“He,” I say through gritted teeth, “is the human equivalent of menstrual cramps.”
Alex whistles appreciatively. “As a brother to three sisters, I just want to say I recognize that roast for what is.” He offers his hand for a high five. I meet it with a slap.
“What about you?” I ask Alex. “How you doing?”
Alex slants a glance at Jen, then back to me. He clears his throat, then says quietly, mindful of Mia, who’s happily pedaling along, on her tag-along bike connected to the back of his. “It’s different between us. I’m the one who fucked up.”
I tip my head. We haven’t talked about this—what exactly went wrong in our marriages. It’s been nice, avoiding it. But maybe it would feel even nicer, having gotten it out there.
“I was a workaholic,” Alex says. “I acted like my first love was my kitchen, my restaurant, my career, rather than her. I hidwhythat was—because my pristine, perfectly run kitchen, my rising-star status, made me feel like I was in control, and I was desperate for that, because inside, I was spiraling out.
“When Jen told me that she was unhappy, that she didn’t feel like I loved her, instead of telling her how much I was struggling, how poorly I was handling it, that it wasn’t that I didn’t want to love her, it was that loving her didn’t give me the relief that being in the kitchen did, I pointed to every reason sheshouldfeel loved.”
My chest aches.
“I fucked up,” he says quietly. “And by the time I understood that, it was too late.”
“Why?” I ask him. “Why too late?”
“Because,” he says steadily, “she couldn’t forgive me when I tried to fix it.”
I can barely wrap my head around the concept of a husband who actually tries to fix your broken marriage. Ethan tapped out the second I raised the possibility that theremightbe something broken between us. And yet, when Jen’s husband tried to fix it, that wasn’t enough.
“I’m sorry,” I say quietly.
He shrugs. This story is older to him than mine is. Less shocking,more familiar. I can tell there’s pain he still carries, but the wound isn’t raw like mine, doesn’t sting how mine does every time I encounter Ethan or anyone whose story brushes against the pain of mine.
I stare at Jen, as that wound stings sharply. Unlike her, my husband quit. Didn’t care enough even to try. And when hers did, it wasn’t enough. It’s hard not to judge that, to not want to grab her shoulders and shake her, and say, “At least he gave a shit!”
But maybe Jen’s judging me the same way. Maybe, after hearing how Ethan tells it, she sees me as a hypercritical, ungrateful woman who couldn’t be happy no matter what, who had to findsomethingwrong, and Ethan had to save himself from mytoxic negativity.
Maybe, in some way, Ethan was right; I could have been more grateful, made peace with what we had, rather than grieve and long for all that we didn’t. Maybe Jen wasn’t completely wrong to feel that her hurt ran so deep, her unwillingness to forgive was justified.
But maybe I was right, too, to want something other than a marriage thatwasdisconnected and often hurtful, and a different man would have heard that for the plea it was to become close, been grateful for the chance for better—really,any—intimacy. Maybe Alex did everything he could to make it right when he could, poured all his heart into his work on healing, being vulnerable, repairing what was broken, and to someone else, that would have been more than enough to heal together.
Maybe, when it comes to telling the stories of our failed relationships, the wounds they inflicted, there are only unreliable narrators, too much hurt warping our perspectives, thwarting any chance to land on the truth of what went wrong.
Maybe, instead of asking,What went wrong? we should ask,When did we stop telling the same story?Maybe if we could try to figureout when the tugs of our experiences became so distanced, they tore that shared story apart into two stories whose plots couldn’t be reconciled, conflicting characters as perpetrator and victim, irreconcilable portrayals of what hurt was premeditated and what was incidental, we’d actually get somewhere.
Because then it wouldn’t be all about figuring out, blaming, or exonerating who was wrong or right. It would be about figuring out what kind of story you’d hoped to tell, the story that got away from you; what kind of journey you want to take as you pick yourself up and start to stumble down the road again, the story you want to find yourself in.
As we come to a stop in front of Ethan and Jen, I’m exhausted from everything that’s been running through my brain.
Alex reaches out, sensing I’ve gone quiet, his fingers brushing mine.
“Hey,” he says softly.
I peer over at him. “Hey.”
He threads his fingers through mine, and in answer, I squeeze, holding his eyes.
“Mommy!” Mia yells.
We pull our hands away, drawn into the inevitable, what we’ve managed to avoid since the awkward exchange between the four of us on my old porch, what started all of this.
“Hi, baby!” Jen crouches to hug Mia, who runs toward her.
I amnotjealous of Jen’s fabulously ample, lifted derriere, accented by her spandex bike shorts and the deep squat she effortlessly completes to hug her daughter.
