Once Upon a Marriage

“Did you talk to him about it?” Had the man taken advantage of Barbara?

“No. I knew enough to know what it was. That it wasn’t unusual.”

“I’m confused,” Marie said, frowning. “So, when did you cross the line from therapist to man? What happened? Why did things suddenly change?”

Had the man come on to a lonely, vulnerable woman? Was her mother on the rebound?

“Nothing happened. I walked into his office one day to tell him that I didn’t need therapy anymore, to tell him thank you and goodbye. He hadn’t heard me come in. Didn’t even know I was there. He was standing at the window, his shoulders were slightly slumped and he looked tired.”

Marie waited, practically holding her breath. “So what happened?” she finally asked.

“That’s it. I saw a man who was tired. Whose shoulders were heavy with the weight they bore. And long after I left his office, I kept seeing that man in my mind. Not the doctor. Not the medical professional who’d helped me. But the man.”

The reply left Marie with more questions than answers. “So you said Dad’s last effort to get back together was the catalyst. But you’d withstood his attempts in the past. What makes you think that this time is different? That you were really ready to be done with therapy?” She attacked the easiest confusion first.

“I’d been off medication for months. And your father had come to visit me.”

Marie had known her father had tried, again, to get back with her mother. He’d tried to get her in the middle of it all. Neither of her parents had told her the attempt had included an in-person visit.

“At the house?”

“Yes.”

Oh. Her stomach filled with dread. In-person visits always meant they shared a room. Maybe because they couldn’t help it. Or just because they always had. Marie had never asked. But how could her mother have her father over and be suddenly in love with someone else? Marrying someone else?

Turning on her side, Barbara faced Marie, too. And sliding her hand out from under the covers, brushed a hand across Marie’s face.

“He slept in the guest room, sweetie. Because I told him he could stay, but I had absolutely no desire to get back together. He brought flowers. Got on his knees and made promises. Big promises. Ones that should have won me over. He had this idea that he’d keep a tracking app on his phone, that I’d have all his accounts and passwords, he was putting a text app on his tablet and he’d leave that at home so I could see all his texts. He wanted us to have the same phone plan so I could see all numbers he communicated with if I needed to do so...”

Her father had told her about all his big promises. They’d been his attempt to keep himself in line. Because he wanted so badly to be a good husband to her mother. He’d need to have the measures in place that would ensure that he’d be caught before he cheated...

“I didn’t want to live my life as a police warden,” Barbara said, her eyes sad. “I couldn’t face a life where I’d be constantly checking numbers and data and text messages to ensure that my husband was being faithful to me. I didn’t want to even think about such things. And I didn’t want to live life with your father anymore, either. I was saddened by the realization, but I wasn’t heartbroken. I was well and truly over him. And that’s why I went to tell Bruce that I wasn’t going to be coming to counseling anymore.”

“And then as soon as you told Bruce you were through, you started dating him?”

Marie had read the statistics, too. To appease her mother, she’d read far too much propaganda and professional opinion on infidelity and discourse on why men cheat. The ways they cheat. The probability of saving a marriage after cheating. How to save a marriage after cheating.

How to know when your husband was cheating. How to prevent him from cheating.

And one thing that had been clear in almost all the pieces she’d read was that women often turned to another man, another relationship, to give them something to lean on as they let go of an old one.

“We ran into each other,” Barbara said. “I was at a shop I’d never been to before, getting new tires on my car, and he was there, too. He’d had a flat that morning, driven over a nail and was waiting for it to be fixed.

“I sat down next to him. He asked me how I was doing. And I saw those tired shoulders. I saw a man who had flat tires. And a life outside of counseling people. I asked him about himself. Somewhat to satisfy the curiosity that had been growing inside me ever since that day in his office. As it turned out, we’d just seen the same movie. We liked the same foods. The same kind of landscaping. He’d just had his redone. But mostly what struck me was the way he talked when he wasn’t working. He has a sense of humor, a way of seeing the world, that delights me...”

Okay. Wow. Marie scrambled, looking for whatever had to be wrong in what her mother was saying.

“I knew, as I sat there in the greasy shop that smelled like rubber, that he was someone important to my life. As soon as I knew he felt the same, I was certain

I’d finally found the right man.”

“How can you be so certain, Mom? You remember the throes of first love. You told me about it often enough, when you warned me about how you’d fallen for Dad in the beginning.”

“This is different, Marie. With your father there was always an element of...unrest. I don’t know how else to describe it. There was excitement. And love. But there was...” Barbara shrugged, lifting the covers enough that a burst of cool air chilled Marie.

“With Bruce, there is peace. I know it sounds corny, but when you feel it, you’ll know.”

Peace. Gabi had said something similar the night before she’d married Liam. She’d said that it just felt right. That she wasn’t worried. She saw all the dangers inherent in a relationship between longtime friends who knew more about each other than a lot of husbands and wives ever knew. Dangers inherent in people from two completely different social classes hooking up. Money mattered a heck of a lot more to Liam than it did to Gabi.