Getting Married

by Theresa Alan

  “What was it?” I ask.

  “Mr. Happy, of course.”

  “Mr. Hap—? Oh.”

  “Yeah, men are sooo predictable. Anyway, it was this really flirty stuff, it really pissed me off. I nearly tore his head off. He vowed he’d stop, but I caught him at it again and again. We ultimately ended up in couple’s therapy because of it.”

  “But now you’re doing the same thing,” I point out. “You’re not trying to get back at him for what he did, are you?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Maybe it’s time to get back into couple’s therapy,” Gabrielle says.

  “Maybe. I don’t know. I just can’t stop fantasizing about a weekend away with Shane in the Bahamas. I just want to have fun and sex and romance with someone who isn’t Jon.”

  “So, do you want that more than you want to keep your family together?” I ask.

  “Of course I don’t want to tear my family up. I just…want it all. And as long as this stays a fantasy, what’s the problem?”

  “You’re not addressing the real problems in your marriage by running away into this other world,” Gabrielle says. “How are things at home between you?”

  “It’s been hard lately. Really hard. We just snap at each other and go around with very short fuses.”

  “What about the sex?”

  Rachel rolls her eyes. “We actually had sex last night, and the whole time, all I could think about was those damn garage shelves.”

  “What are you talking about?” I ask.

  “Don’t you remember? Months and months ago, back on Jon’s thirtieth birthday party, instead of helping me get ready for the party, he spent the day buying supplies to build garage shelves. And he still hasn’t put the damn things up. I’ve asked him to do it a million times. Every week he promises he’ll do it this weekend, and then the weekend comes and goes, and he has all these excuses for why he didn’t get around to it.”

  “You don’t want to destroy your marriage over garage shelves,” I say.

  “Don’t you get it? It’s not about the shelves. It’s about how I bust my ass to keep him and the kids fed, the house cleaned, the dog walked, and I want Jon to show me that he values me and loves me and appreciates the work that I do to keep our family safe and happy. So if I ask him to put up some shelves, he should put up the fucking shelves.”

  “Have you talked to him and put it that way or have you just been nagging him?” I ask.

  Rachel pauses a moment. She takes a deep breath and looks off at nothing as tears fill her eyes. She quickly brushes the tears away. “I’ll talk to him.”

  “Are you and Jon going to make it through this?” I ask.

  “Yes. We love each other desperately. Marriage really is a good thing, Eva, I swear. I’m sorry I’m just showing you the tough side of marriage. That’s just where things are at for me and Jon right now. But it really is an amazing thing to build a life with someone, I promise. How are wedding plans coming?”

  I can’t tell them that my wedding is supposed to be four months away and I’ve stopped planning it completely. I’ve secured three big things—the reception/ceremony site, the caterer, and a DJ. I’m not going to use a florist, so I’m okay there, but I haven’t chosen a dress or shoes or selected wedding invitations. I haven’t booked a photographer or done anything about a rehearsal dinner or a million other details. I don’t know how I expect any of this will get done, but I can’t seem to bring myself to do it. I wonder if it means that I really don’t want to get married after all.

  “I can’t seem to find a dress. According to this book I got on how to plan a wedding, I should have gotten a dress months ago, but I just can’t seem to find something I like.”

  “What are you looking for exactly?” Rachel asks.

  “That’s the problem, I don’t really know. Sometimes I think I want something really different, a beautiful gown that wouldn’t necessarily have to be considered a bridal gown. Then then other times, when I’m flipping through the bridal magazines, I’ll see these dresses on these gorgeous models and become convinced that’s the dress I want, so I’ll go to the store and try it on and as it turns out, I look nothing like the model. I don’t know, I want a dress to reach out and grab me by the collar and shake me, announcing that this is it! This is my dress!”

  “If you want help shopping for dresses, I’ll be happy to come with you. Or maybe I could draw a few designs for you, and I could sew it myself,” Rachel says.

  “I couldn’t ask you do to that.”

  “It could be my wedding present to you.”

  “No way, all that material would be much too expensive.”

  “Okay, well the gift could be my labor. You can pay for materials.”

  “Maybe.” I don’t want to talk about weddings or dresses or failing marriages anymore. After I swallow a bite of my sandwich, I say, “Gabrielle, how is your research going?”

  “Good. I’ve gotten the okay from the Human Subjects Committee to go ahead and conduct my interviews. That was my last big hurdle, besides finishing the damn thing. So I’m crafting an online survey, and then I’ll do some face-to-face follow-up interviews.”

  “Will and most of his friends are all into computer games, so if you want to interview any of them, I’m sure that they’d love to talk to you. They can talk about gaming for hours.”

  “Yeah. I’d like that.”

  “We get together at this bar called Mickie’s every Friday night. Any time you want to come, let me know.”

  “I will, thanks.”

  “Rach, how are the kids?”

  “The kids are good. You know how my friend Lisa is pregnant?”

  I wonder if she’s talking about Evil Bitch Woman Lisa. “No, I didn’t know that,” I say.

  “Well, she is. She’s really big now. She came over yesterday and Julia put her hands on her hips and asked, ‘Why are you so fat?’ I said, ‘Julia, honey, she’s not fat, she has a baby in her tummy.’ Julia got all big-eyed and said in this shocked tone, ‘Lisa! Why did you eat a baby?!’”

  I smile. “She’s such a cutie.”

  “I know. And then my eldest is being his usual brilliant self. He goes to a charter school,” she tells Gabrielle. “It’s very academically rigorous and it starts kids on foreign languages in second grade instead of waiting until they’re in high school. But with the budget cuts, they’re talking about shutting the school down. So there was a public meeting the other night to discuss this, and some of the students wrote speeches about why their school shouldn’t be closed down. A ton of people came to this meeting—we filled the rafters of the kids’ gym. The committee head said there were going to be too may kids speaking to applaud them all, so we had to do the silent kind of applause where you just wiggle your fingers.” She demonstrates by putting her hands out with her palms facing us and then wriggling her fingers. “So kid after kid went, and, you know, they’re kids, their speeches tend to ramble and go off on tangents and the kids tend to not be the best public speakers. So after each kid, all the parents do the silent finger-wiggling thing, and then my Isaac gets out there, and he reads a speech that’s so well-written it sounds like the speechwriter for the president penned the thing. He wrote the entire thing himself, with no help from Jon or me. And he did such a good job of presenting this heart-wrenching talk on how the school has changed his life and how the teachers are passionate about teaching and the students are passionate about learning that when he finished, despite the mandate not to clap, the entire audience burst into thunderous applause. I was crying my eyes out, I was so proud of the kid, and I leapt up and started shouting, ‘That’s my kid! That’s my kid!’”

  “Rachel! You didn’t!” I laugh.

  “Yes, I did. But here’s the best part. After the meeting was over, there was a reporter interviewing the kids for their reaction about the school being shut down. Isaac answered the reporter’s questions and then he turned to me and said, all serious and matter-of-fact, ‘I just don’
t know if I can handle all the fame.’”

  Gabrielle and I hoot at this. As I laugh, I realize that if I never have children, I’m never going to have a moment like that, being filled with so much pride that I jump up and start hollering that that’s my kid to a huge audience of people.

  I feel suddenly sad and nostalgic about a life I may never have.

  Chapter 37

  I n the first few days after I quit using, I felt irritable and depressed, but for the last few weeks, I have felt like a dynamo of health and productivity. I feel positive about my life and my future and I’m feeling good about myself. I barely even think about drugs.

  So when my pink cloud of happiness and illusion pops, it happens abruptly and unexpectedly. I get an urge to take speed that’s so overpowering it overwhelms me. I feel stressed and anxious and I crave it so badly I feel I would gladly do anything to get it because if I don’t, I’ll go crazy. In that moment, I don’t try to do anything to talk myself out of using. I don’t want to talk myself out of it. I want to use. I call Sandy on her cell phone and she agrees to meet me in an hour at a coffee shop close to Rachel’s shop.

  As soon as I’ve gotten the wheels in motion, my anxiety lifts. I feel happy and secure. I just need to get through the next hour, which is totally doable.

  I get to the coffeehouse early and get a cup of coffee to go. I take the coffee outside, have a few sips, and dump out the rest. Then I take the empty cup inside to the bathroom with me, rinse it out, and pat it dry with a paper towel. Next I fold up the bills and put them in the cup and put the lid back on. It feels very James Bondish.

  I wait for Sandy in a booth. She hands me a brown paper bag.

  “This is for you,” she says.

  “And this is for you.” I slide the coffee cup across the table. She takes it without opening it.

  “How are things with you?” she asks.

  “Better now. And you?”

  She shrugs. “Same shit, different day, right? Look, I’ve got a bunch of shit I need to do. Call me if you need me.”

  “Sure. Thanks, Sandy.”

  On the drive home, I feel excited and at peace.

  W hen Will finds my stash of drugs, he freaks out. He starts screaming so loud it scares me. I’m not scared in the sense that I’m worried about my safety, I mean it’s scary because I hadn’t known he was capable of such ferocity. He’s usually so gentle. It also scares me because it reminds me uncannily of the way my father yelled at me sometimes. My father, like Will, rarely got angry, but when he did, the way his booming voice thundered through the room made me want to hide under the bed for safety.

  I’m not proud of what I do next. I get defensive. “I’ve been doing really well. So I slipped up. You think someone who is trying to quit smoking never sneaks a cigarette here or there? It takes time to change!”

  “Meth is not the same thing as a cigarette. It is an illegal drug that can land you in jail and can kill you not in years but in a matter of weeks.”

  “I’m trying! Change isn’t easy.”

  “Why did you do it? Why couldn’t you have told me that you wanted to use?”

  “It was late. You were asleep. I couldn’t sleep. I had too much work to do, so I just thought…”

  “Eva, you can wake me up at any time of day or night. I just don’t understand why you didn’t feel like you could come to me.”

  “It’s not that I didn’t think I could come to you. I—” The truth is, I didn’t want to be talked out of using. I just wanted to get high. I just thought, getting high would be great right now. And without any internal debate, I called Sandy and got the wheels rolling. “I’m sorry. Next time I think about using I’ll come to you.”

  I go to the appointment I had scheduled with Anne the next day and tell her what happened.

  “You do realize that if you keep using drugs, you’re going to lose Will,” she says.

  I nod my head. I do know that. It’s just a question of exactly how much time it will take for Will to get fed up with me.

  “Are you having doubts about Will?”

  “No. I don’t have any doubts that I want to spend my life with him. But the whole marriage thing is freaking me out a little.”

  “I want to address your relationship with Will first. You’re sure you love him?”

  “Yes. I’m absolutely sure. Why are you asking me that?”

  “I just want to be sure you’re not purposely trying to sabotage things with him.”

  “No. I waited my entire life to find someone like Will. I know it makes no sense. I dream all of my life of finding true love, and then I finally find it and I do everything I can to screw it up.”

  “It might be that you’re testing his love for you. You have trouble loving yourself so you have a hard time believing someone could love you.”

  “At least I pick sweet men who treat me right, you know? I may not have any self-esteem, but I don’t have abusive boyfriends.” I realize I’m being defensive again. I want a medal because my fiancé doesn’t beat me? Jesus, I’m in bad shape.

  “Drugs are kind of like an abusive boyfriend who you keep going back to, aren’t they? You know they aren’t good for you, but you keep going back anyway,” Anne says.

  “I don’t even know why I used the other night. It was so stupid!”

  “Don’t say that. Then you’re saying you’re stupid.”

  “I’m not saying I’m stupid, I’m saying my actions were stupid.”

  “Don’t beat yourself up. Just think about why you used. What were you thinking and feeling before you used? This is a good opportunity for self-discovery.”

  Don’t beat myself up? How can she say that? I betrayed Will, broke the law, and put my life and health in danger. I’d say a little bit of whipping my ass in shape is in order. “I wasn’t thinking about anything. All I thought was, gee, it’d be nice to get high.” I study my fingernail and begin using my thumbnail to poke back the cuticles on my left hand. “I don’t know. I guess there was this part of me that felt like I was getting away with something. Like I thought I could use without Will knowing. Not using made me feel sort of, I don’t know, like I feel when I diet. I feel deprived or something. But that’s ridiculous. We can’t give in to any urge or craving we have. Otherwise, we’d all be stealing from each other and we’d all weigh a thousand pounds and we’d all owe millions of dollars in credit card debt. You have to practice a little self-control.”

  “Eva, have you suffered from depression?”

  “I’ve had bouts of depression, sure. Who hasn’t?”

  Anne just nods. “Depression is anger turned inward. I think you have anger you’re not expressing, anger you can’t face, and that’s why you’re getting high—when you’re high you don’t have to feel those emotions that make you uncomfortable.”

  I shrug. Anger turned inward? What do I have to be angry about? My good job? My education? My two parents who love me?

  “Let’s talk about your memories of your parents when you were a child.”

  “Like what kind of memories?”

  “We have to uncover where your anger comes from.”

  “Look, I can buy that I have issues with my parents, but I need to stop using drugs right now. I need help changing my behavior now.”

  “Your behavior will change once we heal the core issues. The fact that you used the other day gives us an opportunity to explore these issues.”

  We spend the rest of the time talking about my childhood and my relationship to my parents. It’s painful to dredge up memories of when my parents were less than perfect, but even so, their “crimes” against me seem really minor. So my father had extremely high expectations of me and he had a hard time expressing his love for me. That must describe a huge percentage of fathers in the world. So many other fathers abandoned their kids or molested their kids or were abusive alcoholics, my father’s failings seem pretty damn minor by comparison. But I keep telling Anne any memories that come into my mind. They all seem like s
mall incidents. I almost get the sense that Anne wants me to reveal that my father molested me or that I was raped when I was twelve or something. As if once I could deal with a huge traumatic event, my anxiety and anger that seem to come from nowhere could suddenly be explained and everything would magically fall into place. But I don’t have one big traumatic event. I just have two imperfect parents. To me, it’s not my relationship with my parents that I think we need to talk about, it’s my reaction to the daily stresses of life that needs to change.

  Anne tells me that psychological health takes time and can’t be rushed, and I understand that I can’t order self-esteem at the drive-through window of a McDonald’s. I am fully willing to work hard at improving my mental health for my sake and the sake of the people who care about me, but I feel frustrated with Anne for not seeing that, in addition to this long-term goal, I need a short-term solution for keeping me away from drugs.

  Four days later, it’s three in the afternoon and I’m exhausted from a shitty night of sleep the night before. I lie down to take a nap, but after ten minutes I get up again because there is no way I’m going to be able to sleep. I think about how Anne said that when I used the other day, I shouldn’t beat myself up about it. I just needed to examine why I did what I did. I decide to take her comment as permission to use again. I am doing much better after all. The important thing is that I’m cutting down and that eventually I’ll quit altogether. When I admit to her that I used again, I’ll just explain that I was exhausted and I didn’t have the energy to fight the craving. I understand that I have to quit and I want to quit, but later, not right now. Maybe after the wedding. That would be a much better time to quit.

  Once again I call Sandy and once again we meet at the coffee shop, but this time I can’t wait to get home. I duck into the bathroom at the coffeehouse. My nails aren’t very long, but they will do. I stick my pinky finger in the bag of powder, then I bring the finger to my nose and snort.