The Antelope in the Living Room: The Real Story of Two People Sharing One Life

by Shankle, Melanie

  Scarlett and Rhett had passion and fireworks. They ran hot and cold. And they were completely and totally dysfunctional. She wanted him only when she realized she couldn’t have him. And I did my best to follow her example for many years. I realize it’s probably shocking to learn this just managed to create a lot of heartache for all involved parties.

  A big part of the problem was that I had no idea who I was or what I wanted out of life. Or maybe it was that I knew those things but was too insecure to admit them.

  During my sophomore year of college, I sat next to a girl who eventually became one of my dearest friends and asked her what she was majoring in. She answered, “Sports management, but all I really want to do is be a wife and a mother.” I was shocked that she actually said it out loud. It’s one thing to think it, but on the outside, weren’t we supposed to act like we aspired to be important businesswomen who speak Japanese and wear suits? Or was that just me?

  On the inside, all I really wanted to be was a wife and a mother. Which is great. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be a wife and a mother, and there’s nothing wrong with wanting to be an important businesswoman who wears business suits and speaks Japanese, although you should know that Japanese is an extremely hard language to learn and you might possibly make a D in your second semester. And for the love of cherry trees, or sakura, as they call them in Japanese, they have three separate alphabets. Or maybe that’s just what they tell naive girls from Texas to see if they’ll actually believe it.

  (To this day the only tangible thing I got from struggling through two semesters of Japanese is to understand that “Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto” translates to “Thank you very much, Mr. Roboto.)

  (I’d say that was tuition money well spent.)

  The problem was that I was looking for a man to complete me. It was all very Jerry Maguire-ish before Jerry Maguire ever came out, and we’d all be better off if we leaned more toward Bridget Jones’s Diary and found someone to love us “just as you are.” I was filled with fear and insecurity about what was waiting for me in the real world, and I thought if I could skip over that whole single-career-girl thing and get straight to the house and the minivan and the 2.5 kids, then life would be a lot better. I would be complete and whole and secure. The problem was that I wasn’t seeking God in any of this, which led to a series of bad decisions, including a messy broken engagement.

  Because here’s the thing: I was a bit of an emotional, insecure wreck, and marriage wasn’t going to change that. After sixteen years of being married, I can safely say that marriage tends to amplify whatever junk is in your life, because you have someone who may or may not point it out to you and call you on it, but you have to love them anyway because you’ve pledged to be bound to them until death do you part. Plus, hypothetically speaking, you may have a child who looks just like that person and yells out, “See ya later, losers!” when you drive by a line of cars stuck in traffic, which is God’s way of helping you remember why you fell in love with him in the first place.

  At some point, I found myself at the bottom of my pile of issues and disappointments and began to realize that only God could heal me and make me feel whole. So I let him. It was a gradual process, but I just kept letting go and then letting go some more. Ultimately, when God brought Perry into my life, it was just as a good friend.

  We met through Breakaway Bible study at Texas A&M. Perry hosted a small prayer group in his apartment, and my friend Jen dragged me there one night because she knew I was at a point where I desperately needed to be surrounded by good influences. After my broken engagement a few months earlier, I was raw and hurting and broken.

  When I walked in the door that evening, feeling shy and insecure, Jen introduced me to Perry. He was sitting in the corner of the living room, wearing the equivalent of Ray-Ban Aviator sunglasses, yet they weren’t sunglasses because they had clear frames. As he began to explain the purpose of the meeting to me in intricate detail, I just nodded at him, trying to figure out why anyone would wear glasses that looked like sunglasses yet provided no protection from dangerous UV rays. It was a mystery that turned out to be a result of his lack of interest in going to the optometrist.

  Since we’d just met, I had no idea that the detailed explanation was part of his charm. To this day, he loves nothing more than to lecture on a variety of topics. A few of his more classic offerings are “Why You Should Always Lock the Back Door,” “Tools Should Never Be Left Out on the Back Table,” and my personal favorite, “The Importance of Turning the Closet Doorknob the Right Way.” They never get old. And by never getting old, I mean that if I have to hear them one more time, I may pack my bags and move into a hotel for the weekend. Or a year.

  Anyway, there was something about Perry that intrigued me. He was different from other guys I’d met —more sure of himself or something. And he had a heart for God that I hadn’t seen in many other guys. It’s shocking the things I don’t remember from college, but I remember every minute of that first meeting. I remember what he said and what he prayed, and looking back, I think that was God’s gift to me because he knew this man was going to be my husband and these were things I’d want to remember.

  We both left Texas A&M a couple of months later as acquaintances. He moved back home to San Antonio, and I moved in with my parents in Houston while I looked for a job. And the job I eventually found landed me in San Antonio. It was a sales job helping people invest their retirement benefits in a variety of mutual funds, and I feel like now is a good time to apologize to anyone who was a victim of my lack of expertise. Nothing like a girl who failed Personal Finance 301 in college to help you plan your financial future.

  After a few lonely months in San Antonio, I called my friend Gregg, who had been the leader for Breakaway. He listened to me as I cried about how miserable I was in this new city where I knew no one, and he reminded me that Perry Shankle had also ended up here.

  And so, in an act of social desperation, I called Perry. We made plans to meet at a local restaurant later that week. When I told my best friend, Gulley, I was going to meet a friend, her initial response was to exclaim that I didn’t have any friends in San Antonio. Then, after I filled her in on who it was, she said, “I can see it now. Mrs. Perry Shankle.”

  I replied, “Umm. I don’t think so. He’s not my type.”

  Prophecy has never been one of my gifts.

  The truth was he intimidated me a little. He was so good and strong and just seemed like more than I deserved. God probably had a good girl all picked out for him. A girl who did things like sing in the church choir and play Putt-Putt golf.

  But against all odds, we became best friends over the next several months, which was exactly what I needed. I wasn’t trying to impress or be something I wasn’t —I was just me. And Perry liked me for me, not because I tried to transform myself into some version of what I thought he wanted. Which is a good thing because sixteen years would be a long time to keep up that kind of charade and might also require me to get up and go hunting at 5:00 a.m. in the freezing cold.

  I still had moments when I felt like maybe he was too churchy or spiritual for me, but then there came a day when all my fears were relieved. He’d driven me down to his family’s ranch to spend the day, and we were in his Ford Bronco crossing a pasture, when all of a sudden a huge group of wild hogs went running across the road. And Perry loudly exclaimed about the size of the male anatomy of one of the hogs in graphic detail. I’ll spare you the exact words because I think it might cause controversy, but suffice it to say it sealed my love for him in some weird, inexplicable way. He became real and a little salty —two qualities of which I’m a big fan.

  And so after months of friendship and just genuinely falling in deep like and eventually love, we had the DTR talk. Otherwise known as Defining the Relationship.

  I was ready because God had brought me to a place where my security and worth were found in him. Perry didn’t complete me. He complemented me and made life more fun, but I didn
’t have that same sense of desperation I’d had for so long. (Although there were still times I could fall back into old patterns. I don’t want you to get the impression I’d conquered it once and for all. Old habits die hard and all that.)

  I’m not one to offer advice, because that requires, you know, wisdom on a particular subject. And I was no poster child for how to really live a great single life. But here’s what I learned along the way.

  Someone can look great on paper; your friends may love him; he may have the best job, a cool car, and not wear jean shorts —but that doesn’t mean he’s the one. (I really did have a list of qualities I wanted in a husband written out in one of my many journals and no jean shorts was number four on the list along with number six, must know how to dance. And number eight, he cannot have a mustache.)

  (So I essentially ruled out being married to Kid Rock.)

  And while all those shallow qualities I listed on paper are obviously essential to finding someone who is socially competent and well groomed, what you really need is someone you’d want next to you in battle, someone who can make you laugh even in the tough times, someone who will encourage you to be the best that you can be. Because, apparently, marriage is like being in the army.

  I think it can be easy to settle for less than you deserve just because less is right in front of you and the best may still be unseen. But I guarantee there are many women in marriages who are so lonely that they long for their single days when at least they had the hope of finding someone who would understand them, love them, and care for them.

  Looking back now, I can see that being single gives you the freedom to do whatever it is you want to do without having to answer to anyone else. If I could change anything, I wish I would have embraced it more instead of wishing it away. When it’s all said and done, it seems like a mere blip on the radar of life, and it’s hard to imagine a time when the most romantic thing in your day didn’t involve someone telling you they don’t mind eating leftover chili for the second night in a row. I’m not kidding. I adore a man who is willing to eat leftovers two nights in a row.

  And you know what I realize now? That we’re all waiting on something, no matter where we are in life. It’s the human condition. Being married and having kids is wonderful, but I guarantee that every person who is reading this has some secret desire in their heart that they would like to see fulfilled. I have so many things in my life to be thankful for, but there are other things that I dream about and hope for, and honestly, I don’t know if those things will ever come to pass or not.

  So I try to keep my eyes on the one who knows everything in my heart and trust that he knows what’s ultimately the best for me and will bring all things to pass in their time. He hasn’t let me down yet, because like it says in 1 Corinthians 2:9, “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind has imagined what God has prepared for those who love him” (NLT). He knows what’s best for me.

  He certainly did the day he brought Perry into my life. In all my wildest dreams, I couldn’t have imagined him because, honestly, he still surprises me almost daily.

  CHAPTER 3

  White Lace and Promises and Cake

  I’M GOING TO GO ahead and tell you the only reason I agreed to and was able to plan a wedding in three months was because Pinterest didn’t exist yet. For the love. What fresh scourge hath Pinterest wrought on our society?

  (I believe Shakespeare first said that.)

  (Actually, I said it. Right after I saw another pin of cupcakes made to look like melting snowmen.)

  I don’t know how a bride these days ever manages to wade through the myriad of hairstyle options and wedding favors and whether or not to have her bridal portrait taken in the back of an old vintage truck or in a field of sunflowers. I would have had to put my head between my knees and stay that way for the rest of my life had I known about all those things. It took me a full two weeks just to decide if I wanted the baked Brie or a fruit plate at my reception. The option of cookies iced with my new monogram would have sent me into a seizure.

  I am not a woman equipped to handle a world where I have to hold a small chalkboard with our wedding date written in some sort of handcrafted calligraphy.

  And all the pressure to come up with creative ways to ask your friends to be bridesmaids and then sending out save-the-date cards? You want to know how I did that back in ye olden days of 1997? I called them on the phone (probably a phone with a cord that couldn’t find the nearest Starbucks if its life depended on it) and said, “Hey, make sure you put August 16 on your calendar because I’m getting married and I’d love for you to be a bridesmaid.”

  That was it.

  No chalkboard. No balloons filled with white and silver confetti. No creative photos of my new diamond ring or Photoshopped pictures of a bubble coming out of my mouth that read, “I said yes!”

  Not to mention the whole “trash the dress” phenomenon. The other day on the news I saw a feature about a girl who set her wedding dress on fire WHILE SHE WAS WEARING IT and then ran into the ocean as someone photographed the whole thing. Trust me when I say this is a terrible idea. The future just called and said thank you for not giving yourself third-degree burns in exchange for some edgy photographs.

  Looking back, I feel like our big day was just a hair shy of the lack of pomp and circumstance when Nellie Oleson married Percival in Little House on the Prairie. In the late ’90s, none of us knew it was even an option to get a portrait made in your wedding dress while sitting on a mattress in a river somewhere. It was a simpler time.

  We had the church and the reception site booked within twenty-four hours. (It’s easy to pick a wedding date when met with the stipulation that it can’t be during hunting season. Perry has always been a romantic fool.) And then, just two days into our engagement, I was offered a new job. A great job in pharmaceutical sales. A job I couldn’t turn down even though it meant I was about to spend seven weeks of my three-month engagement out of town at training meetings learning about the respiratory system and various medications and how to spend your days taking doctors to play golf.

  So the next three months consisted of my flying home on various weekends to attend wedding showers and parties, check on wedding details, and then fly back to various nongarden spots all over the United States for another grueling week of training and getting up early and sitting all day in a “classroom,” which was basically just a fancy term for a hotel room with tables and chairs instead of a bed and a nightstand with a lamp bolted down on it.

  There came a point in this process when I was so exhausted I could barely function. Unfortunately, this came on the morning my training class was meeting with a Department of Public Safety officer for mandatory defensive driving tests.

  The officer had us file into a plain, white-walled room and lined us up to check our driver’s licenses. And when he walked up to me, he informed me that I wouldn’t be able to complete my driving course that morning because I was clearly still drunk from the night before.

  “Umm, officer? I didn’t drink last night.”

  “Young lady, it’s obvious you did. Your eyes are bloodshot, and you can barely focus. It appears you’re having a hard time just standing up.”

  Yes. I call this particular affliction 7:00 a.m. Some would say it’s embarrassing, but I just say it’s an excuse to explain why I can’t commit to any activity that begins before 8:00 a.m. I have an early-morning disability. It’s a real thing, even if it’s only in my head.

  The good news is, I was able to convince him that, yes, while I wasn’t fit for public consumption, I was okay to drive, and he let me take the test. The bad news is, I still had two more weeks of training left. By the time I got home for good, a week before my wedding, I had a full-blown case of bronchitis. And what bride doesn’t appear even more radiant when she sounds like a six-pack-a-day smoker?

  So I hauled myself into the doctor’s office to get every antibiotic known to man because I didn’t want Perry to think he was marrying an oct
ogenarian named Hazel who came complete with an oxygen machine. Although I never would have fit in better at the Village Oaks apartments. I was one large girdle and a Murder, She Wrote episode away from finally being one of them.

  By Friday night it was time for our rehearsal dinner, and thankfully I was feeling like a human being again. And there is nothing like the adrenaline that comes with knowing everyone you love is on their way into town to celebrate one of the biggest days of your life with you. I could have lifted a bus off the ground.

  A few weeks earlier, I’d called my Me-Ma and Pa-Pa to see if they were going to be able to make the trip. They were both in their late eighties at the time, and I knew the four-hour journey might be too much for them. But Pa-Pa answered the phone with his usual “BIG MEL!”

  We talked for a while, and he assured me that he wouldn’t miss the wedding for the world. Then he asked me if I wanted to talk to Me-Ma or, as he called her, “my cook.” I said I did, and as he handed the phone to her, I overheard her ask, “Who is it?”

  And he replied, “Heck if I know!”

  So basically he’d just spent ten minutes reassuring someone he didn’t know that he wouldn’t miss her wedding for love or money.

  But that Friday morning my aunt and uncle called to let me know they’d packed up Me-Ma and Pa-Pa and were indeed on their way to San Antonio to see their oldest grandchild get married.

  The whole day was a flurry of hugs and friends and family. It was filled with the excitement that comes only a few times in life, when you know you’re on the precipice of a whole new beginning. Perry and I sat at our rehearsal dinner that night, surrounded by everyone we loved, and I know neither of us had ever felt more grateful, because not only had we found each other, but we’d also been given the gift of some of the best friends in the world who had taken the time to come celebrate with us and occasionally point out that they knew it was true love when they saw a picture of me dressed in camo and holding a gun.