Page 3 of Trading Up
The excuses that fell from his mouth ran freely like water from the tap, endless and consistent. He started coming home from those business dinners, later and later, telling me that someone needed to stay with the kids, soobviouslythat wasme. He started getting short with me, nitpicking the things that weren’t finished when I ‘did nothing’ at home.
Nothing. That’s what he thought I did at home. Making dinners, caring for the kids all day, diaper changes, picking up the toys at the end of the night, the endless piles of laundry and dishes, and floors that never managed to stay clean despite the daily sweeping, vacuuming, and mopping. That’s what he said I did.
Nothing.
While I was feeling stuck as a full-time, stay-at-home mom, he was off working, building his empire, leaving me with the nitty-gritty home work. Thankfully, I had my Mom Group and my bestie, Row. They helped me get through the day. Row and I would work on business plans for a new restaurant or one of my hair-brained ideas for an app that was like a Mom Group specific to new moms or toddler moms still struggling with PPD/PPA, like myself. Pregnancy with Mav really took its toll on me, even though Will did his best to spoil me, and I felt like I was drowning most days.
Not that my husband noticed the drowning. He thought flowers, massages, taking our toddler so I could shower or go to the store, was enough of a break. Row eventually got me into therapy. It was about a year after Mav was born, and I was at my lowest. He was still a breastfed baby, only taking the breast. No pacifier, no bottle, no pumped or expressed milk,justnipple.
My nipple.
About seven months into therapy, I realized that my marriage was struggling and nowhere near as concrete as I had previously thought it was. Things I had shrugged off were now blaring in my mind. He didn’t want me there supporting him atany of those dinners or meetings, even though he only had his bachelor’s in business, while I had my master’s. When I finally pulled myself out of my PPD, with the help of a therapist and my friends, I started getting back into the business world, seeing how trends were going, and attending seminars. I worked for years after Mav was born to start finding something I could make my own.
It was shortly after the time of the late nights and no time for seeing us at lunch, when I noticed he had been pulling away whenever he graced us with his presence at home, which was rare before and became almost impossible to see him anymore. Therapy opened my eyes, and it was like I saw everything that had been going on over the last few years.
It was like spotting Bigfoot or something when he was home, and realizing that when I looked back, there were more days of him being gone than home than I had let myself admit. I hated that I’d burrowed in deep and ignored it for so long.
“You didn’t burrow deep. You were struggling and made the first step for self-preservation when you didn’t run to him to solve that question,” was what my therapist said to me when we’d talked about it in one session. The boys had been missing him like crazy, while I was swimming in a sea of diapers, breastmilk, pre-k drop-offs and pick-ups, and then navigating the start of kindergarten alone. I was barely keeping my own head above water, and I had chosen myself. For the first time in I didn’t know how long. Looking back on that now, I am proud of my choice. It gave me time to get myself together mentally before I would let myself see the wreckage that was my marriage.
All the while he was away, missing dinners, bedtimes with the kids, time with us, and fun things we would do on the weekends. Eventually, the boys stopped asking about him, andhe was missing everything, really. The way family dinners with all of us became less and less frequent, and eventually included only me and the boys. The way that, when he was home, he guarded his phone, keeping it with him all of the time, even to the bathroom or for a shower, or he would snap at me for every little thing, picking fights that wouldn’t have happened three years ago. Carter had spilled his milk and asked for a paper towel to clean it, one Saturday morning, while sitting in the little breakfast nook. I was finishing making a plate for myself and Mav when he walked in, saw the mess, and just snapped! Yelled at me that I was a horrible mother, raising our children to be ‘careless idiots, ’ and then stormed out the door.
He said it all. In front of the boys. They started crying, asking why Daddy hates us.
He didn’t answer his phone that day. No calls. No text messages.
It was also the first night he didn’t come home.
I learned abouthertwo months later.
Paloma.
She was twenty-three to my thirty-two. Her body hadn’t seen childbirth twice, nor had it seen thirty-two years on this planet yet. Our sons, Carter and Maverick, were only five and three. They were both in school full-time now, so I had time for myself again to do what I wanted, and I wanted to go see him on his lunch breaks, even if he was working through it. I just wanted to be with him. Spend time with him. It seemed like the last three years, definitely the last two, he had pulled so far away I wasn’t sure if I could still reach him. Would he still want to spend time with me? Would he be happy to see me? Would he turn me away? It felt like that was all he was doing every timeI tried to set something up. Or he would agree, only to pull out and cancel at the last minute. I wanted to try to reconnect, to be spontaneous, pull us out of the slump, and thisroommate phasewe were in.
I just wanted to be back to us, something that felt like it was slipping through my fingers by the time I had been able to come up for air. We hadn’t had enough time, affection, or just…us. And my therapist agreed that we needed to reconnect. She told me two months ago I was the definition of ‘a married single mother,’ and I wanted to deny it, but she gave me reading materials, and that’s what I was. What I had been, foryears.
After dropping the boys off at school and running home to get myself together, finally feeling pretty, I stopped to pick up his favorite foods from the burger joint that was just a little too far out of town for him to have as often as he liked. I smiled, thinking of how he was going to be so excited to see the bag that I even talked myself into grabbing a chocolate milkshake for myself. They made the best ones! They made them so thick, it was like sucking a golf ball through a garden hose. But,man, were they good.
Taking one more look in my rearview mirror, I adjusted my sunglasses and smoothed down my sundress. I had a smile, feeling light and hopeful as I walked up to his trailer. I was humming the melody for ‘What About Us’ by P!nk, feeling myself, and also feeling the eyes of every single one of his guys on me. I looked back once at the crew as they were sitting around, eating homemade lunches, watching me like they were expecting something. I was only about five feet from the trailer when I heard it.
The moaning.
I froze in my tracks, thinking how horribly ironic it was that the song I was humming wastheexact questionthat was ringing out in my mind.What about us?!A woman’s moaning broke through that thought, and my heart, fracturing me on a fundamental level. It was followed closely by an all too familiar grunt. Or maybe not so familiar since it had been…how long?
“Fuck! You feel so good. So tight for me,” this voice was husky, thick with lust for this other, younger woman. The chocolate shake in my stomach was threatening to make a reappearance.
How many months since he had touched me? Since he’d said anything even remotely filthy to me? Since…since we’d even shared more than a quick peck on the lips or cheek? I finally gave up after trying (and failing) for so long to get him to touch me, something that was more than a cuddle or a hug. After a while, he wouldn’t even cuddle me. He’d make sure he was home late enough that I was already asleep. Our last time we…ahem…was…two years ago. Two years?!
How?
When?
Where had the time gone?
“Oh! Yes! Will! Harder,” a female voice cried out as I walked up the steps, phone in hand. I was going tomake surethat I got this on video. I was going to getproof. Proof so thatwhen, not if,I left him, he would rememberwhy. I wanted everyone else to know, too. I wanted everyone to see what I was seeing. I wanted them to have this burned into their brains the way this was going to be etched into mine. This would be the image I brought forth if I ever needed to hurl on command. Maybe I should leave that as a note for him.
Felt sick the other day and needed to just get it out. Thought of you. Thanks for the help.
I wanted to laugh while I had tears streaming down my face. Was I losing it? Maybe. But…why was this happening? How was this happening? You don’t fuck your wife over. Especially not when she’s a little more into murder mysteries than you! But I think, as my phone was moving up to start recording, this is why you don’t betray the person you promised to care for when she was worried about becoming a stay-at-home wife and, eventually, a stay-at-home mother. I’d been telling him I wanted to work—that I wanted my own money.
