No Spillway
Our lives floated along swimmingly with only an occasional chop in the water. Having it so good, of course, I had to generate my own apprehensions, my own phantoms, and I did. I worked myself up into a fit of insecurity shortly after Jean’s departure as to whether Ross would remain faithful, having read an article in a magazine on the percentage of men who strayed after marriage. A small noise, an insignificant note amongst the general din, but I latched onto it nonetheless; a signal shot sent rising into the air, calling for the never-far-away doubts and fears to come swirling and fluttering down on my happiness. I let them peck at it mercilessly.
I’d prop myself up in bed at night, leaning back against the headboard, and watch Ross as he slept unaware of the prenuptial scrutiny. His face, so sweet in sleep, made me ache. Welcomed in so many beds, he had sampled more than his fair share of lovers, and he did that and could do it again because there were so many eager to give it to him. Women were always throwing themselves at him; they just didn’t stick. When would he get tired of me? I was always exasperating him; I was well aware of that. Usually after a few minutes of this, Ross’ mouth would drop open and he’d start snoring in unconscious rebuttal. Is that all you have to say for yourself, darling? Nightmares gone for now, demons banished, sleeping like a child.
But it was the dark side of the terrain, the murky bogs and muddy bottom waters that made for uncertain footing. So much frustration, so much anger, his work stoking both daily; the nagging self-doubt, the fatigue of always going his own way, the horrible thoughts and visions that wouldn’t fade; and no place for all this to go but to swirl round and round, no release, no spillway. He’d let it all loose at times, letting himself go just with me—the ugly side of exclusivity—lashing out at me as nastily as he lashed out at himself, never physically, but with judgmental appraisals and a cruel withdrawal of affection. I wasn’t panicked by these blowouts, though I dreaded them. I could sink as low, with similar backwaters splashing, the only difference being I let the deluge barrel through, let it knock me about as it surged on through to its destination, while he struggled against the spew. No, what frightened me during these times was the recklessness exposed in the man, his Achilles’ heel; the same recklessness that made him drive too fast, and I was afraid of him screwing around in a black mood simply to slip loose from the tug, simply for the cheap kick of blowing it all out of the water.
His sleep disturbed by anxiety burning at such close quarters, Ross would often turn toward me at this point, pulling me back down against him. “Can’t you be still—what’s wrong?” he’d protest in the intimacy, mumbling against the back of my head, our bodies spooning, his arm reassuringly draped across me, and I’d press against him, thinking open-eyed about his presence in my life and the terror of his conceivable absence.
* * *
“Now don’t worry, everything is okay,” Mom insisted, “but we won’t be able to fly out for the wedding.” It was St. Patrick’s Day, I remember, the day Mom called and said Dad needed an operation. An exploratory procedure, not life-or-death serious, she said, but I didn’t necessarily believe that; it wasn’t something the doctor felt could be put off. “But don’t go and postpone it again; his sister has made all these plans.” The more things frightened her, the more everything had to be normal; she needed to do that.
But I had to postpone it. Ross did not agree. “It’s too bad, obviously, but at some point, you just have to forge ahead. You can’t use every problem that comes along as an excuse.”
“It’s not an excuse. I didn’t make this up!” I snapped, near tears. “It’s tempting fate . . .” This new fear, fear for my father, gave heft and form to a vague uneasiness that had been building up in me of late, hovering just out of view, just beyond the horizon. There and then gone. “I don’t want to get some horrible news right before the wedding.”
“I know,” he said gently. “I don’t think that’s gonna happen. But the timing’s never going to be exactly right. There’s always going to be something, you know. You can’t control the world, and you certainly can’t police it all by yourself, which is what you seem to want to do sometimes. Remember what you said to me . . .”
“About your mom?”
“Yeah.” Ross looked at me, vexation flittering across his face; he was too indulgent, he thought, too soft-hearted. “Whatever you want, baby,” he said against his better judgment. “Whatever you want to do.”
In the end, we did decide to postpone the wedding till Dad could travel, throwing everyone into a fit. It would be the last wedding for a long time in our family; it was my wedding, and I wanted everyone there, sitting on their chairs wrapped with white satin, everyone present, everyone in my line of sight. I wanted our day to be an exclusively happy one, and I would do everything in my power to make it so. No one was going to run up to me carrying a phone, waving the receiver at me (Amy, Amy, bad news . . .) as I was starting to walk down the aisle. I don’t want that call; I won’t take that call. I was turning into Mom, trying to organize us out of unhappiness, trying to outmaneuver fate, trying to waylay the inevitable losses winging their way toward us.
But my mind kept churning it out, over and over. I began to obsess about something happening to Ross, which drove him up the wall. “Just live your life, for Christ’s sake,” he’d swear at me. But he underestimated the power of the demons. What if he was the victim of a random shooting . . . what if he ran his car off the road? (I’d play that scenario out in my mind to the minutest detail: the call from the state police, ‘Sorry, ma’am. Is there someone there with you?’). What if the plane crashed? What if he contracted whatever disease I had last seen on TV?
But the most appealing prey that fear could sink its claws into was Ross’ upcoming trip to the Philippines as part of a human rights fact-gathering delegation. The mission was to observe trials, meet with the abusers, comfort the abused. The mission was not without risk. What if he was detained, roughed up, or worse? And I understood every possible debased permutation of the term ‘or worse’. What was more frightening—that a man could be so loved, or that others could have so little regard? I began to think about having his child, about having something of him to hold onto. ‘Your father was a great man,’ I imagined instructing my chimeric son in my more morbid moments.
Ross would be in Manila beginning in mid-June for two and a half weeks. I made an appointment with my gynecologist for that time, but didn’t say anything about it. I wasn’t sure why. I had been forewarned by Maureen’s experience that it wasn’t necessarily an automatic thing. First get off the Pill and make sure everything’s a go, then broach the subject. I could just see his face. ‘What’s the thinking behind this—I thought you wanted to go back to school?’ he would say. ‘Do you really want to bring an innocent child into such a crap world?’ I was sure he would say. ‘Let’s get married first, you seem to be having trouble enough with that.’ I was sure he would balk at it, but I was sure our child would be wonderful.
Image: Cheap kicks. Source: “The Flood,” Edward Calvert. Lithograph, 1829. Creative Commons (CC0 1.0) Edited by J. Weigley.