shaken

The older I get, the more I dread "those" phone calls from my mother. Whenever I answer the phone and hear that certain tone in her voice, I know it's bad news. In college, my friends used to joke, in a black-humored sort of way, that my mother only called with bad news - how many people ever use the phone to tell you good news? They want to see the look of surprise on your face when they announce a wedding or a baby so they save the good stuff for seeing you face-to-face; the phone provides the immediacy that bad news requires.

She called to tell me that my cousin has left her husband. Evidently, this happened almost six months ago, but, as my entire family excels in denial, no one wanted to admit such a thing could or had occurred, and she certainly didn't feel like talking about it, so even though people suspected all was not as it seemed, no one would actually talk about it. You have to love good old-fashioned Southern-flavored deliberate blindness. You also have to understand divorce in my family. However common it may be in society at large, divorce is treated with the same fear as leprosy and the same despair as nuclear winter. Not that there haven't been a number of divorces within the family, but, in this case, familiarity does not breed acceptance.

I stopped believing in happily-ever-after a long time ago, but I suppose even such a hardened cynic like me holds on to a shred of hope. What does it take for a marriage to last anymore? What is the key ingredient that so many people are missing? If you ask my parents, or hers, they tell you - and they have - that people lack commitment. You make a decision, you stick with it; you've made your bed, now lie in it.

Even if that bed is pure misery? I talked to my cousin tonight for a long time - she tried to apologize for not calling me sooner; when you've run through summer sprinklers and played three-day games of Monopoly with someone, apologies aren't necessary. It all comes down to something so complicatedly simple: she was miserable and one day she realized she didn't have to be, so she left. Not that she's happy now - she's heartbreakingly sad. She's guilty and angry and depressed and numb and relieved and crushingly aware that this isn't the way her life was supposed to turn out.

So, why did she leave? Because she was miserable. Part of me thinks that's reason enough. I don't need to hear that her husband didn't bother to come home after work, that he didn't answer his cell phone when she called, that he didn't want to spend time with her family or friends, that he married her because he wanted children but won't spend time with the daughter they has, that he wouldn't wear his wedding band, for god's sake. No wife wants to share that information with her family. So when she makes the decision to leave, she has all this motivation stored up that no one has ever seen, making it very easy for them to criticize her actions or cajole her into trying "one more time."

There's some generation thing going on here. Her mother, my mother - sisters - tell us that you just work through these things when you've made such a commitment. Life isn't meant to be happy all the time; we're chasing something that doesn't exist if we believe otherwise. She was a fool if she didn't realize this before they got married (I love that argument) since he hasn't changed an iota since they were living together - and don't get them started on the living together. How a divorce can be the result of earlier cohabitation, I have yet to understand.

No, life isn't one big yellow brick road but I don't want to believe that we're supposed to accept such misery as our lot in life. If your husband, regardless of what he tells you, doesn't want to spend time with you, how is staying in a marriage better than being out of it, with or without children. As she said, now, if I'm alone, I won't have to ask myself why my husband doesn't want to be with me. No woman should have to ask that question.

I ache for her - and want to exact a terrible punishment on him. Yeah, there are always two sides to every story but when one side is inhabited by someone you love, don't expect me to maintain much objectivity.

I do believe in commitment. Trust me, sometimes the only thing that keeps me in grad school is the fact that I started something I'm going to finish. I understand completely that marriage is difficult, that you don't always like each other, that there are bad days/weeks/months, that sometimes sheer will power is all that keeps two people together long enough to get through the swampy morass to the oasis on the other side. I'm not stupid nor am I blind; there are plenty of marriages all around me that detail that picture quite clearly. When does commitment become sheer stupidity, though? When are you allowed to admit that it just won't work? Do you stay together, hoping that your happy golden years will erase the memories of your miserable thirty-something years? What if all you see is more of the same misery you're enduring now? Is that myopia or willfulness or honesty?

Lord, I don't know. She doesn't deserve this, no matter how many times she stole the covers at our slumber parties. I can offer my shoulder and my understanding and my time but it isn't enough to stop the sleepless nights and the soul-searching and the guilt.