Therese speaks out
A cautionary tale by Zamboni_Rodeo
First and foremost, no matter what that trollop Liz Patterson and her cabal of cronies may think of me, the thing I want everyone to know is that I was left with no choice. Sometimes a child is better off without her mother, no matter how much it hurts. Anthony may be a lot of things – a weak-kneed milquetoast chiefly among them – but he was always a good father. Maybe someday I will be able to go back and rescue Francoise from her plain vanilla suburban life, but for the moment at least I know she is safe and well-cared for.
The reason I married Anthony in the first place was because I thought I was supposed to. That’s the ideal, isn’t it? We’re all supposed to go off to university and decide what to do with the rest of our lives, and who we’re supposed to spend it with. Your whole life determined for you in a mere four years. And oh, god, university was so different, so much more expansive than the sheltered life I was accustomed to back home! There were so many new people from such different backgrounds and experiences with so many interests and talents… so the obvious question is, with such a colorful array of people surrounding me, how in the world did I end up with the blandest one in the lot?
For starters, the Anthony I first met was quite different that the one he ended up being. I was in a ballroom dancing class my second semester, and I had just about completely despaired of ever finding a partner who didn’t have two left feet, let alone one whose grip wasn’t bone-crushingly tight or conversely, who wasn’t so afraid to touch me that dancing with him was like dancing with a wet noodle. I was just about ready to take a female partner and dance the male’s position during one class when Anthony and I paired up, and he was so brilliant I can’t even describe it. He had a commanding lead without dragging me all over the floor, and when he held my hand his grip was strong and self-assured without me feeling like I was caught in a pair of pincers. In him, I had found my perfect dance partner, and we started an easy friendship.
With Anthony, I didn’t have a love-at-first sight thing. There were no sparks or fireworks. We went out to clubs and competitions, and we always put on a good show together. He was pleasant enough to be around, he could string together more than two coherent sentences at once, and like me, he seemed to have big career ambitions. He was a good friend, and unlike most guys I knew, I never got the feeling that he was simply hanging around me because he hoped to get in my pants. If you want to know the truth, for the first few months I knew him, I wondered if he might be gay.
He asked me to marry him about a month before graduation, and I was so surprised by his proposal that I said “yes” before I realized he was serious. We had never been an exclusive couple (and honestly, to call us a couple at all was generous; I always considered us more very good platonic friends than lovers). I dated with a handful of guys during my time at university, although I don’t know that he ever went out with any other women (in fact, he seemed to spend a lot of time pining over Liz Patterson, who supposedly was the great lost love of his life). But there we were at breakfast one morning in the student union coffeehouse, talking about our future plans over espresso and brioche, and out of the clear blue he just casually said that the two of us ought to get married after graduation. He got so excited when I said “yes” that I discovered too late that he actually meant those words. And right at that moment he was so happy that I didn’t have the heart to tell him I thought he’d just been kidding around, and so I’d been kidding right back. At that moment, I thought instead, Well, all right. How bad can it be? I mean, he’s intelligent enough and he should be able to hold a steady job; a girl could do a lot worse. It probably didn’t help that one of the points of reference I used to go along with this was the idea that people who get into arranged marriages don’t start out loving each other right away, either. I freely admit to my deeply flawed logic, but it seemed reasonable enough at the time.
My first indication that things were headed for trouble and that I should have just called things off when I had the chance was when Anthony turned down lucrative job offers from firms in Vancouver and Montreal, opting instead to take what amounted to an entry-level accountant position with some used-car huckster/mechanic friend of his back home in Milborough. Still, I thought, we would be close to Toronto, and I had an offer from a firm there anyway. I could live my dream of urban, big-city excitement and he could have the idyllic splendor he wanted from his sleepy bedroom community. It should have worked. His first love was off in the great frozen North somewhere, safely ensconced in some remote outpost and teaching the native school children. There was no reason to expect she’d be a threat to our marriage at all, especially since, as I’d heard through the painfully small grapevine in this equally small suburb that Anthony called home, she was dating some local up there.
The wedding went off without a hitch—well, almost without a hitch, anyway. Anthony insisted on inviting the Pattersons to the affair, claming that they’re been close friends of his forever. When I told him no at first, he said that Liz wouldn’t be able to make it down from wherever she was, that it would just be the elder Pattersons and perhaps their son, who fancied himself to be some kind of great writer, but who I suspected was most likely a colossal bore. I gave in and agreed because it seemed petty to argue the point, but also because I had recently discovered the fingernails-on-a-chalkboard irritation of Anthony wheedling about anything that didn’t fit in with his general view of the world.
It wasn’t until Anthony introduced me to Mama Patterson – a low-breasted woman with a large behind—and then asked her how Elizabeth was doing that I realized exactly how big a mistake I’d made. I’d known I was marrying into the Caine family, but it was at the reception I discovered that I was marrying into the Patterson clan as well, given their closeness to Anthony. And of course, by then it was too late to do anything but stand by and smile and be the happy, new Mrs. Caine.
Our first few months together actually passed quite pleasantly, and I began to hope that maybe my initial misgivings were unfounded, and that things would work out okay after all. We settled into the routine of our new jobs and I grew accustomed to life in the suburbs. About six months into our marriage, though, Anthony began making noises about having children. I’d already told him I didn’t want children – we needed to be solvent, for one thing, and I wanted to get established in my career and prove my worth before suddenly asking for maternity leave. Also, we were living in a dinky little starter home that Anthony had picked out, and there just wasn’t enough room to add a baby into the mix. I hated him for asking about kids, but I hated him even more for making me feel like a queen shrew for telling him no. I wasn’t trying to be selfish about kids—it just wasn’t practical for us to consider at the time. We hadn’t even been married for a full year, and he was already talking about children.
It was after I first said no that he began growing that stupid mustache. I don’t know why he did; maybe he thought it would make him more attractive to me and therefore make me more willing to give in on the idea of having kids, but all it really did was make him look like the love child of Burt Reynolds and Lucille Ball. I stuck to my guns about it for a while, though—I just wasn’t convinced we were ready for the responsibility of a new life. It didn’t help that our discussions about kids were usually preceded by or followed up with some throwaway comment from him about “I bet Liz would love to have a house full of kids,” or something similar, which obviously didn’t win him any points from me. First of all, it’s never a good idea to talk about your ex-girlfriend in such a fashion when you’re trying to win an argument with your wife; secondly, from the snatches of gossip I’d heard around town, Liz seemed more than happy with her single life as a schoolmarm on the frozen tundra, and seemed to have no such concerns about settling down and starting a family herself, despite what Anthony thought.
In the end, though, I just couldn’t take it anymore. I let him wear me down about having children, and I gave in. Yes, part of me did it just to shut up his incessant whining on the subject, but I also did it in the hopes that maybe having a child would fill some void that existed between us. It was as if the instant we got married and moved back to his hometown, Anthony ceased to be the quirky, interesting guy I’d been friends with at university, the one who liked dancing and who knew a thousand ways to make me laugh. Living in Milborough sapped that part of his personality, and he reverted back to the boy I imagine he must have been in high school. He had no ambitions anymore beyond being solidly middle-class, and he forgot about all our late-night discussions over bottles of cheap red wine back at university, dreams we had for traveling the world and living in exotic places. We didn’t talk like that at all anymore, and I missed it.
So, I got pregnant. For a while we were happy again, and things were sort of like they’d been back in school. Anthony busied himself with making the second bedroom into a nursery and getting everything ready, and he seemed a lot more like the old Anthony I used to know. He remembered how to make me laugh and we even went dancing again, at least before I got too big to tango.
I remember thinking when Francie was born that I was supposed to feel happy. All new mothers were happy, so there was no reason for me not to be as well. But try as I might, I just couldn’t feel joy at the idea of this new little life I’d brought into the world. She was just a reminder of all the things I’d done wrong in my life, starting with marrying Anthony. It hurt me deeply to look at her. The people around me were thrilled, though: Anthony, my parents, those stupid Pattersons. And the more I saw them being so joyous, the more depressed I got. I realized that the life I wanted and the one I ended up with couldn’t be more different if I’d done it intentionally, and here I was without a “Rewind” button to press and undo everything.
I was making more money at my job than Anthony made at his, so it only made sense that if one of was to stay home with the baby, it should be him. You should have heard the outcry from Anthony’s Milborough friends when I said I was going back to work—you would have thought I was Satan himself for leaving my child and returning to my career. Anthony didn’t mind, though: he had the child he wanted, and he was more than happy to stay home and take care of her. I knew that, depressed as I was, staying home with the baby and letting him be the breadwinner would just be a recipe for disaster. Really, it was better for all concerned that we worked things out the way we did.
The company I worked for had hired a new account manager during my maternity leave, and I knew from the first day I met him that I had finally found my equal. Jean-Marc was also from Quebec, was intelligent, dark and handsome in the familiar way that all good-looking men are, and we hit it off immediately. Not long after I came back to work, the company took on a new account that he and I were assigned to oversee, and that meant we were working very closely together. Not that I minded. I was so happy to have someone to talk to about things other than diapers and leaky faucets that I didn’t care how it might jeopardize my marriage. Two weeks after I went back to work, I started taking off my wedding ring and sticking it in my purse before entering the building, then putting it back on before I walked in the door when I got home.
At first, all my late nights at the office with Jean-Marc really were just late nights at the office, dealing with paperwork over congealing cartons of Chinese takeout. Before long, though, our late nights at the office became late nights at candlelit restaurants, sharing laughs over expensive bottles of white wine or champagne. I knew what this was doing to my home life with Anthony, but I no longer cared. He had taken me from the university and plopped me down into the middle of a suburban hell, had taken the interesting person I’d once been and caged her up in a two-bedroom, one-bath starter home and chained her down with a child she’d be coerced into having. Jean-Marc entered my life and found that once-charming, fascinating woman, and rescued her from that mundane world. With him, all the possibilities that I’d once seen with Anthony and which had long since shriveled and dried up suddenly became possible again.
I saw the great Liz Patterson for the first time at some New Year’s bash that Anthony dragged me to. I hadn’t wanted to go—Jean-Marc had somehow miraculously gotten his hands on a pair of tickets to the Leafs-Habs game that night, but as our office was closed for the holiday, I just couldn’t come up with a logical excuse to get away and go with him. He took his brother instead, and I went to the party with Anthony. Liz was there with some boy-toy, and from what I gathered, he wasn’t the same one she was dating up North. Back at university, a girl showing up to a dance with someone not her boyfriend wouldn’t have been much cause for speculation, but here in Milborough, where tongues wag if someone burns a casserole, it was the cause of much debate and discussion, and once more I couldn’t believe I’d let myself get shanghaied into living in such a vapid wasteland of smallmindedness.
I was set up to detest her from the start—all the arguments Anthony and I had where her name came up, the way he was still friends with her family, the way he compared what I did to what they did and always found me lacking, it should have come as no surprise. Our whole married life, he made me feel like a second-class citizen for not being a Patterson, and when I saw Liz for the first time, I had to admit I was shocked. After such a build-up, I was expecting some great exotic beauty who turned heads and made men fall weeping at her feet. What I saw instead was a rather plain-looking girl who simply knew how to apply good makeup and who would probably have her mother’s figure in another five or seven years if she wasn’t careful. I couldn’t believe it. This was the woman whose memory I’d been competing with the last two years? This was the great love Anthony could never get over? The realization of it nearly knocked me down, and I wished for all the world that I had just told Anthony the truth—that I was going to a hockey game with my lover—and been done with it, instead of coming to this shindig in a hotel ballroom. I felt like such a fool. I felt even worse when Anthony couldn’t take his eyes off her, watching her laughing and talking and stuffing canapés into her mouth. Maybe I was cheating on him with a co-worker, but he was cheating on me with a memory, and he’d been doing it since the day we’d gotten married.
I can’t remember exactly when I made the decision to leave him; I only know that it was the first good decision I’d made since graduation. I went to Toronto and moved in with Jean-Marc, who would have been only too happy to take Francie in, but I decided to let her stay with her father. She was my daughter and I did love her, but that didn’t necessarily mean I’d be the better parent, and I knew it. Anthony had doted on her and taken care of her from the day we brought her home, and it would have destroyed him if I’d taken her with me. In the end, despite everything, I just couldn’t do that to him. I don’t know what he’s told her about me, if anything at all. For all I know, he’s poisoned her against me and told her that I’m a terrible, hateful person who’s abandoned her. It’s for this reason that I haven’t been back to see her. The pain of never seeing her again is much easier to deal with than the idea that if I did see her, she would hate me. Or worse, that she wouldn’t even know who I was. I took her baby book with me, though, and I look at it sometimes when I’m alone. I wonder how she’ll grow up and who she’ll grow up to be. I hope I can be a part of it someday, and help shape who she becomes. More than anything, I want to see her again so that I can warn her not to do what I did, to lose sight of who she is and forget her purpose in the world. It took me a long time, but I’m finally remembering what mine is, and the excitement of it gives me hope.
Please do not reproduce this anywhere, in whole or in part, without my permission.
Email: jessesbowlofrice@yahoo.com
