He ordered two large iced teas. I leaned over him and called into the menu box, “One unsweetened, please.” Thomas pulled the car around to the window and paid the cashier. I leaned over him again and asked, “May I have a sugar packet, please?” The cashier was pleasant enough and passed us our change, our drinks, and one sugar packet. I got to work adding the sugar to my iced tea, not realizing that Thomas was glaring at me as though he was willing my head to burst into flames. He suddenly punched the accelerator and screeched the tires as he pulled the minivan into a nearby parking spot. My tea spilled a little, and I looked up at him. It wasn’t like him to drive like a maniac.
“What’s the matter?” I asked, concerned that the cashier had given him a dirty look or done something else to offend him. Once in a while cashiers and other customer service people rubbed Thomas the wrong way and he could get awfully grumpy about it.
“You are so flipping ridiculous!” he screamed. I was taken aback. Why in the world was he screaming at me?
“What are you talking about?” I demanded.
“What kind of imbecile orders an unsweetened iced tea and then adds sugar to it? What planet are you from?” His face was red. He was serious. He was this upset about sugar. I was mystified.
“The…the sweetener they use tastes different than sugar,” I stammered. Why did I have to explain myself like this?
“Oh come on,” he retorted, still yelling. “It’s the same thing.”
I was getting really angry. “It is not, Thomas!” I replied, defending myself. “The sweetener they use is too sweet.” What a ridiculous argument this was.
His face was red and he looked as though I had just told him I’d gambled away our life savings on a poker game. He leaned forward, our faces almost touching, and he spoke quietly and deliberately, the way people talk when they need to get something serious across to someone who isn’t too bright. “I hate you,” he said, and then sat back in his chair and burst into tears.
This was an unexpected development. He slumped his head onto the steering wheel and grasped the back of his neck. His shoulders jerked up and down as he cried. I just sat there and stared at him because I really couldn’t think of what else I could do. I knew that he had times when he hated me. Who doesn’t seriously detest their spouse once in a while? I just never thought he would actually ever say it out loud, and I certainly didn’t think it would reduce him to tears. Thomas rarely broke down; his plan of attack usually involved belittling whoever he was angry with and then later pretending like it never happened. I decided I was going to have a hard time pretending like this didn’t happen.
He looked up, tears streaming down his face, and took a deep breath. I thought to myself how ridiculous he looked, gazing up toward the heavens when we didn’t even have a sunroof in the minivan. He was staring at the roof of the car as though a magic solution to his anguish would appear before his eyes. He stared for so long that I found myself actually looking at the same spot he was staring at, almost expecting something interesting to happen. Nothing interesting did happen.
His crying had stopped and he wiped the tears off his face. He snatched up a tissue from the center console and blew his nose. I silently cursed myself for having such a well-stocked vehicle. He had just told me he hated me, and the last thing I wanted to do was provide him comfort with my box of tissues. Those tissues were for the kids when they had runny noses or for me to use when I needed to dispose of my gum…not to make life easier for the man who couldn’t stand me. I vowed to myself to never keep the tissues in easily accessible places within the car again.
I had enough of the silence. “You hate me?” I asked. I wasn’t crying, and I wasn’t emotional. I was numb because I was so surprised by the situation.
He let a huge sigh escape, and then looked at me. “Yes, Michelle, I hate you. I hate the way you talk. I hate the way you eat. Sometimes I hate the way you….”
“What?” I demanded.
“I hate the way you exist,” he said. Then he looked away and rubbed his forehead as though he’d just developed a migraine.
I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t think of the proper reaction to a situation like this. It isn’t that I’m perpetually hung up on proper etiquette, but I understood the gravity of the situation. I was bracing myself in case Thomas was revving up to demand a divorce. It wasn’t like I hadn’t occasionally thought of divorce, but being this close to it was terrifying. I felt like someone who had spent years fantasizing about swimming with sharks and then when the moment comes to leap off the boat and get into the cage I was paralyzed. My heart was beating like mad and I’m pretty sure I was sweating through my shirt. I was too scared to check on my sweating status though, because I was afraid that any move on my part might hurl the situation into high gear.
“I can’t live like this,” he said. This time his voice was much gentler, but I could tell he was still incredibly upset. He was trying to retain control of the situation. “This isn’t what I wanted for my life.” He gestured around the minivan as though it was indicative of all the ills of the world. This was when I got angry.
“Great, Thomas, just great,” I shouted. “How about you tell the kids that you can’t stand being their dad because it wasn’t part of your life plan?” He didn’t respond, so I continued. “The world revolves around you, doesn’t it?” My words were dripping with sarcasm. Thomas was not a fan of sarcasm.
I looked down at the cup of iced tea I was holding. Some granules of sugar were still resting on top of the ice. This was the perfect opportunity to elevate a moment from incredibly tense to extraordinarily dramatic. I couldn’t resist. I picked up the cup and flung the drink – ice and all – right into his face.
When you fling a drink into someone’s face a couple of realizations come pretty quickly. The first thing I realized is that I would probably be the one to clean up the mess. I was the one who drove the minivan throughout the week, so it was unlikely that Thomas would bother. The other thing I quickly realized is that every scene I had ever watched in films where the woman throws a drink in the man’s face was horribly inaccurate. The men don’t sit there shocked and speechless while the woman assumes a triumphant stance. There was no pause. Thomas reacted immediately, probably because the iced tea was so incredibly cold. He violently ripped his seatbelt off, pushed the door open, and leaped out of the car. As he tried to shake the liquid off he growled. Yes, growled. I had never heard such a sound come out of him before. I was starting to feel a bit terrified, and I didn’t like the feeling.
What else could I do? I pushed my door open and ran into the restaurant. Nobody looked up as I ran past the counter and into the restroom. Apparently none of the customers enjoying their fifty-cent tacos had witnessed the drama outside in the parking lot. I wondered what kind of world I lived in where an obviously terrified woman could tear through a fast-food restaurant and not a single person looked up. Maybe they all just thought that I was in a panic over a full bladder…or maybe they just didn’t care.
I stood in front of the mirror and tried to collect my thoughts. I must have been standing too close to the sink because the automatic faucet started pouring water into the sink. When I backed up I must have set off the automatic sensor on the toilet because it started flushing. It was maddening. No matter where I went in the little room, chaos ensued. How appropriate.
I finally found a spot to stand in where I wasn’t affecting any sensors. No toilet was flushing, no faucet was going, and the automatic hand dryer was silent. I began to examine the situation and actually wondered if I should leave the restroom or instead sit there for a while. If I had been thinking straight I would have grabbed my purse when I fled the car because I could have used my cell phone to call someone to come get me. My purse was still in the car, and for all I knew Thomas had taken off with the car in a fit of rage. I also considered the possibility that he was standing outside the restroom poised with an extra-large drink with no lid, ready to splash it in my face in retribution. I finally elected to sit in the restroom for a while longer when I heard a knock on the door.
“Go away, Thomas!” I yelled.
“I’m not Thomas,” a female voice answered. “My daughter has to pee.”
“I have to pee!” confirmed a young voice.
I opened the door, embarrassed that I had commandeered the restroom. I held the door for the mother and daughter team and as they entered the room the little girl smiled at me. They weren’t mad; they just had to pee. I went to the nearest table and sat down. Looking out the windows of the restaurant I saw Thomas, still outside but this time with handfuls of napkins from the restaurant. He was soaking wet and trying to sop up the iced tea from the floor of the minivan. What a ridiculous scene it was. I felt guilty about having thrown the drink in his face, and I figured the least I could do was grab some napkins and go help him. The terrified feeling left me the moment I saw him trying so hard to clean up the drink. I was still completely confused by his declaration of hatred, but at least I didn’t think he was going to flip out on me.
I approached the minivan slowly. “Thomas,” I started.
“I can’t believe you threw your drink on me,” he said, not looking up at me. He kept sopping up the liquid from the floor of the car.
“I’m sorry,” I said. I opened the passenger door and leaned over to help him. “The whole ‘I hate you’ thing freaked me out.” We cleaned in silence for a moment, and then I stared at him until he returned my gaze. “You hate me?” I asked.
He sighed and then said, “I want a divorce.”
I considered this for a moment and then spoke. “Are you involved with someone else?”
He seemed immediately offended. “No, there is no one else. Do you honestly think the only reason I would leave you is because I found someone else?”
“I think it’s a pretty valid question considering the circumstances,” I argued.
His face softened. “There is no one else,” he repeated. “I just don’t think it’s working between us.”
Something interesting happens when you start to talk about divorce with your spouse, even if it’s something you have secretly thought about too. The immediate reaction is to say something contrary to what your spouse is saying. Yes, I had thought that our relationship wasn’t working too, but something about having Thomas be the one to actually say it first made me nervous. I wanted things to happen on my terms – not his – so I immediately began to defend the marriage.
“Every marriage has rough times,” I said. He seemed to be considering this so I continued. “I think we owe it to the kids to try to work through whatever the problems are. We can go to counseling. We can go away for the weekend without the kids. I know my parents would take them so we could get away together.” He tossed some wet napkins to the ground and wiped his hands on a couple of the fresh napkins I had brought out with me.
“Are you happy?” he asked me.
What a loaded question that was. It was the same question that I had asked myself many times over the course of our marriage, and even before then. What is happiness? Is it food on the table and money in the bank? Is it daily instances of hysterical laughter with your spouse? Is it knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that you are married to your soul mate? I wasn’t quite sure what happiness was, but I was pretty sure I wasn’t happy. I had always known he wasn’t happy either. Thomas was all I had ever known, really. He was my first real boyfriend. At this point we had been married almost fourteen years. We’d had our fair share of disagreements but the thought of splitting up was never verbalized until this instance.
“I’m not always happy,” I admitted, “but I know that we can be happy if we work at it.” I was lying. Why was I lying? I wasn’t sure.
Thomas was quiet for a very long time. Could he tell that I didn’t really believe what I was saying?
“Okay,” he said. “I’m sorry. God, I’m so sorry!” He leaned over and gathered me into his arms. We hugged for a long time, our pants getting soaked in the iced tea that was still pooled in the driver’s seat. We didn’t go to the art museum that afternoon. Instead we finished cleaning up the car and Thomas walked inside and bought me another drink. He even added the sugar for me. He could be quite chivalrous when he put his mind to it.
That night in the shower I cried like I had never cried before. I had missed my chance to leave.
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