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To her surprise, the conflict redoubled her husband’s commitment, as though she were the symbol of his newly grown backbone. And despite her own reservations, she closed her eyes to see family hovering aspirationally in a beautiful future.
Every relationship has challenges, she told herself, which was true.Family is earned, she told herself, which, she’d come to learn, was more complicated.
And always there was her husband. The way he kissed her forehead. Wiped the corner of his eyes after laughing at her jokes. Bragged about her work, framing and hanging his favorite of her patent illustrations. His arm rested light around her waist when they entered a crowded party, and she would think,I belong.
Her husband didn’t judge her because of her dad’s fortresses of wreckage. Why should she end things over his father’s blazing volatility?
After college, father and son reached a détente that required everyone to tensely pretend there had never been any conflict, an approachdiametrically opposed to her straightforward arguments with her own father.
Invariably when her in-laws visited, she and her husband would seize gratefully on the banality of discussing the rain. The PGA Tour. Cleaning products.
Eventually she tacitly understood the boundaries of their civility. Understood why her mother-in-law only seemed capable of small talk, taking refuge in its dull safety. Her husband’s progress with his photography was off limits. Securing her job at a large firm as a patent illustrator was similarly a forbidden topic, her father-in-law’s face hardening at the reminder of her career being better paid and more intellectual than his son’s attempts to sell his photos. Years later, her husband’s success, the way his aerial photography became their main source of income and allowed her to go freelance, to pick up their children from school every day, couldn’t be acknowledged; it was untouchable proof of the old man’s fallibility.
Sometimes they’d accidentally stumble across the unmarked margins of a conversational minefield. Her father-in-law was certain that something unidentifiable was being slowly stolen from him, imperceptibly siphoned away. The lightest reference to any news caused him to sputter vagaries about the way certain people had become unacceptably shrill, over-righteous, uptight, perverse—an endless list of often-conflicting euphemisms that did heavy lifting.
At any darkening of his weather, her mother-in-law’s voice dropped to a soothing register. “You are so right, dear. Of course you are.”
Unlike his mother, her husband silently let his father rage, waiting out his storm.
Ignoring him is probably better than trying to argue, isn’t it? Anyway, your husband fought for the most important things. Partner. Career. Life.
Over the course of years, the yearning for family, for acceptance, incrementally wore away, a stone eroded by waves.
“Sometimes there just isn’t any water in a well,” Grandma’s remembered voice reminded her in its southern drawl. “You gotta draw your bucket right on up, hon.”
When her daughter was born, her mother-in-law’s joy was visibly tainted by the old man’s irritation with the baby’s crying, over how the baby’s mere existence constantly interrupted him. Within half an hour of their visit to the hospital to meet their grandchild, her father-in-law wordlessly strode out into the hall, red-faced as the infant, her mother-in-law hurrying after him, apologizing.
“We should’ve made him feel more welcome,” her husband insisted.
Good riddance. There’s no water in that well.
At her son’s third birthday party, her father-in-law eyed his grandson through narrowed lids as the little one cuddled in her arms, sucking his thumb and giggling as she made silly faces.
“Quite the mama’s boy, isn’t he?”
“I mean, yeah,” she sputtered. “He’s a toddler.”
Her father-in-law raised a knowing eyebrow. “You can’t spoil him like the girl. Boys will rip a wuss to shreds.”
White-hot fury burned any response out of her throat.
Her husband sighed. “We aren’t spoiling anyone, Dad.”
She saw the older man’s words had been designed to stick a knife in her side. Twist it. Worse, she recognized that her father-in-law had sliced open a worry about the future she’d shoved away, embarrassed at how it chewed at her heart, insidious. Since the day he was born, her son had been soft and pliant. He nursed easily. Snuggled close. Stared up at her adoringly, tiny hands reaching for her, a little arm tightening behind her shoulder in a hug, his head resting blissfully against her neck like it belonged there. He slept with one of hissister’s discarded dolls. Carried it with him everywhere. Wept when he saw anyone hurt or if she raised her voice. He cried at every preschool morning drop-off, sad to see her leave. And she loved it, she did. His open affection. His sensitivity. His unselfconscious need for closeness.
But she worried about the world.
Mama’s boy. Wuss.They’ll rip him to shreds.
She seethed with the possible truth of the older man’s words as she turned away from his gaunt, goading face.
Don’t let him bait you.
But her father-in-law had found a bruise to press. Every visit, she’d sweep her son away from the old man’s gravelly voice, his wagging finger. “You need to man up. Stop crying.”
She felt the moldering decay of hatred sprouting in her skull.
Don’t let him make you a worse person.
