“I hate to say it, but maybe telling you to be more honest wasn’t the brightest idea,” he said as he pulled off his tie.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, sounds like Yolanda feels like you’re challenging her. I just worry . . .”
“That I’m going to get fired,” I supplied.
He nodded. “Until I officially land this job, your being out of work would be pretty disastrous for us. I wish I’d realized that sooner. You never said anything, so . . .” He shrugged. “Anyway, it was stupid of me not to think about how much we rely on you.”
I was glad to hear him admit it, but I suddenly felt aggravated. Because while he was luxuriating in the simple worry of how to stay faithful, I had been spinning my wheels to keep us solvent. To have and care for a family was a privilege. Recognizing that lightened the load, as Jenny had often said. But it hardly eliminated it.
It occurred to me, however, that my being direct was hardly the only reason why I might join the ranks of the unemployed. Half the department could be eliminated during budget cuts. We could get a new dean who wanted to bring in his own team. If I let my mind spin out, there were myriad possibilities, all ending in catastrophe.
Then what? Sanjay and I were not prepared for the worst, let alone for anything to change.
And things changed. They changed all the time.
“It is stressful. It’s incredibly stressful—and scary, too.” I waved my hands around. “All this could go away if I don’t do my absolute best at all times. You know what the funniest thing is?” My voice was starting to raise, but I couldn’t help it. “Now that I think about it, Yolanda’s question was totally absurd.”
Sanjay looked alarmed. “What do you mean?”
“Who cares if I’m happy at work?” I said. “If happiness was the goal, I wouldn’t have taken the job in the first place. It was always about the money! Maybe if I had realized that sooner, then I actually would have been happier.”
Stevie had walked in the kitchen. She put her hand on my arm and looked up at me pleadingly. “Mommy, don’t fight with Daddy.”
My heart hurt, hearing her say those words. Wasn’t this marriage project about protecting my children and giving them a happy home?
Sure, but what about your happiness, Penny?
Jenny had a way of showing up at the darnedest times.
Instead of talking back to her in my mind, I zoned in on Stevie’s face, which was folded into a frown. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. Daddy and I aren’t really fighting,” I said. “Just having a discussion. Why don’t you go put a show on?”
She narrowed her eyes, but the promise of television was too tempting. “Okay,” she said and ran off to the living room.
“You know, it’s all right for them to hear us fight once in a while,” said Sanjay after Stevie was gone.
“I don’t want them thinking we’re going to end up divorced.”
“Who said anything about divorce? This is about this morning, isn’t it? I knew I shouldn’t have told you that.”
“Yes, you should have. That’s not why I said it.” Not consciously, at least—though now that I was thinking about it, I had to admit it was perhaps a possibility. Still. “My parents fought all the time before my mom left. And lately it seems like you and I may be heading in that direction.”
“That’s part of the whole honesty thing, Penny,” he said with exasperation. “You didn’t want to keep pretending that everything was okay, but now that we’re saying it’s not, you’re backtracking and acting like that’s what’s going to destroy us. Marriage is hard work. I’m sorry I wasn’t trying harder before. I know so much of this is on me. But I’m here now. I’m trying.”
I stared at him, unsure how to respond. He wasn’t wrong. But why was marriage so much work? It didn’t used to be. And if it did require such effort, shouldn’t the fruit of that labor be a stronger, more satisfying union?
Jenny was right. I wasn’t happy at work, and my marriage wasn’t making me a whole lot happier, either. Stevie and Miles were a source of happiness—always in theory, and at least much of the time in practice—but children alone could not fill every void.
I wanted to tell myself it didn’t matter. Happiness was nothing but a fleeting state—a modern construct used to justify personal fulfillment over the greater good.
But deep down, I knew this wasn’t true. To me, at least, the word happy was shorthand for a life with meaning. And as of late, I was coming up awfully short on that front. Worse, I had no vision for how that might change.
There were so many things I could have said to Sanjay. But I took one look at him—still in his dress shirt, only the slightest remnants of post-interview joy on his face—and swallowed my pain.
Our marriage may have been a mess, but I still loved my husband. There was no need to drag him down further than I had already pulled him.
TWENTY-TWO
My father called Friday evening as I was getting home from work. I had left a few messages for him since my conversation with Nick about his health, but more than a week had passed with no response and I had given up on hearing back. “Everything okay?” I asked.
“Can’t a man call his own daughter?” he said.
“Well, yes, obviously,” I said, wedging the phone between my ear and shoulder as I fumbled for the keys in my purse. I had left work early—and by early, I mean when everyone else was leaving—and Sanjay was still picking up the kids from camp. “I’ve been trying to get in touch with you. How have you been?”
“Busy. Anita and I threw a graduation party for Luis last weekend.”
Anita was his girlfriend and Luis was her son. I was pretty sure my father secretly preferred Luis to me and Nick. But maybe that was because Luis didn’t expect anything from him. Anita was the one who expected things, but she loved him and he adored her. My father deserved that after so many years of being alone. Still, sometimes it hurt to hear how he bent over backward for them.
“How are you doing, niña ?” He sounded older than usual. Or maybe he, like me, was just tired.
“Things have been hard lately,” I confessed. “One of my good friends died.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. When?”
I hung my bag on the hook near the door and kicked off my shoes. “Thank you. It was six weeks ago.”
“Sorry,” he said again.
This was more than I had expected—yet I wished he would have said something else, like, “Six weeks! Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” Even “How did it happen?” would have been a start. Nick claimed that our father didn’t know how to relate to us because his own parents had alternated between abuse and neglect, and our mother had not stuck around to help him figure it out. My brother felt it was enough that our father had not followed in our grandparents’ footsteps.
I wasn’t looking for a perfect parent, though. All I wanted was effort. After thirty-nine years I was aware I’d be more likely to wish my way into winning a million dollars, but this didn’t stop me from hoping for the impossible.
“How are the kids?” my father asked. “And what about you and Sanjay?”
I told him about how Miles had stopped wetting the bed, and how Stevie was reading chapter books above her grade level. And I said things between Sanjay and me were great—everything was fine.
It was only after my father responded that I understood why I had stuck to my standard, sanitized response rather than admitting that we had been struggling.
“Good. You two are lucky. A strong marriage is a gift,” he said.
How had I never noticed this before? My marriage was easily the thing he most praised me for, and his compliment had filled me with pride, maybe even a feeling of victory. Because with a few words, he was assuring me I had met my heart’s purest goal—I had avoided turning into my parents, and in the process avoided turning my children into me.
“Thank you,” I said. “Dad, Nick said you were having some health problems. What’s going on?”
He tsked. “It’s nothing. I was having a little stomach pain, so the doctor ran a few tests.”
“And?”
“Eh,” he said.
“Eh?”
“Eh,” he said again.
“Then something is wrong.”
“Maybe. I’m having surgery next month.”
I felt queasy. “Surgery? For what?”
“I have a little cancer,” he said.
My father had only spoken Spanish until his family moved from Puerto Rico to Baltimore when he was seven. Even all these years later, he sometimes mangled English phrases or used the wrong word. But I had a strong feeling his command of our common language had nothing to do with the way he’d described his health problem. “A little cancer? In your stomach?”
“That’s what they say. They caught it early, though. Don’t worry about me—the doctor says I’m going to be just fine.”
I wanted to weep. “Then what? You’ll have chemo?”
“Probably so.”
“How can we help?” I said. “Do you want to come here for a second opinion? The university has one of the top oncology centers in the country. I’m sure I could help you get an appointment.”