A few months ago, when Shep had just recently come home from the hospital, Con’s mother sent a care package. It was filled mostly with small things for the baby—diapers, baby powder, a few toys—but there was also a package of balloons. Con and Grace had a lot of fun with those, blowing them up and letting them spit and splutter their way around the room. They also played a game in which they used the balloon as a ball and tried to keep it in the air as long as they could.
I didn’t see much point to that game. They could bat the balloon right up to the ceiling or send it on slow, graceful arcs into the air, but inevitably it would begin to sink back to the floor. And a few days later, there it still was, deflated and sad under Grace’s desk.
I feel like I am playing that game now, with Gabrielle. I try to cheer her up, and she just sinks down again. I make something better with her and Nick and then a new problem comes to light. Nick promises to do better and he does, for a few days, but then he goes back to his bad habits. Gabrielle reins in her temper, only to snap at him the following week.
I do not know what to do. They love each other, and they both say that they are willing to put in the work, and they are. The problem is that when things are going well, Nick relaxes and stops trying—he tends to think that the problems are solved, when they have only begun to improve. Then Gabrielle gets angry and stops making her own effort in the relationship, which makes him angry in turn. They snip and bicker and fight, and I make up the arguments, and they resolve to do better, only to be doing the same a few days later. It is exhausting for me, and it must be more so for them.
“I feel like I’m dragging him along, Mom,” Gabrielle confided to her mother this morning—she skipped class, because she didn’t feel that she could face it. “I try to talk to him, but either we’re fighting or he’s not listening.”
Ellie shook her head, busily wiping down the counter. “Men are hopeless like that. You just have to keep at him.”
“But I have been,” Gabrielle moaned, trailing her mother through the kitchen. “I ask him again and again to do things, and he does them once and then just keeps on sitting on his ass.”
Ellie snorted lightly. “You think your father ever helped me around the house without me telling him to? You don’t marry a man to get a clean house, honey.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about, Mom—”
“Here, you’re taller than me, reach up and get that dusty spot on the edge of that shelf.”
Sighing, Gabrielle took the cloth and began dusting. “If I wanted to clean kitchens, I would’ve stayed at home, Mom.”
“Oh, hush, I’m almost done.” Ellie quickly wiped down the stovetop, rinsed off her towel, and tossed it over the faucet before turning to her daughter. “He seems so happy, honey, every time he’s been here.”
“And that’s the problem,” Gabrielle answered. “He is happy, and he just can’t get it through his head that I’m not.”
There was such a depth of feeling in that last word that even Ellie could not miss it. Let me be fair—Ellie was not intentionally diminishing her daughters’ troubles. She just did not want to believe that Gabrielle could be so unhappy so early in her marriage. Now, however, she furrowed her brow.
Gabrielle sighed and sank into a chair at the kitchen table. “I don’t know what to do,” she said.
Ellie wanted to help, but she didn’t know what to say. She has never had any such problems with her marriage. She sat down across from Gabrielle and took her hands. “Well, honey, I’d say that I could talk to him for you, but I really think that whatever happens should come from you.”
Gabrielle couldn’t deny the truth of this, but it wasn’t the advice she wanted to hear. She only nodded, staring at the table.
Not an idle woman, nor an emotive one, Ellie soon pushed to her feet. “I gotta get to work—we’re bringing breakfast to the session meeting on Sunday, and I have baking to do.” She took a moment, however, to drop a kiss on her daughter’s hair. “It’ll be okay, darling. You’ll figure it out, I know you will.”
Gabrielle managed to smile, but she didn’t believe her mother’s words. Neither did I, so as she left her parents’ house, I tried to encourage her to seek other advice, maybe from someone who knows her as well as or even better than her parents do.
It didn’t take her long to think of someone. As she got into her car, Gabrielle pulled out her phone and sent a quick text to Victoria.
It has been a while since these two friends have seen each other, and so for a while over lunch there was nothing but exchanging news, catching one another up on the minutiae of their lives. At first, Gabrielle maintained a cheerful demeanor, but Victoria was not fooled. Half an hour into the meal, she set her cup down and demanded to know what was wrong.
As with her mother, I had to encourage Gabrielle to tell the truth. She carries a certain level of shame over these difficulties, more so since she believes them to be private matters between herself and Nick. But she can’t go on like this; she needs help.
“I ask him to walk the dog, and he does it, but then forgets the next night, and he grumbles and moans as if I’m asking him to dig ditches,” she says. “And then the next day I want to talk and he’s in the middle of something and he rolls his eyes at me. He says he took off from school to look after me, but it feels like I’m having to look after him.” Gabrielle paused to blink back tears, and I draped my wing around her shoulders. “I wanted him to be my shelter,” she whispered, “but now he feels like a grenade in my hand, and I have no idea when or how he’s going to go off. And it’s crazy because I know he’s happy as a clam most of the time, and whenever I want something from him it’s like I’m disturbing that happiness and he resents me for it.” She exhaled, a bit surprised by the way the words began to roll out once she’d started. “I don’t know what to do,” she finished.
Victoria didn’t say anything for a long moment. She cast a knowing eye over Gabrielle, seeing without my help the shadowed eyes, the tight jaw, the way she holds her shoulders.
Then she said something that stunned both Gabrielle and me into silence. “Have you considered divorce?”
We both stared at her. “Divorce?” Gabrielle said finally. “What are you talking about? We’ve been married barely six months, come on.”
“And it’s falling apart,” Victoria pointed out.
“Well, yeah, but—we can work it out, somehow, I know—”
“Can you?” Victoria asked. Her words were blunt, but not unkind. “Because it sounds to me like you’re doing all the work, and frankly, Gabby, that’s not going to fly for much longer. You can’t hold up a failing marriage on top of a job and grad school—you will either have a mental breakdown or commit murder.”
A laugh burst from Gabrielle’s throat, and she covered her mouth with her hands, still staring at her friend.
Victoria pushed her plate to one side and set her hands on the table. “Look,” she said, “I’m not saying drop the man like a hot potato. I’m saying think about it. Because the fact is, he’s not holding up his end of the deal, and you are miserable.” She smiled then, her eyes full of compassion, and immediately Gabrielle’s eyes started leaking tears. Heedless of the busy restaurant around them, Victoria dragged her chair around the table so she could put her arm around Gabrielle’s shoulders.
I did not know what to think. I was glad, so very glad that at last someone had seen the truth in Gabrielle’s situation, and I wanted her to get the support she so badly needs. But how could Victoria suggest such a thing? That she just…give up?
“I can’t,” Gabrielle said when she had caught her breath. “I can’t just give up, Vic. It wouldn’t be fair to Nick.”
“It sounds to me like you’ve been more than fair to Nick,” Victoria responded. “And sure you can give up. You are beating yourself up, stressing yourself out and putting yourself through the emotional wringer for something that is giving you nothing in return.” She leaned back so she could look Gabrielle in the eye. “I mean, why did you want to marry him in the first place? So you’d have a place where you could be safe, where you could rest. And this is the exact opposite of restful.”
Gabrielle couldn’t answer that, and nor could I. It is true.
The waiter came by, looking concernedly at Gabrielle, but Victoria calmly asked for the check and sent him on his way again. She dug in her purse and found a package of tissues which she handed to Gabrielle. “Just think about it,” she said. “There’s no shame in getting out of something that is destroying you, Gabby.”
Is there not? I wonder. I think the real question is, is it destroying her? Of course I would never leave a charge in a toxic relationship, but I still believe that there is hope for these two. Am I wrong? Victoria knows Gabrielle just as well as I do if not better, but she does not know Nick. Is she wrong?
I do not know what to think, but there is one thing that I cannot deny. As Gabrielle went back home to find her husband snoring on the sofa, half-finished laundry scattered all around him, there was a small bead of warmth in her spirit at the thought of an escape. And I could not bring myself to stifle it.