What a Girl Needs (2 page)

“I knew my mother was wrong about romance ending.” I smile across the table.

Kevin is as gorgeous as the day I married him as he looks deeply into my eyes. “Are you happy, Ashley?”

“Do you think anyone was Shanghaied in these tunnels?”

He gives me that look. “Really Ashley?”

And I feel slightly ashamed of myself for missing the moment, but I’m captivated by the arched concrete over our heads. Or maybe I just don’t want to answer his question. Because if you can’t say anything nice…

“Well, it’s totally romantic for us, but don’t you wonder what happened here in another era? I mean, someone could have been captured and held hostage down here, and we’re preparing for a culinary feast and feeling romantic. But what if they got sent through the tunnel to a boat waiting offshore and were taken from the only life they’d ever known?”

“Correction,” Kevin says. “It
was
romantic.” He clasps his beautiful, knotty surgeon’s hands on the table, and his slightly narrowed eyes tell me he knows I’m trying to divert his attention. “I asked you if you’re happy.”

“Happy?” I close my eyes for a moment and contemplate that perhaps it is me who turned into my father. What if I’m the one doing the Stockingdale male equivalent of sitting at the table with my pants unbuttoned? “All right. Reset.” I stare at him and try to forget the neurotic voices in my head. “I love you, sweetheart. It’s been two years, but it seems like yesterday that I walked down the aisle toward you. I remember it was near impossible to walk slowly because all I wanted to do was get to you, for fear you’d run off before I reached the altar.”

“I would have waited an eternity.”

“The beat of that wedding march is ridiculous. They should speed it up.”

“But are you happy?” he repeats.

Notice, I didn’t quite answer the question. I don’t know how to answer because Kevin delights me. I regret nothing, and I’d marry him over and over again, but my current life is not enough – and for that reason, I feel like I’ve betrayed him. I search for the words to tell him that I need more, and that it has little to do with him.

“I feel like a failure,” I say.

“A failure? Ashley, you accomplished more in your short career than most people accomplish in a lifetime. How many patents did you secure?”

“
Accomplished.
Past tense. As in, I’m over. Finished. Shouldn’t I have something to look forward to at this age? I mean, I’m too young to be looking backwards, am I right? You’re just getting started in your career. You have so many babies to save, and I have—what? Another pair of shoes to buy?”

Kevin’s expression drops, and once again I’ve changed the mood—just like my dad taking it one portion of his zipper at a time.

“I didn’t realize that’s how you felt. I knew you weren’t your bubbly self, but I suppose I didn’t fully realize how miserable you really were.”

My shoulders slump as I see how I’ve let him down. “I’m a failure as a Christian wife, Kevin, don’t you see? Cooking, caring for others—it should make me happy and fulfill me, but it doesn’t. What’s wrong with me? I make dinner, and I try to find pleasure in it like Nigella Lawson does—”

“Who?”

“She’s a famous chef. But she puts love and joy into her food. I feel like I put bitterness with a side of resentment into it. I abhor cooking and I want to find pleasure in it.” I frown. “But I don’t.”

Kevin taps his finger on the dark table as if searching for the answer to the universe. I pick up the scents of Italian food between us. There’s the pungent odor of garlic mixed with the heady scent of red wine and the sweet wax from the candle at our table. My husband is silenced. I’ve silenced Kevin. I have that ability to shut people down because they don’t know how to answer me. I don’t know when to be quiet. Just like my father doesn’t know when to keep his pants zipped.

“I’m ruining the romance. I shouldn’t have said anything,”

The waiter comes and brings us waters with lemon in it. He reads off the specials, but I’m not listening. My eyes are trained on my husband who wants to fix my mess that isn’t his to fix. It’s not his job to put me back together again.

“May I get you started on some beverages?” The waiter rattles off wine selections, but Kevin and I don’t drink. Nobody wants his or her surgeon to drink, and me? Well, it goes without saying that I don’t need alcohol. I’m more than enough for most people perfectly sober.

The waiter finally leaves us alone in the wine cellar, and rather than romance, there’s this heavy air hanging between us. Kevin takes my hands in his.

“Just because you don’t find fulfillment in darning my socks doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with you, Ashley. This may be hard for you to believe, but I never imagined you as much of a housewife.”

I grimace. “I could do it if I wanted to.”

“Domesticity is not your strong suit, honey. That’s why you lived with Kay.”

“It is not!” But I slink a bit in my chair. “Okay, it probably is, but there’s nothing wrong with taking pleasure in what Kay enjoyed. She enjoyed the house as her castle.”
Why do I feel like my anniversary is suddenly a critique on everything I’m not?

“There’s our house,” he says. “It doesn’t feel like home to you and I know that’s true because when you lived with Kay you made the parts of it that were yours, truly yours. You decorated. You bought a fancy bedspread that matched the curtains—”

Kevin’s parents bought our house. It was a wedding gift. A really crappy wedding gift, if you ask me. Because people, no matter what their budget, should have a choice in the kind of life they want to live. I didn’t, and every time I enter the house, I think of it as Kevin’s mother’s house – not my own.

“I knew who I was then. I was the woman who liked 500-thread count sheets and Sheridan bedding with bright colors to match my mood. I’m not about anything anymore.” The realization hits me like strong drink. “I used to sing in the choir and help Kay organize parties for the singles’ group. I used to write patents and travel all over the world. Now, I can’t get a job. The new church choir is full with singers, and our house is a dump that I don’t have the energy to fix because even when it’s done, it will just be lipstick on a pig.”

As all of these truths spew out of me, Kevin’s face looks more horrified, and he understands that he may be married to a curmudgeon. A young, well-dressed curmudgeon.

“I’m a has-been.”

“Maybe this is a good time to give you my anniversary present.” He drops my hands and reaches into his jacket pocket.

“I wish I could take back everything I’ve said tonight, Kevin. I’ve ruined our anniversary.” I look down at the linen napkin in my lap. “I’ve become my father.”

“Not at all, Ash.” There’s an edge to his voice, something I don’t recognize. “In fact, you’ve only confirmed that I bought you just the right gift to cure what ails you.” He looks at me expectantly while he hands me an envelope. “Happy Anniversary, baby.”

Kevin’s a terrible gift buyer, I confess. He gets so excited to watch me open things, and I have to really work to act excited over a desk lamp—“Oh my goodness, just what I needed!” I’ll squeal. Or there was the time he bought me a silver toilet bowl brush. He was so proud of himself that he’d bought me something that would match the bathroom; I didn’t have the heart to point out the obvious—that
anything
involving scrubbing a toilet is not a great gift.

So it is with trepidation that I slice open the card with my freshly manicured nail. (Nails I gave up Saturday lattes for!) “I can’t imagine what it could be!” Tears flood my eyes when I see it. “An airline ticket?” I can barely speak. “We’re going on a trip? I get actual time with my h-husband?” I stammer. “Oh, Kevin!” I scramble out of my seat to his side where I hold his strong jaw in my hands and kiss him. (This was supposed to be like one of those Bachelor moments, on the hometown dates, but it comes off as more of a thwarted mugging.) “Kevin, really? We’re going to have time together?” My throat is tight as I process how much he cares and I have that prickly, stinging feeling in my nose. “When are we going? Kevin, when?”

He clears his throat and tugs at his tie. I notice as he does so that I missed a crease in his shirt. (Strike ironing off the list of things I do well—actually, let’s just go with anything domestic, full stop.) My arms are clasped around his neck in an awkward position, and instinctively, I know the news isn’t good. The sorrow in his eyes should be a warning sign. But I am so zealous at the idea of a hotel room with my husband in it; I believe he’s just shy about my reaction. I mean, a waiter could enter at any moment, and Kevin isn’t big on public displays of affection.

I tend to be, what Kevin calls,
enthusiastic
. Read: Obnoxious. I rise from the floor and sit back down in my chair as if the last few seconds had never taken place. He faces me. I drink in his eyes. Every time I stare into his eyes, I fall for him all over again because they are dripping with love for me. There is no question how he feels about me. Toilet brush notwithstanding. He wants to give me the world. He just has other priorities. However, the road to you-know-where is paved with good intentions.

“Ashley,” he says while looking down at his blood-red linen napkin. “I’m not going with you on this trip. I’ve got those two huge cases right now.” He clears his throat. “And I don’t think I’m what you need.”

Not what I need? My heart sinks. I try to keep up the smile, but I’m disheartened in a way I haven’t felt since I was single and hit with the sting of dating rejection.

He goes on, “I can’t leave town right now, but I can’t have you sitting alone in the house waiting for me to come home. I need for you to be happy.”

I know I shouldn’t doubt his words, but he needs for me to be happy, so he’s propelling me out of town like a rock from a slingshot? “I’ve never made you feel like you had to entertain me, have I? I don’t expect for you to be my world.”

“No, no. It’s not that.”

“How did you afford this?”

“My Dad gave me his frequent flyer miles.”

His dad. So not only am I being sent away, but on someone else’s dime?

I hold up the card he’s given me and try to decipher what he’s telling me. “So this gift is a trip by myself? For our anniversary?” I don’t care what marriage book you’re reading, that can’t be good.

“I think, Ashley,” Kevin says in his sweetest southern drawl, “you should go home to the Bay Area for a visit. Figure out what will make you happy again, and then do what you must to make it happen when you return. I don’t want you to resent me or my work.”

“I don’t resent you.”
I resented the toilet brush. I may resent this weird “gift”—but I don’t resent him.

“I’d like to keep it that way.” Kevin shakes his head. “I was selfish to get married when I knew what I was facing in this residency and then the fellowship.”

The lump in my throat swells and my eyes sting. “So what you’re saying is that you wish you weren’t married? That’s a stellar anniversary gift.”

“Not for a second. That’s what makes me feel so badly. I’d do it again in a hot minute, but there was a price to pay, Ashley, and you’re paying it and I’m feeling it. No real man lets his wife take the fall. It’s not lost on me that you’re taking the fall.”

“So you’re sending me away? That’s your answer?”

“I’m not putting this well, I’m—”

The waiter enters the wine cellar, takes one look at me and my quivering lower lip, and makes a mad dash exit.

“Brea knows you’re coming,” Kevin adds, as if I’ve won some kind of anniversary lottery.

Brea’s my best friend. She has been for an eternity and she knows me like the back of her hand. Maybe better, because she has two boys under five, so I don’t think she actually ever gets to look at her own hand. She’s been so busy, I barely hear from her, so maybe Kevin is right. Maybe building back old friendships is the key to figuring out my future.

“When do I leave?” I ask, as if I’m headed for the gallows. It’s one thing to win a vacation, it’s another when you get a lone ticket across the country for your two-year anniversary.

“Wednesday. You’ll have tomorrow to pack and then you’ll be on your way. I have that big study going on and I’m not going to be home much anyway.” He says this like it was some kind of anomaly. He’s never home, but when he is, it’s worth all the trouble. Doesn’t he understand that? It’s like getting a guilt offering rather than an anniversary gift.

I suddenly remember what I wanted to tell him about my future, and I don’t have to, because it’s as if he’s read my mind. It feels like breaking up with someone when you don’t want him or her to do it first so that you can maintain a shred of dignity.

“Here, I thought we were going to discuss our future family.”

Kevin gives a mild shrug. “Is that what you want to discuss?”

I suddenly feel like I’m talking to a stranger. My throat goes dry. “Seems a moot point now.”

When I first got married, I thought I wanted a family right away. Thirty-three is no Spring Chicken for having babies, no matter what Hollywood tries to tell us, but my ticking clock started to slow when I visited Kevin at work. Seeing all those preemies, so pink, delicate and the size of gerbils, bringing new life into this world didn’t seem as simple. A fear developed. It’s hard to take the miracle of life for granted, or believe that a healthy baby ever arrives, after you witness so many of them struggling to hang onto life. It sucks a bit of the joy out of the idea, if I’m honest. Fear is the antithesis of faith, I get that, but with a visual reminder fear is also very real.

Naturally, Kevin’s mother thinks I’m barren and manages to mention it every time she calls. She seems to think comparing my eggs to “dehydrated fruit” is appropriate conversation. I’ll tell you one thing, when Elaine Novak comes to visit, there isn’t a box of Raisin Bran within fifty feet of the house.

I finally find my voice. “Your mother will think we’re having trouble if I go to California alone. It’s bad enough she thinks I’m barren.”

Kevin’s eyes go wide. “She doesn’t think you’re barren!” he says, as if I’m a total drama queen and his mother hasn’t implied that very thing from day one.