If You Only Knew

But if I was sick...oh, happy day! I loved being sick. And here’s a secret. In the five years Owen and I were married, I was never once sick. Just don’t tell him that.

I admit, I was feeling a little neglected one night. I’d made a really nice dinner, but he was late coming home from rebuilding children’s faces, so I could hardly complain, could I? As the risotto coagulated on the stove, I waited. He texted that he’d be half an hour late. After half an hour, he texted again. So sorry. Closer to 8. At 8:30 p.m., he came through the door. I pretended not to mind, but I’d had this fabulous call—Bride magazine was featuring one of my dresses on the cover, and I’d been saving the news all day long, because I wanted to tell him in person.

So I poured the wine and Owen and I sat down—I’d set the table beautifully—and we ate the now-gelatinous and slimy risotto, which Owen proclaimed delicious. He was late, he explained, because he’d had to rebuild a child’s nose in a particularly difficult surgery, and he’d wanted to stay until the little guy woke up from anesthesia, and then the little guy wanted to play Pokémon with Owen, and he just couldn’t say no, and the parents were crying with amazement that their son was once again so beautiful and would no longer have to endure the stares and cruelty of the unkind, and the horrible fire that took the kid’s nose could now be a memory and not a flashback every time the kid thought about, touched, saw or had someone look at his face.

The cover of Bride now seemed pretty unimportant.

“Is something wrong, darling?” Owen finally asked.

And because I couldn’t say I’m tired of you being so damn perfect, especially when I made risotto! I said, “No, no.” Pause. “I’m not feeling that great. I’m sorry, babe.”

“Oh, no! I’m sorry! And here I’ve been going on so long! What’s the matter, honey?”

I spewed out a few made-up symptoms—aches, some chills, a sore head—feeling perversely happy with my lie and my husband’s subsequent guilt and attention. He tucked me into bed, found a movie I loved, then went to clean up the kitchen. “I’m running out for a few minutes,” he called. “You need anything?”

“No,” I said, immediately peeved once again. Stupid hospital.

But he returned fifteen minutes later with a pint of the notoriously hard-to-find Ben & Jerry’s Peanut Brittle ice cream. My favorite. “I thought this might be the best medicine,” he said with that sweet smile. Then he lay on the bed next to me as I ate straight from the carton. Later, we held hands. There was no guest-room sleeping for me, no sir. Owen wanted to be close, in case I needed him. He stroked my hair as I fell asleep, told me he loved me.

And he did. But he never needed me. I didn’t complete him. He felt we both deserved more.

All those other marriages—those imperfect marriages with their smelly bathrooms—had something ours didn’t. That moment when you’ve had the worst day ever, and you come home, and you can’t go one more step without a long, hard hug from your spouse. Only they have the arms that will do. Only they really understand.

I don’t think Owen ever had a day when his life was in the shitter. When we met, he was already a star resident, on his way to greatness. And when I had a crappy day, when someone shot down my work, or when a buyer treated me like an assembly-line worker, when a bride had a tantrum because I had done exactly what she asked, I felt as if my complaints were petty and unimportant. After all, I still had my nose, didn’t I?

I told myself that it was good, keeping things in perspective. In order to have interesting things to talk about with my husband, the heroic saver of faces, the smiter of deformities, the changer of lives, I’d listen to TED Talks on my computer while I worked. I’d read important novels. Listen to NPR in order to have interesting things to contribute to our dinner conversations.

But I never let myself have regular feelings when I was with Owen. I was almost afraid to bitch about Marie, the mean and less-talented designer who trashed me to our coworkers after Vera told me my work was “glorious.” When a homeless man peed himself on the subway, and I only noticed because it leaked into my own seat, it was such a sad and horrifying occurrence that I wept as I gave him all the money in my wallet to the disapproving stares of my fellow riders. I cried all the way home and took a forty-five-minute shower. Threw that skirt in the trash and triple bagged it. It was one of my favorites.

But I didn’t tell Owen. He’d just returned from Sri Lanka, fixing faces marred by war, after all. My brush with the homeless man...pah. It was nothing compared to what Owen had seen. So I kept that, and all the other little vagaries and irritations of life, to myself.

There’s that saying—true love makes you a better person. I thought at the time that this was my evolution into a better person. What I didn’t realize was that I wasn’t better; I was just less me. I wanted to vent about Marie and her petty little pecks. I wanted to be consoled about sitting in someone else’s urine.

But it was nothing compared to what Owen dealt with every day.

And so Owen and I had a very happy marriage, a seamless relationship of mutual affection, love, interesting conversations and enjoyable trips. When I felt the need to be human, I faked a mild virus, and Owen would attend to me as he might a patient, and I felt more special and loved than at any other time in our years together.

We were happy.

Except I saw it, that slow erosion of love. Of interest. Of that delight that Owen used to feel toward me, from the very first day we met, that incredibly flattering sense that Owen believed I was the most charming, adorable person he’d ever encountered. For a year, maybe two, I saw Owen’s love flickering, like electricity during a thunderstorm. He was never cruel, never impatient. He was simply leaving me, a surgical centimeter at a time.

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