If It Was Easy, They'd Call the Whole Damn Thing a Honeymoon Read online

  Send the kids in to entertain him. Nothing says “get well soon” like a couple of rugrats jumping on you, right? Pump them up on lots of sugar and send them in with very full mugs of steaming beverages. Make sure they tell him, “Mom says we need to be in here as much as possible to cheer you up!” After a few days of this, he should come to realize that being vertical and productive is the far less painful option.

  Hide the remote control. I know, this one is cruel and really will require herculean effort on your part not to give in, because the whining and complaining will actually worsen in the short term. Also, it’s best to initiate this plan when the kids aren’t home, as he will spew obscenities like the lead thug in the dirtiest Quentin Tarantino flick you ever saw and make an upsetting mess tearing up the house looking for his beloved clicker. He’ll accuse you of hiding it (the nerve!), and he may even bribe you with offers of spa vacations and shopping sprees if you’ll just give it back—or at least help him find it. Be strong! Remember, you’re doing this for his own good. Desperate times call for desperate measures. If televised delights are taken away from him, the only other perk to being sick is a license to eat all of the junk food he can possibly shovel into his mouth. Which brings us to:

  Clear the house of all junk food and refuse to buy any more until he is 100 percent well. This is easy to pull off, as you will use the “you need to eat healthy, healing foods” line of reasoning that’s impossible to argue with. Strip the pantry and refrigerator of his tasty favorites such as salami, Doritos, and those disgusting frosted circus animal cookies he insists on having in the house, and replace them with a hearty assortment of nutrient-dense goodies like liver, wheatgrass, radishes, boiled cabbage, low-sodium chicken broth, and canned, unsweetened goat’s milk. Continue to drink wine, eat steak, and enjoy dessert as you normally would, insisting that you need to keep up your precious strength. This isn’t being unkind; it’s helping to motivate him toward wellness. Bottoms up!

  Make sure whatever cold medicine you give him has the words may cause drowsiness on it. This won’t do anything to shorten the duration or severity of his symptoms, but it could buy you a few minutes of silent relief. Administer this medication in the late afternoon so that you can have a few hours to yourself after the kids go to bed and before you turn in.

  Threaten to call a doctor. Few things strike fear into the heart of a grown man like the thought of donning a paper gown and having a stranger (in all likelihood another man) palpate his flesh or, heaven forbid, puncture it with a needle. You can lead up to this one gradually, dropping casual comments like, “If you’re not feeling better by Friday, I think you should go to the doctor.” Obviously he’s a big boy and the boss of himself, and you can’t make him go, even when Friday rolls around. If he resists, having an arsenal of vague and ambiguous questions such as “Have you read that prolonged fever is associated with erectile dysfunction?” can be enormously helpful in encouraging him to be proactive in his own health care. (By the way, the doctor card works great with sick kids, too—and you can be totally sly about it. “Do you think maybe I should call Dr. Black?” you can ask, looking gravely concerned and slightly perplexed, as if the situation may indeed be out of your hands. Brace yourself for the inevitable, “You know what? I think I’m starting to feel better!” More often than not, it works like a charm.)

  Get sick yourself. This move is the trickiest of all of to pull off, because you probably don’t get sick easily, and on the rare occasion that you do, you aren’t adept at broadcasting your misery. Whenever I manage something brutal like projectile vomiting or severe diarrhea, Joe occasionally notices and responds (even if he was praying to the same porcelain god just hours before me) with a steady stream of Gatorade and the luxury of having the whole entire bed to myself. It’s not much, but it’s better than listening to him moan and hurl.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The View from the

  Passenger Seat . . . Sucks

  As we were driving, we saw a sign that said

  “Watch for Rocks.”

  Marta said it should read “Watch for Pretty Rocks.”

  I told her she should write in her suggestion to

  the highway department,

  but she started saying it was a joke—

  just to get out of writing a simple letter!

  And I thought I was lazy!

  • JACK HANDEY •

  From the endless train of ridiculous research studies that cross my desk, one of my favorites of late was this one: WOMEN MORE ATTRACTED TO MEN IN EXPENSIVE CARS. That was the actual title of the news release, which I even skimmed—mostly because I thought there must be more to it than the obvious—before promptly filing it in my handy “no shit” folder. Apparently a team of university psychologists showed a group of women photos of a man sitting in a sleek silver Bentley and another guy in a battered Ford Fiesta. The women were then asked to rate each man on a standardized scale of attractiveness. Not surprisingly, the women found the Bentley boy significantly more handsome than the Ford fellow, never mind that they were the very same person. None of this was surprising in the least, including the brief mention of a corollary study in which this time the men were asked to rate women in various vehicles. Not at all shockingly, what kind of car the woman drove or what shape it was in or probably even whether it was on wheels or blocks mattered not in the least to the men; they judged each gal on face and figure only, her choice of automobile utterly irrelevant.

  Call me shallow and materialistic, but I get this. To Joe, a car is a tool for carrying crap, and because he is both handy and adventurous, a truck is a must. He drove an old, gold, toosmall-for-his-frame Ford Ranger when we met, and he never looked sexier to me than the day he upgraded to the brand-new, gleaming white F-150. It was no Rolls Royce, but it was rugged and manly and had that delicious new-car scent and a CD player. He was hot.

  That was eight years ago. Today the outside is scratched up, the tailgate is bent, and the inside is coated in dueling layers of dust and dog hair.

  “It’s a truck,” Joe says when I complain about the filth and the stink. “It’s supposed to be dirty.”

  So most of the time we take my car, which isn’t a minivan but close. It’s more of a station wagon–SUV hybrid, but at least it’s got leather seats and a moon roof. It runs great and has never given us a single headache, so I know that I’m stuck with the stupid thing for at least another hundred thousand miles. This used to infuriate me—I like change!—but I’ve come to a place in my marriage and in my life where I have realized that it really doesn’t matter if I’m driving a Pinto or a Lexus; a car is just a vehicle of transport, sort of like a hot dog is to ketchup. It’s an armor designed to protect my family from the dangers of other, bigger cars and keep us dry in a rainstorm. It’s a climate-controlled wagon for hauling groceries and small bodies from one place to another. Oh, and it’s also a great sparring spot.

  Many years ago I wrote an article about relationship conflict for a national magazine, and one of the sources I interviewed—probably a Ph.D. or a famous clinical researcher or bestselling author—told me something I have never forgotten: “When you want to bring up a touchy subject with your spouse,” the communication guru told me, “do it in the car.” The reasoning he used to substantiate this advice sounded like something you’d hear from a wilderness guide before taking off on a solo stint through the grizzly-riddled back country: “Men perceive direct eye contact as a challenge,” he went on to explain. “So the same information will be received as significantly less hostile if you’re not looking directly at him when you deliver it.” After years of careful observation, I’ve come up with another equally compelling motivation for always limiting your sex, money, child care, politics, and religion discussions to the car: Chances are, you’re already fighting anyway. At least if you’re me.

  “At Least You’re Not Married to Him”

  He has a Starbucks obsession. He absolutely cannot pass one without

  filling u
p; it’s just not an option. This is combined with the fact that he

  has to stop every hour on every single road trip we take. Just yesterday

  we were driving three hours and he had to stop twice for coffee. I didn’t

  talk to him for an hour. I love him but I do not always like him.

  MARYELLEN

  Pretty much every single knock-down spat I’ve had with Joe has either started or seriously escalated in the car. Remember the ice-to-the-temple incident at the very beginning of this book? Well, here’s what was happening in the moments just prior to that culminating moment of marital excellence: It was a beautiful summer day and the whole family had been invited to my friend Tami’s birthday barbecue. Tami is an event planner and her husband Mark owns one of my favorite restaurants in town, so their parties are always over the top, with spectacular food and great music and every detail carefully considered. I’d been looking forward to it for weeks and had even rented wacky costumes for all of us so that we would totally rock the hippiefiesta theme. So there we were in our sombreros and waist-length wigs and love beads, having a lovely time, when our youngest daughter proceeded to launch into what was predictably going to be one of the more impressive meltdowns of her little four-year life. Joe, who has a zero-tolerance policy for tiny tantrums, immediately whisked her from the room to frighten some compliance into her. When they rejoined the party, I took the child we have nicknamed LBS (for Low Blood Sugar) into my lap and basically force-fed her, knowing that once she got some food into her system she’d be a new, happy person. Of course I was right, and the rest of the festivities passed without incident. At the party’s end, we packed up our new tie-dye T-shirts and the rest of our copious gear and loaded ourselves into the car.

  “You coddle her,” Joe spat at me as soon as all four doors were shut.

  “I just know how she gets when she’s hungry,” I replied simply, reaching for the radio button. I knew where this was likely to go, too, and I was hoping some decent music could defuse the situation. “I knew her mood would change once she’d eaten,” I added.

  “It doesn’t matter!” my husband shouted at me, pounding the radio’s power button off for emphasis. “She needs to learn that she can’t just throw a tantrum because she’s hungry.”

  “I agree,” I said, struggling to remain calm. “But I didn’t think a birthday party was the best place to teach that particular lesson. I just wanted to calm her down and get her fed. And for the record, I don’t think anyone would consider feeding a child the same thing as coddling her.” I reached for the radio button, thinking that we’d each just had a chance to explain our take on the situation and could put the discussion to bed. But evidently, Joe wasn’t finished.

  “That’s just putting a Band-Aid on bad behavior,” he accused, smacking my hand away from the dial.

  I sat there shocked.

  “Did you just . . . smack my hand?” I asked incredulously, struggling to remain calm and reaching for the dial. Again, he blocked my move. Rage boiled inside me like a cauldron of bleach and ammonia and a dozen other incompatible toxic chemicals. I wanted to shout ugly four-letter words at him but the girls were in the backseat, so it was imperative that I remain as composed as could be.

  “Are you kidding me?” I hissed, using the hand closest to his to hold it down and reaching for the dial with my free hand. The minute I had the music on, he snatched his hand from my grip and snapped the power back off. Because hurtling the sort of insults we were both thinking (“You are such a fucking asshole/ bitch!”) was out of the question, instead we continued to take out our joint frustration on the radio dial like a pair of surly, sugared-up kindergarteners: On. Off. On. Off. On. Off. On. Off. All the way home.

  Mature, I know.

  I am not proud of our embarrassingly adolescent behavior, nor am I condoning it. I’m merely sharing this story to illustrate one of the principal drawbacks of the car fight: You can’t walk away. (At least not until you arrive at your destination, where hopefully one of you won’t lob a cup of ice at the other’s head.)

  “At Least You’re Not Married to Him”

  My husband loves his cars more than he loves me, even though he

  swears that’s not true. He meticulously cleans, waxes, and shines them

  at least once a week, and heaven forbid if it rains I have to listen to him

  go on and on about how God hates him and it always manages to rain

  when he washes the cars. If I did anything to one of his cars I’d be

  hiding underneath my bed like a scared dog.

  MARA

  Over the years, Joe and I have driven thousands of miles in agonizing silence, and I’ve demanded he pull this car over and let me out because I refuse to be stuck inside it with him for another second more times than I can count—although to his enormous credit, he’s actually given in to this insane demand only once. The funniest bit about that time is that neither of us can recall what we were fighting about. We were kidless and carefree and enjoying an idyllic vacation in Hawaii. Each day prior to World War Three had been better than the last, filled with a year’s worth of sun and sex and delicious sleeping in. It was our last night and we were on our way to the island’s most romantic dinner spot, and we are both pretty sure we weren’t fighting when we left the hotel or why would we have gone to dinner at all? So somewhere between beautiful point A and even lovelier point B, The Fight broke out. There we were, zipping along this winding island road in our vacations-plurge convertible, verbally abusing each other at the top of our lungs.

  “Just let me out of this car!” I remember screaming. “Do you hear me? I mean it! I cannot sit next to you for another minute. Pull over and let me out!”

  To my part relief and part horror, he twisted the wheel and drew the car to a screeching, gravelly stop. I flung my door open and stumbled out, smoothing my skirt and my hair and wondering what the hell would happen next. Joe didn’t even give me a second sideways glance as he peeled away. I leaped into the middle of the road, where I stood violently and repeatedly shooting him the full-body double-bird. I convinced myself I saw him watching me in his rearview mirror.

  I knew I was closer to the restaurant than the hotel behind me, so I walked the rest of the way. I spotted the empty convertible in the parking lot and thought to myself, That son of a bitch is inside eating! Well, I’m not sitting out here while he enjoys the best food on this island. I’ll just go in there and sit down like I own the place and eat my food and ignore him. That’ll show him. He had the keys and I didn’t have a dime on me. What other choice did I have?

  Just as neither of us remembers what the fight was about, neither can recall how it ended. We both just know that by the end of the meal, somehow we were talking and laughing about the fact that he’d dumped me on the side of the road. I have a feeling we’ll laugh about that one for a long time. As long as it doesn’t happen again.

  “At Least You’re Not Married to Him”

  I love my husband but he seems to thoroughly enjoy picking his nose—

  and I’m talking digging here—in the car, with me right beside him. It’s

  so gross.

  AMANDA

  From our home base on the central California coast, Joe and I have driven to and around Montana, Mexico, and the Mojave Desert. We’ve circumnavigated the entire island of Ireland, each of us sitting on the “wrong” side of the car while driving on the “wrong” side of the road. (Which, it should be noted, makes quarreling significantly more dangerous.) We’ve had car-guments in countries whose language we don’t speak, frequently over my appalling inability to decipher foreign road signs. We’ve bickered about music, the internal car temperature, which route is indeed fastest, his incessant need to be the leader in any string of vehicles, and occasionally where to stop for food. (My feeling: Burger King is best, McDonald’s will do, and Wendy’s is acceptable for an emergency potty stop only; never for eating.) Fortunately, my map-reading skills are stellar, because I hear a d
eficiency in that area can be fodder for some epic spats.

  We don’t need a three-day trip to fall into auto-argument mode. Even a typical ten-minute drive to Costco can go like this:

  Me (tucking my arms into the body of my shirt for warmth): “Brrrrr! I didn’t realize it was so cold out!”

  Joe (rolling down all four windows): “Cold? It’s got to be at least fifty-five degrees out! It’s beautiful! Practically balmy!”

  Me (shivering and realizing that he’s locked the windows in the down position): “Could you unlock the windows or at least put mine up for me?”

  Joe (grudgingly complying): “I need fresh air. Don’t you need fresh air? How can you not need fresh air?”

  Me (turning on the radio): “I’m going to just keep a blanket in the car.”

  Joe (switching the radio to CD): “You keep saying that, but you never do it.”

  Me (fast-forwarding the CD he’s chosen to the track I prefer): “Whatever. I will do it. Hey, I’m starving. Can we grab a hot dog before we go into Costco?”

  Joe (noticing that I’ve stealthily turned on the heat and snapping it off): “Why didn’t you tell me you were going to want to eat? I didn’t factor in eating time.”

  Me (picturing “Costco run” blocked off in his Outlook calendar): “I didn’t plan it, I just realized I was hungry. Besides, I want a lousy hot dog, not a hand-rolled sushi platter and a chocolate soufflé. And if you’d been ready to go when you said you’d be ready to go, we’d have time to eat a dozen hot dogs!”