Thirty Seven: Elementary School Boy
Somehow, I decided I needed to make up for years of repressing my love for Gabrielle. I guess I figured if I reminded her much I loved her, she’d eventually break down and tell me how much she loved me too. The truth was I wasn’t even positive that she still loved me. It’d been four years since we broke up. Most of the time I figured she didn’t love me anymore… that she’d replaced me with independence, feminism, and everything else she’d come to love most. But every once in awhile I’d catch her watching me from across the room- watching me the same way I watched her. It was a single strand of hope, but I held onto it with everything I had.
I started telling Gabrielle that I loved her whenever I could… whenever I found her alone with no one else around. I wasn’t a big enough asshole to confess my love for Gabrielle right in front of my wife or my family or anything, but I was a big enough asshole to do it when no one else was around. I needed her become vulnerable… I needed her to be so vulnerable that she needed me as badly as I needed her. Selfish? Yes. But I’d given up being a good man a long time before.
I started my “I love you” harassing the day after our argument about her date- that Saturday night. After I put my children to bed, without making either of them throw up or cry, actually, I wandered around the house trying to convince myself I wasn’t looking for her- but I was. What else would I have been looking for? She was on my mind all the time.
I found her in the sunroom writing in a journal- a habit she’d learned from my mother who claimed that journals were the world’s cheapest therapy. I walked into the room quietly hoping she might not hear me, but she did. She looked up immediately and put the journal close to her chest protectively, as if I could read it from across the room.
“Hi,” I stood in the doorway and stated.
“What Taylor?” she sighed.
And then I said it… that’s when I started the whole harassment. I said nothing more, nothing less.
“I love you.”
“Not again…” she said, collecting her things as if she was going to leave the room.
I held my hand out and shook my head. I had no intention of intruding on her space for long.
“I’m leaving… don’t worry,” I said quickly. “I’m tired anyway and I’m going to bed… but I just wanted to let you know that… that I really, truly love you… in case you wanted to tell me back.”
“I don’t love you, Taylor,” she sighed. “Not like you want me to love you… and lately I’ve been questioning if you even mean much to me at all with how you’ve been treating me.”
I suppose that was my cue to apologize, but I didn’t know if I was sorry. I didn’t know if I was sorry or if I felt justified for how I treated her… I didn’t know if I had an explanation for my attitude towards her during the past few months. All I knew was that I loved her… so I stuck with that.
“Alright well, goodnight, Gab,” I said nodded calmly, still holding onto the strand of hope, no matter how fine it was, that she still loved me too. “Love you. Goodnight.”
As I walked back down towards my side of the house, I felt good about what I’d said. For so long I’d been repressing the one emotion that was strongest in my life. It felt liberating to say it.
“I love Gabrielle…” I spoke the words quietly as I climbed the stairs and closed my bedroom door. As I fell asleep that night, I dragged a pillow over to me and held it as I fell asleep. I missed my wife.
It’s strange that I could resent my wife and treat her so badly, but then need her so much at the same time, right? Natalie was a comfort… a constant that I woke up next to everyday. She kept my clothes clean, made sure I showered, and cooked me warm food. She was the mother I’d drifted from and the friends I’d never really had in the first place. Unfortunately, she couldn’t be the lover that I needed so badly.
I spent the next few days with Natalie gone professing my love for Gabrielle whenever I got the chance. When she stepped out of the bathroom from the shower, I just happened to be walking by and I tossed a quiet, subtle, “I love you,” over my shoulder, so quiet that I knew only she would be able to hear. When she arrived home Sunday night with armfuls of bags from a grocery shopping trip with my mother, I gladly went out and carried bags into the kitchen, making sure to mumble, “I love you, Gab,” as she handed me a bag of toilet paper. I became addicted to the release the single phrase brought and the emotions I could stir up in her. Making fun of her eccentric jewelry and democratic ideals no longer excited me. Instead, I became obsessed with harassing Gabrielle with my love for her.
I was like the elementary school boy, really, craving any attention at all from the little blonde girl with pigtails who sits in front of him in the classroom. I was being juvenile, ridiculous, and exasperating, but none of that mattered.
When Gabrielle left for school Monday morning to finish her last week of finals, I made sure I was sitting outside drawing on the front steps when she walked over to her truck. She groaned when she saw me there to see her off.
“Don’t… say it,” she mumbled as she dragged a duffle bag by me and hit me in the side with it accidentally… I think at least.
“Say what?” I feigned a confused look. “What, that your ridiculous amount of wooden bracelets look like shackles?”
She breathed a sigh of relief, naively fooled by my manipulation and tossed her duffle bag into the back seat of the Blazer.
“Yes, that,” she lied right back at me.
“Or that I love you?”
She paused and slammed the backseat of the truck closed. She turned to me and put her hands on her hips and began to rant. “You have some nerve, Taylor. You really have no conscious do you? What you’re doing is not fair… it’s not fair to me, it’s not fair to Natalie, and it’s not fair to yourself. Stop torturing all of us… and stop torturing yourself. When I get back from finals, you better have come to your senses.”
With that, she got into the Blazer and sped off to OSU. I hated OSU. OSU had given Gabrielle the strength to move on, the independence to be something without me. Without Gabrielle, I was nothing. But she was fine without me- she was successful, motivated, and seemingly happy. I hated OSU for helping her move on. And at the same time, I loved it for taking care of her.
The thing is, it seems crazy that I genuinely loved and cared about Gabrielle when you hear about all of my games and manipulation. It seems like if I really loved her, I would have respected her and wanted her to be happy… with or without me. But life isn’t that idealistic. The world is not that black and white. I can’t pretend to be the heroic lover silently wasting away out of respect for the woman he loves. I silently wasted away for four years. But at a certain point you just need to throw in the towel and recklessly, fearlessly, march forward.
When Natalie got home she was pleased to find that our children were still alive and relatively unharmed from their three days with their father. Ezra had a few more bruises due to my tendency to let him lay on the ground having a tantrum instead of coddling him like Natalie did, and Penelope desperately needed a bath. But all in all, she was pleased that I hadn’t killed them. Sometimes I worry that she wasn’t being entirely sarcastic when she said that.
I was happy to have my wife back. It meant someone to shower with in the evening, perfectly browned grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch, and clean sheets on my bed. And even though our sex life had gone to hell years before, it even meant one night of moderately enjoyable sex. I say moderately enjoyable because all sex after Gabrielle was moderately enjoyable. Nothing compared.
I even vowed to myself, that week that I was appreciative of Natalie, that I would stop all the “I love you” business with Gabrielle. I even admitted to myself that I was beginning to act sort of psychotic, and so for the sake of my questionable sanity, I decided to end it.
But when Gabrielle returned that weekend with her boxes of things from her on-campus apartment at OSU, moving back home for the summer, I changed my mind.
I changed my mind because Jessica asked her at the dinner table how her date went on Monday.
“Oh, it wasn’t a date…” Gabrielle replied. “He was just a friend who… he was just a friend. It was fun. I hope we can stay friends now that school is over.”
“It was too a date,” Isaac insisted. “Don’t even act like it wasn’t. Do you not like him? How was it?”
I sat there shoving forkfuls of rice into my mouth and pretending the whole thing didn’t bother me. I told Ezra to eat with his mouth closed just to prove how disinterested I was in it all. The less my family knew about my longing with Gabrielle, the easier life was.
“He’s not… my type,” Gabrielle responded.
“What is your type?” I suddenly asked. I never meant to ask it. It just flew out of my mouth without any warning. All eyes turned to me and I quickly searched for some witty insult to tack on to the end of my statement. “Are Birkenstocks and hemp a requirement?”
“Oh, well he is my type in the sense that he was respectful of me… considerate… always put me before himself,” she spat back at me. I knew she was calling me out on my poor behavior. “But he’s just… he’s not right.”
“Why not?” Jessica persisted.
“He’s…” she pawed at acceptable explanations. “He’s… got clammy hands.”
We all sat there staring at her trying to figure out if she was joking or not. She nodded to confirm her distaste.
“Ridiculously… clammy,” she swallowed.
“My hands are pretty clammy sometimes too,” Zac contributed, completely oblivious to what her statement meant.
My equally oblivious family launched a conversation about the amount of moisture in their various hands. I guess they didn’t understand what Gabrielle’s comment implied… or maybe they were just so used to pretending that everything was okay between her and I.
Gabrielle had turned down a perfectly good guy for the sole reason that his hands were on the moist side. She had no other explanation. I could picture him in my mind without even having met him yet. He was probably the exact man she’d been dreaming of- concerned with poor orphans in Africa and toxic waste in the US. I bet he had majored in something like Recycling or Basket Weaving or something similarly earthy. He wore tunics and sandals. He was as liberal as liberal could be and believed women to be the leader of the world. By what I assumed and had sensed, he was exactly what she was looking for. And she turned him down because he had clammy hands.
She was definitely not over me- not even close.