Thirty Eight: Self-Pity
Knowing that Gabrielle was having trouble dating guys assured me that there was still a future for us. I knew it… I could feel it. I was born to love her… and to be loved back by her. The “I love you”s started all over again.
It was a lot more difficult to claim my love to Gabrielle when Natalie was around, but I managed. I held my hand into the “I love you” sign language symbol across the dinner table at her and spelled it on the fridge in alphabet magnets.
One night Gabrielle volunteered to baby sit my children since no one else could. Natalie had gotten us tickets to a local play and had begged me enough to go that I eventually caved and put on a nice pair of khakis for the evening. As we were leaving, Natalie kissed the children goodbye and ran upstairs to grab some extra make-up to put on in the car. Natalie wore a lot of make-up. Gabrielle hardly wore any. She didn’t need any.
Gabrielle and I stood awkwardly in the kitchen while my children watched Anastasia in the living room.
“Thanks for watching them,” I said civilly.
“It’s fine,” Gabrielle shrugged.
“Want me to pay you?” I teased, reaching for my wallet. “What do you charge?”
She glanced at the stairs to make sure Natalie wasn’t in earshot and then muttered, “All I want is for you to let us go back to normal…”
“What’s normal for us?”
“You know what I mean…”
“Well, seriously. What’s normal? Is normal the way we were a long, long time ago? Is that normal? Because if that’s normal… I’ll gladly go back to it,” I looked her straight in the eyes. “But if normal is going years pretending we don’t need each other… faking that we’re okay, that we’ve healed… well I can’t go back to that again.”
“Why?” she demanded. “Why do you have to be so selfish, Taylor? It’s not about what you want…”
“Damnit, yes it is!” I said loudly and then paused to lower my voice so Natalie didn’t hear us. “I’m here because I didn’t do what was right for me… that’s how I got here… that’s how I got this fucked up, Gabrielle. I have to be honest with myself now… I have to be honest with you. I’ve got to put myself first this time.”
She stood there and stared at me, crossed her arms at her chest- her eyes pouring into my body like she was trying to pull an emotion out of me that just wasn’t there.
“I love you, Gab…” I said quietly.
“I don’t love you…” she whispered. “I used to… and I love the Taylor that wandered onto my front porch four February’s ago. I love him. But you? I can’t seem to find anything to love about you.”
It was like she had doused me in cold water. The statement was chilling. Had I really changed that much? Had I driven Gabrielle away from me, and when? Before I could reply to her, Natalie came running down the stairs with a bag of make-up tucked underneath her arm.
“Ready freddy?” she grinned at me. My wife had taken to speaking to me like she spoke to our children with corny little phrases scattered into her conversations.
“Ready,” I replied but my eyes were on Gabrielle. I was still taken in the brutal honesty of what she had just said to me. I can’t seem to find anything to love about you.
I retaliated by not attending her college graduation. Deep down, there was nothing I wanted to do more than support the love of my life and clap as she completed a goal she’d worked for no matter how rough things got for her. I wanted to pour myself a glass of wine afterwards and make a toast to the entire Hanson family about the strength and wisdom of Gabrielle Carter while I sat there in front of a plate of stuffed cantaloni basking in her splendor. I even bought her a diamond watch- even asked the clerk at the store to wrap it up for me and curl the ribbons for festivity’s sake. I intended to play nice, to pretend it didn’t hurt to see Gabrielle growing up without me, to do it for her sake, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I was just growing more and more selfish with each day of pain I endured, and although I tried the best I could, there was no one to blame but myself… and maybe Natalie sometimes.
*****“I’m moving out,” Gabrielle said days later. I was laying underneath my car trying to wash the bottom of it in an effort to avoid having to join Natalie at the mall with the kids. Spoiled Hanson children and shopping malls don’t mix well, especially since the Woodland Hills mall put a toy store right in the center all of the stores.
I crawled out from under the car, tossed my soapy sponge at her feet, and just stared. Had she really said that?
“You’re what?”
“I’m moving out. I thought you should know. I told the rest of the family today at lunch after church. Had you come to church, you would have known,” she said, calling me out on my withering faith and lack of interest in my family.
“Where are you moving to?” I cried incredulously. “You don’t have anywhere to go! What, are you moving in with that boyfriend of yours from school?”
I was perfectly aware I sounded possessive, jealous, almost psychotic, but I didn’t care. When the one woman you know you can’t live without announces that she is leaving, reason is no longer important.
“Taylor, you know I just went on a single date with him… so don’t say that,” she sighed.
I liked the fact that she had to justify her date to me. It gave me hope. It gave me faith that she still loved me, even if she had convinced herself she didn’t.
“Not that that’s any of your business anyway,” she corrected herself.
“Why are you moving out?” I hounded her- my voice anxiously raising an octave.
“Honestly? Because you’re driving me nuts Taylor…” she sighed, leaning against my BMW and looking away from me. “I’m just… I can’t take this anymore. I can’t take you harassing me anymore. You’re making me uncomfortable… you’re stressing me out. I’m sick of you giving me a hard time about something one moment and then telling me you love me the next. I don’t want any of it. I just need…”
“Are you trying to get a break from me?”
“I need to… for my own well-being.”
I kicked at a sudsy bucket of water and cursed underneath my breath. I had driven her to moving out. It was the last thing I wanted. I couldn’t tolerate hardly seeing her again. I spent her last semester of college reminding myself that summer was approaching and she’d be home for good. I needed to be around her as much as I could because even if it hurt, it hurt far less to be away from her. And now she was… leaving?
“This is ridiculous,” I muttered. “You’re leaving your home because I tell you I love you so much. Just… speak those words so you can realize how crazy you’re being.”
“How crazy I’m being!?” she cried, turning and looking me unapologetically in the eyes for the first time. “Look at you Taylor! You’re a mess! You sleep all day, you don’t take care of yourself… do you even shower anymore?”
I was offended.
“Of course, I-”
“You spend your days ignoring the family and harassing me and quite frankly, I’m not the crazy one, Taylor. You’re not well right now, and I don’t think I’m making things much better.”
“I’m not well!? So now you’re speaking to me like I’m some kind of crazy psychiatric patient… like you’re so much more functional than me. Right?”
“Right now I am, Tay…” she confessed quietly. “You have to pull yourself together.”
“I am pulled together!” I shouted across the garage at her, but I knew I wasn’t. The truth scared me though.
“Tay…” she said quietly. “You’re not okay right now- I know you well enough to say that. We all do… it’s just that everyone in the family is uncomfortable telling you so.”
I hated listening to her stand there and tell me things the family was thinking about me but were too scared to say. I hated knowing that I had let myself sink so far, that I had just watched my own depression deepen with each day. But depression comes without motivation, and I had no reason to fix myself. I couldn’t fix my life, so fixing myself seemed pointless.
“This isn’t you… you haven’t been yourself in so long, Taylor. The Taylor I first met would have never ignored his children, isolated himself from his family, alienated his wife,” she told me everything I didn’t want to hear.
I crawled back under the car and resumed my scrubbing. I could fix the condition of my car, at least. If that was all I could do, then damnit, that was what I was going to do.
“I don’t want to have this barrier between us anymore, Tay. I don’t want to have to tip toe around you and resent you anymore, and I don’t want you to have to be so unable to be normal around me. I want to find a way to be able to get along… to function around each other,” she continued.
But functioning around her wasn’t enough.
“Are you listening to me?”
“I’m listening.”
She stood there for a moment as I watched her sandals slowly pace around the garage. She was a people fixer, and she was determined to fix me. I wondered if she wanted to fix me because she felt it was her duty, or because she cared.
“I don’t want you to move,” I finally admitted.
The silence after my statement was chilling. I heard a single drop of water fall from the bottom of my car and hit the pavement.
“But I think you need me to, and I think I need to,” she replied after a moment of thought. “I’ll be leaving next week. I’ve already found an apartment.”
“Where?” I mumbled, praying she wouldn’t say anywhere outside of Oklahoma.
“Downtown Tulsa… so I can be more involved with the community work I do there.”
I quickly calculated the driving time from my house to downtown Tulsa in order to assess how often she’d be visiting home. That was a 30 minute drive, but considering Gabrielle tends to be extremely economical about using fuel, I didn’t know how often it would be.
“I don’t want you to have to leave because of me,” I responded, happy to have the protection of the car above me so I didn’t have to look at her and awkwardly fidget as I came out of my hard shell for the first time in a long time. “I didn’t mean to… I mean, I want you to get the point that I still love you, Gabrielle, and nothing will ever change that. But I didn’t mean to chase you away, and I’m sorry that I have. I’ll stop bothering you if you’ll stay… I promise.”
“Taylor…” she started, and at first I thought she might say something that would ease the lump in my throat. “I don’t take your promises to heart anymore.”
And that was it. We didn’t speak the entire following week. As she boxed her life up into boxes and wrapped them in thick, brown tape, I didn’t even offer to help. I let Zac and Isaac lug her stuff out to the car and pretended to sleep through her final breakfast living at home. My mother made chocolate chip pancakes for the occasion, in honor of the first breakfast Gabrielle had with us, but even the smell filtering through the house couldn’t pull me into the crowded dining room. When Natalie came up to my bedroom to tell me breakfast was ready and I was expected at the table, I threw myself under the covers and claimed I didn’t feel well. She didn’t argue with me. Everyone eventually learned that arguing with me did no good… everyone except for Gabrielle.
My sister told me my mother cried all throughout breakfast. My mother told me she thought I was amazingly selfish, but she walked away before I could argue.
The first night Gabrielle spent in her new apartment was almost intolerable for me. I’d spent nights alone in my house while she slept at OSU or traveled on work trips, but somehow knowing that she was gone for good was unbearable.
“Tay, Ezra wants you to come read to him. Won’t you come upstairs and read to your children?” Natalie said when she found me sulking on the living room couch as I blasted angry Cranberries music.
“I’m not in the mood,” I mumbled.
Usually I could half-ass my way through being a father. I avoided doing most things, but I did just enough to keep my family off my ass about it. I’d come to realize if I cut up Penelope’s chicken at the dinner table and colored with Ezra for ten minutes, my family left me alone. But laying there, mourning the loss of Gabrielle all over again, I couldn’t seem to force myself to even do the bare minimum.
“Well I’m not in the mood to explain to your kids that their father simply just doesn’t feel like reading to them tonight,” she sighed, throwing in phrases like “your kids” and “their father” in an attempt to make me take my responsibility as a parent more seriously.
“Nat, I don’t want to deal with them right now. I have a headache… tell Ezra I’ll read to him tomorrow,” I pulled a couch pillow over my head in order to inform her that the discussion was over.
“You’re really getting on my nerves, I hope you know…”
“And you’re getting on mine,” I said through the pillow.
“Taylor… is this… is this about Gabrielle?” she finally spat out, a question she asked every once in awhile but never seemed to want the real answer to. I think deep down, like the rest of my family, she knew why I was drowning and what exactly I needed. But it was too hard for her to face the reality of her husband loving someone else.
So I gave her the answer she wanted to hear.
“I just don’t feel good, Nat. I don’t care that Gabrielle left… it will probably release a lot of tension between the two of us since we don’t really get along these days anyway. Can you just leave me alone? Go watch the kids… Ezra’s probably torn up the entire second floor by now.”
I’m sure she didn’t really believe me, but I’m sure she told herself she did. She didn’t say anything else. Arguing did no good. She just went upstairs and read the book I should have forced myself to read- the book I should have wanted to read anyway.
I always expected myself to be the kind of father to wake my children up the morning by tickling them and to put them to sleep at night with a book and kisses. My father was never particularly affectionate, although he did his job well. But my mother had always showered us with love and attention and I intended to do the same for my children. As a teenager, I never expected that before my children were even in Kindergarten, I’d want them to be grown up and out of the house. I expected myself to be better than that.
Somehow, I cared. There was a small part of me who still wanted to fix myself- to make myself the energetic father I always hoped to be. And yet another part of me had already given up years before and couldn’t even fathom changing after a four year slum. Like most people, I gave into my own laziness and self-pity. Changing was too much work.