To be married by Rachel Maczuzak
Meg was sitting up in bed, staring at the eggshell-white walls of her room, when she broke the daze to look down at her sleeping husband whom she didn’t love. It was a morning like any morning, and Meg was anxious, but she was accustomed to feeling that way. She thought of her mother, who also didn’t love her husband.
Beside her, Jason stirred, making Meg involuntarily tense her muscles. When he settled back and she heard his soft, consistent breathing, she felt herself relax. For most of the twelve years that the two were married, Jason occasionally poked fun at Meg’s late sleeping. He considered himself the early riser, and Meg encouraged this false belief. It was easiest that way. In their first years of marriage, when Jason woke up to find Meg sitting silently, calmly, awake an hour before she needed to be, a slight smile would slide across his lips. His pale green eyes would grow big, and his face would contort into that hopeful, pathetic look. An acidic taste crept up Meg’s throat as she simply recalled that look. Sex with Jason in itself was not bad, and she was grateful. She didn’t mind the occasional afternoons that they were both home alone without the kids or the nights before they fell asleep when his naked legs would brush against hers. Jason was a good man, and he loved her, loved to please her. The sex was fine, but that passive, begging look he gave was painful to see. The look reminded Meg of the power she held, the love that she didn’t have for Jason, the love he carried for her. So in the opening hours of the day, when Meg couldn’t sleep, she sat up in bed, stared at her walls, and waited until Jason’s breathing changed and she knew it was time to lay back down and shut her eyes and listen to her husband shower, shave, start the coffee. She had a while yet, that morning – Jason was like a clock.
She couldn’t remember when she realized that her mother didn’t love her father, but she was young, probably fresh in high school. Looking back, she wondered why the realization didn’t surprise her, why she accepted it without concern or disgust or judgment. She supposed it was because the lack of love had been obvious all along, and she had lived in its void, and she just hadn’t put a name on it. Meg’s mother married for security. As a child, she was brutally abused until she ran away at 16 and began working three jobs to pay for rent and the barest of groceries. When she met Meg’s father, and she realized that he was a good man who wouldn’t hurt her and would give her a reprieve from long hours waitressing, she agreed to marriage without a second thought. She didn’t need love, but she needed security, and she found it in Meg’s father.
Meg married to avoid. She met Jason in college, and they began dating towards the end of their senior year. Neither of them initiated a relationship originally; they had mutual friends who coerced them into meeting. That first date was kept perfectly in Meg’s mind not because she remembered it with fondness but because she found flaws with Jason even then, among introductions and nervousness and trivial questions to keep conversation flowing. His faults resonated in her mind as she undressed in her apartment after the date was over – he chewed too loudly, he talked about himself too much, he knew he was very intelligent, he didn’t make her laugh, he was boring boring boring. But Meg was shy at first meeting and plain at first glance, and she wasn’t being asked on many dates, so when he asked her out again, she accepted. On the second date, she saw all the flaws she had discovered previously and decided that they weren’t flukes, but still Meg chastised herself for being too judgmental and tried to focus on Jason’s good qualities. He listened to her, laughed at her jokes, shared many of her interests, displayed a certain kindness and concern for her well-being. As the dating continued, she admitted that she did find him attractive, and conversation between them was satisfactory if she worked at it, but she remained conflicted about how she felt towards Jason. After graduation, Meg and Jason remained in the city of the college unlike many of their peers, so Meg’s options for other prospective dates decreased even more, and Jason was persistent.
She felt lonely in the city without her friends and the community that college had offered, and Jason was a trustworthy companion. A year passed, and two, and when Jason proposed, Meg knew she didn’t love him but was too afraid of living life by herself to say no.
Sorry. Meg formed the word with her lips and silently recited it to the stark, white wall. The word was meant for her sleeping, dreaming husband, but she didn’t want to look at him. She felt heaviness cover her shoulders, and she sank deeper into bed. Guilt. While Meg found nothing wrong with marrying a man she didn’t love, she had guilt, from time to time, for letting Jason believe that she loved him. So much of Jason irritated her because of who she was, but he was a good man, and he didn’t deserve a wife who didn’t love him. And Meg didn’t love him. She had sex with him because she was a woman and she needed physical contact, but there was nothing special to her about his body. She made his favorite meals because he was more prone to washing the dishes then. She asked him about work and how he was feeling because they had children, and she wanted to put up a good front for them. She dressed up when they went out, and took care to her hair and make-up, and bought new lingerie not to excite him but to keep him from going elsewhere for excitement. Meg didn’t want Jason, but she wanted him to want her, because then he would have no reason to leave, and she wouldn’t be lonely.
Sometimes she wanted him to leave. When he spoke to her with a hint of condescension because he believed himself to be her intellectual superior. When he asked her trivial questions. When he acted like he knew her. She wanted to scream sometimes, to throw things, to tell him that their life was a lie, to ask him if he really never questioned the authenticity of their marriage. Maybe she would be happier if he left. Maybe he would, too.
Jason rolled from his side to his back, and Meg heard the subtle deepening of his breathing. She knew it was time to crawl back down if she was to avoid the look. But with a deep breath and one last gaze at the white walls, her friends, her comforters, Meg pulled back the sheets from Jason’s body. His passive, milky, green eyes fluttered open as Meg slowly put her mouth on his. Her heart raced as she moved herself on top of him and encouraged him to touch her, to feel her, to love her.
