If It Was Easy, They'd Call the Whole Damn Thing a Honeymoon (13 page)

He has a Starbucks obsession. He absolutely cannot pass one without
filling up; 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.)

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.

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 deficiency 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!”

“Why don’t we see if we have time for the hot dog
after
we shop?” he suggests, leaning heavily on the gas pedal, as if to prove that he is going to do everything in his power to make sure I get my death rocket. Now, Joe swears that he doesn’t tailgate just to piss me off, and since he is the most honest man I have ever met, I’ll have to concede that he truly must not realize his own unconscious need for vehicular vengeance.

“Honey, honey,
honey
!” I sputter as I see the rapidly approaching rear bumper of the truck in front of us. I am gripping the oh-my-God bar above my head furiously with one hand; the other is splayed firmly against the dashboard, bracing for the imminent collision.

“What?” Joe barks, easing up on the gas just a hair and putting a few comforting inches between our bumper and the truck. “That jackass is going fifty in a sixty-five, and he just switched lanes to get in front of me and hit his brakes. I’m just encouraging him to move over.”

“Why don’t you just go around him?” I ask. The very man who lives for the thrill of passing semitrucks in the pitch-darkness on curvy, two-lane highways has suddenly lost the will to overtake another automobile? I find this hard to believe.

“Don’t need to,” he says, speeding up again. “He’ll move.”

I close my eyes and pray.
Dear God, I know I haven’t been over to visit you there at church in a really long time—oh by the way, happy belated birthday to your son!—but if you could see fit to make sure I make it home alive, I’d really appreciate it. You know, for the kids’ sake and also so that I can continue to do your will here on Earth, which I promise I am going to start doing if you let me live. Love, Jenna. I mean, Amen.

I suppose you are wondering why I don’t just get behind the wheel myself. The thing is, I am a perfectly good driver—until my husband is in the passenger seat. I don’t know what it is about having his physical presence up there next to me, but whenever he is there I’m a nervous wreck. I plow through red lights, stop at barely yellow ones, and bounce along the center line of reflectors like a drunken kangaroo on casters. For this reason (and admittedly, the half dozen fender-benders and handful of speeding tickets on my record), Joe thinks I am unfit to operate anything motorized. And since his driving record is pristine—minus that one speeding ticket he got in Bumfuck, Montana, which he paid cash for on the spot so there’s no actual record of it ever happening—it gets me nowhere to point out the well-documented fact that men break the law more, drive more aggressively, receive more traffic tickets,
and
get in more accidents than women (who aren’t me) do. So I shut up and hang on and pray silently and occasionally let loose with a spontaneous, terrified obscenity.

For a while, I thought my iPhone was going to be the simple solution. I could almost completely tune out what was going on around me—even the bumper-kissing action on all four sides of the car—as long as I was surfing the web or checking the weather or texting or playing hangman or responding to e-mail. This, of course, quickly began to drive Joe insane.

“Who are you texting?” he’d demand angrily, obviously bitter that I was allowed to do it and he wasn’t because he was behind the wheel.

“My boyfriend,” I’d answer, poking him playfully in the ribs. “Come on, why do you care what I’m doing? I’m bored over here. I have nothing to do! I might as well answer a few e-mails. It’s called being productive.”

“No, it’s called being
rude
,” was the reply. “I’m right here. Talk to
me
.”

“We’re going to be in the car for hours,” I remind him. “We’ll run out of stuff to talk about, so I’m saving some of it for later. Besides, you don’t mind if I’m reading a magazine or flipping through a catalog even though they make me totally carsick, so what’s the difference?”

“It’s just different. It’s like talking on your cell phone in public. It’s disrespectful.”

So we frequently ride along in annoyed silence, him whistling some Creedence Clearwater Revival tune he’s got in his head (is there anything more annoying than gratuitous whistling?), and me having to fight every urge in my body to
not look at my iPhone
.