The house is pretty much back in its good shape. The leaking pipe is fixed, the cabinets are all cleaned. The dogs had their long-awaited baths. The garden is tamed. The bedsheets are fresh… And while all this is being done, the house is like a little boy getting a haircut at the barber’s, so stiff and quiet and nervous…
When it comes to moods Merl is black or white, so transparent, has no pretensions. With me, I am gray plus good at blocking pain. No one would know if I’m mad or sad. I’m the actor who sometimes doesn’t know herself either. When the husband gets into my nerves I’m a succulent plant that absorbs and absorbs and absorbs. I hate confrontations and fights. My inner self wants to scream at him but no voice comes out except for a sweet, melodious tone, “Daddy one more time nalang magagalit na talaga ako sayo…” I give warnings when I reach boiling point. A gentle word turns away wrath… A gentle word turns away wrath… A gentle word… I am programmed like a Stepford Wife. But like any other machine once in a while I get glitches too…
…That’s when we fight. He’s always good at philosophical views and the ifs-therefores argument and critical thinking, like he studied under Plato in the Acaedemy or something, while I stutter because my reasoning does not correspond. I hate it! I’m an F minus minus minus. Damn that he knows me so well. When we fight and I’m losing words and he’s still pretty much loaded I wonder why he cares to fight back and doesn’t let me just get away with it. Maybe he’s a masochist; maybe he enjoys watching me while I completely lose it…. On the other hand why do I get angrier when he doesn’t fight back? Duh.
So when he’s mad, he gets his drill and makes holes on the walls, gets the wrench and does plumbing, digs the soil and prunes the plants. It has been months since he last touched his house project. He has found the perfect opportunity to avoid the silence after the word war. Because there’s a ton of not looking at one another and walking in wide distances so as not to get too close to each other in this small area of space.
When we fight, there’s unconscious parenting competition. A scene at the beach: “Max it’s time to leave the water the sun is too hot you might get burned…” and the little tyrant wouldn’t budge like she is super-glued in the sand. I turn up the volume and try one more time and another and another until I lose my patience… Then Merl would go, “Come on Max, do it for Daddy…” Then as if she is suddenly sprinkled with pixie dust, she starts to rise like a possessed voodoo princess. He’s out-parenting me! He’s on superdad mode and doing it on purpose! Eventhough I know he isn’t. I just wanna think he is.
When we fight he doesn’t answer the cellphone, it continues to ring and vibrate until it falls on the floor and gets new painful dents. When we fight I walk with heavy feet even if I’m on rubber slippers. When we fight I cringe at the sound of love songs so I change it to something discolectrifying. And when we fight, how come it’s so difficult to say
“Bless you” to him when he sneezes?
Merl and I don’t really fight, or maybe I just don’t keep records. The only thing I remembered was when I missed the exit of C5 elevated u-turn slot – thrice – and he was so freaking mad since we had to go all the way around and back over and over again – the only part of my life that I felt so genuinely stupid and didn’t wanna admit it.
“Sinabi ko na kasi sayo beforehand na ayoko nga mag-drive e! I’m pulling over!” (Pride)
“ANO BA! BAWAL TUMIGIL DITO SA FLYOVER!”
“Alam ko OKAY!” (Pride + Lie)
Our anniversary a few days ago at Phi Phi is the latest fight. The place is beautiful, the water is clear turquoise, the sand is soft and white… But the glorious sunshine is missing and the boat trip is turbulent, so exactly like my feelings. To cut the chase, all I want to do is take the two-hour ferry and go back to the hotel. I close my eyes tight because the island is beautiful it hurts not enjoying it with him. But then I have to pretend I am not bothered because that’s my expertise, for the kids’ sake, I go. I want to puke.
I ask if he wants to come with us for a walk in the shore, hoping he’d say no, but when he comes along I roll my eyes and regret that I asked, but if he didn’t, I’d still get mad thinking why this man doesn’t even care. Damn if you do damn if you don’t! So suffer! We’re together and I try to walk a few paces behind him so I can stick out my tongue behind his back or give him the dirty finger.
And then after so many hours gone to waste of not talking I ask if he’s mad at me which is quite obvious but I still ask. And he starts his monologue and I pretend to listen but in fact I couldn’t listen because I’m just glad that we’re REALLY talking now. I cry. He hugs me. I cry some more. I talk and talk until I become tired of listening to my voice, because when we fight I become a manic motivational speaker, he becomes tranced.
Then we forget why we are angry in the first place.
We become happy and we wanna dance and shout or change the world or something. And we figure that the night is still young…
Happy Anniversary, dude…
Then we cuddle. Happily married people share not so pretty moments. That what seems to be personal seems to be universal. Fighting is such a complicated dance that when you finally get the complicated steps right at the end there is such a good feeling of relief. There’s really no solution; it’s just a decision to move on. We’re boxers fighting in identical shorts.
That’s what we do.
After a fight.
The house sparkles.
Fin.
