My Husband Kept Scheduling Over My Night Classes—Then I Learned Why My Degree Made Him So Uncomfortable

PART 11

In August, the old pattern tried to come back wearing a reasonable shirt.

Mark’s company scheduled its annual employee picnic for the same Saturday as my fall orientation workshop. Spouses were encouraged to attend. Mark had gone to the picnic alone once before, years earlier, when Hannah had the flu. The earth had continued rotating.

Still, he came into the den holding the invitation and said, “Any chance you can move the workshop?”

I looked up from my laptop.

He looked at the invitation.

Then he sighed.

“No. That was the wrong question.”

I waited.

He tried again.

“Do you want to skip the workshop and come with me?”

“No.”

“Okay.”

“You can ask if I want something.”

“I know.”

“You just can’t disguise wanting as scheduling.”

“I know.”

He sat on the edge of the desk.

“I do want you there.”

“That makes sense.”

“And I’m disappointed.”

“That also makes sense.”

He studied my face as though waiting for the second half.

There wasn’t one.

Finally he laughed.

“This is terrible.”

“What?”

“Having feelings nobody has to fix.”

“I’ve heard adulthood is mostly that and joint pain.”

He kissed me and went to order two new folding chairs for the picnic because the company chairs were apparently an insult to the spine.

On Saturday morning I drove to campus with my new yellow parking pass hanging from the mirror.

The orientation workshop was for returning students who had completed at least two terms. Six months earlier I had been the woman arriving ten minutes early because I needed extra time to locate the correct building and convince myself I belonged inside it.

Now a woman about my age stopped me near the stairwell.

“Do you know where Lake Hall 204 is?”

I pointed upstairs.

“Second floor, left at the vending machines. The room numbers are ridiculous.”

“Thank you.”

She looked at the notebook in my hand. “Have you been doing this long?”

I almost said no.

Then I counted.

“About a year.”

The answer startled me.

A year was not an experiment.

At lunch I texted Mark a picture of the terrible boxed sandwich Riverton had provided.

Me: You win picnic food.

He sent back a photograph of a paper plate holding barbecue, corn, and a cookie the size of a hubcap.

Mark: Education has consequences.

That evening we met at home. He complained about the company raffle. I complained about a forty-minute session called “Leveraging Your Learning Ecosystem,” which neither Nina nor I had survived with dignity.

Then we made grilled cheese.

Not because I had planned ahead.

Not because Mark had failed to plan.

Because we wanted grilled cheese.

A week later Hannah came for Thursday dinner and asked what classes I was taking.

I told her.

Mark corrected me when I gave the wrong course number.

I stared at him.

“What?” he said.

“You know my course number?”

“You left the registration page open on the printer.”

“That is disturbingly attentive.”

“I contain multitudes.”

Hannah groaned. “Please stop sharing phrases.”

After she left, I stood at the calendar while Mark carried glasses into the kitchen.

September was crowded.

His project deadline was circled twice. Elaine had two appointments. We had tickets to a concert. My Wednesday class filled four boxes in black marker, and a Saturday workshop occupied another.

The calendar was not more balanced than it had been before.

Balance, I had discovered, was mostly a word people used when they wanted life to look orderly from a distance.

What had changed was simpler.

Nothing written in my boxes came with an invisible question mark.

Mark could ask me to move something. I could say yes. I could say no. I could ask the same of him. Sometimes one of us would be irritated. Sometimes one of us would change plans. Neither person’s inconvenience proved the other had done something wrong.

I opened my spiral notebook to a fresh page for Monday’s reading notes.

The old yellow parking pass from my first semester was still tucked inside the back cover. I had forgotten it there.

For a moment I considered throwing it away.

Then I left it.

Not as a relic.

As a bookmark.

Mark called from the kitchen. “Thursday dinner next week—six or six-thirty?”

I checked my calendar.

“Six-thirty.”

“Done.”

I wrote the reading assignment at the top of the page and underlined it once.

There was no ceremony.

I had class.