My Husband Kept Scheduling Over My Night Classes—Then I Learned Why My Degree Made Him So Uncomfortable
PART 8
Spring registration opened on a Monday in February.
I knew because Riverton sent three emails, Nina sent six texts, and my academic portal developed a red banner that made registration look like a national emergency.
My required organizational seminar had one evening section.
Wednesday, six to eight forty-five.
Of course it did.
I put the course number in my spiral notebook and went to work.
For two days I waited for a good time to tell Mark.
This was not growth.
Growth would have been telling him Tuesday over tacos.
Instead I waited until Thursday after he had paid the electric bill, cleaned the kitchen, and looked unusually peaceful.
“The seminar I need is Wednesday again,” I said.
His fork stopped halfway to his mouth.
“How long?”
“The term?”
“The class.”
“Until May.”
He put the fork down.
“What else are you taking?”
“Applied Writing. Online.”
“So every Wednesday again.”
“Yes.”
He pushed his plate away.
“Can you take the seminar next fall?”
I had expected irritation. The direct request surprised me.
“Why?”
“Because I think we need a break.”
“From Wednesday?”
“From this.”
He gestured between us.
I sat back.
“What is this?”
“Everything being about school.”
“Everything is not about school.”
“Thanksgiving was. Christmas became a conversation about the year I graduated. We have not booked Arizona. Half our dinners depend on your syllabus.”
“Arizona is not a hostage.”
“You know what I mean.”
“No, Mark. I actually don’t this time.”
He stood, carried his plate to the counter, then came back without it.
“I want one term where we are normal.”
There it was.
Normal.
The word I had been waiting for without knowing it.
“What does normal look like?” I asked.
He stared at me.
“Us.”
“We are us.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Say it anyway.”
His voice rose. “Why?”
“Because when you don’t, I have to guess. And somehow my guesses are always unfair to you.”
He walked to the window over the sink. Outside, February had turned the backyard into the color of wet cardboard.
“I don’t like what this is doing,” he said.
“To what?”
“To how you look at our life.”
I felt the conversation change.
Not louder.
Deeper.
“How do I look at our life?”
“Like you’re auditing it.”
“I have never used the word sacrifice with you.”
“You don’t have to.”
“Then what have I done?”
“You correct me every time I say you chose work. You corrected me in front of Hannah. You tell people you’re finishing the degree you ‘left’ like it was sitting there waiting because somebody made you walk away.”
“Somebody?”
He turned around.
“No. That’s not what I mean.”
“Then who do you think I blame?”
“I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do.”
His mouth tightened.
I waited.
He sat down again.
For several seconds the refrigerator hummed louder than either of us breathed.
Finally he said, “Me.”
I had imagined many explanations for Mark’s resistance.
None had included fear that I was secretly putting him on trial.
“I don’t blame you for everything,” I said.
“That is not the same as saying you don’t blame me.”
“No. It isn’t.”
He looked at the table.
“We had enough money for one of us to stay full time.”
“I remember.”
“My sequence couldn’t be interrupted.”
“I remember.”
“You were already doing well at Carson Office Supply.”
“I remember.”
“You said you could go back later.”
“I did.”
“Then why does it feel like every class says we did something to you?”
I stared at him.
“Maybe because you need the choice to have cost me nothing.”
His face went pale with anger.
“That’s not fair.”
“Probably not entirely.”
“You wanted Hannah.”
“So did you.”
“I worked nights.”
“So did I, except mine were in an office.”
“I’m not saying you didn’t work.”
“No. You keep saying I wasn’t a school person.”
He stood again.
“I said that because you hated it by then.”
“I was tired by then.”
“You never talked about going back.”
“After a while, no.”
“Exactly.”
I looked at him and suddenly understood the sentence he needed me to say.
I never wanted it.
If I had never wanted the degree, then the old decision remained a clean act of practicality. Nobody owed anyone anything. Mark’s career had not been built partly on a road I stopped walking. We were simply two sensible young people who chose the obvious route.
Maybe we had been sensible.
That did not mean the road disappeared.
“Did you tell yourself I never cared because it made that year easier to remember?” I asked.
He flinched.
I had my answer before he spoke.
“I don’t know.”
“You do.”
“I knew you were unhappy sometimes.”
That was the first new sentence.
I did not interrupt.
Mark pressed his palms against the table.
“I knew you were unhappy when I had labs until ten and you had to get Hannah from daycare. I knew you wanted to take a literature course the next spring and we said we couldn’t afford it. I knew.”
My throat tightened.
He kept looking at the table.
“But then you got promoted. You stopped bringing it up. You were good at work. You said college was mostly people talking too long.”
“That was true.”
“I told myself you had figured out you didn’t need it.”
“And then you told Hannah.”
He nodded once.
“I guess I did.”
The anger left me so quickly I almost missed it.
What replaced it was older and sadder.
“You made my adaptation into my preference.”
Mark closed his eyes.
“I didn’t think of it like that.”
“I know.”
“And now every time you sign up for something, I feel like…”
He stopped.
“Like what?”
“Like I’m supposed to apologize for having the life we built.”
I sat there with that.
The house around us was not a crime scene. The mortgage was paid. Hannah was funny and kind. We had taken vacations, buried parents, ruined dinners, made up after stupid fights, and slept beside each other for almost three decades.
I loved our life.
I also wanted the degree.
Mark seemed to believe those two facts were forming teams.
“I am not going to make you confess that you ruined my life,” I said.
He looked up.
“But I’m also not going to prove you didn’t by quitting again.”
His face tightened.
“I didn’t ask you to quit.”
“You asked me to pause the only required spring seminar so we can get back to normal.”
“One semester.”
“I know how long one semester can get.”
That hurt him.
I saw it.
I did not take it back.
