Page 17 of The Devil You Know
Was it? Either way, we have to say it was. “Yes,” I lie.
Ann looks at Ben, who also nods with equal earnestness. “Yep.”
“I can’t believe they’re getting so big already,” Ann says.
“Yes,” I agree. “So big.”
I’m not good at small talk.
“Any luck with the toilet training, Jane?” Ann asks me.
I wince. “Not really.”
“The best thing to do,” she tells me, “is just put them in underwear for a weekend. It’s a messy weekend, but by the end of the weekend, it’s done.”
“That’s whatIsaid,” Ben speaks up. Maybe I should have let him leave.
“It’s just a lot of clean up,” I point out.
“True,” Ann says. “But by the end of the weekend, she’ll be trained!”
Or she won’t be trained and my house will smell like urine.
“Maybe when she’s four,” I say.
“She’ll be four in two months,” Ben reminds me.
I glare at him. “Well, maybe when she’s five then.”
“We arenothaving a five year old in diapers!”
“Well, I’m not having a house covered in pee!”
I can tell that Ann is sorry she brought it up. “I’m going to get more fruit punch,” she tells me as the two of us glare at each other. Ben’s cheeks are pink and I don’t think it’s from the cold anymore. But I’m certainly not having it out with him at the preschool.
I look around the room. None of the other parents in the room have randomly started yelling at each other. What’swrongwith us? We didn’t used to be this way. There was, believe it or not, a time when Ben and I never fought. At all. Well, there would be a tense moment here or there, like if I wanted Italian food and he wanted Indian, but I could honestly say we’d never had a fight.
That changed after Leah was born. She wasn’t a great sleeper, and almost immediately, the competition over who was going to slip in a few hours of sleep started to wear on us. And then when I returned to work when she was three months old, things just got worse.
Our first blowout fight happened when Leah was about six months old. Ben didn’t have to be at work the next day, so he was staying up late, and I was in bed sleeping. At around two in the morning, I heard Leah start to wail. I squeezed my eyes shut, waiting for Ben to soothe her back to sleep. I waited and waited, but it never happened.
Finally, after ten agonizing minutes of listening to my daughter’s escalating screams, I stormed into the living room, where I found Ben casually working on his computer.
“Aren’t you going to get her?” I nearly yelled at him.
“I’m letting her cry it out,” he said casually.
“It’s two in the morning and I’m working all day tomorrow!” I shot back.
“Fine,” he said, although he didn’t make a move off the couch. “Hold on. Just a minute.”
“Seriously?” I yelled. “Go get hernow! I! Have! Work! Tomorrow!”
“Just chill out,” Ben said.
And that’s when I lost it. Let me tell you, if you are a man, never ever tell your wife to “just chill out.” We ended up staying up for most of the rest of the night, alternately yelling at each other and unsuccessfully attempting to soothe Leah back to sleep.
But we made up. Or at least, we both calmed down and we didn’t get divorced or anything. So in that sense, we made up. But after that, the arguments just seemed to happen much easier than they used to.
