To Jillian With Love

The repeated pressing of the panic button on his key chain should have been a metaphor. John peered through the murky downpour. Hurricane Kyle had diminished and the steady, humid deluge was all it could muster. John was searching vainly for the car. Jillian, his wife, paced behind him. She wasn't saying a word. The rigid tension of her reed thin limbs spoke volumes. She was furious and as usual, the fury was directed at him.

He could not remember where he had parked. He was hoping to find the car by sounding the alarm. A faint bleating of a horn, like a forlorn, lost lamb, rose from the herd of monstrous SUVs that crowded the parking lot. "There is is!" Jillian said, not bothering to hide her resigned contempt as she strode past him.

He hurried after her, weighted down by shame and the four green bags filled with groceries. Jillian did not even look back as she stormed across the parking lot. She was so intent on getting to the car that she stepped right in front of a Buick, causing the driver to slam on his brakes. The driver uttered some curse that John could read rather than hear, and gave John a look of annoyance and disdain as John lumbered after his wife. He cringed inwardly, but kept moving. He could see Jillian standing in the driving rain, pointedly allowing herself to get soaked. John had unlocked the car doors from yards away. Jillian wanted to be sure he knew how his absent minded behavior had caused her inconvenience. She watched him approach silently, her arms folded across her narrow chest. "It stuns me that a tenured professor of your intelligence cannot manage to remember where he parked his car. It really....stuns me."

It was at that point that John realized he hated his wife.

He stopped in his tracks for one moment, shocked by the revelation. Jillian called his name sharply and he was torn from his reverie and hurried to the car. Quickly, he loaded the groceries in the back and closed the door. Jillian was in the front passenger seat and staring straight ahead. He climbed in and started the car up, glancing at her anxiously. Sometimes she would blow up at him, sometimes she just froze him out. He didn't know which was worse, he just wanted to know what he was in for. She rubbed her arms deliberately and shivered.

"Are you cold? Do you want me to turn the heater on?" he asked. She continued to stare straight ahead, those large, piercing eyes that had first drawn his attention to her fixed on nothing.

"Why would I want you to turn the head on in August, John? Do you want to waste even more energy with this gas guzzling monstrosity?" She sighed and leaned back wearily. "Just get us out of the parking lot without getting us killed, John. We need to get home. We have twenty guests coming over tonight, or did you forget that?"

He silently maneuvered the car, which did not have that poor of mileage in his opinion, out of the parking lot and home. How could he forget? Their anniversary party was tonight.

Back at their house, he carried the groceries into the kitchen and left them on the counter. Tina, from the cleaning service was there, along with another girl from the service. Jillian refused to hire a housekeeper, saying that she could not be comfortable supporting a class system. The cleaning service came in three days a week and on any occasion when they entertained. They also had a company take care of their spacious yard and someone to plow their drive and sidewalk. When their children were young they had a nanny. John had tried to point out the irony of this to her and the result had been very unpleasant. John had learned long ago to keep quiet if he wanted to keep the peace. After twenty five years of marriage, peace was all John wanted.

He moved through the spacious colonial that they had bought together twenty years ago. He gazed around as if seeing things for the first time. It was a beautiful home, tastefully decorated and a lovely mix of antiques and the artwork they had collected as they had traveled. It was all Jillian, every lamp, chair and painting. The very colors of the walls were chosen by Jillian. He could see nothing that reflected him. It was as if he did not exist in the home.

He entered his study and closed the door, sliding down heavily in the overstuffed chair behind his large, oak desk. Jillian had decorated his study as well. Gone were all the battered and beloved books that he had used and cherished in college. She had gotten rid of them all and replaced them with books she had decided were more suitable to his status and age. He let his eyes wander around the room, seeing Jillian's touch and taste everywhere. She made him disappear in his own room, like some sick magic trick.

He had to think about this new found hatred of his wife. They had been married twenty five years, almost half of his life. They had two children together. They had shared a small rat trap apartment in college years until they could afford a house. The beautiful colonial in Concord that was a testament to what they had accomplished. She was a professor at an Ivy league school and he had received his tenure at the state college he taught at. His tenure had come one year after hers. She was intelligent, well respected and still had the lithe dancer's figure that had attracted him to her long ago. When had he started to hate her?

He opened the top drawer to his desk and pulled out a long, thin jeweler's box. Dark blue velvet with a gold clasp. He snapped it open and gazed at the thin, bracelet within. It was a narrow chain, beautifully crafted and very lovely. Jillian had left it as one of the three choices of presents she wanted at the store. He had long ago given up choosing her gifts. It was too unpleasant. She would compress her lips gaze down at the unwanted offering pointedly. He recalled the last time he had attempted to surprise her. It had been a robe, a silk robe of a fiery scarlet he thought would look beautiful against her pale skin.

"Oh, a robe." She had touched it gingerly, as if finding someone else's underwear in her laundry basket. "It's so....bright?" She had closed the box and looked up at him with a tight smile. "Is there a gift receipt, dear?"

He had learned not to stray from her plans and routines. The children had learned, too. No ashtrays made in boy scouts, no handmade birthday cards. Jillian had plans for them, too and they followed those plans. Dances classes for Becca, piano for both. An aupair that spoke to them in Spanish during their formative years. Private schools for both, but they volunteered with intercity programs so they would not grow up in a bubble. She led them through life the way she led him. If they pulled back, if they resisted, if they fell short, she grew stiff and cold, shutting them out until they relented. They were 24 and 22, bright and beautiful, though he thought Becca was far too thin. She had a period in her teens where she stopped eating and had started to cut herself. Jillian handled it with cool efficiency, the same way she handled everything. John had admired her for it, but could not help feeling he had failed his frail, young daughter. That maybe it was his fault for not protecting her, from giving her some footing in the relentless path of the avalanche that was Jillian's will.

He picked up the small card in the jeweler's box. "To Jillian With Love". The same card for Christmas, her birthday, Valentine's day and their anniversary. She didn't like joke cards or sentimental poems. Once in college, he had been out drinking and had decided it would be a romantic gesture to serenade her. He had stumbled to the building she had lived in. With the encouragement and somewhat off key backup of two of his equally drunken friends, he howled out the lyrics to some pop love song at the top of his lungs. Her roommates had come to the door, laughing and applauding when he finally finished. She had refused to come outside. She had not even look out the window. She had been furious with him.

"Do you think I'm some sort of clown, some bimbo who associates with drunken frat boys? How dare you show up at my apartment drunk! Do you think I want to be involved with a man with so little self control?" It had taken him three weeks to get her to speak to him. She had raged at him for an hour, pacing back and forth in her living room. It had been horrible and humiliating. He had made the youthful mistake of thinking her rage was passion. He had begged her forgiveness and slowly she had relented. She still looked at him pointedly if he refilled his wine glass more than once at a meal.

So he changed. And changed again. He stopped hanging out with his friends, he stopped going to the small dives and bars to drink beer, hear loud music and to hang out. He threw away his ratty t-shirts and he studied when she studied, which was always. They graduated and began job hunting. She found a job almost immediately and after she had polished up his resume and drilled him on interview skills, he had found a job.

And that had been that. They had children, bought a house and went to work. They had arguments and he apologized. Their friends were couples like them. Academics and professionals they met through work or through their children's schools. She earned more than he did, which came up occasionally, but not often enough that he felt he could hold it against her. He had an affair of sorts and Jillian found out. It was ugly and a little sad in retrospect. The children never found out and she only mentioned it when she was very upset or he attempted to make a stand on something. It rarely came up.

He stared at the card until the words blurred before him. He put a hand up to discover with mild surprise that he was crying. What could he do? Stand up tonight when it came time to toast his wife and say,"It's all been a joke. It's a farce. She can't stand me. She won't even let me touch her and hasn't for years. She thinks I'm a fool and maybe I am. I stayed with her, didn't I? This loathsome woman makes me crawl, makes me feel like I'm nothing. I used to have real friends, I used to laugh. I've disappeared. But, I can't blame her for what she did. I let her do it. She's right to hate me" He imagined the horror and shock on everyone's face as he lifted up a glass and said, "To Jillian....with all my hate!"

He shoved the card back in the box and snapped it shut, wiping his face, shuddering as if he had dropped a great weight. It would never happen. He would give Jillian the gift she had chosen with the card she had approved and offer up the same toast he offered up every year. "Friends, children, please lift up your glass. Please toast my beautiful and talented wife, Jillian. To Jillian, with love."