Salmonella Summer

The washer broke in the middle of the week, so his mom asked my husband to take all our sick clothes and linens to the Laundromat in town. I went along for the ride. On the way back, he was driving like a crazy man, weaving in and out of traffic like he always did and pounding on the car roof when he had to wait for a slower car. When he pulled into the fast lane, the car in front abruptly stopped for a red light. He braked fast and halted just touching the car’s back bumper. The guy behind plowed into us, like we weren’t even there. We didn’t have much of a chance in her compact hatchback between two full size sedans. If it weren’t for the mass of laundry that enveloped us, we’d have been killed. I had a broken foot and a few cracked ribs; he broke his left leg and clavicle, and bit off part of his tongue. I realized his mom’s car was totaled as I stood on one foot on the side of the road throwing up.

I knew before we left New Jersey my husband and I probably weren’t going to make it as a couple. From the day we got married he kept getting bigger and stronger and I kept getting smaller and more timid. If he had a good day, I did as well. If not, mine was bad too. Friends would ask how I was and I’d report on my husband, sharing his triumphs and frustrations, forgetting my own.

“But how are you?” one asked.

I no longer knew. I realized my hopes and goals might disappear altogether and couldn’t let that happen. I’d always thought marriage was forever and a couple needed to stick together through thick and thin, but he had an unrequited adolescence to work out and a wife in tow would just pull him down. Marriage to him asked too much.

By the following week, I could go six hours without vomiting. His mom told me she knew about us on the way to the airport to send me home to Philly on a redeye.

Photo by Mack Yoshi on Unsplash

“He’s a damned fool and an idiot. He always was. You’re the best thing that ever happened to him, but he won’t see it for years. It’s not worth hanging around to pick through the wreckage.”

On the plane I had the full row to myself, which was good because I cried the whole way. I cried for the time I’d wasted assuming I could carry a marriage by myself and make someone else happy. And I cried for the fool I’d been imagining marriage was the only choice. When I got back to Jersey, I crawled into my bed and slept like a baby for days.

We saw a counselor after he got back, but she said we didn’t have a marriage problem. She said he needed lots of time to work things through and I probably shouldn’t wait around.

She hugged me and said, “One swallow doesn’t make a summer.”

I lost a husband, as well as ten more pounds from the Salmonella, but going to the family reunion was the best bad decision I ever made.