And since I am already down there in supplication1 on the floor, let me hold that position as I reach back in time three years earlier to the moment when this entire story began--a moment which also found me in this exact same posture2: on my knees, on a floor, praying.
Everything else about the three-years-ago scene was different, though. That time, I was not in Rome but in the upstairs bathroom of the big house in the suburbs of New York which I'd recently purchased with my husband. It was a cold November, around three o'clock in the morning. My husband was sleeping in our bed. I was hiding in the bathroom for something like the forty-seventh consecutive3 night, and--just as during all those nights before--I was sobbing4. Sobbing so hard, in fact, that a great lake of tears and snot was spreading before me on the bathroom tiles, a veritable Lake Inferior (if you will) of all my shame and fear and confusion and grief.
I don't want to be married anymore.
I was trying so hard not to know this, but the truth kept insisting itself to me.
I don't want to be married anymore. I don't want to live in this big house. I don't want to have a baby.
But I was supposed to want to have a baby. I was thirty-one years old. My husband and I--who had been together for eight years, married for six--had built our entire life around the common expectation that, after passing the doddering old age of thirty, I would want to settle down and have children. By then, we mutually anticipated, I would have grown weary of traveling and would be happy to live in a big, busy household full of children and homemade quilts, with a garden in the backyard and a cozy5 stew6 bubbling on the stovetop. (The fact that this was a fairly accurate portrait of my own mother is a quick indicator7 of how difficult it once was for me to tell the difference between myself and the powerful woman who had raised me.) But I didn't--as I was appalled8 to be finding out--want any of these things. Instead, as my twenties had come to a close, that deadline of THIRTY had loomed9 over me like a death sentence, and I discovered that I did not want to be pregnant. I kept waiting to want to have a baby, but it didn't happen. And I know what it feels like to want something, believe me. I well know what desire feels like. But it wasn't there. Moreover, I couldn't stop thinking about what my sister had said to me once, as she was breastfeeding her firstborn: "Having a baby is like getting a tattoo10 on your face. You really need to be certain it's what you want before you commit."
How could I turn back now, though? Everything was in place. This was supposed to be the year. In fact, we'd been trying to get pregnant for a few months already. But nothing had happened (aside from the fact that--in an almost sarcastic11 mockery of pregnancy--I was experiencing psychosomatic morning sickness, nervously12 throwing up my breakfast every day). And every month when I got my period I would find myself whispering furtively13 in the bathroom: Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you for giving me one more month to live . . .
I'd been attempting to convince myself that this was normal. All women must feel this way when they're trying to get pregnant, I'd decided14. ("Ambivalent" was the word I used, avoiding the much more accurate description: "utterly15 consumed with dread16.") I was trying to convince myself that my feelings were customary, despite all evidence to the contrary--such as the acquaintance I'd run into last week who'd just discovered that she was pregnant for the first time, after spending two years and a king's ransom17 in fertility treatments. She was ecstatic. She had wanted to be a mother forever, she told me. She admitted she'd been secretly buying baby clothes for years and hiding them under the bed, where her husband wouldn't find them. I saw the joy in her face and I recognized it. This was the exact joy my own face had radiated last spring, the day I discovered that the magazine I worked for was going to send me on assignment to New Zealand, to write an article about the search for giant squid. And I thought, "Until I can feel as ecstatic about having a baby as I felt about going to New Zealand to search for a giant squid, I cannot have a baby."
I don't want to be married anymore.
In daylight hours, I refused that thought, but at night it would consume me. What a catastrophe18. How could I be such a criminal jerk as to proceed this deep into a marriage, only to leave it? We'd only just bought this house a year ago. Hadn't I wanted this nice house? Hadn't I loved it? So why was I haunting its halls every night now, howling like Medea? Wasn't I proud of all we'd accumulated--the prestigious19 home in the Hudson Valley, the apartment in Manhattan, the eight phone lines, the friends and the picnics and the parties, the weekends spent roaming the aisles20 of some box-shaped superstore of our choice, buying ever more appliances on credit? I had actively21 participated in every moment of the creation of this life--so why did I feel like none of it resembled me? Why did I feel so overwhelmed with duty, tired of being the primary breadwinner and the housekeeper22 and the social coordinator23 and the dog-walker and the wife and the soon-to-be mother, and--somewhere in my stolen moments--a writer . . .?
I don't want to be married anymore.
My husband was sleeping in the other room, in our bed. I equal parts loved him and could not stand him. I couldn't wake him to share in my distress--what would be the point? He'd already been watching me fall apart for months now, watching me behave like a madwoman (we both agreed on that word), and I only exhausted24 him. We both knew there was something wrong with me, and he'd been losing patience with it. We'd been fighting and crying, and we were weary in that way that only a couple whose marriage is collapsing25 can be weary. We had the eyes of refugees.
The many reasons I didn't want to be this man's wife anymore are too personal and too sad to share here. Much of it had to do with my problems, but a good portion of our troubles were related to his issues, as well. That's only natural; there are always two figures in a marriage, after all--two votes, two opinions, two conflicting sets of decisions, desires and limitations. But I don't think it's appropriate for me to discuss his issues in my book. Nor would I ask anyone to believe that I am capable of reporting an unbiased version of our story, and therefore the chronicle of our marriage's failure will remain untold26 here. I also will not discuss here all the reasons why I did still want to be his wife, or all his wonderfulness, or why I loved him and why I had married him and why I was unable to imagine life without him. I won't open any of that. Let it be sufficient to say that, on this night, he was still my lighthouse and my albatross in equal measure. The only thing more unthinkable than leaving was staying; the only thing more impossible than staying was leaving. I didn't want to destroy anything or anybody. I just wanted to slip quietly out the back door, without causing any fuss or consequences, and then not stop running until I reached Greenland.
This part of my story is not a happy one, I know. But I share it here because something was about to occur on that bathroom floor that would change forever the progression of my life--almost like one of those crazy astronomical27 super-events when a planet flips28 over in outer space for no reason whatsoever29, and its molten core shifts, relocating its poles and altering its shape radically30, such that the whole mass of the planet suddenly becomes oblong instead of spherical31. Something like that.
What happened was that I started to pray.
You know--like, to God.
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收听单词发音
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1
supplication
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| n.恳求，祈愿，哀求 | |
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2
posture
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| n.姿势，姿态，心态，态度；v.作出某种姿势 | |
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3
consecutive
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| adj.连续的，联贯的，始终一贯的 | |
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4
sobbing
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| <主方>Ⅰ adj.湿透的 | |
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cozy
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| adj.亲如手足的，密切的，暖和舒服的 | |
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stew
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| n.炖汤，焖，烦恼；v.炖汤，焖，忧虑 | |
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7
indicator
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| n.指标；指示物，指示者；指示器 | |
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8
appalled
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| v.使惊骇，使充满恐惧( appall的过去式和过去分词)adj.惊骇的；丧胆的 | |
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9
loomed
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| v.隐约出现，阴森地逼近( loom的过去式和过去分词 )；隐约出现，阴森地逼近 | |
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10
tattoo
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| n.纹身，(皮肤上的)刺花纹；vt.刺花纹于 | |
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11
sarcastic
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| adj.讥讽的，讽刺的，嘲弄的 | |
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12
nervously
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| adv.神情激动地，不安地 | |
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13
furtively
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| adv. 偷偷地, 暗中地 | |
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14
decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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15
utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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dread
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| vt.担忧，忧虑；惧怕，不敢；n.担忧，畏惧 | |
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17
ransom
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| n.赎金，赎身；v.赎回，解救 | |
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18
catastrophe
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| n.大灾难，大祸 | |
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19
prestigious
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| adj.有威望的，有声望的，受尊敬的 | |
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20
aisles
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| n. (席位间的)通道, 侧廊 | |
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21
actively
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| adv.积极地，勤奋地 | |
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22
housekeeper
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| n.管理家务的主妇，女管家 | |
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23
coordinator
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| n.协调人 | |
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24
exhausted
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| adj.极其疲惫的，精疲力尽的 | |
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25
collapsing
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| 压扁[平]，毁坏，断裂 | |
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26
untold
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| adj.数不清的，无数的 | |
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astronomical
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| adj.天文学的，（数字）极大的 | |
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28
flips
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| 轻弹( flip的第三人称单数 )； 按（开关）； 快速翻转； 急挥 | |
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29
whatsoever
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| adv.（用于否定句中以加强语气）任何；pron.无论什么 | |
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30
radically
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| ad.根本地，本质地 | |
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spherical
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| adj.球形的；球面的 | |
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