Photo by helmet13.

The tree in our tiny backyard is a glorified twig.

“I think I nuked it,” says my husband of eight months, surveying what remains of the poison ivy at its base. An impressive array of weeds tentacle over our socks and shoes and very selves. The dogs in the neighbors’ yard have churned their grass into mud, with the occasional decorative addition of puppy poop. “We’ll wait through the summer, and if it stays dead, I’ll chop it down.”

He goes to work, where we have been expecting him to test into a raise since October. It is now April. The national news has been working against us.
When the Writers Guild of America, the members of which churn forth television shows and movies, went on strike in November, an uncomfortable chunk of our income vanished. My online television commentaries and recaps faded off the stage as new shows dried up. I signed up as an election official, monitoring the Presidential primary for the state (“Yes, you can only vote for one person. No, I can’t tell you who.”) My husband tore out classified ads seeking part-time bus drivers and talked about selling the car, which had a hole in the bumper anyway.

In the meantime, thousands of the airplanes which he controls from a radar scope lay dormant in inspection hangers. The slowdown in traffic meant that his supervisor was unable to test him. “Not yet,” he emailed his engaged brother over and over again. We owed him money. We owed everybody money.

The family diner restaurant dates we’d taken as single dating people seemed to have been populated by actors in some lush soap opera, but we found other means of entertainment. One Friday night we indulged in one of our health care expenses: Fitting the mouth guards we’d brought home from the pharmacy. We’d both begun grinding our teeth in our sleep.

I stared into the malleable plastic tossing around the boiling water. “We have a roof over our heads,” Josh reminded me, “healthy families, food in the pantry, and a way to get around town. Most people dream of having this much.” I nodded, and fished around for my mouth guard with an old metal spoon. And an unrepaired car after a run-in with a deer, and terrifying dental damage, and a string of pro-bono speaking engagements. The very deer were conspiring!

“Fit?” he said.

I choked, but speaking triggered the gag reflex further, so I merely shook my head.

“Maybe you’re pregnant!” a friend suggested cheerfully when I told her about the gagging. Which triggered an entirely new wave of nausea and an official entry in the It Could Always Be Scarier file.

My book proposal lay dormant under mounds of clipped coupons. I stared at the torn-away scrap of paper containing a bit of bar wisdom I’d seen years ago, painted on a wall across the hazy dance floor: “PARADISE COMES AT A PRETTY HIGH PRICE.” I was married and a published writer, and paying very dearly for my paradise. I sent out query letters and interview invitations, ducking under pseudonyms for a string of quick cash jobs. In the evenings I propped a chin on a palm and stared at the low three figures in my bank account. It rained for days on end, which would have been hilarious overkill were the weather not being so bourgeois and sentimental about itself.

Email can create or destroy a world—I was once dumped in an email—but this time, it saved mine. “Broadcast date soon,” wrote my editor, attaching the air dates of several television shows. I ran to the kitchen to call my husband, but the phone was already ringing with his number on the caller ID.

“I just passed,” he said. “New pay rate starts tomorrow.”

I looked out the window at our tiny little tree, placing the flat of my hand against the warm pane. The branches were budding.

Mary Beth Ellis runs www.BlondeChampagne.com. Her first book, Drink to the Lasses, is available at www.DrinktotheLasses.com.

Mary Beth Ellis

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