In the Shadow of Her Life

VALERIA HAD JUST turned twenty-one, had been married for almost two years, and was the mother of a five-year-old boy. After dropping out of high school at the age of sixteen, she was finally attending college to study broadcast journalism. "When I was a kid," she told him, "my parents lived across the street from a television studio, and I watched reporters coming out of there. Guys like Peter Jennings, Tom Brokaw, Barbara Walters, and Roz Abrams ... always wanted to be one of them." Majoring in the same field made it easier for them to find reasons to socialize. They registered for the same classes. When they left the campus during the afternoon, they drove to the Knapp Street rest stop on Belt Parkway and talked until late at night. Then he dropped her at the subway station. And the more time they had to themselves, the more they explored each other's private lives, and almost immediately an unwavering bond developed between them. Somewhere along the way, Valeria and Émile came to an agreement to maintain the truth in their relationship, regardless of the seriousness of the situation or the problem, regardless of the consequences. Both were damaged goods who felt that a friendship in which they couldn’t be honest and trustworthy wasn’t worth having. Her cup was full. She had to deal with her son who resented his step-father, believing the latter to be a replacement for his father. Then there was her husband’s continuous criticism about Valeria’s education and being unemployed because he would rather welcome a paycheck instead of her grade report. In addition, the recent conflict with her father about her pregnancy was once more exacerbated by her spouse’s inability to provide properly for his family. To top it all, she didn’t love her husband. She spoke. She poured out her heart to Émile. No omission. No pretense. No fabrication. He listened. He appreciated. He advised. Between the lines, he gathered enough to discern a weary spirit beneath the laidback appearance, a lonely spouse folded inside the married woman, a passionate dreamer harboring a tormented heart. Having inquired about her preferences, her worries, he compensated, when he could, by adding to her life bits of what was missing. As she weighed the significance of her teenage pregnancy, he empathized with her. He showed her all the thoughtfulness possible since she found it difficult not to feel discarded by the father of her son. In all instances, he treated her with respect to counteract her father’s scorn. He was going through a harsh time at home. Although unable to put his finger on the exact cause of the problem, he was increasingly displeased with his marriage. Émile couldn’t figure if money, lack of romance, being too young when he married, or just the time invested in the marriage contributed to his unhappiness. Besides, Rachel’s frequent reminder that he was the worse husband among their friends didn’t help either. Feeding her melancholy with exemplary conjugal behaviors attributed to their remarkable mates, such as their unflagging attentiveness, their unvarying emotional support, and their incessant caring, her peers’ exaggerations turned Rachel’s world upside down. Her expectations, already pregnant by the idealized husband that filled her youthful dreams, grew fruitless, thus making most of their conversations irrelevant and thinning out Émile’s pleas for an understanding. He and Rachel exchanged words, but they had ceased to listen to each other. She felt neglected, unappreciated, and unloved. Apologies for his misbehaving and promises not to recidivate were band-aid solutions to a much deeper problem. They couldn’t redeem his stained position. He had passed the point of no return, not caring enough to mend their wilting relationship and save their marriage. He needed someone who would pay attention to his plight, without the accusations, without the heated arguments, without the screaming sessions, without the tears. Valeria made memorable and soothing the hours spent away from home. He poured out his heart to her. No omission. No pretense. No fabrication. She listened. She understood. She appeased him. She had a calming influence on him. She was precisely whom he desired. A similar mindset was nearly unthinkable between Rachel and Émile. After about twenty years of a marriage overflowing with financial disputes and vows ridiculed by Émile’s behavior, Rachel resorted to an arsenal of precedents. Such regurgitations, which related heartaches she sustained during their marriage, and which she brought as indictments against her husband, increasingly irritated Émile. He wasn’t skirting her accusations or denying his culpability, but he hoped for an amelioration of their marital condition. Inevitably, their attempts at dialogue, understanding, and reconciliation failed, thus adding layers of mistrust, anger, and bitterness to their predicament. Valeria became his preferred emotional outlet. And they reached a point where neither one was in a hurry to part company. Neither one wanted to go home. And they were just friends. They laughed heartily at the jokes they shared, but slowly he realized why, though appealing, Valeria’s smile was only skin-deep, why it wasn’t from her heart. In turn, she noticed how he struggled to bring out certain inexpressible thoughts, how he always seemed incapable of finding words to describe some of his difficulties. Émile wanted out of his marriage, out of the routine. He believed in love, the run-home-to-you type of love, the real thing, which at one point he experienced with Rachel, and not what survived in his situation; that is, an arrangement based on tradition to abide by, on the legality of a union to respect, on child rearing to consider, on financial necessity to face. He wished for a minute portion of the fairy tale. He realized that he was living the wrong life. Valeria was caught in a marriage she had accepted to the man who rescued her from embarrassment, who replaced the father of her son, the fruit of a youthful indiscretion. She gave birth after the teenager, who she thought was going to be the love of her life, abandoned her. An unexceptional occurrence. At fifteen, however, she couldn’t fathom why her Prince Charming, himself sixteen years old, unemployed, didn’t man up to care for her and their child. His unintended rejection shattered her emotions and prospects. Thus, she was under no illusion.