|
2003-04-14 - 2:45 p.m.
[excerpts from an article in the New York Times Sunday Magazine] The three months went by, then four, then five, then six. His name was out there, but no offers were forthcoming. Jeff was periodically checking job boards like Monster.com, but he rarely saw postings that looked senior enough. Mostly he was hanging around the house like a moody teenager, checking his e-mail, surfing the Internet, playing the guitar. Mara wanted to be understanding. ‘‘I promised myself I wasn’t going to give him any ultimatums,’’ she says. Instead, she took on more work. She secured a publisher for her dissertation and took a tenure-track position at Queens College. She also piled on the part-time teaching and consulting jobs, pushing her income up to $80,000 a year. As the months passed, she tells me, her patience started to wear thin. In May 2002, her father died of leukemia. That month also marked the anniversary of Jeff’s unemployment. ‘‘Once it hits a year,’’ she says, ‘‘there’s no reason to believe it’s going to be any better this time next year.’’ By that point, things at home were strained. ‘‘A lot of people were telling me that if their husband wasn’t working for this long they’d throw him out of the house,’’ Mara says. ‘‘I was starting to think, Am I an idiot for putting up with this?’’ Jeff became depressed and withdrew. Mara, resentful that she couldn’t talk about her job without risking making Jeff feel worse, pulled back, too. They spoke only rarely, Jeff says, and stopped having sex altogether. By the summer, she was just about out of sympathy. ‘‘He was like a retired person,’’ Mara says. ‘‘I couldn’t stand it.’’ She wanted him to do something, anything. One day, over a cheese omelet and Belgian waffles at the diner around the corner from their apartment, she begged him to at least do some volunteer work, whatever it took to get out of the house. But he never did. Jeff is back at the table now, but Mara seems to have scarcely noticed. She continues to speak freely about his unemployment and its toll on their relationship. Jeff occasionally nods in agreement. Once toxic, the subject now couldn’t feel more benign. In September, Mara says, Jeff agreed to go into therapy. They also started couples’ counseling. Two months later, she did what she had vowed never to do: ‘‘I told him that come Feb. 1, if you’re not contributing to the rent, you have to move out.’’
previous - next
|
