RELATIONSHIPS WE’LL ALWAYS HAVE AUSTIN

I know birthdays aren’t supposed to be a big deal as you get older, but with my thirty-seventh approaching, I suddenly felt a resolve to make up for the neglect of past years. My wife was supportive and offered, to take me for the weekend to Austin, where I’d gone to college and spent the prime years of my bachelorhood. I eagerly agreed, thinking of pals, sailboats, Barton Springs, margaritas. I spent most of that evening on the telephone, catching up with old friends and planning various get-togethers. You wouldn’t think planning a weekend jaunt could threaten to toss a happy marriage onto the rocks. But as it turned out, my wife and 1 had in mind two very different trips to the same place.

Our first conflict was rooted in the destination itself. In the context of our marriage, Austin is not just a place but a symbol of the web of friendships I’d built during my years there. My college days left me with a network of shared remembrances that could make even my extroverted wife feel like an alien visitor to the inner circle. Worse, the circle includes women, several of whom I had slept with. Though I’m sure my past sounded more risqué to my wife than it actually had been, over the years Austin has been an enduring bone of contention.

“How do you think I feel walking into a room full of women knowing we’ve all had you?” she’d say, launching her first strike. “’But that was years ago,” I’d reply, wincing and retreating. “We’re all just friends now.” My reassurances somehow never reassured her. It was all too foreign for a Baptist-raised. East Texas girl, first married, at the age of nineteen. She longed for a romantic Austin that belonged only to us. I hadn’t been to Austin in more than a year, and it was time to party. But then came the opening shot: my wife wanted, to stay in a hotel room on Friday night and wait until Saturday to see my friends. Already she was asking me to surrender Friday night’s social possibilities. Well, I reasoned, when we married, she came with two kids and I came with old friends. No way, I thought, will she get me to agree to neglect them.

Unfortunately, my wife loves Austin. Unfortunate because that fact raised the stakes in our argument beyond the bounds of a single weekend. We’ve considered moving the family there if the right opportunities developed. How fine it would be, we both thought, to raise two sons on sailboats and grow old gracefully in the Hill Country.

Only practical barriers stood between me and a permanent return to the capital city. But her considerations were tempered by the “Big Chill” intrusions of the past-college buddies and old flames.

“See you all on Saturday,” 1 explained, in my second round of phone calls to Austin. Connubial bliss is built on bloody compromise.

Round two began the next day. At the time, I couldn’t see the underlying reasons for our next marital spat. You see, we got into a fight about whose car we were going to take. I had just gotten mine back after a month in the shop and was looking forward to breaking in the new engine on southbound 1-35. My car was comfortable, had a nice stereo, and got good gas mileage. The only problem was coddling the new engine at a gentle fifty-five mph for the 400-mile round trip. No big deal.

“You’re crazy if you think I’m going to drive fifty-five mph instead of seventy all the way to Austin,” she said. “And your car is running terrible. The last thing we need, is to have it break down 200 miles from home.”

“I hate your car,” I said. “It’s uncomfortable, doesn’t have a tape player, and gets horrible gas mileage.” At thirty-five, she still drove a hot rod. “I’d rather not go than take your car,” I threatened. We went to bed. like an Arab and a Jew.

The next night I mentioned that the Mavericks-Rockets basketball game would be televised on Saturday, much to my delight. A mistake. Wife looked at me with withering scorn and said, “We haven’t been out of town in a year, and you want to watch a stupid goddamn basketball game?” If the trip were going to be as much fun as planning for it, we were doomed.

Of course I could tape the game on the VCR, she said. As if taping a live sports event was the same as taping a favorite old movie. I’d tried to tape games before. Something always went wrong-the reception was bad, the tape ran out just as the game went into overtime, or, more likely, someone gave the game away by saying, “Boy, the Mavericks sure stunk last night,” before I had a chance to watch it. Taping never worked.

It’s little squabbles like these that torture most married couples. How, short of divorce or domestic violence, do you deal with dirty socks always thrown on the floor, or toilet seats forever left up? How do you survive, much less understand and solve, the battles that go along with a simple weekend trip to Austin to celebrate your birthday? Lacking wisdom, you become locked in on who’s “right” and who’s “wrong.”

That’s exactly what had happened to us. Like young siblings appealing to their mother, we wanted a responsible party to step in with a ruling. And yet, the superficial pettiness of the grievances made it difficult to share them with others. No one would willingly and impartially listen to a grownup married couple carry on like whiny preschoolers. Or so we thought.

Unaware they were in the right place at exactly the wrong time, our good friends Ed and Krista came over for a visit the next night. They had entered the home of a couple approaching desperation, our much-needed weekend trip hanging by a thread.

Our friends innocently agreed to hear our dispute. It looked like a typical male/female stalemate until Ed recognized, as only an outsider can, that a fair compromise was possible. Ed had boiled things down to our two essential grievances-which car to take and the basketball game. Would we each give up one for the other? “Yes,” I replied. Wife was silent.

“Either one?” Ed asked..

“No,” I replied quickly, trying to cut my losses. “I’d give up taking my car to watch the basketball game.” She agreed-reluctantly, I thought. But you can’t be intractable in front of judges without risking contempt of court.

Suddenly, we had a settlement. Would it hold up? I was optimistic.

Wife was silent momentarily. Ed asked her what she was thinking. “I was wondering how I could screw up the basketball game,” she said, and laughed. I knew then the compromise was going to fly.

During the course of our conversation with Ed and Krista, Krista had obviously empathized with wife, while Ed clearly understood my feelings. We all joked about the unreasonableness of the opposite sex and the sacrifices marriage required.

Before long, we were on our second bottle of wine and the discussion shifted to Ed’s betting habits. Ed is a semi-serious better, typically winning or losing $500 over the course of a football season. Reasonable to me, extravagant to his wife. It was getting late by then, and wife and I realized we’d opened a rather unpleasant can of worms between them. In fact, the air got downright frosty. We backed off, thanked them profusely for salvaging our trip to Austin, and bid them good night.

The next day, my wife called to thank Ed and Krista for helping resolve our argument. There was a noticeable pause before Ed responded. “We got into the biggest fight when we got home,” he confessed. “We argued until two a.m.”

I think they stayed mad through the weekend, but I’m not sure. We were in Austin having a great time. Except for the Mavericks game, that is. They stunk that day. Shoulda taped the sucker.