Striking Story

I don't think it was the first or fifth time or eleventh time she hit me that I realized I was going to lose my wife at the end of this fight. She hits me a lot, and I don't really think about it in terms of a defining characteristic of a fight that will end the relationship. I mean, if every fight where a punch got thrown ended the relationship, who'd have any friends?

Living on the Western Slope, it seems like you'd be pretty cooled out, off the wildlife and the stunning vistas and everything else. Flying in on an airplane, you're inclined that there are only two kinds of people on this side of the mountain: the super-rich and the flinty individualists. But there are folks of all stripes here, from sane and boring to half-crazy, and on through to crazy. Lisa and I weren't a perfect match, but I was a link from the edge where she dwelt to the rest of the world. People would say that I "spoke Lisa." I guess they meant it as a compliment, about our compatibility or my understanding as a husband. I guess.

She strayed so close to the edge, dabbled in this dark space where everything she said had a sharpened tip hidden beneath the flesh. No comment or action was without a looming consequence, and tiny barb waiting to sting you. Folks didn't steer clear of her (and us) outright, but over time people understood that it was safer for them and better for everyone if they just kept their distance. She was as funny as the day is long; others with poison in their veins found her to be absolutely unforgettable. "Your Lisa," they'd say, with envy behind their eyes for both her barbs and who knows what else, "she is really something."

When we met, I didn't think she was that much fun. She was, looking back, just refining her methods. She's not a killer or something, but she was more raw, working off the anger, tension and angst of a childhood which wasn't so much scarring as callousing. She had evolved incomplete defenses to lots of things a kid shouldn't need protection against. These sharp words, this drum-tight sense of wounding wit, the relentless cynicism, all came as weapons of self-defense.

But by the time adulthood set in, these weapons had overgrown their boundaries, and their original application was long forgotten. Lisa was the life of the party, and though she insisted she hated every second of it, she was helpless to stop. She was merciless, and was rewarded with the general affirmation of like-minded types whose own tarnished outlook made it nearly impossible for her or them to see how corrosive this behavior really was. They were blind inside it.

With that adulthood came all the normal obsolescence; we had a little girl in 93 and a little boy three years later. They were perhaps her greatest joys and her tenderest victims. She couldn't control these manic feelings, couldn't turn away from the microscope and the quiet angel inside couldn't act fast enough to slow the devil's tongue. They were cowed by her, quick to apologize, perpetually in fear. It was no way to live.