And yet there was an unpredictability to all of these things, rules suddenly changing and then changing again. Vivian would be in her anger forthright, then passive-aggressive, whichever seemed to fit her mood. Her expectations of me became increasingly fuzzy and half the time, I wasn’t sure what to do or not to do, rehashing events in the wake of a blowout, trying to figure out what I might have done to upset her. Nor would she tell me; instead, she’d deny that anything was wrong or accuse me of overreacting. I often felt as if I were walking through a minefield, with both my emotional state and the marriage on the line… and then suddenly, for reasons that were equally mysterious to me, our relationship would revert to something approaching normal. She’d ask about my day or whether there was anything special I wanted for dinner; and after London went to bed, we would make love-the ultimate signal that I’d been forgiven. Afterward, I’d breathe a sigh of relief, hopeful that things were finally returning to the way they used to be.
Vivian would deny my version of these events, or at least my interpretation of them. Angrily. Or she’d cast her actions and behaviors as responses to things I’d done. She would say that I had an unrealistic view of marriage, and that I’d somehow expected the honeymoon to last forever, which just wasn’t possible. She claimed that I brought work stress home, and that I was the one who was moody, not her; that I resented the fact that she’d been able to stay at home and that I often took my resentment out on her.
Whatever version of events was objectively true, in my heart what I wanted more than anything was for Vivian to be happy. Or, more specifically, happy with me. I still loved Vivian, after all, and I missed how she used to smile and laugh when we were together; I missed our rambling conversations and the way we used to hold hands. I missed the Vivian who’d made me believe that I was a man worthy of her love.
Yet, with the exception of our Friday evening date nights, our relationship continued its gradual evolution into something I didn’t always recognize, or even want. Vivian’s contempt began to hurt me. I spent most of those years being disappointed in myself for constantly letting her down, and vowing to try even harder to please her.
Now, fast-forward back to the night of the Christmas party again.
“Get over it,” she’d said to me, and the words continued to play in my mind, even as I dressed. They were sharp, dismissive of my concern and devoid of empathy, but even so, what I remember most about that evening was that Vivian looked even more stunning than usual. She was wearing a black cocktail dress, pumps, and the diamond pendant necklace I’d given her on her last birthday. Her hair fell loose over her shoulders, and when she emerged from the bathroom, all I could do was stare.
“You look beautiful,” I said.
“Thank you,” she said, clutching her handbag.
In the car, things were still tense between us. We stumbled through some small talk, and when she discerned I wasn’t going to bring up Peters again, her mood began to thaw. By the time we arrived at the party, it was almost as though she and I had come to an unspoken agreement to pretend that my comment and her response had never been uttered at all.
Yet, she’d heard me. As annoyed as she’d been, Vivian stayed by my side virtually the entire evening. Peters chatted with us on three separate occasions and twice asked Vivian if she wanted to get something to drink-it was clear he wanted her to join him at the bar-and on both occasions, she shook her head, telling him that she’d already ordered from one of the waiters. She was polite and friendly as she said it, and I found myself wondering whether I’d been making too much of the whole Peters situation after all. He could flirt with her all he wanted, but at the end of the night she would head home with me, and that was all that really mattered, right?
The party itself was largely forgettable-it was no better or worse or even all that different from any other office Christmas party-but after we got home and let our teenage babysitter go, Vivian asked me to pour her a glass of wine and check in on London. By the time I finally made it to the bedroom, there were candles lit and she was wearing lingerie… and…
That was the thing about Vivian; trying to guess what she was going to do next was often pointless; even after seven years, she could still amaze me, sometimes in blissfully tender ways.
Big mistake.
That’s pretty much the way I think about that evening now, at least when it came to my career at the agency.
Jesse Peters, it turns out, wasn’t pleased that Vivian had avoided him, and by the following week, a distinct cooling breeze began flowing from his office toward mine. It was subtle at first; when I saw him in the hallway on the Monday following the party, he walked past with a curt nod, and during a creative meeting a few days later, he asked everyone questions but me. Those types of minor snubs continued, but because I was buried in yet another complex campaign-for a bank that wanted a campaign centered on integrity but that also felt new-I thought nothing of it. After that came the holidays and because the office was always a bit crazed at the beginning of a new year, it wasn’t until the end of January when I registered the fact that Jesse Peters had barely spoken to me for at least six weeks. At that point, I began swinging by his office, but his assistant would inform me that he was on a call or otherwise busy. What finally made me understand the depth of his peevishness with me came in mid-February, when he finally made time to see me. Actually, through his secretary, and then mine, he requested to see me, which essentially meant I had no choice. The firm had lost a major client, an automotive dealer with eight locations throughout Charlotte, and it had been my account. After I walked him through the reasons I thought the client had chosen another firm, he fixed me with an unblinking stare. More ominously, he neither mentioned Vivian nor asked about her. At the conclusion of our meeting, I walked out the door feeling much like the executives I used to feel superior to, the ones I’d seen teetering on the edge of a nervous breakdown. I had the sinking feeling that my days at the Peters Group were suddenly numbered.
Even harder to bear was the fact that it wasn’t because of anything I did or didn’t do for the auto dealer-a man in his late sixties-that made him leave. I’ve seen the print ads and commercials from the agency that took over the account and I still believe that our ideas were more creative and more effective. But clients can be fickle. A downturn in the economy, change in management, or simply the desire to cut expenses in the short run can lead to changes that affect our industry, but sometimes, it has nothing to do with business at all. In this case, the client was going through a divorce and needed money to pay for the settlement; cutting advertising for the next six months would save him more than six figures, and he needed to hoard every penny, since his wife had hired a notoriously cutthroat lawyer. With court costs rising and a nasty settlement in the making, the guy was trimming every expense he could, and Peters knew it.
A month later, when another client pulled the plug-a chain of urgent care clinics-Peters’s displeasure with me was even more evident. It wasn’t a major client-frankly, it barely classified as even a medium client-and the fact that I’d signed three new clients since the beginning of the year seemed to matter to him not at all. Instead, after again summoning me, he ventured aloud that “you might be losing your touch” and that “clients may have stopped trusting your judgment.” As a final exclamation point to the meeting, he called Todd Henley into the office and announced that from that point on, we’d be “working together.” Henley was an up-and-comer-he’d been at the agency five years-and though he was somewhat creative, his real skill was navigating the political waters of the agency. I’d known he was gunning for my job-he wasn’t the only one, but he was the most sycophantic of the bunch. When he suddenly began spending more time in Peters’s office-no doubt claiming more credit than he deserved for any ad campaign we were working on-and leaving with a self-satisfied smirk I knew I had to start making plans.