"I'll remember this"

It's Friday, and I decided to knock off work early.  Son 2 has been home all week, and he goes back to Durmstrang this Sunday.  So I get home maybe a couple of hours before usual and stroll in.  Wife is sewing and looks up with displeasure: "I didn't expect to see you home this early."  I said, "Well, I can leave," and walked back through the house to see what Son 2 was up to. 

He was playing computer games, and obviously hadn't bothered to get dressed since waking up this morning.  So I told him, "Hey, it's a beautiful day and I'm home early. Go get some clothes on and let's go do something outside."  "Like what?"  "Oh, I don't know but we'll think of something. We can go for a hike or a walk, or we can go to a park, or ... hell, I don't know. But go get some clothes on and let's go somewhere."

About this time, Wife came storming into the back of the house -- mad, but I couldn't figure out at whom?  Maybe even she didn't know.

"What's going on here? You two are going out to do something? Every day this week I've tried to do something with you [speaking to Son 2] so we could spend time together; and whenever I ask you what you want to do you just say 'I don't know' and then you go play on that damned computer. And now you [speaking to me] come swooping in like some kind of savior, and the two of you are going to go off to do something fun together?" 

There was a lot more in the same vein.  Obviously she was upset that ... well, something.  At any rate she was upset.  Maybe it was that she hadn't had a perfect week of mother-son bonding with Son 2 to match the movie in her head of what this last week ought to have been like.  I see how that could inflict a narcissistic wound.  But how does it become expressed as anger?  Anger against whom?  Against Son 2 for not thinking of something they could do together?  Against me for coming home early and urging Son 2 to get dressed?  Neither of those makes a lot of sense.  And really, if it were indeed true that Son 2 didn't want to go anywhere with her (and not just that he couldn't think of a place), is she going to make that better by shouting at him?  Will that make her more alluring, or will it make more attractive the prospect of time spent with her?  Did she really reserve no anger at all for herself, for being unable to nurture relationships with the boys?  What can she have been thinking?

I stood in front of her and urged her not to yell.  She kept up a steady stream of vitriol -- I don't remember what all she said -- so that it came across as yelling even though her voice was more subdued.  She was carrying her sewing scissors clenched in her right hand, so that if she had suddenly lifted her arm she could have plunged them toward me.  And when she stopped talking she just stood there and stared at me with a slight tremor in her lip and gaze, the way she does when she is about to burst with sudden violence.  This time she didn't do it -- after all, I'm writing this post right now instead of lying dead on our floor -- but I've seen that look often enough to recognize it.

Son 2 made up an errand for us to go do, so we could get out of the house without it looking like we were having fun.  "I'm all out of BBs for my BB gun. I need you to take me to the store to buy more BBs."  I picked up on this and chimed it, "I also need to put gas in the car because it is nearly empty. So I'll tell you what, dear; Son 2 is going to come with me to get BBs and then we are going to get gas in the car."

Like a shot she asked, "And what are you planning to do after that?"  (Wife believes that all action is planned.)  I told her, "No plans," and finally we got away.

So we went to buy BBs and to put gas in the car.  After that I proposed going to a park or somewhere else, but Son 2 wanted to go home.  Actually, he said, he wanted to go out to a park or something, "But then Mom will be all 'Grrr! You went somewhere without me!' And I don't want her to be sad. So let's go home."  And what then?  "Well once we're home then we can go somewhere else again. But we will have come back, like we said. And we can invite her to come along."

I pointed out that strictly speaking this was blackmail -- emotional blackmail -- on Wife's part; but I also drove the car home.

When we arrived, Son 2 announced to Wife that he wanted to go out to a park or something to try target-shooting with the new BBs he had just acquired.  Would she like to come too?  It took her the longest time to answer; finally she said to me (not him), "I think I'm going to stay here. I guess you could say that I had my turn this week and now you get your turn with him. So you two just go and have fun. But I'll also remember this."  It sounded for all the world like a threat.