Had To

When the phone rang, I heard Husband pause after he said hello. “Well, we had to Mrs. Bea; she died.”

It seems Mrs. Bea began the conversation, “I heard you buried your Grandmother Lutz.”

He could have said Grandma died the week before, or he could have excused the family for not telling Mrs.B. Instead, Husband thought his comment was most fitting and rather funny.

Grandmother Lutz would have rolled her eyes and laughed at him. She never really cared for Mrs. Bea who was the across-the-street neighbor from where Husband grew up.

Mrs. Bea had an annoying habit of clicking her tongue near the back of her throat as she crocheted or knitted, two activities which she did often. It wasn’t the clicking that bothered Grandma. It was the incessant bossiness and control issues.

Then Mrs. B heard the sound of our new baby crying in the background. It was her birth that kept me from going to the funeral of a really great lady and friend.

“What’s that I hear in the background?” asked Mrs. B.

“Our new daughter. She was born three days before Grandma died.”

“I didn’t know Atha gave birth again,” was the surprised response.

“She had to. She was pregnant, and it was time for the baby to come out.”

Another “had to” statement.

Husband loves to make them when people ask questions or make comments he finds insipid.

For example, “Did you take a shower?” 

Husband may answer, “Had to. I stank.”

Or, “Did you pay the electricity and phone bills?”

He will answer, “Had to. They were about to shut off our service.”

We were a few weeks from our wedding the first time I realized this was his way of answering questions he doesn’t want to deal with. At the retirement home where I worked, a noisy nurse kept prying him for information about our wedding plans.

Originally we had planned to marry the end of October, but with school starting coupled with our eagerness to get on with our lives, we moved the date to the end of July.

“I hear you and Atha are getting married sooner than October?” Nursie asked.

Husband may be slow to social clues at times, but he thought he knew where she was going with her question.

“That’s right,” he said, to which she countered with “How come?”

“Have to,” he replied.

“Well, that’s all right. Things like that happen these days. No one is going to think anything about it.”

“What does that mean?” he asked. “Do you think she is pregnant?”

“Well, I…” she began to stammer.

“You’re wrong. When I said we have to it is because we hate saying goodnight at her front door. She is ready to have her own home away from her parents.”

Of course when he told me about the conversation, I got livid.

“That’s my reputation you are messing with,” I said. “Do you realize she is a first-class gossip?”

“I never thought of it that way,” and he was sincerely apologetic. “I just thought she was trying to find out if we are sleeping together.”

“And I bet she was delighted to think she got that kind of information out of you.”

“I told her the truth about why we moved up the date.”

“But you didn’t tell her we are not sleeping together.”

In those days, people wondered about the sex lives of unmarried couples. Today I think they just assume.

Anyway, we married because we had to. I had to be with him as much as possible. He had to get married to be loved and adored. I now understand that “had to” is a suitable way to describe us.