Thursday 12/31/98

New Year's Eve. Marlys went to bed at nine. I'm at the computer with a beer and Dick Clark with the sound off.

Last year at this time I said to myself, 1998, she'll get better, this will pass like a flu. It didn't pass. It moved in.

This year I'm not saying anything to myself. I'm writing down what I know instead. I know I love her. I know she is not a liar and she is not a fool, and I know a lot of people would call her both and I'd take a swing at any one of them. I know she hasn't slept a full night in twenty-one months. I know I'm tired.

The other night she asked me, straight out, "Frank, do you think I'm crazy?" I said no. I said I think you're scared and I think you're worn out, and I think worn out can make a person sick, and I don't mean crazy when I say sick. She thought about that a long time. She said, "That's almost nice." Almost. I'll take almost into 1999.

Sunday 11/22/98

I'm a grandpa. Ella Marie, born Saturday the 14th in Denver, a little over seven pounds, lots of black hair like the Szalai side. We flew up Monday and came home last night.

I want to put this down because it's the best news this page has had. For five days in Denver Marlys was Marlys. She held that baby like she was made out of eggshells. She sang to her in Norwegian, the little song her grandmother sang, which I didn't know she still knew. She slept at night. Right through, in Kristin's guest room with the light off. I lay there and listened to her breathe and I didn't want to go to sleep and miss it.

On the plane home she held my hand the whole way. Then we came in our own front door and she went straight to the bedroom and turned on the lamp.

Saturday 10/17/98

I lost my temper Thursday and I'm going to put it here because I promised myself this page would have the bad parts in it too.

She'd been up three nights running. Thursday she asked me to drive her to Mesa for a special meeting of her group, and I said no. First time I ever said no. I said I'm not driving forty miles so you can sit with people who make it worse. I said some other things. I said "little gray men" in a voice. I'm not proud of the voice.

She didn't yell back. She just looked at me like I'd turned into somebody she didn't know, and she called a cab, which she's never done in her life, and went anyway.

I sat in the truck in the driveway for an hour and then I drove to Mesa and parked in front of Norma's house and waited, and when she came out at ten I got out and opened the door for her, and she got in, and neither of us said anything the whole way home on the freeway. At the house I said I'm sorry. She said, "I know you are, Frank." That was Thursday. We're okay. Mostly.

Wednesday 9/9/98

McGwire did it last night. Sixty-two. I watched it at Hector's. Hector ran a mill next to mine for nineteen years and he's the only one from the shop I told about Marlys. He listened to the whole thing without saying a word and then he said, "My mother saw the Virgin in a tortilla in 1971, Frank. You love them anyway." We've been going to the Diamondbacks games this summer, the new ballpark downtown with the roof. The team stinks. It's the best three hours of my week.

Dr. Hale, our family doctor for fifteen years, had Marlys in for her checkup last week. He took me aside in the hall and said very gently that he'd like her to see a psychiatrist, and he gave me a name. When I told her in the car she said, "So now it's official. Everybody thinks I'm crazy." I said a psychiatrist isn't for crazy, it's for when you can't sleep for a year and a half. She tore the card in half. I taped it back together. It's in my wallet.

Tuesday 7/14/98

She went to the hypnotist. Saturday, in Scottsdale. I drove her. I said I'd drive her and I did.

She came out after two hours with her face gray and her hands shaking and she didn't say anything until we were on the freeway. Then she told me what she "remembered." A room. A table. Light with no lamp in it. Them. I'm not going to write down the rest. It's hers, and it's the kind of thing that people on the Internet grab and carry off.

I'll write down what I think, which is mine. I think a woman who has been scared for sixteen months went into a dark room with a stranger who charges by the hour and asked her to remember, and she did. I don't know what that means. I don't know that it means she made it up. I think it means she's hurting in a place I can't get to, and now she's got pictures to go with it.

She slept on the couch that night with the TV on and every light in the house. I slept in the recliner next to her, so she'd have somebody.

Saturday 5/23/98

Some people in her group have been going to a hypnotherapist in Scottsdale who does "regression." You go under and you remember what happened in the missing time. Norma, who runs the group, says it helped her.

I went to the library and read up on it. There are doctors who say that under hypnosis a person can "remember" things that never happened, especially if the person asking the questions already knows what they're looking for. I brought home the copies. Marlys said I was trying to take it away from her. I said I'm trying to keep somebody from putting something in.

That was a bad fight. We don't have many. We had one in 1979 over a boat, and this one. She's going in July. I said I'll drive her.

Sunday 4/19/98

The dreams are worse. She's been sleeping on the couch with the TV on low because the TV noise "keeps them out." So I've been sleeping alone in our bed for three weeks, first time since 1973 except for my back surgery.

I'm going to say something I haven't said. I'm getting tired of it. Not of her. Of IT. Of every conversation coming back around to the lights. Of her checking the locks four times. Of her asking me did I hear that. I love my wife and some nights I want to take the lawn chair out of the backyard and throw it in the canal.

A lady in Oregon wrote me and said her husband doesn't believe her either, about her own experience, and thanked me for not making fun. I wrote her back and said I'm not always as good as the page makes me sound. That's true, and it's why I'm writing this entry.

Friday 3/13/98

One year tonight since the lights. Marlys wanted to sit out in the yard and so we did, both lawn chairs, a thermos of decaf, the old Army blanket over our knees. It was cool, clear, a lot of stars. Jets from Luke going over now and then with their lights blinking. Every one of them, she held her breath until it passed.

Nothing came. At eleven I said let's go in and she said five more minutes, and at midnight she said five more minutes. At one she let me take her in. On the step she said, "You stayed." Well, where would I go.

Wednesday 2/4/98

Last night Norma came out to the truck and knocked on the window and said, "You might as well come in, Mr. Szalai, it's cold." So I went in.

Eight people in a living room in Mesa. A retired schoolteacher. A young mother with the baby in a car seat on the floor. A long-haul trucker with arms like hams who talked so soft I had to lean in. A man about my age whose wife left him over it. Coffee from a church-sized pot and cookies from the store. Nobody in a tinfoil hat. Nobody selling anything.

They took turns. Mostly they talked about not sleeping, and not being able to tell anybody at work, and their families. The trucker said his brother won't let him near the nephews anymore. Everybody nodded.

I didn't say anything. I drank my coffee. I don't believe what they believe. But I'll tell you, I've been to union meetings with less decency in the room. On the way home Marlys said, "Well?" I said they're nice people. She said, "They're scared people." I said, "That too."

Sunday 1/11/98

New year, new look. Marlys picked the stars background. I told her white letters on black are hard to read and she said then put it in a box, Frank, you're a machinist, make a box. So there's a box.

She's found a group. People who say what happened to her happened to them. They meet Tuesday nights at a lady's house in Mesa. She found the notice on a UFO page on the computer, late at night when I was asleep. I know because I'm the one who knows how to look at where the computer's been, and I looked, and I'm not proud of that either.

She asked me to drive her because she doesn't like to drive at night anymore, on account of the lights on the freeway. I said sure. So Tuesday I drove her to Mesa and sat in the truck in the lady's driveway for two hours with the radio on. I'll do it again this Tuesday. It's something I can do.

Somebody e-mailed me a link to The Crop Circle Skeptic here in Area 51 and said I'd like it. I did. But this page isn't that kind of page. I'm not trying to prove anybody wrong. I'm trying to keep my wife.