Quick note on how I write Mary and how I’ll write Joseph when he inevitably joins this blog:
I want to preface this by saying upfront that I LOVE Joseph. He was probably my fav dad (between him and Robert) and this is just how I portray his and Mary’s relationship. If you play Joseph, then our interpration is between us, but if you are x, y, z dad (or if IM playing Joseph), then... we’ll this is my interpretation and headcanons pertaining to their relationship.
Joseph is a grade a douche, but he’s still a person with layers. He loves Mary, in his own way, but when she had a kid, the relationship wasn’t the same. I also headcanon that Mary had a miscarriage between Chris and the twins, something the couple handled very differently. Joseph fell to looking for other people to help his problems, eventually sleeping with others, mostly men because he didn’t want to risk a child (I do headcanon him bisexual). Mary, on the other hand, without her husbands support and with the women at church only telling her it was ‘God’s Plan,’ felt alone and isolated. She turned to drinking.
They did want to try again. So they tried. And Mary quit drinking when she got pregnant. Two babies. A fucking miracle. It would erase everything bad... but then she saw the messages on Joseph’s phone. So she left to her mothers (who I will eventually write more about). Her mother basically reminded her that a) she was a college dropout who didn’t have a job and lived off her husbands wages, b) she had one child and two on the way, and c) she should just ride it out, go to counseling, all in all get over it. Her mother also played a victim blaming game, telling Mary if she had been more available to Joseph he wouldn’t have gone and done anything. Whether that’s the case or not...
Anyway. They talked and they went to counseling and it went well. But when the twins were born, Mary was constantly tired and itching to drink. Joseph wanted his wife back but she was drowning in children. He helped where he could but both of them were drawn back into old temptations. Joseph started playing around a little more, really flirting. He was thinking about leaving Mary... but how would he look, leaving her and his three kids? And did he even want to leave her? He painted their relationship as, mostly, awful. Partially for the sympathy of it and partially because that was just his perspective. It was awful. Even though there were nights the house was quiet and Mary would climb in his lap, or stumble against him drunk and wanted to dance.
It was like old times all over again, before the kids and before the miscarriage and on those nights they loved each other. On those nights they still do love each other. And some nights Mary would fall against him crying because she felt and feels like she’s falling apart, but what can he do? He feels useless and escaping into his little trists? That helps escape the feeling for a while. And she drinks. And takes birth control pills that Joseph doesn’t know about.
She finds out about Robert before she finds out that Crish is coming. She notices that Joseph isn’t wearing his wedding ring anymore. She hears someone at the bar say that he tells guys he isn’t married or he’s getting a divorce. She doesn’t blame Robert. Mary drinks heavier than ever and continues drinking into her pregnancy, though she’s somewhat monitored and between Joseph and Robert and Damian, she doesn’t get away with it (often). Someone brings up AA and she says she doesn’t have a problem.
Crish is born premature but with no defects. Joseph thanks God. Joseph promises he’ll stop fucking around. Mary doesn’t believe him and when she asks about his ring, he says he took it off to work on the car and he can’t find it. It’s a partial truth. Mary doesn’t really care. She doesn’t care about much. She isn’t sure Joseph does either, and while she loves her kids sometimes she can’t seem to care about them either. Chris she favors and she hates herself for it. Because in her eyes, Chris didn’t start the problem, the miscarriage did, and it was all down hill from there. Every night, she spends an extra few minutes with the twins and she holds Crish, and she prays to have more love for them because sometimes she just can’t care.
And Joseph? He’s trying. But his wife is distant, she goes out with Robert half the nights of the week, and he knows she flirts with men at the bars. And he knows she never goes home with them. And he knows that every time he does go home with someone, it kills her a little bit inside and she gets one step closer to one drink too many. But he doesn’t replace the wedding ring and he gives his sweater to the new neighbor when there’s a chill in the air. Sometimes when he goes home, he finds Mary drunk in Crish’s room, staring at the kid like he’s abstract art and she’s crying and she wants to dance.
Sometimes they still love each other and they both are holding to the thread of hope that says everything will be okay.