Chapter Eleven
"What would you be if you were attached to another object by an inclined plane wrapped helically around an axis?"
Leonard Hofstadter (TBBT Season 4)
"The Desperation Emanation"
"I'll have to marry you now."
"I'd rather wed a monkey."
Sheldon sighed. "While I appreciate your feeble attempt at humor to diffuse the tension and make me feel better, Amy, it isn't helping."
Amy released him and stepped back. Right now, she was so overcome with the urge to strike him that space was desperately needed. The fact that he'd missed the meaning behind her words only strengthened that urge.
"I know this might come as a surprise to you, Sheldon, but the world does not revolve around your feelings," she said, wiping the residual tears from her face. She refused to allow him to see her cry. "In case you missed it, having a boyfriend who believes marrying me is a punishment akin to death has not left me in the highest of spirits. Therefore, when the 'hotzy totzy from Glendale' says she would rather be forever legally joined to a monkey rather than you, you should recognize that she is in earnest and go straight to Hell!"
She marched past him, unsure of where she was going, but desperately needing to be anywhere he wasn't. Sheldon grabbed her elbow as she tried to pass and pulled her back around to face him.
"Go to Hell? Really, Amy?" He searched her face, obviously trying to discern her sudden flash of temper. "Do you still not see what is going on here? Our marriage wouldn't just be a punishment for me. It would also be one for you."
Amy's fury dimmed in the light of this latest statement. She snatched her hand from his grasp and crossed both arms over her chest. "Explain," she said.
"You are a leading neurobiologist. Your research, should you be allowed to complete it, is going to change the world. In a similar vein, I am on a stalwart path in my research that is going to lead directly to a Nobel Prize."
"How would a marriage between us affect either of those outcomes?"
He took a deep breath. "In addition to major changes in the areas of living situation, fudiciary liability, and legal status, a marriage between us would greatly hinder our ability to focus on our respective areas of expertise. The model of our relationship is such that it allows us to compartmentalize our lives to avoid this problem. For example, my societal obligations as your boyfriend are far less than they would be as your husband—"
"Are you talking about coitus? Is this entire problem about the fact that you do not wish to engage in sexual intercourse with me, Sheldon?" Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, Amy felt the heat of anger rising along with the timber of her voice. She was practically screaming at him, but she didn't care. "If this is about something so juvenile and ridiculous, you will not need to worry about ever participating in such an occupation with me. At this point, I wouldn't let you touch me with—pardon my slang—a ten-foot pole."
Sheldon look startled. "What? No! I assure you, if I were to ever logically decide on my own to propose marriage to you, I would have long conquered my issues with intimacy and physical affection—at least where you are concerned. In fact, I was already developing strategies on how we might …" He broke off suddenly and colored.
"Yes?" she prodded.
He coughed awkwardly and looked away. "My point is that coitus is not the problem."
As much as she wanted him to continue his previous thought, she knew it was better to just get to the heart of whatever was troubling him. "Then what is?"
Sheldon studied his nails as he was still unable to meet her gaze. "For the most part, our lives allow us to move unfettered by principal commitments beyond those required to sustain our current living circumstances. Moreover, if I choose to work late completing complicated equations or writing a paper, I need not justify this choice to anyone. If you find the need to conduct one of your experiments overnight, you need not gain permission. It is only on our scheduled date nights or other pre-arranged times when we will socialize that one might need to take the other into consideration. However, as those nights are pre-arranged in advance, they do not present obstacles for our daily intellectual endeavors.
"With marriage, however, this is impossible. Every minute is obligated to one's spouse. One cannot think solely for themselves anymore, they must consider their spouse. Even infinitesimal, seemingly unimportant decisions cannot be made entirely on one's own anymore. They must be made with the acknowledgement and agreement of the spouse. I cannot abide that kind of restriction in my life, Amy. I have too many important things to do to allow for this complication. So do you."
Amy took all this in. The irony that Sheldon, a man who put restrictions and boundaries on everything, did not want to be hemmed in by marriage was not lost on her. Yet, at the same time, her anger was fading away as another, more important truth came to the forefront. Taking into account what she'd overheard of his conversation with Meemaw yesterday, it certainly made sense.
"So, the pledge of commitment is the problem here. Not me?"
"I am fully pledged to you, Amy," he said, taking her hand in his. "The relationship agreement stands as a level of commitment of which few can boast. It is in place to not only ensure my comfort and give us both an accurate valuation of the parameters and responsibilities of each party within the relationship, but it also grants you a security few girlfriends have. The relationship agreement, like the US Constitution, is a living, breathing document that can and is amended as the needs of the relationship change. Thus, you do not have to waste your mental acuity on feelings of insecurity and the like in this relationship. You do not need to fret as women often do to know 'where we are in the relationship'. You need only read the agreement. And, if that wasn't enough to show my level of commitment to you, I have you listed as my in-case-of-emergency contact. How much more can any woman need?"
Just as quickly as he took her hand, he dropped it to rake his own dejectedly through his hair. "But, beyond all that, you have your life and I have mine. The current paradigm of our relationship gives us the best of both worlds. We can enjoy each other's company and still have the freedom to work as we choose. Marriage will take this freedom away."
She nodded, feeling slightly better. He was wrong about the idea that marriage would ruin their scientific ambitions, but he was right about the agreement. At first, she had deemed it overly restrictive, but, on more than one occasion, it had proven to be a source of comfort. It was a physical representation of her bond with the man she loved and his commitment to her. But, as much as the last of her anger was receding, there were things he'd said that had stung too much to forgive without formal rebuke.
"And what about what you said before? The 'hotsie- totsie from Glendale' remark? Then there was the comment about you wishing you'd let Raj and Howard leave the soiled hosiery in your apartment? How am I supposed to deduce anything else from that other than you wish you'd never met me? How do you think that makes me feel?" Amy asked.
"Amy, if I were honest with you," Sheldon said, "there have been many times that I have wished we had not met. Not because I do not want you in my life or because I do not enjoy your company."
"Then why?"
"Because … I do."
"You do?"
He gave a miserable, little nod and sighed like the statement was too difficult to admit. "I don't just want you in my life. Your presence has become a requirement for my continued happiness. I do not just enjoy your company. I seek it out as you stimulate me in a way that few things beyond physics can achieve. I never thought to ever be this attached to another person. You're like a parasite in my intestine that I can't rid myself of. And, the longer this goes on, the more I realize I don't wish to be rid of the parasite. It's extremely uncomfortable for me."
It wasn't a declaration of love, but it was close enough for her. Amy's joy was immediate. She threw her arms around him and planted a kiss on her boyfriend worthy of Casablanca. He allowed the kiss for a moment before pulling her back.
"Woman, we don't have time for this kind of foolishness. We're getting married whether I want to or not. If anyone sees you kissing me, it's going to get back to Granddaddy and make him think I just proposed. That will make all of this worse," he chided.
"I see. Why is it exactly that you believe we have to get married?"
"Because Granddaddy said so." He rattled that off so matter-of-factly, it was like he was naming the atomic number of helium.
"Sheldon, you are a grown man with your own life in California. He is an old man in a wheelchair in Texas. How can he dictate your life choices?"
"Because he has in the past. For example, I was ready to attend college by the end of the third grade. Granddaddy heard this and put his foot down. He told my father I wasn't ready and I had to put off my dreams for another two years. Two years!"
"But, you are no longer a child. You can do whatever you like now," she reminded.
"No, I can't. I'm a Cooper. This has been drilled into me from birth. The Cooper family is patriarchal and Granddaddy rules with an iron fist. What he says goes for everyone. More than once growing up I have been spanked by this man. I was not a troublesome child—not like my brother or my cousins—but if I heard Granddaddy say something that was incorrect, I had to correct him. It was a compulsion, not an option." He sighed. "It still is. But, in his eyes, this behavior was considered disrespectful. Therefore, I carried as many spankings as the others did whenever we visited him in the summer. He has six children, thirty-three grandchildren, and seventeen great-grandchildren. He has spanked every one of us at least once."
"So, because he was physically abusive to everyone—"
"Physically abusive?" Sheldon cried. "Granddaddy would never abuse anyone."
Amy blinked in confusion. "You just said he spanked everyone."
"Spanking doesn't always equate to physical abuse, Amy," Sheldon reproved. "In my family, it is a punishment usually expended to moderate particularly abhorrent behavior. Mom, Dad, and my Meemaw have all spanked me at least once. Even now, if I provoked her in just the right way, my mother would have no qualms about turning me over her knee and—" His features paled once more as something seemed to occur to him. "Do you believe I was being abusive the night I spanked you?"
"Of course not. I enjoyed that," she said. The second the words were out of her mouth, she wanted to recall them.
"You 'enjoyed' the spanking?" he exclaimed. His eyes were so wide she could see the whites of his eyeballs.
Her mind raced to explain this in a way he would understand and not think he was dating some kind of sexual pervert. Sheldon, I was so starved for physical affection that a spanking felt good to me? No, he'd never be able to fully comprehend that without the statistics I gathered and the charts I made. All that research I did and, when I really need it, I—
"Perhaps I didn't spank you hard enough," he said more to himself than her. "I tried to intensify the pressure initially. But, as I have never actually delivered a spanking before, I suppose there is a margin for error. If I increased the force of my hand striking your bottom by six percent—"
Sheldon was unintentionally arousing his girlfriend, and Amy desperately needed him to stop. "We can figure that out later. Let's discuss your grandfather. So, because he is the patriarch of the Cooper family and has indicated that he would like us to wed, you believe we will do so? Sheldon, that's crazy."
He lurched rigidly away from her, obviously affronted. "I am not crazy. My mother had me tested."
She sighed. "I didn't say you were crazy. I said the notion that we are required to marry because of the idle aspirations of an old man is crazy."
"Yet, that is the way it is." The light had gone out of his eyes once more as the knowledge settled over him again. "You stood up to him. Why did you do that? Why not cower like the rest of us? He goes away faster that way."
"I'm sorry. You didn't warn me. How was I supposed to know?"
He sighed. "Assigning blame doesn't matter now. He likes you and has decided he wants you in the family. So, whether or not you or I agree, we shall soon be joined in the bonds of matrimony." He looked off into the distance. "What a waste! I could have done so much in my life. I was so young. I still had many good years of discovery left in me. What about all the good I could have done mankind?"
As Sheldon continued to list all of the ways their impending marriage was going to ruin his life, she tuned him out and started thinking of a way to get them out of this. Clearly, Sheldon believed Mr. Cooper had to power to force his hand. But, beyond the fact that the man had seemingly spanked everyone in the family at least once and delayed Sheldon's entrance into college, she was dumbfounded to discover how that might happen.
"Sheldon, what if we just refuse to get married?"
He broke off from listing and glared down at her. "You had a chance to do that, but you didn't take it, did you? You said, 'When Sheldon proposes to me, it will be of his own free will'."
"Exactly. Of your own free will."
He shook his head. "That is not the most important part of that sentence. It is the 'when' that is the problem. If you had used 'if' that would have indicated that it was a possibility. But, using 'when' not only makes that statement possible, but probable—even imminent. Now do you see how this is your fault? He asked you if you wanted to marry me and, for all intents and purposes, you agreed. Thus, in his eyes, I have only to perform the official proposal to make it so." He shook his head again and groaned. "Forgive my slang, but we areattached to another object by an inclined plane wrapped helically around an axis."
"You mean we're screwed?" she asked.
He scowled. "Isn't that what I just said?"
"Indeed. My apologies. However, I believe you are forgetting one important caveat to all of this. You might be familially bound by the tyrannical decrees of your grandfather, but I am not."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, what if you asked me to marry you, but I declined? Would that effectively take the pressure off of you?"
"Yes, but it would unduly put it on you."
Amy shrugged. "I can more than handle anything that comes up from him. As your grandfather has not spanked me and I am not a member of this clan, I am not subject to its rules. You're a Cooper, but I am a Fowler. Thus, I am free to reject any proposals if I choose. If he assumed I had agreed to marry you, that is his problem and I will tell him so. Believe me, with a mother like mine, I am used to talking my way out of marriage resolutions."
A spark of hope flared in his eyes. "You would do this for me? You understand that you would be effectively usurping him. I couldn't protect you. Granddaddy's wrath is—"
"If it will take that horrendous parlor from your skin and bring the life back into your eyes, I will do anything."
It wasn't a declaration of love, but it was as close as she was willing to admit to him right now. Amy watched Sheldon absorb this. Then, before she knew what was happening, she was pulled awkwardly into his embrace. He wrapped his lanky arms around her waist and buried his face into the hollow of her neck. "Thank you, Amy," he said as his warm breath grazed against her skin. "You have saved me from a life of drudgery and tedium."
She tried to focus on the fact that her boyfriend was willingly hugging her and expressing his appreciation instead of the idea that he still believed marriage to her would be so horrific. Baby steps, she chanted again, and relaxed in his arms.
My boyfriend is hugging me of his own free will. It's not perfect, but I'll take it.