Acts of Contrition (32 page)

Tom is truly relaxed, hanging out with his brothers-in-law. I watch, and think that I see that my brothers-in-law, as well as my sisters, are hovering around Tom more than normal. Doting on him. Plying him with cold beers, hors d’oeuvres, laughing eagerly at his every joke. While my family is my greatest support, they also adore Tom, and out of some brother-in-law deference, they’ve circled around him, to tend to the wound that I’ve inflicted. It seems that my brother-in-law Kevin is avoiding eye contact with me. Teresa’s husband, Paul, pours wine for Angie and Teresa but not me, though my glass is half empty. Maybe I’m making too much of it. For Tom’s sake, I appreciate
the care they’re taking with him, love that their loyalty wraps around him, but part of me feels slighted, like the shunned kid at school whom everyone has decided to avoid just because she tripped and fell on her face.

An hour into it, the attention no longer seems so contrived. The men are in the backyard playing bocce ball, cold beers in hand. Then they’re in the front yard shooting hoops. Later they’re in the basement watching games on the big screen. The little guys—Dom, Danny, and their cousins Matthew and Luke—follow after their dads, imitating their caveman behavior.

Normal. Finally, it all feels normal.

I dash downstairs to the basement refrigerator to get some of the food and overhear Sally and Emily, Shannon and Kelly, huddled in the corner, talking about God knows what, admitting to what they know, what they’ve heard, giggling over whether the scandalous gossip is true. When I head back up with an armful of food, I hear Kelly say something about “the sperm being in the testicles” and I nearly choke, trip, and drop the food. But then I relax and think that learning the birds and the bees from their older cousins might relieve me of some of the pressure. Later I’ll serve as fact-checker, vetting the information they’ve received.

Meanwhile, I sit with my sisters. We’ve never had an actual conversation about The Truth. But I know Mom and Dad have told them about Landon being Sally’s biological father. I’m feeling relaxed, for the first time in so long. We’re laughing and reminiscing about old times, telling stories, calling up memories. Angie is sitting next to me with her arm slung around my shoulder. A warmth runs through my heart and I have to swallow back the pride. I’m glad to know that my heart still works, that heat can still radiate from it when it’s happy. There were
months when I figured it had retired, had switched onto autopilot.
I’ll pump your blood but nothing else.

Just at the peak of my happiness, Teresa pushes a wrong button in me when she leans over and places a condescending hand on my lap and announces in her cloying voice that she’s “praying for me.” Like I’m a reprobate who needs extra prayers. Like I’m the bad kid who has gone astray. Like God forbid, if Teresa weren’t praying for me, I’d be sure to land in hell the first chance I got.

At first I don’t say anything, tell myself to let it go, that it’s just Teresa and her too-pious attitude. But then I start to boil and I have to fight to keep from spewing fire.

“You don’t have to pray for me,” I tell her. My voice is terse, razor sharp. “I’m good.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asks. “Are you asking me
not
to pray for you?”

“You’re free to pray for whomever you want,” I say.

Angie weasels her way out of this tiff, slipping out the back door to check on the boys.

Teresa looks at me squarely. “Mary, I didn’t
mean
anything by it. I just want you to know that I’m thinking about you. That you’re in my prayers, that’s all.”

“Fine,” I say, turning away, gritting my teeth.

“I know you think I’m little Miss Goody Two-shoes, that I’ve never done anything wrong.”

“And you’re not?”

“I have no intention of betraying my secrets to you,” Teresa says. “But the answer to your question is a resounding no. I’m not perfect. I’ve done plenty of things to be ashamed of.”

“Yeah, right.”

“It’s true. There are things that you don’t know about. When I was away at school. Did you ever think that maybe that’s why I’m so faithful now? Maybe
I’m trying to make up for some indiscretions, too.”

“No,” I say honestly. “Not once. Truly, I’ve never once had that thought.”

“Everyone falls, Mare,” Teresa says. “I didn’t switch colleges just for the heck of it.”

I blink at her. “What does
that
mean?”

Teresa gives me only a single sharp shake of her head, then lets me sit there for a long moment trying to imagine what my pious sister could possibly have done.

“Sometimes we swerve in the wrong direction,” Teresa says at last. “And then sometimes we overcorrect to try to make up for it. So there. A little bit of dirt on St. Teresa.”

“I’m sorry,” I say, looking at Teresa through eyes I’ve never used on her before. “Thanks for telling me. Whatever you didn’t just tell me.” I hug her and she looks at me with her x-ray eyes, and I’m left wondering—will probably be wondering for the rest of my life—what my naughty sister Teresa did while she was away at college. Even as deeply in the dark as she leaves me, I feel better.

A few days later, I’m at the mall Christmas shopping when my phone rings. I now recognize the cryptic line of numbers and know it’s Landon. I shouldn’t answer, but I fear he might be up to something regarding Sally and so I need to keep my finger on the pulse.

“I can’t talk to you,” I say as forcefully as I can.

“You don’t need to say a word,” Landon says. “Just
please,
give me two minutes, then I promise I won’t call again.”

“Has it occurred to you that you might need psychological help?”

“Mary,” Landon says. “Two minutes.”

I duck into one of the mall’s long hallways that lead to the restrooms. “What?”

“I just wanted to tell you…that you did things right, Mary. Exceptionally right. You have a family. Your daughters, they’re
beautiful
. I just…I just wanted to say that, that’s all.”

“Thanks, Landon,” I say, trying to brush it away, but a tear springs from my eyes because they
are
beautiful, truly beautiful.

“And I
know
I’ll never be Sally’s dad. Hell, I’ll probably never even know her. But Mary, I have to tell you that I still can’t get her out of my head.”

I feel the blood heat in my cheeks; I pound my fist against the cement wall.

“And I just wanted you to know that I’m not such a driven, egotistical maniac that I haven’t been touched by this.” He pauses, clears his throat, and says in a tender voice, “I need you to know that…I love her from afar.”

The tears rise, but I swallow them down.

“Yes, Landon,” I say. “From afar. That’s right.” My words are taking the hard line I want them to, but he’s getting to me. It’s obvious he’s hurting, and in a new, deeper way than he’s ever hurt before. Or maybe in an old, all-too-familiar way he thought he’d tamped down for good. The boy whose father deserted him, whose mother gave up caring for him, is aching for a family he’s always been denied.

A mother pushing a stroller walks by, looking straight ahead, as though she doesn’t see my face drained of blood.

“I just…,” Landon murmurs.

“Just what?”

“I don’t know…wish I could know her.”

“Listen, Landon,” I say, wiping the tears from my eyes, “get your head on straight. You
just
won a senate seat. That’s your victory. That’s what you
got.
Enjoy it. And stop wondering about the one thing in the world you don’t have.”

“I know, Mary,” Landon says. “I’m not planning on causing any trouble, if that’s what you’re thinking. She’s just on my mind.”

I turn my head from the phone, look up at the ceiling, wonder if there are cameras taping this conversation. I decide I should stop talking about his senate seat. “You’re already causing trouble, Landon. With this call.”

“Will you tell me just one thing? About her. About Sally?”

I shake my head because that information belongs to me and Tom, not him.

“Just one thing,” he presses.

I look down at the bag I’m holding, an assortment of books for Sally. I decide to give him a gift, a tidbit about Sally. “She won’t dog-ear a book.”

“What?”

“Her books. They’re her treasures,” I say. “She’s a voracious reader and goes through a book a night, but she only uses bookmarks. She won’t flip the corners down. She won’t dog-ear her books.”

Landon laughs. I imagine him slumped down in his thousand-dollar Armani suit, comfortable in his executive leather chair, his shiny wing tips resting on his desk. “What does she read?”

I’ve already given Landon what doesn’t belong to him. “I’m hanging up,” I say.

“Mary—”

“Don’t call back.”

After Landon and I broke up for the first time, he crawled back with promises of trying harder. We went on to date for two more years, which meant he had been on my mind—one way or another—for seven years. I was a month away from graduating from law school and the feeling bubbling inside me, a fountain of optimism rising, nudged me in the direction of starting anew. I was ready to get on with my life, my life without Landon. I’d had
enough.
After dinner one Saturday night, I told Landon I was finished. This time for good.

“You’ve been honest with me before,” I said, a new confidence radiating in me, imagining my new life as a lawyer just around the corner. “You were honest when you told me we both wanted different things. I don’t think anything has changed. I’m looking for more, Landon, and I know now you’re not the guy to give it to me. I had hoped you would change, but here we are, in the same position as we were years ago. I’m ready to move on.” I felt tough, like a callus had grown over my heart. Landon James couldn’t hurt me anymore.

Landon looked at me across the table like he was conducting a negotiation. “I see your point, Mary, and I respect it.”

I remember how his formality turned up the edges of my mouth; how it was just the affirmation I needed to feel certain that I was making the right decision.
Mr. Emphatically Not. Mr. I Respect Your Point. Ha!

We made it through dessert with an exceptional level of civility. Then Landon ordered a shot of whiskey or bourbon—something sticky and brown, anyway—that he swirled around in the low, wide glass. The more he drank the more hangdog he became. “Come on, MM,” he said, placing his hands over mine. “We’ve got a good thing going here.”

“We’ve got nothing going here,” I said, pushing his hands away from me.

When he dropped me off at the door to my apartment, he leaned over to kiss me good night. I let him because what the hell did it matter at that point? He pulled me close and the steely resolve in me started to soften. I had begun the night with a full battery of courage, but now it was running down and I knew that I needed to get away from him before it was depleted altogether. I pulled away and said to him what he was never able to say to me. “I love you, Landon,” I said in a matter-of-fact voice. “Always have.”

“I’m lucky for that,” he replied.

I smiled and felt my battery charge a bit. More confirmation that I needed to get out of this relationship for good.
I’m not an emotional person. Emphatically not. I respect your point. I’m lucky for that.
All these years later, still unable to say he loved me.

“Do me a favor?” I asked. “Stay away, okay? No matter what. I’m ready to move on. I really don’t need you showing up here and there, okay?”

“I get it,” he said. “I’ll give you space.”

And he did. He gave me plenty of it. I heard through the grapevine he had taken up quickly with a secretary at his firm. Though it hurt that I was so easily replaceable, I was also glad. I needed to heal. And though I secretly hoped to see him at my law school graduation, at one of the local bars during summer happy hours, or at a legal function, I never once saw Landon. Six months followed, and the next fall I started my job as a first-year law associate at Penn & Hancock. I was working sixty hours a week, starved for sleep, and praying that I would make it to Sunday, the one night of the week when I would collapse at my parents’ door for a good meal and some TLC. Mom would pack
me a week’s worth of meals in Tupperware. “Just zap them in the microwave,” she’d tell me. “You’ve got to eat.”

At the time my sister Angie was a new mother, juggling Kelly and Shannon. She and Kevin and the kids would come over on Sunday night, too, and I’d sit on the floor with the girls, stacking blocks and playing Barbies. My breathing would slow and I’d think,
When is this going to be mine?
Even though I was enjoying being a lawyer and the partners were expressing interest in my future—and I could still imagine myself sitting in that corner office with the view of the monuments—I really wanted to be right here, on my parents’ floor, playing with my nieces, whom I secretly wanted to be my daughters.

A month later, just as I had stopped looking over my shoulder, hoping to run into Landon at the store or on the street, he showed up at my door. His arms were filled with bags of takeout, a dozen roses, and a box wrapped in shiny gold paper.

“May I come in?” he asked.