Scattered Ashes (21 page)

She whirled, her grip so tight on the glass that her knuckles turned white.  “What do I expect?  Are you kidding?  I expect that when I’m close to delivering a baby, your baby,  that you stick around just in case I go into labor.  I expect that when a family member dies, especially someone like my dad, that you cancel whatever important plans you might have to be with me.”

He shook his head and kept eating.  “Yeah, well, with my job, you expect a lot, Nicole, and I can’t always give you that.  I told you from the start that I was out of town a lot.”

The juice tumbled from her hand, and the small bit of control she was still exercising snapped as she hurled the glass against the wall, sensing that they had reached an impasse.  Michael was more worried about his job than his marriage, and Nicole didn’t know how much more she could take of it.

As she started to fly out of the room, Michael looked up and said, “You might want to get that glass up before you step on it and get some in your feet.  We both know you never wear shoes in the house.”

Instead of answering, she blurred past him and ran upstairs and into their bathroom, quickly locking the door.  It wasn’t that she expected Michael to come after her and reasonably talk this out.  He didn’t see the need.  He wasn’t the one ‘given to temper tantrums’ as he called them, and he would never understand Nicole’s anger at his absence.  How many times had they been over this and over this?  Nothing good ever came of it.  Michael maintained his jovial attitude the whole time he remained home as though he expected with enough time and distance from the fighting that Nicole would come to understand his far more mature view on things. 

Even though she tried to keep her emotions in check, they ended up flooding down her face as she leaned against the door, grateful for the distance between the two of them.  She raked her fingers through her hair and slowly slid down the door until her bottom touched the floor.  Yet even there she could not escape the pain ripping through her.  She brought her knees to her chest and folded her arms, giving her head a place to rest until the tears finally stopped, and even though she waited in hopes that Michael might actually come upstairs to apologize, God forbid, the moment she heard the engine of his vehicle start, she knew better.  Michael just didn’t operate on feelings.

She leaned back and smacked her head against the wall, one pain to take away the remnants of the other as the hurt welled up inside of her.  Of course another thought came to her, one that should have come sooner but she had always rejected it before it ever saw the light of day.  Trouble was it seemed to be getting more and more plausible.

Could Michael be having an affair?  Is that what was keeping him so busy?

She stiffened at that thought.  Could he really be that cold inside?  She forced herself to stand up and peer at her reflection.  The woman she saw looking back was pale, thin, and unkempt—so far removed from who Nicole had planned to be that it wasn’t even funny.  For months she’d been telling herself that it came with being pregnant.  Now that the baby had come she found herself saying that it came with being tired.  But this wasn’t who she was.  She knew that much.

Taking a deep breath, she brushed through her hair and tried to put herself into some kind of order before she went and dressed Nick to head to her mom’s.  While Margaret O’Roarke hadn’t felt much like talking lately, Nicole needing some advice about Michael, and she really didn’t want to talk to Sarah about this one.  She knew Sarah would feel that the real reason she was having doubts had to do with Jordan which just wasn’t true.  Whatever there might be between her and Jordan, she wasn’t allowing herself to dwell on it because it couldn’t go anywhere.  He might be divorced, but she was in the middle of a marriage she refused to throw away by cheating.  She just wished she could say the same of Michael.

“Do you want some tea?” Margaret asked, pouring a cup for herself.  Her hand wavered slightly, probably due to all the emotions that had been running high since Ed had died, and of course Margaret believed enough tea could fix anything no matter how difficult it was.

“No, Mom.  I’m fine.”  She pulled a chair out and sat at the dining room table, waiting for her mom to join her.  Nick peacefully slept in the basinet by her feet.  She figured he’d wake in a couple of hours and demand to be fed.

“So what’s all this urgency about?”  Margaret carried her cup and saucer to the table and sat down.  Then she snapped her fingers.  “Oh, I should get the shortbread cookies I bought.  Would you like some of those?”

Nicole caught her mom’s arm.  “No, Mom.  I just need to talk to you.  No cookies required.”

“Well, maybe I’d like some cookies.”  Margaret said and got up.  “Sure you don’t want any tea?”

Sensing that her mother wasn’t going to let go of the idea behind the tea, she finally relented.  “Sure, why not?  I’d love a cup of tea.”  In reality, she hated tea.  She’d just never had the heart to tell her mom that, not considering what a panacea Margaret seemed to think it was.

“Now that’s a good girl.”  Margaret set the cookies on a small plate and carried it to the table, putting it closer to Nicole than her own chair.  It didn’t take much for Nicole to realize the cookies had been for her all along.

“Can you sit, Mom?” Nicole asked, feeling like the pressure building inside of her was going to spew loose at any moment.

“Just let me get your tea.”  She pulled down a cup and quickly filled it.  “Would you like anything with it?”

“Just you.”  Nicole patted the seat next to her.

“Very well.”  Margaret carried the cup and saucer to her daughter and set it front of her.  “Now be careful.  The tea is really hot.”  Then she eased down in the chair, her trembling fingers gently curling around her own cup so she could take a sip.  Then she asked, “So what seems to be the trouble, Nicole?”

Where do I start?
Nicole thought.  “It’s Michael.”

Margaret took a cookie.  “What about him?  He’s got a great job, and the two of you have a beautiful baby.  What more could you ask for?”

Someone who is actually here when I need him to be
, Nicole thought.  Still, she forced herself to take a deep breath.  Although she knew her mom liked Michael, she kind of figured that Margaret would understand.  Now she wasn’t so sure.

“He’s never around, Mom.  He’s always on the road with his job, and here lately I’ve begun to wonder if it’s more that.”

Margaret took another sip and frowned while staring ahead, lost in her own thoughts.  “What are you saying, Nicole?”

Up until now Nicole hadn’t actually said anything.  Saying it meant that it could be real, and that was the last thing she really wanted to think about.  Yet she wasn’t stupid enough to believe the whole out-of-sight, out-of-mind thing.  Averting her eyes, Nicole finally just plunged into the conversation.  “I think he might be having an affair and that’s why he’s gone so much.”

Although Margaret was taking another cookie, the moment she heard her daughter’s words, her fingers fumbled and she dropped it.  “An affair?  You really believe Michael could do that?”

Studying her mom’s face, Nicole quickly realized that while she could believe it about Michael, Margaret was a bit more skeptical.  Then again, her mom had a track record for always giving people the benefit of the doubt.  It was like a compulsion with her.  This only made Nicole second-guess her own thoughts more.  Like she really needed that.

“He’s gone a lot, Mom, especially during important times, times when he should be here.”  She looked down at her hair, checking the ends to see if she needed to get a trim.

“He has a job.  That does limit how much he can be around, Nicole.  You knew that when you married him.”  Margaret picked up her tea cup and took a sip, carefully avoiding eye contact with her daughter.

“Maybe I did know that he worked a lot,” she admitted.  “But everybody has days they can take off when a wife is expecting a baby or someone in the family has died.  Yet Michael never takes off.  Our relationship is somewhere at the bottom of his list, and I hate it.”

Unable to take just sitting anymore, she got up and paced the room.  Her mother watched her walk around the room.  “Wearing the carpet down isn’t going to make anything any better, and you know it.”  She took another bite of cookie.  “Have to talked to Michael about any of this?”

Nicole whirled.  “You mean have I accused him of cheating?”

“Well, yes.”

Nicole strode back to the table.  “Mom, I might be nuts, but I’m not going to say anything unless I have proof.  If I do find proof then I will definitely confront him.”

Although Nicole was really angry about her husband’s less than attentive behavior, the thought of actually confronting him made her head spin.  If she did catch him, it was going to mean starting divorce proceeding, and the last thing she wanted to be was a single mom with a son.

Margaret stood and walked to her daughter so she could wrap her arm around her.  “Baby, maybe you are just overreacting.  Maybe Michael really is just working so hard and that’s why you never see him.” 

Although Nicole wanted to argue with her mom because her gut told her that Michael was cheating, she felt her resolve caving in as her mother wrapped her arms around her in a gesture of comfort.  It would be so much easier for everyone if she were wrong.  Maybe she was just really angry at him for missing both the birth of their son and her father’s funeral.  Perhaps that was clouding everything.

“It just feels like everything is off.” 

Her mother gave her one last reassuring squeeze and released her.  “Your daddy just died, Nicole.  Did you expect that everything would feel normal after that?”  She nodded to the table where their cups sat.  “Maybe we should get back to our tea.  It’s getting cold after all.”

Without waiting for Nicole to say anything, Margaret walked back to the table and sat to enjoy her tea.  Nicole glanced at her mother, struck by how Margaret seemed to be so happy with the smallest things.  That was one thing Nicole’s daddy had really loved about her mother.  It made it so easy to get a smile out of her.  Of course that just made Nicole wonder if she were just being too hard on her husband, that maybe considering his work schedule that she was expecting far too much from him.  She just didn’t know.

For the rest of the day Nicole drove around.  She went the park, to the mall, to the arts and crafts store.  Anywhere but home.  Her last words to Michael had been cast out in anger, and she really didn’t feel any less angry at him.  She had thought perhaps talking to her mom might ease the fury, but it hadn’t. 

As she carried the a small sack from the drug store, Nicole tried to think of another time they’d fought like this, but she couldn’t.  Of course perhaps that might have been because Michael was gone so much.  It took both people being present or at least corresponding over the phone to argue so it only stood to reason that perhaps the reason their marriage had been so peaceful was because of absence and distance not love and devotion.

Nick cooed at her, another sign that even he was tired and had had a long day.

She shook her head, glancing at the blackness around her.  Even though she’d been gone for hours without ever telling Michael where she headed, he hadn’t called to check on her.  Was he having an affair?  Or was he just so sure that he was right about everything that he never doubted their marriage could start to fall apart when both of them failed to nurture the life they’d forged together.

Glancing upstairs, she saw that the light was off.  Michael, a creature of habit, had probably gone to bed already, completely convinced that wherever Nicole and Nick were, they were both fine and would return home soon.  How did anyone have that kind of faith.  She worried non-stop whenever Michael traveled and yet he slept so soundly when she hadn’t come home by eleven.

Nick started to fuss a little, a sure sign that he was probably hungry so once she slipped into the foyer, she headed into the kitchen to fix him a bottle to help him drift to sleep as she sat in the rocker, gently moving back and forth.  It didn’t take long for him to drift away.

A sudden yawn confirmed just how exhausted Nicole truly felt and how grateful she was to carry her son to the crib and gently lay him down.  Standing there, she stared at his peaceful face, liking the way the moonlight poured down around him.  He was so beautiful and amazing.  Still, she thought, looking at the paper sack from the drug store, she still had one important thing to get done before she turned in.