Space (8 page)

And our Maddie was the crowning touch. I smiled at the notion that I now had a second generation little
connection
toddling about.

We had our space in life, Dan and I. It was right and perfect. One we'd worked and planned for all through the years.

Life was good.

“Mama, I need another refill of Lortabs.” Faith had undergone an emergency appendectomy and now recuperated at her home. Jack's work took him out of town so I spent time there watching three-year-old Maddie and doing general cooking and cleaning, pushing my column writing up to the late night hours.

“Are you sure it has a refill?” I asked. It had been a week and a half since surgery and from my own experience with my hysterectomy, I knew that, as a rule, severe pain subsided within one and a half weeks.

“Yeh. I'm still cramping in here.” She indicated her lower abdomen. I shrugged. Maybe hers was different from mine. Dan drove to the pharmacy for the refill. I thought how I'd always avoided continued use of pain killers. But this was Faith's first experience. She'd never
done pain well. On some level, I sensed Faith enjoyed the “la-la” euphoria but didn't feel overly concerned. She was a big girl now. A mother, in fact.

Old enough to make good choices.

I had not a clue of what awaited our family in the wings.

I don't remember exactly when the deeper rumblings began in Faith's marriage. After all, Faith and Jack never displayed that magic that marked Dan's and my union. Too, I'd slowly lost touch with my daughter. At first, I attributed it to her having her own life, apart from mine.

A good thing. Right?

She'd also started working part-time, from home. Soon she had both her realtor's and appraiser's licenses. When Faith set her course, there was no stopping her.

The new freedom sat well upon Dan and me. The time we spent with Faith and her family was quality time. But slowly, without my even noticing it at first, the dinner invitations grew fewer and the intimate chats ceased.

Seemed one day, Faith was a young mother and wife who cooked delicious meals and did laundry and the next, she was a stranger whose blank eyes stared at me unseeingly. It was as though Faith, the Faith I knew, disappeared, leaving someone hollow and alien in her place.

When had it happened?

Was it when Dan and I had been enjoying cruises and weekend excursions to the mountains or seashore, romancing it up like we hadn't for years? So enthralled that we hadn't noticed the slow decline of Faith and Jack's marriage.

Later, I would wonder if I could have helped more.

“I don't want a divorce,” Jack tearfully revealed one day. He sat in my den, needing reassurance and encouragement.

My heart went out to him. I wanted with everything in me to tell him it would all blow over. But I knew in my heart of hearts that it would not. Because Faith would do what she wanted to do.

Period.

He'd come to me, devastated that Faith wanted a separation. I was stunned. Seemed the smooth river of my life had changed overnight into rampant, savage rapids. The bends no longer ran smoothly but in jerks and stops with jack-in-the-box images popping up in dissonant chaos.

Faith's dialogue involving Jack had evolved into total negatives. She never gave him a kind reference. She spoke of a side to Jack I'd never even glimpsed. I had witnessed her out-maneuvering him with her sharp wit and tongue, a thing that visibly shook him.

“Faith,” I told her after one such display in front of the family, “Jack simply needs you to be nice to him. He's evidently not had too much positive feedback in his life.”

“He's not really smart, Mama. Haven't you noticed?”

“He's not stupid, Faith. His intelligence is just different from yours. He's got so many great attributes. He's a wonderful provider. A great dad and, my Lord, honey, he's as handsome as a movie star.”

“I'd rather have a craggy brain who knows how to romance a woman.”

“But you can take him
as is
and with your intellect, with kindness and wisdom, you could have him eating out of your hand. You could have everything you want,
Faith. There is no Mr. Perfect out there. You've got some of the most beautiful raw material to work with that I've ever seen.”

My counsel fell on deaf ears.

Faith had made up her mind.

Dan and I tried to convince Faith to give her marriage another chance.

“
What?”
She glared at us. “He's a jerk. He treats me like crap. You don't hear how he talks to me sometimes. He hit me, Mama! I can't believe you take up for him.”

As always, Faith's passionate convictions smote me, gave me pause. Was I really blind to Jack's faults? Was their “behind closed doors” a place of horrors? Were there really two sides to him?

Of course, there were. Everybody is multi-faceted, depending upon a current situation. He wasn't perfect, but neither was Faith. I knew she'd learned his buttons as he had hers. And she, too, carried a potentially aggressive streak just beneath the surface.

Something about the change in Faith deeply disturbed me.

This wasn't in my dreams for her.

Jack and Faith had grown violent. One two a.m. call from the police had propelled Dan to their house to collect a sleep-fuzzy Maddie as Faith and Jack were hauled off to jail for domestic violence.

“They both were guilty of hitting each other. Faith's fingernails left bloody trails on Jack's arms and she had bruises where he'd gripped her arms tightly,” Dan later explained, his features weary and stunned. “Jack had
called the police to come and subdue Faith and was surprised that they arrested him, too.”

Poor Jack, I couldn't help but think.

And poor Faith.

During that time, the world of justice began to open up to me. I did not always like what I saw.

Dan and I finally bailed them out of jail a couple of days later. Rage emanated from both of them. Against all my hopes that they would forgive and begin anew, that was only the beginning. I didn't then, nor do I now, understand such vehemence.

Dan grew silent. He watched. And one day, he looked at me as one on death row.

“Deede, if Faith and Jack divorce, we'll never know another moment's peace.”

In that heartbeat in time, I did not believe it, thought he was over-dramatizing.

Now, years later, with twenty-twenty hindsight, I realize the veracity of his prophecy.

In horrific resignation, I watched the death of Faith's and Jack's marriage. In the divorce, Faith gained primary custody of five-year-old Maddie. I felt no sense of triumph. Rather, I felt a deep grief when Faith excised from our lives, as succinctly as a surgeon, the man Dan and I had come to recognize as a son.

Initially, to their credit, Faith and Jack remained outwardly friendly, for Maddie's sake.

I tried, oh, how I tried, to be happy for Faith. She commanded it.

“I don't see why you can't just walk away from this, Mama,” she would say. “I was never happy. Can't you see that?”

“I just — feel that Jack's heart is broken over losing us, honey. We were the family he'd never had. He told me so. It's going to take time for us all to heal.”

“Well, he's not family any longer. I can't see why you can't be on my side.”

I rolled my eyes and tried to scrub out the
taking sides.

How I detested that term.

“Anyway,” she switched mid-stream on me, “we're friendly now. I want to keep things as pleasant as possible because of Maddie.”

That placated me somewhat. At the same time, something inside me held complete peace at bay.

Something about Faith — something elusive and offbeat telepathic — hinted that she was just beginning to search for that something she was missing in her life. That, in itself, gave me serious pause. Because since her miraculous birth, she'd had the greatest opportunities available to a beautiful, positive life.

She had so far rejected them all.

Dan's wariness and concern were contagious. Darkness seemed to hover over us.

I wondered, where would she go from here?

Where was my daughter gone off to for all those years? Where and what had been her space? Now, years later, I realize that I don't know her. Haven't for a long time.

I want to. With all my heart, I yearn for that reconnection.

Faith is at once my miracle embryo, my sweet-smelling infant, my toddler and my little girl … my adolescent
who adored me and emulated even my mannerisms at times … the teen who wanted to be her own person, yet still lingered, at times – if not clutching – fingering the apron strings … the young married woman held spellbound by motherhood.

The deadlock that is ours is agonizing. I detest it. The three of us seem wrapped — no,
chained —
together in a nether region of no return. Together, yet apart. Dan, Faith and I are in a horrific limbo with no idea how to escape. We — Dan and I — have prayed, but the
how-to
and the what are not yet revealed.