THE AFFAIR (20 page)

I thought about that for a long time. It wasn’t true. I loved Chance. Our being together was meant to happen. If I only had a crystal ball so I would know what was coming next.

Blaine.
The name whispered across my brain with an intensity that couldn’t be ignored.

If I’d ever needed a psychic, I needed one now. Ironically, the only thing that kept me going those three days was Erica and her constant, annoying phone calls. The first dozen or so had been scolding calls. She was determined that I would know the error of my ways.

Initially I tried to hold my tongue. She was right, I was wrong. I had indeed hurt her beloved father. Finally I could take her sharp tongue no longer. I did what I had wanted to do for many years.

“Erica Jean.” I spoke her name fully and loudly. I had to, for her to hear me.

“Butt out. This is my marriage. What happens between your father and me is our business, not yours. I would suggest you take care of your own husband and leave me to take care of mine.”

There was an angry silence on the other end of the line. I knew the sound of it. I was used to it.

“Goodbye, Erica,” I said at last. “Don’t bother calling again unless it’s to apologize for the way you’ve talked to me.” I severed the connection feeling a lightness I hadn’t felt in weeks.

A few hours later Larry walked through the door, his face unshaven and drawn. His clothes were rumpled; his entire demeanor reeked of a bone weary tiredness. My husband was grieving and I grieved along with him

I went toward him. “Larry, are you all right?” I moved closer to him, not liking the pasty color of his skin.

He lifted his eyes up toward me slowly. He didn’t answer. Just turned from me and walked toward the bedroom. I followed him, ignoring the fact that he slammed the door in my face. I opened it up as he was shedding his clothes, dropping his expensive but rumpled suit on the floor.

I called his name again. “Larry, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

He had shut me out effectively, leaving me with nothing to do but pick up his clothes and put them in the pile for the cleaners. I went through the drawers and laid out fresh underwear on the bed.

I went to the kitchen. He looked as if he hadn’t eaten since he’d left. When he was done with his shower he came to the kitchen, ate the food I placed before him and ignored my pleas for forgiveness. He refused to meet my eyes. It was as though I wasn’t even in the room.

An involuntarily shiver touched my bones. My husband could forgive my infidelity, but he couldn’t forgive me mentioning his mother. He couldn’t forgive me for breaking the bubble that he wanted to maintain of my perfect childhood.

We co-existed like that for two weeks. Not once did Larry object to my sleeping in Erica’s room. Not once did he say so much as good morning to me. He ate the meals I prepared, wore the clothes I laid out and ignored me. If he was watching television and I attempted to join him he would go into the bedroom and close the door.

It was a living nightmare. Every morning and every evening I would tell him I was sorry. I even left messages on his pager and his answering machine at work, after hours. Once I even left a message with his secretary, not caring that she would wonder about it. Still nothing.

I was at the end of my rope. My home life had gone straight to hell and my professional career was heading there also. I received a reprimand masked as a polite question. My boss had peered at me from behind his horn-rimmed glasses.

“Dr. Morgan called. He said his office is out of samples. He was wondering if we could ship him some.”

The man smiled at me in an undertaker sort of way before reminding me that it was my job to service the doctors, that they should never run out of samples and have to call for them. He had smirked as he told me how the scripts the doctors wrote were our bread and butter. Damn. I wasn’t a new rep. I was a senior rep. I knew that.

What could I say to him except that I was sorry and it wouldn’t happen again? I wanted to tell him that the doctor had a ton of samples and there was no way he could have used them all but I didn’t. I told him I would rectify the problem immediately.

I left my office and went immediately to the post office to ship off samples to Chance. If he thought I was bringing them, he had another thought coming. I would do that in a pig’s eye.

I went home exhausted, not wanting to spend another night in silence. As Larry and I sat at the table I went for a bottle of wine in the fridge.

“Larry, don’t you even care that I was unhappy until I met you? You changed that for me. I didn’t mean to hurt you with that remark about your mother.”

I watched as he propped his hands on the table and entwined them together. For the first time in weeks he was looking at me.

“Were you really unhappy as a child?” he asked. The look on his face was pleading with me to say no.

I answered honestly. “Yes. I’ve told you that many times. My parents fought constantly. I lived in fear that my father would kill my mother. He was cheating on her and we all knew it, but she stayed because of us.” I sat down in the chair. “I don’t think she made the right choice.”

“You wanted your parents to get divorced?”

Funny, but in all the years we’d known each other he’d never asked me that.

“No, I wanted them to stay together, despite all my fears. I didn’t want my father to leave home. I blame myself sometimes for my mother staying. I was a daddy’s girl. She knew how much I loved him. She said she stayed for me. When it was finally over she said he left because of me, that he couldn’t stand the thought of having a crazy daughter any longer. She said it was my dreams, my saying that I’d lived before.” I stopped and looked at my husband. “They were both afraid that I really was nuts. The dreams that you call nightmares, I’ve had them my entire life. My father and mother fought because they couldn’t decide whose side of the family I inherited my craziness from.”

“I’m sorry, Mick. I just never understood. You had what I wanted. I wanted to believe that you were just talking. I needed to believe families can be happy.” He looked down then, toward the floor.

Now I saw concern taking over. He didn’t want to worry about me but it was a habit that wasn’t any easier for him to break than it was for me.

We continued our dinner in silence, but the tension was not as thick. This time when he started to watch television in the living room I walked toward my room. He called out for me to join him. When the news was over we shut the set off and headed toward our separate bedrooms. We couldn’t have been more civilized.

In the next several weeks we resumed talking. Things were still not normal, but it was a lot better. Every evening one of the kids would call and talk to Larry for an hour or so. The most they said to me was, “Can I talk to Dad?”

Larry and I were sitting in a companionable silence watching a comedy. We were laughing easily together when he turned to me.

“My firm is having a party. It’s expected that the partners will all bring their wives. Is there any way you would consent to go with me?”

He appeared almost apologetic in the asking. “Why would I mind, Larry? I’m your wife, that hasn’t changed.” I saw him heave a sigh of relief that he tried to pretend was a bored yawn.

“Mick, you’re beautiful.”

I felt myself blushing. I looked around the room at all the women in their sparkling gowns and even more sparkling jewels. “You’re just saying that.” I smiled at Larry.

He tilted my chin until my eyes were on a direct path with his. “I mean it. You’re without a doubt the most beautiful woman in the room.”

He pulled me into his arms and we danced to the slow beat of the mellow music. He was holding me so tightly I could feel the beating of his heart.

“I love you,” he whispered into my ear. “I’ll always love you, Mick.”

I felt his breath, warm, sweet and familiar. I clung to my husband as tightly as he was clinging to me. “I love you too. I always have and I always will.”

The music ended and we remained on the floor in each other’s arms, afraid to break the magic spell, afraid that we would return home and once again be forced to endure the pain of our separate live.

“Larry,” I whispered. “Forgive me for hurting you.” I gazed into his eyes feeling the mounting tears wanting to spill.

“Hi, Larry, haven’t seen you lately.”

It was one of Larry’s colleagues pounding him on the back and reaching around me to shake Larry’s hand. He asked Larry if he could dance with me.

With my eyes, I did my best to plead with him to say no, but before either of us had a chance to answer, I was swirling away for another dance. My only salvation was that the tears stopped instantly.

We ate dinner, talking and laughing with the other couples at the tables. Once in a while I would look up to find Larry’s gaze lingering on me lovingly. It was time we began the healing process. I was now ready to do whatever it would take to put us back together.

In the car heading home we laughed together about some of the things we’d heard, the same way we’d done hundreds of time in the past. It all seemed so long ago.

I leaned into the car cushion. “That was fun. I really enjoyed myself.” I felt Larry eyeing me suspiciously. “Why are you looking at me like that? We always had fun together.”

I watched as the knuckles on his hand turned white with the strain of keeping his emotions under control. He gripped the steering wheel. “Tell me, Mick, I won’t get angry.”

“We’ve been married a long time. I think our marriage is better than most. I have nothing to complain about, really.” I sighed. “Can’t we let it go?”

“We can, but I think that’s part of the problem. I think we’ve let too many things go for too long. I don’t think you would have turned to someone else unless you were unhappy. So tell me.” He glanced at me. “How long have you been unhappy?”

“I don’t know,” I answered truthfully. “I’ve thought about that myself and I really can’t tell you. I think at first I just missed having all of your attention to myself. You never seemed to need time with just me after the children started coming.”

I turned and stared out the window for a long time before turning back to face my husband’s stony profile. “I don’t think I was jealous of the kids, just the time it took from us. I think…I think…” I didn’t want to say it.

“You think what?”

“I sometimes thought you used me to get the things you never had, the family. Then I think I lost importance to you as a person. I became just the mother of your children. I disappeared. You stopped listening to me. Whenever I tried to talk to you, you said I was imagining things, that we were happy. Whatever my problems, you had solutions. I never wanted you to solve all my problems, Larry. I just wanted you to listen.”

“I don’t understand what you’re trying to say.”

“Don’t worry.” I laughed softly. “Sometimes I don’t know myself.”

“Mick.” I heard the panic in his voice. “Did you really not want to have a large family? Would you have gone through with it if I hadn’t shown up?”

I heard the fear and the sadness. I knew he was thinking of the abortion he’d arrived within minutes to prevent.

“I don’t know. It was all so long ago. I always thought that I didn’t want them, that you forced me to have them, but I know now that’s not true.”

“Then why did you feel like that? Why did you try and… You know… with Shannon?”

He couldn’t say the words. “I don’t know. I think I wanted you to listen to me. I wanted not to just be a means of paying your mother back. I didn’t want to keep having babies to fulfill a promise.”