THE AFFAIR (41 page)

“Honey, it was not all your fault. I brought a lot of baggage into our marriage, baggage that I was unaware of. I was trying so hard to live the perfect life that we both wanted that I didn’t know what to do when I found myself unhappy.

She laughed then, and he watched in silence until she began to speak again. “I thought I was so different from my mother,” Mick continued.

“She never said anything to Dad about how she felt. She only told us kids. She told us repeatedly that she stayed there and took dad’s cheating and his abuse because of us.

He watched as the tears rolled down her face. “She told us that so often that I began to believe her.” Michelle looked away. Her pain was breaking his heart.

“Larry,” she began again, “I really wanted you to have the life you didn’t have, the life you thought I had. I really thought that in some way, it was my fault that my mother stayed, that life was so miserable, that my father cheated, and that he hit my mother. Larry, my dreams of having lived another life started when I was a kid. My mother took me to a psychiatrist. They all thought I was crazy. They didn’t know what to do so they blamed each other for what they believed was wrong with me.

“I always thought that maybe, just maybe, if I was a good girl, pretend I wasn’t having the dreams, it would be fine, that we’d have the happy home my mother said she was trying to give us.”

Larry pulled his wife to him. “It was just that…,” He bit his lips. He hated talking about his mother, hated admitting that even now the image of her leaving him bothered the hell out of him. It hurt like the blazes.

All at once he realized that the pain of his mother’s abandonment didn’t hurt with a billionth of the force that Mick’s leaving him had. Maybe he could get over it.

“Mick,” he said, holding her, “I couldn’t listen to you. Your parents didn’t divorce until you were out of high school.

To me you were the luckiest girl on the planet. I was so awed by the fact that you were raised by your mother and natural father.” He smiled.

“Baby, I thought you had it so good, that you just were unaware of how lucky you were. You were raised in a home with two parents, and neither of them was a stepparent. You know how rare that is nowadays. There’s always a stepparent around. Your life was magical to me. I would have given anything to have had even a foster parent that kept me for more than a month or two.”

Larry looked at Mick and felt her sadness. “I wanted to recreate your life for you. I wanted to give you the happiness that I thought you’d grown up with.”

“That’s the problem, ” she all but whispered. “I didn’t want to relive my childhood. I told myself I had so much to be thankful for. You didn’t cheat and we didn’t argue, and you…you were so very happy.”

“That’s just it,” she answered him. “I was too afraid of fighting, afraid that we’d be just like my parents, that you’d take lover after lover, that you’d come in one night and not like something I’d done, that I’d purposefully do something to anger you and that you would hit me.”

“I would have never hit you, Mick.”

“I know but that was my secret fear, so I pretended to be happy, pretended that yes, we were the perfect couple. Larry, it wasn’t the sex. That wasn’t the reason I was unhappy.”

His gut knotted. He noticed she’d not said that he satisfied her. He pulled his errant thought back, determined to listen to every word she had to say.

“Larry, I was so afraid of having children, of putting them through the same things, of blaming them for my own unhappiness, and here I did the same thing anyway.

“I got angry at you for being so happy. I couldn’t understand it. The kids never got on your nerves, you never got upset with them, you kept wanting more and more and I felt with each pregnancy that I was being bound by a life I didn’t want.”

Larry cringed.
Here it comes
, he thought.

“Only that wasn’t the case.” Michelle paused. “I know you don’t want to hear this, but the issue with me and the kids, I don’t think it was what I always thought it was. I think now it was something entirely different.”

He was staring at her, the words on the tip of his tongue. He was about to tell her that if she was going to tell him any more psycho babble to can it. He didn’t want to hear it.

He realized that’s exactly what he’d done to her in the past year. He’d told her that he knew what was best for them. He felt the pain in his chest again, only much milder. God, she was right. He hadn’t listened.

He watched her eyes. When she looked downward, almost embarrassed, he lifted her chin. He saw the smile that appeared on her lips and was happy that he was finally listening. Was this what it took to make him hear her, an almost heart attack?

“This other life,” she began. “It was real, Larry. I lived it. I saw it and I do remember it. I remember the anguish I felt when I knew I was going to die leaving an infant son whose father might not love him because he blamed him for my passing.

“I took that sense of loss into my spirit and I became afraid to love my children, afraid that if I did they would be taken away.”

Larry felt his wife’s shiver, heard her voice breaking. She couldn’t have told him any of that before; surely he would have recalled.

“Mick, I don’t remember your ever saying anything about this. You never told me you didn’t think you loved the kids.”

“How could I? We were the perfect couple leading the perfect life. How could I tell you I didn’t want what you thought made us perfect? I didn’t want you to think I was like your mother.”

For a long time they stared at each other, trying hard to read the other’s expression. Larry didn’t want to ask but there might never be another time.

“Is that why you wanted to abort Shannon? You didn’t love her?”

“I thought I didn’t. I was afraid to love her or any of them except maybe Derrick. Somehow I couldn’t stop myself from loving him.”

“Mick, was there ever a time during our marriage that you were happy?” He watched her eyes.

“Yes,” she answered. “Before the kids started coming, I was happy. Then for a short time after Erica was born. I think it must have been at that point that the fear took hold. I remember feeding her as a baby and you sitting there watching the two of us. You loved us so much, and I felt the same. I loved you and Erica with all my heart.”

“What changed, what made you stop loving me, loving our family?”

“I never stopped loving you, Larry. As for the kids, I think I was just too afraid of losing them to allow myself to fully love them.”

“Because I got tired of you telling me that I was happy when I wasn’t. And the thought that you were going to force me to take care of our grandchildren for the rest of my life…I couldn’t handle it.”

She stopped and looked at Larry and he gazed back at his wife, knowing whatever she was about to say was the real reason for her leaving.

“There was the promise.” Larry nodded for her to continue. “You made me promise to love you always, to never leave you. I knew why it was so important to you, so I did it. I respected you.”

“But?” Larry supplied.

“But you didn’t give me the same respect. When I gave my promise to an old woman, you ignored it as though it was nothing. I thought you were such a hypocrite.”

Larry cringed. Michelle was right. He’d never looked at it from her point of view before. “I’m sorry, Mick. I just wanted to protect you.”

He watched as she licked her lips then flicked her hands across her face to wipe away the tears that had gathered in the corners of her eyes.

“If I’d agreed to allow you to see Viola, none of this would have happened?” He waited while a strange look spread across the face of his wife.

“Eventually it would have happened anyway. That’s one of the problems, Larry. We both thought you had a right to give me permission.”

“I didn’t mean it like that, Mick. You’re twisting my words.”

He had an urge to tell her she was mistaken, that the way she told the story was not the way it had happened at all. Something in her eyes stopped him. She had a questioning look on her face.

“Can I ask you something, Larry?”

He looked at her suspiciously. He felt a lurch in his heart. He knew she was going to ask about the one taboo they had--his mother.

“Do you remember your mother? I mean, really remember her? How she looked, how she smelled, if she ever hugged you? Do you remember anything?”

He attempted to look away from her, but this time it was Mick who pulled his face back to her. “Mick, why are we talking about this?”

“Because this is the first time I’ve felt you were capable of doing it, of listening without telling me you didn’t want to talk about it.

“You need to face this, Larry. What happened when you were a child has had a huge impact on our family. We both have pasts, and we both came to our marriage with baggage. It’s time for us to let it go.”

“That’s just the point. We don’t know what she was like. Maybe she was some young girl with no money, no family, and no way to provide for you. Maybe she was doing the best she could.”

For a long moment he glared at her. Was Mick determined to hurt him to the quick? Her fingers caressed his cheeks and she smiled softly at him, making him catch his breath.

“I want you to stop hurting,” she said.

“I don’t know if I can.”

“I’ll help you. If there’s one good memory that you have, maybe you can hold onto that. Maybe that will take some of the pain away.”

“Mick, I was five-years-old. How am I supposed to go back and recall all of this? All I can remember is me crying, begging her, telling her that I would be good. And still she left. She didn’t even look back to wave. That’s what I remember, Mick.”

“Have you ever thought, Larry, that maybe she didn’t look back because she couldn’t? Maybe she loved you so much that it was killing her to give you up.

“I don’t know.” Mick continued. “Maybe she was just an awful woman whom we’ve both wasted too much of our lives and our energy on hating. I just think it’s time to let it go, maybe get some help.”

He frowned. She was talking counseling again. Well, he’d started and as far as he could tell, it wasn’t having the least effect.

He saw the familiar flash of light in her eyes that told him she had an idea he wasn’t going to like. Then he knew. She wanted him to talk to Blaine MaDia. Hell no!

She stared at him and he sat mute. He couldn’t do what she asked. He didn’t have any happy memories with which to replace the one that was burned into his heart, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to give some psychic license to poke around in his head.

“Let’s change the subject…just for now. Okay?” he added gently. He watched as she bit down on her lip and knew that he wouldn’t like her next question any more than he had her last one.

“That’s fine.” Mick answered him. She paused for a fraction of a second. “Larry, don’t you ever find Erica’s behavior rude and condescending? Don’t you ever mind that she treats us both like her personal servants?”

He looked at Mick and found himself speaking words he thought he’d never say. “Perhaps I tolerate Erica’s shenanigans just a tiny bit more because she looks so much like you. And her birth made us a family. I love her, I love all the kids. I’m their father.”

“I didn’t ask if you love Erica or any of the kids. That goes without question. I just want to know…can’t you see how she behaves? Are you blind to that?”