The House (24 page)

“Then, go see her.” Edward laid the newspaper aside.

“It’s not that simple.”

He fingered the bottle of beer, wet and sweating then clasped his hands. “What would you like me to do, short of taking away your mother’s cancer?”

“Why do you have to always be this way?”

“And what way is that?” Edward’s lips and shoulders went straight, betraying the virulent annoyance in his voice, tight and curt. “Don’t you care about me?”

“Yes, I do, Anna.” He raised his arms as if to encompass the house,
The House
, his gift to Anna and what Violet and he had lacked. “But if you expect me to be all broken up about your mother dying of cancer, I won’t. She never liked me; she told you not to marry me. Your mother accused me of having gotten you pregnant. No, I can’t be sorry.” He sighed, turned toward the sliding glass door and observed the pool where the midday sunlight was bouncing off the water’s surface. “I’m not sad to see your mother dying. But I am glad that she’s out of your life.”

Anna slapped Edward. Realizing what she had done, Anna, then eight months pregnant, pushed herself up from the table. She was headed toward the steps when Edward gripped her shoulders. He turned her around. “I won’t feel bad for what I’ve said.”

“Have you no shame?” Anna’s cheeks felt as if splashed with scalding water. “Is there nothing too low for you to stoop to?”

“This discussion is not about me.”

“No. It’s like everything in this house, and that goes on, and surrounds it,” Anna yelled. “This whole marriage,
this house,
is about you.”

Edward’s face lost all signs of life. But for his amber eyes, energy seemed to escape him. “You won’t blame me for your mother’s illness.”

“I’m not blaming you. In fact, I’m not holding you responsible for anything except that you’ve never been present in this marriage,” Anna said.

“I’m in this marriage.” Again Edward surveyed the kitchen. “No, you’re not. You’re addicted to your work and those women, Stella, Esther, and Margaret.” Anna had discovered a third letter. “You’re hooked to them the way your mother was addicted to that medicine the doctor gave her.” The vibrant, ruddy hue in Edward’s face died. His demeanor became hard as brick. The light in his amber eyes that had first attracted Anna faded. “What are you going to do, hit me?” she asked. “I spoke about your almighty mama.”

A man could not make love to a mother. And heaven forbid that a mother display any amount of sexual vigor and desire toward him. With the birth of Linda looming, Anna feared her marriage would end and that Edward would leave her for one of the women with whom he’d been involved.

“You don’t find me attractive,” she broke the silence.

“Not when you’re acting like this.”

“You never found me attractive,” Anna spat. “I was just willing and easy.” And yet he had married, and given her a home for which most women would die. The envy of the wives of his colleagues, Anna stood caught in a web of misunderstandings and illusions built by Edward. Designed by an architect and built to Edward’s specifications, the house had been transformed and maintained by Anna. It had become a home. But with each child, the home be came a tomb, a place where on returning from the hospital, she fell back into a routine of cooking, washing, and drying. There, in the house she found herself consumed with woman’s work that sucked all hope and passion from her.

“I should have gone to Paris and worked. I should have never married you.”

“And how far would you have gotten with that art degree? No.” Edward corrected, “You had a
degree in art history.
” He sounded like Elena.

“A lot farther than I have with you.”

“Toward what? Living in an apartment, alone, no children and with no one to care for you?”

“You’re insane.” Anna gave a facetious laugh. “I’m supposed to be thankful that you married and deposited me in this house.” She threw her hand. “You’re always off, God knows where, sleeping with whomever, and never loving me.”

“Sex is not love,” Edward said.

“That’s a poor excuse.”

“Don’t confuse the two.”

“You’re using the oldest line in the book. And I’m a fool for having believed it all these years,” Anna said.

“It’s true. And you know it.” She stared at him.

Edward fell still. He then turned and went outside.

Anna followed him. She felt dead inside, grappling for life.

“If my father wasn’t a minister, and my mother dying, I would abort this child, set fire to this house, and leave.”

Edward whipped around.

“This is all you care about,” Anna said. Again she waved her hand this time like Edward, and as if to contain the whole of the house. “This house and the money you make to maintain it.” She was crying. “That’s all that matters.”

Edward’s lips trembled. “You know nothing about what it means to have nowhere to stay, no place to call home, and no one trying to give you one except a tired, beaten woman who had you when she was a child, and looked twice her age when she died.”

“I’m not your mother,” Anna said.

“No, goddamn it, you’re not. And I promised to never have it that way. But you could easily slip to where she fell.” He drew near.

“That would never happen.” Anna broke in. “I’d kill myself and take the children with me before I’d fall to where you mother was. I’d never let David and Theo become like you.”

“Then you’d be a better person than Violet. You’d do what she should’ve done a long time ago.” Edward went back inside to the bedroom.?

Chapter 34

Two weeks had came and went after Edward sent the children back to their homes. Anna and Edward remained in the house living as man and wife with Anna on the road to widowhood.

She set the plate of spinach, fettuccine, and baked chicken on the patio table in front of him. His eyes grew big. He said, “I don’t think I can eat all of this.”

“Eat what you can.” She sat on the chair next to him.

“I can’t eat anything,” he said.

“You’ve lost your appetite?”

While Edward’s appetite was never large; it had remained fairly stable in the weeks since he had left the hospital. Despite all, his weight had decreased.

“How long have you been feeling this way?”

“Just today,” he said.

“It’ll come back.” Anna began to eat.

He looked to her. “I’ve never died before.”

“Try living alone for thirty years. I found all kinds of ways to make myself eat.” The heated words slipped from Anna’s tongue, she speaking for all women betrayed by husbands in similar situations. “I’m sorry.” She had reached a moment of peace when making love to Edward. The two weeks following had deposited her in limbo. “You’re hurting,” Edward said. “And you’re stuck here with me.”

“It’s my choice.”

“Still, it’s painful.”

“For me or for you?” Anna said. Unlike those in her memory, his eyes were clear and soft as they had been two weeks earlier during their exchange of intimacy. Edward had laid in her arms after they had made love. He had cried. They had not spoken of the experience during the ensuing days. Anna had let down her defenses and grown close to him. Edward now stood in a different light. Never had she thought he would be aware of her pain, or that he cared about her hurt. Again, she silently reprimanded herself for the fear less honesty held within her words, cutting as if a sword, into their reconciliation and leaving both wounded. “I never knew you were so sensitive,” she said. “That you held so much pain.”

“It’s been constant,” Edward whispered then glanced toward the pool. “The pain.”

“Were you seeing other women when we were dating and before we married?” Anna said.

Edward continued staring at the pool. “Why do you avoid me when I ask a question?” she asked.

“Perhaps for the same reason you turn away when I tell you the truth about what I feel. The women were easy. They took away the pain.” He turned back to Anna. “They let me tell myself that it was
you
I hated, and not myself.”

“Did you hate me?” Anna asked. Parts of her hated him.

“No, not really.” He shook his head.

“Then, why make me the target of your anger?”

“I envied you, your ability to give.
You
were better than me
stronger
... still are. It was easier to feel anger toward you than my self.” Edward took in a breath. “Growing up was difficult. I’ve never liked who I was that much.”

Anna shuddered at the thought of Edward’s self-loathing, a trait she also held. She had perceived him as possessing confidence, the lack of which she despised in herself. Parts of her refused to hear Edward’s words pointing to the
why
and
cause
of his actions. She grew warm in her shame.

“I thought marrying you would make me different,” Edward said. “It only made me hate myself more.”

“You had Manning Real Estate.” Anna wanted to believe the truth of Edward’s pain. “You worked so hard at making it grow.”

“It was all for you and the children,” Edward said.

“You didn’t play around with those women for me and the children. We didn’t need that.”

“A company can’t love you. It won’t remember you when you’re gone,” Edward said. Anna sizzled with dread.

“What were you thinking when you were with those women? How much did you love their bodies? What did they give you?”

“Stella, Esther, and the others had nothing that you lacked. In fact it was the other way around.”

“They must have had something. You preferred time with them to that with me.”

“I wanted to escape.” Edward clinched his jaw. He gritted his teeth.

“Escape what? Who?
Me
?” Anna pointed to her chest.

“
Myself.
” The irrefutable truth of Edward’s wounded soul reared the head of the beast that had haunted him as a child, and now as a man dying. “They gave me peace. A fleeting, flitting moment of peace,” Edward said.

Anna carried her own internal ghouls, another trait she shared with Edward. He had been so kind when they had made love two weeks ago, his hands, soft and caressing, not grasping and fighting as in the past. Anna grew angry with sadness at the pity she felt for him.

Edward twisted his face. “It was all that stood between me and the thoughts forever exploding inside my head,” he said. A gray sheen overtook his eyes. “They let me forget. They took me from who I was, where I had come from, and where I was going.” He looked to Anna. “They gave me rest and let me forget what I’d never become in this lifetime.” Edward choked up. Despite and because of her anger, Anna wanted to absorb his tears. She felt herself crumbling.

“They let me forget I’d never be like you ..” Edward’s voice cracked. Again he turned to the pool and slowly uttered, “The per son I hated and loved most.” A cloud of sadness descended and took hold of Anna’s shoulders. “I could never be like her or as strong as her,” Edward whispered, and then, “I could never be like Mama. I could never measure up to
you
.” He turned back to Anna. “You were stronger than me and her. I could never be like you. I envied that, what you were, who you are now, the person who took me in. Mama could have been so much more had she had a husband.

“I tried to give you all the things she didn’t have, a home, no need to work. I was determined to have you the way she should have been. But then when I was with you, I felt dirty.” Tears slid down Edward’s cheek. “They gave me rest, the women, from all the things I hated about myself, what I wanted to change and couldn’t. Stella, Esther, and the others let me think I was okay. With you, I stunk. I reeked of poverty. All the smells of that dingy apartment I grew up in came back to me when we made love.” He wrinkled his nose against a frown.

“And what about now?” Anna said.

“I wish it would all end. But I have to stay here and face it with you. And—” Edward doubled over. He fell from his chair onto the patio.

Anna knelt by the pool, and took him into her arms. “Edward. What’s happening?”

Spasms overtook his body. Beneath a sun that had nearly vanished into the sky of indigo, his eyes went shut.?

Chapter 35

Anna called Dr. Grimes as soon as she had gotten Edward into bed. “He seems fine now, but I was scared. I thought I had lost him. Do you think I needs to bring him into the hospital?”

“No. Unfortunately this is par for the course,” Grimes said. “But what if it happens again.”

“The hospice worker will know what to do. Have her call me if she gets concerned. As for you, I’m always available. What I said about Edward, I meant it.”

“Thanks.” A lump formed in Anna’s throat.

The hospice worker arrived within an hour. Anna sat downstairs at the kitchen table while the worker was upstairs making Edward comfortable. Anna set a cup of water inside the microwave to boil for tea. The phone rang.

“Mom, are you okay?” Linda asked after Anna answered.