The Night We Met (15 page)

Thinking about those people still trapped in their airliner seats, about a world where unspeakable things happened, about lives that went on for years and years and then, without warning, were irrevocably broken, I couldn't feel anything but the same detached horror I'd known all day.

When the news started repeating itself, I turned off the set.

What continued to haunt me was that not only had Nate been unfaithful to our marriage vows, he'd done so while still enjoying the benefits of that marriage. He'd made me part of a triangle without giving me a choice. If he'd had her at a time when he and I had not been intimate, I might've been able to get beyond what he'd done. But he hadn't. He'd gone back and forth between the two of us.

Back and forth. Touching me. Touching her.

Sliding down on the couch, I stifled a cry. Nate might be free tonight, might even be with her, but I had children upstairs. Sons who were confused and shocked and hurting, too.

And a little girl who stil trusted him.

Nate wasn't perfect. He was human. He'd stood by me through a lot of hard times. Given beyond what was fair.

Had I acted too hastily?

Was this how Jane Eyre had felt after she'd left Mr. Rochester? I'd always rushed through that part of the book.

Maybe I just needed to open up, to be a little freer in my thinking. Join the 1980s. Understand that Nate was struggling. Afraid.

But it was more than that.

My mind wandered back and I was nineteen again, sitting in a bar down the street from St.

Catherine's, wondering whether my decision to join the convent had been the right one. Realizing it was.

And later, when I sat in my room at the convent days before moving to the mother house, when I answered Nate's letter and read what I wrote—Yes, I'll marry you— my heart had again known peace.

Tonight, lying alone on the couch Nate and I had chosen together several years before, I also knew I'd made the only choice that was right for me that day— tel ing Nate to leave.

Beyond the body, beyond everything, even love, was trust.

Nate's struggle, his fear, his temptation, I could understand. But he'd crossed a line that prevented us from ever going back to where we'd been. Instead of coming to me, telling me he was having problems, letting me be a part of the solution, or at least share in his pain, he'd gone to another woman.

Nate had broken my trust. He'd done it knowingly. And he'd done it repeatedly.

Without trust, there was nothing.

I didn't tell anyone, other than my boys, for some time. It was summer. I was no longer working outside the home. Hiding was easy. Easier than facing the future. It had no definition. No promise of magic. That first month, I focused on getting up in the morning. Changing and dressing Elizabeth, making breakfast, listening for Nate's car in the drive as he came to take the boys to work at the resort. Breathing again when he was gone. I did the dishes and laundry and housework, fed Elizabeth, did more dishes, put her down for a nap. And every single day, that was when I faltered.

I had two hours to fill. Two hours that haunted me. Two hours to replay those hours that had changed my life.

Then Elizabeth would get up again. I'd play with her. Fix dinner. Wait to hear Nate's car a second time. He never came in. And I never looked out.

I avoided the piano like the plague—turning my head away from it anytime I was in the room. I couldn't bear to look at those broken keys.

At the end of the first week, Keith entered the kitchen carrying an envelope with my name on it, made out in Nate's handwriting.

"Put it on the counter," I said to my son. "Dinner's ready."

We were having lasagna. With homemade pasta. Making it had consumed most of Elizabeth's two-hour nap that day.

"Dad said I should give it directly to you." Keith stood in middle of the kitchen, envelope in hand, his gaze resolute.

Too much like his father's.

"In this house, what I say is what happens. And I said to put it on the counter."

A spark of hurt appeared in my oldest son's eyes before he lowered his lids and did as I asked.

"I'm sorry, Keith." I turned from the sink and held out a hand. "Give it to me."

Keith could have told me to get it myself. It was what I deserved. He collected the envelope and handed it to me instead. And stood watching, his eyes seeing far too much.

Hoping he didn't notice my shaking hands, I slit open the envelope, my mind slipping back to the day Nate's first letter had come for me at the convent. I felt about as sick now as I had then.

Was he asking to come back? Would I let him?

Or was this a request for the clothes hanging on his side of the closet? The ones in his drawers upstairs?

Was he coming to col ect his things?

The single piece of paper was too small to fill the envelope. And there was no letter from my husband. It was a check. And the memo line merely said Eliza's share of week's pay-out to owner. It was more than three quarters of our usual income. Either he was siphoning money from the company

—which I knew instinctively he was not—or Nate was living on very little money.

The idea brought tears to my eyes. Nate had always been so generous....

But then a voice that had appeared insidiously in my head this past week reminded me he didn't need a lot of money if he was living in someone else's home, sleeping in her bed, eating at her table.

The boys hadn't said where he was. And I didn't ask.

"Tel your father thank you," I said to Keith. Jimmy came in then, stopping to play patty-cake with Elizabeth, who was in her high chair, and I put the plates on the table.

On the last day of June, 1985, the remaining hostages from TWA Flight 847 boarded a U.S. military plane and were flown to West Germany. Nate had been gone two weeks and one day. I lay there in our bed alone, watching the hostages reach freedom, and out of the blue, with no warning, I began to feel again. An onslaught spread through me. I thought at first it was joy as I lived those glorious moments of release with the men and women who'd been caught in a hell I could only imagine. But suddenly, cruelly, joy was replaced by al the feelings that had been trapped inside me, waiting to be set free. The pain was so severe I couldn't breathe.

And then I started to cry. Huge, racking sobs that shook my body, my bed. Shook me to the very core. I gasped for breath, only to have it taken from me by the next wave of anguish. I had to stop.

Tried to stop. But every moment of calm became an opportunity to fil me up with more despair.

I had thought I'd suffered the worst life had to offer after Sarah died. I'd been wrong. As unbearable as that time had been, through it all I'd been wrapped in love. A security that al owed me the space to grieve.

This was why I hadn't cried. Now...I was never going to stop.

"Mom?"

I held my breath at the sound of Keith's tentative voice. Perhaps he hadn't heard me. Perhaps he'd think I was asleep.

"Mom?" The second voice was closer. And louder, too. Jimmy didn't have the finesse of his older brother.

"Go away."

The mattress dipped on either side of me.

"It's going to be okay, Mom." Keith's voice had changed over the past couple of years. At first, it used to squeak sometimes, but it had become deep, grownup, without my really noticing.

"Keith and I can do anything Dad would do around here," Jimmy said. At nearly fifteen, he was still at the squeaking stage.

I didn't have the heart to argue with him. I rol ed onto my back instead, reaching out a hand to each of my sons.

"You boys have a lot to do. You don't need to be playing nursemaid to me," I told them, finding a smile. "I appreciate the offer, and I'm sure I'll take you up on it now and then, but I don't want you thinking you have to assume the responsibilities of grown men. Your time for that will come soon enough."

I'd lost the life I'd built for myself; I was not going to have them lose theirs, too.

"We're lucky to have income from the resort and while it's not making us millionaires, there's enough to support us all." Two households, I was thinking but didn't say aloud. I thought Keith understood.

"And to send the three of you to college."

"These things happen all the time," I added, and named a couple Nate and I had socialized with a few years back. Jimmy named a woman who'd just started as a reservations clerk at the resort. Keith named the parents of one of his friends. All people whose circumstances we knew I glanced at my sons' solemn faces in the half-lit room.

"All three of those families have to adjust to far bigger changes than we do—the mother being at work al day.

Or a reduced income. Or the kids not seeing their dad anymore." I paused. "We don't. We're really very lucky."

I'd repeated the word lucky. A word I didn't feel at al . And yet, as I spoke to my sons, I encouraged myself, as well. My heart was broken, but it could be worse. Much worse. My entire home could be broken, too, and it wasn't.

I needed to concentrate on that.

And be thankful.

I often thought about underwear these days. Nate's underwear. Who was seeing it. Washing it.

Kissing it.

I'd be minding my own business, cooking some new concoction the boys were going to stick up their noses at but eventual y eat, doing their laundry, teaching Elizabeth to count, cleaning up after the active two-year- old, or watching movies with my sons, and suddenly I'd have a vision of Nate standing in our bathroom with stained underwear in his hands.

I'd see again the stricken look in his eyes.

And I'd sink into the well of darkness that was my constant companion.

Still, I had to live. I had children to take care of.

It occurred to me one evening, as I kneaded bread to go with the peach jam I'd made that afternoon, why Nate hadn't thrown that underwear away. A part of him had wanted to get caught. He'd wanted me to find them.

As his way of telling me what he couldn't bring himself to say?

Hurting me would've been nearly impossible for Nate to do. I'd always believed that.

But then, if it was so impossible, he wouldn't have been able to take his clothes off for another woman. He must've at least thought of me as held her, positioned himself above her. Entered her.

He must have noticed where she was different from me. Felt different. Responded differently.

"Hey, Mom. Let me do that."

I jumped guiltily as Keith came up beside me, more thankful than ever that my son couldn't read my thoughts.

And disappointed in myself for having them—once again.

Chapter 13

"You want to make bread?" I covered my embarrassment with the question. Last I'd known, Keith had been playing an arcade game on the television with Jimmy. My mother had sent them an Atari box with two controls and a series of games the previous Christmas.

"What do I do? Just beat the thing?"

I'd been pounding down the dough when he walked in.

"No," I said, wondering what had motivated this generosity. "Dust your hands with flour and I'll show you," I said, and watched as my broad-shouldered son, huskier than his father and younger brother, put his muscles behind a wad of dough.

"I was thinking," he said as he worked up enough flour dust to coat his face and clothes, and half the floor, as wel . "I'm going to be sixteen next week."

I nodded. We'd talked about going out to dinner to celebrate.

"And with Dad gone and all, I thought it'd be good for me to get my driver's license before school starts. That way I can take Jimmy to school so you don't have to cart Elizabeth out—especially when it gets colder."

Jimmy could also take the bus. Not that either of them had ever had to do that.

"You're signed up for driver's ed for the fall semester."

"I know. But Richard was telling me about this class you can take that goes all day every day for two weeks and then you're done. There's a session scheduled for the first of August."

No! my mind screamed. So loudly I could hardly hear any other thoughts. I couldn't put my baby out on the road with all the maniacs. Not now. Not so soon.

Not while I waited here all alone.

"You have to work," I said through stiff lips.

"I would've missed work if we took a summer vacation like we talked about."

Before Nate left. We'd considered a trip to California to see my mother.

"How much does the class cost?"

He told me, and the price was actually lower than I'd expected. Damn it. "I've got enough saved from working this summer to pay for it," he said.

He was Nate's son there.

Keith continued to knead, and although the bread was going to be denser than I'd wanted it, I didn't stop him.

"The class, the license, is all fine and good, Keith, but that's only the beginning. There's not much point if you don't have a car. Which you don't. And then what about insurance? And gas?"

"If you say yes to the class, I was planning to ask Dad for a car. He always said he'd help me get my first car. And right now, I kind of figure he owes us, you know?"

The boys never mentioned their father—either positively or otherwise. And neither did I.

I wasn't going to be one of those women who bad- mouthed their father to her children. Keith and Jimmy needed Nate. Elizabeth did, too. Being a rotten husband didn't make him a bad father.

"There's still the gas and insurance."

"With the money I've saved I can just about swing the insurance. And, Mom, I was thinking I could either work weekends at the resort for gas, or ask you for it since I'll be doing the driving you'd have been doing anyway."

He'd thought it al through. So well my head was spinning. And before I could stop and think of a way out, I'd agreed.

My firstborn was going to have his license. His freedom. He wasn't going to be as dependent on me ever again.

I couldn't sleep that night. I tried to read, but neither of my faithful companions—Jane Eyre or my Bible—was able to comfort my unsettled heart.