by Leanna Ellis
“So where are we going?” I smile and reach for his hand. “The Old Hockheim Inn?”
His grin is only lukewarm. “Not now.”
Something inside me pinches. Mother’s words come back to me. Who do you think was seen coming out of the Old Hockheim Inn yesterday afternoon? I push the thought away.
“I know this is difficult dealing with Mother. If you want, you and Oliver could go home.” Which might be the best idea, but I refuse to admit that I’m looking to put Mike out of Josie’s reach. Or protect Oliver from being unveiled as the sheriff’s son. “I’ll do my best with the situation here and try to help pick up the pieces when everything blows up.”
“And it will.” Mike pulls his hand away from mine and grips the steering wheel with both hands. He looks like a man on a mission. A man with something on his mind. “We can’t leave anyway. Not with Oliver. He’s stuck here until we get the test results back.”
We skim down the highway, then turn onto a back road. It’s the one Josie took the other night. “Are we going to Makeout Flats?”
“What’s that?”
“Where kids used to park.” I try to scoot closer to him but am restrained by my seat belt.
His mouth remains straight. “I thought we’d take a look at that split in the ground. Everyone is talking about it. It’s a big tourist attraction these days.”
I’ve seen it. But I keep that to myself.
“It was in the paper this weekend. Your mother isn’t the only thing making headlines.”
“You think this charade could hit the paper?”
The car jounces over a rut, and I grab the side door.
“Your mother’s antics could be a movie-of-the-week.”
I would laugh if it weren’t so real. “Why can’t Mother understand that she can not pull this off?”
“She sees what she wants to see.”
“I guess you’re right. She’s managed to accomplish everything else she’s put her mind to. Why not this?”
“Exactly.”
He slows the car. Ahead are warning signs posted by the sheriff’s department. Several yards away a trailer is parked beside the giant crack.
“Look at that!” Mike looks out the window. He turns and drives north, following the posted warning signs. “Is this where you were the other night?”
“Maybe. Looks different in the light.” The chasm looks more alarming. “I don’t see Josie’s car. They must have pulled it out.”
I realize then she didn’t update me. But then I didn’t ask.
“I wonder if there’s much damage to her car, if it can be driven.” My motives are clear to me, at least, but Mike doesn’t seem to be paying attention. It’s a trick Mother would try, and it turns my stomach. I try a different track. “But then Josie doesn’t tell me everything anymore. Not like she used to. Friendships … relationships change.” I glance sideways at Mike.
He has turned the car toward the rift and parked. He stares straight ahead. “The paper said it goes north for a mile. Really tore up a pasture, cracked the foundation of several houses, popped the rails on the railroad track.”
“Amazing how one crack in the surface can cause so much damage,” I muse, more to myself than Mike.
“Yeah.”
I can’t get over the fact that something is wrong, something is bothering Mike. I know from experience that he needs space to process what’s bothering him before he can share it. So I wait.
For a long while we stare out the windshield at the jagged break in the earth’s crust. The dirt and rocks are a rusty brown and pale limestone. I can’t help thinking of the splits in my own life, cracks and fissures created by my own mistakes. I’ve tried to patch them. But have I? Do they remain buried deep, unstable, ready to shake my foundation and split my life wide open?
“Suzanne,” his voice takes on a formal tone, “there’s something we need to talk about.”
I twist my fingers in my lap, brace myself. Are the rumors true? Does Mike suddenly have something to confess? No, I can’t believe that. My own guilt swells up inside me. It has to be about Drew. Mike knows we dated back in high school. He just doesn’t know what else. Did Josie say something? Did he notice the resemblance in Oliver and Drew, which seems so obvious now that I’ve seen them together. I realize I’m still holding onto the door handle, as if bracing for my own personal earthquake.
“Okay.”
Mike fists the steering wheel, leans forward and curses.
“Mike?”
He’s silent for a long moment.
“Are you okay?”
I reach out toward him but he looks stiff, like he doesn’t want to be touched. But I do. I need the warmth of his touch to reassure me. I can feel heat coming off him in waves. I need to be held, need Mike’s arms around me, to feel his strength, the security of his embrace, and at this moment I fear I will never feel that again.
“What’s wrong?”
My heart pounds in my chest. Please God, don’t let Josie have talked to him, whispered her suspicions. Is that what she was doing at the dance hall? At the hotel?
“Mike?”
“Okay, here it is.” He doesn’t look at me. He rubs a hand over his now nearly bald head as he used to do. Of course, he used to leave tufts standing on end. Not now. “Your mother told me there are some rumors going around.”
“Rumors?” My voice is a hoarse whisper. “You don’t hold stock in rumors now, do you?”
“No. But you might. So I wanted to tell you first. Before you heard … well, before you thought or questioned or …”
“Is this about you and Josie at the Old Hockheim Inn?” My voice trembles just slightly.
“You know?”
“Mother mentioned something to me.”
Mike curses again, looks away. Is it guilt or anger? I can’t read him. Whatever it is, it seems to be an overreaction to something minor. I’m not sure why he’s even mentioning something. He is not one to give credence to rumors. When rumors reach me in our circle of friends, I’ll ask Mike, “Did you hear that Travis and Michaela broke up?” He usually can’t remember, doesn’t care. So why now the angst over a rumor?
“What’s wrong?”
“It’s true.”
My heart stops.
“I was there with her at the Old Hockheim Inn.”
I catch a breath as if it could be my last. I stare at my husband, try to replay his words. My chest hurts. Feels like something has rammed into it.
“What?”
“Josie was—”
My heartbeat fills my ears. A trembling starts deep inside and spreads outward. Suddenly I’m outside the car. And I don’t even remember opening the door or getting out. I’m walking away from the car toward the rift in the ground.
“Suzanne!”
I stop. I’m being ridiculous. I’m reacting like my mother. I pull in deep, calming breaths, then turn to face him as he approaches.
“It’s not what you think.”
“Did you sleep with her?” I figure that’s the best place to start.
“No.” He rakes his fingers through his hair. His short hair. It’s an old habit. I realize that he didn’t wear his cowboy hat today. “Of course not.”
Relief washes over me. I start to laugh at my reaction, but Mike’s seriousness quells it. I study him for a moment, the tense lines around his mouth, his narrowed eyes. Could it be about Oliver then? The truth pushes up into my throat. Should I tell him? But how? After all this time? I didn’t really know the truth until I saw Drew again. And what would the truth solve now? Only rip us apart as a family.
“What is it? Why were you there with Josie?”
“She … I … well,” He jams his hands in his jean pockets and hunches his shoulders forward.
“Was my father there too?”
“No.”
“Just you and Josie?”
“Yes.”
The sun is hot and I can feel it along my scalp. “Did she tell you something?”
> His mouth twists as if he struggles with how to ask me.
I reach toward him, want to hold onto him. “You can tell me.”
“Thing is, Suz, I can’t. I promised. You’ve got to trust me with this.”
His words seem broken, like slivers of glass embedded in my flesh. What is he talking about? It doesn’t sound like this is about Oliver or Drew. This is about Josie. And him. Something he knows. A secret maybe?
Josie’s words come back to me about how she dated a man old enough to be her father. Did she mean my father? No. I can’t believe that about my father. Maybe Josie wanted to date my father. Maybe. But even that is a stretch for my imagination. My father wouldn’t fool around with another woman.
“So what is it? What is the big secret?”
He doesn’t answer.
I know if he promised not to tell me something, his honor will hold him to it. Frustrated, I say, “Mike, just tell me. I won’t freak out. I won’t tell Mother. I won’t be mad. But I have to know what she’s telling you.” The words slip out of my own mouth before I can catch them. I try to cover them by saying, “I have to know that nothing is going on between you two.”
“Do you trust me?”
My throat swells. I swallow my confession, my own guilt choking me. Shamed, I look away. I realize it’s my own sin, my own inadequacies and weakness that makes me doubt.
“Can you, Suz?”
Silence throbs between us. My mind is numb, unable to think. My heart feels like this dry, broken ground, with its large, jagged crack. The doubts, the lies, they’re all my fault. But I can’t explain this to Mike.
I blink at him. Then again. His image blurs. Acidic tears burn my eyes, scald my cheeks.
“Yes.”
He reaches for me, but I turn away. Before I realize what has happened, I’m behind the wheel and spinning the car around, leaving Mike standing by the crack in the dust. I don’t know where I’m going. I don’t know what I’m running from.
Yes, I do. I’m running from myself.
From the truth that stands between us.
19
I don’t know how long I sit in the car, staring out the bug-smeared window at the hilly landscape. Tears come and go like a water faucet turning on and off. It’s not Mike. It’s me. It’s not Josie or this weekend, this funeral or my parents. It’s my past. I wish I knew how to fix things, how to rid myself of this guilt, these lies.
My thoughts keep shifting, an unstable foundation to my actions and reactions. Once when I was a child, my father found a snake in the garage. When he tried to kill it, the snake squirmed under the car, whipping first one way then the other. My thoughts feel like that now, burrowing into a tiny opening, winding inward, lurking in deep caverns, disappearing.
Would I even recognize the truth if I found it? I’ve hidden it for so long, I might not know it anymore.
I know how these things can happen. I know how the pressures and fears and needs blind and destroy. And in a hot, flashing moment you reach out. And regret it for the rest of your life. I know how those tiny moments, those decisions, those rationalizations occur. And I know about not being able to find the words to explain, to tell the truth. Sometimes it’s easier to live with a lie.
Another thought rocks me. That’s how it is with Mother. She’d rather live with a lie than admit the truth that her marriage died, that Daddy wanted someone else. Maybe our motivations are different. Maybe the lies are poles apart. But the heart of our difficulties is the same.
Mother isn’t the first person to have difficulties in her marriage. When Mike and I couldn’t get pregnant, we struggled. We suffered the humiliation and discomfort of medical tests. Our lovemaking was reduced to temperature readings and performing on demand. Then the battles began.
“Mike,” I remember saying, calling to him, from the bedroom, “guess what?” I tried to make my tone playful, but I couldn’t hide the desperation, the fear, the urgency.
He didn’t answer. So I went to the den and found him studying some legal brief. He rubbed his tired eyes. It was late, past time for bed. I felt my internal clock ticking away.
“Mike,” I tried again, “wanna take a recess?”
“I can’t now, Suz.”
“But—”
“I have to be in court tomorrow.”
“But—”
“This is important. This is my job.”
“I thought this was important to you too.”
Anger rose inside me like the tide, slow but undeniable. I couldn’t help it when my temperature changed, when my ovary decided to release its egg. This was the opportune moment. If we didn’t make love now right now, it would be too late and we would have to wait another month. Another thirty days. Another seven hundred and twenty hours. How much longer would we have to wait? Would I have to wait?
“Mike—”
“Suzanne, I can’t. I’m busy. I have to finish this.”
It wasn’t one argument. Or two. It was month after month. Mike’s temper grew shorter, and so did mine. He started avoiding me, coming to bed later. Working late at the office, getting up earlier. I would go to bed with his side of the bed empty. I’d awaken with the sheets rumpled but cool to the touch. I couldn’t think of anything but cribs and yellow blankets as soft as the downy head of a baby. During the day I would go to baby stores, touch the clothes, look at the stuffed animals. Inevitably some woman would walk in pushing a stroller and I’d find myself following after them like an obsessed fan. When Mike and I would go out to eat, I would see a couple with a baby or a young child. Mike would be talking about some case, but I wouldn’t be able to stop staring at the baby, wondering if our baby would look as cute gnawing on a French fry.
“Suz? Are you listening to me?”
“Huh? Yes, of course.”
But I wasn’t. I couldn’t.
My obsession drove Mike further into his work.
Then came the last straw.
“We haven’t made love in two months!” I accused him. “You said you wanted a baby.” He was letting me down. Abandoning me. The way it seemed God had. I had prayed for a baby. I’d even fasted a time or two. But nothing. No answer. No baby. “You said—”
“Yes, I want a baby! But I’m not obsessed with it. You are!”
He shoved his papers into his briefcase.
“What are you doing?”
He stalked out of the room and into our bedroom. I followed after him, hopeful he was going to make love to me even though he was angry. But when I reached the bedroom, there was a suitcase on the bed and he was tossing in clothes, his toothbrush, socks, underwear.
Cold sunk into my bones and I began to shiver. “What are you doing?”
“I can’t deal with this anymore.”
“But—”
“You don’t want me, Suzanne. You want a baby, not a husband. This is all you think about!” He grabbed a box of pregnancy tests from the cabinet in the bathroom and threw it across the room. The box smashed against the wall, and plastic containers clattered to the floor.
Then he left.
I cleaned up the mess. One pregnancy test after another. I curled up in the chair next to the bed. And I cried.
I don’t even remember how many days went by. One. Two. Maybe three or four. I would wake up, wander through the rest of the house. Sit in the nursery that I had decorated only in my mind. Restless, I moved to another room, then another. Sometimes I would sit and stare off at nothing, just the stucco wall, trying to find a pattern, an answer. I laid on the cold tile floor in the kitchen. I tried to pray, but the words wouldn’t come.
I went to the phone. I didn’t know who to call. I tried Mike’s office, but he was in a meeting. Or in court. Or on the phone. He simply wasn’t taking my calls or calling me back.
Never had I felt so alone, so lost.
Who could I call? Mother? And hear her condemnation? She would say it was my fault. I thought of friend after friend but then discarded each name. How could I tell them what I�
�d done, how I had pushed Mike away, how he’d rejected me?
When I finally stepped out of the house, the sun was blinding in its brilliance, stinging my eyes. I recoiled, my thoughts too dark. And I retreated into myself, into the house.
When the phone rang, I prayed it was Mike.
The voice was familiar. It touched a chord in me. I reached out for help.
Drew was in California. He wanted to see me. He’s an old friend, I told myself. Maybe he’s getting his life back on track. Maybe he needs me. Mike certainly didn’t. And I needed to be needed. I needed something familiar. Something from home. Something or someone to make me feel secure and comforted and loved.
I didn’t want to face the truth, that my own harping, my own obsession, had killed my marriage. I had turned into my mother. I simply wanted to forget the pain. I didn’t want to think about whether my marriage was ending. I didn’t want to think at all.
So I agreed to meet Drew at a park. He still rode a motorcycle. He still was handsome in that reckless way of his. A maverick. A loner.
We talked, then went to a restaurant for lunch. We wandered along the Imperial Beach Pier, reconnecting. He made an offhanded joke, and for the first time in days or weeks or months I laughed and began to relax.
Dinner followed. And more talking. We talked about old times. We talked about our lives, what was happening, or not happening. That is, Drew talked. I asked questions. I didn’t want to talk about me. I didn’t want to talk about my marriage or Mike or how I had failed.
Drew had been riding around the country, trying to find himself. I was trying to find myself too. And the spark of a flame we had once felt for each other ignited. We went to his hotel room. To talk. Only to talk. Or so we said. We didn’t want to break the connection that had been tenuously restrung between us.