by Gina Ardito
I made my tea, brought it upstairs, and sipped while I dressed in sweats and sneakers. By ten a.m., I’d had a yogurt and whole wheat toast for breakfast and now stood outside, surrounded by a pile of amber and scarlet leaves I’d amassed into a pile. I don’t know why, but a sudden playful urge overwhelmed me, and I dropped the rake I’d been using and tossed myself into the middle of the fallen foliage. For decades, I’d handled all the yard work here and at my mom’s. Yet, unlike my siblings who’d often leaped into the piles I’d amassed, I’d never found any enjoyment in the task. Until now. Giggling like a loon, I tossed armfuls of the leaves into the air and watched them scatter back to earth in haphazard designs. Sure, I’d just destroyed all the work I’d done this morning, but I didn’t regret this moment of sheer joy. In fact, I rolled over onto my stomach and tossed leaves up to float down upon my back.
“So this is what happens when you spend time with a child,” a voice sneered from behind me. “You revert to childish behavior yourself.”
I didn’t bother to turn around. “Get off my property, Michael, or I’ll call the police.”
“Do you have any idea how foolish you appear to everyone in town?” He crouched beside me, his bent knee inches from my face. “What on earth can you possibly see in that boy? I know what he sees in you. You’re a notch on his belt.”
I’d like to say his snide commentary didn’t affect me at all, but I won’t lie. For a split second, I hesitated, my hand clutching a fistful of dry leaves.
He took full advantage of my uncertainty. “Look at you. Rolling around on the ground like a dog in heat. You should be ashamed of yourself.”
Thank God, Josh’s voice popped into my head. You have a great smile, but it’s like seeing Bigfoot. No one believes me when I try to tell them. You almost never smile. That was the old Francesca. The new Frannie not only smiled, she laughed.
Rolling over, I gathered an armful of leaves and sat up. “I’m making a conscious effort to add more fun to my life. I think I’ll begin by saying goodbye to you. Goodbye, Michael.”
He stood, glaring down at me, his eyes glittering like frigid ice chips. “You’re making a mistake, Francesca.”
“No.” Undaunted, I rose so he and I were, once again, on a level playing field. “I’m correcting the mistake I almost made five years ago. Now, go.”
Anger heated the space between us, but he eventually turned to walk away. Once his back was to me, I tossed the leaves high into the air. As they wafted down around me, I cheered. “Wooooo-hoooo!”
****
Emily
Roy looked from me to Margie, then back again. “Who the hell are you?”
“Roy!” Shock jolted me upright. I didn’t know what had surprised me more: Margie’s announcement or my husband’s rudeness.
Margie only cackled at him. “I’m your wife’s friend—someone she can count on—a position you should be holding in her life.”
“Yeah, well, thanks for the unsolicited advice.” He shot to his feet and stalked toward her. “Now mind your own business.” To punctuate his demand, he yanked at the curtain until it reconverted into a cloth barrier between us and my roommate.
Icy fury crackled around Roy and me, nose-diving the room’s temperature. “Get out, Roy. Out of my room.” I picked up my call button. “Don’t make me buzz the nurse.”
He must have sensed he’d gone too far because he stared hard at the plastic object grasped tightly in my hand for several long seconds. At last, his posture sagged, and he leaned against the sink. “I don’t get it, Em. What’s going on?”
“I don’t know,” I replied, the first real honest answer I’d given him in ages. “We lost that spark. I don’t know how or when, but whatever good we had between us has been missing for a while. Lately, every conversation disintegrates, and every moment we’re together becomes a battle. I’m tired of arguing, tired of the stress, tired of the resentment.”
To his credit, he didn’t try to deny it. He simply nodded, his face a mask of misery. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. “But, moving out? Are you sure?”
“At least temporarily, yes. I need time and space. I’m not happy; you’re not happy; the kids aren’t happy. I don’t know if the heart attack changed how I see us, but it definitely changed me. When I’m around you, I become tense and defensive. And I hate that. I know this comes as a surprise to you, and I’m sorry. But I’m just not willing to let my life continue the way it’s been going. Especially since I don’t know when another heart attack might come along and zap!” I clutched my chest. “Lights out for me. Permanently.”
“Maybe you should talk to Dr. Calderon first. She might not think it’s such a good idea for you to be on your own so soon after this…zap.” He turned his gaze to the window.
“I’ll check with her,” I said, “but unless she tells me moving out is going to put me back in here, I’m not coming home.”
He swerved his focus back to me, eyes glinting. “You’re not taking the kids.”
It wasn’t a question, and I didn’t argue. “No.” The thought hurt and hollowed me, but I knew better than to debate where the kids would be better off. Not only would moving out uproot them from all they loved, but, I still didn’t know where I’d end up—despite Margie’s impetuous offer. How could I drag my kids into my uncertainty?
“Jeez, Em, what kind of mother doesn’t want her kids?”
I sucked in a breath. By announcing my intention to separate, I’d hurt him. And he’d just retaliated. With stunning brutality. Exhaling, I fisted my hands beneath the sheet and struggled for composure. Yelling at each other wouldn’t help either of us come to terms here. “I want them, but I can’t take them right now. Whether I’m home or not, I don’t have the strength or health to take care of them.”
“And what exactly am I supposed to tell them about the fact that you’ve abandoned them? That you’d rather live with some old woman than with your family?”
He didn’t mean what he said. Those were his mother’s words, not his. They still stung, though. “Tell them the truth,” I retorted. “That I can’t get better at home.”
“That’s not the truth.”
“Yeah, Roy,” I said, my voice whisper-soft and filled with regret. “It is.”
“So, great. Because things are tough between us, you’re going to run away. That’s a terrific lesson to teach our teenagers. I can’t believe how selfish you’re being. Have you even considered what I’m supposed to do without you to help with the kids?”
“Yes. The same thing you’d have to do if I’d run off with Ambrose Chase. Improvise. Figure it out.”
“Are you leaving us for Ambrose Chase?”
“Of course not. I’m leaving for me.”
In advising me to lighten my load, Dr. Stewart probably hadn’t intended that I abandon Roy and the kids to sink or swim without me. But now that I’d decided to leave, I figured I might as well get a few other issues off my chest. “Ask your mother to help you out. She’s always chock-full of unwanted parenting advice.”
Tunneling his fingers through his hair, he sighed. “She just wants to help, you know.”
“She wants to help you. Your mother has absolutely no use for me. Never has, never will.”
“Oh, come on. That’s not true.”
“Yeah, it is. Don’t believe me? Go home. Tell her that we’re separating. She won’t do cartwheels or handstands, but she will list a thousand reasons why this will be the best thing that ever happened to you. Later, when you and the kids aren’t around, or maybe even after you seem more comfortable with the situation, she’ll do the cartwheels and handstands. Hell, if our separation should eventually lead to divorce, she’ll host a ticker-tape parade down Main Street.”
Roy’s complexion bleached. “Divorce? Who said anything about divorce? For God’s sake, be honest with me. Are you leaving us for good, Em?”
I stared at the inky stamp identifying my sheet as the property of Morrison General Hospital. “I
don’t know.”
“Well, hey, thanks for pulling the rug out from under us all,” he retorted as he straightened. “I gotta go. Our kids are waiting, and I have to drop off your prescriptions. See ya around.” He shoved aside the curtain and disappeared.
I could’ve called after him, maybe stopped him from walking away under so much controlled rage, but what for? I had nothing left to say. After he’d stalked out, I curled into a tight ball and willed the tremors racking my body to stop. Deep breaths, I reminded myself. Somehow, though, I knew all the deep breathing in the world wouldn’t fill the cracks splitting my heart.
“You did the right thing, you know.”
At the creaky voice above me, I looked up from my misery cocoon. Margie stood at my bedside. I couldn’t reply. My throat had closed around the tears I wouldn’t allow to leak past my eyes.
She reached a heavily-veined hand out to pat my shoulder. “For the record, I think he does love you. But he needs a reminder of that fact. Same goes for you. So you’ll come home with me and Vinnie. I’m being discharged tomorrow morning, and I know my doctor will be happier if I tell him I’ve got someone younger staying at our apartment to keep an eye on me.”
I choked on a sob. “I don’t think your doctor meant you should have another patient taking care of you.”
“Pffft! You look after me, I’ll look after you. And Vinnie will look after both of us. He lives to take care of ‘helpless’ women. It’s a perfect setup.” I must have looked dubious because she patted my shoulder again and added, “It’s gonna be fine, sweetheart. You’ll see. A little time away, and you’ll both figure out where you belong.”
I nodded and curled up tighter, hugging my knees to my chest.
“Marriage is a funny thing.” Margie’s slippered feet whisked the floor as she shuffled back to her bed. “Sometimes, circumstances have become so negative, a couple can’t find anything positive. Vinnie and I went through that a lot. Whenever money was tight, or the kids were in trouble, or he worked too many hours, or all of the above, I’d sit and stew. I’d wonder if I’d screwed up my life—and his. I’d imagine things would be so much better if we’d never married.”
Her words struck a nerve, and I rolled over to face her. She sat up in her bed, her eyes twinkling with some wise, ageless light.
“How long have you two been married?” I asked.
“Forty-six years. And let me tell you...” She chuckled. “...I bet we spent at least half that time fighting over nonsense. All couples fight. All couples hit rough patches. Anybody who tells you different is either a lifelong liar or a lifelong bachelor. You can’t live with a person for that many years and expect nothing but laughter and chocolates. If you don’t have episodes of tears and turnips, you can’t really appreciate the laughter and chocolates, can you?”
“No, I guess not.”
“Of course you can’t.” She sighed and settled against her pillow again. “Forty-six years. And if I could, I’d relive every day with him.”
“Even the tears and turnips days?”
“Especially the tears and turnips days. Those are the days I know we loved each other the most because we got through them. Together. Sure I complain about him sometimes. He’s a pain in the ass, but he’s my pain in the ass.” She rolled over, turning her back to me. “You’ll see. You either love each other, or you don’t. There’s no in-between.”
Chapter 15
Emily
“Tell me about your marriage.”
I don’t know what I expected in Dr. Calderon, but the female drill sergeant seated across from me wasn’t close to any picture in my imagination. Spiky, silver hair cropped above her bare earlobes enhanced the angles of her razor sharp cheekbones and pointy chin. She wore a steel gray suit with a dove gray blouse, and her eyes were so dark they looked black. Her entire look reflected all the emotional depth of a great white shark.
I squirmed in the leather club chair in the family consultation room that Dr. Calderon had commandeered for our first visit. “What do you want to know?”
“You’ve opted to leave your family right now. Let’s start with that, shall we?”
Had she already taken Roy’s side? A wall rose inside me. “You think it’s a mistake?”
The counselor’s posture remained straight and stiff, her expression a blank canvas. “It doesn’t matter what I think. Why don’t you tell me why you want to separate from your husband at this particular juncture?”
Oh, yeah. She was definitely Team Roy. I sat up, ready to tell her my side. “How much time have we got?”
“All the time we need.” She waved her hand, encompassing the private consultation room.
“I didn’t make the decision lightly, you know,” I insisted. “Things haven’t been right between us for a while now.”
“Give me an example, if you can.”
Oh, I could. I just didn’t want to. Telling some stranger intimate secrets about my life with Roy made me uncomfortable. Betrayal tasted bitter on my tongue. “It’s just little things, I guess,” I hemmed. “Nothing crucial.”
“They can’t be too little if you’re considering the end of a marriage that’s lasted…” She glanced down at her notes. “…more than seventeen years.”
I shook my head. “I should probably talk to Roy.”
“You’ll have an opportunity to speak to him later. Right now, I’d like you to talk to me. That’s why we’re both here. It’s important for me to understand your current state of mind. So, tell me, what hasn’t been right between the two of you?”
On a defeated sigh, I opted to reveal just a few things about Roy and me—nothing too big, nothing too small. At least, that was my original intention. Once I started, though, I couldn’t seem to stop. All of my complaints: the distance between us, his mother, his constant harping over our finances, his mother, how he took me for granted, his mother, his hesitancy to discipline the kids, which always made me The Bad Guy. And of course, most of all, I talked about his mother. I really spilled my guts—without interruption—for a good twenty minutes before the words slowed to a halt. Drained, I sank into the cushioned back of the chair and waited for Dr. Calderon to sneer at me and dismiss my concerns as petty.
But she didn’t react the way I expected. She allowed a slight smile to touch her mocha-glossed lips. “Feel better now?”
“Yeah.” And I did. I suddenly understood the lure of analysis. There was something so liberating about telling an impartial stranger all your secrets and fears without open judgment. Even if she wasn’t a hundred percent impartial.
“Good. Now, tell me this. Do you think you would have decided to separate from your husband if you hadn’t just suffered a heart attack?”
I thought about that carefully before I answered. “I don’t know for sure. I mean, the thought’s been in the back of my mind for a while.”
“Oh? For how long?”
I traced a cabbage rose on the upholstery with a fingertip. “I honestly can’t say. But I can tell you I’ve dreamed about asking Roy for a divorce. More than once. Not dream, like a fantasy while I’m stuck in traffic. I mean a real dream. When I’m asleep. Don’t they say that your subconscious creates options for you in your dreams?”
She jotted something in the spiral steno pad on her lap. “Is that what you believe? That divorce is an option for you?”
“Divorce is always an option, isn’t it?”
“I suppose.”
She supposed. What kind of answer was that? I slapped a hand on the arm of my chair. “Don’t you get it? Maybe Roy and I shouldn’t have been married, to begin with. Maybe his mother was right.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Because we didn’t marry for love, we married for respectability. I was sixteen and pregnant. That’s not enough of a reason for two people to get married.”
“You didn’t love Roy when you married him?”
“Of course I did. I do,” I corrected on the next breath before she could nail me on
my use of the past tense. “But, we were kids, ourselves. We had no idea what we were getting into. The odds were stacked against us from the start.”
“Then why did you two get married?”
I thought back to that crazy time, the panic, the disappointment. “When I told Roy I was pregnant, he barely blinked. He just shrugged and said, ‘Okay, so we’ll get married.’ Like someone else might say, ‘You don’t have Diet Pepsi? Okay, I’ll have a Diet Coke.’”
“How did that make you feel?”
“I couldn’t believe he offered right off the bat. I wasn’t even sure that was what I wanted.”
“What did you want?”
“What do you think I wanted?” A desperate chuckle escaped. “To not be pregnant.”
“An abortion?”
“God, no!” I practically shouted the denial. “That’s my Melissa you’re talking about. I can’t imagine never having her in my life.”
“We’re not talking about Melissa, your daughter. We’re talking about you, younger than your daughter is now, pregnant, terrified, and not wanting to be pregnant.”
“But I wasn’t thinking about abortion.”
“Then what were you thinking?”
My teeth tugged at my lower lip. “I wasn’t. It was more like wishing. I was wishing I wasn’t pregnant. Wishing I’d wake up and it would all be a dream. I know it sounds stupid, but I was a dumb kid, in way over my head.”
“So was Roy.”
I couldn’t argue with that. She had a definite point. “We both grew up too fast. I think that’s why we’re butting heads now. If I hadn’t become pregnant, if we hadn’t married right away, I doubt we’d still be a couple now. That’s another reason I think we should separate. Maybe my mother-in-law was right all these years. Maybe I did ruin Roy’s life. Neither of us ever went to college…” I thought about that for a long time, about the limitations we’d placed on ourselves by getting married when Roy was right out of high school and I dropped out in eleventh grade. What if I hadn’t become pregnant? What if I had graduated and both of us had gone on to college? Our finances would be a lot cheerier. But we wouldn’t have Melissa. Or probably Corey, for that matter.