by Terra Little
She was as attached to it as some people were to their pets.
Pam closed her eyes as she settled the guitar across her lap and let her mind take her to the stage. She strummed her fingers lightly over the strings, reacquainting herself with the chords, then she began playing. Her voice came out softly, joining the music hesitantly at first and then growing stronger the longer she played. She forgot about the other guests at the B&B as she played and sang. It was a song she’d started writing a few years ago and had only recently rediscovered, scribbled on a sheet of paper and tucked inside a book she’d started reading and quickly grown bored with. Over and over, she sang the lyrics she remembered writing, until they flowed into a melody she could work with. More lyrics came to mind and she weaved them into the fabric of the song. She had started off freestyling and playing around with the song, but she ended up scrambling off the bed, searching for a pen and paper to write the lyrics down.
She was still making music when the sky lightened and the sun began peeking from behind the clouds. Before she spread out to sleep, she named the song “Have Mercy On Me.”
The sun was peeking from behind the clouds on the morning Paris Greene rolled over in bed and realized that Chad was no longer lying beside her. She cracked her eyes open and looked around the bedroom slowly. She saw him sitting on the very edge of the bed, knees spread, hands dangling in the space between them and staring into space.
Paris recognized the defeated slump of his shoulders and wrestled with the choice to pretend that she was asleep and ignore him or to open her mouth and say something. Eventually she rolled to her side and propped her head on her hand, touched his back softly. Chad glanced back at her over his shoulder, then looked away quickly.
“Did I wake you up?”
Her eyes slid over to the alarm clock and noted the time. 5:40 A.M. “It’s almost time for me to wake up, anyway.” She took a deep breath. “This is the third time this week I’ve opened my eyes and seen you looking like that, Chad. Tell me what’s wrong. Is it something with work?”
“No, it’s not work, Paris.” He scooted around on the mattress until he was sitting sideways and could see her face without having to crane his neck. “Is everything all right with you? Are you happy?”
“Where did that come from?”
“I’m just wondering if you’re happy and if you are, what is it that’s making you happy?”
“What if I say I’m not? Will that make you feel better about the fact that you’re not happy? Is that what you’re trying to get at?”
“We’ve talked about this before,” he said carefully.
“Yeah, we have. Three times. I don’t know about you, but I’m sick of talking about it. We’re married. Is this what married couples do, sit around talking about how unhappy they are?”
“I don’t know what married couples do.” He blew out a harsh breath. “But somehow I don’t think they do what we’ve been doing.”
“What do you want me to do? What can I do to make you happy?” The beginnings of anger were in her voice. She spun away from Chad’s probing eyes and rolled to a sitting position on the side of the bed.
She rooted around on the floor for her slippers and pushed her feet into them.
“It’s not that you make me unhappy, Paris. Why is it that every time this subject comes up, you immediately assume that the problem is with you?” He watched her come around the bed and storm past him to the bathroom.
“Why is it that this subject keeps coming up, Chad? It’s like an every three-month thing now. Everything is fine for a while and then, wham, you hit me with this. Why can’t we find a good place and stay there?”
Chad rose from the bed and went to stand in the bathroom doorway. Paris squeezed a line of toothpaste on her toothbrush and looked at his reflection in the mirror. The first time he’d told her in that roundabout way of his that he was unhappy she hadn’t known what to do with the information, so she’d stored it away and ignored it. Maybe he was having trouble adjusting to married life, she thought. He just needed a little more time to get used to the responsibilities of a new house and a family.
But they were settled into a groove by now. He was teaching at the high school and coaching the girls’ volleyball team, and he said he enjoyed working with the kids. She was working as a social worker at the children’s home right outside of town and she loved her job too. In another year or so she planned to apply for a supervisory position, and they had already discussed his intention to apply for the position of school principal after the current one retired, which was expected in the next five years. They lived in a nice home, spacious and tastefully furnished, and one they had picked out together and decided on buying. Nikki was almost five and flourishing, looking more like her father every day and reading already. And he still wasn’t satisfied.
Theirs was an easy relationship, mainly because Chad didn’t mind sharing in the household chores and he insisted on being a hands-on parent. He started dinner as many nights as she did, he did laundry, ironed most of his own clothing and helped Nikki with her homework, all without having to be asked. When she’d discovered that he also left the bathroom as neat as he found it, Paris had considered herself lucky to have him. She didn’t nag him and she gave him plenty of space to move around in. What else did he want?
“Something’s missing, Paris. Don’t you feel it?”
Paris turned on the tap and dampened the bristles of her toothbrush, then bent over and went to work brushing her teeth. She used the time to consider his question carefully.
She recalled the first time she’d ever laid eyes on Chad, coming across his porch and jogging down the steps casually. Though she didn’t think she’d had a crush on him all those years ago, she did remember thinking that he was nice to look at. Like a painting that drew the eye back to it time and time again, but you couldn’t really say why. For a fourteen-year-old boy, she had thought him surprisingly appealing to the eye. He’d had none of the unchecked scruffiness the other boys she knew had, and he was always meticulously groomed. She had always believed that was part of what Nate had initially liked about Chad, too. The two of them running around together had attracted more than a few appreciative feminine glances, from both young and old.
In high school and then again in college, Chad played basketball and his body was well-formed and leanly muscled as a result. Long hands and feet, once dangling from his extremities awkwardly, now fit his frame perfectly. He treated himself to a manicure once a month in Atlanta, while he was receiving a pedicure, and he was fastidious about keeping his hair shaped and trimmed. He never skipped out on his biweekly barber appointments and his infatuation with clothes and shoes rivaled that of any woman’s. He had what some would call presence. He turned heads just by walking into a room. Paris knew of at least two women who regularly flirted with her husband, despite his married status, but she tried not to let it bother her.
She couldn’t blame those women for noticing that Chad was easy on the eyes. When he was fourteen he was cute, but as a fully-grown man he was magnetic. She thought it had something to do with his eyes and the way they stared out of his face like lasers. They were an average shade of brown, except they were remarkably expressive and framed with long, thick lashes. If he allowed himself to give in to anger, which he rarely did, they could cut like knives. When he was passionate about something or someone, they could made you lose track of your train of thought, and when he was indifferent, their affect was flat, almost like he was in a trance.
His smile, when it came, was wide and slightly tilted to one side, sandwiched between deep slashes in his jaws and flashing brightly out of a longish cocoa-brown face.
She liked to see him smile, liked to come upon him in the middle of laughing about something silly, and thought with more than a little sadness that she hadn’t had the opportunity to do so in quite a while. Maybe in years.
“Yes, I feel it,” Paris eventually said. His eyes were expressionless now, which meant that he w
as indifferent and seeing it made her angry. Her hands shook as she replaced her toothbrush in the holder.
“What do you think it is?”
“Don’t try to turn this around, Chad. You’re the one who brought the subject up, so why don’t you tell me what you think is missing?” She reached for a tube of facial cleanser and squeezed a dollop in her hand, smoothed it into her skin with small circular motions as she caught his eyes in the mirror. “What about sex? That’s something that’s noticeably missing. Do you miss that?”
Chad’s eyes widened slightly. He shifted and leaned against the doorjamb. “Of course I do.”
“Just not with me, right?”
“Paris, I . . .” He trailed off, unsure of what he wanted to say or of how to say it. This was another topic that they discussed often, but he wasn’t in the mood to tackle the issue right now.
“What, Chad?” She looked around for her towel and snatched it off a nearby rod. “Do you realize I could probably count on one hand the number of times we’ve made love? And that includes our wedding night and the night you rolled over, calling out for . . .”
He cut her off tersely, his eyes going from blank to hard in seconds. A hand went up to push her words back. “Don’t,” he snapped. “I’ve apologized for that a hundred times, and I wish you wouldn’t keep throwing it in my face.”
Paris came toward him and he stepped back to let her pass. Belatedly, he realized that she had intended to initiate some sort of embrace and, still, he didn’t attempt to right his fumble. He stood there staring at her, hating himself for causing the pain in her eyes, but unable to prevent it.
He was the first to look away, dropping his head and massaging the bridge of his nose as he retraced his steps to the bed and sat down heavily. She went over to the closet and stood in front of the open door, visually choosing her outfit for the day.
“Are you seeing someone else?”
Chad’s head shot up. He was expecting to find her hovering over him, ready to do battle, but she hadn’t moved from her place in front of the closet, hadn’t turned to face him. “No,” he sighed. The lie was like a bad taste at the back of his throat. “Are you?”
“I’ve gone out to lunch with Ben Nolan a few times, but nothing more than that.”
He searched his mind for information about Ben Nolan and eventually came up with what he knew. He was an older man, average looking and nice enough, as far as Chad could tell from the one time he’d had occasion to cross his path. He remembered being introduced to Nolan at the home’s annual Christmas party, remembered shaking his hand and making casual conversation. Nolan was in an upper level social services position and part of his duties included making the trip to Mercy several times a year to inspect the children’s home where Paris worked.
He sat there and waited for anger and jealousy to come and when neither of those feelings surfaced, he sighed again. This time loudly.
“He’s asked me out, too,” Paris added. She decided to bypass skirts all together and pulled a pair of slacks and a blouse from the closet.
“Do you want to go?” She threw him an “are you serious” look before bending down to grab a pair of heels from the closet floor. “I just meant . . .”
“Do you want me to go, Chad?” He didn’t answer, and she grew tired of standing there waiting. When she was certain he didn’t intend to look at her or to address the question, she left him in the bedroom and went to shower.
Paris was dressed and standing at the dresser, rifling through her jewelry box in search of an illusive earring when Chad spoke next. Across the room, his head was bent to the task of sliding a belt through the loops of his slacks. He called her name and she looked up and locked eyes with him in the mirror, her eyebrows raised expectantly.
“Nolan seems like a decent guy,” he said.
Though they had discussed many of the issues living within their marriage, Chad’s decision to set up a separate bedroom down the hall from Paris’s bedroom was never discussed. It was something that happened gradually, until all of his belongings were transferred and he was firmly ensconced there.
Ironically enough, it was Nikki who had unwittingly started the process. She was five when she caught the chicken pox from one of her kindergarten classmates and was sent home to wait the illness out. Her insistence on scratching ferociously sent Chad to another room to sleep, so Nikki could sleep with Paris and Paris could keep an eye on her through the night. A little at a time, his things were transported down the hall until there was nothing left of his in Paris’s room. After Nikki returned to school, Chad saw no reason to move back.
“You want a divorce?” Paris asked him once as they were working in the backyard. He’d gone to a conference in Atlanta the week before and brought back a sapling. He and Nikki were planting it on the side of the backyard Paris hadn’t laid claim to for her flowers and he’d just sent Nikki inside to bring him a glass of water when Paris approached him. She stood over him, blocking the sun from his eyes, with dirt-caked gardening gloves on her hands and a wide brimmed straw hat on her head.
Chad propped an arm on his bent knee and met her gaze straight on. “If we get a divorce, I take Nikki.”
She sucked in a sharp breath and shook her head. “That’s not an option. I had her when you came along and I’ll still have her if you decide to leave.”
“She’s my daughter, Paris.”
“You wouldn’t even know that if it wasn’t for me.”
“You’re right. But still . . . I’m not leaving her, so you can forget that. Is this about Nolan? Are things getting serious between you two?”
“Ben has nothing to do with this. I asked you if you wanted a divorce.”
“You brought it up, so I think it’s you who wants one. Am I right?” He eyed her curiously, then shot a glance toward the house to make sure Nikki was still inside.
“It’s either that or keep on doing what we’re doing. Putting on a charade for Nikki, who realizes that we have separate rooms by the way, and smiling like idiots for the town.” She dropped down on her haunches and stared at him. “How long can we keep this up?”
“You want to marry Nolan?”
She thought about it and shook her head. “Not really, no. I care about him, but I don’t love him. I love you.”
“I love you, too,” he said and meant it. Then, “Are you being discreet?”
“You know we are.”
“And he treats you well? Because if he isn’t, I’ll break his neck. You know that, right?”
Despite the hurt squeezing her heart, Paris smiled. “Yes, I know.”
Chad looked deeply into her eyes for several seconds. “If a divorce is really what you want, then I won’t fight you for it. But I will fight you for Nikki. I feel like shit for saying that, but it’s the truth, Paris. I don’t want us to have to go there with each other.”
“I don’t either.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Chad saw Nikki tipping across the yard balancing an overfilled glass in her hands. She brought the glass to him, splashed water on his leg, and shimmied her way onto his lap, all at once. He bent an arm around her tiny waist and pushed his nose into the silky hair at the crown of her head, inhaling deeply. Then he looked at Paris over the rim of his glass as he drank. His eyes spoke to her and she read them loud and clear. She nodded slowly and rose to go back to her flowers.
Another night he went to her room after Nikki was asleep and stretched out next to her on the bed. She was snuggled under the covers watching television and he fit a pillow under his head and settled down to join her. He lay on top of the covers, with his feet crossed at the ankles and his hands folded over his abdomen. Three sets of commercials came and went, the show she was watching went off and another one came on before he spoke.
“You remember when all of us used to sit around Nate’s house watching television when we were kids?”
Paris giggled at the memory. “Nate’s mother would have to run us out of her front room with a broomst
ick. Those were the best times.”
“The best,” he agreed.
“You and Pam always spent the whole time arguing about silly things. I think that’s really the reason we kept getting put out. All that arguing got on Miss Merlene’s nerves.”
“Got on my nerves, too. I don’t know why I let her get under my skin like she did.”
She picked up the remote and surfed through the channels. “I do and Nate did, too. We pretty much figured you two were sneaking around behind our backs and breaking the code of the foursome.”
His head rolled around on the pillow and he looked at her. “Word around town is that she was running around with Nate.”
“That was the cover story. Me and Nate knew the real story, and even if we didn’t, Nikki is proof enough.”
“Pam told you?” He was genuinely surprised. He’d never told anyone about his time with Pam, and she always said she hadn’t either.
“No, she didn’t tell me. I sneaked and read her diary one time and saw it for myself. She told me she wasn’t a virgin anymore, but she wouldn’t tell me anything else. I had to invade her privacy to get all the juicy details.” She glanced at him and returned her attention to the television. “Sex in the City reruns or Law and Order reruns?”
“Law and Order. She put all the juicy details in her diary?”
“She was seventeen, Chad. That’s what seventeen-year-olds do.”
It occurred to him then that Paris wasn’t as informed as he first thought. He reached up and scratched his head, thinking. “And you think she lost her virginity when she was seventeen?”
Seeing the shit-eating grin on Chad’s face had Paris’s eyes widening. She took a hand from under the covers and pushed at his shoulder. “Before that?”
He pretended to be concentrating on the television screen and said nothing.