“That odor in you hair.” She was obviously stunned. I had showered at Deirdre’s but the perfume lingered slightly. “You have a soapy smell, not ours.”
“It’s your imagination,” I nervously told her.
“Greg. You’re lying. You’ve been with someone.” She hesitated, her eyes wide. “You fucked that woman.” Then, though she hated the word, rarely used it but could not help herself nor did she care, she repeated, her voice loud, “You fucked her.”
I never thought while washing my hair, never would have thought of perfumed soap. It was on my body and what we had done. Did I feel bad? Well - yes. More importantly, sadly, I was still thinking of being inside Deirdre, what it felt like, the smoothness of her skin, her firm, lovely-to-feel breasts, both of us looking at our naked bodies as she watched me shower, that captivating smile, her alluring voice telling me she would be here, in this place, any time. Then, with certainty, “You'll be back as soon as you can so we can be ourselves, no pretending to care, and - she smiled - enjoying ourselves.” I don't think, or didn't, there could be any other man for her now. I stood there, wet, looking at that lithe body, not wanting to leave it or her. It was as though she could read my thoughts, for she stepped into the shower and moved against me, tantalizing me, and with those soft, caressing hands gliding over me, telling me I was captured. And truly I was. Brigit had faded from my conscience.
But not here in Brigit’s and my apartment that brought me to reality, for with a jolt, Brigit forcefully pushed me away and ran to the bedroom, sobbing.
I stood, unable to move, not knowing whether I should go to her. I did think of the ring I had given her and the plans for Las Cruces and the wedding, asking myself how I could have failed her and given in to my sexual desire. But I did admit to myself that I enjoyed it and Deirdre. There I was, punishing myself, thinking of Deirdre, her softness and the enjoyment, and Brigit, the woman I was to marry or had been going to marry.
Brigit came to the bedroom door, walked slowly into the living room, shaking, crying, rubbing away the tears with the back of her hand, her face red with anger and disbelief.
She raised her left hand, pulled off the ring, and threw it at me. “I could never trust you again,” and she sobbed, sadly mumbled, “Never again. That whore is all yours. Marry her and have a good life. That’s what she wants. Well, she’s got it,” she paused for some time, staring at me, her hair disheveled, her face streaked, “Got it all.”
She started for the bedroom, turned. “I’m packing and going to the nurses’ quarters. You can screw her here from now on, in public for all I care.” She thought, spoke again. “You know, Gregory, you have destroyed your life.”
I suppose you’d expect her to fight, but I believe she didn’t want to be involved in something messy or to lower herself by fighting Deirdre, something of which she was quite capable. Rather, I think she preferred, hopefully, to see either Deirdre or me demolished in our self-desire.
I do know now we never stopped loving each other.
~
Brigit took a vacation and went home to Las Cruces, wanting to hide herself in the desert. As she drove from El Paso to home, occasionally she would stop, look, comparing herself to the desolate and sparse growth. She had loved this land, her home that was green below Alamogordo. Thinking of Cloudcroft, she thought she might go there to be alone even if it would remind her of New England. Yet, she did not want such a vivid memory of Gregory’s visit. On one stop, she pulled to the side of the road, looked in the mirror, brushed her hair with her hand, reached in her pocketbook for her lipstick, saying to herself, “Why bother? What good has this body been to me, this face? And I let him have it, soil me. Never, never again.” She laughed. I could find a woman for companionship and, well, yes, sex. That way, we’d understand each other, what we feel, how we feel, none of that pretending. That’s what I’ve been doing. Pretending. Oh shut up, Brigit, you fake. You still love that man and always will.
Her depression faded as she drove up to her house. Her mother, hearing the car, had come to the door. Here was that solid, certain woman, who in her younger years could have almost been a twin of her daughter. Brigit had always loved looking at her photographs before and after she was married to Brigit’s father. As one would expect, Maureen loved all her daughters. Perhaps, though, she also felt God had given her a twin of whom she would always be proud and protective. Now, as she watched Brigit running toward her, her arms outstretched, letting out a little scream of love and happiness, protection was most important to Maureen. As their arms enfolded one another, Brigit felt since leaving Boston the touch of love that would never die. Gregory could not kill love, but he could instill hopelessness, loneliness, and uncertainty of a woman’s attractiveness and holding power. At least, that was for now. Would it ever change? Brigit determined it would. No one could defeat this healer and saint from the past. She lived now. That her parents named her after the healer and the saint was all in the distant Celtic past and early Christianity. Brigit had never believed any of this, but now she wondered. I am strong, and I do have love. It may be a different kind of love, but at least it’s lasting and real. Well, I'm no saint. Saint Brigit was a virgin. She laughed aloud. I'm sure not the Saint, world. But, I’ll never regret. It’s almost like I can feel him inside, or there with his mouth, or my arms about him. So good. She frowned. Stop thinking about it. I don’t want to remember any of it. You always will, Brigit. Believe it, fool. You still love him and just accept him. You willingly gave yourself to him. You’ll always be part of him. He’ll find out. He’ll rue. Don’t be a vengeful witch, Brigit. But he will. I know it.
Her mother interrupted her mind’s rambling. “It’s so good to have you home.” Maureen was sorry she said it that way, as though nothing had happened, that the family had been preparing for a wedding never to be. “We’re so glad you’re here. Oh, dearest.” Maureen started to cry. “I’m so sorry. You must be . . . .” and she stopped, not wanting to inflame a wound so deep that only her daughter could feel, that no one else in the family had been so defiled, insulted, embarrassed. She hated Gregory, never wanted to hear his name again, wondering what she would or could do to help Brigit. Perhaps being with her sisters, perhaps visiting the convent and Anne, spending time in the peace the convent offered. Perhaps. All was “perhaps” now. Except Maureen knew Brigit was the strongest of her daughters. She would ask no question, however, tell Luke not to, but wait until Brigit said something. Maureen had seen deserted married women, listened to their bitterness, their swearing, their desire for vengeance. Once she made the mistake of suggesting a priest and the quiet of the church to a friend, the rejoinder being a damnation of religion, the church that did nothing but demean women as the preying beings responsible for their own downfall – exhibiting and dressing in sexual clothing and colored faces to lure. The women to whom Maureen listened always said it was the other woman who caused the break-up, that it was her flirtations that ensured the hungering men’s sense of victory and her own. The deserter was always vile, stupid being trapped and leaving a loving wife and his children. The victims, unsuspecting Brigits. But the church blamed the good woman, if there were such a person.
Maureen, horrified, took many months to forgive the abandoned friend because of her damnation of the church, although she coolly kept in touch with her, Maureen still sorrowful for the woman’s pain. The world was cruel. In Korea our soldiers and the unprotected civilians being killed, maimed while a craven General urges atomic weapons which if allowed would end us all, our torments, tears, pleasures, laughter. How different here at home is the pain and suffering? Here we smother the greatest gift – love – with plundered sexual satisfaction. My daughter. A man treating her the way he did, a woman so beautiful, so good, so loyal, so accomplished. Don’t say anything, Maureen. Let it all come out of her. She’ll talk to both Luke and me. I know that. And she has her sisters.
But was there anyone who could end the agony of betrayal and abandonment? The tears, the
memories, the unspeakable hurt? A deserted woman thrust aside by a lover deceived by that female predator.
When Brigit entered the house, the familiarity wrapped her in its memories of growing up on the ranch, horseback riding, traveling northward across the desert to Albuquerque and Taos. She would sometimes ski in Taos and learned as much as she could about the Pueblo, remembering the men sitting in the small town square in the early morning, wrapped in their blankets, rarely speaking. Or there was the time she was in the Pueblo, startled by the beauty of the young pueblo woman leaning against her doorway, watching, so silent, so apparently content. Brigit told herself at that moment that she must find her way to such peace, such self-possession. It was a religious experience found only in oneself. From that time, Brigit never forgot the young woman and always felt a kinship to her, a spiritual connection that she never felt in church. She had decided that she would never tell her parents but that it would be part of her secret self never to be revealed.
Now she wondered whether she had destroyed that image and feeling by having given herself to Gregory and having been deserted. The more she thought about it, however, perhaps it would be her triumph, her rediscovery of herself and the love that she had given so freely. Perhaps, she began to think, she didn’t despise Gregory, that her love might never fade.
In a conversation with her sisters Ellen and Marie who appeared so satisfied in their marriages, she told them of her sorrow, the pain, the many tears. Hearing what had happened, they were angry, Marie even raising her voice and cursing Gregory and Deirdre.
“Stop,” Brigit insisted. “Don’t yell. I can’t stand it,” and she began to cry. “I’m so miserable. I look at you all apparently so content, your children. I suppose I pictured myself living like you, having children running about. Are you both as happy as you seem?” Her conscience suddenly bothered her, for she wanted an answer that told her what she saw in Marie’s and Ellen’s houses was appearance.
Ellen placed her hand on Brigit’s face. “I wouldn’t change for anything, dear; but there are times you want to take a frying pan and slam it over your husband’s head. It’s not all love. Sometimes there’s, well, I think, something close to despising him for paying so little attention to me. But then something will happen, and when he makes love to me, or rubs my back or kisses me when he comes home, or I’m listening to the yelling and laughter of the children, I know it’s all worth it. But it’s confining being held so close to your home. You have your profession. We have always envied you for that.”
Watching the changing expressions on her sister’s face, and looking at Marie who nodded agreement, Brigit smiled slightly, wiped at her eyes thinking of Gregory. “You know, I still love him. I want to hate him, and I can’t. I don’t know if I’ll ever be free. For that I despise him. So I love and despise.” She stopped, catching her breath, feeling her heart beat faster, “Oh I don’t know. But please, please don’t ever tell mom and dad what I just said.”
“Mom called us and told us about when you walked into the house with that look of pleasure on your face, how she followed you to your room and what happened when dad came home.”
“She would,” was all that Brigit answered. Her sisters faded, and she was just coming home and she and her mother were standing together, both crying from happiness at seeing each other and at the horrible unjustness Brigit had experienced.
Brigit remembered thinking and wanting to tell her mother, Oh, mom. I gave myself to him. I slept with him, lived with him, and I know that hurt you, my living with a man in sin. Forgive me. Yet, immediately she realized she could not say that, for she did not regret that love between them and the joy of their lovemaking, how they had learned to accept what was good and imperfect in each of them.
Then her father had come home, and rather than go to wash up, shower, as he always did, he came to Brigit’s bedroom where she was resting, her head turned to the window, seeing what? Thinking what? The door was open enough so her father saw her and did not want to disturb her. However, she heard his step, turned from her dreaming, looking at him, while wiping at her eyes.
“May I come in, Brigit?”
“Yes.” She sat up. “I guess I was just resting and thinking. You know, I wondered whether I should even go to Hotel Santé and find out if they have an opening in my field. But then, I don’t know, dad. I don’t know anything right now.”
He sat on her bed and pulled her to him. “It’s so good to see you, to have you home.” He faltered, unsure of what to say. “You look good.”
“Dad, don’t be afraid to talk. Just don’t tell me what to do. I have to work through this myself.”
“I, well, I wasn’t going to tell you . . .”
“Oh, forget it. You don’t have to apologize and worry whether you’re saying something wrong. What is there to say? I have to work through this myself,” she repeated.
Inadvertently he raised her left hand. She looked at the bare ring finger, as did he, and could not stop the tears. Luke dropped the hand, his face reddened by anger and mindlessness. “What a stupid man.” He couldn’t help himself. “To have a woman like you.”
She blurted unintentionally. “Dad, I love him. He’s always going to be in my heart. I may despise him right now, but all you men,” and she smiled weakly at her father. “Oh, I don’t mean you, but admit it. You see a pretty woman in town and you look and wonder. Women do it too. It’s all human, only this particular woman turned him from the one who would support him come the worst, if he lost his standing or . . . oh I don’t know.”
“I guess you’re right.”
“I am right, but . . .”
“You’ll never forgive him.”
“You mean you’ll never forgive him, that if he were here you’d batter him for hurting your daughter. What good is revenge? Don’t forget your Bible, dad,” she finished sarcastically.
Bible. Who created those stories? But who can turn her back on Jesus’ words. He raised Mary Magdalene. Will He do the same for me? How do I know? Damn you, Gregory. You took all of me, feasted on me, and here I am asking Jesus to raise me like he did the Magdalene. Hah, I’ll go back to my Celtic ancestors before there was the Saint Brigit, when there was only the healer Brigit. Is she that good, Gregory? Is she that good in bed, better than I? Is she . . . . Oh I don’t know. I just don’t. But I know. I know. Something is going to happen. She’s that kind of woman. You can’t see it, your eyes glazed over by that delusory woman, given a body no better than mine. The difference? She has that deceptive mind. Enjoy yourself, Gregory. It’s funny. I remember the first time we hugged. I turned my body to be certain you could feel the softness of my breast against your body. I wonder what you thought. Stop it, Brigit. You’re driving yourself mad.
Luke left the bed. She felt the mattress’s light upward movement. “When you’re rested, dear, come down. Your mother and I will be there. Do you mind if we invite Ellen and Marie and their families to dinner? I wish Anne, well Sister Angelina, could be here too. By the way, you are going to see her?”
“Yes and no. Let’s have the whole family here.”
And so Brigit managed to become an actress, but she did enjoy the prattling children and the family warmth.
Later in the week she went to Sister Angelina. As she approached the convent, there were memories of school, of the sisters lecturing them about being good girls, protected by God and honored by their future husbands, unless they decided to enter Orders and become a servant of God, a truly blessed life. But purity is most important whether in Orders or as a wife.
They went to the chapel, knelt and said their prayers. Sister Angelina seemed so different to Brigit, her calmness and certainty. Brigit realized she felt a twinge of envy at what seemed to be the peace that enfolded her. But would she ever know life? There was so much beyond the convent that perhaps Sister Angelina would never even feel. Yet, she was jealous of the peace and listened as her sister quietly told her to believe in herself and her ability and her willingness to h
elp people that would bring her peace, the peace, perhaps, that Sister Angelina experiences. Yet, you are a woman with woman’s feelings and desires. I know it. You’re just as human as I, but you have learned to discipline yourself. I can listen to you and be soothed, but I am a Woman and need the love not only of my profession but of a man.
They sat on a cement bench against the wall of the cloister, so quiet, green with flora, trees, prickly pear cacti tended by the Sisters. Brigit started to speak in a whisper, caught herself, laughing. “Anne,” “Call me Angelina, Brigit. It’s my name now. I could have kept Anne.” “I’ll try to get used to it. It reminds me of Galileo and his daughter. They always used her religious name.”
Angelina perhaps thought her sister a grave sinner. Maureen had told her that Brigit, unmarried, was living with a man she met during the war. Sister Angelina told Maureen she would pray for her soul and that God forgive and protect her. Maureen blanched, thinking of her daughter’s soul and cohabitation with a Jew of all things. How many times multiplied was her sin? Nothing the family could have said would have been well received. Moreover, Maureen did not believe she should interfere in any of her children’s lives. She loved them too deeply. It was often a wonder to her that they rarely quarreled, that they could often talk rather intimately as women do with one another. Growing up may have been different when there was friction; but, for the most part, it seemed to have disappeared, except when it came to Brigit who, though she deeply loved her mother, would never allow her to direct her life, nor her father either. Luke and Maureen had learned to accept Brigit for who she was and how she lived, and her independence. That was the meaning of love to Maureen. Acceptance, sheltering.
After a time, Brigit told them she was going to Taos. She would stop in Santa Fe to look through the galleries, but she wanted to be in Taos, still remembering that Indian woman in the doorway, posing perhaps, communing but so peaceful. Brigit would find her own peace in that town.
Our Seas of Fear and Love Page 22