"I'm not leaving her."
"I'm sorry, baby, you have to." His words were little more than a whisper as he bent over me where I half lay against the smal pine box.
"I can't." While my spirit was slowly crumbling, my voice remained strong.
"Yes, you can." I had a flash of memory—Nate saying those same words to me in that same tone.
The day he'd driven me to the hospital to deliver our first child.
Forever ago.
He'd been right then. I could do it. I had. And repeated the experience twice more.
But this time he was dead wrong.
Dead, dead wrong.
As dead wrong as that precious little body lying so stiffly just inches from my face.
As dead as I wanted to be.
Sarah's sweet, chubby cheeks blurred as my eyes welled with tears.
"I can't, Nate." My voice broke and my body shook with sobs that hurt my bones. "I just can't do it." I heard my wails, wondered in some obscure part of my brain what the mortician must think of me, but didn't have the strength to give a damn.
Nate stood beside me, holding me up as I held on to the silky fabric lining our baby's casket, crying with me. I could feel his tears dropping on the back of my neck and knew he was grieving, too.
The weight of his pain was too much to bear.
I'd done this. To Sarah. To Nate.
This was my penance. The price I guess I'd always known I would someday pay.
This was God's way of punishing me for breaking my word to Him. I should never have left the convent.
This was my fault.
I begged God to have enough mercy to take me home.
My chest was soaked. I felt something sticky on my breasts. Pulling myself up out of a deep sleep I knew I didn't want to leave, I thought of Sarah, hungry, needing to eat, and opened my eyes.
And then closed them again. Remembering.
The setting sun was shining in on me. I could feel its warmth on my face.
It was afternoon and I was in bed.
I didn't care. Another drop of milk slid down the side of my breast to the mattress beneath me. The thick protective pads I wore inside my bra were drenched, heavy with unused milk.
There were no tears left to cry, just this weighty sadness that infiltrated my bones and pinned me to the bed.
"How long's she been asleep?" Nate's voice. Home from work.
"More than an hour." Mama was there, too. In the room. They were probably staring at me. I didn't have to feign sleep. I was comatose whether I was conscious or not. "I'm worried sick about her, Nate. I told James I'd be home by the end of the week, but I can't leave her. Or the boys."
The boys. My sons. They deserved better than me. I wasn't good enough to earn the honor of raising Sarah. Would I harm them, too?
And James, my father. He knew about me. I didn't blame him for staying away al these years. Even the death of my precious little Sarah hadn't been enough to bring him back.
"I think you should go." Nate's voice sounded tired.
He needed a woman who was worthy of him.
"Who'll watch over her? And the boys? She's barely twenty-three, Nate. Still a baby herself. Too young to handle...this...and two small boys. I can't leave her."
"She's been in bed for a week. Refusing to take the medication her doctor gave her to dry up her milk and to help with depression. We can't continue this way."
Was he ready to dump me then? I couldn't blame him.
"I don't know what else to do..." Mama sounded like she was going to cry.
I was responsible for that, too. If I hadn't been so numb, I'd have hated myself.
"We're not helping her, Mom. As long as you're here, she doesn't have to do anything."
"You think if I go she's just going to get up and be fine?"
"I think she has two sons to take care of and if no one else is here to do it, she'll have to."
Dear Nate. He still thought a person was in control of her own life, that we actually had choices and our own inner strength would see us through. I used to believe that, too.
Not anymore.
"I'l call the airline after dinner, but, Nate, you have to promise me you'l call if she gets into any trouble...."
Mama didn't mean breaking laws kind of trouble; I knew that. She was afraid I was going to kill myself.
I wasn't afraid of that. I was thinking about it, though.
I got up when Mama left the next day. Waved goodbye to her and Nate. He was going to work after dropping her at the airport. It was mid-January, busy season for him. And too cold for the boys to play outside. I brought toys to the living room, put up the gates, brought in a box of graham crackers, turned on the television set and lay down on the couch. I didn't move—except for one trek to the kitchen, some diaper changes for Jimmy and a couple of trips to the potty with Keith. I was stil there when Nate got home.
"Why didn't you turn on any lights?"
I hadn't noticed. "We didn't need them."
Jimmy and Keith were both asleep, lying on pil ows in front of the television.
"What's for dinner?"
I had no idea. I stared at him blankly.
"Eliza, you still have two healthy, growing children. They have to eat."
"They had graham crackers."
"That's al they've had al day?"
"No." I frowned. Tried to be who he wanted me to be. "They had fruit, mixed vegetables and chicken and rice for lunch."
"You fed Keith out of baby food jars?"
"He likes it."
"He's three years old."
I had no reply to that. Nor to Nate's repeated attempts to rouse me enough to make dinner. It's not that I didn't want them all to eat. I did. But I didn't have the energy or the focus to prepare even the simplest meal.
The thought of going through the cupboards to find out what was there made me dizzy. Nauseous.
Jimmy was stil eating baby food, anyway. And Keith wouldn't mind it again. That just left Nate.
In the end, he went out for hamburgers, taking the boys with him.
I woke up when Nate crawled into bed beside me that night. Lying silently, waiting for him to settle with his back to me, listening for the relaxed breathing that would tel me he was asleep, I felt consumed by guilt. I'd let him down so completely.
Let them all down.
The mattress shifted, dipped close to my side.
"Liza? You awake?"
If I hadn't been, I would be now. Nate was sliding his arm beneath me, pulling me against him.
He was so warm. I wanted to be held. And yet I was too cold to ever recover. I lay there, limp, letting him touch me, aware that his fingers were running lightly along my neck, but feeling nothing.
"Come on, baby. No one else can do this for you. It's up to you."
That's what he didn't understand. I was powerless.
He kissed me then. A soft, tender caress that would have broken my heart with its sweetness if I'd had a heart left to break.
"Kiss me, love." His tongue swept over mine, coaxing lips that were lifeless. "Let yourself feel."
He thought I had control, that I could somehow make the numbness go away.
When his hand moved to my breast, when my nipple quivered at his touch, I turned my back to him.
Nate Grady was the temptation that had started me down this long road to hell—lured me from the life that would have protected me—and given me the sweet little spirits I'd inadvertently hurt with my weakness.
Did Nate know that Sarah's death was my fault? My penance?
Did he secretly hate me?
I'd thought about Sister Michael Damien that day. I'd written to the sisters a few times after I left St.
Catherine's. Sent them pictures of the boys when they were born, but I'd never heard back.
All I could see now was the concerned look on Sister Damien's face the day I'd told her Nate was divorced— the day she knew I'd be leaving not only the convent, but the Church.
"I'm not going to quit, Eliza." His voice was loud and clear in the darkness of our bedroom. Resolute.
"We're a team, you and I. Part of the same whole. As long as it takes, I'm going to be here."
With that, he rol ed over, his back to me, and went to sleep.
I lay awake listening to him breathe—wishing I could find the escape of unconsciousness that had carried me through until that day—while tears dripped slowly down to wet my pil ow.
* * *
I couldn't get up the next morning. I honestly tried. Nate cajoled. He brought the boys in, put them on the bed with me. I just couldn't do it. Filled with self- loathing, I was paralyzed with the fear of what I might bring to any day I entered. A part of me knew I was in trouble. That I should get help. But I couldn't bridge the gap inside me that would take me from realization to action. I could find no solace in my faith, in the Bible verses I knew by heart or even my precious Jane Eyre.
Nate took the boys to work with him. I spent the day staring at the darkness in my mind.
"Okay, that's it!"
I jerked awake as the covers were torn from my body.
"Look at you! You haven't been up all day, have you?"
I could count on one hand the times my husband had screamed at me. I stared at him.
"Get up, Eliza." His voice was louder. "I mean it!"
Nate didn't get angry. Not like this.
"Now!"
His grip was not gentle as he yanked me into a sitting position. My legs wouldn't move, but that didn't stop him. Nate hauled me up, over his shoulder, carried me into the bathroom. My head hung down as he bent to turn on the shower and then I came upright again as he stood me inside, gown and al .
"The boys are in their high chairs, having juice while
they wait for dinner. You have five minutes to get washed and out of this shower. Another five to dress, and then you'll come down to the kitchen and make dinner for your family. Is that clear?"
He was no longer yelling at me. This new, softer tone was more menacing.
Blinking at him through the water spraying down on my head, I did the only thing I could do. I nodded.
I managed cereal and toast with peanut butter and jel y. Nate pretended to busy himself with a leak under the kitchen sink, but I could see him watching every move I made. If I lived through this horrible time, I would never forget that moment.
As pathetic and damaging as I was, the man loved me.
I had some value.
"One of the front-desk clerks quit today," he said as he ate cold cereal on a snowy January night without so much as raising his eyebrows. "Starting tomorrow, you're coming to work with me. You can help out at the front desk."
I couldn't do that. "What about the boys?"
"For now, they can play in my office. There's a sleeping room that has a couple of port-a-cribs close by that we can use for naps. And they can attend the guest day care facility the rest of the time."
"I can't, Nate."
"You can and you will."
"You can't make me."
His eyes were steely as they met mine. "Watch me."
Chapter 8
I screwed up at the front desk. Reservations were lost.
I gave someone the wrong key to a room. Messages weren't relayed. None of it was on purpose; I just couldn't focus.
"See, I told you," I said to Nate when, after the fourth incident, he cal ed me into his office.
His scrutiny made me uncomfortable and I tried not to fidget. The boys were playing with a plastic train set, spitting as they made engine sounds. They'd be turning two and three this summer. I wondered if Mama would come and throw them a party.
"I'm short a housekeeper." Nate's voice brought me back. "See Maria on the seventh floor and she'll set you up."
"I have to clean rooms?"
"You got any better ideas?" His look challenged me to argue with him. "Like maybe an institution where you can sit -and be a vegetable for the rest of your life? Or drugs that'l keep you numb?"
He was scaring me.
Had I been more myself, I would've known that was a good sign.
"I hate you, Nate Grady." I wasn't sure I meant the words, but in that second, I felt them.
"And I love you."
His reply made me feel like a pile of dirt. With one last look at my sons, I left the room.
"I want a vacation."
"Sorry."
I stomped my foot where I stood in front of my husband's desk, an action that had little effect on the plush piled carpet. "Nate, I've been working for no pay for six weeks. I want some time off."
He didn't glance up from the papers he was perusing. "In case you hadn't noticed, it's the busy season around here. No one gets time off."
"Then hire someone to take my place."
He peered up at me long enough to make me squirm. "What time did you get up on Saturday?"
So I'd had a relapse. "Nate." I put all the anger building up inside me into saying his name.
He had the audacity to grin at me. "That's right, Liza, get mad. Yel , scream, hit something."
I wasn't like that. Didn't do those things.
Without another word I went back to work.
"I miss my sons," I said.
"I miss my wife."
Nate and I hadn't made love since Sarah died.
"Why are you stil so good to me?"
"I love you."
My heart wel ed with so much feeling it almost suffocated me.
The boys were in bed and we were sitting over a last cup of coffee at the kitchen table one night in mid-May. There'd been an assassination attempt on Alabama's governor, George Wallace, that day, which left him paralyzed. The man hadn't abandoned a convent casing and yet a bad thing had happened to him. Martin Luther King had been serving God and the public with his life when he'd been killed.
"Sarah didn't die because I'm a bad person." I spoke the words out loud, but was real y talking to myself.
"No, she didn't."
"I'm scared, Nate." There. I'd admitted it. "I'm starting to feel again and I'm afraid the pain's going to be too intense."
"There are times it seems that way. But they pass."
I reached for his hand, holding it between both of mine on the table. "You hurt, too."
"Yeah."
"And I haven't been there to give you any comfort at all."
"You lie in bed beside me every night, Liza. You breathe. You get up in the morning and force yourself to do work you don't want to do. You love our sons. You miss them. Every single one of these things comforts me."
"I've been selfish."
"You've been surviving. Sarah's death devastated you."
"Why didn't it you?" The question wasn't accusation. Just the opposite. I wanted to know how he did it. How he kept going in the face of such impossible agony.
"I have a life outside of home." His words surprised me. "I was able to leave here and go someplace where I'm someone else. The boss. Not Daddy. Not husband. Those times offered me a break from the constant hurting."
He squeezed my hand. "Your life was all here, completely involved with being a mother. And suddenly, being a mother was the most painful experience you'd ever had to endure. You had no escape."
I now understood why he'd forced me to go to work.
"You make me sound a lot more noble than I feel."
"You're human, Liza."
And with that came good and bad. Pain and joy.
"Will you do something for me?"
"Of course."
"Will you play the piano?"
He hadn't touched a key since Sarah's death. The drawn look on his face told me he wasn't going to now.
"Please?"
"The boys are asleep."
"Until four months ago, they fell asleep to the piano every night."
He was still going to refuse.
"I'm cleaning toilets, Nate." Making myself recover.
His chin dropped to his chest.
&n
bsp; I stood, yanked on his hand. ' 'Come on, I'll sit with you.
He let me pull him into the other room and sat down when I slid the bench out. And, hands resting limply in his lap, he stared at the keys.
"Let's do chopsticks," I said, grasping at straws. It was the only thing I knew how to play.
With two fingers I started softly and then grew louder, pounding the keys. Harder and harder. Until my fingers hurt. I didn't even know I was crying until tears plopped down on the ivory slats.
Before I could stop myself, I was pounding out horrible, discordant sounds, my fists slamming down on the instrument with everything I had. I could feel the edges of the keys scraping my knuckles and I didn't care.
We'd lost so much. Too much. Our precious daughter. Our joy. Even this. The special beauty that Nate had brought into our home.
I was angry. So angry.
And then, in the midst of the cacophony, came a single, true note. Followed by another. My hands stilled as I looked at the strong fingers moving shakily over the keys.
I wasn't sure Nate was playing a song. Or if he was actual y aware of what he was doing. But slowly, a tune surfaced, and for the first time in four months my heart knew a moment of peace.
Somehow, through al the noise, he'd found "My Cup Runneth Over." I felt again the way I'd felt the very first time I'd heard that song. And subsequent memories surfaced, as well.
Nate didn't play long. Half an hour, maybe. But it was enough. He'd be back at the piano again. Soon.
We climbed the stairs to our room together, stopping, as if by unspoken agreement, to look in on the boys. Both of our sons were sleeping soundly, Jimmy with his diapered butt in the air as always and Keith with two fingers in his mouth.
And that night, we made a different kind of love. Slow. Lingering. And the completion, when it came, left me languid, relaxed, ready to fal asleep in my husband's arms.
We were blessed.
Very blessed.
Times were changing. In 1972 the largest scandal ever to hit the White House was exposed by a security guard who noticed a piece of adhesive tape on a door that left it unlocked, allowing five men to steal key Democratic documents. By January 1975, at least six government officials had been found guilty in the Watergate conspiracy and were sentenced to thirty years in prison. Also early in that year, The Jeffersons, the first successful black sitcom, premiered on primetime television. And Pennsylvania was the first state to allow girls to compete with boys.
The Night We Met Page 7