Lies and Other Acts of Love

by Kristy Woodson Harvey

  His shock turned to confusion, and he said, “So what are you doing here? I mean, does Ben not want a baby or something?”

  I bit my lip. “Ben doesn’t know.”

  True mystification was written all over his face, but then he steeled his jaw and, in that classic, Holden way, that decisive, confident manner that I needed most, he said, “Don’t tell him.”

  “What do you mean, don’t tell him?”

  “Don’t tell him. If he knows, there will be custody battles and the baby being shifted from place to place and all sorts of confusion.”

  It made me realize how little I had actually considered this. I had to tell Ben, didn’t I? I couldn’t keep a secret this huge from Ben. Or could I? He hadn’t been terribly concerned about keeping a huge secret from me.

  My thoughts shifted to Lovey. Had she been at this same crossroads? All of a sudden, I began to understand her a little bit better. Because, now, it wasn’t about me, and it wasn’t about Ben and it wasn’t about Holden. It was about this precious little baby and what would be best for it.

  I thought of my mother and how she had never had any doubt about who her parents were. And she was happy. And, though I knew it was wrong, I nodded all the same. “Okay.”

  Then I started crying again. “Holden, this won’t work. I mean, I won’t be divorced for a year at the minimum, and I’m going to be pregnant and having this baby with you . . . Our families will absolutely die. What will people say? What will they think?”

  “I don’t give a shit what people think,” he said. “We’ll move. I’m sick of Raleigh anyway.”

  My heart was starting to warm to him, to realize that, for all his faults, this was a man that was capable of being a rock for me when I needed it most. That’s when I made the mistake of glancing down at the Love band adorning my left finger.

  I had made a vow. I had promised to love Ben and cherish him and be faithful to him until the day I died. And he had broken that vow. And now, sitting in the tapestried den of my ex-fiancé, I was the one who felt broken. “Where will we move?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. But we’ll just go. And our families will be pissed, but, wherever we go, the people there won’t know. We’ll just act like we’ve been married the whole time. And, when it’s legal, we can sneak off somewhere, just the two of us, and get it done.” He cleared his throat and looked down at my stomach. “Just the three of us, I mean.” He winked at me. “I think a little return trip to the BVIs might be nice.”

  I thought of that trip with Holden, the night we got engaged, the joy I had felt at the Christmas-card-perfect life that I had won for myself. And how I had thrown it all away on a fling that hadn’t ever really loved me. The weight of all of my bad decisions suddenly felt like it was suffocating me. I had to get outside and get some fresh air. I started toward the door with Holden following behind me. “Where are you going? I think we have a few more details to iron out here.”

  I shook my head. “I know, Holden. But I have so much to deal with between now and then. I just need to go.”

  In the way I needed most, he said, “Okay. I’m here whenever.” He paused. “Do you want me to get a crib or something?”

  I looked back at him, my hand on the car door already and said, “For right now, let’s just wait. Just don’t tell anyone.” I turned back and added, “Can you just wait a little longer for me?” I put my hand on my belly. “For us?”

  He grinned like his horse had just won the Derby and said, “Oh, Ann, I’d wait for you forever.”

  I sped out of the driveway and down the highway, angry at the uninvited tears crashing my party. As I drove, music blaring in the background, I sobbed for the person that I had pushed away the most: my husband. And for this baby that we had made out of so much love.

  Somewhere along the two-hour drive from Raleigh to Salisbury, I composed myself, and I thought about my options. I had spent so long thinking that the only choice was to leave Ben, but what if that wasn’t it? What if I could stay? What if we could move away and go back to that simpler time where we first fell in love and we were both so happy? What about that option?

  The pride surged in me, and I thought about Doug and Sally. I knew that I could never be that woman, that I could never live with a man when I knew that he had someone else filling his heart and his bed, knowing that I wasn’t enough for him. I couldn’t bear the thought of having to face Laura Anne forever, of her knowing that she had battered my ego and humiliated me, that she had taken from me everything I thought was real.

  Having to go to Laura Anne’s house for the party she threw us, smile politely and thank her graciously, had been unthinkable enough, especially considering that I couldn’t drink. I would say it was one of the hardest nights of my life, but, in other ways, it was one of the proudest too. I kept my composure, I didn’t kill either of them, and I made it through almost two hours before claiming a migraine—I don’t get migraines, but Laura Anne doesn’t know that—and having to go home. Ben had given me an odd look, but never said a word about my fake condition. In fact, in the car, he said, “Oh my gosh. You don’t think this headache could mean you’re pregnant, do you?”

  I flat-out lied with a simple, “No.”

  And I knew that night that I couldn’t bear the thought of being the woman that stayed and took that from a man, even one that she was convinced was the other half of her soul.

  Worst of all, I couldn’t imagine the humiliation if Ben didn’t want me anymore. What if I gave him the option to rebuild what we had and he chose her anyway?

  The hardest thing for me about the affair was that, though I was so seethingly angry with Ben, I still loved him so madly. He had been my entire life, every laugh, every heartbeat, every tear had been with him and for him. And, oddly, it didn’t seem like he loved me any less. When I saw him standing in the doorway of the pool house, waiting for my headlights to pull up, I broke down again. And it was Ben, as always, who pulled me onto his lap, stroked my hair and whispered, “Everybody needs a good cry every now and then, TL.”

  And then I started crying even harder because I knew that I wasn’t his TL, at least not in the way I wanted to be. I knew our marriage was over, and he had no idea. The man who had changed everything about my life would be gone from it soon. It was as though everything I had put my faith in on this earth had fallen into a mythic hand that had closed and crumbled it all in one fell swoop.

  I composed myself, picked my head up from Ben’s shoulder and looked at him.

  “What’s the matter with my girl?” he asked, nuzzling my neck.

  I looked into his eyes, and I knew it was the right moment. I needed to tell him something. About the baby. That I knew about the affair. But, instead, I said, “It’s just so hard to see Lovey like that.”

  “I know, sweetheart. But she’s going to be fine. She has so much love around her, and, when you’re surrounded by love, what else do you really need?” He kissed me. “After I found your love, I haven’t needed another single thing.”

  And that’s when it hit me. What if I had my facts wrong about Ben? What if Laura Anne zipped up in his golf bag that day hadn’t meant that he was cheating? What if it was something else entirely, something that the four of us would sit around a fire pit and have a good, long laugh about in the near future?

  And there I was again, back to questioning everything, back to feeling like the axis of my life was tipping so far to the left that I was on the verge of falling off of the world. For a moment, I had hope. Maybe there was another explanation as to why Ben had to sneak Laura Anne out of the pool house. And maybe there was some other explanation to the whole blood-typing, birth certificate fiasco. Maybe it was nothing more than a mistake, a slip of the pen. Another explanation for anything, at this point, would be a very welcome change.

  Lovey

  One Big Secret

  In life, you have to be pre
pared for the surprises, good and bad, and take them in stride with grace and humility. But I never saw it coming that day. I was lounging in the elevated nursing home bed, sipping a cup of coffee with impossibly fresh cream that Luella had procured from the farmers’ market, thinking that this nursing home gig wasn’t so bad after all. All of my meals were prepared, Dan was taken care of and, even though I was as ready to get out of here as a two-week overdue woman is to give birth, there was such a sense of safety in knowing that, in an emergency, a team could be assembled for Dan as quickly as I could push a button.

  I had talked to each of my girls that morning and was thrilled that all five of them would be coming that weekend. The love they had for each other, that bond, it made me so happy. But, in the quiet moments, it made me a little bit sad too. Even after my sister Lib and her husband had come back home, when the war had ended, we’d never been close. Through all of those years of her living in Charlotte and me in Raleigh, only a few hours up the road, we had never seen each other more than once or twice a year, never grazed beyond the niceties of conversations about children and work, cooking and keeping the house. Sometimes I ached for that missed opportunity, wondered what kind of sister I could have had if either of us had made the effort.

  But, happily, I had been there a few days before she died. It had been unexpected, her death. Although, certainly, at ninety-four, death is always an expectation. Her last words to me were, “Lynn, I know I was never much of a sister to you. But I’ve always loved you so much. I’ve always prayed for you and the girls and been so happy for your happy life.”

  Even as she said it, I wondered if my happy life had driven a wedge between us. I wondered if I had confided in her more, if we hadn’t been so busy keeping up appearances, if our paths could have collided in a more meaningful way, if we could have had even a fraction of what my girls had.

  As well as my own face in the mirror, I knew there was no use harping on what might have been. And, besides, there was a silver lining. On the very bright side, where He hadn’t given me a close relationship with my real one, God had given me a sister to navigate every up and down with. In fact, I had spoken with Katie Jo that morning. While I was laid up in bed, she was getting in a new one. “I have a new beau,” she had said, giggling as though we were fourteen again.

  “A boyfriend?” I had asked, feigning shock. Katie Jo had married once, years and years ago, but never had children. And that was just as well because her marriage began after I had Sally and ended before I had Louise. She swore she’d never do it again, and, truth be told, some birds just shouldn’t be caged.

  “And, oh my Lord, he really is a boy, Lynn. It’s almost embarrassing.”

  I laughed, the pain pulsing in my hip. But, in that moment, I envied her. I looked over at Dan, confined to his bed, me confined to mine. And I realized that maybe I’d had my last adventure. But not Katie Jo. Her last adventure would coincide with her last breath. That’s how it was always meant to be. “Do tell.”

  “He is seventy-two, Lynn. Can you believe that? What would a seventy-two-year-old want with an eighty-eight-year-old?”

  I laughed again. “Oh, mercy, Katie Jo. You know, I can’t imagine any man worth his salt that wouldn’t want you.”

  She promised to visit. I hoped in the deepest part of my soul that I would see her again before one of us was gone. Hearing my best friend’s voice, the way we could still pick up right where we left off, had done my heart good. And I realized again that we might not have had the same momma and daddy. But, in my mind, Katie Jo would always be my sister.

  I looked over at Dan again. He was dozing between frames of the black-and-white film on the screen, and I knew that everyone else in the world, everyone besides me, would say that my comfort in having a team to save him at any moment was an idiotic, cruel thought. Why, they would wonder, would I want to revive a man who had virtually no quality of life? But the thing about a long marriage, the overriding factor in an existence where you became one flesh with a man and never looked back, is that, no matter the personal cost, no matter the reasonable reality, you can’t bear the thought of being away from him. As incongruous as it may seem to the outside world, to the person with whom their body and mind has been joined for longer than a good many people are on the earth, not having them there, in any state, feels as impossible as staying on the ground without gravity.

  I was nearly dozing off myself when the door slammed and both Dan and I popped up, alarmed. I couldn’t even question who it was before Annabelle peeked around the corner.

  My family had been as faithful as hunting dogs about coming to visit us while we were here, realizing that, when you’re basically confined to a bed, the days seem too long even for someone who knows that her hourglass is almost out of sand.

  “Hello, my darling girl,” I said, trying to sit up.

  My smile faded quickly when I saw her closed body language, the way her normally relaxed and shining countenance was wrinkled and worried. “I know, Lovey,” was all she said.

  My mind raced, and I could feel myself going pale because, in all my life, I’d had only one big secret. I looked over at Dan; he was gazing back into the television screen, completely unaware that the one thing we had tried the hardest to hide for more than fifty years might be out in the open. But that was impossible, I reassured myself. There was no conceivable way that she could know.

  And so, taking a leisurely sip of my coffee, trying to calm myself, I said, “I have no idea what you’re talking about, darling.”

  “I know about Mom,” she said.

  I could feel my pulse racing again, realizing that it contributed to a vile throbbing in my hip. Calm down, I told myself. That could mean practically anything. Maybe Jean had been caught doing something illicit with campaign funds and Annabelle thought I knew. Or maybe one of my only daughters that I believed to be squeaky clean was also having a little fling.

  “Darling, what in heaven’s name are you talking about?” I took another sip of my coffee, as casually as I could, though my heart was beating out of my chest.

  “I saw the paper,” she said, crossing her arms indignantly. “I saw that form you filled out about Mom being adopted.”

  I was racking my brain. I had burned those forms immediately when the new birth certificate was issued. “What form, sweetheart? Maybe you should sit down. Are you feeling all right?”

  Annabelle laughed cruelly. “I wondered why someone as smart and methodical and prepared as you are would possibly risk keeping that form and getting caught. But now I see. You didn’t know it was in the lockbox, did you?”

  I had been in that lockbox thousands of times. And I always looked at those birth certificates. I compared them to make sure that they were perfect. I counted pictures to make sure that each girl had the same number. I had created a spot where all five of my daughters would go after Dan and I were gone and never have a single question. I knew for certain that there wasn’t any sort of form in that lockbox. She was bluffing. I could feel myself calming. “Annabelle,” I said. “Why don’t you come sit by me. You’re not making any sense.”

  That look she gave me, it was so mean and so hideous that I couldn’t believe it could even come from those big, beautiful eyes of hers. They were all beautiful. Every last one of the children and grandchildren in our family. But Annabelle was in a class all her own. Long and lithe, with skin that seemed to have an otherworldly glow. To see her so angry, the shadow on that gorgeous face with those impossibly high cheekbones, was the shock of my lifetime.

  “It was stuck, Lovey. Practically glued to Mom’s birth certificate. The others might never have even noticed it. But it felt thick to me. And when I rubbed it together, that second piece of paper started to peel off. That piece of paper that you didn’t even know was there.”

  I was finding it difficult to catch my breath. I looked over at Dan again, as if he was going to spring to life and s
ave me from this inquisition. It had happened before. When I had needed him, even in this state, he had seemed to come back and take charge once again. But this time, just blankness. If I had been younger, I could have thought of an explanation. If Dan had been well, he could have smoothed this over. But she had seen the paper. She knew.

  But then Annabelle said, “I can’t believe that you could cheat on D-daddy,” and I felt a flood of relief wash over me.

  Daughters and granddaughters have a complicated relationship with their mothers and grandmothers. There is a vicious kind of love there, one that I would venture to say, while not as pure and untainted as their love for their fathers and grandfathers, goes deeper. It is the kind of love that ebbs and flows, fights and forgives. It is the kind of love that takes the bullet, recovers in the ICU and lives to tell about it. And I realized right then and there that I had two choices: I could stand in front of the firing squad and take it. Or I could tell the truth. I looked over at my husband, completely indefensible in his current state, and felt that rush of pity come over me.

  And so I made the decision that any wartime wife worth her salt would. “I can’t be sorry for anything that led to the creation of a daughter and a granddaughter so sensational and first in my heart.”

  I hadn’t admitted anything, so, in that way, I hadn’t actually lied. But I hadn’t totally told the truth either. But, like I’ve said before and I’ll likely say again, those little white lies are the only things that make any of our families what they are. When the truth would be too large a pill to swallow, a tiny omission of fact here or there keeps the peace like nothing else I know.

  “How could you do that, Lovey? How could you lie like that forever? I mean, does Mom even know?”