Precarious

by Al Riske

  Anyway, that’s as close as Charlie could come to deciphering her thought processes. Right up to the end, she seemed oblivious and impervious—unshakable in her sense of having right on her side. He had actually threatened to leave her once, a couple of years before he actually did.

  “If you go to that conference in Boseman,” he told her, “I won’t be here when you get back.”

  “Yes, you will,” she said, folding her arms just below her ample breasts—a feature she rarely displayed but never tried to hide. And he was still there when she returned. She had never doubted it. She was doing God’s work, after all; Charlie would never leave her because of that.

  IN THE EARLY days of their marriage, they fought over all kinds of little things. The trouble was Charlie had a knack for recalling their fights, and a bad habit of playing them over in his mind …

  “What’d you do with my pants?”

  “I never touched your pants,” Linda said.

  “I left them right here on the bed.”

  “Well, I didn’t move them.”

  “Linda … ”

  “What!”

  “I know I left them right here.”

  “Well, you must have moved them because I didn’t.”

  “Never mind. I think I remember what you did with them.”

  He left the room and came back with his pants.

  “Where did I put them?” she asked.

  “In my gym bag.”

  “Uh-huh, right where you put them.”

  “You could have saved me a lot of trouble if you’d just told me that’s what you did with them,” he said.

  “I didn’t do anything with them and you know it. Now you apologize.”

  “Aww, sugar baby, I’m sorry.”

  “I hate it when you do that to me,” she said. “Next time will you listen to me?”

  “I said I was sorry. Now you say you’re sorry.”

  “Me? Why should I say I’m sorry?”

  “Because you yelled at me and now you feel sorry for me.”

  “You yelled at me first,” she said, “and I was right!”

  So much for forgiveness.

  IF THERE WAS one fault Linda could admit to, it was jealousy. Charlie had always been somewhat of a ladies’ man (people said he looked like Paul Newman with his flashing blue eyes) and he loved to flirt. But he suspected that Linda didn’t really mind. She may even have taken pride in his easy-going charm, since he inevitably went home with her, making her the envy of all the other women.

  The only woman she ever considered a threat was Annie. She and Charlie had once been engaged, but Annie got cold feet, and Linda got Charlie. So it wasn’t really an issue, except at high school reunions, when Annie McKintosh Miller would come into town looking slender and youthful—even better than she looked in school. Worse, she had the nerve to ask Charlie if he was happy.

  He was, he said, and decided not to pursue the topic. He should not have mentioned it to Linda, but perhaps he wanted to make her jealous.

  It didn’t help.

  IN TRUTH, THERE was no other woman. Not when they separated. Not when the divorce became final. And, aside from a few awkward dates, not for a year after that. He was too busy trying to land a job that paid enough to cover not only child support, which he gladly provided, but also alimony. He hadn’t expected alimony.

  The judge had evidently felt sorry for Linda, who sobbed throughout the proceedings, her lawyer contending at one point that his client was on the verge of a complete emotional breakdown. So Charlie would have to pay alimony, even though he had been laid off and Linda was still working. As it turned out, she would continue working without interruption, even after their nonadulterous breakup, because she quickly found a church in nearby Kalispell with a more forgiving attitude toward divorce.

  The judge didn’t know that. All he knew was that Charlie and Linda had been married for seventeen years, and he seemed intent on punishing Charlie for sticking it out so long.

  Charlie couldn’t pinpoint where they had gone wrong. It was a thousand things really—things they should or shouldn’t have said over the years. Maybe he hadn’t tried hard enough or tried the right things. He would never know. But he did know when it was over for him.

  HERE’S THE STORY he told to close friends and family members, and every word of it was true—though it was not the real reason for their breakup, only the most revealing symptom and least embarrassing example:

  One day he asked Linda to think of something he could do for her, every day, to show his love. Her request was simple enough: Before he left for work, could he toss the newspaper onto the porch from its usual landing place at the end of the driveway?

  What he asked in return was equally simple: As he drove away each morning, he wanted to be able to look up and see her waving to him through the kitchen window.

  She waved to him the first morning and never bothered again.

  He could have said something, but there didn’t seem to be any point. He would have thought the thump of the newspaper hitting the porch each day would have been reminder enough.

  To ask again would be too humiliating. Even his God-fearing mother—“I didn’t raise you to run out on your wife and kids”—un-derstood that.

  His best friend, Tim, a 270-pound giant everyone called Tiny because of his squeaky little voice, said, “Tell you what, Charlie. I never did like her.”

  Charlie didn’t tell Tim the real reason he decided to call it quits—the reason he knew it would have to be sooner rather than later, anyway. That story was less succinct and more embarrassing. Charlie would need a couple shots of tequila or a nice bottle of Merlot before he would feel comfortable sharing that sorry tale.

  TRUTH BE TOLD, the real reason—the one thing that could have made everything else different—kept changing on him. Every time he tried to analyze it, he came up with something else. A new wrinkle. A new if only. Maybe the ending began before he even met Linda. Maybe it began with Annie.

  Even after she called off the wedding—they had been way too young, even he could see that now—there had been a point where he could have stopped her from being so stupid as to marry Perry Miller. But he didn’t even know Perry then, and he certainly didn’t know they were about to tie the knot.

  Annie didn’t tell him.

  Charlie had just graduated from the university, and he ran into Annie at the evening service of the church where they used to sing together in the choir. Afterward, he walked her to her car and told her how great it was to see her again.

  “Yes,” she said. “It’s really good to see you, too.”

  She paused then and looked at her feet and his feet, her sling-backed pumps and his wrinkled loafers. But she didn’t say anything, and neither did he.

  CHARLIE FINALLY DID land a job, in sales, though not before exhausting the severance pay from his old one. And with so little coming in, at least until he could get himself established, he was forced to suffer another indignity: he had to move in with his parents to make ends meet.

  Sam asked him why he wasn’t sending child support.

  “Mom says you haven’t sent a check in eight months,” he said.

  “That’s a lie,” Charlie said, but he couldn’t be sure if it was Linda’s lie or another of Sam’s.

  Then something unexpected happened. Linda remarried. Less than a year after the divorce, devastated Linda hooked up with an older man, Mike Anderson of Canoga Park, California, who had come to Montana to start his life over and met Linda at a church bazaar.

  Charlie had to take Linda to court to stop the alimony payments, a process that should have been wholly unnecessary but did provide one clear satisfaction: She had to admit, under oath, that he had never missed a child-support payment.

  His boys have since told him that Mike is pretty much a complete asshole.

  “A bigger asshole than me?” Charlie asked.

  “It’s pretty much a wash,” Sam said.

  Rory nodded.

&nb
sp; KIDS WERE SUPPOSED to be perceptive in ways that adults had forgotten how to be, but his had apparently not noticed that he had been taking antidepressants for more than a year before he split. What could they have been thinking when he and Linda argued about his decision to stop taking the pills? They had been right there in the back seat of the car.

  “You need the pills, Charlie,” she had said. “You’re so much happier when you take them. We all are.”

  THE WAY LINDA saw it, Charlie wasn’t thinking straight when he moved out of the house. She told the church board it was because he had stopped taking his medication. He didn’t care and he didn’t return repeated phone calls from various board members. The way Charlie saw it, he was thinking clearly for the first time in months—make that years. He was no longer the drugged-up hypocrite perpetuating the illusion of a happy marriage.

  Of the people he did talk to, he told everyone that the separation was all his doing. It wasn’t anything Linda had done or said. For her part, Linda never disagreed. Fine. He was willing to take the blame at that point.

  He did agree to see a marriage counselor, however, and the counselor, a soft-spoken woman who didn’t take sides, insisted that Charlie tell Linda why he was leaving her.

  “She has a right to know.”

  AFTER CHARLIE MOVED out of the house, he and Tim had lunch up at Hell Roaring Saloon, sat on the deck looking down the mountainside, and shared a pitcher of Black Star double-hopped lager. Somehow they got to talking about a camping trip they all made together—he and Linda, Tim and Nora, and another couple, Paul and Lori. This was years ago, and he had all but forgotten about it, but it came back to him very clearly.

  They were all sharing one big tent on a cold night in Glacier National Park. He remembered coming in late, shining a flashlight, and saying, “Now is everybody where they’re supposed to be? Okay, just checking. Don’t anybody open their eyes because I’m gonna take off my clothes now.”

  He peeled off his clothes while holding the flashlight, still on.

  Nora said, “Wow, a strobe-light show and everything.”

  Linda rolled over.

  “Charlie, I was sleeping,” she groaned.

  “Aw, sugar baby, I was just getting undressed.”

  “It’s not fair. Last night when you went to bed early you got so mad at us, and we weren’t even trying to wake you up. We were whispering and being real quiet and you yelled at us—awful, nasty words.”

  “Well, you should have been a little quieter.”

  He rummaged around, putting his watch and the flashlight by the head of their sleeping bag so he could see the time and be sure to get an early start fishing.

  “Let me feel your tits,” he said.

  “No.”

  “Come on, I just want to touch them … Oh, I got one!”

  “How come you waited till now to get so friendly? You didn’t talk to me all day or even come near me.”

  “Honey, I waited till now because I knew we’d be alone.”

  Everyone laughed, except Linda, of course, and then Charlie started whistling “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head.” Nora and Tim joined in, then Paul.

  “Okay, now, let’s do ‘Johnny Rowed His Boat Ashore.’ This side first … ”

  “Johnny?”

  “Okay, that’s it. Lights out.”

  After a long silence, Tim said, “Charlie, check your watch. I think it’s time to get up and start fishing.”

  “No, Tim, go to sleep.”

  “What’s the matter,” Linda said, “are we keeping you up, Charlie?”

  “Shut up, ya bitch.”

  Everyone laughed, except Linda of course.

  IN THE BEGINNING Charlie was just naive enough to think the divorce could be handled with a minimum of fuss, with both parties keeping the best interests of the children in mind at all times. Then, as that illusion evaporated and tensions escalated—when she started calling him selfish and weak and said that she’d lost all respect for him—it became difficult to admit, even to himself, that he ever had second thoughts.

  His weakness was that he didn’t like to be alone. And he missed the boys, especially at Christmas. He had imagined they could all be together on Christmas morning that first year of their separation, but Linda told him not to come.

  “The boys don’t want you here,” she said.

  When he found himself with nothing to do, he offered to complete any number of home-improvement projects (not totally selfless, since the house would be worth more that way), but Linda always said no.

  “That’s reserved for family,” she finally told him—and that was the end of that.

  The closest he came to changing his mind, though, was much earlier, when he was still at home but sleeping in the guest bedroom. He told Linda he had grown tired of living in the fishbowl her profession put them in, and she offered to quit. Just like that. Simple. But it wasn’t that simple; surely she knew that. He wouldn’t ask her to quit for the same reason he was still there when she returned from the ministers’ conference.

  “Live by the sword, die by the sword,” he said.

  But she didn’t get it.

  HERE’S THE THOUGHT that sustained him through the worst of it: He no longer had to worry, as she always did, about what other people would think. And here’s the thought that troubled him: He was free to be himself now, if only he could remember how.

  TIM SAID HE was amazed Charlie’s marriage lasted as long as it did.

  “The way things were going, Nora and I figured two years tops.”

  Charlie was stunned.

  “What made you think that?”

  Then Tim reminded him of the following incident, a brief get-to-gether, many years ago, on the way to something else:

  “This is not a rush thing,” Linda said. “It was never intended to be a rush thing.”

  “Yes, it was because I’ve gotta get back and help your dad with his boat,” Charlie said.

  “I haven’t seen some of these people in four years! I could care less if you get back in time to fix that boat just so you and Daddy can go water ski.”

  “We’ve certainly got our priorities straight there.”

  Linda turned to Tim.

  “Don’t you think that’s logical from my standpoint? Why would I want to leave my friend’s wedding shower early so he can get the boat fixed and go skiing when I wasn’t even invited? Doesn’t that make perfect sense?”

  “Looking at it strictly from your point of view?”

  “You were invited,” Charlie said.

  “I was not. I was specifically invited not to go, when you suggested Lori and I could do something together.”

  “If you didn’t want to, why didn’t you come to me in private and tell me?”

  “No, if I’m going to have to stay home, I’d just as soon have some company,” Linda said. “I just didn’t like the idea of having my time volunteered.”

  “I’m sorry. I’ll keep my mouth shut from now on,” Charlie said.

  “That’s not the point.”

  “The point is to make me look small.”

  THE GREAT THING about seeing Annie was that she knew exactly what he was going through. She was willing to listen and had her own stories to tell, having left Perry five years earlier.

  She said she knew she should never have married Perry. There had been plenty of warning signs during their courtship, but she had ignored them all.

  “There was even one night when he had told me, ‘If you don’t like it, woman, there’s the door.’ I said, ‘You’d better be careful, because I’ll take the door every time.’ We argued for another hour—I don’t even remember what about—and he said it again. So I chose the door,” she said.

  “But that wasn’t the end of it, was it?”

  Annie shook her head.

  “Perry could be charming and persuasive, too,” she said. “He was a lawyer used to winning, and I guess he did.” They were married two months later.

  ANNIE OFTEN TOLD C
harlie that he wasn’t ready for a serious relationship even though he felt certain that he was. With her.

  She encouraged him to date other women, but he didn’t want to. Then she didn’t want to see him driving all the way to Missoula to see her every weekend. It was too much, she said. So he stopped calling her.

  He stopped as long as he could, and then he’d ask to see her again, and they’d go out and have a good time. He didn’t even mind that she always wore four-inch heels, which made her about two inches taller than he was even in his cowboys boots. As a matter of fact, he liked it. It was different. Different was good.

  ONE THING WAS certain: He didn’t want things to be like they were with Linda.

  “I just got fed up with the way you manipulated me,” he told her, their counselor there in the room with them for the big moment. “You did it all the time,” he said. “In the bedroom and everywhere else.”

  Charlie was stunned when Linda said simply, “I’m sorry.” She seemed to mean it, too. But by then it was far too late.

  CHARLIE KNEW THROUGH mutual friends that Annie had left Perry—knew it for a good three years before his own decision to leave Linda. It wasn’t a factor. The reason he decided to move out—the reason he knew it had to be soon—was his failure, over the course of a full month, to engage Linda in any kind of sex act.

  He had tried everything he could think of, everything she had ever told him about the need for romance and kindness and caring, but every night his advances had been rebuffed.

  Now, over dinner and a second bottle of wine at the Tupelo Grille, Charlie found himself telling the story to Annie and watching her face.

  “I put a little ‘x’ on the calendar every time I struck out, and at the end of the month I showed the calendar to Linda. She hit the roof.”

  Annie shook her hair back.

  “I’d be pretty pissed off if you did that to me,” she said. “But then you’d probably have to use a day-at-a-glance calendar: ‘Do you realize we haven’t had sex in nearly twelve hours!’”