“Of course,” Terry said. “Tom’s got a big following—often including some of the people he’s counseling.” She turned quickly back toward her desk. “I think I hear him.” She motioned for Mallie to follow her.
Chapter Seven
Mallie felt an anxious rise in her pulse when she saw Father Matthews standing in the entrance to his study. He was even taller than she remembered and far more handsome, not as old. His craggy face softened when he smiled. He wore a gray tweed jacket over his dark shirt and white-banded collar.
“Hello, Mallie,” the priest said. His voice in person had a sensuous resonance; it seemed to enter her skin. He did not move but stretched out his hand to greet her. “Forgive me for running late. It’s an occupational hazard of mine. Come on in.” He took her hand and guided her past him into his office.
His study looked like a scholar’s library: dark brown wood paneling that surrounded burgeoning book shelves and an aging Oriental rug across the center. Books covered every surface: the shelves, his desk, the couch, the floor. He pointed to an empty chair near the corner of his desk. “Have a seat,” he said. “Or maybe you’d be more comfortable on the couch. I could move the books.”
“This is fine,” Mallie said. She sat down on the edge of the chair.
Father Matthews pulled another chair out from behind his desk and sat slightly across from her. “So, tell me why you’re here. You sounded somewhat distressed on the phone.” His tone was formal but kind.
Underneath his thick, dark rimmed glasses, she could see the softness of his gray-blue eyes. A rush of anger returned to her throat. You should know why I’m here! She tried to speak, but no words would come out.
He reached over and took her hand. “Take a breath,” he said. His hand was warm and strong.
She shut her eyes, a reflex to hold back tears. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t want to do this.”
“You haven’t done anything, Mallie,” he said. “You’re safe here. Take your time.” He let go of her hand and sat back in his chair, an indication that he had all the time in the world.
She waited for what seemed like an eternity. Finally she took another breath and began to speak. “I can’t believe you told Larry our only problem was communication. I can’t believe—did you really say that to him?”
“All marriages have problems of communication,” the priest said quickly. “It’s part of human relationships. I guess you could say all people have problems with communication.”
“But didn’t Larry tell you anything about the women in his life—about Julie?”
“No,” he said. He crossed his arms, not changing his expression. “He didn’t mention any other women. Who’s Julie?”
Oh God, Mallie shuddered. Of course, he didn’t. “I guess I should tell it from the beginning.” She looked hard at Father Matthews to be certain she had his approval.
“You can say whatever you need to say in this room,” he said. His voice was gentle, assuring, without any tinge of judgment. He folded his hands in his lap.
Mallie held her eyes closed for a few seconds. Could she really tell him her secrets, all those things she had been hiding for so long? She had never talked to a priest—Catholic or Episcopalian—about anything personal. Yet here she was about to tell Father Matthews about her husband’s affairs—the attempted suicide—and her terrifying fear of what might happen to her, to her marriage. She wanted to trust Father Matthews. If she did not tell someone about the lies in her life, Mallie felt as if she might shatter into a thousand pieces. She cleared her throat. “I thought we had a perfect marriage for the first two years. Ups and downs—disagreements, of course—but nothing major. The first time we were separated for longer than a few days at a time was in 1962, the summer after Sammy was born. Sammy’s our first son—he’s away at St. George’s School in Rhode Island. Anyway, that summer Larry was sent out to California for a week of sales calls.”
She stopped, realizing she needed to explain to the priest about Larry’s job. Right after they were married, Larry went to work for her father at Malcolm Brothers Hardware, a wholesale distributor company that her grandfather started in the 1920s. Her father had told her husband that if he worked really hard he might someday be president. For the first two years Larry stayed close to home, traveling as a sales rep to Arkansas and Mississippi, then as the company began to grow, he was sent all over the country.
“So, on that particular business trip to California,” she said, “he stopped in Seattle over the weekend to be an usher in a Princeton friend’s wedding. I took Sammy—just a baby at the time—to our little cabin on my parents’ property at Pickwick Lake.
“I picked up the telephone on Sunday afternoon. It was long distance—a woman’s voice asking to speak to Larry. I thought maybe the call might have had something to do with one of his clients, so I said, ‘This is Mallie Vose. Is there a message you’d like to leave for my husband?’”
Mallie took a deep breath before she spoke again. “There was silence on the other end of the line. Then the woman said, ‘Oh, my God, I thought you might be his mother. I didn’t know he was married. Please forgive me.’ And she hung up.”
Saying those words, recalling the memory, caused Mallie’s throat to tighten.
The priest sat quietly waiting for her to speak again. After a few moments of silence, he said, “How did that call make you feel?”
Mallie put her hand over her eyes, then dropped it in her lap. “I remember staring at that little black telephone as if it were a snake that had bitten me. I knew instantly that Larry had lied to someone. I didn’t want to believe it. I tried to convince myself that the woman had misunderstood—Larry couldn’t have told her he wasn’t married—he wouldn’t do that. But I knew. I knew.”
“So, how did you handle the situation?” the priest asked.
“I packed up Sammy and went home. I didn’t say anything to anyone about it. I kept trying to convince myself there must be some explanation. I tried to stay busy and not think about it until Larry got home. But I began having terrible cramps in my stomach; I couldn’t eat.”
“How long was he away?”
“Four more days,” she said. “When he finally walked in the door—it was a Thursday night, as I remember—I didn’t want him to touch me. When he started towards me, I blurted out the story of the phone call.”
She hesitated. The priest said, “And then?”
Mallie shook her head. “He started laughing.” The remembrance of his laughter seemed even more absurd to her as she repeated it to Father Matthews. “I mean it, he was laughing. I was so shocked at the time.”
“What did he say?”
“He stood right in front of me and said, ‘Oh Mallie, I’m so sorry. It had to have been that former Miss Washington I sat next to at the bridal dinner in Seattle. It was nothing. I can’t believe she called. My friends said she had a crush on me and they thought it would be a lark if I didn’t tell her I was married—you know, sort of a joke for a night. When the dinner was over, I told her if she ever wanted to talk to pick up the phone, but I never thought she’d actually call. I must have given her the Pickwick number. We’d all had a lot to drink.’”
“Did you believe him?” the priest said.
Mallie shook her head, as if in retelling the story, she couldn’t believe she had been so gullible. “He convinced me the woman meant nothing to him. He assured me nothing like that would ever happen again.” She sat back in her chair. “That was sixteen years ago.”
“But it wasn’t the only time such an incident took place. Is that right?” The priest obviously knew the answer to his question.
“Right,” she said, hearing the sarcasm in her own voice. “There’ve been more incidents than I can count. Anonymous, threatening letters. One woman’s letter said that Larry had rented an apartment in some new building in downtown Memphis and was sleeping with her daughter. There was another with a newspaper clipping about a wife catching her husband in bed with another woman. T
hat one included a note that suggested I needed to hire a lawyer. I told Larry about them. He always had an explanation. It was only after this last time, after Julie—a woman in his office he’s obviously been having an affair with—called me on the phone and then tried to kill herself—”
“Tried to kill herself?” The priest leaned forward and interrupted her in mid-sentence. “What do you mean? What happened?”
“She took an overdose—her friend called our house—Larry went to the hospital. She’s okay. He says she’s okay.” Mallie took another breath, a sigh. “But I knew I couldn’t pretend anymore. That night I felt like everything was over. My marriage, my reputation, everything. When Larry asked for help and you agreed to see him, I thought maybe there was some hope.” She held back tears. “And you told him our problem was communication.”
The priest shook his head. “I could only deal with the facts as he told them to me.” He sounded sincerely apologetic, as if he wished he had known more of the real situation when he met with Larry. “It must have been an extremely difficult time for you. Suicide’s a very serious matter.”
“I knew I had to see you by myself,” Mallie said.
“Good.” The priest leaned forward in his chair, nodding to her. “You made a good decision. Whether you know it or not, you’ve made a decision to live—no matter what Larry does—or ever did—or what might happen to your marriage.”
Mallie closed her eyes. What did that mean—a decision to live? All she could see were Larry’s tears, his slumping body and his cry for help. She didn’t want a divorce—surely it wouldn’t come to that—but she didn’t want to live with lies and other women anymore either.
“I’m glad you came today,” the priest said.
Thank God. Mallie felt a deep relief. She had done the right thing by seeing him alone. He understood. She trusted him. “Father Matthews, do you think there’s any hope for our marriage?”
Taking an instructor’s stance, he said, “When a broken marriage is healed, it’s often stronger than one that’s never been broken.”
She nodded her agreement. She had broken her right leg in her early thirties, when she and Larry were on a trip to New Orleans. It had taken nearly a year to heal, but it was stronger than her left leg.
“I think I should meet with the two of you individually for some period of time before I meet with you as a couple,” the priest said.
Mallie felt another rush of relief. She liked the idea of meeting with him alone again.
“And, if you wouldn’t mind,” he said, “I’d prefer that you called me Tom rather than ‘Father.’ I think it would work better for both of us in an ongoing counseling situation.”
“Forgive me,” Mallie said. “‘Father’ is a habit from my Catholic childhood. I’ve always thought of priests as ‘Father.’ But I will—I’d like to call you Tom.” She couldn’t imagine being able to talk to any of the Catholic priests that she had known in the past the way she talked to him.
He took out a small black leather book and a pen from his shirt pocket. “Great,” he said. “That’s settled. Could you come here at this same time next Tuesday?”
Mallie reached into the confusion of her purse for her own date book. Makeup. Hairbrush. Checkbook. Bills to be mailed. School activities schedule. Kleenex. A little yellow box of Chiclets. She studied her calendar: a book club meeting every other Tuesday morning, carpools every afternoon except Tuesdays and Thursdays. Tennis. Board meetings. “Two o’clock Tuesday would be fine,” she said.
After he gave her a few guidelines of what to share with Larry during the week—and what not to share: nothing about their individual counseling sessions, nothing about Julie or the attempted suicide—they both stood in recognition that the session was over. Tom put his arms around her and gave her a firm, warm hug. “This was a good beginning, Mallie,” he said.
She closed her eyes and for a second she wanted to melt into Tom Matthews. Not since she first knew Larry had she felt that a man could be so immediately empathetic, so accepting of her. He pulled away, then lightly kissed her on the side of her forehead. She looked at his face. Behind the glasses she saw an expression of compassion. She had definitely come to the right person. “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you so much.”
He patted her shoulder as she turned to leave. “God bless you, Mallie,” he said. “See you next week.”
Chapter Eight
In the week that followed, Mallie was surprised at the number of times she thought of Tom Matthews. She found that she was not only holding mental conversations with him, telling him what she was thinking and feeling, her doubts and fears about the future of her marriage, her painful past experiences with Larry’s infidelities—expecting the priest’s positive response—but she was also looking forward to another hug at the end of the session. The way he held her and said “God bless you” had filled her with warmth, a sense of worth. He cared about her. She wanted more of it. By the time two p.m. Tuesday afternoon came around, she felt both excited and anxious. Would he be the patient listener, the consoling person she remembered him to be? Surely their second session would be at least as meaningful to her as the first one.
When Mallie walked into St. Michael’s, Terry greeted her with the same open, positive smile. “Hi there,” she said, looking up from her typewriter. “As usual, I’m afraid he’s a little late.” She nodded toward the closed door of the chaplain’s study. “I don’t think he’ll be much longer.”
“I love your shoes,” Mallie said, referring to Terry’s green tennis shoes peeking out from under her desk. In her mind those shoes seemed so out of place in the chapel. Mallie could never have worn anything like that, but rather than say nothing or ask a question about why someone did something she considered odd, she often called attention to the situation by paying a compliment. It was a southern trait she knew about herself—the desire to please, to always say something nice, even if she knew it was not wholly true.
Terry smiled. “I started wearing them when I had foot surgery a few years ago. Now they’re like my old friends.”
Before they could continue the conversation, the door opened and Tom Matthews appeared, shaking his head. “So sorry to keep you waiting.” He beckoned to Mallie to follow him into his study. “Good to see you,” he said, giving her a quick hug as he closed the door behind them. “Come. Have a seat. Tell me about your week.”
Mallie took a deep breath, sorting out quickly what she wanted to say. She wanted to please the priest. “Well, we did what you suggested. It was hard—at least for me—but Larry and I didn’t talk about anything having to do with Julie or the suicide attempt. Nothing about either of our counseling sessions.”
“What did you talk about?” he asked.
“The boys mostly. David’s training Bingo to fetch—he’s our two-year-old yellow lab—so he and his father can take him hunting. Larry took them both out to Shelby Forest on Saturday to try Bingo out in the lake. I went to one of Troy’s football games. We talked about that. We tried to keep things as normal as possible, just as you recommended.”
“And how did you feel about your time alone with Larry?”
“It was awkward,” she said. “Really strange. It’s as if we’re walking around each other in the same house but it’s not the same. We’re not the same.” Mallie felt some confusion over telling Tom her real feelings. The truth was that she had experienced moments when she looked at Larry and no longer felt that she wanted to try to make her marriage work. She certainly didn’t want to be divorced, but she could not imagine going through the rest of her life not trusting her husband, constantly worried about other women and his lies. She had given her vow to God as well as to Larry when they were married. The idea of wanting to break it, to have a different life, made her feel like a bad person. As much as she wanted to be truthful with Tom about her feelings, she didn’t want him to think she was a bad person. She didn’t want to think that about herself. “When I look at Larry, sometimes I feel as if something
has gone away, or maybe died. I just don’t feel anything, any attraction to Larry anymore.”
“Do you remember what it was that attracted you to Larry in the first place?” Tom asked. “Can you talk about that?”
“Oh Tom,” she sighed as she spoke. “He was so handsome. So much fun to be with. Such a good dancer. He was so attentive to me—and he had such big ideas of what he wanted to do in life. I’d never met anyone like him, certainly no one I knew growing up in Memphis.”
“Larry wasn’t from Memphis?” Tom asked.
“No, no,” Mallie said, shaking her head, as if it were so obvious that Larry wasn’t southern. She was surprised Tom didn’t recognize it—particularly since he was not southern himself. “Larry’s from Providence, Rhode Island. He didn’t move to Memphis until after we were married.”
“Then how did you meet him?” Tom asked.
“At a debut party in New York City during Christmas vacation,” Mallie said. His question opened a book of memories she had long since closed. The tradition of families giving elaborate parties based on the idea of “making a debut into society” was very prevalent among her friends in the North as well as the South at that time. “My roommate at Sweet Briar lived in New York and invited me to spend a few days with her before going home to Memphis.”
“Tell me about it,” the priest said.
Mallie’s story of spotting Larry across a balloon-festooned ballroom of the Union Club came alive for both of them as she told it to Tom Matthews. “I watched him dance with one of my friends and decided he was not only the handsomest boy at the party—movie-star handsome, a blond Cary Grant—but he was also as graceful as Gene Kelly. I asked a friend who he was. She said everyone knew Larry Vose. She was surprised I didn’t know him. He was apparently a famous Princeton lacrosse star. The amazing thing was that he walked right up to me a few minutes later and said ‘Hi, I’m Larry Vose. You want to dance?’”
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