She thought about her years with Larry. They never screamed at each other or slammed doors. They argued, disagreed on many things, and she sometimes criticized him about his spending habits. He bought expensive clothes for himself—Hong Kong shirts—and sometimes elaborate presents for her. As much as she liked his gifts, she knew he could not afford them. Once he came home with a vintage Mercedes sedan that he had bought from one of his hardware clients in Mississippi. The car spent more time racking up bills in the repair shop than being a source of pride sitting in their driveway. Mallie knew that Larry spent more money than his salary allowed. He had no doubt dipped into the small inheritance his grandfather had left him. Certainly she resented his constant traveling and the tension that had developed in recent years between Larry and her father. Thinking about all that, and, of course, the biggest anguish of all—the other women and the lies—Mallie had to admit she had been pretending that she loved Larry for years. Until her growing intimacy with Tom, she had forgotten how love felt: the desire to be in the other person’s presence at all times and above all others—the comfort and joy of complete trust. She replayed Larry’s admission in Tom’s office that he did not love her. She relived the way Larry looked away from her when he said those words, the way he tried to take some of the sting back by saying he didn’t really know how he felt, but that he didn’t want to be married to her. Mallie shook her head. Of course he didn’t love her. It wasn’t possible that Larry could still love her and not want to be married to her. She wondered what might have happened if she had not been so quick to accept his decision, if she had tried to stop him from walking out the door. But she hadn’t. The deed was done. It was over. The thought of what would happen now was terrifying. It made her want to pull the covers over her head and slip down into the dark, to disappear. No matter who took the blame, she could not imagine telling the boys, her friends, and her parents that she and Larry were getting a divorce. The word itself sounded like death. Finally, in sheer exhaustion, she fell asleep.
Just before dawn, as the pale first light came through the window beside her bed, Mallie opened her eyes and began to recall the dream that had awakened her. Slowly, slowly, the details came into focus.
She and Larry had been sailing on a small boat with friends in a familiar, but unnamed body of water. They were drinking cocktails and laughing while they were moored at the end of the day. She instinctively turned to look behind her and to her horror, she saw a tidal wave about to crash on top of the boat. She was too frightened to speak and warn the others. The wave hit and all of them were sent roiling in the dark sea water. She could not breathe and was certain that she was drowning. Suddenly she was aware that she had been tossed up on a distant, unfamiliar shore—alone but alive. The beach stretched for miles with nothing at either end and no one in sight. She looked around and saw a path winding up a steep cliff beyond the beach. She knew that was where she was supposed to go. Hand over hand, she climbed the rocky face and finally reached the top. Just ahead of her an old woman in a shroud was sitting on a rock, holding a baby in her arms. She walked over to the woman, who held up the baby to her. “Take this child,” the woman said. “Care for her and you will be fine.”
When Mallie held the child in her arms, she was filled with warmth and happiness.
For some reason Mallie could not immediately understand, she felt tears in her eyes as she recalled the dream. She was not sad. She knew the dream was positive and prophetic. It was meant as some sort of sign that she would live and she would be okay. She knew that. Why was she crying? She was anxious to talk to Tom about it. Tom. The question that she had asked herself over and over during the night came back to her. Did Tom know what would happen when he left her alone in the room with Larry? Was he aware that a “tidal wave” might hit her life? She would have to see him as soon as possible.
Chapter Twelve
The next morning, first thing, Mallie called Terry at St. Michael’s. She was grateful that, through their conversations during her weekly visits to the chapel, she had begun to trust Terry. She even suspected Terry knew about her feelings for Tom. This was an emergency, she confided to Terry on the phone. She had to have an appointment with Tom as soon as possible. Terry assured her she would see to it that Tom found a place in his schedule at some point during the day. An hour later she called Mallie back to confirm that he would see her at three.
The minute Mallie closed the door of Tom’s study, she fell into his arms, burying her face in his chest. He stroked her hair. She was sure he knew what had happened. The thought fleetingly crossed her mind that he had planned for it to happen.
“Your life is not over, Mallie,” he said. “Know that. Maybe it’s just beginning.”
She kept her eyes closed, trying to control her conflicting feelings. She was truly frightened about her future, but a part of her was relieved a decision had been made. She wanted to tell Tom about the dream—about the tidal wave—how terrified she had been that everything and everyone in her life would be gone and she would be dead. She wanted to tell him about the old woman and the baby—how happy and peaceful she felt when she held the child. But she could not speak. She could only feel his arms around her, hear his soothing voice consoling her.
“You’re a beautiful, special, wonderful woman,” he said, and, as if reading her mind, he added, “You’re not to worry. Everything will be okay.”
She put her face up next to his. Closing her eyes, aware of the warmth of his skin on hers, she felt another sweep of relief. The cold tension of the unknown that had gripped her with fear throughout the night disappeared. She felt total protection—as if nothing in the world could harm her—as long as Tom Matthews held her. She did not move from his arms. She breathed in his familiar, musty, aftershave scent, and felt the softness of his cheek next to hers. In a totally unexpected moment, her mouth found his mouth. The connection was electric, not a jarring shock, but a warm illumination that filled her whole body. Neither of them moved. Finally, she broke the connection and put her head into the space under his chin. “I love you,” she whispered.
“I love you, too, Mallie,” he said, softly. He patted her arm as he spoke. When she moved, her forehead touched the crisp, white, clerical collar around his neck. It felt like a stone wall jutting up between them. She backed away and moved to a chair next to him.
“I have something I must tell you, Tom,” she said. Her heart was pounding against her rib cage. The fear gripping her chest was greater than all of the fear that she had experienced during the previous night. “It’s something I haven’t been able to tell you.”
“Whatever it is—it’s okay, Mallie.” Tom Matthews reached out to hold her hand and to speak with a quiet authority. “You are not to worry.”
“Tom,” she said, “I don’t care that Larry’s gone. I know it’s horrible. Shocking, maybe. I know that. But he doesn’t love me. He said so.”
In that moment she couldn’t come right out and tell Tom that the real reason she didn’t care about Larry leaving her was that she had fallen in love with him. It would sound so callous, proof that she had not taken her marriage commitment seriously. That was the last thing she wanted Tom to think about her—the last thing she had ever expected of herself. “I know it’s strange, but I don’t feel rejected,” she said. She looked at him hoping she could read in his eyes that he understood.
Tom nodded, then surprised her with his answer. “Rejection is painful, Mallie. Even if you don’t feel the pain at the moment, it’s one of life’s most hurtful and difficult human experiences. Do you still love him?”
It didn’t take her a second to respond. “No,” she said. “I don’t think so. What it feels like is—the love is gone. The marriage feels dead.”
“That feeling may be so,” Tom said, as he sat back in his chair and let go of her hand. “But it’s important for you to understand that love is more than a feeling; it’s an act of will—a determination of the mind. At the same time, love has to be kept alive th
rough actions and the honest expression of feelings.” His voice was gentle, more consoling than advisory. “You’ve been married to Larry for nearly eighteen years and from what you’ve told me, you’ve been denying your true feelings for many of those years.”
Mallie lowered her head, unable to look at Tom as she spoke. She knew she had to speak the truth to him. “What I really have to tell you is about my feelings,” she said, “but it’s not about my feelings for Larry or our marriage.” She pushed a new wave of fear down in her throat.
“What is it?” he asked.
She swallowed and lifted her eyes toward him. “It’s about you,” she said. “I think about you all the time, Tom. I go to sleep thinking about you. I wake up thinking about you. I feel as if I am living just to be with you. I know it’s wrong. I know.” She stopped. “I’m so afraid you’ll send me away—that you’ll tell me I have to go to someone else.”
Tom took both of her hands in his and spoke directly to her. “Mallie, there’s nothing wrong with what you’re feeling about me. It’s perfectly natural in this situation. What you’re feeling is all part of the healing process. This is a very difficult and painful time for you. More than you realize. You need not worry. I can handle this for both of us. You don’t have to go anywhere else, to anyone else. I will always be here for you. I promise you.” He tightened his grip on her hands and smiled at her.
She felt as if an invisible vise had let go of her body. She had risked everything by telling him of her love for him. All she heard in that moment was that she did not have to leave him and that he would always be there for her. Thank God. “I trust you, Tom,” she said.
Inside, within seconds, she was bursting with confusion again. She had not allowed herself to imagine kissing another man in all her married life, but it had been years since she experienced the elation she felt from kissing Tom. She had begun to think that the sensual excitement she had once known with Larry was gone permanently from her life. She never imagined that she would fall in love with another man—certainly not a married Episcopal priest. She knew it made no sense, but it had happened. It was real. And when she told Tom she loved him, did he not say to her “I love you, too?” But then he said that her feelings were part of “the healing process.” What did that mean? Nothing was clear. All her convictions of who she was, all her ideas of how life should be, everything impressed upon her from childhood were disappearing, vanishing, as if they never existed. Even the sensation of peace she had felt when she’d held the child in her powerful dream no longer mattered to her. Only one thing seemed real: the overriding determination in her mind that nothing was going to keep her from being with Tom Matthews. Nothing.
Chapter Thirteen
Larry called and agreed to come home before dinner on Friday night to meet with the boys. They were accustomed to his being away during the week, so it would only become obvious that something in their lives had changed if he didn’t come home for the weekend.
Larry was to be the spokesman. It was only fair, Mallie argued, that he should be the one to tell them about the separation. He was the one, after all, who had left home. Since Sammy was away at St. George’s School in Newport, Rhode Island, he would have to be told by phone, or perhaps Larry would choose to go to Rhode Island himself. He could go to Providence on the same trip and tell his parents as well.
It was close to six when Larry came home. The four of them gathered in the library, Troy and David seated on the two-seater couch, Larry in his usual chair, and Mallie across from him next to the fireplace. It was the room where so many family events had taken place—the ritual opening of their Christmas stockings, the planning of their summer vacation in Watch Hill, the happy times of sharing special programs like the Olympic Games on television together.
Mallie had sat on that same couch with Larry, both of them glued to the television set throughout the entire weekend after President Kennedy was shot in Dallas. In horror, late on that November Sunday morning in 1963, during a quiet, maternal moment with baby Sammy in her lap, they had witnessed Jack Ruby shoot Lee Harvey Oswald right in front of them. She had thought that nothing more dramatic than that event could possibly ever happen to her family.
Mallie closed her eyes, fighting the image of the news of their separation coming as a gun blast in her children’s faces.
“What’s going on, Mom?” Troy asked, looking at her with an earnest expression that Mallie recognized from her own childhood sense of responsibility. She was the oldest of her three sisters. Since Sammy was away to boarding school, Troy had taken over the position of the oldest boy. She felt his desire to say and do everything right.
For a second, she wanted to preempt Larry, to jump in and tell the boys that it had all been a mistake. There was nothing to talk about. Everything was fine. They could go outside and play with their friends. She kept her eyes on Larry, not answering Troy, forcing herself to wait for her husband to speak.
“We need to tell you both something,” Larry said, his eyes nearly disappearing under his brow and his head tilted forward, as if he were hiding beneath a low rooftop in a storm. He was fidgeting with his hands, his left hand opening and closing into a fist. “Your mother and I are going to separate for a while.” He stopped.
Troy looked again at Mallie. “Mom?”
Mallie raised her open hand toward her son, a signal to ask him to wait for his father to finish what he was saying. She closed her eyes.
“I’m going to live in an apartment near here—in Laurelwood,” he continued, “and you’ll stay here with your mother.”
“Why?” David asked. “Did we do something wrong?” He sounded choked. His voice was even higher and thinner than usual.
Mallie wanted to reach out for him, hold him close to her. David was the sensitive one, the animal lover, the red-haired artist of the three boys. At eleven years old, he was the one who couldn’t bear to watch when they buried Laddie, their lab before Bingo, who had been hit by a speeding car in front of their house on Walnut Grove Road.
“No, no,” Larry said emphatically. “Neither of you did anything. It has nothing to do with you. This is a decision we’ve made.”
Mallie wanted to correct him and say “a decision that you’ve made,” but she knew that wouldn’t be fair. She had agreed to the separation. She had thought she wanted the separation. At the moment, the idea felt like a betrayal of her children, of everything she held dear.
“Are you getting a divorce?” Troy asked. He was sitting up straight, looking from his father to his mother, directing his question to her. “Does Sammy know about this?”
“No, Sammy doesn’t know anything about this yet,” Mallie said, trying to keep control of her voice. “And we don’t know what will happen, Troy.”
She really didn’t know what would happen in the future. That was the truth, as best she knew the truth at that moment. Mallie felt heartsick for each of her boys. A memory surfaced of the years she had spent as a child with her mother during the Second World War, when her father was stationed in the Pacific, her constant fear that her father would not come home and that they would no longer be a family.
“We don’t know,” Larry repeated. “For now we’re going to be living separately. There are some things your mother and I have to work out. I want you to know that I’m leaving home, but I’m not leaving you. I want you to come over to my place whenever you like.”
Larry sounded so very rational, almost mechanical. He spoke casually as if he were taking his old car out of the home garage and driving it to a new garage to fix it. The boys could come over to the new garage to be with him anytime. Mallie reminded herself that Larry was a charmer who had convinced her of untruths with his explanations for too many years. He was attempting to charm the boys.
“Is there anything we can do?” David said. Tears welled in his eyes.
Mallie could hardly bear to look at her son, at David’s pained face. The plaintiveness in his voice and his tears dissolved all the optimistic thought
s she held for her own future—possibilities that she had envisioned only hours before. What she and Larry were doing was so selfish. How would she ever be able to forget David’s tears? In that moment it didn’t matter that she and Larry had been living separate lives under the same roof for years. It didn’t matter that Larry had been consistently telling her lies. It certainly didn’t matter that she had finally felt that maybe there was a better life for her without him. All she could see was the sadness in her son’s face, the reality that his life, all three of her sons’ lives, would never be the same. She felt an overwhelming accusation that somehow she had failed to keep the family together.
She got up from her rooted position in her chair and put her arms around David. “It’s okay, sweetheart,” she said. “It’s okay. It’s not your fault. I promise you it has nothing to do with you.” She kissed him on the side of his face and looked back at Larry, hoping he would figure out some way to end the torture of dragging on the conversation.
“We’ll talk again,” Larry said. He stood up as if to say the session was over.
Troy took David’s arm and they walked silently past their parents out of the library.
“You’ll call Sammy tonight?” Mallie questioned Larry. She was sure that her oldest son would want to talk to her after his father called him, but she didn’t want to be the one to break the news to him.
“I’ll call him,” Larry said. “Maybe not tonight, but I’ll call him.” Mallie sat back on the couch and watched her husband go into their bedroom to pack his clothes. He was so particular and fastidious about his clothes. His suits, sports jackets, ties and tassel loafers all came from Brooks Brothers. He had found a shirt maker in Hong Kong, where he could order his shirts with a monogram on the sleeve at no extra charge. She wondered what he was deciding to take with him. In an unexpected flare-up of anger, she envisioned throwing what he left behind into a canvas bag and dumping it at Goodwill. That would serve Larry right. How could he have sat there so complacently and told the boys that “we have some things to work out?” That was another lie. There was nothing to work out. He was leaving because he didn’t love her and didn’t want to be married to her. He had another woman in his life named Julie. Maybe he intended to marry her. She, Mallie, his wife of almost eighteen years, no longer mattered to him. All those years, all those women. And she had stayed married to him, taken care of their family. The more she thought about it, the angrier she became. She had allowed herself to be a part of creating a marriage façade for years, and now she was allowing herself to be a part of creating a divorce façade—or at least, a sham separation.
Valeria Vose Page 7