by Susan Wilson
I called Sean at his mother's and asked him to meet with me. Then I called Grace.
After I had Tim I had a tubal ligation. I was tired of being pregnant and was happy with two children. I didn't admit, even to myself, that I didn't want ever again to give Sean an excuse for wandering because of my being pregnant. I still blamed myself for his weakness. We never told Alice about the operation, as Old World Catholic as she was, it would have been a mistake. We let her believe that we were very good at rhythm. Or maybe she guessed and knew enough to keep her mouth shut. I supposed she allowed Francis his wanderings because of her own inadequate birth-control method. Better he wander on the unsafe days than have yet another child. I imagined a lot I knew nothing about. Having to tell Alice now that I intended to divorce her son made me think more about keeping that other sin from her.
Grace wouldn't agree to take the kids for the afternoon until she'd extracted from me the whole of my last two conversations with Sean. She prompted from time to time but generally let me tell it as stream of consciousness, hmmming and okaying in a way which didn't interrupt my narrative flow but let me say the thoughts which had been voiced only in my head for days. It was like going to a psychiatrist. Eventually I came back to the conclusion I'd woken up with and felt validated.
“You're doing the right thing, Cleo. What will you tell the kids?”
Like being patted on the back and then punched. “I don't know. That's part of what we'll talk about.”
“On the agenda, then?”
“Something like that.”
Grace came and collected the kids. I spent some time reading through the manuscript and making changes, but it was not a successful distraction. My own thoughts kept bumping up against the imagined thoughts of my characters. My real drama sucking the wind out of my imagined drama. The mantel clock in the living room chimed several times, and seemed to come no closer to four o'clock, when Sean said he'd come over. The nauseous feeling settled into my gut and I wished this was over.
This time Sean didn't knock. I deliberately waited for him in the living room, giving our discussion the more formal setting it required. I sat in the left-side wing chair, Sean sat in the one opposite, our little seldom-used fireplace between us. We might have been sitting for a portrait.
All of a sudden Sean began to cry. I'd never seen him cry before except when his father died, and then that was a dignified, quickly extinguished silent moment. Now he cried. Great rolling tears cascaded down his unshaven cheeks and his hands went to his face. “Cleo, I'm so torn.”
“How so?” My voice was dispassionate despite my instinct to go over to him and hold him as I would any crying child.
“I hate what I'm doing to this family, but I can't help it.”
What he said was so true. He couldn't help it, and by his admission it was easier for me to press on. “Sean. It's for the best. We could get counseling and prolong the agony, but I think that what we had has been dying or dead for a long time now. You've proven it.”
He'd collected himself by now, dragging out a handkerchief to wipe away the proof of his weak moment. In an instant he assumed his businessman's persona. “You're right. What do we do first?”
“Decide what we're telling the children.” Now it was my turn to cry.
In the corner of his eye, a lingering droplet nearly spilled over, in answer to my own sudden weeping.
Somehow we got through the necessary parts of the conversation. We would talk to the children together, explain that even though we both loved them, Daddy also loved someone else. I'd left the room for a little while after that. Then we regrouped and decided to begin the divorce proceedings before we talked to Alice. I think we were both afraid she'd talk us out of it.
We had gravitated back into the kitchen and I made us each a sandwich, some part of my mind marveling at my ability to perform such a mundane act. I handed Sean his sandwich, he got up and got us napkins. In the brief silence of our eating, I imagined that some sort of wall had been breached, or passed through like a ghost in a movie. We'd come to some other land where we could eat in comfortable silence and get on with our lives. Sean felt it, too—not exactly a peace, probably more a truce. We'd behaved. We had not screamed or accused or uttered invectives today.
We had uttered the word divorce. It was the first time I'd thought of divorce as something real, concrete, and with actions and rules of its own. Saying the word had breathed it into life, a golem of massive proportion. At the same time I felt suddenly weightless, not freed, exactly, more like coming to terms with an inevitable death. It would come, and in some ways, it would be all right.
“I should go.” Sean stuck his plate into the dishwasher.
“What about the kids? Grace should have them back in a little while.”
“I can't tonight. I don't have the emotional chops to go through it right now. Tomorrow night. After work.”
“I'd rather do it tonight, Sean.”
“Cleo, I need twenty-four hours to adjust to this.”
“Sean, don't imagine this is going to change overnight. Don't think sleeping on it is going to change my mind.”
“No. Of course not. Or mine.” In the end he agreed to come in the morning.
I stood at the back door, holding the doorknob in my hand as Sean hefted a black garbage bag full of things he needed to take with him. As he passed by me, he stopped and kissed my cheek. It was such a natural act I don't think it even registered immediately. Then Sean set the bag down and took me in his arms, kissing me with full force of passion, as if to test my resolve.
“Don't, Sean. Don't ever do that again.” I shut the door behind him.
Thirty-four
I just wanted to hear his voice. Just for a minute, just long enough so I could prove to myself I hadn't imagined him. I sat in the slowly darkening living room, half-listening for Grace to come with the kids. Judging if I had enough time to make a quick, dangerous phone call. I sat in the slowly darkening living room and pretended I was on the porch of the cabin, waiting to see Ben's light appear. Every night I had watched Ben come out of his cabin, lift the chimney of the lantern, and put a match to it, the soft yellowish light making a tiny beacon of welcome at a self-proclaimed hermit's home.
I heard the car door slam and I knew I had waited too long.
Grace stayed, wanting details, of course, but having to wait out the kids and their bedtime before getting any. Lily was particularly hard to maneuver, suddenly clingy and interested in being in the kitchen with the women. I finally lost my temper with her—”It is time for bed, now go!” My nerves were raw and I no longer had any patience with stubbornness or with negotiation.
Gathering her dignity, Lily walked away. Then, as she reached the archway, she turned and with cool knowingness asked, “When is Daddy coming home, and why is he living at Gramma's?”
I caught Grace's expression before she could quickly settle it into a mask of detachment. “Daddy and I will talk to you and Tim about that tomorrow.”
Not satisfied, but recognizing she wouldn't get any more out of me, Lily nodded as if to let me know she'd hold me to that promise. She reminded me of her grandmother. Not Alice, but my mother.
“Was it okay?” Grace asked after the kids had finally gone to bed.
“I wouldn't put it on my top-ten list of things to do on a Sunday afternoon . . . but, yes, I guess it was all right. We've got our cards on the table.”
“I know a great lawyer.”
“I do, too.”
The golem stank up the room.
I knew that Grace wanted a reenactment but I couldn't give it to her. For her benefit, I assumed a façade of weary but handling it. I wasn't in the mood for sympathy or encouragement and I knew that Grace, no big fan of Sean's in the first place, would dish it out until I broke down. I really only wanted to be alone, to have some time to examine the events and my feelings by myself.
Eventually Grace left and I lay down on the couch in the den, wrapping the pink and mauve an
d white afghan Alice had made for us around me. It was hot and humid outside, but I was cold in my house. I lay on my couch, wrapped in my mother-in-law's afghan, and allowed fresh tears to come. The kids couldn't hear me sniffling and at this moment I didn't have to be strong for Grace's benefit, or anyone else's, either. The only person I would have wept in front of was Ben, and he was so far away.
It was almost eleven o'clock. Oddly, it wasn't the divorce I thought about, it was the urgent need to talk to Ben. It was like a craving for something I hadn't known I was addicted to. I sat up and wiped my eyes and scolded myself for letting go. I would tell Ben that I'd made my decision, that I was divorcing Sean and that soon my life would be smoothed out.
I pulled the desk phone onto my lap and impulsively dialed his number. I was proud of myself. I wanted nothing more in those few quiet and solitary moments than to call Ben and tell him how I'd awakened from the nightmare of trying to save the unsavable. That I'd stood up on my own hind legs and stopped being grateful to Sean for lending me his family. I needed to hear Ben's voice to still my false euphoria. The phone rang unanswered, and when Ben's recorded voice invited me to leave a message, I hung up.
I was flushed with relief. By the third ring it had occurred to me that I didn't want Ben to get the idea that my choice had anything to do with my feelings for him. There mustn't ever be a hint that he should somehow feel responsible for my emotional well-being; if he thought I'd been able to cut loose from Sean because I thought I had him to go to, I'd die. Even if it might be true.
Sitting there with the silent phone on my lap, I realized that I needed to be as separate from Ben as I was from Sean. I needed to have time to let the marital bitterness wither into neutrality and the sweet feelings I had for Ben grow up naturally if they were to survive. I needed distance to see if what I felt for Ben was more than a summer fling. I had to step outside of myself and my problematic world long enough to see things from Ben's point of view. The last thing he needed was an emotionally dependent woman while he still struggled with his own problems. We hadn't exactly said we wouldn't talk to each other, but as my mantel clock in the other room chimed midnight, I allowed that maybe we both needed a little time apart.
If what we had felt for each other was real, it would wait. If what we had was a product of our separate unhappinesses, born of our wounded spirits, then it would dissipate like the morning mist, beautiful but temporary.
Thirty-five
Sean got to the house even before I could get dressed. I realized that we were going to have this conversation with the kids early enough that he wouldn't be late for work. I supposed that was better than being squeezed in between appointments.
It looked to me like a weak imitation of Christmas morning, the kids all tousled and rubbing sleep from their eyes, anticipating surprise, a little nervous. Except that Sean was dressed in full business regalia, suit, tie, and watch, which he kept looking at as we herded the kids away from the TV and into the kitchen. Sean removed his navy blue jacket and carefully hung it across the back of the extra kitchen chair. I pulled my housecoat belt tighter around me and plugged in the coffeepot. It was raining lightly—I only noticed as I looked out of the window over the sink. I was suddenly nostalgic for the rain on the roof of the cabin, thunderous applause against the shingles, cascading off the slope of the porch overhang. This rain, against which we were well protected, seemed citified and unremarkable.
I pulled a box of cereal out of the cupboard. Ben was probably even this morning introducing his musical theme for this brand to the ad agency. The kids liked Ben, he was comfortable with them. I saw them playing in the water together, laughing over Trivial Pursuit. I squeezed my eyes shut at the suggestion my mind wanted to enjoy. Until our lives were recalled from our particular hells, I dare not think in terms of future. Ben needed to confront his past and I my present before I could think of a future together, even in the most abstract way. Echoes of my midnight resolutions forbade me to dream.
“Why didn't you sleep here last night?” Lily stood beside Sean, who was sitting in his accustomed place at the kitchen table.
He reached around and pulled her to him, but Lily wouldn't be assuaged by a mere hug, she wanted answers. “Are you guys getting a divorce?”
Lily's question put paid to any illusion our troubles had been handled discreetly.
“Why do you ask that?” Sean still held on to Lily's arm.
“I heard Auntie Margaret say you were.”
Sean and I looked at each other over the top of Lily's head, allied for the instant in annoyance at Sean's older sister.
I squatted down beside Lily and grasped Tim's hand which had a sticky spoon in it. “Well, Daddy and I are—”
“Going to take a little time away from each other.”
“Sean?”
“You know how you and Katy sometimes fight a lot when you've been together too much?” Sean named Lily's best friend.
Lily nodded.
“Well, Mommy and I need to be separate for a while.”
“Sean, that's not what we—”
“Cleo. It could be. It should be.”
I stared at him, disbelief and anger somehow blended with a kind of relief, as if an impending amputation was now a series of painful operations. I didn't envision a different outcome, only a more protracted journey. “We'll discuss this later.”
The coffee was ready and I stood up. I kissed both children and went to pour it. Tim went back to eating his cereal. Lily went to her chair. No one spoke. I set the coffee in front of Sean and glanced at Tim. Two tears of equal weight trickled down his sleep puffed cheeks. He kept spooning cereal into his mouth, chewing with slow deliberation, as if he had to think how to do it. Staring into his bowl, he let the tears continue their journey until they clung to either side of his little jaw, suspended for an instant before dropping into his cereal.
“Sean, why did you make them think this is temporary? Like a vacation?”
“Look, what good would it do to hit them with the big one when this way we can all get used to the idea first?”
“You've talked to your mother.”
“Yes. Yes, I did. What of it?”
I could see Alice's hand in this sudden volte-face.
“I know what she wants. She wants me to be like her, putting up with your little mistakes and keeping a Catholic house.”
“That's not fair, Cleo.”
“What do you want, Sean? Leaving everyone else out of it, what do you want?”
“To do the right thing by the kids.”
“That wouldn't have included staying faithful to me?”
“Stop it, Cleo.”
“Why do I get the feeling you prefer separation over divorce because that way you don't have to commit to Eleanor? The classic, my-wife-won't-give-me-a-divorce excuse.” I was grasping at straws, my words voicing a thought I hadn't actually formulated until this minute.
I watched the choleric pink color rise above Sean's crisp white collar,-grow brilliant at his ears and flush his face, except around his nose, where the skin faded to ashy white. It was like watching a movie transformation of Jekyll and Hyde. Instinctively, I stepped back.
“I think you're the one ready to throw the baby out with the bathwater, and I have to ask myself why.” Sean grabbed his jacket from off the back of a chair and slammed out of the house.
I stood alone in my kitchen. Only the noise of the TV in the den disturbed the quiet, so sudden and so deep.
“Mommy, why are you and Daddy mad at each other?” Tim had come back into the kitchen. I wiped vague tears off my cheeks with the back of my hand and then licked my thumb and rubbed the traces of his off Tim's cheeks then pulled him onto my lap.
“Grown-up reasons.” I saw Lily out of the corner of my eye, standing in the doorway. “You both must understand that this has nothing to do with you. We both still love you, we'll always love you. Parent love doesn't go away.” Unaccountably I thought of my parents and imagined that if it does
n't go away, there are times when it simply never forms.
“Is he still going to live here?”
“No, sweetie. That's what separation is.”
“Is he still going to coach my team?”
“I'm sure he is.”
Lily shoved herself onto my lap, one knee now for each child. The three of us, like a portrait. I'd title it The Restructured Family. Sean had left me alone with the kids to make explanations without deep revelations.
Lily squirmed, her bony bottom hurting my leg a little. “Daddy's screwing another woman.”
I managed to hold back my surprise. “Another thing you heard Auntie Margaret say?”
“No. Auntie Siobhan.”
“Do you know what that means?” Hoping she didn't.
Lily very much wanted to appear sophisticated and worldly in front of her brother. “I guess so.”
“It means he's got a girlfriend. Something married men aren't supposed to do.”
“Doesn't he love you anymore?”
I had no answer for that.
Thirty-six