Acts of Contrition
Page 18
“Hey, Tom!” she says. “What are you going to do now? Hit another bar?”
I freeze, rooted in my footsteps. I don’t know what to say. Is she asking me to do something? Go somewhere? “I guess,” I say.
“Just curious,” she says with a wave.
“What are you up to on your big night off?”
“I haven’t even thought about it,” she says. “I’m never off this time of night.” She looks out at the ocean, at the sunset. “God, I’m cooped up in that dreary bar every night, and just look at the sunset. I can’t believe what I’m missing.”
Her cheerful expression shifts a bit, like she really gets it: the regret in missing a sunset every night.
“Do you…want to go down on the beach? Watch the sun set?” I’m Tom, married Tom—husband, father, and provider—Mr. Responsible. I don’t typically ask twenty-five-year-old bartenders to watch the sunset. I’m slightly exhilarated, but mostly I feel like a creep, unable to shake the fact that this girl was once Sally’s age.
“I’d love to,” she sings. “Let’s go!”
We walk down the boardwalk for a while until we reach an entrance onto the sand. She pulls off her sequined flip-flops but I keep my work boots on. It’s only April, but it’s unusually warm, though not warm enough for a dip in the ocean, so I’m taken by surprise when Chloe starts to run toward the shore. In no time she’s up to her waist, her saturated cutoffs turned a dark indigo blue. Then she dives into a wave, comes up, flips back her wispy blond hair, and adjusts her tiny halter, which is clinging happily to her breasts.
A minute later she’s standing next to me. “That was awesome!” She shakes her head and I get a sprinkling of her wet hair across my face.
“What are you going to do now?” I ask, because I’m a dad and I’m responsible and I’m looking at this young woman who is now in wet clothes.
“Enjoy the sunset!” she says with a flourish, missing my point altogether.
“You’re wet,” I say, and wonder why the hell I care about her being wet if she doesn’t.
“I’m good,” she says flippantly, lying flat on her back in the sand with her arms anchored behind her head.
Feeling odd standing over her, I take a seat beside her. All I can think about is the sand that will be stuck to her when she stands up. Sally does that all the time—emerges from the ocean and then plops on the sand. When she gets up we call her a cinnamon doughnut.
A while later Chloe claims to be dying for a drink, so she gets up and dusts herself off, though it’s a futile attempt, and then we walk to Bart’s, another local dive. She goes to talk to the bartender, whom she clearly seems to know. He hands her a Bart’s T-shirt, which she puts on over her wet and sandy halter. Then she shimmies the halter down until it puddles at her ankles.
She sees me watching her. When she pulls the halter from the ground, she twists her body and raises her arms above her head with a theatric “Ta-da!”
“Very talented,” I say.
The bartender shrugs off his leather jacket and gives that to Chloe, too. I’m guessing they went to high school together—maybe as recently as a few years ago. We order beers and a plate of nachos. On the back of the paper menu, Chloe sketches me with a pencil. The likeness is striking. Though I feel younger at the beach, I clearly don’t look it, as Chloe has captured my forty-year-old mug perfectly with lines meandering around my eyes, a map of dead-end roads framing my mouth. I look rugged, which is how I feel most days when I’m working with Patrick hoisting two-by-fours. But my eyes look sad and I wonder how she’s managed that with only a piece of graphite.
She’s a talented artist, and I get a twinge of sadness in my chest that she’s tending bar when she possibly could have done something different with her life. I stop short of suggesting that she sign up for classes at the community college. It’s none of my business. She’s none of my business.
A few beers later, we end up throwing darts and shooting pool.
Somehow we manage to drink ten beers between the two of us. Somehow Chloe ends up in my car, claiming she needs a ride home. Somehow Chloe explains she doesn’t have to pick up her daughter from her mother’s tonight. Somehow I end up in Chloe’s apartment, on her couch, with another beer in my hand.
Chloe walks around the apartment, flipping on some lights, switching off others. She turns on some music, picks up some of her kid’s toys, and throws them into a basket. Then she stands directly in front of me and does a little twirl, as if she’s announcing herself. Almost in slow motion, she shimmies her still-wet cutoff shorts off her tight twenty-five-year-old body. I watch her, entranced, my heartbeat suddenly loud in my ears.
Then she slips down her panties, which are tiny little strings, and I swallow hard, pushing the endless questions and images from my head. Enjoy this, I tell myself. Don’t worry that she’s a good fifteen years younger than you. Don’t worry that her little undies are smaller than your daughters’. Don’t—don’t—think about Mary, because she doesn’t deserve to be thought about. She betrayed you and lied to you, over and over. Don’t think about Mary.
Chloe shifts her hips, putting on a show, and then crisscrosses her hands across her Bart’s T-shirt, grabs it from the bottom, and lifts it over her head. There, standing in front of me, is twenty-five-year-old Chloe—hot, tight, tanned, young—exhibiting herself for my benefit.
Her eyes slip down from mine and then back up, lit by a new kind of smile. Decisions have been made by at least parts of me. Heart hammering, I swallow hard, seek to find some dim, functioning corner of my cerebral cortex. I’m at a hell of a crossroads. This moment will define who I am for the rest of my life. Will I continue on as Tom—Mr. Responsible, Mr. Do-the-Right-Thing—or will I become that guy? Or am I already that guy? Is that who Mary has made me? Hell, maybe I’ve always been him, and now he’s just been freed to stand up and take his due. That can’t be…but, maybe.
Then I do think of Mary, how the month before we were married, she was at a similar crossroads. She was alone with her ex-boyfriend and, rather than doing the right thing, she did the wrong thing.
Why not? I tell myself. Mary’s that girl, the one who slept with her ex-boyfriend when she was engaged to you.
Payback. Yes, payback.
Before I’ve even had a chance to think it through, Chloe walks toward me, swings one long leg over my two, and sits astride my lap. Inches from my face, her naked body gives off heat and a fresh, salty tang. She reaches for my hands, lifts them to her breasts, which are so small and perky they fit in my cupped palms. I hold my hands there, frozen, afraid to move, afraid to feel her little energetic breasts. She scoots higher in my lap, flips her hair to the side, and lowers her mouth to mine. When I feel her lips, I am all of a sudden an addict—just like Patrick and my dad, at the taste of whiskey. I want nothing but more. More than anything in the entire world—at this moment in time—I want Chloe, and don’t care if it means that I never again have Mary, and if I never again see my children.
Goddamn! Mary, Sally, Emily, the boys. Goddamn!
I pull away from Chloe’s lips, though my entire body is thrumming, begging to take her. Goddamn! I lift her off my lap, stand stock-still as she rights herself into sitting on the sofa.
“No?” she asks, almost kindly, almost like she knew she was taking a chance.
“I want to,” I say. “You have no idea.”
“But you can’t?”
“I can’t,” I say. “I can’t.”
“I kind of figured,” she says.
I stand at ease now. My mutinous body back under my control. “I’m going through a tough time.” She deserves to know something. “Wife, kids. It’s difficult.”
“Yep.”
“How did you know?”
“You’re a nice guy, Tom. You’re a good guy. I work at a crappy bar. You’re not my usual customer.”
I want to tell her not to settle, that someday she’ll meet a great guy, someone who will treat her well and care for her daught
er as if she were his own. As I think this thought, my mind turns to Sally, the daughter I raised because I believed she was my own. Would I have been good enough to raise her as my own if I had known she was Landon James’s? Did Mary’s lame-ass rationalization hold water: Did her lie give me a life? I push the thought from my head with a decided not now.
“Sorry, Chloe…and thanks,” I say as I walk to the door. By now she’s slipped the oversize Bart’s T-shirt back on and pulled her hair into a ponytail. Now she barely looks old enough to order a beer, much less twenty-five, much less old enough to be involved with a guy like me. I step outside, inhale the sea air, and pull the door closed. Then I open it back up, turn the bottom lock so that it’ll catch when I close it. “Lock the top bolt when I leave,” I say.
She nods.
I can’t help it. She’s a young woman living alone. I want to make sure she’s locked in for the night. As it turns out, I’m that guy, not the other guy.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Relapse
LANDON IS STILL IN THE news. The primary election will be held in June. It looks like he’s got a good chance, not just at the primary but at the entire senate race. The incumbent Republican senator has announced his intention to retire, and so far only a handful of hopefuls have thrown their hats into the ring. The photo of Landon and me held the press’s attention for less than twenty-four hours before it was overshadowed by news of another candidate’s sordid Internet wanderings.
I’m just pulling into the grocery store parking lot when my cell burbles, alerting me of a text message.
Can I call? It’s from Landon.
No!!!! I text back.
Before I can collect my thoughts, the phone rings. I ignore it, but he calls again. And again. On the third try, I slide my thumb across the phone to answer it because I know if I don’t, he’ll keep calling.
“You can’t call,” I say.
“I’ll only be a minute.”
“What do you want?” I ask.
“I want to know how you are, obviously,” Landon says. “I can’t stop thinking about what you’re going through.”
“Don’t worry about me,” I say. “I’m not your concern.”
“You are.”
“I’m not,” I say, as the anger in me burns fiery red. “I’ve hurt the people I love the most, but lucky for you, the photo didn’t seem to interest anyone but my husband. Already yesterday’s news. Once again you’ve come out unscathed, smelling like roses.”
“It’s not like that,” Landon says. “I know you’re going through hell.”
How to describe hell? I think of Sally’s Greek mythology, of Procrustes, “the stretcher,” how he stretched or amputated the legs of his tricked captors to make them fit in his iron bed. That’s how I feel, like I am anything but right, and trying to fit is pure torture.
“Listen, Landon. I’m hanging up. We cannot talk on the phone. Ever. You’ve got to understand that.”
“This is hard on me, too,” he says in a rush, trying to get it in before I cut him off. “Knowing what that photo represented. The day I essentially signed away my rights as a father to Sally.”
“Landon,” I sigh. “It was for the best.”
“Who’s to say?”
“Who’s to say?” I say incredulously. “I’m to say. It’s not a subjective matter. It’s a fact. You were in no position—never were—and Sally has had the best father in the world all of these years.” I think about Tom playing soccer with Sally in the backyard, the two of them at Tom’s workbench building a birdhouse from scratch, Tom explaining how to solve for x in a tricky prealgebra problem.
“I’m not arguing that,” Landon says. “And obviously it was what I wanted back then. I didn’t want anything in my way. Still don’t. But this year, ever since I saw her last Christmas…”
“Ever since you saw her last Christmas what?”
“Nothing, nothing,” he says. “It just made it real for me, that’s all. Seeing her.”
“Yes, Landon, you saw her. You saw her with her sister, and you know she has brothers and a mother and father. She has a family. She’s a happy girl surrounded by family, so whatever it is that you’re thinking, don’t!” My heart is racing. This is the one thought that Landon James is not allowed to have, ever.
“Take it easy, MM. I’m not thinking anything. I have the election coming up. That’s all I’m thinking about.”
“Then why are you calling me?”
“I don’t know!” Landon shouts with a strain of desperation. “Because I care if you’re okay. Because I feel bad that I damaged your marriage. And because I think of Sally now. I can’t help it. I think about her now.”
“You can think about her, Landon, but you know it can’t go further than that, don’t you?”
“Is your marriage going to survive this, Mary?”
“My marriage has to survive this.”
We both hold on the line but say nothing. Just breathe.
“I’m hanging up,” I say. “Don’t call again.”
The phone is already away from my ear when he says, “What’s it like, MM? Being a mom?”
“Good-bye, Landon. Don’t call again.” I hit end. What’s it like being a mom? Are there actually words that describe what it feels like to put my mouth on that sweet, velvety spot behind my sons’ ears, the feel of the tender arrows that are their shoulder blades, the vine of pebbled jewels that run down their backs? Are there words for the way my heart rises and tumbles at my daughters’ accomplishments and defeats, how I sometimes need to sturdy myself when they’re dressed in jewelry and heels, the way looking into my daughters’ eyes is like looking into a magic mirror that reflects back pieces and parts of everything I am and ever wanted to be? Are there words for the way the pillow feels against the back of my head each night, knowing that the four of them are safe and sound and tucked in and asleep?
If I were to have answered Landon’s questions, I would have said, “It’s like winning an election every day. It’s an honor.”
I stare at my phone and am unsure if I should cry or scream. Landon is the last person in the world with whom I should be having a conversation, but my husband is no longer talking to me, and in a weird way it feels good to be talking to someone who knows me—well, at least someone who knew me, once upon a time. Twenty years later and Landon James is still leaving me unsettled.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Admitting
AFTER LANDON AND I WERE reintroduced by our mutual friend David Kaye, we went on to date for the following year. And while it was only a year of dating, I marked our relationship as having started five years earlier, from back when we met for the first time. Our tree began to grow rings, dating its age, from the first moment Landon kissed me.
By now I was in my second year of law school and Landon was working eighty hours a week at the corporate law firm of Myers & Jones. He’d call me every night on his way home from work. Maybe he would stop by once during the week. Around Thursday he’d say, “Are we on for Saturday night?” We’d go out to dinner, we’d sit at a bar listening to music, sometimes Landon would cook, sometimes I would. Occasionally we’d meet up with friends, or Landon would introduce me to a colleague, always quick with a compliment: “This is the brilliant legal mind of Mary Russo,” or “This is the beautiful and talented Mary Margaret.” He was full of it and I knew it, but there was no denying that he made me feel like a million bucks when he slung his arm around me and claimed me as his own.
It seemed like we were doing normal couple things, moving in the right direction. Each Saturday night we’d end up at Landon’s apartment. Landon was sweet and vulnerable and when he looked me in the eyes I swore, oh how I swore, that in those moments, I could see his vulnerability, could see how ready he was to commit to me. That gentle look I saw in him always seemed to me like his true nature, like if he weren’t so afraid, he’d open up more. A few times he told me about his father, who left, and how his mother never recovered from it.
Looking back now, I do believe I was a safe haven for Landon, someone with whom he could be entirely himself. But I can also see how it was mostly about him. He was the one who did the talking, rattling on endlessly about politics, the local government, how within the next year he’d want to get his foot firmly in place down in Richmond. He already had a platform, he already had slogans. He was sure that his law firm would back him. And the law firm represents some real heavy hitters, Mary, I can still hear him saying. With their support…
Because he never said it, I filled in the blanks for myself, imagining being by his side up on the podium as he delivered his acceptance speech. I imagined his career, how years later it would be told that Landon James’s wife, Mary, was an integral part of his success, how Landon leaned on her more heavily than on any of his advisors. I once shared this vision with my sister Angela, who quickly rebutted, “Mary, has Landon ever mentioned you being part of any of this?” No, I said. But we’re dating. We’re together. What else could it mean?
It was the Saturday that marked the year Landon and I had been dating. He hadn’t mentioned anything along the lines of our “anniversary” and I didn’t bring it up, hoping secretly that he had planned something big, a special dinner punctuated with a piece of jewelry to signify his commitment. I bought him cuff links, more expensive than I could afford, but they were beautiful gold squares with a red ruby in the center of each. Very GOP, I thought.
“I could really go for a burger,” Landon said that night, seemingly oblivious that I was squeezed into a little black dress with three-inch spike heels.
“Well, okay,” I said. “Maybe I should change.”