Acts of Contrition

by Handford, Jennifer

  Emily’s eager to get into the water, too, but she needs to do it in stages, holding her arms up high, standing on tippy-toes, and squealing each time a wave breaks on her back. She swivels around every few seconds or so, checking in with me, the exaggerated emotion on her face relaying her every feeling.

  “Just come in!” Sally urges her sister, so sure of the superiority of her method of getting wet all at once.

  “It’s cold!” Emily screams, and then takes another step toward Sally.

  Meanwhile, the boys dash back and forth, just barely getting their feet wet. It’ll take them a few days to get used to the water, but by the time we’re ready to go home, they’ll be begging Tom to take them in again. I’m thankful the boys aren’t overzealous, that they somehow sense the danger of the water. My nerves are tested enough as I keep a watchful eye on the girls.

  I remember last year, watching Tom hold the boys, one on each biceps, like Poseidon emerging from a great storm, plowing through the water with the strength of a horse. And I remember how Danny got scared, and how Tom cradled him against his chest, as tender and loving as a person can be. I remember sitting on the beach watching, my toes pressing into the sand, thinking it through. How a guy, so big and strong, the product of a nearly alcoholic father and a sometimes distant mother, could yield the perfect blend of strength and compassion.

  An hour later, the girls are tuckered out. Emily’s lips have turned blue and she’s shivering atop my lap. I’m rubbing the towel and shimmying my arms tighter around her, kissing the top of her head. Tomorrow we’ll come for the entire morning.

  Tom grills hot dogs and hamburgers for dinner, and we eat on the deck while we watch the sun set over the sound. Afterward I mash fresh peaches from the farmers’ market into vanilla ice cream and brew a pot of decaf for Tom and me. I pour a shot of Baileys into our mugs, a treat we have only at the beach. A shot of whiskey would make it even better, but I wouldn’t dare.

  By the time we’re finished with dessert, it’s nearly dark. I ask the girls to ready themselves for bedtime and they head to their room without a fuss. It’s different from home, which makes it an adventure. My kids are easy at the beach.

  The boys choose their jammies. Dom’s in Spider-Man and Danny’s in dinosaurs. We brush teeth, dab a warm washcloth across their faces, clap when they pee. Then we flip a coin to see who has first dibs on the top bunk. Technically the boys aren’t old enough to sleep in a top bunk, but this bunk bed is unusually small, not very high, and the boys sleep like rocks. So with extra pillows lining the floor in case of a fall, Tom and I feel they’re okay.

  “Can we both sleep on the top bunk?” Dom asks before I’ve even flipped.

  “It’s fine with me,” I say, looking at Danny. Danny nods wildly in agreement and I tuck them in tightly next to each other, with their dinosaurs scattered around them. The boys are as different as can be, in their personalities, in their temperaments. Two batches of cookies baked with the same exact ingredients, yet with completely different results. But the twin bond is undeniable. They’re magnets pulled toward each other.

  “I love you, Dom. I love you, Dan.”

  “We love Mommy!” they cheer, and I kiss them again before easing out of their room, wondering if that will ever get old: mommy adoration.

  Sally’s in bed reading Percy Jackson and Emily is beside her, listening to her iPod. Some moms would fret over her daughter listening to Lady Gaga, but I don’t have to worry about Emily, whose tastes run more toward Andrew Lloyd Webber and Leonard Bernstein.

  After the kids are down, Tom and I return to the deck. I refill our coffee. We sit on the patio chairs with our feet up.

  “My brother,” Tom says. “Patrick.”

  “What about him?”

  “After high school, you know, he was offered baseball scholarships from a lot of colleges.”

  “I know.”

  “And he was also drafted by a big-league team.”

  “Yeah,” I say, wondering why Tom is telling me all this history I already know.

  “Everyone—me included—told him, ‘Take the scholarships and go to college.’ ”

  “I know, but he didn’t listen to you.”

  “That’s because I pulled him aside one day, away from Mom and Dad. I told him that he could go to college anytime. That he should try for his big shot. I convinced him to sign with the Diamondbacks, shoot for the big leagues. He listened to me because he always listened to me.”

  “I never knew,” I say.

  “He should have gone to college. His whole life would have been different…better, if he’d gone to college.”

  “You feel that now, because you have the benefit of hindsight, but you didn’t know what was going to happen. He was an amazing ballplayer. None of us can see the future.”

  “My best mind knew,” Tom says. “But my best mind was lured into the promise of something else.”

  “You feel responsible for his drinking because you urged him to follow his dream?” I ask. “That’s not fair to you, Tom. There’s a good chance that he would have fallen no matter what direction he went. It’s not like a college campus would have been such a good place for a guy with alcoholic tendencies.”

  “Maybe,” Tom says. “But I led him in the wrong direction. There wouldn’t have been the devastation if he hadn’t tried. The rise and the fall is what killed him. I’ve always regretted my advice.”

  “It’s better that he tried,” I say. “None of us can avoid devastation from time to time, right?”

  “We haven’t,” Tom says.

  “I’m glad you told me, Tom. Really, I’m glad you told me.”

  “It’s nice to talk,” he says. “I’ve missed it.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “For everything.”

  “Let’s be done with apologies, okay?” he says, and then slides his legs along the length of the couch, pulling me onto him. We kiss like we did when we first met, back when kissing was an activity in itself, not a prelude to sex. Back when our ears weren’t pricked for the sounds of wandering children. We kiss, we stare into each other’s eyes, and we kiss more. Then Tom eases himself off the sofa, lifts me, and carries me to our bedroom. We make love, slowly and tenderly, and when it’s over I turn my head away from Tom and for the first time ever—since the day I married Tom—I’m not burdened. Our life—our bond—is for once in the open light. Our truth is known. We know who we are. We’ve taken our first step in our recovery. The relief in not carrying the load any longer is featherlight. For the first time in recent memory, I fall asleep peacefully.

  On Sunday morning I wake up with Dom and Danny burrowed into my sides. Tom’s gone, out for a jog, I’m guessing. I finger the black hair that spikes across Dom’s forehead and drape my arm around Danny’s bony frame. My precious twins—a single egg, split.

  A half hour later Emily snuggles into bed with me, positioning the length of her soft body along my side, her knee resting over my thigh. “You’re smiley this morning,” Emily says, and I squeeze her tight because that’s exactly how I’m feeling. Sally, the bedheaded preteen, ambles her way in soon after.

  We nuzzle and cuddle and snuggle and watch an episode of Happy Days. It’s a frozen moment where arms and legs are crisscrossed and entwined and I wish I had a special mechanism that would store it and keep it forever. A jar with a lid that could hold memories, recall scents, feelings, flutters of the heart. It seems unfathomable that time will someday fade—if not erase—this memory from me, but I know that it will. Memories are fleeting, and even a mother’s heart isn’t keen enough to recall indefinitely the silky texture of a nine-year-old’s hair or the earnest gaze from a ten-year-old who is on the brink of growing into her own person yet still trusts her mother implicitly.

  “Mass is at ten o’clock,” I say, checking the time.

  “I love the beach church,” Emily sings. “Last year they played guitar! Up on the altar!” She says it as though it’s a scandal, to think the Catholic Church would all
ow guitar.

  “And there were doughnuts in the lobby after Mass!” Sally joins in. The girls have sat in the pews of our church, St. Andrew’s, their entire lives, following the strict convention of Mass, the sidelong glances of the stuffy elderly ladies, the stern homily. The beachside church is like a party and concert in comparison.

  Just as I’m sliding pancakes onto the children’s plates, my phone rings. Figuring it’s Angie, I answer it with a cheery “Good morning!”

  “Well, good morning to you, too,” Landon James says.

  I duck out onto the deck, close the sliding glass door, and look left, look right, look for Tom in every direction. “Why are you calling?”

  “I won the primary,” Landon says like a little boy who wants attention for getting an A on his math test.

  “I know, Landon. Obviously, I know. Congratulations.”

  “So, that’s good.”

  “You don’t sound particularly happy,” I say, my eyes still darting.

  “I’m exactly where I want to be,” he says. “Yet I feel like crawling into bed for a month.”

  “Well, good luck with that, Landon. We can’t be having this conversation,” I say. “I’m hanging up.”

  “I’m surrounded by people,” he says. “But I’ve never been so lonely.”

  The self-pity in his voice takes me right back. I never wished for Landon to fail, but in his times of defeat, he wanted me more. His loss was my gain, but only temporarily, no different from getting high. “There has to be someone you can talk to,” I say, doing all I can to send the message that that someone is not me.

  “They all want something from me: a job, a recommendation, a relationship. No one knew me back when I was just a law student and some nobody idealist with big dreams. Except you.”

  “Landon, come on.”

  “I’m sorry. It’s not really why I’m depressed, anyway.”

  “I’m hanging up,” I say, and pull the phone from my ear.

  “Sally,” I hear him say, and when he does, a shiver snakes down my back. I return the phone to my ear.

  “What?”

  “Goddamn, MM. I can’t get her out of my head! I open and close my desk drawer eighty times a day just to look at this grainy newspaper photo I have of her.”

  “Landon…”

  “I just want to know her. I want to know what she’s like, what she likes. What’s her favorite food, color? Is she athletic or artsy? Is she competitive or laid-back?”

  “Landon…”

  “I lie in bed at night and make up conversations, pretend that she and I are sitting on the steps of the Capitol, looking out at the Washington Monument.”

  “Landon!” I hiss into the phone. “Knock it off.”

  “You have no idea what’s it’s like,” Landon says. “Now that I’ve seen her, I want to know her.”

  “What can you possibly think you can do about it?” I ask through clenched teeth, cutting right to the chase, because all of a sudden I feel the gun at my head.

  “I don’t know!”

  “You’ve got to know.”

  “I’m not going to do anything about it. I’m just going to suffer, that’s all.”

  The self-pity again. “Do you promise you’ll let it go?”

  “All along I thought that I was the smart one, avoiding risk at all costs. But you, Mary, were the tactical genius. You knew that fortifying a life with love was the surest way to stay strong. Me? I’ve been starving myself of it forever.”

  “Are you going to stay away?” I ask again.

  But he doesn’t answer me. Instead he sighs, and when he speaks it’s in little more than a whisper. “There are days, Mary,” he says, “that I look around me in whatever meeting I’m in—and I’m always in a meeting; that’s my life now—and I think, What is your deal, James? You’ve made it—not all the way there, but damn close. The Republican candidate for Senate, with more than a fighting chance to win the seat, if the pollsters know anything. But all I’m thinking about is…spending a day with Sally.”

  I hit end before responding to this, without saying good-bye, because jogging up the road is my husband.

  After showers, the girls and I dress casually in sundresses and sandals. Tom and the boys wear shorts. Together we walk down the beach road about half a mile to the Catholic Church that looks more like a revamped convenience store. This morning’s Mass doesn’t disappoint. There is a group of beachy musicians at the altar, shaking tambourines, cowbells, and maracas while singing folksy church songs. The readings and homily fly by without notice. Before we know it, the kids are chomping on doughnuts in the lobby. When Tom brings me a peanut doughnut, I tell him I’m not hungry.

  “Too many pancakes,” he says, and I nod in agreement, though I haven’t eaten a bite all morning. A phone call from Landon, his threat to my life, his desperation to know Sally, is enough to steal much more than my appetite.

  The next morning I wake up early and stand under the heat of the shower for longer than usual, trying to convince myself to calm down. The fog is thick, and though I can’t see an inch in front of my face, I have to believe that the road is there. I have to have faith. I know Landon, probably better than anyone, and though yesterday his desperation bordered on crazy, I’ve got to believe that he wouldn’t dare risk his career for Sally. For the decade I knew him, the smart money was on Landon’s selfishness. I bet against it and lost. Now I’ve got to believe that Landon’s regard for only himself will prevail again. There’s no way he’d follow through with his “I’d give it all up for a day with Sally,” would he?

  After breakfast we make our annual pilgrimage to Ocracoke Island, driving our car onto the ferry and disembarking a half hour later, our heads dizzy from the boat fumes and happy to be breathing fresh air. We walk around the island, ducking into souvenir shops. We watch a guy cast a fishnet into the water. He offers to let the boys try, and they clamor at the opportunity. Tom shadows Danny’s body first so that he doesn’t hurl himself into the water. Danny swings the net, but it lands in a clump; the graceful fan the fisherman was able to achieve seems to require practice. Dom tries next, having the same result as his brother. They’re excited anyway, to have thrown a real net.

  Sally pulls out her art pad and sits on a bench, sketching the marina in front of her. Her golden hair shimmers in the sun like a halo. She’s staring at the horizon, thinking. Intense concentration forms a hood of her eyebrows. Her defiant chin juts forward. Her cheekbones seem more angular than normal. The resemblance kills me. I wanted her to look like Tom and so she did, in my mind. But now I see her through new eyes. And all I can see is Landon.

  Emily’s atop a concrete divider, lifting her knees and kicking her feet in an Irish jig. Her upper body is as straight and still as a statue, her arms anchored to her sides, but her legs flail and flip. There’s a family with two daughters sitting on a bench one down from us, watching Emily, the little girls pointing with admiration. Emily’s oblivious. Dance springs from her as easily as walking. It doesn’t occur to her that she’s talented.

  We eat dinner at a nice waterfront restaurant before heading back onto the ferry. The boys fall asleep in the car, Sally stares out the window, Emily sings from Evita.

  I look over at Tom. He’s calm and relaxed and in him I see the man I was married to a mere eight months ago, the one who found goodness in every human being, the one who hadn’t yet been robbed blind. When he catches me looking at him, he turns, meets my eyes. “What?”

  “Nothing, hon,” I say. “I love you.” I reach over and rub his arm because he believes we’re over the hump, though after the call from Landon, guilt sits in my stomach like a bag of coins, heavy and indigestible. I know I should tell Tom about the call, but I can’t. Not after last night.

  The days fall into a steady rhythm: dodging waves, searching for shells, and making sand castles in the morning. Back to the beach house for lunch, picnicking on the deck, already reminiscing about the morning at the beach as if an hour ago were fi
ve years ago, setting the memories in concrete so that we’ll never forget the sting of the cold waves hitting our backs or the salt of the water sneaking into our mouths or the caress of our feet kneading the sand.

  After lunch we pack into the car for a field trip. We see the Wright Brothers National Memorial one day, watch the hang gliders at Jockey’s Ridge another, swim on the sound side another, digging for hermit crabs and admiring the kite surfers. Most afternoons we park at the marina, stand on the wooden docks, and watch the fishing boats come in, waiting in anticipation as the captain tosses the prized catches of the day: yellowfin tuna, dolphin. The boys are hoping to see a blue marlin like the one hanging in the restaurant the other night. Tonight we’re headed to play miniature golf at Jurassic Putt in Nags Head. The boys are giddy with excitement. They can’t wait to see the gigantic dinosaurs. Dom’s hoping to see a T. rex.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Working the Steps

  SEPTEMBER ROLLS IN AND THE kids head back to school. Sally enters the fifth grade and Emily enters the fourth. The boys stride confidently into kindergarten. It’s October before we know it. Leaves turn, Halloween comes, and the children sprint from door to door, collecting their bounty of candy.

  Soon it’s November and the coverage of the election has reached monumental proportions. Talk of Landon is everywhere. On Sunday morning he appears on Meet the Press. An hour later he’s on Face the Nation. He and the Democrat are neck and neck. Both are giving it all they’ve got, slinging mud, impugning each other’s credibility. The Democrat’s commercials accuse Landon of hating women, of wanting them dead, because he is against federal money going to support Planned Parenthood. Landon’s campaign is just as skewed, slandering his opponent for sending our troops into harm’s way ill-prepared. It’s hard to watch. The media feigns disgust but offers more coverage than ever. The dirtier the better. The only saving grace: there’s no mention of my photo, my name; no reference to me is ever made again. Housewife and mother Mary Morrissey means nothing to anyone. And I no longer worry about Landon wanting Sally. The passion behind his plea was fleeting. I should’ve known better than to expect constancy from Landon James, and for once I couldn’t be happier to be denied it.