by Nicole Conn
“Yeah.” Peyton sighed long and hard, then said, without looking at Elena. “Maybe we should pull back a bit. Until...you know—things settle down.”
*
“I tell you I just saw her kissing a woman!” Millie yattered on the phone as fast as her lips could form words. “In the plain light of day!”
Millie summarily tossed her Snowflake Angel into the car as she frenetically tried to keep pace with her own gossip. “I knew something was up with her. Not wanting to protest, missing services. But this!” She barely gave the poor dog another moment as she jumped into the front seat and began driving without having fastened her seatbelt.
“She’s turned into...into a GAY! And what about poor Pastor Barry? How could she do this to him?”
Millie, now on a mission, sped through the streets of the city.
*
Elena glanced sharply back to Peyton, could see the raw pain etched in her exhausted face.
“You wouldn’t have to feel so guilty,” Peyton continued softly. “I could dial this back and get my head screwed back on right.”
Elena bolted to her feet, alarmed.
“Where...where is all this coming from?”
“I...I just think we need to pull back and get some perspective.”
“Do you really believe if you rearrange the psychic furniture that will fix it? If you act like you’re not as in love with me as I am with you that—that—” Elena stopped. She could see that escalating this debate was getting nowhere, and tried to calm herself.
“I understand all the reasons you can’t trust. Your mom, Margaret cheating on you...but Peyton, I’ve never lied to you and I never will.”
“I guess at this point I really don’t know that, Elena.”
Elena shook her head, now getting upset.
“I spent the last day and half with my guts skewered inside out wondering whether you were having sex with your husband.” Peyton’s jaw clenched as she took a deep breath, “and last week I did the same thing because of your anniversary— getting shit-faced over it because I can’t bear the idea of him touching you. But also because I have no right to these feelings—”
“Oh Peyton...nothing happened. We didn’t even go…Barry had an emergency at the cid ncy at hurch.”
Peyton looked at Elena. She didn’t get it. It seemed to Peyton that as long as Elena felt she could dodge one bullet after another, the end still wasn’t going to be global destruction—for both of them.
“I knew what I was getting into...it is what it is.” Peyton bowed her head, then looked out at nothing in particular. “I just don’t think I can do it.”
“Peyton, don’t you see a future with us?”
“So this date night nothing happened. What about the next one and the one after that? At some point...something will happen.”
Elena was about to defend this last, but how could she really? How could she say she and Barry would never sleep with one another again? Not because she would want that—the thought made her stomach lurch with dread, but the reality was that they were still married.
“After all, Peyton...I have been married for fifteen years.” She stopped thinking about how she had been able to hold Barry off for nearly eight months. But without telling him why and it had already become such a huge issue—and she wasn’t quite certain she was prepared to do that yet—she knew that sleeping with him again was, in all reality, a likely possibility. “I...Nash, my family—they don’t—they can’t understand this...and I, I’ve already told you—it would mean absolutely nothing—”
“Don’t you get it?” Peyton turned to her, the agony plain in her eyes. “I’m...I’m too damn far in.”
Elena reached for Peyton, but Peyton’s face and body were stone.
“Please if you can give me some time, I’ll...”
“You’ll what?”
“I’ll...I’ll work it out.” Elena felt like the ground was disappearing from beneath her. “But I need to know you’re right there with me.”
Peyton clenched her jaw as she stared ahead, felt herself withdrawing, farther and farther away. When she looked at Elena, even though she loved her with all of her being, she also saw a woman willing to sleep with him in order to keep both lives. She felt herself hardening. “I believe they call that having your cake and eating it too.”
Peyton saw that she had gone too far. Saw the surprise in Elena’s eyes. She was not used to Peyton causing her pain.
“I don’t think I can do this halfway,” Elena countered.
Peyton shook her head. The tone in her voice wasn’t accusatory, merely bleak and pragmatic. “You are doing it halfway.”
Peyton saw the tears in Elena’s eyes, knew she would begin crying soon herself and wanted to finish this business. Be done with it. “Maybe I’mookMaybe limited, but no, I don’t see a future with...this.”
Elena could not believe what she was hearing. Confused, angry, terrified and completely overwhelmed she shook her head, and walked away.
*
“I can’t even say the word.” On her seventh call now, heading from her home to the church, Millie sucked in her breath. She had dashed home in a panic, knowing when she went to see Barry she was not going to present her news in a Martha Stewart jogging suit. She’d flown into the house, jumped into her sexiest Ann Taylor skirt and blouse ensemble, hastily putting on her makeup, letting her hair down as she jabbered furiously with one lead congregant after another.
“…lesbian!” Oh, Millie said it after all, shocked by the titillating jolt that ran through her body. “A…lesbian. That’s what they call them. That’s what she is.”
“Don’t call her that,” Diana said on the other end. “Look, Millie. I know.”
“What? You knew this was going on?”
“I…Elena told me a few weeks ago. I thought it was a phase. That it would pass. That she would do the right thing.” Diana sighed. “And I think we owe it to her and her years of service to the church to come to the right decision. Millie, please tell me you haven’t said a word to anyone else.”
“Of course not!” Millie lied easily. “But has it occurred to you that maybe Elena’s been like this all along?”
“No.”
“Well, you would know,” Millie suggested. “I know how close the two of you have always been.”
“Millie—”
“Don’t be silly,” Millie recouped, “you think I don’t know how full your hands are with those kids of yours? I’m just saying, if she would have told anyone, she would have told you…and apparently she has. Now, the question is, who is going to tell Pastor Barry?”
“No one,” Diana snapped, shocked that Millie would ask. “It’s their business, Millie—”
“I’m afraid that’s simply not the case. This is Pastor Barry we’re talking about here. How is he supposed to lead this charge when his wife is sleeping with one of them? He can’t do an effective job. He’ll be laughed out of the pulpit. Someone has to protect him,” Millie proffered indignantly. “Someone has to take care of this. And I’m the one to do it.”
*
Barry walked to the altar, his face ashen. He slammed his hands on the pulpit that he stood before every Sunday, then burrowed into /dirrowed his head into palms, trying to blot the vision from his head of his wife, kissing…NO…it can’t be true! He swiped his sermon papers before him to the ground.
Millie watched his rage. A smile curled at the edges of her mouth. Yes, this was causing her no end of satisfaction, but she couldn’t be having Barry tear the place apart. She had put too much money into the spring renovations. She allowed another moment of sweet solace, then, righting her shoulders, she calmly walked to Barry and put her arms about him.
“There, there,” she held him, soothing him.
Barry bristled at her touch. He wanted to throw her against the pews, break her slimy little neck. How dare she!
“How could she?” he hissed. “No. You must be mistaken. Not Elena.”
“Barry,
I know how difficult it is to accept this—”
“How do you even know it was her?”
Millie cocked her head with a patronizing shake of the head, feigning pain.
“Barry, Barry, Barry…I’ve got the good eyes the Lord gave me. And while others have difficulty embracing the evils of the world, God gave me the gift to stare it straight in the eye…to call it for what it is. And this is not just adultery, Barry. She hasn’t just wronged you by sins of the flesh, she has gone out of her way to insult you—to tear at the very foundation of your greatest battle.”
Millie put her arms about his broad shoulders. But he no longer could bear her touch and shrugged out of her cloying tentacles. The idea of his wife, of Elena with anyone, sent him reeling, but with that woman, that woman who’d robbed his family of so much time…he wanted to strangle her. He wanted to crush that bitch—that lesbian who had turned his wife. How? How in the hell was it even possible? Didn’t you have to be born that way? And if that was the case, had Elena been a lesbian all this time? NO! NO!
He stormed from the altar, unable to tune out his thoughts, but unable to answer any of these mounting questions. Frustrated as he had never been before he charged out of the church to the archway, pacing, kicking at the bench. Millie dutifully followed her lost lamb, let him rail for a few moments longer.
When he turned she was in front of him. And her eyes no longer carried the gentle care when she first gleefully informed him of Elena’s “transgressions” but a brittle and steely edge that warned him. He stood there a long moment, taking in the ugliness that had come from her mouth, the satisfaction she had taken in delivering this news that he now knew beyond a shadow of a doubt was true.
It was true. That was just it. He had known it was something…how the hell could he not. But this? That fuckin’ lezzie? Going down on my wife? He saw black. Infuriated. Humiliated. Sickened. She wasn’t even attractive…she was—she was sick. All of this was sick. He knew, deep down, he didn’t give a rat’s ass what the gays and lesbians did in their owas in then time, in the shadows where they belonged. He didn’t need to save their souls. It just was the fact that they threw it in your face. That’s what he objected to. And now…now it was personal.
“God damn it!” he roared.
Millie let out yelp, shocked by Barry’s outburst. “Pastor Barry!” She maintained her steely resolve and lost the feigned sympathy.
“I…I’m sorry, Millie, I…”
He glanced at her. He was keenly aware that how he handled this could affect the rest of his career. His livelihood.
Their eyes met. He lifted his hands, although they felt like they weighed a thousand pounds. “What…what do I do?”
Millie walked to him. Got very close. Looked deeply into his eyes.
“You are going to use your anger to pray with me, Barry. And then you are going to march home and tell your wife to stop this madness. That she not only owes it to the church, but to you and your son. Elena is not a stupid woman, Barry. She will do what she knows is right.”
They stood close for a long moment. What they both knew was that they lived lies, shadowy furtive lies, full of the pretense of good bidding.
“Pray with me.” Millie didn’t ask. She demanded.
Barry was now caught in his own farce, impotent on every level, but they both knew he had no other choice but to continue in his spiritual sham. So he bowed his head and prayed.
*
Elena heard Barry’s car drive up the driveway, heard the car door slam fiercely. Listened as he headed to her studio with stomping footsteps and sat still as she heard him throw a frame against the wall. Shattering glass, followed by a thunderous clamor of destruction, Barry tearing apart Elena’s studio with all the anger he had felt at the church, free now to purge his rage.
She waited. But all she heard for a long time was silence. Then the car starting and backing up in a screech of tires.
Hours later, long after she had put Nash to bed, she sat out on the back porch.
She had moved through every minute since Peyton had broken off with her in a sort of hyper surreal calmness. She walked slowly, gracefully, attending to each and every task with deliberation and care. She came home, cleaned up the house, did the laundry and heard the calls on the answering machine from Diana, scrambling to find her, Millie scrambling to find Barry, then Diana telling her she had to call, that Millie had seen her with “that woman” in the park. Even when she felt her heart drop to the floor, knowing what Millie had seen, she continued to move in the same way, step by careful step, because she knew if she did not, she would losrinhe woule her mind. Completely.
She fed Nash and Tori when they arrived from hanging with some friends at the mall. She sat with them in the living room, waiting second by second for Barry to rage through the house, and when that did not happen, she put the kids to bed, and sat. She made tea she did not drink.
She sat. And felt absolutely dead.
And that’s when she knew what she had to do.
And so she sat and waited until two in the morning when she heard the car pull up, this time its door closing quietly. She sensed more than heard Barry trying to find her, and that when he didn’t find her in the house he would find her where she sat when she wanted peace and quiet, in the garden in the backyard.
And then he was there. Standing in front of her, then falling to his knees.
He looked up into her face.
A single tear fell from her eyes. He slumped over her knees, his shoulders began to quake, his body sobbing wildly out of control, wracking cries of anger turned to grief, of anguish, confusion. In his torment, the only words she could make out were a wretched, “Don’t do this to us.”
Elena watched him, no longer detached, aching for his loss, their loss, and put a hand to his back, soothing his broken heart, then lay her head upon his. She held him for hours, as the dark turned to dawn. She held him until he could cry no longer.
*
Elena later walked into the studio that was now in complete shambles. Everything ruined. She didn’t care as she began to quietly weave through the shards of glass, the mangled frames, and then stopped.
Her shoulders began to quake. Her heart began to race.
She slumped to the floor and began to cry, sob, let go of every second she had waited for Barry to return, and she mourned them all as she picked up the broken frame of their baby daughter.
She cried until there were no tears left, curled into a ball and fell asleep among the ruins of her life.
*
Peyton did not return home until sometime after three in the morning. Utterly plastered, she had stumbled to her couch and passed out before she even hit it.
The next morning when she tried to open her eyes, she wondered why they hurt so much and then remembered. The crying. All the endless tears. The only thing that had stopped them was drinking, which she had done on her own in her car, overlooking the majestic sweep of the valley, off a lone ridge on the Angeles Crest Highway. Slugging from a bottle of Cuervo—she dihe rvo—sdn’t even like tequila, but that was all the better. It all felt like castigation, one way or another. She only stopped crying when she had drunk enough to become numb, and then she had passed out briefly.
She didn’t want to drive home, had called Wave who picked her up and insisted she stay with her, but she had said no, absolutely not. Yet there were Wave’s feet she was looking at across from her as her eyes tried to focus.
She slowly lifted her head. Yeah, it was Wave. With a mug of coffee in hand.
“Up you go then,” Wave suggested softly. “Don’t want all that mush in yer brain to flow out yer ears.”
Peyton sat up slowly. Wave handed her the coffee, sat beside her and read the paper. Wave knew her so well. Knew she wouldn’t—couldn’t talk yet. Knew her better than she probably knew herself. Why the hell couldn’t she just fall in love with her?
“Up you get when you’ve got your sea legs,” Wave added, continuing to read he
r paper. “A shower would make you a new woman and since I’m sittin’ downwind sooner than later would be appreciated.”
Later, after Peyton had showered, the water hurting her throbbing head, she had finally come back to life. Wave had made some scrambled eggs and toast, “somethin’ light on that bludgeoned tummy of yours,” which she ate without tasting, not daring to protest. When Wave had inspected Peyton to her satisfaction, she told her she had to get home to walk her dog, but “don’t be runnin’ off for any more escapades like last night—unless of course I’m invited along with you!”
Peyton sat in her living room now, feeling utterly helpless, fatigued, hung over and hopeless. She sat for an hour before she checked her e-mails.
A message from Elena glowed brightly from the screen.
Peyton’s heart began to race. She got up, walked away from the computer. Paced. Sat, tapped a pen until it was going to drill a hole to China, and did every conceivable toying with every object on her desk before she caved.
I didn’t want to do this in an e-mail, but you won’t see me, or answer my calls. Peyton, of all the things I came to realize last night, the one that overrides everything is that you deserve to be in a balanced relationship where ALL your needs are being met. As you pointed out, I can’t give that to you. I can give a lot, but not without more heartache. You were right about the fact that I wasn’t thinking or looking beyond the moment I was in. Not fair of me at all.
*
“‘You have so many pieces of your life that you are trying to put together and I didn’t fully understand how damaging this relationship could be to you,’” Wave now read the rest of the e-mail out loud to them both as she and Peyton sat in a corner booth at Pinot Latte. Peyton had tried, unsucc
“‘I just wanted to love you and make you happy,’” Wave continued, “‘but it wasn’t quite that simple. You would never be able to trust, or feel strong or complete with me, and I’m so sorry for that, but I’m not sorry I fell in love with you so completely.’”