Never Trust A Lady

by Kathleen Creighton

  What she heard instead in that tense and breathless silence was the faint rustle and crackle of paper. The click of a cigarette lighter. The softest of exhalations. And then at last she heard his footsteps scuff the vinyl-tile floor, moving away from her, toward the breakfast nook. Away, not closer. As of course she wanted him to do. Had all but asked him to do.

  And still she felt a vast sense of loneliness and loss.

  “Yeah, I still grieve for my wife and my son.” His voice was harsh in her friendly kitchen, so warm and fragrant with the homey smell of steaming soup. “I probably always will. I loved Jenny for twenty-two years, dammit-that’s almost half my life. Jason was my child-my only child. You don’t stop loving somebody just because they happen to die.”

  “Of course not,” Jane whispered. She opened a drawer, took out an ashtray and stood for a moment holding it, keeping her back to him as she drew a courage-building breath. Why not? she thought. Why not? I have nothing else to lose. “But,” she said, her voice shaking, “does it mean you can’t love anyone else, ever again?”

  He didn’t answer, and when she turned with the ashtray in her hands, she saw that he’d moved around the table so that it stood between them, like a barrier.

  “I don’t know,” he said, and for a moment his eyes blazed at her with the brightness of pain. Then he shook his head and looked away, reaching blindly for the ashtray she’d placed on the table. “I know I loved my wife. I don’t know if I’ll ever love anyone else that way again. I know, well, hell, I haven’t exactly been a monk in the seven years since she died, but there hasn’t been anyone that even came close.” He pulled his gaze back to her then, as if it was a hard thing to do, and there was no escaping the anguish in his face, and the confusion, the longing, and…fear.

  He’s afraid, she thought, suddenly understanding. Afraid of letting go.

  “And where,” she softly asked, “does that leave me?”

  She saw his jaw clench, and he punched the words through them. “Damned if I know!” He brought his fist down gently on the tabletop, but his knuckles were white and his voice rose, rocky with anger. “I don’t know what’s going on with me right now, if you want to know the truth. I know I like you, dammit. I like your company. I know I want you, and not just to have sex with, either, though God knows-and I think you do, too-that I do want that. I mean I want you around-to talk to, be with-and that’s not something I’ve said to anyone in seven years, let me tell you!” He glared at her as if both blaming and daring her to dispute him.

  She stared back at him, eyes burning, her whole face aching with the need to relieve the tension with tears. But I can’t cry, she thought. It will make it so much worse. I won’t cry. She said nothing, and watched the anger and frustration in his face turn to bewilderment.

  “But the thing is, ever since I met you, it seems like I keep being reminded of Jenny. Not…you, exactly-I mean, it’s not that you remind me of Jen. You’re nothing like her. Just…things. Little things. It’s like…you’ve brought her back to me, or something.” His red-rimmed eyes stabbed her accusingly. “Now every time I turn around, seems like I bump into a memory of Jen.”

  “And is that such a bad thing?” Jane asked, her tongue thick with unshed tears.

  “It’s hell.” Again he ground the words out through tightly clenched teeth. “Do you know how hard I’ve tried to forget? For seven years?”

  “Maybe,” she ventured, hugging herself now, hoping he wouldn’t see or notice that she was shaking, “you aren’t supposed to forget. Maybe it’s time to remember…and then-” she caught a quick breath and whispered it “-say goodbye.”

  There were moments of suspenseful silence. Then he uttered a surprised-sounding “Huh!” and unexpectedly smiled. It was the same little lopsided smile that had always struck her as being so poignant; now, at least, she thought she understood why.

  “Funny,” he muttered as he stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray, “someone else just said the same thing to me a couple of days ago…”

  When he looked back at her, his eyes had softened and the smile was slipping. “Look, all I know is, I wanted to see you again. Needed to see you, actually. So-” he gave an offhand shrug she knew was only meant to hide his terrible vulnerability “-I guess that’s the answer to your question, why I’m here.”

  But not the second question, thought Jane. What do you want with me?

  Because we both know exactly what you can’t ever bring yourself to admit. Simply put: You need me.

  She didn’t know which she wanted to do more-laugh or cry. If she’d thought David a master when it came to knowing how to push her buttons, then Tom Hawkins must be in a class by himself. He’d known her only a few days, and already he knew the one way to short-circuit her resolve, the one button she could never resist. He needs me.

  But, her heart protested, what about me? I need too. I want. I deserve. Someone who loves…me.

  Before she knew she was going to, she heard herself speaking softly, almost musingly. Leaning against the countertop with her arms folded across, and pressed hard against, the quivering ball of nerves that had taken the place of her stomach, she began to tell him about herself. And about David.

  “I met my husband when I was just seventeen, Tom. I was in high school, a straight-A student, and I had so many dreams. David was very jealous, possessive and controlling, which I, of course, thought meant that he loved me. Because I was young, and didn’t know then that loving someone doesn’t mean putting them in a cage. It means giving them room to fly.”

  Her voice cracked on the last word, and she had to look away quickly and wait until she was sure she had both her voice and her face under control again before she dared go on. All the while, Tom said nothing, but simply watched her, quietly smoking. He seemed to be waiting for her to continue, and after a while, in a low, husky murmur, she did.

  “When I was nineteen, I found that I was pregnant. I’d just started college, but I dropped out, and we got married-familiar story, right? Especially in those days.” She smiled wryly, not quite meeting his eyes. “I must tell you that I didn’t look for ward to my wedding day and future life with joy and optimism. It was more like…resignation. I knew life with David would never be easy, but I believed I was doing the right thing.

  “Anyway. Two weeks after the wedding, I had a miscarriage.” Tom exhaled audibly. “It was early in the pregnancy. The child wasn’t real to me,” she said gently. “I didn’t grieve for it. What I grieved for were my dreams, my…possibilities.” She took a deep breath. “But only for a little while. I told myself David was a good man, a hard worker, that he would love and provide for me, and I told myself that I loved him and it was up to me to make him a good wife and a happy home.

  “And I did, dammit.” There was anger now, and she didn’t even try to hide it, to keep her voice from grating or one hand from curling into a fist. “For so many years I followed him dutifully from place to place, pouring all my energy into trying to be the perfect wife, the perfect mom, spending all my creativity to make our home lovely and serene. And David, well, to give him credit, he was indeed a good man, a hard worker, a good provider, and after Lynn and Tracy were born, a very good dad. What he never learned how to be was a partner, a friend, a mate…a husband.”

  She paused, knowing she was getting more carried away than she’d planned, meaning to apologize to Tom for boring him with her life story when he was so obviously more in need of a listener than a lecture. But he’d pulled out a chair and seated himself at the table, and was gazing at her intently, listening to her, it seemed, with every cell in his body. So she gave him the apology in a shrug and a smile and continued.

  “As the years went by, I realized that David not only didn’t love me, that in fact he probably isn’t capable of loving anyone. He only possesses people. He loves the girls, because to him they are extensions of himself. Me he cared about only in terms of what I provided for him-his home, his children, his meals. Sex. I was expected to
do my job, like any good employee, while his function, like that of any good boss, was to delegate as much work and responsibility to me as possible, and in return provide me with a living wage. Period.”

  “God,” said Tom under his breath, almost involuntarily.

  Jane glanced at him and found that this time it was impossible to look away again. She said softly, “Little by little, I came to understand that I was very much alone. And that I was lonely. I decided that I had to do something, because if I didn’t, I was going to die of loneliness. I believe it, you know-that you can die of loneliness. You die inside, the part of you that really matters, a little at a time.”

  “And so,” he murmured, not disagreeing, “you got a divorce.”

  “No,” she said. “I took up dancing.” And she had to laugh at the look on his face. “It’s true. I signed up for dancing lessons. I meant it as a way for David and I to share something, to actually do something together for once. But he thought it was silly, said he was too busy and refused to go, and because I’d already spent the money, I went ahead anyway. It was pretty awful, at first. I hated the group lessons-as one of several unattached women, I always seemed to wind up dancing the man’s position-but the instructor was very good. So I signed up for private lessons.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” she said when Tom restlessly stirred, frowned and reached for his cigarettes. “It’s what David thought, too-that I was having an affair with my dance teacher. How trite, huh? And actually, I did adore Hans-”

  “Hans?”

  “He was Dutch, I think-maybe German. Probably gay, but so what? He was young and lithe and graceful and charming, but more to the point, he made me feel all those things. When I was on that dance floor with Hans, I felt…as if I could fly. As if I were a bird, just released from a cage, and I was soaring… and that there was no limit to the sky.”

  She stopped on a high note that was too dangerously close to being a sob, and after a few restorative moments, gave a low chuckle and murmured, “Oh, boy, David was furious. He demanded that I quit. But…” She paused then, remembering, reliving the terrible sense of panic and futility she’d felt as she’d tried to make David understand. She felt it again now as she wondered how she could ever expect Tom, a man, to know what it felt like to be a woman and trapped by other people’s expectations.

  Passion filled her chest with pain; once more she doubled her fingers into a fist and used it to press against the ache. “He might just as well have asked me to give up light. I mean, I felt as if I’d been living in the dark for so long, you know? And now someone had come along and turned on the light. And here was this man who supposedly loved me, and he was asking-telling-me I had to go back to the dark! I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. He didn’t understand. He kept saying, ‘How could you put a dance class above your marriage, for God’s sake?’ He didn’t know it wasn’t a dance class he was asking me to give up, it was life.”

  “And so,” said Tom in a rough, quiet voice, exhaling smoke, “you got a divorce. Hell, I don’t blame you.”

  “Not even then,” Jane said, relaxing slightly, but not quite believing he really understood. “Believe it or not. It never entered my head. All I wanted then was to do some of the things I’d always dreamed of doing, in spite of his disapproval. I enrolled in some college classes, for instance.” She gave a soft, derisive snort, and said the rest with a little smile on her face, knowing it would sound too angry, too bitter if she let all her pain and frustration show. “Well, when David found out he couldn’t control me any longer, he just withdrew from me completely. Punishing me, I suppose. Sex was the last thing to go, probably because that meant a certain amount of inconvenience for him, as well. Eventually, all I was getting from him was hostility and disapproval.”

  “That’s no way to live,” Tom said in a voice so gravelly it almost hurt to hear it.

  “No,” Jane agreed softly, “it isn’t. And I knew that. But it still took a couple more years of pain and fear and the most awful guilt before I was finally able to tell David I wanted out. It was on the eve of our twenty-first wedding anniversary. I think it was partly that-” she smiled a little “-partly the fact that I’d just turned forty. Maybe a little that Lynn was a senior in high school, and I knew she was going to be leaving home soon. Then in a few more years, Tracy…and I’d be truly alone.

  “Anyway-” she drew a deep, shuddering breath “-I did it, and it was a hell I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy, and I vowed that I would never, ever go through something like that again. I also vowed,” and finally she had to whisper, “that I wouldn’t let myself settle, ever again, for anything less than someone who would love me, cherish me…and give me the freedom to fly. It’s been five years, dammit, and I haven’t.” She paused to snatch an agonized breath before blurting out, “Do you think it’s too much to ask?”

  Tom shook his head. There was a long silence while he scowled at the floor.

  “And now,” she said gently, and his eyes came back to her, warily, still frowning, as if he knew what she was going to say, “you are asking me to give you…all these feelings I have for you.” As hard as it was, she gazed at him without wavering, letting him see everything that was in her heart at that moment, knowing how it must hurt him to acknowledge it. “You want me to give all that I have to give-because that’s the only way I know how. Tom. When I feel something, I give it all. And believe me, that’s a lot. And in return, you can give me… nothing?”

  There was another long silence before he finally coughed and said in that voice that was as raw as tearing cloth, “Right now, yeah. That’s about the size of it.”

  He stubbed out his cigarette clumsily, like a blind man, and got to his feet. His smile was as skewed and painful as she’d ever seen it when he looked at her and muttered, “I always have been pretty much of a sonuvabitch.”

  He paused, then shook his head and added on a note of wonder, “That’s what made Jen such a miracle, I guess. A man can’t expect to get two such miracles in one lifetime.”

  And she knew that he was leaving.

  It was what she wanted, of course. It was what had to happen. It was the way things had to be-for her sake. For her well-being and happiness, for all that she’d promised herself, all that she’d dreamed. Tom, of the gentle hands, the thrilling kisses, the unthinkingly caring little gestures…Tom had nothing left of his heart to give her. He’d invested it all in a woman and a child and buried it with them when they died. And she was sorry for him. She ached for his loneliness and need. But she couldn’t sacrifice her need for his. She couldn’t.

  Oh, God, she thought, please don’t let me do this.

  He knew he had to leave. It wasn’t what he wanted. God knows… Hawk actually thought it might have been easier to leave behind one of his appendages-at least for that they gave you some kind of anesthesia.

  This was almost as bad as losing Jen and Jason all over again. In a way, he felt as if he was reliving it, those terrible days after the bombing…the hospital…leaving Marseilles, returning to their house in Florence…walking away from it that last time. Feeling as if his whole body had been tied down with lead weights, as if he were swimming against a powerful undertow, and every move he made, even the smallest move, required a tremendous effort, all the strength in his body, all the power of his will.

  How many times he’d railed against his own strength and will, wishing he could just give in, give up and let the undertow take him down. But he hadn’t. Something inside him had made him keep making that next stroke, taking that next step, waking up to face one more day. Doing what had to be done. Simply because it was the way things had to be.

  That was what it felt like to him now. Like his whole body was lead, and it took all his strength just to move his arms, to pick up his jacket, put one foot in front of the other. But he did it because it was what had to be done. He had to leave Jane standing there looking at him with her rain-drenched eyes. Walk out of her house, get in his borrowed red Nissan and driv
e away and never, ever come back. Never see her again.

  It wasn’t what he wanted. It was the way things had to be. For her sake, because what he wanted from her was something he couldn’t give her in return. And for his sake, because he knew she’d give it to him if he asked her, and he wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he did.

  He didn’t say goodbye. He didn’t trust himself to speak. He went outside into the March night, carrying his jacket in one hand, not even feeling the cold, feeling only numbness and a terrible sense of urgency. Because he knew that if he didn’t get to the car, get it started and get the hell away from Jane’s house as fast as he possibly could, he might still do the unforgivable. He could still walk back into her warm happy kitchen and take her in his arms and pull her warm, giving body against him and kiss her until she begged him to stay. He could do it.

  Please, God, don’t let me do it.

  He had the car started, the lights on and his seat belt fastened, and was just putting the car in gear when suddenly she was there at his window. Adrenaline hit him, and it was like running full tilt into a wall. She lifted a hand and knocked on the glass, but he could only stare at her, shocked and jangling like a malfunctioning fire alarm, all his impulses and responses hopelessly scrambled. Don’t do this. For the love of God, just drive away…

  But she was opening the door, bending down to him, and he knew it was too late for that now.

  “Jane,” he growled just as she was whispering, “Please, Tom. Come back inside.”

  “For God’s sake, what are you doing?” Angrily, he threw the gear lever into Park. The heater came on and blew gusty, humid air against the windshield, fogging it.

  “I’d like you to stay.”

  He could only look at her, everything inside him vibrating like a badly timed engine. Her face was a pale blur in the artificial moonlight given off by the mercury vapor yard lamps. He saw that she was hugging herself in the loose, soft tunic, and from the sound of her voice, he knew that she was shivering.