Somewhere along the way my dreams changed. I no longer wanted to be protected or to have my decisions made for me, but I’d failed to notify my husband of the change. So, I unjustly blamed him for a situation I could have taken control of at any time. The problem was that I hadn’t learned that lesson soon enough.
It was only when I hit the dreaded forty mark that I really became aware of my growing resentment toward my life, my family, my husband and most of all, toward myself.
I’d turned into my mother. I didn’t want to rock the boat, to fight, to have it escalate into divorce as my parents’ marriage had. No, I wanted my marriage to Larry to be forever. I didn’t want to be crazy and alone so I kept my feelings bottled inside.
If it had not been for that little old woman darting out into the path of my car, maybe I could have lived out the remainder of my life this way. But it had happened. I was being haunted by a woman still alive.
The smell of the blood that oozed from her body assaulted my senses on a daily basis. Her pitiful cries, the look of pain and shock in her pale blue eyes never left me. And with the memory, the dreams returned in full force.
Viola’s clothes spoke of poverty, and her words had confirmed it. Her main worry, despite my continued reassurance, was how she could afford a hospital visit. My promise that I would be there for her had brought a weak smile to her pale lips.
“It wasn’t your fault,” she’d said, squeezing my hands, her wrinkled flesh covering my own. It was only then that I noticed the trembling in my hands.
It was Viola’s touch that I felt now as I stood in the store trying to control the bizarre feelings taking over my body. I felt as if I’d betrayed the old woman by never following through on my promise. I’d left her thinking I would be there for her. I’d failed her and I’d failed myself.
I needed something to chase away the thought of Viola and her raggedy coat and the sight of cans of tomato sauce flying up in the air and landing on my car, eggs breaking and pooling into a gooey mess.
I couldn’t shake the memory. I looked down at my own cart filled with only the best the store had to offer, things I gave no thought to purchasing.
It hit me how hard it must have been for Viola to scrape money together for the meager groceries in her bag.
“My food.” I thought I’d heard her say those words but I was never sure.
Michelle, think of something else, I scolded myself. Viola is in the past. Keep her there. So, I thought of my children, all grown and moved away and I thought briefly of my grandchildren. I knew this wasn’t an empty nest feeling, because the kids got on my nerves and I was glad when they finally left. As for the grandkids, my rule was two hours, then back home they went. Nor did I encourage spending holidays with us.
Larry had laughed at me when I shared my feelings with him. He thought I was teasing. Why, I don’t know. I told him in the most serious fashion. But he couldn’t accept my feelings, I suppose because he loved them so much and enjoyed their company. Several times a year he always planned trips for us to see the kids but at the last instant I usually told him I had an emergency at work and couldn’t go but that I’d make it up to him when he returned.
In my job as a medical sales representative that excuse was as flimsy as the nightgown I’d always wear for Larry on his return.
The kids enjoyed having their father to themselves and I enjoyed not having to visit them. Funny thing, as much as I wished for time alone, I couldn’t wait for Larry to come home. Maybe I was a bit crazy.
Chapter Two
I met Chance when I was shopping for my husband’s dinner. Can you imagine the irony in that? In his name? Anyway, when I could malinger no longer, I at last paid for my groceries and made my way toward the exit.
The sky had been a beautiful cerulean blue when I went in, but now it was an angry gray. Fat drops of water began to plop down as I left the store and by the time I was halfway to my car, the rain was pouring down in buckets. The paper bag I’d opted for in the store quickly became saturated and collapsed, spilling my groceries under cars and into the greasy puddles.
I stood for a moment, soaked to the bone, watching my dinner scatter like so many pearls from a broken strand. I started to cry. It wasn’t so much the food or the wasted money, but in that moment those scattering groceries represented my life and my emotions.
I saw tomato sauce flying in the air, eggs breaking, though I had bought neither. I could no more escape my feelings of guilt for not going to see Viola than I could escape my own flesh.
So I did the only thing I could. I cried harder than I ever had in my life, in the rain, in the parking lot, my arms outstretched to the heavens. At first I didn’t notice the man retrieving my items and placing them in a double plastic bag.
When he handed the plastic bag filled with my groceries back to me, I saw sympathy in his face and his eyes and cried harder. For a moment he looked confused. Then he put his arms around me and held me, pressing my head into his chest.
I held on to him as if my very life depended on it. Despite the cold rain, I felt an electrical energy emanating from his body and twining around me. I felt as if I had come home at last. Strange, but it was how I felt.
For long minutes the rain poured down over us. I truly wanted to stop crying, but the fact that I was crying in the rain, in the parking lot, with a strange man comforting me, made me cry more.
At last I gained control and lifted my head from his chest and looked at him. There was an expression of awe on his face, of wonderment. “Do I know you?” I attempted to smile, but the intensity of his look prevented it.
“I’m sorry about this.” I waved my hand around attempting to convey to him that I was not usually a woman given to hysterics.
“Are you better now?” he asked.
“I think so, but I don’t want to be alone.”
I forced myself to look, really look, at the man standing in front of me. He was tall, almost as tall as Larry. That would make him close to six feet.
His hair was jet black, like a raven’s, and had the tiniest sprinkling of gray around the temples. The rain had plastered his shirt flat against his chest and abdomen, revealing that he was lean and muscular.
I examined his face. Strong chin, a mouth that was firm and inviting, tiny laugh lines etched into the contours.
But it was his eyes that gave me pause. I’d been attracted to Larry because of the beauty of his golden brown eyes. This man standing before me possessed without a doubt the most captivating blue eyes God had ever bestowed on a human. I’d never seen that particular color on any living being. I gazed into their depths and became lost. I pulled back to get a better look at the total man. His skin was the color of heated gold from his obvious tan. In spite of the cold rain his touch was hot and inviting. But none of those things were the reason behind my actions. There was something familiar about him and it frightened me.
I closed my eyes against the rush of unexpected emotions. I knew I needed to get a grip, yet my head was spinning and for no known reason, I felt a surge of pure joy overtake me. I was relieved when he spoke.
“You look as if you could use some company. Would you like to go somewhere and have a cup of coffee…maybe talk…a little?”
“You’re right, I could use some company.” I was no longer sobbing, just crying quietly now. I took a good look at this man who’d taken the time to comfort me.
For the first time I noticed something behind the intense look in his eyes. He was in pain. I wanted to do something to help, anything to take away this stranger’s own pain and sorrow.
I wanted only to comfort this man. He felt familiar to me, this stranger who’d shown me such compassion. This time there would be no call to ask my husband what I should do. I would do what I wanted.
I felt him pulling away from me and I backed away also. Maybe I’d only imagined the intense heat searing me. Despite the chill of the rain I could feel heat rush to my cheeks and was glad of my olive complexion. My blush would
only be internal for feeling stupid in mistaking a stranger’s kindness. We gazed into each other’s eyes for maybe five seconds.
“Do you believe in fate?”
He asked me this only a moment before I found myself in his arms again, his lips covering my own, tasting the rain on his tongue and the sweet mint of his breath.
His mouth filled me with a heat that I knew but had abandoned long ago. It was as if I had found my life again. I no longer wanted to die.
I don’t remember putting my groceries in my car, but I must have, because later I took them out. What I do remember is the man silently holding out his hand to me. I knew what he wanted. He wanted me. And I wanted him.
I do remember him opening the door of his Jeep Cherokee to let me in. That was the first moment I became conscious that I was soaked. I worried about ruining his seats. He smiled at me and kissed my hand.
I truly wish I could say that I was so overcome with passion that I was unaware of what I was doing, but that wasn’t the case. I thought about the book and later the movie, The Bridges of Madison County, and how I had argued that the woman had no right to cheat on her husband, that he’d done nothing wrong, that she just wanted to have an affair.
Well, I was now that woman. My husband by the usual standards is the ideal mate. He loves me, of that I’m sure. He provides a good living for us and he’s the perfect father. In fact, I think the only thing about our life that bothers Larry is my “flights of fancy,” as he calls them. He’s teasingly told me on several occasions that he would never commit me, that he’d take care of me himself. I know he means it as a joke but the possibility of it happening is always with me. Now I no longer cared. It didn’t matter.
While I was sitting in a Jeep with a man whose name I didn’t know, I knew it didn’t make any difference. I was going through with it.
The thought of asking him to get condoms crossed my mind. I briefly thought of AIDS, then how irresponsible I was being. I could be driving away with a serial killer. I just wanted for once to do something that had not been pre-approved by my husband. Besides, I knew instinctively that this man wouldn’t hurt me. There was some connection to him that I felt in my being.
If one of my daughters had done something so incredibly dumb I would have read her the riot act, and I did attempt to do so for myself. The hotel was only a couple of blocks away, right in my own small town where anyone could walk in and see me, but I truly didn’t care.
I didn’t care at that point that my thick, cinnamon- colored dyed hair was soaked and tangled and falling in heavy curls down my back and over my face. I didn’t care that I was a total mess and that the desk clerk looked at us curiously.
I knew the stranger had signed us in as Mr. and Mrs. and I got a tingle. I might as well have stepped in front of a moving train. That was the impact this stranger was having on me. For some idiotic reason, though, it felt right. I felt as if I were truly his wife, his mate, and that this was a proper thing I was about to do. I wasn’t about to commit adultery. I was only going to make love with my husband, my true husband whose name I did not know.
Inside the room I sat on the edge of the bed in my wet clothes. He went into the bathroom and returned with a stack of towels. He held out his hand to me and I stood, again knowing what he wanted. I lifted my arms as though I were a child and allowed him to undress me.
He toweled my body dry so gently that I would have thought I was in a dream if not for the surge of desire filling my entire being. I wanted him physically and spiritually, not in a religious sense. I mean that I wanted his spirit to mate with my own.
I admit I felt better dry, and I smiled at him. He smiled back, took another towel, and began drying my hair strand by long strand. He kissed each blotted strand, touching it as though he was remembering doing it before.
He moved from my hair to my ears, drying them, kissing them, touching them. He did this over every inch of my body.
“I was beginning to think I would never find you again,” he whispered against the small of my back, but I heard him. I didn’t question what he meant. I knew.
I was trembling so hard that he pulled away to look at me. “You’re not afraid, are you?”
“A little.”
His smile was my reward. My fears drained away, leaving me feeling wild, decadent, and free. I took a towel and did for him what he had done for me, drying his body, kissing him tenderly.
My fingers searched his body furiously for landmarks and craters I evidently knew existed. I had made love with this man many times before. I shivered, wondering how that could be possible.
One of us pulled the covers back from the bed. I’m not sure which of us, only that suddenly we were under the covers holding each other, touching, and we were both crying softly.
“I’ve been waiting for you,” he said to me.
“And I’ve been trying to find you,” I answered.
When we came, it was together. I knew then what it was I’d been missing, what my husband who I knew without a doubt loved me could never give me. He could never give me this supreme feeling of connection, but it wasn’t his fault.
We lay together for the longest time, still touching. “I’ve never done anything like this before,” I said to him. I didn’t want him to think I was some kind of tramp.
I started to pull away and he tightened his arm around me. He had a strange look in his eyes. “This is not the first time we’ve made love,” he said authoritatively.
“What are you talking about?” I turned so that I could look in his eyes. These were my feelings, my thoughts. How was it possible that he was having them?
“What are you talking about?” I asked again. I don’t know you. I don’t even know your name.” Yet the feel of his skin under my fingers called me a liar. I knew every cell in his body. Intimately.
“Can’t you feel it?” he responded. “Our meeting was not an accident.”
The strange thing was that I knew it wasn’t an accident, but to admit to what I thought it really was would mean that my life would now take on a different meaning. I had to do something to pretend that my life hadn’t just changed forever. I wanted to believe that his words gave me reason to worry, that perhaps I had just slept with a stalker, no matter how incredible it was. Maybe I had better think of some way to escape. I had to believe that the words this stranger spoke made him sound like a nut. If I didn’t, it would mean that I was nuts.
“Are you saying you planned this, that you’ve done this type of thing before?” I was offended and wondered how it was that he happened to have plastic bags.
He stared at me a moment before answering. “I didn’t plan today. In fact, standing in the rain getting soaked was the last thing I had on my mind.”
“I sat in my car watching you. I saw you coming out of the store and your bags break. I never intended to get involved, but when you stood there crying, I watched people walking away from you, looking at you strangely. Before I knew it, I was out of the car, running into the store to grab plastic bags.”
He looked me over, his voice sounding insulted. “No, I don’t remember having done this, if you mean by this, our meeting in the rain.” There was a slight shift in his body. His eyes softened and his lips stretched into a smile.
“It was fated for us to meet. I’ve been waiting years for you.” His eyes were smiling at me yet his words to any sane person were those of a person that definitely belonged on Prozac. And I was trying to the best of my ability to be a sane person.
“What’s your name?” It was a little late to think of getting acquainted, but I still needed to know who I’d slept with, so that when I went to confession I could tell on him also.
“Chance.”
I looked at him. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
He hopped out of the bed and walked across the room, lean and muscular. I feasted my eyes on his beauty, on his strength, not feeling ashamed, not minding that I was a middle-aged woman with not so firm breasts and an extra twenty pounds
on my five-five frame. I didn’t care. I felt beautiful and I knew he found me beautiful as well.
Chance brought me back his wallet. I examined the picture and the name. Chance Morgan? I held my left hand out for him to examine. “I should have told you this sooner but I’m married.” He merely smiled. Okay, I thought, this joker has more problems than I do.
“I’ve been married twenty-six years. Yesterday was my anniversary.”
“And today you wanted to die. You came to the store because you could feel yourself giving in to the sweet invitation of death. You had no idea that you were searching for me until you found me, but then you knew. I saw the recognition in your eyes. I felt it in your touch, in your response to me.”
Oh God, what was happening to me? “What the heck are you talking about?” I asked.
“Tell me you don’t believe me.”
“I do believe you, but you’re scaring me.”
“What would you like for this to be?”
“I’d like for you to be just a little bit crazy maybe. It would make all of this easier for me. Listen, are you…are you on any kind of medications?”
“No medications, anything else you want to know?”
“I was going to ask if you’re nuts, but thought maybe I shouldn’t, just in case. Perhaps I should be nice to you until I return to my home, my life, and the safety of my husband’s arms.”
“Is that really what you want after all the time we’ve wasted not being together in this life, to just leave me and return to your home?”
His eyes suddenly looked so sad. I felt I had betrayed him, and in a way that hurt more than what I had done to my husband. I had denied the life that Chance seemed to be remembering.
“Deny that you wanted to die.”
I got out of the bed then, keeping a wary eye on Chance. It was time for me to end this fantasy.
“Listen, Chance, thank you for this afternoon.”
THE AFFAIR Page 2