“Should I be worried?”
I noticed for the first time the tiny worry lines around his eyes. Something was bothering him that he’d not put into words.
“Mick, are you planning on having an affair while I’m gone?”
“I thought you believed me incapable of that?” I said, looking over his shoulder.
“I still do.” He reached for me then stopped himself. “But you’re not acting like yourself. You’re beginning to scare me. I can’t deal with the paranormal and I’ve noticed all the books you’ve been reading lately are about it.”
“What do you want me to do, Larry? My reading isn’t affecting your life. I still cook and clean for you. I’m there whenever you turn to me. What have I taken from you or from our marriage?” I noticed the hurt look that came into his eyes.
“We’ve always shared and this one time we can’t.” His voice was muffled. I was aware that he was uncomfortable talking about anything that couldn’t be proven.
I was undaunted by his feelings, and elected instead to focus on his words. The fact that he wanted to share gave me hope. So I said to him, “We can share it. We can find out about it together, we can make the journey together.” I smiled, feeling maybe this was the way things were meant to be. Perhaps Larry and I would explore this new avenue of interest.
“I don’t want to make that particular journey. And I want you to be done with it when I return home.”
“Excuse me?”
I watched as his jaw tightened. I listened as he spoke to me as if I were one of the children.
“I’ve never given you an ultimatum, but this is one time I must put my foot down. When I return home, I want this nonsense out of our home and out of your head.”
I laughed out loud. “You want to regulate my thoughts? I only read when you’re not around, or when you’ve fallen asleep.”
“I know that, but I don’t like waking and finding you not there. I want you to stay in bed with me, where you belong. I need you there. So whatever you have to do to rid our lives of this invasion, you have two weeks to do it. And that includes your dreams. I want you to go to a doctor, get something for them. I want them to stop. I know they have something to do with all of this nonsense.”
I couldn’t believe my husband’s gall. I wanted to strike out at him, hurt him for his remarks and I knew just how to do it. If he thought it was an affair I was after, maybe I’d give him something to worry about. And since he was the one who’d brought it up, I couldn’t help wondering if he was giving me his tacit approval to have an affair. It sure as hell sounded like it. It sounded to me as if he was giving me two weeks to do whatever I wanted, as long as I was done with it when he returned.
I looked away from him for a moment in disbelief. Surely I was hearing him wrong. “Larry, is that why you asked if I’m planning on having an affair? Did I hear you right? Are you giving me your approval? If so, why do you think two weeks will be long enough?”
He glared at me and walked toward the security line leading to the gate. He wanted to be away from me. “Two weeks, Mick,” he said. He continued walking, looking back once over his right shoulder to repeat, “Two weeks.” Even from where I stood I could tell his teeth were clenched in anger.
I drove to the only medical office I planned to visit for the next two weeks. I’d decided to take a two week vacation while Larry was gone.
This time my wait in Chance’s office was much shorter. He came to the waiting room door himself and invited me in. I rolled my bag in, handed a stack of notepads to the receptionist on the way.
My knees were knocking together, and my hands were trembling. I knew why I was sitting across from Chance Morgan and he knew also.
“I’ve been waiting for you to come back.”
It was simple when he said it. Yet his blatant assumption angered me. I wanted him to share the guilt for my infidelity and even more, I wanted to blame him for what we had not done, but what I knew we would do.
“I read the books you gave me,” I answered at last. “I’m curious about what you have to say. I don’t know that I believe you, but I want to hear more about it. I want to hear what you were going to tell me before. What happened, Chance? How do you know this is all real?”
I watched as he walked around to the front of his desk and peered at what appeared to be a work calendar. There was not the slightest doubt in my mind that he would make time for me regardless of his appointments.
“Do you have time for lunch? This is going to take a while to tell you.”
He was trying hard to hide the wistful look. I saw it though it sent tremors throughout my body. I had been moving toward this moment long before Chance ever walked into my life.
Of course I hadn’t understood what was happening to me, just felt a great apathy and an underlying knowledge that someone, somewhere was waiting for me. I needed to know more about regression therapy. I needed to know more about Chance.
Larry had ordered me to get ‘it’ out of my system and I was taking him up on it. Of course Larry never had in mind the things I was about to do. For the first time in my life I had someone to talk to about the feelings I’d had my entire life, someone who might have the answers, someone who didn’t think I was crazy.
“Yes, Chance, I can have lunch.”
Maybe it would turn out to be that after being married for so long I just wanted a change. But within my psyche I knew there was more. There had better be more because I was gambling my life on the slim chance that there was.
“Give me a minute.” Chance smiled at me, then went out the door. I wondered briefly what he would tell his staff. Surely, they were curious.
He came back, then smiled at me from several feet away. Again, I knew he was sensing hesitation on my part, but I wouldn’t change my mind, not now. I wanted to know why I felt an intense connection to him. Was he really my husband from a previous life, the dark-haired lover from my dreams?
“Are you canceling patients?”
“Of course not, I would never do that.” He must have sensed my doubt because he continued, “Not even for you would I leave my patients hanging.”
“What about the day we met? You said you heard me calling you and came. Didn’t you have patients that day?”
“Michelle, I didn’t cancel patients the day we met. It just so happened that my calendar was clear. I do take time off from work. I’m a cardiologist but I’m also human. I need down time.”
That was the right thing for him to say. I wondered how he’d known just the thing to say that would allow me to release the last little bit of hesitation. It was a little spooky, as if he could read my thoughts. I peered at him, wondering if he could be psychic.
“Where would you like to have lunch?”
I looked in his eyes. There was no hidden meaning. “I want to see where you live. Is that possible?”
In a way I was challenging him. If he was lying about being unmarried, he couldn’t take me to his home. There would be pictures. If his wife was working, there would be some sign to let me know. It was amazing that I wondered if he was married while my own marriage hung like an albatross around my neck.
“I would love for you to come home with me. I’m a great cook. My specialty is Chinese.”
I stood, licking my lips. Okay, I’d come this far. I heard Larry’s voice screaming at me in my head. Then I saw our daughter Erica with her disapproving nod and her unruly kids by her side. I thought of my husband’s ordering me to be done with this foolishness. I was tired of taking orders. “I love Chinese food,” I answered.
“Would you like to follow me in your car?”
For an answer I smiled, then followed him out the door saying a hasty good-bye to the receptionist. The woman barely glanced at me but I felt as if Adulteress was written across my forehead.
In the driveway of Chance’s home I killed the engine and looked around. His house was not what I expected. Somehow he’d found Utopia in the midst of the Chicago suburbs. His home stoo
d alone on a small manmade hill and looked to be very old. I glanced up and down the block. The other homes were lovely, huge, yet half the size of Chance’s. They had lots of trees and thick well manicured lawns but they all appeared to be rather new, no older than ten years. In fact I knew the subdivision hadn’t been there twenty years ago. I wondered if this was really an old refurbished house, or a modern dwelling made to resemble its predecessor.
I followed Chance through the widest, thickest pair of oak doors I’d ever seen. A rush of strong emotions hit me squarely in the chest and I stumbled and clutched my breast, suddenly afraid. Never in my life had I felt something so powerful. The energy in the room rapidly wrapped around me, enveloping me in warmth and love.
I knew this place, these things. I was overcome with the strangest sense of deja vu. I had never been here before, and even if it was as Chance had said that I had a past life, why would these objects in his house be so familiar to me?
“Are you all right?”
“Something’s wrong, Chance. Your furnishings feel so familiar to me. This is spooky.”
His hand reached out for me. “I searched a long time in antique shops for everything in here,” he said, as though that explanation alone should suffice.
“I felt for the energy until it was right. There were some things I wasn’t so sure of.”
The pleasure shone on his face. I took the hand he offered and proceeded into the room. I ran my free hand over the furnishings, stopping in awe in front of an antique rocker covered in a beautiful brocade.
For several long moments I stood before the chair. Then my glance found Chance and I sat, closing my eyes. This was my chair. Flashes of me sitting there rocking, Jeremy kneeling at my feet, came to me, Jeremy’s smile, his hand touching mine, his love. Oh God, I thought, what’s happening to me? I was afraid. This was not a dream. I didn’t know what it was.
I wanted to get up, take the chair, and run. I wanted to beg Larry to come home, to take me to the doctor for that physical he wanted me to have. And maybe I would spend some time in an institution. I believed now I needed it.
“Michelle, it’s okay, take it slow.” Chance’s arms were around me, holding me simply to comfort me.
“I have to go,” I said as I stood up. I need time to think about this.” He stared at me. “I need to call my husband. I feel I’m losing touch with reality and you’re the reason, Chance.”
Larry sat in his assigned seat, surprised that Michelle had remembered to get him a window seat. The way she’d been acting lately, as though she didn’t care, he half expected to find himself seated in the middle of two strangers. Instead, she’d gotten him a first class seat.
He didn’t know if that was a good sign or not. He pressed his head against the glass. If he were not a forty-six-year- old man he would cry. Something was wrong with his marriage.
That was an understatement. Something was terribly wrong with his marriage, had been now for over eight months. Ever since Mick had hit the old lady with her car there had been a cloud hanging over them.
It was the first time in their marriage that they’d screamed at each other, saying hurtful things. Mick going to visit the woman had been out of the question.
He had been trying to protect her. But since then she’d looked at him with, if not hatred, intense dislike. He wasn’t the enemy. He was her protector, always had been, and always would be. He hoped.
Larry could barely wait to be airborne. He wanted a drink. He could feel the fear eating away at him and needed something to dull the ache. He was aware that in first class he didn’t have to wait, but to have a drink before the plane took off would be an act of desperation.
And he didn’t want to admit to desperation. The most he would admit to was despair. He missed the easy relationship he’d always enjoyed with his wife. Michelle was his life. He loved her more now than he had the day he married her.
Sure, there were some things lacking in their marriage, but he’d done his best to ignore them and for the most part it worked. If only he were able to make his wife feel the passion for him that he felt for her, their lives really would be perfect.
He leaned back in his seat, grateful for the quick takeoff and the even quicker drink put into his hand. He downed the scotch in one gulp, the smooth liquid going down to the center of his pain and setting his stomach ablaze. He rang for another. The thought that his wife was falling out of love with him would undoubtedly require every ounce of booze on the plane.
When the second drink went down, he allowed himself to relax, glad that he didn’t have anyone sitting next to him to disturb his train of thought. All he could think about was Michelle, the woman he loved, had loved for over twenty-eight years. He had no idea how he would live without her.
She was the only woman he’d ever made love to. He’d been too afraid as a boy. He’d been ridiculed and called names, shuffled from place to place, not wanted by anyone. That is, until he was in college and the beautiful woman with hair the color of warm cinnamon sat down next to him and stared.
“Hi, you have the most beautiful eyes,” she’d said to him. “I just wanted to tell you that.”
Those words were carved into his soul. He remembered he’d smiled at her, stunned, and immediately fallen in love.
“Oh my God, I thought your eyes were beautiful, but your smile would light up the world. My name’s Michelle, by the way. What’s yours?”
“Larry,” he’d managed to stammer out, sure that this had to be a prank. Where had this beautiful woman come from and why the hell had she chosen to talk to him? “You have beautiful hair, I love the color,” he’d whispered softly not daring to tell her how beautiful he thought she was.
“Thanks,” Michelle replied. “I dye it. Since you love the color, I hope they never stop making it.”
Larry closed his eyes tight against the pain he was feeling now. It hadn’t been a prank. Later she’d told him that she’d been watching him and felt drawn to him. She’d told him he was meant to be in her life. He hadn’t minded that one bit.
After months of dating, they’d made love. It was the first time for both of them, something that surprised them both. It ended so quickly that no one had to tell him Michelle had not enjoyed it.
He’d assumed it would get better for her with time. Hell, it had been all that he had hoped for, only magnified about a million times. For him it had only gotten better with time.
Even now, as angry as he was with her, the thought of her made him hard. He loved touching her, all the silky moist spots that he knew were reserved only for him. He loved the feel of the hot juices that flowed out of her body over his hand. He’d done every damn thing he could think to do to please his wife.
He could still see the look on her face when he brought home the porno tapes. She didn’t object, she just wasn’t pleased. And when he’d suggested that they try some of the things they’d seen, the look of disgust on her face had been enough to make him forget the idea. He was too afraid of losing her.
He knew that was the reason he’d never insisted on discussing their problem more fully. If it was said out in the open, she might stop loving him, stop touching him, not allow him to touch her.
No, for several years they’d both pretended that nothing was wrong. Who knew for sure? Maybe there wasn’t. Neither of them had ever been with anyone else. Maybe that was the way it was with all married couples.
In every other manner they were in synch. They laughed together and had fun. After several years their lovemaking improved. Mick even began to enjoy his touches.
He could tell when his wife began to enjoy making love with him. She’d pulled him to her and begun caressing his body, teasing him, telling him to make love to her, to let her make love to him.
It should have been enough. It was just that he’d never been able to rock her world as she rocked his. He didn’t just want her to enjoy making love with him, he wanted her pleasure to be so intense that she screamed out with it, calling his name as s
he came. He wanted that more than anything. No, that wasn’t true. More than anything he wanted his marriage to continue. He wanted his wife to continue loving him as she always had.
He thought of Viola, the woman Michelle had hit and the look on Michelle’s face after weeks of fighting. He’d put his foot down, demanding that she not go see the woman or get in touch with her in any manner. He was relieved when at last she’d acquiesced.
Larry took a slower sip of the drink in his hand. Had she really acquiesced? Her exact words had been, “Do whatever the hell you want. You always do.”
He’d not thought about it at the time. He’d been too busy making sure that Michelle was protected, too happy to hear that she was going to listen to him, allow him to handle things. He’d been too busy to see how unhappy the decision made his wife.
He took another longer sip. She’d get over it. She had to. He thought of their latest argument. In the past eight months they’d fought more than they had their entire marriage. She was trying to hurt him deliberately, that much he knew. He just didn’t understand why.
How could she say she didn’t want kids? That would make her as bad as his own mother, and she was nothing like his mother. He remembered how much attention she’d paid to the kids, putting them in ballet and music lessons, baking cookies for them. She had been a wonderful mother.
She would have never taken their kids and just dumped them on the state, never bothering to look back. And regardless of what she’d said, he didn’t believe she would have ever aborted their child.
A stab of pain hit him in both temples with the force of a two ton truck. After their second baby Mick had cried during each pregnancy and begged him to allow her to have her tubes tied. He’d always said no. He wondered what would have happened if this had happened now, when a woman no longer needed their husband’s consent to do it.
He couldn’t believe she’d refused to take time off from work and keep the kids for Erica and Roy to have some time alone. Now he downed the drink and rang for another.
THE AFFAIR Page 6