THE AFFAIR

by Davis, Dyanne

  He definitely hadn’t believed she would send him to Arizona alone to care for two small children. He’d expected her to board the plane right until the moment the jet taxied down the runway. This was not the woman he loved. Michelle wouldn’t do this. But she had.

  Larry polished off his drink, the last he would have. Getting drunk never solved anything. He laid his head back against the soft leather and groaned. There was an ache in his heart as well as his head. The last place he wanted to be at the moment was flying away from his wife. He needed to be home. He needed to make things right.

  Lately she’d started having the dreams again, the ones of another man, someone she believed she’d loved and lost, and she’d begun talking nonsense about past lives and willing herself to die.

  A shiver froze his heart. Once started, he seemed unable to stop the chill that had crept around his heart from enveloping him, turning him into that same frightened boy he’d been when his mother had told him she was finding him a new home.

  His heart had pounded in fear as he’d tried to remember what bad thing he’d done to make his mother find him a new home. He’d begged and pleaded with his mother, promising to be good. None of the efforts of a five-year-old had mattered. She’d not found him a new home. She’d turned him over to the state.

  Larry had endured it, at first helpless, as one after the other of the caregivers he was entrusted to abandoned him also. Then he’d learned to survive. He’d learned to be strong, to harden his heart. Mick’s love had been sudden and unexpected, the balm he’d needed to heal his heart and spirit.

  Mick was his constant. She’d sworn to love him always. And until recently he’d never doubted that she always would. Now she was behaving oddly. He thought of the night more than two months ago when she had confessed to sleeping with another man. He’d laughed at her and she’d been insulted. She’d questioned whether he doubted another man would find her attractive.

  He shouldn’t have laughed. He should have told her then and there that the sight of her inflamed his senses. He thought she knew that. He had never meant to hurt her feelings, but the thought of her touching a stranger, making love with him…It wasn’t possible.

  His wife had taken years to get comfortable touching him. She’d been just as bad about him touching her. So he knew there was no way in hell she would allow a stranger to touch her.

  Opening his eyes Larry looked around the cabin. Enough thinking about problems that didn’t exist. Mick was probably going through the change. He’d heard women behaved strangely during that time. They would weather it as they had everything in their lives. He forced a smile to his lips. Mick was not his mother. She would never desert him.

  I left Chance’s home thinking of Larry, wondering what he was doing, wishing I had flown to Arizona with him. It seemed as if I’d tumbled headlong into a whirlwind. With shaking fingers I dialed the phone. I needed to talk to Larry. I wanted to tell him what had happened.

  “Hello, Mother.”

  Erica’s voice was cold and hard. Her use of Mother, instead of Mom, was her signal to me that she was angry. I smiled at the fury in my eldest child’s voice. If I had cared that my actions would upset her I would have her kids right now and would probably be downing a handful of pills from the migraine they invariably gave me. No, I had no time for her histrionics.

  “Erica, let me speak to your father.” My voice was just as cold and dispassionate. I had given her twenty-three years of my life. I didn’t owe her more. I had done the mom thing until I was sick to death of it. The plays, the games, the sleep-overs, the trips, the park, the zoo, baking cookies, helping with homework until finally it was baby-sitting. And all this while working fulltime.

  Yes, I had done it all. No wonder Larry thought of me as the perfect mother. I had played the part and kept my feelings buried deep inside, but now, now I wasn’t ready to give away the next part of my life caring for my children’s offspring.

  I sagged against a chair and slid into it as I heard Larry’s voice on the other end of the phone.

  “I decided to take some vacation time. I need you to come home.” There was silence, dead silence such as I’d never known. Then Larry’s voice talking to Erica.

  “Honey, the connection on your phone’s not that good. I’m going to go outside and call your mother on my cell phone.”

  “Is everything all right, Dad?” I heard Erica answer him. He replied to her, “Everything’s fine, honey.”

  I could imagine him smiling at her. I wanted everything to be fine.

  I realized the silence on the phone had turned into a busy signal. I knew my husband had hung up the phone without telling me of his intentions. Sure, I’d heard him tell our daughter, but didn’t I count? I clicked the off button to stop the noise.

  I was beginning to feel sorry for myself and part of me knew it was an excuse to run back to Chance, to experience him the way I wanted. I was dying of thirst and he was the long awaited drink of water I needed.

  The cordless phone rang in my hand. The moment I clicked the button, Larry’s booming voice was screaming at me, something he never did.

  “What the hell do you mean, you need me to come home? Are you ill?”

  “I don’t think so.” I waited.

  “You don’t think so? You don’t think so!”

  This time his voice was so loud that I moved the phone away from my ear. “Hon, I know this sounds crazy and I can’t really explain it. All I can tell you is that I need you home. I can feel that I’m going to do something we’ll both regret if you’re not here to stop me. Please baby, come home now.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  I heard the momentary fear in his voice. He was probably thinking I was going to swallow a handful of pills or something else equally as innocent. If only that was what I was thinking.

  “Mick, when did you take this vacation time?”

  “That doesn’t matter.”

  “Like hell it doesn’t. It matters. If you’re on vacation, the kids could be there with us right now. I would be home with you and we wouldn’t be having this absurd conversation.”

  I heard the sound of the ocean in my head. I was screwing this up. I wanted to make him understand. I wanted to make it painless. Tears were streaming down my face. I couldn’t find the words to tell my husband the truth without making him want to commit me.

  “I asked you a question, Mick. When did you take vacation?”

  I ignored the question. To me that didn’t matter, not as much as trying to make Larry understand. “I touched a chair today, Larry. It was an antique, at least a hundred years old. I sat in it and I felt it envelope me. It was my chair.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about past lives.”

  “Not that shit again!” he roared. “I warned you, Mick. No more. All you had to do was tell me anything else, you missed me, you loved me and I would have come home to you in a flash. But this…God…”

  I heard the end of the profanity he muttered before he hung up on me. I wrapped my arms around my body and cried for the loss of innocence in my marriage. For sure we would never be the same.

  Every nerve in my body tingled with awareness. I wanted Larry, but I needed Chance. I needed him to help me make sense of what was happening to me. My glance caught the recent picture of my husband smiling from the frame on the mantle. I loved him. With all my heart I loved him.

  At two in the afternoon I made my way toward my bed, reaching to take my husband’s picture from the mantle. I curled up in bed with it and cried, begging God for strength.

  Three days later I made a decision. I had not talked to Larry again. He’d not bothered to call me and I’d not called him.

  What finally made up my mind were the dreams I had for three nights in a row. Vivid dreams of another lifetime. Chance was there with me, holding me. He didn’t wear the face he wore now and neither did I, but it was us. Of that I was sure. This time there was no blood, just the tw
o of us laughing, loving, being happy. Again I saw myself sitting in my rocker, Chance staring up at me tenderly, only his name was Jeremy. “I’ll love you always, Dimitra,” he said. That was the name he’d called me that night in the hotel. I didn’t know if I’d made myself hear that name in my dream or if this was what it felt like, a memory, a long ago forgotten memory.

  This time as I dialed the phone I knew the man on the other end would have a different response. He would be there whenever I needed him. In my dream he’d made a solemn vow that we would always be together, that death would only separate us for a moment.

  Larry sat glaring at the phone, willing it to ring. He’d not spoken to Michelle in three days. He was afraid to call her, afraid to hear her tell him that she’d awakened after twenty-six years of loving him and realized she no longer did.

  Damn. The whole episode was crazy. They’d never handled their problems this way. He missed her with every fiber of his being. Maybe that was the reason the kids were getting to him. He’d never seen it before, but they could be rather obnoxious. As much as he loved his grandchildren, he had to admit that.

  He’d only been there with them for one day alone. The other two days, he had taken a good long look at his daughter, the daughter that Mick always accused him of spoiling, of favoring.

  Maybe it was true. He’d looked at her the day before thinking how much she looked like her mother. He’d been surprised that her resemblance to Mick did in fact create a bond. He had never dared admit it to anyone, least of all to himself.

  But now he knew Mick was correct in her assessment of the situation. But how could he not love Erica a little more? She was the spitting image of the woman who’d given her life. Her birth had been the cement that glued them together as a family instead of a couple.

  Larry looked around his daughter’s spotless white kitchen, remembering how amazed he’d been not to see any clutter. The all white kitchen was new. Something they never would have tried with young kids, something Mick wouldn’t try now for fear of their grandchildren’s visits.

  He’d walked around the house looking at Erica’s collection of Lladros safely ensconced behind glass in a curio cabinet. Not one fingerprint marred the glass. He’d been the one to start his daughter’s collection. From the day she was born he’d collected them for her. Not a one was broken-unlike Mick’s meager collection.

  He’d been standing there looking at his eldest daughter’s collection when she’d come to stand behind him.

  “How do you manage to keep the kids away from those?” He waved toward the curio.

  “They wouldn’t dare touch my things.”

  “Are you saying they’ve never tried?”

  “They tried and I spanked them.”

  He watched as she turned smiling brown eyes on him. “These are precious, they’re all from you. I would never let them destroy them.” His mouth fell open in surprise.

  “That wasn’t the attitude you had with your mother’s figurines.”

  “Daddy, you know Mom isn’t as attached to her things I am.”

  “Erica, it was an anniversary gift. I gave it to her for our twentieth anniversary.”

  He had watched as Erica pouted, her face frowning, her eyes no longer smiling, but glaring at him.

  “If it was that important to her, then why didn’t she just let you buy her another one? Nooo, she had to take it out on me and my kids and make me feel guilty that they’re so lively.”

  Larry looked at his daughter and saw the face of his wife a year before, crying amidst the ruins from her broken figurine, an anniversary gift from him to her. He hadn’t given her many, preferring instead to take the entire family on anniversary trips. Now watching his daughter’s angry face, he recalled every word. He got a shiver as he heard Michelle’s voice in his head calling to him.

  “Oh my God! Larry, look what they did.”

  “They’re just kids, Mother,” Erica had answered her mother, before he could say a word. “If you didn’t want it broken you shouldn’t have put it out.”

  At the time he’d ignored the fire in Mick’s eyes when she answered Erica. “It was on the mantle, Erica. Maybe you should have better control of your kids and teach them to respect other people’s property. They had no business climbing up there anyway.”

  “What’s the big deal, Mother? Just go buy yourself another one.”

  “It was an anniversary gift.”

  “Then tell Daddy to buy you another one.”

  Larry could clearly picture the tears as they rained down his wife’s face. He’d wanted so much to stop her from hurting, but he chose to stop the fight. “Erica’s right, honey. Stop crying, I’ll buy you another one tomorrow.”

  “If you do, I’ll break it myself,” she’d replied. He had watched, as she finished picking up the broken porcelain and dumped it in the trash without another word.

  For the first time, looking at Erica in her uncluttered home with over twenty years of an expensive Lladro collection intact, he was beginning to understand. Mick was right, Erica was selfish.

  Chapter Five

  “Michelle?”

  I dared to breathe, the relief evident in my bones. If I closed my eyes in a certain way I could almost see the string that connected me to the voice on the phone.

  “Michelle, I’ve been waiting for you to call me. I’ve had time to get used to this.”

  A pause.

  “I was so sure when I found you, that you would be ready for this. I’m sorry I didn’t give you more time.”

  I couldn’t believe it. Chance was apologizing to me for my behaving like a fool and running away from him.

  “Chance, can we talk?”

  “I’m swamped with patients until six.”

  “I could buy you dinner.”

  “Where’s your husband?”

  “In Arizona.”

  I heard the slow, even breathing from the other end of the phone. I shivered. I wondered how long Chance had been collecting these things to show to the woman he loved. Then it hit me. I was the woman he loved, the one he’d stored up treasures for.

  “I could meet you at your house at seven…bring dinner fixings…and cook dinner for you.”

  “Do you remember how to get there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you sure you want to come?”

  “I have to.”

  “Then I’ll meet you there at seven…only don’t bring dinner. We’ll order in.”

  For the rest of the day I moved through the rooms of my home cleaning and dusting, remembering my life with Larry, my children, my parents. I felt the way I had after having been given morphine for pain years before. Dizzy.

  I was not quite sure that I wasn’t in a dream. I concentrated harder, trying to stop the shadow that was now forming around my life. It felt as if I were living inside a board game. If I wanted, I believed I could pick up the pieces and move them about.

  Call Larry. The sound reverberated through my head not quite reaching my soul.

  I didn’t want an attack of conscience. I didn’t want to forgive Larry, to have him forgive me. I didn’t want to hear him ask me one more time if I’d gone to the doctor, implying that I was crazy. I wanted something that I knew would be bad for me, and I knew that it would cause me problems later.

  It was with that in mind that I pulled an invisible veil over my eyes to block out the pictures of my family, to block out my life. I was totally aware of what I was about to do. In that aspect, I have no defense.

  By six my entire body felt as if it were wired into a circuit board and someone was shooting little jolts of electricity around and through me.

  I walked into my bathroom, my hand automatically opening the drawer and pulling out a brand new toothbrush. This I stuck into my purse. A cold shiver ran through me and I thought of the saying that someone had walked over my grave. I now knew what that meant.

  A few minutes before seven, I sat in the driveway of Chance’s home waiting for something to happen
to make me stop this incredible madness. Nothing happened. Not guilt, not a sense of loss, nothing. The door opened and Chance stood framed by the soft light from inside. Though he was smiling at me, my own uncertainty was evident in him.

  I sensed he wanted to come to the car, but was holding back, waiting for me to make my choice. It seemed strange that all it would take for me to change my life was the simple act of getting out of the car.

  My eyes fell on the door handle. I gazed at Chance then found myself walking toward him, not remembering actually opening the door.

  “Hi.”

  I stood about a foot from him, the shuddering from within now on the outside. I sank my teeth into the flesh of my lips. His arms reached out for me, enclosing me in a circle of warmth.

  “Welcome home.”

  I fell against his chest sobbing, knowing in some strange way I had indeed returned home, to this man.

  “Chance, we need to talk. I have to understand what you’re telling me. This all seems so romantic and so farfetched.” I closed my eyes allowing a loud sigh to escape.

  “How do I know I’m not just here with you now because I’m tired and want a change? How do you know I’m not angry at my husband right now and using you?”

  I stepped away from Chance. Finally, my husband’s face had managed to push its way into my brain, making me aware of exactly what I was doing by being here with this man. Even if I didn’t sleep with him again, I’d crossed the barrier of trust.