“What’s that?” She smiled, thinking the answer would be easy.
Ray moved his hands to his lap, and sat up, and leaned toward her. “That you’d go with me, as my wife.” Karen’s smile faded as quickly as it had appeared. Ray moved his head closer to hers so that their faces were inches apart. “You didn’t expect this.”
“No,” Karen managed to whisper.
“Because I never told you how I felt.”
“I don’t know.” Karen closed her eyes.
Before she opened them, Ray kissed her lips. It was a long, slow kiss that she immediately responded to without thinking—a fresh, new kiss, the kind that disappeared after time in a long-term relationship. It stirred up her insides. And when it was over and Ray slowly moved his head away, Karen put her hand around the back of his head, drew him to her, and kissed him. He wrapped his arms around her and they kissed over and over, oblivious to everything except each other. Finally, Karen broke away, inhaling deeply. Ray smiled at her. “I should have done that a long time ago.” Karen looked down, away from his eyes. The guilty feelings about Bob exploded in her head. Ray took her chin in his hand and turned her face to his. “It’s okay. I know what you’re thinking.”
“I’m not sure you do.”
“Let’s not talk about that,” he said, getting up and reaching for her hand. “I’m going to walk you back to your dorm, and you can sleep on what I just told you.” Karen took his hand and stood, already knowing that sleep would not be possible.
“I can’t believe this,” is what Allison said, again and again, until Karen finished the story. It was a long story that started with Ray’s offer from the Braves, moved through their friendship to the kiss and his marriage proposal, and ended with Bob. “God, Karen, this is like every woman’s fantasy. You are facing choices we all want to make.” Allison explained that no matter what Karen chose, she couldn’t lose. If she chose Ray, she would move to Georgia and finish her education there while he made thousands of dollars an hour throwing a baseball. She would lead a celebrity life, filled with clothes, cars, mansions, and expensive vacations. They would have adorable children, who would be looked after by a trustworthy nanny while Karen pursued whatever line of interest occurred to her. Maybe she would run their museum, and Ray would join her in the off-season. And they would be deliriously happy. Who wouldn’t be happy married to a gorgeous money-making machine like Ray?
And if Karen chose Bob, fine. He was the kindest, most considerate guy Allison knew, and he would give Karen a good life. As a married couple, which was exactly where they were headed before Ray arrived on campus, they would be more than comfortable financially. Because Karen was motivated, she would undoubtedly work—but only before the children were born, and then possibly after they were full-time elementary school students. It was Karen’s hard-working conscience, Allison said, that was giving Karen such trouble now. She was in agony when she should have been dancing around the room.
“I can’t believe this is happening.” Karen was sitting on her bed, her legs folded up underneath her.
“Tell me about it. How does it feel to be the luckiest girl on the planet?”
“I don’t feel lucky. I feel miserable.”
“Miserable?” Allison got up from the bed. “How can you be miserable?”
Karen closed her eyes. When she opened them, the tears from earlier in the evening had returned. “Because I don’t know what to do. I have to choose between the two most important men in my life.”
“You are right about that. You can’t have them both.”
Karen blew her nose, raw from its contact with too many tissues. “What would you do?”
Allison sat back down on the bed. “What does your heart tell you to do?”
Karen rocked her upper body back and forth several times, a soothing method she had employed in stressful times since childhood, since her brothers were born. “My heart tells me to stay with Bob.”
“Then let Ray go. Whether he goes to Georgia or not, let him go.”
By morning, Karen knew Allison was right. She took a walk with Ray after art history and told him she cared deeply about him, but couldn’t continue to spend time with him. Ray told her he admired her integrity, making it even harder for Karen. He also said he had spoken with his parents after his talk with her, and they had given him their blessing on returning to Georgia, where he would start with the Braves and finish his education on the side. He would be leaving in the next week.
After lunch, Karen found Bob in the library. She pulled a chair up to his carrel and laid her head on his arm. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered. Bob wrapped his arms about her. “I’m so sorry.”
“I know. I know you are.”
“Will you forgive me?” She lifted her head to face him.
“That depends,” said Bob, reaching into the pocket of his jacket hanging on the back of his chair.
“Depends on what?”
He presented her with the small royal blue velvet box given him by the jeweler an hour earlier. “Will you marry me, Karen Spears?”
Karen opened the box and saw the one-carat diamond inside. After she kissed her answer, Bob took the ring from the box and put it on her finger.
CHAPTER 4
JUNE 1991
Karen and Bob got married three weeks after her graduation from State. Their wedding day was breezy but warm, fitting into the specifications of what Shelley Spears had for fifteen months been hoping for. Most described Karen, dressed in Shelley’s dress that had been rescued from a flat cardboard box filled with loosely crumpled balls of white tissue paper sitting in the attic waiting for this day, as a vision. As a new wife, Karen was confident and peaceful, as if she and Bob had already been married many years and had slid into a comfort level known to aluminum anniversary couples. And Bob couldn’t stop talking about his bride, repeatedly telling the guests the story about seeing Karen in the student center and knowing that day would lead to this one.
They exchanged the vows Karen had written, which included the word honor, but omitted the word obey, and the gold rings they had custom made for each other. On the inside of both rings, the words MY ONE TRUE LOVE were inscribed with the date. Allison, who was working at State that summer and going into the master’s degree program of English literature in the fall, was Karen’s maid of honor, and Evan, with whom Bob had kept in touch via e-mail and occasional phone calls since Evan’s move to Texas the previous year, served as best man. The ceremony in the Congregational church was short and simple, followed by a lavish cocktail reception at the Town and Country Club, featuring polished silver trays with gourmet hors d’oeuvres, cut-glass bowls overflowing with shrimp, and a seemingly limitless supply of champagne served in crystal flutes. The band Karen and Shelley had selected made good on their promise to get the old folks out of their chairs with some big band tunes and to rock the house for the younger generation. When it came time for Karen and Bob to leave, the guests enthusiastically threw rose petals at Mr. and Mrs. Robert Parsons as they ran hand in hand through the crowded club entranceway to a decorated limousine in the parking lot.
The weather in the Virgin Islands was just as it was pictured on the postcards. Even though Bob’s travel agent had warned him about the possibility of excessive temperatures, Bob and Karen easily adjusted to eighty-five-degree days after a cold, wet spring. They spent their ten days leisurely, reading in the shade, swimming, shopping, and eating exquisitely prepared local food. With a wedding band on her finger and the headiness of a new wife, Karen freely gave her body to her husband, pleasing him and making him especially thankful for their permanent union.
Only once on their honeymoon did Karen think about Ray McNamara. She and Bob were shopping in town when she saw a tall man with blond hair standing on a street corner holding several large shopping bags. Karen knew it wasn’t him, but the man looked enough like him from a distance to hold her attention, to send her thoughts back to school, back to that intense night in the classroom when she
and Ray kissed. She tried not to think about Ray, and she was mostly successful. She had been engaged for more than a year and was now married to another man. But occasionally she allowed herself a few moments of unrestrained fantasy about Ray. And it was always about that kiss.
Karen repeatedly told herself that Ray’s kiss was not as extraordinary as it had felt that night. It had simply been a different kiss, a new kiss. She had been kissing no one but Bob for more than a year. Any new kiss, she reasoned, would feel magical because it emanated from someone else’s mouth. And that mouth, Ray McNamara’s mouth, was perfectly sized to hers. He had written Karen letters for several months after he left school. They were full of news about baseball—as if Karen didn’t devour every Braves story carried in the sports sections of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution provided to the university library by an alumnus—and art history. Ray was, indeed, pursuing his degree and finding he had a lot of time to study when the team was traveling. Since leaving school, he had developed a liking for modern art and was toying with the idea of opening a museum for kids. They would appreciate the vibrant colors and geometric shapes and patterns, he wrote, and perhaps as a result develop a taste for art earlier in life.
Karen occasionally reread his letters, which she had kept in the bottom drawer of her State-issued desk, underneath a couple of notebooks filled with information relevant to classes she had already completed. She couldn’t name what she was looking for or even why she held on to the letters, but she guessed it had something to do with her interest in the what if question. What if she had married Ray and moved to Georgia? What if she had talked her parents into letting her attend a small liberal arts college instead of State? What if, many more years ago, her mother’s rocky pregnancy with the twins had resulted in miscarriage? She rarely discussed these thoughts with Bob, who preferred to make choices and live with them, good and bad, and not turn back, not waste time wondering about other options. There were, in his opinion, too many shades of gray. Ray didn’t engage in the hypothetical either. In his letters, he did mention their relationship, but he always called it a friendship and told her how much he missed talking to her. He invited her to Atlanta, as a friend, to watch him play. Karen didn’t mention this to Bob, however. He would never let her go. He never talked about Ray, or the Braves, treating both as if they didn’t exist.
And they existed for Karen only when she wanted them to. Ray didn’t creep into her thoughts uninvited. At school, she read about Ray’s team, but she had rationalized her interest, telling herself she would follow the news about any famous friend. She wore Bob’s ring proudly and directed her attention to him when he visited on the weekends. Only a few times had she slipped, confessing her doubts to Allison or writing back to Ray, and she had chastised herself. Supportive of Karen, as Karen was of her, Allison assuaged her friend’s fears, telling her being tempted was a normal part of life. What really mattered was how Karen dealt with it, and in Allison’s eyes, the maid of honor’s view, Karen did a better job than most young women in her situation.
The man on the street corner was joined by a woman, whom he bent down to kiss just after she appeared at his side. Did Ray have a girlfriend? Was he married? Karen didn’t know because Ray had stopped writing to her several months before graduation. She had thought about calling him late one night in mid-April. But Allison had talked her out of it, a decision Karen had been happy about in the morning. Since then, she had not written, e-mailed from the library, or made any other attempts to contact him. And she had forgotten about him completely during the frenzied weeks of wedding preparation.
When Karen and Bob got back from their honeymoon, they set up house in the apartment Bob had been living in since his graduation the previous year. A little less than an hour from their hometown, Canton was a small city on the banks of the Joseph River. Karen had chosen the apartment with Bob, knowing she would be joining him twelve months later. They had the sunny half of the ground floor of a historic house that had been recently remodeled and updated into four apartments just a mile and a half from downtown. In addition to their large master bedroom, they had an eat-in kitchen, a roomy living room, a full bathroom, and a smaller bedroom both Bob and Karen agreed that, when the time was right, would make a perfect nursery.
Karen didn’t start her job until August first, leaving her plenty of time to fuss with her new living space. With her mother’s help, she sewed new sets of curtains for the living room, kitchen, and bedroom, as well as a new comforter for the queen-size bed she and Bob would be sharing for the rest of their lives. It was a four-post, mahogany rice bed they had ordered from a supplier in North Carolina, easily the grandest piece of furniture Karen had ever owned. It was the bed, more than the pots and pans in their cupboards or their matching coffee mugs, that reminded Karen she was married. People in less serious relationships slept on mattresses in metal frames, pickup trucked from their college dormitories, or on futons that turned back into living room couches in the morning.
Living in an apartment and calling it home was as much of an adjustment for Karen as being referred to as Mrs. Parsons. Throughout college, Karen had considered the state university campus her home. It was where she had met Bob and they had spent almost two years together. It was where she had met Allison, her best friend. It was where she had decided to make communications her career. Her parents’ house, her childhood home, during those years had simply been a place for good food, rest, and occasional social interaction with high school friends. Those visits, most of them brief, were a vacation, a diversion from her real life at the university. Apartment living was for grown-ups, with its electric bills and fridge that needed food and floors that required sweeping. It was quiet, too. With Bob at work all day, Karen, for the first time in many years, was grateful for her mother’s company.
And Shelley was happy to have her daughter within driving distance. A good number of her friends’ children had moved far away after graduation. Those friends justified this separation, over enthusiastically in Shelley’s opinion, with what they called Eternal Truths. The pull of distant cities was strong, they told her. After living in a one-horse town in the Midwest, the children needed some adventure in their lives. It would be good for them to throw themselves into the busyness of city life. Where else could they learn the survival skills needed to be responsible? And Shelley had nodded her head in agreement over the years, mostly because she wondered if Karen would follow the same path. However, when her daughter met Bob, Shelley knew she had a chance of keeping Karen close to home. No matter what her friends said about living a thousand miles from a son or daughter, Shelley knew they were kidding themselves. All parents wanted their children close to home. And for that reason alone, Bob was a godsend.
The first month of married life for Karen and Bob was almost perfect, marred only by small, insignificant events that should have been expected, but weren’t. The day Bob had left the door open and Karen had walked into the bathroom and found him cutting his toenails was off-putting, as was the first time Bob emptied the bathroom trash can when Karen had her period. Bob’s habit of letting the dinner dishes sit overnight in the sink bothered Karen, who liked a clean, orderly living space. Karen’s insistence on pulling out the vacuum cleaner every Saturday morning, interrupting Bob’s newspaper time, seemed controlling to him. She had all week to vacuum. But they talked about most things, both wanting to immediately resolve any issues. In fact, making time for conversation was something they did every night before dinner. Karen started with tales of domesticity, as she called them, and then Bob talked about work
Bob had been working for Forester Paper for just over a year, starting the week after his graduation. It was a family-owned and -operated business with its headquarters and largest plant twenty miles from Karen and Bob’s apartment. Bob rented a storage unit on the outskirts of town to hold his various corrugated packaging samples and spent a good amount of his time driving from customer to customer to see to their needs. His territory, which at first comp
rised the middle of the state, had grown over the months. He was now responsible for half the state, with the other half on the horizon. His sales manager was pleased with his performance, for which Bob was rewarded with money and staff. With two sales reps working for him after just one year, Bob traveled more to grow the business than to hawk cardboard. He knew he’d still have to “pay his dues,” as his boss liked to put it, but Todd Martin was ten years away from retirement, and Bob could already picture himself sitting in that office.
Karen was newly impressed with Bob’s performance and prospects for the future, even though his work habits had been evident in college. A conscientious, focused student at school, Bob had goals and direction, qualities that had separated him from a good percentage of the university’s student body. He went to parties, drank beer, and goofed around like everyone else, but he did those things after his work was done. He typically had a plan he diligently followed until its completion before he let his mind and body wander. He was mature for his age, responsible, and Karen loved that about him. So she was an eager listener, nodding her head in encouragement when Bob told her about securing a new account or handling a special delivery.
After they talked for thirty minutes or so, they would walk back into the kitchen, where Bob would sit down at the table Karen set before he got home. He continued talking while she served him and then served herself. They usually drank a glass of red wine with their meal, Bob having decided beer was for the weekends, and the conversation continued. Karen’s dinners were always nutritional as well as delicious, and Bob was pleased he had chosen such a versatile bride. He had not known the extent of her capabilities when he first saw her that day in the student center, but he told himself he must have sensed her potential as well as her beauty. There were a lot of pretty girls at the university, but few of them, Bob had decided long ago, measured up to Karen’s level of competence.
A Changing Marriage Page 5