by Susan Ward
She couldn’t take the guilt. She’d crumbled her second day in Cambridge after we’d made love, and told me everything and that she wouldn’t marry me.
I married her anyway.
I forgave her, right then and there in the moment when I learned the truth—though she never knew it because I never told her.
It was the first time I’d ever kept anything from her. It wouldn’t be the last time either.
But that first time is the one I’ve regretted for a lifetime. I’m pretty sure it’s what kept us from loving each other the way I wanted us to.
~
The next day when I drove to Cambridge it was a pleasant November morning. It was a long drive, over two hundred miles, and it gave me time to think.
It was evening before I got home. I kept driving and thinking and replaying the minutes of my marriage in my head. I couldn’t go on the way things were going. I had to find a way to get things back on track with Lena. I wouldn’t be happy unless I did.
When I entered the house, I found her curled on the couch, sobbing. My first thought was Oh fuck, Patty, did Lena call you looking for me and did you tell my wife about Jessica? I couldn’t think of another reason for finding Lena looking this devastated and lost.
Lena was staring off into space as if she didn’t even realize I was home so I quickly went to her, so suffused by guilt that I didn’t notice that she melted into me instead of fought my taking her in my arms, which would have been her normal reaction to my being with a girl.
“Please, doll, don’t cry,” I whispered, spraying kisses across her face. “I don’t know what Patty told you, but you’ve got to believe me. I didn’t cheat with Jessica last night. I won’t lie. I almost did. But I couldn’t because I love you. I slept in the car and then came home.”
She pulled back from me, staring, confused. “What?”
Oh fuck—she didn’t know. I could tell the moment when my words registered in her head.
“That’s where you’ve been? On a day like today? With Jessica instead of with your family?”
I blew past the accusation and said, “What do you mean day like today?”
Her expression changed into one I would never forget. “They killed him, Jack. That beautiful man is dead. They shot President Kennedy in Dallas today. How could they kill a president?”
~
Lena was glued to the set for days, every minute until the president’s funeral was done, then went to the bedroom and climbed into bed. She wouldn’t look at me. She wouldn’t talk. She wouldn’t hold Sammy. I’d never seen her like this.
I wasn’t sure what had made the strongest woman I’d ever known break: that Kennedy was dead or that the shooting reminded her of Gustavo or was it me blindsiding her over my near infidelity?
I didn’t know what else to do. I called Patty and asked her to come.
“How long has she been like this?” Patty asked, alarmed, after leaving the bedroom and rejoining me in the kitchen.
“Right after I got home. No change in over a week. She won’t even talk to me, Patty.”
She slapped me on the arm, annoyed. “Why the hell did you confess something you didn’t do?”
I ran my hand through my hair, clutching my golden waves until it hurt. “When I saw her on the couch I thought somehow she knew…”
I couldn’t finish, not with the way Patty was looking at me. She dropped down heavily on the chair across from me. “I’m sorry, Jack. I shouldn’t have said that. I’m not even sure if this is about that.”
“Won’t she talk to you?”
Patty shook her head. “Not about what you told her.”
Fuck.
“I think she’s afraid of something,” Patty added.
I looked up. “Why do you say that?”
“Because when we were talking, she said, ‘If they can kill a president they can kill a senator’s son’ and that I had to make you stop doing the things you do with me. What does that mean, Jack?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know, Patty. She’s distraught.”
But that was a lie. I knew exactly what Lena had meant by that. My escaping from my problems with Reggie and Patty, the causes I’d joined for a reason not to be home, and the things I did say too vocally, which frightened Lena. If I was honest with myself, at that point I only continued doing it because I knew Lena had loved Gustavo more. I thought maybe by being more like him I would get more of her. That someday she’d love me the way I knew she’d loved him.
“How long can you stay?” I asked.
“As long as you need me to, Jack.” She came around the table and took me in her arms. “It’s going to be all right, Jackie. Lena’s going to pull out of this. She’s just sad. The entire country is sad. And she’ll forgive whatever you told her. I admit I didn’t like her when you married her, not after you told me…you know…everything. But she’s good for you, Jack, and I love her for that. So whatever you told her, she’s going to forgive you. She loves you exactly how you love her.”
But no matter how much I wanted that to be true, I wasn’t as confident as Patty.
Chapter Twenty-Five
1964 was a year of beginnings and endings.
Parker and Dun’s first album was released, Darkness and Light—ironically not a play on who we were, Reggie the cynic and Jack the hopeful, but rather a play on a biblical phrase, Light shines in the darkness and darkness has not overcome it. Because I’d completely given up on the concept of God by then and Reggie still sort of believed, we turned it around in the order our names appeared on the album since I was the darkness during this time, not Reggie.
We were officially a band with a record label. We felt like we had finally made it, though we weren’t making much money and the album had only been modestly well received. We were touring more than ever, I was away from home more than I should have been, but my worries of 1963 weren’t even close to cured in ’64, and I was still just a guy trying to make the rent and to make my wife love me.
Liam replaced me as front man with Still Light and wouldn’t speak to me. He did stop by the house frequently to visit Lena when I was on the road. Lena never told me about his visits. It was Patty who informed me.
Reggie dropped out of college before graduating Harvard and moved to New York City to live with Patty. I didn’t drop out of school nor was I working toward graduating. I kept coming back to Cambridge only because Lena was there.
And then there was Lena.
As unpredictable as ever to me.
By spring of ’64, I wasn’t sure which she would be: a beginning or an ending. But I started the year hopeful. She’d finally climbed out of bed and was speaking to me again.
For five months our marriage existed on hiatus, with her walling out everyone, especially me. It was the longest five months of my life, pure agony, and it didn’t matter that we were only going through motions and not even close to good together. It was enough she was trying for me.
Our friendships realigned in an unpredictable way as well, and both Liam and Reggie were more her friends than mine. During those many days when she wouldn’t even look at me, she always smiled and talked to Reggie. I wasn’t sure what they talked about, and it hurt that during this time he understood her better than I did, and it definitely hurt that it was him she let close to her and not me.
Even as relieved as I was that she was being nearly her old self with someone, it made me glad Reggie was soon to be out of here.
It was amazing how much stuff he’d accumulated in his room in Cambridge in under four years. It took all four of us—me, Patty, Lena, and Reggie—to get him packed up to move to the apartment in the city he’d rented for him and Patty.
Lena and I would have the house to ourselves for the first time since we’d married. Yep, I was hopeful, and even more so as I rolled tape across the top of a box and listened to Lena laugh in the kitchen with Reggie.
Patty sat on the floor, dividing out the albums, trying to figure out which were Reggie’s.
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She looked up at me. “She sounds good, Jack. Better. I think Reggie moving out might be just the thing you need to get everything smoothed out with her again.”
I shrugged. “I hope so, Patty.”
Hope. An understatement. Nothing had touched my cock but my own hand for too long.
Her smile grew larger. “I know so, Jack. I guarantee she didn’t fix herself up today for Reggie and me. She looks like Lena again.”
I heard Reggie’s laugh mix with Lena’s this time in the kitchen. Fuck—what are they always laughing about? It annoyed me to feel jealousy.
“I wouldn’t be so sure of that, Patty.”
She frowned. “Jackie, stop it. Pessimism isn’t you. What happened to that Parker confidence and killer lady’s man smile? A girl doesn’t dress like that unless she wants her man to undress her.”
I tilted my head to the side and gave her an exasperated look, enough so that she laughed, but the truth was I didn’t even know what man was me anymore.
I wasn’t married Jack or Good Time Jack.
I was Jack living in agonizing separateness from Lena.
Even when I was with her, I was missing her.
Patty stood up and put her hands on her hips as she surveyed the room. “I think we’re done. We’ve got him packed. Just help me take that last box out to the car, Jack.”
I picked up the box and followed her to the car. She’d been involved with Reggie for a year behind Georgie’s back before she finally told him that she was breaking it off and moving in with Reggie. Still, I wasn’t ready to let go of the idea of Georgie and Patty together. It just seemed nothing was staying the same anymore.
I set the box in the trunk and slammed it closed. “Are you sure about this, Patty? It’s one thing to date a guy, another to live with him.”
She made a face. “And even another to marry him.” That landed with a punch, though she’d only been joking. Her cheeks reddened and she hugged me. “I’m sorry, Jackie. That was a stupid thing to say. You’re a gem of a husband. If I could find one like you, I’d marry him.”
Christ—charitable pity and ego props from Patty Stovall, the girl who’d been throwing herself at me since elementary school. If anything said I needed to pull myself together fast it was this.
“Cheer up, Jack. It’s going to be OK.”
I gave her a tight squeeze because she wouldn’t let go of me, and whispered in her ear, “You’re probably thrilled you didn’t find a gem. You better let go of me soon before I change my mind and try to marry you.”
She humorously sprang back from my arms. Her brows shot up in a cute way. “It’s not too late for me to be your girl, Jackie.”
She was only teasing.
“And it’s not too late for you and Georgie.”
“Still planning everyone’s future?”
I grinned. “Still trying.”
We were both laughing when we reentered the house.
Reggie was helping Lena on with her sweater. “We were thinking about running out and grabbing some takeout. What do you think, Chinese or burgers?”
“I don’t care,” Patty said, dropping heavily onto a chair. “But shouldn’t we hit the road soon? It’s a long drive to the city.”
Their gazes locked. “We have time, Patty. And I’m hungry.”
That ended the debate.
Once they were gone, we went into the kitchen—Patty to set the table and me to pour myself a tall scotch. It wasn’t lost on me that Lena had left without as much as a kiss on my cheek.
As I sipped my drink and watched Patty flutter around the kitchen, I reminded myself that at least she’d given me a little Lena sparkle from beneath slightly lowered lashes when she’d looked at me before she’d taken off with Reggie.
“What do you think they talk about?” I asked.
“All kinds of stuff.”
I frowned. “Like?”
“Music. Her career. Reggie finds her stories about when she used to perform fascinating. Books. Politics. Just ordinary stuff.”
It wasn’t ordinary to me since Lena never discussed those things with me. I couldn’t remember the last time we had a conversation about anything beyond us.
“Is that that kind of discussions you have with Reggie?”
Patty laughed, shaking her head as she continued to set out silverware. “Reggie and I do other things than talk, unless we’re at a meeting. Now, Georgie was a talker. So boring at times. He knows every useless fact about everything. Excruciatingly all-knowing about junk you don’t want to hear.”
I refilled my glass. “Is that why you dropped him?”
“Among other things.”
“Such as?”
“Jeez, Jackie, you going to make me say it? The man was lousy in bed.”
I almost spat out my drink, and used my glass to hide my grin. Oh fuck, poor Georgie. “That bad, huh?”
She crinkled her nose. “The worst. Not like you.”
“How would you know? Maybe I’m lousy, too.”
“Good Time Jack? Girls talk about everything.” She poked me playfully in the chest with a finger. “You’d be surprised how much we all know about all of you. I had Reggie’s full details before I ever let him slip a hand beneath my shirt.”
“Who from?”
“Liz,” she responded with a heavy stare. “She likes to talk about all her experiences.”
“Oh fuck.”
She dropped down into a chair and started folding the napkins before tucking them under the forks, and I studied her for a while. I wondered if Lena talked to Patty about me, and if she knew what it was that kept my wife from making love to me.
Fuck.
Pathetic.
The kitchen door opened, and Reggie returned with Lena. She was still smiling, and Patty was right. She didn’t look just Lena beautiful, she looked Lena sexy. Almost like the girl I’d met in Santa Barbara.
“Is Sammy still sleeping?” she asked.
I set down my drink. “I don’t know. I haven’t checked.”
When I started to move toward the door, she stopped me with a hand. “No, Jack, sit down and eat. If he’s quiet I’d leave him alone.”
I wanted in the worst way to kiss her, but I wasn’t sure if she wanted me to, so I sat down in my chair instead.
“Chinese, huh?” I asked as she scooped food out onto my plate.
“I’m in the mood for something spicy,” she murmured on her husky purr that ran across my body like a tidal wave.
Maybe Patty was right.
Maybe Lena was telling me she was ready to be my wife again. “Good to know,” I said, locking her in my gaze, and she met it directly, clear with her answering message.
During dinner, we both laughed more than we had in months. Later we sat on the floor in the living room, having drinks around the coffee table. As the four of us continued the evening, Lena eased in to me, settling against me so I could wrap her in my arms as I used to always prefer it to be.
She was mostly talking to Reggie, and me to Patty, but that didn’t matter. It was nice to hold her while she laughed. Nice, though it made it difficult to focus on Patty’s chatter. It’d been months since we’d made love and I had to fight an erection the entire time her butt rested between my legs.
Patty checked her watch. “Damn it, Reggie. It’s after ten. We should get out of here.” We all started to stand up, but she stopped Lena and me. “It’s late. No. You don’t have to walk us out. Finish your drinks. I don’t want to get held up at the car talking more.” At the door, she pointed. “I expect both of you to come to the city soon to see our new place. But not too soon. It’s going to take me forever to figure out what to do with everything Reggie’s hauling there.”
Reggie rolled his eyes. “Ignore her. Come whenever you want. Catch you two later.”
The door closed.
We were alone.
I searched for something cautious but in the right direction to say. “It was fun tonight, wasn’t it, doll?”
There was silence between us for more minutes than I wanted, but then she turned in to me without moving from my embrace.
“You’re a good man, Jack.”
I smiled. “Why do you say that?”
She curled in to me, caressing my arms as she touched light kisses across my chest. “For putting up with me.”
I started kissing her hair. “I don’t put up with you, Lena. I adore you. That’s how it’s always been with us.”
She peeked up at me. “Do you adore me even when I stop?”
I wasn’t sure what she was asking, but her voice was light and suggestive again, so I humorously growled, “Especially when you stop. It’s the only time I can ever catch you.”
Her eyes locked on mine. “I’ve stopped so you can catch me now, Jackson.”
Jackson. Her voice and the look in her eyes shot straight to my heart then elsewhere. I started unbuttoning her shirt, placing kisses down her neck, and her head tilted back as she moved with my lips.
“I’ve missed you,” she whispered, curling her fingers in my hair as I kissed her breast and tried to undo the fastening.
“I’ve missed you, too.” I lifted my face to stare at her. “But do you want to know what I’ve missed most?”
She nodded.
“The little things. You smiling at me, or just touching me for no reason. I even miss when you give me crap.”
She laughed, her forehead coming to rest against my chin. “You miss even that?”
I got her bra off and then her pants. “Especially that.”
“Not really?”
“Oh, definitely.” I eased her back against the floor. “I miss all things Lena when they’re not all mine.”
“I miss all things Jack when they’re not all mine.”
I was kissing my way down her body, starving for the taste of her. Slowly I made my way up the inside of her thigh with my fingers then mouth.
I was about to pull off her panties when her hand moved from my hair to my wrist, stopping me.
“It’s hard for a woman to lose a baby. I know I worried you and pushed you away, but I couldn’t get over it any other way.”