Bitter Sweet (43 page)

‘Maggie, I’m very new at this. I’ve never had an affair before, and ill seem unsure it’s because I am. I don’t know what comes first. I can’t be intimate with two women at the same time, and she’s coming home, and it’s decision time.

Oh, hell, this is awkward.’

‘For both of us, because I’ve never had an affair either.

Eric, please understand. I have thought about what it would be like to be married to you. But it’s been...’ She paused, seeking honesty. ‘It’s been more fantasy than anything else.

Because we were first for each other, and if things had gone differently we might have been married all these years. I suppose it was natural that I idealized you, and fantasized about you. And then suddenly you came sweeping back into my life like a... a knight on a steed, a sailor at the helm, blowing your air horn and making my heart plunge.

My tint love.’

She rested her hands on his leather jacket at the level of his heart. ‘But I don’t want us to make commitments we can’t keep, or demands we have no right to make. We’ve been together only three days, and- let’s be honest- the way the sex has been, we may be reasoning with our glands right now. ‘

He drew a deep breath and let his shoulders sag. ‘I’ve told myself the same thing at least a dozen times a day, and to tell the truth, I was afraid to bring up marriage for exactly the same reasons. Everything is happening so fast. But I wanted you to know before I left here that I’ve made a decision and I’m sticking to it. I’m going to tell
Nancy
tonight that I can’t live with her anymore. I won’t be one of those men who keeps stringing two women along.’

‘Eric, listen to me.’ She took his face in her hands.

‘There’s a part of me that loves hearing you say that, but there’s another part that sees very clearly how people in this situation do the thing that’s ultimately wrong for them.

Eric, think. Think very hard about your reasons for leaving her. They must be because of your relationship with her, not because of your relationship with me.’

He studied her brown eyes, thinking how wise she was and how unclassic their responses: he supposed in most cases such as theirs, the single one would be clinging, the married one evasive.

‘I told you before this started, I don’t love her anymore, I haven’t for months, I even talked to my brother, Mike, about it last fall.’

‘But if you’ve made the decision to leave her and you did it impulsively, there’s a good possibility you’re reacting to the last three nights instead of the last eighteen years, and which should bear more weight?’

‘I said I’ve made my decision, and I’ll stick to it.’

‘All right. You do what you must, but do it understand ing that I have just embarked upon a new phase of my life. I have this house, and a business I’ve barely begun, and some things to accomplish on my own.’ More quietly, she added, ‘And I still have some healing to do.’

For some time they stood separately, untouching.

“All right,’ he said at length. ‘Thanks for being honest with me.’

‘I’ve read,’ she told him, ‘that in order to buy a handgun you must fill out an application and wait three days. The lawmakers think it eliminates a lot of shootings. Perhaps they ought to make a similar law about leaving wives when affairs begin.’ Their eyes met, Eric’s dismayed, Maggie’s drawn with concern. ‘Eric, I’ve never considered myself a potential homewrecker, but I’ve got my guilts over what happened, too.’

‘So what do you want to do?’

‘Would you agree to put off doing anything for a while, and during that rime, staying away from me? From here?’

He studied her, beleaguered. ‘For how long?’

‘Let’s not set a time limit. Let’s just consider it a commonsense time.’

‘Could I call you?’ he asked, looking like a little boy chastised.

‘If you think it’s wise.’

‘You’re putting it all on me.’

‘No. I’ll only call you ill think it’s wise, too.’

He looked sad.

‘Now smile for me once, before you go,’ she requested.

Instead, he clutched her close against him. ‘Aw, Maggie...’

‘I know... I know...’ she soothed, rubbing his back.

But she didn’t know. She had no more answers than he. I’ll miss you,’ he whispered. His voice sounded tortured.

‘I’ll miss you, too.’

A moment later he spun away, the door opened and he was gone.

Chapter 13

Nancy
had had a trying trip up from
Chicago
and arrived irritable. The roads had been icy, the weather frigid and the stoi’e clerks temperamental. When she opened the kitchen door and stepped inside, burdened by luggage, Eric was there to meet her. The aroma in the room immediately took the edge off her temper.

‘Hi,’ she said, catching the door with her heel while he reached for her suitcase and garment bag.

She lifted her face toward his but he grabbed her things and carried them away without the customary kiss. When he returned to the kitchen, he moved straight to the refrigerator and reached inside for a bottle of lime water.

‘It smells good in here. What have you got in the oven?’

‘Cornish game hens with wild-rice stuffing.’

‘Cornish game hens.., what’s the occasion?’

Guilt, he thought, but answered, ‘I know they’re your favourites.’ He closed the refrigerator, twisted off the bottle cap and opened a lower cabinet door to drop it into the garbage. She was close behind him when he turned.

‘Mmm ... what a nice homecoming,’ she said invitingly.

He raised the bottle and took a swig.

She caught him in the circle of her arms, pinning his elbows to his sides. ‘No kiss?’

He hesitated before giving her a quick one. The look on his face set off an alarm bell in
Nancy
.

‘Hey, wait a minute.., is that all I get?’

He eased free. ‘I’ve got to check the birds,’ he said, and picked up a pair of pot holders off the countertop before shouldering around her to reach the stove. “Excuse me, I have to open the oven.’

Within
Nancy
the alarm bell sounded again, more insistently. Whatever was bothering him, it was serious. So many excuses to avoid a kiss, a glance. He checked the birds, drank his bottle of lime water, set the table, served her favourite foods, inquired about her week, and maintained eye contact for a grand total of perhaps ten seconds through the entire meal. His replies were distant, his sense of’ humour nonexistent, and he left half the food on his plate.

‘What’s wrong?’ she asked at meal’s end.

He picked up his plate, carried it to the sink and turned on the water. ‘It’s just these winter doldrums.’

It’s more, she thought as a frisson of panic ricocheted through her body. It’s a woman. The truth struck her like a broadside: he had begun changing the day his old girlfriend came back to town.
Nancy
added it up again - his distraction, his uncharacteristic quietness, the way he’d suddenly begun avoiding physical contact.

Do something, she thought, say something that will forestall him.

‘Honey, I’ve been thinking,’ she said, leaving her chair, fitting her body behind his and twining her arms around his belt. ‘Maybe I’ll ask to have my territory split so I could have a couple more days a week at home.’ It was a lie. She hadn’t considered it for a moment, but, driven by desperation, she said what she hoped he’d want to hear.

Beneath her cheek she felt his back muscles working as he scrubbed a plate.

‘What do you think?’ she asked.

He continued moving. The water ran.

‘If you want to.’

‘I’ve also been doing a little more thinking about having a baby.’

He went still as a threatened spider. With her ear against his back she heard him swallow.

‘Maybe one wouldn’t be so bad.’

The water stopped running. In the silence, neither of them moved.

‘Why the sudden change of heart?’ he asked.

She improvised as fast as her thoughts could race. ‘I was thinking since you don’t work during the winter you could take care of it then. If I went back to work we’d only need a baby-sitter for half the year.’

She ran a hand down his jeans and curled it against the warmth of his compressed genitals. He draped the butts of his hands against the edge of the sink and said nothing.

‘Eric?’ she whispered, beginning to stroke him.

He swung around and seized her against him, wetting the back of her silk dress, clutching her with the desperation of a mourner. She sensed she had stumbled upon some moment of crisis and felt certain she knew what it was: guilt.

He was rough with her, giving her no chance to resist, stripping her from the waist down as if afraid she - or he - might change their minds. There was a small sofa in the living room around the corner. He hauled her to it and without giving her the opportunity to take precautions, made short order of putting sperm within her: without kisses or tenderness their coupling could be called little else.

When it was over,
Nancy
was angry.

‘Let me up,’ she said.

In silence they moved to separate parts of the house to put themselves in order.

In their bedroom upstairs she stood a long time in the dim light from the hall, staring at a knob on a chest of drawers, thinking, if he made me pregnant, so hell me God, I’ll kill him!

In the kitchen he stood for minutes. At length he sighed, resumed cleaning off the table, abandoned the job midway and returned to the living room to sit in the gloom on the edge of a chair with his elbows on his knees and reflect upon his life. He was so damned confused. What was he trying to prove by manhandling
Nancy
that way? He felt like a pervert, guiltier than ever after what he’d done. Did he really want her pregnant now? If he walked into the bedroom at this moment and said, I want a divorce, and she said okay, wouldn’t he walk right out of this house and go to Maggie without a second thought?

No. Because he, not his wife, was the guilty party here.

The house remained so quiet he could hear the kitchen faucet dripping. He sat in the gloom until his eyes discerned the outline of the sofa where the cushions remained askew in one corner where he’d thrown her.

He rose disconsolately and straightened them. Went upstairs, climbing with heavy steps. In the doorway of their bedroom he stopped and looked into the darkened room.

She was sitting on the foot of the bed beside the garment bag he’d brought up earlier. On the floor nearby sat her suitcase.

He thought he would not blame her if she picked them up and walked out.

He shuffled in and stopped beside her.

‘I’m sorry,
Nancy
,” he said.

She remained motionless, as if she had not heard him.

He touched her head heavily.

‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered.

Still sitting, she pivoted to face the far wall and crossed her arms dghdy. ‘You should be,’ she said.

He let his hand slip off her head and drop to his side.

He waited, but she said no more. He searched for something further to offer her, but felt like a drained vessel without a single droplet left to offer her for sustenance.

After some time he walked from the room and isolated himself downstairs.

On Monday forenoon he went out to Mike’s, driven by the need for a confessor.

Barb answered his knock; round as a dirigible and wholesomely happy. She took one look at his glum face and said, ‘He’s down in the garage changing the oil in his truck.’

Eric found Mike dressed in greasy coveralls, lying on a creeper beneath his Ford pickup.

‘Heya, Mike,’ he said cheerlessly, closing the door.

‘That you, little bro?’

‘It’s me.’

‘Just a minute, let me get this oil draining.’ There followed several grunts, a metallic grating, then the ping of liquid hitting an empty pan. The creeper bumped along the concrete floor and Mike emerged, wearing a red bill-cap turned backward.

‘You out slumming?’

‘You guessed it,’ Eric obliged with a halfhearted grin.

‘Looking like a whipped spaniel, too,’ Mike observed, rising, wiping his hands on a rag.

‘I need to talk to you.’

‘Woa! This is serious.’

‘Yes, it is.’

‘Well, hang on. Let me stick a couple chunks of wood in the stove.’ In one corner of the garage a barrel-sized cast iron stove gave off warmth. Mike opened its squeaky door, thrust in two pieces of maple, returned to Eric, and overturned a green plastic bucket. ‘Sit,’ he ordered, dropping onto the creeper with his legs outstretched and his ankles crossed. ‘I’ve got the whole damn day,’ he invited, ‘so shoot.’

Eric sat still as a rock, his eyes on a toolbox, wondering how to begin. Finally his troubled gaze shifted to Mike.