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Authors: Suzanne Jenkins

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BOOK: Dream Lover
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When we pulled into Babylon, I almost lost my nerve. But I gave myself a negative pep talk about what she owed me. If she had kept an eye on Jack, none of this would have happened. By the time the cab pulled up to her house, I was back in form, ready for a fight.

She opened the door and looked from my face to Eric’s, then back to my face. You could see the recognition in her eyes. And then, shocking the hell out of me, she gave us a huge grin.

“Well! What do you know! Come right in!” she said. “I hope you didn’t have trouble finding the place!” She held the door open for us, smiling as we walked in. “I’m Pam Smith, but I guess you already know that. And you and the young man are?”

“I’m Alyssa and this is Eric.” He was exhausted from the trip and actually docile. She led us to a beautiful enclosed patio and offered us a seat. She gave me lemonade and Eric a glass of milk, and brought out a plate of cookies. She kept up chatter the entire time she was serving us. I knew as soon as I saw her that my original plan was ridiculous. She wasn’t the cause of my stupidity. It wasn’t her fault that Jack was a jerk. Although she never badmouthed him, I could tell that she was appalled by his actions.

“Tell me about you,” she asked. “Are you finished with school? It must be a handful with a little one.” She was interested in me as a person, concerned over the job I had being a single parent. After we had our refreshments, we walked on the beach. She played with Eric, running with him and showing him shells and seaweed that had washed up on the sand.

Then, with some reservation, “Are you healthy?” She looked at me with fear when she asked that question, and I reassured her without divulging too much. I felt like I owed someone so graceful the respect that I hadn’t gotten. I just couldn’t lower myself to get revenge. She was such a lady that I felt empowered to rise above what Jack had done to me. When I left Pam’s house, I thought that I would finally be able to move forward. I believe she made it possible for me to forgive myself.

I wondered how someone as depraved as Jack Smith could have such a nice woman for a wife. I doubt if I will ever see her again. Although Eric is her children’s half-brother, it seems unlikely that they will meet. But stranger things have happened. I think I’m ready to date. There is a guy at work who has asked me to dinner several times. I might give him a chance. I have a lot to offer the right guy. For one thing, I am really rich.

25

A
s September unfolded, the weather went from summer to fall, and Pam fell into a comfortable place once again. Her life wasn’t turning out to be as different as she thought it would be without Jack. There were many things to look forward to each day, after all. She absolutely loved autumn. Every morning brought a new change in the weather. There were summerlike days where she would put her shorts on and grab her straw hat and sit on the beach to read for hours like she used to do when the children were home. They would play in the surf with their friends, kids who lived inland and would show up in droves every morning, exhausted looking mothers and fathers dropping them off on their way to work, grateful that Pam was willing to keep an extra half dozen kids all day. The truth was she loved it. She shopped for their lunches and snacks with as much thought as if she were going to entertain royalty. Although she was sad that those days were gone, the peace of sitting on the beach and not having to worry about anyone else’s child drowning was lovely. If she got lonely enough, she would ask her sisters Sharon and Susan to visit and that would take care of her desire to have kids around. Those little monsters would drive the impulse to have children from the most saintly of mothers. She thought of Alyssa and Eric; maybe someday. Maybe after Sandra had the baby she would invite them all for the day.

Brent and Lisa stayed in touch with their mother. When it rained or was too cold to walk or sit on the beach, Pam spent hours packing boxes of homemade cookies and other goodies, books she thought they might like and funny T-shirts she saw, and sending the packages off. They both loved getting things from home.

The day after the kids left to go back to school, Pam went to her favorite garden center and got everything she would need to decorate the yard for fall. She bought giant pumpkins; dried corn stalks; bunches of bittersweet; bales of straw; braided ropes of garlic; giant gourds; huge decorative kale; and the piece de resistance, a scarecrow. She decorated both the front of the house and the back, a titillating surprise for beachcombers to discover. It was a tradition in the neighborhood that the Smith house would be the first one on the block to celebrate the end of the tourist season. Although you rarely heard it spoken aloud, many locals hated having to leave their homes between July 4 and Labor Day to do even the simplest task like getting gas in the car. The crowds and traffic were hard to bear. Didn’t people realize that their behavior would have consequences somewhere down the road? Pam didn’t mind. She loved everything about living in Babylon, even the tourists. They acted as that important counter-irritant that would make her appreciate it even more when they left town.

On cooler fall days, Pam would put a sweater on, grab a plastic grocery bag, and go out for a beach walk. She would go north first and walk as far as the inlet that led to the canals. Then she would turn and go south, passing her house and going as far as the causeway. She always came home with a bag full of beach finds: shells, beach glass and the ever-present litter. Nelda stayed in the city after all that autumn, choosing to spend her days as Bernice’s companion. The two women enjoyed the same things: shopping, playing cards, a good bottle of scotch. Pam was thinking of spending winter there with her mother and mother-in-law but she was keeping her options open.

Definitely a creature of habit, Pam loved her routine. She didn’t care for the intrusion into her life that another man would cause. Maybe she and Jack had lasted all those years because she liked to be left alone rather than because she’d had her head stuck in the sand. Andy hadn’t called her yet and it was a relief. He would have expected more from her than she was willing to give. And then the final embarrassment; he would walk by her in the hardware store while holding the hand of another woman, a local divorcee Pam recognized from the gym, and make eye contact without acknowledging Pam.

26

Pam

I
feel like I am getting stronger every day. My life has been a lie, and I am ready to come clean and start over. The most difficult part of this will be talking to my children. They will be home over Christmas, but I don’t want to wait that long. I would rather we be on neutral turf when I turn their world upside down and I do not want to do it over the phone, but how is that possible? The three of us will have to find a way to move on.

I’m healthy as a horse. I know I must avoid stress and watch my diet and I’m even more obsessive about exercise and eating right then I was before. Before Jack died. My doctor is wonderful. I have never felt ostracized by his staff. Having AIDS has been good for me. I know that sounds like a contradiction. What I mean is that it has forced me to take stock of what is important.

My life up until last summer was made up of increments of time spent doing senseless and unnecessary things, going from one task to the next. I know I was wasting time until Jack got home. Day after day, year after year, I prepared for his arrival, and then when he got here, I was lonelier than when I was alone. We could be in the same room and I was lonely. He wasn’t completely with me, and now I know that is exactly what the problem was. He was keeping the biggest part of himself separate from me. What is it about women—me, in particular—who would allow a life to be wasted because of fear? I was afraid to get what I needed, what I deserved, what was rightfully mine. My mother said that to me at one time. Why did I always put myself last? She said I relinquished that which was mine to my sisters. Where Marie had been concerned, that was true. I had turned my head when my suspicions were aroused. My husband was having sex with her. I knew something was wrong, my intuition telling me over and over again that there was something not right about their relationship. Yet I as much as promoted it by sticking my head in the sand. That is my biggest regret!

I cannot deny that my children must have been affected by what was going on. Children know; they are silent observers and they see more than you think they do. The very worst thing that I did was to hide in my bedroom on the other side of the house, which was designed that way so that our bedroom would be away from the children’s two bedrooms. And all along, their father was having sex with their aunt in the next room. I wonder how I can come out and ask them if they ever heard anything. I know noise carries from that part of the house. Would it be cruel? If they did hear sounds, they are probably doing their best to stifle the memories, to cover them up. Would I be doing them a favor by allowing them to purge such knowledge? Or making it worse by acknowledging it? It is never too late to be honest. I have to remember that.

Exposing Jack’s lies has helped me to understand so much about myself. Of course, I regret the time I wasted. After the children started college, during that first year both were gone, it should have been so obvious that something was amiss. I am still processing how I could have been so blind. If Jack had lived, I’m positive we would be getting a divorce right now because his relationship with Sandra would have been discovered and he probably would have left me to live with her once he found out she was pregnant. That has been a bitter pill to swallow.

Last night I had a dream about my dad. Not exactly a dream, more of a daydream. I was lying in bed thinking about everything that has happened this past summer. I remembered how he once told us at the dinner table—barely able to get the words out because he was so emotional—that having four daughters who were all nice girls had humbled him. He didn’t know why he deserved such good fortune. It was a lie, of course. Marie was horrible to him and worse to Nelda, and caused them so much anxiety with the anorexia. She should have directed her misery toward Jack, but it was just the opposite. She worshiped him. That is why I hold her partially responsible. She may have been considered blameless because she was a child, just fifteen years old, but she provoked much of what happened to her, I am certain. She and Jack were made for each other. I wonder how many young people she protected by being the sacrificial lamb.

But to get back to my father, I thought about how he got up at five every single day of the week, sick or not, and went to his job working for the city. He was one of the men who wore that mucky green uniform. My mother spent a good part of her life washing and ironing those uniforms; men who worked in the subway tunnels didn’t take their uniforms to the cleaners. I saw her doing that every week and she would hum while she was ironing his clothes. My father had installed a metal bar in our kitchen that fit into a pipe attached to the wall, and as she ironed, she would hang his uniforms on this bar. On ironing day, we would come home from school and there would be a big pot of chicken soup on the stove and my dad’s uniforms hanging neatly from the bar. The ritual never varied. He came home from work and lifted the bar out of the pipe, carrying it into their bedroom with my mother following after, and transferred his uniforms to the closet bar. He’d change his clothes and wash up and we would be waiting for them with the table set and the soup ready to be served. He and my mother came out of the bedroom, smiling at us. I often think that is why I made such a big deal out of taking care of Jack’s clothes. I mean, it was almost a full-time job. He appreciated it, too. I’m not sorry I did it now. My mother did it as an act of worship, and I took that on myself.

Years ago, in a women’s Bible Study on marriage that I attended, the leader said when she ironed her husband’s shirts, she would pray over where his heart would be as she ironed the left side of the shirt. I should have prayed over the crotch area. It’s clear that Jack was a walking encyclopedia of sexual aberrations. His earliest memories had to be of violent sexual abuse at the hands of his father. That is no excuse for hurting others. I hope he never killed anyone. I have a fear every single day that someone is going to come to the door with evidence of something worse that he did. I never could have imagined that one day I would open the door to a young girl holding a two-year-old carbon copy of my late husband. It was surreal! I felt the breath get knocked out of me. She looked like she was about twelve years old. I was completely unprepared for it. I wondered if I would feel anything for the little boy outside of sadness, and I didn’t. He will never know his real father. That may be a good thing; we will never know.

Fortunately, the boy didn’t look anything like Brent. Brent looks more like Bernice. He has light hair and eyes as she does. Jack must have looked like his father. His real father, Albert. Harold was brawny and muscular; Jack was leaner. Brent takes after Jack in that department. He is tall and lanky; he’d make a good male model. But don’t tell him that! I find myself more curious than emotional about Sandra’s baby. They will be able to tell the sex at her next doctor’s appointment this week. I hope it’s a girl. This may be a horrible generalization, but I think Tom will have an easier time accepting a little girl than a little boy.

We don’t see each other on the weekend anymore. She is busy with Tom now, and that is the way it should be. Last weekend, they started fixing up a corner of her bedroom for the baby. I don’t remember the size of the area, but it’s big enough for them to put a decorative privacy screen in place to cordon off an area for the crib. Sandra is still so tiny through the belly area that no one at work has even noticed that she is pregnant. I am going to have a shower for her at the mansion. My mother, Bernice, and Marie will be there. I am not inviting my sister-in-law Anne, who I understand is out of jail and plans to divorce Bill. Good for her! She still has a chance for a life. I wonder if I should invite Alyssa. I’ll ask Sandra.

BOOK: Dream Lover
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