Mom's the Word (15 page)

Long after the china breaks

Vows stretched, bent

Routine fits and starts

Of all-the-same days

There comes the gift

Ripe and shiny in

The corner of your eyes

A reflection of all the

Love I've ever known

Flung against all

You are. This morning

You smiled at me

And I was twenty again,

Stupid and breathless

For your kiss.

Tonight, I will unwrap

Our love with wiser fingers,

Knowing it is both fragile

And strong.

 

—Karol

Day 15 on the way home from Hope and Singh's

“A
re things any better?” Karol pressed her eyes shut for a moment, preparing for the response from her old friend. Things hadn't been going well for Hope and Singh.

“Not really.”

“Did you visit the church Rob found? Did Singh go to the support group?”

“Yes and yes. The church is nice, actually. It was good to be back in fellowship. That much seems right. Everything else, well, it's just going to take time, I think. There's been a lot of damage done. The children, bless their hearts, don't know what to think of us.”

“Nobody's perfect, Hope,” Karol said with experience and conviction behind her.

“I know. Now. I can see that I tried to be perfect, tried to have heaven on this earth. This wretched, sinful earth. Oh, look at me, I'm doing it again. Being negative. It's just that, well, nothing makes sense. He says it's not because of me, but it has to be, doesn't it? If that's what he wanted, why would he let me believe—why would God let me believe—”

“We're human, Hope. We mess up. You are a beautiful woman, a wonderful wife. He doesn't want anyone else. It's the enemy trying to destroy your beautiful family. You all have touched so many lives, especially ours. You can get through this. You're coming for Ryan's birthday, right?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. Let's just focus on making it until then, focus on today. There's grace enough for today. Pick one thing you want to do…today.”

“Pick blueberries with the children.”

“Okay. Do that. Have fun. Take pictures. Make pie. Smile. And trust God for tomorrow. Deal?”

“Deal.”

“All right. Let's talk soon.”

“Karol?”

“Yes?”

“I love you. So much. I'm so sorry. For everything.”

“I know. Me, too.”

“Don't stop writing. I was wrong before. You have a gift. It will make room for you.”

The phone clicked softly in Karol's ear. Before they'd left North Carolina, Rob had sprung into action, finding a local pastor and support group that Singh felt comfortable with. Singh seemed to be glad to be tackling the problem with a group of strangers.

Hope had ups and downs, also, but by the time they'd left, things seemed to be off to a good start. Now it seemed things were unraveling again. Karol worried for her friends, but these days it was her own marriage that concerned her.

She'd been so ready to believe in Singh, but thought the worst of her own husband. Karol had allowed others to talk her out of the trust that had once been the foundation of her marriage. And yet, she was more afraid to trust now than ever. Though Rob wasn't the one struggling with pornography—at the moment—the realization that it could have easily been him, or any other Christian man she knew, was sobering.

The best way to explain it was to just say it, so she did. She walked outside to the shed, where Rob was putting away his tools.

“I'm afraid. If that happened to Hope and Singh, it could happen to us, too. I'm not the best wife in the world. My mothering skills won't win any awards. I think the reason I've felt discouraged about being a mother is because I don't feel secure as a wife. It's not your fault really. It's just that marriage seems so, so…”

“Disposable?” Rob kissed her forehead.

“Yes. That's a good word. Maybe I understand my mother a little better now. When I was younger, I thought that you'd always love me, that I didn't need to work hard at our relationship.” She rubbed her husband's shoulders, knotted from carrying the younger kids to bed a few minutes earlier. They'd been working hard all day, making a tree house of their own.

He smiled at her touch, but not at her words. “I will always love you, Karol. And you do work hard at our relationship. Sometimes people are so busy ‘working on their relationships' that they get sick of each other and mess the whole thing up. You are here and you believe in me. Thinking that you didn't for a while is what made things hard. I said some things I shouldn't have. I'm sorry if I made you feel insecure. You have no idea how much I'm into you.”

Likewise.

Just before a tide of kisses carried them away, Karol spoke again. “You did get to me when you said that you're attracted to other women sometimes. I didn't recognize how much of a battleground marriage is. For me, it's my emotions, for you, maybe it's more physical.”

Rob leaned against the shed before taking her hand and starting for the house. “I think it's both for both of us, just at different times. People try to make it seem as though women are all one thing and men are all the other, but the physical struggle came from me feeling like you thought less of me. You've always seemed so, I don't know, proud of me. That still gets to me even though I'm an everyday guy. I want to be better.”

Karol fought back tears as they went inside, started up the stairs. Here she'd been blaming some Internet model for the problems in her marriage when she'd been the thorn in her own side. “I think that I felt like I wasn't enough for you anymore, like I needed to have a destiny outside of the family to keep you interested.”

Rob laughed. “Oh, no, babe. I'm interested. I don't think there's anything wrong in having things you love to do. You're a great mom and wife. You're a great teacher and writer. There are lots of other things you haven't worked hard enough at yet to know whether you're good at them. I just want you to be happy when I get to you. Mia's getting older. You're about due for a dose of me-time.”

“But what about you?”

“Karol, I get to do what I love everyday. Then I come home and hammer and build on things. And you don't bug me about it. You know I love these things—”

“It's just how you're wired, to build things. Whether it's a computer or a birdhouse, you just get how things work.”

Rob pulled his wife to his chest. “Exactly. And you get how words work. I think that where we went wrong was trying to be Hope and Singh instead of being ourselves. We've got to find our own way.”

She wiped her eyes. “Ryan said that.”

“Smart kid.”

“Yes. He is. What are we going to get him for his birthday?”

“A little brother?” Rob said in a mocking voice.

Karol punched him lightly. “Be serious.”

“Okay, he's a deep kid for eleven, but he is going to middle school now. A tool set, maybe?”

“He's not you, Rob.”

“Right. A book then. Some kind of rare and precious book. You'd know what better than I would. Unless…” He got up and turned on the light.

“What?” She watched in horror and amazement as her husband pulled the boxes of her poems and unfinished stories from under the bed. There were two huge boxes full. She held the sides of the mattress. “No way. Don't even think about it.”

“Why not? He loves your writing. A rare and precious book. Your book. I could edit for you, do the cover, whatever you need.”

“There's no way. It's impossible.” Karol fell back on the bed. Talking about their marriage had been hard enough, but her sharing her writing with her husband, too? No way.

With a notebook in hand and a plea in his eyes, Rob sat down beside her. “Nothing is impossible with God, Karol. Nothing. You just told Hope that before we left. You've told me the same many times. It's still true. Besides, this stuff is amazing. I could kick myself for letting you shove it under the bed all these years.”

“You pushed me, remember? We tried to publish that book of affirmations, remember? Nobody wanted it. Ryan did a great job on the edits but that's probably about the only thing that I'd be able to give Ryan to read.” She nodded finally as Rob stared at the notebook. “Go ahead.”

Rob turned a page. “I don't know. There's a lot of stuff here. That poem you wrote this morning was pretty good. I've been looking forward to tonight. Thought about buying some ribbon so that you could unwrap our love….”

Karol's mouth opened wide. She'd been half-asleep when she'd written that poem. Her notebook and pen had been closed and put away when she awoke. She hadn't considered that Rob might have read it. The thought of him reading that poem freaked her out, but she had to laugh as he pretended to tie a bow around his neck.

“Stop it.”

“I will for now, but only because Ryan is still up. I really think you should do a book for Ryan's birthday. I'm going to read it all anyway so I can help you choose if you want—don't look at me like that. I am going to read it. All of it. Unless you don't want me to.”

“It's not that. But sometimes the stories just come like they come, you know? I don't want you to know how strange I really am. I'm weird enough already.”

“Strange but beautiful. I believe that's a quote from our first date.”

She nodded. “I'm not sure how you got a second date with a line like that, but yes, that sounds about right.”

He put down the notebook and took her hand. “You can do this, honey. Even the poems would be great. I know you still have that novel, too, the one you wrote in college.”

At the mention of the novel she'd written but assumed Rob had forgotten about, Karol sat up straighter in the bed.

“Yes, I remember it. You read me some of it. Liked it, too. It was a good choice. I think your words, whichever ones you choose, will be a good choice.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive.”

She settled back in his arms. “I love you.”

He pretended to tie a ribbon around his neck again. “Prove it.”

 

It was all there.

In the stacks of notebooks, bound together by rubber bands, were all Karol's words, her hopes, her dreams. Even in high school, she'd rambled on about love, even though she hadn't known for sure then what it really was. Her college work turned dark and unexpected in places, like a rush of English rain. There were other pieces that stole Karol's breath, like the novel she'd written as her senior thesis. A novel she'd written and forgotten.

At the first line, it all came rushing back:

Breath caught in Karol's throat. How had she forgotten this? It had taken her two years to write. At the suggestion of her professor, she'd spent another year editing it. She'd met Rob around the time she finished and never submitted it. And yet, as she turned the yellowed pages of her final handwritten draft, something bright and afraid leaped within her.

She read on, marking through words and changing them as she went:

Karol stopped writing, again wondering what Rob—or anyone else—would think of her if and when they read this story. Like so many of the others in her secret box, it was a mystery, a tale that unwound between her fingers no matter how hard she tried to hold it still. It wasn't a bright book of Christian affirmations or the mothering manual Hope might have penned, but it was what Karol had.

Who she was.

One of her afternoons had been spent cleaning out the attic, which was still hot and cramped, but without the scrap-booking supplies she'd never used—tried that on day three—the broken sewing machines Rob would never fix—gave them to Goodwill during week two—and makeup she would never sell—after she finished laughing, Karol just threw it away—there was room for her to think. The treadmill had been covered in clothes. It was here beneath the years and shadows that she'd found an old box, the one that contained her novel, the one that might change everything.

With the story hot upon her, pouring out and refusing to be quiet, Karol grabbed the notebooks—there were three, bound together with a purple hair scrunchie—and headed downstairs for the computer. Ryan passed her in the hall wearing an outfit she'd never seen and reeking of cologne that smelled a lot like his father's.

Karol didn't even break her stride.

She threw up a hand and kept moving, praying a quick prayer for the neighbors she'd so disliked just a few months ago. The computer blinked on and she rested the first notebook against something and began to type. The thought of writing had been so far away before, abstract and cloudy, a dream. But now, as the words tapped through her fingers, it seemed solid. Finite. And it held her to the chair as if it would never let go.