Mourning Glory (31 page)

When she got to the Salvation Army drop-off center in West Palm Beach, the woman handed her a small packet of letters.

"I knew you'd want this," she said with a knowing
nod.

"Thank you."

"And I'm so happy that you're feeling better."

"What?"

"I think you look just great."

Puzzled by the woman's statement, Grace went outside and
got in her car. She sat for a long time contemplating the envelopes, all neatly
slit open, obviously by letter opener. There were three of them, all addressed
to a Palm Beach post office box, as the woman had stated. There was no return
address on the envelopes, which were all written on blue stationery and
addressed in a hand that seemed, even to her unpracticed eye, to be masculine.

She noted the place and date on the postmarks. Miami. Last year. Each posted in a one-month time frame. She arranged them by chronology,
the earliest first.

Before opening the first envelope, Grace speculated that
these might be letters from Sam and that reading them would be tantamount to an
unwarranted and immoral intrusion. Besides, she didn't want to suffer the
irritation of reading Sam's sweet words of love to his late wife. But even
then, before reading the letters, she noted that the handwriting on the
envelope just didn't
seem
like Sam's.

But then, she reasoned with a detective's zeal, why the
post office box, unless it was meant to be a little game between them? Sam,
after all, did have an imaginative streak and was capable of inventing games.
And if not Sam, who? And why the salutation
darling?
She wondered if her
curiosity was turning salacious. Destiny again, she told herself, imagining
that fate was throwing luminescent dust in her face, lighting the way to some
crucial discovery.

With shaking fingers, she drew out the first letter and
began to read, her heart pounding with trepidation at what was clearly an
unhealthy violation of Anne's privacy. It wasn't a long letter, a mere note
covering only one side of the page. But as she read, she became more and more
perplexed and eager to know more.

"Darling,"
the
letter began. It was, as the woman had said, the only salutation.

After all these years, Anne, my dearest
love, how can you just remove me from your life? I thought our love was too
strong, too consuming, too everlasting. I wish I could find the words to
express it. The fire of your passion and its memory even now has sustained me
all these years. Our intimate time together is the only thing that makes my
life palatable. How can I survive without you? Please, Anne, my darling, my
all, reconsider.
Love everlasting

The letter was signed with the "happy face"
graphic, but the smile was turned down.

Admittedly, she was stunned but did not let herself jump to
any firm or rash conclusions. Just follow the silver dust, she commanded
herself. The devil is in the details.

Despite her shaking fingers, she carefully refolded the
letter and, blowing the envelope to widen its opening, she slipped it neatly
back in place. Handling it carefully, perhaps as evidence for some future
revelation, she set it aside and opened the next one.

Before reading it, she contemplated the words of the first
letter she had read. "The fire of your passion." Frigid, was she?
Really! Don't jump to conclusions, she warned herself. So far this was merely
circumstantial, a transient idea remembered from an occasional foray into Court
TV. Things are never as they appear.

With fastidious care, she removed the second letter, which
covered the full four pages of the stationery. An errant thought crossed her
mind and made her giggle. This was a miniseries.

Darling,
My mind can barely accept this. Terminal. You wrote terminal. I'm stunned.
Have you considered all the alternatives? I suppose I should feel flattered
that you wanted to stop seeing me, not because you no longer loved me but
because you thought I might be turned off by your declining health. Never.
Ever. I told you. I will love you forever and ever and ever. Do you realize,
Anne, that it has been more than twenty-five years? A quarter of a century. It
was wrong, Anne, wrong to deprive us of each other, wrong to steal only
moments, instead of being with each other always. For what? Life with our
spouses was never "real life." Never a passionate life, body and
soul. Who have we hurt? No one but ourselves. I can't stand the idea of it, the
stupidity of it, the waste of it. Anne, please, let's acknowledge it publicly
before we part forever. We owe that to ourselves.
Love everlasting

That, too, was signed with a happy face, the smile turned
downward.

Still reserving your judgment?
Grace asked herself smugly. The letter writer was, obviously,
Anne's longtime secret lover. So this is where she spent all her passion.
Anne,
you cagey bitch,
she thought,
you weren't frigid at all. You were just
being faithful to your lover. How noble! How romantic! How could you be so
two-faced?

The knowledge brought an odd sense of elation. The icon was
off its pedestal. In a flash her elation turned to anger. At first toward Sam.
You
blind, deluded dupe,
she railed at him silently, banished from his wife's
embrace, sentenced to a lifetime of guilt by a faithless woman. Worse, his not
knowing, not having a clue, worshipping at the shrine of her memory.
Where
was your vaunted insight, Sam?

Then, suddenly, her anger found it's real mark: Anne! Anne
the virgin queen, Anne sitting on the golden throne of memory. What was she,
after all? A liar, a cheat, a whoring cunt, forcing Sam to find sexual solace
with prostitutes and inducing a monumental guilt trip on a lovely, wonderful,
devoted, blameless man. "Ball-busting bitch," she hissed aloud. It
was all Anne's ruthless ploy to maintain her status while she fucked her brains
out with a secret stud. Sam was the cuckold, the injured party. She felt his
humiliation, his forced entry into a secret world of lies and dissimulation
that, she was certain, were foreign to his nature.

Surely Anne had known that he was finding gratification
elsewhere. It hadn't fazed her. She was getting her fill. Dear, sweet, phony,
coldhearted Anne. It was hateful of her. Poor, dear, trusting Sam, an innocent
victim of this unfaithful woman, this fraud.

Venting her anger for a few moments more, Grace finally
calmed somewhat and opened the last letter.

As always it began with "Darling."

Your last word, your farewell. How can I
endure such a thought? I could have visited you at the hospital or now, at
home. You could have given me at least that farewell in person, a parting
embrace. I couldn't care less what Sam might think. What would it matter now?
Nevertheless, my love, I will defer to your wishes. Farewell, my dear, sweet
darling, my true love, my life. Farewell, my princess. I will terminate the PO
box. Life will never be the same without you. Never! Never! There will never be
another woman in my embrace. Never! In a real sense, my life, too, is over.
Good-bye, my dearest love.

Inexplicably the letter was not signed. It was, of course,
both heartfelt and pathetic, but Grace's anger and disgust strongly repressed
any sympathy for the writer or Anne.

She sat in the car for a long time, mulling over this
strange surfeit of unwanted information. She was convinced that Sam had no
knowledge of her perfidy. She had gotten away with it for a quarter of a
century.

She put the letters in her purse, started the car and
headed toward the bridge. In her possession she had the hard evidence of Anne's
unfaithfulness. The woman had deliberately maintained her pose of frigidity,
had deprived Sam of his rights as a husband, had forced him into a life of
infidelity, exposed him to danger, goaded him into secrecy and guilt, stunted
their marriage. It was infuriating.

Her anger simmered at white heat. At that moment she felt
no elation in the discovery, no sense of vindication, no joy in it, only
despair. Her heart went out to Sam.

Worse, Anne had apparently saved the letters deliberately,
as if it was necessary for her to preserve the evidence of her unfaithfulness,
perhaps hoping that one day they would be found, as they were. It couldn't have
been an oversight. No way. Perhaps there were other letters as well. Why, then,
would she have set up a clandestine PO box? She would have to search through
the clothes to be sure.

In her meanness, Grace speculated, Anne, Anne the
wonderful, had reached beyond the grave to hurt her husband. Imagine! Twenty-five
years of faithlessness. It was, she supposed, something of a record. She had
taken her pleasure elsewhere. She had been faithful to her lover only, while
depriving her husband of her wifely favors, forcing him to consort with
strangers. Grace turned it over and over in her mind, like a perpetual
drumbeat. How could she have been so callous and unfeeling toward Sam?

Whatever Anne's rationalization for her action, Grace
continued to be furious over her subterfuge. How clever she had been to keep
the secret! Think of the creativity required, while, all the time, enjoying the
largesse of her husband's millions.

Then it occurred to her that perhaps Sam had known all
along, had made his peace, had taken refuge in denial, had, as any good
businessman might have done, considered the bottom line. Anne, after all,
represented his entrance into the heady world of upper class social acceptance,
where money could grease the skids and antecedents might be, however
reluctantly, overlooked. No, she decided finally, Sam had simply been gullible.
Her own relationship with him was proof positive.

She crossed the Royal Palm Bridge and rode north on Ocean Drive toward Sam's house. As her anger dissipated, she discovered that the evidence of
Anne's infidelity had provided her with an extraordinary weapon. It had the
power to destroy the myth of Anne's perfection and to expose her as a fraud.

Her satisfaction over such an idea was short-lived. How
would Sam react to such a revelation? Would the destruction of Anne's image
further her own cause? Or would it hurt? Grace, too, was culpable. She, too,
had lied, dissimulated, falsified. Would her exposure of Anne's guilt make Sam
resentful of Grace? Often, the bearer of bad news became associated with the
news itself. Sam was deeply involved with the worship of his wife. His mind
might not accept the truth of it, making Grace the villain. It was a dilemma.

She acknowledged that the temptation to expose Anne was
tantalizing. She had it in her power to place doubt in Sam's mind and possibly
destroy his image of dear old Anne, classy Anne, perfect Anne. Unfortunately,
she also risked being caught in the crossfire.

She parked the car and saw Sam's smiling face in the open
door, ready to receive her into his arms. Marilyn, bonded with her now, came
out to greet her. No, she decided. This was not the time to reveal Anne's
secret. Nothing must disturb the calibration of their current mood. Perhaps
someday. But definitely not now.

She fell into his arms and folded herself into his embrace.

"I need you," he said.

"No less than I need you," she assured him.

They did not take their morning walk. Instead, arms around
each other's waists, they walked up to the bedroom and made love. It was a
mutual initiation, spontaneous, frenzied and immediate, the culmination coming
swiftly, in tandem, as if they had been deprived for years.

"After I called I spent a night of agony," he
said when they had cooled and lay comfortably in each other's embrace.

"Why?"

"Don't laugh, but I was jealous. I fantasized that you
didn't want to talk because there was a man in your bed."

"Are you serious?" she asked, unable to suppress
a giggle.

"I was at the time."

"There is room in my bed, Sam, but only room in my
life for one man."

"You were abrupt. It made me insecure."

She decided on the absolute truth, wondering if it was
possible to find her way back to square one, original truth.

"My daughter had picked up the phone. I haven't told
her about you, Sam. Not yet."

"I guess I blew it, then," he sighed.

"You certainly piqued her curiosity."

"And did you tell her?"

"I sort of danced around it."

"How so?"

At that point she knew that absolute truth was impossible.

"I told her I had a very close friend."

"That's all?"

"What would you want me to tell her, Sam?"

It was, she knew, an opening to a discussion of their
future. She waited with trepidation for his response.

"It's your call, Grace," he replied evasively.
"I'd like to meet her. She sounds quite wonderful."

The idea filled her with dread. Even if she coached Jackie
in the details of the big lie, she knew that Sam would discover the subterfuge
with a few well-aimed questions. Such a meeting would be a disaster.

"Why not invite her over, Grace?" he asked, in a
sudden change of focus, which took her by surprise.

"She's extraordinarily busy with her schoolwork."

"On a weekend, then," Sam persisted.

"Yes," Grace replied. "Might be a great
idea."

She paused for a moment, then winked and smiled, knowing it
was pure sham.

"First, I think I should explain to her what's going
on here."

Considering what she had discovered that morning, was she
any worse than Anne?

"And what exactly is going on here, Grace?" Sam
asked playfully, raising himself on his elbow and studying her face.

"An involvement," Grace said cautiously, putting
her hand up to his face, patting his cheek.

"With a very mature man," Sam said.

"That again?"

"It's on my mind, Grace."

"Well, then, take it off your mind. Maturity is good,
Sam. There's a lot to say for experience. Besides, I'm not exactly a spring
chicken."