Promise Me (8 page)

Forgiveness requires selective memory, and after several weeks I decided to move his dalliance from center stage. His sin may not have been forgotten, but it wasn't dictating our every interaction either. I began to see the man I loved again.

Five weeks after he had moved back in, I decided to make a change. I was sitting in the break room eating my lunch with Roxanne when I announced my decision.

“I think I'm going to do it,” I said.

Roxanne wrapped a paper towel around a frozen burrito and put it in the microwave. “Darling, I have no idea what you're talking about.” She pushed several buttons, and the oven started.

“I'm letting Marc back in.”

“You already did that, babycakes.”

“In my bedroom.”

I suddenly had her full attention. She sat down next to me. “Really.”

“I'm ready to move on.”

She smiled. “So things are going pretty well.”

“More than well. Better than ever. Marc's been a complete saint. I think this whole thing was a giant wake-up call for him.”

“Won't be the first time someone walked through hell to get to heaven,” Roxanne said. The timer bell rang on the microwave, and Roxanne got up, opened the microwave door and reached inside and pulled out her burrito, lifting it by the corners of the paper towel. “So when are you doing this?”

“I was thinking of making him a nice dinner and telling him tonight. Do you think Jan could sit?”

“She's probably free and you know how she loves Char. Why don't you just have Charlotte sleep over? Just in case one thing leads to another.”

Jan was available, and I arranged for her to pick Charlotte up from school, then run by the house for pajamas and a change of clothes. The more I thought about the night, the more excited I got. I didn't call Marc to tell him—I wanted the evening to be a complete surprise. I left work at four, stopped at the grocery store and picked up a bottle of red wine, a loaf of peasant bread, asparagus and a couple of steaks. I put the steaks on to broil, then set the table with china, silverware and tall candlesticks.

Marc had told me that he would be home by 6:30, so at 6:20 I lit the candles, put on some perfume and waited for him in the front room. He didn't come. By 7:30 I began to worry that something had happened. By 8:30 my emotions started running wild and I began imagining him with the other woman. I called his office line, but it went straight to voicemail. I waited for him until eleven, then I blew out the candles, put the steaks in foil and went to bed without eating. My emotions vacillated from anger to worry.
Where was he?

He didn't come home during the night. The next morning I called his work. His secretary, Gloria, put me through to Marc's boss, Dean.

“I was just about to call you,” Dean said. “We were worried when Marc didn't show up today. Yesterday he was acting rather peculiar. He left work at noon to go to an appointment and missed an important meeting later in the day. No one has seen or heard from him since. We assumed he was at home.”

“No, I haven't seen him since yesterday morning,” I said. “What do you mean by peculiar?”

“He offered another salesman his two biggest accounts.”

“Why would he do that?”

“It makes no sense,” Dean said. “Gloria also said she overheard him on the phone earlier in the day. She thought he was . . . crying.”

I thanked him and hung up. I was frightened.
Had I been too harsh
? That night, after Charlotte was in bed, Roxanne came over to the house and sat with me while I made calls to whoever I could think of who might have seen him. I called the area hospitals and police stations to see if he'd been in an accident. It was around nine when the headlights of Marc's car flashed through our picture window on our living room wall. Roxanne looked at me. “I'll go, babe. Good luck.”

“Thanks.”

Roxanne went out the side door to avoid bumping into him. I heard the door unlock, then Marc opened the front door and walked in. I walked into the foyer to meet him. He reeked of alcohol.

“Where have you been?”

“Gone,” he said, avoiding eye contact.

“You've been drinking.”

“Aren't you sharp.”

“Marc, where have you been?”

“I don't have to answer to you.”

“You're still my husband.”

“Not for long.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“I've been drinking,” he said. “That's what it means. That's where I've been. That's all you need to know.”

“You're on a real winning streak here. First cheating, now drinking.”

He waved a clumsy hand to brush me off. “Don't talk to me. I'm through talking. I'm getting my things and leaving.”

“You've been begging me to stay and now you're leaving?”

“Pretty much.”

“What about Charlotte?”

“She's going to have to get used to it anyway.”

“What are you talking about? Get used to what?”

“Being fatherless.” He stopped to look me in the eyes. “Not that you care, but I found out why I'm not feeling well. I have pancreatic cancer. The doctor's given me two to six months to live. How do you like them apples?” He walked to our bedroom, knelt down at the dresser and began pulling out clothes.

I followed him, dumbstruck. When I could speak, I said, “Marc, I didn't even know you weren't feeling well.”

“You weren't doing much thinking about how I was doing.”

I crouched down next to him. “Marc, please stop. I do care. I was so afraid that something had happened to you. Thursday night I made us a candlelit dinner. I want you back.”

He stopped what he was doing. “It's too late for that.”

“No, it's not. Where will you go?”

He looked at me sadly. “If I'm lucky, I have maybe thirty
to forty days left of any kind of quality. I'm not going to waste a single one of them being abused by you. I told you I'm sorry for what happened. But I'm done now. I'm not going to spend my last days on earth beating myself over what I can't change. Or let you do it.” He stood, his arms full of clothing. “Where'd you put my suitcase?”

“Marc, what happened, the other woman, it broke my heart, because I love you. I've always loved you. And I forgive you for what happened.”

He looked at me in disbelief.

“I forgive you, Marc. Completely. I want you back. I want things to be the way they were.”

“They can't be the way they were.”

“No, but there can still be love.”

He took a deep breath. “I don't know.”

“Where will you go?” My eyes welled up with tears. “Do you really want to die alone?”

His eyes began to moisten as well. He shook his head.

“You belong here with your family. We'll take care of you.”

He laid his clothes on the bed, then wiped his eyes with his sleeve.

I took his hand. “I married you for better or for worse. Most of it has been better. You've been good to me. You've given me Charlotte. You're a good father. I want to be with you. I want you in my bed. It's forgotten. I promise.”

“Can you really do that?”

I put my arms around him. “I will. I promise. Let me care for you.”

He suddenly began to cry. “I'm so sorry about everything. I'm sorry I have this.”

“We can beat this.
Together
, we can beat this.”

He shook his head. “It's too late for that. My oncologist said that even if they put me through chemo and radiation it would only buy me a few months at best. He said, ‘Go home, put things in order and cherish every minute with your loved ones.' ” He began to cry again. “I told him I didn't have a home.”

“You do. You have us. And that's what we'll do. We'll make the most of every minute. I love you. I always have.”

Marc dropped his head on my shoulder and we both wept.

Just when I was ready to take the bandage off my nose, an axe took off my head.

Beth Cardall's Diary

Physically, Marc did okay for the next three weeks, but it was clear that the cancer was spreading. Almost as difficult as watching his decline was watching Charlotte experience his loss. Telling her that her father was dying was the most difficult thing I'd ever done. It was hard to know how much she really perceived. What does a six-year-old know of death? For that matter, what does anyone really know?

By August, Marc had difficulty walking and I took a leave of absence from work to care for him. On a cool morning in September, I had just finished bathing him when he asked, “Do you love me?”

“Of course I do,” I said, drawing a terry cloth towel across his back. “Haven't I shown you?”

“In spades,” he said quietly.

“Why do you ask?”

“I wonder if you would love the
real
me.”

“What do you mean?”

“Never mind,” he said.

I pushed the exchange from my mind, chalking it up to the myriad drugs the doctors had him on. About a week later
I was feeding him lunch when he mumbled, “
E pluribus unum
.”

E pluribus unum
?

“I need to confess something.”

The way he said this filled my chest with fear. I instinctively knew that whatever he was going to say was bad. “I don't want to hear it,” I said. “If it's going to hurt me, please don't tell me.”

“I don't want to die a liar. I don't want our relationship to have just been a lie.”

My panic was now so thick I could barely breathe. “Please, Marc, don't do this.”

He said, “Ashley wasn't the only one. There were others.”

Others?
I looked at him waiting for the other shoe to drop. When he didn't say it, I asked, “How many?”

“Maybe eleven.”

Eleven
. I began to cry. My heart wasn't a yo-yo; it was a paper target on a shooting range. It was roadkill. “You couldn't have just kept this to yourself?” I got up and walked out of the room.