Promise Me (9 page)

Nothing was the same after that. Marc was a stranger to me—a man I'd never really known. I didn't speak to him for the next three days. Oddly, I wasn't angry—emotionally, that account had been bankrupted—I was something more. I was indifferent.

Marc stayed in our bedroom while I slept with Charlotte
in her bed. I don't think it was coincidence that his confession was the start of his great decline. He lived for just three and a half weeks more and I cared for him through it all. It wasn't easy. I'm neither a doormat nor a saint. I stayed with him because of Charlotte. She was still sick, complaining every few days of a stomachache, no doubt made worse by her fear and anxiety over what was happening to her dad. I wasn't about to punish her for the sins of her father. Besides, Marc had nowhere else to go, and regardless of how much I'd been hurt, I couldn't live with my daughter's father dying alone, even though more than once I wished I could have.

On the third day of October the hospice workers started their vigil. My husband, they told me, was actively dying (which sounded to me like an oxymoron). I had no doubt that Marc was sorry for what he'd done, sorry for his betrayal, even more sorry, I think, that he had told me. Those were his last words to me, the saddest last words one could leave this world with: “I'm sorry.”

A week later, on October 10, he passed quietly in the night. Charlotte cried for her father the entire next day and every day after for the next two weeks. By then my heart already felt like it had died a hundred times over.

Marc had a small life insurance policy, only $25,000, which wasn't enough to do much more than cover his medical deductibles and funeral expenses and to catch up on the bills that had piled up since we had both stopped working.

That is where Charlotte and I were as the year came to a close. Winter came again and the days shortened and seemed darker and colder than ever before.

Then the holiday season crept upon us. I did not welcome it. I was feeling anything but festive, anything but believing. I was trustless of life and men. I would say that I was without faith, but no one is truly faithless; they just have faith in the wrong things: fear and defeat.

Then, when I least expected anything new in my life, he came.

I have found that the most significant experiences of our lives rarely come when we're expecting them and oftentimes when we're not even paying attention.

Beth Cardall's Diary

The first time I saw
him
was on Christmas Day, 1989. As the Bing Crosby song had it, it was a white Christmas. Actually, more of a
white-out
Christmas. Nearly thirty inches of heavy snow had fallen during the night, and it was still falling, with brisk winds sculpting the snow along the roadsides into four-foot-high curled drifts that looked like frozen ocean waves. The radio said that more than five thousand homes in the city had lost electricity. Charlotte and I were among the fortunate who still had power and a cozy fire in our wood-burning stove.

Our Christmas tree looked like I felt inside: small, sparse and dry, with too few lights. Truthfully, I felt ugly, inside and out. I had been pretty once, or at least that seemed to be the general consensus, but not so much lately. I felt worn-out and broken, like an old running shoe.
Through the ringer
, my mother used to say. It sounds silly to me now, but I was only twenty-eight and I already felt old. I was much too young to feel that old.

Had I been alone I probably would have just ignored the season, but Charlotte really needed the holiday and Roxanne wouldn't have let me off that easy. We celebrated Thanksgiving
Day with Roxanne and her family. The next Saturday, in a quest to capture the spirit, Charlotte and I made Christmas tree ornaments. We dipped walnuts in Elmer's glue and glitter and tied them with yarn. We also cut snowflakes from paper.

Money was tight, but I stretched to get Charlotte what she wanted, a Skip-It, a set of
Baby-sitters Club
books and her big present, an American Girl doll. She squealed when she opened the package with the doll.

“Look, Mom, what Santa brought!”

“She's beautiful. What's her name?”

“Molly.”

“She wears glasses.”

“Uh-huh. Like me. And a locket.” She opened the doll's tiny locket around its neck. “Can we put a picture inside?”

I smiled. “How did you know to put a picture in there?”

“Everyone knows that.”

“Sorry. Should we put a picture of you in there?”

“No, Daddy's.”

She had been playing with her doll for a half-hour or so when she asked, “Mom, why didn't Santa bring you anything?”

“Well,” I said, “I really didn't need anything so I asked Santa to give my presents to a good little girl who did.”

“Doesn't Santa have enough for everyone?”

When did she get so smart?
“Not this year. I guess there was a toy shortage at the North Pole.”

I could see her puzzling over the dilemma. After a moment she said, “Then I'll ask Jesus to bring you something.”

I smiled. “What are you going to ask Him to bring me?”

“Someone to take care of you.”

Out of the mouths of babes, they say. I didn't know how to respond to that so I just changed the subject. “Are you hungry?”

She nodded. “Are we going to have muffins?”

“Yes we are. Just like I promised.”

A week earlier I had asked Charlotte what she wanted for Christmas breakfast. She didn't hesitate: blueberry-buttermilk muffins. Blueberry-buttermilk muffins were our own creation. One Sunday morning I'd been in the middle of making muffins when I discovered we were out of milk. I didn't have time to run to the store so I substituted buttermilk. The results were unexpectedly delicious and a new favorite.

I went into the kitchen and began putting the ingredients together when I realized I'd forgotten the buttermilk. I could have just used regular milk or even just poured her some Cheerios—with the weather being the way it was, that would have been the prudent thing to do—but after what she'd been through that year, I didn't want to deny her anything that was within my grasp to deliver.

“We need to go to the store,” I said. I put on my overcoat, bundled up Charlotte, then drove to the only place open Christmas morning—a 7-Eleven about a mile from my home.

Maybe it was chance, or perhaps it was in answer to Charlotte's prayer, but that's where I first saw
him
.

When we arrived at the 7-Eleven, I said to Charlotte, “Honey, just wait in the car. I'm only going to be a minute.”

“Can I have some gum?”

I smiled. “Sure.”

I was stomping the snow from my boots as I entered the store, so I didn't see him at first. He was standing near the back sipping coffee from a foam cup, staring at me intently.

We had brief eye contact. I tried not to stare, but he really was gorgeous.
Soap opera gorgeous
, Roxanne would say. Gorgeous and exotic looking. He had slightly curly, cappuccino-hued hair and bright blue eyes, which were radiant against his olive skin. I wondered what such a beautiful man was doing alone at a 7-Eleven on Christmas morning. Call it sour grapes, but the self-preservation part of my mind kicked in and I immediately concluded that there must be something wrong with him—like the time Charlotte made Kool-Aid and used salt instead of sugar. It looked good, but after one sip I poured the pitcher down the sink.

I stopped to pick up a few things besides my buttermilk—an apple, a half-gallon of milk and a package of Doublemint gum—then I walked to the cash register, my purchases balanced precariously in my arms.

He
walked up to the counter at the same time, his eyes never leaving me. His gaze made me feel awkward, but, frankly, it was nice to be noticed.

“Merry Christmas,” he said. His voice was warm and rich.

I had pretended that I hadn't noticed him staring at me and I turned and flashed a furtive smile. “Good morning,” I said, then turned back to the clerk, doing my best to look uninterested.

As I was setting my things on the counter, the gum fell to the ground. I bent over to get it. Apparently
soap opera guy
had the same idea and we bumped heads hard. I stood up rubbing the top of my head. “Ow.”

“I'm sorry,” he said, grimacing with embarrassment. He handed me the package of Doublemint. “I'm Matthew.”

I took the gum, still rubbing my head with the other hand. “Hi, Matthew.”

“Have we met?”

I shook my head, wondering if this was a pickup line. “I don't think so.”

The store clerk, who seemed oblivious to everything but his wish to be elsewhere, said, “Is this everything?”

“And this,” I said. I handed him the gum, then fished a ten-dollar bill from my wallet.

“Six seventy-three out of ten.” He handed me my change. “Would you like your things in a sack?”

“Yes, please.”

I glanced back at Matthew and he smiled at me. I nervously brushed the hair back from my face. The clerk stacked everything in the sack and handed it to me. “Merry Christmas,” he said dully.