THE AFFAIR (27 page)

“Mick, what’s wrong with you? How can you laugh about our fighting? What is it you want me to release?”

“Your feelings about your mother, about her abandoning you.”

He started to pull away from me, but I grabbed his hand and held on. “No, Larry. It’s time to admit it to yourself and to me. It’s part of the reason for both our pain.”

He stood and I stood with him. “You don’t have to beat yourself up about being a good father. You are, you always were and you always will be.

“It doesn’t mean that you have to let them walk all over you or us. I know how much you love the kids, but it’s time they were on their own. I’m tired of them dropping in on us whenever they want. I want them to give back their keys.”

He was looking at me as if I was insane and I was. I was insane to have put up with this crap for so long.

“Please,” I whispered. “For once would you listen to me? They come into our home whenever they want and they take things without asking and never return them. I can’t stand it. They’re driving me nuts.”

I had stopped laughing and was now crying again. “You’re not your mother. You didn’t abandon your kids.”

I walked closer to him. “But I feel that you’ve abandoned me. It wasn’t so bad when they were babies or even before they moved out, but they’re all out and adults now. It’s time to let go. It’s time for us to be the center of each other’s life.”

“You’re asking me to choose between you and our kids. How can you do that, Mick? You know how I feel about that.”

“Yes, I know. That’s why I’ve kept silent so long. But I can’t any longer. What we have is not enough anymore. You’re not your mother. And I’m not mine.”

“Keep my mother out of this.”

“I can’t. The scars from what she did to you are still with you. They’re the reason that you are the way you are. You need to talk to someone about it. Let it go. I’ll help you.”

“Shut up, Mick, shut up about my mother. I don’t give a damn about her. This isn’t about her anyway. This is about you. You’re the one who broke up our marriage, you’re the one who had an affair and you’re the one who’s sneaking behind my back to see a fucking psychic.”

It hit me then, something I hadn’t thought of. It was so obvious. I should have asked him in the beginning of the argument.

“You never did tell me. How did you know I saw Blaine?”

He looked away. He didn’t need to tell me. It was Erica. I remembered the looks she had been giving me. I couldn’t believe it. My own daughter had been following me. My feelings that I was being followed had turned out to be right after all.

A crushing sadness overtook me and I stood in surrender, shivering from the pain of total loss. “I think I’ll answer the question you’ve been harping on for months. Remember this, you asked for it.

“You really want to know about the sex with Chance? You’ve been asking if I enjoyed it. I’ll tell you now. Yes, it was incredible.” I looked up into my husband’s eyes that were beginning to cloud over with pain.

“Do you want to know why it was so incredible? He gave himself to me completely. He didn’t hold back. There were no memories, no pain to stop him from loving me. There was no one who he found just a bit more important than being with me. And do you want to know what else? He listened when I talked.”

I turned to walk out of the bedroom. I had one more person to confront. I knew I’d twisted the knife in my husband’s heart. He was crying and so was I.

“I love you, Mick,” he said as I walked down the stairs.

“I know you do,” I answered him, “just not enough.”

Chapter Twelve

Every step I took was laced with determination. It was time I put Erica in her place and sent her packing. If her father couldn’t do it, then I would have to.

I pounded on the door to the bedroom she was sleeping in, oblivious to the noise I was making, or to Larry’s voice coming down the stairs after me.

“Larry, why don’t you just go back to bed and leave me alone? Your precious daughter will never blame you for my actions. Don’t worry, you’ll still be the perfect father.”

I was being nasty. Part of me wanted to stop, but the other part of me wanted to lash out at Larry, to do anything that might make him actually open his ears and hear me, not what he wanted to hear, but me.

“Erica.” I pounded on the door. “Wake up.” The door opened to her glaring, sleep-filled eyes. I marched in the room, Larry right on my heels.

“Mother, why are you banging on my door in the middle of the night? I was sleeping.”

Erica glared at me before looking over my shoulder to glare at her father. “Dad, why didn’t you stop her?”

I answered her before Larry had a chance. “Erica, I want you out of here. Tomorrow morning you get your things and go to a hotel until you leave. I’m serious. I also want the key to this house back. I don’t want you coming here letting yourself in anymore when we’re not home.”

“Why are you so anxious for me to leave, Mother? You think that Daddy doesn’t know what’s going on? You want to continue having your affair, don’t you, Mother? Daddy may believe you that it’s over. I don’t. It’s too late to send me home. Tomorrow, everyone’s coming.”

I looked first at Larry, then at Erica with the permanent sneer on her face, ignoring that she was being so proper in calling me Mother instead of Mom. “Who’s everyone?” I asked.

“Your other children, Mother. Shannon, Derrick, Beth and Brigid. They’re all coming to support Dad. We’re going to have a little family meeting.”

“Who arranged this little meeting?”

I held myself in check, finding myself for the first time in my children’s lives really wanting to hit one of them.

With Larry the slap had just happened. With Erica, I could imagine the feel of her skin on my hand, the imprint of my fingers on her cheek. I could well imagine doing this, so I stayed as far away from her as I could in the small bedroom.

“I called them, Mother. You’ve been acting strangely ever since I came. First you didn’t want me or the kids here. Which was normal,” she said with a smirk.

“But when you decided to play grandma, I knew something was wrong. So the next day when you were supposed to be going to work I followed you.” Her chin jutted out in defiance.

“You’ve been going to see that psychic, Blaine MaDia. Daddy told you not to. You won’t sleep with Daddy, so you must be sleeping with someone.”

She said this as though that justified her spying on me. My voice was quaking with emotion, sadness laced with anger. “Larry, did you tell her to do this?”

“No,” he answered, his voice low. He wasn’t being completely truthful. It only took one lifetime with him to know he was hiding something from me.

“But you knew about it, didn’t you?”

“I knew,” Larry said. “I thought you would tell me. But when you went to lunch with him and still didn’t tell me I’d say I had reason for concern. You have to admit, Mick, you have been acting weird. You haven’t been yourself in a long time.”

I laughed hysterically. “You don’t know how right you are. Since I was born, I haven’t been myself.”

I turned from him to Erica. “This doesn’t change anything. Tomorrow morning I still want you to leave.” I smiled at her. “Your brother and sisters can all leave with you.”

I was sure the money they were using to come to my home to scold me as though I was a child was financed no doubt by their father, who’d never heard the word no, let along uttered it.

I awoke that morning to more voices in the house than Mindy and Lars’ excited screams. I heard Derrick asking where I was. It was time for me to get up and put in an appearance.

Derrick and Shannon were standing only a couple of feet apart. They were talking and looked up quickly when I came into the room.

“Hi Mom,” Shannon almost whispered, glancing once at her big sister Erica, to see if her talking to me was permitted.

Derrick glanced at both of them, then came to me and hugged me. He pulled away from me, looked me over and whistled.

“Wow, Mom, you look good. You’ve lost weight. How much?” He angled his head for a better look, not giving me a chance to answer, before he commented on my hair. “You cut your hair too. I like it.”

“Didn’t you know, Derrick, that’s the first sign of a woman having an affair? She loses weight and gets a makeover.”

“What are the signs of a man having an affair, Erica?” I looked at my daughter. “If I were you, I’d worry that the first step could be when he doesn’t care that his wife and kids take off so frequently to visit her parents without him. I’d worry that maybe my husband was glad I left.”

My daughter’s face flushed a bright red as she huffed and stomped angrily away. I heard her dialing the phone. Larry was sitting in a chair in the family room. I hadn’t noticed him at first.

This time I wasn’t trying to goad Larry. I meant it. I was tired of the spineless act he pulled when our children were around. I wanted him to be the confident man he was in the courtroom.

“Mom, why don’t we go for a drive, just the two of us?”

I looked up at my son. Only then did I wish I had not spoken to Larry in such a manner. My son’s expression mirrored his father’s confusion and pain. God!! For a moment I wanted to die. In all the years of our marriage Larry and I had taken great pains to never speak to each other disrespectfully in front of the children. Actually, until my accident in now more than twenty-eight years we’d never spoken in disrespectful tones to each other. I didn’t like it. If only there was a way to make it stop without me having to completely give in I’d gladly take it.

I looked again at Derrick, my only son and the child with whom I had the closet connection. Erica had just re-entered the room, frowning. Derrick rolled his eyes at his sisters.

“Mom,” he said, “we didn’t come to condemn you. We only want to help. I want to help, Mom. Can we take a ride someplace?”

I think I knew then what I was going to do. I followed Derrick out to the car. Surely there had to be a better way to end a marriage.

The mother that had raised him would never do the things I had done. I saw a look come into his eyes. He wanted me to call Erica a liar, to say it hadn’t happened, so he could pretend that nothing was wrong.

I wished momentarily for him that I could. But the pain I was in was the result of years of pretense. I didn’t wish that on my son.

“It’s true,” I said at last.

“You met him in the parking lot of the grocery store?”