THE AFFAIR (9 page)

He knew that was the reason he’d never insisted on discussing their problem more fully. If it was said out in the open, she might stop loving him, stop touching him, not allow him to touch her.

No, for several years they’d both pretended that nothing was wrong. Who knew for sure? Maybe there wasn’t. Neither of them had ever been with anyone else. Maybe that was the way it was with all married couples.

In every other manner they were in synch. They laughed together and had fun. After several years their lovemaking improved. Mick even began to enjoy his touches.

He could tell when his wife began to enjoy making love with him. She’d pulled him to her and begun caressing his body, teasing him, telling him to make love to her, to let her make love to him.

It should have been enough. It was just that he’d never been able to rock her world as she rocked his. He didn’t just want her to enjoy making love with him, he wanted her pleasure to be so intense that she screamed out with it, calling his name as she came. He wanted that more than anything. No, that wasn’t true. More than anything he wanted his marriage to continue. He wanted his wife to continue loving him as she always had.

He thought of Viola, the woman Michelle had hit and the look on Michelle’s face after weeks of fighting. He’d put his foot down, demanding that she not go see the woman or get in touch with her in any manner. He was relieved when at last she’d acquiesced.

Larry took a slower sip of the drink in his hand. Had she really acquiesced? Her exact words had been,
“Do whatever the hell you want. You always do.”

He’d not thought about it at the time. He’d been too busy making sure that Michelle was protected, too happy to hear that she was going to listen to him, allow him to handle things. He’d been too busy to see how unhappy the decision made his wife.

He took another longer sip. She’d get over it. She had to. He thought of their latest argument. In the past eight months they’d fought more than they had their entire marriage. She was trying to hurt him deliberately, that much he knew. He just didn’t understand why.

How could she say she didn’t want kids? That would make her as bad as his own mother, and she was nothing like his mother. He remembered how much attention she’d paid to the kids, putting them in ballet and music lessons, baking cookies for them. She had been a wonderful mother.

She would have never taken their kids and just dumped them on the state, never bothering to look back. And regardless of what she’d said, he didn’t believe she would have ever aborted their child.

A stab of pain hit him in both temples with the force of a two ton truck. After their second baby Mick had cried during each pregnancy and begged him to allow her to have her tubes tied. He’d always said no. He wondered what would have happened if this had happened now, when a woman no longer needed their husband’s consent to do it.

He couldn’t believe she’d refused to take time off from work and keep the kids for Erica and Roy to have some time alone. Now he downed the drink and rang for another.

He definitely hadn’t believed she would send him to Arizona alone to care for two small children. He’d expected her to board the plane right until the moment the jet taxied down the runway. This was not the woman he loved. Michelle wouldn’t do this. But she had.

Larry polished off his drink, the last he would have. Getting drunk never solved anything. He laid his head back against the soft leather and groaned. There was an ache in his heart as well as his head. The last place he wanted to be at the moment was flying away from his wife. He needed to be home. He needed to make things right.

Lately she’d started having the dreams again, the ones of another man, someone she believed she’d loved and lost, and she’d begun talking nonsense about past lives and willing herself to die.

A shiver froze his heart. Once started, he seemed unable to stop the chill that had crept around his heart from enveloping him, turning him into that same frightened boy he’d been when his mother had told him she was finding him a new home.

His heart had pounded in fear as he’d tried to remember what bad thing he’d done to make his mother find him a new home. He’d begged and pleaded with his mother, promising to be good. None of the efforts of a five-year-old had mattered. She’d not found him a new home. She’d turned him over to the state.

Larry had endured it, at first helpless, as one after the other of the caregivers he was entrusted to abandoned him also. Then he’d learned to survive. He’d learned to be strong, to harden his heart. Mick’s love had been sudden and unexpected, the balm he’d needed to heal his heart and spirit.

Mick was his constant. She’d sworn to love him always. And until recently he’d never doubted that she always would. Now she was behaving oddly. He thought of the night more than two months ago when she had confessed to sleeping with another man. He’d laughed at her and she’d been insulted. She’d questioned whether he doubted another man would find her attractive.

He shouldn’t have laughed. He should have told her then and there that the sight of her inflamed his senses. He thought she knew that. He had never meant to hurt her feelings, but the thought of her touching a stranger, making love with him…It wasn’t possible.

His wife had taken years to get comfortable touching him. She’d been just as bad about him touching her. So he knew there was no way in hell she would allow a stranger to touch her.

Opening his eyes Larry looked around the cabin. Enough thinking about problems that didn’t exist. Mick was probably going through the change. He’d heard women behaved strangely during that time. They would weather it as they had everything in their lives. He forced a smile to his lips. Mick was not his mother. She would never desert him.

I left Chance’s home thinking of Larry, wondering what he was doing, wishing I had flown to Arizona with him. It seemed as if I’d tumbled headlong into a whirlwind. With shaking fingers I dialed the phone. I needed to talk to Larry. I wanted to tell him what had happened.

“Hello, Mother.”

Erica’s voice was cold and hard. Her use of Mother, instead of Mom, was her signal to me that she was angry. I smiled at the fury in my eldest child’s voice. If I had cared that my actions would upset her I would have her kids right now and would probably be downing a handful of pills from the migraine they invariably gave me. No, I had no time for her histrionics.

“Erica, let me speak to your father.” My voice was just as cold and dispassionate. I had given her twenty-three years of my life. I didn’t owe her more. I had done the mom thing until I was sick to death of it. The plays, the games, the sleep-overs, the trips, the park, the zoo, baking cookies, helping with homework until finally it was baby-sitting. And all this while working fulltime.

Yes, I had done it all. No wonder Larry thought of me as the perfect mother. I had played the part and kept my feelings buried deep inside, but now, now I wasn’t ready to give away the next part of my life caring for my children’s offspring.

I sagged against a chair and slid into it as I heard Larry’s voice on the other end of the phone.

“I decided to take some vacation time. I need you to come home.” There was silence, dead silence such as I’d never known. Then Larry’s voice talking to Erica.

I realized the silence on the phone had turned into a busy signal. I knew my husband had hung up the phone without telling me of his intentions. Sure, I’d heard him tell our daughter, but didn’t I count? I clicked the off button to stop the noise.

I was beginning to feel sorry for myself and part of me knew it was an excuse to run back to Chance, to experience him the way I wanted. I was dying of thirst and he was the long awaited drink of water I needed.

The cordless phone rang in my hand. The moment I clicked the button, Larry’s booming voice was screaming at me, something he never did.

This time his voice was so loud that I moved the phone away from my ear. “Hon, I know this sounds crazy and I can’t really explain it. All I can tell you is that I need you home. I can feel that I’m going to do something we’ll both regret if you’re not here to stop me. Please baby, come home now.”

“What are you talking about?”

I heard the momentary fear in his voice. He was probably thinking I was going to swallow a handful of pills or something else equally as innocent. If only that was what I was thinking.

“Mick, when did you take this vacation time?”

“That doesn’t matter.”

“Like hell it doesn’t. It matters. If you’re on vacation, the kids could be there with us right now. I would be home with you and we wouldn’t be having this absurd conversation.”

I heard the sound of the ocean in my head. I was screwing this up. I wanted to make him understand. I wanted to make it painless. Tears were streaming down my face. I couldn’t find the words to tell my husband the truth without making him want to commit me.

“I asked you a question, Mick. When did you take vacation?”

I ignored the question. To me that didn’t matter, not as much as trying to make Larry understand. “I touched a chair today, Larry. It was an antique, at least a hundred years old. I sat in it and I felt it envelope me. It was my chair.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about past lives.”

“Not that shit again!” he roared. “I warned you, Mick. No more. All you had to do was tell me anything else, you missed me, you loved me and I would have come home to you in a flash. But this…God…”

I heard the end of the profanity he muttered before he hung up on me. I wrapped my arms around my body and cried for the loss of innocence in my marriage. For sure we would never be the same.

Every nerve in my body tingled with awareness. I wanted Larry, but I needed Chance. I needed him to help me make sense of what was happening to me. My glance caught the recent picture of my husband smiling from the frame on the mantle. I loved him. With all my heart I loved him.

At two in the afternoon I made my way toward my bed, reaching to take my husband’s picture from the mantle. I curled up in bed with it and cried, begging God for strength.

Three days later I made a decision. I had not talked to Larry again. He’d not bothered to call me and I’d not called him.

What finally made up my mind were the dreams I had for three nights in a row. Vivid dreams of another lifetime. Chance was there with me, holding me. He didn’t wear the face he wore now and neither did I, but it was us. Of that I was sure. This time there was no blood, just the two of us laughing, loving, being happy. Again I saw myself sitting in my rocker, Chance staring up at me tenderly, only his name was Jeremy. “I’ll love you always, Dimitra,” he said. That was the name he’d called me that night in the hotel. I didn’t know if I’d made myself hear that name in my dream or if this was what it felt like, a memory, a long ago forgotten memory.

This time as I dialed the phone I knew the man on the other end would have a different response. He would be there whenever I needed him. In my dream he’d made a solemn vow that we would always be together, that death would only separate us for a moment.

Larry sat glaring at the phone, willing it to ring. He’d not spoken to Michelle in three days. He was afraid to call her, afraid to hear her tell him that she’d awakened after twenty-six years of loving him and realized she no longer did.

Damn. The whole episode was crazy. They’d never handled their problems this way. He missed her with every fiber of his being. Maybe that was the reason the kids were getting to him. He’d never seen it before, but they could be rather obnoxious. As much as he loved his grandchildren, he had to admit that.