War (23 page)

              Now, the cab has dropped me off at my new place in Beacon Hill. The doorman has said hello. The valet has nodded
his
head at me. And I’m on my way to punch my security code into the building…if I can make it there. One foot in front of the other. I look back at the cab and see Jon still in it, leaning against his door, his eyes closed. He’s just waiting for the cab to swing around to the other side of the street to let him out. He’s too drunk to try to cross it alone.

              And that’s when I see them.

              Or…is it them? I squint my eyes. Is it them? No. Can’t be. Are they walking into Jon’s condo building? Are they grabbing something from that nosy old security guy? What’s his name? Russell, or something. I squint my eyes more. What is he handing them? No, wait. It can’t be them.

              “Mr. Kyles?” my doorman says. “Everything alright?”

              “Uh…yeah,” I say to him. I continue to squint. Is that them? No. I’m drunk. That’s not them. That’s not Danielle, Winnie and Rena.

JACOB

“Thank you, Father, for meeting me. I know it’s late.”

“Yes, well when Sister Claire told me there was a Blair here wanting to confess his sins, I couldn’t resist.” I can’t see Father Harper’s face but I can tell he’s smiling.

After I left Matt in Chief’s office, I felt this overwhelming need to declare to myself, Winnie and our Higher Power, that I feel like shit. I may be a Blair, but I’m also Catholic, which means that come rain or shine, no matter who I was with or who I drank under the bar the night before, I’ll be in Sunday Mass with the rest of the Blairs at St. Bernadette Catholic Church. But for some reason, though I know Confession is confidential, I didn’t want to talk to my priest about Winnie and my marriage. I like my priest, don’t get me wrong, but I wanted to talk to someone that doesn’t feed me from the palm of his hand on Communion Sunday. Father Harper is Jasmine and Danielle’s priest. I come into contact with him whenever Nicky has a play or during summers when I pick Nicky and Ralphie up from
B
ible camp. Danielle, of course, goes to Mass on Sunday with the Blairs now at St. Bernadette, but the good thing about being Catholic is that Mass happens all week long, not just on Sundays. So she still attends Mass here, at her childhood church, on Thursdays. So Father Harper knows me. But I’m hoping he can be unbiased with what I have to confess.

“Thank you for meeting me in the Confession Box. I know people normally don’t do that these days,” I say to him as I lean back in the leather seat and close my eyes.

“Oh, we do it often here, for my older parishioners.”

“Yeah, the same with my church.”

Silence.

“Attorney Blair?”

“Jacob.”

“Take your time, Jacob.”

“Thank you.” I open my eyes and look around the small compartment I’m in. It’s dark with just a small faint glow of a light on the ceiling. Looks like something that would be inside of a car. Deep purple curtains are used to seal off the Confession Box, instead of doors. I can barely see the profile of Father Harper through the cutout opening that looks like a decorative iron gate. But both of us are staring straight ahead. I take a deep breath. Here goes. “I’ve slept with four different women since I’ve been married to my wife.” I take another deep breath.

“Alright…”

“The first time was three years into the marriage and it happened after I started thinking about my ex, the woman I broke up with for my wife. The first affair happened in Hilton Head and it lasted only for the duration of the trip. About a week. I gave the girl a wrong name and number and haven’t seen her since. I’m sure she knows who I am by now but she has no proof so she hasn’t said anything.”

“Go on.”

“I met the second woman at a military ball in DC. Both her father and my wife’s father are in the army. My wife’s father is a rank above that woman’s father. Anyway, she caught my attention because she reminded me of my ex.”

“The woman you had an affair with.”

“Yes. Prissy, always smiling…long black hair. At the dinner, she mentioned that she had friends in Boston. I told her the next time she came up to Boston, she should let me know. The next week she met me at a bar.”

“Here in Boston.”

“Right.”

“Did she know you were married?”

“She did.”

“Did she know your wife?”

“Yes.”

“Go on.”

I take another deep breath. “I, uh, slept with her for a few months. But it was nothing.”

“Nothing.”

“Just sex.”

“Then why do it? Was your wife not having sex with you?”

“I’ve never had an issue in that department with my wife.”

“Then why?”

“Because she reminded me of my first girlfriend. The girl I left for my wife.”

“Go on.”

“One day, this woman found my address and popped up at my place. I got her to leave before my wife noticed anything but it shook me up.”

“What did she want?”

“For me to leave my wife. By the time she came to my condo, she was starting to get obsessive. Calling me all day. Popping up at my office every week. So, I was trying to cut things off with her.”

“And she wasn’t happy with that.”

“No.”

“What did you do to make her believe that you would possibly leave your wife for her?”

“Nothing, Father. I would
never
leave my wife. I made no such promises to this girl. She and I never talked about a future together, it was just sex.”

“For you.”

Silence.

“Jacob?”

“Yes Father, for me.”

“Go on.”

“I called my father after this girl showed up at my place. My father called her father and next thing I know, I get a call telling me that she committed suicide.”

“Hmm. That must have been devastating.”

“It wasn’t.” There, I finally admitted it. I wasn’t sad when Jocelyn died.

“No?”

“I was nervous…but relieved. Don’t get me wrong, I never want to go through that again. The mental anguish was enough to drive me over the deep end. But I wasn’t devastated. I was…relieved. And nervous.”

“Why?”

“If my wife had found out, she would have left me and we had just had our son.”

“So
,
why were you nervous?”

“The woman left a suicide note and I was always nervous that I was mentioned in it.”

“Were you?”

“I don’t know. Her parents hid it before the police arrived but they did tell my father that she wrote one. They all just wanted the matter closed. Winnie’s father is the ranking officer of this girl’s father. So her father just wanted this to disappear.”

“Go on.”

“After that, I told myself that I’d never cheat on my wife again.”

“But you did.”

“I did.”

“Go on.”

“I met a girl at the bar and I slept with her the same night. She had long black hair and these dimples…she reminded me of my ex.”

“The one you left for your wife.”

“Right.”

“But afterwards she tried to blackmail me.”

“Did your wife find out?”

“No. I, uh, ended up…handling matters. But I’d rather not get into it.”

“Very well.”

“The fourth woman was my actual ex.”

“So, after having affairs with all of these other women who
reminded
you of your ex, you finally found the actual woman.”

“I did.”

“I’m listening.”

“I seduced her, in a way. It had been over a decade since I had been with her and I was looking forward to it. But about two weeks into the affair, she came to my condo when my wife was home.”

“Ah, just like the other woman. The one who took her own life.”

“Right.”

“What did you do?”

“Long story short, I decided that enough was enough. I had more than enough chances to get myself together. I had all these warnings and now I was just ready to move on with my life.”

“Without obsessing over the thought of your ex.”

“Yeah, I guess you can say I was obsessing over her. Father?”

“Yes.”

“The only way I can describe what I was doing is like this: cheating on my wife was like trying to rewind the hands of time. Trying to live out a life that’s already expired.”

“I need you to explain that.”

“Father, as a kid, did you have a favorite candy bar that they stopped selling?”

“Actually, I did. As a child in the 50’s, I liked Mallow Cups.”

“Ah, the ones with the marshmallow stuff inside.”

“That’s it.”

“You can’t find those just anywhere now-a-days.”

“Oh
,
no. You have to go to a specialty shop or happen to get lucky at a candy store. I think they may sell them at Cracker Barrel. Haven’t been there in a while. But yes, Mallow Cups.”

“Okay, so my ex was like a Mallow Cup. As a kid you really liked Mallow Cups but for some reason, as you grew up, you started to eat them less and less. You were on to another dessert: chocolate cake. It was sweeter, warmer, richer and more satisfying than Mallow Cups. But from time to time you thought about Mallow Cups and after not having them for so long, you don’t remember just
liking
them, now you remember
loving
them. You used to enjoy them during some of the most carefree moments of your life as a boy, and sooner or later, you begin to blend a great childhood and Mallow Cups together. You remember that life was so good as a child
because
of Mallow Cups. Sooner or later you don’t just remember
loving
Mallow Cups, you remember being
addicted
to them. Now you’ve got to find them. And so every time you happen to be out, you’re not particularly looking for Mallow Cups, but if you happen to see something that reminds you of them, you consider giving it a try. Then you find yourself buying a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup because they look like Mallow Cups on the outside. They come in a similar package. They look nearly identical inside their package. But when you bite into a Reese’s Cup…”

“It doesn’t taste anything like it.”

“Not at all. It’s not a Mallow Cup. That’s what I was doing with these women. Whenever I happened to come across someone who was comparable to my ex, I had to try her out. But the two were never comparable.

But then, Father, the scrip flips on you. One day, you’re out and you happen to come across some Mallow Cups. And you just
know
they’re going to be perfect because the adult in you remembers the boy in you loving them. So you buy it, bite into it, eat it and…yeah, it’s good. You like it. But it just doesn’t taste like you remembered. Maybe it was just nostalgia. But right now, you can firmly say that these Mallow Cups aren’t better than the chocolate cake that you grew to love. The chocolate cake is more satisfying. Do you get me Father?”

“Perfectly.” I close my eyes and finally take a long deep breath. There, everything’s out in the open. I can only just pray my mind won’t punish me for the rest of my life. “Jacob, do you love your wife?”

“I have never loved another woman like I love my wife. I can say that now, I couldn’t say that before.”

“Do you enjoy her company?”

“More than any woman I’ve been with.”

“Do you have enough humor, enjoyment and amusement in the marriage?”

“She and I can laugh together for hours.”

“Are you attracted to your wife?”

“After four kids and fifteen years, she’s still the pretty girl that I met outside of the movie theater on Tremont Street.”

“Then may I make a suggestion?”

“Yes, Father.”

“Keep your zipper closed.”

“Yes, Father.”

MARLA

              “Jon, I was worried sick!” I say to him as we get on the elevators. I had been riding up and down the elevator all night in our condo building, checking outside, seeing if Jon was there then going back to our condo, seeing if he was on the elevator going up as I was going down. I looked like a mad woman… Rusty told me so. Then about an hour ago, I headed to Roxbury and hunted every dive I know Jon loves. When I still didn’t find him, I headed to the jail to make sure he was released.