Acts of Contrition (11 page)

“Take a breath,” she said. “No one’s perfect.”

“He is, Ang. Seriously, I could die.”

The next day I woke up early and showered because I didn’t want to miss hearing the phone when Landon called. By noon the phone still hadn’t rung. By midnight I had checked for a dial tone umpteen times, and still no call. At first I honestly couldn’t believe it. And then I did. Two more days passed—on campus, in class, at home—and I barely managed to cut through the thick fog of my days. “Are you okay, Mary?” friends asked. I nodded but couldn’t speak. It was happening again. Landon had reeled me in and then let me go. How could it feel so right to be with him and then this? Angie called, almost on the hour. “It’s better to know now, Mare, what kind of guy you’re dealing with.”

“Maybe something happened,” I said, excusing his abominable behavior, giving him the benefit of the doubt that perhaps he was in a car crash, or suddenly struck mute.

Angie only sighed.

It wasn’t until the fourth day that Landon called. “Hey, you,” he said. “Wow, what a busy week. Been thinking about you, though. Are you free this Saturday night?”

The previous four days had been torturous. Physically, I suffered—nausea, fatigue, insomnia. Mentally, I shrunk—my self-worth boiled down and scorched. I had rehearsed what I would say to him a thousand times, “Go to hell!” being at the top of my list. Yet when I heard his voice, the heroin rush charged every atom of my being, and I bargained that maybe a busy week excused his behavior. I was desperate to see him again. I was desperate for another hit to take the edge off. “Sure,” I said. “Why not?”

CHAPTER NINE

Deserving of Love

IT’S BEEN NEARLY A MONTH
since my conversation with Landon about the photo and I’ve been saying a novena every night. Tom’s busy at work and, while the kids are intuitive, they’re also blessedly self-centered. They don’t seem to notice that I’m preoccupied, clumsy, and accident-prone. They don’t seem to notice that my head is dizzy with thought. They don’t complain when I burn the French toast, or drop a plate, or allow them a soda for dinner instead of milk. My sister Angie is the only one who questions me. “You’re acting
weird,
Mare.”

So far the threatening photo of Landon and me hasn’t shown up. Each day I flip the channels between Fox, CNN, and the local news. I search Landon James on my laptop for new stories. I read blogs, listen to radio commentaries. The photo hasn’t surfaced. But still, I feel sick. What if. What if the photo does show up and I have to explain to Tom what I was doing in DC that day with Landon? Tom doesn’t deserve to be hurt by this.

Time passes, though, and buffs my worry until it’s no longer sharp. Each day it slips a little further from my thoughts. A sliver burrowed under my skin.

The rain starts to fall sometime before dinner on the night before Thanksgiving. Just as I’m spooning pot roast over egg noodles, an enormous clap of thunder sets the sky into a torrential pour. The girls run to the window to see the black clouds racing in, shrouding the last patches of struggling daylight.

“Get back from the windows,” Tom says, and the girls leap onto the sofa, huddled together, loving every minute of the brewing thunderstorm, with all of the tumult of a Greek myth, Zeus throwing a tantrum. Meanwhile the boys huddle around my legs, koala bears clipped to a tree.

Tom clicks on the television and a warning for our county is flashing across the screen.
DO NOT LEAVE YOUR HOUSE UNLESS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY
, it warns. The newscaster is using the terms “mini-tornado” and “microburst” to describe the impending storm. An unreasonable frustration swirls in me like the weather outside: Mother Nature is very inconveniently ruining our Thanksgiving plans. If the storm keeps up, my sisters will never make it. As if she were reading my mind, the phone rings and it’s Angela.

“J. C., Mare. If you didn’t want us to come, you could have just said so.”

“I know,” I whine. “This sucks. I was really looking forward to seeing everyone.”

“I’m sure it’ll be fine by tomorrow.”

“Maybe,” I say, not so sure. “They’re talking about downed power lines and trees on the roads.”

“Don’t stress. We’ll talk in the morning.”

“Okay, I’ll keep positive thoughts.”

“Screw that,” Angela says. “Say a Hail Mary. For the storm…and for whatever else is bugging you.”

“I have been,” I say.

“Saying Hail Marys?”

“A lot of them,” I admit.

“For the storm? Or for what’s bugging you?”

“The storm just started,” I say, hanging up before I reveal too much. So long as it’s not said, perhaps it isn’t real. As much as I’d like to tell Angie about the photo, about Landon, I can’t, because by now I’m certain of one thing: The truth is owed to Tom, no one else.

The rain pounds throughout the night. Tom and I lie in bed and listen to the
ting-ting-ting
on the rooftop as the wind gusts swoosh by the windows. I get up to check the boys, who are sleeping together in Danny’s bed, the one that isn’t near the window. Emily, too, is sleeping with Sally, whose bed is squished into a corner and draped with a canopy. Back in bed, I snuggle up to Tom, curling around his muscular arm. I bury my face into it and inhale his scent. “Want to make out?” I say, kissing his shoulder.

“I always want to make out,” he says, rolling into me and wrapping his arms around my back.

“It’s the flannel, isn’t it?” I say. “This nightgown turns you on.”

“A warm body turns me on,” he says, yanking at my undies.

By the time I open my eyes to see the morning light sneaking through the bottom slats of miniblinds, I already have two kids in my bed. The twins are curled into each other like two sides of
a butterfly, and Tom is splayed out on his stomach with his arm covering them like a speed bump. I slip out of bed and look out the window. A beautiful sunny morning, birds are chirping, the sky is resplendent, but the aftermath from the storm looks like Armageddon blew through. There are branches scattered across the driveway, entire trees uprooted across the lawn. It looks as if a giant has come and picked up our neighborhood in its meaty hand and shaken it like a snow globe.

“Tom,” I say. “Tommy, wake up. This is nuts.”

Tom yawns and stretches and gets out of bed, joining me at the window. “Good God,” he says. And then, “Chain saw.”

“What about Thanksgiving?”

“We’re going to have a great Thanksgiving,” Tom says, kissing me smack on the mouth before heading to the bathroom. “But first I’m going to chop up some trees.”

Down in the kitchen, I crack a dozen eggs with the phone tucked between my ear and my neck. First I call my mother.

“Ma,” I say. “Have you seen it outside? It’s like a bomb went off.”

“Dad’s already outside picking up sticks. We lost one big tree. The one on the side of the house.”

“Did it hit the house?” I ask while whisking the eggs, worried that it’ll cost them a bundle, money they don’t have to spare.

“No, thank the Lord.”

“Are you still coming over today?”

“Of course, honey. Early afternoon. Is that okay?”

“Great,” I say. “Have you talked to anyone else?” I go to the refrigerator for a splash of milk and a handful of shredded cheese for the eggs.

“Not yet, you want me to?”

“I’ll call them now.”

“Call me back,” she says.

I pour the eggs into the largest skillet and then dial Angela. Angie lives in Alexandria with her husband, Kevin, and two daughters, Shannon and Kelly, whom my girls worship. They’re ages thirteen and fifteen, all one hundred fifty pounds of them—
combined
—decked out in their skinny jeans and hooded sweatshirts, glow-in-the-dark braces, and too much product in their hair. You’d never know they wore St. Mary’s plaid jumpers and loafers most of the week.

“We’ll be there,” she says. “It’s just a matter of when. Kevin is helping some of the neighbor guys. A pretty big tree came down in the middle of the cul-de-sac. Right now they’re trying to wrap a chain around it so they can pull it out further. They’ll be chopping it up for a while.”

“Okay,” I say, trying not to sound insensitive, but I want to know what time everyone will be here so I know when to put the turkey in. “When’s your best guess?”

“Early afternoon?” Angie says. “Is that okay?”

“Yeah, okay,” I say. “Let’s plan on eating at four.” I slide a double helping of scrambled eggs onto Sally’s plate, a reasonable helping for Emily and Dom, and barely a tablespoon for Danny, my child who barely eats. Set reasonable expectations; can’t expect him to clean his plate if there’s too much food.

By the time I’ve poured milk for the kids, Sally has finished her plate of eggs.

“Did you even
chew
?”

Sally shrugs. “They’re
eggs
. Can I go out with Dad?” she asks eagerly, wiping her mouth with her sleeve. She loves helping Tom in the yard, especially when power tools are involved.

The others are still waiting for their eggs to cool down.

“Don’t you dare go near that chain saw!”

“Like I would,” she says.

Next I call Teresa, who is four years older than me and has two boys, Matthew and Luke, who are a few years older than the twins. She lives in the country in Maryland, homeschools her children, and drags them to morning Mass seven days a week. Teresa is unwavering in her devotion to the church. Behind her back, Angie and I refer to her as “Salt of the earth” because she’s so
good.
Teresa has x-ray eyes, as if her chosen-one status has given her a greater ability to see inside each person’s truth. Once—when I was in law school and my vocabulary was plump with legal terms—I leveled her in a debate. She looked at me with her penetrating eyes and said, “You think you’re so smart, Mare. You think you’re clever, but really you’re just sneaky.”

“That’s
mean,
” I insisted. “I’m not sneaky. I’m no mystery. What you see is what you get.” I can still hear the defensiveness in my voice and see the smirk on my sister’s face as she said, “Yeah, right,” like it was so obvious to her that I had the potential to lie under oath, if the price were right.

When I talk to her this morning, she hems and haws. “I don’t know, Mare. It might be better to stay put.”

“Wimp! Get your ass over here.” I hardly ever swear, but for some reason, when I’m talking to Teresa, the words flow right out, like I’m trying to shock her for sport.

“We have some parishioners who are homebound and I think I’d better check in on them, bring them a plate, just in case their relatives can’t make it to them.”

“Isn’t there anyone else who can look in on them?”

“Mare,” Teresa says in her disapproving tone, as if I have just suggested leaving children in a burning building. “What if it was Mom or Dad left alone on Thanksgiving? Nothing to eat. No heat.”

“You’re right,” I grumble. “St. Teresa. You’re a good person,” I say, but selfishly wish Teresa could put her family first for just one day out of the year.

Next I talk to my oldest sister, Martina, who is ten years older than me and who was married and pregnant by the time I was in the fifth grade. Her two kids are grown and in college. She started young and never made it to college like Angela, Teresa, and me, but now her kids are independent while we’re still raising ours. Sacrifices and trade-offs, that’s how it goes. Last time I talked to her, she mentioned going back to school to get her nursing license. She’d make a great nurse. She was the one who taught me and my other sisters how to take care of our babies, how to get them latched on to nurse, how to settle the barking coughs of croup, how to aspirate snot from a screaming baby’s nose.

“So, really?” I say. “You’re not coming?”

“We’ll see,” she promises. “Let me check in with the kids and I’ll get back to you.” Martina’s oldest, Kayla, is studying at the University of Virginia, her second oldest, Maria, is at the University of Maryland, and her baby is taking a year off, working at the National Aquarium.

Finally I sit down at the counter with the boys, a cup of coffee in hand.

“Happy Turkey Day,” I say to them.

“Gobble, gobble,” Dom replies.

“Hey, champs,” I say. “What did the turkey say at Thanksgiving dinner?”

“What?”

“I’m stuffed!” I exclaim. “Get it—stuffed?”

“I don’t get it,” Danny says.

“You stuff a turkey on Thanksgiving,” I say. “You put stuffing—you know, dressing—inside of it.”

“Inside of it where?” Dom asks.

“In its tummy?” Danny says.

“Well…not really. Never mind! You guys want to help Dad pick up sticks?”

“He said he’d give us a penny a stick!”

“Sounds like a good deal,” I say. “Go to the bathroom, and put on your fleeces and boots.”

Once the boys are outside, I’m left with Emily, who is still at the counter flipping through a Pottery Barn catalog, commenting on what’s gorgeous and what’s dreadful, sipping her hot cocoa like the queen of England.

I open the refrigerator and start pulling out ingredients for the side dishes. Once I have what I need, I begin cubing the sourdough for the dressing. I chop the onions, celery, and sage, sauté in stainless steel with a chunk of butter, then deglaze with white wine. As I pour the mixture over the bread, I’m already thinking about a leftover turkey sandwich tomorrow, stuffed with dressing and cranberry sauce. Once I clear the kids’ dishes, I start in on the butternut squash, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole. I’ll leave the gravy for Mom. She has a magical way of scraping brown bits off the bottom of the roaster with a sprinkling of flour and a half bottle of red wine.