Acts of Contrition (22 page)

The nights that follow are quieter than normal. Tonight I slip into Sally’s room. She’s sprawled across her bed with her myth book on one side and a book of Bible stories on the other. Emily’s lying across the foot of her sister’s bed, flipping through a catalog. When I ask Sally what she’s up to, she tells me that she’s trying to find similarities between Greek myths and Bible stories. Never having considered such a parallel, I ask if she’s found any.

“A lot,” she says. “They both talk of floods, of wars, of power.”

“I guess that’s true,” I say. “Anything else?”

“Well,” she says. “Men fell—like, you know, in both—because of trickery, deceit, and temptation.”

“Oh, yeah,” I say, as my eyes well up with tears. “Be right back. I need to blow my nose.” Out of her room and into my bathroom, I make it just in time to cover my face to hush my bawling cries. I sit on the toilet and sob into my hands. The guilt of Tom’s being gone at my doing—at my trickery and deceit, because of temptation—makes me want to kill myself. I think of the pride and propriety of fatherhood, how men define themselves by what they create; how for Tom, losing his claim to Sally has robbed him of something he considered his. The elusiveness of fatherhood, how it requires a faith that’s not required of women, who witness their bellies swell and blossom into nine months of evidence.

My deceit robbed Tom of something that was his.

My trickery betrayed him.

He trusted that Sally was his. He trusted that I was true. Now our masks are off and we’re revealed as something different altogether. How does a man maintain his faith, his beliefs, his convictions, when the premises themselves are false?

After I wash my face, I return to Sally’s room, call the girls onto my lap, and though there are knees and elbows and too-long legs, we find a way to perfectly cluster together.

“I love you girls so much,” I say. “You have no idea how much I love you girls.”

“Mom,” Sally says. “We know.”

Then I go to check on the boys, who are nestled together watching
Toy Story
. At the sight of me, they stand on the bed, so instinctively it makes my heart lurch, and climb their way into my arms. They sing their “I Love Mommy” song, and because I can’t stand the thought of my gigantic bed without Tom, I carry the boys into our room and allow them to sleep next to me.

I worry the beads on my rosary, let my fingers slide down to the cross. I finally see how deep my betrayal goes. This isn’t just about us as a family, or Tom and me as a couple; I’ve rocked the foundation of Tom’s core belief system. I’ve forced him to question his faith.

When Tom returns home the following Friday, the boys leap into his arms and the girls coil around his waist. He stands there like a pillar, supporting each of them. The first time we make eye
contact it’s held for maybe a second, and I swear that I see the glimmer of a smile in his eyes, but then he looks away.

“Did you bring us anything?” Dom wants to know.

“Bring
you
anything,” Tom jokes. “Now why would I bring you anything?”

“Come on, Dad,” Danny says.

Tom unzips his computer bag. “Let’s see, I have shower caps for the girls and bars of soap for the boys.”

“Dad, really,” Sally says. “We know you’re joking.”

“Okay,” Tom says. “Let me look again.” This time he pulls out giant lollipops for the boys, inside each of which is a real scorpion. The boys ooh and aah, daring each other to eat his. And for the girls he pulls out little cardboard boxes, with silver-and-turquoise earrings inside.

“Thanks, Dad!” Sally and Emily cheer.

“What about for Mom?” Danny wants to know. “Did you bring her anything from Arizona?”

“Mommy always says not to spend money on her, so this time I listened,” Tom says. “You guys want to go play a game of H-O-R-S-E before dinner?”

The four children and Tom slip into their coats and then rush outside. In no time I hear the bouncing of the basketball, the jeers and cheers of the kids, the words of encouragement from Tom. And once again, I’m left inside the house, alone.

What once seemed unfathomable—a tangible divide between Tom and me—has now become our reality. It’s unnerving how quickly reality shifts, the pace at which we all adjust to new circumstances. Just weeks ago, we were a family, embarrassingly loving, demonstrative family members who crossed all boundaries of personal space to get closer to one another. We were once a family that crowded onto one sofa to watch a television
program even though there was ample seating elsewhere. We were leg drapers, arm wrap-arounders, food, drink, and joy sharers. Now there is a force field around Tom and me, a barrier cloaked in polite indifference. Who we were has been replaced by who we are—actors in a commercial, portraying a happy family.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Above All Things

THE DAYS ARE OBLIVIOUS TO
my crisis, and with perfect predictability they continue to pass. February and March push through, one cold front after another. Snow, then ice, then snow covering ice. It’s cold outside and it’s cold inside, the way Tom and I live alongside each other with no warmth. I walk through my days with the icy-cold shrapnel of my past pressing into my chest.

Tom has found a nifty loophole to being home. He spends each weekend in Virginia Beach with Patrick, who is now sober and back at work. With Tom’s help he’s opened a handyman business, offering services from cleaning gutters, painting, and roofing to building decks and sunrooms. He’s swamped with jobs and Tom has become his partner, helping him with the labor as well as managing the money aspects of the business.

When Tom started his routine of leaving for the weekends, the kids were intolerable, wailing for him to stay. But kids adapt and by the fourth weekend they were used to it, and they no longer pitch a fit when he leaves. When Tom returns and takes the kids to dinner at Friendly’s on a school night just for the hell of
it, they burst with excitement, as giddy as children of divorce who only see their dad every other Sunday. The scarcity of him has increased his value like that of a sought-after commodity.

Each time he returns home, I look for signs of forgiveness. But he continues to be the same: cold and distant and nowhere near forgiving me. He wakes up early, returns from work late. On Friday night he packs his bag for the weekend.

It’s Friday now and because Tom’s packing and I’m folding laundry, I offer him a stack of T-shirts from the load. He takes them without looking up.

“What are you and Patrick working on this weekend?” I ask.

“A deck,” Tom says, slapping the T-shirts into his duffel bag.

“How is Patrick?” I ask.

“Fine.”

“Kathy and Mia?”

“Fine.”

“Do you need anything else?” I ask, offering him a pair of jeans and socks.

“Whatever,” he says.

“Well, do you or don’t you?” I ask, balancing the jeans and socks in my hand.

“If you don’t feel like putting the laundry away, just give me my stuff.”

“Screw you,” I say under my breath.

“What?” he says.

“I said screw you. I was asking if you needed clean clothes, not trying to get out of my wifely responsibilities of putting laundry away.”

“My bad,” he says.

“So this is it?” I say. “This is our life. This is how it’s going to be. Forever!”

“Don’t know.”

“You know, Tom. It is customary for the punishment to fit the crime. Don’t you think you’re being a little cruel and unusual?”

“I don’t,” he says, zipping his duffel and leaving the room.

I race down to the basement. Tonight I won’t be there when Tom leaves our house, helping him disengage from the children. Let him peel the children off his own legs. Let him say good-bye to them. Let him close the door on their four beautiful, wide-eyed faces. I’m done helping him leave us.

In the basement I head into the back room that’s full of exercise equipment. In the corner hangs Tom’s punching bag from college. It’s heavy and as immovable as a side of beef—and daring me to give it my best shot. I assume a stance with my left foot forward and draw back my right arm, then make a fist, remembering how Tom once showed me, with my thumb on the outside, dummy, not the inside. I punch at the bag. It hurts like hell, the pain shooting all the way into my shoulder. I pull back my arm again. Ready, aim, fire. Again, again, again. I punch with my right hand, then my left. In seconds I’m hurting and dripping with sweat, but the pain is welcome, sharp and bracing like being smacked by a wave, not dull and aching like the incessant rub that’s left me raw. My knuckles are red and some of the skin is peeling off. I punch again, harder, harder. I want to see blood. I punch once more, fall against the wall, and spin with the room as I suck on my knuckles. I can’t decide if the throbbing hurts or feels good, my lines are now so blurred. I know that later it will hurt more. Everything always hurts more later.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

To Do Penance

ON ASH WEDNESDAY WE ENTER
Lent, a period that forgives darkened pasts and welcomes in a future of light. We sit for Mass and receive a smudge of dirt across our foreheads from last year’s burnt palms, to signify that we are all sinners; that we are repentant creatures. We participate in the Holy Eucharist and head into Lent with pure hearts. Only my heart is anything but pure. It’s burdened and dark and damaged and neglected. With each day that passes and Tom and I share a house but not our lives, I feel my heart grow even tighter, like a hand clenched in an arthritic fist.

My emotions open and scab over and reopen again, like wounds that cannot heal. I continue to ache for Tom’s pain, but I also feel like I’m worthy of forgiveness. Short of public humiliation or wearing a scarlet
A,
I feel that I’ve expressed a more than adequate level of sorrow. What I need now is to be absolved of my wrongdoing. What I need now is for Tom to stop beating me up every day with his creepy politeness and icy distance and offhanded jabs.
If God can forgive me, then why can’t you?
I want
to scream at Tom. My insides are so bruised, I’m surprised my skin doesn’t shine purple.

I wake up every morning, like the littlest kid in the schoolyard, defenses up, feet dancing, dukes flying. Each day I’m ready to say, “Enough!” I’m ready to call Tom out, insist on a little respect, demand a trace of dignity, for God’s sake.

But then I see Tom, and though he’s still flaming mad, he’s also hurt, a hurt that has built a home in his eyes. I see it, even when he’s playing with the kids. That’s the only time I get to look at him these days. When he doesn’t know that I’m watching. And when I do—
see him
—all my toughness turns to fluff, and I’m gooey and sorry and reduced once again.

When we at last celebrate Easter, a calm that is closer to apathy spreads through me the way tiny drops of water seek thirsty roots. I continue to be sorry to my bones, but I can’t fall on my sword another day. I need a break from hurting.

The days continue to pass and the kids are busy in school. Sally is reading Anne Frank and writing a paper of her own for her composition class. She’s chosen to write about Daisy, our dog, and Sally’s fear that she’ll someday die. I speak briefly with her teacher, who assures me that this is typical, that this is the age when children start pondering the death of family members, pets. It’s the age when children learn that sad and bad things can happen: sickness, the loss of a parent’s job, a move to another school. Her teacher tells me, statistically speaking, that this is the age of divorce. Many parents make it to the ten-, twelve-year mark and then call it quits. In the blink of an eye, children go from a stable two-parent family to splitting time with Mom in
one place, Dad in another, often a stepparent not far behind. Unfortunately, her teacher tells me, it’s the end of an innocence in many regards.