Acts of Contrition (23 page)

I listen, nod, and process the notion that Tom and I seem quite likely, or almost certain, to contribute to this sad statistic, our solid family tree splintering into two, the strength we’ve found in numbers gone forever.

To think that Sally is growing up, that she has dipped not just a toe but an entire foot in the waters of a mature life. To think that she comprehends, on some level, that a girl like Anne Frank had feared for her life, that a holocaust was reality. I don’t want Sally to have these thoughts. I don’t want her to worry about sad and bad things. I don’t want her to know that six million innocent people were killed just because of who they were. I don’t want her to know that terrorists are capable of flying planes into our skyscrapers, that creeps lurk behind corners, that her mother’s indiscretion could rob her of her two-parent childhood. I want her childhood to be pure and perfect. I want her to have 100 percent confidence that her parents will always be here and her grandparents’ door will always be open, with them welcoming her in with the smell of sauce on the stove and bread in the oven.

But then I think, well maybe a little dose of reality is a good thing, because clearly Sally’s life won’t always be cannoli at Nana’s and a game of H-O-R-S-E with Dad. Surely the time will come when something bad will happen: a friend will get hurt, a family member will be stricken with cancer, her dog Daisy will die. Surely the time will come when she will learn a truth that will hit her so hard it will flip her inside out. My thoughts blur and render—back and forth—at the reality of this. And then a thought
I’ve never wholly allowed myself to consider bubbles to the surface: Sally might someday learn the truth about Landon James.

Emily has said good-bye to the ancient history of the Greeks and Romans, stepping eagerly into the Middle Ages, an era that appeals to her with its lords and ladies and colorfully dressed minstrels. She’s learning about the rise of Christianity, the role the Church played in people’s lives, providing for them in the way the city-state no longer could. One night she’s regaling us with the characteristics of a castle, how there are layers and layers of defense: the moat, the stone, the tower, the keep. “Why do you think they needed so much protection?” she asks. Sally answers before Tom or I have a chance to sugarcoat a response. “If you hold the keys to the kingdom, you’re a target,” she says flatly, drawing a finger across her neck in a cutthroat gesture. “People want what others have, and they’re willing to fight for it.”

My girls, and their capacity to learn, floor me. I marvel at their ability to memorize lengthy poems by Longfellow and Kipling, just as easily as they can reduce fractions and measure angles. I don’t remember learning, when I was in the third and fourth grades, what they’re learning. I remember practicing swearwords in the bathroom with my friends, talking about boys, and holding a stick to my mouth, pretending to smoke a cigarette like bad Sandy in
Grease
. My girls are so mature, so
smart;
their capacity to take in so much hits me hard. The pride I feel for their accomplishments is excessive, like water boiling.

And the little guys. They’re learning to hold their pencils correctly, write in giant block letters, identify the days of the week, the months, the seasons. They proclaim their jobs each day. “I was the weatherman!” or “I was the book selector!” I adore that they’re small, and it pains me in a certain way that they long to be big like their sisters. I want to tell them to slow down. “Just wait!”
I want to holler. “You’ll be there soon enough.” But the way they emulate their older siblings is too adorable to interrupt.

“We need to do our homework, too,” the boys will say, pulling out their workbooks and crayons, sliding their chairs next to their sisters, basking in their oldness.

Then I do the math. When the boys are ten years old—the age Sally is now—the girls will be fifteen and sixteen. Then I want to cry, thinking that by the time the boys are oohing and aahing over Roman torture and gladiators being thrown into the ring with lions, my baby girls will be begging their father to teach them to drive, rolling their eyes at me every time I say no, and confiding in their girlfriends their darkest secrets. A few years later, they’ll be on their way to a college dorm room, dragging with them an overstuffed duffel and a hot pot. The thought that Tom and I and our children might weather these years separately—two homes, joint custody—makes me ache.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Restore Sanity

TOM

I NOW UNDERSTAND THE APPEAL
of alcohol. It shouldn’t be a revelation, but it is, as I’ve always done my best to keep my distance. If you drink enough of it, it dulls the pain to a manageable level. If you drink more than enough of it, it makes the pain go away altogether. For two months now I’ve been driving down to Virginia Beach on the weekends. Patrick and I work all day Saturday and Sunday, cleaning gutters, building additions, finishing basements. By six o’clock my back feels like metal rods have rusted inside it, my feet throb, and my arms hang like heavy strips of wet blanket, but there’s something intensely satisfying in seeing progress. Something measurable.

Patrick and I are getting along great. We’ve switched roles. He’s taking care of me for once. He’s strong and sober and back together with his family, and I’m the brother who crashes on his sofa. Most nights, after Patrick and I have cleaned up from our
day’s work, Kathy cooks a nice dinner and the four of us sit on the back porch, eating, drinking iced tea. It’s wild seeing Patrick so put together, taking care of his family. Mia cracks me up. She squeals and giggles when I tickle her tummy, reminding me so much of the little guys right now, but also of Sally and Em when they were five years old. God, it’s like it was yesterday. Walking them to school on their first days of kindergarten. Mia makes me ache for my kids, but being away for the weekends is the only salvation I have.

After dinner I usually tell Patrick and Kathy that I’m going for a walk. Patrick offers to come, and I always say no,
spend some time with your family
. The fact that I’m gone for hours isn’t exactly crafty on my part. Patrick must know that I’ve gone for a drink. I never say so, and feel guilty as hell that I do it, when he’s trying so hard to stay sober. But hell, this is my time of need, and if I can’t get a drink or two every night, the crappiness of the situation will bury me.

Each night I head in the same direction. Straight down the boardwalk to Sandy’s Bar, a dark dive with pool tables and a jukebox.

There’s a bartender there named Chloe. She wears tight, cutoff jeans and a halter top. One time I asked her if she grew up around here, and she took it as an invitation to tell me her life story. She’s never been married. She’s a single mom of a five-year-old daughter. The father of her child hit the road at the sight of the first ultrasound. He came back once, Chloe told me, held Ava—their child—and then shook his head, saying that fatherhood wasn’t for him. In high school Chloe wanted to be an artist. Sometimes she draws sketches of the bar patrons on the back of cocktail napkins and gives them to the guys like a parting gift.

Chloe doesn’t know a thing about me. It’s almost like she senses that it’s better not to ask. The way she rambles on about her life is exactly what I want, exactly what I need. By any standard she’s had a tough life, yet she’s always smiling, always bubbly and cheerful, like she’s just grateful to have made it this far.

By the time I get to Sandy’s tonight, Chloe’s outside, pulling the door closed with a heavy thud.

“Closing up already?”

“You’d never believe! Our water went out,” she says. “We had no choice but to close. They promised we’ll be set by tomorrow.”

“You have the night off then?”

She looks at me with a sidelong glance, and I realize what I said could be misconstrued. “I do!” she says cheerfully.

“Well, have a good night,” I say. “See you tomorrow.”

“Yes, definitely!” she says. “If they deliver the water, anyway.”

“It’ll be fine,” I say, smiling. “See you.” I start to walk away.

“Hey, Tom!” she says. “What are you going to do now? Hit another bar?”

I freeze, rooted in my footsteps. I don’t know what to say. Is she asking me to do something? Go somewhere? “I guess,” I say.

“Just curious,” she says with a wave.

“What are you up to on your big night off?”

“I haven’t even
thought
about it,” she says. “I’m never off this time of night.” She looks out at the ocean, at the sunset. “God, I’m cooped up in that dreary bar every night, and just look at the sunset. I can’t believe what I’m missing.”

Her cheerful expression shifts a bit, like she really gets it: the regret in missing a sunset every night.

“Do you…want to go down on the beach? Watch the sun set?” I’m Tom, married Tom—husband, father, and provider—Mr. Responsible. I don’t typically ask twenty-five-year-old
bartenders to watch the sunset. I’m slightly exhilarated, but mostly I feel like a creep, unable to shake the fact that this girl was once Sally’s age.

“I’d love to,” she sings. “Let’s go!”

We walk down the boardwalk for a while until we reach an entrance onto the sand. She pulls off her sequined flip-flops but I keep my work boots on. It’s only April, but it’s unusually warm, though not warm enough for a dip in the ocean, so I’m taken by surprise when Chloe starts to run toward the shore. In no time she’s up to her waist, her saturated cutoffs turned a dark indigo blue. Then she dives into a wave, comes up, flips back her wispy blond hair, and adjusts her tiny halter, which is clinging happily to her breasts.

A minute later she’s standing next to me. “That was awesome!” She shakes her head and I get a sprinkling of her wet hair across my face.

“What are you going to do now?” I ask, because I’m a dad and I’m responsible and I’m looking at this young woman who is now in wet clothes.

“Enjoy the sunset!” she says with a flourish, missing my point altogether.

“You’re wet,” I say, and wonder why the hell I care about her being wet if she doesn’t.

“I’m good,” she says flippantly, lying flat on her back in the sand with her arms anchored behind her head.

Feeling odd standing over her, I take a seat beside her. All I can think about is the sand that will be stuck to her when she stands up. Sally does that all the time—emerges from the ocean and then plops on the sand. When she gets up we call her a cinnamon doughnut.

A while later Chloe claims to be dying for a drink, so she gets up and dusts herself off, though it’s a futile attempt, and then we walk to Bart’s, another local dive. She goes to talk to the bartender, whom she clearly seems to know. He hands her a Bart’s T-shirt, which she puts on over her wet and sandy halter. Then she shimmies the halter down until it puddles at her ankles.

She sees me watching her. When she pulls the halter from the ground, she twists her body and raises her arms above her head with a theatric “Ta-da!”

“Very talented,” I say.

The bartender shrugs off his leather jacket and gives that to Chloe, too. I’m guessing they went to high school together—maybe as recently as a few years ago. We order beers and a plate of nachos. On the back of the paper menu, Chloe sketches me with a pencil. The likeness is striking. Though I feel younger at the beach, I clearly don’t look it, as Chloe has captured my forty-year-old mug perfectly with lines meandering around my eyes, a map of dead-end roads framing my mouth. I look rugged, which is how I feel most days when I’m working with Patrick hoisting two-by-fours. But my eyes look sad and I wonder how she’s managed that with only a piece of graphite.

She’s a talented artist, and I get a twinge of sadness in my chest that she’s tending bar when she possibly could have done something different with her life. I stop short of suggesting that she sign up for classes at the community college. It’s none of my business.
She’s
none of my business.

A few beers later, we end up throwing darts and shooting pool.

Somehow we manage to drink ten beers between the two of us. Somehow Chloe ends up in my car, claiming she needs a ride
home. Somehow Chloe explains she doesn’t have to pick up her daughter from her mother’s tonight. Somehow I end up in Chloe’s apartment, on her couch, with another beer in my hand.

Chloe walks around the apartment, flipping on some lights, switching off others. She turns on some music, picks up some of her kid’s toys, and throws them into a basket. Then she stands directly in front of me and does a little twirl, as if she’s announcing herself. Almost in slow motion, she shimmies her still-wet cutoff shorts off her tight twenty-five-year-old body. I watch her, entranced, my heartbeat suddenly loud in my ears.

Then she slips down her panties, which are tiny little strings, and I swallow hard, pushing the endless questions and images from my head.
Enjoy this,
I tell myself. Don’t worry that she’s a good fifteen years younger than you. Don’t worry that her little undies are smaller than your daughters’. Don’t—
don’t
—think about Mary, because she doesn’t deserve to be thought about. She betrayed you and lied to you, over and over. Don’t think about Mary.

Chloe shifts her hips, putting on a show, and then crisscrosses her hands across her Bart’s T-shirt, grabs it from the bottom, and lifts it over her head. There, standing in front of me, is twenty-five-year-old Chloe—hot, tight, tanned, young—exhibiting herself for my benefit.

Her eyes slip down from mine and then back up, lit by a new kind of smile. Decisions have been made by at least parts of me. Heart hammering, I swallow hard, seek to find some dim, functioning corner of my cerebral cortex. I’m at a hell of a crossroads. This moment will define who I am for the rest of my life. Will I continue on as Tom—Mr. Responsible, Mr. Do-the-Right-Thing—or will I become
that guy
? Or am I already that guy? Is that who Mary has made me? Hell, maybe I’ve always
been him, and now he’s just been freed to stand up and take his due. That can’t be…but, maybe.

Then I do think of Mary, how the month before we were married, she was at a similar crossroads. She was alone with her ex-boyfriend and, rather than doing the right thing, she did the wrong thing.