Acts of Contrition (25 page)

“We’ve been dating for exactly a year. I guess you didn’t have it marked on your day planner.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I guess I’m not the kind of guy who would think to do that.”

I looked at him. “What are we doing? Seriously, Landon. Don’t you think this is weird? I mean, here we are, we see each
other a couple of times a week. I end up in your bed every Saturday night. What’s going on here?”

“What do you want me to say?”

“I want you to tell me how you feel,” I said.
I want you to say that you love me,
I thought. I want you to say that you see us together, fulfilling each other’s dreams. I want to promise to help you become whatever you want and I want you to promise to build a life with me with a houseful of babies.

“I don’t even know what you feel for me,” I said. “If you care for me. I mean, you never say
anything
.”

Landon’s body had stiffened. His chest now felt more like a rock than a cushion. I could feel his shoulders inching toward his ears. I rolled farther from him, and onto my pillow, staring at the ceiling.

“I’m not an emotional person,” he said. “Emphatically not.”

Emphatically not.
Like he was writing his thesis, like he was addressing a courtroom, like he had a thesaurus under his pillow.

“I get that,” I said. “But you’ve got to give me
something
.”

I lay there, waiting for him to toss out something trite and meaningless to appease me. An “of course I like you” or “I’m having a lot of fun” or “you’re a really nice person.” Feed me a line! Tell me a lie! Say something that will keep me on the hook a little longer, because I really don’t want this to end, but I really don’t want to feel foolish for another day either.

“My father left, my mother checked out, and I’ve been on my own since I was a kid. I just don’t know if I love you,” he said, looking at me briefly and then back at the ceiling. “How would I know? How does
anyone
know for sure?”

His admission left me halted. At that moment, all I wanted to do was to love him; to love him so fiercely that I’d heal his entire childhood, that I’d restore what was taken from him.

“I’m serious. How do you make a case for love?” Landon went on. “I mean, where’s the empirical data?”

“There is none,” I said. “It’s a leap of faith.”

“I’m short on faith.”

“I have it in abundance.”

Landon and I lay side by side, looking up at the ceiling, considering. Perhaps this—a small admission on his part, that love for me was even possible—was the first layer peeling back. If I were able to continue peeling back more and more layers, maybe this relationship could take root. Maybe.

“Try?” I said, placing my hand on his chest, sneaking a glance at his eyes, which looked nervous and worried. “
Try
to love me.” I hoped my plea to him to love me would sound passionate yet steady, as if I—the one endowed with a keen ability to love—had wisdom to impart to him, the fledgling. But even to my ears it sounded closer to begging.

“I don’t know if I’m ready.”

“I know I love you,” I said. “And I’m willing to take the chance if you are. Just try, and if it doesn’t work out, we’ll survive,
I’ll
survive. I’d rather mend a broken heart than go on like we’re doing.”

A thick fog of silence descended on us, and we lay there sipping for air, for fear that if we moved or spoke we might choke. Finally I closed my eyes and recited Hail Marys. Landon must have taken me for sleeping, because a while later he rolled into me and brushed the hair out of my face and whispered, “I do love you, Mary. I love you so much.” I feigned a noisy exhale and kept my eyes shut, because the dissonance of the moment had me in a stranglehold. Without knowing, I knew that Landon would retract his statement, that he’d take back what he had given, because for him, it was asking too much.

When I woke up in the morning, Landon was already in the shower. I went to the kitchen and poured a bowl of Cheerios just as he was walking out of the steamy bathroom.

“Good morning,” he said, his voice as formal as that of a lawyer addressing a courtroom.

“Hi,” I said, taking a bite of cereal.

“I’ve got an early meeting,” he said. “Take your time. Just pull the door locked when you leave.” Five minutes later he was dressed in his suit and tie, his hair still wet, leaving little droplets on his shoulder. I stepped in front of him and reached up to kiss him, but he turned his cheek. “We’ll talk later,” he said, and was out the door.

Before I let myself out, I placed the wrapped box of cuff links on his dresser.

Five days went by without my hearing from Landon. Five days of bone-aching, heart-wrenching pain. He’d done it again; he’d killed me again.

On the sixth day, he sat in front of me in my apartment.

“First of all,” he said, “I want to say—for the record—I
knew
. I knew it was our…our, you know,
anniversary
.”

“You did?”

“I did,” he said. “I bought you a necklace.” He dipped his hand into his coat pocket and pulled out a box, handed it to me. Inside was a heart-shaped locket on a gold chain. “I wanted to give it to you. I wanted to take you to dinner at Angelo’s.”

“But you didn’t.”

“I froze,” he said. “That day, all day long, I thought I was having a heart attack. I couldn’t breathe. I thought about canceling, but I thought that would be worse. So I just acted like a jerk. Like I hadn’t remembered.”

“What about now?”

Landon walked to the window, pressed his forehead against it. When he turned and looked at me, his face was composed in perfect lawyer fashion. “I can’t do it,” he said. “I can’t be in the type of relationship you want to be in. I’m not ready for commitment, marriage, children. I know that’s what you want, but I can’t.”

“I see,” I said, sitting down and cupping my face with my hands. “Then why have you been dating me for a year? What did you think was going to happen?”

“I thought it would end. Like every other relationship in my life. I never considered that we’d still be together.”

I looked up at him. “But we are.”

“Why does everything have to
lead
to something more?” Striking a cooler tone now, turning toward the window again. “Why can’t two people just enjoy each other’s company?”

Because Saturday night dates had run their course, that’s why! Because I had bigger plans for myself. And while they didn’t include appearing on
Larry King Live
, or having the title Congresswoman in front of my name, they did include marriage and babies—lots of babies—and birthdays and anniversaries, and milestones and traditions.

“Why does everything have to lead to something?” I croaked. “You’ve got your entire political career planned for the next twenty years. You already have slogans for your campaigns! You’re the one with a ten-year plan, aren’t you?”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “You know how much I enjoy being with you.”

I wiped my eyes and reached for a tissue. “Is it so wrong to want to connect with someone?”

Landon just shrugged, as if he didn’t know the answer to the question but knew it didn’t apply to him.

“What now?” I asked.

“I don’t know, Mary,” Landon said. “You know where I stand. I’ve got to focus on work, the upcoming campaign. We want different things and I don’t want to hurt you more than I have. I am sorry.”

I was sorry, too. Sorry that I had wasted a year of my life. Sorry that I had been thinking about Landon James for five years. I was a twenty-four-year-old girl who had been pining over a guy who just couldn’t do it. Classic.

“Then…,” I said, all of a sudden filled with a rush of power. A new start! I’d get right back out there and start dating, find a guy who shared my dreams of a house and babies and Hallmark cards and gaudy Christmas decorations; a guy who would celebrate every milestone; a guy who had already held a baby in his arms, maybe a niece or nephew, and had become addicted to the smell of baby shampoo and talcum powder; a guy who would care about me as much as I cared about him.

“Then what, Mary?” Landon asked. “What now?”

“I guess this is good-bye,” I said. “We’re done.”

Only we weren’t. I just didn’t know it at the time. I didn’t know that Landon would continue to darken my door, offering me just enough to keep me on the hook, for another five years.

PART FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Awakening

THE NEXT FRIDAY NIGHT, TOM
stays for dinner before heading to the beach. He tells the family he’ll be taking another trip. This time to Ireland. He glances at me briefly, then looks at the kids, explains how it’s for work, how his company is doing work for an Irish company. How there are a lot of tech companies in Ireland these days. Maybe he’ll bring them a souvenir. The kids squeal at the thought. Emily wants an Irish jig dress. Sally’s hoping for a soccer jersey. The boys will take anything.

I jam my hands under my legs, feel my lips press together, can see the rise and fall of my sweater as my heart fills with smoke. Ireland, really?

Once again, Tom’s playing chicken with me. At each end of the dinner table we’re two cars headed toward each other at full speed. Who will be the first to swerve? In this case, who will be the first to leave the table? He’s poking at me, taking easy shots, hitting me where it hurts, but I’m not budging.

“That’s nice,” I say in my forced-pleasant voice. “When’s that?”

“In a few weeks,” he says. “Next month.”

“When
exactly
?” I ask through clenched teeth pulled into a smile.

“The first week in May,” he says. As he says it, his tone loses a bit of its edge. Even he feels crummy about this, I can tell. “Girls, do me a favor and take the boys upstairs to get ready for bed,” Tom says.

“What’s going
on
?” Sally says. “Why are you guys acting so
weird
?”

“Sal, please.” I look across at Tom. He’s staring at his plate.

“We’re part of this family, too,” Sally says. “We deserve to know what’s going on.”

“Sally, now,” Tom says. “Take the boys upstairs.”

Sally stomps her way up, Emily follows, and the boys crawl on their hands and knees, barking like puppies, panting with their tongues out.

“Interesting timing,” I say.

“Hmm?” Tom asks, poking at his food.

“Just ironic, because that is the week we had blocked off for celebrating our anniversary.”

“Well,” he says, “a lot has changed since January. And this is for work.”

“I wasn’t implying that we’d still be celebrating our anniversary.”

“Right.”

“I was just commenting on the timing.”

“Just a coincidence.”

“Crappy coincidence,” I say.

“It’s for work.”

“Got it.”

Tom stares at his plate, then looks up.

“I thought I’d bring Patrick along.”

“Your brother? To Ireland?” Tom’s gone out of his way to hurt me this time: Ireland, our anniversary, his stupid brother.

“That’s right.”

“And…why are you doing that?”

“I’ll have some downtime. It won’t be all work. Thought it would be fun to have him there. He’s always wanted to go.”

“You think that’s a safe bet?” I say. “Patrick? To the land of whiskey?”

“Temptation is everywhere,” Tom says. “Isn’t that right?”

“Oh, God!” I say. “Is this
never
going to end?”

“Listen, Mary, I just thought it would be nice to bring him along. He never has an opportunity to go anywhere.”

He’s always wanted to go.…He never has an opportunity.…
Never mind me, the mom who has been raising four kids for ten years and has not once been outside the United States.

I plaster on a smile that is gigantically too big for the moment, but it’s the only way to mask the blood-boiling anger that’s pulsing through me. “Well, that’s just
wonderful
! I hope the two of you have an excellent time together.”

“He might not be perfect,” Tom says in a cool voice, “but he’s never lied to me. At least there’s that.”

“Hooray for him,” I say, getting up, stacking the plates, and walking toward the sink. I stop and turn. “Maybe you’ll find some nice Irish girls at the local pub, just so you can jab the knife a little farther into my chest.”

Tom slips into the backyard and I see him throw Daisy’s ball so hard and far, she can’t get it. It’s beyond her invisible fence. Tom stomps and pounds his fist into the palm of his other hand, and then climbs into the brambles to fetch it.

I can’t breathe. My chest hurts, my
heart
hurts. I want to scream and break things, but I’m not
allowed
to because I’m the
mom and everyone—everyone—is watching me at all times. I can’t even lock myself in the bathroom for five minutes without one of the kids pounding on the door with some dramatic entreaty that requires my immediate attention. I consider the stack of plates sitting in the sink. I eye the mallet on the counter that I used to pound the chicken. I hold it in my hand, squeeze the rubber handle, pretend to hammer it down onto the plates. Then I think about the
mess,
the cleanup; it would take an hour to make sure I’d gotten every tiny shard of glass. Forget it.

I run down to the basement and head to the corner of the exercise room. I punch at the bag. Again, again, again. “Screw you!” I whisper through clenched teeth.
Screw you,
I whisper through my cries.
Screw you
. Then I fall onto the ground and push my face into the carpet. I roll over onto my back, scoot my body until I’m lying directly beneath the bag, and then nudge it with my hand. Daring it. I look up at the chain atop the bag, connected to a carabiner clip, swinging from the hook in the ceiling.
Crush me,
I think.
Who cares?