Acts of Contrition (26 page)

The following week is quiet. Tom’s news of a trip to Ireland has sent me into a depression, one that makes me pull back and draw inward. I’m tired of putting forth so much effort. I need a break. The more I retreat, the more attentive Tom becomes. An interesting seesaw of emotion and guilt between us. A few times during the week he tries to smile at me. Once he pours me a glass of wine. He says good night before edging to his side of the bed. He senses that I’m brittle, that if he blows too hard I might turn to dust.

The next week I’m feeling better. Working through the stages. Acceptance has taken the place of depression. Or maybe it’s more apathy. I find myself shaking my head at the thought of Ireland, a pervasive feeling of
whatever
running through me. Take your stupid trip with your stupid brother. See if I care.

Tom’s anger has turned intermittent, like the slow setting on the windshield wipers. He has his moments in which he borders on nice, then sometimes the fury fills him, and I get the feeling he’ll never reach forgiveness, like it’s an actual place, a remote village in the mountains of Nepal. A Sherpa is needed to lead him in.

The night before Tom leaves for Ireland, I’m lying in bed next to him. He’s asleep on his side, facing my direction; one hand is on his face, the other curled into his chest. I reach out my hand and cover his, touch his skin for the first time in months, let our palms adhere. I scoot a little closer, lift my hand and use it to brush the hair out of his eyes. He used to love that. “Run your fingers through my hair,” he’d say each night, with his head in my lap as we watched a
Seinfeld
rerun before bedtime. His hair is silky and the amber waves slip through my fingers. His hair, same as Sally’s. “Your daughter looks just like her father,” so many people have said over the past ten years. That was God helping me out.
I’ll give you this
.
I’ll make her in his image.
But a likeness only masqueraded as the truth, only made the truth so much harder to bear.

Tom opens his eyes, sees that I’m touching him, matches his eyes with mine. We peer into each other’s sadness for a second, maybe two. I keep running my fingers through his hair, saying a prayer each time, something like
Please, please, please.

“I miss you,” I whisper.

Tom reaches for my hand, sandwiches it between his, and squeezes it gently. I think I see the corners of his mouth edge up, just so slightly. Then he blinks, closes his eyes, and turns over. He scoots farther away, hugging his side of the bed, leaving a gap between us as large as the Arctic tundra, but maybe not as cold. I roll over to my side, hugging my pillow into my chest, and think,
Well, maybe
.

In the morning, I check my list. Even though Tom’s sadness and anger masked as cruelty has left me undone, I still can’t help myself when it comes to packing for his trip. I’m a wife and mother. It’s in my job description. I’ve gone on the Internet to research the weather, how it could rain in Dublin at any time, how layering is his best bet. Aside from his work clothes, I’ve packed long-sleeved shirts, sweatshirts, jeans, socks and underwear, and two rain jackets (knowing that stupid Patrick would never think to bring one).

When Tom says good-bye, the boys cry and the girls issue dramatic statements of love and devotion, like their father’s shipping off to war.

“We’ll miss you
so much
!” Emily cries.

“We
LOVE
you
so much
!” Sally says, throwing herself into Tom’s arms.

There are hugs and kisses and more hugs and more hanging and more proclamations and declarations of the best and biggest love
ever
. Finally, Tom leans into me and gives me a friendly hug—one of those where two people don’t really touch, just hover around each other like scaffolding, patting each other quickly and briefly, as if the other has a skin disease.

“Good luck to you,” he says.

The kids may have gotten Tom’s undying pledge of love, his loyalty, a piece of his heart to squeeze tight like a security blanket, but me, I got a buddy’s pat on the back and a good luck!

“Dad,” Sally says in a hushed tone. Tom turns, looks at her. “You are coming back, right?”

Tom lifts her into his arms, as naturally as he did when she was a little girl, hugs her tightly and kisses her cheek, over and over again. “I love you, Sally,” he says. “And yes, I’m coming back.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Deserving of Love

THREE HOURS LATER, I FIGURE
that Tom’s finally on the airplane, following a half-hour drive into DC, parking and security, and a two-hour wait to get onto the plane. I close my eyes and imagine that he and Patrick are settled in, Tom with his folded newspapers, Patrick with his jumbo coffee. With any luck, Tom remembered to buy them some snacks and maybe a sandwich. I can see Patrick staring out the window, his jittery leg bouncing. I’m certain Tom’s wearing the airplane headphones, listening to the pilots chat and navigate. I’m thinking all of this when the phone rings.

“Mary…It’s Colleen.”

“Hi,” I say carefully, because I haven’t spoken to Colleen since Tom and I went off our cliff. While Colleen has always treated me like a daughter, what I’ve done to her son is a game changer. One night, as Tom and I brawled, he went too far and used his mother as evidence against my wrongdoing. “Even my mother—my mother who loved you
like a daughter,
my mother who has forgiven more than her share of indiscretions—said that what
you’ve done, and the fact that you’ve lied about it for so long, was inexcusable.”

“Mary, dear,” Colleen goes on.

I think I detect that Colleen is crying, and Colleen, who is always perfectly composed, never cries.

“Are you okay?” I ask.

“I need to get ahold of Tom. Or Patrick. I tried Kathy…but she wasn’t home.”

“They’re on a plane, Colleen. What’s going on?” Now I’m sure. There’s no way there’s not something wrong with
that
voice.

“Honey, oh, Mary…” Colleen’s dam breaks, and all of a sudden she’s sobbing.

“It’s Sean. He’s in the hospital.”

“What happened?” Before she even answers, I think of Tom, locked on an airplane over the Atlantic.

“He was just
here,
” she cries in a frantic, shrill voice. “We were watching our programs. I had taped
60 Minutes
from the other night. I went to get him another cup of coffee. When I came back, he was slumped in his recliner.
Slumped!
Oh dear, Mary. I only left the room for five minutes.” Colleen sobs, and I can’t even imagine the heavy tears pouring from her: perfectly put-together Colleen, my mother-in-law who toughed out breast cancer with a stiff upper lip and five miles of walking each day.

“What did you do?” I ask.

“I called 911. The ambulance was here in less than five minutes. They put him on a
stretcher,
” she cries. “Then they drove away.”

“How is he now?” I ask, reaching for a pen and a pad of paper.

“I don’t
know
. They just left a few minutes ago. He’s probably still in the ambulance.” Colleen releases a giant cry, and I can imagine her finely manicured hand covering her eyes as her shoulders bob up and down.

“Is there anyone there who can go with you to the hospital?”

“I’ll drive myself.”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

“I’ll be fine. It’s only a few miles.”

“Colleen,” I say as strongly as I can, “I’ll be there in four hours. I’m leaving right now.” I’m already slipping on my clogs and reaching for my keys and purse. “Your only job is to get yourself to the hospital safely and to be with Sean. I’m coming!”

“Oh, Mary.
Thank you,
” she cries. “I know you and Tom…”

“Don’t worry about that now,” I say. “I’m on my way.”

I’m in jeans and a T-shirt and haven’t yet brushed my teeth or hair for the day. I run upstairs to my bathroom and do the minimum: brush teeth, a swipe of deodorant, a hair band wrapped around my wrist for later. I grab a pair of undies from my drawer and an extra T-shirt, and in less than three minutes, with only my purse and cell phone, I’m in the car and heading toward the interstate. I call Mom and explain. She says she’ll coordinate with Dad to pick up all the kids. I’m rattling nonsense about the girls’ homework, how Emily needs for you to literally
stand over her
while she does her math. Whatever it takes, I tell Ma. Set a timer, reward her with mini-marshmallows, but don’t let her get away with not doing her multiplication. Sally, on the other hand, is Miss Efficient and Miss Cocky, so much so that she’ll do her work too quickly, making careless mistakes. She’s working long division. I tell Ma to make sure she multiplies them back to check her work.

Mom says yes to everything, but I know her. She’ll feed the girls tea and cannoli before homework and then sit with them for hours, making a fun game out of it. I go on: Whatever you do, don’t let Dom or Danny fall asleep on the way home from school or you’ll never get them to bed tonight. Again, Mom
agrees, but I know her. Her adage is: never wake a sleeping baby. She’d rather slip into bed with them at three o’clock in the morning and sing them back to sleep than deprive them of their afternoon nap.

“What about Tom?” Mom asks.

“He’s on a plane for the next ten hours. I’ll call him as soon as he lands. Hopefully, we’ll know something by then.”

I fill up at the gas station and drive through McDonald’s. Other than that, I don’t stop, zipping my way south.

Thanks to a heavy foot on the gas pedal and the lucky absence of cops, I make it to Colleen in three and a half hours. I jog through the parking garage and the hallways until I reach the surgery waiting room. When I see Colleen, I stop short, because all of a sudden my self-confidence can be measured in ccs, barely enough to fill a syringe.
Hi, Colleen, it’s me, the woman who ruined your son’s life.

“Colleen,” I say carefully.

“Oh, Mary!” She rises from the brown tweed chair and rushes to me. “Thank God you’re here!” She collapses into my arms, and any feelings of ill will she might be harboring against me are put at least temporarily on hold.

“How is he?” I ask.

“He’s in surgery,” she sobs into my chest. “Triple bypass!”

“A heart attack?”

Colleen pulls back, covers her mouth, nods.

“When’s the last time someone’s come out to talk to you?”

“About an hour ago. He’d already been in surgery for a couple of hours.”

“Did they say anything? About his prognosis?”

“I don’t know, dear. I don’t remember. It’s all such a
blur.
”

“Okay, okay,” I say, leading her back to the chair. I sit beside her, still holding her hand, stroking the soft, thin skin stretched across her delicate veins. “How about some coffee? Are you hungry?”

She shakes her head no, so I sit with her, pull her into me so that her cheek is on my shoulder. I check the clock, one thirty. Tom’s plane doesn’t land until seven o’clock tonight.

For the next two hours, Colleen and I avoid land mines as if we have metal detectors. The children are safe ground, so I tell Colleen everything: what the girls are reading, what the boys are learning, field trips and projects, upcoming events at school. I tell the least about Sally because all of a sudden I wonder if Colleen loves her first grandchild less now that she knows the truth. That can’t be true, but…

When the surgeon pushes through the double doors, he removes his glasses and rubs the lenses on the bottom of his scrubs.

“He’s out of surgery,” he says.

“How is he?” Colleen asks hesitantly, as if she assumes he’ll say,
Not good
.

“He did very well.”

“So what
exactly
did you do?” I ask. “What exactly happened?” I know Colleen is in no shape to take notes and that Tom will need to know every detail when I call him.

“The blood vessels that supply blood to the heart can become blocked, and that blockage prevents enough oxygen from reaching the heart. Thus, coronary artery disease. In your father’s situation, there were three vessels that were blocked. We were able to take vessels from his legs and graft them onto the heart, thus creating a detour for the blood flow.”

“So he’s going to be okay?” I ask, marveling at the doctor’s simple explanation:
The road was closed, so we made a detour!

“He should be just fine,” the doctor says. “Of course, when he’s back to full speed, he’s going to want to make some lifestyle changes.”

“What about drinking?” I might be overstepping my boundaries as the daughter-in-law, but Colleen’s so spacey, she won’t remember.

“Drinking too much alcohol can definitely lead to a rise in triglycerides. It can also cause high blood pressure. Like anything,” the doctor says, “moderation.”

Two hours later, we’re called back to see Tom’s father. Colleen collapses into his bed rail. She wails his name,
“Sean, Sean…,”
like he’s a wounded soldier on a battlefield. He’s barely lucid, still groggy from the anesthesia. I close my eyes and think it through. Colleen has loved Sean throughout their entire marriage, throughout his infidelity, his excessive drinking. Here she is, nearly reduced to rubble at the sight of her ill husband. I can’t help but wonder where she puts it. Where does she put the anger and resentment and pure animosity she must feel for this man? Is it compartmentalized—still there, somewhere, tucked away, for her to pull out when the mood suits her? Or has her love, her devotion, her lifetime commitment to this man
overwhelmed
the bitter feelings, like a strong wave engulfs a sand castle or too much garlic overpowers the sweetness of basil, or confessing our wrongs and praying an Act of Contrition absolves us from sin? How can she be so undone by a man who has hurt her so deeply?

Would Tom even care if I was in the hospital? Would his former feelings of love for me supplant his seething anger? Would he ever find a place to tuck my indiscretion into? Does absolute forgiveness really, truly exist? Is there something higher, beyond “I forgive you, but…”? Is there a place in the heart that ends with “I forgive you, period”?