Acts of Contrition (28 page)

After a while, Tom says, “Well, Mary, I’m here now. Do you want to head back home? Get back to the kids?”

“Oh! Yeah, well, sure,” I stammer, feeling entirely kicked out of the show I’d been running for the last forty-eight hours. It hadn’t occurred to me that I’d leave
immediately.
“I guess I could do that.”

“Mare, honey,” Sean says, winking at me when Tom’s back is turned, “do you think you can stay another night? That night orderly is a little rough on the old man. He’s liable to yank my cords out if you’re not here to monitor him while he changes the sheets.”

“I can do
that,
” Tom says. “I’ll be here, Dad.”

“Oh, son, that’s true. But Mary has a way with these guys. Wait’ll you see her in action. And she’ll get me an extra pudding with dinner, too.” Again Sean winks at me, like he wants to be sure that I get what he’s up to; that forcing me to stay another night will bring Tom and me back together.

“I’m happy to stay,” I say. “If it’s okay with Tom.”

“Whatever Dad wants,” Tom says, sounding as though he feels slighted, like he flew all the way across the Atlantic—twice—just to be relegated behind the woman who ruined his life.

While Tom sits with his father, I run home to Sean and Colleen’s house. Colleen is just slipping into her car to head back to the hospital, looking fresh and revived in a salmon-colored twin set and white linen pants.

“Tom’s with him,” I say.

“Mary, dear,” Colleen says, reaching her little peach of a hand to my cheek. “I don’t want to pretend that there isn’t an eight-hundred-pound gorilla in the room. I admit I’m not happy about your situation with Tom.”

I begin to cry like a child because being admonished by a parent—any parent—is crushing.

Colleen reaches her arms around me. “But I believe that you love Tom.…”

“I do!” I blubber. “More than anything. Colleen, you have no idea how sorry I am.”

“I do,” she says. “Suffice it to say that I’ve seen such sorrow in the eyes of my husband before.”

I’m split down the middle because being grouped with Sean isn’t exactly what I was hoping for, but then again, at least Colleen is extending an olive branch.

“I have the most luxurious bubble bath under my sink,”
Colleen says, making it clear that our heart-to-heart is over. “The tub was just scrubbed. Get yourself a glass of wine, light some candles, pour in the bubble bath, and take a well-deserved rest.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Persons Harmed

I DO AS COLLEEN RECOMMENDED
and soak for a good hour in the tub, under a foot of lavender bubbles. I sip from my glass of chardonnay and try, try so hard, to breathe and relax. But relaxing is a luxury, a pleasure reserved for deserving people, and at the moment—even five months later—I still don’t feel that I deserve much in the way of pleasure. I’ve hurt Tom on so many levels: the most basic—I was with another man when I was committed to him. A level deeper—I carried, delivered, and passed off as his own a child who wasn’t his. Sink lower—I kept my infidelity a secret for the entire duration of our marriage. Hanging by my thumbs—I never came clean; the truth was revealed as the unfortunate side effect of a stupid photo, not from my stepping up. I had ten years to find the courage, to do the right thing, and never did.

I think of Tom, what he said that day.
I’d love to know what you’re most sorry about: the fact that you slept with Landon when you were engaged to me. Or is it the fact that you got caught?
It was a crappy thing for him to say, a
mean
thing. But now I wonder
about my motives, whether there was any purity to them or just selfishness. There are two types of contrition, Mom taught us: perfect and imperfect.
Perfect,
stemming from our love for God, for our sorrow for having offended Him. And
imperfect,
arising from other motives, such as the loss of heaven or the fear of hell.

If I’m honest, I have to admit that my contrition was the imperfect kind: the fear of being caught. I believe that I’ve been a good wife and mother, that I’ve made my family a happy home, but it was a house built with stolen bricks. A charity funded with drug money. A test aced by cheating. I had ten years to make my contrition perfect, but lying was the steroid that kept me in the lead. A position I wasn’t willing to give up.

When I dry off, I see that Colleen has laid out some clothes for me. They’re actually mine, an outfit I’d left in the dryer the last time we’d visited. I gather my clean undies from my bag and pull on the capris and T-shirt that Colleen left. Then I return to her bathroom. I rummage through her top drawer, knowing that she always has samples from Clinique and Estée Lauder during their free-package period. I find a new mascara, some blush, and a rose-colored lipstick. I blow out my hair until it’s smooth and find my toothbrush, then brush until my tongue and cheeks feel raw.

As I look in the mirror, I gaze into my own eyes and think,
Please, please, please, Tom. Love me again.

By the time I get back to the hospital, Sean’s room is filled with visitors. Patrick is on one side of his dad, Tom is on the other, and Colleen is holding court for her two sisters, who have just flown in from Albany, explaining the triple bypass procedure in exacting detail. Sean roars when he sees me, “There’s the best nurse in this whole hospital!” He goes on to regale Colleen’s sisters with the same stories he told Tom, how I keep the doctors hopping, how I score him extra pudding.

I examine the aunts and smile oddly because I’m unsure what Colleen has told them about me. It seems they are oblivious to my and Tom’s problems, so when we all settle in for a visit, they ask the obvious. They want to know about the kids. I look at Tom, and he smiles and shrugs, urging me to give the aunts the lowdown.

I prattle on about the girls, how Sally is playing travel soccer, is the tallest girl in her class, and is a voracious reader. “She has the vocabulary of an adult,” I say. “Currently her favorite word is
extraneous
. In her estimation, most of what I say is extraneous, like an unnecessary and annoying bother.”

The aunts laugh, remember their own children as they went through the know-it-all stage, nod and laugh and wipe tears from their eyes. “It goes so fast,” they lament.

I tell how Emily is rehearsing for
The Wizard of Oz
, still singing in the church choir, and is on a spiritual quest for “truth and beauty.” “When she’s older she’ll either break my heart by moving to New York City to be an actress or running off to the hills of India with her poet boyfriend to seek transcendence.

“And the twins,” I say. “They’re still so little, but they think they’re big. They just beam with pride when they do things themselves.”

“You’re blessed,” Aunt Elaine says. “God smiled on you and Tom with that wonderful family of yours.”

“I agree,” I say, looking at Tom and offering him a sad smile.

Then the aunts ask Tom about Ireland, what he was able to see in his one-day trip.

“I saw the inside of the hotel and the inside of the conference room where I made my presentation,” he says wryly.

Patrick tells of his one-day excursion through Dublin while Tom was working.

“You’ll go back,” Aunt Deirdre says to Tom. “Next time you’ll take Mare. And you’ll visit County Clare and see the Cliffs of Moher and sleep in a castle.”

Aunt Elaine looks at me, her eyebrows raised high in excitement for us.

“Definitely,” I say. “I’ve always wanted to see Ireland. Hopefully, that’ll be in our cards someday.” Again I look at Tom, gauge his reaction to see if he believes our cards hold a future.

Then Sean launches in, telling stories about his time in Dublin, and breaks out in a croaky rendition of “Molly Malone.” We’re all laughing, and before you know it the childhood stories come out. Colleen tells of when Tom and Patrick were kids, the stunts they’d pulled playing Evel Knievel and TV heroes like those in
The Six Million Dollar Man
and
The Incredible Hulk
. Soon, Tom’s laughing and I want to cry because I haven’t seen him laugh in
so
long and he has the best laugh, the kind of roar that emanates from his belly, a smile that transforms his face, a joy that forms crinkles of diamonds in the corners of his eyes. He wipes at his eyes, remembering the carefree times as a child, when he and Patrick were just two boys, before the alcoholic DNA in Patrick’s body had coiled around him, before Tom flicked on the television one day to find out that his wife was a liar and a cheat and a thief.

Visiting hours are just about over. For Sean’s benefit, I give a stern talking-to to the night orderly who is preparing to change his sheets. Then I turn my back to Sean and give the orderly a wink and a smile and a ten-dollar bill, mouthing the words
Thank you
. Colleen and her sisters are talking about a Chinese restaurant not too far from the hospital one of the nurses said was decent. Patrick says he’s starving and could go for some kung pao. Tom agrees. I hang back, unsure if unredeemable me is invited to the party.

“Ready, Mary?” Colleen says.

“Maybe I’ll just grab something in the cafeteria,” I say, because among this crowd of Tom, his brother, his mother, and her sisters, who really wants me along?

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Colleen says, looking at Tom with raised eyebrows, as if urging him to get on board. “You’re coming.”

The aunts look at Tom for an explanation for my hesitation. “Maybe she doesn’t like Chinese?” Aunt Elaine says, and I smile because it’s obvious they don’t know what I’ve done.

Tom looks at his aunts, his mother. “Of course, Mary. Come have dinner.”

Tom and Patrick had taken a cab from the airport, so they’re without a car. Colleen says she has room for her sisters plus one. She slings her arm around Patrick and tells me and Tom that they’ll meet us there. She is being far from sneaky, trying to play cupid with us.

We walk to the car in silence. As I’m pulling out of the lot, Tom says in his careful, formal voice, “Thank you again for coming. That was good of you.”

“Of course I came,” I say.

“Not, ‘of course,’ ” he says. “You didn’t have to come. It wasn’t your family. And it was big of you that you made the effort.”

“I didn’t do it for points,” I say. “And just so you know, they
are
my family. Just because you and I are on rocky ground doesn’t mean I no longer love your parents. They may not be my blood, but I consider them my family nonetheless. I don’t need the DNA to match up.”

“And neither do I. Don’t question my love for Sally,” he says. “That’s
never
been the issue.”

“I know,” I say. “I know you love her. I’m sorry I said that. This
is no time to make things worse. I have no business laying into you now, or anytime, for that matter.”

“I’m sorry, too,” he says. “I shouldn’t have said that they’re not your family.”

At dinner I drink three beers and I’m nearly drunk. For about half an hour I relish the cloudy space I’m occupying, where I’m not constantly examining faces and scrutinizing comments for subtext. I relish being altered, how it makes the plum sauce on the moo shu pork taste richer, sweeter, how it makes Aunt Elaine’s eyebrows seem cartoonish and drawn on, how it warms my cheeks and wraps its arms around me like an electric blanket. Tom drives us back to Colleen’s. I fall asleep in Sean’s recliner in my clothes, the underwire of my bra digging into my ribs, a chenille blanket tucked into my sides. I’m lucid enough to consider getting up to go to the bathroom, to run a toothbrush across my teeth, but I can’t move, literally cannot move, like I’ve swallowed cement.

At three o’clock in the morning, I wake up. My tongue is fuzzy and my eyelashes are goopy, stuck together. I tiptoe to the bathroom, put my mouth under the faucet, and drink what seems like a gallon of water. I wash my face, brush my teeth, and use the toilet.

I stand there in the dark hallway outside the bathroom, wondering where everyone is. I imagine the aunts are in the guest bedroom with the two twin beds, and Tom and Patrick must be in the family room on the sofas. I sneak into the family room and see Tom sprawled on the leather sofa. Patrick isn’t on the other one. Maybe he went back to his house. I consider lying down on the vacant one, but first I kneel next to Tom, run my fingers through his hair, over his shoulder. He opens his eyes,
looks at me, and pulls back the blanket covering him to make room for me.

Inviting me in.

I am a woman dying in the desert, and Tom has offered me water.

I slip in next to him, my back curved into his stomach, his arm over mine. I lay there, wide awake. I know Tom is, too. I can feel his eyelashes flutter on my hair. Neither of us says a word. We just breathe, frozen, as if turned to stone by Medusa’s glare. I have an itch on my nose but I don’t dare scratch it. The slightest move might be enough to break the spell, to bring Tom back to his senses with a tidy and formal “Okay, then, you’d better get back to your recliner.”

Finally, I hear Tom doze into sleep. I close my eyes, too, and drift off, for the first time in nearly five months, in the embrace of my husband’s arms.