Elena Undone (34 page)

Millie put her arms about his broad shoulders. But he no longer could bear her touch and shrugged out of her cloying tentacles. The idea of his wife, of Elena with anyone, sent him reeling, but with that woman,
that woman who’d robbed his family of so much time…
he wanted to strangle her. He wanted to crush that bitch—that lesbian who had turned his wife. How? How in the hell was it even possible? Didn’t you have to be born that way? And if that was the case, had Elena been a lesbian all this time? NO! NO!

He stormed from the altar, unable to tune out his thoughts, but unable to answer any of these mounting questions. Frustrated as he had never been before he charged out of the church to the archway, pacing, kicking at the bench. Millie dutifully followed her lost lamb, let him rail for a few moments longer.

When he turned she was in front of him. And her eyes no longer carried the gentle care when she first gleefully informed him of Elena’s “transgressions” but a brittle and steely edge that warned him. He stood there a long moment, taking in the ugliness that had come from her mouth, the satisfaction she had taken in delivering this news that he now knew beyond a shadow of a doubt was true.

It was true. That was just it. He had known it was something…how the hell could he not. But this?
That fuckin’ lezzie? Going down on my wife?
He saw black. Infuriated. Humiliated. Sickened. She wasn’t even attractive…she was—she was sick. All of this was sick. He knew, deep down, he didn’t give a rat’s ass what the gays and lesbians did in their owas in then time, in the shadows where they belonged. He didn’t need to save their souls. It just was the fact that they threw it in your face. That’s what he objected to. And now…now it was personal.

“God damn it!” he roared.

Millie let out yelp, shocked by Barry’s outburst. “Pastor Barry!” She maintained her steely resolve and lost the feigned sympathy.

“I…I’m sorry, Millie, I…”

He glanced at her. He was keenly aware that how he handled this could affect the rest of his career. His livelihood.

Their eyes met. He lifted his hands, although they felt like they weighed a thousand pounds. “What…what do I do?”

Millie walked to him. Got very close. Looked deeply into his eyes.

“You are going to use your anger to pray with me, Barry. And then you are going to march home and tell your wife to stop this madness. That she not only owes it to the church, but to you and your son. Elena is not a stupid woman, Barry. She will do what she knows is right.”

They stood close for a long moment. What they both knew was that they lived lies, shadowy furtive lies, full of the pretense of good bidding.

“Pray with me.” Millie didn’t ask. She demanded.

Barry was now caught in his own farce, impotent on every level, but they both knew he had no other choice but to continue in his spiritual sham. So he bowed his head and prayed.

*

Elena heard Barry’s car drive up the driveway, heard the car door slam fiercely. Listened as he headed to her studio with stomping footsteps and sat still as she heard him throw a frame against the wall. Shattering glass, followed by a thunderous clamor of destruction, Barry tearing apart Elena’s studio with all the anger he had felt at the church, free now to purge his rage.

She waited. But all she heard for a long time was silence. Then the car starting and backing up in a screech of tires.

Hours later, long after she had put Nash to bed, she sat out on the back porch.

She had moved through every minute since Peyton had broken off with her in a sort of hyper surreal calmness. She walked slowly, gracefully, attending to each and every task with deliberation and care. She came home, cleaned up the house, did the laundry and heard the calls on the answering machine from Diana, scrambling to find her, Millie scrambling to find Barry, then Diana telling her she had to call, that Millie had seen her with “that woman” in the park. Even when she felt her heart drop to the floor, knowing what Millie had seen, she continued to move in the same way, step by careful step, because she knew if she did not, she would losrinhe woule her mind. Completely.

She fed Nash and Tori when they arrived from hanging with some friends at the mall. She sat with them in the living room, waiting second by second for Barry to rage through the house, and when that did not happen, she put the kids to bed, and sat. She made tea she did not drink.

She sat. And felt absolutely dead.

And that’s when she knew what she had to do.

And so she sat and waited until two in the morning when she heard the car pull up, this time its door closing quietly. She sensed more than heard Barry trying to find her, and that when he didn’t find her in the house he would find her where she sat when she wanted peace and quiet, in the garden in the backyard.

And then he was there. Standing in front of her, then falling to his knees.

He looked up into her face.

A single tear fell from her eyes. He slumped over her knees, his shoulders began to quake, his body sobbing wildly out of control, wracking cries of anger turned to grief, of anguish, confusion. In his torment, the only words she could make out were a wretched, “Don’t do this to us.”

Elena watched him, no longer detached, aching for his loss, their loss, and put a hand to his back, soothing his broken heart, then lay her head upon his. She held him for hours, as the dark turned to dawn. She held him until he could cry no longer.

*

Elena later walked into the studio that was now in complete shambles. Everything ruined. She didn’t care as she began to quietly weave through the shards of glass, the mangled frames, and then stopped.

Her shoulders began to quake. Her heart began to race.

She slumped to the floor and began to cry, sob, let go of every second she had waited for Barry to return, and she mourned them all as she picked up the broken frame of their baby daughter.

She cried until there were no tears left, curled into a ball and fell asleep among the ruins of her life.

*

Peyton did not return home until sometime after three in the morning. Utterly plastered, she had stumbled to her couch and passed out before she even hit it.

The next morning when she tried to open her eyes, she wondered why they hurt so much and then remembered. The crying. All the endless tears. The only thing that had stopped them was drinking, which she had done on her own in her car, overlooking the majestic sweep of the valley, off a lone ridge on the Angeles Crest Highway. Slugging from a bottle of Cuervo—she dihe rvo—sdn’t even like tequila, but that was all the better. It all felt like castigation, one way or another. She only stopped crying when she had drunk enough to become numb, and then she had passed out briefly.

She didn’t want to drive home, had called Wave who picked her up and insisted she stay with her, but she had said no, absolutely not. Yet there were Wave’s feet she was looking at across from her as her eyes tried to focus.

She slowly lifted her head. Yeah, it was Wave. With a mug of coffee in hand.

“Up you go then,” Wave suggested softly. “Don’t want all that mush in yer brain to flow out yer ears.”

Peyton sat up slowly. Wave handed her the coffee, sat beside her and read the paper. Wave knew her so well. Knew she wouldn’t—couldn’t talk yet. Knew her better than she probably knew herself. Why the hell couldn’t she just fall in love with her?

“Up you get when you’ve got your sea legs,” Wave added, continuing to read her paper. “A shower would make you a new woman and since I’m sittin’ downwind sooner than later would be appreciated.”

Later, after Peyton had showered, the water hurting her throbbing head, she had finally come back to life. Wave had made some scrambled eggs and toast, “somethin’ light on that bludgeoned tummy of yours,” which she ate without tasting, not daring to protest. When Wave had inspected Peyton to her satisfaction, she told her she had to get home to walk her dog, but “don’t be runnin’ off for any more escapades like last night—unless of course I’m invited along with you!”

Peyton sat in her living room now, feeling utterly helpless, fatigued, hung over and hopeless. She sat for an hour before she checked her e-mails.

A message from Elena glowed brightly from the screen.

Peyton’s heart began to race. She got up, walked away from the computer. Paced. Sat, tapped a pen until it was going to drill a hole to China, and did every conceivable toying with every object on her desk before she caved.

I didn’t want to do this in an e-mail, but you won’t see me, or answer my calls. Peyton, of all the things I came to realize last night, the one that overrides everything is that you deserve to be in a balanced relationship where ALL your needs are being met. As you pointed out, I can’t give that to you. I can give a lot, but not without more heartache. You were right about the fact that I wasn’t thinking or looking beyond the moment I was in. Not fair of me at all.

*

“‘You have so many pieces of your life that you are trying to put together and I didn’t fully understand how damaging this relationship could be to you,’” Wave now read the rest of the e-mail out loud to them both as she and Peyton sat in a corner booth at Pinot Latte. Peyton had tried, unsucc

“‘I just wanted to love you and make you happy,’” Wave continued, “‘but it wasn’t quite that simple. You would never be able to trust, or feel strong or complete with me, and I’m so sorry for that, but I’m not sorry I fell in love with you so completely.’”

Wave gently placed the printed e-mail between them on the countertop, glanced at her friend. “Are you okay?”

“No. I’m not okay. I’m pissed as hell.”

“Well,” Wave considered having just read the e-mail, “you might just have a point. Sounds a bit like she’s dodgering off the hook. But look, I can tell she really means well.”

“Means well?” Peyton snorted “
Means well
? She has just reduced us to the most boring cliché in the lesbian universe.”

“I’m not trying to get all Hallmark on you, Peyton, really I’m not, but you knew from the start this was sort of straight out from the top of the lesbian ten commandments: Thou shalt not sleep with straight married chick.”

Peyton couldn’t even summon a smile. Wave sighed. “My point being, maybe—just maybe, if you can let this go gracefully, it will, in the future—and maybe not too far in the future—become, well, a beautiful memory.”

“Yeah, well, that’s not going to happen. How can this be a beautiful memory when I know that she’s living a complete lie? She’s just going to continue on living in this sham of a marriage?”

“Maybe it’s not as much of a sham as we think. You know some people are fine with status quo and she does have a son, after all, and we’ve already gone over her parents and all that malarkey. Maybe this is what’s truly best for her, and she’s actually doin’ the right thing for you, by letting you go…so you can get on with your life.”

“Whose side are you on?”

“Yours, my love. Always yours and that’s why, I gotta tell ya, I think she’s doing you a huge favor.”

*

On the same Sunday, across town, the congregation of the Holy Church of Light sat in electrified anticipation of what they might see at services that morning. The buzz from member to member grew with each retelling of the story and with each retelling more erroneous facts were attached and embellished upon until the party line of gossip had hit a furious apex.

As Barry entered the church from its front door the entire room turned in unison, all eyes swiveling to the very picture they had all been waiting for for days—was the good pasts the gootor going to show up with his fallen wife or not?

Barry walked in first, followed by Nash and Tori and, yes, a stunned gasp emitted from the congregation, there was Elena, bringing up the rear as they all entered the church in a unified front.

“Really, Pastor Barry.” Millie rushed to Barry, leaned to him and whispered, “Do you think it’s a good idea...”

Diana jumped in to shore up Elena, making her voice heard loud and clear, “Good morning, Millie. Turned out to be a lovely day, didn’t it? They said it was going to rain. Come on, Elena, let’s set up the coffee for after service.”

Elena accepted both Barry’s brave show of the loving husband as well as Diana’s intervention while Barry headed Millie off.

He said, “Why don’t we all thank God for this glorious day...and consider how fortunate we are.”

Millie glanced about. Saw that she was outnumbered. Backed down.

*

Wave refilled both of their coffee cups and sat down once again, now that the first flood of morning customers was settled.

“Well, hell, it’s not like she’s married to an accountant. Think of what this will do to his world. Their family. You know I think you did the right thing for Elena, and for her family, by putting the decision squarely on her shoulders. If you hadn’t backed out Peyton, where do you think this would go? It would still have the same ending, only now you’ve gotten out with some sense of honor and grace.”