Secret Lives Of Husbands And Wives (32 page)

This is my Christmas gift to Harry.

When it’s time to pick up the children, I move my easel into the corner farthest from the door and tent a canvas over it. Not that it will be disturbed in here.

Once this shed was the graveyard of my past. Now it is a peephole into Harry’s future.

3:30 p.m.

Evermoor, the “adults-only/active community” where Mother now lives, has all the bells and whistles: a resortlike setting with flat, velvety green lawns crisscrossed by smooth pathways edged in a rainbow of annuals shaded by large swaying trees.

Its brochure, filled with photos of happy, healthy seniors eating well and keeping active, does not really do it justice. Tango and yoga are the most popular classes, Eudora McClatchy, Evermoor’s administrator, informs me as she escorts me down the hall to my mother’s door.

Then, in a knowing whisper that ensures my antsy, sullen children can’t hear her, she adds: “And our in-house pharmacy sells the most Viagra of any drugstore in the county.”

“Really, Eudora, that is too much information.”

“You’re telling me! Hey, I’m the one who has to look these horny old sods in the face.” She stops in front of Mother’s door. “Not that you have to worry about that with your mom. She likes them to look, but they can’t touch, if you get my drift.”

Believe me, I know: once burned, twice shy.

We’re both paying for it.

Eudora’s sharp rap on Mother’s door is ignored. She waits a moment before knocking again. “She knows you’re coming for her, right?”

“Yes, of course.” Mother has a motto: Let Them Wait. If They Really Want to Put Up With Me, They Will.

No, we don’t really want her grief. Particularly not for three days
before Christmas and two days afterward. But we wait anyway.

Finally the door cracks open. Mother peers out with a frown. “You’re early, Lyssa.” Even as she says this, she waves Eudora away. Eudora gives me a sad smile. Mother is now my problem, not hers. At least for the next five days.

Well, it is only five. This is why Ted is so willing to come through with the monthly stipend that keeps her here.

“The kids can sit down.” She points to the couch. The boys run to it, but Olivia, her favorite, reaches up for a hug first.

“Ah! Missed you, my baby.” Mother cracks her first smile. I count to see how many will follow, but know those smiles will be few and far between.

“I have something for you, Grandma!” Olivia nudges me for the gift, which is buried in my purse. I rummage until I find it, then hand it to my proud gal: an eggshell ornament, wrapped in tissue and tied with a thin gold ribbon. She made it at Christmas camp. Glued into a pipe-cleaner frame is a photo of Mother holding a baby Olivia. The rest of the egg is dipped in gold glitter.

“You can open it now, if you want . . . but where is your tree?”

After Father left, our Christmas trees went from real to fake, and from towering to tiny. By the time I left home, Mother had pretty much given up the ghost of Christmas altogether. Why bother? She spent the next decade of holiday seasons traveling with other bitter women to sultrier and, I hope, friendlier climes. Only after Ted and I had Tanner, and after one of her few girlfriends convinced her that a place like Evermoor was a happier hunting ground, did Mother purchase a small artificial tree, if only for appearance’s sake.

Like Olivia, I look around, but I don’t see one.

Mother shrugs. “The bedroom. On the dresser. I like the lights. They show me the way to the bathroom.”

Olivia runs in there. I follow, to make sure it’s not something she can topple over. What we find is a pre-decorated artificial tree only two feet high.

“Oooh,” sighs Olivia. But of course. It is the perfect size for anyone under seven or over seventy. She runs back to the living room and hands over the ornament. Mother rewards the current love of her life with a hug and a pat. “Go hang it on the little tree, near the bottom.”

“Do you have a hook?” Olivia holds it up to show its missing link to perfection.

“That’s a luxury, little one. Poverty is the mother of invention. Right, Lyssa?” Mother grimaces. “You’ll find a hairpin in the right-hand drawer of my dresser. When you do, bring it to your mother. She’ll show you how to bend it so that it stays on the tree.”

She pats Olivia to send her on her way. “What, Ted couldn’t make it?”

“He’s trying to catch up with work. Sales are down and his whole team is scrambling. But he’ll be home by dinnertime.” Lately that has been the case. For the kids’ sake, I’m glad.

Not that it has made a difference in our lustmaking. It seems that his desire for me died around the same time he got wind of Harry’s misfortunes. He doesn’t know that Harry and I no longer see each other, but he does know that our children are seeing less of the Wilder kids, so maybe he’s put two and two together.

Maybe he thinks that everything is back to normal.

He’s right. And that’s the shame of it all.

“He’s a hard worker, your Ted. And a good provider. You’re set for life. How many women your age can say that? All those divorces! A pity. ‘Starter marriages.’ Ha! No such thing when kids are involved. You can’t just start over.”

She looks at me sharply, daring me to disagree. But I won’t, because she’s right.

“I’ve got cake for everyone. But not you, Lyssa. You’ve put on a little weight.”

I open my mouth to say something, but what’s the use? She meant to hurt.

Besides, she’s right. I have put on a pound or two. Or three. All the stress, I guess, not to mention the doughnuts. But still . . .

Mother nods me toward the kitchen. “Let’s set it up. Then one cigarette for the road.”

I frown. “Where, here in the apartment? But what if they catch you?” Mother has been warned repeatedly about Evermoor’s no-smoking policy. Her darling Ted’s big fear is that they’ll kick her out and we’ll have to take her in.

“I’m safe. One of the old lechers here disconnected the smoke alarm for me.” She points at the one over the kitchen alcove. “I only smoke here in the kitchen. I run the fan and dump the ashes down the disposal. No one’s the wiser.”

I nod, and reach for the plates while she cuts the cake. The boys scramble to her small dining room table as if some catchy tune has stopped midway in a game of musical chairs.

“Grandma, whatever happened to our grandpa?” From Mickey’s chocolate-smeared lips comes this blasphemy. I hold my breath for her answer.

“He left me. No one wants to be around me, little guy. Not even your mother.”

Tanner, who like me must have been thinking that very thing, tries not to choke on his milk and spews it across the table’s high-gloss mahogany finish. Mother lets loose a curse and grabs a dishrag to mop up the drops.

“Mommy, isn’t this your name?” Olivia crawls into my lap. She is holding a letter, yellowed and musty.

Miss Judith’s kindergarten spelling lessons have paid off. She is right: that is my name on it.

What she can’t know, but I do, is that the block lettering is in my father’s hand.

“Honey, where did you find these?”

“In Grandma’s drawer. There were no hairpins, but there are a lot of these—”

I stumble past her, into Mother’s bedroom. The drawer that is open is the one below the shallow drawer in which she keeps her hairpins. Within it is a towering stack of letters, all in the same hand but postmarked with dates that go back years.

All the way back to that Father’s Day, so long ago.

That letter at the very bottom of the pile has no postmark, just my first name, along with a handwritten date for that day. I rip it open and begin reading:

Dear Lyssa, I had promised to be back last night. But Mother has asked me to stay away. It breaks my heart, being gone from you a minute, let alone a day, but I will honor her wishes. . . .

I smell Mother standing behind me. It’s not just her stale nicotine breath that repulses me, but the stench of her deceit. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“You know why.” This confrontation has given her a great excuse to light up a cigarette. She taps it into the ashtray she carries with her. “You would have left me, too. You would have chosen him over me. Him . . . and
her
.”

She’s wrong. She needed me the most. I knew it then, just like I know it now.

But because of what she’s done, she robbed me of my chance to prove my love to her.

She has robbed me of my love for her.

I walk past her, out the front door. My children scramble after me, too shocked even to call my name. Tanner is shushing Olivia, who wants to know why Grandma isn’t coming too.

Because Christmas is going to be spent with Grandpa instead.

If he can forgive me. If he is even still alive.

“Forgiveness is the final form of love.”

—Reinhold Niebuhr

4:50 p.m.

The home bearing the address on the card that Patti shoved in my hand is not at all what I’m expecting: trim but modest, a midcentury Eichler on a cul-de-sac filled with them.

My father sleeps in a hospital bed that has been set up in the center of the living room. The layout of the house provides a view of an interior courtyard from every room. After my children get over the shock that they’ve finally met their grandfather, they fixate on the courtyard and its gushing fountain. It is much more pleasing to look at than an old prune of a man, gray and wan like the clouds overhead, tethered to a respirator that beeps out his final wispy breaths.

They know they should love him, but that’s hard when you don’t have any history of doing so.

I know this from experience.

Now, in my father’s presence and seeing his reality, I can honestly say there is no way to make up for lost time.

And because time is of the essence, I start our visit by introducing each child to Father by name, age, and the kind of asides that are the shorthand of parental pride: obvious physical traits, such as Olivia’s silvery eyes; the activities in which each excels, such as Tanner’s basketball; and characteristics my father will recognize in himself, such as Mickey’s love for baseball stats.

This is my way of proving to him that out of sight does not necessarily mean out of mind, that I haven’t forgotten all those little nuances that made him my first love.

That I love him still.

Afterward, Patti rounds up the kids to take them to get a pizza. I tell her she really doesn’t have to, but then I realize this is her gift to my father and me.

All this time he has held onto my hand and won’t let go. His voice is no more than a soft whisper, but his eyes speak volumes with each piercing stare.

“So, all these years, she hid them from you.” He smiles wanly. “I was afraid of that.”

“I found out today. I thought it was your choice not to be there for me all those years. Not to contact me.” My sobs are making it hard for him to hear me, I know, but I can’t help it. “Dad, I want to say I’m sorry. For not being mature enough to look beyond her bitterness all these years. I was torn. I thought I was being loyal to her, and that you were making it easy for me.”

When he sighs, his throat gurgles. His life is flowing out of him quickly now. “You were a kid. You didn’t know. If you had, that would have been different. Then the decision would have been yours to make.”

Yes, oh yes! Mine to make . . . 

And what would I have done?

Would I have let my mother’s tears and pleas sway me?

Would I have found my own reasons to hate my father and Patti?

It’s easy to pretend that I would have had the maturity to recognize his unhappiness in the relationship he had with my mother, and to forgive him for leaving her.

At least, now that I know he didn’t plan on leaving me too.

“Lyssa, maybe I didn’t try hard enough to stay in your life. Maybe I should have followed you to school, or the park. Maybe I should have heard it straight from your lips.”

“I would never have told you I didn’t want to see you.”

“I know that now. But back then, maybe I was afraid you’d say the opposite.” He stops to gasp for breath, to grasp my wrist. “I had my pride. I had a new wife. God bless Patti, I love her dearly, but she would say anything to stroke that ego of mine. Even suggesting that everyone else was at fault.” His eyes tear up. “But I know better. It was much easier to pretend you were far away than to hear that you hated my guts.” He turns his head away so that I can’t see him cry.

I can’t think of anything to say. So instead, I watch his chest rise and fall beneath his pajama top.

It is a long while before he speaks again. When he does, he says, “Tell me about him.”

That startles me.
How does he know about Harry?

And then I realize he means Ted.

Ted, with whom I’ve spent the last fifteen years of my life. With whom I have three children, and who’s kept a 3,200-square-foot roof over all our heads.

Ted, who is a loving and caring father.

But what can I tell my father? That my husband wooed me only because I played hard to get?

That he only wants me now because he’s worried I’ll leave him for another man?

That our love life stinks?

No. Instead I tell him what he really wants to hear: “Ted loves me. He is a wonderful provider. He gave me three beautiful children. We live the life I always wanted.”

“That’s all I ever wanted for you. Lyssa, my love, that is all you can ever hope for in life.” These are his last gasps before he falls asleep.

I think about DeeDee and Harry, how hard both are fighting to hold on to the lives they had before their breakup. In DeeDee’s case, that means everything as it was, sans Harry.

As for Harry, I now know that he’s accepted DeeDee’s desertion
and is ready to let her go, but not his children, or the home he’s worked so hard for.

Yes, he’s doing the right thing to fight so hard for it. If my father had done the same, my life might have been different.

What about me? Is Harry willing to fight for me, too?

As he would say, it’s a moot point because I’ve already made up my mind that I won’t let him.

My father is right. Ted has given me my life. It’s time we started living it together.