THE AFFAIR (16 page)

I drove home, thinking over what Chance had said, sure that mixed up in all of that were his desires. He was not any different than Larry. He wanted me to give up my life for a dream he’d carried for twenty years.

He knew nothing about the joy on my husband’s face when Erica was born, of the tears he’d shed. He knew nothing about the love Larry felt for me. That was one thing I never doubted, Larry’s love.

In some ways I did think he was using our lives to make up for his mother’s leaving him. I knew his need for a family had to do with that, but I had never pressed the issue. I’d wanted so much to wipe away all the sadness that the five-year-old I’d never known had endured.

There was something tragic in Larry’s face from the first moment I met him. He carried around a sadness in his beautiful brown eyes. He didn’t have any friends as far as I knew and his cool manner intrigued me. I thought he needed a friend.

So I’d set out to save him, to be his friend. I didn’t know how badly he was in need of someone to love until after we’d made love the first time. Despite Larry’s aloofness the last thing I expected was him to be a virgin.

The brevity of our encounter surprised me. It was nothing like I had imagined my first time would be. There was an awful, painful burning, much worse than the worst bladder infection. Then in about three seconds Larry fell on me in a heap. It took me at least five minutes to know that it was over.

Disappointment washed over me in waves. I had waited my entire life and given up my virginity for this. It wasn’t worth it. After awhile Larry got off me and rolled to the side of the motel bed we’d rented for the occasion.

I remember the incident as clearly today as if almost twenty-eight years had not passed. For a long time we didn’t talk. Larry turned his back on me. I felt my stomach knotting up. I hadn’t pleased him either. I cringed at the thought that now I was no longer a virgin.

I heard sobbing. At first I couldn’t believe it. When I touched Larry’s shoulder’s he turned and held me so tightly that I thought something was wrong. I didn’t know what to do, but I was becoming afraid of his increasing emotions.

“Larry, what’s wrong?” I attempted to console him by stroking his hair, wishing I was anywhere else but in the room with him. I didn’t know how to comfort him. I worried that I was so bad that he couldn’t handle it. Yet there was something else there beneath it all. I felt I had betrayed someone by making love to Larry. That thought scared me more than Larry’s tears.

“I love you, Mick.”

That was the first time he’d ever called me Mick. I liked it. I wanted to tell him that I loved him too, but I wasn’t sure. I did like him a lot and I enjoyed being with him.

I loved the way he treated me. It was nothing like the way my parents did. He wasn’t afraid of me. He didn’t think that I was crazy. He always seemed in awe that I was with him, his face lighting up when he saw me coming toward him. It all gave me a good feeling inside.

“Don’t ever leave me, Mick.”

“Why are you saying that?”

“I couldn’t take it if you left me. I need you, Mick. I need you to make my life complete. Promise me, Mick, promise me that you’ll never stop loving me. Promise me that you’ll never love anyone else, that you’ll never give yourself to anyone else. Promise me that you’ll never fall out of love with me.”

I didn’t answer him. I felt scared deep inside. Larry seemed so desperate that I began to pull away. I had never told him I loved him and yet he wanted me to promise him that I would never stop.

That was when Larry told me about his mother. As he talked, I saw the frightened little boy clinging to his mother’s skirt. I saw him crying alone in the darkness, blaming himself, not knowing why he was abandoned. I now knew why he was such a loner. That picture of Larry struck a chord in my soul and for some reason I mourned the loss of another little boy who’d not had a mother.

Larry was right. He needed me. There was no way I could let him down. Yet I had a sudden urge to run away. I heard a voice clearly in my head urging me to do just that.

I looked into Larry’s tear-stained face. What kind of person was I? He needed me. Then and there I swore I would love Larry always. I would not be the woman his mother was. I would make sure Larry could depend on me.

“Larry, I love you.”

He pulled away to look deep into my eyes, searching for the truth. I knew that from the intensity of his gaze. “Larry, I love you,” I repeated again. I ignored the voice that was now screaming in my head, telling me to run.

“Do you promise to love me always?”

I thought of his mother, of the five-year-old boy that he had been and my heart broke for him afresh. “I promise that I will love you always.”

I rubbed the tears from his face. I thought of our lovemaking.
Why would I want to repeat that with anyone else? It wasn’t that big a deal
.

“I love you, and I promise I’ll never love anyone else. I’ll never make love to anyone else. I promise.”

“Will you marry me, Mick?”

I gasped aloud. My head was swimming. I was so grateful that he wanted to marry me. I wouldn’t have to feel ashamed that I’d given myself to just anyone. I would be his fiancée.

“Yes, Larry, I’ll marry you.” I wound my arms tightly around his neck even as a feeling of panic overcame me. Again, I wanted to run. If I didn’t hold on to Larry I would. So I held on to him for dear life.

We made love for the second time. It lasted perhaps thirty seconds longer than the first time. I wondered about all the love stories I had read. For some reason I had thought it was real. I’d had dreams of making love to a tall, dark-haired man. Filled with passion, the dreams left me weak and wanting. Now I knew the dream was just that—a dream. Passion-filled lovemaking was a fantasy.

Our lives continued as we planned. Two years after we met, we finished school and got married. Larry went to law school and I went to work for a major pharmaceutical company. After a couple of years of blissful happiness as newlyweds I became pregnant. That was the moment I can look back on and know it was then when my fears began. Betrayal, pain and sorrow were my daily companion. My childhood dreams of a past lover, a son I’d not gotten a chance to raise came back with full force during my first pregnancy. I found myself grieving for my lost family yet pretending to Larry that everything was fine. I feared I was going insane and worked hard to control my dreams, my agony that was as real to me as Larry’s love. Despite my occasional longings to be reunited with my lost family I’d kept my promises to Larry.

There were times when I would dream of the dark-haired lover and awake feeling I had broken my promises to my husband. I blamed myself for not finding more pleasure in my husband’s touch. I thought I was crazy to feel that I was cheating on the lover in my dreams. I fought to get over loving a man that didn’t exist.

I learned self hypnosis and taught myself not to cringe, to be more receptive. I found that just a small sip of wine heightened my desire, so I would take a drink. It almost worked. He almost touched me in the way I was craving, but I was afraid to say anything.

He needed a simple direction or two, but I didn’t know how to tell him. I didn’t want to do anything that might make Larry feel bad. I didn’t want him to question where I’d learned about such things. How could I tell him that in my dreams I was loving another man?

I came to almost dread our lovemaking, my constantly being brought so near the edge, to be left there as he plunged toward bliss alone. I hid that knowledge deep within myself, afraid that it might be my inability to enjoy lovemaking to the fullest except in my fantasies.

I became adept at pretense. I learned what to do to give my husband satisfaction, what moves to make to make him think I, too, had reached the pinnacle of fulfillment.

How could I explain to Larry that somewhere in my memories there existed another man whose body I craved, whose touch set me on fire and whose very breath made me shiver with sexual desire? I didn’t have the words necessary to explain that a phantom had claims on my very soul.

This man lived only in my dreams. I knew that. Yet I wondered why I knew instinctually that it was a different touch I craved. I repeatedly shoved my longings away from me. Larry and I had a good life. We rarely fought, we went out, we made love regularly, we had fun together and we were friends.

Slowly I saw my husband blossom in the knowledge that I would always love him, always be there when he returned home. He was a confident, loving man that always saw qualities in me that I didn’t believe I possessed.

Chance was right. I needed Larry every bit as much as he needed me. Without him I would be forced to deal with the fact that I didn’t believe I was a nice person inside.

I was a good mother because it was expected of me. I was a good wife because I’d promised. And I’d been a good daughter because I had thought it would make my parents happy, keep them together.

None of it worked. My parents got divorced, my kids were angry with me most of the time now because I was no longer at their beck and call. And my husband was confused. I needed Larry to retain my sanity. Damn my dreams and damn Chance for turning out to be the man in them.

He thought I didn’t believe him. I had known from the moment he held me in the rain that he was the man in my dreams. My heart had lurched toward his. I’d called myself crazy when I felt it and him crazy when he spoke of it, but I had known. I couldn’t admit any of this to Chance. What would happen to my life if I did? What would happen to the promise I’d made to Larry?

My life was spiraling out of my control. In time I’m sure I would have been able to push Viola to the back of my mind as I’d done with so many things. Being with Chance had changed things. I could no longer pretend, or keep things shoved to the back of my mind. I now knew it would be impossible for me to keep pretending to be the virtuous wife and mother my husband thought me to be.

Somewhere deep within I heard the same voice I had heard many years before telling me to run. It was now telling me it was time for me to live again.

Chapter Eight

I opened the door of my home and walked through it as if for the first time. I thought of when we’d bought it. Larry had fallen in love with the layout, with the many bedrooms and the huge backyard.

At the time I’d had no idea that all of the rooms would be filled with children. I was thrilled to be buying a home, happy with my wonderful, handsome husband. I would have agreed to live on an ant farm if he had suggested it.

Now I walked through each room remembering the years we’d spent there. I waited to walk in my bedroom last. I lay on my bed fully clothed, not bothering to kick off my shoes. I had spent most of my life here in this bed with my husband. I couldn’t anymore. I knew that. But I also couldn’t leave Larry. We needed each other.

I went to the closet and began removing my clothes. I hadn’t known what I would do when I left Chance but I did now. It would be impossible for me to sleep in the bed with my husband after spending the past nine nights in Chance’s bed, in his arms.

As I moved to Erica’s old bedroom I felt a shudder of pain go through me. This was the second promise I’d broken in the past several months. It seemed since I’d broken the promise to Viola, everything else was happening in rapid succession.

I thought of the night Larry asked me to marry him, the promises I’d made to him. Well, those promises were now broken. I’d given my body and part of my heart to a man who claimed we were destined to love.

Larry would never understand that. If it had not happened to me, I wasn’t sure if I would believe it myself. But my soul stirred within Chance’s embrace, alerting me to the fact that he spoke the truth.

My dreams were confirmation that somewhere, sometime, this man and I had shared a life. We’d shared a love that apparently death did not and could not erase. Still, where did that leave me now? I didn’t want to leave my husband, but I couldn’t sleep in our bed and pretend that nothing had changed.

When all my personal possessions had been removed from my room, I calmly went to the store. I would make dinner for Larry’s return, steak, the same as it always was when he returned from visiting the kids.

The only thing that would be different on Larry’s return would be me. I would not be waiting in a flimsy gown.

Larry walked into his home, bone weary from the fear that had gripped him so tightly the past two weeks. Michelle wasn’t home. Panic began a slow beat in his temples, then proceeded to his belly, churning the bitter acid upward toward his now closing throat.

He walked throughout the house, something telling him not to go into the bedroom. The hairs on his arms pricked with static electricity whenever he turned in that direction. Whatever was waiting for him lay in that room.