The House (14 page)

“I don’t know if that’s a correct assessment of Matt’s intentions.” Anna’s identification with Matt went deep. “Perhaps the better question is why did Serine let it happen?”

“She was confused,” Grant said. “Your decision to divorce her father was tearing her apart, upsetting her. Her father had been unfaithful to you many times, but she couldn’t understand why you waited so long, and after so much had gone on.”

That seemed to be the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question. Anna calmed herself. “Sometimes it takes awhile to realize that not only are we unhappy but what we might do about it.”

“Thirty-three years?” Grant frowned. Anna sensed that Grant’s interest in why she had chosen to divorce Edward somehow trailed back to his mother’s death. “Why do you stay with the ones of us who mistreat you and don’t give you what you want and need, but leave those of us who love you, open our hearts, and pour out all we have?”

“Is that what you view me as having done?” Anna considered her words to Inman when telling him of Edward’s illness and wanting to care for him.
I need to be with him
, to which, Inman had replied,
I also need you to be certain of what you feel for me.

Grant’s countenance turned sad. “My mother left my father for a man half her age, and with none of my father’s integrity. I was in law school, studying in Budapest at the time. Mama and I talked often. I was an only child. She never said anything about why she had ditched Dad—even when I told her that I knew, and questioned her. I found out through my grandmother, her mother, that she’d left my father. She never told me she was leaving, or
why
.”

“Perhaps she didn’t know why.”

“Oh, she knew alright,” Grant said. The prosecutor driven by the young adult searching for answers had returned. “She knew her answer betrayed her guilt and would never measure up. My Dad was innocent.” The force with which Grant spoke launched a blast of insight.

Anna saw herself not only as like Grant’s deceased mother some part of her dead and another part dying—Anna also felt a kinship with Grant’s father, the part of herself that possessed no voice, or rather refused to speak. “No one’s innocent in a marriage,” Anna said. “Guilt is always shared. We are not what we think, you, me, Serine, Edward, Matt, my children, your parents.” Anna was amazed at the level of honesty with which Serine had spoken to Grant of Edwards’s dalliances. It revealed a depth of truth unblemished by youth and innocence.

Matt’s a fuck buddy; that’s all.
Again, Anna trembled at having slapped the most vulnerable of her children.

“For the past year, I have been engaged in trying to divorce Ed ward. I’ve wanted my freedom for a long time. And now that Edward is dying and has maybe less time than the doctor says, I’m afraid. I’m afraid and angry that death is taking him from me.” Anna had never realized until she met Matt, and was now speaking with Grant that without Edward in the world, as unfaithful as he was, she would be alone.

“I would expect you to feel vindicated.” Grant’s eyes receded as if recalling his father’s loss—the anger and hurt he might have felt when his wife, Grant’s mother, died.

“For thirty-three years I’ve been having an affair with my loneliness and private frustrations. “They’ve been with me all my life. It’s drew me to marry Edward. I wanted to escape myself, who I was, what I hated.” Anna forced a bittersweet smile, and staved back tears. “Now I won’t have him abandoning and frustrating me with his self-absorption and perpetual traveling. When he leaves this time, he’ll never return.” ?

Chapter 18

Anna’s conversation with Grant awakened within her a nest of questions buzzing for answers. She drove to the cemetery behind the Chapel of the Chimes. The quietness held within the high stone walls surrounding the graveyard against the bustle of the streets beyond delivered a tranquilizing effect as she walked between the headstones of the dead. Anna slowed in nearing the markers bearing her mother’s and father’s names: Elena Chason and Reverend Elijah Chason. Kneeling at the marker, she recalled her father’s words when learning of Elena’s prognosis.
Your mother’s dying. I don’t know what I’m going to do.

“You’ll be fine.” Anna had said. They were at the old Providence Hospital; her mother was in a room a few steps beyond where she and her father stood. She had placed her hand upon Elijah’s trembling shoulder. His face was blank; his eyes were empty pools of misery. Anna wished she could have entered his eyes then traveled the banks of his memory and uncovered why and what had ever drawn him to her mother.

“I love her,” he said.

“I’ll drive you home,”

“But my car,” Elijah said. “How will I get it home?” He had come hours earlier. After speaking with Elena’s doctors, he had called Anna.

“Edward and I will come back for your car.”

“Is he home?”

“Yes,” Anna said.

Reverend Elijah seemed surprised. He handed over the keys to his car. She accompanied him downstairs and to the garage.

Minutes later and moving down Telegraph Avenue, he asked, “Are you happy?” The Reverend had seemed more bereft in asking that question than in telling Anna of her mother’s prognosis.

“Yes,” Anna said. Pregnant with Linda, she still held hope for her marriage.

They reached her parents’ home on Union Street in Oakland. She took him inside and prepared dinner.

“I doubt I’ll be able to eat anything.” Elijah moaned. One day Elena had been ironing his shirts for Sunday services; the next she’d been unable to get out of bed. Her illness had shocked him.
Brain cancer last stages
, the doctors had said. Anna set the plate on the table. “What will I do?” Reverend Elijah had asked. He looked to his only child.

“What you’ve always done.” Anna sat next to him. “What we’ve always done. Pray.” But she hadn’t prayed in a while. This would be her first time in years looking to God for help. Not even Edward’s malfeasances had forced her to look outside herself for answers. The approaching death of Elena Chason, stalwart helpmate of a minister, and a mother with little show of affection, had drawn on Anna’s vulnerabilities.
My mother’s dying. Daddy is losing his wife. We don’t know what to do. Help us, oh Lord, to see this through. Help us.
And, there was the church where Elijah had ministered for more than thirty years.
Guide Daddy in what to do
. During the last five years of occupying his position, Elijah had been reticent to share his duties with a younger assistant who would eventually take over and make it difficult to attract another minister.

Anna began washing the dishes.

“Daddy, you need to think about finding someone to help out at the church,” she urged. “Not that they have to completely take over, but you need someone to preach at least two Sundays a month.”

“Delivering the word of God is my way of life.” Elijah sighed. Still at the kitchen table, he leaned back in his chair as if acquiescing. “Without your mother around, not preaching would be like—” He turned to Anna. “It would be like you losing David, Theo, and the baby you’re carrying, no clothes to fold, no one needing your food, or you. With Edward away all the time, you’d lose hope.”

Anna realized that Elijah knew of the problem plaguing her marriage, Edward’s unfaithfulness.

Back at home, she told Edward of her mother’s condition. “Ma ma’s dying and Daddy doesn’t know what to do. I’m worried about him.”

“Then, bring him here,” Edward said as he undressing.

“I don’t want to move him here. And, besides, he wouldn’t come.”

“Why not? The house is plenty big enough. We have five bed rooms.” Edward had begun plans for a house when learning that Anna was pregnant with David two years earlier. Violet had died the afternoon Edward was meeting with the architect.

“I don’t think it would be good to uproot him. Two losses might topple him over.”

“Suit yourself. The offer stands.”

Fuming at Edward’s callous response, she turned from the closet, and walked to him. “If you really want to know why I don’t want Daddy here, it’s because I’m ashamed for him to see me here alone with you away all the time.”

“I work,” Edward snapped.

“Yes, you work. But you also play quite rudely and very dangerously.” Anna wondered if any of the women with whom Edward had affairs were married or had boyfriends.

“Come off your high horse, Anna. You have everything any woman could need or want.”

“Except you.”

He got in bed. “You have me as much as any woman can expect to have a man when he’s working to provide for his family.”

“Did you give Stella as much as you give me, David, and Theo?” Anna had massaged her abdomen containing Linda.

Edward rolled over and turned away from her.

“I told you that was over.”

“And, I don’t believe you.” Anna had seen letters from Esther. “That’s your choice. As long as I provide for you and David, I’d say you have little to grumble about.”

“I deserve better,” she spoke to his back then hit his shoulder. He whipped over on the bed and grabbed her wrist. “This is the only way I can get you to touch me.”

Edward dropped her hand. He lay back down, and again turned from her.

“What’s wrong with me, Edward? Surely it’s not because I’m pregnant, that I’m a mother—
the mother of your children
? My mother is dying. My father is out of his mind with worry. Soon he’ll be alone.” Anna didn’t know quite what it was that her father would miss about her mother. What had drawn him to marry such a cold and soulless person?

“You’re just like her, the two of you cut from the same cloth, you and Mama.”

“I thought you said she didn’t like me?” Edward popped up. Redness filled the whites of his eyes surrounding his amber pupils.

“Takes one to find one. One thief always knows another.”

Edward jumped out of bed. “If I’m so much like your mother, why’d you marry me? The way you’re describing us sounds like you’ve got a fair amount of her in you.”

“She is my mother.”

“So what are you saying,” he yelled, “that you married me be cause I reminded you of your mother? Or of
yourself
?”

“I’m saying I’m tired of being here alone while you travel around the world. Why can’t you focus on real estate here in Oakland, Berkeley, or San Francisco?”

“And there aren’t women here, too?” A light flickered in Edward’s eyes and quickly died.

Anna recalled how he had said,
I’m not like your father. I’m immunized against poverty. I can’t promise much. I’ll give you a house.
When learning Anna was pregnant with David he had stated,
I won’t have my son growing up in an apartment. We’ll need a house, a home
. Propelled by the memory, Anna had asked, “What is it with you and things—money?”

“It takes money to keep this house and allow you to stay home and care for my sons. And in case you haven’t noticed, we have an other child on the way.”

“These are my children.”

He looked to her bulging stomach with what seemed vehement and disappointment. “Ownership does not bequeath capital. It takes capital to live.”

“And what is our capital?” Anna asked. “Why aren’t we living as man and wife rather than as a two people under the same roof?”

“Thank God we have one.”

“But what keeps us, going as we do, under it?” Anna drew near. “Don’t you want something better?” Again she grasped her stomach, fearful of how all the negative energies between her and Edward would affect the child she was carrying. Despite the anger and frustration, she had grown warm and moist between her legs. There was something about Edward when angry that rendered him vulnerable—and
attractive
.

“And what the hell is
better
?” Edward sat up and raised his arms as if to encompass the house. “This conversation is ridiculous.” He got out of bed and headed for the door. “Your father’s welcome to live here whenever he likes.” He pulled open the door and left.

Anna ran her fingers across the name etched into the headstone,
Reverend Elijah Fredrick Chason. Loving husband and father. Dedicated minister. Servant of God. 1910-1980
. As the memory receded from the shores of her mind, Anna removed her wedding band. She considered burying it in the dirt near the headstone. But she could not. Instead, she placed it in her pocket and drove home.?

Chapter 19

The water kettle let out a piercing cry as Anna entered the kitchen. She slung her purse onto the chair at the table. “Want some?” Theo asked. He turned off the flame and poured steaming water into a mug.

“Hot tea on a warm afternoon in Indian summer?” Anna walked to the counter.

“It calms the nerves,” Theo said.

Yours or mine
? Anna wondered.

Theo filled a second cup and smiled then said, “You look like you could use a tranquilizer.” He went to the table and sat. Anna lifted the second mug from the counter, filled it, and joined him at the table.

“I assume that since the house is still standing, Matt and Grant never crossed paths,” Anna said. She stirred her tea, lifted the bag from the mug, and laid it on the saucer between them.