The House (17 page)

The aroma of bacon and eggs drew Anna from her bed. Venturing downstairs, she entered the kitchen where Theo turned to her with a smile and said, “I wondered when you might be getting up.”

“What time is it?”

“Half-past eleven.”

Shocked that she had slept so late, Anna was even more disturbed that Theo seemed untroubled that she had done so. Their conversation last evening had overturned rocks of truth and shattered boulders of long-held beliefs deposited inside Anna. It also troubled her that Theo had usurped the kitchen, her area of expertise and escape, and made it his place of calm and safety. This was all Millicent’s doing, Anna silently grumbled.

Theo handed her a plate of eggs, bacon and toast.

“Thanks.” She took her plate to the table and sat.

Theo joined her. He had been cooking all morning. “I got excited when I heard you in the shower. This is fresh, just for you and me.”

“I guess we could call you the resident chef,” Anna said.

“I suppose so. And I hate to eat alone.” He smiled.

Again Anna thought of Millicent and silently groaned.

Theo brought some eggs to his mouth, chewed them, swallowed, and said, “Linda and Brad have gone for a walk. They ate earlier.” He sipped his coffee. “How did you sleep last night?”

“Fairly well.” Anna grew awash in the shame at how much she relished her son’s thoughtfulness and caring. She drank some coffee.

“I think you should know that Serine’s been involved with both Grant and Matt for the last two years. I spoke with her this morning.” Theo explained, “She’s back in L.A., was on her way to court. She’s pretty shaken up. I told her she at least owed you an explanation.”

“She’s got to choose. At least give back Grant’s engagement ring.” Anna shook her head.

“Like I said last night, Matt and Grant have known about one other.” Theo finished his eggs, and sipped his coffee. “As for Serine’s disjointed perspective on the matter, you might want to speak with David about that. Serine looks to him for guidance.”

Anna lowered her fork onto the edge of her plate. She sighed and leaned back in her chair.

“David left a message on Linda’s phone,” Theo explained. “The funeral was yesterday.” Again Anna sighed. It was all too much. Theo continued, “Heather’s going to be at her father’s for another week or so cleaning out the house, and packing his things.” Anna stared at Theo’s smooth, dark face. “David will be back late tomorrow, or the following afternoon. He has a fair amount to attend with Heather’s father’s estate.”

“I can imagine.” Anna wondered when David would be called to do the same with Edward’s belongings. In light of David’s statements at the dinner table nights earlier, Anna debated how much she wanted to involve her eldest son in handling Edward’s estate. She would need to speak with Henderson about that.

“I’d like to know how the service went,” she said. “I should have been there. In fact, why isn’t David sharing some of this with me? I am his mother.” The brunt behind her words hit Theo like a cold gust of wind. Glimmer dimmed in the eyes of her younger son. “I guess I’d like to know I’m still needed.”

“David is a thirty-three year-old man,” Theo said. “You’ve given enough of your time, and yourself to him and all of us.”

Lifting her cup of coffee, Anna asked, “Is that why
only you
persisted in calling when I stopped?” Anna had at one time wondered how Theo’s persistence in calling involved the other three. Now she knew it was personally driven.

“You were hurt,” Theo said. “You need to let that go.”

“You mean the
hurting
,” Anna corrected.

“It pained you to ask for a divorce. Even more since Dad was fighting not to give it to you. Like always, you pulled away from us.” But this time Anna had not been living in the house with her children.

“I didn’t want to involve you.”

“We were already involved. He’s our dad. You’re our mom.”

Anna stared at the food growing cold upon her plate. Her mother’s voice arose.
Waste not, want not.
The futility of all Anna had dedicated her life to—remaining faithful, and honest to Edward, their marriage, and their children cut at her heart. Despite Theo’s understanding, and forgiveness of her actions, Anna felt she needed to explain why she had withdrawn. The silence between them pulled at her. It pained Anna that she
could not
explain what she had hoped to gain from not speaking to her children. She also felt ashamed of what she
had
experienced with Inman, passion and intimacy, and beyond that, the hope of being loved.

Yet on learning of Edward’s terminal illness, Anna had quickly retreated back to the house where she would care for him. Did she love Edward, or not? The love she had held onto throughout their marriage died fifteen months ago. Anna looked at her coffee and recalled how Edward had never looked up when she placed the cup of decaf on the desk beside him. He had continued scribbling furiously across the document representing the lucrative sale of a property.

Anna now wondered of her ability to hold fast to the all-encompassing love she had nurtured and spread upon her children. She felt proud that as adults living in the world under their own steam, they sought and received comfort from within their own ranks. It also shadowed her with a sense of having been excluded, even though she had instigated the estrangement by withdrawing. Anna sensed that her children, like her, held questions not simply about her marriage, but about her as an individual, who she was, and who she had become in seeking a divorce from Edward.

Words she had spoken to Edward filled her head.
I hate you for what you’ve done. You’ve hurt me. More than that you’ve hurt these children. You took away their innocence. I’ll never forgive you for that.
Her thoughts shifted to Inman. Would the children accept him after Edward had died? Would she even want to be with Inman and face that challenge? The cumbersome questions threatened to overwhelm her.

“Your father hurt me terribly,” Anna said, “but I’ve yet to divorce him.” Theo seemed surprise and yet not so. “That morning,” she explained, “the day I found out that he was sick and dying.”

“The day he agreed to the divorce, and your selling the house,” Theo interjected.

“Yes. That morning, in the meeting at Henderson’s office would have been our last time together.” Anna went on. “Your father had given me my freedom. He deeded me the house. I knew something was wrong. All through the meeting he didn’t seem himself. He was not the Edward I knew.” He was not the man she had loved and depended upon as a constant in her life. Neither was he the Edward Manning she had grown to hate. “I asked Henderson not to file the divorce agreement,” Anna said. “I haven’t told your sisters and brother.”

“Does Dad know?”

“Yes.”

Theo remained still with his hands on his lap.

“But you’re no longer wearing your wedding band.”

“It was all coming to an end. My world, the way I wanted it, had come as I requested. I was terrified,” Anna tried explaining her actions and the contradiction of remaining married but having removed the symbol of unending commitment. “I was also angry, still am, but—” Tears threatened to spill over. Her vision blurred.

“And what about when you learned Dad was sick and dying?”

Anna’s chest cleared and lightened. “It was strange. I knew somehow that I hadn’t lost him. And then when he agreed to let me bring him home, I ... I ... I felt hope.” Lines formed upon Theo’s forehead. “I have him now,” Anna said. But he’s dying. Now death is the other woman.” ?

Chapter 22

Anna was standing at the counter lost in the oblivion of cut ting carrots when the patio door slid open, and David entered. She laid down the knife. Torment and anguish filled his eyes. He dropped his bag, and approached the counter.

“How was the service?” Anna asked.

David slid onto one of the stools. A shadow of shame gripped her elder son’s face, for what Anna suspected was the way he had spoken to her three nights earlier. Anna proceeded to the refrigerator, took out some ham, bread, and mayonnaise. David needed distance.

“It was nice,” he said of his father-in-law’s funeral. It’s not what I want for Dad.”

“And Heather?” Anna was back at the counter. “Will she be coming here?” Anna was not ready to contemplate that far ahead. She began making a sandwich.

David tugged at his fingers then twisted the wedding band on his left hand. Emptiness hung in his eyes. “I think she wants a divorce.”

“Are you sure? What has she said?” Anna lowered the knife to the counter.

“She’s met someone. He lives next door to her father.”

“Who?” Anna pursued.

“His name is Rob. He helped Mr. Matthews during the early stages of the cancer by driving him to the oncologist and the chemo therapy treatments. He knew a lot of what was going on. He called Heather each week and gave a report. When the calls came more often, sometimes every day, she decided to come back and stay.”

“What makes you think she wants to leave you for him?” Anna finished making the sandwich and placed it before David.

“She’s tired.” David fingered the sandwich. Despair was written and etched in every curve and crease of his forehead, and face. “Her father’s death has taken everything she’s got.”

“Can’t you help her? Don’t you want to?”

David leaned back in his chair. “I work every day, bring home all I have, and give what’s left to Heather, Emily, and Josh.” Anna grew frustrated and angry. David sounded like Edward when Elena had been dying.

David started, “Now with Dad dying...” He furrowed his brows. “What is it you wives want from us?” His words again echoed Ed ward’s contempt during Elena’s last days. Yet David appeared sincere in his desire to understand.

“We just want a friend,” Anna said. The conversation had devolved to a variation on the theme of her conversation with Edward decades earlier. Anna felt trapped. Her eldest son, and child in whom she had put many of hopes, now held a need to know. David’s soul was seeking liberation and the peace that
passeth
all understanding.

Linda entered the room. With Serine gone, she had been up stairs all morning with Edward. “I think we need to call hospice.”

“What’s happened?” Anna said. David stood.

“Daddy says he’s really tired. He wants them.”

David went upstairs. Dread filled Anna against the glow of serenity draping Linda’s face. Theo, who had been outside by the pool, entered the kitchen through sliding glass door.

Linda lifted the cordless phone. “Dad gave me the number to hospice,” she said then displayed the crumpled piece of paper.

Anna started upstairs. Theo followed. He grasped her hand when she reached the landing. “I’m here if you need me.”

Anna patted his fingers then continued to Edward’s room.

The hospice worker’s visit that afternoon ran matter-of-factly, eerily so. Anna found it surreal as she watched Edward listen, and then speak with the woman about the services they offered.

“I don’t want to put my wife at a strain,” he said, “When the time comes that I can’t do for myself... “ Brad was already assisting Edward to the bathroom, and then waiting until Edward signaled he was ready to get back into bed. Unable to witness and hear any more, Anna stood and left.

In the downstairs study that used to be Edward’s office, David and Theo quietly discussed varied matters. Linda and Brad, for whom Anna envied their closeness, had gone for a walk. Of all Anna’s children, who would have thought Linda would become so stable in adulthood?

In the kitchen, Anna removed a glass from the cabinet and filled it with water. On the way to the table, she glanced at the pool. The sun was glistening upon the water’s surface. Moving through the sliding glass door, she stepped out onto the patio and lowered her self onto one of the cushioned chairs. She lifted her head and took in the awning that extended ten feet or so. Edward had installed it, saying, “Then you can sit underneath, and watch the boys swim up and down the pool.” Anna had spent many afternoons watching David and Theo swim the of the lanes of the pool, while she was shaded by the overhang attached to the home and hearth over which she held dominion, and within the kingdom Edward had established, guarded, and maintained.

Protected under that same measure, from the hot rays of a late September mid-afternoon, she now recalled Edward taking the children to swim lessons at the Oakland YMCA. On the weekends when he had not been away, Edward had walked, stopwatch in hand, alongside David and Theo swimming laps. The sun had beat upon Edward’s ruddy face and cast a tan that lasted long after Christmas, and into the heart of winter. His voice had been encouraging as David and Theo pulled on their strengths to reach the length of the pool and back.

Anna lowered her eyelids and tried to imagine the time when Edward would no longer leave for a business trip in Brazil, Greece, Egypt, and Panama during which he would extend his stay only to return home with an even deeper tan. Edward’s death would invoke a time when darkness would descend and he would be forever gone from Anna, the earth, their marriage, and the
house
.