Читать книгу A Charmed Life - Nancy Jr. Manther - Страница 7

A solitary tear ran down Annie’s cheek and splashed onto the divorce papers on the counter in front of her. The notary’s stamp was a blurry smudge, looming large. She remembered the last time they’d broken up with disturbing clarity. If she didn’t know better, she would have thought it was yesterday. The distance between then and now had disappeared and all she felt was the pain. The pain had always been there – it had never gone away. If only she had known, so many years ago, that love didn’t have to hurt to be real. If only someone had told her that there could be more happiness than hurt.

The red flags had always been there, but she had managed to ignore, deny, repress them, until the day that Dillon died. Looking back she realized this, but while she was in the moment, it had been much more difficult to see. She had loved Eric with all of her heart and soul. He had been everything to her and she had tried so hard to be everything to him as well, but it hadn’t worked. She had always felt that something was missing -- that she didn’t quite measure up. She never felt that Eric found her beautiful or sexy, even though sex was something they had plenty of in the early years. Feminists would have scoffed at her willingness to please him, but it was really all she wanted to do. Making him happy made her happy.

Of course, in all the wisdom and experience of twenty-three years, she thought she loved him. She did love him. However she soon found that love alone wasn’t enough -- at least the kind of love that they had or the kind of love they could give each other. Because while she loved Eric, there was always an undercurrent of doubt whether he loved her. He said he did, but his actions told a different story. Annie always berated herself for doubting him; how could she be so disloyal? So she ignored the pain she felt when he’d stay out until the wee hours of the morning with his buddies or when he forgot the color of her eyes.

Once before they were married, Eric had wanted to go fishing. They were driving down a dusty, country road on the way to the lake, looking for a place to buy bait and a fishing license. Annie had planned on doing more reading and tanning than fishing and had assured him that she didn’t need a license. They finally saw a run down building on the side of the road with a make shift sign that said “BAIT SHOP.” It was connected to a liquor store that had a flashing Grain Belt sign that had half of the neon burnt out. Eric pulled his black Grand Prix into the parking lot.

“This is great!” he exclaimed. “We can get a fishing license and some beer. One stop shopping -- you’ve gotta like that.” He turned off the ignition and turned to her. “Do you want to come with?”

“That’s okay -- I’ll wait here,” Annie replied, smiling back at him. “But will you get me a Tab?”

“Alright,” he said, and hurried into the store, extinguishing his cigarette before he went inside.

Twenty minutes later he emerged with a brown paper bag in his right hand, a carton of beer in his left and a white piece of paper between his teeth.

“Sorry I took so long,” he said, dropping the paper from his mouth before he spoke. “It took a while to get waited on.”

“No problem,” said Annie. “I took a little nap.”

“I got night crawlers and leeches for me, and worms for you,” he announced as he set the bag of bait on the floor of the back seat.

“But I’m not going to fish,” she reminded him, not that he couldn’t put the worms to good use.

“Oh yes, you are!” With a flourish, Eric waved the piece of paper in front of her face. She blinked at the commotion and put her hands up to stop him.

“What are you doing?” she asked, confused.

“Well, I decided to get us a joint fishing license,” he explained proudly. “Then if you want to fish, you can. Besides, it was cheaper than two single ones would be.”

“But we’re not married,” she interjected, secretly pleased that he was even willing to pretend. She had been hoping for a commitment from him for a long time. Maybe he was finally warming up to the idea. “Won’t we get in trouble if they stop us?”

“Oh you and your always wanting to follow the rules,” he teased, dismissing her question. “It will be fine.” He looked into her eyes a little longer than usual. She smiled back at him, ready to concede that it would be okay, when he muttered, “Damn!”

“What?” Annie was thoroughly confused at this point. “What’s wrong?”

“You have blue eyes,” he stated and then swore under his breath again.

“Yeah -- so?”

“I put down ‘green’ on the license. Damn it. I was so sure I guessed right.”

Annie was stricken. He’d guessed her eye color? She couldn’t believe he didn’t know for sure. They’d been dating for four years, not four days. Her heart plummeted to her feet, but she was determined not to show it. How picky could she be to let something like that bother her? Besides, it was so sweet of him to get them a joint license. He’d actually put her down as his wife. That had to count for something; much more than getting her eye color right. But the fact that he’d gotten it wrong started to wear away at her heart, in one little spot way at the bottom, where she thought could ignore it.

“That’s okay,” she said, trying to sound cheerful. “Did you get my Tab?” She thought she’d change the subject to divert her attention from the sick feeling in the pit of her stomach.

“Damn,” he said again. “I forgot.”

Annie made a conscious decision not to say anything. It was better that way. She wasn’t going to say it was alright and she wasn’t going to get mad about it. It simply didn’t seem worth the time or effort. Instead she found happiness in the fact that for the moment, she was a tiny bit closer to becoming Mrs. Eric Morgan.

As it turned out, being Mrs. Morgan didn’t make much of a difference. Several years later, Eric came home from work one day and announced that he’d stopped at a sporting goods store during his lunch break and bought a fishing license. The state fishing opener was that weekend and he was going on the first of several trips he had planned for the summer.

“Guess what?” He waved the white piece of paper in front of her face as she cut up a red, juicy tomato for the salad she was making for dinner.

“What?” She reached for the dishcloth to wipe the juice and seeds from the tomato off the counter. She then ran the cloth under a stream of hot water from the faucet to rinse it off before she neatly folded it and placed it on the divider between the sinks.

“I got a joint license this year -- just in case you decide to fish.”

“That’s good, I guess,” she replied. “We do have that family reunion to go to up at Breezy Point. It might come in handy.” She wiped her hands on the blue terry cloth dish towel and reached for the license. Suddenly she was reminded of the first joint license he’d bought for them so long ago. She smirked a little as she wondered if he’d gotten her eye color right this time. Before she could get hold of it, he whisked it out of her hands.

“There’s only one problem,” he said, a sheepish look coming over his face. He put both of his hands behind his back, the license safely hidden from her. “I kind of had a little problem with one thing on the license. You’re going to think this is really funny --”

“You didn’t forget my eye color again did you?” She laughed as she took the cover off the pot boiling on the stove to stir the contents bubbling inside. As she removed the lid, a drop of spaghetti sauce made a leap for freedom and landed on the shiny white surface next to the burner. She frowned, grabbed the dish cloth and wiped it up without missing a beat.

“Not if they’re brown,” he said with a nervous chuckle.

Annie put the cover back on the pot of spaghetti sauce a bit too loudly and turned to face him. “You’re kidding me, right?” she said, still smiling, but feeling her heart drop a few inches.

“Well, not really,” he looked nervously at the floor, at the stove, out the window, anywhere but at her face. Or more specifically, into her eyes. No wonder he doesn’t know what color they are, Annie thought angrily. He never actually looks at them.

“I stood there for the longest time, trying to remember, and I just couldn’t,” he went on to explain. “I just drew a blank. At first I thought green but then I remembered that’s what I put down the first time. Remember how funny that was? Anyhow, I was holding up the line, and I had to put something, so I just said brown.” He was folding and unfolding the license in his hands as he spoke. “But that’s not right, is it?”

“You tell me,” Annie closed her eyes and stood there with her arms folded across her chest. She leaned against the counter, crossing her right foot over her left, and waited.

Eric sighed heavily and rolled his eyes. “Come on, Annie. You’re being ridiculous. You know that, don’t you? Don’t you have to get dinner on the table?”

“Quit trying to change the subject.” She was losing her patience. “It shouldn’t be that tough.”

Eric was silent for a minute and then said,” They’re hazel, aren’t they?”

She opened her eyes. “You tell me.”

He did as she said and when their eyes met, she was stunned by the anger and coldness she saw as she looked into his eyes. He scowled and looked away.

“Your girlfriend must have the brown eyes, huh?” She tried to make a joke out of it, but neither one of them found it very funny.

Tears gathered in her eyes as she shoved the pages of the divorce decree into its manila envelope. It had been one of the moments in their years together that she’d never forget. It was the incident that woke her up; that made her pay attention. How could he not know the color of her eyes? What man who loves a woman doesn’t remember a thing like that? The gnawing in her gut made her wince as she remembered more. If nothing else, it would confirm for her that they’d made the right choice; it had been the only choice, really.

It was a month after Dillon died when she’d found the note. It all happened innocently enough -- she was getting some of Eric’s suits ready to bring to the dry cleaner’s. Even though she hated the reason for being home from work, she found herself enjoying having unhurried time for household tasks. Usually she was hurrying to the dry cleaners to pick up Eric’s suits or shirts on her way home from work when time was already cramped. It was a luxury to be able to be able to take her time, especially in the middle of the day, when everything wasn’t so crowded with afterwork shoppers. Of course it would have been so much better to have Dillon along in his little car seat as she ran her errands, but she was trying to find the good in small things. It seemed to help her heal. Maybe if she told herself that enough, she’d finally believe it.

The T.V. in the bedroom was tuned to “Live with Regis and Kathy Lee”. Kathy Lee was carrying on about her precious little dogs, Chablis and Chardonnay, her hand resting on her pregnant belly as she spoke. Sure, Annie thought jealously, her baby will be okay. No sooner had she thought it, when she reprimanded herself for being so horrible. She wouldn’t wish her tragic fate on anyone -- even Kathy Lee. No one deserved this kind of pain.

“Oh, Reeg,” Kathy Lee’s voice droned on in the background as Annie went about emptying the pockets of Eric’s suit coats and pants. He was usually good about taking everything out of them, but every now and then he missed something. Since she had the time, Annie was being extra careful to check every last pocket. The last time she’d brought one of his suits to be cleaned, a tube of lip balm had been left in the inside pocket of the jacket. The suit had almost been ruined because the dry cleaners had missed it too. Eric had been furious, more at himself than anyone, but Annie decided it was worth it to be more vigilant now, to prevent potential disaster later.

She was rooting around in the inside pocket of his dark gray suit jacket. No lip balm to be found, but there was a piece of paper or something there. Probably a receipt, she told herself as she removed it and looked at it. He had been searching for the receipt for a new tie he’d recently purchased and wanted to return, so she decided to open the folded piece of paper to see if that’s what it was. He often shopped at an exclusive men’s store near his office that had large, elaborate receipts, much larger than the usual cash register tape. Her heart stopped as she read the words:

Beth G. -

call anytime

Frantically, she turned the piece of paper over to see if there was anything on the back to indicate when it had been written. There was nothing; it was just a plain piece of white paper from a 4” x 6” notepad. There was a remnant of the red plastic binding on the top but that was all. Her hand shook as she stared at the carelessly scrawled words. She felt sick to her stomach as she sat down on the bed to get her bearings.

Annie closed her eyes and made herself take several very slow, deep breaths. What did this mean? She thought she only had to worry about Kelly. Now there was someone named Beth? Her heart pounded wildly, making it difficult to breathe. Oh my God, she thought, still trying to calm her upset stomach. Now what do I do? She had to talk to Eric -- she needed to confront him. As upset as she was, there had to be a reasonable explanation; there had to be. She tried to ignore the voice inside of her that told her that there could only be one explanation for such a note. She had failed at being a mother, she was determined not to fail at being a wife.

Furious tears nibbled at the inner corners of her eyes, but she pressed her fingers there to keep them from spilling out. She had to stay strong, to stay in control. This would not get the better of her. She could do this. Just then, Regis announced their next guest as a woman who had written a book about divorce. Annie’s skin crawled as the words entered her brain and she bolted for the bathroom and vomited into the toilet.

Enough of that, she told herself as she tore off a length of toilet paper to wipe her mouth off. Enough. She stood up and looked at herself in the mirror. The tears she’d been fighting so hard to keep in, were running down her face. They’d snuck out while she was throwing up. Okay, fine. Get it over with now, because you are not going to cry later.

When Eric got home late that afternoon, she was sitting in the living room, reading a book and drinking a glass of wine. It had been a warm day, warm enough for air conditioning, but she’d opted to turn it off earlier in the day and had opened the windows instead. She heard the door open and then she heard his voice.

“Jesus, it’s hot in here -- why isn’t the air on?” He was unbuttoning the top button on his shirt as he entered the room. He stopped when he saw her. “Wow -- you look great.”

Annie had taken extra care in getting ready that afternoon. Her hair and make-up were perfect and she’d put on Eric’s favorite white sundress. She was pleased to discover that she could fit into it -- her pregnancy pounds were beginning to disappear.

She wanted to look especially good as she asked him about the note she’d found in his suit. She looked attractive and confident, even though she was terrified. The wine helped calm her nerves and gave her the additional courage she’d need for the task ahead.

“Thanks,” she said as she reached for her glass and took another sip of wine. “Did you have a good day?”

“Yeah, it was fine,” he said as he went to the refrigerator for the wine bottle. He poured himself a glass. “How was yours?”

“Well,” she started, “it was all right. Nothing too exciting until I got your suits ready to bring to the cleaners.” She took another sip and a deep breath. “And then I came across this.” She held up the note between the first two fingers of her right hand.

Eric stood there, frozen in place, the color momentarily draining from his face.

“What’s that?” he asked warily after a few seconds.

“Well,” Annie started, “it’s not the receipt for your new tie.” She slowly unfolded the paper as she spoke. “At first I thought that’s what it was, but then I read it.” She looked at him squarely in the eyes and said, “But it’s definitely not a receipt.”

“What is it then?” he asked again. He reached out his hand toward her. “Will you give it to me please?”

Annie pulled the note close to her body and held it tightly. She looked at it for a moment and then looked back up at her husband.

“Annie –”

“It was really wonderful to be going through your suits before I brought them to the cleaners this morning and find something like this.” She shook the note for emphasis.

She took another sip of wine, pacing herself. That afternoon, as she showered and primped for Eric’s homecoming, she realized what a mistake she’d been making in trying to please him; in trying to be a “good wife.” She was losing respect for herself – how could Eric not be losing it too? Why on earth should he respect someone who let herself be walked all over like an old rug? The area over her heart was getting particularly threadbare. At the rate they were going, he’d wear a hole right through it if she didn’t do something.

“Annie – calm down. It’s not what you think.”

“No, Eric, I’m not going to calm down. ” She stopped to catch her breath. Her heart was pounding like a sledge hammer. “Who is Beth G.?” She held the note out to him again. “What am I supposed to think?”

He sighed and slowly shook his head back and forth, “What do you want from me, Annie?” His voice was defiant and defeated at the same time.

“I want the truth.” She said the words calmly and firmly. She was terrified inside, but was determined not to show it. She sensed she was heading to a place she hadn’t been prepared to go, but there was no turning back now.

Eric felt his pocket for his cigarettes and fidgeted in his chair. “I need to go and have a smoke.”

“No, you don’t.”

“It’ll just take a minute,” he sounded like a petulant, spoiled school boy.

“I want the truth,” she repeated the words.

He stood there looking forlorn and subdued.

“Just tell me. Who is Beth?” Suddenly she wished she could take back the words. She wished she could turn back the clock to an easier, happier time, but had trouble remembering when that would have been.

Eric stood up and walked across the room to the window. He stopped there and looked out at the yard. His back was to her as he started to speak. “Beth is a family law attorney. One of the guys at work gave me her name.”

She could barely hear him, but decided not to interrupt. Something told her to be still and wait. The only sound was the neighbor’s dog barking, filling the awkward silence with a much needed distraction.

“I started to realize it while you were pregnant. All that mattered to you was the baby; I became less and less important to you. Now all we do is fight; I can never do anything to please you. I can’t do this anymore, Annie. I want a divorce.”

The floor seemed to shift under her feet and Annie reached down for the arm of the sofa to keep from falling. Suddenly she felt as though she was being pulled underwater by a violent, relentless current of disbelief and fear. She lowered herself down onto the sofa.

“A divorce?” The words left a bitter taste on her tongue.

He stood there like a statue, hands shoved in his pockets, his mouth a hard line.

“But I love you, Eric. We can work this out. We haven’t even tried. This has been an awful few weeks. Maybe Dr. Hayes knows a counselor who can help us.” Annie was desperate for him to listen to reason.

He shook his head. “No. No counseling. Let’s just cut our losses and be done, Annie. It’s pointless to keep up the act.”

“What act? What do you mean?” Tears were now running down her face. “Doesn’t our marriage mean anything to you?”

“I always wanted it to, I really did, but it’s just not working.” He sounded like a stranger. “It’s never going to work. It’s just too hard.”

“I can’t believe you’re willing to just throw it all away.” The words were getting caught in her throat, constricted by the torrent of emotions.

“Well, believe it.”

“Is there someone else? That Kelly from work?” There had to be more to this than he was telling her. “Eric, are you having an affair?”

“No, there’s no one else. You’re so paranoid. Kelly has nothing to do with this. I just want life back the way it used to be.” He looked away from her as he spoke.

He left her sitting there and went into the bedroom to pack a bag. When he came back out, she was still on the sofa, tears still running down her face.

“I’ll call you,” he murmured and then walked out the door, letting it slam behind him.

In the days that followed she couldn’t remember what she’d been looking at when he left, if anything at all. The entire incident remained a blur, except for the words: ‘I want a divorce.’ It made her sick to think of it, but she kept repeating the phrase in her head over and over again. Each time she repeated it, it still sounded so foreign and unreal. How could Eric want a divorce? Had he really been that unhappy? How could this be happening to her? First her baby died and now her marriage was dying. Although according to her husband, it was already dead, and he wanted it to stay that way.