Chapter 5

Those first pangs of uncertainty bred like rabbits. By the time I got there I was a wreck. I went forth on pure adrenaline and pounded on the door. When he answered it I must had scared him half to death, because I burst into tears and he thought something had happened to Chrissy.

I quelled that fear first, telling him she was fine, but it was like a dam burst inside me and I couldn’t keep anything in any more. It all came out, not in the logical, reasoned bits and pieces I had practiced saying as I started the trip back home. It just flowed forth like waves on the beach, unruly and disorganized, as I told him I loved him, and couldn’t do without him, and wanted to be his wife and live with him. Bless his heart. He didn’t shush me or tell me to grow up. Instead he just held my shoulders like his daughter had held them a few hours past, listening to me babble. He didn’t even wipe my tears away, letting me do that myself.

He just listened.

When I finally ran down I felt so hopeless that I almost sat down on the floor. I know I swayed.

“Come on,” he said, and pulled me into the kitchen where he sat me down at the table. The car had been warm, so I wasn’t wearing a coat when I jumped out of it and ran to beat on his door. He went to the cupboard and got down the bottle of Scotch he kept there. It was half full of a dark amber liquid and had a black label. He splashed some in a small glass and handed it to me.

“Sip this,” he said. “Just sips! Sorry, it’s all I’ve got.”

I let the liquid go into my mouth and swallowed. Fire flowed from my mouth down to my stomach, leaving a column of warmth, and the faintly bitter taste of smoke in my mouth. I sipped again. It didn’t burn as much this time.

“Not too fast,” he said.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Why?”

“For coming here and crying and making a fool of myself,” I said.

“Oh.”

He got his own glass and poured for himself. He took a few more sips and I took another one. I decided it was good.

“I see you’re driving Chrissy’s car. Does she know about all this?”

“She didn’t call you did she? She promised she wouldn’t!”

“Would I be asking about the car if she had called me?” he asked, calmly.

“I guess not. She said I was crazy.”

“I see.”

“I probably am.”

“Mmm hmm. Is that all she said?”

“She said she didn’t know how to feel about it, but gave me the keys. Would you please just say something and get it over with?” I moaned. I took another sip. This one was a little bigger, and I felt that delicious burn again. I decided that the burn of that in my stomach felt almost like the warmth of his sperm in my belly.

“Are you willing to talk about this without yelling and screaming?” he asked.

My gut tried to go cold, but the Scotch wouldn’t let it.

I nodded.

“Such a marriage would upset a lot of people,” he said.

“My parents,” I admitted.

“And many, many others. There is a significant age difference involved.”

“That doesn’t matter to me,” I said.

“I know,” he said. “But it would matter to a lot of others. There would be talk ... snide, unpleasant talk.”

“Why?” I asked.

“People would assume I got myself a trophy wife,” he said. “Or they’d assume you were a gold digger, after my money.”

I blinked. I had never really thought about “his money.”

“By the time you’re the age I am now, I’d be fifty-five,” he said. “You’d be in the prime of your life, and I’d be slowing down and getting old.”

“That’s almost twenty years from now,” I said. “That’s a whole lifetime away!”

“For you, yes,” he said. “But for me, only half as long as I’ve already been alive.”

I said nothing.

“What about your education?” he asked.

That was one of the things I had thought about long and hard on the trip back.

“I’ve tried to think of occupations I might enjoy, but nothing comes to me. Maybe some day I’ll decide I want to do something. I can go to college then. But the time to have children is when you’re young and in shape. I love children. I love taking care of children. I want to have your babies, and take care of them. It’s not that I want to be a housewife. I want to be your wife, and take care of our family.

“What if Chrissy ends up not approving?”

I had been feeling sorry for myself, and that I just needed to find a way to get out of this torture somehow. I didn’t know what to do. I felt awful. He had put forth all the standard reasons why what I wanted would be considered a bad idea by almost everybody.

But when he said, “ends up not approving,” my mind registered a difference. Everything he had brought up was a possibility. The way he said that about Chrissy, though, sounded like he was expressing concern about a real future.

For the first time since I’d arrived, I had the faintest hope that he was actually considering my proposal seriously.

“Chrissy loves us,” I said carefully. I took another sip and realized that my glass was empty. I pushed it toward him and he shook his head.

“You’ve had plenty,” he said. “The last thing you need right now is to get drunk.”

“I’ve never been drunk in my life,” I said.

“Well don’t start now.”

“Chrissy loves us both,” I said again. “She wants us both to be happy. If she thought we were both happy, she’d come on board.”

“It would change your relationship, though,” he said.

Again, he was talking as if it might happen, and he was worried about the possibility there would be conflict.

“Why?” I asked. “I love you already. I’m not jealous of her. The only difference would be that I’d be living with you. Our roles might be reversed in those terms, but why should that affect how we feel about each other?”

“You’d let your husband have extramarital affairs?” His eyebrows rose and he looked shocked.

“You making love with Chrissy would not be an extramarital affair,” I said. “It’s normal.”

“Wow,” he said.

“I don’t think you get it,” I said. “I have been in love with you since I was fourteen. I’ve never thought of another man in the same terms I think of you. I can’t imagine living with another man or having his babies. I’ve tried to imagine that with other men, and there’s nothing there. It’s just a big blank. But with you I see this house full of children again... our children. It’s so easy to imagine that that it just seems like it has to happen some day.”

“And what if I felt like Chrissy was enough ... that I had already had all the children I needed?”

The tears practically burst from my eyes, but I didn’t wipe them off. I just let them run down my cheeks.

“I don’t know,” I whispered.

He got up and came to my side of the table. He held out his hand, and when I stood he held me for a few moments. I tried not to cry, honestly I did, but I was so sad.

He let go of me and sat down. He pulled me onto his lap. I felt huge, tall, and he looked small, somehow, because his head was below mine.

“You are something,” he sighed. I hiccupped. He put a hand on my thigh and went on. “When you were thirteen, you came to a sleepover. There were a bunch of other girls there, and you guys made so much noise I was afraid that the neighbors would complain. Then it got very quiet, suddenly. I was curious. I went to Chrissy’s door and peeked in.

I felt a sudden rush of excited shame. I knew exactly what he was going to say next.

“All of you girls were topless and had your hands in your panties.”

“Marnie talked us into trying something,” I whispered.

“The look on your face was something I’ll never forget,” he said. “You were in ecstasy. I wanted, at that second, nothing more than to be able to make that look come over your face.”

I wiped my cheeks with the palms of my hands. I wasn’t crying any more.

“I couldn’t forget it. It was the first time I had wanted to be with a woman since Jennifer died.”

“I was just a kid,” I objected. “I barely had boobs!”

“You were beautiful,” he said. “You were captivating. You had so much potential. It practically drove me crazy. And you were here all the time. I managed to wait a year, but then, when you wanted me to play games with you, I lost it.”

“You didn’t lose it. You barely touched me.”

“You have no idea what was going through my mind,” he sighed. “I masturbated five times that night. As soon as the game was over I jerked off. I couldn’t even get to sleep until I’d done it again. Then I woke up twice more in the night and did it again. In the morning I was sore, but I still had to go again before I could face you at breakfast.”