Sand in My Eyes, page 22
“But that’s not fair to you,” he said.
“Mothers don’t always care about what’s fair or not for themselves. There’s a part of me that wants to teach my children about forgiveness, only I don’t know that I can, so I instead will teach them about endurance, and how marriage endures through good times and through bad.”
“Yeah, but don’t you want to teach your sons the consequences of cheating on their wives, and your daughter that she deserves better?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Is there better?”
“Anna,” he said, and by now he was standing up and close to me and there was nothing but the yard sales signs separating us. “Never, in my miserable years of marriage did I cheat on my wife. I divorced her, and then started to date, and that was only after we went for counseling and tried all sorts of things to make it work. And let me tell you firsthand that not all men cheat! For him to have cheated on you, a woman like you, Anna, the mother of his children—he’s a real dog and you deserve more in life, and I’m here if you’re considering a change.”
I turned my face so I wouldn’t have to look at him. “Oh, that’s hysterical,” I said. “You—an art history professor leaving for Stonehenge, and me—a stay-at-home mother who can hardly make it to the supermarket.”
“You think you’re better off staying where you are, in an unstable marriage with some dog who cheats?”
“Maybe,” I said, wiping tears from my face.
“It’s your choice, Anna,” he said. “It’s your choice.”
“Not really,” I told him, and by now I was feeling foolish. “You and I, Liam, we’re a whim, we’re a fling, a good memory, a reminder that my heart still beats, but a foolish thing, the two of us, and probably one day nothing more than a regret I’ll have and, for you, a name you can add to your list, a woman you knew from Sanibel, like all the other women you are yet to love from around the world—all those sacred places!”
“Oh, come on, Anna,” he said. “You don’t believe that. Somewhere in your deep-thinking, contemplative mind you know there’s got to be a way to make it work between us—if not now, someday soon.”
“Nope, there’s no way,” I said like I believed it, and stormed out of the shed, dropping the signs and picking them up, but still storming the best I could. Once I knew he was following at my heels, I went on, “Unless we could reverse time and I met you earlier, but then I couldn’t imagine not having my kids, or having other kids instead of them, so no, it could never work.”
“Why?” he asked me.
“Why what?”
“I don’t know,” he said, pulling his hat off and tossing it to the ground, rubbing his hands through his hair. “Why do bees love honey?”
I gave him a look that said, “you’re not making sense,” and with that he returned to his hammering and I to my snipping, receptive to any unfurling wisdom the flowers might have for me and trying in my mind to see things differently, to see them the way his mother saw things. And to think, before meeting Fedelina, I knew nothing of flowers, other than “roses are red and violets are blue.” Suddenly I knew more, that I should do with my life what I was doing with the shrub—cut out the bad, the dead blooms, starting with my marriage. “I will leave Timothy once and for all,” I mumbled.
But what would I tell my children? That, hard as they might try, all of the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Mommy and Daddy together again? I closed my eyes and held a branch tightly, wishing it had knowledge to share with me. When I opened my eyes, I decided that cutting my husband out of my life wasn’t the answer. How much easier might it be to add rather than cut … add what? Add beauty!
“Bye,” I called out to Liam, my arms full of good blooms.
“Where are you going with all that?”
“Home,” I said. “I’m taking a few for myself.”
“Don’t forget your signs. You need help putting them out?”
“No, thanks,” I said.
“I’ll leave them at your steps.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Bye.”
As I carried the blooms up my stairs and into my house, I knew that, like the hydrangea branches, Liam and I didn’t stand a chance at rooting, and I felt remorse for loving that which wasn’t mine, and for taking flowers that didn’t belong to me. Still, I dropped them into jars of water, wanting to believe, hoping one might root.
The rest of my day I spent organizing the junk under my house into piles, and sticking prices to the items for the next day’s yard sale. I worked well into the night, and shortly after dusk there was a knock at my door. It was Fedelina.
“There’s something I need to ask you,” she said, a grave look to her face.
“There is?”
“Yes, and be honest.”
I felt like crossing my fingers behind my back. I could never tell how I had fallen in love with her son.
“Promise me you’ll be honest?” she asked again, and I gave a nod of my head.
“Good, because I need to know,” she said, turning to the side, showing me her profile. “Is my mouth drooping?”
“Is your mouth drooping?” I repeated back to her.
“Yeah, right here,” she said, pointing to the left side of her face.
I stepped up close. “I don’t think so. Why?”
“Oh, I looked in the mirror, and it looked to me like it was.”
“I don’t think so,” I said, giving it a good look. “I don’t see it drooping.”
“Then it’s the way I’m applying my lipstick,” she said, and when I gave her a peculiar look, she added, “I’ve had a couple of minor strokes in the past. That’s why I’m asking.”
“Oh,” I said. “What does your son think?”
“I didn’t ask him. I wanted to ask you first.”
“Put no trust in me,” I told her. “Please get yourself checked.”
“I don’t feel like moving up north or touring assisted-living homes. I know my family wants that. It’s why my son is here, checking up on me as he is. He’s leaving tomorrow, you know,” she said.
“Is he really?”
“Yes—and that’s a good thing. I don’t want my children sticking around, worrying about me. They’ve got their lives, and I’ve got mine.” She was rummaging now through her straw bag, and I was glad she wasn’t looking into my eyes, detecting that which mothers detect, the eyes of a girl in love with their boy. “You wouldn’t happen to have any lotion, would you?” she asked. “My hands are dry and they’re driving me crazy. This itching! It doesn’t stop.”
“Over there on the windowsill, help yourself,” I said, pointing.
The look in her eyes went from warm to suspicious. “My oak leaf hydrangea?” she asked.
“I felt bad for it—all the dead blooms! I wanted to help.”
“That wasn’t necessary,” she said quickly, setting it down next to the other ten jars. “Hydrangea—they can thrive on very little attention, Anna.”
I could feel the guilt eating away at my cells for taking what didn’t belong to me, and for letting my heart yearn for another man when it should be yearning for my own husband. I could learn a thing or two from the hydrangea, I thought sadly to myself. If they can thrive on very little attention, then I should, too. I shouldn’t have allowed myself to get so lonely, to the point of doing what I did—cutting from branches that don’t belong to me.
“Anna,” she said sharply, and I obediently looked her in the eyes. “I hope you’re not being falsely optimistic, romantic in your thinking that one of these ten jars of water is going to grow roots. Is that what you’re hoping for, dear?”
I nodded, unsure whether we were talking flowers, or if she was alluding to me and Liam, and whether or not I believed our love might take root.
“I don’t mean to burst your bubble,” she continued. “I’ve had friends in the past, a long time ago, who cut branches from shrubs and tried what you’re trying. It worked for some, but they had to leave their arrangements in water a long time before they could grow roots of their own. But, more often than not, it does fail, and the branches would have been better off where they were, where they belonged before the cut.”
I gave a loud sigh and shook my head, wanting to tell her that I already knew that Liam and I didn’t stand a chance. “What was I thinking? It could never work,” was all I could say, for I still didn’t know whether I was sensitized and perceiving flowers differently due to our prior conversations, or whether she was on to me and trying to caution me with regard to my love for her son.
“I’ll be seeing you,” she said, heading for the door.
“No time for coffee?” I asked.
“Already had my cup.”
I was glad when she left. I had other things to think about, like my yard sale in the morning, and where to put the signs announcing it, and my husband’s return tonight. I went to the dryer, pulled a warm sheet out, shook it, then went to the sofa and tucked it in.
CHAPTER FORTY
EARLY THE NEXT MORNING in the little yellow room there was a window. Out that window were cars honking, doors opening and closing, people talking and knocking at my door. Then into the room came my husband’s voice like a frustrated squirrel, saying, “I thought you said the sale started at nine.”
“I did. That’s what I put in the paper.”
“Then why are people showing up now?”
I pushed him lightly out of my way and, shrugging my shoulders, I hurried past. “Welcome home,” I said. It was the same thing I had said to him when he marched into my room around three-thirty in the morning and announced his return.
“What’s all our stuff doing outside?” he had asked me then.
“I’m having a sale.”
“You think you went to extremes?”
“Some call it ‘cleansing.’”
“Cleansing? Our house is empty. Should I be concerned?”
“Why should you be concerned?
“A man comes home to an empty house. Are you planning something?”
“What would I be planning?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Leaving?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I told him.
“So I shouldn’t be concerned?”
“If you want to be concerned, you can. I did go through your closet. If there’s anything you’re missing and still want, you’d better look downstairs.”
“Should I do that now?”
“No. You can do it in the morning. The sale starts at nine. It should be a good one. I’m hoping to make a lot of money.”
“It sounds like your week was productive. What else did you do?”
“It’s almost four in the morning,” I reminded him.
“Fine, where do you want me—couch or bed?”
“Couch,” I said.
“Story of my life,” I heard him rant as he went down the hallway. “May as well buy a hammock, hang it outside.”
“Welcome home,” I said softly, and could have said more, gone after him with my words. But I felt like an owl that had been hit by a car. While he was away, someone cared for me, brought me back to life, and I no longer had it in me to clack at people who upset me, or puff myself up like I used to. And besides, I was glad he had left for the couch. I didn’t feel like listening to him snore.
By the time I got downstairs, carloads of shoppers already had our belongings piled high in their arms, ready to cash out. I accepted the on-the-spot bargaining they did with me because I was eager to get rid of the stuff before Timothy noticed ties, shoes, or other things he wanted to keep.
“This lady wants to buy your leather journal,” my husband said to me an hour into the sale.
“Two bucks,” I told him.
“You bought that in San Francisco,” he said. “It inspired you, remember?”
“That was years ago, and see?” I said, taking it out of his hands and thumbing through its pages. “It’s still blank. My mind is overtaken by other things now.” I handed it to the shopper.
“I don’t think you should sell it,” he called after me as I walked away.
“Let it go. It’s time to let go,” I said without emotion.
“For two bucks,” I heard him say sarcastically, “My wife is selling the dream she once had, her dream of writing a literary masterpiece.”
“Oh, please,” I said, rolling my eyes at him. “A bit dramatic, don’t you think?”
I wanted then to tell him I wasn’t the same woman I was back when I bought the journal, back when life was simpler and it was the two of us, with no places to fly off to, no children interrupting our every sentence—those newlywed days when we had only a mattress on the floor to sleep on and our dreams to wake up to, back when we didn’t have to wake at the crack of dawn like farmers. I think he already knew he was no longer married to that woman with the pot of coffee and the dreams, but in some ways he’s married to someone better—less egocentric, more compassionate, and there’s three people in the world she loves more than herself—but somewhere in the midst of this beautiful, motherly metamorphosis, she got stuck in a cocoon of martyrdom.
“I’m not the same woman you married,” was all I said. “People change.”
It was starting to feel like a long time that we were standing there, like two bulls looking into each other’s eyes, ready to charge, and I didn’t want him probing further, asking me how I had changed. He was about to, I could tell. I didn’t feel like weakening, crying on his shoulder, disclosing that beneath the mommy costume I had been wearing for years was a woman longing to be in an adult relationship with a husband she could grow with, change with, trust! I was glad when he turned and walked away. I couldn’t help myself. I made sure he wasn’t looking when I picked up the journal that the lady had put back down and wrote in it the first thing that came to mind.
I craved for us, as a couple, to delve into the depths of the seen and unseen, sharing our reactions to the world, and getting to know better the spiritual forces that have the miraculous power to bind two people together for the duration of their existence on Earth. These were my original expectations, and what is wrong with being a high achiever when it comes to the person you are going to spend the duration of your physical life with?
I closed the journal and returned it to the table, but would have to sell it at a discounted price now. Who wants to buy a journal already written in? There was a lot going through my head at once. When her children are away, a woman finds she still has her brain and all its functioning parts, and she is capable of loving, thinking, figuring things out, and of remembering all the expectations she had of marriage in the first place. I almost picked the journal back up again, wanting to write more, but when I suspected that Timothy, watching me from afar, might recognize all of this on my face, this part of me that hasn’t changed—my creativity, my desire to write, lying dormant within but still there as strongly as during our newlywed days together in San Francisco when that brown leather journal caught my eye—I left the journal and walked away.
We both kept busy for the next hour. He was picking out clothes, and things he liked, and carrying them back into the house, while I was loading furniture into pickup trucks, fitting toys into the backs of cars, and dealing with seasoned bargainers who wanted to buy the belongings of my life for mere pennies. When business finally slowed and I looked up from the wadded-up bills shoved into a coin box, I saw that Fedelina had come over and was talking with my husband.
I stepped closer, pretending to care about folding sweaters on the clothing table. I wanted to hear what they were talking about, and was hoping she was talking sense into the man, telling him his wife wasn’t nutty and that she didn’t need her kids taken away for a week. All she needed was a little help around the house and short rests here and there.
But I know they weren’t talking about that. Husbands don’t like hearing about sleep-deprived, overwhelmed wives.
“A man I was talking to the other day told me he was having marital problems,” Fedelina was saying to Timothy, “and so I asked him, ‘Do you fight a lot?’ He said, ‘No, hardly ever.’ ‘That’s your problem,’ I told him. ‘You both need to say everything, get it all out and let the other say it, too. Oscar—he and I were together a long time. Want to know our marriage secret?’”
“Sure. What do you charge?” Timothy said.
“Nothing,” she said as she leaned toward him. “We fought daily. That was our secret.”
“Really, that’s it?”
“Yeah and right after the fight I’d say, ‘Do you want a sandwich, Oscar,’ and he’d say, ‘Yeah, bologna.’ I’d speak my mind, he’d speak his and then we’d both move on. We were good at moving on.”
“Thanks for the pearls of wisdom.”
I walked over, wanting to tell them how hard it would be for me to joke about a sandwich after a thick slice of my heart—the slice I had fed to Timothy—had been half chewed and spit out.
“Hey there, Fedelina,” was all I said.
“Why, hello, Anna. I was telling your husband my marriage secret. Have I told you?”
“You did,” I said matter of factly. “How long did you say you were married for?”
“Five decades, can you believe?”
“My God, that’s long,” I said. “But life is long, too. At least sometimes it seems so, doesn’t it?” I turned my attention to a lady who wanted to buy the heart earrings Timothy had bought me for one of our anniversaries.
Moments later, after she left with the hearts already on her ears, my husband came up and asked, “Where’s your ring, Anna? Did you sell that, too?”
“Of course not,” I said.
“Then where is it?”
“I lost it somewhere in Tarpon Bay,” I told him.
“Tarpon Bay, that’s interesting.”
“Yeah, I went canoeing while you were gone. It slid off accidentally.”
“I didn’t know you liked canoeing.”
“I do now,” I said as I put my hand out and let a woman drop quarters into my palm.
“Should I be checking our banking account to make sure our money is still there?”
