Amy Inspired - Bethany Pierce [109]
“So what did you want to talk about?” I asked, unfolding the cloth napkin in my lap.
“Your father had an affair,” she said without prelude. “Two actually.”
I blinked in shock. “What?”
“I’m sorry, I don’t know any other way to say it but to say it.”
I stared at my grandmother, trying to get my bearings. “Mom said they loved each other but couldn’t live together.”
“She told me the same thing, until you were both in high school. Eat your soup, Sugarpie. It’s getting cold.”
I stirred the soup, but I’d suddenly lost my appetite.
Grandma cut her salad, cross-hatching with her knife until the lettuce had been reduced to a pulp. Her earrings—big orange O’s— dangled as she worked. “Amy, I know this comes as a surprise. I never thought I’d be the one to tell you.”
At the sight of my confusion, she sighed. She set her silverware down, dabbed either corner of her mouth with her napkin, and explained: “I never knew about his cheating. She told me the same thing she told you, that they loved each other, but couldn’t live together. Of course, that wasn’t enough for me. You love someone, you make it work, that was always my theory. The Lord knows I couldn’t live with your grandfather sometimes, but as I saw it, that wasn’t reason enough to throw in the towel. It was all I could do to hold my tongue around your mother those weeks. The divorce was quick. Over. Just like that.
“Then, years later, there was an incident at church—I don’t know if you remember. A choir member committed adultery with the music director. Rumors about the affair circulated for months. Your mom was so bothered by it; I couldn’t figure it out. Then she came to the house one day, all shook up and crying, and she finally told me the truth about what happened between her and your father.”
“He cheated on her,” I repeated in disbelief.
“He had his first affair the second year they were married and the second several months before the divorce. Your mother said she could only guess at the first, but she found letters the second woman had written to your father, and caught them talking on the phone on more than one occasion. She never actually saw them together, thank heavens, but the letters broke her heart. When she confronted him, he said he’d end things, but that wasn’t enough for your mother. She said she couldn’t live her life wondering when he was going to do it again.
“Your mother left your father, Amy. Not the other way around.”
My breath felt shallow. Why had Mom lied to me?
“You know you can’t tell this to a soul,” Grandma warned. “Especially not to your mother. She’s wanted to tell you, but she doesn’t know how.” Careful to keep the billowy sleeves of her hot pink blouse from dipping into her salad, she reached across the table for the salt. “She has this featherbrained idea that she should wait until some big defining moment—first it was your high school graduation. Then it was your college graduation. Now she’s decided it would be best to wait and tell you before you get married.”
“Did she tell Brian?”
“Of course not. This whole ‘waiting for the right moment’ is nonsense.”
“I just don’t understand why she would lie to me.”
“I have my theories. To admit he cheated is to admit she wasn’t good enough. I think she decided having a husband up and leave his family for no good reason was preferable to living with a husband who had a wandering eye. So she told everyone he left her. And that’s the story she tells herself.”
Grandma contemplated the striped wallpaper to the side of our booth.
She said, “I for one would rather be a widow than know my husband preferred another woman.”
At home I ran to my room. I reached under the bed for the shoe box I kept hidden beside the box of old manuscripts (which, I remembered with annoyance, Eli had never returned) and behind the Tupperware of off-season clothes. Inside were carefully organized piles of photos I’d rescued one