Big Cherry Holler - Adriana Trigiani [99]
“Weird.”
“Ave, do you want to know what happened?” Jack is speaking of Karen Bell, I assume.
“No,” I tell him.
“I can tell you,” he offers.
“No, honey. That’s yours. That’s not mine.” The only strategy I have, the only one I know for sure I must stick to, is that I mustn’t have real pictures of the two of them together in my mind. Those pictures would make it impossible for me to go forward. This much I know about myself.
My husband sits down next to me. We sit there a very long time.
“Jack. What should we do?”
“What do you want to do?”
“Well, I guess most of the time, I wish you could take my pain away,” I tell him.
“I can’t do that.”
“I know.”
“If you want me to go, I will. You can have everything. This house. But I want Etta half of the year. That would be the only thing I would want,” he says quietly.
“You’ve given this some thought.”
“Because I can’t bear to see you like this.”
“You really love me, don’t you?” I take his hand.
“Yes, I do.”
“That’s always been amazing to me, you know.”
“What do you mean?”
“That love you’ve always had for me. I never could quite believe it.”
“Why?”
“Maybe because I never thought I deserved it. And maybe because it’s easy for me not to feel. It worked so well for me all of my life. You married a real cold cookie.”
“You’re not cold. You’ve just been hurt.” Jack gets up. And then he does the strangest thing. He kneels in front of me. “And I can’t believe I hurt you more.”
My husband puts his head in my lap and cries. And I realize a very important thing about him, and maybe it’s the thing that will help us go forward: he never blames me for what I am; and he doesn’t judge me. He accepts me. And that’s the one thing I never gave him in return. This guy never had a chance with me; not really. He was never enough. But who could be? No man could measure up to my standards.
“Jack, look at me.” He does. “I thought I had changed. I thought you changed me with your love, by giving me the kids, by sharing this life with me. I thought I let you in, but I never really did.”
“I knew what you were when I fell in love with you. I knew it was going to be hard. I knew that when I signed on. Remember when you went into that Deep Sleep?”
Of course I remember. Years ago, I collapsed and slept for one week straight. At the time, Doc Daugherty called it a nervous breakdown.
“I almost decided not to go after you anymore. I thought, there’s something going on inside this woman that no one will ever know or understand. But I couldn’t give up. I couldn’t give you up. I had the out, I had the chance, but something made me stay. I think about that a lot. Why did I stay? Is it because I love you? Or is it more than that? I know you need me, and maybe that’s my purpose, to be needed. I don’t know.”
“That’s not your purpose.”
“What is, then?”
“To be chosen.” Now it’s my turn to cry. “And I never chose you. But I do now. Today. If you’ll still have me.”
My heart is breaking. This good and decent man has been dragged through my crazy life like a wagon. It wasn’t all terrible, and maybe there were times when he wasn’t dragged. We’ve had great times together. And tragedy. And routine. Great sex. No sex. But it has all been built upon sand. There is no foundation here because I never truly committed to this. I was thirty-six years old, and I thought it was time. That’s why I got married. Yes, I loved him, but I also knew that this was an opportunity that would not come again. I made myself walk into my fear and seize control. I wasn’t going to let anything hold me back anymore. I was going to live. I didn’t think about how I was going to live, only that I had a right to live. A right to a life with a good man who loved me.
I thought I knew my issues. I thought it was my childhood, with the strange secrets hidden under the surface. I believed that once I found my real father, everything would fall into place. Mario da Schilpario would have all the answers. I was sure of it! But he was only part of the answer. When I made peace with Fred Mulligan, I felt release. When I accepted the