Devil at My Heels - Louis Zamperini [115]
Then dimly, as if from far away, I heard a voice say, “Louie!”
Cynthia was home. I turned around to see her in the doorway, her face drained of all color, terror in her eyes. She dropped her packages and snatched the baby. “You might have killed her!” she screamed.
“Oh, my God,” I whispered, as I slowly returned to sanity.
It never happened again, but sometimes I’d wake up in the dark, soaked from another nightmare, to find Cynthia weeping in bed. “I don’t know, Louie,” she’d say when I’d ask what was wrong—as if I didn’t know. “I love you and you love me and we have a beautiful baby, but even if we had all the money in the world to go with this I think something would still be missing. I don’t know what it is, but I know something’s missing.”
What could I say to that? Then her mood would vanish and we’d spend part of each day arguing about finances—and worse. One day, out of the blue, she said, “If this keeps up, Louie, I may have to leave you. You have to come to your senses. I can’t do anything to please you. You act as if you hate me.”
“I don’t hate you,” I barked. “I just don’t like you reminding me that you think I’m a failure.” I also wanted to say that I loved her and was more frightened of her following through with her threat than I’d ever been of daily beatings by the Bird, but I couldn’t find the courage.
ONE AFTERNOON, WHILE leafing through our desk calendar, I discovered a mysterious notation penciled in by Cynthia: “Take inventory.” I didn’t know what it meant, and that worried me. Inventory of what? Clothes? Possessions? Our marriage? I reviewed our fights—there were so many—looking for the one incident that might have caused her to take such a step. Then I got it. Last Christmas Eve, before Cissy had been born…
As we’d dressed for a party Cynthia said she wanted to stop at a church on the way, and she wouldn’t let up no matter how much I argued against it. When we got into the car, she insisted again.
“Be quiet,” I said. “We’ll be late for the party.”
“I will not,” she snapped. “There’s a church on the next block. I haven’t been for two years because you didn’t want me to go. Now I don’t care. I’m going in for a few minutes, like it or not.” I glared at her, then slammed on the brakes in front of the church and said, “Okay. Fine. But if you’re not back in five minutes, I’m going to the party without you.”
I watched Cynthia, pregnant, struggle up the steps, then looked at my watch. My head pounded as each second passed. I couldn’t explain my hatred of religion, of God, to her. She wouldn’t understand. She’d say I was foolish. I just wanted to get to the party, have a few drinks, forget her whims and my misery. Why was she suddenly all fired up about church in the first place? What was the big deal?
The car door opened and Cynthia got back in. She didn’t look at me, but she was calmer. “I just said a quick prayer for us, Louie. That’s all.” Then she stared out the window while I drove, convinced because of my own failures with prayer that Cynthia had also wasted her time.
BY THE END of 1948 I finally ran out of money. To pay my bills I borrowed a thousand dollars from a friend and offered my car as collateral. I said I’d pay him back by a certain date or he could take the car. Meanwhile, Cynthia went to Miami with Cissy to see her parents, and as I dreaded, she returned determined to get a divorce. Our situation, she insisted, was hopeless. I didn’t have a steady income. I’d been “taken” by different people. I drank. I was angry. Unstable. She loved me, but that was no longer enough.
I didn’t want a divorce, but I was caught in a self-pity trap. All I could say was, “Well, you’re entitled, the way I’m doing, but I can’t do anything about my situation.” I was too proud and too ashamed to ask for help—even from my family. Inside I knew that she was absolutely right.
I’d failed her. I’d failed my family. I’d failed myself.
ALTHOUGH CYNTHIA HAD said we were through, she didn’t rush to leave,