Acts of Contrition Read online

  “Not the point.”

  Finally we both stop and take a moment to breathe. Tom settles down a bit, his fists unclench. But this is only round one, the easy round, the one that might be forgiven. Round two promises to be much worse.

  “Let’s get through this,” Tom says. “What business did you have to discuss with Landon James the second time you met, after we were married? When that photo was taken?”

  I sit down, and for the first time in hours my breath flows easily. It’s over and I know it. My defeat is certain and there’s a calmness in the retreat. Tom once told me that being knocked out in the ring felt like surrender, the acceptance of knowing it’s over.

  I’ve waited ten years to say the words that are about to come out of my mouth. I look at Tom, knowing that I’ll never see him again with the same eyes and, more important, that he’ll never see me the same way again. I reach for his hands, but he knocks mine away. I cover my mouth and swallow a decade of tears.

  Here it is: the end of life as I know it. I can only hope to God that finally telling the truth will offer at least a shred of solace. Just to have it out in the open for once, not to have to suck on the bitter lie for another day. I take a deep breath, will my heart to hang in there, and stand in front of Tom.

  “Business about Sally,” I say in almost a whisper.

  “Sally?” Tom says, confused.

  “Yes, honey. About Sally.”

  “Is this a goddamned riddle?” Tom yells venomously. “What does this have to do with Sal?”

  I look at him with pleading eyes. I want to say it, but he gets it on his own, and when the earth shifts under his feet I can almost see him crack down the middle.

  “No! No, no, no, no,” Tom says, shaking his head. “Don’t you even tell me what you’re about to tell me. No!”

  “Tom,” I sob. “Please.”

  “Say it!” he roars.

  “I can’t!”

  “Say it, Mary. So help me God, you say what you’re getting at. Say it!”

  My ears are ringing. My mouth won’t operate…and then it does, “It’s true. Landon James is Sally’s biological father.” I have said the words that I have said out loud only once before—to Landon.

  “My Sally?” he says in a gravelly yelp. “You’re telling me that my Sally is not mine. Is that what you’re saying?”

  “Oh, God, Tom. I’m so sorry. But she is yours. You raised her. She’s your girl. You’re her daddy. Please, Tom.”

  “You were knocked up when we walked down the aisle and we acted like it was our little secret, but all along you knew it wasn’t our secret—it was your dirty little lie. You’ve been lying to me our entire marriage. Our entire marriage!” Tom yells. He walks toward the wall next to the fireplace, braces his hands against it, and taps his forehead—a metronome tapping to the beat of his grief. Then he pushes himself to upright, and punches his fist straight through the drywall.

  Instinctively, I look up toward the kids’ rooms; cannot even imagine how I could explain the racket, the discord between their parents.

  “I didn’t know whose baby it was, Tom,” I cry. “I prayed so hard that she was yours, and when she was born it was the happiest moment of my life when I saw her swirl of amber hair, because I thought for sure that she was yours. But then the nurse handed her to me, and even though she was a squishy newborn, I saw something in her eyes—a resemblance to Landon—and that’s when I suspected.”

  “You didn’t know whose child you were carrying?” Tom’s voice disintegrates as he says this, and he begins to sob.

  “Tom, please. We have a wonderful life. We can’t let this ruin what we have.”

  “You fooled me into loving Sally more than myself and she’s not even my girl. I would have done anything for her, and you just let me believe my feelings were true.” Tom sobs, storming across the room. As I watch, he lifts from the mantel the porcelain vase we bought in Napa Valley on the day of our engagement and hurls it into the fireplace. Then he punches another wall, leaving a fist-sized hole. He examines his bloody knuckles and falls onto the sofa, crying into his hands. “Sally,” he whimpers. “Sally. Sally. Sally.”

  I go to him, kneel beside him. Pull his hands to my mouth, hold his knuckles against my lips, kiss soft, moist kisses onto them. “She’s your girl, Tom. You can’t blame her for any of this. I know you’ll never forgive me, and I don’t blame you, and I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to make this up to you, but Tom, for God’s sake, we have four children and they’re all yours, and you cannot take this out on Sally. She’d be devastated if you changed how you treat her.”

  “Stop lecturing me on what I do and do not need to do!” Tom barks darkly, pulling his hands away from me. “You don’t have the right to tell me anything.”

  I sit down next to him on the sofa. Watch him suffer through the torture and pain. Watch him writhe while the truth snakes through his mind and heart. Watch him hurt and know that I caused it. Through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault. The words echo in my head as I pray for mercy for poor Tom.

  He looks up, presses his lips together, then smirks. “The life insurance policy that Landon named you as the beneficiary, that was for Sally?”

  “Yes,” I say.

  “Your relationship with him never ended,” Tom says in the saddest voice. “In one way or another you’ve been carrying on with him all these years. I was just the dumb sap who didn’t know it.”

  Then he’s on his feet and out the door. A few minutes later I hear the screech of tires as Tom backs up his car, then the punch of the accelerator issuing a hot-rod squeal down the driveway.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The Pains of Hell

  TOM

  I HOP ON I-66 HEADED west. I pull in enough air to fill a basketball, push against the steering wheel, and watch the tendons in my forearm pop. I ball my lacerated hand into a fist and pound it down onto the center console—the compartment between my seat and the passenger’s. I hear it crack, feel the gash on my hand bust open again. Damn it, it’s going to cost a bundle to get that thing replaced. “Screw it,” I say, furious at myself for worrying about being responsible at a time like this. Since I already broke it, I punch it again. And again. I gun the engine, grit my teeth. A deer is nibbling grass on the side of the road. It looks up at me and flinches a bit. Stay, I warn it, because right now it is looking an awful lot like Landon James—and Mary, for that matter.

  There’s no other way to describe it. I’m filled with hate. Hate. For my wife, for the mother of my children. At this moment I hate her and want only one thing: to make her hurt as badly as she has made me hurt. Pure vengeance. She is anathema to everything I believe in. Landon James? Hell, I’d knock his lights out with a quick right jab. He’d feel the crack of his jaw a split second before he was on the ropes, then flat on his ass. But I don’t feel hate for him like I feel for Mary. Landon James is disposable, inconsequential in so many ways. But Mary, God, Mary. She broke my heart.

  All these years I’ve known there was something up, something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. I always felt like I was second string when it came to Mary and Landon James, but I just thought it had to do with the two of them: lingering feelings, a shared past, a decade spent together that couldn’t easily be erased. But no, there was more. There was a secret. A roll in the hay right before our wedding.

  And Sally, dear God, Sally. My girl, who everyone says looks like me! Our hair, it’s the same color, the same texture. And she’s so competitive, so athletic and determined. I thought she got all that from me, but she didn’t get anything from me. I’m nothing to her.

  I look at the speedometer. I’m pushing 90 mph. If I get stopped, the cop will check my blood-alcohol content. Who knows what it would register. Maybe I’d get thrown in jail. Maybe I could make a case for rehab. Patrick and I could room together. He could teach me how to say “screw you” to a responsible life. We’d spend our days in the rec room, shooting hoops. Then we’d
take turns talking to the shrink. I’d tell her how my wife is a cheating, lying whore who ruined my life. She’d listen and nod and offer me a tissue. Later, Patrick and I would sit with all the other losers in the art room, making crafts out of macaroni and glue like we’re kids. Maybe at night the nurses would knock me out with some strong-ass meds that would put me into a coma sleep in which I wouldn’t stand a chance of thinking about Mary or Landon or Sally.

  The exits fly by. I’m already past Manassas. I’m happy to see the speed limit increase to 65 mph. At least now I’m speeding only twenty-five miles over the limit. You’re allowed to be irresponsible once! I hear in my head. Everyone else has been. My father, my brother, even my mother, whose complacency is a type of irresponsibility. Mary, Landon—they were irresponsible. “Good ol’ Tom!” I say aloud, gunning the engine again. Always the guy to count on: dependable, reliable, honest. Screw that!

  I’m in the country now. I took the boys camping up here once, to the Shenandoah Valley. We pitched our tent right off Skyline Drive. The two little guys sat on my lap and we looked out at the brilliant sunset, a view that extended to heaven. “God made everything beautiful,” Dom said that day.

  “That’s right,” I told them. “God’s pretty awesome.”

  “No one’s gooder than God,” Danny said.

  “Yep,” I said. “God’s the best. But you know who else is really awesome? Mom.”

  “Because of the love,” one of the little guys said.

  “Yep, because of the love,” I said that day. “And because Mom is true-blue. That means that she’s honest and kind and always tries to do the right thing.”

  “Mommy never lies,” Danny said.

  Truth. I know now that there is no such thing. If Mary—the one person I believed to be good and true—is a dirty, rotten liar, then everyone is. Everyone.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The Nature of Wrongdoing

  I STAND IN THE KITCHEN, staring out the window, stunned. What happened did not just happen. What happened did just happen. Tom knows that I saw Landon, that I slept with Landon, that Landon is Sally’s father. The enormity of it makes me dizzy. For a decade I imagined this moment in time, but now that it’s here, it’s worse, bigger, more sickening. What I did, the lie I’ve been living, telling it to Tom, is eviscerating.

  We’ll never come back from this.

  I stand at the window for an hour, just staring, like a dog waiting for the return of its master. When I’m finally able to break my gaze, I begin to clean, wiping down the counters and appliances, standing atop a chair to get the dust from the top of the refrigerator. I say Hail Marys, Our Fathers, over and over and over again, but I feel like a hypocrite, like the idea of me praying is indulgent and hopeful when I should feel nothing but sorrow and guilt. I don’t deserve God’s help right now, but Tom does, so instead of praying for me, I pray for Tom. I pray that God will heal his pain, that God will soothe his hurt, and mostly I pray that God will protect Tom behind the wheel, a man fueled with anger and whiskey. I shake my head at my stupid self because I’m doing it again, negotiating agreements: Protect my husband and I’ll absorb his pain. I imagine God laughing at my stupid self with my stupid deals, reminding me that He provides whether the terms are good or not.

  Kneeling before the fireplace with the garbage can at my side, gathering shards of porcelain that once made the vase Tom and I bought on the day of our engagement, I pause to look up at the wall, at the two battered spots that were assaulted by Tom’s fist. I stand and place my hand on the deeper hole, see a smear of Tom’s blood from his knuckles. Unthinking, I reach into the bin for a shard of porcelain and run it across my palm until I draw blood, then place my blood on Tom’s. I’m sorry, baby. I’m so sorry, I whisper, rapping my forehead against the wall.

  The bookcase is only a foot or so from the larger of the two holes. I brace my back against the side of the fireplace and push the bookcase with my legs until the hole is covered, hidden away from my children’s sight. The other hole isn’t as deep, so I relocate the framed mirror atop it. With the evidence covered, I feel creepy, as deceitful as a crook.

  By the time I sit down on our bed, it’s two o’clock in the morning. My hands are still shaking and my teeth are still chattering, though I’m covered in a heavy sweatshirt. I watch the time on the clock turn minute by minute. When I go to the bathroom, I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror. My eyes look sunken, like a refugee’s, like those of someone who will never come back from where she once was. Years ago I volunteered at a shelter where most of the women had been abused. They all had the same ghostly eyes. My eyes look like theirs, though I don’t deserve to have the eyes of a victim since I’m the abuser.

  In bed I wonder about Tom. Where are you, honey? Did he find a diner, plop into a corner booth, nurse a tenth cup of coffee, his eyes rubbed red and puffy? Or did he continue on with his initiation into the land of whiskey, where his father and brother roam? Where would he go for comfort? What would he do? It’s not like he has a support system like I do, my three sisters, my adoring parents, all skilled in the doting and hovering department, an arsenal of stuffed shells and stuffed pastries prepared and ready, whether for crisis or celebration.

  Tom has his parents, who, while supportive, are avoiders. I can already hear Sean, who pretends everything is dandy, even if Patrick is in rehab or Colleen is in chemo for breast cancer or his blood pressure has topped two hundred. “Oh, son! God bless you, son,” he’d say. “This is just a glitch. You and Mare will work this out, you’ll see. How about spending the day with your old man?”

  And Colleen is no better, the way she reasons and rationalizes but never sits down, addressing adversity through motion. I can see Tom sitting at his mother’s table in her immaculate kitchen while she sorts silverware and refolds perfectly square napkins. I can hear Tom flipping roles, telling his mother to sit down, that it is going to be okay. Colleen would bend down, kiss Tom’s head, and agree. “Of course, dear. It’s going to be okay,” she’d say, and then begin cleaning out the refrigerator.

  And then there is Patrick, the guy whose premonition about me was spot-on. “It’s not too late to bail,” Patrick had said the morning of our wedding. “I’ve got a twelve-pack in the trunk.” I now wonder whether Tom remembers his brother’s prophetic quip, considers the possibility that Patrick’s soulful eyes could zero in on his future. Tom must wish he’d heeded his brother’s warning.

  At four o’clock in the morning, I hear the garage door open and the sound of footsteps making their way downstairs to the basement. Then I hear the shower turn on, sending a high-pitched whine up the pipes. Half an hour later Tom enters our room for clean clothes. I slip out of bed and stand in front of him. “Tom,” I plead.

  “Not now,” he says.

  “When?”

  He shakes his head at me in disgust, as if to say, “Never.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Cornerstone of Faith

  TOM DRESSES QUICKLY AND THEN leaves the house. I lie in bed, waiting for the boys. With clockwork predictability, they crawl in with me at six o’clock, finding perfect fits in impossibly small spaces. Dom’s head is resting on my neck, his silky hair tickling my nose. Danny’s on my side, softly singing a song he learned at Sunday school, “Peter, James, and John in a Sailboat.”

  “That’s nice,” I tell him.

  “They’re possums,” he says.

  “That’s right,” I say. “Apostles.”

  Domenic stirs, stretches wildly, smacks me in the face. “Where’s Daddy?”

  “He had to go to work early,” I say, smoothing his hair across his head.

  “I wanted to crack eggs on his back and give him chills,” Dom says.

  “Do me,” I say, rolling onto my stomach so that my son can snap and smack his little fists on my spine.

  “Did it give you chills?” he asks, and I nod yes because since last night I’ve had nothing but.

  An hour later we’re down for breakfast, four
kids lined up at the counter, slumped over their bowls of cereal, trying to fight the sleepiness that still has a hold on them like a Benadryl hangover. I stare out the kitchen window with a coffee cup held to my lips.

  When I turn around and Sally finally looks up, wiping the sleep from her eyes, she gasps. “Mom! What’s wrong with your face?”

  I reach for my cheek, which feels thin and slumpy. I know my eyes must be swollen and lined. I consider how to explain the worn and crumpled look on my face to my children.

  “I didn’t sleep well,” I say. “So help me out, okay, girls?”

  The girls eat their cereal and drink their hot cocoa and then head up the stairs to get ready for school. I coax the boys upstairs and today they actually comply. Maybe I look so scary they’re considering that since I’ve magically transformed into a monster, they had better listen to me or else. I get the boys dressed, hair and teeth brushed, a quick trip to the toilet. Sally and Emily are packing their backpacks on the kitchen counter.

  “Why’d Dad leave so early this morning?” Sally asks. “Another trip to Chicago?”

  “No, honey, he just had work to do.”

  Sally squints her scrutinizing eyes at me. “You sure you’re okay, Mom?”

  “I’m fine, honey,” I say, and then blow my nose for effect. “Let’s get going, okay? Want me to drive you today instead of taking the bus?”

  I drop the girls off first and then the boys. Back home I sit on the sofa, chewing on my cuticles, staring at the wall, wondering how much deeper I’ll fall into the abyss, how much hotter things can get.

  Angie calls, Mom and Dad, Teresa, and Martina. I can’t talk; I let them go to voice mail.

  The turn of the door handle tells me that Tom’s home. I stand and face him and find that his anger hasn’t abated; his face isn’t any more forgiving today than yesterday. His fists are still tight balls, his jaw is still a wire pulled taut.