Love May Fail (35 page)

I see her face light up for a fraction of a second as she sips her wine, but then she halfheartedly says, “Maybe,” and the light is gone again.

Time passes.

Mr. Vernon doesn’t contact Portia.

She throws herself into the writing of her next book, but the joy and enthusiasm are gone.

On the first night of June, the Crystal Lake Diner—the place where Danielle waitressed—catches fire. No one is hurt, but just like that a South Jersey landmark is gutted. All of the booths and the stools and thousands of diner customers’ good memories go up in flames. It’s a sad twist of fate losing a public place that you’ve shared with a community for your entire life. And it’s also one less link to Danielle—one less memento. The diner might as well have been in Portia’s backyard, as she grew up right down the street. It’s also like losing a time machine, because just walking into that place instantly transported many of us back to high school—late night fries after binge drinking in the woods.

“That’s where I reconnected with Danielle,” Portia says when she hears about the news. “And my reconnecting with Danielle led me to you and all that followed.”

“Yeah, so?” I say.

“It just seems like an extremely bad omen, doesn’t it?”

“Everyone got out safely, at least. That’s good, right?”

“I don’t know, Chuck. I just don’t know anymore.” She bursts into tears, which scares me. I mean, we’re all sad about the fire, but Portia sobs and sobs in my arms for almost an hour.

Six months after the publication date, Portia receives a devastating e-mail from her agent. There will be no
Love May Fail
paperback release. The sales were so low that the publisher has decided to disassociate its name from Portia Kane.

Right around the one-year anniversary of her publication date, something inside of Portia finally breaks.

She stops writing and begins to spend her days taking long walks and sitting on park benches, mindlessly feeding squirrels and pigeons.

She repaints (multiple times) every room in our new close-to-my-work home in Pennsylvania.

Volunteers a lot at Tommy’s new school.

Buys cookbooks and fattens me up with endless gourmet meals that would sell in the best restaurants in any major city in the world.

Bakes dozens of different pies for our neighbors.

She buys an old truck that looks remarkably like the one I had when we first met, and begins trash-picking furniture, refinishing the pieces in our basement, and selling them at flea markets. She barely makes a profit and doesn’t seem to get any joy out of the process, downing Advil for sore wrists and elbows at an alarming rate.

Even our sex life becomes routine. She never initiates or refuses, but participates with an unspoken sense of obligation that borders on offensive and often leaves me feeling depressed. Whenever I ask if I’m doing something wrong, Portia says, “You are the best lover I will ever have,” which seems like a way around talking straight about the problem. Still, I don’t push her. I feel as though she’s healing that broken heart of hers the best she can—and I, of all people, know that recovery takes time.

The worst part is that Tommy misses the old Portia. He doesn’t exactly say anything about the change, but I can read his eyes and body language. The little man is sort of careful around her now,
almost as if he has reverted to taking care of his mother figure, which breaks my heart. He’s forever volunteering to help with chores around the house—like carrying in groceries or taking out the garbage or dusting or folding laundry or weeding the flower beds—and Portia usually says that it’s easier to do the work herself, and while that frees up Tommy to play with his friends on the block, it also leaves him feeling confused and maybe even rejected, although I never ask him about his feelings about Portia. It’s too painful for me to address my own, let alone deal with the effect my wife’s depression is having on the boy we are raising.

Saying she doesn’t have the emotional energy, Portia even stops making the drive back across the bridge to see her mother. More and more time passes in between trips east, and we only go when I pester her about visiting the old woman.

Time passes, and Mrs. Kane stares at the Buy from Home Network and Tommy grows and I teach and bartend and Portia finds things to keep herself occupied, at least superficially.

I plan little weekend family vacations and surprise dinners in the city, buy tickets to plays and musicals I think she will like, take her to a comedy club, allow Tommy to buy tickets to a few rock concerts we go to as a family. I even skip lunches to save my own money and buy designer clothes for Portia. She refuses to spend any of “Ken’s money” on anything but the mortgage and essentials for Tommy, saying, “What do I need new outfits for?” While she always says thank you and smiles whenever she opens the wrapped boxes I give her, nothing I do ever makes her eyes light up the way they once did, and she never wears what I buy, unless I make a specific request.

Ken and Julie send postcards from Honduras, along with short reports on the missionary work they are doing. Portia rips the first few up with a rage that scares me enough to throw away the future notes without letting my wife read them first.

“Maybe you should try writing again,” I sometimes dare to say when her crying wakes me up in the middle of the night, and she’ll always respond, “I’m okay. Just go back to sleep.”

The world is a hard place and can be hardest on the hopeful, but I just can’t seem to let go of the woman I married—the one who believed wildly in possibility.

On Tommy’s ninth birthday, I lead my first-grade class to the after-school pickup with a bit of a lift in my step. In my front pocket are tickets to the monster truck rally that Tommy and his best friend Marcus have been wanting to attend. Marcus and I are going to surprise Tommy with a night of hugely obscene vehicles, five-foot-high tires driving over and crushing normal cars before bursting through flames and soaring off ramps over bikini girls as heavy metal music blasts from gigantic speakers hung above.

Basically a nine-year-old boy’s dream.

Portia has agreed to go, mostly—I think—because it’s Tommy’s birthday, and he specifically requested that she be a part of things. She hasn’t really been all that social lately, turning down invitations from friends and complaining about being tired far more than seems possible, especially because she’s been going to bed early and sleeping twelve hours a night. Tommy has playfully nicknamed her “Sleeping Beauty.”

Once my last student has made her way into her parent’s car, I lock up my classroom and attempt to leave the building, but the Crab—who has somehow held on to the role of principal, even though she is approaching her two hundredth birthday—sticks her head out of the office. “Just the man I was looking for,” she says. “I hope you’re not attempting to leave early, Mr. Bass. The teacher’s handbook states that you may not leave the building before three
thirty without permission from administration, which as you very well know means me. And as I have given you no such permission, I
know
you weren’t about to exit this building.”

The Crab and I have become friends. Her evaluations of my lessons are always marked Exemplary, and I haven’t left for a higher-paying public school teaching position yet, which I believe both baffles and impresses Mother Catherine—we both know she’d write me a recommendation letter if I asked. The truth is, I like teaching here, and Mother Catherine is a fantastic principal who puts the needs of the kids first over the politics of parents who pay hard-earned cash to send their children to a Catholic school. I actually respect the Crab—a lot. And Portia has more than enough money left over from her first marriage for us to live comfortably.

“It’s Tommy’s birthday,” I explain. “We’re going to see a monster truck show.”

“Well, I certainly wouldn’t want to make you late for such a cerebral event as monster truck night, Mr. Bass, but I’m afraid I need to speak with you in my office before you leave. Something urgent has just come up. And since you are technically still on the clock, I suggest you follow me.”

I swallow hard and scan my brain for any possible trouble that could potentially ambush me once the Crab closes her office door behind us. It doesn’t take much for a teacher to be swept up into a shit storm. Some parent’s boss makes them feel powerless during the day, so when they come home they call Mother Catherine and—with godlike confidence—critique my lesson plans. Or maybe somebody forgot about the peanut ban and stuck a threatening PB&J in a lunchbox, which would have the food allergy moms shooting nuclear warheads at everyone if only they had the capability, and since they don’t, they call and scream until mushroom clouds come out of the phone. This is just par for the course when you are a teacher.

“Sit,” the Crab tells me once we are in her office, and I do as I am told.

“Crazy parent call?” I guess.

“No,” she says.

“So?”

“How’s your marriage?” Mother Catherine says, confusing me.

I blink and then go for a joke. “How’s yours?”

“If you wish to know the thoughts of my husband, I suggest you get down on your knees and ask Him yourself.”

“I just might do that, Mother Catherine.”

“Indulge me. Please. How
is
your marriage, Mr. Bass?”

“Why are you asking?”

“You are aware that Portia and I speak from time to time? That we have a . . .
a relationship
.”

“Yes,” I say, and wonder where this is headed.

“I’d like to speak to you now as a friend and not your boss. May I have your permission?”

“Sure,” I say, and begin to feel my palms getting sweaty.

“Portia tells me many things about you. I do believe the woman has mistaken me for a priest, because she has been confessing to me. Only I’m not bound by God to keep what she tells me a secret. Again—not a priest. We both know I would never tell anyone else her secrets, but husband and wife are one flesh, and therefore there should be no secrets between you and Portia.”

“Secrets?” I say, imagining the worst.

“You are a good man, Chuck Bass. One of the best teachers we have here in this school—one of the best teachers I have ever seen in action—mostly because you care so much about the kids. That’s what makes teachers great—empathy. Anyone can learn the subject matter. But caring, well you can’t teach someone that. You either have it in you or you don’t.”

“What does this have to do with my marriage?”

“You are very good to Portia. And she knows it.”

“I love her.”

“And she loves you too, but she’s stuck. You see it plainly, and she knows you see it, which makes it hard for her. Your Tommy sees it too, but pretends he doesn’t just so she won’t feel bad, which ends up making her feel even worse, because she doesn’t know how to get unstuck and she very much wants to—for you and Tommy and herself too. She’s had a crisis of faith, although she wouldn’t put it that way.”

I don’t know what the Crab wants me to say. “I’ve been trying to—”

“You have been a good husband, better than Portia ever dreamed possible.”

I just look at the Crab in her habit and wonder what this is all about.

“Portia and I have been praying together, did you know that?”

I shake my head.

“I have the sisters praying for Portia, and nun prayers are very powerful. I pray for Portia too. Every night. There are some people who are meant to tend the light, and that can be a difficult job over the long haul. Just look at what happened to my husband.”

“Mother Catherine, I appreciate your prayers and the kind words. I really do. But why did you bring me into your office today?”

The Crab grins. “So direct, Mr. Bass.”

I shrug playfully, because I did not mean to be offensive.

She’s smiling too much, I think, just before she says, “Do you remember that when I first interviewed you, I said that Portia and I were linked?”

I don’t remember that specifically, but it sounds like the type of mystical Catholic talk the Crab often uses, so I nod.

“Well, my dear friend Sister Maeve’s prodigal son has come home.”

It takes a second to sink in. “Mr. Vernon is alive? He’s back in the Philadelphia area?”

“No, he’s not in the Philadelphia area,” she says. “But he
is
alive. We have been communicating. He finally responded to the letters his mother and I wrote him when she was dying and he was in the Vermont wilderness, feeling sorry for himself. Took him some time to get up the courage. But he finally got around to it.”

“He’s really alive?”

“Very much so.”

“Does Portia know about this?” I say, thinking that Mr. Vernon’s being alive—actual proof—is the one thing capable of putting the light back in her eyes. It seems like a miracle, because we’d completely given up.

“She hasn’t a clue,” the Crab says.

“Why didn’t you tell her yourself already?”

“Because opportunities like this don’t come along very often. Chances to resurrect people. Make them whole again. In my experience, it’s best to do it with a little style and flair—panache even, don’t you think? Heighten the experience. Make it memorable—epic. Be a little romantic about it.”

“I’m not sure I understand, Mother. I’m sorry.”

“Yes, you do, Mr. Bass. You absolutely do,” Mother Catherine says, and then she slides an envelope across her desk.

“That’s from him? Mr. Vernon?” I pick up the envelope—my heart is trying its best to punch through my rib cage. “Do I have to read it here in front of you?”

“You are free to go, Mr. Bass. Enjoy your monster truck rally. Happy birthday to Tommy. And have fun resurrecting our girl. She’s got work to do yet.”

The Crab and I look into each other’s eyes for a moment, and then I say, “Thank you, Mother Catherine.”

She nods with a quiet confidence, and the light in her eyes glows brighter than I have ever seen it shine before.

I jet out of the building and across the parking lot.

Inside my car, I rip open the envelope with trembling hands.

My eyes race back and forth, but I can’t get the words into my head fast enough—and when I finish, I have to reread the letter immediately just to make sure I fully comprehend.

Once I’m sure I understand what Mr. Vernon is suggesting, in the privacy of my vehicle, I raise two sets of devil horns above my head, stick out my tongue, and scream like a proper metalhead for a good three minutes.