Surrender (10 page)

She looks down at her plate. “My first marriage was great, you know. Almost perfect.” Her eyes cloud, and I imagine that she’s remembering her first husband, David’s father. “I wanted the same thing again, so I did everything that Henry wanted, trying to make him happy, so that we could be happy.” She sighs. “I was a fool.”

I agree silently.

She drops the croissant suddenly and looks at me, the mask of easy friendliness gone, and replaced by the pained expression of someone who realizes what she’s thrown away and can never get back. “A lot of things happened when David was a child, that may have led him to close himself off emotionally, but please don’t give up on him.” Her eyes are glistening softly as she speaks, “He was a very loving little boy, and I’m sure that somewhere in there, if you look hard enough, you’ll find a loving man.”

I look away from the pain in her eyes. I don’t need anybody to tell me to give David another chance. What I need, is to ignore the temptation to let him hurt me again. What I need is to forget about him, even if it destroys me.

“Think about what I said.” She says with genuine feeling.

I shake my head, blaming her, for how much she ruined David’s childhood and made him the man he is.

I get up from my chair. “I’m not hungry.” I say abruptly, placing some money on the table and picking up my bag. “I have to go.”

She doesn’t try to stop me. I hurry out of the café and out onto the busy sidewalk.

At the store, neither Jan nor Larry has arrived. I go through the motions of doing my work while inside, my mind is churning, and my thoughts confused.

Don’t leave me.

Why do I keep thinking of those words? His words. And why do they make me feel so confused? He didn’t want me to leave, the way he held on to me, even in sleep... Well I didn’t go, but he did, leaving me with nothing but the sick feeling of emptiness that’s still in my stomach.

Did he assume that he had won me over, that he’d succeeded is making me helplessly his again, and that he could do whatever he wanted since I had willingly given myself to him again?

Somewhere in there, if you look hard enough, you’ll find a loving man.

Would I? Oh, David can be loving. I’ve seen glimpses of him being loving at various times in our marriage, but is he a loving man? Is there a loving man somewhere inside the same David who used my body to subjugate me until I lost myself in his lovemaking and became pliant to his demands, the same David who threw my love back in my face and told me our marriage was only about sex?

He’s not a loving man. He is hard, ruthless and dangerous.

And yet I love him.

Don’t leave me.

I hear my phone ringing again in my bag, I ignore it. It’s been ringing all morning. If it’s David, I don’t want to talk to him. If it isn’t, I don’t want to talk to anyone else either.

Larry arrives, then Jan. For some reason, neither of them tries to make conversation with me. Maybe my feelings of confusion and dejection are clear on my face, either way I’m soon left with only my continuously ringing phone and the familiar sounds of videogames for company.

Don’t leave me.

The phone stops ringing, then starts again almost immediately, I pull it out of my bag, thinking of switching it off, but when I see David’s name flashing on the screen, I give in and answer the call.

“Sophie.” I hear him breathe. “Where are you?” He says, with something like relief in his voice.

I swallow the lump in my throat. “I’m at work.”

“You could have let me know you were leaving.”

“Like you did before you left?” I retort sarcastically.

For a long moment, he doesn’t say anything. “I had something to attend to.” He says finally.

“You always do.” I reply.

He sighs, “Look Sophie, I need to see you.”

I shake my head. “Please David, there’s nothing more…”

“I’m on my way,” he continues, interrupting me.

“Don’t come here.” I protest.

At first, he doesn’t reply, but when he does, his voice is firm and determined. “Try and stop me.” he says, before he cuts the connection.

I consider leaving before David arrives. I still feel too raw to talk to him. How do I tell him that I’ve had enough, that we’re over, when I feel like any moment I’ll shatter into a million tiny pieces.

He must have been driving really fast, because in less than thirty minutes, I see a black car I don’t recognize park on the sidewalk in front of the store, and the next moment, David is striding through the doors.

I expected him to be dressed for work, but he’s wearing casual clothes, jeans, a white shirt, and a black jacket. For a second, I allow myself to be distracted by how beautiful he is. From his perfectly sensual face to his athletic body and long, long legs.

This is the man I love, I realize. This is the man I’ll always love.

“Can we talk?” he asks, gesturing towards the door to Jan and Larry’s office.

Can I refuse? I wonder. If I say no, would he walk out of the door and out of my life? I don’t think so.

I nod.

“About this morning...”

There’s something about the sound of his voice. The tenderness is pulling at my heart, and suddenly I can’t bear it anymore.

“Don’t tell me.” I say, stopping him, “Please David. This morning I...” I swallow as my voice catches in my throat. “Nothing has changed David. I’m always going to be the girl who loves you even though she shouldn’t, and you’re always going to be that man to whom love means nothing.”

“Sophie…”

“No wait.” I continue. “I spoke to your mother this morning.”

His body stiffens and a shuttered expression comes over his face. “What?”

“I bumped into her when I was leaving this morning,” I tell him, “and she asked me to join her for breakfast so we could talk.”

“And what did she have to say?” He asks coolly, his tone betraying that whatever his mother has to say means little to him.

“She explained that she may have hurt you by putting your stepfather’s needs ahead of yours.” I say. “I think she was trying to say that she hurt you then, and that you’re still hurting because of that.”

He snorts bitterly. “Is that what she said?” He laughs harshly. “Well beneath those pretty words Sophie, the truth is this. I never got along with my stepfather. He hated me from the first, and I grew to hate him too. He mocked me, belittled me, and verbally abused me any chance he got. But my mother never saw that, all she wanted was to be his wife, to travel the world with him and attend parties, play the socialite.

David pauses and takes a deep breath. “He used to hit her.” He says with a deep frown. “She’d have a bruise and tell everyone that she fell or something, I didn’t even know until I saw him hit her when I was fourteen.”

I close my eyes, feeling his pain. “What did you do?” I ask gently.

“I didn’t know what to do.” He says, looking into my face, his eyes searching mine, as if looking for some confirmation that there was nothing he could have done. “When I begged her to leave Henry, she laughed and said I was imagining things because I hated him so much.” He laughs mirthlessly. “It went on like that till I was about seventeen, then one day he lost his temper and hit her, right in front of me. He kept hitting her, and when I tried to pull him off, he started to hit me too. Well I fought back, and I beat him up really badly. I didn’t know what my mother would think. But I didn’t expect her to stand beside Henry when he had me arrested, and say nothing in my defense.”

“She didn’t explain why you hit him?”

David shakes his head. “Henry told the police that I was prone to violent fits, and she agreed with him, she agreed with everything he said. I spent a week in a facility for troubled teens, and he hired a psychiatrist who agreed with what they said. I was going to be transferred to a home because he had everybody convinced that I was crazy.

“I’m so sorry David.”

He turns away, pacing away from my desk before coming right back, a frown marring his brow. “Do you know why my mother agreed with him, Sophie?” he asks, “because she signed a pre-nup before they got married. In the event of a divorce, she’d have gotten nothing. That’s why she threw me over for him again and again, because losing the money and status meant more than her son’s life.”

I sigh, “She said she was in love with him, that she just wanted to make him happy.”

“I’m sure she did.” David scoffs, “She’s very good at telling herself what she wants to believe.”

“What happened after?” I ask, “How did you get out?”

“I don’t know.” He shrugs. “One day, I was released, all the charges were dropped, and my record wiped clean. Steve picked me up and took me to the house. When we got there both Henry and my mother had gone on another one of their trips. I left, and never went back, and I never heard from my mother until after Henry died.”

I shake my head. “I didn’t know.” I say, my heart breaking for him.

“Well, you couldn’t have.” He frowns. “The next time she tries to make you feel some sympathy for her and tells you that she ‘hurt’ me when I was a child, at least you’ll know what she did.”

I nod. At least now I know why he never lets anyone in, why he couldn’t let me in. He’s been hurt by someone he loved, at the time when it could make the most impression, and now he’ll never expose himself to that kind of pain again.

I’ll never hurt him, but what does it matter? He doesn’t trust anyone enough to let them in, not even me.

“David,” I get up and go around my desk to where he’s standing. “I’d like to show you something.”

He looks wary. “What is it?”

“You’ll have to come with me.” I tell him with a gentle smile. He waits while I interrupt the tournament going on in the back office to tell Jan and Larry that I have to step out for a while. They wave me off, more concerned about finishing their game than about me.

“About this morning…” David starts again, his voice strangely hesitant. I look at his face, confused by the uncertain expression I find there. What is he going to say?

“Wait.” I tell him, leading him outside. “You can tell me later.”

Surprisingly, he obeys, and follows me down the street to the museum, as he holds one of the swing doors open for me to step inside, there’s a quizzical look on his face, but he doesn’t ask any questions.

Trey smiles and waves at me, but when he sees David, he doesn’t come over to talk.

I lead David to the painting, faltering as we approach it. I’ve been so certain about it for so long, but now I wonder if maybe I’m wrong. What if David doesn’t believe me? What if he can’t see what I see when I look at it.

It’s hanging in its usual place, everything about it the same as when I first saw it.

David stares at the painting for a while, and then reads the name at the bottom. “Jonathan Cutler,” he says at last. “I’ve never heard of him.” He looks at me, his eyes searching. “Does it mean something to you?”

“Yes.” I sigh, “When I first started working at the store I used to come here just to look at this.” I pause. “It just drew me, somehow.”

David nods, his eyes encouraging me to continue.

“Then I learned that the painter was a professor at one of the local colleges, and that he had an affair with one of his students. When his wife found out, she drove her car over a bridge with him in it.”

David gives the painting another searching look. “And this was the student?”

I nod. “He loved her.” I say. “That’s what I see when I look at this painting. That even though it was wrong, and even tough ultimately, it destroyed all their lives, he loved her.”

“All their lives?” he frowns at me, I can almost see his mind working, “She... The student…You don’t think...?”

I nod silently, answering his question. He remembers, I think in wonder, he remembers our first real conversation when I told him about my mother. It seems like ages ago, but he didn’t forget, surely that means something.

“Are you sure?” He looks from me to the painting and back again.

“Yes,” I smile sadly. “She was pregnant, and he was dead. That’s why she left school, came home, and had me.”

“And then she died.” He looks sad. “I’m sorry Sophie.”