Tempted (36 page)

I stopped myself from asking if she was.

“So I decided to prove him wrong. I just wanted him to stop berating me all the time for something I wasn’t doing. I met Barry at the bowling alley. He started giving me lessons. He was your dad’s friend, and interestingly enough, the only man your dad didn’t accuse me of sleeping with.”

“So you had an affair with him?”

“We didn’t mean for it to happen, Anne. It just did.” My mother sipped her coffee, which must have gone cold long before. “And I fell in love with him.”

“So…you went with him. You left us behind.”

“I didn’t know if things were going to work with Barry. I didn’t want to drag you kids back and forth. I needed a while to sort myself out. Being a mother doesn’t mean you’re perfect,” my mother said. “I made mistakes. Barry and I didn’t work like I thought. I loved your dad too much to leave him behind. Should I have dragged you kids out of your house, away from your dad and introduced you to some other man, all when I wasn’t sure he was the right choice for me to make?”

“You left us!” I cried. “And he drank, all summer long! And he told us about how he was going to put rocks in his pockets and go out in the middle of the lake, or how he was going to take a gun and shoot himself in the head!”

“I’m sorry,” my mother said, her fingers spread like she sought absolution. “I’m sorry, honey. I didn’t know. And all I can do now is be sorry I didn’t.”

She was right, of course. All she could do was be sorry. She couldn’t make any of it better, or take it away, or change the past.

“Why’d you choose Dad?” I asked her. “Did you really not love Barry, after all?”

“No. I did. As much as I loved your dad, but in a different way. I was a different person with Barry. But that person was a woman who didn’t have four daughters and a history. He let me be someone new, but in the end…it wasn’t being new that I wanted.”

I had never given my mother credit for being able to express herself with such eloquence. I felt bad for dismissing her all these years. “Do you ever regret the choice you made? Do you ever think about what might have been different?”

“Of course I do. But I don’t let it hold me back.”

I nodded, looking down at the table. “I’m sorry, Mom.”

She made a small, surprised noise. “For what?”

“For not being a better daughter.”

“Oh, Anne,” my mother said with a laugh. “Don’t you know that to me you’re perfect? Each of you is perfect?”

She hugged me then, and we cried some more. We must have been loud enough to wake Claire, who padded into the kitchen rubbing at her eyes. She put a hand on her hip.

“What the hell’s going on in here?”

“Mom thinks I’m perfect.”

“Screw you, bitch,” said Claire. “I’m the perfect one.”

My mother sighed. “Claire, for God’s sake. The language. Don’t talk to your sister that way.”

But Claire and I were laughing and giving each other obscene hand gestures. My mother, outnumbered, could only shake her head and toss up her hands in defeat.

“You’re a perfect bunch of pains in the ass,” my mother said.

That was good enough for me.

Everything was working out for my sister, thanks to James’s help and Alex’s money. Fixing Patricia’s problem, however, had created one for us. I’d promised honesty, and he’d given me lies.

Lies of omission, true, but I’d taken as much responsibility for mine as if I’d out and out told him an untruth. He’d let me believe Alex was gone. Out of our lives. Well, he’d been out of mine, all right. Just not my husband’s.

The thunderstorms that had threatened all weekend hovered all day Monday, too. I stood on the deck, watching the lake grow choppy and the clouds get darker. A breeze whipped the ends of my hair, tangling it, but I didn’t tie it back.

I wanted to be a warrior.

James came home from work as the first drops of water splattered on the wood at my bare feet. I didn’t turn to greet him. I pulled the sleeves of my oversize sweatshirt down over my hands and tucked them close to my body. The rain made dark circles on my jeans.

“You should have told me” was all I said when I heard his footfalls in the doorway.

“You told me you’d made him go. I didn’t know you’d care. I thought you wanted him gone.”

“But you didn’t.”

“No,” said James. “I guess I didn’t. If I thought you could handle him being around, just not the whole sex thing, I’d have told you.”

I whirled. “Fuck you!”

He recoiled. “Anne—”

I stabbed my finger at him. “No. Shut up. Fuck you, James. You say that like it was something silly. ‘The sex thing.’ Like it was some stupid game or something.”

“That’s not what I meant!”

“Then what did you mean? Oh, silly Anne, she got all tangled up with Alex because of ‘the sex thing.’ And then she couldn’t deal with it, so she tossed him out and made him leave, but you just didn’t think that was important, did you? So you kept seeing him? Behind my back? What did you boys do together, James? Get high and play video games? Did you look at porn and jerk off together? Oh, wait. I forgot. You’re not queer.” I sneered the last.

Rain spattered harder, still individual droplets and not a downpour. Each was cold and stung my skin. They beaded on the deck, beginning to make puddles.

“I didn’t want to upset you, that’s all!”

I wanted to shake him until his teeth rattled. I wanted to scream. I wanted to fill my mouth with rain so I never had to talk to him again.

“He came into our house and into our bed and he fucked with our marriage—”

“Alex didn’t fuck with our marriage.”

“You are absolutely right,” I said. “That was you.”

He lifted a finger to point, accusing, but dropped his hand. “You’ve already judged me. There’s nothing I can say that will change your mind, so I’m not going to bother.”

The wind, cold, ripped through me. I bit down to stop my teeth from chattering, and said through a clenched jaw, “You did this, James. You did it.”

“And you wanted it,” he snapped back. “I saw it the first time you looked at him. Like you wanted him to strip you down right there. I’m not fucking blind, you know.”

“So what? You gave me to him so he wouldn’t take me?”

He didn’t answer.

“I wasn’t yours to give!” I shouted, advancing on him. “I wasn’t some princess in one of your goddamned video games, James!”

“But you wanted it!” he shouted. “Dammit, Anne, you wanted it! You wanted him!”

“But what did you want?” I asked. “Why did you want it, really?”

James turned and braced himself on the railing, his head down. A few drops of rain splattered on the back of his neck, which looked vulnerable above the collar of his denim jacket. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”

“Just tell me the truth.”

We were at a standoff, both furious. I drew in breath after breath of stormy air, but it did nothing but left me feeling like I was suffocating. James stood up to face me. Rain slipped down his face and dripped from his chin.

“I should have told you I was still seeing him,” he said, finally. “But hell, Anne, it’s not like I was fucking him or anything. We just drank a few beers every once in a while. We shot some pool. We’re friends, you know. It’s what we do.”

“So why didn’t you just tell me, then? Why let me think he was gone?”

“You never talked about him. I thought you didn’t want to. You never asked me if I saw him.”

“I didn’t know I had to ask,” I said.

James gave me a helpless look. “I thought you didn’t want to know.”

I couldn’t be surprised he might have thought such a thing. It seemed he knew me better than I’d thought he did. “I didn’t ask him to leave.”

He stopped. Stared. “What?”

“I didn’t ask him to leave,” I said. “I wanted him to stay. I asked him to stay.”

James shook his head. He put a hand on the doorframe. More rain slapped us. “But you said—”

“I wanted you to think it was me that ended it. But it was him. He left. I wanted him to stay, but he left, anyway. But that doesn’t really matter, does it? Because you should have told me you were seeing him.”

“Yeah, because you’ve been nothing but balls-up honest with me the past few months,” he said. “You should’ve told me that you were still on the shots, Anne. It might’ve made a big difference.”

The second the words came out of his mouth, he clamped his lips shut. It was too late. I swiped water from my eyes, certain I wanted to see every nuance of his expression when he answered my question.

“What kind of difference?”

“Never mind. Forget it. It’s done. We both fucked up.”

“James,” I said, and my voice was a warrior’s voice, one without mercy. “If you knew I was on birth control and couldn’t get pregnant, would you have changed the rules?”

He pushed me away with his hands, pushing at air, not touching me. I didn’t move. Rain made tracks down my spine.

“Would you have said he could fuck me?”

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

“James! Would you have let him fuck me if you’d known?”

“I don’t know!” he shouted. “How do I know you never did? I know you did things when I wasn’t around! How do I know you weren’t fucking him every day?”

“Because we love you!” I cried. The wind came up and whipped away my words. “Because you said it was the one thing we couldn’t do, and we both love you too much to hurt you like that! Why do you think he left? Why do you think I let him? Because we love you, both of us, and I love him, too, and it’s nothing but the biggest mess I’ve ever known!”

It was a mess, but I had chosen it. I couldn’t look at him anymore. I fled, down the deck and across the yard. I slipped on the wet grass and went down on my knee for a moment before I got up and ran to the sand and the water eating at it. Lightning lit the sky. Thunder, far away but coming closer, rumbled.

I waded into the lake. Water too frigid for August lapped at my knees. I bent and splashed it on my face, trying to wash away the tears.

I thought of my dad, threatening to fill his pockets with rocks and wade out into the lake. As a child the threat had frightened me to the point of nightmares. I’d imagined my dad, hair floating like seaweed, face nibbled away by the fish, pockets bulging with stones. Sometimes it hadn’t been my father, but me. As an adult I’d recognized it for the melodramatic, manipulative play for attention it was, but I still dreamed of the weight of stones holding me beneath the water.

Of how it would feel to drown.

“Anne!” The wind whipped James’s voice away from me, but I still heard it.

I didn’t turn. He shouted again. I lifted my face to the rain pouring down over me. Cold water from above and cold water from below.

“Anne! Get out of there!”

Lightning. Thunder. I wasn’t in danger of drowning, not in knee-high water, but it was foolish to be standing outside during an electrical storm. I turned to look at him, silhouetted against the house.

I had never loved James desperately. Never without reserve. Afraid of losing him, I’d never let myself get lost in him.

He jumped off the deck, ran across the yard, down to our small strip of beach. Water splashed around me, and I winced, though my face was already wet. He grabbed me.

“Get out of there! What are you doing? Are you crazy?”

“No,” I said, but because I wasn’t shouting he couldn’t hear me over the sound of the rain and thunder.

James pulled me toward the shore. “C’mon, let’s get inside!”

I moved, but slowly, my feet numb. Everything felt numb. I stumbled, and the lake lapped at me like a friendly dog. James hauled me upright just as another blue-white flash lit the sky. Thunder rattled the ground within seconds. Electricity crackled in the air all around us. My teeth hummed. My tongue tasted like I’d licked a battery.

James yanked me upright and we stumbled out of the water. The sand, wet and cold, grated against my bare toes. The grass was slicker. More lightning lit the world around us. Though I was soaking wet, it felt like every hair on my body rose, straining toward the sky. The thunder was so loud my ears rang, and even after it faded it left the sound of the rain muted.

We made it into the house to the accompaniment of another round of thunder and lightning. James slammed the door behind us. We dripped in silence, staring at each other.

I wrapped my arms around myself to combat the chill. My teeth struggled to chatter. I gave up trying to stop them. The sound was loud.

The power went off, then flickered back. A second later it went off and didn’t come back on. The next flash of lightning lit the kitchen, but neither of us had moved.

There are so few times any longer when we are fully in the dark. Even on nights without the moon, the light from the microwave or alarm clock is enough to give our eyes something to open to. Now there was nothing. The familiar landscape of my house had become a minefield, ready to stub toes and snag elbows.

I heard the slide of a drawer opening. James had found our flashlight, the one that recharged by winding a small handle and never needed batteries. I flung up a hand against the glare, which rivaled the lightning outside.