The Space Between Promises (3 page)

Chapter Six

10:15 p.m. Gregory would be home in fifteen minutes. I have two choices. I can pretend I am asleep, knowing that he will not wake me, or I can continue to watch television and greet him with an empty stare and silence, instead of my usual eager hug and kiss. After all of these years, I feel a stir of excitement when the familiar headlights of his Jeep round the corner and bounce cheerily into our dark gravel driveway. Often I watch from the window, and those times when he sits, listening to a song, I wait by the window until I saw the lights go dim, as his broad shoulders ease out of the tiny frame of his Wrangler. I stand at the door smiling like a child. Oh, how I love this man. His tender embrace can erase the cares of the day and his gentle gaze can melt any fear. I am small in his arms, and I fit neatly into him, my head touching his chest.
Tonight, I am angry. Earlier in the week, I had climbed on to his lap, my long hair flowing over bare shoulders, a definite suggestion, since it was usually pulled back into what I called my "mom bun," a loose chignon at the nape of my neck, the front loosely parted to the side, not too harsh around my aging face. I had smiled warmly and he had tucked me into his arms, like a child would a favorite doll and said, "You are beautiful. You are sexy. I love you. I had a really hard day at work." I slipped off his knee and buried myself in an oversized quilt, staring at the television and watching the lips move on the screen. He would then spend the following two nights at Finn's house, leaving me to wonder from what he needed escape.
Tonight, I am not happy to see him. I opt for the latter choice, occupied with a sitcom, when I hear the quiet click of the door. He gently plods up the slightly groaning stairs to the loft and gazes in my direction with an amused and boyish smile. He holds a wrapped chocolate chip cookie from a bakery that he had been convinced to buy along with his meal and gestured for me to take it. It wasn't a peace offering. Gregory doesn’t see himself as doing any wrong which would require such a thing such as a peace offering. In fact, he probably had completely forgotten that on Saturday night I stood at the top of the stairs weeping as he walked out the door.
In a single moment, during a simple exchange, one hand giving, the other taking, an insignificant cookie becomes the very thing that eases my hurt. I humor him by breaking off a piece, and it is cold, from sitting in the car, as he sits down in his recliner and sighs. It is an invitation for me to ask how his day was, so we can find some common ground and chat for a few minutes. This would mean he has fulfilled his husbandly duty, providing me with a few minutes of his attention, just enough to ease his conscience before he wearily puts on his headset and turns on the console, as if that too, is a burden he has to bear.
I do not ask how his day was. I nibble a few bites of the cookie, and pretend to watch TV. He waits several minutes, staring ahead in his chair, and when he realizes that I shifted the pillow on the couch the way I always do when I am ready to fall asleep, I hear him greet his buddies through the headset that invades the privacy of our home every evening. 'He's home, boys,' I muse. 'Your game spouse is home, and he is ready to make love to you all night. Into the wee hours of the morning, he will romance you. You will dance to the music of missiles, artillery and ambush.'
I will sleep alone again, regardless of whether or not I asked about his day. I closed my eyes, satisfied that I had regained some battle ground of my own in this war on love.

Chapter Seven

Sipping coffee, watching snow fall, nursing both girls back to health from a cold virus, and wondering when winter will ever come to an end, I greet another day. The older I get, the longer winter seems to last. Wet snow pants flung over whatever railing or rack that can be found in our small farm house that does not have what all the modern ladies are boasting about; a mud room. Lonely knit gloves looking for a mate scattered from room to room, wet boots slopping up the entryway, and kids with incurable cabin fever.
Truth is, I'd rather be cold than hot. And Lord knows, N.Y. summers are unforgiving. The heat, mixed with humidity is often unbearable. It is easier to warm up than to cool down, at least in my opinion. It's the sunshine and the long days that seem so far gone when March comes to a close. It is not going out like a lamb this year, I muse.
Tessa's final gurgles drift through the bedroom door and I know she has settled in for a mid-morning snooze. I think about the laundry that waits, taunting me, "Run, run, run, as fast as you can, you can't catch me, I'm the dirty-hamper man." And so it is. Each day, I wake up and chase after life, and it seems always just out of reach.
I ignore the laundry and spend a few minutes researching pursuing my Master's degree. I happened upon a co-worker this week who was working toward hers online. It piqued my interest and she entertained a few questions I had. I'm a believer in time and place significance, so I took this as a sign that furthering my education is not out of reach. I could work at night when the kids were asleep. I navigate the college website, allowing myself to taste the possibility, like dabbling with sushi, and decide I will need to set aside a block of time to devote to research.

I nurse a second cup of coffee and hang on to the quiet moment. My view is blocked by the oversized, outdated air conditioner that sits idly in the window, dust caked in its vents. The house is too old for central air, so these bulky contraptions are what keep us cool during a brutal summer day. Sometimes Maggie will mention the time Daddy turned them all off when it was ninety-eight degrees, and he went from room to room screaming. I try to ignore the conversation, as if in some way that will help to eradicate the memory.
I shudder, not wanting to believe that a man with so much good in him is capable of such cruelty. I am mildly comforted only by the fact that when I confronted him a year later he bore no memory of it, allowing me to somewhat forgive what was most likely a result of his blood pressure wreaking havoc on our lives. The invisible enemy that worked so diligently to destroy us.
Twenty-eight weeks pregnant and trying to catch up on some ironing in the heat of the day, I sighed and brushed back a loose strand of sweaty hair.

"Why don't you wait until it
cools off to do that?" He asks. I answer without looking up. "Because I have the time now ..." He is of course sitting in his recliner by the air conditioner when the use of iron requires too much energy and the entire upstairs fuse blows. I tug the cord from the wall and am about to make my way to the cellar to reset the fuse box when he erupts.
 

"You never listen to me! Why don't you ever listen to me?! It makes no sense to iron in this heat! Here ... Here ... You like the
heat? You want heat?" He storms into the kitchen, turns off the air conditioner, flies into the living room and does the same, unplugging the TV. He doesn't touch the air conditioner downstairs in the kids' bedrooms. The punishment was not theirs after all. It was mine. I had not obeyed him. I had tossed his suggestion to the side and went ahead with my ironing and now I would pay for my indiscretion. "You want to throw money out the window, ironing while all the air conditioners are on? Let's see how you do without any appliances."
Before he barrels out of the house he warns, "When I'm gone, if you touch any of these air conditioners, the TV, anything, I will throw them out the window when I get home." I want to remind him that the air conditioners technically belong to his mother and they aren't his to throw out, but past experience warned me against this. He knows the wide-eyed kids will certainly tell him if I do turn them on, so I know there would be no air conditioner in the long hours to come. He peels out of the driveway in our only vehicle at the time, and leaves me pregnant, with two small children to swelter in silence.
"Daddy's not feeling well," I say as I usher Sam and Maggie downstairs to their room to play. I can feel the contractions beginning. Already the heat is suffocating. I can barely breathe. Within an hour the bare hardwood kitchen table is covered in condensation. The kids are asleep in their cool room, but the contractions are increasing. Knowing he could walk in the door at any minute, I don't dare seek relief. Sitting in the kitchen, struggling to breathe against the oppressive heat, I muster what courage I have and dial Finn's house, "Gregory, you need to come home, I'm in labor."
***
The first thing he does when he comes home is to turn on all the air conditioners. In what had been a matter of six hours, he seems to have completely forgotten that he had forbade the use of them, and seemed perplexed as to why I was sitting in a house whose walls and wood furniture were literally sweating. I remind him that he went into a rage and turned them all off, to which he responds with a baffled expression.
"Your mom is going to stay with the kids," I say flatly. "The contractions won't stop."
The ride to the hospital is a silent one. I had expected him to feel worried and guilty. I had expected him to reassure me, to attempt reconciliation. He says nothing. His mood is dull, as if this trip is a nuisance, as if this was a plan I devised to pull him away from a good game, a few Mountain Dews and a package of Twizzlers.
I am strangely more concerned with his level of guilt than I am this baby's safety. Fairly confident that I will be given something to stop the labor, I make a point to cover my belly with open hands on either side, sitting staunchly upright to ensure him of my discomfort.
We arrive at the entrance and he drops me off at the front door. "You aren't coming in?" I asked incredulously. "You're in good hands," he says without looking at me. “I’ve got to get home to the kids.” He drives away as I clutch my belly and hobble inside.
It is his mother who picks me up the next morning after the drugs had successfully stopped the labor. I had explained to the nurses that my husband had to return home to care for our other two children and that he would make arrangements to return if the situation did not improve. I'm sure in their line of work, they have heard every excuse in the book, and have quietly overlooked the absence of many a foul husband at a laboring woman's bedside. What they did not know that is if my husband believed this was anything other than a guilt-trip, he would have been glued to my bedside. We have been at this game long enough, he and I.
This was not a well devised plan. I lost a night's sleep, twisting on the thin hospital bed in a humid room, an aching I.V. in my wrist, knowing he was home sleeping in the comfort of an air conditioned room. He had come out with the upper hand, and there was nothing to do but return home and pretend nothing had happened.
And so I did, neatly filing this grievance into my memory along with many other of its like. I take comfort in believing that one day he will stand before God, and each of these inhumane moments will file out of the Book of Life and stand to accuse him. I concede to defeat, and suppose I should feel grateful that this baby was not born at twenty-eight weeks, fully knowing that if it had, he would never have felt responsible anyway.
After all, how was I to know that this baby would be a girl, and that he would fall helplessly in love with her? And that this love would change everything.

***
"Uh oh," Tessa says, standing at the baby gate as Gregory heads down the stairs for work. About the only words she knows are "mom," "dad," and "uh oh." He smiles up at her and waves. He has a smile for her that no one else can call their own. It seems he has a special smile for each member of the family. I know them all. I see them before they form, and I feel them, knowing the depths to which they travel. When Gregory smiles, childlike purity surfaces, and I see him as a boy, before life hardened him.
The smile reserved for Sam is a soft one, accompanied by a sad look in Gregory's eyes. It is as though he knows that in many ways, our gentle and kind little boy is fragile and too soft for this world. When Gregory smiles at him, it is a smile that begs for many years with his son, but knows this may not be. He worries for his delicate son, and is filled with love for the little boy whose heart is unmistakably pure. How will he fair in this cruel world, with such uncompromising goodness? His fine spirit humbles us, and we see our shortcomings in his unadulterated kindness. It is a meek smile, and its reach is far, seeking to find refuge in Sam's heart.

Maggie's smile is one of masked pride for her smart, sassy and spunky personality. Often, he turns away when he smiles for her, because he is humored by her guff, and knows she marches to her own drum. This smile is one of total amusement and always comes with a short laugh. He secretly adores that she is like him, always questioning authority, unashamed to stand up for what she thinks is right. He is proud of her an
d it shows in his smirk.
His smile for Tessa is entirely unique. His face lifts when he smiles at her, and his shoulders immediately shrink. I love this smile. It dismantles him. His heart is unguarded and it rests in her little hand for that brief moment. It is the most vulnerable of all his smiles, and it is saved for Tessa. I think it is my favorite. It does not carry a note of sadness, or a smack of smug pride. It is wide open and completely free.
She waves back, squats down to see his face through the slots in the gate, then starts spinning in circles, showing off for him. She adores him, and out of all the children she most readily welcomed him into her little life, often reaching for him when she is in my arms.
"Daddy's going to work," I tell her. I am loading the dishwasher and he seeks my gaze from the stairs, and then comes my smile. It is a closed lipped smile, one that says, "I'm off to work babe. Another day, another dollar. I do this for you. It isn't much, but I do it for you." My smile is one that wants to find a way to prove its worthiness, but it carries with it a burden that I cannot always imagine. It is not a smile of mirth or amusement, or pride. It is one of weariness and defeat. But, there is something singular about this smile. It also holds a promise. And it is my very own smile, my very own promise, my very own love.
I smile softly and wave good-bye. Words don't seem to fit this moment. We speak in many ways. I have been smiling for many years, some real, others not. But what has remained silent all this time is my song. And the words to this are many.