Zoe
In the years that followed the day in 1987 that we signed the contract, our focus turned to the children. Proms, graduation, choosing the perfect college, the right major, the career. Spence and I rejoiced in the accomplishments of our children and celebrated with friends the passages of milestones in all our lives—silver anniversaries, turning fifty, starting the dream second career.
One day I was unhooking and labeling the mass of cords and cables behind the desk that held the computer. Despite the pleas of our children to put the computer someplace less public, Spence and I had stuck to our rule that the computer belonged to the family. As such, we were adamant that it would remain in a shared room—the family room we’d added to the back of the house a few years after the twins were born. Of course our main objective had been to monitor what our children “researched” and the people they formed online friendships with.
Now, on one of my cleaning binges, I had decided that with the children practically grown, I could move the thing and its unsightly and uncontrollable mass of cords to a less prominent place in the house. There behind the desk was the contract. I sat back on my heels and blew away the years of accumulated dust and remembered the afternoon Spence strode into the kitchen, announced, “We should talk,” and continued to his study. He had waited for me to follow and then shut the door.
In his direct manner, he told me about the conversation he’d just had with Cami. “So, if you’re planning to leave—or have me leave—let’s get on with it,” he said.
I was stunned. “What on earth gives you the idea that I want you to leave or that I’m planning to leave you?” I asked.
He didn’t have to answer. We both knew how things had been between us.
“Admittedly we’ve come to a crossroads in our marriage, Spence—notice I said ‘crossroads’ not ‘dead end.’ Neither of us can honestly say what direction we’ll go from here, but I know the old ‘staying together for the sake of the children’ isn’t something I view as a good thing—for us or the kids.”
His eyes had widened and I recognized the expression in them as fear. Please don’t, his eyes said before he turned away to the window. He used the moment to draw in a deep breath and slowly blow it out. “I see,” he said softly.
“No, you don’t.”
I walked around the desk and stood next to him, not facing him but focusing on where Cami sat on the rope swing Spence had hung for her when she was six. She was sixteen now and kicking at the dirt as she twisted the swing chains into a single strand. Then she lifted her coltish legs allowing the chains to unravel and spin her round and round.
I put my hand on Spence’s arm. “I am not leaving you and I hope you aren’t leaving me,” I said. “You and I made a commitment—for better or for worse. This is one of those ‘worse’ times and I’m not willing to say we can’t find our way through it—not yet—not by a long shot.”
He looked at me then and this time his eyes were filled with hope—false hope, for I was still angry and hurt and knew that I had miles to go before I could completely forgive him. Before I could forgive myself for the part I was all too aware I had played in letting things deteriorate to this point. “Spence, we aren’t there, yet,” I told him. “All I’m saying is that I won’t hang our marriage on the children. And I won’t permit some thirty-something who is smarter, prettier and more in tune with where you are at this stage of your life than I am to count as a reason we abandon the commitment we made to each other. I feel angry and betrayed and guilty and a host of other things I’ve got to work through, Spencer Andersen. I don’t like you a whole lot these days, but I love you and I think you still love me and we will get through this.”
He rubbed his palm over his unshaven chin. “Well, that’s all fine, Zoe, and you can have all the time you need, but frankly, our children deserve reassurance now.”
And that was when we came up with the idea of the contract. At the family meeting—a tradition Spence and I had begun once I went back to work—it was clear that Cami wasn’t buying it, but in the absence of anything else, she signed it. I had no doubts that she would use it as proof we’d lied to her if Spence and I didn’t find some way to get us all past this.
The terms were simple. Spence and I agreed to be “gentle and sweet”—Cami’s wording—to each other. In return, the children agreed to come to either Spence or me with their questions if they had concerns about how things were going. It was Taylor who suggested the final stipulation.
“Every night at supper, we each have to say something nice about every other person at the table.”
“Like what?” Cami demanded. “What would you say about me?”
Taylor smiled and held out the pen for me to write in the new condition. “You’ll be surprised,” he said.
And we were. That night at supper Taylor cleared his throat loudly right after I had taken my place opposite Spence and started to pass the salad dressing to Cami.
“Cami, I noticed your hair is getting really long. It’s nice on you.”
Todd snorted and swallowed a mouthful of lemonade.
Taylor was unperturbed. “And Dad, you know that defense move you showed me last week when we were shooting buckets on the driveway? I tried it in practice today and Coach was really impressed.”
“That’s great, Taylor,” Spence said, somehow maintaining a straight face while the rest of us sat staring open-mouthed at Taylor.
Taylor turned to his brother. “Todd, I have this science thing that has to do with plants, and you’re really better at that stuff than I am. Can you help me after supper?”
Todd looked as if he might explode with delight at this unexpected compliment from his brother. “Sure,” he muttered.
Finally Taylor focused his attention on me. “Mom, I think the work you do for the mayor is very important. He’s a jerk, but I like telling my friends that my mom is the brains behind everything good that happens in this town.”
I glanced the length of the table at Spence, who had taken a sudden interest in cutting his meat. “Thank you, Taylor,” I said softly.
Taylor released a sigh of pure relief at having completed the circuit. “See? How hard was that? Okay, who’s next?”
In spite of the fact that I knew it still bothered Spence, I kept working for Peter. I did it as much to prove to myself that I had done nothing wrong as I did it for the love of the job. I had admitted the temptation but resisted it while Spence had…. I felt noble and wounded. Oh, who was I kidding? I could accomplish just as much working in a dozen other positions. It wouldn’t take much more than the news that I was resigning as Peter’s chief of staff for the offers to come rolling in. I knew that and Spence knew that. That Spence and I had arrived at this brink was so scary for me, and when I am scared, I am not the type to burrow under the covers. I fight back and sometimes I fight dirty.
Our little roundtable of compliments had opened my eyes to the realization that if Spence and I were going to get through this, we had to start with what had happened. We had danced around a confrontation for weeks now. It was time to have our say—in plain language rather than thinly veiled smirks and grimaces.
“Can we talk?” I sounded like a poor imitation of Joan Rivers. “The kids have gone up for the night and it’s early yet, so I thought…”
Spence looked up from the Sunday paper he’d finally gotten around to reading on this Monday night. “Okay,” he said reluctantly. Unlike me, Spence would prefer not to rehash the past, searching for answers we might have missed. Spence is a let’s-get-on-with-it sort of guy.
I curled into a corner of the couch. He sat up straighter in his favorite chair and put the paper aside. I tried not to be irritated by the minuscule raising of Spence’s eyebrows that said, Oh, no, not a talk.
“It’s important that you understand that I haven’t stayed on with Peter—on the job—as a kind of punishment for you,” I began, and bit my lip, realizing I had blurted out the one thing I had wanted to calmly lead up to.
Spence frowned and looked down. “I understand your work is important to you, Zoe.”
I waited for more. “But?” I prompted.
“But nothing. I am saying I accept that your work is important.”
I hated it when he spoke to me as if I were a patient of his. He was my husband. “You do believe that there’s nothing between Peter and me?”
Spence flashed a sardonic smile. “About as much as you believe there was nothing to my fling with Jane Brooks,” he said. “The difference is that Jane is absent from the scene. She accepted that job with the pharmaceutical company in Texas. We’re not likely to ever see each other again, much less—”
“Much less what?” I sat forward on the sofa, facing the gauntlet he’d thrown down. “Are you implying that because Peter and I continue to work together, that I am incapable of—”
Anger glittered in Spence’s eyes. “I am not implying anything, Zoe. I am saying outright that I have apologized for what happened on my part and taken the steps necessary to make sure you aren’t hurt any more than you have been. You, on the other hand, seem intent on rubbing my nose in it by dangling Peter Quarles in front of me at every opportunity.”
I opened my mouth, but Spence stood up and continued talking. “Well, here’s a news bulletin for you—I have known from practically the day I met you, and certainly from the day I first I loved you, that Peter would be there…always be there. I have also known that you find some subliminal comfort in that—having a fallback position just in case things don’t work out here. Well, I’m tired of walking on eggs, Zoe. Two people have cheated in this marriage.”
“But only one acted on it,” I shot back, hating that he had as usual gone to the very core of the issue and laid it bare.
“Mea culpa,” he said in a whisper. “I’m going to bed.”
I stayed up half the night, wandering through the house, eating peanut butter and then ice cream directly from the containers as I fought against the understanding that Spence was right. We had been traveling separate paths long before Spence admitted the affair. I had realized that he had begun to want different things, united only when it concerned what was best for the children. I had been thrilled to go to work for Peter, to once again find “me”—Zoe, the independent woman with something to contribute beyond the chaos of carpools and school events and wife-of-the-doctor/professor performances. And the truth was that I had settled for the prestige and power that the job with Peter had given me, abandoning any notion of building something on my own. But at what price?
Spence was right that ever since our dual confessions of infidelity, things between us had gone from awful to horrible, and never more so than when I stubbornly refused to resign. And I knew at least a part of that stubborn refusal had been the fact that I was appalled Spence actually believed I had betrayed him first.
“Not physically,” he’d argued, “but the late nights, the public appearances where he insisted he must have you at his side. Do you have any idea what it felt like to hear one of my interns identifying you as the mayor’s wife after seeing that spread in the paper last fall?”
“So, of course, that was all the justification you needed to take your little research assistant to bed,” I’d fired back.
We’d fought dirty and aimed to inflict as much pain and punishment as we could in an effort to keep from examining our own motives. For I knew that there was an element of truth in Spence’s accusations about how much I enjoyed Peter’s attentions. And he understood that it was his guilt and self-loathing at having succumbed to his own temptation that made him want to defend himself against my righteous anger.
But somehow with everything out in the open between us we were able to move beyond the shouted insults, accusations, prolonged silences and avoidance of being alone with each other. As Cami had made crystal clear, our polite smiles and public displays of solidarity for the sake of the children were fooling no one—least of all our children. And because both Spence and I were united in our determination not to drag the children into our private anguish, we honored that contract while the natural progression of our children’s lives drew them out into the larger world—and away from us.
Taylor’s nightly compliment fest was obviously a challenge for all of us, but to our surprise, the harder it became to keep inventing fresh compliments, the more fun we had with it as a family.
“Cami,” Todd said the night after Spence had walked out on my attempt to talk through our problems, “your—” He paused, obviously racking his brain for something—anything—nice to say about her. Then he smiled. “Your fingernails are very clean.”
He was running low on new ideas and we all knew it, but it set off a round of silliness that had us all laughing so hard that we could barely speak.
“Your turn, Dad,” Taylor announced after all three of the children and I had made our rounds.
“Okay, here goes.” Spencer sat up very straight and focused on each child as he delivered their compliment. “Todd, your love of nature inspires me. Taylor, you’re a born entertainer. Cami, your smile could light up a room.”
There was a silence as each child digested this enormous praise from their father, who was more given to caution when it came to doling out his compliments.
“And what about Mom?” Cami said.
“Your mom is the best friend anyone could ever hope to have,” he said without hesitation as he looked at me across the table, his eyes holding mine.
“Wow,” I heard Taylor whisper.
Spence continued to command our full attention. “Maybe going forward we could ease up on the regimen of this compliment thing? I think we’ve all got the gist of it, don’t you?”
Four heads nodded in unison.
“Works for me,” I said. “How about dessert?”
As I stood there years later, the dusty, crinkled contract in my hand, I tried to recall how we had spent the rest of that evening. That I couldn’t meant that Spence and I must have settled into the truce that allowed us to rediscover the friendship and respect we had once thought could never last.
Remembering that night and what Spence had said, I carefully folded the contract and placed it in the folder I kept for saving such things. My cleaning binge had begun because I’d started to realize that soon Spence and I would no longer have the buffer of the children and their activities, friends and chatter. These days we were tumbling far too fast toward that day when we would be alone—with each other. I wasn’t ready. I had no idea how we were going to do this.
That spring, Cami had finished her graduate degree at Harvard and was now living with my parents in Manhattan while she searched for a job and an apartment and toyed with the idea of getting her doctorate at Columbia in her spare time.
“What about getting a life in your spare time?” Spence had teased her.
“This is my life, Dad, and I love it. My work, the city—it’s all fabulous.”
“So the possibility of a husband and kids any time in this century is…?”
Cami had giggled. “You’re going to have to look to Todd and Sandra for those grandchildren—in this century,” she’d said, and Spence had laughed. She always made him laugh—something I used to be able to do before….
That spring Todd announced that he had proposed to Sandra Alexander, a girl he had met only months earlier. He stated that they planned to be married as soon as possible.
“Is she pregnant?” his brother, Taylor, asked, barely glancing up. He was chewing the end of his pen as he completed the application for the summer broadcasting job he was hoping to land in Minnesota.
“No,” Todd replied quietly.
I glanced over at Spencer, who had lowered his newspaper and was watching Todd over the tops of his half reading glasses. He caught my eye. After almost twenty-five years of marriage, he had gotten good at translating my glances into actual words. Do something, this one told him.
“Sit down, son, and let’s talk about this,” he said.
Todd crossed the room and stood by the fireplace. “Here’s the deal,” he said in a voice that indicated he’d been rehearsing the coming speech for some time. “We’re in love. I know we’re young, but we know what we want. I mean, I may not have Taylor’s brains, but…”
Ah, I thought, and realized that Spencer was also thinking the same thing. Early in the lives of our nearly identical boys, it had become clear that the distinguishing mark between them was to be the ability to learn and comprehend and excel in the realm of formal learning. Taylor had sailed through high school with a solid four-point average, earned a full academic scholarship and would enter his sophomore year at UCLA in the fall. Todd had struggled through every class since third grade. In fact, at the end of that year his teachers had suggested we hold him back a year.
“So he can get some special help. Also, then he won’t be constantly compared with his brother,” the principal had told us bluntly.
But he was compared. As he followed Taylor year after year, teachers would inevitably make comparisons—subtle, but unmistakable. Todd coped by spending more and more time at the farm, helping his grandparents and enjoying solitary outdoor sports like fishing and cross-country skiing—silent sports, he called them.
“Where will you live?” I asked him now, working overtime to keep my emotions—my fear that he was about to make an enormous mistake that would change his life forever—from showing.
“The farm, if Grandma and Poppa will let us. They don’t use the upstairs anymore and we could convert that into an apartment. There’s already an outside entrance. We’d be company for them and we could help Poppa bring the farm back—make it profitable again. Keep it in the family.”
I saw Spence consider this. I was practically twitching with all the objections that pressed to spill out of my mouth without censorship, while he was always so calm in the face of the things our children had sprung on us through the years. Like the time Cami had decided she wanted a tattoo, or when Taylor had rolled the car over, trying to beat curfew one night.
Now I focused on Todd—this young man who was so like his father—this stranger who was my son—and willed myself to form words that would not make things worse.
“Are you nuts?” Taylor said before I could speak. He was completely involved in the drama playing itself out in our family room. “Move to the farm, set up your own place there—great idea. But get married—I mean, you haven’t even begun to live yet, man.”
I actually felt a smile tickle the corners of my mouth as I blessed Taylor for saying more or less what I’d been thinking.
“This isn’t about you,” Todd said to his brother. “This isn’t about the life you want. It’s about what I want.” He turned his attention back to Spence. “It’s about finding my place in this family of superoverachievers and it’s not something spur of the minute.”
“Okay,” Spence said slowly. “But Taylor has raised one pretty good point.”
Todd’s grip on the fireplace mantel tightened, but his features remained impassive. “Why get married?” he asked, and glanced from me to his father and back.
We both nodded.
“Because I love her and she loves me. Because we’ve both had to find our way in the world alone so far—”
“You’ve never been alone,” I interrupted.
“No, but it’s been pretty lonely sometimes,” he said. “Look, I know you both love me and you’ve done everything you could for me, but it’s time to fend for myself.”
“What about school?” Spence asked. “You and Sandra are graduating in a month, but what about college?”
“We’ll finish senior year out there—in Mount Horeb. We’ll be living at the farm, so that makes sense.”
And on one level it did. He would not have to compete with the memory of his brother for those last couple of months of high school—no one would remember that his brother had been the valedictorian. He would be the new face and judged only on his own performance.
“And college?” I repeated.
He shot me a smile so filled with pity that I had to look away. “Mom, we both know that’s not happening. I just don’t want to waste four more years of my life trying to do something I’m not good at. Maybe later. Down the road, I can pick up some agricultural courses or something.”
“We can get tutors,” I began. “At the university, they offer…”
He just stood there shaking his head.
Spence cleared his throat and removed his reading glasses. “Okay, so you move in with Mom and Dad at the farm and finish high school. Doesn’t Sandra already go to school there?”
Todd nodded.
Spence stood and began pacing—a sure sign that he was working through the logistics of this thing. I only hoped that his plan included some way to keep our son from throwing away his life by marrying before he was even twenty.
“So the two of you can be together for what’s left of your senior year. During that time a lot can change, but even if it doesn’t, you’ll be more prepared and more sure—”
“We’re sure now, Dad.”
I could see that Spence was floundering in the face of Todd’s determination. “You’re just nineteen, Todd,” I began. “Sandra is only eighteen. People in this day and age simply do not get married when they are still teenagers and still growing.”
Taylor let out a hoot of laughter, which he stifled as soon as I threw him a look. I was well aware that my argument was full of holes, but Spence was getting nowhere. “Your father and I have to have some time to consider this, Todd,” I said firmly. “End of discussion.”
Todd shrugged and crossed the room to the stairway. “We’d really like your blessing,” he said, and I understood that what he was not saying was that with or without our blessing he was going through with this. “And as long as I’m dropping bombs tonight, I joined the National Guard.”
My mouth opened and closed. I shook my head, hoping I hadn’t heard that right. “You c-can’t,” I stuttered. I felt Spence beside me, his hand on my shoulder.
Todd stepped back into the room. “Mom, I’m not doing any of this to hurt you—it’s not about you or Dad. This is my life, and I want to start taking charge of it and planning a realistic future for myself. Please understand that.”
I was shaking and chewing my lip to keep the howls of protest at bay. I stared at my clenched hands and heard Spence say in a voice that all three children were aware meant the discussion was far from closed, “We’ll talk about this tomorrow, son.”
I stayed where I was, mentally counting out the heavy footfalls as Todd climbed the stairs. When I heard the familiar click of his bedroom door, I drew in one long shuddering breath and stood.
“Taylor, go to bed,” I snapped at our other son, who was now leaning forward, fully prepared to engage in the discussion that would follow Todd’s dramatic exit.
Spence
After our teenaged son announced his decision to join the National Guard and plans to marry and move to the farm, we stayed up most of the night debating the best plan for stopping this insanity. Somewhere around three in the morning as she was brewing a fresh pot of coffee, Zoe said, “Okay, let’s address one issue at a time here. What if we’re wrong? I mean about them marrying?”
I was bleary-eyed. Zoe’s staying power for these sorts of discussions had always been superhuman. She looked as if she could go on for hours. “Zoe, they’re kids.”
“In many ways, so were we,” she reminded me softly. “Look, Spence, all we’ve been doing is thinking about this thing from our point of view. He made some good arguments,” she added as she refilled my coffee mug.
“Name one.”
“College would be agony for him—I don’t care where he went or how many tutors we hired.”
“Name another.”
“Both he and Sandra are mature beyond their years. Sandra’s dad died when she was only three and her mother has been the family’s sole job. Sandra’s worked in some sort or other since she was twelve—babysitting or such. Marie thinks the world of her.”
“She’s a terrific young woman—I’m not denying that. But is she ready to be a wife? Is Todd ready to be a husband?”
The slightest tug at her lips told me she was fighting a smile. “Were we?” She sat in the chair opposite mine. “Think about it. We’d known each other for only a few months before you went to Vietnam. Most of our so-called courtship was carried on through the mail.”
“We were adults,” I argued.
“Semantics. We were in our twenties—me barely. Did that make us any wiser when it came to having any idea what it meant to be married?”
“You need to switch to decaf,” I said, reaching for her coffee mug. She stopped me by putting her hand over mine. I looked into her eyes. “You’re actually considering saying yes to this insanity?”
“I’m seriously saying that it isn’t up to us. Our son has reached a decision about his life—he’s clearly not arrived at this lightly. Just because we’ve only had tonight to talk it through doesn’t mean he hasn’t been working it out for months already. Did you appreciate the way he handled himself tonight? The way he handled Taylor? That shows planning—strategic planning. At least we’ve taught him that.”
I couldn’t argue. “And what if it doesn’t work out?”
She shrugged. “Hey, life doesn’t come with a warranty for happiness.” She continued to keep her hand on mine. “We learned that,” she added softly.
Then she was up and rinsing out the mugs and turning off the coffeemaker.
“So we’re decided?” I asked, watching her, enjoying as I hadn’t in months the efficiency and grace of her movements. “I mean about the marriage?”
“I am,” she replied. “You have to make your own decision.”
“If I say okay, can we go to bed?”
“Oh, Spence, don’t give in—I want you to believe this is best for Todd. He—and Sandra—deserve our complete support.”
The woman who stood at the kitchen sink folding the dish towel and making this impassioned plea was the same woman I’d first noticed that day on campus nearly twenty-five years earlier. It was hard to refute her arguments and it was impossible to turn away.
“Besides, Todd’s always dreamed of someday managing the farm,” Zoe reminded me. “Your dad has counted on that.”
“He doesn’t have to get married to take over the farm,” I said, but there was no energy left for the debate.
“He loves her,” Zoe said in almost a whisper, “and she loves him more than she can bear sometimes.” Her voice shook with emotion, and when I looked up, she was crying. “It’s right there for the whole world to see. It’s like…”
I got up so fast that the kitchen chair teetered on two legs before tipping over and hitting the floor. But neither of us noticed. I stood in front of Zoe as she leaned against the sink, her chin practically on her chest as huge tears plopped onto the front of her denim shirt.
It had been so long since I’d held her—really held her. Over the months and years since my affair, we had not only signed a contract with the kids, we had carefully built an imaginary picket fence between us. It was the kind that good friends or neighbors might exchange news over without ever stepping through the gate to be together on the same side. Oh, we had hugged and even resorted to giving each other a quick dry-lipped kiss on our way out the door in the morning. In bed we groaned with pleasure at the comfort of the bed after exhausting days filled with work and social commitments, but not in the ecstasy of lovemaking. We were polite and gentle and still too shaken by what we had almost lost to risk anything.
So as I stood in front of Zoe, watching her cry, wanting nothing so much as to take her in my arms, I hesitated. And in that hesitation, the moment was lost. She raised her hands to her face and laughed as she moved around me and busied herself straightening the place mats on the table. “I’m losing my baby,” she said with a wry laugh, “or one of them, anyway.” She glanced around the kitchen as if seeking some other task she could tackle. “I suppose we ought to get some sleep,” she said finally.
“What about the National Guard?” I asked.
Her eyes and mouth tightened. “If we agree to the marriage, then…”
“He can’t turn back that clock, Zoe,” I said, and when I saw her regrouping for battle on this topic, I added, “Whatever strings you’re thinking of trying to pull—or asking Peter to pull—I won’t be a part of it,” I told her.
Through all our years together Zoe and I had compromised on many topics, but not this one. She had remained steadfastly antiwar, while I continued to support the idea of a strong military as vital to maintaining the peace and security that Americans too often took for granted—as if it were an entitlement, not something to be earned.
She started to debate my logic, then caught herself. “Well, it’s the National Guard and they do good work—tornadoes, floods, civil disobedience. I mean, it’s not like…” She glanced at me, her eyes pleading for reassurance.
“Todd’ll be fine,” I assured her. “Let’s get some sleep.”
“You go on,” she said. “I’ll be up in a bit.”
Zoe
Thursday, March 15, 1995
It’s been a long time since I wrote anything. I used to think the point of keeping a journal was to record my life—the events of that life whether grand or minuscule. But it seems the only times I resort to putting my thoughts down in writing is when I can’t find answers—can’t find a solution. Like tonight.
But it’s not a solution for Todd and Sandra that I need. It’s not even about Todd joining the Guard. I don’t like it. No, that’s too mild. I hate it, although I suppose I should have seen it coming. Growing up, he was always more like Spence and Hal than like me. And he was also like Ty in so many ways—serious and thoughtful, gentle but at the same time quietly determined. The way he sits at the dinner table, saying nothing while I rant on about whatever new perceived injustice has caught my attention. Like Spence, he nods and even smiles. Usually once I run out of words to hurl at the problem, I just stop, expecting my children—if not my husband—to agree. Cami always plays devil’s advocate—deliberately adding fuel to the debate. Taylor shrugs with the “whatever” indifference of the times and Todd concentrates on eating.
“What do you think, Todd?” I ask.
He finishes chewing his food, then offers me that incredible smile that so mirrors his father’s and replies, “As you would say, Mom—they didn’t ask you.”
How many times had I raged on and on about some issue, only to add after I finally ran out of steam, “But as my grandmother used to say, ‘They didn’t ask me.’” The implication being that if they had, things would not be in the mess they were in.
This time Todd isn’t asking me, either. Not about joining the Guard and not about getting married. So I can rant and rave and howl at the moon, but I will not change what he has decided to do—what he has done. My choice is clear. I can either support his decisions and do everything I can to help make them the right decisions for him. Or I can refuse and risk losing him.
But I already knew all that halfway into the discussion Spence and I had earlier in the kitchen. That was the point. I knew that what I needed to do was move from denial to anger to acceptance in a place where Todd would not hear or be hurt. I knew that I could only do that with Spence.
Only Spence.
Always Spence.
Why do I continue to reject him? Why—after all this time and after everything he does that shows me every day his love for me—do I run from any overture he makes? All I had to do tonight was take the tiniest step forward and we could have—would have…What? Made love? Turned back the calendar? Torn down the tangles of wire barbed with our individual hurts and hysteria or self-righteousness that allow us to be with each other but not connect?
I realized tonight that I was ready to let Todd and Sandra do this thing because I remembered nights sitting on the steps of the Mifflin Street house with Spence. We’d warm our hands on steaming mugs of hot chocolate and plan our tomorrows. Thinking back on my life, there have been many moments of high excitement, even ecstasy. But for sheer simple happiness, nothing compares with those quiet nights when most everyone up and down the street was asleep and Spencer Andersen and I saw the whole world—our whole lives—ahead of us.
We’ve traveled so far from those days and I appreciate how blessed we’ve been—I’ve been. We have three magnificent children, a home we have loved from the moment we first walked through the front door, life’s work that we never could have imagined would be so fulfilling. But somewhere along the way we lost each other. It’s become a day-by-day thing haunted by the past for us. We’ve lost the ability to look forward, to dream. That’s what I heard Todd telling us tonight—about his dreams for the future, about seeing what lies ahead—not backward.
Tonight I stood at the kitchen sink and thought about Todd and Sandra and how they are just beginning with everything in front of them—with everything possible for them. In a perverse way I even saw Spence and me in them—Sandra is a very strong young woman. Even the National Guard thing began to seem like a safe parallel to what Spence and I had been through. But most of all, I wanted that precious time back for Spence and me. I wanted “us” back. And yet when he stepped closer and I realized that he would hold me, I also knew that he hesitated because of all the occasions I’ve rebuffed him openly or pretended not to see the signs.
I could have made that new beginning for us. I could have moved that tiny step, raised my eyes to his, lifted my arms. But I didn’t…again. If I long for us back together again, then why? Because the risk that we might reach that cliff again and this time go over terrifies me. Safer this way.
Spence
I was still awake when Zoe finally got into bed. The sky was already losing its blackness and I could hear birds stirring. She eased herself under the covers, trying not to wake me. I stretched my arm across the expanse of our king-size bed until I felt her shoulder.
“They’ll be okay,” I whispered.
Zoe was quiet for a long moment, then her fingers curled over mine. “I know.” She rolled toward me and curled against my side. “And so will we,” she said as she smoothed my hair away from my forehead.
It had been so long since I’d cried, but I did nothing to stop the tears that seemed to wash over my cheeks in a river as I reached for her.
I studied her in the moonlight that filtered through the lace curtains of our bedroom and saw every facet of her beauty as clearly as if we’d left every light in the room on. “You’re exquisite,” I told her.
I stroked her hair, still long but now streaked with gray and sunlight, nudging it away to expose her bare shoulders. Shoulders that were sprinkled with freckles in spite of the sunscreen and wide-brimmed straw hat she wore religiously. I followed the line of her gown, a river of green batiste. But her beauty was not in her hair or the body beneath the gown. Her beauty was in her eyes and her smile—both ripened by the years, the experiences she had had, the choices she had made, the wisdom she had cultivated.
The kiss seemed to last forever and at the same time be over in a millisecond. The familiar taste of her, the fullness of her lips and mouth opening to mine. The delicate cotton nightgown that was no match for the silky smoothness of her bare arms and shoulders. It was as if I was home at last.
“Spence,” she whispered, her head lowered so that I couldn’t see her eyes. “Maybe we should take a page from our son’s book.”
I kissed her throat. “I’m listening.”
She laughed and lifted her head to give me better access to her neck, her ear, the curve of her jaw. “You’re not, but I’m going to say it anyway.”
My heart tripped, fearful as always that we had made this small step but not the large leap I so longed for us to take. I rested on one elbow. “Say what?”
“Let’s make a fresh start—like Todd and Sandra. Let’s let go of the past and just—live.”
“The past—good and bad—is part of who we are,” I reminded her.
“I know. For better or worse, but we can get back to focusing on the better.”
I grinned. “Works for me.”
Our lovemaking was a remembered waltz, the music filled with memories of an attic room on Mifflin Street, a waterbed above a bookstore, and this house—this wonderful place where we had once again found “home.”