DORI STARED AT the closed door, the sound of Trev’s angry slam reverberating in her ears. For a moment she couldn’t think, didn’t feel. Then the disbelief and pain kicked in.
What had just happened? How had she gone from such hope and joy to such despair? One moment she was in Trev’s arms, vowing to be his forever. The next he was storming out of the house, more furious than she had ever seen him in all the years she’d known him.
Years of patterned thinking asserted themselves, and she found herself feeling resentful and used. How dare he walk out on her like that! That’s what happened when you tried to dislodge the pink elephant. Better to leave it alone and just step cautiously around it, leaving it behind as you pressed into the future.
Except there was no future now.
The thought hit with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer pulverizing stone. The ache was so intense she doubled over, her arms wrapped around her stomach. The pain was too deep for tears. She’d known from the beginning that if he rejected her again, she’d die somehow. Oh, not physically. That would be too easy.
Oh, Lord, I can’t stand this agony! Help me!
No immediate surcease came, no lifting of the black cloud that enveloped her, no reconstructing of the heart the sledgehammer of his rejection and anger had crushed.
With a sigh she pulled herself to her feet. She climbed the stairs slowly, each step its own little Everest. Halfway up she heard a little slither of sound over her head, but when she stopped to listen, the sound disappeared.
When she reached the top of the stairs, she noticed the door to the hall closet was partially open. She pushed it shut and continued on to her room. She pulled her little suitcase from under the bed and threw in as much as it would hold. She zipped it shut and pulled it to the floor where it landed with a thud. She jerked up the pull handle and wheeled it to the top of the stairs. There she grabbed the short handle on the case’s side and lugged it down to the living room.
She opened the closet to get her coat, and the red Lands’ End Squall seemed to jump out and grab her. A sob rose as she deliberately reached around it and got her black down-filled coat. She pulled on her red beret and her red gloves, grabbed her purse and suitcase, and left the house.
She thought suddenly of Trudy, off somewhere with Maureen and Ryan. Poor Trudy, moved at the whim of people whether she wanted to move or not. A picture rose in her mind of Ryan seated on the floor laughing as Trudy gave his face a bath. Another surfaced of Trudy lying head to head with Jack, barking and teasing him to come chase her. And the sweetest picture of all—a grinning Ryan lying on the floor with Trudy’s head lying on one shoulder and Jack’s on the other, both dogs blissful as he fondled their ears.
She’d leave Trudy here as a gift to Ryan. Someone might as well get something positive out of this catastrophe. Certainly Trudy was small enough that Mae wouldn’t mind having her in the house.
Oh, Lord, I don’t want to leave!
But she knew she had no choice. Trev didn’t want her. It was that simple.
As she drove through town, it began to snow, slowly at first, then with increasing force. She felt a momentary flutter of fear—it had been so long since she’d driven in snow—but the emotional chaos consuming her pushed the snow problem to the side. She made certain she didn’t pass Harbor Lights or Phil’s pharmacy. It would be too painful. She sniffed.
I’m sorry, Mae. Forgive me for letting you down. And, Phil, be careful you don’t let Maureen get away. She’s just right for you.
Tears sheened her eyes as she thought of the two of them getting married. She wouldn’t even be able to come to their wedding because Trev would be there. With Angie?
For a minute she thought she might throw up.
As she drove over the Ninth Street Causeway she glanced at the clock on her dash. Ten o’clock. She’d been in Seaside for six days and eight hours, give or take an hour. That wasn’t very long, but she felt utterly bereft.
Trev.
She allowed herself to go back to that fateful afternoon six years ago. She saw herself open the door, so excited about seeing her new husband again, so hungry for his arms about her. She saw the open bedroom door and the dark-haired man and the blonde woman sleeping in what was to have been her bed, hers and Trev’s. She felt the slam of horror all over again, saw her hand come to her mouth to smother the agonized scream, saw herself turn and run back to her dorm room where she’d stuffed whatever came to hand into her backpack and headed for the airport.
Suddenly a conversation long forgotten surfaced. She was at the apartment one Friday not too long after her first semester had begun. Phil was already in graduate school, sharing the apartment with Trev, a junior.
“How come you’ve got the big bedroom?” Phil asked as he walked out of his tiny room. “I can barely turn around in there.”
Trev shrugged. “I got here first on moving day?”
“But oldest gets first dibs. Haven’t you ever heard of primogeniture?”
“Right. I want to know where that rule is written down,” Trev groused. “I think some oldest kid somewhere just decided it should be that way and told all the other oldest kids he knew who told all the oldest kids they knew and on and on.”
“What’s wrong with your room?” Dori asked, peering in the door of the room under discussion. “Aside from the socks and underwear on the floor and the dust bunnies under the bed, I mean.”
“Well, the bed, for one thing. It’s too small.”
Dori frowned at Phil. “It’s a standard twin bed. What’s the problem?”
“Two don’t fit well.”
“But there’s only one of you,” she answered reasonably.
“Most of the time,” he said with a significant look at Trev.
Dori felt her face heat as it dawned on her what her brother was talking about. “I don’t want to hear this. I do not want to hear this.”
Trev laughed at her discomfort. “Look, Phil, feel free to use my bed anytime you need to, provided I’m not sleeping in it, of course.”
“Better yet,” Phil said, “we’ll trade. One semester yours, one semester mine.”
As the memory unrolled, Dori began to shake, her whole body trembling under the enormity of her discovery.
He was right, and she was wrong!
All these years she had been so certain of her position. He was wrong; she was right. Sure, she was an emotional coward. Sure, she had run. Sure, she had refused to talk about the situation out of a combination of fear and self-protection.
But he had been wrong, and she had been right.
Oh, Lord, what have I done? I’ve killed my marriage to the only man I’ve ever loved or will love, and I did it not once but twice. How can he ever forgive me? How can You ever forgive me?
Great wracking sobs began to shake her. The road wavered through the flood of moisture that filled her eyes. She slowed so she wouldn’t have an accident. Snowflakes slapped the windshield, one after another. She groaned and turned the wipers to high speed. Even the weather was against her.
She peered into the night. Shouldn’t she have come to the entrance to the Garden State Parkway by now? It hadn’t seemed this far when Trev drove it. She frowned. It hadn’t looked this rural either. She had no idea where she was. She thought she was driving north, and Philadelphia was north, wasn’t it? Philadelphia and the airport. She’d just keep driving, and she’d get there eventually.
This time, Lord, I won’t turn away from You. I at least learned that much in my short time here.
Trev had taught her. She’d seen in him what a Christian should be. She’d even seen mesmerizing glimpses of the loving husband he would have been if she hadn’t messed it all up.
And I believe in marriage so strongly, Lord. That’s the irony of it all.
She dashed a hand across her cheek. At the rate she was weeping, she’d have chapped skin before she got halfway to the airport.
Six years without a move to divorce was proof of her commitment to marriage, wasn’t it?
She thought for a minute, and honesty forced her to rephrase. It didn’t show commitment to marriage but rather to the concept of marriage. If she’d been committed to marriage itself, wouldn’t she have been here, fighting for it instead of abandoning it?
Her parents had been committed to marriage, not the idea of marriage. They had lived together every day, been happy together, sad together, bored together, angry at each other, dazzled by each other. The same with Pop and Honey.
Pop wasn’t always an easy man to live with, and Honey had been independent for over forty years before they married. Both were highly opinionated. Their fights were dillies, and at first the young Dori, already uncertain in her new surroundings, still raw from the loss of her parents, had been frightened by them. When Honey had realized how the little girl was being affected, she sat down with Dori.
“Dori, love, you mustn’t worry. Pop and I are fine. Since no one can be everything that his or her partner wants, there will always be struggles and disagreements in a marriage, even between people who love each other deeply like Pop and me. It can’t be avoided. A marriage without struggles isn’t a marriage. It’s only two people living in the same house, not caring enough to work out the issues between them.”
“But you yell,” Dori said in a small voice.
Honey smiled. “That we do. Some people cry. Some people get real quiet. Some people turn away. We yell. But this is the fact you need to always remember, honey. We love each other, Pop and I. When we stood before the minister and said our vows, we both knew that we were promising to be together for life. I’m not going anywhere. Pop’s not going anywhere.”
“You’re sure?”
“Absolutely positively. And you’re not going anywhere either.” Honey hugged her close. “We’re family, and family stays together even in the hard times. Especially in the hard times.”
“No!” the adult Dori shouted into the black night and cranked the steering wheel to the left. “I am not running again. Families stick together, especially in the hard times. I’m fighting this time. Oh, God, give me courage!”
The car turned, crossing the white center line, all but invisible under the carpet of snow. The nose swung toward Seaside, and Dori was filled with determination and hope. She would get down on her knees and ask Trev’s forgiveness, then get up and help him build their marriage, one that would reflect their love and commitment to each other and to the Lord.
When the right front wheel slid off the shoulder into a slight ditch, she felt the jolt of the undercarriage coming to rest on the ground from her tailbone to the base of her skull.