realized, though, that you haven’t really told me much about yourself,” he continued. “You tell me how you feel about things, and I really like that. You’re such a straight shooter. I don’t have to guess with you. But …” His voice trailed off.
“But?”
“I don’t know anything about your past.”
“Ah,” she said. She’d hoped to avoid talking to him about her past, but clearly that was going to be impossible.
“Here’s what I know,” he said. “You grew up in North Carolina, like I did. You were an only child. Your parents are dead. You have no children. You were married, but your husband died long ago and you haven’t dated since. But I don’t know what it was like for you growing up, or what your parents did for a living, and that’s my fault for not asking questions. I know that. And I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right,” she said.
“The biggest blank of all is your marriage.” His hand toyed with her hair where it fell in wisps at the back of her neck. “Your husband,” he said. “You never talk about him. You know all about Alice. I talk about her too much, I suppose.” He laughed self-consciously and she felt a little sorry for him.
“No, you don’t,” she reassured him.
“I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’m sorry I haven’t asked you about these things before now,” he said. “That I haven’t given you the chance to tell me about yourself. I hope you haven’t misconstrued that as disinterest. It’s really been …” He laughed. “It’s been selfishness, pure and simple. I needed to dump my problems onto you. But I’m ready now.”
She was quiet, and he nudged her.
“So go ahead,” he said. “Tell me.”
She let out her breath. “Oh,” she said, “this is hard.”
“Why is it hard?”
She could feel the blank slate he’d placed in front of her, waiting for her to fill it. “Some things are difficult to talk about,” she said. “But I do want to tell you. I want a good relationship with you and I know I can’t build one on lies.”
“Have you been lying to me?” It sounded as though this was not a complete surprise to him.
“Yes,” she said, “though mostly through omission.”
“You can tell me anything,” he said, and she wondered if he knew what he was getting himself into.
“I have to ask you to keep what I say just between us, okay?” she asked. “I mean, I’m ready to tell you … some things … but not the world.”
“All right.”
She was quiet a moment, forming her thoughts, and he spoke before she could get the first word out.
“You have had a child,” he said.
The question surprised her. Of the things she was preparing to say, that was low on her list. “Yes, I have,” she said. “But how did you know?”
“Your body gave it away.”
“My stretch marks?”
He laughed. “You are so self-conscious about your body,” he said. “I didn’t notice any stretch marks. But the color of your nipples. The areolae are dark.”
“That’s what I get for dating a doctor,” she said.
“Did you lose the child?”
She pressed her palm against his chest again, trying to formulate her response. “Yes,” she said. “But not the way you mean.” She squeezed her eyes shut. “My husband didn’t die,” she said. “I’m not really a widow.” She hurried on as she felt the muscles in his chest tighten up beneath her hand. “And I’m very, very sorry for having led you to believe that I am, because I know that’s part of what drew you to me. Thinking we had that in common. I’m sorry.”
“You’re still married?” he asked.
“No. I’m divorced. But when I moved here—to California—eight years ago, I couldn’t bring myself to tell complete strangers the truth. It was easier to just say he’d died. I didn’t want to have to answer questions about my ex. He was dead to me, as far as I was concerned, so it wasn’t a lie that was hard for me to stick with. Until now. until you.”
“It was a nasty divorce, then.” He was upset over her pretense of being a widow. She could hear it in his voice, and she didn’t blame him.
“I want you to know that I’m an honest person,” she said. “I mean, basically, I’m very honest. I do have this one big lie I’ve been living, but please don’t think that it defines who I am. Because it doesn’t.”
“Tell me,” he said.
“My ex-husband is in prison for murder.” She had said those words to herself many times, but never, not once, had she said them out loud. They echoed in the huge room.
“God,” he said. “What happened?”
She rolled away from him to turn on the Tiffany lamp on the night table. The old, nauseating images were filling her head and whenever that happened, she couldn’t tolerate being in the dark.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
She rested her head on his shoulder, swallowing hard against the nausea.
“Could that be enough for now?” she asked. “Enough of the truth? I still get nightmares about it sometimes and don’t really want to have any tonight.” How could she tell him she had lived in a cramped little North Carolina trailer—and spent time in a battered women’s shelter—when here she was, lying in a $3000 carved cherry bed in La Jolla, trying to fit in with the sort of people she hadn’t even known existed back then?
“Just tell me one thing,” Jim said. “He didn’t kill your child, did he?”
“No,” she said. “Nothing like that.”
“Is it a boy or a girl?”
“A boy.” A man by now. “His name is Freddy. Fred. We’re estranged. He blamed me for what happened with his father. He thought I somehow drove him to kill someone. After it happened, Freddy and I left North Carolina and moved to L.A., where I had an old girlfriend from nursing school. We moved in with her and I got my master’s degree there. My son was very hard to manage, though. He wasn’t a bad kid. Just … so terribly angry with me. The day he turned eighteen, he moved out. I went to a counselor who said I should practice tough love. You know, let him go, let him make it on his own. So that’s what I did.” She recited the situation with little emotion. She couldn’t let herself feel the pain behind the words or she might fall apart, and she wasn’t ready to do that with Jim. With anyone.
“And you haven’t been in touch with him since?”
“I don’t know where he is, and he’s never tried to find me.”
Jim
