David.”
“No sympathy, remember?” he said. “But keep that in mind. Bad genetics.”
He said it lightly, but there was something in his eyes that was not light at all. As if she had been considering him as partner material, that should dissuade her.
How could she address that without making it seem as if she were looking at him as partner material?
She didn’t have to address it because he went on, his voice quiet, “In the last little while, I’ve actually felt grateful that he didn’t live to see my mom like this.”
She wanted to say Oh, David, again, but didn’t. She was so aware that he was giving something of himself to her, sharing a deeply private side that she suspected few people, if any, had ever seen.
“My dad,” he went on, “would have been just like that policeman. He knew right from wrong and he taught me that, and he didn’t care if I was happy about it or not. My happiness was secondary to my being a good person.”
“Mine, too,” she said, “now that I think about it.”
“It’s nice to see you looking so happy, Kayla,” David said quietly, as if they had spoken Kevin’s name out loud, as if he knew how desperate she had often felt in her marriage.
She felt as if the tears were going to start again, so she bit the side of her cheek and buried her face in her dog’s fur and said nothing.
“It’s your turn,” he said quietly, as if it were an order. And then, as if she might have dismissed it the first time, he said it again, even more firmly. “Kayla, it’s your turn for happiness.”
HER TURN FOR HAPPINESS?
“I feel guilty when I’m happy,” Kayla blurted out.
David nodded. “I remember feeling that way after my dad died. How dare the world hold laughter again?”
She nodded. That was how she felt exactly, but it was layered with even deeper confusion because her feelings about her husband’s death were not all black and white.
“But then I remembered something my dad said to me,” David said thoughtfully. “My dad said you could never be guilty and happy at the same time. Or afraid and happy at the same time. That’s why he was such a stickler for doing the right thing. That’s what he saw as the stepping stones to building true happiness. And that’s what he would have wanted me to do. To choose happiness. And that’s what I want you to do, too.”
She stared at David. He could have said a million things, and yet the thing he had said was so right.
Despite herself, she shared something else.
“David?”
“Hmm?”
“I’m scared of happiness. Remember you said wishes are for children? I’m afraid that the things you wish for just set you up for disappointment. And heartbreak.”
They had arrived in front of her house, and he glanced at his and then, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, went and sat in his wet clothes on her front step. He patted the place beside him.
“It was awful, wasn’t it?” he asked.
And she was going to say “what?” as if she didn’t know what he was talking about, but she did know, and she could not bear to bring dishonesty between them.
She had known this time was coming when they would have to address the history between them.
And she had expected that exploration would be like there was an unexploded mine buried somewhere in the unexplored ground between them.
“Yes,” she whispered. “Being married to Kevin was awful in so many ways. I mean, there were good things, too, don’t get me wrong.”
“Tell me,” he said.
And she knew he didn’t mean the good things. She ordered herself not to, but she could not disobey the command in his voice.
And so she found herself telling him. Slowly at first, like water that was seeping out a hole in a dam, the steady, small flow making the hole larger until the water was shooting through it with force, faster and faster.
She told him about the late nights waiting for Kevin, not knowing where he was, about the terrible houses they had lived in and the bills not paid. She talked about working as a waitress and a cleaning lady, about babysitting children and raking leaves, trying to hold it all together long after she should have let it fall apart.
And the more she worked at holding it together the more Kevin seemed to sabotage everything she had done, lose interest in her, treat her shabbily, at first in the privacy of their own home, and then in front of other people.
“Sometimes,” she said, finally, “I feel relieved that he died.”
It should have been her biggest secret. But it wasn’t. There was one left, still.
She waited for him to react with horror to this revelation that she had never admitted out loud to anyone.
Instead, they sat silently on the front steps with the sun pouring down hot on their heads, drying their clothes so that the lemon stains and wrinkles would probably never come out. Her dog snoozing in her arms, Kayla was aware she did not feel judged at all.
There. They were out. Her shameful and most closely guarded secrets. It was like a mine exploding, but instead of feeling destructive, it felt like a relief.
Before it exploded she waited. And wondered. And every step was guarded. And every breath was held.
Suddenly it felt as if she could breathe.
And suddenly it felt as if she were free to walk across the field that was her memory without being caught in an explosion.
Instead of rejecting her, David put his arm around her shoulder and pulled her into the solidness of his body.
And Kayla, in that moment of shared strength and sunshine, realized it had not been so much Kevin she had withheld forgiveness from.
In fact, she had forgiven Kevin again and again and again.
Except when he had died, taking with him any chance that they would find their way, that the love she still had for him would somehow see them through, would fix things—then she had felt angry and beyond forgiveness.
Betrayed by his carelessness in a way she could no longer fix. But now she could see most of her anger was at her own powerlessness.
She realized that more so than with Kevin, it was herself she had never forgiven. She had never forgiven herself for her own bad choices, for making everything worse instead of better.
But there, with David’s arm around her shoulder, she felt strong and warm, and for the first time in very, very long, optimistic.
