Redemption

by Nancy Geary

  Several summers later, she’d been out in the Day Sailer with Hope and her cousin Frances, who’d come for her annual visit. The wind had taken them far from shore, and they’d had difficulty tacking their way back. When the sky grew overcast and the rain started, Hope had begun to cry, her teeth chattering between her blue lips. The strong tide and offshore breeze slowed their progress even more. The swells grew. Coming about, the boat had capsized. Hope had fallen into the sail and become entangled in the various ropes.

  She remembered the bleeding cut on Frances’s forehead from an oar strike as the boat capsized. “Swim to the beach. Get help. We need a motorboat. I’ll find Hope,” Frances had directed. Although Penelope had wanted the words to be muffled by the wind and the waves, she’d heard the instruction. A strong swimmer, she’d gotten to shore but hadn’t run to the house, hadn’t called for anyone. Instead she’d stood gazing out to sea, watching the struggle. Despite the cold wetness that had saturated her shorts, T-shirt, and sneakers, she’d felt a sense of relief. Again the fate of her little sister was within her control. With no assistance, the ocean would let the first child triumph by swallowing the second, smaller body forever.

  But Frances had saved her. She’d seen Hope’s bright orange life preserver through the dense rain and loosened her from the morass of canvas and rope. With her elbow looped under Hope’s chin, she’d towed her to safety. Penelope would never forget the glaring look in Frances’s eyes as she’d turned to face her cousin. Holding Hope bundled in her arms, she’d asked only one question: “Why didn’t you go for help?” Penelope had no response, and Frances knew it. Perhaps she’d even surmised Penelope’s intent. But despite the significant punishment doled out to Frances, who as the eldest was considered the most irresponsible in putting the other girls in harm’s way, she’d never said another word about the incident.

  Penelope now stared through the doorway and listened as the women’s laughter and chatter grew louder, more boisterous. The rage she’d experienced more than a decade ago, the nausea in her stomach and pressure in her skull, returned. Nothing had changed. She’d achieved success, while Hope was useless. But she would always be the favorite. She’d won the heart of Jack and everyone else, no matter what Penelope did or how perfectly she managed her life. It wasn’t fair.

  She let her weight fall into the doorway and sighed. Sometimes she felt she’d suffered long enough.

  8

  Why? That’s all I want to know.” Sitting beside Hope on the sagging couch, Carl had his hand on her thigh. He squeezed a little harder. “Give me an answer.”

  “You don’t understand.” Barely able to see through the puffiness of her eyes, she stared at her reflection in the black glass of the window.

  He stood and walked to the closet, removed a clean undershirt from the stack on the shelf, and pulled it on over his head. “I’m sick of your lies, your bullshit.”

  “I’m not lying.”

  “Then why? Why not me?”

  “Because… well…” She didn’t know what to say. The conversation had been going around in circles for the last hour or more, with her rising desperation only fueling his anger. She thought he knew her so well that she’d be able to make him understand why she had to marry Jack, even acquiesce in the decision, but she’d been wrong. He didn’t believe in sin. He didn’t understand guilt. He took what he wanted and consumed her with a voracious appetite, never realizing how tormented their pleasure made her. Coming to his apartment had been a mistake.

  It had been weeks since they’d been together, since they’d made love, and she’d tried to convince herself their separation was for the best. She was about to be married. Her ongoing affair with another man violated the Ten Commandments; it was a betrayal of Jack’s trust. Her involvement with Carl, the hedonism of their relationship, made it all the worse, but she couldn’t help herself. She’d tried in an indirect way to turn to Father Whitney for guidance, and she prayed to God every day to give her strength. Both had failed. She couldn’t contain her thoughts of Carl; they’d spilled out of the urn into which she’d entombed them.

  “Please believe me. I’d be with you if I could.”

  Carl banged his fist against the door, and she heard the wood splinter. “Don’t pull your victim act on me. You’re a coward. Your parents sold your pussy to the highest bidder and you never objected.”

  “Don’t,” she said, her voice shaking uncontrollably.

  “You make me sick.”

  “I love you.” With all her self-doubts, she knew these words were true. She often felt Carl was the air she breathed, so consumed was she by his scent, his touch, his voice. But she couldn’t break her engagement. Not now.

  “Then tell me what you’re doing marrying that fuck!” he yelled.

  The blackness in his eyes as he stared at her made her cringe. She couldn’t contain her sobs, and she felt her body nearly convulse. Hold me! Help me! she wanted to say, but she knew her pleas would only anger him more. She wished Hope Lawrence could disappear and she could lose herself and the torment of her past. She needed a new identity. She needed to feel worthy. She wanted to belong to someone she could trust. And she prayed that becoming Mrs. John James Cabot could give her what she craved. But as her wedding day approached, she realized she couldn’t live without Carl, too.

  “The truth is so repulsive, even you can’t utter the words.” He opened the freezer, removed a fifth of vodka, and took a swig from the bottle, then another. “Get out.”

  “No… no, please. I’ve told you everything,” she lied, but her lies came from desperation, not an intent to deceive. “Please don’t send me away.” Hope slid off the couch, moved to where he stood by the refrigerator, and knelt at his feet. “I love you,” she said again. “You’re everything to me. I’ll make it worth it to you.” She reached for the zipper of his pants.

  The force of his hand slapping her cheek toppled her backward, and she felt something sharp pierce her side. Her face stung, and for a moment she saw spinning stars. She lay still, feeling her heart pound in her chest. “It’s okay,” she said, although her voice sounded foreign. Then she got up on all fours and crawled back to him. “Please,” she begged. “Let me.”

  Her slender fingers moved slowly back up his leg, rubbing his calf, then his thigh, then his groin in slow circles. “Let me show you.” She hesitated, waiting to gauge his reaction, but he didn’t move. Slowly she undid his fly and reached inside.

  He put his hands on her shoulders, and she felt his grip tighten. Was he pushing her away or holding her still? She couldn’t tell. She buried her face against him. His hair and skin were soft and slightly moist. His smell filled her nostrils. She glanced up at his face and saw that his eyes were closed. Perhaps she could make him peaceful again. Perhaps everything could be all right.

  She ran her tongue up and down him, feeling the texture of his skin. She made small circles with her fingertip and felt him grow even harder beneath her touch. She knew this was wrong, but for the moment she didn’t care. All she wanted was for him to let her stay in his life.

  His fingers dug into her back. The pain sent a twinge down her spine, making her neck muscles contract. Did he want more? He had one hand on her head and looped her hair around his finger. Suddenly he pulled, and she struggled to keep from uttering a sound. She didn’t want to interrupt his pleasure.

  He seemed swollen, larger than she ever remembered. He moaned, and for a moment she felt joy wash through her at his obvious excitement. Then she felt pressure on her neck and realized his hands were around her throat.

  “Don’t hurt me,” she whispered.

  Jack ejected the Robert Palmer CD from the disc player. Through the partially opened window of his black Porsche, he could hear the sound of crickets breaking the silence. Their persistence seemed to mock him, and he wondered again why he’d spent the last two hours staring at Hope’s Volvo parked on the street just below the lighted window of Carl’s apartment. Given the distance and the fabric
covering the glass, he couldn’t see inside, but he didn’t need to. He could imagine everything.

  His father was right. She had lied when she’d said her relationship with Carl was over. He just hadn’t wanted to believe it. When he’d asked her directly the night before, she’d kissed his cheek, gently run her fingers across the front of his pants, and smiled. Her loving gestures had reassured him. So why had he followed her here? Why had his instinct been to distrust her?

  A part of him knew even when they got engaged that her feelings for Carl would never disappear. She’d told him so. They’d gone skiing for the weekend, but the mountain had been covered in sheets of ice, so they’d never made it onto the slopes. Lying on the shag rug in the rented condominium, she’d tried to explain that loving someone else didn’t make her love him less. As he stared at the gas fireplace, watching the symmetrical flames leap from the artificial log, he’d listened intently, desperate to be convinced. But it didn’t make sense. Didn’t loving someone mean wanting to be monogamous? How could he share his lover’s heart and body and not harbor some resentment? How could anyone?

  The light in the window went out. He continued to stare up at the dark apartment as he felt himself perspire. Each moment he expected her to appear, get in her car, and drive home. But the minutes passed and Hope remained inside.

  “What’s wrong with you? Aren’t you a man? What’s happened to your pride?” He could hear his father’s words. “Everyone knows what’s going on. You may say she has emotional problems, but the girl’s a slut pure and simple. You’re better than this.”

  But loving an unfaithful woman wasn’t about being less of a man. It was accepting that he was less, so much less that she’d turned to someone else for her pleasure. He couldn’t tell his father, but he knew Carl had opened Hope’s body, elevated her sense of the possible. He’d freed her from the constraints she’d felt her whole life and allowed her to explore. Jack only reined her in by who he was and what he wanted.

  “No son of mine is going to be cuckolded!”

  Why couldn’t his father understand? Of course he was angry. He wouldn’t be human if he didn’t admit that there were moments when he harbored violent feelings toward Carl for making him feel inferior or toward Hope for her betrayal or toward them both for simply being in love; but aside from the one time that he’d thrown his favorite photograph of her across the room, shattering the glass, his rage dissipated as soon as he saw her.

  “What more do you need to know before you realize she isn’t worthy of you, Jack?” his mother had asked that afternoon. “Doesn’t it matter to you that she’s ill?”

  He hadn’t known what she’d meant by that comment, but he hadn’t wanted to hear another word. “Why are you saddling yourself with this burden? You are our lineage, our future,” he’d heard her call out after him as he left the house. He had to lose himself and knew of only one adequate distraction. He craved the familiar smell of oats, hay, and manure that filled the stable. He needed to sit in his well-oiled saddle, feel the smooth leather reins between his fingers, and run his hand through Deliver Me’s silky mane. His champion pony wouldn’t disappoint him. Or desert him.

  “You’ll find someone else.” That’s what everyone had said that one summer he’d had the courage, or perhaps the stupidity, to end their relationship. He’d tried to forget her, but even her sister wasn’t a distraction. She was sexy—he gave her that—and she’d thrown herself at him, been willing to do anything and everything to please and pleasure him; but she had an ambition, an efficient competence to her, that eventually repelled him. He didn’t want a successful professional. He didn’t want to hear about her climb toward partnership. He wanted a wife.

  Hope had a fierce spirit but a gentle nature, a sweetness born of the pain he knew she’d suffered, although she’d never been totally honest about her experiences. Even if he couldn’t appreciate her poetry or understand her intense depressions, there was nobody like her. She needed him. Her vulnerability, her fragility, were intoxicating. The bottom line was that he loved her so much, he would take whatever part of her she was willing to give.

  He closed his eyes, exhausted, but rather than drifting off to sleep, he found himself picturing them together. He could see her slender body, feel her soft skin and silky hair. She’d unbutton her blue jeans slowly, pretending to be tentative, shy, even as she undulated her hips in rhythm to the tune she’d hum quietly. She’d pull her T-shirt over her head, revealing her thin torso and small breasts. Then she’d turn away from him and bend over ever so slightly. That was his invitation.

  Carl would hold on to her protruding hipbones and press himself against her. She might lean against the wall for support when his weight and thrust threatened to topple her. Carl would listen, as Jack had so many times before, to her irregular moans, perhaps low and erotic, perhaps high-pitched, revealing a hint of the pain she experienced before she relaxed and was lost in pleasure.

  As Jack sat staring into the black night, he felt lonely in a way he’d never before experienced. Nobody understood; he wasn’t even sure he could explain his relationship to himself, but he was incapable of diminishing the intensity of his feelings. By loving her, he’d be forever isolated. And that scared him.

  He turned on the ignition and shifted the car into first gear. As he pulled into the road, he glanced once more at the window. He thought he saw shadows moving, the figures of Hope and Carl intertwined, but he knew it was only his imagination. As he pulled out into the street, he felt a flash of rage, an overpowering wish that she could experience the same torture that she inflicted on him with such seeming indifference. Only if she understood his pain, only if her heart could be twisted, too, would her involvement with Carl ever end.

  August

  9

  Frances adjusted the drawstring on her sage silk pants and turned to check her backside in the full-length mirror. She frowned, wishing her sweater were a few inches longer.

  “You look beautiful from any angle,” Sam said.

  She turned and smiled. Sam perched on the edge of the sagging mattress. He adjusted his position and pulled at the collar of his dress shirt. At his insistence, Frances had selected his unoriginal but appropriate outfit: pressed trousers, tassel loafers, a navy blue blazer, and a polka-dot tie. Despite his discomfort, he did look handsome.

  “We better get going.”

  They had arrived at the King’s Arms Motor Lodge on Route 128 that afternoon and checked into a room with two double beds, wall-to-wall plush carpeting with a stain just inside the door, and a television set in a wood veneer cabinet. The balcony overlooked the parking lot. Although the room was reasonably priced given its location thirty minutes north of Boston, the motel otherwise had little to recommend it. This weekend, however, it was full, packed with guests of the Cabot-Lawrence wedding party; like Frances and Sam, most had checked in that day.

  “I guess I’m as ready as I’ll ever be,” Frances said, glancing again in the mirror. Fortunately, her slight weight loss did show in her face. With a suntan and Sam’s reassurance, she didn’t feel half bad. She grabbed her clutch, the card key, and the neatly printed directions to the rehearsal dinner, a buffet at the Field and Hunt Club hosted by Jim and Fiona Cabot. The scrolled paper tied with a white satin ribbon was one of several items in the welcome basket that had been left in their room. “Better than Christmas!” Sam exclaimed as he gazed at the contents: a seaweed face mask, zinc oxide, a road map and guide to antiquing in the area, a lobster-shaped refrigerator magnet, two T-shirts, and matching baseball caps with Jack and Hope. August 18. Manchester-by-the-Sea emblazoned across the chest in navy script. Typical of Adelaide’s attention to detail, Frances thought. That she would select each wedding souvenir, pack each basket, and even leave extra baskets for them to take home to Blair and her father were just more examples of her generosity. It reminded her of how Adelaide ran her household: There were always homemade chocolate-chip cookies in green tins by the toaster, fresh flowers on the ta
ble in the entrance hall, and Floris soaps wrapped in tissue in the guest bathroom. Such details made life at the Lawrences’ seem perfect.

  “What are the Cabots like, anyway? You’ve barely said a word about them.”

  “I don’t know them well. You have to remember that most of my visits here were brief. Dad brought us up for a couple of days to see Adelaide and our cousins. It was family time,” she said, and smiled, thinking how odd the word sounded in the context of her upbringing. A sense of family was something that seemed to belong to everyone else. “Jack was always around. I think he fell in love with Hope when they were still in diapers. But other than a cocktail party now and then, the Cabots weren’t much of a fixture. They’re very rich. She talks a lot and he’s aloof.”

  “Doesn’t that describe virtually every couple you grew up with?”

  “You are dreading this event.” Frances laughed. “Don’t worry. It’ll be over soon.”

  “That’s what you always say, Miss Fanny. And it’s rarely true. But that’s why I love you.”

  “Why? Because I’m always wrong?” she teased.

  “No. Because nothing’s simple, but you never stop hoping it will be.” He opened the door for her to leave and gently patted her backside as she passed into the hallway.