Letting Him Stay

by Suzanne Readsmith

so incredible and unbelievable that I became frozen; stock still like a dear in headlight about to be mown down. His voice no longer betrayed his emotions. He was being cold and dispassionate like a judge who had to deliver even harsher news. I sensed that he too was disassociating from his situation. He appeared a stranger to me cutting pretence. His marriage vows obviously meant nothing to him. I was confused and completely in the dark. My anger towards him was white hot. Was this a joke? Was he toying with my emotions not realising that I was descending into madness quickly? Why would Tom lie like this? Who is Tom I asked myself because this couldn’t be true and who am I now? Here was a man I was married to who had become completely unrecognisable to me and yet somehow he remained as transparent. He had so successfully hidden so much from me. There had been so much I had not realised, seen or recognised; not looked out for. I hadn’t guessed and so he wasn’t transparent at all. He now stood as witness as I lost my moorings. I was drowning before him and he threw me no lifeline. I wanted to laugh and I did so in an ugly way. I felt no shame about this as only the ignorant and disabused can. Behind this façade of suddenly appearing pulled together I knew that Tom had no confidence at all. He was like a child quivering appearing white and ashen. I had new data to process and I couldn’t. Freda the friend who had been kind enough to tell me what was going on had stated that as far as she knew it had been happening for about 18-months. She must have been wrong; obviously it was so much longer perhaps. What could he be talking about? We were both standing facing each other and I was panting quickly and loudly. I could see his heart pounding through his cotton rich shirt, the kind he insisted on having. I fixated on the fact that he had stated it was his second child and I knew that he had meant with her, yet I couldn’t make the numbers add up because what if Catherine didn’t count. All I could see was that he was discounting us, his family and placing emphasis on where his new child was placed with them. I chanted madly.

  “Second best, second best, second best.”

  This chant picked up a pace and suddenly I became like a train with poetic rhythm. I circled the velvet settee and it felt nice. I was free and liberated and when I stopped dead in my tracks I decided to scream quite consciously because I needed to. It was a long scream even by my own standards and I couldn’t stop it, it had its own momentum. It was blood curdling and loud within my head. I stopped for a long breath in between to gain energy to scream more loudly for a longer time. My ears were hurting and suddenly there was a pounding within them matched by the sound of Fran our next-door neighbour banging on the windowpane cupping her hands to make sense of what was happening. In seconds she was standing beside Tom and I and soon John her husband was with us too. Fran’s expressions seem to mirror the terror in my eyes when she realised I was having so much more than a tantrum. She left and returned with a paper bag, which she pressed against my gasping mouth. I was in full throe of a panic attack. As I breathed obligingly into the bag I centred my viewpoint upon Tom who was being comforted by John. We appeared to be like causalities on a roadside after a car accident, ushered aside for safety and statements. I was alive yet I wanted to be dead. My breathing returned to normal and I felt traumatised by the panic I had experienced. I felt spent and wasted with no energy. I had nothing more to give in the way of a reaction even for myself. It was over and now I felt nothing. I allowed myself to be led upstairs and I was encouraged to lie under the quilt of my marital bed fully clothed.

  My clothes were stained because I had been sick and Fran tried to help me with a damp terry towel. I felt washed over by her kindness alone. Fran had suffered troubles so much worse than ours losing her teenage son when he committed suicide two years ago. I felt ashamed to be reacting so badly and so childishly to what might be perceived by others as much ado over nothing compared to losing someone when they have died. Tom has been disloyal, broken his vows and who takes them seriously these days? Why have marriage at all? At the very least it had given the children his name. So what, where had marriage got me? Ultimately I have been replaced which makes me dispensable. Tom had always shown disgust if ever any of his friends had played away from home, such double standards! It wasn’t as if I felt above such a thing happening to us. I had never taken Tom for granted having felt genuinely secure in his love; it’s as simple as that. I hadn’t relaxed, I had thought I was still in the middle of things and that our marriage was still growing, developing and becoming even better. We had so much to look forward to and it occurred to me now, thinking this way, that Tom’s parents Mary and Jack had two more grandchildren. Oh please don’t let it be that way, that they already know; I couldn’t take that. Mary would be upset for me surely. Perhaps not, all children are embraced as God’s gift in Mary’s eyes and rightly so but not like this. I could just see and hear her now stating to me …

  “It is like this Anna! Life doesn’t come in neat packages that we can wrap up in bows we have to take it as it comes.”

  “What about me?”

  Why had Tom moved on from me to start again with someone else? His main base and structure wasn’t enough for him obviously and he had made concerted choices, pressing ahead with them to have not one child with her but two. How pointed is that? Alternatively what he has done has been a mindless act, which somehow makes it worse.

  Who was I arguing with in my head? Here was I appealing to Mary his mother who wasn’t even here and she was bound to somehow forgive Tom and make allowances for him? She would be practical and no doubt she would buy a bloody highchair. Stand by me yes, but disown the bairns no, because they belonged to Tom and therefore carried Kinsella blood. At this point I understood my place in the structure of the family. I had been relegated to being no more than an appendage to Tom, a child bearer and not a totally successful one at that. I was a woman who should have kept her body in a neater state, all pepped up and pert so as too keep her husband interested. I should never ever have relaxed because that is foolish. After all I am a woman and women have a fight on their hands from day one. The first is with their mothers. The second is to attain a partner. The third is to keep a partner. The fourth is making a decision whether to create a family or not. The fifth is to keep the family safe. The sixth is to keep a partner interested when hormones are dissipating fast. The seventh is to stay alive to look after everyone. This includes children who don’t seem to leave home these days. Ageing parents needing medical and emotional attention and grandchildren should they appear. These are the ‘seven stages of woman’.

  Ordinarily to a friend in the same position as Fran I would be being much harsher recommending a dignified pull together.

  “Get rid, good riddance, get someone else!”

  I knew myself to be compassionate person. Fran was stroking my hair and it felt nice. I think she could tell I was thinking things through wildly, trying to gather everything together to make sense of what was happening. Only Tom had ever stroked my hair to soothe me, which caused me to instantly wonder whether he now stroked and played with her hair. It caused a new spasm of pain, which I felt in my stomach. How would I get through this? I tried to explain things to Fran but I couldn’t. I could hear myself telling her that my own baby had died stating this over and over again which she already knew so why was I saying this? It was all I could muster myself to say. Everything centred on the loss of Catherine and instead of grieving with me, staying with me, Tom had done what men do best which was to procreate with another. Caveman stuff really.

  “Man makes fire! Man hunts and gathers food! Man needs many women!”

  Sickening but seemingly true. Where did this place Catherine with Tom now? As a family we had been a full pack of cards, all shiny and new; cellophane wrapped. We had lost one card but not carelessly. Somehow we had found a way to still play together and to carry on with our game. Despite all our shuffling up to cover or fill the void that Catherine had left, we couldn’t truly fit back together to be as w
e once were, a full pack. We were changed. Money meant nothing to me after Catherine however Tom had cost us thousands through taking risky gambles. Now it would seem he had nothing in us as a family left to gamble with and he had given up on our game of ‘Happy Families’ to start a new one with someone else with higher and more exciting stakes. Like Scott he had left the tent, but not to be virtuous and to die, rather to show cowardice and to live again. Reasoning this side of Tom’s character to myself I still could not make it ring true. No matter how hard I thought it I could never had put Tom down as having the ability to do this, never. How could the man I loved so much crush and humiliate me in such a way?

  When I awoke Tom was sitting at the foot of our bed. He was trapping my legs and I could not move which added to my anguish and increased my feeling of being trapped. I didn’t tell him this. Every word that was uttered from this point on by anyone would be hugely significant to me because the old way of living had gone