The Man She Married

by Cathy Lamb

  “Please. I’ve been in a coma. My brain is funny and I have no time for this anymore. I do not want to listen to you as you drag another innocent man through a divorce and take half his money. Why don’t you try to love Dell, Mom?”

  “I do . . . I do . . . love Dell.” Her lips tightened. There might have been a sheen in her eyes.

  “He’s an honest, hardworking man, Mom. He’s always been kind to you. He took a chance on you, being your fifth husband. He’s incredibly generous. He’s smart. He loves his kids and he loves you.”

  “I don’t know if he loves me anymore.”

  She blinked. Twice. Holy moly. Were those tears? “Mom, do you act in a way that makes it easy for Dell to stay in love with you?”

  Her mouth opened, shut, opened, shut.

  “People are not required to stay in love with each other. If Dell is falling out of love with you, maybe it’s because you’re argumentative, demanding, selfish, and a leech. Maybe it’s because you require two thousand a month. He’s seeing you clearly and why you married him. You’re hurting him, can you not see that? I know that Dell loved you when he married you. I saw the hope and adoration in his eyes.”

  “You did?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is your father seeing anyone?”

  “Mom.” I took her hand. “Dad is not in love with you, he doesn’t pine for you, he would never get back together with you.”

  “And I don’t want to get back together with him.”

  I stared at her.

  Her eyes filled up, and I finally saw the mask come down. “I ruined our marriage,” she whispered. “I was angry and immature. I didn’t know how to be a wife or a mother, and everything seemed hard. I didn’t like being poor. I had had enough of that when I was younger. Poverty is like a stench over you and your whole life.”

  “What do you mean? You said you grew up wealthy.”

  She dismissed my comment.

  “Mom?” What in the world? She had always talked about her parents’ money.

  “I made a mistake leaving your father.”

  Yes. Those were tears.

  “I loved him very much.” She sniffled, not graciously at all. “I still do.”

  “I know you do.” I was trying to feel sorry for her and her long-lost love, but I couldn’t. It was impossible. “You said no to Dad decades ago and left. You can say yes to Dell and stay happily married for the rest of your life. Another husband is not going to fix the problem here. You’re the problem. You need to go home and put on that cowgirl porn outfit and be kind and loving to Dell like when you were dating and remind him why he fell in love with you in the first place.”

  She sat in that thought, her hands crossed, her rings from Dell glittering. “Perhaps I do.”

  We sat at that expensive restaurant by the lake quietly for a minute, then she eyed my dessert. “Keep eating, dear. Remember what I said about bosoms. You need them. Two full ones. You’re too thin. Men like curves. Don’t forget you’re pushing forty.”

  * * *

  My mother did not ask me how I was doing.

  She didn’t ask me how I was feeling.

  She didn’t ask me about my work.

  She didn’t ask what I was doing during the day, so she didn’t know about my jewelry.

  But she hugged me and kissed my cheek when she left and said, “I do love you, Natalie. Very much.”

  Later that week flowers arrived from her. There was a note:

  Cowgirl porn outfit worked. Hee-haw!

  I would ask her about her comment about growing up poor the next time I saw her.

  * * *

  Not long after my dad and I cleared out all the junk from our home, when I was twelve years old, and I felt I could breathe without the harsh glimpses of my mother’s chain-rattling ghost, I settled back in with my home décor magazines. I wanted a pretty home, like in the magazines, where normal families lived. I wanted to be normal.

  I didn’t feel normal. My mother had left me in a town where almost every single kid had a mother. The parents might be divorced, but the mom was there. The pity of being “poor Natalie, her mother left. You know, Jocelyn . . .” was nauseating.

  I wanted a home that felt like a home, not dull and dark and motherless. I wanted a home like Chick and Jed’s, who had a mother who loved to decorate with tons of clashing, bright fabrics.

  I wanted a home like Justine’s, filled with eight kids and two parents, comfy furniture, books stacked up everywhere, plants and pillows.

  I read an article about how a family took walls down in their home to open it up. I showed my dad the before-and-after photos after he’d spent the day on a roof. I told him that we should do this, too. “When walls come down,” I quoted the magazine, “the sunshine comes in.”

  Kind, encouraging, and deeply saddened because my mother kept hurting my feelings by not showing up in my life when she should, he said, “Let’s do it, Hummingbird.”

  He called in favors from friends, and that weekend they took down two walls in our home, opening up the whole living and dining area and kitchen. It didn’t seem so small and dark anymore. They added a long beam to keep the roof from falling in. Our shabby, dated cave of a kitchen was gutted.

  A friend of my dad’s was a contractor. He remodeled kitchens. Herman had pulled white cabinets out of a client’s house. They apparently were not fancy enough for her. They were only fifteen years old, in perfect condition, and they were definitely fancy enough for us. My dad and Herman hung those up in a weekend. “White cabinets signal cleanliness and freshness,” I quoted again. My dad blinked at me.

  The woman had also thrown out her stove, sink, fridge, and oven. All too old! All too dated! Not fancy enough! When I saw them, I danced.

  I told him we had to paint all the walls and ceilings white.

  “White?” my dad said. “Everything?”

  “Yes. If a space is small,” I said proudly, quoting an article again, “paint it white. It will add dimension and the appearance of roominess.”

  He raised his eyebrows at his young, geeky daughter’s declaration but borrowed equipment from a painter friend of his and started spraying. He sprayed the impossibly ugly faux gray rock on our fireplace when I said, “For a simple fix of an old hearth, paint the whole thing white and add a natural wood mantle for candles, pictures, and other treasures.”

  “My treasures?” my dad said. “Like my beer?”

  “No, Dad, not your beer!”

  He winked at me.

  The next weekend I showed my dad a picture of a kitchen island I liked. He stopped his tired sigh halfway out of his mouth and forced a smile at his eager daughter. “I can build this in a day, Hummingbird.”

  He built the island from old wood stored in our garage. He put shelves on two sides of it for storage. He grabbed an old door that my grandma had saved from a burned-down church, sanded and stained it, and dropped it on top.

  I showed my dad how other people in the magazines had a long coffee table in front of the couch. “A coffee table is both useful and decorative,” I said to him, again quoting from my home décor magazines. “You can display your personal belongings.”

  “My what?” my dad asked.

  “Your personal belongings.”

  “Like my tool belt?”

  I sighed. “Dad . . .”

  He grinned at me.

  He made a table out of wood from our red barn that had fallen down years ago. He sanded it down but left some of the red paint. Then he made us two side tables with the same wood. “For our new lamps,” I told him. “Lamps bring light to dark corners and set the mood of the home.” His eyes widened once again at his odd little daughter.

  We needed curtains. I knew this because my home décor magazines said, “Add color to your home with brightly colored curtains.”

  I went to Goodwill and bought a sewing machine. I had no idea how to use it, so I grabbed a book from the library and my dad and I figured it out together. There was a hoarder d
own the street named Bo. He didn’t sew, but he had stacks of fabric from his mother who died fifteen years ago. My dad had done his roof. He offered Bo money for some fabric, but Bo declined. “You did right by me with my roof, Scott, so I’ll do right by you. Take all the fabric you want.” That comment made me screech with glee to the fragile Bo’s alarm. Bo screeched back.

  We walked out with a trunk full of fabrics and threads, even lace, and I made the curtains. I had to start over three times and three times Chick’s mother came over to help me, but soon we had light-yellow flowered curtains up.

  I made a slip cover out of blue jean material for our old gray and pink couch. It wasn’t perfect, but it was better, and then I made pillows, just like in the magazines.

  We went garage sale hunting and I saw two chandeliers I fell in love with. My masculine dad is not a chandelier kind of guy, but he bought them for cheap and hung them over our kitchen table and in our family room because he knew his daughter loved them. We also found a pink tulip light to hang over my bed.

  It took months.

  But we had a remodeled home with colorful pillows and curtains, chandeliers, and a modern island. We had white kitchen cabinets and coffee tables like everyone else.

  We were proud of our home.

  We were what I always wanted to be: normal.

  * * *

  My dad and I later painted our house yellow with white trim. We painted the door blue because that’s my dad’s favorite color. We tore down the broken-down deck and built a new one, all the way around, extra wide in front and back.

  My dad still lives there. The view is spectacular, an ever-changing painting.

  We’ve made some décor changes. Five years ago I bought him brand-new furniture, a comfortable couch and two leather chairs. We kept everything he built, though, which still looks so rustically stylish. I paid to have all his windows replaced and to have two sets of French doors installed to let in more light. I did this as a surprise when he was on a fishing trip with Zack. I feigned getting a cold so I could be home when the window people arrived. He would never have let me do it if I had asked, but he loved it.

  We almost lost that house because of the medical bills that came after he broke his back and the loss of his livelihood. We never should have been put in that position. No one should. But now that his home and the land is paid for, it will always be his.

  I am happy knowing that my dad is happy, in his home, out in the country.

  I never thought I’d say it when I lived there, but I missed Lake Joseph.

  * * *

  Work kept getting worse.

  I was so tired, my bones felt as if they were cracking. My brain wanted to leap out of my head and take its own nap.

  I couldn’t do my job. The numbers, even with a calculator, even with computer programs, weren’t working for me; they twisted and turned. I was lost within the maze of the tax code, words swirling. I stared at my computer, at files, and nothing made sense.

  I made calls to clients, they made calls to me, and I was able to answer them in a general way, but I struggled with the specifics. I told them I’d get an e-mail to them immediately, but I needed help from Justine or from Maggie, who let me bang on her drums.

  I was failing.

  On a rainy Tuesday I stared out my office window and watched the raindrops slide down the glass.

  The question was, Would I get better in time? Would I ever be able to work at the high level of competency that I needed to be successful in this firm?

  I doubted it.

  But not be an accountant anymore?

  How could that be?

  How could that be me?

  I’m a numbers woman. A math woman. Numbers don’t lie. Numbers are honest. Numbers are right or wrong. Numbers don’t abandon you, hurt you. I’m a CPA. I had wanted to be a CPA since high school. Having my own firm was what I had worked for.

  And yet.

  The commute was tiring. The work was relentless. The clients were often difficult, the tax forms complicated, particularly for our larger business clients, the hours long for many months each year. Most of our clients had a lot of money, and there was no redeeming value for my work.

  Zack had asked me to quit. He was worried about me, worried I wouldn’t heal. My ghostly pallor and my headaches, which were galloping back since I started working, after they had gone completely, mercifully away, weren’t helping.

  “Please, baby,” he begged. “I sold one house, and the money’s coming in. I’ll sell the others soon. We’ll be fine. Quit. Rest. Get all the way better.”

  I knew we would move when he wasn’t so busy and when we had time to figure out where we wanted to live. We would use our savings, too, to buy a house.

  All I wanted to do was sleep, my head so filled with confusion and pain and blurring numbers I was surprised it didn’t crumble. The office was busy, clients in and out, meetings and conferences....

  I used to love it.

  Did I still love it?

  I stared out the window and continued to watch the raindrops slide.

  * * *

  I made my grandma Dixie’s apple pie again.

  I remember how, while the pie was baking, my grandma and I always did something fun, something interesting. Sometimes we went outside and she had me shoot cans off a log. Sometimes she pointed out different birds and had me memorize their names. We drove her tractor. She taught me how to drive her truck when I was fourteen. She taught me how to be a “bull-crackin’ poker player,” and how to shoot darts.

  She taught me about perfumes, too, and we smelled all of hers in their antique, ornate, or crystal bottles with the stoppers. “A woman can wear perfume, fix cars, drive tractors, and beat the men, all at the same time. Don’t you forget I told you that.” And “Don’t let anyone silence you, Natalie. Always speak up for yourself.” And “Never forget that I love you, kid. You and your dad are the people I love best.”

  I sure missed her. She used to talk about her favorite car: a red 1967 Chevy. I don’t know why that image kept popping up in my head. . . . I could see her in her blue mechanic’s overalls. . . .

  This time I didn’t burn my grandma Dixie’s apple pie.

  I forgot the nutmeg and didn’t use enough brown sugar, but it was better than last time.

  “It’s delicious,” Zack said.

  * * *

  My dad brought me another package on a windy, rainy day, and we sat down at my kitchen table and worked. We’d already discussed what I needed.

  The man was a genius with metal.

  He made blue herons in flight. Flamingos. Cranes. Owls. Robins.

  He made circles, which I had requested. Plain, simple silver circles to hang on leather strips for men. I’d also had him make plain rectangles, ovals, and triangles with the centers cut out. Men want plain, I think. Masculine.

  I strung the leather through them, tied the knots, added the silver clasps.

  Now I needed men who wanted to wear them. I would call this the Stud Man Line.

  My jewelry gave me hope.

  * * *

  “Why does Mom still hurt me, Dad?” I put down my mug of hot chocolate after we were done making jewelry. With my mother I needed wine; with my dad, hot chocolate. “It’s been years since she left us, but she’ll say something mean and it’ll drag me right back to being that lonely kid. Or she’ll say something rude, and I’ll let it get to me.”

  “She can still hurt you because she’s your mom, Hummingbird.”

  “I was a kid. A little girl. And she walked out. I barely saw her during my childhood, you know that. But I’m an adult. This pain, the anger, it should have stopped by now.”

  My eyes filled up, so his did, too. When I was growing up, every time I cried, my dad cried, too. I’d feel bad because I was crying, then worse because I made my dad cry. We were a mess.

  “I try to forgive her, but how do you forgive someone who walks out on a seven-year-old child, who does not feel bad about it, who will not
take responsibility for it, who can’t see your side of things, or feel apologetic or compassionate, and still says awful things sometimes?”

  “Listen, Pumpkin Pie.” He drummed his fingers on the table. “For some reason we’ve got this fad going on about forgiveness in this country. You know how I feel about chicken-squawking fads.”

  I laughed through a couple of tears. “Yes, Dad, I do.”

  He tapped his head. “Common sense. Now, see here. There are some things that people do to us that are unforgivable. Your mom not being in your life, that could be one of them. Our society says, ‘Forgive her. Don’t forgive her for her, forgive her for you.’”

  I nodded.

  “That is the biggest bunch of bull I’ve ever heard.” He brought a fist down on the table. It did not alarm me. “What that requires you to do, my hummingbird, is to sit with your mother in your head and think about what she did to you until you can forgive her. That means she’s in your life, the old hurts recirculating, the anger bubbling up like hot tar, the loneliness gutting you, causing you stress. You get stuck like a truck in the muck with that. Then this chicken-squawking fad makes you feel bad if you can’t forgive, as if it’s your fault or you’re not trying hard enough or praying enough or you’re not a forgiving person.”

  I nodded my head.

  “That is junk. Psychobabble junk, I call it. She was not a mother to you, and it’s impossible to reason, rationalize, or forgive that one. It would be easier to break a horse in your living room.”

  “Then how do I handle her? How do I handle that relationship?”

  “You choose to live in the sunshine instead.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means you don’t try to forgive her anymore. Let it go. All the negative, bad emotions she brings up in you? You shut ’em down like you’d shut a barn door. You don’t allow her to cause you more pain. You accept that what she did wasn’t acceptable. Like it’s not acceptable to treat your farm animals badly even if you are going to eat them on Sunday.”

  “Okay.”

  “Accept what happened. Accept that she did you wrong. Accept that she did not have the personal integrity to do the right thing. Accept that she is not willing or able to apologize, and not willing or able to take responsibility. She never will be. That’s your mother. But don’t dwell on it for one more minute, because it only brings you down. Don’t allow her to do that to you. Don’t allow her to take one more minute of your life and make it negative, or painful. Then decide how much a part of your life you want her to be.”