From This Day Forward

by Modean Moon

The expression in his eyes shuttered. “You won’t let me what, Ginnie? Talk you into doing something that you don’t really want to do, seduce you into staying with me because your body can’t deny that you still care? No. I should have let you leave then. You really wanted to go, didn’t you?

  “Was that when it really ended for us, Ginnie? Were those first few months here in Pleasant Gap only an illusion? I thought at the time that they might have been—there was a quality about them that was never quite real. I hate clichés, but there’s an old one that says if something seems too good to be true, it usually is.”

  Neil shook his head to clear his thoughts. “I had no right to say that, and I had no right to do this.” He drew away from her. “We both know why I’m here, and this isn’t the reason.”

  Her eyes were enormous in her small, pale face. Her hair spread out like a halo on the pillows. He saw a pulse beating erratically in her throat and the uneven rise and fall of her breasts beneath the sheet.

  But wasn’t that the reason? he thought. Couldn’t he have seen to her safety just as well from Little Rock? Was there any real reason for him to have come to Pleasant Gap if not to try one last time to bring her back into his life?

  Don’t be a fool, Neil, he raged silently. Ginnie had made her life without him. She was happier without him. If he persisted, if he made love to her now, if she allowed it, it wouldn’t be because she really wanted him. If he brushed away her resistance, she would respond, but she’d hate him for it.

  He turned away from her, because telling himself all those things would do no good if he continued to look at her, still tousled and flushed with sleep. And turning away did no good, because Ginnie’s image remained in front of his eyes, the mattress remained soft beneath him, the blanket continued to brush his hands. He could hear her heart beating. Or was it his own? God, if he didn’t get himself under control, he’d take her now and damn the consequences.

  “I’ll be in the kitchen,” he said abruptly.

  When she joined him later in the kitchen, the first thing Ginnie noticed was the contents of her wooden box spread over the table. Neil dropped the picture he was holding and shuffled it in with the others, but not before she saw that it was the one of them on the seawall in Galveston.

  “I didn’t know you had these,” he said in a soft voice that betrayed no emotion.

  “I...” She pretended to be absorbed with removing the basket from the coffeepot and pouring herself a fresh cup. “I didn’t take many.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” he said. “They were yours for you to take as many of as you wanted. I just didn’t think you’d want any. You were terribly unhappy, weren’t you, Ginnie?”

  “At times,” she said, not willing or able to say more.

  “You’ve done all right for yourself since we got out of your life and left you alone. Haven’t you?”

  The shock and then the pain of being served with unexpected divorce papers flooded over her. “Is that what you did, Neil? Got out of my life?” She couldn’t keep the bitterness from her voice. “I always thought you got me out of yours.”

  “Maybe I tried,” he admitted, putting the pictures back into the box. “Where did we go wrong, Ginnie? We could have had everything.”

  “I don’t want to dissect our marriage now, Neil.”

  “Have you ever?” He took out the pictures, shuffled through them and once again drew out the one of them on the seawall. “Have you ever asked how we got from this point to where we are now?”

  “Have you?”

  He held the photograph carelessly, forgotten in one hand. “The first time was in Little Rock, when I sat alone in the dark with a bottle of scotch and your note. Do you know what it does to a man when his wife leaves him, Ginnie?”

  He paused, but he wasn’t waiting for an answer. He was dragging up old wounds. “It’s like someone has twisted a knife in his gut. The first thing he’s aware of, after the pain, is a sense of betrayal, a breach of faith that maybe never is healed-I don’t know. Then, when he can think, if he can think, he begins to wonder, what could I have done that I didn’t do? What did I do that I shouldn’t have done?

  “I knew you were having trouble with Todd, but I didn’t know how much trouble, not how serious it really was. Looking back, I can see things that I let slide. I couldn’t read your mind, Ginnie. Maybe if you’d told me more about your problems with him sooner, or maybe if I’d listened to you more closely, instead of waiting until they erupted into full-scale war, I wouldn’t have stayed so blind, but I can’t promise you that. All I knew was that you were unhappy, that I had failed to make you happy.

  “It’s unreasonable, isn’t it?” he asked. “No one person should have to be responsible for another’s happiness, but I had taken that responsibility.”

  Neil sighed and shook his head. “Whether you expected it of me or not, somehow I had made it my duty to make you happy. And I had made it my duty to make my son happy. And I didn’t succeed.

  “What kind of failure was I, Ginnie, that I could not make my family happy?”

  “Neil —”

  “Other men could. I was intelligent, aggressive. I could sway a jury. I was charismatic, or so I’d been told. I could charm the voters. I could soothe internal problems at the office and with the election committee. I must be doing something wrong at home.

  “Of course I knew that. I’d done something wrong with Todd since he was born. And that’s part of it, but maybe it doesn’t belong in this discussion. Maybe it does. The move to Pleasant Gap was to be the cure-all, Ginnie. I’d make everything up to you for your unhappiness. I’d make everything up to Todd for his unhappiness, for what his mother had done, for what I had allowed to be done. I twisted myself around until I didn’t know me.

  “For a while, it was all right. For a while, it was wonderful. But then it all started again, and I didn’t know what to do. I began looking at what I had given up. I began missing what I had given up. I began resenting giving it up, because it looked as though the sacrifice had been futile. And I didn’t want to give up any more.

  “I didn’t want to be forced into choosing between you and Todd.”

  “Neil, I never-”

  “No. You never. You never said it to me. He never really said it to me. But it happened, didn’t it? The day I walked into the kitchen and found you holding him away from you, with blood on your face and terror in your eyes. I could have killed him, Ginnie. I think I would have if he’d hurt you any worse than he had.

  “I know you wondered why I didn’t punish him more than I did, why I only sent him to his room. For God’s sake, I was afraid to touch him! Afraid that if I did, I’d never be able to stop hitting him. At that moment, I think I could have turned my back on him and never spoken to him again.”

  She whimpered. It was the only sound she was capable of making.

  Neil looked toward her, only bleakness in his eyes. “But that was before I found out how much trouble he was really in. How much he needed me. I’d let him down so many times before, Ginnie. Can you understand that? By not realizing how bad the situation was with his mother. By not fighting harder to get custody of him when Ann and I divorced. By not picking him up for visitation when I should have that weekend Ann killed herself and leaving Todd there to find her.”

  A mist of tears blurred Ginnie’s vision. She knew she ought to stop him, but she could say nothing.

  “By not listening to you when you first started telling me he had problems,” Neil continued in his relentless self-recriminations. “By manufacturing all sorts of excuses for him in my mind. By being afraid to look at the truth. Because the truth hurt too much. The truth led to some damning, illogical conclusions.”

  She heard his slow escape of breath before he went on in the same low voice. “My father’s depression could have been a fluke, like lightning, something that strikes once. But if I admitted his problems, and then I admitted my son had problems, and I admitted I was unable to cope with his problems, wh
ere did that leave me, Ginnie? Except squarely in the middle—a link between the two of them.”

  He glanced up at her. “I said they were illogical. But illogical or not, those were the conclusions I drew.”

  “Why didn’t you say something to me before now, Neil?”

  “And destroy my image even more? When you’re trying so hard to play God, it’s difficult to admit any kind of failure. And besides, I wasn’t really sure how you’d react to being married to a mere man. I always felt that you expected me to be larger than life, stronger than any man could possibly be, wiser than any man could possibly be.

  “I’m not,” he said. “I’m just a man. I’m not sure I wanted to believe it then. It took me a long time to accept it. But it’s a lot easier not having to be God.”

  “I didn’t ask that of you, Neil. I had no idea you felt that way. It wasn’t necessary. Do you know what it would have meant to me if once, just once, you’d held your hand out to me and said, ‘I need your help.’”

  “Someone trying to be everything to everyone can’t afford that luxury. Think back, Ginnie. Did you ever reach out for my help? Really? It took years and a major crisis for you to tell me something that had hurt you our first day home after our honeymoon. And when you told me that, you weren’t asking for help, you were demanding it.

  “Maybe you didn’t realize the difference—I didn’t at the time—but if you had asked me for help, we might have been able to talk through it. We might have been able to come up with an answer. Instead, you threw it at me—‘here’s another crisis, Neil. You fix it,’ and I either had to fix it or disregard it. And at that time, there were so many crises going on I had to convince myself that some of them must be imaginary.”

  “I’m sorry,” Ginnie said, recognizing how ineffectual those two words were. “There ought to have been something within me that told me.”

  Her heart went out to Neil, forlorn as he was, sitting listlessly in the kitchen chair, the picture of them forgotten in his hand. “But perhaps I wouldn’t have heard it,” she admitted, “even if it had. I had my own role to play, too.”

  Neil glanced sharply at her.

  “I would never have forced you into a choice between me and Todd, Neil.”

  “I know that now. You would never have done that to me.”

  “No,” she corrected him. “I would never have done that to me. You were always larger than life, charismatic and successful and intelligent and aggressive. I’d never have forced a choice between me and your son, because I always knew what your choice would be.

  “I was never quite sure why you married me—”

  “My God, Ginnie—”

  “No.” Her hurt bled through into her words. “No. You’ve been honest. It’s time for me to be honest, too.

  “I think I was always afraid I’d wake up someday to find you’d realized you’d made a horrible mistake in marrying me. I had nothing to offer you. I wasn’t as beautiful as the women you saw every day. I wasn’t as accomplished as those you worked with. I wasn’t even doing a very good job of making a home for you.

  “I couldn’t go running to you with everything Todd said that hurt me, everything he did that concerned me. I was supposed to be making a home for you where you could be comfortable and relaxed and away from the pressures of the world, not dumping more pressures into your lap every time you walked in the door. Lord, if I couldn’t at least do that, of what use was I? I wasn’t helping you in your career. I didn’t have any great social contacts for you.

  “No, I would never have forced you to make a choice between me and Todd. I had to take care of the problems all by myself. And I knew that if I worked hard enough at it, I’d find a way. I’d do it. And everything would be wonderful. And you would love me.”

  “Ginnie. Oh, Ginnie,” he said on a soft moan. Through the silence hanging between them, they both distinctly heard the sharp rap of knuckles on the kitchen door. Neil swiveled toward the sound, and Ginnie half turned, her forgotten coffee cup still in her hand, but neither moved to answer the summons.

  The knock sounded again.

  Neil rose carefully from his chair and glanced at her. She nodded hesitantly. Cautiously, he slid the bolt, opened the door only far enough to see who was outside and then opened it wide.

  A young couple, jeans-clad and wearing matching sweatshirts and letter jackets, stood there laughing at something one had obviously just said. Their smiles faded when they saw the unknown man at the door. Ginnie hurried to Neil’s side.

  “Uh... Miz K,” the girl said. “Ah—is this a bad time? You did say the day after Christmas?”

  Her timing was atrocious, but Ginnie had promised. “Yes, Debby, I did say the day after Christmas.”

  Ginnie motioned vaguely toward the couple. “Neil, this is Debby White, student editor of the paper this year, and Ron Hobart.” She grinned. “Debby’s constant companion. This is—” She paused. How did she introduce Neil?

  Neil solved that problem for her. “Neil Kendrick,” he said. “It’s nice to meet you, Debby, Ron.”

  “Come on in,” Ginnie told the couple, breaking the awkward silence that followed Neil’s words. She reached for the folder in Debby’s hand. “Do you have the manuscript ready?”

  “Yes, but if this is a bad time, I can come back.”

  Maybe Debby’s timing wasn’t so bad, after all. This, Ginnie could cope with. An extension of the interrupted discussion, she couldn’t.

  “Debby has a story almost ready to submit to Seventeen magazine,” she said to Neil. “I promised her I’d go over it with her today.”

  When they reached the table, Ginnie hastily stuffed the Polaroid snapshot back into the box and closed the lid.

  “Do you want me to put that away?” Neil asked. “I have a feeling I need to make myself scarce, anyway.”

  Ginnie smiled gratefully at him and handed him the box.

  “Me, too, Mr. Kendrick,” Ron added. “I don’t get to sit in on the criticism sessions. They usually send me to the stereo while they’re talking.”

  Neil quirked an eyebrow at Ginnie but managed to smile at the boy. “Don’t you find that a little dull?”

  “Not really. Miz K’s got some old stuff that we have a little trouble with, but she’s got some pretty neat new CDs, too. We’re teaching her.”

  “This, I’ve got to see,” Neil said.

  “Oh, well, sure—” The boy seemed suddenly to realize that he was talking to a stranger, a stranger who might question his casual use of Ginnie’s house. “Uh... if that’s okay, Miz K?”

  Ginnie heard more than one question in his voice. Maybe she ought to explain, but what could she say? She decided the situation was too complex to go into at this point. They’d just have to accept each other.

  “Sure. Go on,” she said. “This won’t take but a few minutes.”

  A short time later, she heard the sounds of a mellow rock beat coming from the living room, played at the top of the volume range she had established as acceptable.

  She pulled out a chair, sat down and opened the folder. It took a few moments for her to be able to concentrate on the neatly typed manuscript before her.

  Should she have sent the kids away? Would Neil understand there were things unrelated to him or to Todd that she had to do? How would he react to being cooped up in her living room with an unknown young man? Would he think she didn’t care about Todd or about his feelings?

  Neil had dropped everything to come running up here. Did he expect her to drop everything also while they waited? Well, she couldn’t. She’d put her life in limbo the years she’d been married to him. Oh, Lord, she had done that. She’d turned her life over to him. Had she expected him to provide her with happiness the way he’d thought?

  A niggling little voice in the back of her mind whispered to her, “Of course you did. You not only expected it, you demanded it.” But another argued, “Not you, Ginnie. You wouldn’t be that selfish.”

  “MizK?”

  G
innie looked up from the unseen pages in her hand to the girl seated across from her. Debby glowed with health. Intelligence sparkled from her deep-set blue eyes. An almost model student, except when she wasn’t, Ginnie thought and smothered an unbidden grin.

  “We can come back if this is a bad time, honest.”

  “Nonsense,” Ginnie told her. “I know you want to get this finished.” She also knew that she could put Debby off if she had to, but it seemed unfair to. She concentrated on the manuscript.

  “You’ve firmed up your opening,” she said. “That’s much better. You got into the story a lot more quickly this time, and I think you’ll find it’s stronger.” She skimmed the rest of the pages. “Okay, good. You’ve tied in your title. Hand me a pencil.” Quickly she underlined one word.

  “Typo?” Debby asked.

  “I’ll let you blame it on that,” Ginnie told her. “I think it’s spelling, though.”

  “That’s just great,” Debby said. “I’ve proofread that thing four times.”

  “Ssh,” Ginnie said, trying not to laugh. “I’m reading.” She leaned back in the chair, lost in the story. Debby could write. Ginnie had no doubt about that. And it looked as though fiction might be her strong point. She stacked the pages carefully and handed them to Debby.

  “Well?” the girl asked.

  “Well, when you correct that one—typing error, I think the manuscript will be ready to mail.”

  “Do you mean it?” Debby asked. “Do you really mean it? Do you think it’s good enough to send in?”

  “Not only do I think it’s good enough to submit, Debby, I think it’s good enough for them to buy. But there are no guarantees. What you need to do now is get busy on another story, because it’s going to be at least two months before you hear anything about this one. And you want something else in the mail, so that if this story does get rejected, all your hopes won’t be smashed.”

  “Ah, gee, Miz K. Thank you.”

  “Debby?”

  “Yes?” The girl looked at her expectantly.

  “Don’t get upset if it’s rejected. This is a good piece of work, but you’ve picked a really tough market.”