by Warren Adler
“It’s not because of Chuck, is it?”
They had rarely discussed that issue. Now she regretted her deliberate avoidance of the subject.
“Now that you ask, it was awful, Molly. Being alone so much. It wasn’t a marriage. Maybe at first. No. It wasn’t very good. Not for me. It was lonely and—why am I going on like this? Let’s just say that it wasn’t like yours and Charlie’s. Not like most loving married couples. Chuck didn’t want to be married, Molly. He didn’t want the responsibility. He just wasn’t satisfied with me—or Tray. He didn’t want Tray, you know.”
Molly felt a flash of anger.
“Now that’s not true, Frances.” In her heart, of course, she knew otherwise.
“Maybe not Tray, specifically. Rather the whole idea of being tied down, of fatherhood. Of answering to one woman.” She had grown nervous again, and the lip tremors resumed.
“Really, Frances—”
“He was away for six months or more at a time. I admit I’ve been naive, but I’m not a fool. There are men like that. They like the freedom and danger of that kind of life. A wife and children don’t fit into it.”
“You should have demanded he stay home.”
“I tried. You know I tried,” she said, her voice again lowering to a whisper. But her answer was tentative, and Molly saw her sense of shame and failure.
“Maybe you weren’t assertive enough,” Molly said, knowing there was a barb in it. She felt a stab of guilt. When it came to Chuck, maybe none of them had been assertive enough, including herself.
“Well then,” Frances replied. “I don’t want to make the same mistake again. I’m not afraid anymore. I have my priorities and I don’t intend ever to be silent again.”
Priorities, Molly thought. She could not remember Frances ever using that term. It seemed scientific—sounded like Peter’s word. She was Peter’s spokesman, Molly decided.
Her anger was rising now, and she knew that soon she would reach the point of no return, when words could be weapons of total destruction. There was no point in citing Frances’s lack of assertion or any other imagined faults, no point in implying that they were the cause of Chuck’s death. Not now. Too many people were already blaming themselves. But this business of priorities had an ominous air about it. Worse, she understood exactly what it meant. Molly, too, at this point in time, had her priorities. And they were in direct conflict with Frances’s.
Molly, too, had consciously reordered her priorities at one point in her life, perhaps not with as much revolutionary fervor as Frances, but to the men around her it had seemed radical at the time. She chose to take up her teaching job again when Chuck was barely out of diapers, a decision that had shaken the rafters of her own marriage. No, there could be no retreat from a woman’s reordered priorities. The game was lost, she knew.
The conversation had finally dwindled. There was nothing more to say, nothing left to do but hug Tray and hide her tears.
“You’re squeezing too hard, Gramma,” Tray had said. Sniffling, she disguised her anguish by tickling his ribs. Tray had squealed with laughter, a sound that had since replayed itself at odd moments of quietude on sunny afternoons in the backyard, along with the remembered sound of Chuck’s boyhood voice.
Finally she had kissed Tray’s head, his soft blond hair like Chuck’s, and held him at arm’s length.
“Now you remember the proverb Grandma taught you.” She had embroidered it in petit point, and it had hung, suitably framed, on all her classroom walls.
She watched Tray’s eyes, so like hers and Chuck’s, sparkling in a flash of sunlight.
“Do unto others as you would have”—he kicked his toe into the patio’s edge, then looked up again—“as you would have others do unto you.”
“And what do they call that?”
“The Golden Rule, Gramma.”
She had pulled herself up to her full height, which was a few inches taller than Frances. Then why are we bending it? she had thought to herself. She embraced her daughter-in-law, willing herself to go beyond tears, as Frances was doing, knowing that they were both deliberately resisting the womanly cliché of disintegrating into inconsolable guilt-drenched tears. We’ll both cry later, she thought.
“Do I have to go now, Mommy?” Tray asked. “Can’t I stay here with Gramma and play?”
“I’m afraid not,” Frances replied.
“Only for a little while. Pleeeez.”
“Not now,” Molly said, turning so he wouldn’t see her tears. She wished she could say more, but it was impossible to go on.
“But why?”
“Because,” Frances said. After all, what more was there to say?
Before he was out of sight, Molly had turned again, watching the child disappear in the mist of her anguish. She saw him wave and could barely muster the strength to wave back. Then she had collapsed on her knees on the patio.
But confronting Charlie was, hands down, the most painful part of the episode. Frances must have known it would be, must have chosen the moment precisely, the day before she, Tray, and Peter were to leave for Syracuse to prepare for the wedding. Until then Charlie had been threatening wildly not to attend “out of respect for Chuck.” Molly had been cautioning him on going too far, fearful of alienating Peter, who could punish them through Tray. Her reasoning galled her, and the irony was, even now, as painful to remember as to confront.
Charlie’s reaction was explosive. There had been no way to break the news gently. It had, of course, confirmed her husband’s most potently paranoid fear, the loss of his grandson. Of their grandson, she corrected in her mind.
“You can’t be serious.” She had expected disbelief, then denial, which came predictably. “I don’t believe it. No. It can’t be true.”
“It’s a temporary thing,” she had said, words that would be flung back at her ad infinitum. “Understandable from her point of view.” Was it to calm him with reason or feed his anger?
“I won’t stand for it.” Actually, she remembered, he had sat down, looking suddenly shriveled like a sail without wind. “She can’t do that.”
“She can and will,” Molly had said with firmness, offering him a kind of statement of finality. “It’s an emotional time for her. She’s frightened. She doesn’t want any upsetting ripples. Not now.”
“We’re the child’s grandparents, for crying out loud. You don’t just cut off grandparents. It’s not human.” The sudden weakness caused by the initial shock had worn off swiftly, and he had bounced out of the chair and begun to pace the room, directing all his anger and frustration in Molly’s direction. She had expected nothing less. “I always knew she was a mean bitch. All quiet and sweet on the surface. Now I can see why Chuck couldn’t stand to be with her. He would still be here today, if he hadn’t married that woman. You see?” He had waved a finger in front of Molly’s nose, but she had chosen to stand her ground, to take the assault. “I was right and you were wrong. Why do you think he went away to risk his life? He ran from her. Couldn’t stand being near her. That’s why. Well, I have no intention of letting her get away with it. Not with my boy’s son. Not with Tray. I swear I won’t let her get away with it. Never.”
“You have no say in this, Charlie,” she said quietly, knowing it would focus his anger more directly on herself. He had begun to pace the room like a caged animal, suddenly stopping in front of her, his face distorted with rage. There was nothing to do but let him rant. It was a futile gesture, especially for an essentially good and gentle man. But at that point any sign of pity on her part would only have made things worse. He shook a threatening finger at her face.
“I blame you most of all for being so accepting of Chuck’s decision to marry her. She hated her uncle. All she wanted was to get the hell out of that situation. I was right. She was one lousy wife, too. Now she’s getting married while Chuck’s body is still warm. There’s the proof that she never did love him. She couldn’t have loved him. How could she have loved him and jumped into another man’s bed so soo
n after—? You could have stopped it. A woman knows about other women. Men are stupid about things like that.” His voice had broken. “Now Chuck’s dead because of it, and she’s going to take Tray away from me as well.”
“From us,” she had corrected softly. He hadn’t paid the slightest attention.
“Well, I’m not going to let her get away with it.” He was smoldering now like red hot ashes.
“It’s not forever, Charlie,” she said, forcing herself to remain calm. “We have to give it time.”
“That’s what you say.” She could see the flames erupting again. He turned away and paced the room, muttering to himself. Soon he was running a full head of macho steam, strutting and posturing. He punched his chest. “I’m not going to let her get away with it. No way. I’ve had it with her.”
“It’s not only her,” she said protectively.
“No way,” he said, listening only to his harsh inner voices. It was sad and futile, like someone spitting into the wind.
But when he had stormed out of the house, she became alarmed and ran after him to the garage. He had gotten into the car and had slammed and locked the door, gunning the motor, its sound echoing his fury. She tried to open the door, then beat on the window with her fists. Later she had wondered why she had not simply stood in front of the car, blocking it with her body. Was she afraid that he would run her over? No, she was dead certain he would not do that. He would never have gone against his own instincts. Then why had she not done it? Because she had wanted him to go, because she had wanted him to make this last-ditch effort to save Tray for them.
But she had dashed to the telephone to warn Frances, only to be rebuffed by a recording that Frances’s telephone had been disconnected. She had even toyed with the idea of calling the police, but it revolted her. She had always looked down her nose at families who needed police action to intervene in domestic quarrels. It was demeaning, unworthy of mature people. It was a ten-minute drive to Frances’s apartment. She had felt totally helpless, unable to think or function logically. She could have called for a taxi. But she didn’t. The waiting became agony. In her memory, it was the hour of her greatest terror.
It was Peter who had finally called her.
“He came in like a lion and went out like a lamb,” Peter had said. “I knew you’d be worried. I guess he’ll ride around a bit. Maybe stop at a bar.”
“Charlie’s not much of a drinker. It’s not his way.” She had resented the implication.
“At first, I thought he might be violent. Thankfully, Tray was at a neighbor’s.”
“He didn’t even see Tray?”
“Frances got him from the neighbors.
“At least Charlie got to see him. Did it tear him up?”
“It wasn’t a very happy moment for him. I can tell you Tray was also shaken up.”
“It could have been avoided, Peter.”
“I don’t think so, Molly. It’s a lot more complex than meets the eye. And really, you must understand it has nothing to do with you or Charlie.”
“Nothing? Tray is our grandchild.”
“I understand that,” he said sympathetically. “But there is a question of priorities.” There was that word again, she thought.
“I think your decision is wrong,” she said. Thinking of Charlie’s anguish, the fight had gone out of her.
“Maybe so. But we must have this chance. And we’re not saying it will be forever.”
“Yes. I heard all that this afternoon.”
There was a long pause. She listened attentively for any regretful sigh, but none came.
“I’m just calling to say that Charlie is all right, as well as can be expected, and that I’m sorry. With a little patience, things might work out for all of us. The main thing is Tray.”
Peter had hung up and she remembered that she had held the phone for a long time, until she heard the car purring back into the garage. She did not go out to greet him. He had cut the motor but did not appear for a long time. Molly had waited, seated in the living room. Then he came in. He was definitely not the same man who had left less than an hour before. Ashen, he was the picture of defeat, more broken than he had been at the news of Chuck’s death. Be strong, she begged herself, although her own hurt was, she was sure, equal to his.
He dropped onto a chair in the kitchen like a puppet that had been cast aside, no longer needed for the show.
“I couldn’t stand it,” he whispered. “Saying good-bye. I broke down.” He looked as if he might be getting ready to do that again. His nose was runny, and his eyes were red from crying. He swallowed hard. “He asked me why I was crying.” He was falling apart. She came toward him and laid his head against her breast.
“It will be all right, Charlie. A little patience. It will be. You’ll see,” she whispered, forcing her stability. While he was in this state, she knew, she needed to appear strong. He desperately needed her to lean on.
“And—” He started to talk, stopped; then, forcing a brief sense of control, he continued. “ ‘Grampa,’ he asked me, ‘where does it hurt?’ He asked me that. Where does it hurt?” He trembled and sobbed for a moment, then managed to speak again. “I told him . . . ‘Tray,’ I said. ‘It hurts everywhere.’ Everywhere. . . .” Then he broke down again.
That night they had clung to each other in bed not merely like two spoons, but like one. How else were they expected to get through that dreadful night?
Sitting in the den now, having difficulty concentrating on her papers, she concluded that remembering was both painful and necessary. You couldn’t hide from life. Ultimately, everything had to be faced squarely. There was still life ahead, she assured herself, looking at the papers. At least she had her work and the opportunity to see hope on the faces of her fifth-grade children. There was renewal in that, she decided, thankfully. Unfortunately, Charlie did not have that opportunity, she thought sadly, and that made it doubly necessary for her to husband her courage and gather the shreds of optimism.
Poor Charlie. She had tried to buck him up as he confronted the looming horror of early retirement. At first it had been an option, then a necessity. All his choices had narrowed, then closed.
“I fought for this country,” he had said, a theme he had taken up often, as if his present state was because of some national betrayal.
“You can’t blame it on the country,” she had countered sensibly.
“Then what?”
It was a question that defied any soothing answer.
She heard him stamping his boots on the mat outside, then his footsteps moving into the house. He seemed to have chucked the yard chores earlier than usual. But then Sundays were not special for him anymore. She listened, unable to focus on the papers. He was making coffee in the coffee maker. He was always dosing himself with caffeine.
Soon he was sitting opposite her in the den, and she put aside her papers to give him her undivided attention. On Sundays, certainly, he was entitled to that.
“Might as well face it, Molly,” he said, a cigarette dangling from his lips, both hands cupping the mug for warmth. She felt encouraged by the talk. He was right: They had better face facts. “They have no damned intention of answering.”
“That’s the way it looks, doesn’t it?”
“Lawyers,” he said, removing his cigarette. Some of the paper stuck to his lips. “Pack of liars. Doesn’t matter to them.”
“That’s not fair, Charlie. He laid it out for us.”
“Leaves us hanging.”
When he did not speak for a long time, she feared that he was falling back into silence.
“We could always cut and run.” She knew it would shock him into alertness.
“You want that?”
“No, I don’t,” she said firmly. “I want Tray.”
“Damned right,” he agreed. “We’re in it for the whole nine yards.”
“There’s no sense brooding about it,” she said. “That’s not the way a boxer prepares himself.” She smiled. “Do
unto others before they do unto you.” He chuckled. That saying always got a rise out of him.
He sipped his coffee, then punched out his cigarette and lit another. It was not a time for admonishment. “It’ll start really costing now.” He became silent again, took deep drags on his cigarette. “Bet he’s grown four, five inches.” He shook his head. “Sundays are the pits.” She knew what he meant. Sunday had been Chuck’s big day. And Tray’s. “We used to have lots of fun on Sundays.”
“That’s being broody, Charlie,” she rebuked.
“They can’t take away memories.”
“Nobody can touch those.”
“If we get to court, she’s going to have to tell it different than it was,” Charlie said. “Make us out like we were a couple of rats.” He reached out and touched her hand. “We weren’t, were we?”
“Don’t be silly.”
“I mean it’s what she has to say to win. Like the lawyer said.”
“Well, then we’ll have to refute all charges.”
“How can anyone call us rats?”
“It wouldn’t be honest—just a ploy anyway.”
“We were damned good parents and grandparents. Weren’t we?”
“By any standard. Especially love.”
“It was her that was the bad one. Chuck made one big mistake.” He shook his head. “Besides, they were too young. Now we gotta pay the piper. It’s not fair.”
“What is fair?”
“We were good, Molly. We were always good. Weren’t we?”
“You musn’t question that. Of course we were.”
“Are you sure?”
“Sure I’m sure. Whatever has gotten into you?” It was a kind of mock rebuke, mostly to deflect his being too hard on himself.
“Something I might have done to Chuck. As a father. You know what I mean. Something I didn’t know I was doing. I really thought he was a fine young man, that we had done one helluva job. I mean he was out there working for his wife and kid.”
“You’ve got to stop that, Charlie.”
“I’m just trying to analyze the situation. It’s important.”
“I don’t mean that. I mean taking it all on yourself, as if I wasn’t there.”
