Mine to Tell

by Donnelly, Colleen L

  We were all quiet. I looked at him, my heart melting as I heard his masculine voice speak of love and suffering. I wanted to lean across the table and hug him, but I was too afraid.

  Alex leaned back in his chair. “What my father went through didn’t feel like love when we were little.”

  “But maybe it was,” Kyle persisted, his tone smooth and even. “Does love always turn out the way we want it to?” Then he looked at me. “Julianne Crouse was a fine woman. We haven’t finished her story, but she suffered, and she was fine indeed.”

  Tears came to my eyes. “Thank you,” I squeaked. Kyle stood and walked around the table to me. He helped me stand as he thanked them for their time. He retrieved Julianne’s picture, took my hand, and together we went to the door, Alex and his wife following us.

  “I hope you’re right,” Alex said, running his hand through his thin, brittle hair as we stepped outside. “My father had some things to come to terms with, but he was a good man. A better man later in life, when he told us he was sorry. I never knew for what.”

  I started to cry. Maybe because none of us understood forgiveness and the right to live without kite strings and circles. My family, Trevor, and maybe John’s family were a little like Isaac, drawing circles, drawing lines, wanting everyone else to stay where we put them and behave the way we believed they should without letting them come to terms with who they were and their own pain. I hurried to the car and closed the door. Kyle slid in beside me and held my hand as he drove us back to the hotel.

  Chapter 47

  “For perhaps he was for this reason parted from you for awhile, that you should have him back forever.”

  Kyle and I drove home in near silence. Hours on the road in deep thought, two minds working like one over the unconnected fragments of Julianne’s and John’s lives we’d uncovered.

  “Thank you for coming with me,” I said as he pulled to my house. We both sat in the car and stared at the prison Isaac had built for Julianne. “It’s like an awful sandwich, if you can forgive the comparison. Something really awful in between two very good slices of bread.”

  Kyle nodded. He didn’t laugh and he didn’t insult my childish analogy of Julianne’s suffering meshed between happy youthful years and hopefully happy older ones. I liked Kyle. Really liked him.

  “There’s something on your door,” he said, still looking at the house. I looked and, sure enough, something was dangling from my doorknob. I sighed.

  “Guess I’ll go see what awaits me.” I groaned silently, knowing it was probably tantamount to some tribal death threat from my family, like maybe all of my childhood pictures with my head cut out of them.

  Kyle helped me carry my luggage to the house. I stepped to my door and lifted the handles of a small bag from the doorknob. I peered inside and saw a flower with a note attached. I lifted the flower from the bag, wondering if it was poisoned.

  I’m sorry. I recognized the handwriting on the card. My gut went cold as the flower trembled in my hand.

  “You okay?” Kyle asked. I nodded, but I wasn’t. I dropped my hand to my side and felt I would vomit.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said, unlocking the door and moving quickly inside. “Just set my bags right there by the door.” I covered my mouth and raced for the kitchen. Just as I threw my head forward over the wash pan, I heard my front door close. I vomited, Trevor’s flower on the floor by my feet.

  ~*~

  I thought I could make things right. John’s wife’s letter and Isaac’s vehemence taught me I needed to. I had to fix things, had to work them out. So when John wrote again and explained what he’d needed to tell me, I left. Left Isaac a note and said I had to go. I intended to come back. I just didn’t know when. I would be away however long it would take to fix things.

  I went to Chicago on money I took from Isaac. If I’d gone when I’d asked the first time, I would have let him give me money. But now that I was going without his knowledge, without his consent, without forethought on my own part, I took it. This was a trip Isaac needed, one he should be grateful I was taking, even though I knew he wouldn’t be.

  I found John. It wasn’t difficult. He worked the same job in the same place. I found it and waited for him outside, even though he had no idea I was coming. I stood in the shadows, watching until the lamps went out inside and he locked up for the day. It was when he had his back to me that I stepped from the darkness behind him, listening to the final turn of the key in the lock as his hands twisted it just like they’d been doing for years.

  “Julianne?” he asked without turning.

  “How did you know?” I whispered.

  “How could I not?” He turned slowly as if he was afraid reality wouldn’t bear up with what he sensed. But I was there, in the dim light where the pain and wear of the years was invisible. We’d borne pain as we’d borne a love. And this we understood without seeing each other.

  My soul melted into him as he gazed at me, years vanishing as I drank in everything about this one man I had truly loved. He moved toward me, but he didn’t try to touch me. I wished he would, yet wished he wouldn’t. We stood on the walkway and looked at each other, time without beginning and without end.

  “I’ve come to make things right,” I whispered.

  “You just did,” he said, a happy sigh in his voice.

  “No.” I laughed a little. “I mean really right. For both of us. For our families.”

  “Let’s not,” he said, sounding a little desperate. “Let’s just leave things the way they are.”

  “No, we can’t.” I couldn’t tell him of his wife’s letter, and I wouldn’t tell him of Isaac and his anger.

  “But I won’t give you up,” he said. “Not any more than I already have. All these years without you, when you were really mine. If only we’d known, if only Arthur had told me he filed our little pretend ceremony under his legal credentials and made it official. The sin isn’t us being together, it’s being apart. We’re bigamists, you realize. We were married to each other and then defrauded ourselves and our supposed spouses by marrying them. I’ve made poor Ellen miserable, I’m not myself, my boys have suffered. Damn Arthur for not telling me!”

  “It couldn’t have been real,” I said, tears in my eyes and my voice. “Surely Arthur’s joke is nothing more than that.”

  “He meant it as a gift, actually. His wife explained it in the letter I got from her when he passed away. He’d married us for real that day of our pretend ceremony, and filed it behind our backs, thinking he’d surprise us when you returned for our actual wedding. Then when you didn’t return and I failed to bring you back, he was ashamed. He went to the courthouse and took our file. Hid it away with him all these years so the record wasn’t visible. I have it in my office. She sent it along with the letter. We were married the day you set foot on that train, years ago.”

  We didn’t see her nearby as we spoke. I didn’t know until later when she wrote me again that she’d come there too, his wife, wanting to surprise him, do something kind to win him back any way she could. John and I talked, discussed meeting the next day to talk more about what we should do, and then we tried to part. It was impossible, more impossible than I’d ever imagined. Our hands lifted as if by magnetic force, drawn to each other and our fingertips touched, a bolt traveling between them.

  “Tomorrow,” we said and we parted. I went to my room and vomited. Sick and weak with physical suffering that continued on through the night.

  ~*~

  I’d read on without Kyle. After a restless night of little sleep, I needed to distract myself from Trevor’s attempt to repent. My doors were locked so no one could just walk in. So Trevor couldn’t walk in. Anyone else was welcome.

  I wasn’t able to eat, so I consumed large amounts of hot tea and sat on the sofa with Julianne on my lap. It was all beginning to come together now—their love, circumstances that tore them apart, fortuitous circumstances that gave them the right to come back together, and the decisions the
y faced. And not only them but Ellen, the blow she suffered at seeing them, hearing them, and the decision she must have made soon after, to try to force his hand.

  As I sat and pondered what I would have done in Julianne’s situation, a knock came at my door. I didn’t move. There were people I wouldn’t mind seeing, some I dreaded seeing, and one I didn’t want to see at all. The knock came again. Soft, not forceful. Either my mother or Kyle. “Please let it be Kyle.” I said a prayer as I stood to answer it.

  “Hi, Anna,” Trevor said as I cracked the door open. My mind did a photographic snapshot of his face before I closed my eyes, a face full of repentance and clouded by a faint hope, his anger having melted down into a lava he wanted to be rid of. I opened my eyes again. His look hadn’t changed, his eyes were large and frightened, pouty if I dared to describe them that way.

  “I’m busy,” I said, and I pushed the door closed. I didn’t move away from it. I stood there, waiting for the inevitable knock, and it came, within seconds.

  “Anna, I want to talk. Please open up.”

  No, I said in my mind. Otherwise I said nothing.

  “Just for a minute, that’s all.”

  “No.” It came out of my mouth this time. “No, Trevor.” I waited, wondering how he’d react. The old Trevor would have teased me, the frightened Trevor would have pleaded, the hurt Trevor would have hit the door with his fist and stalked away. I listened. Nothing. After several minutes I slid to a nearby window and looked at the road in front of my house. Trevor’s back was to me as he slumped toward his car, a handful of flowers dangling from one hand. I didn’t know this Trevor. He was new. I watched him and wondered, wondered if both of us had changed so much.

  Chapter 48

  “Her sins, which are many, have been forgiven, for she loved much; but he who is forgiven little, loves little.”

  My illness did not relent. Even as I rode the train back home I could barely contain my stomach, my head, my nerves. John had been so concerned, he’d stayed by my side, not pressuring me for a decision about us, but letting me rest, encouraging me to try to eat or drink something, but I couldn’t. I reeled at the thought of food.

  I’d agreed meagerly, as he unwillingly put me on the train, that I’d return if possible. At what point, I made no promises, but I wanted to talk to Isaac, be honest with him, offer him an escape from his misery if he so chose. There were children involved, though, his and John’s, and they wouldn’t understand legalities, only faithfulness and security. I hoped John would do the same with his wife, but I didn’t ask him to. I looked to heaven as the train pulled away. “We need help,” I said, and I laid my head against the window and tried to sleep away my angst.

  When I arrived at my home, it was late evening. Lamplight burned in the windows, and I could see Isaac and the boys at the table, eating so late. I watched them, still reeling with nausea, wishing for my bed but wondering if I’d be welcome.

  I stepped inside. All eyes turned to me, the boys’ inquisitive, Isaac’s hateful. I looked at them. Levi stood, smiled, and laughed to see me until Isaac silenced him. I walked to our room, barely able to steady myself, my small bag feeling as if it weighed a hundred pounds.

  I entered the room and dropped onto the bed in the dark. I lay there, knowing the ceiling would be swirling, if I could see it. The door opened, a panel of dim light entering the room, then disappearing. I waited. Isaac lit a lamp on his side of the bed and stood over me, staring down at me. I closed my eyes.

  “You’ve brought shame on us,” he said. I covered my eyes with my hands to keep the room from spinning. “Look at me,” he commanded.

  “I’m ill,” I said.

  “God only knows what you’ve been doing to deserve it.” His voice was sharp. His own wounds not enough, he had to inflict some on me.

  “I’m sorry.” I tried to calm him. “It’s not what you think. I’ll explain, but let me sleep first.”

  He said nothing for a minute. I relished the silence but knew it wouldn’t last.

  “You saw him, didn’t you?”

  I bit back the rising bile and nodded. “It’s not what you imagine, though.”

  “Whore!” he spit. “I can no longer tolerate you here with me. I won’t have it. A wife who’s unfaithful. How can that be?”

  I wasn’t unfaithful to Isaac, except in my broken heart those first few years of our marriage, when I pined for another although I tried not to. In worse ways, I’d been unfaithful to John, my true husband, it turned out, while I’d been going through the motions with Isaac.

  I said nothing to Isaac’s charges. I waited until his threats were done and he’d stormed from the room. Then I vomited. On the floor at my side of the bed, my side of the room, nothing touching his.

  I stayed to my bed for days, unable to improve and growing weaker and more tired by the day. It was my mother who finally deduced that I was with child. I knew it was Isaac’s child, from the night he’d forced himself on me. When he learned what my mother diagnosed, he was quick to keep his word in spite of my illness. He turned the old shed into a house for me, put me in it, and said he’d have nothing to do with an adulterous wife or a bastard child. I said only once that it was his child, but he wouldn’t listen.

  I took my place in the other house, knowing now that I would stay there without saying a word to Isaac about our marriage. Although a legal commitment tied me to John, a moral one bound me to Isaac’s child. This God that had forgiven me and understood me—the same God I didn’t think Isaac had ever met, for his religion was bigger than God—was a moral God, a God of heart not rod, and I would stay to love this child and Isaac’s sons, stay for the marriage everyone thought was there, and lastly for my parents. I would write John and let him know. I’d seen that look in his eyes when I’d left him at the train station. We both knew we’d keep these second vows, these moral obligations to others, because it was right. I would keep mine in this other house while carrying Isaac’s child.

  ~*~

  “Trevor’s been here,” I said, for some unknown reason, when Kyle finished reading.

  “We’re catching up to where we’ve deciphered her notes in the Bible,” he said. “One of us needs to do some more decoding.”

  I felt myself redden. Trevor was hanging there, and neither one of us wanted to do anything with him. I was ashamed I’d said anything. There was no reason for it. I felt like an insecure high school girl.

  “I’ll do it,” I said. “And I didn’t mean to mention Trevor. I don’t know why I said that.”

  “Because he’s been your Isaac,” Kyle said, glancing up at me.

  I couldn’t speak. He was right. The gap between Julianne and me shortened with just that one statement, the expanse became passable and the history explainable.

  “So you have to decide who’s your John. Or if you even want one.”

  “Well, I don’t want an Isaac, that’s for sure.”

  We were quiet for a moment. He pulled out Julianne’s Bible and set it on the desk for me. Then he retrieved her stack of letters and walked to the sofa and stood in front of me. I looked up at him.

  “The next one of these is appropriate,” he said gazing down at me, “for both of you.” I nodded and patted the sofa next to me. He dropped down beside me.

  ~*~

  November 15, 1916

  My Dearest Julianne,

  I can hardly hold my hand steady as I write this. I’m so anxious for your health and so anxious to know how your discussion went with Isaac.

  Have you recovered from your ailment? I’m certain the strain of seeing me and hearing what our lives together should have been was too much for you. I’m certain your affliction has passed by now. I’ve fervently prayed for your recovery.

  I confess I want to be foolhardy, I can’t help myself. You’re my lawfully wedded wife and knowing that drives me to despair. But Ellen, the woman I thought I was married to, is wounded. Nearly mortally. I’ve confessed to her, told her everything, and she’s asked me t
o leave. I hurt, I miss my boys, I regret what she’s suffered, but I won’t pretend anymore. I suspect, my dear Julianne, your experience is the same and you and I have discovered a larger right. One that surpasses the letter of the law. I want to be with you, and could make a case to be with you. But I find the spirit of the law within much more binding than the one without. I think you know what I mean.

  Write me soon and let me know.

  Yours in heart,

  John

  Chapter 49

  “If therefore you are presenting your offering at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your offering there before the altar, and go your way; first be reconciled to your brother, and then come and present your offering.”

  I watched my mother’s face as she finished reading the next series of articles about Julianne before I sent them to the newspaper. We sat at her kitchen table, coffee cups between us, midmorning sunlight giving Julianne’s sad tale some reprieve. It was a war on my mother’s face, her expression bounding from what everyone had felt comfortable believing all these years to the story Julianne herself was telling. I saw two commitments at play, the one to my father and his family and the one she’d denied for years, the one to who she was as a woman, a person.

  At last she laid the papers on the table. She smoothed her hands over them, her gaze fixed on the top one. I waited, not for a compliment but for her to say how she felt, how Julianne’s life was hers too.

  “You sure about all of this?” she asked, giving the old lies one last chance.

  “It’s her own words, Mama. Hers and the people who wrote letters to her.”

  “Of course we don’t know what happened next, do we? Not for sure, anyway.”