Absence of Grace

by Ann Warner

  “If I do, I am not doing it in that dress.”

  “Why didn’t you tell your mom you didn’t like it?”

  “I tried, but she has this idea of me, and that’s the dress that fit.”

  Maxine sighed. “It’s a beautiful dress.”

  “Just not for me.”

  Maxine held the dress up and peered at Clen. “You may be right about that.” She smoothed the tulle and sighed again. “Too bad it won’t fit me. I suppose you could sell it. A couple of the seniors are tall enough.”

  “Mom would kill me.” But only if she found out, something that was unlikely. Her mother, caught up dealing with Josh’s illness, would hardly notice one missing dress. “Okay, go for it. I’ll give you twenty­five percent.”

  “Done. So...are you going to the meeting tonight?” Maxine asked, as she slipped the dress back into the closet. “Rumor is the student council president wants to find out why we’re so dead set against all the rules.”

  Clen snorted. “Maybe she can explain how she’s managed to put up with them for three years.”

  “What I intend to ask is why they can’t set the darn clock to the correct time.” Maxine had earned her only demerits for arriving back from a date at the last possible minute, only to discover the grandfather clock that kept official Marymead time was five minutes fast.

  “I think Thomasina may be coming over to our side,” Clen said.

  “And you think that because?”

  “In my last meeting with her, she admitted she didn’t keep all the rules when she was a student.”

  “I’ll just bet she didn’t.” Maxine grinned. “She hides it well, but I believe there’s a subversive side to Thomasina.”

  Chapter Two

  1982

  Atlanta, Georgia

  Entering Melton’s office, Clen’s gaze was drawn to the large oil painting on the wall behind his desk. From a distance, it was clearly a matador delivering the killing stroke, but up close it was dark swaths of crimson, umber, and black with an occasional slash of yellow. And although it was reportedly worth a great deal of money, Clen was glad she didn’t have to spend her days beneath its brooding presence.

  Melton, a short, dapper man with a brisk delivery, glanced up from the pages he was marking. “Ah, Clen. Excellent. I need you to substitute for me at the Prism shareholder meeting in New York tomorrow morning. You don’t have to speak, just show the flag, take good notes. My secretary has the tickets and itinerary. Flight leaves this afternoon at three thirty.”

  “That doesn’t give me much time.” Clen had been warned Melton had a habit of dumping assignments on junior associates at the last minute, but this was the first time he’d done it to her.

  His manicured hand dismissed her with what she dubbed his pope wave. “It’s only overnight. Still, I know you women always need time to pack.”

  Right. As if he didn’t.

  “You can leave now. If you feel you must.” He waved again, dismissing her.

  So generous of him to give her four hours’ notice, and without even a token effort to explain why he was unable to attend.

  Three hours later, hot and out of breath, Clen sank into a seat in the Delta Crown Room at the Atlanta airport. She drew in a slow, careful breath and let it out, glancing around the room to find Paul sitting twenty feet away with a woman wearing a tight red sundress. He’d supposedly left for Chicago this morning, so what was he doing here? And the woman—this was a business associate? If so, she was way overdue for the dress-for-success chat.

  The woman lifted a straw tote onto her lap. Decorated with brightly colored flowers and a large “Virgin Islands” stitched across the top, it was the twin of the bag Paul discouraged Clen from buying on their honeymoon by labeling it “tourist-tacky.”

  White earrings banged against the woman’s jaw as she dug in the bag. When her hand emerged, it held a dark blue ticket folder that matched her long fingernails.

  Before Clen could react, Paul and the woman gathered their belongings and walked out. Clen got unstuck and followed. The concourse was crowded, and Clen kept track of the two by watching Paul’s head bob along. Finally his head bobbed to the right and when she reached that spot, it was just in time to see the two walking through a boarding doorway.

  Paul had the woman’s straw tote on his shoulder and his hand planted in a proprietary fashion in the middle of her bare back. Clen looked from the now empty doorway to the flight information posted behind the desk.

  Destination: St. Thomas.

  There wasn’t a single business reason for Paul to be going there. It meant...this was exactly what it first appeared to be. Her husband was having an affair.

  Clen groped her way to an empty seat where nausea and dizziness held her in place as she struggled to accept this shift in her world. Paul going off, not to Chicago with a business associate, but to St. Thomas with a woman.

  If she had just accepted the evidence sooner, she could have done...something, although it was her nature to hesitate. In fact, her customary ‘pause to consider’ strategy underpinned most of her professional success. Always, always she looked before she leaped, but if there had ever been a time to simply leap, this was it. Maybe walk up to the woman and give one of those gaudy earrings a sharp yank. Although no telling what might have happened next...

  “Financial Analyst Arrested for Assaulting Husband and Woman Companion at Airport”

  Except…Paul wasn’t worth it. That much was blindingly clear.

  Her mind spun, tossing up bizarre thoughts. The handfuls of water she tossed at Paul on their honeymoon in St. Thomas, the two of them laughing as they played together. And how could that lead to this...this duplicity of Paul’s with a squatty, heavily bosomed blonde? A woman so dissimilar to Clen, she might as well have come from another planet. A woman he was taking to St. Thomas, where he would kiss those bright, overdrawn lips and unzip that too-tight dress, reaching out to fondle those...mammaries. God, they couldn’t possibly be real, could they?

  Another wave of nausea hit, and Clen clamped a hand over her mouth until it abated. She may not have deserved Paul’s unconditional love, but she surely didn’t deserve such a graceless betrayal. She looked around, struggling to remember which direction she’d come from, trying to figure out where she now needed to go.

  Crowds of people strode purposefully past. Men in suits carrying briefcases and looking harried. Women, most wearing colorful dresses except for the few like her in business attire. Everything so unbearably normal. She took a deep breath, stood, and stepped into that flow, leaving it again when she reached a restroom. With shaking hands, she scooped water into her mouth and then onto her face. She didn’t look in either the mirror or at the women who bustled around her. Just moments earlier, she, too, had been bustling, with somewhere to go. Then, just like that, her bustle was...gone.

  She reclaimed her carry-on from the Crown Room and drove home to the large, formal house that was more Paul’s taste than hers. She left her suitcase by the back door and leaned on the kitchen counter, staring out at the perfectly groomed backyard.

  Okay. Now what?

  She needed to call Melton, of course, although, at the moment, it was difficult to give a flying fig about him, the trip to New York, or her job. Still, better to not burn too many bridges until she had time to think things through.

  So...Melton first. And her excuse? Bad traffic, an accident? Definitely not the truth—that she was undone by the discovery her husband was taking another woman to St. Thomas.

  At the thought, a wave of emotion swamped her—anger, hurt, but perhaps not much surprise and, floating on top, the hopelessness she thought she’d left behind long ago.

  She lifted the phone, and without further debate about what she was going to say, dialed Melton’s number. “Is he there?”

  “Clen?” The voice of Melton’s secretary, usually so cool and efficient, held a hint of raised eyebrows. “Aren’t you supposed to be on your way to New York?”

&
nbsp; “That was the plan. I missed the flight.”

  “Oh. Do you have a cold? You sound stuffed up.”

  “Something like that.” For sure, she felt miserable.

  “Well, it serves him right,” the secretary said. “He’s always doing that. Palming stuff off because he’s decided he’d rather squeeze in a round of golf or something. I’ll call New York and tell them he can’t make it, and I’ll tell him you were hit with a stomach virus. Just be sure you take a couple of days off.”

  Hard to believe it could be that easy. If only everything was—like deciding what to do about Paul.

  The option that first came to mind was to go upstairs and tear apart his closet of meticulously organized suits and ties. But although a demolished wardrobe would upset him, it wouldn’t rock his world the way hers had been rocked.

  Another possibility was to flee, taking nothing, not even extra underwear or a toothbrush. But if she did that, Paul would contact the authorities.

  No. There had to be other more dignified, more creative...more useful ways of handling this. Suddenly, she knew exactly where to begin.

  The night Paul returned from St. Thomas, Clen waited until he changed clothes and came back downstairs.

  “We need to talk,” she said.

  “Can’t it wait? I’m tired, and I have a report to go over before tomorrow morning.” He placed a cup of coffee in the microwave and set the timer.

  “Sorry. It can’t.” The car was packed and she was ready to drive to the Peachtree Plaza where she’d already registered.

  “Can you keep it short?”

  “Sure. Can do. I’m leaving you.” The unexpected rhyme pleased her.

  The microwave pinged, but she’d managed to pull his attention away from both coffee and report. “What? What on earth are you talking about?”

  “I...am...leaving...you.”

  He looked so shocked, she felt, briefly, like smiling.

  “You can’t mean it.”

  “Oh, but I do, Paul.” She pushed away the memory of his lips on hers, his hands touching her with easy familiarity as they made love. No. Not love. Sex. But those lips had lied and those hands...

  “Is it another man?”

  Wild laughter tickled the back of her throat. “No, Paul. It’s a woman.”

  Laughter continued to threaten as his expression segued from shock to irritation. “You can’t be serious.”

  “I’ve transferred my share of our assets into a separate account. I’m leaving you the equity in the house and its furnishings. Here are the figures.” She handed him the sheet of paper with the details of what she’d done.

  “You still haven’t given me a reason,” he said, taking the paper from her.

  “Oh, I don’t know. Does St. Thomas ring any bells?”

  “What? Of course it does. We went there on our honeymoon.”

  “In June, nineteen seventy. So, how many times have you been back? And before you answer, don’t forget this week.”

  He looked discomfited but for only a moment. “What do you expect? A man has needs.”

  “I never refused you, Paul.”

  “And you made damn sure I knew what a martyr you were.”

  His anger coming at her in waves began to distort the fragile internal harmony she’d managed to recover in the days he’d been gone. Further, the blatant dishonesty of his words took her breath away. When she got it back, she almost said, you sure never worried if you were meeting my needs. But she didn’t want to get into a nuclear exchange with him. Nothing to be gained. Not anymore.

  “You plan to marry her?”

  “Who?”

  “The lady in red.”

  They stared at each other until Paul looked away.

  “What’s her name?”

  He cleared his throat. “Amber.”

  The line, ‘amber waves of grain,’ from “America the Beautiful” popped into Clen’s head. Once again, she struggled not to laugh.

  Paul scrubbed a hand through his hair. “Hell, I don’t know. She can’t cook.” His face reddened, so perhaps he realized how self-centered that sounded.

  He shifted his feet, then he began to read the paper she’d handed him. “Whoa. You’ve appropriated more than your share.” Only five minutes in and he already had the aggrieved spouse act down pat.

  “Actually, I’ve been extremely generous.”

  “Oh, come on, Clen. There’s no need for this.” A wheedling note distorted his rich baritone. “We make a good team.”

  Not only unfaithful, but delusional. “You do realize you didn’t say, ‘Don’t leave me because I love you.’”

  “That goes without saying, babe.”

  “Yes, it’s pretty much gone without saying for thirteen years.”

  “I don’t recall hearing it all that often myself.”

  “You may be right.” She paused, gazing at him with more attention than she had in a while.

  He glanced away.

  “So tell me. Why did you marry me, Paul?”

  “What?”

  “Did you love me?”

  “Of course.”

  “And now you don’t.”

  He rubbed his forehead then glared at her. “What is love, anyway?”

  “You must have some idea if you claim to have felt it.”

  “Hell’s bells, Clen, stop being so damn analytical. That’s the problem, you know. Love is...excitement, spontaneity, the thrill of the chase.”

  “And then you caught me, and the thrill was gone.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Is that why you didn’t want children?”

  He looked away from her. “I thought you didn’t want them. And I was good with that.”

  “No, you didn’t think that at all.”

  He shifted, turning sideways, as if to leave, and yet he stayed.

  “I think love is unselfish, intimate, honest.”

  “There,” he said. “That’s it in a nutshell. We see the world in fundamentally different ways.”

  “How odd we never noticed.”

  Possibly, it was the most honest they’d ever been with each other. Too bad they’d left it until it no longer mattered.

  Paul pulled in a breath, then sighed and dropped his gaze from hers. “What are your plans?” He asked the question in the same offhand way he often asked how her day had been.

  She’d always suspected he didn’t care about her answers, and so this last time she didn’t try to give him one. There was no longer any point. They’d become that couple in the Audrey Hepburn movie, Two for the Road.

  Question: What kind of people don’t even try to talk to each other?

  Answer: Married people.

  Chapter Three

  1982

  Seattle, Washington

  Pam greeted him with a kiss, then led him over to where the guest of honor was seated. “Grannie, this is Gerrum Kirsey. Gerrum, my great-grannie Adelaide.”

  He accepted the hand Adelaide offered, to find her grip was surprisingly robust for an elderly woman.

  She smiled up at him with eyes alive with intelligence and mischief. “It’s a relief to finally meet you, Gerrum Kirsey, and to see you’re human, after all.”

  “Grannie!”

  “Well, the way you described him, I wouldn’t have been a bit surprised if he’d shown up wearing a toga and toting a lightning bolt.”

  “I had strict orders. No lightning bolts and definitely no togas.”

  “Oh, well. I suppose Pam told you I’m much too old for such excitements.”

  He raised his eyebrows in a silent question that drew a chuckle from Adelaide, the sound as robust as her handshake.

  “She did happen to mention something about a ninetieth birthday?”

  Adelaide sighed. “Oh my, that sounds old, doesn’t it.” She cocked her head, smiling at him. “Pam tells me you’ve asked her to marry you.”

  He hesitated, and Grannie Adelaide pounced. “Ah, I see perhaps my granddaughter was the o
ne who popped the question. Well, she always seems to know exactly what she wants and is prepared to go after it. An admirable quality, I suppose. Tell me, Gerrum, do you always know what you want?”