Hope Street: Hope StreetThe Marriage Bed

by Judith Arnold

  Next to her, Bobby said nothing. Random raindrops had accelerated into a drizzle and he flicked on the wipers. She could tell he was gnashing his teeth by the twitching muscle in his jaw.

  He drove through downtown Holmdell, past Harley’s and the new Starbucks. He drove past where the A&W stand used to be. It was gone, replaced by a car wash. Farther down the road, a Home Depot had sprung up, a large concrete structure surrounded by an even larger parking lot. Bobby kept driving.

  She realized where he was driving her when he veered off the main road and onto a two-lane strip of asphalt that snaked into the woods outside of town. Over one hill, a jag in the road, up another hill and the trees thinned out, opening onto a stretch of dirt and gravel and beyond it the lake.

  No other cars were there. Sunday at noon wasn’t exactly a popular time for teenagers to make out in cars—if they still did that sort of thing these days—and the damp day kept swimmers from gathering along the edge of the lake on the narrow strip of sand that Holmdell residents extravagantly called a beach. Bobby had his choice of places to park, and he angled the car to provide a clear view of the lake and the pine forest surrounding it. The water was slate-colored, pockmarked by the rain striking its surface. When he turned off the engine, Joelle heard the tap of raindrops against the roof.

  “You never brought me here before,” she said.

  “Yeah, I did.” He pushed his seat back as far as it could go and attempted to stretch his legs. “We’d bike up here to swim.”

  “When we were kids. I meant…” She remembered the summer nights Drew drove her to the lake in his Corvette and she’d struggled to figure out how far she ought to let him go.

  “I know what you meant.”

  More silence. More raindrops pattering on the car’s roof.

  Joelle stared at the lake and ran her fingers lightly over her cheek where Mrs. Foster had slapped her. “You wanted to kill Mrs. Foster back there, didn’t you,” she finally said.

  “And you wanted to shoot the breeze with her.”

  “I did not!”

  “You treat the Fosters like they’re decent people. They’re not. They’re spoiled, demanding, manipulative users. And that woman hit you. I can’t believe she did that.”

  “I can.”

  “It’s her son’s fault she never knew about Claudia. She shouldn’t be blaming you.”

  “Maybe she should.” Joelle felt as bleak as the grim, gray clouds lying low above them. A sob filled her throat and she gulped it down. “I did everything wrong, Bobby. I shouldn’t have had sex with Drew. And when I got pregnant…”

  “Don’t say you should have gotten rid of the baby.” His voice was taut with indignation.

  No, she shouldn’t have gotten rid of Claudia, either through abortion or adoption. She couldn’t imagine her life without Claudia in it, her precious daughter, her blessed firstborn. She couldn’t imagine her life without Claudia—or without Bobby. If it hadn’t been for Claudia, he would never have married her.

  He reached across the gear stick and captured her hand in his. It was the first time he’d touched her voluntarily, with affection, since Drew Foster had entered their house a week ago. He pulled her hand toward him, sandwiched it in both of his, traced his thumb aimlessly over her palm. “You weren’t acting alone, Jo. If you did everything wrong, so did I.”

  The caress of his thumb felt so good she wanted to moan. She wanted to vault herself over the gearstick and into his lap, and hold him and kiss him and believe he loved her the way she loved him. But there was no room, and her seat belt was still fastened and she was afraid to risk having him push her away. So much remained wrong between them, so much unsaid. “Maybe marrying you was just another thing I did wrong. But I can’t help feeling it was the right thing to do.”

  He twisted in his seat to face her. She kept her eyes on the lake, but she sensed his movement. She felt his scrutiny, his gaze solid and warm. “We were nuts to think we could keep the truth about Claudia a secret forever,” he conceded.

  “We kept it a secret for a long time.” At last she looked at him, but now he’d turned away and was staring at the lake, at the rain streaking the windshield. “Unfortunately we never figured out what we’d do if the secret got out.”

  “What should we do?” he asked.

  “If I knew, we wouldn’t be here now.”

  His lips moved, as if he wanted to taste his words before he actually spoke them. “You walked out on me, Jo.”

  “We walked out on each other,” she corrected him. “I just traveled more miles.”

  His thumb moved back and forth against her palm, exploring the lines, the skin worn dry by so many years of cleaning, digging weeds, sewing, demonstrating craft projects to her students, writing, hugging, clinging to her children and then prodding them out into the world. “All my life, I’ve tried to give you what you want,” he said, his voice low but steady. “I did the best I could. But I don’t think it’s enough.”

  No, she acknowledged. It wasn’t enough. He’d given her so much, but not the one thing she truly wanted. “I need to know what’s in your heart,” she said. “That would be enough.”

  He exhaled. “I—I don’t do that stuff. Baring my soul and all that. Talking to shrinks, punching pillows to get out the rage, meditating, chanting, whatever. That’s not the way I am.”

  She agreed with a nod.

  “But I’ve tried.”

  She eyed him skeptically. “Have you?”

  “I told you what happened in ’Nam. I didn’t want to, but you pushed me, so I told you. And when I was starting the business, I talked to you about the finances, the loans, everything I was worried about. Everything I dreamed the business would be.” He hesitated, and his voice emerged hoarse when he said, “I told you I hated my father. And I told you how I felt when Foster walked into our house last week. What more do you want?”

  “I want…” God, she hated to beg. She hated to ask him for what he couldn’t give. But they were actually talking, and he was holding her hand and she couldn’t back out now. If the truth hurt…Well, it often did. She would simply have to endure the pain. “I want you to love me, Bobby.”

  “What?” He half shouted the word, half laughed it.

  “You’ve never said it. Not once in all the years I’ve known you, all the years we’ve been married. You’ve never told me you love me.”

  “I tell you all the time. Maybe not in words, but—come on, Jo. You ask for a Prius—I buy you a Prius. You decide to try gardening—I give you a garden. Anything you want, anything I can give you—”

  “Those are things, Bobby.” He might be laughing, but she heard anger in his words, as well. She herself was far from laughter. It was all she could do to keep from erupting in tears. “When you were in Vietnam, every time I got a letter from you, I’d say a little prayer that you’d signed it ‘Love, Bobby.’ Then I opened it, and it never said love. I was sure you were planning to divorce me as soon as you got home. That was the deal, after all—we’d get married and then we could get a divorce. You never said you loved me, so I figured you didn’t. But then you came back broken and wounded, and you couldn’t divorce me while you were in rehab, and then you kind of got in the habit of being married to me and—”

  “Are you insane?” He tugged her hand, urging her to meet his gaze. “I’ve been in love with you since the first day of Mrs. Schmidt’s fourth-grade class.”

  “You were ten years old. How could you have been in love with me?”

  “Damned if I know. But I was.”

  “You never told me, Bobby. You never even hinted—”

  “Because you were Joelle Webber.” He sighed, his gaze pinned to the horizon. “You were going places. I realized even then that you were going to wind up someplace better. You were going to escape Tubtown. You weren’t going to tie yourself to a boy whose father drank a lot and knocked him around, who went off to Vietnam because even that hellhole was better than his own home. I loved you enough to s
tay out of your way.”

  “I did wind up someplace better,” she said, wishing he didn’t look so distraught. “You were right about that.”

  “Everything I did, Jo—buying a house, building a business, getting the damn college degree—I did it so you would never have to think you’d gotten ripped off. You had dreams, you had expectations, and I did everything I could not to disappoint you. You married me only because you were in a bad situation, but—”

  “The day you asked me to marry you was the best day of my life,” she said. “I’d walked up that hill in the cemetery certain it was the absolute worst day of my life, and you turned it into the best day.”

  “You didn’t know that at the time,” he argued.

  “No. It took me a while to figure out, but I know it now.” She unclasped her seat belt and leaned across the console to kiss Bobby. “Tell me. I need to hear the words.”

  “I love you, Jo,” he said. “I always have.”

  They kissed, a deep, lush, loving kiss. His hand remained around hers and his mouth took hers, possessive, hungry…loving. She believed that. He’d said the words, and this time the truth didn’t hurt at all.

  By the time they stopped kissing, she was half in his lap, one knee propped on her seat, the steering wheel digging into her shoulder and the car’s windows steamed. Bobby cupped her face with his free hand, brushed her hair back from her cheek and peered into her eyes. “So here we are at the lake, and this car is too small.”

  “It’s not too small.”

  “It’s too small and I’m too old.” He smiled and caressed her mouth with his fingertips. “I’m sorry I never took you here to do anything besides swimming.”

  “You were busy with half the girls in Tubtown. I don’t think you’re all that sorry.”

  “I am,” he insisted. He grazed her lips with his, and then her cheek and then the sensitive spot just below her ear. Desire throbbed deep inside her. “I would have made it good for you if I’d brought you here,” he murmured, and she knew he would have. He’d made it good for her on their wedding night, when all she understood about sex was that it was unpleasant and painful and embarrassing. He always made it good for her, even when they were tired or angry or distracted. If only Bobby had told her he loved her back then, when she’d been young and hadn’t made any terrible mistakes yet, who knew where they’d be today?

  As if he could read her mind, he let his hand fall still and his eyes grew darker. “I could say I love you nonstop for the rest of our lives, Jo. But that wouldn’t make things any better.”

  “Why?”

  He closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them. “I’m still going to lose Claudia.”

  If Bobby had loved Joelle as a teenager, Claudia would never have existed. They would never have had their wonderful daughter. “You won’t lose her, Bobby. She adores you.”

  “She went for a blood test.”

  Once again silence filled the car. The rain was falling harder now, drumming against the car’s surfaces, blurring the world beyond the windows.

  “If she isn’t a match, it’s all over,” Joelle said, wishing she could convince them both of that.

  “It’s not over.” His gaze slid past her and fixed on the silver shimmer of the rain. “She said he was her brother. Foster’s son—her brother.” He stared into her eyes, the sorrow and accusation in his gaze piercing her. “You told her about Foster, and now I’m losing her. You want me to bare my soul? Here’s what’s in my soul, then. I love you, Jo. I always have and I always will. But when you told Claudia that Foster was her father, you took her away from me.” He turned from her, once again staring out at the rain spilling down into the lake.

  “She loves you.”

  “She calls him her father.” He swallowed, his eyes distant, seeing not the scenery outside the car but something invisible, something inside himself. “I love you, Jo, but I wish to hell you’d never let Foster into our lives.”

  “He was in our lives all along,” she pointed out sadly.

  She felt Bobby’s withdrawal, a subtle motion, a slackening of his hold on her. He seemed to slip away from her like the rain slipping into the lake, water vanishing into water. “Yeah,” he muttered, nudging her back into her seat and reaching for the car keys. “He was, wasn’t he.”

  Joelle watched him, struggling to read his expression. For one fleeting moment he’d opened to her and spoken his heart. Now he was locking himself up again, sealing himself away. What she’d said was only the truth, but like the truth that he feared had cost him his daughter, this truth might cost Joelle her husband.

  Don’t close down, she wanted to plead. Don’t leave me. But he was easing away, drawing back, in full retreat. She’d had him for that one precious moment, and now he was gone.

  FOURTEEN

  Two weeks later

  “HERE YOU GO,” MONA said, entering Bobby’s office with a stack of application forms. “I put the three best prospects on top. One’s a college kid just back from a school program in London. He plans to make some money before he has to go back to college in September. The other two are cousins of Hector Cabral’s wife. Here legally. I checked their papers. They don’t speak English too well, but Hector vouches for them. They said he told them you’re a good boss.” She grinned. “You want to fire him for lying?”

  Hector had been working for DiFranco Landscaping for several years. Bit by bit, he was transporting his entire extended family from Brazil to New England, and Bobby had already hired several Cabral relatives. Over the years, he’d learned a lot about immigration law.

  “You ought to move on these soon,” Mona continued, placing the stack on his blotter. “You really need some more employees. The price of success, Bob. You’ve got more contracts than you can staff.”

  “I’m not complaining.” DiFranco Landscaping had landed a lot of jobs this summer. His staff size waxed and waned with the seasons, but this year the firm was in serious demand. He was desperate to add some more personnel, and he would.

  He eyed the top application, from the college student. The words made no sense to him; the letters were just squiggly ink shapes. “Something on your mind?” Mona asked.

  He shoved back the pile. “I can’t concentrate. My daughter’s undergoing a medical procedure tomorrow morning.”

  Mona’s eyes widened. “Nothing serious, I hope.”

  “She’ll be fine.” Bobby was reasonably convinced of that, even though marrow extraction was a lot more complicated than getting a tooth filled or suturing a cut. Claudia would be given general anesthesia, and then a doctor would insert a needle into her pelvic bone and suck the marrow out. Bobby consoled himself with the understanding that Drew Foster would hire only the best doctors in New York City to treat his son. The doctors would know what they were doing with Claudia.

  “If her procedure is tomorrow morning, those applications can wait until tomorrow afternoon,” Mona said, tapping the pile with her fingernail and giving Bobby a sympathetic smile before she turned and left his office.

  He dug his thumbs into his temples and rubbed, trying to stave off the headache that had been circling his skull all morning. Claudia would be fine, he assured himself. She wanted to do this. It was her choice.

  And he ought to review the applications and find some new hires.

  He slid open the top drawer of his desk to get a pencil so he could jot down notes. His gaze snagged on the photo of Joelle he kept there, and he paused.

  Despite the washed-out colors of the photo, Joelle glowed in her pretty prom dress, with her loose, loopy curls and her bright smile. She’d been so happy that evening, so excited about attending the prom.

  With Drew Foster.

  It wasn’t just the medical procedure that was eating at Bobby. It was the knowledge that Claudi a was about to meet her real father.

  Foster had arranged for a car to pick up Claudia that morning and drive her to the city so the extraction could be done in the same hospital where his son was a
patient. They were all going to meet with the doctor later that afternoon, ostensibly to discuss the procedure. She would spend the night as the guest of Foster and his wife and then get to the hospital by seven the following morning.

  Bobby couldn’t obliterate the pictures in his mind of Claudia meeting Foster, acknowledging their kinship and believing that she’d finally found her real father. No matter that Bobby had been the only dad she’d ever known. There was a bond between her and Foster, and once they were in the same room, it would blossom.

  Thinking about their meeting opened the doors to his headache, which rushed into his brain with booms and flashes of red. Damn. Claudia and Foster. Claudia and her father. Claudia and the guy who’d escorted Joelle to the prom the night that photo was taken, the night she’d worn that beautiful blue gown and worried about whether she had enough class to hang off the arm of a boy from the Hill.

  Bobby shoved the drawer shut, locked his desk and stormed out of his office. “I can’t work,” he told Mona, who peered up at him from her desk in the outer office. “I’ll review the applications tomorrow. I just can’t do it today.” Before she could question him, he swept out of the building.

  He was halfway home before he paused to figure out what the hell he was doing. His mind swam with images of Claudia and Joelle’s old boyfriend, Claudia searching the man’s face and seeing in it a reflection of herself. Bobby had tried so hard, since the day she’d phoned to tell him and Joelle that she was a match for Foster’s son, to be calm and reasonable about the whole thing. He’d tried to focus on his work, to make conversation with Joelle over dinner, to slip into the comfortable routines that had marked his days before Foster had barged in and screwed everything up.

  He’d tried to be the husband Joelle wanted him to be.

  But just as Foster dreaded the possibility of losing his son, Bobby dreaded the possibility of losing his daughter. And in his case it was his own fault. His and Joelle’s. They’d lied, and now they were paying the price. He hated himself—and he hated Joelle, too.