A Morning Like This

by Deborah Bedford

  “Often, we are convicted in our lives that something needs to change,” Nelson began as David sank lower into his seat. “But a man who hears and feels convicted of something, and equates that with having changed and done something about it, is like a man who sees himself in the mirror and then walks away and doesn’t remember what he looks like.”

  On the back of David’s bulletin, flat against a hymnal, Braden began to sketch timid outlines on paper. Desperate to break eye contact with his pastor, David focused on Braden’s drawing instead. At first he thought Braden was drawing a picture of a pitcher on the mound. But as the shape began to take form, David recognized a man crouched in a warrior’s stance with a huge belt, sword drawn for battle, shield upheld.

  A little boy’s picture.

  “The more we know our heavenly Father, the more we love Him. The more we love Him, the more we trust Him, and the more we trust Him, the more we want His advice and counsel. The more we seek His advice and counsel, the more He’ll give it to us.”

  David wondered what sort of a picture a little girl would draw in a church pew on a Sunday morning. Little girls liked to draw flowers, didn’t they? They liked those little houses. Or those big green scribbles of trees.

  He raised his eyes. Unbidden, they locked immediately onto Nelson’s. “You get stuck,” the pastor’s voice rumbled in much the same tone and manner as the thunder on the mountains the other day, “because you think hearing something and being convicted of it are equivalent to the doing.”

  Samantha’s face swam before David, the way it had appeared in Susan’s wallet photograph: sunny and irrepressible, her dark eyes studying him as if she could see into the core of his soul.

  Desperate, David squeezed his son against him in a stupid, transparent gesture of fatherhood and held him there against his will until Braden squirmed away.

  It wasn’t only the thought of losing his family that left David longing and afraid. It was the thought of losing his courage. Of losing himself.

  What happens to me, if I bury this? What happens to an innocent child if I cover my own transgression from the one it will hurt the most?

  For a moment, just one moment, David felt Abby’s chin brush against his shoulder and smelled a waft of her familiar perfume, the scent Braden called the smell-of-Mom. She uncrossed her legs, settled back, and placed her hand possessively upon his knee.

  The poignant mixture of Nelson’s words, of Abby’s touching him, of Braden sitting beside him on a pew, swinging his legs and doodling, pushed David to a chasmic edge.

  Trapped. I’m trapped. I jump here, and I die.

  The truth seemed to come from every part of him at once, crying out in silence from the back of David’s throat. It came from his heart, and from someplace larger than his heart, something beyond him that knew him to the very depths of his soul.

  You’re standing still, aren’t you, and letting mistake heap upon mistake? You’re standing still and letting rubble pile upon rubble.

  Here today in their pew where they sat every Sunday near the front in the center of the third row—today while Nelson’s sermon words pounded out over the loudspeaker—David felt the church members were surveying the knobs protruding from his backbone. They were measuring the flush of color that crept past the collar of his Teton Pines golf shirt. They were comparing the way he had clutched Abby’s hand last week, how she made a point to reach for him today, and how he didn’t respond to her now.

  Guilty. Guilty.

  God was telling him to do something impossible.

  And everyone would see his deceitful heart.

  Chapter Seven

  Every Sunday afternoon Abby called her mother, Carol Higgins, to have a weekly chat.

  “Oh, Abigail,” the woman said. “It’s so good hearing your voice.”

  “Yours, too, Mom. How are you? Have you had a good week?”

  “Russell Smith came over and painted the shutters this week. They look so pretty from the street. Much better than before.”

  “Oh, nice, Mom. I’m glad you’re pleased.”

  “Frank planted petunias in the big pot by the front door yesterday. Pink ones. They add such a nice splotch of color.”

  “How is Frank?”

  Frank Higgins was her mother’s second husband. It had been such a blessing, having Carol find someone special like him in her retirement years. Someone who would finally take care of her the way Abby’s father never had.

  “Oh, Frank is fine. Just fine. He’s out washing the front windows right now. I’ll go get him in a minute. I know he’ll want to talk to you.”

  “I want to talk to him, too.”

  Carol lowered her voice a notch, as if she was worried someone might overhear her. “It means so much to Frank, Abigail. Having you treat him the way you treat him—”

  “Well, I wouldn’t treat him any other way.”

  “—almost as if he were your real father.”

  Abby let this conversation taper off into nothing.

  But Carol found something else to say. “He didn’t wait to open those gifts you sent. He ripped into them yesterday, right after the postman left them at the door.”

  “Shame on Frank.”

  “And you chose for him real well, honey. Those huckleberry chocolates were just the thing. He’s already eaten half the box.”

  “Good.”

  “And to have Braden sign the card in his own handwriting. That was really something.”

  “I’m glad he was pleased.”

  “Honey, thanks for working to make everything right with him.”

  Oh. A sigh. Abby shifted the receiver to her other ear. “It’s like Frank is my dad, Mom. It’s easy.”

  At that, neither of them could come up with anything more to say on the subject.

  “How’s David, dear? Is he having a good day?”

  “I think so,” Abby said. “Yes, he is.”

  “Well.” A long pause. “I should get Frank.”

  “Okay.”

  “Honey—”

  “It’s okay, Mom.”

  “I know Father’s Day is always a hard day for you.”

  “Mother, it’s really okay.”

  “I’m sorry for the part I played in that.”

  “It’s gotten better. It has. I hardly think about that part anymore.”

  “Abigail—”

  “I just focus on David, Mom. I think about what I have to look forward to instead of what’s happened in the past. That makes everything a whole lot easier.”

  David pulled the lawn mower out of the garage. He yanked the pull cord as hard as he could and took morose satisfaction when it wouldn’t start. It meant he got to yank it again.

  He had been waiting all day for the “right time.” Only there was no right time to do something like this to his wife.

  Every time he went inside she and Braden would tell him, “Happy Father’s Day.” And when he wasn’t suffering through that he was remembering Viola Upter-grove’s shining eyes, that surreal, flapping butterfly, and her frail hand patting him.

  You have such a beautiful family.

  When the engine finally chuffed to life, he aimed the mower at the ragged grass with hawkish precision and went after the lawn. He made one violent slash past the window, then another, widening his course, the mulch shooting out like coleslaw around his ankles.

  He ran over a pinecone and took perverse pleasure in chopping it to smithereens. He shredded aspen leaves that lay like playing cards in the grass. Back and forth, on and on across the yard. On his last pass, he made a fierce right-angle turn and began again, cutting across the grain, one resolute swathe after another, dividing his lawn into checkerboard squares.

  His shoes were green when he stepped inside, and he stopped to pick up a grass clump that had stuck to the carpet. He wiped his hands on the kitchen towel and realized he’d left grass there, too. Oops. Abby would go after him for leaving grass on the tea towel. He tried to brush it off and made a bigger mess of it
instead. It left a green stain and landed in the sink drainer on top of clean silverware.

  “Abby?” He heard her tromping up the stairs from the basement. “I need to talk to you.”

  Up she came with her full wicker laundry basket in both hands, headed toward their bedroom to put clean clothes away. She balanced the basket on her hip for a minute and poked a strand of hair behind her ear. “What, David?”

  “Let me have that.” He tried to take the basket from her. “I’ll help you.”

  “You’re going to get green all over everything. These are clean.”

  “See, I knew you’d be worried about grass getting on things. I cleaned it up in the kitchen.”

  “I’ve got this.”

  “You sure?”

  “What is it? You’re helping with the laundry now? That’s a surprise.” She stood on her tiptoes and gave him an unsuspecting little peck.

  He hated that she was teasing him, hated that she didn’t have any cares or any awful intuitions about him as he followed her into the bedroom. “Abby.” He waited until she dumped the basket on the bed and began to sort through the laundry. Then he shut the door.

  That stopped her.

  She stood beside the trappings of their everyday lives—one masculine gray sock with a hole in the heel, her own frayed nightshirt, a tea towel from the kitchen that read “Kindness is a special art of giving with a loving heart”—and said, “You’ve shut the door. This must be serious.”

  He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t blurt it out and destroy everything they’d ever had together. Father, if this is what You want from me, then You’ve got to help me do it. You’ve got to help me know what to say.

  “What is it, David? Why are you staring at me like that?” Her smile shone unprotected, as happy and un-wary as a child’s.

  Braden and his friends went dashing around the side of the house. David heard skateboards rasping over asphalt and the slam of wheels on the plywood incline that he had hammered together beside the garage. The thump of a hard landing, the tumble of a fall.

  David picked up something to fold, some flimsy silk thing that he’d seen Abby wear underneath her sweaters. He tried to match seam to seam, corner to corner, but the thing slithered formless from his grasp like something alive.

  If he didn’t have anything to fold, he didn’t have anything to do with his hands.

  He considered sitting down on the bed before he told her. But, no. He felt more comfortable, more in control, standing up. “I don’t know how to say this, Abigail. I don’t know where to start.”

  “At the beginning.” She rescued the shiny silk thing from his knee and pressed it into a perfect, tiny square. “Just start at the beginning, David. It’s as good a place as any.”

  “This is important, Abby.”

  “Well.” He could see she was confused. Her expression became neutral. “Okay.” She waited. “Go on.”

  Lord. Is this the way it is with You? Giving up everything good I know in exchange for failure I deserve? Sacrificing something that I understand for everything that I don’t?

  Outside, the boys had abandoned the skateboards and turned on the hose. In the grass out the window, the yellow sprinkler threw up May Pole ribbons of spray. Braden ran through, the water beating against his bare legs. He skipped and yelped, running back for more.

  “They’re getting their clothes wet out there,” Abby complained. At first David thought she wanted him to tell them to stop. But he realized she was only talking, filling the space between them. “I’m not doing laundry again until next weekend. This is my only day.”

  David turned from the window, back to his wife, back to the awful matter at hand. “I need you to listen carefully and not to interrupt me with this.” There wasn’t anything he could say to cushion the blow for her. “Because I have difficult news.”

  She stopped folding and rested her nose in the vee between her thumb and her pointer finger. “Okay.”

  “I’ve gotten into… well, it can’t be helped, Abby. There’s going to be some trouble.”

  She lowered her brows. “Go on.”

  “It’s something you have to know. In order for us to…go forward.”

  “Okay.” She waited.

  He took a deep breath and launched. “I’ve had an affair, Abby.”

  “What?” For a moment she seemed disoriented, as if she had lost her bearings. She gave one half-witted, awful-sounding hiccup. “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.” She removed a pair of his socks from the basket and matched them, toe to toe, heel to heel, before she rolled the tops together, one inside the other. David had an absurd thought as he watched her: here was why he didn’t help with the laundry. He could never fold things quite right for her.

  “No. It isn’t ridiculous. It’s true.”

  She stopped folding.

  “Abby, listen to me.”

  She waited, those eyes of hers dazed, bewildered, still. “You’re crazy, you know. Saying things like this. It isn’t in very good taste.”

  “No, Abby. Maybe then I was crazy. But not anymore.”

  “This isn’t funny.”

  “I didn’t intend it to be.”

  She cocked her head to one side, staring at him, her eyes turning hard. Her face showed slow recognition, slipping into a mask that didn’t look like Abby anymore. “Suppose you tell me again, David. Suppose you tell me again and this time I won’t be stupid enough to think you’re kidding.”

  He could see a tendril of her hair that had escaped, curling against the nape of her neck. He wanted to reach for it and tuck it away from her face. Only, now, he didn’t think he had the right. “Please. I don’t want to tell you again.”

  “You’re lying—”

  “I wish to God that I were.”

  “You are.”

  David shook his head slowly. He branded her eyes with his own. “I’m not lying.”

  Until now it’s been a lie, Abby. Now, this time, it’s finally the truth.

  Slowly, methodically, she began to take the few pieces of laundry she’d folded, wad them up, and pitch them back into the basket one piece at a time. Each word she spoke was punctuated with tossed clothing. First the silk lingerie she had smoothed into the little square. The socks, landing like a Scud missile on the floor. His khaki shorts pinwheeling through the air, like some bodiless person turning a somersault.

  “Why are you telling me now?” In went a pair of his burgundy BVD’s. “Why on a Sunday, when we’ve been to church?” A washrag and the green shirt to Braden’s little league uniform. “Why, on Father’s Day?”

  When he answered, his voice was grave. “Because it couldn’t wait any longer. Because I’m doing what I think the Lord wants me to do.”

  She stared at him in disbelief. “You’re doing what the Lord wants you to do? The Lord?” He watched her draw in on herself, her body language tightening, her emotions pulling in. She gave one slight rock of her chin, one small robotic flick of her hand. “Well, then. Thanks be to the Lord,” and her voice gave one broken little cry, to be saying such familiar words when her heart felt so little. “I don’t know what we’d do without Him.”

  “Abby, I’m sorry.”

  Her face had gone pale. How he hated himself for the numb shock in her voice, the deadness in her eyes. “I don’t want to talk about this right now. I have to absorb this.”

  “Please.”

  “You need to leave me alone.”

  “No, I can’t.” He took one step toward her. Just one step. No more. “There’s too much at stake.”

  “I should say so.”

  “Things have gotten messed up.”

  “An affair. What does that mean exactly? Were you attracted to someone besides me?”

  He had the grace to look at the toe on his left shoe.

  “Did you… did you spend time with someone else?”

  “Please, Ab,” he said. “Don’t make me have to spell this out.”

  She looked deeply
into his eyes and he could tell she didn’t trust his words anymore, only his expressions, and she was trying to read the truth in him. “You didn’t. Tell me you didn’t—”

  Outside, Braden must have picked up the water sprinkler and aimed it. Spray pelted the side of the house and made them both jump. Water spattered like pancake batter against the windowpane.

  As powerful as Abby’s gaze had been to search him out, so was his need to break it and turn away. He refused to meet her eyes. “I did.”

  “When, David?”

  “A long time ago.”

  “When a long time ago?”

  “It doesn’t matter now, does it? It’s been over for years.”

  “It matters, David.”

  He struggled against himself, trying to wrangle a way to protect her from any more pain. He owed her so much more than deception. He owed her the truth. “It was nine years ago, Abby. I met her at the bank. She was a grad student spending her summer here and I…I got way too involved.”

  Her voice tightened. “Nine years ago?”

  “Yes.”

  He watched her counting back. “I was pregnant with Braden nine years ago.”

  “Yes.”

  “We were just getting started, David. We were practically still on our honeymoon.” She twisted one of his favorite Denver Bronco T-shirts into a wad, then pulled out a pair of his sweat shorts and yanked on each leg like she was unfurling a flag. “I was pregnant.”

  “I know that.” Even in David’s own ears he heard how feeble his story sounded. “If I had to do it again, Abby, I wouldn’t.”

  “That’s noble of you. Don’t you think you should have thought about it then?”

  Don’t say any more. He wanted to shake her. Don’t take us farther than we can go.

  “I just cracked, Abby. You were eight months along and I got…freaked out.”

  When does it stop? This hurting people?

  It doesn’t, the answer came. Never.

  Abby’s face had changed. She looked transparent, as if mistrust and anger and fear were waiting there right beneath her skin. “Did you fall in love with her?”

  “No. Not, that way, I guess. I just… well…Oh, Abby, she was there.”