Richard returned to mowing, and she drove into the garage, closing the automatic door behind her. So what am I supposed to do now?
Heidi’s final bit of advice seemed to have more of an effect than Carissa wanted to admit because all she wanted to do when she walked into the house was fill the bathtub with water as hot as she could stand and soak until she turned wrinkly.
Locking the bedroom door, Carissa ran the water as high as it could safely go and then inched her way into the tub until the water was up to her shoulders. Her soft brown hair dangled in the water. Beads of perspiration streamed down her forehead. She stretched out her toes, and her breathing slowed to a less erratic pace.
If there was a sensation just past numb, this was it. She hadn’t felt this way since right after her miscarriage almost sixteen years ago.
As she let the steamy bath relax her, Carissa thought back on how Richard had insisted after the miscarriage that she get some help. He said he saw her spirit sinking into a deep, dark place. His idea of help, of course, was counseling.
Carissa went to two sessions and decided she was over it. Opening up to a stranger, no matter how qualified that counselor was, just didn’t feel right to her. She felt like such a hypocrite. Here she was, telling her husband she fully supported what he did and encouraging others to go to counseling. But when she had the opportunity, it didn’t work for her.
Instead, she ended up talking to her closest friend from church, who also had had a miscarriage. Together the two young mothers mourned, and somehow they both slowly were healed in the process.
Carissa tried to think of another woman she could open up to now about the conflict in her marriage and the loss of her job. No one came to mind. While her mom was supportive and caring, just like Heidi, Carissa didn’t want to open that family box of chocolates. Too many hidden fruits and nuts.
Fed up with her self-reflective session, Carissa climbed out of the tub and wrapped herself in a plush towel. From the closet she pulled out her most comfortable, airy summer dress. Then she stretched out on her bed and waited out the light-headed sensation that often accompanied her hot baths.
As exhausted as she was, Carissa knew that a nap would elude her. She had to talk to Richard. She couldn’t go another night curled up in the bedroom chair with nothing resolved between them.
Padding her way into the kitchen, she saw that Richard was seated at the kitchen table in his grass-stained jeans. The toaster was dismantled in front of him. All the main pieces were belly up on two dishtowels. Why was it that even in his off-duty time, the man had to “fix” something?
He looked at her. “Are you ready to talk?”
“I need to eat something first.” Carissa opened the refrigerator door in search of anything that would settle her stomach. Dry toast was the only item she thought she could handle. Some black tea with lots of warm milk might go down, too.
Pulling out the loaf of bread, Carissa untwisted the tie and took two slices. Then she realized where the toaster was—on the table in pieces. Just like the rest of her life.
In frustration, she threw the slices into the trash and stuffed the loaf of bread back into the refrigerator.
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m hungry!”
“Why don’t you make some scrambled eggs?”
I don’t want scrambled eggs. I want toast!
A sickening heaviness pressed in on her chest. After not eating all day, the only thing that sounded good right now was not toast but a milkshake. A Burgerville vanilla milkshake.
Grabbing a sweater and her purse, Carissa headed for the garage.
“Now what are you doing?”
“I’m going to get something to eat.”
“I’ll go with you.” It wasn’t an offer or a question. Richard was already on his feet, ready to go.
“I’m just going to Burgerville.”
“Fine. I’ll go with you.”
Carissa had no steam in her left to protest. She slipped her feet into a pair of sandals by the back door, and the two of them headed off to the local hamburger stop, just as they had done many times over the years, starting with when they were teenagers.
As they drove together in silence, Carissa thought of how different the summer night had felt only twenty-four hours ago, when she had stretched out in the hammock in the backyard, thinking she was going to leisurely read through her poetry book.
Then she thought of how different a night like this felt twenty-four years ago, when their love was fresh, and she thought she was living a poem. Back then they couldn’t keep their hands off each other. Everything Richard said intrigued her and melted her heart. Every look she gave him softened his expression.
That was then.
Richard pulled the car up to the drive-through speaker and ordered his usual Tillamook cheeseburger with extra tomatoes. Carissa ordered a vanilla milkshake. After two sips she felt better. Stronger.
As Richard pulled the car back onto the main street, Carissa decided she might as well get the inevitable over with. “I was let go today.”
Richard glanced at her and then back at the road. He looked at her again. “What did you just say?”
“I was let go today. Fired.”
It took a moment before he seemed able to respond. “You were fired?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
As she gave him a condensed rundown, Richard pulled the car into the parking lot of a used-furniture store and turned off the engine. Facing her, with his eyebrows dipped precariously, he said, “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I’m telling you now.” Carissa sipped her shake. The chill numbed her insides. She wished she had ordered the larger size and then realized how detached she was from the reality of this moment. It felt as if she were watching a play from the front row, rather than actually being the one involved in the conversation.
Richard’s response wasn’t what she expected.
“This isn’t right. This isn’t right at all.” None of his usual calm, cool, confident counselor demeanor remained. His expression clouded. His make-it-happen, fix-it list began. “Did you talk to Dr. Garrett? Did you remind him of your seniority?”
“No, I didn’t talk to him.”
“You need to talk to him. First thing in the morning. He can still reverse his decision. You haven’t signed anything, have you?”
“No.”
“You need to set up a meeting with all the doctors. Make sure Dr. Walters is there. Remind them of all you do for them. See what sort of adjustment can be made. Do they need to cut you to thirty hours a week until a new doctor is hired to take Dr. Walters’s place?”
“I don’t know if they are going to hire anyone else.”
“Find out. See what their plans are. You need to find a way to stay on there. Carissa, we can’t make it on my income alone.”
“I know that.”
He rubbed his forehead and stared out the windshield. She was fully aware that they couldn’t live on just Richard’s salary. Part of the reason was because Richard charged clients much less than the going rate. He also paid far too much for his shared office space, and he met with a number of clients at no charge “just to get them back on their feet,” as he had said more than once.
Carissa knew it would be of no value to pick apart his business practices. They had talked that topic to death over the years and nothing had changed. The conclusion was always the same. He was doing what he loved. He was having a dramatic impact on many lives. This was his “ministry” as much as it was his job.
Therefore, Carissa always took the high road. She acquiesced to carrying the larger portion of the financial load.
“I guess we’ll have to move,” Carissa said flatly. She hadn’t expected those words to pop out of her mouth. It was a fleeting thought, not one she had considered long enough to suggest with confidence.
“Move?” Clearly, it wasn’t the solution Richard was considering.
“I don’t see how w
e can stay where we are. How can we afford it? Even if they kept me on for fewer hours or if I got another job tomorrow, my salary isn’t going to be what I’m receiving now. Besides, I don’t feel safe in our house. Not after last night.”
“Carissa, nothing detrimental happened to you last night. You are taking one benign incident and expanding it into a global life issue. You are not in danger in our house.”
“How can you say that? You still don’t see the problem, do you?”
“I see the problem, all right. The problem is that you don’t trust me. For some reason, you’ve stopped respecting me.”
Carissa couldn’t believe he was saying these things. “Richard, you know that I respect you. You know that I trust you.”
“No, you don’t. You used to stand with me and support what I do. This is what I’ve worked for. All the years of school, all the hours I had to log before I could get my license. You agreed this was the door God opened. Why are you shutting me out?”
“You’re the one who has been shutting me out! You’re more involved in your clients’ lives than you are in my life. I’m the one who lost her job today, and you’re sitting here telling me I should support you! I have supported you. Don’t you see that?”
“You don’t support my decisions. You made that clear last night.”
“I was frightened. We had a prowler at our home.”
“I took care of it.”
“No, you didn’t. Not permanently.”
What followed was a volley of foul accusations that no two people who ever claimed they loved each other should speak. They kept at it for ten minutes, locked in the car’s confines in the vacant parking lot of the used-furniture store.
Exhausted and having gotten nowhere in their debate, Carissa leaned against the car door with nothing more to say.
In response to her silence Richard said, “You’ve given up, haven’t you?”
She didn’t know if he meant she had given up on fighting or if she had given up on him and on their marriage. Instead of answering, she just stared at him. Who was this man beside her in the car?
“We’re done.” Richard turned the key in the ignition. He backed out of the parking lot and drove home way too fast. Again, Carissa didn’t know the extent of the intended meaning of those words.
Are we done, Richard? Do you see our marriage coming to an end? Is that what you’re trying to say?
As soon as he pulled into the garage, Richard strode into the house. Carissa sat alone in the car, trying to make sense of what was happening to them. The engine pinged. Feelings of betrayal and confusion caused her to tremble.
Drawing up the small portion of courage she had left, Carissa went inside the house and headed for their bedroom. She was prepared to make peace at any price. More than anything, she wanted to feel strong again. She wanted to work things out with Richard and find a way to pull herself together. Then they could make clear-minded decisions about what to do next.
Carissa stepped into the bedroom and saw that Richard had tossed an open suitcase on the bed. He was standing in the closet, yanking his clothes from the hangers.
4
“E maliu mai, e Iesu
I kela keia la me ‘Oe
Pela no e ku’u Haku e.”
“If I falter, Lord, who cares?
Who with me my burden shares?
None but thee, Dear Lord, none but thee.”
CARISSA FROZE. RICHARD IGNORED her and shoved a pair of jeans into his open suitcase. No! The word caught in her throat and wouldn’t escape in a sound.
A flashback came over her, covered her, and consumed the room around her. She was twelve years old, cowering in the hallway of her childhood home with her toddler sister in her arms. Through her parents’ half-open bedroom door Carissa and Heidi had watched their father—their hero—jerk his clothes from the closet and storm out of the house while their mother shrieked and threw his shoes at him. He left without even looking back at Carissa or Heidi.
And he never returned. He never contacted his daughters again. Just like that, their father erased himself from their lives.
Carissa shook as she stepped into the walk-in closet with Richard. Her voice trembled, but she managed to form the words, “No. Richard, don’t do this!”
He gave her a stern look. “Don’t do what?”
“Don’t leave. Not like this.”
“I have to give my presentation at the ACFI conference on Saturday.” Richard’s words were firm and authoritative. “My flight goes out at two-thirty tomorrow, and I have two clients in the morning.” He shifted his weight. “You forgot, didn’t you?”
Carissa shrunk back, her heart still racing.
Richard tilted his head. “Wait a minute. What did you think I was doing?”
Carissa stammered, trying to come up with a way to hide her intense reaction. “I …I thought the Denver convention was next week.”
“It is. That’s the NWCA. This weekend it’s the ACFI in Sacramento. You thought something else was happening here, didn’t you? You thought I was leaving you.”
She was too upset to reply.
“Why won’t you be honest with me? You keep clammed up inside yourself all the time now. You don’t come out and tell me what’s going on. I have to try to guess or find out at Burgerville that you lost your job. You didn’t use to be like this.”
Carissa realized that, in all the years Richard had been her closest friend as well as her husband, she had never related to him what happened the night her father left. It had always been a memory too painful to bring up. And here she was, feeling the same emotions that had paralyzed her as a twelve-year-old, and she still couldn’t speak about them with the one person who could be trusted with her soul wound.
At least he used to be the one she felt she could trust with her soul wound. Now she didn’t know. Maybe Richard was right. Maybe she didn’t trust him.
When she couldn’t manage a reply, he said, “See? Even now you’re shutting me out. If you’re not willing to talk to me, then we can’t resolve anything.”
He stood waiting impatiently for her to explain herself. But she couldn’t.
“That’s what I thought.” Richard brushed past and pulled open his dresser drawer so forcefully the entire drawer came out. He let out a string of foul words, and Carissa turned to flee down the hall. This wasn’t like Richard at all. She didn’t know what to do, what to say. In the chaos of her crashing emotions, a single thought came to her.
You should leave.
Carissa heard the thought as clearly as if she had spoken it aloud. Such a solution to her pain went against everything she believed. Throughout their marriage, Carissa and Richard had studied the Bible together, listened to sermons, attended marriage-improvement conferences, and agreed at every turn that, since they both came from divorced families, they would never go that route.
Yet here they were, physically divorcing themselves from each other for the second night in a row while still under the same roof.
Carissa shut the door to the guest room and stood with her back pressed against it. She realized that she and Richard had been divorced emotionally for quite some time. That separation would explain the dull loneliness that ached in her last night when she was alone in the hammock. It was all coming into focus now. For the past year and a half, the two of them slowly had been pulling apart from each other. In all the ways that really counted, weren’t they divorced already?
If you moved out, you would only be making official something that’s already happened between the two of you.
Her logic made sense. Another empowering thought came.
You should leave him before he leaves you.
For the first time in many draining hours, Carissa felt as if some relief, some form of freedom, was within her reach. A strange sense of strength engaged her spirit and filled her with a new purpose. Self-preservation.
She curled under the covers of their son’s old bed. No tears came. Only sleep. Her exhausted b
ody barely moved until she woke the next morning. When she got up, Carissa felt oddly rested. Maybe the war had ended. No more battles needed to be fought today.
Opening the guest-room door, Carissa pattered down the hall to the bathroom. She could see that their bedroom door was open. Looking in, she saw that Richard wasn’t there. The bed was made, and his suitcase was gone.
Carissa no longer had a place to put her torn-up feelings, so she didn’t try to process the look and feel of the vacated bedroom. All she could think about was that she had to get to work by eight. She had to train Molly today. Then she was going to leave the job that for the past fifteen years had been the primary source of her income, her daily purpose, and for that matter, her identity. What she would do after that, she had no idea. But she was beginning to feel as if she had options.
Just then she heard the coffee bean grinder. Richard was still there. She took her time showering and getting ready for work and then made her entrance into the kitchen. Richard was sitting at the kitchen table, eating scrambled eggs.
He kept his back to her as he spoke. “There’s more in the pan, if you want some.”
Things were back to normal. This was how their lives had been for more than a year and a half. They were roommates sharing the same space. None of the smoke from their fiery arguments of the past two days seemed to hang in the air. Richard had gone back to his efficient self, without even questioning why she had slept in the spare room. Maybe what he had said last night was how he truly felt. Maybe he also knew that they were “done.”
Carissa pulled a plate out of the cupboard and stood by the sink, eating the rest of the scrambled eggs.
“I’ll be back on Sunday. I’m leaving my car at the airport because right after I return I’m going out to Gresham. One of my clients, a separated couple, are renewing their vows.”
The irony punched her in the gut. Her husband had once again saved a marriage. Not their marriage, but someone else’s marriage.
This wasn’t the first time Richard had participated in a vow-renewal ceremony. She had gone with him to two others and had felt so proud of her husband. At each ceremony Richard had lit up like a young boy who had just received his first bicycle. Both times he cried. Such ceremonies were the fruit of his labors, but this time she wouldn’t be with him to enjoy the moment. He didn’t even ask if she wanted to meet him there.
Under a Maui Moon Page 4
