***
Shay came the next morning very early. I could tell he was aware that there was something different with me this time. I couldn’t talk to him. I felt a wedge between us. I wanted to lean on him, but I wasn’t able to forgive and forget him having a woman over to our house the night my daddy died. I wasn’t going to forget that he wasn’t there to protect me from Harrison. If Shay had been with me, it wouldn’t have happened, so I blamed him as much as I blamed Harrison.
“Callie, I want to talk to you. Can we go out on the porch?” Shay asked.
“No, we can talk in the bedroom.” I wanted nothing to do with the front porch right then.
“Shay sat down on the bed. “Callie, what are you going to do?”
I was standing by the window. I turned and looked at him. “I’m leaving you, Shay. I want a divorce. I’m going out to the house tomorrow to pack the things I’ll need for the kids. I don’t want you to be there.”
Shay tried to hug me, to touch me, but I pulled away. Not because I didn’t love or need him desperately, but because I had my pride too. He had crushed me when I was down. He asked me to go with him somewhere to get a 7-Up, but I just wanted to be left alone in my sorrow, so I asked him to leave. He could tell he wasn’t reaching me, so he finally got up and walked out the door.
‘Fight for me, fucker,’ I whispered as I lay on the bed. But the sound of the Impala’s glass packs just grew fainter as the car disappeared down the road.
Look Me In The Eyes And Swear It
I went home the next day to pack some clothes for the kids and myself. I didn’t take the kids with me. I wanted to get this done and then sit them down and explain that Daddy and I were going to get a divorce. I was packing things when Shay came into the suite. I will never forget the look on his face.
“Callie, don’t do this. Please, princess.” He reached for me. I started packing. “We can work through this if you don’t leave.” He stepped toward me. “I don’t want to be here without the three of you…” I kept packing without looking at him. “You’re coming home.” Shay’s voice broke. “I won’t let you go.”
“Well, that is something you should have thought about the night you invited another woman into our home,” I said. Tears dribbled down my cheeks but I kept packing.
Shay took my arms and moved me to the loveseat. He sat us both down and looked pleadingly into my eyes. “Please stay, Callie. I’ll move to the Big House and you and the kids can stay here. This is your home.” His eyes were filled with tears.
“Didn’t look that way the night my dad died,” I said matter-of-factly.
We sat there for a second in silence. Then I looked right into Shay’s face and said, “Shay, look me in the eyes and tell me you’ll never step out on me again.”
Shay just looked down. He wouldn’t lie to me, so he couldn’t look me in the eyes. He didn’t say anything.
I stood up and said, “Well that pretty much says it all. We’re out of here. I can’t live where I see you every day, you can’t ask me to do that.” Tears were streaming down my face but I folded my arms and stood my ground. “Now please leave while I pack. Just leave the house. I can’t think with you standing there.”
“No, I want to hold you, Callie,” Shay said stubbornly. “Please. I can’t live without you. I’m so sorry about what happened. If I could take it back I would.”
He tried to hug me but I stepped away.
“Fuck you, Shay. If that were true, you would tell me it would never happen again. But you can’t, so as far as I’m concerned, that makes you a fucker, Shay Westover. Now get the hell out of here until I’m gone, I don’t want you near me!”
“Callie, if I say it will never happen again, that could be a lie if I slipped, and I won’t lie to you. It would be a false promise just to get what I wanted, and that’s not fair to you. Less than a week ago I had a wife, kids and a happy home, now you’re telling me it’s all gone?”
“Damn right that’s what I’m telling you,” I told him. “Less than a week ago I had a daddy and a husband I thought loved me enough to be with me at the most horrible moment of my life. I had my dad thirty-six years, I had Marie ten months, both deaths are just beyond my comprehension, and now I don’t have a husband.”
I stepped toward him. “Where was my husband, my love, while my daddy was dying? He was having a beer on my sofa, in my house, with a girl!” I put my hands over my eyes. “Just go and I’ll be gone soon. Call when you want to see the kids, because I don’t want to be there when you get them. Now get out!” I yelled. “I never want to see you again!”
Shay looked at me a long while; then he walked out of the bedroom. I heard him go down the stairs and out the kitchen door. As I heard the car start up, I sank to the floor and just lay on the carpet sobbing, begging God to help me.
“God,” I whispered, “I can’t live without this man. But I love my daddy too much to sweep what had happened under the rug. Please help me. I don’t know what to do.”
I would spend the rest of my life punishing myself for not being woman enough for my Shay. I never hated anyone more in my life than I hated myself in that instant. I’d always known somehow I didn’t deserve a happy life. I lay down on the carpet in the sitting area and sobbed as I heard the Impala’s glass packs fade into the distance.
***
When I told the children about the divorce, they wouldn’t believe me, and I heard them crying in their beds that night. They couldn’t picture life without Mom and Dad together. They had always considered us the All-American Family. They were inconsolable.
They had this record they loved to play, called “Our House.” It went something like, “Our house is a very, very, very fine house…” I can’t remember the rest of it. I’d brought the record player and our records to Mom’s, and one day I found that record broken in a hundred pieces in the trash.
Thinking back on it, I am surprised I didn’t go back to Shay just for the kids. I wasn’t thinking clearly. Finding another woman in my own home the night my daddy died was too much for me. I couldn’t live with it. It made me too damn sad.
***
Shay would call the kids but I never talked to him. He would send Maggie to pick them up. We avoided each other at all costs.
I heard rumors that Shay was seen out with other women. I wasn’t surprised. I told myself he was a good man and deserved happiness. I just wasn’t the one to give it to him. I felt that a part of me had known this since the day I met him.
If you love someone, they say to set them free. If they return to you, then it was meant to be.
He wasn’t returning.
***
I enrolled the kids in Hudson public school. It was now going on four months since I’d seen Shay. Was I okay? Hell no!
At one point my mother came to me and said, “Kathrine, what can I do? You cry all night. I hear you crying out Shay’s name. I hear you begging God for Shay and I hear you asking God to take care of Shay and let him be happy.”
She put her hand on my shoulder. “Kathrine, you can’t go on like this. You don’t eat, what do you weigh?”
I was ninety-two pounds, skin and bone.
***
One day Maggie called and took me to lunch. She put both her hands out, palms up, right in the middle of the table, and I knew she wanted to hold my hands. I placed my hands in hers.
“Kathrine,” she said sadly, “Shay only sleeps at the house. He’s never there; he eats at our house and hardly talks. There’s no sparkle in his eyes. I know he’s drinking hard liquor. He doesn’t care about the business or himself. Kathrine, I don’t know what happened between the two of you, but I do know this: Shay can’t live without you. He’s going to kill himself drinking like that and driving. Is there anything I can do, honey? Just tell me.”
“Maggie, he made this bed for himself, now he has to sleep in it. And from what I hear, he’s not sleeping in it alone. You have to let it go, Maggie. I’ll be filing for divorce soon. I was giving myself a few months to g
et the strength, but I will be filing soon.”
Maggie just gazed at me sadly.
“There’s something I want to tell you,” I said. “Something I don’t think you ever knew. When I met Shay I was living on the upper west side, but Maggie, I didn’t belong there. My parents and I had just moved into that house when I started dating Shay.”
“Where are you going with this, Kathrine?”
“Well, Maggie, the truth is, I’ve never been good enough for Shay. He deserved someone from his station in life. Maybe this is the reason I’ve never been enough for him, because I’m truly not enough for him.”
“Where did you used to live?” she asked me.
“322 Oak Street.”
“Darlin’,” Maggie squeezed my hands. “I was born and raised all through high school at 214 Redwood Street. That’s two blocks from where you grew up. When I met Sterling, it didn’t matter to him. He saw me and he wanted me.”
I was totally taken aback. Maggie, the beautiful, sophisticated Maggie, had grown up where I had grown up.
“Maggie, if you hadn’t told me this, I would never have known!”
“Well, Kathrine, would it have really mattered? I’m still Maggie,” she smiled. “Beautiful Kathrine, it’s not where you come from, but who you become. You, my dear, are a wonderful person. You completed Shay. So whatever your problems are, Kathrine, never, ever diminish yourself; you have more class than any girl Shay ever brought home.”
For the first time in my life, I no longer cared that I was from the wrong side of the tracks. I was so glad I had accepted Maggie’s luncheon invitation.
“Now, Kathrine,” said Maggie, “with all that’s been going on, I missed your birthday, so I’m taking you shopping. I’m buying you a beautiful new outfit. You’re a good mother and you take such good care of my grandchildren.”
We had so much fun shopping. Maggie picked out the perfect dress: winter-white knit with long sleeves and a turtleneck. It looked like a form-fitting sweater and came up to about four or five inches above my knee. We accented it with a wide chocolate-brown belt and three and a half inch heels in winter-white with chocolate trim. Plus a beautiful necklace and earring set in chocolate with gold trim. Every woman knows, no matter how broken her heart is, it will feel a little better in a flattering new dress.
Now if I only had somewhere to wear it.
***
Let me tell you, divorce is lonely. Anyone who has gone through one will tell you. All our couple friends were originally Shay’s buddies, so I lost the husbands and along with them, of course, the wives. My friend Susie had gotten married and moved to Denver, Colorado, before Wessy was born. I hadn’t seen her since; though we did talk on the phone once in a while.
So when one of our old friends, Jenny, called and asked if she could see me, you can imagine how excited I was. It felt good to know someone cared. I made cinnamon rolls and a pot of cinnamon tea. I was so glad to see her that when I opened the door, I hugged her.
We had a small chat, and I will admit it was a strained chat, as I don’t think she knew what to say. Somehow I got the feeling she was glad this fairytale love of Shay’s and mine was over. She really didn’t ask how I was doing or seem to care. She told me a little about their new house, and I set out the rolls and tea.
“Well,” Jenny said, “I really can’t stay very long, Kathrine; I just wanted to run over because Troy and I would like to buy your and Shay’s bedroom set—since you’re getting a divorce.”
I nearly fell off my chair. “Are you kidding me, Jenny?” I said. “Our furniture is not for sale. Do you think our life is for sale? I haven’t even filed for divorce yet, and if and when I do, no one will be buying anything that belonged to the two of us. I’d burn it before I’d let someone else use it.”
If she thought sleeping in Shay’s old bed would be like having sex with Shay she had another think coming. Jenny looked at me, opening her mouth as if to speak.
“Jenny, I realize you’re not finished with your tea, but I’d like you to leave. I think you were totally out of line coming here with such a ridiculous request.”
I got up, went to the kitchen and asked Mom if she would please see Jenny out. When Mom came back, I told her why Jenny had come to see me.
“You know, Kathrine,” she sighed, shaking her head, “we’ve seen some pretty bad behavior in people lately. What is this world coming to?”
I sat there with tears running down my face. I thought someone had come to see me, and all she wanted was our bedroom set.
***
A couple of weeks later, Mom’s phone rang. I answered and it was Susie. She was calling Mom looking for me, because I hadn’t answered at home. Never in my life had I been so happy to hear Susie’s voice. She told me she was also getting a divorce, and that the next week she’d be at her parents’ house. She wanted to know if we could go out one night and catch up.
“Yes, yes,” I told her, excited. “I really need to see you, Susie.”
Before she hung up she said, “Well Kathrine, I’m shocked. I’d never have thought you and Shay could ever be apart. You’ll have to tell me everything.”
I could trust Susie; she truly was my friend. We made arrangements to meet the next Thursday evening at nine at the new lounge in Hudson, called The Blue Gill. I’d heard it was the happening place, whatever that meant. There was nothing happening for me, but I was excited to get out of the house and see a friend; and I’d be able to wear the new outfit Maggie had bought me.
I arrived a little after nine and so did Susie, so we did our hugging and crying in the parking lot. Then we went in and got a table. I was sitting with my back to the door. It was a nice lounge, with cute small round cocktail tables. A DJ was playing Sixties and Seventies music and there was a dance floor. It didn’t take long for Susie and me to catch up... We talked each other’s legs off. I was thrilled to hear she was moving back to Hudson. Now I’d have a friend.
“Kathrine,” she said at one point, “isn’t that Nick and Ron at the bar? Do you remember them from high school? I thought Ron was so cool.”
“I think so,” I said.
Just then they spotted us and came over to our table. The four of us giggled and laughed for about half an hour. Ron asked Susie to dance and she accepted. Nick asked me to dance, but I declined, saying, “Nick, I’m just too new at this. Let’s sit it out, please.”
“I’ve never seen you anywhere without Shay,” said Nick, “have you two split up?”
“We’re separated at this time but I do plan on filing for a divorce,” I told him. “But Nick, I don’t want to talk about Shay, it brings up issues I’ve not yet resolved.”
“You still love him is what you’re saying.”
“I’ve never stopped loving Shay and I know I never will. But sometimes people are not right for each other.”
Nick was looking over my shoulder. “Kathrine, I hate to tell you this, but Shay just walked in with some girl and they’re a few tables behind us. I don’t think he’s seen you yet.”
“Oh great, I need to leave. I’m going to slip out. Will you tell Susie to call me tomorrow and tell her why I left?”
I began to gather up my cape and purse.
“He spotted you,” Nick said in a low voice. “He’s standing up. He just picked his drink up—looks like a White Russian…”
Just what I need, I thought; Shay in a lounge with hard liquor, and me at a table with Nick.
“I have to go,” I said, getting a little frightened.
“Kathrine, here he comes.”
I began shaking on the inside. I had no idea what Shay would do. I remembered our one horrible New Year’s Eve at the club and the parking lot encounter.
“Well, well, what have we here!” Shay’s voice was hard and flinty. “My wife out with another man; isn’t that just hunky-dory. I’ll give you this, princess, you always look like you just stepped off the cover of a high fashion magazine.”
He was swaying a little as he
spoke. “And you,” he pointed his drink at Nick. “After fucking my wife, you won’t want to fuck another woman. As you now know, she’s the best.”
Shay stood there a few seconds looking at me, those big beautiful brown eyes sort of watery. I looked at him uncertainly and then he reached over the table and poured his drink right over the top of my head.
Liquor ran down my hair, down my face, Kahlua and cream on my new outfit from Maggie. I grabbed my cape and purse and ran out crying. I ran to my car and drove to Mom’s through sobs. When I got home I showered and went to bed, crying like a baby.
About 2 a.m. Shay called and Mom answered.
Samson and Sunset Page 31
