Marriage Seasons 03 - Falling for You Again (27 page)

“Well, you weren’t,” she blurted out, hurt by his unfair accusations. “In the beginning, you were rude and crude and demanding, and it took me years to soften you into a nice person. George was nice from the very start. He knew how to give gifts, and you still can’t think of anything better than that old snow globe! When we moved into our first apartment, I was lonely and scared and terribly afraid I’d made a big mistake in marrying you. But George was always there, calming me down and drying my tears. When he went off to New York, I was pregnant, and it just about devastated me to lose his companionship. But then Charles Jr. was born, and life began to have meaning again. Things made sense to me. I understood what my purpose was. I finally knew who I was and what I wanted out of life. And I began to figure out how to truly love you. George and I stayed in touch for a while because we cared about each other. But it wasn’t love. Not like us. You and I are husband and wife, Charlie. I’ve always been faithful to you.”

“How can you say you were faithful to me when you had a secret boyfriend? You kept his letters and gifts, and you bought and saved every magazine that ever published his work. That’s not commitment. That’s adultery!”

“Adultery? It is not!” Esther squared her shoulders in defiance. “I never touched George or kissed him or anything. I didn’t commit adultery! How dare you say such a thing? I never got drunk and went into a strip club. You did! You’ve always kept one eye on pretty girls passing by. You’ve looked at catalogs with ladies in their underwear. I know you have. And you look at Miranda Finley doing yoga in her bathing suit too! Do you suppose I don’t notice those things? Well, I do. You’ve hurt me plenty of times with your wandering eye, Charlie, and don’t think you haven’t. I was friends with George Snyder, and so what? It’s no more wrong than you going into a strip club.”

“I did that once, and I apologized,” Charlie shot back at her. “I knew what I did was wrong. I admitted it, and I never did it again. But you’ve had feelings for that man for nearly fifty years! You never said a word about it. You kept it a little secret. A private thing between the two of you. That’s wrong, Esther! Dead wrong!”

She swallowed down her hurt. “But I wasn’t in love with George Snyder.”

“Then why did you hide him from me?”

“I knew you’d be mad—and you are. You don’t understand.”

“Tell me this, Esther. Would you like it if I had visited back and forth with a woman every day at work while you were home with the kids? How would you feel if she gave me little presents and wrote me letters? Don’t you know how awful you’d think it was if you learned that I’d saved her letters and notes and presents for fifty years?”

Esther hung her head. “I wouldn’t like it. But you don’t understand how it was with George and me.”

“I don’t have to understand. It was wrong for you to carry on a friendship with another man! It was wrong for you to have him over to our apartment and for you to go over to his! These letters were wrong!” He scooped up the letters and hurled them against the far wall, scattering them on the floor. “All of it, Esther. All of it was wrong, and you know it or you would have told me!”

At that, he stood, walked over to the stack of magazines, and gave them a kick. As they exploded into the air like a flock of chickens, he stomped out the door and slammed it behind him.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

C
harlie pressed the end of a strip of tape into the gray mudding compound and ran it down the seam between two sheets of drywall. Once he and Brad started this phase of the room addition, the kid had stopped spitting tobacco on the floor. Charlie was grateful. He’d begun to think if he heard another splat, he was going to wrench the kid’s head off and drop-kick it into the lake.

“You’re going a little crooked there, Mr. Moore,” Brad called across the empty space between them. He was mixing fresh drywall mud. “Try to stay straight, because I can’t mud over a wrinkle in the tape. It’s got to be perfect the first time or it won’t look right.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Charlie muttered. “The voice of experience. Mr. Perfection himself.”

“What’s that? Did you say something?”

“Just doing my job here,” Charlie said over his shoulder. “You got that compound ready?”

“Coming your way.”

Brad carried the heavy bucket toward the ladder on which Charlie was standing. As the younger man set to work on the next seam, Charlie stepped down and drew in a deep breath. He was dog tired, and there wasn’t a thing he could do about it.

Life simply wore him out these days. Especially with Esther acting so snippy and defensive. Since their conflict two days ago, she kept trying to convince Charlie that her friendship with George Snyder had been perfectly innocent.

It was going to be hard to work his way through this one, Charlie had realized. No matter what Esther claimed about the innocence of the relationship, it didn’t feel right to Charlie. A man and a woman alone together for hours on end. Talking. Giving each other presents. Him sketching her. Her crying on his shoulder. No, it was wrong no matter which way you turned it.

Last night, Charlie had driven Boofer around the Deepwater Cove neighborhood so many times the golf cart nearly ran out of gas. He kept thinking about Esther’s accusations—all the ways he had failed her through the years. Plenty of things came to mind. He’d been far from a saint, and she was right about his wandering eye.

Charlie had always struggled to keep his focus on Esther, especially during the times in their marriage when she had declared herself “not interested” in his affections. “Off-limits” was the way she put it. That didn’t happen often, but it was enough to frustrate him plenty. Besides, Esther had never been much of a go-getter in the bedroom. In fact, that part of their marriage had been something of a disappointment. Still, he deeply loved his wife, and he had learned to adjust to their different levels of desire.

Little had he known that George Snyder was always lurking in the background of Esther’s mind. Was that what had kept her from wanting Charlie at times? She had insisted that she and George never touched each other. But according to Esther, the artist down the hall certainly knew all the right things to do for a woman. The memory of her smile in the sketch made Charlie’s gut ache. She had never looked at him that way. What had George Snyder done to earn Esther’s eternal loyalty and unabashed adoration?

“I guess you heard what happened between me and Ashley the other night,” Brad commented as he slapped gray mud onto a seam in the drywall. “Seems like everyone is talking about it. I don’t even know why I’m working on this stupid room except to be able to sell the house and get my money back out of it.”

Charlie tried to focus on the young man. Willing away thoughts of Esther and George Snyder, he lifted the ladder, moved it down to the next joint, and began to unwrap the tape. Charlie had no idea how he could concentrate on anything except his own worries and frustrations, but at the moment, he had no choice.

“I haven’t heard anything about the two of you,” he told Brad. “I try to keep my nose out of other folks’ business. If you want me to know what happened, you’d better just spill the beans.”

“I’m not sure I can talk about it without cussing. I’m so mad I could just—”

“Give it a try, boy, because I’m in no mood for your filthy mouth.”

Charlie could feel Brad’s eyes on him as he climbed the ladder. Placing the end of the tape at the top of the seam near the ceiling, he began pressing it into the damp mud. Truth to tell, Charlie didn’t have much heart to serve as a marriage counselor for Brad Hanes this evening. Obviously he hadn’t done such a bang-up job as a husband himself.

“It’s all about Thanksgiving,” Brad said. “Her mother expects us to go to their house, and I told Ashley I’m not eating a turkey cooked by that obnoxious mother of hers. After working in the family snack shop for so many years, the woman can’t cook anything but chili dogs and onion rings. I told Ashley I figured we’d go over to my mom’s place but—right on cue—she burst into tears at that. Boo hoo hoo. ‘You don’t like my family,’ she says. ‘You hate my mother. You don’t respect my father.’ Blah, blah, blah. On and on until I couldn’t stand to hear another word.”

Charlie paused with the tape and reflected on the battles he and Esther had initially fought over Thanksgiving, Christmas, and the other traditional holidays. Those times had been nightmares for sure, especially after the babies were born. Both their families got involved, each putting on the pressure, until it began to feel like World War III. Come to think of it, that was one reason Charlie had pressed for the move to Washington DC and the postal inspector position. Anything to get away from their parents.

“So I go outside and I’m getting into the car,” Brad was saying, “and here she comes, running after me, tears streaming, sobbing so loud the whole neighborhood can hear. She starts pounding on the window until finally I roll it down. That’s when she grabs my shirt and tells me if I ever go to Larry’s again, she’ll divorce me. She says I’m a drunk. Hah. She doesn’t have any idea what she’s talking about. You want to know what a real drunk looks like? You should’ve seen my dad. Now there was a fall-down-and-puke-on-the-lawn alcoholic. He couldn’t hold a job. He treated my mom like dirt. He smacked us kids around. He used to—”

Brad cut himself off and spat on the floor. For once, Charlie couldn’t blame him.

“Anyhow,” the young man continued, “I’m not a drunk. Ashley has no right to keep me from Larry’s if I want to go. It’s my bar, and it’s where my friends hang out. People there treat me right, especially the women. I told Ashley that too. I said if she didn’t watch her mouth, I’d find someone to take her place. And I would, too, Mr. Moore. Don’t think I wouldn’t.”

“You really believe you could find a woman better than Ashley?”

“You bet I could! Ashley’s nuts. Crying all the time. Blaming me for everything. She says I don’t do nice stuff for her. Well, I bring home a paycheck, don’t I? You’d think she might be a little grateful for that. No, she just whines at me. ‘You used to take me to the movies, Brad. You used to buy me flowers. You used to dress up when we went out to eat. You were always so sweet. You always listened to me.’ Yakety yak.”

With his trowel, Brad dug a mound of mud from the pail and hurled it at the wall. The mud hit the seam dead-on, and the kid gave a victory whoop. “I used to play first base, Mr. Moore. Did you know that? And I was quarterback, too. There was nothing I couldn’t do back in high school. I was
it
. I was
something
. Ashley couldn’t get enough of me. Now, nine times out of ten she pushes me away. Says I’m mean. I’m too rough. I’m not gentle enough.”

Brad scraped the drywall mud as he spoke. “I told her, ‘I’m an athlete, you lamebrain. You expected me to turn into a ballroom dancer or a piano player once we got married?’ These hands are callused because I use ’em all day long. I work hard. Ashley says what’s the point in working so hard if I’m just going to drink up half my paycheck? But that’s a lie. At least I’m not buying beads and string and junk like that. I don’t know, Mr. Moore. If you ask me, it’s hopeless. After that fight the other night, I’m figuring I’ll get this room finished and put the house up for sale. Ashley’s already talking about moving back to her parents’ place. That’s fine with me. She can sling hamburgers and make necklaces until her dying day. I’m going to have a
life
.”

Stepping down from the ladder, Charlie ran the rest of the tape along the damp seam to the floor. He and Brad were almost finished with the mudding and taping, and it wouldn’t be long before they could paint. The room was really beginning to take shape, and Charlie had come to appreciate Brad’s workmanship and enjoy the camaraderie between himself and the younger man.

But this evening, Charlie could hardly even think what to say in response to the sudden flood of anger and resentment Brad had expressed about his marriage. How could Charlie blithely encourage another couple’s relationship when his own suddenly seemed to be hovering on the edge of a steep cliff?

“You’re never going to find a better woman than Ashley,” he said finally. “I can promise you that. You might find a different gal, sure, but she’ll come with her own set of irritations. You can count on it.”

“Not those women at the bar. They’re fine—”

“Good gravy, kid, you’re not serious about taking up with a barfly, are you?” Charlie’s ire rose as he spoke. “You want to marry some dame that can’t think of any better way to spend her time than drinking and flirting with married men? You’re upset because Ashley expects you to soften up and treat her nice. Wait till you hook up with a gal whose pastime is drinking beer and dancing the two-step. You’ll come home wanting dinner, and she’ll be over at Larry’s with some other man.”

Charlie shook his head as he continued. “You said you want to have a life, Brad? Well, you’ve got one. So what do you want out of it? You want to be sixty years old and still drinking at Larry’s? Married to some toothless hag who’s trying to look twenty-five? Or have three or four divorces under your belt? That’s the direction you’re headed, buster.”

The two men stared at each other across the darkening room. Brad tossed his trowel to the floor.

Charlie dropped the roll of tape into the toolbox. He let out a hot breath and pointed his finger at the younger man. “If you let Ashley get away, you’re dumber than I thought. Where to spend Thanksgiving isn’t important. Drinking at Larry’s bar isn’t important. Ashley’s beads don’t really matter, and neither do your hardworking hands. What matters is that you kids found each other, loved each other, and made a vow to keep on loving each other no matter what. Now get yourself over to the country club and apologize to Ashley for being such a dad-blamed fool.”

“A fool?” Brad’s chest swelled.

“Yes, a fool, and don’t argue with me. You called Ashley a lamebrain? You’re a total numskull when it comes to women. You’re even dumber than most men. So stop strutting around like you have the world on a string just because the floozies at some bar give you the eye. Any man can walk into a tavern and land himself a one-night stand. But you’ve married yourself a sweet little lady who used to think you hung the moon. You really want to be a man? Pull yourself together and hang that moon back in the sky for your wife.”