Authors: Donna Fletcher Crow
She got up and moved toward the door.
Tom sprang to his feet and gripped her arm. “Laura, listen to me! You don’t understand at all. Marla isn’t just a real estate agent. I need her.”
Laura wrenched away with a sob, her hands over her ears. “I said I didn’t want to hear it!”
He took her arm again and turned her to face him. “Well, you’re going to hear it anyway. I need Marla, but not in any sordid way you obviously have in mind. Marla is the investor backing this Kansas City project. Her family is wealthy—very, very wealthy—and she believes in the future of this investment.”
Laura blinked. “The project that’s supposed to put Marsden and James on a solid footing financially?”
“That’s the one. Clear over the top. Next stop, the big board on Wall Street.”
“But couldn’t you get financing somewhere else?”
“Probably—given considerable luck and plenty of time—two things we don’t have. If this deal blows, we don’t have a plan B. We’d have to start from scratch looking for a new one.”
“But there must be others.”
“Not of this size. We have some smaller things going, but even with the smaller ones, finding them and packaging them takes time and effort and nervous strain. Fine for me; I thrive on it—”
“But Phil …”
“That’s right. If we can reach his goal, he’ll retire and he and Lois should have lots of good years left. If not …”
Laura sank down on the sofa. What was he saying? That he had made love to Marla for her money? No. No matter how much it sounded like that, she could never believe anything so despicable of Tom.
But what about these other issues? What could she say? Everything inside her wanted to yell and argue that their marriage was more important than any business deal. She’d gladly go back to their presuccess days for the sake of having everything right—really right with Tom. But she couldn’t be so selfish. Phil and Lois had stood by them through all the lean years. And Lois had been like an aunt to Laura. Lois was the only person with whom Laura had shared her agony over her childlessness. She couldn’t choose her own happiness over theirs.
Things were coming at her too fast, much faster than she could handle. She had just begun to clear her own image of herself, gain some understanding of who she was and why, when she found she had to confront her mother. She was only a few hours clear of that barrier when she discovered she must also forgive and trust Tom. And now—accept Marla? Forgive Marla? No way.
She couldn’t even think about that. One thing at a time. There was too much to work through with Tom yet. “Tom, I’m not through this yet. Actually I’m sinking deeper. Won’t you help me? Won’t you see Kyle with me, please?”
Tom looked thunderous.
Her voice was barely above a whisper. “Not for your sake. For mine. I need help.”
Tom and Laura sat in the brown leather wingback chairs with Kyle across from them in a smaller chair he pulled around from his desk. Kyle looked so drawn and worried that Laura couldn’t help wondering if they should trade places, but Dr. Larsen was, as always, keeping the session on sound professional lines. “… that, of course, is the core of the problem—growing apart rather than together.” He waggled the eraser end of his pencil at them.
“And intimacy—physical and spiritual—which is the core and essence of marriage—can only be achieved by working together. Couples too often let their problems get between them. Then when they swing at the problem they miss and hit each other. You have to stand side-by-side and face the problem together.”
Laura was quiet for a moment. She so wanted Tom to say something. To give some indication of his feelings. But he didn’t. So she went ahead. “I think I see what you’re saying. You’re really talking about a whole lifestyle of love. That’s as much about working together as it is about loving each other.” She crossed her hands over her chest. “It’s like a—a vocation. Does that sound sacrilegious?”
Kyle smiled. “Not at all. A Catholic friend of mine says that loving intimacy in marriage can be—should be—a means of grace. He likens it to prayer in the life of a celibate. The great mystics—Pierre Teilhard, St. Theresa, Julian of Norwich—experienced a passionate, ecstatic intimacy with God in the higher states of prayer. It’s an exultation a husband and wife can achieve together in marital love.”
Laura felt overwhelmed, embarrassed at the thought of such complete abandonment and yet desired the experience even as she shrank from it.
I am come into my garden, my sister, my spouse: I have gathered my myrrh with my spice; I have eaten my honeycomb with my honey; I have drunk my wine with my milk: eat, O friends; drink, yea, drink abundantly, O beloved.
“It’s the whole concept of a sacrament—a visible playing out of the Divine/human relationship. We need to experience the roles of lover and beloved in human terms in order to be able to understand being loved by the Divine. The Bible is full of such imagery: God and creation, Jehovah and Israel, Christ and the Church …”
I rose up to open to my beloved; and my hands dropped with myrrh, and my fingers with sweet smelling myrrh, upon the handles of the lock. I opened to my beloved; but my beloved had withdrawn himself, and was gone; my soul failed when he spake: I sought him, but I could not find him; I called him, but he gave me no answer.
“In marriage man and woman are given the gift to love each other as God does, with God’s love working through them. First to each other, then to reach out to others around them—loving their children, church, neighbors. The husband and wife are transformed into living symbols of the God who is love.”
It all sounded so wonderful. And so far beyond her grasp.
O my dove, that art in the clefts of the rock, in the secret places of the stairs, let me see thy countenance, let me hear thy voice; for sweet is thy voice, and thy countenance is comely. Take us the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vines: for our vines have tender grapes.
Laura looked at Tom. What was he thinking? Were Kyle’s words reaching him? Was his silence rejection of the whole idea of love being spiritual as well as physical? If only she could know. Tom’s head was turned just slightly to reveal the line of his hair neatly clipped at the base of his head and the neckline above his collar. She longed to run her fingertips over that smooth skin. Then his hand moved on the arm of his chair and the broad gold band on his finger caught her eye. She put that there. That was her ring—her pledge—the symbol of her life with him.
“True marital oneness is a foretaste of heaven. It’s a glimpse of the glory of God. Sacramental intimacy, far from being shameful or selfish, is a means of bringing God’s grace into our lives.”
My beloved is mine, and I am his: he feedeth among the lilies. Until the day break, and the shadows flee away, turn, my beloved, and be thou like a roe or a young hart upon the mountains.
“The tender concern and self-abandonment of sacred intimacy must be the mark of your daily life—not just half an hour before bedtime, but in all those largely trivial encounters that gradually weave the web of your closeness. We’re talking about an atmosphere in your home, a total awareness of each other. Sex shouldn’t be an isolated event, but something a husband and wife do together in the same loving context that they do everything.”
The image Kyle’s words were creating in Laura’s mind was almost too wonderful to be contained—a home filled with quiet joy. “That’s absolutely beautiful. Doesn’t it sound unbelievably wonderful, Tom?” She rushed on to cover his silence. “But I don’t think I could ever achieve anything like that.”
“You can’t. Not on your own.”
No, but it seemed to be all up to her. Had Tom caught even a glimpse of the vision? “What do I—we—have to do?”
“Well, first of all, hearing this once is a nice start, but it can take years to internalize these concepts into natural behavior. You’ll need to continue with the psychological understandings and the healing you’ve begun. And always work for complete sharing and openness between the two of you in all areas of your life. Learn to think of the welfare and happiness of the other person first—never seeking
my
will, or even
our
will, but looking for what’s
right.
“It’s not going to happen overnight, or only during lovemaking. I’m talking about the constant state in which you live together.”
Tom sat so quietly he could be asleep. His eyes were shadowed, giving no clue to his thoughts.
Come, my beloved. Let us go into the garden …
“Laura,” Kyle’s voice made her jump. “A while ago you used the term ‘vocation’—a spiritual call. That’s exactly what marriage is—a spiritual call from your Creator to the joyful intimacy He created you for.”
Laura looked at Tom.
Arise, my love, my fair one and come away
. Her glance dropped shyly when he turned her direction. The idea was wonderful. But putting it all into action …
“Did an aura of desire exist between you when you were engaged?” Oh, dear. Now Kyle was getting directly personal. What if Tom walked out? Still, the question brought warm memories flooding back. She couldn’t help nodding.
Kyle answered her with a nod. “And that glow can be maintained. Better yet, it can grow throughout your married life. If you work together.”
Laura sat close to Tom on the drive back to the hotel. The reincarnation of that aura of desire they had once shared grew inside her. Surely it would spread to Tom. Surround and engulf him. With this they could build a shining wall of love around them that even Marla and her pots of gold couldn’t scale.
Laura snuggled closer. Miraculously, Tom put his arm around her. She felt the warmth of his touch spread all through her. And for the first time in years it didn’t end in a cold chill with the thought that this would lead to something else—something dirty. She could stay there, warm and comforted in the circle of her husband’s arm, savoring the rightness of it, secure that this was her place. “Tom?”
“Hmm?”
“What did you think—about what Kyle said?”
“Sounded good. All theory, of course.”
“But if we could achieve something like he talked about?”
“It’d be great.”
Laura let out a deep sigh. She hadn’t realized she had been metaphorically holding her breath for so long. It was all right then. Tom agreed. They would work together to build a marriage of shining radiance. “Oh, Tom, thank you! I so hoped you’d feel like that.”
“Of course. Everybody wants a good marriage.”
Back in the room he put his papers down. “Let’s get some dinner.”
“Yes!” Laura, who had just perched on the sofa, jumped up. “Let’s celebrate! And I know just the place.” She scrambled for her map. The Old England Inn would be the setting for their celebration—the setting for the beginning of their real honeymoon. The honeymoon they should have had seven years ago.
A short time later they entered the world of the Elizabethan coaching inn, and Laura felt that this moment had been worth waiting seven years for. She stopped just inside the door. “Oh, Tom, wait. Let me just absorb this.”
“It’s the time machine you’ve always longed for, isn’t it?”
“That’s exactly what it is.” Amazing. Tom understood. He was entering her world with her. Laura was almost afraid to talk for fear the vision would vanish and she’d be back in a world of fast food and computers. But even after she blinked several times, the vision remained substantial: the great hall all of heavily carved black oak; a high, copper-hooded fireplace with a roaring fire, guarded by a suit of armor; a wide, red-carpeted stairway leading to a leadglassed dormer large enough to hold several 16th-century chairs and sofas; and before them a massive refectory table surrounded by tall Jacobean chairs.
And the whole scene cast in the glow of candlelight. “Just look at those candelabra.” Laura pointed to the massive, branched candlesticks on the table.
The hostess in laced vest and mobcap had been standing back, but at Laura’s remark she moved forward. “A little boy bounded through here one day and said, ‘Oh, look! Plastic.’ I wanted to hit him over the head with one—they’re that heavy.”
Laura laughed. “That would have been a weighty lesson, all right.” She ran her hand over the table glowing with a patina raised by centuries of such touches. “Your antiques are marvelous.”
“Yes, this table was owned by the Brontë family.”
Laura withdrew her hand, fearful of desecrating so valuable an object, but the hostess smiled. “Everything we have here is absolutely authentic. The only reproductions are two chairs in the dining room, and they are 200 years old—reproductions of chairs that were 200 years old then.”
Laura and Tom entered the dining room laughing over the concept that anything 200 years old could be considered a reproduction. They were seated in a corner table by a window where English ivy looked in on them and the lamppost on the village green revealed stone lions crouching atop ivy-covered pillars marking the way to the Tudor village street beyond. And over and around it all, permeating every corner and pore, were the opulent tones of golden, baroque music. Laura relaxed in her high-backed chair, letting the sound flow through her. “Mmm, that music’s so rich you don’t need food.”
“You can get fat listening here—just like breathing chocolate at Roger’s.”
“That’s it—this sounds like Roger’s smells.” Intimacy, Laura thought. An accumulation of tiny, shared delights.
They were waited on by liveried footmen in black velvet knee breeches with white silk stockings and goldtrimmed red jerkins over white shirts. With a flourish worthy of his uniform, their waiter presented platters of pink-centered English roast beef and crisp, golden Yorkshire pudding surrounded by a colorful variety of vegetables.
Tom savored a bite. “Mmm, roast beef as a high art.”
“And what’s more, not one of the vegetables is limp or soggy.”
But far more wonderful than the food, the antiques, or even the music, was Tom. Her Tom, her husband, her beloved, sitting in the glow of candlelight across from her. Laura felt she could touch the special aura around their table. She was intensely alert to Tom, totally absorbed in him. And she felt this special rapport being returned to her as they held the center of each other’s attention.