From This Day Forward Page 6

  But there were moments. Ginnie and the other reporters gathered for lunch, sometimes for dinner, and shared tales of other assignments, or someone would recall a particularly good story another had written. Ginnie belonged with this group of people. Among them she felt accepted, welcomed and appreciated— feeling she had almost forgotten. Feelings that didn’t wane as the week and the trial drew to a close. They grew. And with them grew an awareness of the emptiness of the life awaiting her at home.

  Home? She laughed bitterly. Her motel room, impersonal though it was, was as much home as their house in Little Rock had been for the last year.

  And there also grew the awareness that no matter how much she loved Neil, she was losing herself in a morass of self-pity, frustration and neglect, and there seemed to be no way to save either her marriage or herself without destroying the other.

  As she watched the trial’s dispassionately told story of passions gone wild, her thoughts turned inward to her own passions, too long denied.

  But I can’t leave him. The thought so shocked her that she sat in stunned silence, missing an entire cross-examination. The witness was excused and another one called.

  Or can I? He didn’t need her, not really. If she stayed, she’d only destroy herself. She knew that.

  But I love him. Was that enough? Had it ever been enough?

  I need him. And she’d still need him, no matter what. But even remaining with him, she’d never have him. She might as well face that. He didn’t need her. Todd didn’t need her. Even Charlie didn’t need her. Except in a perverse way that had nothing at all to do with her needs. She could stay in the house and become withered and bitter—she recognized the beginnings of that in herself already—or she could leave. And maybe away from him she could stop the pain she felt constantly.

  If only there was some way to turn things around. But she’d heard the subtle warning when he’d told her about Ann.

  She longed for her grandmother’s ample bosom to bury her face against and sob out her unhappiness, for someone to be able to tell her what to do to make the hurt go away. But there was no one, no one, who could tell her what to do.

  The people on each side of her stood, and she looked up to see the judge leaving the room. The prosecuting attorney was smiling. The defense attorney huddled with his client. And Ginnie had absolutely no idea what had just happened.

  Friday arrived, bringing the inevitable conviction and the end of Ginnie’s week of respite. The reporters got together for a late lunch and a drink before the out-of-towners started for home, but Ginnie declined their invitation to join them. She’d already packed her car. It was time to face what awaited her.

  When she reached the interstate highway, though, she couldn’t make herself turn onto it. She headed her car south, instead, over once-familiar roads.

  The mountains spread out before her, gentle blue shadows rising around the rim of the valley. Her destination was a tiny town just over the first ridge. Once, she’d thought those mountains shut her away from the rest of the world. Now she saw them differently. They were a protective barrier holding back the harshness of the world.

  She crested the first ridge. The road hesitated downward before gathering itself for its climb up the second, and she turned off the highway onto a narrower asphalt strip. A mile later she was in the center of what was left of the small town.

  A pair of two-story rock buildings, boarded over now, remained to guard the shell of a third that had long ago succumbed to neglect and vandalism. A prefabricated metal building housed the town’s only business, a combination grocery store, gas station and bait shop for the nearby lake. There was a small red-brick post office, and a still smaller yellow brick building housing telephone-company equipment. A gaunt hound wandered unconcernedly across the street in front of her car. She had a picture in her scrapbook of the town as it had been fifty years before when the coal mines were still going strong and the rock buildings had held a bank, a hotel and a thriving general store. Otherwise, she would not have believed the prosperity that this town had once known.

  Ginnie turned off the main street. Two-blocks away on a small ridge, the house still kept vigil over the dying town. She slipped the car into Park and sat looking up at the building. Memories of the smells of homemade bread, cookies hot from the oven and her grandmother’s beef stew carried her back to the time when she had spent hours in a swing hung from a now-missing limb of the giant oak in the front yard and planned what she would do with the wonderful future awaiting her. A rusted car body now occupied the swing’s place in the midst of an overgrown lawn. What shutters remained on the upstairs windows hung precariously.

  Allowing the house to be sold in the probate of her grandmother’s estate six years before had seemed her only alternative at the time. The money had helped finance her college education. Besides, with her grandmother gone, she’d thought there would be no reason for her ever to want to return to the house.

  She brushed absently at the tear sliding down her cheek and eased the car into gear. There were no answers here.

  Two miles farther into the hills, on the way to a larger but no more prosperous town, lay a well-tended cemetery. Ginnie avoided the familiar white-frame church, taking the narrow road which bordered the outer perimeter of the graveyard until she reached a large pine tree. She parked, stepped from the car and walked among silent, ancient markers until she reached a plot outlined by a wrought-iron fence.

  She leaned against the fence, not opening the gate, and not going inside. A wild rose grew in one corner of the plot, twisted and leafless now in winter’s chill.

  “When you’re in trouble you go to family, don’t you?” she asked of no one. Well, here was her family—a grandfather she had never known, a mother and father who she remembered only as shadowy dream figures from her distant childhood, an aunt and an uncle who had both died in infancy and a grandmother who had been father, mother and friend to her for too few years.

  “Tell me,” she whispered. “Tell me how to make the hurt stop. Kiss it and make it go away, Gran.”

  Her grandmother had known enough hurt of her own. She’d buried her husband and her three children. But she’d found a calmness Ginnie had never understood, drawing strength from Mass each Sunday and nurturing a small child, in loving and caring and giving, teaching the child values she had learned fifty years before. You have to be true to yourself, Virginia. That was the important one, Ginnie knew. But the others—Home and family are all-important. The most important thing you can do in this life is to be part of a family. To love and to care for someone else is all there is once you strip everything down to its basics.

  “Tell me how, Gran,” Ginnie whispered. “I can’t do it alone.”

  There was no answer, only a shifting of the wind. A snowflake fell on her face, and then another, and another. She looked around the bleak cemetery and then back at the neat stones commemorating her family. They had a closeness—had it even in death—that she and Neil, and Todd, would never know.

  After a few brief spits, the snow stopped, melted before it even touched the ground.

  No answers. There were no answers anywhere.

  Ginnie got back in her car and reluctantly turned it toward Little Rock.

  Chapter 5

  Neil’s car was not at home when Ginnie arrived. Of course not, she thought bitterly. How foolish of her to have hoped it might be. A strange car, one long overdue for a paint job and nosing downward because of oversize rear tires, sat blocking access to her side of the garage. She parked beside it and lifted her suitcase from the back seat.

  The television’s blare was her only greeting when she let herself in the front door. She made no attempt to be quiet, but she doubted that she could have been heard over the din even if she had yelled.

  She set her suitcase in the entry hall, stepped around the couch and pushed the button on the television, silencing its clamor. She glanced at the clutter on the coffee table, at the four plates obviously just used and
left dirty and discarded in the living room. She heard laughter from the kitchen, as abruptly silenced as the television sound. She reached the kitchen door just as it opened. Todd and his three now-inseparable companions marched out. Joe looked uneasy, Todd, Barry and Tommy merely defiant.

  “What are you doing here?” Todd asked.

  She smiled humorlessly. She’d not expected a warm welcome, and she certainly hadn’t gotten one. “I live here. Remember? What’s going on?”

  “Nothing,” Todd said. “I’m spending the night at Tommy’s.”

  Before she could speak, he added, “Dad said I could.”

  She raised an eyebrow but said nothing. He pushed past her and led his friends through the house, slamming the front door on his way out.

  She expelled her breath upward and shook her head, trying to free the hair from across her forehead and the unwanted thoughts from her mind.

  “Welcome home, Ginnie,” she said to the empty house. “It’s so nice to see you again. The week seemed endless without you.”

  Her breath caught in a sob, but when she pushed open the kitchen door, it ended in an expletive as she surveyed her normally spotless kitchen. What would have happened if Mrs. Stemmons hadn’t come in each evening? she wondered as she realized that the mess facing her was all new.

  Potato chips spilled out across the cabinet from a ripped-open sack. A drying mess still recognizable as stew splattered the stove top and counter, while on the stove a pan held the scorched remains of what had probably been intended for dinner.

  Ginnie stood in defeat in the midst of dirty glasses and silverware, wadded paper towels, open cans of vegetables and spilled, half-empty pop bottles.

  “See, Ginnie,” she said finally in a small, tight voice. “You are needed, after all.”

  She grabbed a handful of the wadded paper towels to throw in the trash and as she did she noticed the bottle of wine she had bought weeks before for the celebration dinner that never took place. It was empty now, except for the cork, which looked as though it had been pushed down into the bottle. She retrieved it from the trash and set it on the counter. Had Neil done that? she wondered. It didn’t seem likely. He appreciated good wine too much to have ravaged the cork in that manner.

  But suddenly it didn’t matter. What mattered was the knowledge that she didn’t belong, had never belonged, and no matter what she did, would never belong. If all they needed was a housekeeper, they could hire one. A housekeeper didn’t have to feel responsible for anything other than tending to the mess a family made of their house. A housekeeper didn’t have to feel the pain of knowing that’s all she was.

  She couldn’t stay in this house any longer. Even the air in it seemed bent on pushing her out. She felt tightening pressure in her chest, her throat and behind her eyes, but she swore she wouldn’t cry, not now. She fumbled in her shoulder bag for her notebook. Her hand jerked as she scrawled the note. Neil, I can’t take it anymore. I’ll let you know later where I’ll be.

  She shoved the mess on the counter to one side with a crumpled dish towel and lay the note there in isolated splendor. Then she plopped the empty wine bottle onto one corner of it to hold it secure.

  There was no need even to go upstairs. On her way back through the living room, she picked up her suitcase and carried it with her from the house.

  She drove for hours, aimlessly, unable to decide where to go. Several times she almost took the interstate west, back to Fort Smith, maybe even back to the town where she had grown up, but she couldn’t bring herself to do that. There was nothing for her there. She drove through areas of Little Rock that she had never seen before, and she didn’t see them this time, either.

  Her mind played over all the scenes that had hurt her in the past year, but it wouldn’t stop with that. Then it replayed the good times. It replayed the moment she had held Neil while he slept and he had seemed vulnerable. It replayed the feel of his skin against hers, the taste of his mouth, the hard pressure of his body.

  And during that endless evening, she did cry, silent tears that streamed down her face. She beat the steering wheel in her frustration. She raged aloud at the futility of it all.

  After her tears dried, after some of the swelling around her eyes had subsided, she looked around trying to find out where she was. She’d gotten only as far as Jacksonville—so few miles. She pulled into the Holiday Inn parking lot, meaning to take a room, but went into the restaurant instead.

  She’d had no lunch, and no dinner, but she didn’t think she could face food. She offered an attempt at a smile in response to the waitress’s cheerful greeting and ordered coffee.

  Two cups, three, four later, she sat alone, the only customer at that late hour, and knew that while she no longer had a marriage, she couldn’t leave Neil with no more than a note.

  Ginnie parked in the driveway next to Neil’s car, hesitating before she let herself into the darkened house.

  The remains of a fire glowed from the hearth, but other than that, the house was dark as well as quiet. She stared into the glowing embers. How anticlimactic everything was, she thought. She’d just made the hardest decision of her entire life, and the person she needed to tell that decision was probably already asleep.

  She muffled a twisted laugh. How did she handle this? Did she make herself a bed on the couch? Did she turn around and leave again? Or did she go upstairs and say, Excuse me, I’m going to share your bed tonight but I’m going to leave you?

  “Where in the hell have you been?”

  Neil’s words cut through her rising hysteria. She whirled to the sound of his voice. Accustomed now to the darkness of the room, she saw him in the shadows of the wing-back chair. She watched the darker shadow of his arm reach upward to the lamp on the table beside him, and light pooled over that corner of the room.

  He looked awful, she thought as she finally saw him clearly. He’d shed his coat and vest and tie. His collar was open, his shirtsleeves rolled up, and his hair had lost its styled perfection and hung errantly over his forehead. A day’s growth of beard darkened his jaw. He held an almost empty glass negligently in his left hand. The scotch bottle waited on the table.

  “I asked you a question,” he said, and she sensed the slight slurring of his words more than she heard it.

  “Are you drunk?”

  He looked at the glass as though he had forgotten it and lifted it to his mouth. “No such luck, dear wife,” he said before draining the glass. “But I’m working on it.”

  He slammed the glass on the table. “Where have you been?”

  She had thought her decision hard to make, but the effort of making it had been nothing compared with the agony of now telling him of it. “Driving.”

  “Just driving?” he asked. “Was that safe?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Good,” he said, unwinding from the chair. “That makes two of us. My wife has been gone for a week. On the evening I expect her home, I come back to a disaster area and find this —” he snatched her note from the table “— under an empty wine bottle. What was it, Ginnie? A fit of self-pity? God knows, Todd left it a mess here. Did you sit there drinking the wine thinking how hard your life was, how empty your life was, how meaningless you life was? How long did you take to make that decision, Ginnie. One glass? A half bottle? All of it?”

  He splashed more scotch into his glass. “Well, here’s to some liquid courage.”

  He set the glass down without drinking from it. “Only mine doesn’t seem to be working, and yours has apparently worn off.”

  He walked to the fireplace and stood facing the mantel. “Oh, hell, Ginnie.” He gripped the ledge for long seconds before turning to face her. When he spoke, his voice reflected none of that brief burst of emotion. “Why did you come back?”

  At that moment she loved him more than she ever had, and she hated him for making what she had to say a necessity.

  “I thought you deserved more than a note.” There was no easy way to say it. “I w
ant a divorce, Neil. I won’t do anything until after the election, but we don’t have a marriage, and I can’t go on pretending that we do.”

  “A divorce. You’ve been around the law long enough to know that if that’s what you really want, there’s nothing I can do to stop you. But I can’t accept that we have nothing left.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Ginnie, you need a clear head to make a decision like that.”

  Did he really think she had been drunk? “I didn’t drink the wine, Neil. I found the bottle in the trash. And I didn’t make this decision lightly.”

  She felt tears starting again and was powerless to stop them.

  “We don’t have a marriage,” she repeated. “We don’t have a family. And no matter how much I love you, I can’t ignore that any longer. If I didn’t love you, I might be able to stay.”

  His voice was incredibly gentle. “You know you aren’t making any sense. You’re leaving me because you love me?”

  She looked up at him leaning against the fireplace wall. Maybe it didn’t make any sense, she thought. She tried to read in his face one sign to help change her mind. Not arrogant now, he seemed puzzled and hesitant. Her gaze traced the line of his shadowed jaw and rested on the cleft in his chin. Imperceptibly, almost, and so fast that had she not been watching at that instant she would not have seen it, a quiver moved across his face.

  “Oh, Neil,” she moaned. “If I didn’t love you, it wouldn’t hurt so much.”

  He pushed away from the wall and started toward her. She couldn’t move as he circled the couch and took her coat from her, draping it over the back of the sofa.

  “What wouldn’t hurt so much?” he asked, taking her shoulders in his hands as she stared at him, unable now even to speak.