From This Day Forward Page 9

  “He’s an angry boy who needs love and understanding, Ginnie.”

  “He’s had love and understanding, Neil, but at some point he has to begin to be responsible for his own actions. We can’t go through the rest of our lives excusing his behavior because of what happened to him as a child.”

  “But did you ever excuse it for that reason?” He didn’t mean that. He remembered the look on her face the night they had returned from their honeymoon, the first time Todd had snubbed her. He’d seen that look again, too often. He’d seen it recently. He saw it now.

  He didn’t want her hurt. God! Surely there was something she could do. His talking with Todd did no good. Todd never railed against Ginnie. All he ever said was, Ginnie doesn’t like me, she doesn’t trust me, she doesn’t want me here. And while Neil didn’t believe that of her, he couldn’t convince Todd of the truth.

  “Have I ever excused him because of that?” How could Neil even ask? “Constantly, Neil. Constantly. From the first words he said to me in private.”

  Ginnie caught back a sob as she remembered the pain. “Do you know what they were? I never told you about that, did I? The first words your son said to me in private the night we returned from Galveston—I tried to talk to him about his mother, to tell him that I didn’t intend to force my way into her place. What he said was...what he said was, ‘Maybe you’ll die, too.’ But that won’t be necessary, will it? All I have to do to make him happy is pack my suitcase and leave. So don’t talk to me about excusing his behavior because of what he’s been through.”

  Her words chilled him. No! She had misunderstood, or blown Todd’s comment out of proportion.

  “Why would he want you to leave?”

  “I don’t know.” She was quieter now. Reflective. Subdued. “At first I thought it was so he could have you to himself. Now I wonder if it isn’t so that there will be no one who notices what he’s doing, who disapproves of what he’s doing.”

  “Ginnie, you act as if he’s some sort of criminal and I condone his actions.”

  “No. You don’t condone them. You just aren’t aware of them.”

  “And why is that?” he asked. “I’m not imperceptive.”

  “No, Neil, you’re not imperceptive. Just absent.”

  There. It was out again. He’d known it would come out, and if she resented his absences now, the campaign would only make things worse. But, damn it, what did she expect of him? He’d twisted his whole life around for her and still she wasn’t satisfied, still the wasn’t able—or willing — to make an effort to meet him. There was just so much he could do. He’d sacrificed his career plans, he’d sacrificed his law practice, and now it seemed that she wanted him to throw his son at a psychiatrist and wash his hands of him, too.

  “You say he wants you to go, Ginnie. He says that you want him gone. That you don’t like him, you don’t trust him, and you don’t want him here.”

  “God, Neil.” She sagged against the cabinet. “How did we get to this point? He said that I don’t like him. Do you know how much I wanted to love your son, how much I want to love him, but he throws all my affection back in my face.

  “No. I don’t trust him. I want to. Each time I think I might be able to, something else happens.

  “And as for wanting him gone...” She sighed. She couldn’t lie about this anymore, not even to herself. “Yes. Sometimes I think our life would be much easier if we didn’t have to contend with him. Sometimes I wish to God his mother were still alive so we could send him to her for at least a summer, so we could have time to ourselves.”

  She saw a betraying muscle twitching in his jaw.

  “But that doesn’t mean that I want him gone.”

  “You wish his mother were still alive?”

  Ginnie nodded, warned to silence by the chill in Neil’s voice.

  “And if she were, you’d ship him off to her? Like a piece of baggage?”

  “No. Not like a piece of baggage. Like a son visiting his natural parent!”

  “A natural parent who never wanted him. That was the problem, Ginnie. The only reason Ann fought for custody of him was to thwart me, and she did treat him like a piece of baggage. She never had time for him. She was always too busy with her men and her — her drinking and her trips to Vegas and her pills. If she had cared for him, do you think she would have committed suicide in the house, leaving him, a child, to find his mother’s body?”

  “Oh, sweet Jesus,” she moaned. “You never told me that.”

  “And you never asked. You never asked one thing about Ann. You never asked one thing about Todd’s life with her.”

  Neil turned from her, crashing his fist futilely against the kitchen table. And he had never told her. She’d always seemed too innocent, too fragile, to expose her to the sordid details of his first marriage and of Ann’s troubled life. So what did he do? He hurled those details at her in the middle of an argument.

  “Neil—I—” Ginnie’s voice was stricken. He tensed at her tentative touch on his shoulder. “I’ll try,” she promised. Her voice broke. “I’ll try.”

  She did try. In the face of Todd’s increasing belligerence, Ginnie exerted what she felt was superhuman effort to be understanding. In spite of Tommy’s weekly visits and Todd’s long absences from home, she continued to try. And if custodial care was the only thing Todd would allow, she swore she would give him the best custodial care she could. Gran had set an example for her a long time before. It was the only one Ginnie knew to follow. But clean laundry and home-cooked meals were things he accepted carelessly as due him, while the affection she offered he just as carelessly rejected.

  Todd still pushed past her to leave the room. The first time he actually made physical contact with her while going by her, Ginnie attributed to an accident. His shoulder brushed hers as he passed, causing her to step back, off balance. He was angry and defensive because she had been questioning him about his actions. Surely, though, it had been an accident.

  The second time, he’d been acting strangely — drunk, almost, although she detected no smell of alcohol about him.

  “What’s the matter, Todd?” she asked, concerned. “Are you ill?”

  “Oh, shut up!” he yelled at her.

  And this time when he pushed, it was with his hand, not his shoulder, and this time there was no way she could delude herself into believing it was an accident.

  “You’re always after me about something. Just leave me alone. Just leave me the hell alone!” he shouted as he stormed out of the house.

  Imagination? she asked herself. Emotion?

  “Neil,” she said late that night as she lay in the dark on her side of the bed. “I’m worried about Todd.”

  Neil tensed at the beginning of the familiar litany. What had she concocted now?

  “I think...” She hesitated, unsure of how to continue, because these were only thoughts, impressions, and she had no proof. “I think he’s — taking something.”

  Neil expelled his breath. First it was a psychological problem. Now it was a chemical one. Well, why should Todd be exempt from her rationalizations? She’d blamed all the other problems of their marriage on outside forces. Outside forces somehow seemed easier for her to cope with.

  “Go to sleep, Ginnie.”

  “I’m serious about this,” she persisted. “He’s acting more strangely every day.”

  “So it has to be dope? Did you think that would get my attention, knowing how I feel about the stuff? Leave him alone, Ginnie. For God’s sake, just leave the boy alone and let him grow up.”

  He heard her sharp intake of breath and knew full well that she would be crying silently. So she was hurt again. Once he’d have done anything he could to see that she didn’t hurt. Now — now pain seemed to have become a way of life. For both of them.

  He stared with hollow eyes at the shadows on the ceiling. So Todd was acting strangely. Well, he couldn’t blame him. The battle lines were drawn so firmly in this house they were almost visible. T
odd tore at him constantly now. The boy was troubled. He couldn’t ignore that any longer. There was a lot of Ann in Todd.

  But, God, there was a lot of him in Todd, too. Looking at Todd was like looking in a mirror, or looking at a picture of his own father. He understood his son’s insecurity. He’d felt it himself. And he knew, but didn’t know how to stop the fact, that Todd’s life was repeating his own frustrated, lonely early years.

  Neil’s father had left him to his own devices most of his childhood, only taking an interest when Neil strayed too far from accepted behavior. And in spite of the move to Pleasant Gap, that’s what Neil was doing to Todd. Ginnie could have helped. Why in the hell didn’t she see that she could have helped?

  But he wouldn’t abdicate. Not the way his father had.

  No. He couldn’t blame all of Todd’s problems on Ann. A lot of them had to come from this house. And from him. But he was frustrated in his inability to act, except in anger.

  Just like his father, Neil realized with a jolt of fear. Just like his father, who had spent the last years of his life paralyzed by indecision, going through the motions of life but unable to act on anything unless forced to, until one day he refused to be forced into action any longer. A heart attack was listed as the official cause of death, but Neil knew better. The man had decided not to hurt anymore. When he was not a great deal older than Neil was now, he had gotten up one morning, sat in his favorite chair and willed himself to die. Neil knew that, without question.

  He felt Ginnie shifting on the other side of the bed, turning away from him, with unspoken censure in her actions and an unspoken sense of betrayal in her tension. He knew that he had disappointed her, that he constantly disappointed her now, but, God, he couldn’t be strong for them all, not much longer. And yet, what right did he have to expect strength from Ginnie? At least not strength enough for him to draw from.

  Still, if she would just once turn to him at night, if she would just once comfort him. He almost reached for her to draw her into his arms, to take from her the comfort she seemed incapable of giving, to lose himself in the pretense that things were the way they once had been.

  He heard a strangled sob break from her. Even loving her, those damned tears would still be sliding down her cheeks. Even loving her, he’d not be able to get away from this awful, crushing sense of failure.

  He turned on his side, away from her, and some time later, much later, he finally slept.

  Ginnie could no longer pretend. The house, once her haven, daily more resembled an armed camp. Each of them seemed to be waiting for the other to say something, to do something that would propel them into the final cataclysmic scene. And it would be final. She knew that. For that reason, she edged around any possible conflict, drawing into a shell, trying not to see, trying not to hear, trying not to feel.

  And the final scene, when it came, came with such devastating fury that it was months before she could even bring herself to think about it.

  Ginnie was in the kitchen making piecrusts — Happy Homemaker, she thought, at least in appearances — must keep up appearances—when Todd came in through the back door. She glanced up at him. He didn’t speak. He just went directly through the kitchen. She shrugged but didn’t speak, either. A short time later, he appeared with an armload of jeans and underwear.

  “These didn’t get washed.”

  “They weren’t in the hamper,” she said patiently. “I’ve told you, I won’t dig through your room looking for your laundry.”

  “I don’t have anything clean.” He extended them toward her. “And Dad wants me at the courthouse this afternoon.”

  She put down the rolling pin, lifted the fragile dough and began fitting it into the pie pan. “I’ve shown you how to operate the washing machine, Todd. Now might be a good time to put that knowledge to work.”

  He looked at her for long, angry moments before dropping the armload of laundry onto the table, onto her piecrust.

  “Damn you, Todd!” The words erupted from her before she could think not to say them.

  His expression closed in a way so similar to Neil’s that she caught herself, biting back more angry words.

  “I didn’t mean that,” she said, shamed by her outburst.

  “You meant it, all right. You just didn’t go far enough. When are you going to ask him to make a decision, Ginnie? Isn’t that what it’s coming down to? Well, I’ll tell you, if my father has to choose between me and you, you won’t be the one who stays.”

  She fumbled for the clothes, gathered them in her arms, and, unable to face him, she whirled and went into the laundry room, threw the clothes in the washing machine not bothering to sort them, dumped in detergent and spun the controls.

  When she returned to the kitchen, Todd was no longer there, but she heard him in the house, and later she heard the front door slam as she dumped piecrust and unrolled dough into the trash. She washed the residue of flour from her hands and reached for her wedding ring, which she had placed in a small dish beside the sink. It wasn’t there, and her heart thudded sickeningly as she looked at the empty dish. She lifted the dish to look beneath it, but she knew it wouldn’t be there. Before starting to work on the crusts, she had carefully placed the ring in the decorative dish she kept beside the sink for that very purpose. She had not moved it, and no one had been in the kitchen except her... and Todd.

  She ran for the front door, reaching it just as she heard his tires squealing as he spun out of the driveway. “Oh— Oh— Damn it!” She beat her palm against the door. “How could he? How could he?”

  Without stopping to think, she ran down the hall, slamming open his door as she burst into his room. He’d just hidden it, she thought. Not even Todd would take her wedding ring not meaning to return it.

  Since childhood, Todd had kept special treasures in his desk, demanding utmost privacy. Ginnie never opened his desk drawers. Now she did, rummaging through them, searching frantically, one drawer, two, three, the cubbyholes in the writing top.

  She didn’t find the ring. What she found were almost illegible scribblings on sketches of such violence she threw them from her in horror. What she found were packages of cigarette papers. What she found was a jeweler’s box she had thought long ago lost filled with small, round, green seeds.

  Todd’s dresser drawers came next. In the bottom one, under his winter sweaters, she found a velvet bag that had once encased a bottle of whiskey now full of change, half dollars, quarters and a wallet bulging with paper money.

  What she found on the top shelf of his closet was a plastic bag from a bookstore in Little Rock, and inside that bag, not marijuana as she had half feared, but a rainbow assortment of pills in various plastic pockets.

  What she found was confirmation of all her accusations, of all her fears, and, God, she wished she hadn’t found that. But she didn’t find her ring.

  She carried the money and the bag of pills back into the kitchen and collapsed in a chair. God, oh, God, what did she do now? This would kill Neil. And yet he had to know.

  She shook her head from side to side as if denying what lay on the table before her. A picture of a twelve-year-old Todd playing with Charlie floated through her mind. “Oh, Todd,” she moaned.

  She knew Neil’s schedule. He had pretrial conferences slated all morning. He’d be closeted with attorneys and case files and other people’s problems until at least noon.

  Ginnie threw her head back and closed her eyes. If ever anything qualified as an emergency, this was it, and yet she couldn’t bring herself to disturb him, not yet. She sat there in stunned silence, her mind unable to grasp the full implications of what lay on the table, and watched the face of the clock across the room, watched the hands move around it, approaching noon, bringing the moment of confrontation closer, and closer.

  She swallowed convulsively. It was almost time. If she didn’t call soon, she wouldn’t be able to reach him until after lunch.

  The chair scraped across the floor as she pulled herself t
o her feet. Old. She felt ancient as she dialed the number, as she explained to Neil’s secretary that she didn’t want to interrupt him but that it was important, that it was vital, that he come home during the noon recess.

  The sound of tires in the driveway assaulted her ears as she replaced the receiver. Hastily, she grabbed the contraband, stuffed it into a lower cabinet behind some bakeware and slammed the cabinet door shut. One packet had fallen to the floor. She snatched it up just as Todd entered the kitchen.

  “I need my clothes.”

  “Clothes?” she asked numbly, not remembering for a moment the washer full of laundry.

  She told herself later that if she had been more attuned to him, she would have understood why he paced so restlessly, why his hands moved with quick, uncoordinated jerks, why his glance darted from object to object, why his words came so rapidly, but at that time she didn’t.

  “And I need my wedding ring.”

  “So?”

  “So give it to me, Todd. Before this situation gets any worse.”

  “What if I said I don’t have it?”

  “I wouldn’t believe you. I don’t believe you. What I don’t know is why you took it, but I want it now.”

  He grinned at her, a malicious little grin that only twisted his mouth, and thrust his hand into his pocket. He pulled out the ring and held it between his thumb and forefinger, turning it in the light.

  “What are you going to do? Tell Dad?”

  “Probably.” She held out her hand. “Give it to me.”

  He tossed it into the air and snatched it back in one quick motion. “I think you lost it, Ginnie. I think you lost it and you want to put the blame on me.”

  Suddenly, fear, like nausea, rose in her throat, but she couldn’t let Todd see that. He was, after all, still a boy. He was, after all, still under her care. She swallowed her fear and stood upright. Never raising her voice, never taking her eyes from his, she again extended her hand. “Give me the ring.”

  “He won’t believe you, you know. Why would I want to take your wedding ring?”