She knew it would be unforgivable. Her mother-in-law would certainly never forgive her. Her sons would say they did, but deep down in their young hearts and in the corner of their hearts that would stay young and wounded until their dying days, they wouldn’t. How could they? Her husband, too, would be unforgiving, though in his heart, and not all that deep down, he’d be glad, if truth be told. If, for once, he’d allow truth to be told between them. Told today within these four grand walls that must have heard so many other hard truths and inconvenient secrets.
She was perched on the edge of a brocade chair in a manner her mother-in-law thought common.
“You appear, my dear, ready to fly,” she’d once remarked. “Rather like a delinquent debtor waiting on tenterhooks in the bank manager’s outer office.”
But no fault could be found in her schooled, erect posture. Her back was always straight, her shoulders always squared, even if she tended to tilt her chin, and thus her face, slightly downward. Some had deemed this a sign of modesty and innocence, others a mark of coquettishness and evasion, even falseness. Her husband, in the beginning, had called it charming. She would try, today, to keep her chin up.
When she saw the large knob in the middle of the wide door turning, she deliberately lifted her face, as if she were looking at a distant horizon. It felt unnatural.
He entered quietly, turned slowly to close the door behind him. He was impeccably groomed, as always, and his erect posture was every inch a match for her own. They’d both been well-trained.
“You asked to see me?”
She stood up, smoothed her skirt over her slender hips.
“Yes. Thank you for making time.”
He inclined his head amicably. He’d been well-trained in that, too.
“My day is rather full, but, of course, if you need…”
“We. I think we need to—”
“We?”
“We do have something in common, after all, Charles. Besides the boys.”
“Well, yes. Duty. Decorum. Neither of which requires discussion, I’d have thought.”
“Unhappiness.”
“What?”
“We’re both unhappy.”
She watched his expression shift briefly to anger, then pull back into neutrality. She saw he would not let himself lose control. He would not help her.
“Is that all?”
“Isn’t that enough?”
“Enough for what? Another solitary trip? One can be arranged, if that’s what you want. Some excuse can be made.”
“No, not a trip.”
“Really, is this necessary just now? Can’t it wait? We’re due at my sister’s for the weekend, you remember. Plenty of idle hours to fill there.”
“I’m not going to your sister’s.”
“They’re expecting us.”
“I’m tired of doing what’s expected.”
“It’s conversations like this that are tiresome. Tiresome and pointless.”
“We can’t go on like this.”
She saw his cheek twitch. He was struggling to stay calm and to sound calm, even though, for a change, there was no one there to overhear them, no one writing down or recording their words, no one photographing the way they were standing, not far apart but not close either, like two boxers before a bout when the referee was outlining the rules of the fight.
“We again?”
“I, then. I can’t go on any longer.”
“Yes, you can. And you will, just as I will. Because ‘like this’ is what we have. And you knew it from the start.”
“No, I didn’t. I didn’t know it. Did you?”
“That’s of no consequence now.”
“If you knew right from the start, why did you let it start at all?”
He raised one eyebrow and almost smiled. Amazing how a smile could denote sorrow as well as it could show joy or amusement. She knew, of course, that he had had to let it start. With someone, at any rate. She’d been awed at being the one chosen. She’d also been, in private moments, of which there were few, a little frightened. In the midst of an intimidating onrush of congratulations and questions, she had felt, at her core, a fraud. But he’d seemed sure and untroubled. Or stoic. She would let him be sure enough for both of them. That had been her mother’s advice when she voiced her trepidation one late night in front of the fire at the home she’d soon be leaving. Besides which, by then she was in love with him. By then, she’d begun to believe the fairy tale.
“You do dramatize,” he said at last.
She knew a warning when she heard one. Would he really dare bring all that up? The times she hadn’t wanted to go on living. Did he think he could shut her down that way? She took a deep breath. She could give warnings, too.
“You haven’t forgotten her, have you?”
“Oh, please. Suspicion doesn’t become you.”
“It’s rather crowded in our marriage.”
“Inevitably so. But not in the way you mean.”
“Will you swear it?”
“I don’t need to.”
“I need you to.”
“Or else?”
Here it was then. Her opportunity to announce that she was going to leave him. Her invocation of a maelstrom on both their heads. There would be a crush of attention greater than the one that had surrounded their lavish wedding five years ago. A meaner crush. She felt her resolve faltering. Their two little sons. Her mother-in-law. The eyes of the world.
“I only want us to try…”
He reached out his hand as if to touch her, but then let it drop to his side. Was it her imagination, or did he look disappointed at the turn she’d taken?
“Of course,” he said, turning to go. “We must try to do better.”
He didn’t say better at what. And he didn’t sound convinced, or even hopeful. She didn’t know it then, not for certain, but he hadn’t, in fact, forgotten the woman who’d come before her in his life, the woman who was waiting for him, whether she herself knew it or not. And she didn’t know, then, the paths her own longings would soon lead her down, the other arms in which she’d find comfort and release. Nor did she know then the number of things that would need forgiving and that would not receive it, at least not from either of them.
“Will we see you at dinner?” he said at the door.
“Not tonight. I have a function.”
“Oh, that’s right.”
“Charles?”
“Hmm?”
Forgetting, she lowered her head the smallest degree and gazed up at him in her usual manner.
“This isn’t over.”
“No. It’s not over yet.”