A Hard and Heavy Thing (34 page)

He drew out his words like a moody teenager. “Wroooong. Wrong wrong wrong. Your other option?” He leaned forward again and smiled broadly, spreading his fingers and turning his palms up to show them it wasn't magic and that he had nothing up his sleeves. “Your other option is to be happy together.

“But, that's it. Those are the only two options. Be miserable together, or be happy together. Divorce is not an option. If we can start from that premise, we can work together. If not,” he shrugged. “Your loss. The bottom line: This is marriage counseling. Not divorce counseling.”

Nick looked at Eris. Eris looked at Nick. Staying together and being this miserable for the rest of their lives was not an option. Being happy seemed impossible because they were young and had not yet learned how to fight for each other. They were young and had not yet learned to forgive. But there in that little closet that the pastor liked to call a sacristy, they decided to try.

In that little room, they were more open with each other than they had ever been before. Nick finally yelled and let his frustration out. He recounted the whole messy scene for Pastor Bartles, detailing the hurtful things she had said. He explained how he understood the drinking was a sickness. He had seen her mother growing up. He had seen how Eris had tried to change so many times and he was proud of her for continuing to try. And it's not like he didn't have his own problems, Lord knows he did, so who was he to judge? He would patiently wait with her and hold her hair over the toilet for as long as they lived, in the same way he'd hold her hand in the hospital if she had cancer. In sickness and in health, right? But he made it clear in no uncertain terms that he could not live with someone who felt sorry for him.

Eris explained with tears and sobs that she didn't remember saying she pitied him. She had never pitied him. The scars were a reminder of everything that made him good and pure and righteous and bold. And she pushed the folding chair behind her; she actually got on her knees, put her head in his lap, and let her tears run onto his jeans as she pleaded with him to believe her. “If I did say that I pitied you,” she had said between sobs, “It was because you got stuck with a drunken whore for a wife.”

This admission, coupled with her insistence that she didn't even remember the exchange, made Nick feel like he should be the one on his knees begging for forgiveness. He had never wanted anyone else, and in fact, had never been with anyone else. Sitting there with her head in his lap, humble and completely broken of spirit, he couldn't help but push his own chair back and get down on the floor. There on his knees he confessed his own shortcomings to her with tears in his eyes so he could profess his forgiveness and receive hers. They embraced right there on the floor of the little sacristy as if no one were watching but God.

That is, until Pastor Bartles cleared his throat. “Okay, okay. Get off the floor. This isn't a Nicholas Sparks book.”

Pulled from the moment, they sat back in their chairs.

The old pastor raised a hand off the desk. He gestured in front of him, his hand shaking as if he were getting ready to throw the dice at the craps table. “This is all good and beautiful and necessary,” he said. “But it isn't that simple. This is only the beginning. The rest of it—well, the rest of it takes actual work. It's easy to say you forgive; it's easy to say you love; but to do it?” He slammed his hand down on the Bible, making them both jump. “To do it is a different matter. You must do it every day. Sometimes every hour.” His voice raised in a crescendo. “Sometimes every single stinking second.” He had reached the point of yelling. Nick imagined the fire and brimstone sermons the man must be able to deliver on Sunday mornings. “And you will both fail. Time and again you will fail and it will no doubt be just as hard in the future as it is now. Words are cheap. Tears are cheap. But sacrifice—taking action to sacrifice, to give of
yourself
to show love—to
show
it and not just say it—that kind of sacrifice—” He lowered his voice to a growling hiss. “Well, it actually costs something.” His eyes blazed and once again he made eye contact with each of them.

“Thankfully,” his voice ascended on an optimistic scale. “You don't have to do it alone.” He looked up. “Jesus Savior,” he said. “Jesus Savior pilot me. Our battle here is over, done, and won. Easy peasy apple pie. Nothing easier in the world.”

Sitting in that office with the blazing eyes of a man who cared nothing for their self-esteem, it did seem as simple as that. In a way, it reminded Nick of his time in the military. He was given a mission and feelings just didn't play into it. The truth counted. The actions counted. But the intentions? The words? Cheap. His mission here was to love his wife. He intended to do that.

When they had returned home, it still seemed that simple. That's not to say it didn't take work, but it wasn't complicated. Doing the right thing usually isn't complicated, Nick figured. It's just hard. Eris quit drinking cold turkey and started going to some meetings. Now she even had the idea to go to grad school to counsel other people suffering from addiction. They continued to meet with Pastor Bartles once a month just to follow up and hear what they needed to hear. They threw themselves back into the community of their own church—Uncle Thomas's church—with a vigor and enthusiasm they didn't have before. They spent more time in Bible study and more time volunteering. Even their lovemaking had grown more frequent and passionate. Things improved and, until recently, had never been better.

Then when Nick caught Kathy cooking the books and siphoning cash orders into her own pocket, everything exploded again. Nick refused to call the police and press charges; nor would he take her to court to sue for restitution. The issue had caused Eris to fly off the handle, but he would not bend, preferring instead to fire Kathy quietly, forgive her, and turn the other cheek. His compassion moved Kathy to return $763.14, but that was not enough for Eris, and it was peanuts compared to what she took.

The result was that Nick had to pick up the slack. He couldn't afford to hire anyone full-time so he worked insane hours trying to keep the doors open. He had a handful of bartenders and a short-order cook, but they were part-timers down on their luck, and he certainly couldn't trust them to run the place. He slept at home, took Sundays off for church, but had time for little else. He rarely saw his wife, and on nights like this one—nights in which she picked at everything he did, second-guessed his decisions, criticized the way he supported their small family, and essentially derided his humble inheritance—he felt the pain return. The old questions and insecurities nagged at him all over again. He slept without sleeping, the little earwig of doubt worming its way through his thoughts and keeping him from rest. She pities you. She pities you. She pities you, it whispered.

Eris returned home from work each day shortly after five in the afternoon. It seemed that Levi typically woke and got his day started slightly earlier than that. Nearly without fail, the shower floor would be wet when she returned. The chemical scent of a man's mountain fresh or cool spring body wash lingered in the air.

It had been Eris's habit to do a load of laundry every other day as soon as she returned from the bank, but with Levi living in the basement, she decided to wait for an opportunity when he wasn't there before going down to do her work. She didn't want to intrude on his privacy. During the first week, she came home and watched television. She made dinners that required little effort to prepare—cup of noodles, grilled cheese, tuna with crackers—and she went to bed without hearing a sound. Apart from the Blazer parked in front, there was no indication that she was anything but alone in the house.

By the following week, his odd hours forced her to go down there to start working through the mountain of laundry that had built up on the floor of the master bedroom. She carried a pink basket downstairs on her hip. Levi lay on his stomach in bed writing in a notebook. After starting the laundry, she stopped on her way back up.

She walked over to the bed and picked up a paperback,
A Farewell to Arms
. He looked up at her.

She wrinkled her nose. “Yuck.”

“You don't like?”

She shook her head. “He believes in heroes. His men are hopeless barbarians. And his women are fools for loving them.”

“You know nothing about it.”

She was not offended. She threw the book back on the bed.

“Who would you rather I read?”

“Danielle Steel.”

“Shut up.”

“Tim O'Brien.” She had read a lot of war literature since Nick had come home. Anything to learn what he was about.

He nodded and went back to writing.

“You sure write a lot for someone who doesn't want to be a writer.”

He looked up. “Do you want to be a boring old banker?”

She shook her head.

“You sure spend a lot of time working at the bank for someone who doesn't want to be a banker.”

He wrote. She lingered.

“War stories?” she asked.

“A love story.”

“Yeah right.”

“Yeah right?”

“There are no true love stories.”

He closed the notebook, rolled over, and sat up. “Trouble in paradise?”

She looked down, embarrassed. “Forget it,” she said. “I shouldn't have said anything. I don't know why I said that.”

He gestured to a folding chair in front of the bed.

She stayed where she was. “Forget about me. Are you going to tell me about your adventures over there?”

“We braided bracelets from parachute cord.”

“What else?”

“We played prison card games and gambled for cigarettes.”

“What else?”

“We started our Humvees and let them run. We checked fluids and tire pressures and lights.”

“What else?”

“We oiled our weapons.”

“What else?”

“We waited for the field telephone to ring, for someone to tell us we had a mission.”

“Did it ever ring?”

“Did it ever ring. Are you going to tell me why there are no true love stories?”

“Maybe I was wrong.”

“Or maybe you were right.”

“A true love story is never romantic.”

“It only instructs, encourages virtue, suggests models of proper human behavior, et cetera?” he asked.

She nodded sadly. “We're incapable.”

“You can tell a true love story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to selflessness and sacrifice?”

“And unhappiness,” she said. “A true love story must be full of much unhappiness.”

“What else?” he said.

“Another time,” she said before walking upstairs.

The next night she invited him up for pizza. He joined her, and he did not take his eyes from her the entire meal. Even as she looked down and cut her slice with the side of a fork, she could feel his eyes on her.

Finally he said, “I never expected Nick to come back here. I never expected him to go back to the pub. He hated this place. Hated that place.”

“Well.” She dipped a forkful of pizza into the little puddle of ranch dressing on her plate. “He's here. We're here.”

“But why?”

“Why ask why? At least that's what he'd say. He believes in the sovereignty of God.”

“I had a friend named Albie who would say the same thing.” Levi wiped his mouth with a napkin. “I never expected you'd be married,” he said. “I never expected you'd work at a bank.”

“I never expected you'd be homeless and living in my basement.”

He smiled.

They spoke of her plans to go back to grad school for psychology, or social work maybe. She marveled at the foolishness of how she spent her days looking at loan applications, enabling or crushing the hopes of normal people like her by plugging numbers into a formula. It was so pointless. Her life had taken her so far from where she ever expected she would go.

When she began clearing the paper plates from the table, Levi excused himself.

The next night they had spaghetti. He spoke of his lingering hangover. He commented on the improved look of the bar district. “I mean, it still looks like La Crosse,” he said. “But they really gave downtown a face-lift. Especially the riverfront.”

“Different bars, same culture,” she said.

“I missed it here.”

“You can keep it,” she told him. “I'm over it.” The way he stared unnerved her. She snorted like a cynic and looked down.

For a week they did not speak of love and they did not speak of war.

The following Monday, she gathered her husband's underwear, socks, and dirty jeans from the floor of her room. The hallway by the bathroom did not smell of shampoo or a man's cologne. When she carried the laundry past Levi's room, she saw that he was not there.

She microwaved a Hot Pocket for dinner. She held a paperback in one hand and her dinner in the other as she sat on the couch. She heard the door open and the stomping of feet.

Levi walked in and put his hands on the back of the recliner that gave the room shape and separated the hallway from the rest of the room. “Sorry I'm late,” he said as he looked at her with furrowed eyebrows that sought forgiveness. He said it as if they had a standing date. As if he had missed the family dinner. Like his constant stares, she found it unnerving, for she had never had a standing date with anyone. She had never shared a regular family dinner. She had never had reliable company.

“You're not late for anything,” she said as she kept her eyes on the page of her book.

“I got a bottle of wine,” he said. “When's the last time you had a good wine buzz? Whaddya say?”

She shook her head no.