Suburban Renewal (32 page)

My jaw trembled and my blood was pounding through my veins so loudly I could barely hear.

“He killed her,” I said aloud.

It felt good just to say it, to know it finally, once and for all.

“He killed the wrong person,” Nate said. “He told me not to do the same thing. He told me to leave the pills and go home. That's what I did.”

I looked at him then as the truth of what happened became suddenly clear.

“He took the pills himself,” I said. “It was suicide.”

Nate nodded.

“I found the pill bottle the next day. I threw it in the trash before anybody else could see it and suspect.”

I sat there beside my son, trying to take it all in.

“I thought Cherry Dale had killed him,” I said.

“Cherry Dale? No way,” Nate said. “Cherry Dale was too good a person. A good person would never have killed him. A good person wouldn't have even let him take his own life.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “You're not blaming yourself for that?”

Nate shrugged and shook his head, indecisive.

“I don't feel guilty anymore about him doing it,” Nate said. “I guess I've gotten past that. He was an adult. I was a kid. I never made him do anything in his life. I'm just saying that I let it happen. I should never have stolen the pills. I sure shouldn't have told him how ashamed and angry it made me because of who he was. It made me ashamed of who I was. Ashamed of who I am.”

“Ashamed? Nate, you should be proud of who you are,” I told him.

“Dad, I'm just like him,” he said. “I look like him, I talk like him, I act like him.”

“You mean you're like a heavy drinker?” I asked.

“No, you know I don't really drink.”

“So you're a braggart, a loudmouth?”

“No, I'm not really like that.”

“Are you incompetent with tools? Lazy on the job?”

“I'm good at what I do and I like doing it.”

“Do you beat the woman you love?”

“No, of course not.”

“Do you lie and cheat and take advantage at every opportunity?”

“Well no, you know I don't.”

“Are you in this world for yourself and to hell with anybody that gets in your way?”

“No.”

“Then you're not like him,” I said. “You're like me. You're just like me.”

I pulled him into a big hug. Dads don't get to hug their sons enough and that's what I wanted to do, just hold him safe in my arms.

“You're like me, Nate,” I told him. “You're like me. I don't know if my father had crappy genes or if he was abused as a kid. He never said, I just don't know. I
guess I won't know. But he didn't raise me. Gram raised me. She raised me to be a decent, upright kind of guy and that's the kind of guy I've tried to be. Nate, I raised you to be that kind of guy, too.”

2002

C
oming into the kitchen that morning, I felt antsy, disturbed, restless. It was a morning that demanded something. Change was in the air.

The house, Gram's house, our house was quiet these days, empty. Nate had moved his business to a warehouse in north Tulsa. And he'd moved himself to an apartment closer to Jin and Makayla. They were not back together, but a happy, active three-year-old could easily consume all the love, energy and patience of two parents.

Jin had switched her major to computer engineering and finished her degree with honors. Her graduation, unfortunately, coincided with the bubble burst of the technology industry. She had managed to keep her job with WorldCom, one of the big new tech employers in Tulsa, but it was an uncertain time.

Lauren and Gilk were expecting their first child. They were both excited and happy. I was, too, but I felt a bit disconnected from the process. When Jin was pregnant with Makayla, I'd been right there for everything. Now, with my own daughter, I only got weekend visits every few weeks and reports on the phone.

My business was both a smashing success and a co
lossal failure. My ideas, my philosophy, my designs, even my name was known throughout the education community. I was frequently asked to give presentations and speeches—I was nationally lauded as an innovator. But I barely brought in enough income to cover my expenses.

Not that there wasn't money to be made. A number of commercial concerns had cheerfully ripped off things available for free on my Web site, repackaged them, revved up some expensive marketing and sold them at a nice profit.

This was annoying, and I tried to get my ego past it. What I'd wanted was to make a difference. That had happened. That I didn't get credit, or get rich on the deal, well, that would have just been gravy, anyway.

But thank God for tamales! If it had not been for Sam's business, I would never have been able to pursue my dreams.

He'd almost sold out the last year. Investors, looking for a safe place to stash their money, had offered Sam two million dollars to buy the business outright. We'd both gotten eyes as big as saucers. Considering the debt that we owed for expansion, the rising costs of operation and the slim, but steady, profit he was pulling in, it was a very generous offer.

I was already planning European vacations, an updated wardrobe and a flashy new car when Sam told me he was turning it down.

“What would I do?” he asked me. “This is what I know. This is what I like. This pays me to get up every morning and go to work.”

“Lots of men would give a lot to retire in their mid-forties and live off their investments,” I pointed out.

He shook his head. “I've been out of work. I sat out
years without a job to go to. I don't see that as a reward.”

As a compromise, he took on a partner, someone to help manage the day-to-day operations. Celia Garner was the daughter of one of our former employees. Loretta had been partially blinded by flying glass during the tornado. Though she had worked on and off since then, she'd never regained her vision and had taken disability retirement. Her youngest daughter, Celia, had just earned her degree in hotel and restaurant management. I was pretty sure that she was taking this opportunity with
Okie Tamales
to get some experience and save up some capital to start something of her own. But that was not a bad thing, and it did give Sam time to take a few trips and learn to play golf. And to pass off, to someone younger, those long hours required by a small business.

It was a good life. It hadn't always been easy. Sometimes it was still a struggle, but it was good.

As I poured my coffee in the kitchen that had once been Gram's, I thought about our past. And I wondered about the future.

Sam was sitting on the deck by the pool, reading the paper. He was a handsome guy, maybe more now than when he was young. Back then all the guys looked good. Not all of them had held up as well. I guess that was where that Braydon blood came in. They were attractive people, Floyd, Sam, Nate.

A trim, good-looking guy in his midforties with a decent amount of money and a likable disposition. I figured that in the dating market, some shrewd thirty-something divorcée would snap him up in twenty minutes and thank her lucky stars for the rest of her life. He'd provide for her, dote on her, do for her. He'd
be a great stepfather for her troubled kids from the bad first marriage. He'd show up for their soccer games and make sure there was plenty of money for them to go to college. He'd do it without ever expecting even an acknowledgment of his effort.

Sam was a good deal any way you sliced it. I was not unaware of that fact. It just didn't figure into my thinking that morning.

I carried my coffee out to the deck. He leaned over to give me a good-morning kiss and handed me the Lifestyle section of the newspaper. I sat down in the chair across from his.

“Do you know what today is?” I asked him.

He got that deer-in-the-headlights look and quickly checked the date on his watch. He looked up at me, clearly puzzled.

“Well, it's not our anniversary or anyone's birthday,” he said.

I knew there wasn't any way that he would guess.

“It was twenty-five years ago today that I came home from college and told you that I was pregnant.”

“Aah,” he said, drawing the sound out and nodding.

“What do you think about us renewing our wedding vows?” I asked him.

His brow furrowed. “You want to renew our wedding vows?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Like one of those anniversary things? With wedding clothes and a cake and all that?”

“I don't care about the clothes or the cake,” I told him. “I'd just like us to repledge our vows.”

“You want me to
plight my troth
again?” he asked with a chuckle.

“People don't say that these days,” I said. “We'd make up our own vows, say it the way that has meaning for us.”

Sam's body language was all squirmy and uncomfortable. “Why would we want to do that?” he asked.

“To make it clear that we're together because we want to be,” I answered.

He shrugged off the suggestion. “I'm here. I'm married to you,” he told me. “
Because I want to be
goes without saying.”

I raised my chin, determined to be demanding. This was important.

“The way I see it,” I said. “We either renew our vows and start this marriage all over again or we just call it quits and get a divorce.”

From the stunned look on his face, I was sure my statement was unexpected.

“I didn't realize that you were unhappy,” he said very carefully.

“I'm not unhappy,” I told him. “How could I be? I have a great career, two healthy, well-adjusted kids and a wonderful home. I'm emotionally stable and financially secure. Any woman who has all that can't possibly get away with saying she's unhappy.”

“Usually when the
D
word is mentioned, it's because something is terribly wrong,” he said. “If you're not unhappy then why has it dropped in today?”

It wasn't that easy to explain. I took a sip of coffee and then looked thoughtfully into the eyes of the man who had been my partner for more than half of my life.

“Things are different now, Sam,” I said. “With Lauren married and starting a family, and Nate as settled as he probably will ever be, it's as if we've suddenly got our lives back as our own.”

“We've worked hard, we've done our job as parents and, knock on wood, they've both turned out okay,” he said. “We have every reason to be proud of that. And I'd say we've earned some life on our own.”

“I agree, I totally agree,” I told him. “But it's like a door is opening to a whole new life. That old life, those young kids with young kids, they've grown up now. They've gone after what they wanted. Sometimes they succeeded, sometimes they failed. But that's yesterday. Today it's you and me and a whole new future out there.”

“That's a good thing,” Sam pointed out.

“I'm not disputing that,” I said. “But a marriage can't live on memories alone. It's like the tornado going through downtown. Things change. They will never be tomorrow what they were yesterday.”

“Of course not,” he agreed. “I hope you're not thinking that we're stuck in some kind of rut, because we're not. Both of us are different now than we were when we married.”

“My point exactly,” I said. “We are different. The things we want are different and the world that we live in is different. My question is, do we want to spend the next phase of our different life together, or on our own?”

“Corrie, I can't even imagine my not being with you,” Sam said.

“Well, try,” I told him. “Try to imagine that you just met me today, now, this morning,” I asked him. “Would you choose to be married to me?”

“Of course,” he answered too quickly.

“No, think about it,” I insisted. “If we were total strangers, just starting out on our own in our midfor
ties, would you want to date me, sleep with me, spend the rest of your life with me?”

“How can I know?” he answered. “If I hadn't married you, I don't know what kind of guy I'd be. And I don't know what kind of woman you'd be if you'd spent the last twenty-five years somewhere else.”

“Okay, that's a fair enough answer,” I admitted. “But I have to let you know, I'm not sure that I'm willing to spend the next twenty-five years with you if our only reason for being together is that we always have been.”

His brow furrowed with genuine concern.

“Was my pregnancy the only reason that you married me? Can you even remember how you used to feel about me?”

Sam sat there for a long moment just looking at me. For both of us, it was as if our whole lives together were flashing before our eyes. An assault of memories, sweet and sad, special and ordinary. Twenty-five years of being man and wife.

“This is amazing,” he said finally, his expression incredulous.

“What?”

“It's amazing that after all this time, being together year after year after year, we still don't know each other any better than this,” he said.

“Oh?”

He leaned forward and took my hand in his own. With his finger he traced the little gold band on my left hand. Then he looked up into my eyes.

“Corrie, being pregnant was your reason for marrying me,” he said. “It was never my reason for marrying you.”

“It was.”

“It was not,” he insisted. “I married you because I was given a chance to. It was clear to me, even young and crazy and shortsighted as I was back then, that if my life, with all its tragic baggage and uncertain potential, was linked with yours, then nothing we'd face could ever defeat us.”

The openness and honesty of his statement nearly took my breath away. “I knew then, like I know now, that you're out of my league,” he continued. “You could have had any guy—smart guys, rich guys, important guys. I'm not oblivious to the treasure that you are, Corrie. The day you told me you were going to have my baby, I didn't feel scared or trapped or any of those emotions guys are supposed to feel. I was elated! I thought you'd come to tell me that you'd fallen for somebody else. That's what I expected. That you would dump me for somebody who was smart and well-off and who could offer you a better future. All I ever had to offer was myself and my love.”

He held out his strong, work-worn, empty hands before him. “That's still, pretty much, all I have. You, Corrie Braydon, are all the woman I've ever wanted, everything that I ever hoped and prayed for. That pesky little sperm that caused all the trouble in your life was the best friend that I ever had. He gave me the last two and a half decades with you. But I guess you're right. Even a life sentence doesn't usually run over twenty-five years.”

Sam stopped and took a deep breath, as if mustering his courage.

“I remember talking with Mike once about Emerson's idea of ‘compensation.' How over a lifetime the good things and bad things somehow even out. I know that marrying me meant giving up a lot of good things
that you wanted in your life. And that through our years together a lot of bad things have happened to us. I also know that I love you, Corrie Braydon. If you leave, I will still love you. If you stay married to me, then you're right, it needs to be your own free choice.”

I sat there, across the table from him, his eyes gazing into mine. What was any lifetime together based on? Passion? Habit? Friendship? Convenience? It was all those things. And it was more. It was a sharing that says, today I'll carry you and tomorrow you'll carry me. It was a hand to hold in grief and arms to embrace in trouble. It was a partner who believed in you when you didn't believe in yourself. A person who could watch you change and be willing to change themselves. Someone you could trust to always have your best interest at heart.

Marrying Sam had taken my life in a different direction than I had planned for, different than I'd hoped for. But what my life had been; the family I had, the success I'd achieved, that would have been impossible without him. I had no plans for the rest of my life. No goals, no aspirations to be fulfilled. I needed to think that through, figure out where I wanted to head next, what I wanted to accomplish. There was a good chance I might live another forty years. I wanted the second half of my time on earth to be as full and exciting and meaningful as the first.

And whatever I chose to do, I knew that it would be better, sweeter, more worthwhile with this man at my side.

“I love you, too, Sam,” I told him, and then added the question that needed to be asked. “Will you marry me?”