The Violets of March (23 page)

“I’ve slept with a man who isn’t my husband.”

There was silence on the other side of the booth, an uncomfortable silence, so I spoke up again.

“Father, I love Elliot Hartley, not my husband, Bobby. I am a horrible woman for it.”

I listened for a sign that the priest was there, that he was listening. I wanted him to tell me I was forgiven. I wanted him to tell me to do a thousand Hail Marys. I wanted him to lift the weight off my shoulders, because it was getting too heavy for me to carry.

Instead he cleared his throat and said, “You’ve committed adultery, and the Church does not condone such behavior. I suggest you go home and repent to your husband and pray that he forgives you, and if he does then God will forgive you.”

Aren’t all sins the same in God’s eyes? Isn’t that the message I’d heard in Sunday school since childhood? Instead, I felt like a heathen, unable to work my way back to heaven.

I nodded and stood up, holding the baby over my shoulder, and walked out feeling great shame, with an even heavier burden to carry. The big brass doors closed loudly behind me.

“Hello, Esther.” It was a woman’s voice behind me in the parking lot. I turned around and saw that Janice was walking toward me, with a strange smirk on her face, but I just kept walking.

Another day went by. Bobby came home from work and I thought about telling him, but I couldn’t bring myself to say the vulgar words I’d need to say to explain myself. No matter how I spit it out, there was the fact that I’d given myself to someone else. Bobby was always so sunny, always so cheerful, even when I wasn’t. He was too good a man. I couldn’t bring myself to shatter him. I wouldn’t do it.

And then the next morning, after Bobby had gone to work, I got the call—the call that made me question every choice I’d made to this point, every emotion I’d felt.

“Mrs. Littleton?” the female voice said on the other end of the line.

“Yes,” I said.

“This is Susan from Harrison Memorial Hospital; I’m calling about your husband. He’s in the hospital.”

She told me that Bobby had collapsed just before walking onto the ferry that morning, and an ambulance had rushed him to the hospital in Bremerton. When I heard her say the words “heart attack,” my own heart cracked a little—cracked with regret, the way it does when you have been cruel to someone whom you should have loved. Bobby didn’t deserve this. He didn’t deserve any of this, and I decided to make it up to him.

What would I do with the baby? I couldn’t bring her to the hospital, not today, not under these circumstances. So I knocked on Janice’s door, as a last resort, and handed the baby over, wrapped in pink blankets. I didn’t like the way Janice looked at her, with the disquieting sense that she’d take my child, take my home, take my place in Bobby’s bed if she had the chance.

“Where are you going?” she asked, with that familiar look of disapproval in her eyes.

“Something very important has come up,” I said. “It’s an emergency.” I didn’t dare tell her it was Bobby. She’d be at his bedside before I could blink an eye.

“Of course,” she said. “And Bobby, when will he be home?”

“Not for a while,” I said, running to the car. “Thanks for watching the baby. I really appreciate it.”

I drove to the hospital and when I arrived, I backed into another car in the parking lot, but I didn’t stop to check the damage. None of that mattered. Bobby needed me.

“I’m looking for Bobby Littleton,” I practically barked to the receptionist. She directed me to the sixth floor, where Bobby was getting ready for surgery, and I made it to the room just in time.

“Oh, Bobby!” I cried. “When they called me I was beside myself.”

“They say I’m going to make it,” he said, winking at me.

I leaned over his bed and wrapped my arms around him. I lay like that until the nurses tapped my shoulder and said, “It’s time.” I didn’t want to let go, and as I watched them wheel him away, I was haunted by the fear that I had caused all of this.

Waiting for him to come through surgery was agony. I paced the floors relentlessly; I was sure I’d walked at least three miles. Occasionally I’d look out the window, to the theater below to see what was playing. On the marquee was BLUE SKIES, WITH BING CROSBY. I watched couples, mostly teenagers, walking arm in arm, and I wished I were one of them. I wanted to turn back time and get it right, without any of the regret, without the pain.

I gazed out the window a little longer, watching couples file in for the show.

And that’s when I saw Elliot.

His tall frame stood out in the crowd, in any crowd. And he wasn’t alone. There beside him was Frances.

“Mrs. Littleton,” the nurse said from the doorway.

“Yes?” I said, forcing myself to turn away from the window. I felt trapped between two worlds. “Is he OK? Tell me he’s OK.”

She smiled. “That husband of yours is a fighter. He came through surgery just fine. But his recovery will be tough. He’ll need your around-the-clock care.”

I nodded.

“Speaking of which,” she said, “I’ll just need to see your ID, for the discharge paperwork.”

I reached down to the place where my purse always hung on my arm, but it wasn’t there. Then I remembered that I’d never retrieved it from the restaurant the night I’d gone to see Elliot. All of it seemed so unfathomable now.

“I’m sorry, I must have left my purse at home,” I lied.

“That’s OK, dear,” she said, smiling. “We can do without.”

“Thank you,” I said. “Can I see him now?”

“Yes,” she said. “But he’s quite groggy. Just keep that in mind.”

I followed her back to the post-op area and there he was, eyes closed.

“Hi, Bobby,” I said, caressing his hand.

He opened his eyes and smiled at me. “Told you I’d be all right,” he said.

Unlike me, Bobby never broke a promise.

It was at least ten before Bee and I made our way to the breakfast table. The air was thick with sorrow.

“Good morning,” she said in a weak voice. She was still in her nightgown and robe. I’d never seen her in pajamas, and the garb made her look much older.

“I’ll get the paper for you,” I said, walking out to the front porch and finding the
Seattle Times
embedded in the mud below a rosebush next to the house. Thank goodness for the plastic bag that covered it.

“The funeral is the day after tomorrow,” Bee said. She didn’t look at me when she spoke, and it occurred to me that she might have been just saying the words aloud to try them on for size, perhaps to see if Evelyn’s passing wasn’t just a bad dream.

“Can I help with anything?” I asked.

Bee shook her head. “No. Her husband’s family is taking care of everything.”

I made scrambled eggs as Bee sat there staring out at the water. I thought of Joel when I did, and of the morning he’d told me about Stephanie. I had dropped a plate, a detail that I had forgotten until now. It was a piece of our wedding china—Waterford, white, with a big silver rim, so expensive that the salesgirl at Macy’s squealed a little as we added twelve place settings to our registry. What once was a treasure lay shattered on the floor in jagged pieces.

“It’s funny,” I said to Bee, turning the eggs in the pan with a spatula.

“What, dear?” she replied quietly.

“I broke a plate.”

“You broke a plate?”

“Yeah, at home, when Joel told me that he was leaving.”

Bee just stared ahead, motionless.

“And I didn’t care. Now, as I think back on that morning, I seem to be more disturbed about the plate than I am about Joel.”