She shrugged his hand away. “Well, you did. I hurt and it’s b ... because of you and I hate you at this m ... moment for doing this to us.” She was using the sides of her hands to wipe her nose. He passed his handkerchief over her shoulder.
She used it, then said, “You’ve been acting so strange lately. I knew something was wrong, but I couldn’t figure out what.”
“I tried to tell you in Duluth, but I just ...” His words trailed away and he ended softly, “Aw, hell.”
Silence pressed down, thick, oppressive, stilling all but their burrowing thoughts. Sorrow sealed them to their swing seats and held them prisoners of each other and this cruel foible sprung upon them at mid-life, when they’d been so serene and smug. The autumn evening progressed, the edge of the world closing the sun’s lower eyelid, turning the sky the hues of fruit. A faint chill drifted across the playground.
After many minutes Claire finally asked, “Does he know?”
“She’s telling him today.”
He could tell she was adding things up and drawing the wrong conclusion. All this time she’d been turned away from him with the swing chain crossed above her head. She let it uncross and throw her into line with him so she could see his face. Though her expression seemed dulled by sorrow, her gaze seemed to penetrate clear to his viscera.
“You saw her, didn’t you? That’s where you were when you said you were going to buy the battery.”
“Yes, but Claire—”
“Have you seen her other times?”
“Listen to me. He’s grown up not knowing who his father was. I couldn’t tell you about him without her permission, and that’s what we talked about today, the decision to tell the truth to everyone at the same time so nobody would find out from anyone else.”
“You didn’t answer my question. Have you seen her other times?”
Some muscles tensed, altering his jawline, reflecting movement at his temple. “Yes. Once. The day I found out he was my son.”
“Where?”
“At her house. But all we did was talk, Claire, honest.” Claire said nothing for the longest time, staring at him with puffy, red, mistrusting eyes. Finally she dropped her gaze to her knees. “She must live around here someplace.”
“In Haviland Hills Addition. She moved here from Texas just before school started. When she walked in to register Kent, she had no idea I was the principal. Claire, I’m answering all these questions because I have nothing more to hide. That one night back in 1975, that was it. I swear to God, there has never been anyone but you since the day I took my vows.”
She let her shoulders slump and dropped her hands between her legs, where they hung loosely. Her eyes closed and her head lolled backward, pointing the bill of her baseball cap at the sky. She sighed once—a great, noisy shudder of a sigh, then sat, motionless, the picture of one who simply wishes to escape. She gave herself a tiny jog and set the swing in motion—a few degrees only—as if somewhere in the depths of her mind she pretended she was beyond all this. Her chambray shirttail hung behind her, and her crossed shins laid the outsides of her tennis shoes against the dirt.
He waited, sick at heart for having caused her despair.
“Well,” she said finally, pulling her head up as if marshaling fortitude, “we’ve got some children to consider, don’t we?” The swing continued in waggling figure S’s. Then abruptly it stopped as she clapped a hand to her mouth and turned away while the tears built once again. “Oh, God, what a mess.” Her voice had gone squeaky.
What should he say? Do? Give? Offer? His misery was as complete as hers.
“I never meant to hurt any of you, not you or the children, not in any way, Claire. It happened so long ago. It was just an incident out of my past that I’d forgotten about.”
“It was long ago for you, but it’s now for us. We’ve got to deal with it now, and it’s so unfair to foist this on the children.”
“Don’t you think I’ve been thinking about that?”
“I don’t know. Have you?”
“Of course I have. Claire, you act as if I’ve suddenly gotten heartless because of this thing. Can’t you see that I hurt, too? That I’m sorry, and I wish I could undo it? But I can’t. All I can do is be honest about everything and hope that’s the way to cause the least amount of pain to everyone involved. As for the children, I intend to tell them today. I can do that by myself or you can be with me, whatever you want.”
“Chelsea’s going to be so ... so ..Claire motioned vacantly. “Who knows what went on between them? I know she’s got a crush on him.”
“Nothing went on between them, I’d stake my life on it.”
“Oh, I know that!” Claire shot back angrily, glaring. “On a first date that wasn’t even a date? Give us credit for raising a daughter with a few more scruples than that! I’m talking about kisses. If he kissed her, and certainly kids that age are going to kiss!”
“Well, we’ll never find out, because I’m surely not going to ask her.”
“No, of course not. But she’ll be chagrined just the same. And what about Robby? He’s already antagonistic toward Kent ... they have to play football together, and I have to face him in a classroom Monday.”
“I have to face him, too.”
“Oh, well, pardon me if I can’t feel too sorry for you over what you’ve got to face!”
She left her swing and moved to one of the diagonal struts, propping a shoulder against it. With her hands slipped into her front hip pockets she looked sunward. He actually felt sick to his stomach studying the back of her. Always now, the back of her. Fear had congealed into a sickening lump within him. Need skulked there too, the need to touch her, hold her, have her in his arms and feel reassured that they could work this through.
He left his swing and moved up behind her, hesitant to touch her, afraid not to, awkward with his insecurity. He stared at the messy ponytail she’d drawn through the back opening of her cap, at the sun-speckled tips of her hair, the sleeves of her washed-out old shirt whose wrinkles appeared dusted by the low sun. Her youthful clothing and untidiness gave her a childlike defenselessness.
“Claire ...” He put his hands on the soft chambray below her collar.
“Don’t.” She shimmied free and settled against the pole again, defiant. “I don’t want to be touched by you right now. You should know that.”
He dropped his hands and waited.
And waited.
Facing the same direction as Claire while their shadows grew longer and the dull tarnish of distress settled over their marriage.
“It’s the betrayal that hurts worst of all,” she said, finally. “Thinking you know someone, then finding out you don’t know him at all.”
“That’s not true, Claire. I’m the same man I was.”
“Not in my eyes. Not anymore.”
“I still love you.”
“You don’t do this to someone you love. You don’t go to another woman’s house. Especially not a woman who had your baby.”
“Oh, come on, Claire, I told you, that thing with her happened in 1975. She’s a damned stranger to me!”
Claire snorted quietly and stood despondent, looking down at her feet. Finally she turned around and the expression in her eyes chilled him.
“I never thought I could feel this way about you. Never. I thought that what we had built together was inviolable, that we had the kind of marriage that nothing could damage, because we’d worked so hard at it. But at this moment, Tom Gardner, I hate you. I want to strike out at you and hurt you because you’re doing this to us and to our family.”
“If it’ll make you feel any better, do it. God knows I deserve it.”
She swung with her right and slapped him so hard that it knocked him off balance. Immediately she stepped back and gasped, realizing what she’d done. His cheek flared with her handprint. His eyes widened in surprise. Never in eighteen years of marriage had either of them struck the other.
He stepped back, putting space
between them, each of them somewhat embarrassed, uncertain of their footing. Slowly the flush of anger came to join that from the handprint on his face.
“What do you want me to do, Claire? It’s done. It’s history. What do you want me to do?”
“Tell your children. Tell them their father isn’t the kind of man they thought he was. Try to explain to Robby why you had sex with another woman while I was carrying him. Try to explain to Chelsea why she mustn’t do things like that with boys, although it was all right for you to do it because you really didn’t want to marry her mother!” Claire pointed a finger toward home. “You drive back there and tell them, Tom Gardner, and break their hearts, because this is more than just the announcement that they have a half-brother! This is a betrayal, and don’t think they’ll see it as anything less!”
She had, of course, capsulized the gist of his guilt toward the children. He hated hearing it.
“You sound as if you plan to ask them to choose sides. Don’t do that, Claire.”
“Oh, don’t be so damned self-righteous!” She made two fists and strained to keep them against her hips. There seemed to be more rebuffs scrabbling to be shouted, but, as if she didn’t trust herself, she turned and stalked toward the car.
*****
She slammed the passenger door vehemently and lashed her arms around her midriff as if to keep her very skin from falling off. She fixed her eyes on the pebbles at the edge of the tar where the grass was worn thin. That line where the black met the green suddenly snaked into motion, skewed by fresh tears as self-pity took a turn on her.
On our wedding week ...
He never really wanted to marry me ...
He said I railroaded him ...
He was out there on the playground, standing under the swing set with his head hanging, probably playing for her sympathy and understanding. Well, she had none to spare, not for him. Not today, not tomorrow, or anytime soon. No husband could dump a load like this on his wife and expect her to rebound like the infatuated girl she’d once been.
She was the wronged one here. She, not he!
All her married life she had worked toward an ideal, not only in her relationship with him, but in their family relationship as a whole. To discover it was predicated upon a marriage he’d never wanted, a first child he felt he’d been saddled with, made a mockery of all the hard work and emotion she had invested in these eighteen years.
Eighteen years ... condensing into this.
She felt like a fool never to have suspected, and blamed him for bringing these feelings upon her at a time in her life when all she wanted was blissful harmony. But if she had not suspected then, she did now. The woman who had offered a reprieve from his obligations was back in the area, still single, the father of his son. And he admittedly had seen her more than once.
What intelligent man with a home and family at risk would not deny anything illicit?
The thought terrified Claire even while exacerbating her anger.
I don’t want to be a woman sorting through suspicions! Not one of those pitiable creatures who are whispered about in the teachers’ lounge. I want to be the woman I was one hour ago!
Anger and self-pity were still roiling her thoughts when she heard his footsteps on the cinders.
He got in and slammed the door. Put the key in the ignition. But emotional inertia held him motionless. He let the hand drop and his eyes rest unfocused on the hood. “Claire, I don’t know how I’m going to tell them.”
“Neither do I,” she said to the blacktop, not a wisp of sympathy in her voice.
“I suppose I should just say it straight out like I did to you.”
“I suppose so.”
“Do you want to be there?”
“To tell the truth, I want to be in Puerto Rico right now. Calcutta, Saudi Arabia ... anywhere but here, going through this!”
The stretches of silence were growing longer and more oppressive.
Eventually he started the car and drove them home while she never once looked at him or spoke. He parked in the garage and followed her into the house, taut with dread of telling his children and losing honor in their eyes.
He hung his car keys in the kitchen on a hooked board that Robby had made in elementary school. He went to the kitchen sink for a drink and found there a red mug that said DAD, given to him by Chelsea last Father’s Day. All around him, evidence of their love and respect for him. He filled the mug and drank slowly, postponing his final fall from grace.
He shut off the water and turned to find Chelsea had entered the kitchen and stood on its far side, all her housework completed, present as ordered for whatever it was that would happen. Robby stood with her, both of them silent and wondering. Claire had disappeared.
“Let’s sit down,” he said. “I’ve got something to tell you.”
They sat at the kitchen table, glancing from him to each other in confusion and wariness.
“Some things have happened in the last week and a half that ... well, they’re going to change our lives to some degree. Not”—he motioned as if stirring the air above a crystal ball—“not our family life, as such, but in a way each member of our family, because it concerns all of us.
“Now, before I say anything more, I want you to know that Mom and I have talked about it. We’re working it out between us, okay? So there’s nothing to be scared of.”
He cleared his throat. “This concerns Kent Arens.”
“Kent?” Chelsea repeated, surprised.
Claire appeared silently behind the kids and leaned against the kitchen doorway where only Tom could see her. He linked his fingers on the tabletop, fitting the pads of his thumbs together.
“Kent Arens is my son.”
No one moved or spoke. But the blood rose in Chelsea’s face and Robby’s lips parted. He sat back against the kitchen chair, his long arms hanging, his oversized hands curled around the edges of the chair seat. Chelsea merely stared at her father, stunned.
“I knew his mother when I was in college, but I never knew she’d had him, not until the Wednesday before school started, when she brought him in to register.”
The silence roared on for a long time.
Robby spoke first. “Are you sure?”
Tom nodded silently.
“But ... but how old is he?”
“The same age as you.”
He whispered, “Oh, jeez.” And after a beat, “Does Mom know that?”
“Yes, she does.”
Robby whispered, “Wow.”
“There are some things about all this that I believe should remain private between your mother and myself, but some things I think we all have to know and understand. Kent was never told who his father was, but he’s being told today, too, so there’ll be no mistaking our relationship the next time any of us meet him. Nobody at school knows about this, so it’s up to you—up to us—to ...” To tell the truth or conceal it? “ ... to ... well, set the tone for our future relationship with him. I don’t know what it will be any more than you do, but I’m asking you to understand that there’ll be difficulties for all of us. For us, for him. I’m not telling you how to react to this news. I’m not saying, ‘He’s your brother, you have to love him, or even like him.’ Chelsea, I know you’ve already become his friend and I... well, I’m sorry if this is an embarrassment for you. Robby, I know your feelings, too. This isn’t going to be easy, and I’m sorry I have to put you through it. But, please ... if you’ve got feelings to work out, talk to Mom and me about it. Will you do that?”
One of them mumbled something, but both refused to lift their eyes from the tabletop.
“I want you both to know that what I’ve done was very wrong. I’ve always valued your respect for me as a father and been proud of it. Telling you the truth about this has been ... has been—” Tom swallowed visibly—“well, it’s been the worst couple weeks of my life. I knew you had to be told but I was afraid your opinion of me would change. What I did was wrong, and I accept responsibili
ty for that. I ask your forgiveness, because in wronging your mother, I’ve wronged you. I have no excuses. There are no excuses for dishonorable behavior, but I love you both very much, and the last thing in the world I’d ever do is hurt you or your mom. Because I love you all ... very much.” He lifted his eyes to Claire. She stayed against the doorway, her expressionless face as immobile as if baked in ceramic. Neither of the children had lifted their eyes.
He spoke to them again. “There’s something more I need to say about this. It has to do with morals.” He realized he had clasped his joined hands hard against his belly. Inside, it was trembling fiercely. “Please don’t ... don’t follow my example. You’ve been good, honest kids. Stay that way ... please.” His last word came out a little hoarsely.
Silence followed, another one of those stretches of misery that were becoming standard fare on this soulful day.
“Is there anything you want to say... or ask?” Tom said.
Chelsea, solemn and red, her eyes downcast, whispered, “What’ll we tell our friends?”
“The truth, when you must. I would never ask you to lie for me. He’s my son, and it seems absurd to believe that in the environment where all four of us—five of us—spend five days a week, the truth won’t be known. Kent will have some things to work out, too, remember. I’d imagine he’ll rely on his counselor to help him sort out his feelings. The same might even be true for you.”
Chelsea made an L of her arms and dropped her face into one hand. “It’ll be so embarrassing. Our dad ... the principal.”
“I know and I’m sorry, Chelsea.”
Tom wanted to reach across the corner of the table and squeeze her arm, but felt he’d somehow lost the right. Robby’s embarrassment seemed to have ebbed and been replaced by a half scowl. “So what are we supposed to do? I mean, is he gonna be hanging around here, or what?”
“Hanging around here? No, I don’t think so. I mean ...
Robby, that’s hard to answer. He’s finding out today that he not only has a father living right across town, he’s got a half-brother and half-sister, and even aunts and uncles and a grandfather he didn’t know he had. I would imagine the time will come when he’ll be curious about all of us.”