A Summer Love Affair, page 30
Chris looked uncomfortable. “Why should a person be forced to scream in order to be heard?”
“They shouldn’t. But . . .”
“I’m sorry,” he said quickly. “I don’t mean to criticize Hugh. Really.”
“I know. Chris,” Elizabeth asked, “I’ve often wondered if you went to confession after we broke things off. We were both so burdened by guilt.”
Chris shook his head. “No. I never sought official absolution. Instead, I asked God for forgiveness on my own, without intercession. It’s not the Catholic way, but it’s the decision I made.”
“Do you regret that decision?” Elizabeth asked.
“No,” he said. “I don’t regret it, though at times I’ve wondered why I didn’t seek formal absolution.”
“A ritual of forgiveness is something I’ve never had access to, not having been raised a Catholic. Well, it’s more than just a ritual. Confession is a sacrament, isn’t it?”
“Yes. And a sacrament means nothing if you don’t have faith. No,” Chris added hurriedly, “that’s not true. You can be full of doubt, not sure of what you believe if anything, and still draw comfort from the faith of others, as well as from ritual or participation in a sacramental act.”
“I see what you mean. Was there ever any real interest in Catholicism in Hugh’s family?” Elizabeth asked. “Or was it just one of those things the family did by rote, go to church Sunday morning, say this prayer at meal times, that prayer when you went to bed, all with no real thought or interest?”
Chris shook his head. “I can’t really say I knew what went on with Hugh’s parents. They seemed sincere enough, but Hugh and his brothers never took to their religion, if you can put it that way. And interestingly, Hugh wasn’t close to his brothers. You met them. They were a lot like Hugh, blustery, forceful. Maybe he saw them as competition, whereas with me, there was never any chance of our being in competition for anything—not even for you. We were playing two very different games, each of us in possession of two very different sets of skills.”
“I know. By the time Jess was born,” Elizabeth said, “Hugh had already lost touch with his brothers. I felt bad about that. I’d only met them a handful of times, and had seen them last at the wedding, but they were Hugh’s flesh and blood. I sent Richard and George and their families Christmas cards every year for my entire marriage, signing both my name and Hugh’s. Their wives would do the same. But the brothers never bothered with one another.”
“Were they at the funeral?” Chris asked.
“No,” Elizabeth said. “By the time Hugh passed, Richard had been dead for almost two years. As far as I know George is still alive, but maybe not. The last holiday card I got from his wife was the year after Hugh’s death. Then, nothing.”
“It’s strange how families fall apart. It makes you wonder if they were ever really strong and coherent in the first place, or just pretending to be so.”
“Hugh’s mother would have very much liked her sons to be close,” Elizabeth said. “She told me so more than once. But there really wasn’t much she could do about it once the boys were no longer living under her roof.”
“Your daughters,” Chris said. “They’re close to one another?”
“Overall, yes. Maybe not always the best of friends, but there’s never been any major conflict among them, not even when they were growing up.”
“And now? Since they’ve learned of my part in your life?”
“There might be a degree of conflict now,” Elizabeth admitted. “But it’s not as if Jess has renounced her family in reaction to my relationship with you. I’d like to think—to believe—that all will be well again between us.”
There followed a long moment of silence. Elizabeth found herself staring at Chris’s hands, one around his iced drink, the other in a relaxed fist on the table. She remembered as if it were yesterday the first moment his hands had touched her in an intimate way. Could it really have been thirty years before?
“I’ve missed Hugh over the years,” Chris said quietly, “particularly at specific times of my life, when the pressures of work or the news of the world got to feel like too much. Growing up, whenever I got too melancholic he would jostle me out of my dark mood and sometimes even make me laugh at my habit of ‘too much thinking.’ One or two times I resented what I saw as an intrusion rather than as an act of friendship, but in the end I was always glad he had cared enough to speak.”
“I don’t remember Hugh ever being really down,” Elizabeth said, “and if something was bothering him at a given time, it certainly didn’t bother him for long. He was almost ridiculously resilient. I envied him that ability to rebound.” Elizabeth smiled a bit. “When it didn’t drive me crazy, and make me wonder if he had ever felt anything deeply at all.”
“I think he felt very deeply,” Chris said, his voice breaking. “I failed Hugh in more ways than one. I’ll never forgive myself for not being a better friend.”
Elizabeth swallowed hard. She felt a bit sick to her stomach and wondered if she would ever be truly done with the lying that brought on guilt. “I have another admission to make,” she said quietly. “Just before Hugh died he asked me to let you know that he loved you. He was worried he had said or done something to put you off. I tried to reassure him that he was in no way to blame, that people drifted away from each other for all sorts of reasons. I’m not sure I succeeded.”
“And you didn’t seek me out to pass on Hugh’s message.” It was a statement, not a question.
“No,” Elizabeth said softly. “I’m sorry for that. I owed it to Hugh to fulfill the promise I made when he was near the end. It was the usual story. I was afraid, afraid of so many things. I knew that I would be compelled by what’s right to tell you more than just what Hugh had asked me to say. That you had a daughter. It seemed too much for me to handle. I’m sorry.”
Chris nodded. “It’s all right. You’re telling me now.”
“Better late than never? I’m not sure that’s always true.” Elizabeth leaned forward. “Chris, should we have tried to keep going on as we had before the affair, the three of us, family friends, pretending for Hugh’s sake that nothing had gone on between you and me?”
“I don’t know,” Chris admitted. “It’s an unanswerable question now, so maybe it doesn’t really matter. But it does matter, doesn’t it?”
Yes, Elizabeth thought. It did still matter, what they had decided thirty years ago. And it made her wonder if they should continue to be punished for their mistake, their crime of passion. Should they keep punishing themselves and each other by choosing to stay apart? Or could they acknowledge the harm they had done, accept the blame, agree that they had tried to atone for the harm ever since it had been committed, and move on to find happiness and contentment together? All the while aware of having been chastened, tempered. All the while grateful for Hugh in their lives. Not only had he brought them together—however unwittingly—but he had been a good friend and a good husband in spite of his ham-handedness in emotional matters.
“I’m going to let Petra know that we’ve been meeting,” Elizabeth said now. “I’m not comfortable keeping it a secret from her.”
Chris nodded. “All right. There’s no reason she should be kept in the dark. For once, we’re not doing anything wrong by being together.”
Elizabeth reached for his hand. She so hoped that he was right.
Chapter 67
“Look at these tomatoes! They’re gorgeous!” Petra exclaimed. “Caprese salad tonight for sure.”
“We’ll need to pick up some mozzarella on the way home,” her mother noted. “Corn. We need corn.”
Elizabeth headed to the mountain of bright green corn on the cob while Petra lingered over the array of freshly picked herbs for sale. She was happy to be back in Maine, though her excursion to Massachusetts the day before had been a real pleasure. She and her father had met at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem to explore a few of the ongoing exhibits, like Japan-omania! Japanese Art Goes Global, and the galleries that housed the works of American Art. Petra had been pleased to discover that her father shared her habit—her need—of silence while regarding art. She hated going to an exhibit with a person who couldn’t stop chatting or who wouldn’t stop commenting.
Chris hadn’t had time to linger afterward; he was finishing an article that needed to be submitted to the journal’s editor first thing the following morning, so Petra had headed back to Eliot’s Corner, glad she had learned even more about the man who had helped give her life.
“I love this kind of day,” her mother observed a few minutes later, as they pulled back onto the road loaded down with ten ears of corn, a large bag of tomatoes, another bag of zucchini, and a fistful of fragrant basil from the farm stand. “Meandering through the countryside.”
“Even if we’re not on foot,” Petra noted. “Is it really meandering if you’re in a car?”
“I don’t know,” Elizabeth admitted. “But I kind of think it is. Look, I’ve been wanting to tell you something. I’ve seen Chris. Actually, we’ve gotten together twice now.”
Petra’s eyes widened. She felt stunned and the tiniest bit betrayed. Why hadn’t her father said anything yesterday? Should he have? Could she possibly be jealous of her mother, now, too, spending time with Chris? “You have?” she said finally, pushing the strange thoughts and feelings away. “I thought you didn’t . . . I thought you . . . Wow.”
“Yes,” her mother said, her eyes on the road. “Wow. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. It’s all been a bit . . . A bit surreal, if that’s the right word.”
“So, how did this come about?” Petra asked. “Did you call him? Did he call you?”
“No. Chris just showed up one day, not long after you’d left to walk into town. I don’t know if he knew you wouldn’t be home, or if it mattered either way to him. Of course, I recognized him immediately. He hasn’t changed all that much, but to say it was a shock seeing him standing there in our front yard is putting it mildly. I never expected him to just appear like that, with no warning, without asking.”
“I’m really surprised he took that risk,” Petra admitted after a moment, remembering all of the times when she had considered many of her father’s actions cowardly. “That was pretty brave of him. You could have closed the door in his face. In a nice way, I mean. But I wonder why he didn’t tell me he planned to contact you.”
“Maybe he wanted to spare you from knowing that I had refused to talk to him,” Elizabeth suggested. “Assuming I had refused—and Chris had to know that was a possibility, in spite of everything that’s happened this summer.”
Petra shifted so that she could look more directly at her mother. “What did you feel in that first moment, Mom, face-to-face with Chris, with my father?”
Elizabeth shook her head, her eyes still firmly on the road. “It’s hard to put into words, really. Shock, like I said. Self-consciousness. I wished I’d looked better, had put on some makeup that morning! Maybe a twinge of anger or annoyance, directed at who or what I can’t say. But after a few minutes, it was all okay. He was my Christopher Ryan. I was happy he was there with me.”
“You must find him changed in some ways though,” Petra pressed. “No one stays exactly the same over time.”
“Yes. I do find him changed,” her mother admitted. “He seems more mature, but maybe that’s just a consequence of ageing with your eyes open, of coming to understand and accept more and more of what you witness and experience in life. Oh, I don’t know. But Chris is definitely a stronger man now than he was all those years ago. I can feel it.”
“What do you think he found changed about you?” Petra asked.
Her mother laughed. “Aside from the wrinkles around my eyes and my expanded waistline?”
“Mom! Like he cares about those things! Has he said anything about his feelings for you now? Tell me everything!” Petra felt tears come to her eyes. “I’m very happy for you, Mom,” she went on, “and for Chris. For all three of us, really. I mean, who knows what will happen in the future, but to finally know and acknowledge that this family exists and has existed for thirty years, well, that’s huge.”
“It is huge,” her mother agreed. “Again, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you right away that Chris had come by. In some moments, I still feel that our relationship needs to be kept secret, that it’s shameful. It might take some time to get past that, to remember that things are different now.”
“Well, please do get past it,” Petra urged. “Because if you feel shame about your relationship with my father, then what am I supposed to feel? I mean, nothing good can come from a shameful or sinful situation, right? So, what does that make me? A mistake? A monster?”
“My gosh, Petra,” her mother exclaimed. “You’re certainly not a mistake or a monster! There’s nothing at all for which you should feel ashamed or embarrassed or guilty. But I do understand your need for me to stop beating myself up about having fallen in love with a man not my husband. It’s a waste of time, for one, and time is just too precious to waste.”
“Is enjoying a beautiful summer afternoon with your mother a waste of time?” Petra asked with a smile.
“Not at all.”
Petra nodded. “Good. Because spending time with you is one of my favorite things ever.”
Chapter 68
Elizabeth was in a remarkably good mood.
She hadn’t expected understanding and forgiveness from the man—one of them—she had hurt, but those were the very gifts Chris was offering. Just how well had she known Christopher Ryan? How well did she know him now? Because how, knowing him, could she have feared his condemnation or his rejection?
Being on her own for many years had caused Elizabeth’s mind to create all sorts of enemies and hobgoblins; she had begun to focus only or mostly on negative outcomes to a reunion of the two lovers and had failed to imagine happiness. But in reality, in the here and now, Chris was neither an enemy nor a hobgoblin; he was the person she had loved so well, the person for whose love she had risked so much. He might even still be the friend he had been long before they had come together as lovers. In Chris’s friendship, she might have found a remedy—one based on equality—for the isolation she had feared in her post-career life.
She had asked him not to go away again. He had promised that he wouldn’t.
And so, now it was time to come clean to Cam and Jess about this renewed friendship.
Conveniently, Cam had announced her plans to visit Eliot’s Corner again. Getting Jess to stop by during her sister’s stay wasn’t difficult though Jess did grumble about having “a lot to do” and “being very busy.” Well, she was always grumbling about something.
Petra hadn’t said where exactly she was going, but she had been firm about not wanting to be present when Elizabeth spoke to her sisters.
“Cam will be okay about it,” Petra had said. “But Jess will be Jess, and I’m not sure I need to hear any more of her bitchiness at the moment. But if you want me to be there, sort of as an ally or support, I will be, no problem.”
Elizabeth had thanked Petra for her offer but told her to do what she needed to do for her well-being. Now, though, sitting across from Cam and Jess in the backyard, Elizabeth half wished she had accepted Petra’s offer of support. After her first big revelation earlier in the summer, this one was pretty tame and even to be expected. Still . . .
“Where’s Petra?” Jess asked. “Off hunting through someone’s discarded stuff again? Hoping to find a hidden treasure in a trash heap?”
Cam sighed. “Jess, will you never stop—”
“Stop what?” Jess said, turning to her sister. “Being myself?”
Cam just frowned.
“Seriously, Mom,” Jess went on, “where is Petra?”
“Honestly, I have no idea. She took the car and headed off. Though I’m pretty sure a trash heap is not her destination,” Elizabeth added dryly.
Jess shrugged. “Sorry.”
“Chris and I have seen each other,” Elizabeth announced, before Jess could spout more nonsense.
Jess frowned. “I should have known this was coming. So, what’s the deal? You guys are dating or something?”
Cam sighed. “Good ‘ole Jess, always getting straight to the point.”
“No, we’re not dating,” Elizabeth responded calmly. “We’re talking.”
“Whose idea was it to get together? Did Petra put you up to it?”
“Nobody put me or Chris up to it,” Elizabeth replied harshly. “Really, Jess, sometimes you make it very difficult to have a civil conversation.”
Jess had the grace to look slightly ashamed. “Sorry,” she mumbled.
“Well, I’m glad you two are communicating,” Cam said. “You must have an awful lot to talk about.”
Elizabeth nodded. “We do. And not just the standard ‘what have you been doing with your life all these years’ sort of topics. In the two times that we’ve met over the past week or so, we’ve covered so much emotional territory. Even at the time of our relationship thirty years ago we were able to talk about everything under the sun, with never an awkward silence. This time, after a very brief moment of discomfort, our friendship easily reawakened.”
“Has he apologized for what he did?” Jess demanded. “For betraying my father, his best friend?”
Elizabeth flinched. “There’s no need for him to apologize to me. We both—”
“You don’t have to explain things, Mom,” Cam said quickly.
“Wait,” Jess went on, sitting forward. “I have another question. It’s no secret I’m not exactly a huge fan of this Christopher Ryan, and I’m not letting him off the hook for the damage he did to our family, but on some level, he has a serious right to be pissed off. I mean, you’ve effectively been lying to him, Mom, every single day for the past thirty years. You can’t tell me there was only a ‘brief moment of discomfort.’ He must have been furious when he found out he had a kid.”
