A Family Affair(8)

“Ah, so you might suspect, but...” Joe said.

“All the signs were there. After all these years. After I sucked it up and did everything I could to make it work.”

“It was a long time ago, Anna. A lot of water over the dam. It was probably just a midlife crisis.”

“He was sixty-two! How the hell long was he expecting to live?”

Joe lifted his glass. “Much longer than he did. It took a lot of strength for you to get over it and make a good life, a good marriage.”

She just stared at him as if he was insane. “What makes you think I got over it? I never got over it. I’ve been looking over my shoulder for almost thirty years!” She sipped her drink carefully. She didn’t want to scorch her throat again.

Joe threw his back.

“Arlene and I couldn’t hold it together,” Joe said of his ex-wife. “Do you ever hear from her?”

“Never,” Anna said. “Do you?”

“A little,” he said. “It’s about the kids or the grandkids and is mostly confined to texts or the occasional email. Arlene and I were not meant to be. The divorce, though painful, was destiny. We got off to a bad start. I have two great kids and a couple of beautiful granddaughters. But I thought you and Chad invented marriage. In spite of all you’d been through.”

“Because I’m a good sport, that’s why,” she said. “And because everything I ever said about him, about us, made him look like a king. Or at least a benevolent despot.”

And in a way it was true. For years she acted as if it didn’t hurt her that he’d stepped out, found another woman and cheated. She knew exactly what it took to make him feel loved and special and she delivered, whether she felt it was irrelevant. She let it go that he was bad at remembering special occasions, that her feelings were less important than his.

“It seemed you loved him very much,” Joe said.

“Of course I loved him, but that wasn’t the reason I put so much energy into trying to make a decent marriage. It was my commitment. I didn’t expect that he’d never grow old, never get sick, never have issues. I didn’t take for granted that we’d be in love every day. Hell, there were days I hated him and I assumed he had those days, too—isn’t it inevitable? I stayed, anyway. It was Chad who was the part-timer. When it started to get challenging for him, he was always weighing the advantages of leaving. I, on the other hand, never saw any advantage in leaving. Until his latest depression. It was the last straw for me. He had everything and yet he complained. He was ungrateful. He kept saying something was missing, as though it was my job to figure out what that was and deliver it.” She shook her head. “But if he had come home in a better frame of mind... We were usually distracted by discussions of our competing schedules, some major repair or purchase we had to talk about, or if one of the kids had a problem.”

“Amazing how easy it can be to not talk about it, isn’t it?” Joe said.

“Thirty years of practice will do that for you,” she said.

“And yet, you never considered a life on your own terms?”

After a quiet moment, she said, “Because I did love him. I did. But—”

Anna’s phone chimed with a text. Are you okay? Phoebe was asking.

Perfectly fine, thanks, Anna answered.

Good. If you don’t need me, I’m staying home. Headache. If you need me, call.
Go to bed, I’m fine. Talk to you tomorrow.
She took a breath. “No one knows this but Phoebe. And now you. His last struggle with unhappiness coincided with my appointment to the bench. That had become a pattern. If I had something to be proud of, he became very needy. I was planning to suggest we live separate lives. I thought it was time he figure out how to be happy on his own.”

“Whoa!” Joe said, shocked. “After all these years?”

“I love what I do,” she said. “I’ve worked so hard to get to this place. I’m only fifty-seven. And I’m tired of always focusing on Chad’s happiness. I thought it was my turn...” A solitary tear ran down her cheek. “I guess it is now.”

Anna and Joe talked into the night. They got past Chad’s discontent and Anna’s confusion about it and covered all those years when their kids were young, when they all got together for backyard barbecues or day trips to the lake and one trip to Disneyland that was a near disaster when Anna and Chad briefly lost Bess and finally found her with a princess. She told him about when Chad was helping Mike coach and how proud she was of both of them. “I wanted to kick him in the ass, but I didn’t want him to die,” she said, another large tear spilling over. “Sorry, tequila tears.”

“You should go to bed,” he said. “And I need to borrow a couch.”

“Nonsense. I have two guest rooms. Would you like to borrow a pair of Chad’s pajamas?”

He made a face. “You will never see me in your husband’s pajamas. I’ll rough it.”

“Take Mike’s room. Mike put fresh sheets on the bed before he left and there’s shaving stuff and new toothbrushes in the bathroom. I’ll get the coffee ready, so if you get up first, just flip it on.”

“Thanks, Anna. It would be stupid of me to try to drive back to Menlo Park.”

“I wouldn’t sleep at all, thinking of you doing that. I’ll sleep a lot better knowing you’re tucked away for the night.” She started to leave the room, then turned back. “In all these years, this is a first. I don’t believe you’ve ever stayed the night before.”