Karma Day 17
When we were about halfway home Reverend Morgan turned to me and said in a firm voice that brooked no argument, “We’re stopping. You haven’t eaten anything in hours and I don’t know about you but I am starving. I know you’re heartbroken but you’ll not going to be able to care for Jay if you don’t take care of yourself first.”
I’d stopped crying but now I was in a state of shock that went beyond petty things like food or human needs. I just wanted to go home and curl into a ball on my bed, hide under the covers forever. I croaked out, “I’m not hungry’\”
Politely, firmly, in a way a parent talks to a small stubborn child Morgan said, “You may not be hungry but you have to eat something. When you get home in 40 minutes you’ll need to be strong enough to meet Jay’s needs. He’s your primary responsibility now. Nothing that happened today changes that.”
He stopped at a restaurant I’d driven past something like a million times and never bored to visit, Town & County Restaurant. I’d glimpsed it’s red neon sign proclaiming the ‘best food in the world’ so many mornings and evenings but the old fashion looking exterior had never lured me in.
Inside the restaurant it was as deserted as the outside. But the interior was humble and quant, booths and tables with red checkered table clothes, framed photos on the wall of long gone celebrities that had once come this way. It was like a fancier version of an old fashioned diner on the inside, cozy and inviting.
Both the waitress and Pastor Morgan extended me mercy that evening. I kept staring at the menu and it might as well be written in ancient Aramaic because I understood it not at all, the words kept swimming past my eyes until Pastor Morgan offered to order for me. I nodded dumbly before saying, “Alright, Pastor Morgan.”
He stopped me and said, “We’ve spent a very long afternoon and evening together on the most difficult day our nation has experienced in many years. I think you can call me Will.”
My thoughts were so jumbled that day that I gasped out, “But, but, you’re a man of God and my son’s principal. I don’t think it’s right for me to be that familiar.”
Will Morgan, Lutheran minister, school principal, smiled at me and removed his clerical collar before my surprised expression and said, “There, now I’m just plain Will. Take off your head scarf and you can be Mary, or Mary Martha if you prefer.”
I didn’t know what to say to this. It seemed to me like he was playing fast and loose and I clutched the end of my head scarf and said in the most dignified outraged voice I could muster up, “Certainly not! Reverend Morgan you forget yourself!”
He shrugged and looked distressed, like he’d offered me a present and I’d ungratefully dismissed it. “I was just trying to make you feel more at ease.”
Fortunately for me the food arrived them and I didn’t have to bother making small talk any longer to my great relief. This had been awkward enough and I barely knew Reverend Morgan. Until the moment I smelled the aroma of the arriving food I hadn’t realized just how hungry I was. Will Morgan had ordered both of us the same thing, a hearty breakfast with country ham, eggs, toast, grits and biscuits.
While I was enjoying tucking into my meal I realized that Morgan had been truthful with me. He was obviously famished because he’s eating like this is his last meal ever. Suddenly I feel guilty that I’d been wrapped up in my world so much today that I could not see the needs of another human being and I decide to be nicer to him. I’ve been snappish and borderline rude because it almost felt like an invasion of my space for him to be here considering I barely know him. But I know he’s just trying to care for me, for Jay, to the best of his ability. It’s who he is.
So I stir myself to talk to him once the pace of our meal becomes more leisurely. “I never thought to thank you earlier for driving me in and tolerating that scene back at my condo.” I say, trying to muster up a bit of a smile. It feels alien and unnatural to try and smile after all I’ve been through today.
Will startled when I spoke, I’d obviously jolted him out of his head, out of the midst of who knows where, he certainly was far away from this table and he blushed before replying, “What else could I do? I’m concerned for all my students like Jay and it was fairly obvious that he was being severely impacted by today’s tragedy. But I must confess, this day hasn’t exactly worked out like I expected it to. I’m so terribly sorry you’ve been put through this, first thinking your husband was dead and then finding out that he was unfaithful. I know the pain that causes all too well. I want you to know that I’ll do everything within my power to help out Jay and you because I know you’re facing tough times ahead.”
I nodded, taking another sip of coffee before saying, “Today was a shocker but it’s not going to end badly. Michael will tire of his single life and come home. He always does.”
Will gasped, worry furrows appearing between his brows as he asked, “This has happened before?”
In that restaurant, in front of this man, I decide that like Michael, it’s time for some truth. “Yes, Michael has always been flighty, less committed to our marriage than I have been. I’ve never caught him cheating before but I think I always knew in the back of my mind that he was unfaithful. He’d go through periods of time where he was hateful and cranky and he worked long hours. Then just as suddenly as it started it would end, he’d show up on time at home, be loving, gracious and helpful, send me flowers and I’d know that whatever it was Michael was struggling with was at an end. This is just more of the same.”
“And the drinking? Is that recent too or a long standing problem?” Will asked.
“Early in our marriage it became obvious that Michael was an alky, his parents were, his siblings were. He recognized this was a problem for him and he hasn’t drank around me in many years. It was a surprise to see him drinking today. Makes me wonder if I ever really knew him. Is this a one time occurrence or a daily thing? I just don’t know. I don‘t have a clue how to handle his drinking it‘s been so long since he‘s been drunk around us. Back when Jay was a baby he roughly handled Jay, bruising Jay and I used that incident and his guilt to force him to stop drinking, at least around us.”
Suddenly Will Morgan looked very embarrassed, he turned red and almost started to fidget like a wayward school boy. Finally he spoke, “I know this is really none of my business but I’ve been wondering how I could broach the subject of possible abuse with you. I’m not trying to pry but I have noticed that your son seems by turns afraid of your husband or rudely dismissive of him. I worry about him. I haven‘t actually seen any signs of physical abuse but I have to be honest with you, your son does show signs of early rebellion that make me think things aren‘t great with Dad.”
I looked down at my plate, suddenly uninterested in my meal, “You’re right, it really is none of your business. Our marriage and parenthood of Jay has been fraught with the normal ups and downs everyone faces. Michael has never actually abused Jay.”
But I could see that Will wasn’t going to drop the subject. He looked very perplexed and said slowly, “You just said your husband was rough with the boy. That sounds like borderline abuse to me.”
I realized again how deep the denial I’d been living in all the years of my adulthood was, here I was, telling cleaned up versions of the truth. Truthfully I’d had to take Jay to the ER when he was a toddler with a dislocated arm from Michael grabbing him hard more than once. Somehow I’d managed to deflect the doctors questions about possible abuse and I’d kept it buried all these things, not wanting to acknowledge what Michael did to Jay when he was a toddler.
But I didn’t want this man before me, this virtual stranger, to know the depth of how Michael had once treated Jay and sometimes me. So I shrugged and looked up at him, eyes radiating innocence as I replied, “I’m speaking of things that happened once when Jay was a toddler. True, Michael and Jay aren’t that close but I think that has to do more with the fact that Michael works long hours in the city and travels a couple of times a month with his job than any abuse or drinking. Michael is gone from sun up to far past sun down and stays in the city sometimes as well. He’s just not around but it’s not by his choice, it’s the job.”
Will Morgan didn’t reply right away, he took another sip of his coffee. “I might have nothing to worry about with previous abuse in regards to Jay but after today I’ll be making sure the staff at school keeps an eye on him. This is not going to be an easy time regardless of how it works out in the long term. I would recommend that both you and Jay seek some sort of professional help to deal with the fallout of today.”
I laughed, “Pastor Morgan, you make it sound like Michael and I are going to be divorcing. Don’t make that assumption that divorce is looming. This will blow over. Nothing will change. Michael will come home.”
“How can you say that?” he asked me, “I was back there, listening to every word your husband said. He wants a divorce. I know you said this is just typical for you but you also said he’d never asked for a divorce before. I believe him, he’s serious and you’ll have to deal with that in a way that protects Jay. Kids sometimes don’t handle divorce very well.”
And just like that I felt my temper raging out of control and I snapped at him, “Don’t you know, my religion forbids divorce. As I said earlier, this will all blow over. Plus, I’m not giving Michael a divorce. God hates divorce, you should know that as a man of God. You’re not married and you don’t have kids so what do you even know about any of these things? You’ve lived the sheltered life of an unmarried pastor so I consider you unqualified to sound off on anything but my child’s education.”
I didn’t add that myself and many others at Plover Creek considered Lutheranism to be just a little less righteous and pure than our own. We Charismatic looked down upon mainstream Protestant religions as being lukewarm and Pharisee like. Will just didn’t get how our faith in God ruled every aspect of our lives.
Amusement sparkled in Will’s green eyes, amusement mixed with some sort of deep sadness lurking behind it all. “Oh, I’ve known tragedy and marriage and children. I’m not the goody two shoes you believe. Did you know I was once married?”
I started thinking about the implications of his confession, wondering how he could possibly be ordained and be a minister, deciding he had to have lost his wife to death. “No,” I stammered out nervously, “I’ve heard nothing about you but I do try to avoid gossip. God hates gossip.”
“Like you, I’m not local. I spent my growing up years living in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. My momma and daddy weren’t married and they split up and got back together again all throughout my childhood. Momma was a free spirit and Daddy always thought his band would make it big one day. I wasn’t taken to church as a child, in fact, I thought religion was for suckers, feeble minded losers and I wasn’t having any of it. I lived for the next beer, the next wave on my surfboard and the next pretty girl. I did so so in school and after graduation I started working in construction, doing carpentry work and drinking and partying every night. I never got in trouble and I was living a carefree fun sort of life, no worries about tomorrow, no real responsibilities. “
“Why are you telling me all of this?” I gently interrupted his monologue.
“Because you stated there is no way I could possibly understand your situation because I was unmarried, childless with a perfect life. I wish to shatter your illusions and show you I do understand your feelings, all too well. I’ve not always been a minister, hell, I haven’t always been a Christian even. I was a very bad boy for some time, never thinking about grace or God in any way.
I lived like that for a long time, till my mid twenties I suppose, until my regular girlfriend, someone I met through the beach bar party scene, ended up pregnant. We agreed we would get married for the sake of the child, so our baby would be raised by a set of two parents. Even though I didn’t know the Lord, I knew that abortion was wrong. Sarah wanted at first to get an abortion, but I talked her out of it. We married and it was a disaster, we didn’t have anything in common and neither of us really loved each other. I didn’t have the first idea of how to make a marriage work, I kept drinking and partying, Sarah was annoyed that I would abandon her alone at the house, knocked up and bored so I could bar hop after work.
But the minute I saw my baby girl it was all worth it, all the bickering, all the tension. I loved that child from the moment I laid eyes on her. Holding her in my arms was heaven, pure heaven. Something profound happened to me the night she was born, for the first time there was someone who was entirely mine, who looked to me for care, love, protection. It changed me in an instant. I swore I would do everything in my power to be the best father in the world.”
I didn’t say anything during Pastor Morgan’s recitation of his life, I just nodded and occasionally made an understanding noise as he continued.
“Part of that change for the best was accepting Jesus in my life. For months a couple of guys at work had been witnessing to me, trying to get me to turn away from the booze and pot and come to church with them. I’d always been very dismissive of those Charlie Church types but when I beheld the miracle of baby Hannah, that was her name, Hannah, I knew there was a loving and just God in the heavens and it seemed like the next logical step to turn to Him, thank Him for the gift of Hannah and to raise her knowing her creator. Plus I wasn’t entirely sure how to live a straight sober life. I knew I had to give up the alcohol and the drugs. My parents had been stoners and drinkers and I grew up living that way but I wanted better for Hannah.
None of this set very well with Sarah. She wanted me to return to the hard-partying Will she knew from the beach bar scene and wanted no part of my new life in Christ. She mocked me, saying leopards don’t change their spots and there was no way I would be able to stay away from the weed and the bar scene. I couldn’t get her to give it up either. Three months after Hannah was born Sarah stayed away from our apartment all night, calling at the middle of the night from a bar in a drunken haze to tell me she would come home when she damn well felt like it.
I was so tempted to use, to get so high I didn’t care. But I didn’t. I called up friends from church, who came over and prayed with me that Sarah’s heart be touched and she turn to the Lord. When she finally came home days later I was frantic and begged her to never do that again. In the meantime I’d lost my job because I’d had to miss work while Sarah was gone.
Getting another good job in construction wasn’t hard but things never did thaw between us again. Sarah and I lived very separate lives, I’d get up at dawn, feed Hannah, change her diaper and put her back in her crib before packing my lunch and going to work. Yeah, I turned penny pinching during those days, trying to save up to buy a house for Hannah to grow up in and for her to have a college education. I reminded myself every day that what I did, from work to staying with her mother, was towards the goal of being the best Dad for Hannah.
Motherhood didn’t affect Sarah quite the same way. I’d go off to work and much later the neighbors told me that Hannah would cry, sometimes for hours, while Sarah slept off whatever alcohol or drugs she’d consumed the night before. I wanted to beat her when I found out she was neglecting our daughter but my friends at church urged me to keep praying for her, killing her with kindness and be the best husband I could be to her and that eventually she’d come around.
Sometimes we got along better than others, every now and again I’d see things in Sarah that gave me a glimmer of hope that life was going to work out, that we were going to both be believers, fall in love with either other and raise Hannah up the right way. I had such foolish hopes then, but I didn’t know any better. I was so young.
After I’d been a believer for about a year I started getting very involved with life at church. I helped lead a cell group, teach Sunday School and one Sunday I was invited to speak to the congregation on the subject of how I’d experienced God’s love through the birth of my daughter strongly enough to give up drugs and booze. When I wasn’t working or caring for Hannah, both she and I were at church.”
“Lutheran?” I asked.
“Well, no, a Charismatic non-denominational congregation with quite a few Lutherans attending.
At the end of my second year of clean living I started to feel from my daily quiet time that perhaps God wanted me to become a pastor. I prayed about it for a long time and eventually I shared my belief with the leaders of my church, all of whom had been ordained through the Lutheran church. They encouraged me to do just that, go back to school and study towards ordination. It was a big step but I felt that is exactly where God would have me.
But Sarah was enraged when I told her of my plans. We’d been saving towards buying a house. She’d gone back to work as an nurses aide and I’d continued working in construction, building hotels and condos for the area tourist trade. We’d made a lot of money and she wanted to buy a house. For me to go into the ministry meant I’d have to quit my job and go to school during the day while she worked.
We fought for months over this. Sarah screaming at me that I was fooling myself that there was a God. She was still as scornful as ever over my religion, refusing to step foot into church and mocking me whenever she had a chance. That first night I explained I was going back to school she stayed out again all night. She hadn’t done that in a very long time, again she came home days later stinking of the streets, of stale smoke and booze and sweat.
And Hannah just kept growing up. So beautiful, the only source of perfect unconditional love in my life.
It was because of Hannah that I defied Sarah’s wishes and enrolled at seminary.
I quit my construction job, paid my tuition and made arrangements for us to move to a cheaper place, a handy mans apartment at a local vacation time share facility. We lived there rent free in exchange for myself and Sarah being on call 24 hours a day to fix the small things that happened on site. I figured if she continued to work as a nurses aide and I took a night job as a desk clerk at a hotel we should be able to make it through the years of schooling ahead of me without any trouble. I remember those years, days crammed packed with busy.
At first I didn’t notice that Sarah was worse, that she drank more and came home less. I was busy with class and my night job. Somehow I’d managed to get Hannah in free daycare at a school connected with the church and the hotel I worked the night shift at allowed me to bring her with me. I’d put her down in her portable crib to sleep in the room behind the check in area and I’d crack open the books between guests arriving at the hotel. Hannah was either with me or in day care.
Old friends started stopping by the hotel and hinting that Sarah was out at this bar or that one, getting high, hitting on this or that guy. I didn’t believe it at first, sure, I knew she drank and still got high but she was always loyal to me, telling me that even at her angriest at me that she could never cheat. And I knew she loved Hannah, even if she did sometimes act like Hannah was more of an annoyance than a blessing. I just kept holding on praying, thinking that eventually Sarah would see the light and settle down. By that point I was praying so hard for God to change Sarah because I didn’t much like her much less love her with the kind of love a man is supposed to feel for his wife. But I was committed to her, to seeing this thing through to the end. After all, isn’t that what good Christian men did?
One night in the second year of school Hannah was very sick and I had to leave my night auditor job at the hotel to take her to the ER. After we’d waited what seemed like forever for four year old Hannah to be diagnosed with an ear infection we walked in on Sarah. Sarah was in bed with a strange man, in our bed, wasted as can be. We had a huge fight after I threw the man out and Sarah told me the same thing you heard today, that she didn’t love me, had never loved me. Furthermore she knew that I had never loved her, no matter than I’d told her I did. She could tell because I’d always been a bad liar. She left me that night, gathered her things and ran out into the night.
At first it felt like a relief. I knew I could handle school, my night job and my handy man position just fine and care for Hannah. I knew Sarah loved Hannah but I also knew she felt trapped by having to care for Hannah, which is why most of the child care fell to me. But I didn’t mind, I had Hannah and I loved Hannah more than I loved life itself. Maybe even more than I loved God.
After Sarah left I spent many long hours in prayer, begging God for a sign, wanting to know what to do next. Finally I decided she would probably return and if she did I was to offer her true forgiveness and welcome her back as my wife. I told myself that my primary tasks while Sarah was away was to keep on with the studies and keep taking the best care of Hannah I could.
I surrendered it all, put it in God’s hands, knowing He would either lead her back to me and we’d end up with a stronger union blessed by Him or Sarah would file for divorce and I wouldn’t fight it. In my mind I believed that if Sarah divorced me it would be because He was lining up the circumstances for me to be united with the great God sanctioned love of my life, that one woman He’d picked out for me before I was born. I knew the chances of Sarah making a good pastor’s wife were very slim and I thought perhaps this was God’s way of dealing with that problem.
In most ways life was easier and much more tranquil after Sarah left. At first Hannah would sometimes cry and ask for her mother and I would tell her that her mommy was off on a long wonderful vacation because mommy was tired. We wanted mommy to be happy and rested didn’t we, I told her, so we had to be patient and wait for her to return. This seemed to satisfy Hannah and before too many months she rarely mentioned her mother.
We continued on, Hannah started pre school and I entered another year of seminary. We struggled along. No word from Sarah, but we were happy. My parents adored Hannah and they willingly cared for her when I managed to land extra work on the weekends. My parents even came to accept that their son was going to be a minister, told me that they were proud of me and that I was well shed of Sarah, some day I’d met and marry someone who would fall in love with Hannah and be an excellent wife and mother. Forget Sarah and move on, they said.
And I did. I didn’t date because I didn’t feel free to do so while Sarah was out there and we were still legally married. I didn’t feel like it was right for me to file for the divorce because seminary taught that God hated divorce and you had to try all ways of mending the marriage before divorcing. Several ladies at church and seminary hinted to me that they were interested in me but I held off from any emotional entanglements until I knew which direction Sarah would go in dissolving our marriage.
That spring of my senior year in seminary Sarah reappeared, showing up on my doorstep one bright morning like almost two years hadn’t elapsed without a word from her. I could look at her and see that the last two years had taken a terrible toll on her. Gone was the pretty brunette with the sparkling blue eyes I’d married. She was terribly thin, like she hadn’t eaten a solid meal in days and her sagging skin had a grainy gray pallor. Even though I knew she was no older than I, in our late twenties, she looked like she could have easily been every bit of 45 years old. Sick, unhealthy and old. When she started speaking I could see she was even missing teeth.
Sarah whispered that she was sorry, sorry she’d left like she did and sorry she’d inflicted so much pain on me, sorry for all the things she’d done since she left. She didn’t go into specific detail exactly where she’d been and what she’d been doing but I could only imagine the worst after seeing the shell of her old self she’d morphed into. I didn’t ask for any answers. To know would be unbearable.
It wasn’t what I personally wanted, to have her show up like this when my life was so settled and mapped out for success but God gently reminded me of my promise to Him to take Sarah back with open arms and complete forgiveness if this was the path He wanted me to take. So I bit back whatever misgivings I had and did exactly that.
That first night Sarah told me she’d realized two things during her time away, that she needed God in a big way and that she genuinely did love and miss both Hannah and I. She begged me to forgive her, help her find a way to God and to simply love her as my wife. I stared into those blood shot eyes surrounded by puffy bloated lids and crinkles and felt only pity and the love of Christ for another human being so I silently prayed that God would help me find the love a man has for his wife for Sarah. The quicker, the better.
Unfortunately two years is a long time in the life of a small child. When Sarah left Hannah had been a playful four year old. In just two years time Hannah had matured into a very serious first grader, well behaved, studious and helpful. She barely remembered her mother and held her mother at a cold distance at first. I could see Sarah was hurt and I tried to explain to her just how hurt Hannah had been when she disappeared without a trace. Begged her to be patient with both Hannah and I because we were both going to have to take time adjusting to her presence in our lives again. She left just like that and arrived back the same way, with the speed and precision of a meteoroid strike out of the blue. The landscape is forever changed when a meteor hit’s the ground, scarred and damaged. She wanted us to pretend that no time had passed and there was no damage. That wasn’t possible.”
I interrupted Will here to interject, “And just like that you were able to accept her back to be your wife? Did anything change or was it more of the same?”
He sighed deeply before going on as I realized that the longer Will Morgan talked the sadder he’d started to look. Dredging up old painful memories he continued on, “I still didn’t love Sarah but I forgave her and accepted her again as my wife. For the first six months after her return she behaved perfectly, she accepted Jesus, starting going to church with Hannah and I and settled into life as a stay at home mom. She didn’t drink or drug and she finally stopped dressing like she was a bar fly, trading the skin tight jeans and mini skirts for more fitting clothing for the wife of a soon to be pastor. Whatever had happened to her out on the streets was bad enough to make her subdued, quiet and thoughtful, not the ball of fire she’d been. But we did settle in to a life together and I thought, okay God, so this is the woman You have for me and I made every attempt to conjure up romantic love for her. I didn’t love her but I didn’t find having a wife to be a trial either. We rubbed along nicely and eventually Hannah did thaw towards her mother.
By the time I graduated and was ordained things in our little family were on an even keel and I was relieved. I knew to be a pastor and a single father would have been frowned upon so I was glad to have a wife again. We settled into our first pastorate position over in rural North Carolina, up in the mountains at a small church. There was a tiny white clapboard house behind the church. I liked our new community but I knew quickly that she found it restraining, confining. Whenever I came home from work every day Sarah would complain, timidly at first but with ever increasing litany of the wrongs of our small town. I could tell Sarah was bored but I urged her to take up a hobby and start an outreach program through our church.
Sarah’s answer was to decide we needed another child and to go off her birth control pills. In the previous six months she’d started to heal from the months of alcohol and drug abuse and she looked and seemed quite healthy. I didn’t know she had contracted herpes and hepatitis C while she was away from us.
I didn’t want another child right thing. We were busy settling into an entirely different life in a new place and I felt we needed to concentrate on helping Hannah make the transition to our new situation. The last thing we needed to do was to strain our meager finances with another mouth and split our attentions on another child.
We fought bitterly over having another child. I begged Sarah to put it off for a year, just till we settled into our first position but she was adamant, she would get pregnant as quickly as possible. At first I avoided all relations with her but eventually I couldn’t control myself, finding it too difficult to have a willing woman in my bed without making love to her. Soon enough she was pregnant.
I accepted it as a gift from God, swallowing my disappointment that I was being burdened with a big expense I couldn’t afford so at Sarah’s urging I asked to be appointed to a bigger church with a larger salary. And we moved again, this time to Virginia Beach, Virginia, to a larger congregation. I was almost afraid to go there because, just like Myrtle Beach, it was a tourist town and a beach atmosphere known for partying and all the other negatives we’d left in Myrtle.
But Sarah seemed to have no interest in the party scene, pushing herself into establishing our household and decorating the small ranch house the church rented for us. She seemed happy. I liked our new church situation better so I thought this was just another example of God blessing us when I thought it wasn’t going to be good.
I worked hard and Sarah’s pregnancy progressed. Hannah settled into the Lutheran school connected to the new church and soon made new friends. I should have known it was all too perfect and couldn’t last.
And then my son was born, seemingly health weighing eight pounds and ten ounces with a full head of dark hair. We were both over the moon when Jason arrived and I started feeling something akin to the first stirrings of love for Sarah.
We settled into life with our two children. I coached Hannah’s T-Ball team and Sarah took her to Brownies and to Missionettes. I loved my new congregation and they embraced our small family.
Things didn’t start to fall apart until six months after Jason’s birth. Both Sarah and I started to worry because with every major developmental milestone that sprang up Jason wasn’t able to measure up. At six months he couldn’t lift his head, he didn’t smile and he couldn’t roll over. He was stuck about the newborn stage. Finally our pediatrician recommended a specialist and we brought Jason to the new doctor for an evaluation.
What he told us was earth-shattering and ultimately the thing that ended our marriage. Turns out that Jason had contracted both herpes and hepatitis c from his birth and as a result of these diseases rampaging unchecked in his body he was now retarded and suffering from liver disease. There was no cure for either.
Our family physician kept repeating, “If I had only known you had herpes and hep c this could have all been prevented.” Sarah kept howling that she didn’t know, she didn’t know. I was tested for both and found to be negative. Hannah was also clean.
I turned against Sarah, turned a cold shoulder to her after this. How could she had exposed me and our son to these illnesses, how could she not have known she was sick? My restless brain turned over and over the fact that herpes confirmed she’d been with other men during our separation and her promiscuity had doomed our son. I moved out of our bedroom and started sleeping in the study, interacting as little as possible with Sarah. Hannah was confused by all of this, why I didn’t want to be around mommy and why her mother was so sad all of the time.
This went on for six months or so until I started to hear rumors that when I was working Sarah had started to hit the party scene again. She started dressing in a revealing fashion once again and took to the bar scene with a vengeance. I fought with her about it and our diocese asked me to explain the actions of my wife because they found it embarrassing to the church. I tried to explain and spent every ounce of energy I had trying to keep things at home on an even keel. I even asked Sarah to go into marital counseling with me, offering to forgive and forget if we could go into therapy. I even told the lie that I loved her. She refused.
Then tragedy struck while I was away on a three day charge conference in Northern Virginia. Last on the second day of the conference there was a cryptic message that I was to come home as soon as possible from the local Virginia Police. I drove home out of my mind with fear, afraid that Sarah had abandoned the kids or maybe that she’d snapped under the influence and hurt Jason.
It was bad, but not any of the negative scenarios I’d imagined. From what the police pieced together Sarah had been giving both children large doses of a over the counter antihistamine to make them sleep while I was gone and going out drinking and partying with her pals. That day she’d done it again, left the kids alone in the house and headed out for the bars along the beachfront boardwalk. Some time after she left, an hour or two, an electrical short caused an intense fire in the kitchen. When the fire dept arrived they were able to extinguish the blaze quickly but it was too late for Hannah and Jason. Both had died in their sleep of smoke inhalation. The only mercy is that neither of them suffered.
If I had been hurt when Sarah left me or when we discovered that Jason was mentally handicapped it was nothing compared to the pain I felt upon their deaths. In the police station I attacked and tried to strangle Sarah, blaming her for their deaths. The police arrested Sarah on a number of charges but she ended up only serving eighteen months in prison for both deaths. She divorced me while she was in prison, citing ‘emotional cruelty‘, still unable to admit she‘d killed our children. Shortly after she was released she made her way back home to Myrtle Beach and she killed herself with an overdose of pills on top of the graves of our children.
Shortly after all of this happened I asked to be transferred, somewhere with a school preferably so that I could help kids, protect them from themselves, from the screw ups for their parents. I’ve been here five years now and all that happened in the past seems unreal like a bad dream. I like it here, but I’m not sure I can ever trust enough again to marry or have children.
So, you see, I do know what you’re going through today. You snapped at me, said I couldn’t, but I do.”
I was crying by this point in Will’s narrative, wondering how he wasn’t stark raving bonkers. I know I would have been had it been Jay dying tragically like that at Michael’s hand. I would have killed Michael, no question about it. I could only reach across the table and take Will’s hand and squeeze it while murmuring, “I’m so, so sorry Will. I know better than to judge someone or their situation and your story is a good reminder of how I need to not make assumptions. You must have tremendous inner strength to live through that and still walk with the Lord.”
Will looked as though he were close to tears himself and he said, “Am I strong or just too weak to do anything else, Mrs. Smith?”
I blushed, suddenly ashamed of myself for my assumptions and judgments and I stammered out, “You can call me Mary.”
We dawdled as long as we could over coffee. Will assured me that he would be supportive of Jay and myself, he’d help out as much as he could at the school to make sure Jay had loving support. When we finished the drive home we were talking like old friends. Will’s story of what he had endured had opened a dialogue between us, a commonality that I didn’t know existed. I felt worlds better even though I had lived through hell today.
The good feelings lasted until Will dropped me at my home. As I unlocked the door and walked in I noticed that my charming farmhouse more resembled a pig sty. The people who’d came over to wait with me in my house had left a mess, clean laundry trampled on the rug of the study, dirty plates and dishes on various surfaces, mud tracked across the beautiful oriental rug in the living room. I started to weep at the sight of wet marks, ghostly rings on my shiny oak dining room table and when I went into the nearby powder room to get tissue to blow my nose I noticed that all the toilet paper was gone and the medicine cabinet door was ajar.
Suddenly the house felt far too suffocating and I ran from it, not caring it was after eleven pm, I ran from the house and across the yard, seeking out the warmth and love at Marvellette’s house across the road. But an oncoming train stopped me and I wept and wailed as it passed, wondering how I got to this sorry state from my long ago childhood in Mississippi. The trains passed by our house this closely too, shaking the foundation of the house, a constant lullaby.
It always irritated Michael, these trains rolling past our house but for me it only brought back memories of a time when I felt loved and secure, golden feelings of childhood. Tonight it didn’t. I stood shrieking and crying by the side of the railroad grade, upset at being delayed once again.
After what seemed an eternity the train passed and I ran across the blacktop to Marvellette’s house. She sat up with me while I unloaded all the events of this day. I’ll always remember the look of shock on her face as I told her of catching Michael with another woman. She understood when I said I could not face a night sleeping in the same bed that I’d shared with Michael all those years and I spent that fitful night laying on her sofa. Tomorrow would be time enough to sort out what I would do next but I knew I’d never spend another night in the bedroom I’d shared with Michael.
After Marvellette returned to bed I lay on her lumpy old sofa staring at the ceiling, wondering exactly how I’d failed Michael so badly that he would so easily abandon me like this. I pleaded with God to give me an answer to this all.
As the trains passed by again, whistle blasts long and low in the distance, I thought anew about how my life could have taken a turn like this. When I’d been a girl, even though I was poor without many opportunities, I’d believed that life would take me many places.
In those days I lived mostly with my grandmother in her large old house along the main drag in Toomsuba, Mississippi. Sometimes I lived with my mother in a series of rented trailers and small houses but most of the time I stayed with my grandmother. I never knew who my father was and my mother was a bartender who seemed to have a never ending parade of male companions must to the horror of my very proper grandmother. I started living with my grandmother after childrens protective services kept putting me in foster care because my mother would sometimes disappear for a day or two.
I never minded the shuttling back and forth and I didn’t even mind foster care. I always found being part of a large family to be a welcome change that I didn’t mind I was glomming onto someone else’s family.
But once I arrived at my grandmother’s home life took on a steady pace. No running out in the middle of the night on the landlord. No more eating beans from a can and baloney. No more being able to go roam the neighborhood at any time during the night or day. But I welcomed that change too.
My room in her home overlooked the local train yards in the distance and the sound of the trains underpinned most of my days and nights.
Once upon a time my grandmother had been a wealthy woman, now she eked by on her social security payments and whatever she could collect from CPS towards my care. I didn’t realize until I was grown that she got food stamps for having custody of me or that I was on Medicaid.
But I didn’t know we were poor. To me life at my grandmother’s house seemed like paradise. And I’d been too dumb to realize not everyone lived like my mother and I did. All I knew is that I had regular meals now, clean clothes, the nicest ones I’d ever worn and a house so pretty that most of the girls at school asked it if was true that we had one room just for our piano. No one pointed at me as the daughter of the town easy lay and no kids at school accused me of being ‘stinky’ any longer.
I stopped going to the local elementary school and my grandmother enrolled me in a the St Mary Academy for Young Ladies. In exchange for my tuition I worked on the grounds of the school, helping Sister Agnes in the library, scrubbing pots with Sister Thelica in the kitchen or I helped Sister Lalonda pull weeds from the vegetable garden. For two hours every day after school I worked at the convent school on whatever task was set before me. I credit those years working under the tutelage of the nuns as truly forming who I am today. How else would I have learned to grow my own food or to sew my clothing. Not from my mother, goodtime Gertie and certainly not from my grandmother, grand dame of society once upon a time.
What I did learn from my grandmother was how to function graciously in a world starting to go mad with rudeness and self centeredness. She taught me how to properly set a table, the correct way to converse in polite company, how to sit, how to stand, how to dance. I left her home with manners that could have put me in any blue blood family even if I was on food stamps. It wasn’t until many years later that I realized how big a gift she’d given me.
From the age of 7 years old those nuns became a sort of family to me, a family I’d never experienced and one that loved me and supported me up until the day I left the convent in rural Mississippi to go to nursing school. The nuns had turned me into a scholar in those years so I landed a full scholarship to a smaller college in Maryland.
Between the lessons from my grandmother, the education and practical knowledge learned from the convent I was ready to go out into the world to face anything. Or so it felt like.
I’d stopped crying but now I was in a state of shock that went beyond petty things like food or human needs. I just wanted to go home and curl into a ball on my bed, hide under the covers forever. I croaked out, “I’m not hungry’\”
Politely, firmly, in a way a parent talks to a small stubborn child Morgan said, “You may not be hungry but you have to eat something. When you get home in 40 minutes you’ll need to be strong enough to meet Jay’s needs. He’s your primary responsibility now. Nothing that happened today changes that.”
He stopped at a restaurant I’d driven past something like a million times and never bored to visit, Town & County Restaurant. I’d glimpsed it’s red neon sign proclaiming the ‘best food in the world’ so many mornings and evenings but the old fashion looking exterior had never lured me in.
Inside the restaurant it was as deserted as the outside. But the interior was humble and quant, booths and tables with red checkered table clothes, framed photos on the wall of long gone celebrities that had once come this way. It was like a fancier version of an old fashioned diner on the inside, cozy and inviting.
Both the waitress and Pastor Morgan extended me mercy that evening. I kept staring at the menu and it might as well be written in ancient Aramaic because I understood it not at all, the words kept swimming past my eyes until Pastor Morgan offered to order for me. I nodded dumbly before saying, “Alright, Pastor Morgan.”
He stopped me and said, “We’ve spent a very long afternoon and evening together on the most difficult day our nation has experienced in many years. I think you can call me Will.”
My thoughts were so jumbled that day that I gasped out, “But, but, you’re a man of God and my son’s principal. I don’t think it’s right for me to be that familiar.”
Will Morgan, Lutheran minister, school principal, smiled at me and removed his clerical collar before my surprised expression and said, “There, now I’m just plain Will. Take off your head scarf and you can be Mary, or Mary Martha if you prefer.”
I didn’t know what to say to this. It seemed to me like he was playing fast and loose and I clutched the end of my head scarf and said in the most dignified outraged voice I could muster up, “Certainly not! Reverend Morgan you forget yourself!”
He shrugged and looked distressed, like he’d offered me a present and I’d ungratefully dismissed it. “I was just trying to make you feel more at ease.”
Fortunately for me the food arrived them and I didn’t have to bother making small talk any longer to my great relief. This had been awkward enough and I barely knew Reverend Morgan. Until the moment I smelled the aroma of the arriving food I hadn’t realized just how hungry I was. Will Morgan had ordered both of us the same thing, a hearty breakfast with country ham, eggs, toast, grits and biscuits.
While I was enjoying tucking into my meal I realized that Morgan had been truthful with me. He was obviously famished because he’s eating like this is his last meal ever. Suddenly I feel guilty that I’d been wrapped up in my world so much today that I could not see the needs of another human being and I decide to be nicer to him. I’ve been snappish and borderline rude because it almost felt like an invasion of my space for him to be here considering I barely know him. But I know he’s just trying to care for me, for Jay, to the best of his ability. It’s who he is.
So I stir myself to talk to him once the pace of our meal becomes more leisurely. “I never thought to thank you earlier for driving me in and tolerating that scene back at my condo.” I say, trying to muster up a bit of a smile. It feels alien and unnatural to try and smile after all I’ve been through today.
Will startled when I spoke, I’d obviously jolted him out of his head, out of the midst of who knows where, he certainly was far away from this table and he blushed before replying, “What else could I do? I’m concerned for all my students like Jay and it was fairly obvious that he was being severely impacted by today’s tragedy. But I must confess, this day hasn’t exactly worked out like I expected it to. I’m so terribly sorry you’ve been put through this, first thinking your husband was dead and then finding out that he was unfaithful. I know the pain that causes all too well. I want you to know that I’ll do everything within my power to help out Jay and you because I know you’re facing tough times ahead.”
I nodded, taking another sip of coffee before saying, “Today was a shocker but it’s not going to end badly. Michael will tire of his single life and come home. He always does.”
Will gasped, worry furrows appearing between his brows as he asked, “This has happened before?”
In that restaurant, in front of this man, I decide that like Michael, it’s time for some truth. “Yes, Michael has always been flighty, less committed to our marriage than I have been. I’ve never caught him cheating before but I think I always knew in the back of my mind that he was unfaithful. He’d go through periods of time where he was hateful and cranky and he worked long hours. Then just as suddenly as it started it would end, he’d show up on time at home, be loving, gracious and helpful, send me flowers and I’d know that whatever it was Michael was struggling with was at an end. This is just more of the same.”
“And the drinking? Is that recent too or a long standing problem?” Will asked.
“Early in our marriage it became obvious that Michael was an alky, his parents were, his siblings were. He recognized this was a problem for him and he hasn’t drank around me in many years. It was a surprise to see him drinking today. Makes me wonder if I ever really knew him. Is this a one time occurrence or a daily thing? I just don’t know. I don‘t have a clue how to handle his drinking it‘s been so long since he‘s been drunk around us. Back when Jay was a baby he roughly handled Jay, bruising Jay and I used that incident and his guilt to force him to stop drinking, at least around us.”
Suddenly Will Morgan looked very embarrassed, he turned red and almost started to fidget like a wayward school boy. Finally he spoke, “I know this is really none of my business but I’ve been wondering how I could broach the subject of possible abuse with you. I’m not trying to pry but I have noticed that your son seems by turns afraid of your husband or rudely dismissive of him. I worry about him. I haven‘t actually seen any signs of physical abuse but I have to be honest with you, your son does show signs of early rebellion that make me think things aren‘t great with Dad.”
I looked down at my plate, suddenly uninterested in my meal, “You’re right, it really is none of your business. Our marriage and parenthood of Jay has been fraught with the normal ups and downs everyone faces. Michael has never actually abused Jay.”
But I could see that Will wasn’t going to drop the subject. He looked very perplexed and said slowly, “You just said your husband was rough with the boy. That sounds like borderline abuse to me.”
I realized again how deep the denial I’d been living in all the years of my adulthood was, here I was, telling cleaned up versions of the truth. Truthfully I’d had to take Jay to the ER when he was a toddler with a dislocated arm from Michael grabbing him hard more than once. Somehow I’d managed to deflect the doctors questions about possible abuse and I’d kept it buried all these things, not wanting to acknowledge what Michael did to Jay when he was a toddler.
But I didn’t want this man before me, this virtual stranger, to know the depth of how Michael had once treated Jay and sometimes me. So I shrugged and looked up at him, eyes radiating innocence as I replied, “I’m speaking of things that happened once when Jay was a toddler. True, Michael and Jay aren’t that close but I think that has to do more with the fact that Michael works long hours in the city and travels a couple of times a month with his job than any abuse or drinking. Michael is gone from sun up to far past sun down and stays in the city sometimes as well. He’s just not around but it’s not by his choice, it’s the job.”
Will Morgan didn’t reply right away, he took another sip of his coffee. “I might have nothing to worry about with previous abuse in regards to Jay but after today I’ll be making sure the staff at school keeps an eye on him. This is not going to be an easy time regardless of how it works out in the long term. I would recommend that both you and Jay seek some sort of professional help to deal with the fallout of today.”
I laughed, “Pastor Morgan, you make it sound like Michael and I are going to be divorcing. Don’t make that assumption that divorce is looming. This will blow over. Nothing will change. Michael will come home.”
“How can you say that?” he asked me, “I was back there, listening to every word your husband said. He wants a divorce. I know you said this is just typical for you but you also said he’d never asked for a divorce before. I believe him, he’s serious and you’ll have to deal with that in a way that protects Jay. Kids sometimes don’t handle divorce very well.”
And just like that I felt my temper raging out of control and I snapped at him, “Don’t you know, my religion forbids divorce. As I said earlier, this will all blow over. Plus, I’m not giving Michael a divorce. God hates divorce, you should know that as a man of God. You’re not married and you don’t have kids so what do you even know about any of these things? You’ve lived the sheltered life of an unmarried pastor so I consider you unqualified to sound off on anything but my child’s education.”
I didn’t add that myself and many others at Plover Creek considered Lutheranism to be just a little less righteous and pure than our own. We Charismatic looked down upon mainstream Protestant religions as being lukewarm and Pharisee like. Will just didn’t get how our faith in God ruled every aspect of our lives.
Amusement sparkled in Will’s green eyes, amusement mixed with some sort of deep sadness lurking behind it all. “Oh, I’ve known tragedy and marriage and children. I’m not the goody two shoes you believe. Did you know I was once married?”
I started thinking about the implications of his confession, wondering how he could possibly be ordained and be a minister, deciding he had to have lost his wife to death. “No,” I stammered out nervously, “I’ve heard nothing about you but I do try to avoid gossip. God hates gossip.”
“Like you, I’m not local. I spent my growing up years living in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. My momma and daddy weren’t married and they split up and got back together again all throughout my childhood. Momma was a free spirit and Daddy always thought his band would make it big one day. I wasn’t taken to church as a child, in fact, I thought religion was for suckers, feeble minded losers and I wasn’t having any of it. I lived for the next beer, the next wave on my surfboard and the next pretty girl. I did so so in school and after graduation I started working in construction, doing carpentry work and drinking and partying every night. I never got in trouble and I was living a carefree fun sort of life, no worries about tomorrow, no real responsibilities. “
“Why are you telling me all of this?” I gently interrupted his monologue.
“Because you stated there is no way I could possibly understand your situation because I was unmarried, childless with a perfect life. I wish to shatter your illusions and show you I do understand your feelings, all too well. I’ve not always been a minister, hell, I haven’t always been a Christian even. I was a very bad boy for some time, never thinking about grace or God in any way.
I lived like that for a long time, till my mid twenties I suppose, until my regular girlfriend, someone I met through the beach bar party scene, ended up pregnant. We agreed we would get married for the sake of the child, so our baby would be raised by a set of two parents. Even though I didn’t know the Lord, I knew that abortion was wrong. Sarah wanted at first to get an abortion, but I talked her out of it. We married and it was a disaster, we didn’t have anything in common and neither of us really loved each other. I didn’t have the first idea of how to make a marriage work, I kept drinking and partying, Sarah was annoyed that I would abandon her alone at the house, knocked up and bored so I could bar hop after work.
But the minute I saw my baby girl it was all worth it, all the bickering, all the tension. I loved that child from the moment I laid eyes on her. Holding her in my arms was heaven, pure heaven. Something profound happened to me the night she was born, for the first time there was someone who was entirely mine, who looked to me for care, love, protection. It changed me in an instant. I swore I would do everything in my power to be the best father in the world.”
I didn’t say anything during Pastor Morgan’s recitation of his life, I just nodded and occasionally made an understanding noise as he continued.
“Part of that change for the best was accepting Jesus in my life. For months a couple of guys at work had been witnessing to me, trying to get me to turn away from the booze and pot and come to church with them. I’d always been very dismissive of those Charlie Church types but when I beheld the miracle of baby Hannah, that was her name, Hannah, I knew there was a loving and just God in the heavens and it seemed like the next logical step to turn to Him, thank Him for the gift of Hannah and to raise her knowing her creator. Plus I wasn’t entirely sure how to live a straight sober life. I knew I had to give up the alcohol and the drugs. My parents had been stoners and drinkers and I grew up living that way but I wanted better for Hannah.
None of this set very well with Sarah. She wanted me to return to the hard-partying Will she knew from the beach bar scene and wanted no part of my new life in Christ. She mocked me, saying leopards don’t change their spots and there was no way I would be able to stay away from the weed and the bar scene. I couldn’t get her to give it up either. Three months after Hannah was born Sarah stayed away from our apartment all night, calling at the middle of the night from a bar in a drunken haze to tell me she would come home when she damn well felt like it.
I was so tempted to use, to get so high I didn’t care. But I didn’t. I called up friends from church, who came over and prayed with me that Sarah’s heart be touched and she turn to the Lord. When she finally came home days later I was frantic and begged her to never do that again. In the meantime I’d lost my job because I’d had to miss work while Sarah was gone.
Getting another good job in construction wasn’t hard but things never did thaw between us again. Sarah and I lived very separate lives, I’d get up at dawn, feed Hannah, change her diaper and put her back in her crib before packing my lunch and going to work. Yeah, I turned penny pinching during those days, trying to save up to buy a house for Hannah to grow up in and for her to have a college education. I reminded myself every day that what I did, from work to staying with her mother, was towards the goal of being the best Dad for Hannah.
Motherhood didn’t affect Sarah quite the same way. I’d go off to work and much later the neighbors told me that Hannah would cry, sometimes for hours, while Sarah slept off whatever alcohol or drugs she’d consumed the night before. I wanted to beat her when I found out she was neglecting our daughter but my friends at church urged me to keep praying for her, killing her with kindness and be the best husband I could be to her and that eventually she’d come around.
Sometimes we got along better than others, every now and again I’d see things in Sarah that gave me a glimmer of hope that life was going to work out, that we were going to both be believers, fall in love with either other and raise Hannah up the right way. I had such foolish hopes then, but I didn’t know any better. I was so young.
After I’d been a believer for about a year I started getting very involved with life at church. I helped lead a cell group, teach Sunday School and one Sunday I was invited to speak to the congregation on the subject of how I’d experienced God’s love through the birth of my daughter strongly enough to give up drugs and booze. When I wasn’t working or caring for Hannah, both she and I were at church.”
“Lutheran?” I asked.
“Well, no, a Charismatic non-denominational congregation with quite a few Lutherans attending.
At the end of my second year of clean living I started to feel from my daily quiet time that perhaps God wanted me to become a pastor. I prayed about it for a long time and eventually I shared my belief with the leaders of my church, all of whom had been ordained through the Lutheran church. They encouraged me to do just that, go back to school and study towards ordination. It was a big step but I felt that is exactly where God would have me.
But Sarah was enraged when I told her of my plans. We’d been saving towards buying a house. She’d gone back to work as an nurses aide and I’d continued working in construction, building hotels and condos for the area tourist trade. We’d made a lot of money and she wanted to buy a house. For me to go into the ministry meant I’d have to quit my job and go to school during the day while she worked.
We fought for months over this. Sarah screaming at me that I was fooling myself that there was a God. She was still as scornful as ever over my religion, refusing to step foot into church and mocking me whenever she had a chance. That first night I explained I was going back to school she stayed out again all night. She hadn’t done that in a very long time, again she came home days later stinking of the streets, of stale smoke and booze and sweat.
And Hannah just kept growing up. So beautiful, the only source of perfect unconditional love in my life.
It was because of Hannah that I defied Sarah’s wishes and enrolled at seminary.
I quit my construction job, paid my tuition and made arrangements for us to move to a cheaper place, a handy mans apartment at a local vacation time share facility. We lived there rent free in exchange for myself and Sarah being on call 24 hours a day to fix the small things that happened on site. I figured if she continued to work as a nurses aide and I took a night job as a desk clerk at a hotel we should be able to make it through the years of schooling ahead of me without any trouble. I remember those years, days crammed packed with busy.
At first I didn’t notice that Sarah was worse, that she drank more and came home less. I was busy with class and my night job. Somehow I’d managed to get Hannah in free daycare at a school connected with the church and the hotel I worked the night shift at allowed me to bring her with me. I’d put her down in her portable crib to sleep in the room behind the check in area and I’d crack open the books between guests arriving at the hotel. Hannah was either with me or in day care.
Old friends started stopping by the hotel and hinting that Sarah was out at this bar or that one, getting high, hitting on this or that guy. I didn’t believe it at first, sure, I knew she drank and still got high but she was always loyal to me, telling me that even at her angriest at me that she could never cheat. And I knew she loved Hannah, even if she did sometimes act like Hannah was more of an annoyance than a blessing. I just kept holding on praying, thinking that eventually Sarah would see the light and settle down. By that point I was praying so hard for God to change Sarah because I didn’t much like her much less love her with the kind of love a man is supposed to feel for his wife. But I was committed to her, to seeing this thing through to the end. After all, isn’t that what good Christian men did?
One night in the second year of school Hannah was very sick and I had to leave my night auditor job at the hotel to take her to the ER. After we’d waited what seemed like forever for four year old Hannah to be diagnosed with an ear infection we walked in on Sarah. Sarah was in bed with a strange man, in our bed, wasted as can be. We had a huge fight after I threw the man out and Sarah told me the same thing you heard today, that she didn’t love me, had never loved me. Furthermore she knew that I had never loved her, no matter than I’d told her I did. She could tell because I’d always been a bad liar. She left me that night, gathered her things and ran out into the night.
At first it felt like a relief. I knew I could handle school, my night job and my handy man position just fine and care for Hannah. I knew Sarah loved Hannah but I also knew she felt trapped by having to care for Hannah, which is why most of the child care fell to me. But I didn’t mind, I had Hannah and I loved Hannah more than I loved life itself. Maybe even more than I loved God.
After Sarah left I spent many long hours in prayer, begging God for a sign, wanting to know what to do next. Finally I decided she would probably return and if she did I was to offer her true forgiveness and welcome her back as my wife. I told myself that my primary tasks while Sarah was away was to keep on with the studies and keep taking the best care of Hannah I could.
I surrendered it all, put it in God’s hands, knowing He would either lead her back to me and we’d end up with a stronger union blessed by Him or Sarah would file for divorce and I wouldn’t fight it. In my mind I believed that if Sarah divorced me it would be because He was lining up the circumstances for me to be united with the great God sanctioned love of my life, that one woman He’d picked out for me before I was born. I knew the chances of Sarah making a good pastor’s wife were very slim and I thought perhaps this was God’s way of dealing with that problem.
In most ways life was easier and much more tranquil after Sarah left. At first Hannah would sometimes cry and ask for her mother and I would tell her that her mommy was off on a long wonderful vacation because mommy was tired. We wanted mommy to be happy and rested didn’t we, I told her, so we had to be patient and wait for her to return. This seemed to satisfy Hannah and before too many months she rarely mentioned her mother.
We continued on, Hannah started pre school and I entered another year of seminary. We struggled along. No word from Sarah, but we were happy. My parents adored Hannah and they willingly cared for her when I managed to land extra work on the weekends. My parents even came to accept that their son was going to be a minister, told me that they were proud of me and that I was well shed of Sarah, some day I’d met and marry someone who would fall in love with Hannah and be an excellent wife and mother. Forget Sarah and move on, they said.
And I did. I didn’t date because I didn’t feel free to do so while Sarah was out there and we were still legally married. I didn’t feel like it was right for me to file for the divorce because seminary taught that God hated divorce and you had to try all ways of mending the marriage before divorcing. Several ladies at church and seminary hinted to me that they were interested in me but I held off from any emotional entanglements until I knew which direction Sarah would go in dissolving our marriage.
That spring of my senior year in seminary Sarah reappeared, showing up on my doorstep one bright morning like almost two years hadn’t elapsed without a word from her. I could look at her and see that the last two years had taken a terrible toll on her. Gone was the pretty brunette with the sparkling blue eyes I’d married. She was terribly thin, like she hadn’t eaten a solid meal in days and her sagging skin had a grainy gray pallor. Even though I knew she was no older than I, in our late twenties, she looked like she could have easily been every bit of 45 years old. Sick, unhealthy and old. When she started speaking I could see she was even missing teeth.
Sarah whispered that she was sorry, sorry she’d left like she did and sorry she’d inflicted so much pain on me, sorry for all the things she’d done since she left. She didn’t go into specific detail exactly where she’d been and what she’d been doing but I could only imagine the worst after seeing the shell of her old self she’d morphed into. I didn’t ask for any answers. To know would be unbearable.
It wasn’t what I personally wanted, to have her show up like this when my life was so settled and mapped out for success but God gently reminded me of my promise to Him to take Sarah back with open arms and complete forgiveness if this was the path He wanted me to take. So I bit back whatever misgivings I had and did exactly that.
That first night Sarah told me she’d realized two things during her time away, that she needed God in a big way and that she genuinely did love and miss both Hannah and I. She begged me to forgive her, help her find a way to God and to simply love her as my wife. I stared into those blood shot eyes surrounded by puffy bloated lids and crinkles and felt only pity and the love of Christ for another human being so I silently prayed that God would help me find the love a man has for his wife for Sarah. The quicker, the better.
Unfortunately two years is a long time in the life of a small child. When Sarah left Hannah had been a playful four year old. In just two years time Hannah had matured into a very serious first grader, well behaved, studious and helpful. She barely remembered her mother and held her mother at a cold distance at first. I could see Sarah was hurt and I tried to explain to her just how hurt Hannah had been when she disappeared without a trace. Begged her to be patient with both Hannah and I because we were both going to have to take time adjusting to her presence in our lives again. She left just like that and arrived back the same way, with the speed and precision of a meteoroid strike out of the blue. The landscape is forever changed when a meteor hit’s the ground, scarred and damaged. She wanted us to pretend that no time had passed and there was no damage. That wasn’t possible.”
I interrupted Will here to interject, “And just like that you were able to accept her back to be your wife? Did anything change or was it more of the same?”
He sighed deeply before going on as I realized that the longer Will Morgan talked the sadder he’d started to look. Dredging up old painful memories he continued on, “I still didn’t love Sarah but I forgave her and accepted her again as my wife. For the first six months after her return she behaved perfectly, she accepted Jesus, starting going to church with Hannah and I and settled into life as a stay at home mom. She didn’t drink or drug and she finally stopped dressing like she was a bar fly, trading the skin tight jeans and mini skirts for more fitting clothing for the wife of a soon to be pastor. Whatever had happened to her out on the streets was bad enough to make her subdued, quiet and thoughtful, not the ball of fire she’d been. But we did settle in to a life together and I thought, okay God, so this is the woman You have for me and I made every attempt to conjure up romantic love for her. I didn’t love her but I didn’t find having a wife to be a trial either. We rubbed along nicely and eventually Hannah did thaw towards her mother.
By the time I graduated and was ordained things in our little family were on an even keel and I was relieved. I knew to be a pastor and a single father would have been frowned upon so I was glad to have a wife again. We settled into our first pastorate position over in rural North Carolina, up in the mountains at a small church. There was a tiny white clapboard house behind the church. I liked our new community but I knew quickly that she found it restraining, confining. Whenever I came home from work every day Sarah would complain, timidly at first but with ever increasing litany of the wrongs of our small town. I could tell Sarah was bored but I urged her to take up a hobby and start an outreach program through our church.
Sarah’s answer was to decide we needed another child and to go off her birth control pills. In the previous six months she’d started to heal from the months of alcohol and drug abuse and she looked and seemed quite healthy. I didn’t know she had contracted herpes and hepatitis C while she was away from us.
I didn’t want another child right thing. We were busy settling into an entirely different life in a new place and I felt we needed to concentrate on helping Hannah make the transition to our new situation. The last thing we needed to do was to strain our meager finances with another mouth and split our attentions on another child.
We fought bitterly over having another child. I begged Sarah to put it off for a year, just till we settled into our first position but she was adamant, she would get pregnant as quickly as possible. At first I avoided all relations with her but eventually I couldn’t control myself, finding it too difficult to have a willing woman in my bed without making love to her. Soon enough she was pregnant.
I accepted it as a gift from God, swallowing my disappointment that I was being burdened with a big expense I couldn’t afford so at Sarah’s urging I asked to be appointed to a bigger church with a larger salary. And we moved again, this time to Virginia Beach, Virginia, to a larger congregation. I was almost afraid to go there because, just like Myrtle Beach, it was a tourist town and a beach atmosphere known for partying and all the other negatives we’d left in Myrtle.
But Sarah seemed to have no interest in the party scene, pushing herself into establishing our household and decorating the small ranch house the church rented for us. She seemed happy. I liked our new church situation better so I thought this was just another example of God blessing us when I thought it wasn’t going to be good.
I worked hard and Sarah’s pregnancy progressed. Hannah settled into the Lutheran school connected to the new church and soon made new friends. I should have known it was all too perfect and couldn’t last.
And then my son was born, seemingly health weighing eight pounds and ten ounces with a full head of dark hair. We were both over the moon when Jason arrived and I started feeling something akin to the first stirrings of love for Sarah.
We settled into life with our two children. I coached Hannah’s T-Ball team and Sarah took her to Brownies and to Missionettes. I loved my new congregation and they embraced our small family.
Things didn’t start to fall apart until six months after Jason’s birth. Both Sarah and I started to worry because with every major developmental milestone that sprang up Jason wasn’t able to measure up. At six months he couldn’t lift his head, he didn’t smile and he couldn’t roll over. He was stuck about the newborn stage. Finally our pediatrician recommended a specialist and we brought Jason to the new doctor for an evaluation.
What he told us was earth-shattering and ultimately the thing that ended our marriage. Turns out that Jason had contracted both herpes and hepatitis c from his birth and as a result of these diseases rampaging unchecked in his body he was now retarded and suffering from liver disease. There was no cure for either.
Our family physician kept repeating, “If I had only known you had herpes and hep c this could have all been prevented.” Sarah kept howling that she didn’t know, she didn’t know. I was tested for both and found to be negative. Hannah was also clean.
I turned against Sarah, turned a cold shoulder to her after this. How could she had exposed me and our son to these illnesses, how could she not have known she was sick? My restless brain turned over and over the fact that herpes confirmed she’d been with other men during our separation and her promiscuity had doomed our son. I moved out of our bedroom and started sleeping in the study, interacting as little as possible with Sarah. Hannah was confused by all of this, why I didn’t want to be around mommy and why her mother was so sad all of the time.
This went on for six months or so until I started to hear rumors that when I was working Sarah had started to hit the party scene again. She started dressing in a revealing fashion once again and took to the bar scene with a vengeance. I fought with her about it and our diocese asked me to explain the actions of my wife because they found it embarrassing to the church. I tried to explain and spent every ounce of energy I had trying to keep things at home on an even keel. I even asked Sarah to go into marital counseling with me, offering to forgive and forget if we could go into therapy. I even told the lie that I loved her. She refused.
Then tragedy struck while I was away on a three day charge conference in Northern Virginia. Last on the second day of the conference there was a cryptic message that I was to come home as soon as possible from the local Virginia Police. I drove home out of my mind with fear, afraid that Sarah had abandoned the kids or maybe that she’d snapped under the influence and hurt Jason.
It was bad, but not any of the negative scenarios I’d imagined. From what the police pieced together Sarah had been giving both children large doses of a over the counter antihistamine to make them sleep while I was gone and going out drinking and partying with her pals. That day she’d done it again, left the kids alone in the house and headed out for the bars along the beachfront boardwalk. Some time after she left, an hour or two, an electrical short caused an intense fire in the kitchen. When the fire dept arrived they were able to extinguish the blaze quickly but it was too late for Hannah and Jason. Both had died in their sleep of smoke inhalation. The only mercy is that neither of them suffered.
If I had been hurt when Sarah left me or when we discovered that Jason was mentally handicapped it was nothing compared to the pain I felt upon their deaths. In the police station I attacked and tried to strangle Sarah, blaming her for their deaths. The police arrested Sarah on a number of charges but she ended up only serving eighteen months in prison for both deaths. She divorced me while she was in prison, citing ‘emotional cruelty‘, still unable to admit she‘d killed our children. Shortly after she was released she made her way back home to Myrtle Beach and she killed herself with an overdose of pills on top of the graves of our children.
Shortly after all of this happened I asked to be transferred, somewhere with a school preferably so that I could help kids, protect them from themselves, from the screw ups for their parents. I’ve been here five years now and all that happened in the past seems unreal like a bad dream. I like it here, but I’m not sure I can ever trust enough again to marry or have children.
So, you see, I do know what you’re going through today. You snapped at me, said I couldn’t, but I do.”
I was crying by this point in Will’s narrative, wondering how he wasn’t stark raving bonkers. I know I would have been had it been Jay dying tragically like that at Michael’s hand. I would have killed Michael, no question about it. I could only reach across the table and take Will’s hand and squeeze it while murmuring, “I’m so, so sorry Will. I know better than to judge someone or their situation and your story is a good reminder of how I need to not make assumptions. You must have tremendous inner strength to live through that and still walk with the Lord.”
Will looked as though he were close to tears himself and he said, “Am I strong or just too weak to do anything else, Mrs. Smith?”
I blushed, suddenly ashamed of myself for my assumptions and judgments and I stammered out, “You can call me Mary.”
We dawdled as long as we could over coffee. Will assured me that he would be supportive of Jay and myself, he’d help out as much as he could at the school to make sure Jay had loving support. When we finished the drive home we were talking like old friends. Will’s story of what he had endured had opened a dialogue between us, a commonality that I didn’t know existed. I felt worlds better even though I had lived through hell today.
The good feelings lasted until Will dropped me at my home. As I unlocked the door and walked in I noticed that my charming farmhouse more resembled a pig sty. The people who’d came over to wait with me in my house had left a mess, clean laundry trampled on the rug of the study, dirty plates and dishes on various surfaces, mud tracked across the beautiful oriental rug in the living room. I started to weep at the sight of wet marks, ghostly rings on my shiny oak dining room table and when I went into the nearby powder room to get tissue to blow my nose I noticed that all the toilet paper was gone and the medicine cabinet door was ajar.
Suddenly the house felt far too suffocating and I ran from it, not caring it was after eleven pm, I ran from the house and across the yard, seeking out the warmth and love at Marvellette’s house across the road. But an oncoming train stopped me and I wept and wailed as it passed, wondering how I got to this sorry state from my long ago childhood in Mississippi. The trains passed by our house this closely too, shaking the foundation of the house, a constant lullaby.
It always irritated Michael, these trains rolling past our house but for me it only brought back memories of a time when I felt loved and secure, golden feelings of childhood. Tonight it didn’t. I stood shrieking and crying by the side of the railroad grade, upset at being delayed once again.
After what seemed an eternity the train passed and I ran across the blacktop to Marvellette’s house. She sat up with me while I unloaded all the events of this day. I’ll always remember the look of shock on her face as I told her of catching Michael with another woman. She understood when I said I could not face a night sleeping in the same bed that I’d shared with Michael all those years and I spent that fitful night laying on her sofa. Tomorrow would be time enough to sort out what I would do next but I knew I’d never spend another night in the bedroom I’d shared with Michael.
After Marvellette returned to bed I lay on her lumpy old sofa staring at the ceiling, wondering exactly how I’d failed Michael so badly that he would so easily abandon me like this. I pleaded with God to give me an answer to this all.
As the trains passed by again, whistle blasts long and low in the distance, I thought anew about how my life could have taken a turn like this. When I’d been a girl, even though I was poor without many opportunities, I’d believed that life would take me many places.
In those days I lived mostly with my grandmother in her large old house along the main drag in Toomsuba, Mississippi. Sometimes I lived with my mother in a series of rented trailers and small houses but most of the time I stayed with my grandmother. I never knew who my father was and my mother was a bartender who seemed to have a never ending parade of male companions must to the horror of my very proper grandmother. I started living with my grandmother after childrens protective services kept putting me in foster care because my mother would sometimes disappear for a day or two.
I never minded the shuttling back and forth and I didn’t even mind foster care. I always found being part of a large family to be a welcome change that I didn’t mind I was glomming onto someone else’s family.
But once I arrived at my grandmother’s home life took on a steady pace. No running out in the middle of the night on the landlord. No more eating beans from a can and baloney. No more being able to go roam the neighborhood at any time during the night or day. But I welcomed that change too.
My room in her home overlooked the local train yards in the distance and the sound of the trains underpinned most of my days and nights.
Once upon a time my grandmother had been a wealthy woman, now she eked by on her social security payments and whatever she could collect from CPS towards my care. I didn’t realize until I was grown that she got food stamps for having custody of me or that I was on Medicaid.
But I didn’t know we were poor. To me life at my grandmother’s house seemed like paradise. And I’d been too dumb to realize not everyone lived like my mother and I did. All I knew is that I had regular meals now, clean clothes, the nicest ones I’d ever worn and a house so pretty that most of the girls at school asked it if was true that we had one room just for our piano. No one pointed at me as the daughter of the town easy lay and no kids at school accused me of being ‘stinky’ any longer.
I stopped going to the local elementary school and my grandmother enrolled me in a the St Mary Academy for Young Ladies. In exchange for my tuition I worked on the grounds of the school, helping Sister Agnes in the library, scrubbing pots with Sister Thelica in the kitchen or I helped Sister Lalonda pull weeds from the vegetable garden. For two hours every day after school I worked at the convent school on whatever task was set before me. I credit those years working under the tutelage of the nuns as truly forming who I am today. How else would I have learned to grow my own food or to sew my clothing. Not from my mother, goodtime Gertie and certainly not from my grandmother, grand dame of society once upon a time.
What I did learn from my grandmother was how to function graciously in a world starting to go mad with rudeness and self centeredness. She taught me how to properly set a table, the correct way to converse in polite company, how to sit, how to stand, how to dance. I left her home with manners that could have put me in any blue blood family even if I was on food stamps. It wasn’t until many years later that I realized how big a gift she’d given me.
From the age of 7 years old those nuns became a sort of family to me, a family I’d never experienced and one that loved me and supported me up until the day I left the convent in rural Mississippi to go to nursing school. The nuns had turned me into a scholar in those years so I landed a full scholarship to a smaller college in Maryland.
Between the lessons from my grandmother, the education and practical knowledge learned from the convent I was ready to go out into the world to face anything. Or so it felt like.
posted by Blues In The Night | 8:46 AM
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