Chapter 45
adelaide
I sat there, my hands limp in my lap, as Matt and Hope finished telling me all that they’d learned in Mississippi.
Relief flowed through me like some kind of intravenous painkiller.
Charlie hadn’t killed that baby after all!
He’d never even seen it. It wasn’t even his!
And that blood on his clothes—it had belonged to the woman’s dog.
And the pistol was missing because that man Ben had taken it.
I’d no sooner tasted the sweetness of relief than regret shoved its ugly snout in my face. Oh, heavens. I’d been so unfair to Charlie. So hideously, horribly unfair!
Charlie had tried to tell me, hadn’t he? He’d tried to tell me afterward, but I was too angry—angry and disgusted and revolted. I’d just turned away.
Oh, I should have known he couldn’t do such a thing!
I should have been more sensitive! But I’d been too wrapped up in my own heartache to think about his.
I must have spoken out loud, because Hope tried to console me, but the memories were crowding in, and I couldn’t hear anything except my own thoughts.
1948
I’d hated lying and pretending to be pregnant, but by the time the baby was due, I felt like I was having a baby. I was looking forward to having a new little life to nurture. I’d been hopeful that it could be a new beginning for Charlie and me.
But when there was no baby, it all boiled up inside me again, worse than ever. All that Charlie had put me through, forcing me to deceive my friends and family like that! I felt like such a wretchful fraud.
Of course, he must have felt that way, too, when he married me and pretended Becky was his—but that had been a good thing, a happy thing. He’d gained a child.
I had no one to talk to about it but Charlie—and I hated him. I deplore having to admit it—hate is the worst sin, isn’t it?—but I did. It churned in my belly like battery acid. And I’m so sorry for it! But for months there, I just hated him.
The most shameful thing about my behavior is that I was furious he picked that particular time to turn over a new leaf.
He stopped drinking, he was an attentive father, he read the Bible.
He was good with the children, considerate toward me, and did chores around the house without me even asking.
The nicer, the more godly, the kindlier, the more thoughtful he was, the angrier I got.
I was so, so angry—white-hot, blue-flame angry.
Everyone thought I was cantankerous because I was grieving the baby. Mother insisted that Dr. Henry come see me. I was mortified. All the lies about why I hadn’t seen him—his questions about my problems with the baby—why, I didn’t know what to say. He thought I was having another nervous breakdown.
And maybe I was, because that’s when I wrote to Joe. I couldn’t keep all the secrets inside anymore. They were just eating me up, just gnawing at me day and night.
I wanted to telephone, but I couldn’t. Long-distance calls went through a local operator, and the whole town would know my business.
Same thing with sending a telegram. So one day, while Charlie was at work and the kids were playing at my friend Marie’s house, I sat down and wrote a letter.
I told him how I couldn’t bear for Charlie to touch me, how just looking at him made me sick.
How I dreamed about just not waking up, but I didn’t want to leave my children motherless.
I begged him to please come and get me before I lost my mind.
Well, the phone rang before I finished. It was my neighbor Marie—Becky had fallen and cut her head, and it looked like she might need stitches. Well, I dashed out the door without another thought. I just dashed.
And it ended up that, yes, she needed stitches.
And by the time I got her to the doctor’s office, and we’d been seen, and all the stitching and instructions and everything were taken care of, it was supper time.
I panicked, because I remembered I’d left the letter out.
I hurried home, but it was too late. Charlie had already seen it.
I knew, because the letter was gone. So was the bottle of scotch hidden in the back of the kitchen cabinet—and the cabinet was open. There was no sign of Charlie, which meant he must be out drinking.
I thought about what I had written—the cruel things I’d said, the vile way I’d portrayed him, the revulsion I’d expressed—and, well, I just felt heartsick.
Ashamed. Horrified. Horrible. The truth is, Charlie’s biggest flaw was loving me, and I’d turned him into a monster.
I was literally nauseous at the thought of how much that letter must have had hurt him.
But on another level, I felt something else: relieved.
He’d have to agree to a divorce now. He couldn’t want to live with a wife who felt the way I did. He just couldn’t. I sagged into my chair. I was tired, so tired of hiding my feelings. So tired of running away. It was time to confront this thing, head-on.
I put the children to bed—I had to cut Becky’s shirt off her little body, because it pulled on over her head, and there was another round of tears because it was her favorite shirt.
This last crying spell left me completely exhausted, but I was too upset to go to bed.
Charlie was out drinking, and there was no telling what he would do when he got home.
I heard a knock on the door. I saw police lights outside. My first thought was, They’re bringing Charlie home because he passed out drunk.
But it was John Carter, an officer who was a couple of years behind me in school, and he was alone. He pulled off his cap and twisted it in his hands in a way that made my stomach pull back against my spine. “Mrs. McCauley, I hate to tell you this, but Charlie’s been in an accident.”
The breath whooshed out of my lungs. Every scrap of air seemed to leave the cells of my body.
“He’s at the parish hospital.”
“Is he . . .”
My heart was in my throat, gagging me with terror.
“He’s alive, but it’s bad, ma’am. He ran into the bridge culvert.”
“Was anyone else . . .”
He misinterpreted what I was going to ask. Apparently he’d had other experiences with drinking men, men who’d been found in situations hard to explain to their wives. “Oh, he was all by himself, ma’am. Completely alone. But . . . he’d been drinking.”
“I—I see.” That certainly wasn’t news. I put my hand to my throat. “Was any other car involved?”
“Not that we know of. Someone might have run him off the road, or maybe he swerved to avoid an animal. Or maybe he just lost control of the car.” He looked down at it his boots. “He smelled awful strong of whiskey.”
Oh, dear Lord—did he do it on purpose? The thought made my legs turn to rubber. I clutched the doorframe.
“You okay, ma’am?”
“I think maybe I should sit down.”
He came into the room and helped me get settled in a chair. I ran my hand over my face. He brought me a damp towel from the kitchen, which I put over my eyes for a moment.
“Is there someone you want me to call?” he asked.
His mother. And my mother. They both needed to be called. I pulled off the towel and shook my head. “I’ll do it.”
I moved as if in a stupor. I’m not sure if I thanked him. I called—oh, thank God for family!—my mother first. She called Charlie’s parents, then came over to stay with the kids, and my father drove me to the hospital.
The whole time, I was making bargains with God. Please, God. Let him live. I’ll do anything. I’ll be good. I’ll be a faithful, loving wife till death do us part. I will. I swear I will.
Charlie was in surgery when I got there.
The doctors told me he’d broken both legs and his back, and he had chest injuries and head injuries.
If he made it through surgery and the long recovery period that was to follow, he might be paralyzed from the waist down.
They warned that he might not remember the events of the accident or even a day or two before.
I prayed he wouldn’t remember the letter.
But he did. They allowed me to be with him in the recovery room. As soon as he came to, he opened his eyes, looked at me, and closed them again. “I’m sorry,” he murmured.
“For what?”
“For not getting out of your way.”
Well, guilt just opened its enormous jaws and swallowed me whole.
Let me tell you a thing or two about guilt.
It’s a monstrous glutton with shark teeth, rows and rows of teeth that cut and cut and just keep on cutting.
There’s no smooth esophagus you eventually slide down—just cuts and more cuts, and then you’re in the belly of the beast, all hacked up and bathed in acid.
And just when you think it might be easing up, that ugly monster spits you out, then bites down and starts chewing on you all over again.
I vowed to turn over a new leaf. I would become a better person.
An upright person. A person of total integrity.
I would do what the boys in the war had done: I would put one foot in front of the other and keep on marching, keep on slogging.
The only way out is through. I realized now, when it was maybe too late, that the key to life was just that simple.
Wherever you are, whatever situation you’re in, the only way out is through.
I stayed at the hospital the next few days, while Charlie’s life hung in the balance. He didn’t speak again, and I began to hope I’d misunderstood him or misinterpreted his words. Maybe he wouldn’t remember the letter after all.
But when I finally went home to sleep at the insistence of Mother, I found the letter and a note from Charlie tucked under my pillow.
Can’t live without you.
Funny, I thought. Because I was finding it nigh near impossible to live with myself.