Twenty-One
Honey knew the second she woke up that something was wrong.
Finn was always up ahead of her. She’d never been a morning person, and even when the kids were very small, he would let her sleep in an extra thirty or forty minutes and wake her by placing a steaming mug of coffee on the bedside table, the gentlest alarm.
Even when they were arguing, even during the past weeks, when a foreboding chill had settled over the house, he’d brought her morning coffee. Black with two packets of Sweet’N Low.
That morning, not only was there no coffee, but the house was unusually cold.
Finn always turned the thermostat up when he woke.
The sky was lightening. Why was the house so quiet?
Where was her coffee? She flew out of bed and down the stairs.
“Finn?” She went into the kitchen and turned on the lights. “Finn? Are you here?”
“Mommy.” Fern’s voice from the corner of the room. She was sitting in the breakfast nook, wrapped in a blanket.
“Fern. What are you doing sitting here in the dark. What’s going on? Where’s Daddy?”
“Gone,” Fern said, pushing an envelope across the surface of the small wooden table.
“YOU WOULDN’T DARE” WAS WHAT Honey’d said to Finn weeks ago when he brought up divorce over lunch at the diner nearest his office—a burger platter for him, a plate of cottage cheese with tomatoes for her.
At first, she didn’t understand the gravity of the situation.
She thought he was complaining about work or maybe something to do with the kids.
She started out sympathetic, telling him he should take some time for himself.
Maybe get back into golf, which he’d neglected since he started jogging, a pastime she loathed because his running clothes never seemed to get as clean as she wanted.
“Maybe we should plan a week at the lake,” she’d said.
“I’m not talking about taking up a hobby,” he said.
“What are you talking about?”
“Significant changes.”
“Like what?”
He looked over toward the door of the restaurant and gave a little nod to someone he recognized. He took a healthy bite of his burger and said, “I’m not happy in this marriage.”
She froze. Not happy? What was that supposed to mean?
All she could hear underneath the whoosh of blood rushing from her heart to her head was her father and one of his favorite and most irritating responses to her younger self: “Who ever said anything about happy?” which was the exact sentence that burst out of her mouth.
A misstep. He started to respond, and she raised her hand and lowered her voice to a whisper.
“I am not having this conversation here.”
He nodded, motioned for the check and they drove home in silence.
She started marshaling her arguments beginning with the obvious.
“We took a vow before God,” she said the minute they were back in their house and alone.
“Lest you forget, for better or worse, until death.” She winced, hearing herself.
She sounded like a schoolmarm or like one of the nuns at the elementary school.
He took a deep breath and ushered her into the dining room, where they sat.
He started out slow and careful but quickly gathered steam.
He was angry. He was dissatisfied. Times were changing, and he realized he needed more from his relationship.
“We don’t have a relationship. We’re married!” Honey pleaded.
“And this marriage is enough for you? We almost never talk about anything significant. We never do anything different or exciting. Most everything I do seems to annoy you. I can’t remember the last time we had sex—”
“Please don’t use that word.”
“Christ, Honey. You are my wife, and you can’t even say the word, much less welcome the—” he broke off in exasperation.
“You’re good with this?” he asked, gesturing to take in the room, the house, the two of them, and the entire state of New York for all she knew.
She should have taken his hand. She should have said something about love and companionship, asked why he was unhappy.
She should have done a million things, but as her panic rose, she defaulted to threats. Duty. God. Retribution.
“You aren’t going to be able to receive Communion,” she said to him, her voice hushed and ominous. “Think about that, Finn. Think about what it’s going to be like to go to Mass and sit there like an outcast—like Bess!—as we all receive.”
He shook his head almost sadly. As if she were a particularly thick student or a cashier at the store who couldn’t remember any of the produce codes. “I go to church because it’s good for business. My faith is a personal thing. Me and God. I don’t need the middleman. Nobody does.”
She gasped, genuinely afraid for him, for his soul.
But she also recognized, staring at him across her highly polished colonial dining table, that he had a light behind his eyes, a fire that she’d rarely seen.
She recognized she was dealing with something she didn’t fully comprehend.
“Well, what about business?” she finally asked, tacking into the wind.
“What are people going to think? What are your employees going to think? What about your children?”
“I think it’s going to be a nice bit of gossip for a few weeks.
I think it’s 1977 and the world is changing and, ultimately, nobody is going to give a shit.
And I will take care of Dune and Fern. For that matter, I will take care of you.
You don’t have to worry about money or the house or any of it. I mean that.”
The following weeks were horrible. A frustrating round-robin of Honey pelting Finn with questions (Was there someone else?
Had he cheated on her? How long had he felt this way?) and Finn turning it all around on Honey (“This is about you and me and only you and me”).
They spent most of their time quietly hurling accusations at one another, stewing in opposite corners.
One day, Honey wrote down a list of all the things she did for him and their family in a typical day.
It had thirty-two line items, everything from laundry to managing the annual physicals to hosting the company Christmas party.
He took his time looking at the list. Nodded his head in affirmation.
“I agree. You do all these things, and you do them well.” Finally, she thought, we’re getting somewhere.
“But,” he continued, “where’s the romance? ”
“Romance?”
“Where’s you and I having dinner alone? Going to bed early together? Taking a walk? Traveling? Show me something on this list”—he let the page flutter to the floor—“about love and affection.”
Later, she would regret how she’d stonewalled. She refused to even discuss divorce, and when he intimated that if she didn’t concede to see a lawyer, he would take matters into his own hands, she’d ignored him. She buried it deep and waited for it to pass like she always had.
She had been scared on her wedding night.
What she’d told Finn was true—her friend had warned her sex was unpleasant and painful—but she would never tell him the whole truth.
About the weekend she and all her cousins were having a sleepover at her aunt Millie’s house the night before Easter Sunday.
The next morning the older kids would hide eggs and help the younger kids with the Easter egg hunt.
Honey was only fifteen and her aunt had let her assemble the Easter baskets.
One big chocolate bunny, a fistful of chocolate eggs and jelly beans scattered around.
The whole thing wrapped in colorful cellophane.
When they were done, all the older cousins—including Jake and Janet from Chicago—settled into the rec room to play Hearts.
Jake asked her to help him bring some sodas up from the basement.
She and Jake had not gotten along when they were younger.
He was two years older than she was, with better grades, a spot on the hockey team and a quick wit.
Honey resented how he moved through the world with such ease and charm.
“I like that dress,” he said as they were rummaging through the extra refrigerator in the basement, putting bottles of Coke into a large carton to carry upstairs.
“I made it,” Honey said. She was thrilled Jake had noticed. She was proud of the dress, turquoise-and-white gingham with a full skirt and white sleeves. You couldn’t even tell she’d messed the hem up a bit on one side.
“Cool,” he said. “How do you make a dress?”
“You start with a pattern,” she said. “Then you pick the fabric.”
“You picked this out?” He fingered the edge of one cap sleeve. “It’s a good color. It’s very soft,” he said, moving closer. Then he ran his finger down her arm. “This is soft, too.”
She froze in place. A boy had never touched her. Never approached her so familiarly, and this wasn’t any boy—it was her cousin. She laughed a little and took a step back.
“Don’t go,” Jake said. “I want to hear more about the dress. How do you figure out how to make it do this?” He pulled on the button placket in front of her and one of the buttons came loose.
“Stop it,” she said, feeling the tears build, feeling panicky.
“I’m admiring you,” he said. Everything moved quickly.
He pressed her against the wall made of concrete bricks.
It was damp, and she could feel the back of her dress absorb the moisture.
Jake started kissing her and at first, she liked it.
It felt good. But just as she was starting to enjoy the kissing part, he pushed his hips against hers and moved his hand down to her breast and started kneading it. “Don’t,” she said.