Chapter 12 #2
She had left behind a life of safety, and any number of men who had a romantic interest in her for a man who had written taciturn letters and offered nothing in the way of romance at all.
There were bigger things. Brighter things.
Her mother had dimmed herself loving a man who was awful.
She’d had a child with him. Whoever her mom was before, Perry would never know, because she was that child.
But at one time, her mom had been a woman who had looked at Perry and decided to name her Periwinkle.
And that was possibly the most misguided moment of romantic whimsy ever.
Perry had always had trouble connecting those dots.
But knowing Carson had healed her in a lot of ways. Because he was lovable. There was no argument about that. Even so, his father was mainly uninterested and his mother was absent. But Perry could see there were no flaws in him. His situation made her feel slightly better about herself.
They were, she concluded, integral to one another’s development.
When they pulled up to her house, which was now empty, she felt a strange, hollow ache in her chest.
“This is weird,” she said as they got out of the truck and made their way up the front porch. She let her hands skim slowly along the banister.
“What is?”
“Just thinking about leaving.”
“You could rent the place out. Instead of selling it.”
“I could. But purchasing the building in Medford would be dicier. If I had a big lump sum, then I’d be able to be sure I had a few months of rent on hand in case the business took more than it made.
” She worried her bottom lip. “Maybe I’ll think about it.
But I would have to manage a tenant all the way over in this town … ”
“You could find a property manager.”
“Granted,” she said. “But again, I feel the arrangement might be too unstable. And if I have a savings account …”
“What are you really trying to accomplish?” he asked, taking the keys from her hand and unlocking the door, pushing it open.
“I already told you.”
“You want more out of life. But you have a successful business here. You have a good life here.”
“I’m just ready for something different.” It was such a lie. She hated herself for telling it.
“Yeah. Okay. It’s just that you seem sad about moving.”
“Isn’t every big change scary and kind of sad?”
“I don’t know.”
He seemed genuinely mystified by her question. Instead of continuing the conversation, he walked into the room, and she could see him taking a mental inventory of all the things that were in disrepair.
“What about getting married?” she asked.
His shoulders went rigid. She felt bad for bringing the topic up.
Maybe it was inappropriate. Maybe she shouldn’t have asked.
He had said those things about Alyssa, and then they had dropped the subject, let it evaporate into thin air as if it had never happened.
A regrettable detour, just like the dates they had gone on that night in Medford that hadn’t amounted to much of anything.
They had let the conversation end as well.
But here she was. Talking about it again.
“No. It wasn’t scary at all. I felt sure and certain.
I knew everything was going to work out.
” He rapped his knuckles against the wall.
“Why wouldn’t it? I made the decision to do the normal thing.
The good thing. I was a goddamn soldier, Perry.
And soldiers are good people. They’re not outlaws stained by the tainted blood of their ancestors. Nope.”
“Carson …”
“I …” He looked at her, and there was something raw in his eyes. Something tortured. Painful. “I don’t know if I can love anybody.”
The admission was tortured and pained, ripped from him.
“What are you talking about?”
“It’s like … my dad. He got married. He had kids.
He cheated. He just didn’t care about my mother as much as he cared about whatever momentary distraction was sitting in front of them.
Just like he didn’t give a shit about his kids.
He didn’t make sure we had food. He didn’t tuck us in at night.
He didn’t care about us. Not really. He tried to.
He went through all the motions. He wasn’t a criminal.
I mean, there were DUIs. But he wasn’t going around trying to be a bad person.
It was just that … there was a limit to how deep his soul went.
It was a well with a very finite bottom. I’m afraid that I’m the same.”
“Why?”
“I wanted that marriage to be something. I cared about it. So much. When I got Alyssa up here, I realized I didn’t know how to talk to her.
I realized that we didn’t have much to say to each other.
She was happy with the house. And so was I.
She occupied a space in it that I appreciated.
She filled the emptiness in my life, and I enjoyed it. She died and I grieved her.”
“Carson,” she said softly. “She was your wife. You loved her. You did. You had to have.”
She needed that to be true because it had cut her in half when he’d married another woman. To have to unravel every feeling she’d had about his marriage didn’t feel fair.
She realized, though, that he had been doing the same thing. Quietly these last two years. Reckoning with his own feelings and how difficult they were.
He had been grappling with this idea that he could love nothing and fix no one. Not even himself.
“I brought her out here, and she was lonely. She told me that. She was lonely, and she said I was holding back and … she said that I was emotionally unavailable.”
“You’re not emotionally unavailable.” She responded automatically. She wasn’t sure if her words were totally true.
“I was. To her. I know you. I’ve known you all your life.
But I didn’t know how to open up to the woman I married.
I don’t think I know what love even is. I thought it was as simple as looking at a woman and deciding that I could imagine being with her.
But I’m not Flynn. Monogamy has never terrified me.
It sounded settled. It sounded like I might be fixing something. ”
“Why didn’t you tell me this?” She felt raw and wounded.
She felt as if he had stabbed her. She didn’t know what to do with his confession.
That he carried this much pain was such a hideous thing.
“I was just thinking earlier,” she said, “that I am so grateful for you. Because if I didn’t have a friend like you, Carson, I would have thought that there was something irreparably damaged inside me.
I would have thought that was why my parents couldn’t love me.
Not the way that parents should. But I looked at you, and how wonderful you were, and the way that your parents were.
That your mom left, that your dad was so uninterested, and it made me think that maybe I was okay.
Because I knew that you were. I am so sorry I didn’t do that for you. ”
“Don’t say that, Perry. You did everything for me. You are the most important person in my life. I’m afraid. That I’m my father. I feel guilty that Alyssa died with a shitty husband.”
“You were not a shitty husband. Everybody says that marriage is hard, and being newly married is very hard. You guys were just going through a rough patch.”
“Yeah. But that was all our marriage ever got to be. When we started out, we wanted the same things. We wanted to move to a small town. We wanted to have kids.”
Her heart crumpled just a little bit. She wanted to have kids too. She understood what he was saying. This idea that you could make yourself a family and protect yourself with it. Make a happy bubble nothing could pop. Protect yourself from all the bad things that had ever happened before.
She understood. He’d tried it and he believed he’d failed. She knew Carson well enough to know that failure of that kind was not acceptable.
She nodded. “Yeah.”
“We didn’t get to fix it. She died unhappy.”
“I think it’s probably more nuanced than that. She wasn’t unhappy all the time. I’m sure that she hoped to change things with you.”
He looked into the distance. “Maybe.”
“Listen. I have complicated feelings about Alyssa. All right. But there’s one thing I do know: You didn’t marry a weak woman.
She was strong. And she definitely had her own opinions.
She would have left you if she didn’t see a way for the two of you to work things out.
So she wasn’t despairing, and she wasn’t without hope or a plan.
Whatever she thought was going to happen, she saw a future.
Don’t give yourself so much credit that you think a woman sat down and died of a brain aneurysm because she couldn’t sort out what to do with your two-year-old marriage, Carson. ”
He looked devastated, and she felt kind of bad.
But he needed to hear the truth. “I know you cared about her. I also know that you feel you let her down in some ways. But she didn’t exist to be your salvation.
That’s your perspective. She didn’t exist to be your success or your failure.
She had her own hopes, her own dreams. Maybe she would’ve stayed with you and worked it out, maybe she would have left.
But I doubt she was sitting there waiting to find out if you could love her more. ”
“Fuck,” he said, his voice pained.
“Well. It’s true. Give her a little bit more credit and stop seeing her as someone who just existed in the context of you.”
This rousing defense of Alyssa wasn’t something Perry had seen coming.
Not that there was really anything wrong with Alyssa.
But Perry had always felt the relationship was wrong.
She wasn’t sure if she felt validated by Carson’s admission or not.
And the whole conversation felt strange, because the woman wasn’t here to speak for herself.
Maybe that was the deepest tragedy in all of this.
Not that Carson had lost his wife.