50
He taps to start the timer and swallows.
“So, you know my dad is a dick.” I nod. He nods too. “Well, he comes from a long line of them. Just the most proud, corrupt, competitive, backstabbing sons of bitches alive. You know I…well of course you know how I feel about my family.” I nod again.
He breathes in deep. “Wait.” He curses under his breath. “I forgot to start with this: I am not asking to be excused. The things I want to tell you, they’re not excuses, okay? How I behaved the last few years, and, hell, maybe our whole lives. It’s inexcusable. I’m just trying to explain what…got me so messed up over the years and how I’m, um, trying to fix it.”
I find myself holding my breath. He’s just so awkward right now. I’ve never seen him like this.
“K. So the Bells. Horrible people. Even worse, horrible people with money. The whole heir and a spare thing? That’s not just families like the Clarks or the DeLanes. I was always the spare.” He pauses, like his brain is playing painful memories behind his eyes. I resist the urge to reach out and touch him. Just barely.
“So, as the spare, you know, Josh was going to do everything. He was going to have his marriage set up. He was going to take over as CEO. He was by my dad’s side as soon as he could walk, basically. Which, other than not being able to stand my brother being a cocky jerk, I never cared. Until you. You know I hated, hated how I thought he’d been with you.” I keep nodding.
He shakes off the feelings with a shudder before going on.
“But Dad didn’t want me and Tommy getting soft as the spares. He made sure we had to compete for his attention. He always pitted Josh and me against each other. Then later, since he was so much younger, he started having Tommy try to beat our records. Sports records, grades, hell even height. I remember the poor kid cried when he was just like five or six because Dad called him puny, that he didn’t match my line on the wall in the garage where he measured us each year.” Adam blows an angry exhale out of his nostrils. He’s still protective of Tom to this day.
“I think the only reason Dad even did that was to compare us and find a way to talk down to us. I mean, he certainly wasn’t sentimental like you marking the boys' heights in their room for fun, for the memories.”
I have a distant memory of the first time I put a mark on the wall. Adam didn’t love the idea. I never asked him why, I just figured he was pissy about all the things that made him pissy 24/7. My turn to swallow. My eyes are already feeling tingly.
“So,” he sits back and pulls his hands up his thighs, then pulls them forward again, ending right back up in his forward-leaning position around the little half table between us. “You can imagine I wanted to get the hell out of my dad’s house. But it wasn’t just the house, Suze. I had a whole plan. I think I was twelve the first time I got to stay with Uncle Lance for a few weeks in the summer. Dad wanted me out of the house so he and Josh could do stuff without me complaining and griping that I didn’t want to tag along. Also gave Josh things to brag about after, all the special things he and dad did while Tommy and I were sent away.”
Adam pauses to scoff again. I marvel. It’s truly hard to believe Adam is such a great dad when he had such an awful example. I sniff but Adam straightens, like he’s pushing himself to carry on. He’s talking slowly, but deliberately, like he’s making sure not to miss anything. Like maybe he made himself an outline of this conversation that he’s sticking to in his head. Probably not, but that’s what it seems like.
“Joke was on them though because that ranch was the best thing that ever happened to me. My uncle taught me everything, all the things my dad should have. He was young and cool and he knew my dad was an asshole. Tried to make up for it. Man, I loved that place.” He swallows and locks eyes with me for a second before looking back down at his feet.
“I had some land picked out right by Uncle Lance’s place. For after graduation. I was going to move. To Montana. I was going to grow his business, help him expand. I mean, I was out, Susan. I was getting out. Of all the Bell family businesses. I was going to forfeit my shares in B.I., the small trust fund my grandad had for each of us, all of it. I was so done in Oklahoma. So excited to get the hell out of all of it.”
He looks up at me.
“Then I met you.”
My mouth falls open for the millionth time and, thinking I’m going to object, he raises a hand.
“I know you didn’t know. I never told you. Actually, I think you asked me if I had plans and I told you I didn’t. Because already at that moment, I wasn’t sure I wanted to follow through anymore. Leave everything. I mean, you…”
He finally sits back and runs one hand through his hair.
“You saw so much in me. Your little pep talks about how I was a leader, I had had coaches encourage me about sports over the years, but to see all my potential like that? No one did. Only you. Then your big dreams and goals for the life you wanted, the partner you wanted. I wanted to be that guy. I overheard you talking, to Megan I think it was, rambling all the things you thought Josh could be. More and more I just wanted to be the one to check off every single thing on your list.”
His voice gets scratchy and I think his eyes are misting up? Who even is this man?
“Isn’t that one of your movie quotes? You make me want to be a better man?” he asks me just above a whisper. I nod. “That’s basically our story, Susan. I fell for you, hard, and you made me better. You really did.”
He pauses, and I can tell we’re taking a turn.
I croak out, “But?”
“But being better for you meant staying in a company I hated. Working hand in hand with a man I hated . I would…I would get sick. Physically sick to my stomach at work sometimes. Just having to be around my dad all day.” He shakes his head, trying to rid himself of the memories. “It did get a little better when Dad left the business but it still was a business I’d always said I’d never run. I…I like the people, sure, but I’m not passionate about construction. Or expansion. Or legacy. And you, well, you were. You are.” He reaches a hand in my direction but doesn’t touch me.
“That’s not bad, okay? That’s not what I’m saying. I love it about you, how driven you are, your need for excellence and achievement. How you love your family and the business your granddad built. But…that’s not what I had. Not what I went to work for everyday. Then…then I would spend twelve hours working and come home to a huge house and new cars and we needed to put in a pool and we needed to build out the attic and suddenly we were active in the HOA and the PTO and two different church small groups. I don’t even think you realized how you pushed and pushed and pushed after…”
“After Mom died,” I finish for him.
He nods. “It makes sense that you kind of went into overdrive. More lists. More plans. More goals and more activities. Bigger achievements. You…damn, I mean, you alone were going to keep the family on track. Help your dad keep the business on track. Help keep Sally on the right path. And you did. You still do. But you took on more and more and more and I just tried,” he sniffs, no tears show on his lashes but his face blushes a deep red.
“Suze, I tried to keep up. I went to all the galas with you, every podcast interview, every magazine spread. I wanted to want it. I wanted to enjoy it. But I hated it all so much, and you got angrier and angrier that I didn’t fake it, wasn’t enjoying it. I thought being there was enough. Showing up, even though I didn’t want to, even though talking up Bell International and the family legacy made my skin crawl, and I hated small talk and hated answering questions but I did it anyway, for you. Over and over. Anything you asked I said yes and I was going to be there. If you wanted me there I was going to go. I thought doing it was enough but you wanted me to do it and be happy about it.”
Tears were flowing down my face now.
I don’t think I’ve ever heard Adam’s voice in my ears this long, this many words, ever, in our entire lives.
And he’s right. I did go overboard after Mom. I did expect him to show up and have a good attitude, to be happy with me doing the things that I wanted. While all along he—
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
He picks up the small glass of ice water and takes a few gulps before replying, “Which part?”
“That you hated all that?”
He tilts his head. “You knew I didn’t like those things.”
“Well, yes but I didn’t realize how much, I mean that your skin was crawling? I didn’t know that.”
“I know, and like I said, that’s on me. I should’ve told you how unhappy I was, maybe, I don’t know maybe after Mikey was born? I mean, we both were so exhausted. Working ourselves to the bone with both companies expanding, then coming home and giving our all to the boys, I don’t know how we even did it.”
I nod, “Yeah, me either.”
“I know it was worse for you. You were nursing, you weren’t sleeping. I was a big man-baby for a lot of that time. I just got more and more angry, more and more depressed. And I think it was because after Uncle Lance died there was a shift in me. Like…hopelessness, I guess? That my dream of ever getting out died with him.” He chuckles a sad laugh. “And, according to Shep, all of that was made worse because of my deep,” he makes air quotes, “‘emotional constipation’ from years of bottling up my feelings.”
“You talked to Shep about this?” I gape at him.
He shrugs, “Little bit.” He takes a deep breath and I join him. As he exhales, he talks a little faster. “Your Mom died, you started to speed up, Uncle Lance died, I shut down. We just couldn’t ever sync up it seemed like. Even for,” he looks to the cockpit where the door is shut, “even for sex. I always picked the wrong time and you shot me down again and again, I stopped trying. I shouldn’t have.”
He looks me in the eye, serious, contrite. “I shouldn’t have. I should’ve kept trying. I think if we’d had that connection we would’ve started to laugh again, talk more. I should’ve…hell I should’ve done so many things. Like stay.”
He gently grabs my knee.
“I didn’t mean I didn’t want you that night. When I yelled and left the house. I meant I didn’t want the job. The…pressure? The more, more, more of it. I felt like I wasn’t a good dad, I was always working or answering calls, putting out dumb fires. I wanted to coach little league but I didn’t have time. I wanted to take Mikey to his dentist appointments because I know he gets scared, but I always had so much going on at the office and you and Loretta had your whole system without me.
I knew I wasn’t being a good husband anymore. I wasn’t a good man at that point. But I should’ve stayed in the house, Susan. I’m so sorry I left that night.”
“Why, why did you?”
“Because I was so mad…at you. You, you’re the one who made me better and taught me how to love and gave me three baby boys. But…you, to me, were also the reason I was dying every day from sunup to six pm, or most times later. I was so damn lonely—”
“You? You were lonely?” I say, pulling my knee from his grip and getting angry for the first time since he started his timer.
“I know you were too, I know you were. But it seemed to me like you had Loretta and you had your work that you actually did enjoy, and your whole family, I didn’t feel like I could talk to anyone, tell anyone that I, Adam Bell, CEO, didn’t want anything to do with Bell International. I mean what could I say?”
“That! That you hated your whole life!”
“No.” He leans in and looks me in the eye. “Don’t, please. That’s not what I’m saying. Not my whole life. That’s why this is so hard, because work shouldn’t be my whole life, should it? I want my life to be you, the boys, our family, our friends. Then there’s some work around the edges.”
“What, like you want to retire?” I say it like it’s a cuss word.
He almost chuckles. “No, not retire. That sounds boring.”
His timer goes off and I almost laugh as the relief washes over him. He inhales and exhales and honestly seems like he might throw up.
We sit in silence for a while because I have so many thoughts I can’t figure out which one to voice aloud. I’m not sure how long we sit. I replay everything he just said a million times. I remember scenes, moments. I relive parts of our life, parts Adam hated and resented.
“I just don’t understand!” I finally blurt. “If it was all that bad why did you keep doing it over and over, I mean we did a million appearances and interviews and events!”
“You wanted me there. I never want to say no to you, you know that.”
“But why?” I am still shaking my head and thinking through all that I asked of him, put him through.
“Because,” he frowns at me like I’m not getting it. “Because I love you.”
I scoff, and freeze, and focus on continuing to breathe. “I…I can’t remember the last time you told me that.” He starts to open his mouth but I talk over him. “You never told me that! In our marriage I think you said you loved me three times? Four maybe? And now, now held hostage on a plane when our divorce is finally going through and I’m moving on, you decide to drop the L-bomb on me?” I shriek. I’m shrieking.
“I thought you knew!” He grows exasperated too. “Every single time I was there, for you, our whole life I was living, for you, the life you dreamed of and hoped for, even if I was dying inside, I did it all anyway, for you! How is that not clear? How could you not see it?”
“No, that’s not fair. Sure, you were there, but you were so angry, it didn’t look anything like love. It looked like resentment and bitterness and honestly, regret!” I squeeze my eyes shut to try and stop all the tears from flowing out.
“Look at me,” He says softly. “Susan.” He waits until I open my eyes. He reaches forward, slowly, to cup my face. “I have a lot of regrets. That I resisted loving you for so long in the beginning. That I let myself get so depressed. That I was a coward who didn’t speak up about what was bothering him. That I left the night you kicked me out. But I have never, ever, not even once, regretted marrying you.” I let out a tiny sob and he inches closer, wiping my tears with his scratchy thumbs. “I would do it again. And again. And again. Even with the job and my dad and the stupid photoshoots and all of it. I would do it again and again.” He kisses my forehead and his voice breaks too. “And again and again. To be with you. I would.”
He moves to hold me, kneeling in front of my seat and wrapping me like a blanket. I cry and I think he is crying too. I just…this is…I don’t…
It’s all so much. Too much. Too much too late? Is it too late for this? For us?
I don’t have a chance to say the thought out loud because the pilot tells us it’s time to buckle up for our descent.
“K, we have to stop crying now,” Adam says as he pulls away and moves back to his seat across from me. “Time to take a selfie with the world’s largest crawfish statue.”
“The what now?”