A/N: Big props to Cathryn for helping me out with a key transitional sentence in this chapter.
***
She had not wanted any of this.
Her years of coldly controlling the family. The rudeness, standoffishness, and unfairness she had exhibited toward them.
It kept getting worse over the years, but the menopause pushed it over the edge, turning it from control into abuse. She banished her children to an uninsulated, unfinished garage apartment. No running water. No food. No heat. No supervision. It was abuse. She knew this.
And she hated herself for it, would not let herself feel the touch of her husband, nor the joy of making love to him. A horrible woman like her did not deserve such pleasure.
The guilt and self-hatred etched lines on her face and put weight on her frame. She no longer felt vibrant and sexy, no longer wanted her husband to see her unclothed.
She had not wanted any of this.
But, like all things on this earth, the dark times eventually ran their course. Her family forgave her, as they had been trained to do. Her hormones gradually released their death-grip on her emotions. She softened, and she began to feel sexy again. Unfortunately, it was too late.
Her husband had hardened, and he wanted little to do with her anymore, in the bedroom or elsewhere. Working, stalking his children, trying to convince Matt not to convert to Judaism, things such as these became his primary pastimes. Anything to avoid spending time with her.
Until the weight of it all – the burden of heading a family of seven children as well as a large suburban church parish – crashed down upon him mightily, and his doctors recommended surgery. Weak heart.
So weak he couldn't find the strength within himself to tell her about it at first. Doc and Uncle Hank he told right away, but not her. No. Instead he took the family bowling to distract them all and then he hemmed and hawed and waited until late that night to finally tell her about his surgery. Put it off until the last minute. She couldn't help but think it was her fault, that her past behavior was to blame for the fact that he hadn't felt comfortable enough to tell her.
She had not wanted any of this.
Then came his laziness, his despondence, his weeks of incessant moping during recovery. Her attempts to attract his attention and refocus it back onto her and his church work proved futile. Two things he had used to be so passionate about, he now seemed so uninterested in.
Was this, too, her fault? Was the grimy residue of her menopausal psychosis still coating their relationship, his life? Or was there something inside him that she was unable to see, a deeper issue, that caused him to lose interest in her? Was it something to do with his weak heart? Was she part of the burden, the very thing that had made it weak?
Who knew? He wouldn't touch her, even when she wanted him to, and he wouldn't talk to her about why. He would just sit on the porch strumming his son's guitar, or hole up in his office to work on his smutty novel.
Until this morning. Something unusual had happened. Although he had initially refused to make love to her, something had rousted him. And that something was named Gabrielle.
She had not wanted any of this.
But somehow, despite the fact that so little had gone her way before now, the seismic shift needed to push the two back together finally occurred. Despite the fact that she had blown up at Eric in the kitchen, he had forgiven her, which led, of course, to the sloppy hand-to-mouth feeding session in the bedroom, eating her rival's brownies, and drinking her cheap wine.
And as she and Eric traded drunken, sloppy kisses, and as they shed item by item of clothing, enthusiastically getting to know each other once again as wife and husband, for some reason it all felt right again. It felt like those early days before the children had arrived, when everything was fresh and new, and their love had weathered even the darkest of times, like her best friend's untimely death. Today, Eric's love felt like the love she had once known could overcome anything.
Where had this love been hiding for these past few years? Why had it not shown itself in a single action between the two of them for such a long time?
Did it matter? No. Not on this day, not with the bedroom door closed and the sun shining through the window and birds chirping outside, and her husband's love inside. Today it felt right, all the way into the afternoon.
And this she had wanted with all her heart, for all these many years.