Addendum 6.5 – "Savor the Veal 'pt. 4'"
May 1993 – Fairfield, CT
Jonathan held his breath tighter than the phone in his mother's office. It continued to ring as he stared at the contact card he'd snagged from her rolodex. She hadn't written a last name, but the address was in California.
Michael entered rough, "What?"
"What?" Jonathan's much lighter voice interceded for himself.
"Who is this?"
A woman giggled obnoxiously in the background, and Jonathan swallowed, "Dad, it's me, Jonathan."
"Jonathan?" Michael softened.
"Yeah, I-"
"What's up?"
Jonathan took a breath, "I, uh- I just wanted to see if, well, if-"
The woman made a weird, groaning mumble, and Michael shushed her.
"What?" Michael tried louder.
Jonathan hesitated. "I was just wondering if, if- I mean, I know you were just here, but… did you want to go to my National Honor Society induction?"
"Just a minute!" Michael's distant voice barked. Then it came in louder through the receiver, "Your what?"
Jonathan was holding his breath again, "My National Honor Society induction. It's this Friday night."
Nothing.
"Uh… National what?"
"National Honor Society. It's like a club, where everybody's into getting good grades and- and being a good citizen and stuff. …It helps you get into colleges."
He heard his dad scoff, and a swift, red tint smothered Jonathan's pale features.
Silence.
Jonathan inhaled sharply, "You know what? Never mind. I'm sorry; I wasn't thinking. I just liked having you here and thought you might want to… you know. But never mind-"
"No, Jonathan, wait a second."
"It's fine, Dad."
The distant siren, again, made her presence known: "Uh! I'm naked over here!"
Jonathan's face twisted into all kinds of uncomfortable, "Bye."
Michael snapped toward the roughly tousled blonde, "Shut up! I'm trying to talk to my son!"
Daylight shot between the closed blinds of his darkened apartment room, and the woman's smokey brown eyes narrowed into slits.
Michael leaned forward into the receiver, "Jonathan?"
Nothing.
May 1993 – Fairfield, CT
Tony tossed a dishrag onto the counter and picked up the phone on the second ring.
"Hello, Bower residence; Tony speaking."
His still-efficient, but noticeably quieter, less-bouncy self, was as apparent and predicating to Angela as her own. She rested the side of her forehead against the phone booth dividers and allowed an exhale.
"It's your home, too," her soft voice finally reached.
Tony shut his eyelids and pinched tears between them. When he was able to breathe, it came up as a gasp, "Hi, honey." He blinked widely and wiped his fingers on his shirt.
She heard it all, even if she didn't know what 'it' was. "I um- I was going to ask if there were anyone home who could pick me up from the air-"
"I'll be there. Which one?"
Whatever 'it' was, a little smile told her that he did want her as much as she wanted him.
"Newark." Then she felt both the need and the desire to explain, "It was cheaper."
A soft smile appeared on his face. "When do you get in?" he sniffed.
"I'm already here."
Preempting Tony's impatience, she thumbed the metal phone cord and sped through an explanation, "I needed… I just needed some time."
But Tony's answer was gentle. "It's fine, baby," he blinked and wiped under his eyes. Swallowing, he nodded, "It'll take me a couple hours, but I'm leaving now, okay?"
Surprise and gratitude lit yet another uncertain smile, "Thank you, Tony."
Turning off the oven and opening the door to the half-baked eggplant parmesan, he smiled wider, "I'll be right there."
May 1993 – Newark International Airport
Angela saw the familiar headlights of Tony's jeep coming toward her and made a single, awkward wave. She hated everything about this place. She hadn't been here since the night she'd come to pick up Michael from his trip to Turkey more than a decade before, but she could still feel the humiliation burning her face. Even as a douchey joke, the suggestion of his crew passing her around – not to mention, the assumption that she'd be volunteering for such an arrangement - had sent her stiletto-scrunched toes flying across these same lanes into the freezing, but preferable, rain.
This time, it was still dark, but the night was clear. Tony came to a careful stop, and she heard him turn the radio off.
I didn't even know we had country stations over here.
Yet again reminded of all the obstacles confronting them, she tried her best to wiggle her toes as he got out to meet her. These new heels she'd gotten in California weren't much of an improvement.
He stepped closer but stopped before touching her.
"Hi."
She mirrored his caution, "Hi."
Motioning toward the front seat, he opened the door. She made a small smile as she got in, "Thank you."
He smiled back and shut the door.
As he placed her duffle in the backseat, Angela peeled off her shoes with a wince.
They drove into the dark, neither reaching for the radio.
Tony's silence surprised her, and Angela realized she'd been waiting for him to make the first move. He always did.
But by the time they got on the interstate, she was getting the idea he was yielding, and the absence of that pervasive and exhausting need for ready response both warmed and relaxed her.
It was also a little unnerving. It was her move.
Her eyes flickered to his, "Thank you for coming to get me. You didn't have to."
"Angela, there's not a thing in this world I would've rather done."
She waited for him to amend his hasty pronouncement with a dude joke and subsequent knee slap, but he never did.
His presence felt soft. It was familiar, but distantly so, and she realized she was pleasantly curious. She'd expected a certain, irritating, adolescent dance from the both of them, and his lack of performance felt like it was calling out a stillness in the whole car. Days of diligent preparation crumbled contentedly around her, and she found herself at the foot of a quiet, indefensible adlib of what she most wanted to say.
"Tony?"
He looked over at her.
"I didn't really plan this, but- If I talked to you about my marriage to Michael, would you listen?"
She didn't even know his mouth was open until she saw him close it. He nodded without a sound.
Angela's lungs expanded in gratitude, and a little voice wandered out.
"Well, uh… I was very young when I met Michael."
Her internal lie detector twisted up her brows - Already?
She knew that was arguably inaccurate and amended with a severe need to tell him the truth about herself. For the first time in a long time, Tony seemed interested.
"Actually, I was 25, but I felt much younger."
She shook her head and let out a little laugh, "That doesn't even make sense. How could I feel so immature when, even at that point, I'd accomplished so much?"
Glancing briefly back to the road, Tony's sad smile graciously accompanied her early stumblings.
Angela grabbed onto his empathy like she was holding his hand and pleaded the case against herself. "I'd graduated with honors from both Yale and Harvard, but nobody would give me the time of day until I went to an in-person networking event." She made a little laugh, "I thought I nearly blew my chances telling this veteran ad exec, Mr. Joliet, what I thought about the war."
She squinted in disbelief, "But he liked that. He liked it when I told him what I really thought and gave my reasons for it. I hadn't experienced that in a long time..."
Swallowing, she blinked out her own window, "When I was a kid I, uh- I had some very dear, softspoken friends who worked for our family, and they would let me say what I thought without holding it against me."
Her voice had broken, midsentence, but she plowed ahead, even with those tattling tears likely wrecking her carefully crafted eyeliner, "We became very close. I didn't have that with too many other people. Even my father, with whom I did have that, left me when he died... But my mother, my classmates, my first lover-" she flipped up an inviting palm, "you know, Brian?"
Tony nodded.
"They all rejected it or used it against me - that openness, that: 'here I am, take me'."
"Brian rejected you?"
Her eyelids dropped significantly, "The morning after? Yes. Baja awaited."
"Ouch."
She made a flat smile and shrugged down at her now-much-less-constrained toes, "I'm not upset about how we turned out, now, but at the time it hurt. A lot."
"Anyway, I graduated, got my first job, and I guess I saw my new boss kind of like my father. He was extremely encouraging, and I brought him my best work."
Angela looked back up to Tony, whose soft smile encouraged her, too.
"But I only worked for him for a year when he retired, giving me the most generous send-off he could. But he still left."
She shrugged and scrunched her nose, "It seems childish to say it like that, but I felt like he'd taken me under his wing when nobody had wanted me. And then he plopped me right down into a position for which, I'm sure, he had to argue my qualifications. But he was determined…" she whispered. "I caught his faith in me."
She stuck up her chin in louder explanation, "He maneuvered a deal with Wallace and McQuade that would make me a 'Junior Vice President' for a year while I learned the ropes." She made a side eye, "I think the silly title may have been a bit of an initiation thing. But it was worth it, and Mr. Joliet knew it would be. I wanted to make him look good for sticking his neck out for me. I wanted to make my father look good by amounting to something great. I wanted Ben to know that all those hours he'd spent listening to me, talking to me, loving me weren't for nothing."
"Ben? Your gardener?"
She swallowed and nodded. This was a biggie, and regardless of all the factual minutiae Tony had gleaned over the years, Angela realized she'd, once again, successfully dodged the heart of the matter. She certainly had with Michael.
Her heart beat like the little drummer boy's offering as she barely opened her mouth, "But he wasn't just my gardener. He was like a grandfather to me. He was one of those precious, quiet souls inhabiting the world with the rest of us. He was wise and meek and had such a presence about him, one that vastly exceeded his socioeconomic status…"
She looked down at her lap and twisted up her eyebrows, "And he believed in me. He didn't let me get away with nonsense but never spoke down to me."
Looking back up at Tony, she reached again, "I felt like he held my hope for me. My father had left me. My mother had left me. But they'd left me with Ben."
She blinked. Like a fact.
"And then he died. All of a sudden, out of nowhere – like there are these cosmic guillotines floating around that can chop your world apart," she snapped her fingers, "just like that."
Tony squinted a little.
"I was wrecked. I'd lost everything. I mean, I kind of had my mother, but…" She shook her head and shrugged as her voice tapered off, "I'd learned not to be close to her anyway."
She stared at her still-tingly toes and, again, moved them around.
Looking back up to a now-very-blurry Tony, she sniffed up what mucus she could and tried to be clear, "I didn't know what to do. Have you ever been face to face with a void? Nothing but sheer, unadulterated freefall?"
Whether from Tony's voice or what she actually saw, Angela didn't know, but she was gifted the assurance of his dead, wet eyes looking more real than she'd ever seen them.
"Yes."
A fresh gush of closeness exceeded her lower lids. …He did love Marie.
"Yeah," she whispered.
Her need to nail Tony to the wall was nowhere to be found. Regardless of where it left them, she far preferred this experience to any righteous vindication she presumed herself on the hook for exacting. He was listening. And so was she. At the end of it all, this is what she wanted, anyway.
"Well, I spent a week flailing around - screaming, sobbing, sleeping - anything but feeling,"
Tony's eyebrows flicked up dryly, and he sniffed and swiped at his eyes.
Angela looked over at him longingly, debating whether she should flip up the console and make it bench seat. Sniffing herself, she decided against it. They needed to talk, and she had a proclivity for smoothing that over when it was in her power to do so.
She took a shuddery breath and looked out the windshield, "Yeah, well, I was dying for relief and decided to grasp at the one area in which I'd had extremely high-risk, high-reward experience. And at that point, I had nothing to lose."
She turned a serious look to Tony, propping her chin bravely high. "I wanted that hit. I needed it. I needed to feel special. The only people who thought I was inherently worthwhile were gone!"
Tony gave her a slow, deep nod and absently licked his lips.
Nodding back in mutual agreement, she sniffed up yet more renegade snot. "I dressed as enticingly as I could, picked a club at random, downed a couple shots, and then Michael was there, making it all better. 1, 2, 3, poof! My pain was gone."
"I felt unbelievable," she breathed, starting to, again, plead her case. "Not only wasn't I in pain, but this gorgeous man was there, gushing over me, gushing relief over all my wounds – and not just from Ben, but from all the wounds I'd had in this area before, completely negating them! The way he looked at me… it was like something must've been wrong with Brian for not wanting me. For the first time since it happened, I actually believed that! It wasn't my fault; it wasn't that I wasn't enough. I was more than enough for Michael, and he couldn't get enough of me!"
Tony turned his eyes back to the road, "Something was definitely wrong with Brian."
Angela smiled and allowed herself a few breaths to steady her thoughts, "Well, Michael was in a rough place, too. He'd just had a fresh experience with his family's never-ending judgement and was numbing out in the most decadent ways he could. And I was a part of that."
"It really was a perfect storm. We were both broken, finding intense hits of comfort in the other, neither giving one whit what it cost us."
She closed her eyes, "We were so reckless," but then opened them into a shrug. "You could say it was stupid; I certainly have. But honestly? It felt like I needed it. All of it. I needed to cast everything into the fire. I didn't want my life as it was anymore - whatever would emerge couldn't be as bad as what went in!"
The insistence of her terrified face glowed in the moonlight as her overdue testimony came out in a whisper, "But it was. It was just long, and excruciating – like being slowly strangled to death instead of burning alive. It was still really bad… except when we gave each other a break and made each other feel like the only thing we'd ever need to be happy. And not just happy - blissfully wanted and accepted and appreciated for everything we were without trying."
Her voice lightened to nothing, and her shoulders went up apologetically, "I got my inherent worth back."
Tony nodded again, his gentle gaze kind enough to stay with her.
"But we yo-yoed each other around, both of us feeling like the other one had all the power. And man, did we resent each other for it… Our lives did not align outside the bedroom. So, we coped through it. I isolated more and more at work, finding companionship in other places. He would get away as much as he could and be verbally abusive. We destroyed each other, all for chance at another taste."
Tony's eyes squinted and then pinged from his dash to the road.
Again, Angela didn't feel settled. That's not entirely true.
Slowly, her blink opened to Tony, and she spoke clearly, "Actually, there was more to it... I like to chock it off as desperation and lust, because it doesn't feel so stupid… like I can blame it on being drunk or something."
She licked her lips and didn't drop eye contact, "But I loved him. A lot. I'd have given up anything to be with him and have him want to be with me. Forever. Not just in bed but sharing our whole lives – I loved to watch him in his element. I wanted us to support each other's gifts and destiny, enjoying each other's uniqueness… if he'd just let me be me and actually like that. But he didn't. It didn't feel like he really wanted me."
She waved off the complexity with her hand, "He had stuff from a long time ago that was messing with him, just Iike I did. He was bound and determined to be more important to me than my job."
Her eyes squinted in sincerity, "In a good relationship, I think that goes without saying. But in ours, it was something he insisted on me proving, over and over and over. Almost right out of the gate, he was trying to get me to give it up or prioritize it under anything he wanted to do. But he didn't understand, and I couldn't do that – especially, knowing that wasn't the real problem."
Tony nodded, calculating all she was saying, and she tried to add to his data, "He felt like his mother had chosen money – security, in her case - over him and his brother. He'd needed her and she wasn't there. And he felt like I was doing the same thing."
Tony's face froze, but he didn't look away.
"But Michael stayed with me, even though he believed that about me."
Angela's nose flared with a tingly pressure as her eyes filled yet again, "And I stayed with him, even though he'd hold me close, look me in the eye, give me his whole body…"
Her voice strained but she didn't let up, "and then, just rip it all to shreds… I'd have him, and then I'd lose him."
She let out a big breath and snapped her fingers. "Just like that: Alive," she snapped again, "Dead, gone."
Like the sourceless Nile, a truly baffling amount of tears streamed down her cheeks, and she couldn't stop talking long enough to figure out why Tony looked angry.
"Then alive again. …I'd get him back, Tony. I'd never gotten my father back. I'd never gotten Ben back, or Brian, or hell, even Mr. Joliet!"
She looked pointedly at Tony's still tight face, begging him to understand, "But Michael would come back, and he'd be just as alive and anesthetic as I'd ever known him to be."
"Like I said, it happened over and over and over. He felt the same way with my job… and things he associated with my job," she drifted. "But one time, it was too much, and I couldn't accept his comfort after that. Even after I understood it. It just hurt. too. badly. And I was too scared to go through it again."
"But when the comfort stopped, the relationship stopped, too. We didn't work without it. Chaotic as it was, sex reset our cycle, our rhythm, our relationship was dependent on it. But I couldn't do it anymore. The high wasn't worth the inevitable fall… That's when he left and didn't come back."
Tony's eyes squinted, and she tried to clear things up.
"I knew he was going to Africa for six months. But he called me after he was done, and we couldn't break the stalemate over the phone. I couldn't take the continued cruelty, and I guess he felt the same way. So, he did his best to hurt me, and I didn't see or hear from him again until you opened up the door to him that first year you lived with us."
Tony allowed a hesitant smile, "The one you slammed in his face."
"Yeah," Angela laughed a little and wiped her tears.
"So, it wasn't just about him always being away?"
"Oh, no," she sniffed. "That was only part of it."
She kept looking at Tony but didn't take another breath. She was scared. She didn't know how he'd take it this time, and her previous attempts had fallen flat. But- he's listening. And she wanted to try.
Determined to hold eye contact, she braved, "In the middle of all this was that other coping thing I had. Michael was so often unkind and uninterested in who I was and what I was good at, I found other friends. I found Wendy and Isabel. We cared about each other and what we were going through… I laughed so much when I was with them," she smiled widely. "It lightened my load and helped me care about myself."
He tried to smile but clearly didn't understand the problem.
She geared up for the truth.
"But uh… I also got it from Grant. Do you remember him?"
Tony's face froze, and he scratched the back of his neck. "Uh huh."
Angela smiled and nodded, "He was great to me. He was this strange combination of the father-figures I'd lost - him being so sure of me and my abilities and dead set on featuring them, the friend I was longing for - one who would stick up for me and laugh with me and want the best for me-"
She stopped talking. All she heard from herself was: Me, me, me.
"and me for him!" she tried to amend. But, even true, her efforts at self-acquittal felt forced.
With a long drag of a sigh, she turned her head on the headrest, "I used him, Tony. Damn it, I wish it weren't true. I cared about him, but at first, I think it was just about me feeling better after Michael picked hippos over me."
Tony's brows twisted, "Angela, I don't wanna say something that was bad, was good… But isn't that kinda normal? I mean, you and Grant didn't date for very long. How are people supposed to start relationships?"
"I don't know, but I think it has something to do with wanting what's best for both of you. That's the honorable way to end one, why should it be different at the start?"
But a significantly wry smile lit her features as she recalled multiple instances of Grant's uninvited, but not necessarily unwelcome, hands all over her in the first few weeks of them trying each other out.
She laughed a little, "Okay, maybe we both had selfish motives to start, but it didn't stay that way."
"It's not like you didn't know the guy, either."
Surprised, her hopeful eyebrows popped up, "True. We both treated each other well, years before anything turned openly sexual."
He made a flat smile, and she wondered where he found it. He sure didn't seem this gracious last week.
Still, she continued gratefully into the unknown, "I'd always known him for his actions on the job. He was strong and confident, funny, when he wasn't pissed. He spoke up for all of us, regarding not only what we brought to the job, but everybody's understanding of that. He didn't even want me carping about Jim."
Unimpressed eyebrows flicked up on Tony's face, but he didn't interrupt.
"He was just a good boss: fair and motivated and knowledgeable - everything you'd want in a friend."
"Or a lover?"
Her flat smile succumbed, "Or a lover." She shrugged, "It was complicated. But regardless of how it manifested, I liked being on his side. It didn't start off with me thinking of him as a lover."
Tony checked the road again but still appeared to be listening.
"Tony, back in the day, nothing was overt. But I do remember liking the way Grant would look at me, the way he'd treat me. I remember convincing myself it was just part of getting along with co-workers and doing well on the job. I might've been trying to calm any brewing guilt, but I think I was veering away from what I knew, deep down, somewhere, could be a very big problem."
She caught his eye, "A problem I didn't want. Back then, I was still trying to have a marriage with Michael."
Tony nodded, though he didn't seem as relaxed as before. But she couldn't get sidetracked; she needed to get through this.
Swallowing, she started up again, "But those great qualities Grant had pulled the best out of me and did a pretty good job of hiding this growing attraction. Michael saw it before I did, the flirting back and forth, and it sent a wrench into our marriage from which we never did recover."
Angela closed her eyes slowly. This was hard. Even in near drunken exasperation, it had still been deliberate.
Opening them, she looked to Tony, "Like I said, I knew I was attracted to Grant, but I didn't realize I was so accepting of it. I certainly didn't realize I was flirting – just having a good time while I was doing what I was good at!"
Her voice quieted, "But when Michael saw how I was acting, he was so hurt and angry. He didn't care that it wasn't on purpose. He didn't care that I was sorry-"
Angela tipped her head, considering. "From where our marriage ended up, it seems minimal now. But at that point, nothing like this – worrying about the security of our relationship - had been on the table, for either of us."
That didn't sound right to her, either, but she didn't heed it.
"When we realized it was on the table, we both went crazy. He snuggled up to some little chickie in a bar – and he did it in front of his friends, too!"
Tony's face froze again, his eyes darting back to the road.
"They knew we were down there together! They knew we were married. It was humiliating!"
With much effort, Tony popped up his brows, "Like the Old Timers reunion?"
Her whole face hardened and her mouth barely moved. "Kind of."
Breathe
Quieting her irritation, she exhaled and looked down at the ring finger in her lap, "I guess that's how Michael felt, picturing me giggling with Grant in front of my coworkers every day."
"I don't know," she shrugged and looked back at him, trying to find the truth. "I don't know how obvious Grant and I were. You know Jim Peterson had a thought or two about it,"
Tony had again recovered and released a small scoff on cue.
"but he also could've pulled that from nothing. Jim's a real pig."
He nodded in solemn agreement.
Angela sniffed again, frustrated with how impulsive and ridiculously haphazard this whole yarn was unraveling. She knew this timid chaos was more accurate to her true self than the meticulous agenda she'd spent the whole plane ride arrogantly planning to enact, but the lack of order still embarrassed her. Humbling herself enough to accept Tony's grace in it all, she obliged a backtrack.
"We were down in Panama at the time. Michael was up for an award for one of his documentaries,"
Tony looked directly at her.
"That's where they were hosting it, the Platino Awards…" Angela said, noticing Tony's more finely tuned attention but not commenting on it.
"Anyway, when I saw Michael allow that woman to be all over him, I stopped crying my eyes out. I'd been killing myself for accidentally hurting him, and there he was, purposefully and publicly flipping me off."
She appreciated that Tony seemed to keep watching her as often and acutely as he could and felt a solid connection in that. Sensing the leeway, she shoved her chin in the air, "I was done."
Something was yet again, unsettled and she sighed.
Damn lie detector. It was so distracting. She wanted to tell this story the way she wanted to, without having to force through these disruptive hesitancies. But she also knew she needed to finally see the truth in her story. What else was the point of this conversation? How could she get Tony to understand what really happened if she were still allowing herself to believe lies?
Calming down, she sighed yet again, "Okay, that's not true. I wanted to storm off and be done. I felt so hurt, so exposed… so left," she shrugged weakly, "I forced myself past everything scary and sad, and the perfect, exasperated tantrum came out easily. But Michael called it: we were one-upping each other… and we didn't stop until he was broken and bloody on the streets outside a club, fighting some guy I'd slathered my sweaty body all over, Michael having rubbed every part of some other woman with every part of himself…"
She'd kept her eyes shut during her confession but opened them to see Tony still very much listening in silence. Gratitude kept her going.
Gratitude kept her honest.
"Tony, Michael was crazy and sadistic, but I followed suit-" she tossed up a defeated hand, "Aw, hell. Who knows who started it. But all that one-upping… Tony, I won; he didn't. I never wanted either of us to lose. But then, feeling like he didn't care at all, when at the same time, I knew he did; he really did – this is how a man behaves when he loves me!? - I became dead set on not losing to his cruelty; I did not deserve that."
But then her angry voice tapered off to a whisper, "But then I learned how much worse it felt to win."
Tony's eyes narrowed.
She started to cry and could barely hear her own voice, "Tony, I don't want that." She shook her head, "Never again. Whenever Michael and I went to war with each other, we agreed to lose. Both of us. And we lost big that night, Tony. We never got better. It was just the beginning of the end."
Actually…
Angela looked away from him as she remembered out loud, "…That's not true, either."
History started to align in her head, and it came out slowly, "We'd had a lot of drama up until then. As big as that fight was, I don't know why I remembered that being the first big problem. It couldn't have been. We were wound tightly by that point, and damn near anything could've set it off."
She kept her squint directed at the blackness beyond the windshield as the memories ghosted in front of her. "I remember being scared. All the time. I remember being lonely. All the time. I remember being angry," she looked over at Tony, "All the time."
Tony squinted cautiously, "What were you scared of?"
Angela was a little surprised Tony had asked her anything; she was getting used to the meandering monologue. But she smiled at his interest and shook her head back to the present.
Then she remembered how to answer his question honestly, and her smile died.
Looking away from him she shrugged, still not comfortable with the whole concept.
Her eyes pinged, "I just- I never really knew what was in there. In Michael."
She looked him in the eye, "I guess that goes for both of us. I had no idea what would happen in Panama was inside me, either. But I knew I didn't know what was inside Michael."
Tony's squint narrowed even more.
"This one time, back when I first met Wendy and Isabel, he and I had been arguing, and he-"
She chanced to see Tony's face become instantly tight, and she shook her head quickly, "No. No, nothing like that. He just-"
She stopped trying to minimize it. She didn't want to maximize it, either. But the truth had its own course, and she needed to follow it.
She looked in Tony's eyes, "I was scared. Before, what would feel… wobbly, as far as my safety with him was concerned – like, he'd get angry or start yelling at me, out of nowhere - I'd brush away and pretend wasn't real."
She flicked her eyebrows up acknowledging, "I'd tried to do that this one night, too, blowing off the aggressive way he was talking to me and coming at him with my own sass... That felt safer, being a part of the firestorm instead of cowering to it. But Michael didn't let me brush it away this time…"
The first time since it happened, she felt her little self stand up. Her voice was raspy, and she spoke to the windshield, but she was speaking.
"He was a lot bigger than I was. I don't know what he was trying to do, but I remember what he did. He got really close to me while he was angry. He talked low and clear, looking me right in the eye… like no matter what he said, it was a warning."
Angela braved a look at Tony, but still, his heavily flexed face said nothing. She appreciated the restraint – both that he needed it and that he conceded to it. This was hard enough to unearth; she didn't need to defend anything right now. But it did feel like she got to reside in her man's shadow for the minute, and it strengthened her.
"It was weird." She let herself keep thinking through it aloud, "That was the first time I got this jealous vibe from him. He was always jealous of my time at work, but this time, it was like he was worried about my fidelity – which, at that point, I'd never given him a reason to question. I was going out with Wendy and Isabel for the first time, and-" she scoffed, "I think he'd just never seen me have a social life since I met him."
Her gaze drifted to the windshield as she whispered through the memory, "…at a club …in a tiny dress," And it was almost like she could hear Michael say, 'where you slept with the first guy who asked you to dance'.
Angela's face snarled up at Tony's clearly confused face, "You've gotta be kidding me! That's not how it happened!"
She slapped the seat she was sitting on, "He knew when I met him, I was heartbroken over Ben… not to mention I was single – and he slept with me, too! He knew this time we were married with a child. He knew me! Shit! I was going out with my friends! Those are not at all the same circumstances! What? Because I found my cocktail dresses? It's not like he hadn't seen me in them before!"
Tony revealed nothing but an obviously clenched jaw.
"And the truth is, if he would've allotted me more than 5 minutes to stroke his dick that night, I would've way rather gone out with him!"
Her angry tears scratched at all perceivable serenity, and she hugged herself. "He just wanted me whenever he wanted me, expecting me to do whatever he wanted at the drop of a hat. Always."
She swallowed as her wounded heart started to settle, and eventually, she let out a shuddery breath, "Well, I guess we got out a couple times a year to do something I wanted." She sniffed and shrugged, "...Sometimes, it was nice. We'd gone to parties at my office together."
"Grant was there?"
She was, again, surprised to hear Tony's voice in all this, but she liked the companionship, especially on the rabbit trails – like he was in this ridiculous discourse with her, regardless of how crazy. It was comforting, and she reciprocated the engagement.
"Of course! It was at my work! But these parties were way, way before anything happened between me and Grant. It was a night out for me and Michael. It was like this glitzy showcase of all I was at my job, all I wanted Michael to be proud of… or even acknowledge..."
Her diminished speech gave way to insistence, "And we had fun! He and I would dance together; it was great. We loved to dance. I remember him smiling at me as he took my coat, checking me out…"
"Grant?"
"Michael!"
Tony tossed his head back a little, and she stumbled back to her story.
"I remember laughing with him…"
She let out a little chuckle, "making fun of how lousy the hors d'oeuvres were. …He was actually a very good cook, himself, when he'd bother to get out the pans. He didn't think he should have to."
Tony allowed one side of his pressed frown to tip up.
She looked up to him, honestly, and shrugged again, "Anyway, I thought we had a good time out on the town… but maybe Michael was just making an effort. It's probably what I wanted to see…"
"He's always pretty moody in public," she rolled her eyes, "so I wasn't expecting him to dazzle anyone with his people skills."
Tony scoffed.
"But we had a couple drinks, he stuck close to me, looking nice in his suit… you know, whatever - " she shrugged, "office party stuff. We had a good time..." Her eyes narrowed sharply, "And I never once tried to run off with anyone just because I was showing a little thigh! Damn."
"Yeah…" Tony drifted.
He took a few moments to himself while she stewed.
Then he turned to look at her, soft but serious.
"Angela, I don't care if you were showing every mile of your legs,"
Her instant and genuine grin dropped shyly.
"…Grant's tongue draggin' around the party like a cartoon…"
She laughed, despite the situation.
But then Tony's own smile hardened to solid granite, and a foreign but surprisingly familiar strength slowed the whole cadence of time.
"No one's allowed to scare you."
Angela's head tilted at the resolution on his face, and the protection she felt was nothing if not natural and right. It warmed and surrounded her, letting her breathe easily. She didn't know what Emily was talking about. She did need this.
"Thank you, Tony," she whispered.
"I didn't make it up, Angela. But even if it wasn't in plain words, no man worth his salt would threaten his wife. Ever." He let out another angry laugh, "It's just crazy you didn't know that."
She felt her eyelids sting but allowed herself to be littler, not in weakness but in the strength of truth.
Tony's paused.
"I know I haven't been a husband worth my salt either, but-"
Slowly, Angela closed her eyes. She didn't want to nail Tony to the wall anymore, but he was awful to Marie.
And yet, hearing a serious valuation of all he'd done start to strain in front of her… I'd rather have it this way than him being some naïve, little wind-up man who'd never brushed up against his dark nature. I need someone who can know that about me, too - and handle it.
She opened her eyes into a teary smile, "I feel protected now."
"Good," he rasped. "I don't want you to be afraid."
She nodded back, again overwhelmed with gratitude.
"I used to be. All the time. Before that time with the girls, even, but especially since then."
Tony was back to pinching his lips.
"It's like, once that line is crossed, you just… you never know," she shrugged awkwardly.
"Damn him," he whispered to the windshield.
He took a moment to breathe steadily, and Angela tried to do the same.
But then he turned back abruptly, "It never stopped? You two seemed to end it on pretty friendly terms… at least before he tried to get custody of Jonathan."
"Oh, yeah. We did. I'd say that was us at our best, but…" she cleared her throat.
Again, Tony was back to squinting while Angela's wide eyes pleaded her case.
"When he came back – you know, when you first met him?"
He nodded, and she made an acknowledging little chuckle of nerves, "Well, you remember us…"
The confusion in his eyes morphed to annoyance, and he didn't hide their dry, if flamboyant, roll in his head, "Yes, I do."
"Exactly. Well-"
Shit. Here we go.
"Tony, I didn't tell Michael about me and Grant before we started to have sex again."
Tony's mouth did fall this time.
"I told him while we were having sex."
The Tonyest of reprimands surged forth, "Angelaaaa!"
"I know! But damn it, Tony, I was so mad and hurt and… scared he would leave again…"
Tony's judgmental expression started to die down, and she was further encouraged.
"When he got jealous of you and likened it to me flirting with Grant – right in the middle of us having sex – that was him!" she pointed her finger at Tony.
Tony's eyebrows popped up with his pitch, "He was jealous of me?"
Angela's voice dropped, "Focus, Tony."
But his head had already started its prideful bobble, and her rolled eyes conceded for the moment.
"You're a great-looking man with the muscle definition he's been striving for since he discovered I liked it. Yes, as you well know, he was jealous that you were living with me. He was jealous that your bedroom was right across the hall. He was jealous that I knew when you bathed-"
His cocky smile still hadn't tapered, "Gee…"
"Anyway, he was acting like that's just how I was, an unfaithful wife – like he had no part in that storyline whatsoever! …if you could even make that case! For crying out loud, I'd tried to divorce him!" She tossed her chin up, "So, I whipped out the big guns and told him about sleeping with Grant and the unnamed few after him."
But then the whole car seemed to shrink with her voice, and even Tony's head was back down to normal size.
"…We screamed and cried for a while." She swallowed, "But he was still there when we stopped crying. He didn't leave, Tony. He. came. back. Even after I'd given him more reason than I ever had. He stayed."
Tony breathed into a flat line.
She kept her voice soft, acknowledging, "I know he didn't treat you well, but I needed him to be there. I didn't want you to go, but fighting for you just would've made you look bad. And I was willing to! I wanted to! I was not going to be walked on in my marriage anymore! But you didn't want me to, remember? You wanted me to let you go."
"Angela, I couldn't," he whispered.
She nodded, "I know. You've always valued marriage and family."
Ouch. She wasn't trying to be hurtful. That is what she thought of Tony.
But he allowed the rightful pause before he responded.
"Not always."
She swallowed again, "You valued mine."
He was clearly grateful, and she smiled back.
"Anyway, we were hot and heavy like always,"
Tony was back to rolling his eyes.
"but things were weird. All of a sudden, everything else that had always destabilized our marriage felt…" she thought a second, "yeah, like I said, minimal: Michael, constantly startling me with his frightening size and cruelty… me, lowering my defenses around my boss while having barely any time with my husband… both of us, rubbing and sweating ourselves all over other people… Michael and I having intense, tender sex before he screams that I'm a 'fucking whore'… barely letting him touch me for months after that,"
Tony's eyes just kept getting wider and crazier, apparently understanding nothing and everything, all at once.
"it all felt like nothing in light of what we were dealing with when Michael came home. Our marriage was shattered. But I tried. He tried! I saw him! Multiple times, I remember him stepping away from that power struggle we'd been in forever - " she put her fist to her heart, "and I valued that!"
"I didn't want to lord anything over him, but I kept getting tied up with work, and- and…" her voice got tiny, "and then you left, and I was lonely again…"
Tony squinted.
Her breath was shaky, but she kept going. "And then," she looked up to Tony, "and then he stopped being so hesitant, and his anger started coming out again."
Tony's face went tight.
"I was afraid he'd leave. I was afraid he'd stay, and I'd give up my dreams to pay him back for giving up his. I was afraid I'd never see you again! Nothing was working, and some part of me was afraid all the time!"
Tony's hesitant face softened. "You seemed fine," he whispered.
She flicked up dry eyebrows, "Yeah, I'm good like that."
His head tipped back slowly.
"I don't know if you remember, Tony, but it was near Valentine's Day, and everything was cold."
Tony started to squint, "…a snowstorm?"
Angela relaxed at the connection of his comprehension. "You remember," she smiled.
Tony looked increasingly uncomfortable, but she kept going.
"Anyway, things kept getting more strained with us after you left, not less. And during that blizzard, Michael went scuba diving, of all things," she rolled her eyes before hardening them. "I didn't know why he'd agreed to field training if he were going to be behind a desk for the foreseeable future, but I remember him snapping at me for trying to figure it out."
She tilted her head at Tony. "I know that sounds small. It's not that he was really doing anything - like before. It just felt like things were shifting. After we'd laid our cards on the table that first night, he was so cautious. I didn't want that, but I also didn't want the other extreme: that arrogant way he'd toss my heart around when literally anything would set him off. But I could feel it starting again, the power struggle. He'd eek out these little reminders of how angry he really was, then pull back and apologize. But he didn't mean it. He meant the aggression." Her eyebrows flicked up again, "I guess he should've been angry… but damn it, we weren't all my fault! I guess that's what made his affection so inconsistent; he was probably as confused and frustrated as I was."
Tony nodded.
She shrugged, "Again, the 'outbursts' were small, but I could feel the change happening. And I was still worried about him. Diving is dangerous, even in clear weather! I was worried about us. It didn't feel like he was as all that committed to staying in the city if he were willing to dive in the ice and snow to recertify for field work." She flipped up her palm at Tony, "And I'd just sacrificed my best friend to keep us together!"
Tony seemed to work his cautious lips into a smile as best he could.
"Well, he went with the plan that we'd meet after work that day. But he called me after he was done, from Brooklyn. He wanted to slug over – which I was none too thrilled about, but I was just worried about him!"
He nodded again, but his face looked increasingly strained.
Angela pushed past his body language and dropped wide eyes to his, "It took hours, Tony. He was just on the other side of the river! Michael was right: as much as I didn't like the idea, in traffic like that, he should've been able to get a ride instantly. We were supposed to meet at my office, so I stayed put, but it was agonizing! I'm telling you: hours, I waited. I don't know what happened to him, but by the time he fell through the elevator doors in our reception area, he looked like an ice-frosted yeti somebody had shot."
"He shot him!?"
She pulled her chin back, "What? Who?"
His newly paralyzed face didn't answer her.
She blinked, "No. No, I just mean he was hypothermic and so exhausted that he literally fell onto my office floor. I remember rolling him over."
Tony's darting eyes started to settle, and she shook off the misunderstanding and plowed ahead.
"Anyway, he looked… bizarre. I still can't even describe it, though I remember it like it was yesterday. It was scary. The way he looked at me… he wasn't just hungry and tired like he'd said on the phone. He looked… out of his mind."
She shrugged, "But he'd been out in that weather, with a wet head, all evening… I told myself he was bound to be a little loopy. So, I brushed it off again, like I'd always done. I tried to warm him up and get him comfortable, but then he gets this crazy idea that he wants to have sex. Right there, right then."
She finally acknowledged whatever was struggling with Tony's expression. "I know! Weird, right!?"
He nodded slowly.
"But I felt so guilty. Grant had just called me."
Angela didn't know how Tony could look like he was listening as intently as he was and still seem like he was getting more and more scared with every word she uttered, but he did.
"I know! I couldn't believe his timing. I hadn't spoken with Grant since he'd told me he'd resigned, and even that was out of the blue! We weren't in communication with each other."
Tony, again, silently nodded through obvious nerves. Still not having time to deal with whatever was going on with his insides, Angela dove deeper into hers.
"I wanted him," tiny admission sped out, and she could tell he heard her.
She felt flushed, and sweat broke out all over her face, chest, and back. She spoke louder.
"I wanted Grant. Talking to him, I remembered the difference. The difference in how I felt. I know you didn't get along with Grant either, but I'm telling you: the man believed in me. Yes, he had other intentions as well," she smiled, "but he thought I was worth something to his team. I felt like I was worth something when I was with him - maybe because of how I felt around him, or maybe because I was proud of who I became in his environment, I don't know-"
Tony's latest slow nod felt much more human, and she leaned into the conversation.
"But it felt good. I know the difference! Michael thinks I'm a moron! …Well, academically smart, perhaps, but nothing transferable to the business world, because Grant thought I was pretty! Makes perfect sense!" She threw her hands up and huffed out the window. "…Dipshit."
A slightly amused smile tipped up the corner of Tony's mouth.
She turned her face back to his with a fresh sheen of tears covering her eyes. "You know," her voice broke, "I'm not feeling so guilty about that anymore. I did want to be with someone who treated me well. I did want to be encouraged and valued and enjoyed for all I was. I liked that! I shouldn't have felt guilty for hearing the difference over the phone - again. What I should've done is told Michael that I didn't want what he was offering."
Her head dropped to her lap, "…But I couldn't. It's not true, not all of it. Michael had given up so much for me. I was shocked and grateful; this was our biggest battle - our jobs - and he'd surrendered to keep us together. And I was scared: that puts me in his debt. How could I hold onto that? It wasn't even feeling like love anymore."
She looked up to Tony's compassionate face, beyond grateful he was just letting her ramble.
"Besides, Grant had already told me he didn't want kids, and I had one."
Angela tossed an exasperated hand in the air, "You had started a new job you loooooved," she rolled her eyes.
"Hey-" Tony interjected.
She looked at him dryly and lifted her eyebrows.
He matched her look and didn't back down, "I gave them up the second Michael asked me to."
She smiled a little.
"I'd take being your servant over them being mine in a heartbeat. Even back then, I wanted you, even just as my friend." He popped up unapologetic brows, "Sam and me – our lives were better with you."
Angela's heart slowed and warmed all at once. She wanted to say what Tony did but was sickened by the obvious gap. My servant? Oh, that sounds awful!
"Did you really think of yourself as my servant?"
Tony shook his head, "Never. …Well, maybe a few times." He laughed, "When I painted your car-"
"Oh, I am not apologizing for that!" she laughed.
He grinned.
Hers died down and brought her volume with it.
"But I will apologize for what I said." She remembered that infraction, clear as a bell.
Damn it. I can't believe I've never done this.
"Tony, I'm sorry. I'm sorry I said you were just the maid. You've never been just the maid. You've taken more ownership over our home than I have. You made it a home. You've been my dear friend from the very beginning. I'm sorry I said that - even if you were monstrously out of line," her snarky smile saddened, "I was much worse."
Tony matched her look, "Yeah," he sighed. "I know milked it, but that one hurt."
"I'm sorry, Tony. If it helps, I remember it tasting like a lie, even as I'd said it."
He grinned, "…It does. Thanks."
She laughed a little, but then softened, "And I'm sorry I never apologized for it. I certainly owed you that. You didn't deserve to have me sweep it under the rug."
He shrugged, "Well, it let us both off the hook."
"Yeah… 'told you I'm good at that," she whispered. "Generally speaking, I tend to ease my guilt by not saying when other people hurt me, specifically. I did that with that swindling tenant we had-"
"Michelle," he smiled saucily.
A tear rolled down her cheeks, and his smile disappeared.
Carefully, she stacked another block on the tower, "I did it with Kathleen."
Tony's now painfully uncomfortable face didn't move.
"No, Tony, I mean it. I-" she shook her head, "I never wanted to talk to you about how hurt I was with this stuff. Hell, I didn't even want to talk to me about it. I didn't want to deal with all the ways Michael hurt me. The ways I'd hurt him, Jonathan, you!... I just wanted to forget. But I should've laid down the law much sooner with Michelle."
Tony sighed and tipped his head back and forth.
"And I should've ripped your head off when I found out about Kathleen."
Tony looked her in the eye, "I know." He looked over at her, "I'm sorry, Angela. I wish I never woulda never touched her. It was you I'd been droolin' over. It was you I couldn't stop thinkin' about. It was you I wanted to be with - no stand-in chick would cut it. I know I hurt you."
Another tear graced her cheek, and he whispered, "She wasn't worth it. That first time I saw you cry. She wasn't worth it to me."
"Then why'd you keep going?" she squeaked.
He shrugged weakly, "I remember wishing you would yell at me. Wishing you'd bring it up-"
A shrug!? That's his answer! 'i DOn't kNoW'. Again!?
Her stomach tightened enough to chop her body in half at the waist, but she didn't release a sound as he continued his testimony.
"Wishing you'd break something or cry or-"
But she was glaring at him sharply, and he noticed, "Okay, I mean I wish you would've cried again, been mad at me."
He shrugged, "But you stopped crying. You started smiling - even I was sick of smiling after a while. I wished you'd do anything to snap us out of the whole, dumb show... Yell, cry, throw something - anything - some kind of Goddamn consequence! But instead, I got your pretty smile, your nervous laugh, you, just being generally awkward and shaky around me… you, walking out the door with other men – that was the worst! And I couldn't say anything because it was my fault."
As angry as she was, she knew that's because she was hurt.
"I wish you would've. I wish you would've said something - said it was your fault, and you still didn't want me to go with them… said it was our fault - and then, of course, I would've yelled at you – but at least then we would've started a real conversation."
Tony popped his eyebrows up and down, acknowledging.
She kept at him, "You could've, even if you didn't have a right to..."
"I wanted to say something."
"I would've stayed, Tony; I know that. I don't know what I would've told you…"
She swallowed for courage, "but I should've told you it wasn't all your fault. I should've told you a long time ago that I needed you. That I wanted you-"
"You did," he stated quietly, but clearly. "We both did. In Jamaica."
She nodded tearfully as he mouthed, 'I'm sorry'.
He understood.
Finally.
Suddenly nothing seemed so insurmountable anymore.
And yet, in all the cataclysmic realization, her wavery voice hadn't veered course. "-that I don't know how long it would take me to pick up the pieces of our life together if I'd lost you, or how I would even want to. I see a terrible future for myself without you, Tony." She finished in a whisper, "Please don't leave me. You keep me soft. You keep me real. I need you."
Tony tried to clear his throat, "That's what you should've said?"
"That's what I am saying," her patience strived.
Tony's relieved exhale quickly changed to a grateful smile, "I need you, too, Angela." He scoffed, "Please don't leave me. And shit - I don't want you to act like you're not hurt or nothin', just so you don't feel bad about hurting other people. Just talk to me. Please?" He popped up those amazing eyebrows, "We're gonna hurt each other sometimes, but… I think we can fix it if we talk."
She let out a teary laugh. It seemed so simple when he said it like that. And it felt good to hear him cuss, like now they were having an adult conversation. She didn't need it to be every other word, but if nothing were worth an expletive, something was wrong.
"Okay," she sniffed. "But on that note, I'm not done. I still haven't told you about what else happened while you were at Mrs. Randolph's."
He settled back into his seat and checked the road. "Okay."
Angela took a big breath to regroup. "Okay, well, like I was saying before, Michael wanted to have sex in my office, even though he was in an awful state. We were both starving and crying and on edge. I don't remember everything that was going on, just that we were both emotionally and physically in very poor shape. Hell, even at the time, I didn't know what was going on, just that it was a horrible time to start anything, especially at my office."
Tony nodded.
"But I felt so guilty for talking to Grant, for wanting to talk to him, for flirting with him – again - that I gave in."
Tony gave a lopsided shrug, "Well, you and Michael were still trying to work things out, right?"
"Yes, we were. But he couldn't hide his anger so well anymore. It was already feeling like I was losing him… like he was losing me, like both of us were gripping this falling marriage by our fingernails." She squared up to him, "Tony, we were trying to get closer, but it wasn't working."
He squinted, and her terrified eyes stared back, "I was sitting on his lap in my chair when we started-"
Tony started to tense up.
"Tony," she closed her eyes, "Tony, I have to talk to you about this."
She waited while Tony took a long breath. Then he nodded, "It's okay. Talk to me."
"Thanks," she whispered honestly. She wouldn't have wanted to be in Tony's position, either, but she needed the margin.
"Well, we were in the chair for a bit, but it was still… harsh and desperate, like we were trying to fix something… attacking the problem."
Tony's eyes narrowed.
She shook her head, struggling to re-center her thoughts, "I remember we were both crying - though I didn't know why he was, and he didn't know why I was. At first, it was a little unsettling, but I figured it was the culmination of everything, us trying so hard and, once again, seeming to amount to nothing together."
"Anyway, we banged around my desk for a while 'till we made it to the floor… He seemed so…" she sucked in a great inhale, "I don't know how he could've been angry; I remember feeling his tears on my chest, his snot on my arm, his skin was still cold… he was needing me, but I was scared. Even before we'd started kissing, ever since he got to my office - it was scary. I didn't get it. He was hurting. He-"
Her face started to snarl in perfect discomfort as a tear rolled down her cheek, and Tony watched with growing caution as her turmoil continued to unfold.
"Tony, he'd told me he didn't like seeing me cry, but I don't think that could've been as bad as this. He- I've never-"
She was having a hard time breathing and tried to sit up straight, but her taxed back muscles still hadn't recovered from the long flight, and she felt the need to stretch out of the confines of all truth involved.
Everything about this memory hurt, and she'd avoided it as long as she could. But now her heart was beating so fast, she wanted to know what was in there as much as she wanted Tony to.
She pinched the bridge of her nose as her shaky breaths came out slower, "I know this sounds crazy, but it tasted like blood every time we kissed. I remember that very well. It was creepy. I think I hurt him, but I can't imagine how. It's not like I still had braces!"
Tony released an obviously forced laugh, and she kept trying to explain.
"It was like that even before we got rough." She shrugged, "I made it as nice for him as I could, but everything was harsh and intense. It wasn't exactly bad; he was unmistakably sincere. We both were! …But this was on the floor. My back was getting rug burned... It was- yeah, rough and ugly, but also… despairing, maybe? I don't know, but Michael never once looked like he was enjoying himself. No matter how much I tried, no matter how much he tried, it was just lonely… insistent… demanding sex."
"Demanding…"
Angela shook her head, "No. No, I don't mean that. I agreed. And I'd tried to reciprocate that fierce mood, too, because I thought that's what he wanted. And he did stop when I yelled out that it hurt."
Tony was now in a full-on glare.
She shook her head, "No, Tony. I didn't let him know until it was really, really bad. Of course, I think he could've observed that this wasn't nice for either of us, if he were paying attention."
She sighed, "…Maybe he was and still needed to do it, like I did…"
"Regardless, he was hell bent on doing this the hardest way he could. And I was so confused, but-" she looked down, "but he told me he needed me to do it, so I did it."
She closed her eyes in solemn vow, "I would've done anything to get rid of that guilt."
Tony made a slow blink, and the long, steady exhale passing his clenched teeth momentarily stood as the only sound in the car. He opened his eyes to the road, and she tried to catch his eye again.
"He kept going back and forth – furious, then devastated. And I had no idea why! When he'd spoken with me on the phone that afternoon, he was kinda pissy and hurtful. Then… all this..."
She sniffed and finished quietly, "Anyway, when he saw what he'd done to my back, he started to cry again."
Tony's face showed no sign of retreat.
"Honestly, Tony, he wasn't this weepy. I'd never seen him cry this much - our whole marriage put together! At that point, he didn't seem angry anymore." She squinted, "Well, he did, but it was… different, like his anger had a different target. He was serious, gentle, kissing the burn..."
She closed her eyes and breathed, "He kissed me everywhere… he wasn't trying to do any more damage. "
Her eyes slowly opened.
"That's it: it felt like he was trying to hurt something before," she whispered, and she'd never seen Tony look angrier.
"No, Tony," she waved her hand in front of herself, "I don't even think it was me. Just… just, the situation," she shook her head, still trying to figure it all out.
"When he saw that he did hurt me, it felt like that was the last thing he'd ever wanted to do. Just like it always was with him. Dead." She snapped. "Alive. Just like that."
Tony had perched his tongue to the back of his canine tooth and shook his silent head out the windshield.
"That was our last time together."
Tony squinted and turned back to her, "That's how you ended it?"
Angela's face instantly filled with heat. She took a deep breath. Here we go again.
"Well, he wanted to have a nicer send off, after we'd both decided it wasn't working. But uh…" She closed her eyes, "Tony, I'd called Grant back before that."
She opened her eyes to see Tony looking not one bit surprised. Still, she needed to unburden herself.
"I was hurting and scared. I liked how I felt with Grant, and I didn't like how I felt with Michael. Our marriage, how we'd always done things, wasn't working. …But I'd called Grant mere hours after I'd been trying to make things right with Michael at my office. I hadn't broken it off with Michael yet. I know that sounds viciously selfish… but in the moment I felt… desperate."
She looked right at Tony, "I needed Grant. This was bigger than I was, and I needed him to make it better."
A slow backward nod tilted Tony's head, and Angela was grateful for the calm.
"I should've waited," she nodded adamantly. "I know that, and I still feel very guilty about it. But I was so sad, all I knew I was losing – even in Michael's and my on-again-off-again lifestyle, we'd been married for almost 8 years. I was scared to be alone; you know how empty that is! I could feel him leaving me for good, even before we'd talked openly about it. We could not function like we were, a life where that kind of abandon was okay – necessary, even. I was scared to hurt that badly, to be that alone." Her eyes pleaded with him when her tiny voice barely could, "But I tried to exchange Michael for Grant."
Her slow blink opened in absolute sincerity, "Tony, I had no right to do that. Love, the kind I want, is all in. I don't get to know if I've secured one until I've fully let go of another. But I tried to. I want you to know I did that - and that I'm sorry. Truly. That's not who I want to be."
Tony nodded slowly.
She smiled gratefully, and her raspy voice pressed on. "Michael never knew I called him. But I just realized this week the reason I didn't give Michael the goodbye he wanted was so that I didn't feel guilty about calling Grant, practically begging him to be with me."
Tony didn't drop eye contact as he reached for her hand.
Oh, my God.
She had no idea how her heart kept beating.
He's not leaving.
It took a couple seconds, but she kind of laughed out a grateful smile - one that felt weird with mucus on it - but she was too grateful to feel the ick. Smearing it off with the back of her other hand, she sniffed and tried to finish.
"Tony, I let those ugly, desperate, painful times in my office - in the city with Michael, and then at home, from where I called Grant - be the official end of my marriage. And that isn't the right picture of who Michael and I were at all."
"You sure about that?"
Angela blinked.
He shrugged, "Yeah, it's terrible, but how could it have been better and you two still deciding to split?"
She spent several seconds adjusting to the abruptness of his comment before considering its merit, "I always thought of that last day together as Michael and I finally treating each other right-"
But as her wheels turned, she turned back to him, "Maybe it wasn't as sweet between us as we'd all remembered by the time he left."
"Angela, I don't know all that was going on with you two. I know when Michael called me at Mrs. Randolph's house, he definitely didn't sound this nuts. I had no clue all that had gone on. But maybe the two o' ya just scared yourselves again with how bad things had gotten and tried to back away slowly."
Angela's eyes settled on the streetlit darkness in front of them, "Wow." She started to feel very sad.
Their last day together had always felt like a high point of maturity and love in their marriage, like maybe it wasn't even a defeat. Now it felt like their convicted consciences had been putting out as many fires as they could as they went down with the ship.
Tony shrugged, "Maybe he felt guilty, and that's why he called me to come step in. I mean, the week before, he couldn't get rid of me fast enough. And then, he was trying to push me into your arms… Something had to have shifted there. He probably felt guilty as sin. I know I would've..."
Shivering, she took the hand he wasn't holding and rubbed her other arm, "That is terrible." All of it. That night, the aftermath, all of it.
It was embarrassing.
But she looked over at Tony, and he just nodded solemnly; it didn't feel judgmental at all.
Instead of shrinking back, she let her eyes opened wider, "You're right, Tony: that was our marriage – Michael and I beating the hell out of each other and then weeping over the devastation. Oh, my God!"
His eyebrows went up sadly, "I'm sorry, Angela. I wouldn't want that, either."
"It was always like that."
Tony made a flat smile.
"Emily thinks I called Grant because something in me needed to feel guilty enough to detach from Michael. Like maybe I was too addicted to save myself from him on my own."
"Save yourself?" he scrunched his face. "That's not what I just heard. I agree, it needed to be bad, or you wouldn't'a left. But I heard you saying how awful it was to see Michael crying like that, like how he'd gotten so hurt in Panama. I've never seen anyone so miserable about what someone else was goin' through. That's love, Angela. Maybe it helped the both a ya - yeah… and I guess it was wrong – okay, thanks for sayin' so… but it's as clear to me that my biscotti will never be as good as Mrs. Rossini's: you called Grant to save Michael from you."
Angela cocked her head at Tony, and her nose stung.
His gentle voice sounded surprised, "You really don't like yourself, do you?"
He was again blurry through the tears, and she let go of his hand to hold her stomach.
"It was getting better for a while, but I think I backslid."
"After Kathleen," he whispered.
She didn't respond, and he squeezed his eyes shut, "Damn it."
Even knowing there was truth at play here, it wasn't the whole truth. "Tony, it's not your fault that I do that-"
But he didn't acknowledge her, "Angela, I'm sorry. I'm sorry I was such a coward - foolin' around with her, and then makin' fun of you instead of bein' sorry. I just- I dunno," he shrugged. "I couldn't have you, but… You were the last person I could lose. I loved you. I knew it! Like I loved Marie. And then I-"
Something clicked in both their faces.
"And then I killed her…" he drifted.
Neither did anything but breathe until Tony had to look at the road again.
"You were trying to protect me from you," she whispered to his profile. "With Kathleen…"
Oh, that's terrible!
"Tony, you didn't kill Marie."
He turned back to look at her, a tear running down his frozen face. He didn't say anything, but it looked like he was dying to.
Angela didn't even know why, but now she was dying to hold him.
She didn't know how many seconds went by while she waited for any of this to make sense. Then, finally, even with a small voice, he put the pieces together.
"I was on the 6, a little after it happened. After she died. After my shoulder. And uh- and there was this health magazine someone left on the seat. I was bored," he shrugged, "so I picked it up and started readin' it."
Angela's eyes narrowed, trying to understand.
He licked his lips, and the tears were now coming down in streams. "It was this article about heart attacks or somethin' - somethin' they called, 'Broken Heart Syndrome'."
Oh, no. Tony.
She wasn't sure if she'd said that out loud. She knew her face hadn't moved.
His still-little voice strained, "It's a real thing, Angela. Yeah, I guess it's mostly older folks, like widows and stuff. But it said it could happen after any big, terrible life event."
He managed to finish, but she could barely hear its breathy exit, "Maybe she knew."
"Oh, Tony," Angela shook her head but never dropped eye contact. "I don't know. That sounds like a long shot."
"Does it!?"
Angela's reaching face shrank back.
"She seemed healthy, Angela!"
"But you don't know that. Why would you do that to yourself? You don't even know if that 'broken heart' thing is what she died from. You just knew it was something with her heart. It could've been anything!"
"I never worked up the guts to go check with the hospital or ask anyone who might'a remembered what the doctor said. I couldn't. What if it was true!?"
Pain was all over her face, but she had no concrete comfort to offer, and that's what he needed. The maybe is what hurt.
The maybe is always what hurts.
"…So, you laughed it off and made it go away," she extrapolated.
His entire face crumpled, and tears channeled through those beautifully fragile lines at the corners of his eyes.
"I always laugh things off when I'm scared," he squeaked.
Well, that explains a lot.
She didn't know what to say, finally seeing what he'd been coping through all this time. She just knew she was sad – so sad.
Sniffing greatly, Tony shuddered out a breath, "I need to pull over."
Angela nodded quickly and finally gained enough presence of mind to put a firm hand on his shoulder.
He made it down the next off ramp and found a secluded spot, well into the shoulder. She looked out in front of them and kept trying to breathe. She couldn't believe what he had put himself through.
The chances of that happening, even if Marie knew something was up, or- or just picked it up on her own from that Cassanova way Tony behaves…
She shook her head, trying to clear out the possibilities, "Tony the odds of that happening must be-"
"Odds! You, the business chick, are gonna to talk to me about odds!"
Her brows scrunched, not liking the attack, but loving him enough to look for the explanation.
He leaned furiously toward her, and started counting on his fingers, "My mama died. My grandfather died. My wife died. My father died. Statistically speaking, that's a lotta death for a fairly young and active family!"
She blinked.
Yet another slosh of tears made his devastated condescension even more pronounced, "And so, we must ask ourselves, what is the driving factor here?"
"Tony, stop it." Her face was stone, and she was not moving. "You didn't do any of that. Seriously, what are you getting out of lying like that? Permission to push people away so you don't have to be scared of losing them? Sometimes truly awful things happen, a lot of them. That doesn't mean it was your fault. My father died, but I didn't kill him. He loved me… and then I was just a 14 year old girl, missing her daddy. Those. Are. The facts. Me pulling crazy crap out of the air, like maybe I wasn't worth sticking around for-"
Tony's forehead fell to the arm he'd slung across the steering wheel.
She noticed a dragonfly buzz around the windshield in the headlights.
All she could hear was her breath.
Her chest continued to rise and fall as she watched his haunted body pay the piper.
Closing her eyes, she shook her head to herself.
All this time. Saboteurs, both of us. Because of this stupid stuff we believe, just so our pain doesn't hurt as badly.
But this is so much worse! All these years…
It's so stupid!
Angela turned her torso and put her elbow up over the seat, "Tony, listen to me."
With a slow blink that released yet another helping of silent tears, he faced her.
"Tony, we are going to that hospital. Do you hear me? We're going together. We're going to look at this and exonerate you, once and for all. No one should be tortured like that."
His pained face tilted to the side, "Angela, what if it's-"
"Then I'll hold you, Tony. And I'll tell you the truth: that even with that, we don't know that you're what caused it."
He pelted her with a look of the most steadfast irritation.
She doubled down, "Even if they could tell us with 100% certainty – which they can't – but if they could tell us that it was all your fault that Marie died, I still want you, Tony. I want you to be mine, and I want you to fight for us."
It would've taken nothing to make his brimming tears fall, but he squeezed his eyes as securely as his guilt held him.
"That means you've got to fight for you, Tony. From here on out, every time you start to wonder and torment yourself, you're going to call me, and I'm going to cry with you. You got it? I'm with you in this."
She put a gentle palm to his cheek and scraped her thumb across the wet stubble. He opened his eyes to see her kind face, and covering her hand with his, he turned to kiss her palm.
"I love you," he breathed against her skin.
Her other hand unclicked her buckle.
Now's a very good time.
Flipping back the console, Angela scooted over and hugged Tony tightly, her pretty, white nail tips rubbing thoughtlessly off on his denim shirt.
And she held him.
She held him as he cried. She held him as she cried. And she felt stronger. They felt stronger. Drained and devastated, they felt stronger together.
He didn't let go when he spoke behind her ear, "Thank you, Angela."
"Thank you. You didn't have to tell me that."
"I wanted to," he said pulling his face back in front of hers and wiped his eyes. "I want to be with you."
Large, viscous bubbles of snot obeyed her lengthy inhale, and she laughed awkwardly. "You sure about that?" she said, leaning back to her side, dabbing a dainty finger pad to her noisy nostril.
He chuckled and twisted around to snag a hankie from his back pocket.
She sighed, "I always told myself Michael and I didn't really want to be together, and that's why it didn't work between us."
Tony handed her the hankie, and somehow managed a scoff and a sniff at the same time, "Angela, that's the stupidest thing I ever heard."
Her testy brows furrowed.
"There's no way all'a what you just said coulda happened with two people who didn't want to be together. You woulda gotten out years beforehand; a guy sure never woulda stayed." He popped out a decided lower lip and shook his head confidently. "No way."
Her mouth opened a little, but she had nothing to say.
"Now, I'm not trying to talk you into wanting him again-" He laughed nervously, "Please, no!" His grin softened, "But you did love each other. You did want to be together - real bad."
What if he's right? What does that mean?
"Then why couldn't we?"
Tony shrugged, "I don't know. Did you two do much talkin' like this?"
She shook her head, "Barely."
"Well, it's helping me."
"Me, too," she whispered.
He squinted at her as he thought, "I dunno, maybe you were kinda like his mom."
Her eyes rounded out, and he popped his own brows up empathetically, "I mean, maybe both'a ya were. It kinda sounds like you needed your job – you know, like you said, her security? - cuz you didn't sense him lettin' go of everything for you, either - like when you were a kid, and Mona leavin' the bills for you to worry about, and Michael with that scuba thing. That doesn't make sense to me, either, unless he was keepin' his options open. Like you said, in a good relationship, that goes without saying. I know we have some problems we gotta work through, but we were willing to give up our security for each other, and not cuz the other one was makin' us, either. It's a voluntary jump. If we both aren't 'all in', as you said, one of us sure can't hold all that up. It's gotta be both. Remember when your grandmother came and wanted us to sign a pre-nup?"
Angela groaned.
"Yeah, just the suggestion - that 'maybe we aren't all in' - that nearly killed us!"
She nodded and then thought for a moment, "Maybe you're right. Maybe Michael and I were just scared."
"Sounds like it - but not 'nervous' scared; 'real bad' scared – like, 'when you're a kid, and your parent leaves you all alone' scared."
"Yeah," she whispered. "Like that."
Tony nodded.
"It wasn't just his mom he couldn't count on. His dad, too. He was white collar, built himself up from nothing, and then ran around on Michael's mom. Michael didn't think she knew about it, but Michael saw it and never trusted anything in the business world after that."
"Makes sense," he whispered. "His dad left his mom out to dry... She probably knew."
Angela grabbed his hand and held it tightly.
She kept holding it as she squinted out the windshield for a while, "Huh… Come to think of it, Grant is exactly the kind of man Michael's parents wanted him to be. They were awful to him – making fun of him, demeaning him, blaming him for all their problems. He was the family trash can."
Tony joined her stare into the darkness beyond, "You and Grant together must'a really been a kick in the balls..."
Her eyebrows were instantly sorrowful, and Tony tried for eye contact, "Too bad he treats everyone like shit. What a terrible life he's got. You know he and Heather broke up, too?"
She shook her head into all the information he was dropping, "What? No. No, I didn't know that..."
It was sad. All of this was sad, and she didn't like it.
"Yeah, I guess she cheated on him," Tony shrugged. "That's what he said, anyway. The guy's a bitter old soul, Angela, but I'm sorry I believed him about you, even a little." He looked in her eyes, "That's not who you are, and I don't want to be like him."
She had settled, and her breathing had smoothed.
"Me, neither," she whispered.
Tony smiled sadly at her.
Her voice came in higher and less steady than she would've liked, but it lacked no sincerity, "Thank you for this, Tony. Thank you for trusting me and letting me be honest with you. I want to."
"I'm glad you still do."
Angela closed her eyes briefly and shook her head, barely believing this conversation was even happening. "Same here. Though I don't know why you would. I was hardly a compassionate listener the other day."
Tony sucked in his breath, "Well, I had a little help…"
"Hmm?"
He slid his top teeth across his bottom ones. "I uh- I actually went to see someone this past week, too."
Her brows scrunched, "What? Who?"
He swallowed laboriously while renewed anxiety sped her past all the women he used to know.
Finally, he squeaked out his answer.
"…Grant?"