"What a Time - Julia Michaels"
Winter, early 2009
"Okay, wait." Jeff snorted before running a hand down his face. "You're telling me that for four months, you've been on birth control while we've been supposedly trying to get pregnant?"
Lacey steeled herself, holding her pillow with both arms. "Yes, Jeff. And I'm sorry. I told you. It was very wrong, but I just couldn't seem to make you get it that–"
"That you're afraid to have a baby because of your anxiety. Right." He threw his hands up in the air. "Whatever the hell that means. Don't you figure most people are?"
She sighed, closing her eyes. It was late. They were both tired, and Jeff was angrier than she'd ever seen him. Lacey knew she'd picked the wrong time to sit down with him to confess what she'd done.
It wasn't as though she'd deliberately set out to trick him. But he–and his mother, to boot–had done nothing this past year but harp on her about having a baby.
"If you want more than one you'd better get on with it, Dear," Barbara had warned in her shrill, lecturing tone. "Your biological clock is not on your side. Twenty-eight leads to thirty-five in about a minute."
So finally, Lacey had decided she'd take the plunge and do this thing. They were probably right–she was overreacting. She'd likely have the baby, be absolutely delighted and happy she did, and life would go on. The panic attacks may still come, but well, she'd figure out how to handle them. But she had made the mistake of waiting until after she had told Jeff she was going off the pill that she went to consult with her doctor about how fit she was to become pregnant–just in case.
"Well, Lacey, you do realize you'll have to come off the antidepressant. The one your psychiatrist put you on is associated with birth defects. We can always try a safer one if you'd like." The woman had smiled kindly, and Lacey might have been reassured if she'd not just gone from feeling listless for almost a year to feeling halfway normal once Dr. Hemby added depression to her diagnosis and had started her on the medication. And to switch it so soon in addition to dealing with pregnancy hormones? What a nightmare that would surely turn out to be.
So Lacey kept telling herself, One more month. Give it one more month, and she'd tell Jeff what she'd learned and try to be trusting enough of her gynecologist to attempt an antidepressant switch. But "one more month" had turned into four, and finally, Lacey knew she had deceived her husband long enough. And she wanted to tell him before he happened upon a partially used birth control pill sleeve in the bathroom cabinet.
"Yes. I know it's a big step and it scares most people. But when you deal with this, Jeff, it's even worse. And how do I know I won't form the postpartum thing after I give birth, and you'll have to pretty much take over for me?"
"See, that's the thing with you," Jeff pointed. "You speak shit into existence. You think you're a headcase, and so you are. Don't you see?"
"Jeff," she was trying not to raise her voice. "I know you believe that's how it works. But I didn't pick this, okay? Would I have gone to therapy for years just because I want to be a headcase? How about take medicine every day? Please just give me a break. And when I tell you my limits, why can't you trust me? If you and your mom hadn't pushed me so hard, then I might ha–"
"Okay, leave Mom out of this," Jeff predictably cut in. "She just wants the best for us, and you know the woman wants more grandkids."
A few choice words popped into Lacey's head to level at Jeff about his mother, but she bit those back, too. All in all, Lacey felt she was doing a great job of staying calm. But then, she had little right to fight back anyway: she was the one who had been dishonest.
"All right," she challenged Jeff instead. "If you really mean that, then you won't tell her about this."
"What, your big lie?" he chortled.
"Yes. My big lie, if that's what you want to call it. If your mother's not involved, then you don't need to tell her this part, either. Think you can handle that?"
Without answering, Jeff just shook his head and snatched up his pillow. "I'm sleeping in the guest room. This is gonna take me some time."
Lacey nodded. That was fair enough.
She'd considered so many times just not revealing to him the dishonesty of the past few months. She certainly hadn't needed to, not when she could just go off her birth control now and he would never know she hadn't done so months ago.
But that was part of the problem, wasn't it? She still wasn't sure she wanted to go off at all. And if that was the case, Jeff deserved the truth. Anyway, she didn't like keeping secrets from him. It seemed to her, from the outside, that the marriages around her that crumbled often did so because of couples keeping petty secrets, telling petty lies. She did not want that to be her marriage.
Yet she also didn't want her marriage to be this: a total lack of ability to tell Jeff the things that went on in her heart and mind without him completely dismissing them and telling her she was just full of shit. Which was pretty much what it amounted to every single time she tried.
It took days for Jeff to even talk to her again. It was as though she'd been unfaithful, stolen from him, gone out and blown his life savings. "Jeff," she finally spoke one morning as he buttered his toast. "How long are you going to punish me for this?"
"I'm not punishing you," he replied irritably, unscrewing the lid off the jar of wild blueberry preserves that Lacey had canned last summer when she was feeling uncharacteristically like a good, dutiful homemaker. "I just need to sort through my feelings."
Lacey watched him across the table, feeling something within her harden as she spoke words she knew would certainly not hasten that process. "Kind of like I never had the chance to sort through mine about getting pregnant, because you were constantly pressuring me to just do it?"
There. She'd just picked a fight without necessarily meaning to, but also without really caring. Because these days, they usually ended up there anyway.
So it started all over again:
Her trying to plead her case with Jeff, and him just telling her she needed to grow up and stop listening to her "damn emotions."
Her accusing him of listening more to his mom than to her; him telling her she was in the very worst occupation she could possibly be in, trying to solve everybody else's problems when she couldn't even solve her own.
Her throwing in that his attitude and the way he talked down to her were her primary problems; him telling her that if she could just be rational and not act like a child, he wouldn't treat her like one.
Her finally feeling something break inside her as she pleaded for them to go to marriage counseling or something, anything, to resolve some of these issues; him reminding her…again…that she lied to him, and a marriage counselor can't fix someone who isn't truthful. Maybe that's why seeing Dr. Hemby for so many years had done so precious little for her.
Lacey stood up and grabbed her keys off the counter all while Jeff was still hurling barbs at her with the rapid fire of a machine gun. She could feel herself coming apart at the seams.
"When I get back here, I want you gone. You, your stuff, everything!" She shouted.
Jeff stopped talking, bewilderment taking its place on his face.
She had never, in her memory, gotten so out-of-control angry or shouted at anyone the way she had just shouted that command.
But it felt good. And in that moment, she wanted to keep on going. "I don't care if you leave me nothing but a mattress on the floor to sleep on, and then come back later for the house. I want you to take it all and go! I'm so crazy, so psycho, so unable to be rational?! Then how about you take yourself out of the equation!"
Jeff stood staring at her in stunned silence.
As the fever died down a bit, Lacey saw the pallor of her angry words as they lay in a heap on the floor in front of her. She couldn't take them back.
She began shaking uncontrollably then, her car keys slipping from her fingers to land on the floor with a resounding thunk that seemed to shake Jeff out of his shock. He stood staring at them for several seconds. Lacey wrapped her arms around herself in her effort to stop the shaking, but the tears wouldn't stop coming. She felt completely undone, only… hadn't she been undone for a long time now? It's just that finally it had all come to a head.
"Um…" Jeff reached up to rub his opposite shoulder apprehensively, the anger now gone from his voice. "D-Do you really mean it, for me to leave?"
"No," Lacey sobbed. "No, of course I don't want you to leave. I just want to stop fighting, I want all this…this stuff between us to go away so we can be happy. And most of it's my fault."
Jeff took a few steps across the kitchen toward her. "It's not your fault. I'm an insensitive asshole, and I'm…I'm sorry. I didn't know you felt so trapped about the baby thing."
"I should have done a better job telling you."
"You couldn't, because of your anxiety."
"I know. Maybe I do need another doctor. And I need to try harder."
"No, I do."
Hugs. Tears. Kisses. Apologies. Jeff rubbed his hands over her arms to soothe the goosebumps that had risen on them. Never had he been so tender as he was after that very first monumental fight.
Lacey tried harder after that. She asked if Jeff would mind giving her just one more month on the pill to try yet again to get used to the idea of being a parent, and he agreed to that. He resolved not to talk to his mother at length about the "baby stuff" anymore, informing the woman that this was his and his wife's business. They took a spontaneous romantic trip to Chicago one weekend and saw a quirky but poignant show called Avenue Q that chronicled the disillusionment the young people of her generation felt coming out of college and attempting to slide effortlessly into the brave new world of adulthood. And maybe, just maybe, that's all this was. She and Jeff were trying to satisfy their own goals and nurture their own careers and they just weren't focusing as much as they should on their marriage. It seemed people were starting to get married older now, and by all accounts, that had been a better idea. Twenty-four seemed plenty old at the time of her and Jeff's nuptials, but looking back on it, they had been so young–emotionally if not physically.
But they were still young, and still able to turn it all around. And that's what Lacey resolved to do.
/
Five months later…
Adam's mom modeled her latest handbag, thrusting a sassy shoulder forward as she made a kiss face toward the camera.
"Mom, no way!" Adam lowered his new Sony Cyber-Shot, wrinkling his nose. "If you're doing that kind of modeling, find another photographer."
Yvette broke out in laughter. "Oh Son, if you can't laugh and have fun, what's the point in any of it?" She swept out her arm.
He chuckled. Ever since he'd mistakenly dropped the word at the company Christmas party last year that his mom made handbags, his inbox had been flooded with requests by the wives of the other lawyers, asking him to take pictures of her work. He wasn't exactly sure his mom's whimsical, patched bags would be the envy of lawyer's wives, but he did as asked. These were also pictures she could use for the website she was launching, as professional as Adam intended to make them look.
"How about this, any better?" His mom tossed her head back and brought her hand up to her short hair before wincing, letting go of the bag.
"Mom?" He pulled his camera strap off around his shoulder and came over, concerned.
"Oh it's just the surgical wound, Honey," Yvette waved him off. "I hit it the wrong way."
"Is it healing…?"
"Sure." She brought a hand up and brought his face closer to hers, giving his cheek a quick kiss. "You guys don't need to worry. Aren't we just happy we caught it before it spread?"
The "it" his mother referred to was never called by its name in their home, as though not to give it any more power: breast cancer.
His mother had received a call to come back and let the doctor conduct another mammogram around Easter of last year, and when the second one came back abnormal, a biopsy was needed. That's when they found the malignant cyst and immediately made plans to remove it, plus both her breasts even though she technically only needed a single mastectomy.
"I don't want to take any chances," Yvette had confided in the doctor on the day of her consultation. "My sons would make terrible nurses if I have to go through this again."
Thus was the courageous attitude his mom faced her surgery with, but in the days that followed while she was healing, Adam, who had taken some personal time off to come home to be with her, would often hear her lying in bed crying.
"Mama?" He hadn't called her that since he was a little boy, but it felt so fitting now as he came over to sit on the edge of the bed. "What's wrong? Do you need a pain pill?"
"No, Honey. I don't. Listen." She clutched his hand so hard he nearly winced. "When a woman goes through something like this, she almost feels she's losing part of herself. I mean…well obviously she is, but breasts symbolize something much more than just random, useless body parts to us."
He recalled feeling his face flush, not sure how comfortable he was talking to his mother about a woman's breasts. But she needed to talk right now, and so he would listen. "Right…?"
"Sure," she rested her head against her pillows again, speaking tiredly. "You look forward to growing them. When you do, you spend all your teenage years hoping the boys will notice them. Then you grow up and use them to feed your babies, and then, when all that's done…they remain sort of like trophies. Testimonies to all you faced and conquered as a woman. You know?"
Adam nodded. Her words made sense.
"But I'll be okay. I'm gonna be okay."
And she was. Well, mostly.
In the days after Adam took a whole slideshow of pictures of his mom modeling the purses, the pain in one of her wounds had become so intense it was causing her to vomit. Despite the lack of a breast, Yvette used modesty in the matter and would only allow Phil to look at the wound left behind on the right side…which was festering.
"It's infected," Phil spoke in a low, somber voice to his son once they were out in the hallway together. "The whole thing. It's oozing all these…these colors, and fluids…" He wrinkled his nose. "I don't know the words to describe it, you know I've never been able to stomach much in the way of medical things. But we've got to call the doctor right now."
After calling his supervisor and letting him know he would be out of the office for a few more days–thankfully none of them court dates–he made plans to settle in with his mom and dad to identify what was wrong with his mother and how he could help with her care.
If only Sarah was inclined to nursing. Not that they were married, nor even had the type of relationship for her to come take care of his ailing mother. But Travis sure was married to an awesome nurse.
"Travis is busy with the family, Adam, and running his firm. You know how it is," Phil answered briskly when Adam had brought up calling his brother. "We're just going to have to handle this one ourselves."
Come to find out, the wound had been infected by staph at the hospital, a common occurrence during and after surgeries. Yvette's case was unfortunately so bad that the wound had to be reopened, cleaned out, and restitched, all of which caused her a tremendous amount of pain. As she lay in bed crying after they'd brought her home from the hospital for the third time, Phil pulled Adam to the side.
"Son, er…" Phil shuffled. "You know I try not to ask you to do alot. Not that you aren't more than capable. You've made me very proud. But I try not to rest more than your fair share of responsibility on your shoulders. I'm afraid I don't have a choice, however, other than to ask you this."
Adam nodded, waiting.
"Tomorrow night at Oak Ridge Country Club, I"m going to be awarded a plaque by my coworkers and colleagues in honor of my impending retirement. It's mostly a businessman affair although spouses are invited as well, but my point is, I cannot miss receiving this award. By all accounts, they spent quite a bit of money on it–"
"So you want me to stay here and nurse Mom while you're gone. We have to clean the wound about four times a day, right? Using that one bottle of stuff?"
But Phil shook his head. "No, Adam, I've got to be here with your mom. She needs me, and any time I know she's hurting or having a hard time, I'm always going to want to be present with her. But what I need you to do is to go and accept that plaque for me."
Before Adam could protest, he added in, "I told Hal you might be there, if, of course, I could talk you into it, and he's perfectly okay with the suggestion. And when you get to the front, you might want to be ready to say a few words, just thanking everyone and generally acting very grateful, letting them all know what it means to me," Phil shrugged. "I don't imagine this would be any sweat for a bigwig lawyer, right?"
Adam stared at his dad. "Dad, I don't know anything about these people."
"Son, you grew up around them. They'll welcome anything you have to say." His dad patted his arm before walking off.
Suddenly Adam felt angry. He was here right now to spend time with his ailing mother. Instead, he was stuck with doing a favor he hadn't the slightest interest in doing. His dad must have been talking about the East Minneapolis Business Professionals. That was the only association he knew his dad to be a part of. So, he wondered, why couldn't they just bring the plaque to the stage, say a few words, mention that Phil Banks couldn't be with them that night, then move on and give the award to his dad later? He might be good in a courtroom, but he hated this type of thing.
Sighing, he shook his head and went in to check on Mom again. He cracked the door just slightly, not wishing to wake her if she was asleep.
"Come on in, Baby," she whimpered. It nearly broke Adam's heart to hear so much pain in his mother's voice. He opened the door wider and came in, walking slowly over to her bedside.
She smiled at him, corners of her eyes crinkling in that mirthful way Adam had always loved, and reached out to take his hand. "Adam," she began, turning serious. "I just need to say that if anything happens to me–"
"Mom, stop." He nearly pulled his hand away. Feeling instantly sorry for his sharp tone, he softened it. "You're going to be okay. The cancer should be gone. This is just an infection, and I know it hurts, but you're not going to die."
"Probably not right now, no," his mom continued, ignoring Adam's heated response. "But one day I will. Going through this whole thing has just really got me thinking about my kids and grandkids, and what I want to leave behind one day. And for you, I want to say," she reached her other hand up to place over his heart, "don't let go of what's in here. If you're not careful, you can develop 'Business Brain.' Know what that is?"
He shook his head, listening.
"It's what your dad has," she smiled a little. "Oh, he's a good man, and the love of my life. This doesn't take anything away from that fact, but it's been a safety mechanism for him, I think, to always be considering the bottom line. I've said before that I see so much of him in you, and it makes me happy and proud. But he does have his weaknesses, and I want you to learn from them if you can. Son, do things that make you laugh. Be silly. Play pranks sometimes. Go to the movies and sit there all day, watching one thing after another and eating so much popcorn you could burst."
Adam listened, humoring her.
"Do you remember, years ago, when you played that prank on me with my Danielle Steel books?" She giggled, then repositioned herself slowly and carefully. "Back in those days, you had fun. You were so happy."
He shifted, realizing just how very near they were to a topic he really didn't want to revisit.
"You and Sarah have helped one another through so much grief over the past few years. But I know you don't love her in a soulmate kind of way. What I hope is that both of you one day meets–"
"Mom," Adam gently pulled his hand from hers. "I really don't want to talk about this. I don't need fireworks and passion, okay? That's not required for me to be happy. I am happy. And as for soulmates, you know I don't believe in them."
But his Mom still had that look in her eye–the one where he knew she wanted to argue with him, to bring up the past. The carefree summers he spent laughing like there was no tomorrow, smiling more than he'd ever smiled in his life, feeling like life couldn't be better.
She wanted to bring up her.
So he wouldn't let her go there. "Mom," he cut off the would-be conversation. "I've grown up."
Perhaps reading the determination on his face not to engage the matter further, she simply nodded, then gave him another small smile. "You know what you need, Honey." She patted his arm. "Always my sensible Adam. Except for when you let yourself out of the lake house in the middle of the night when you were four and jumped into the water thinking you were going to swim over to the neighbor's boat."
Adam chuckled, looking away. "Yeah. Four year olds. What can I say? Good thing Travis followed me and held onto my hand til Dad could get there."
"I could have lost you!" Yvette reached up and lightly popped his cheek with her hand. "I spent the whole night holding you after I gave you a hot bath to warm you up. Remember?"
"Actually, yeah. That part was nice." He reached down and squeezed his mom's hand one more time. He didn't like for her to start talking this way, about all their old good times and memorable occurrences. It made him think about how close they'd come to losing her. "Well, I'm going to go out for a while, maybe get dinner."
"Sure, Honey."
"Want me to put a movie on for you? Get you some Sprite? Anything…?"
"I'm so medicated I think I'm just going to go to sleep. If I need anything, I'll recruit your dad, yeah?" She gave him a lazy sort of smile, and he could tell the pain meds were definitely taking effect.
He chuckled, and headed for the door. "Okay. Sleep tight."
Adam stood at the door another few seconds to be sure she was dozing comfortably. Then, taking a deep breath, he headed downstairs to see if he could borrow his dad's car. Having thought he was just here to spend time with his mom, he hadn't packed for a business dinner such as he'd be attending tomorrow night for his father. So the night would begin with shopping.
After checking out a few of the upscale shops in Edina, Adam came away with a nice pair of trousers, updated dress shoes which he'd been meaning to buy anyway, a suit coat, and figured he could just borrow one of his dad's ties. He had always prided himself on looking nice, so shopping hadn't ever been something Adam dreaded as most men did. He hated having to spend the money, of course, as he had plenty of good trouser and suit coat combinations at home. But it couldn't be helped, as he wouldn't let his dad down at a time like this, even if he might still wish there could be a way around attending this thing.
"You'll be glad you were there to do it," Sarah told him later that night on the phone. "I mean, sure, they could just give it to your dad later. But it sounds like it means alot to him to have somebody actually accept it on his behalf."
"Yeah. Dad's never been someone to leave you hanging if he could help it. And as you say, I'm here, so…" Adam made a face after tasting the coffee he'd just brewed to take upstairs to sip while he worked on case files. Pouring the whole pot down the sink, he opened the cabinet and took out a pod for his parents' Keurig, choosing a safer option this time. "Anyway, afterward I'm hoping to meet up with some of the old team for drinks."
"Old team? Your hockey team from back there?" she asked.
"Yup, the Ducks. Most of us have moved out of the area, but there are still a few that live here. Can't come home unless I touch base with them." Adam's heart felt lighter at the prospect of seeing his friends again. Guy and Connie were supposed to be in attendance along with Averman and Fulton. Guy had tried, in vain, to locate their old coach to see if he'd be interested in meeting up with them, but he was nowhere to be found.
"Well, have fun. I'm headed off to Amy's for the weekend, so I'll see you when we both get back?"
"Sure thing," Adam, with a correct cup of coffee brewed, headed toward the stairs. Some people might find the casual manner in which he and Sarah conducted their relationship to be a little strange or unfulfilling–his mother apparently being one–but it worked for them. They could go off and do the things they really wanted to do, have their own careers, their own lives, but also had one another during the lonely in-between. No commitment, no fuss, no drama.
I could go the rest of my life like this.
After hanging up with Sarah, he retreated upstairs to the guest apartment that was where he lived just prior to college and during the summers in between. When he got a job in NYC and subsequently an apartment, his mom had told him to come home and get what he wanted to take back with him, because anything remaining was going to be boxed and stored up in the attic. He knew she wanted to have that space free for when Grandpa Greg needed to come live with her just as his grandmother had. But Grandpa Greg, eighty-five and holding, still lived on his own in Albany.
Adam clicked on the lamp at the desk and set his coffee down, digging through his briefcase to find the cases he wanted to go over just one more time before their corresponding court dates.
Here was Violet Grigsby, the proud, upright woman looking to sue her ex-husband for trauma and emotional distress. Adam had sat for a collective number of hours on end listening to Ms. Grigsby's stories of gaslighting, blackmail, and emotional abuse only to have to warn her on more than one occasion that this type of case was always very difficult to win due to the very specific set of circumstances that must always be present. But Ms. Grigsby was determined to push ahead, so Adam was too.
Taking a sip of his coffee, Adam plunged into her file. She would be the first out of three tonight.
/
"Here," Lacey tossed a pair of socks across the bed at Jeff before finishing putting in her right earring before work. "Don't forget to wear matching blacks this time."
"Yeah, and don't you forget to come tonight," he picked them up off the bed, pointing them at her. "It's at the–"
"Oak Ridge Country Club. Yes, I know. I'm dressing a little nicer today and bringing heels so I'll be ready when I get off." Lacey put in her other earring and looked in the mirror one more time, turning each way as she always did. She paused, however, when she saw that Jeff was eyeing her hungrily.
"Save it, Cowboy. We're both going to be late. There's always tonight, if I feel like it."
Lacey gave him a little smile when she said it, but she was pretty sure the answer to whether or not she would feel like being romantic with her husband was "no." But she would.
Why? Because ever since that fight they had several months ago, things had not been at all bad. They hadn't been good, because it seemed to Lacey that all the goodness went out of their relationship after the first year of marriage. But it at least hadn't been bad. So she did her best by Jeff, trying to be encouraging and selfless. Not because she was taking literally Tammy Wynette's "Stand By Your Man," but because Jeff was a human being she'd made a commitment to. Maybe that had been the right thing, maybe it had been the wrong thing. But either way, this was her life. And she wasn't unhappy most of the time.
Before heading out the door, Lacey grabbed a few more things that would prove essential when sprucing up after her work day in preparation to join Jeff at his business dinner with his EMBP association. She dreaded these things like nothing else, because the only purpose they seemed to serve was to network big businessmen so they could show off their wives, their cell phones and their credentials. But apparently connections were made there that were crucial to those who worked in various types of business across the eastern part of the city, Jeff being one. It wouldn't kill her to go support him once every six months, and that's thankfully the only time these were held. One in winter, one in summer.
However, despite her best efforts, Lacey knew almost from the moment she stepped into the Hope Heals center that she was in for a rough day.
"Nadia has gone off her meds again," Jashandra whispered after Lacey slipped into team meeting. "It's not good."
"Oh no," Lacey clamped her eyes shut. Nineteen-year-old Nadia had been stable for a record six months, taking her antipsychotics as prescribed, working with a therapist and working part-time for an old record store. What on earth made these kids think they could go off their medication and stay just as stable as ever?
Of course, Lacey knew. For some it was a fresh feeling of invincibility, and for some, the medication side effects asked more of them than they were willing to give. For Nadia, an intense creative, it was likely the second reason.
After a brief update on the program participants by each case manager and the reading of a couple of quotes meant to inspire the workers, they were all sent off to their cubicles except for Lacey and Jashandra.
"All right," Kelly, the center's director, began with a sigh. "I need you girls to tag team having a discussion with Nadia to see if you can figure out exactly how bad this is. Did she lose her job, get kicked out of her dad's house again, start back smoking weed? Anything you can surmise. If she becomes hysterical at any point, try to get her to let you take her to the hospital. Got it?"
Kelly had stated her directions clearly enough, but getting any real information out of Nadia when she had missed a few days of Proxolin was a serious feat. Finally, by three thirty in the afternoon, in between all the usual antics of a psychotic break–crying, laughing, interacting with imaginary people–Nadia managed to communicate her distress to Lacey by laying her head in her lap and crying. When Lacey asked if she'd like to go get help, the girl, to her amazement, nodded.
"You've been doing so well for so long, Girl. And you're going to again," Lacey smiled down at her.
Of course it always remained to be seen if Nadia actually understood Lacey's offer of help when she realized it meant the hospital. She could change her mind at any minute. But while she was willing, Lacey was going to take her.
"Do you need me to take her?" Jashandra offered. "I'm happy to, as long as I could be out by no later than six. My daughter's soccer game, you know…"
"You never know how long you might be at the hospital when you take somebody, so I'm good for it. You go with the next one," Lacey replied, taking out her phone to call Jeff.
"Hey Hon," he answered after the first ring. "What's goin' on?"
"Um…well, we have a situation, and I'm probably going to be late to the EMBP thing tonight. But I'm coming," she added firmly, then lowered her voice to a whisper. "I promise. I just have to escort a young woman to the hospital."
"Jeez, Lacey," he gave an exasperated sigh. "Can't anybody else do it? I know that sounds bad, but this is just a twice-a-year thing. It would look good to have you there."
Something about that comment caused Lacey to bristle. Of course it would look good. Things needed to "look good" to Jeff. Even if his wife was pulled away from helping a girl with schizophrenia to keep her life intact.
"Well, I'll get there when I get there. Now I've got to go." Lacey practically hung up on him. Thankfully he didn't call back, as badly as he usually hated for her to do that.
The hospital trip did, in fact, take as long as hospital trips usually did. Nadia sat rocking, head in her hands, for most of the wait. Once the doctor came in and assessed her, as, by then, her energy was wearing thin, it moved a little faster. But it was still close to seven thirty when Nadia was finally helped to stand and be escorted to the psychiatric care wing. Lacey said goodbye to the listless young woman, promising to call and check in tomorrow.
As she watched Nadia shuffle along beside the nurse who had come to get her, Lacey felt sadness flood her heart…but also pride. Nadia had built a life for herself despite her illness, and even in the midst of a terrible relapse, it somehow managed to stick with her that she was going to have to do what she didn't want–go back to the hospital–in order not to lose it. That's what Lacey loved the most about her job. Volunteers would always come in and call the case workers heroes for doing what they did. But these young people were the heroes, both the successful and the struggling. Because they got up every day and they continued to press forward despite facing so many challenges.
Taking a deep breath and wiping away a tear, Lacey turned and made her way back to her car. It might be eight or after before she could make the drive across town, but she was determined to remind her husband he could count on her.
/
Adam waited for the applause to die down after he accepted his father's plaque, his polite "lawyer" smile in place. He took a quiet deep breath as he opened his mouth to speak, hoping his voice didn't tremble as much as his insides did.
"David Bly once said, 'Striving for success without hard work is like trying to harvest where you haven't planted.' I can say with certainty that my dad did alot of planting when we were growing up, and it was by watching his example that my brother and I came to understand that the opportunities we had were thanks to my father's hard work–not because we were entitled to them. There's no one I know that's more deserving of a happy retirement. And I know he thanks you all very much."
He hoped his words were sufficient, and judging by the second round of applause he received, he supposed they were.
God was he ever glad that was done. Adam wanted nothing more than to carry his father's plaque straight home and place it in the man's hands before going to bed. He'd stayed up far too late last night going over case notes. But to just show up for his dad's retirement acknowledgement and leave immediately after receiving it? No way was that in good taste. So, as dessert was still coming around, he took his place back at the table he had been assigned to alongside a handful of other businessmen, none of whom he'd gotten to know particularly well during dinner. Adam had been raised to be polite and able to carry on a civilized conversation with strangers, but when he was surrounded by people who already knew one another and to whom he was an outsider, he didn't like to break in. And anyway, he enjoyed listening far more than he enjoyed talking.
He'd at least come to ascertain from the last hour that his table was composed of a worker's comp lawyer, two business accountants and a rising commercial real estate mogul. They seemed to vary in age from twenty-five to forty-five, and all but two had their wives with them. The other attorney appeared to be single, given his lack of a wedding band, and one of the business accountants, a gregarious guy, was waiting on his wife to come from her own job.
"Be sure to save your wife a dessert, Jeff," an older woman peered over at the business accountant, smiling. Her husband, Adam had put together, was the commercial real estate guy. "What's kept her, again?"
The guy called Jeff was still working on his main course, but paused to lift a shoulder in a shrug. "Had to take a client to the hospital or some damn thing. She's a real bleeding heart."
"Yes? What is it she does?" the woman went on, sipping her champagne.
"Well, she's a social worker actually, for that place called Hope Heals. For the kids with mental illness?"
"Oh!" Another of the wives nodded animatedly. "I know the place. They do really good work. Which one is your wife?"
Adam politely turned down dessert just in time to hear the accountant's response.
"Lacey Breckenridge. Know her?"
His mouth went completely dry. His body temperature seemed to oscillate between hot and cold.
"I think I may know of her, at least. You see, my niece has a whole host of issues," the woman went on. "And she got some real help from the ladies there. That name just stands out to me, as I don't know very many Laceys."
But Adam barely heard, taking up his water glass.
"Yeah, she loves her job, that's for sure," Jeff grinned. "A little too much at times, but who of us here doesn't know what that's like?"
A chuckle sounded around the table, but Adam continued to drink an absurd amount of water, trying to force down the lump in his throat that refused to budge.
"How 'bout you, Mr. Banks? Got a wife?"
He looked up to see Jeff staring right at him. His expression was open and friendly, but Adam had a hard time maintaining eye contact. "Um…no, I don't."
"You're better off, aren't you? You and Ames over there," Jeff nodded to the other lawyer. "Trust me, marriage is overrated. Not that anybody wouldn't be lucky to call any of you ladies his wife, of course." With that comment, he winked charmingly at the wives sitting at the table as they giggled in protest. Adam probably wasn't imagining the forced grins and chair shifting of the men accompanying them. Was flirting with married women right in front of their husbands this guy's usual?
Jeff and Lacey Breckenridge.
"Well," Adam pushed his chair back suddenly. "It's been great meeting each of you, but I should go check on my mother… and take my dad this," he reached for the plaque, realizing he was seconds away from leaving it.
"No dessert, Mr. Banks?" Another wife, this one younger, inquired with undue concern.
"No, I'm afraid I don't do sugar usually," Adam's voice sounded far away to his own ears. "But it's been great. Enjoy the rest of your time tonight." He nodded a farewell, getting up from his seat as quickly as he could and heading out of the large dining room into the hall. He had to force himself to think hard to remember his way out of here. Just as he was turning a corner that he thought led him toward the exit, he narrowly missed running into a woman, reaching out instinctively to catch her shoulders before she plowed into him and nearly knocked herself down.
/
Lacey, flustered from having just limped in on one high heel, struggling with the other as she was rushing hard to make it into the dining room, nearly dropped it when she came around a corner and ran straight into the arms of a tall, broad-shouldered man.
"Oh, I'm so sor–!"
She stopped short, staring up at his face. There was no mistaking it, even after all this time. Adam stared back at her.
She couldn't move, glued to the spot with no voice.
He quickly let her go, but stood a moment longer, looking at her with an unreadable expression before he reached up to rub the back of his neck–a gesture so achingly familiar it nearly sent her to her knees–and turned his eyes to the exit behind her, stepping around her like she was just some random nobody he had locked buggies with at the grocery store, and kept on going.
When she was able to turn around, Lacey stared after him. Had he not recognized her? Oh, but he had. She'd seen that recognition flash across his eyes for just a mere second when they collided. And that knowledge was far, far worse.
"H–" she began to call after him, but could no more get the sound out than she could go after him, which she wanted so badly to do. To ask him why he was there. Why was he leaving right now, in the middle of the dinner. Why did he still hate her so much.
Lacey looked down, confused, realizing she still held a high heel shoe in her hand like an idiot. Slowly, she bent over and slipped it on, then turned and, instead of heading for the dining room, strode purposefully toward the ladies' restroom where she locked herself in a stall and allowed herself to sob into a wad of toilet paper, emitting little squeaking sounds every few seconds. She didn't care a fig who entered and heard her, either.
But this was Jeff's evening. She was here tonight as his wife. And no matter what had brought Adam Banks to the EMBP dinner, this was her role to play in life now. She liked it. She loved her husband. And if Adam could so carelessly brush her aside after having not seen her in nearly a decade, then he could go to hell.
She sniffled, finally exiting the stall and stepping up to the mirror above one of the sinks. Lacey always kept an extra tube of mascara in her purse for just such an occasion as this, when her previously applied makeup melted into streaks down her face. A social worker had to be prepared, after all.
After taking a good ten minutes to fix her face, trying not to let fresh tears dump down her cheeks all over again, Lacey left the restroom and entered the dining room just as another gentleman wearing a suit–they were all faceless suits to her, really–took his place behind the podium to give out another reward. This one was for…something something. Did it really even matter?
Jeff glanced over as she slid into the seat beside him, giving her a half smile as he reached back to pat her hand in an almost condescending way. Despite her attempts to fix up, she knew it would still be obvious to most husbands that their wife had been crying. But Jeff didn't say a word.
And she didn't either. She didn't even dare to ask anyone why Adam Banks had been in attendance tonight. Lacey just tilted her head, smiled when spoken to and gave cheerful responses and asked mindless questions just as she had back in high school for all the football and hockey players, party girls, and hot guys.
This was all life amounted to, apparently. She had been a fool to have thought, once upon a time, that it was anything else.
/
Adam sat in his car, staring straight ahead.
What was that? What had just happened?
Lacey. Oh God, Lacey.
That's what had happened.
He was suddenly overcome by the urge to jump out of his car and dash back into the building, into that dining room filled with pompous, self-important jackasses–like her husband–and kneel in front of her, taking her hand.
Lacey, I'm sorry, he imagined himself saying to her. Please forgive me. For everything. Do you want to go get a coffee and just talk? Can I tell you what my life's been like the past several years without you? Will you tell me everything about yours?
But no. Not only would that not work now that she had a husband and he himself was in a relationship, he also reminded himself of the reason he'd been hurt so badly by her in the past: she left first.
After they'd spent the night together in one another's arms in Albany, he'd been awash with hope that she was coming back to him. As he'd showered that next morning, he was already planning what jewelry store he could find open that day to find her official engagement ring. He'd ask her to marry him properly, and she'd be his forever once again. But then, after that hopeful hour, his hopes were dashed to pieces and his heart shattered with a jackhammer when he found out she hadn't really, after all, wanted to reunite.
She had been selfish in the way she'd toyed with him. And he wouldn't let himself forget it. He wouldn't–couldn't–endure such a throbbing pain ever again.
His head spinning with thoughts, Adam rested his forehead on his steering wheel for a good twenty minutes, feeling so nauseated he couldn't move. Finally he forced himself to sit up and pull his phone out of his pocket, scrolling through his contacts.
Fulton picked up after just a couple rings. "Hey! All set for tonight? The gang's all ready."
"Yeah, about that," Adam pinched the bridge of his nose with his other hand. "I don't think I can make it. I've got a ton of work to do back home, so I think I'm going to push my flight up and just head back."
A pause on the other end of the line.
"Okay, so what happened?"
"Nothing," Adam answered quickly, then sighed. There was no use lying to Fulton. Somehow he always knew better. "It's just... something I don't really want to talk about right now."
"Well, if you're sure." His friend sounded disappointed. "We were all looking forward to seeing you though. Are you positive you don't want to come?"
"Positive," Adam answered. "Sorry about this. Just tell everyone I said hi and I'm sorry I had to miss it, okay?"
After hanging up with Fulton, Adam called immediately and rescheduled his flight for the red eye leaving that very night. Which meant he'd need to hurry up and get back to his parents' to pack his things.
Before he drove away, however, he found his eyes wandering to the rearview mirror, and Oak Ridge Country Club. He watched the building–particularly the exit doors–just in case something important happened.
But it didn't, and he reminded himself it was better off that way. Now, he thought, as he turned the key and put the car in reverse, life could carry on.
/
"Son?" Adam heard his mom's voice as he jogged down the stairs carrying his suitcase.
"Yeah?" He tried to sound unassuming, but he was doing a poor job of it. She'd been as disappointed to find out he was leaving that night as she had been proud of Phil's plaque. And no matter what he told her about needing to get back to get some stuff done that had "suddenly come up" for work, she wasn't letting it go.
"Hold on, I need my briefcase and some other stuff," he put off going into the den she was sitting in until the last minute. Retrieving the items and setting them in the hall alongside his luggage, he finally took a deep breath and headed into the room she enjoyed sitting in to get away from her bedroom sometimes.
"Adam, what on earth? I thought you were staying another week. Something's changed. What is it?" His mom shifted around slowly to where a spot was left for him to sit at the end of the couch. "Come talk."
"Mom, I told you, I'm coming back. I just need to go home and sort some things out, is all." Adam didn't sit, or slow, down. "I'm working on a case for this woman, and I think you'd really like her brass. Of course you know I can't tell you much about the situation and definitely not the name or anything, but she's out to peg her husband for emotional trauma, and I think we've built up a really good ca–"
"I don't care about any of that," his mom retorted, annoyed. "I want you to sit down here right now and tell me what happened tonight. Did any of your father's old colleagues give you a hard time about something? Just let me tell you stories about what they were like at twenty-nine."
"No, it's… it's nothing about Dad's colleagues." But before he could continue, his mother pointed again toward the end of the couch for him to sit. He sighed, obeying.
"Then what's it about? Something happened tonight. What was it?"
Adam rubbed over his eyes. He could either keep denying the whole thing, make up a lie, or just tell her the truth. And the more she badgered him, the closer he got to blurting it out.
"We can do this all night, Honey. I'm not due for pain medicine for another four hours, and you can bet I'm not going to bed a minute before I get that dose. So we may as well talk."
"I saw Lacey tonight."
If nothing else had been able to render his mom silent, this certainly had. She stared silently at Adam, surprised, but waiting for him to continue. But did he even need to?
"At…the thing," he cleared his throat, trying to train his voice to be diplomatic. "She was there with her husband."
"Jeff Breckenridge," his mom whispered the name a couple of times as though to place it. "Is he a businessman, then?"
"Apparently so. A business accountant,."
Mom sighed, slapping her forehead. "That organization has grown way too big over the years for your dad to keep track of who's who. Or at least I'm choosing to believe that's why he didn't foresee something like this. Oh please tell me you didn't have to share a table with them."
"Funnily enough," he began, bitterness edging his voice, "I did. Though providence saw fit for her to be late. I was leaving just as she was coming." Adam left out that the reason he was leaving early in the first place was because he'd just put two and two together.
His mother was quiet for a moment. "I see. Did you two talk? Can you tell me more about this?"
"There's really nothing to tell," he shrugged. "I mean, we ran into one another–literally, I almost dropped Dad's plaque–and then I walked away. I'm assuming she did, too."
His mom sat still.
"So, that's really all there was to it," he attempted to tie a neat little bow on top of the situation.
"Hmm. So I'm hearing alot of phrases like 'all there was to it' and 'nothing to tell,' she replied. "Just help me understand why, if there really was nothing to this thing, you came back home tonight as solemn as a judge and were fully packed in less than fifteen minutes. It clearly did something to you whether you want to tell me about it or not. And I get it that I'm your mom and maybe not who you'd like to share this with. But I'm the best you've got right now. Unless, of course, you want to call Travis."
Adam cringed. "I can't even imagine what his sage advice would be for getting over something like this."
"Ah, so you do admit it was something to get over."
He absently studied the hem of his mom's old, faded pink terry cloth robe. Maybe it was the sight of something so comforting that reminded him of home and family–and that he was surrounded by them now–that caused the tears to spring.
Oh hell.
"I don't know, Mom." He impatiently wiped the tears with his shirt sleeve. "I mean, why does this kind of stuff ever bother people? We just…get tired, or overstressed, something like that, and thereby we get unreasonable. Lacey and I are more than over and have been for a very long time. It shouldn't matter what she does and who she's with. I guess I just hoped it would be somebody who…" he trailed off.
Could he actually be depended upon to come up with a good prototype in his mind for who Lacey should have ended up with?
"I don't know, just anybody but that assclown. Sorry…" he mumbled an apology for the language.
But his mom didn't miss a beat. "So is he an assclown because that's just what he is, or because he's with Lacey?"
Adam paused. "Both I guess."
They sat there in silence for a few minutes, both of them staring at the faux fireplace his mother had turned on to lend a feel of comfort to the room. And as much as Adam hated it, he suddenly wanted to be five years old again, tucked safely into his parents' home and beneath their sheltering wings. He wanted to hobble around on skates again out at the pond, where the promise of soaring across the vast sheet of ice aroused a sense of adventure and freedom in him. His next big awakening and surge of happiness had come when he'd been switched over from the Hawks to the Ducks in early middle school. That's where he learned about being a true team player and winning the right way. Then, in high school, he felt that crazy rush of falling in love with, kissing for the first time, losing his virginity, all to Lacey.
She had been a rite of passage. A beautiful, spirited, wildflower-laced rite of passage. It was no wonder he couldn't bring himself to forget her. He'd shared so many "firsts" with her at such a critical age. It wasn't magic, it wasn't a soul connection, and it maybe even hadn't been love. It surely wasn't real, mature love, he told himself.
Mature love was…well…he wasn't exactly sure what it was, but he knew what it wasn't: being so hung up on your college girlfriend that you didn't know how to share your heart with anyone but her. Even after she was long married.
"Well…I've got a flight to catch." Adam pushed himself up. "I'll be okay, Mom. I promise. I just need to get my head straight."
"I know. And you will." His mom smiled up at him a little sadly. "It's just a mom thing, I guess, to feel like if you dig deeply enough, you can come up with the magic words to speed up the process."
"And if you had those, I'd gladly take them. But you've got enough of your own stuff to deal with." Adam squeezed his mom's shoulder gently, unwilling to hurt her by hugging her. It was true, he desperately needed to get out of this town for tonight. But he was coming back. His family needed him, and he was unwilling to allow any of his personal battles to get in the way of that.
/
The next few weeks stretched out like a month of rainy Mondays that found Lacey in tears nearly every other night.
"I think it's the stress of trying to get pregnant," she sniffled, sitting cross-legged on the floor in Dr. Hemby's office. "And work's been really crazy. Summer months seem to be extra tough for a few of our clients to stay straight, you know, and Jeff's been…" she sighed.
"He's not happy you haven't gotten pregnant."
"Well, he swears that's not true. But I know he still doesn't trust me, even though I've gone out of my way to prove I'm serious about starting a family. He should have been convinced over the spring when I actually did go off birth control. The mood swings were fierce." Lacey wiped underneath her eyes with her fourth tissue, tossing the disintegrated ball of mush into the trash. "I'm trying to eat all the fertility superfoods, take my supplements, track my ovulation, but…" she gave an angry shrug.
The fact was, she didn't want to get pregnant now anymore than she had this time last year. But she was willing to, and the lack of results made her feel like a failure in yet another aspect of her marriage.
Dr. Hemby nodded contemplatively, holding her cup of oolong. "And there's nothing else that could be bothering you?"
Lacey hesitated before making eye contact with her psychiatrist. "No. Nothing else."
/
But it was Kristy who knew the other side of the story–and had known it since the night after Jeff's EMBP dinner.
Lacey and her friend sat at the park together, watching chubby little David toddle and jump around in the splash pad with a cluster of other two-year-olds he'd just met. The friendly child was the very best of Davy and Kristy combined.
"And what I'd like to know is, was I really so bad that I single handedly turned that sweet, sensitive boy I met years ago into this hardened force to be reckoned with? I mean if you could have just seen his eyes when he saw me, Kristy, and the way he just walked away like he couldn't be bothered giving me the time of day," the words spilled out.
Kristy had listened patiently as Lacey had chronicled the events of the night before.
"I was so sick on my stomach I barely made it through the evening, and then when we got home, I had to go straight to bed feigning food poisoning. Then, would you believe, in the midst of all that, Jeff never asked me once if there was something bothering me. It was like the whole thing went completely over his head." Lacey rested her head in her hands for a moment. "But it's just as well, because you know I couldn't have told him."
"Actually, I'm wondering if telling him might not be exactly what you need to do," Kristy replied quietly.
Lacey sat up. "You're kidding me, right?"
"Not at all." Kristy's expression was compassionate, but serious. "Doesn't it seem to you like it brings people closer together when one opens up and starts sharing secrets? Then the other one feels they can be vulnerable too, and it seems to be really good for relationships. You've always kind of held Jeff at a distance, Lacey. Surely you can see that."
At first, Lacey felt herself bristle. "Kristy, I've done everything I can to make my marriage work. It hasn't been very easy for us admittedly, but I don't think I'm entirely to blame for that."
"No no, I'm not saying you haven't worked hard in your marriage." Kristy reached out and rested a hand on Lacey's arm. "I think you've always tried to be a good wife to Jeff and love him as well as you can, but that's just it, isn't it? It's almost as though there's been a limit to how much you can love him. And I'm just saying that being transparent about some things might not only bring the two of you closer, it may be the next level of closure you need regarding Adam."
Lacey nodded, pondering. Time was, she'd have been devastated at the thought of closure from her love for Adam. It was something she'd held onto during her early twenties, even if subconsciously, because it felt like the last thing she had left of those happy times. But after she'd gotten married and had experienced those harrowing days following the unwrapping of her promise ring, she felt she was finally ready for it. And she even thought that by now she'd "achieved" it after a fashion. Until she'd seen him again. Then, it was back to the beginning. Or at least that's how it had felt since then.
Kristy was right. Lacey did need another level of closure. And she also wanted her marriage to work. But it may take her some time to feel ready to talk to Jeff about something this sensitive.
Meanwhile, she wasn't keen on talking to Dr. Hemby about the topic yet again. It seemed the more she talked about it, the more on the forefront of her mind it stayed. If she spoke about it again, it would be to her husband.
And the opportunity presented itself much sooner than she hoped it would.
"Hey Babe. Wanna go to a hockey game tomorrow night?"
Lacey nearly scalded herself on the stove top where she was making Jiffy Pop, one of her favorite snacks these days. There was just nothing quite so satisfying as watching the foil balloon rise as the kernels popped.
It was the little things.
"Can't you just go?" she found herself blurting out before she could stop herself. "I mean, you know I hate hockey. And I always thought you did, too."
"Well sure, I used to, but…" Jeff came over and whipped out his pocket knife, pulling a tear in Lacey's perfectly formed popcorn bubble and grabbing out a handful. She stared at the gash he'd left. "Last season the playoffs were brutal. Watched 'em over at Ames' house, you know." He went to the fridge to pop open a beer. "Kind of made me wonder why I didn't give it a chance alot earlier."
Lacey balked. She did not at all want to go watch hockey. But at the same time, Jeff so rarely asked her to do anything with him anymore that she didn't want to turn him down. And besides, couldn't she just take a book? A flashback of bringing Babysitter's Club books to hockey games when Davy played pee-wees made her smile to herself. "I guess maybe I could," she finally replied.
"Good. We'll sit with Ames and Eva. But go easy on 'em, they just started dating."
Great. She could hardly bring a book then, because sitting and reading would be a pretty rude thing to do if they were supposed to be socializing with a couple. Oh well. It was one night at a hockey game.
And thank God it was only one night.
/
Seeing the men in their hockey gear and watching the way they skated across the ice, guiding the puck so deftly toward the goal, brought back memories she felt ill-equipped to visit. At one point when a young man removed his helmet, Lacey did a double take. She excused herself to the restroom, but instead headed to a bench tucked in a corner of the lobby and played on her phone for a bit. She had reached her quota of angst for the night, but the more she sat and thought about her emotions and what was driving them, the more she came to know it was the right thing to do to talk to Jeff.
After the game, he seemed mildly annoyed to find her sitting nonchalantly on a bench in the ticket area. But when she explained she had tried to come back in but got lost and couldn't find her seat among the huge crowd, he seemed accepting enough. She managed to whisper to him, "Let's go eat somewhere," just before her husband's lawyer friend was to invite them out for drinks.
"Uh…that's okay, I think the wife wants to go eat somewhere," Jeff turned down the invitation in a way that caused Lacey's face to go red. Did he have no tact at all, ever?
But she chose to let the matter go, focusing on the words she wanted to say to Jeff about her past relationship with Adam. Ames and his girlfriend were gracious regarding the regrets she and Jeff had to offer them, and left shortly thereafter.
"So where you wanna go?" Jeff asked Lacey as he unlocked the car door.
"Somewhere quiet, so we can talk," Lacey supplied.
Jeff looked over suspiciously, but acquiesced, the two of them settling for a nearby Cheddar's. It was late, and there were few things still open on this side of town. Which was a perfect setting for Lacey.
"So what's up, Babe?" Jeff grinned in a way she could tell he was trying to repress nervousness. "What do you have to tell me?"
Oh no. He was expecting that news.
"Well," Lacey began, sipping on her Coke. "I'm sorry to tell you I'm not pregnant, if that's what you were expecting." Best to get that out of the way now. But to lighten the mood, she added, "No pun intended."
She watched as Jeff deflated. "What? Not yet?"
"No, not yet," Lacey replied a little irritably. Was it her fault she couldn't get pregnant? It certainly wasn't for lack of trying. "Anyway, I think I'll have a monte cristo." Just for that last comment, she was going to make him wait a few minutes for what she was going to say. A hidden part of her wanted to see him squirm.
Plus, truthfully, she was nervous.
"All right," he gave an impatient nod. "You want a monte cristo, I want chicken pie. What do you need to tell me, Lacey?"
Lacey went ahead and put her napkin in her lap, swallowing hard and studying the bubbles rising to the top of her Coke. How to even start this?
She took a deep breath and just landed in. "Jeff, um…I think we can both agree that things have been a little tough in our relationship. I mean from the minute we got married. It's important we're honest about that, don't you think?"
Jeff hesitated a moment before giving a shrug. "Well, you're a complicated girl, Lacey. I don't always know what to do with that."
"I'm not blaming you," she spoke quickly, reaching over to place her hand over his. "If anything…maybe I am the one responsible for that. I mean granted, we have ways in which we don't always bring out the best in one another, but that's probably every relationship. But…well, I was thinking the other day about why sometimes I hold a part of myself back a little. Like…I love you. And I want to make you happy, I want us to be happy. But it wasn't until recently that I realized there's a reason I haven't always worked as hard as I should to take us even deeper. Does that make sense…?"
Now, Lacey knew Jeff wasn't that deep. But his face-value way of looking at the world was never more evident than it was as he stared back at her, confused. "You've been holding back? Why?"
Lacey stared at him incredulously. "Well yes, Jeff, I have. Surely you've been able to tell I've not always been as…" but she simply sighed and decided to let this part go. Get to the point. "Okay. Let me just say, there's something I need to tell you about. Something that made up a big part of my life at one point, and I was thinking that if I shared more of my heart with you, maybe you'll understand me better. Plus, I don't like keeping secrets from you, and you know that."
Jeff's eyes flashed momentarily, but he didn't take them from hers. Instead, he leaned forward, folded elbows on the table as he faced her directly. The pose felt slightly intimidating to her, so Lacey found herself averting her eyes every so often.
"Well…this started years ago. When I was in high sch–actually, no. It started further back. When I was a little girl. You know how you noticed that I always add a maroon scarf in all my paintings? Well there's a reason. And just…please bear with me. Let me tell you all of it before you say anything, okay?"
So for the next hour, before, during, and after food came, Lacey chronicled her relationship with Adam Banks. Beginning with the maroon scarf story as promised, moving on through reconnecting with Adam at the high school party and becoming friends with him as the two of them became closer. She next moved to their romantic relationship. Some details felt far too sacred to tell Jeff, so she gave an overall picture, only telling him what she felt was relevant. Then she went into the heartbreaking story of the breakup, leaving out the details about her grief at their wedding reception, the promise ring and the phone call. It was certainly not her intent to hurt Jeff and lead him to believe she'd spent the duration of their five-year marriage thinking about another man. Because truthfully, she hadn't. She'd tried her best to leave the past in the past, and throw all her heart into her marriage to this man. It had only been since a month ago that she realized how much work she still had to do…
Lacey finished up by…as difficult as it was…telling Jeff about the EMBP dinner and why she'd not felt her best that evening after they'd gone home.
"And I know it's a lot to digest." She felt she'd done a very poor job communicating the entire story and why it had unfolded into the most heartbreakingly beautiful of her life. But it was a beginning. And with any luck, Jeff would have questions to ask her and be open and receptive to her answers. She just had to remind herself to be painfully honest, even when it was hard.
He sat still for a moment, gazing at her. But his expression wasn't angry.
Lacey took a quiet breath. Kristy had doubtlessly been right. All she'd ever needed to do was just tell Jeff this story. They'd committed to love one another, and she'd sold Jeff far too short. He did love her. He'd sat quietly, hearing her out, and they were going to be closer than ever after they discussed it for a little while. And with any luck, she'd put the ghost of her former relationship to rest once and for all.
He leaned in, and Lacey smiled a little, awaiting his words.
"Who even are you?"
She stared at Jeff for a second, suddenly feeling uneasy. "I'm…I'm sorry?"
"Because if I ever once thought you were a grounded, fun-loving, compassionate woman, I was clearly as f*cked up as you are."
Lacey felt her heart speed up and a flush heat up her cheeks, taken aback. "J…Jeff?" She stammered. "I don't…I don't understand."
He snorted. "You don't understand? I just sat here and listened to you tell me, for a whole hour, how you can't get over a guy you got to know over the course of a couple hockey games and a highschool party, then dated for all of three years. Do you realize that's two years less than we've even been married?"
She opened her mouth to speak, but couldn't think of the right words before he landed in again.
"And so you're saying this is Phil Banks' son?"
Lacey furrowed her brow, confused. "Yes, his dad is Phil Banks. But I don't know what that has to do with anything."
"Yeah, I met the guy. Quiet, serious. Went up on stage to take his dad's retirement plaque because of his dad needing to stay home with his sick mom."
"Yvette's sick?" Lacey's breath quickened before she realized this added concern for the Banks family was not at all helping her cause.
But Jeff chose to ignore that and continued talking.
"I mean things haven't been easy for us, but I guess now I know it's because you've had your head back in 1998 with your Prince Charming in a tin can riding in on his white horse. Newsflash, Lacey: rich guys always look like that to poor girls."
Lacey's ears buzzed before she lifted her water glass carefully, her Coke glass already empty. She then leaned across the booth and sloshed its contents with as much force as she could muster at her husband.
Jeff sat unmoving. It was his turn to be surprised.
Not caring who had turned around and was watching them by now, Lacey sat back calmly, leveling her eyes at his.
"I think you should be advised of something. The last guy who talked to me the way you're talking to me now, and who called me a 'poor girl,' never saw me again after the night he dared to do so. Now. Jeff." She cleared her throat, trying not to laugh at the impressive picture Jeff was cutting with water dripping down his still face. "The whole reason I told you about those memories was that, despite what you think about them, they are some of the most cherished of my life. And I saw enough hope in our relationship to believe that if I shared them with you and told you some of my biggest secrets, we could start a path toward understanding one another better. And we desperately need that right now. But let me be clear." Lacey leaned in again. "If you say such a disrespectful thing to me again, or about the boy who was my first love–because I would never, ever do that to you–then know that it will be the last thing you ever say to my face. Is that in any way unclear? Can we be two thirty-year-olds now who show each other respect?"
Finally Jeff reached for his napkin, bringing it up and wiping off his face. And that's when Lacey began to feel shame for her actions. Jeff deserved a wake-up call for the things he'd just said. But he didn't deserve to be humiliated in front of an entire restaurant. Lacey glanced over at the empty water glass.
"I'm sorry," she finally whispered. "I shouldn't have done that."
Jeff shrugged, still cleaning the mess up, red-faced.
"I just…this didn't go at all like I was hoping it would, and when you said those things…"
Finally he nodded, setting his sopping wet napkin beside him and looking back at her. "I didn't mean to call you a poor girl. I'm sorry, that was a low blow. But Lacey, surely you see the problem here. Banks is gone. I mean you said so yourself. He told you all those years ago that it was over. So what's the problem? Why can't you just push past this? Trust me, I've seen your strength," Jeff winced.
Because he is the love of my life.
"Because it's…it's just a hangup, okay?" Lacey improvised. "And I wanted to share it with you so maybe I could get closure by talking about it to the one person I should be able to talk about it to: my husband."
Only she hadn't been entirely honest after all, had she? Because she'd just, the very second before, told a lie. Yes, her feelings for Adam could be considered a hangup, but she also knew she'd loved him fiercely. But she was downplaying it yet again to Jeff. Although, she reasoned with herself, she may as well, because he clearly wasn't going to take the truth seriously.
"Okay, well uh," he took a deep breath, trying to push past the ice water incident. "Here's the thing. I can't go here with you, Lacey. When it comes to this Adam Banks thing, I just…can't. I don't get it, all right? Though I thank you for being honest about it. Of course that means something, but…how about we just keep going? Move past this, let it go. I'm willing to do that if you are."
But "letting it go" hadn't at all been the desired outcome. Lacey still couldn't understand what was so wrong about her having loved someone so much. And wouldn't it be normal to struggle after seeing him again for the first time in years? Why was that so difficult for Jeff to understand? He'd called her complicated, but was she, really?
Lacey could even understand, and accept, if he was somewhat jealous. But what Jeff was expressing to her wasn't jealousy. It felt more like disgust.
Pretty sure she'd never know the answer to all her questions now, Lacey steadied her broken heart and simply nodded. Never again would she bring this up to Jeff. Because there, one late night in the middle of a restaurant, he proved to her for the final time that her heart was not safe with him.