“I know you blame him. But it isn’t that simple. Vanessa, my brother has been through a lot. More than you ever knew. More than you can ever imagine.”
At this, I can’t help blinking in surprise. She is casting Richard as the victim.
“He attacked me,” I almost shout. “He nearly killed me.”
Maureen seems unaffected by my outburst; she merely clears her throat and begins again. “When our parents died—”
“In the car accident.”
She frowns, as if my remark has irritated her. As if she has planned for this to be less a conversation than a monologue.
“Yes. Our father lost control of their station wagon. It hit a guard-rail and flipped. Our parents died instantly. Richard doesn’t remember much, but the police said skid marks showed my dad was speeding.”
I jerk back. “Richard doesn’t remember—you mean he was in the car?” I blurt.
“Yes, yes,” Maureen says impatiently. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”
I am stunned; he concealed more of himself than I ever realized.
“It was horrible for him.” Maureen words are almost rushed, as if she wants to hurry through these details before she gets to the important part of her story. “Richard was trapped in the backseat. He hit his forehead. The frame of the car was all twisted and he couldn’t get out. It took a while for another driver to pass by and call for paramedics. Richard had a concussion and needed stitches, but it could have been so much worse.”
The silvery scar above his eye, I think. The one he said was caused by a bike accident.
I picture Richard as a young teenager—a boy, really—dazed and in pain from the crash. Crying out for his mother. Failing to rouse his parents. Trying to wrench open the upside-down station wagon’s doors. Beating his fists against the windows and yelling. And the blood. There must have been so much blood.
“My dad had a temper, and whenever he got mad, he drove fast. I suspect he was arguing with my mother before the crash.” Maureen’s cadence is slower now. She shakes her head. “Thank God I always told Richard to wear a seat belt. He listened to what I said.”
“I had no idea,” I finally respond.
Maureen turns to look at me; it’s as if I’ve pulled her from a reverie. “Yes, Richard never talked about the accident with anyone but me. What I want you to know is that it wasn’t just when he was driving that my father lost his temper. My father was abusive to my mother.”
I inhale sharply.
My dad wasn’t always good to my mom, Richard had told me after my mother’s funeral as I sat shivering in the bathtub.
I think back to the photograph of his parents Richard hid in the storage unit. I wonder if he needed to literally bury it to suppress the memories of his childhood, so they could yield to the more palatable story he presented.
A shadow falls over me. I instinctively whip my head around. “I’m sorry to interrupt,” a nurse in blue scrubs says, smiling. “You wanted me to let you know when your brother woke up.”
Maureen nods. “Can you ask him to come down, Angie?” Then Maureen turns to me. “I think it would be better for you two to talk here rather than in his room.”
We watch the nurse retreat. When the woman is out of earshot, Maureen’s voice turns steely. Her words are clipped. “Look, Vanessa. Richard is fragile right now. Can we agree that you will finally leave him alone?”
“He’s the one who wanted me to come here.”
“Richard doesn’t know what he wants right now. Two weeks ago, he thought he wanted to marry Emma. He believed she was perfect”—Maureen makes a little scoffing sound—“even though he barely knew her. He thought that about you at one time, too. He always wanted his life to look a certain way, like the idealized bride and groom on the cake topper he bought for my parents all those years ago.”
I think of the mismatched date on the bottom of the figurines. “Richard bought that for your parents?”
“I see he didn’t tell you about that, either. It was for their anniversary. He had this whole plan that we’d cook them a special dinner and bake them a cake. That they’d have a wonderful night and start loving each other again. But then the car crash happened. He never got to give it to them.
“It was hollow inside, you know. The cake topper. That’s what I thought when I saw it broken in the hallway that day. . . . I guess he was bringing it to the tasting to show the cake designer. But Richard really has no business being married to anyone. And it’s my job now to make sure that it doesn’t happen.”
She suddenly smiles—a wide, genuine grin—and I’m completely unnerved.
But it isn’t for me. It’s for her brother, who is approaching us.
Maureen stands up. “I’ll give you two a few minutes alone.”
I sit beside the man who both is and is no longer a mystery to me.
He wears jeans and a plain cotton shirt. Dark stubble lines his jaw. Despite the fact that he’s been sleeping so much, he appears tired and his skin is sallow. He is no longer the man who enthralled me, then subsequently terrorized me.
He appears ordinary to me now, somehow deflated, like a man I wouldn’t look at twice as he waited for a bus or bought a cup of coffee at a street kiosk.
My husband kept me off-balance for years. He tried to erase me.
My husband also hugged my waist on a green sled while we sped down a hill in Central Park. He brought me rum raisin ice cream on the anniversary of my father’s death and left me love notes for no reason at all.
And he hoped I could save him from himself.
When Richard finally speaks, he says what I have wanted to hear for so long.
“I’m sorry, Vanessa.”
He has apologized to me before, but this time I know his words are different.
At last they are real.
“Is there any way you could give me another chance? I’m getting better. We could start over.”
I gaze out at the gardens and rolling green lawn. I had envisioned a scene much like this when Richard first showed me our Westchester house: The two of us side by side on a porch swing, but decades into our marriage. Connected by memories we’d constructed together, each of us layering in our favorite details with every retelling, until we’d created a unified recollection.
I’d expected to be angry when I saw him. But I only feel pity.
By way of an answer to his question, I hand Richard my cloth bag. He pulls out the top item, a black jewelry box. In it are my wedding and engagement rings. He opens the box.
“I wanted to give these back to you.” I have spent so long mired in our past. It is time to return them to him and truly move on.
“We could adopt a child. We could make it perfect this time.”
He wipes his eyes. I have never seen him cry before.
Maureen is between us in an instant. She takes the bag and the rings from Richard. “Vanessa, I think it’s time for you to go. I’ll see you out.”
I stand up. Not because she told me to, but because I am ready to leave. “Good-bye, Richard.”
Maureen leads me down the steps toward the parking lot.
I follow at a slower pace.
“You can do whatever you want with the wedding album.” I gesture to the bag. “It was my gift to Richard, so it’s rightfully his.”
“I remember. Terry did a nice job. Lucky that he was able to fit you in that day after all.”
I stop short. I’d never told anyone how close we’d come to not having a photographer at our ceremony.
And it has been nearly a decade since our wedding; even I couldn’t come up with Terry’s name that quickly.
As Maureen meets my stare, I recollect how a woman had phoned to cancel our booking. Maureen knew which photographer we were using; she had suggested I include black-and-white shots when I emailed her a link to Terry’s website and sought her opinion about Richard’s gift.
Her icy-blue eyes look so much like Richard’s in this instant. It is impossible to gauge what she is thinking.