For Gail the evening had taken on an all too familiar feel, as she sat alone by the telephone in the darkened living room. This was the feeling that had come to characterize her marriage. Not love, not affection, but emptiness.
The house was quiet now. Nigel had cried himself to sleep and Sarah had been gently guided back to her room where a kiss and a hug had settled her for the night. Sarah had seen her daddy today, however briefly, and was content. What Gail's mother was doing, or thinking, behind the closed door of her bedroom was as unknown as the room was resolutely silent. Perhaps she slept?
But Gail's thoughts were far from peaceful. Garnet Chandler's phone call and Brent's brief visit had unnerved her. The look in Brent's eye when their gaze had met (was it anger, was it despair?) had left her physically chilled and full of an ominous dread. What was he doing behind the wheel of that limo? Is that where he was working now? Had he gone from rising star at a law firm back to limo driver?
Deeper and more disturbing than those feelings was the dawning awareness that, at the end of her discussion with Chandler, she had begun to hope. All contact between Brent and herself had been through their respective lawyers recently. Gail had turned her face away from any consideration of what impact everything was having on Brent. To know might have been to weaken, and for the children's sake, for the sake of her sanity, she had to stand firm. And yet, she hoped. Deeper in the quietest most hidden recesses of her mind, she hoped and dreamed. She dreamed of a husband who had learned the value of his wife and family, who loved her still.
Don't go there Gail, she warned herself. Don't follow this line of thought. He's waiting like a spider at the end of it, waiting to pounce, wrap you in his web and suck you dry.
Gail shivered. She had to admit, she didn't really know Brent. There were those stories of his drinking. In all the years they spent together, she had never seen him drunk (although there had been some rumours from his college days). But she had seldom even seen him drink. Did we really mean so much to you after all, below that frightening obsession with your job? Down there in your soul where it really mattered? Have I done this to you by leaving?
Get a grip, Gail ordered herself, getting up and beginning to pace around the room. Don't let your hopes blind you to reality. After all, where was he when the kids were sick, or when your dad died? When you needed him he was at that office buried in legal paper work, that's where. Or out at expensive lunches boasting of his court room victories with the other legal vultures! While you sat home wiping Nigel's puke off the floor when he was sick with the flu and wondering how you were ever going to get up for work the next morning, where was Brent? And just how many nights have you spent alone like this, not knowing where Brent was or when he was coming home? More than you can....
"You might have told me Brent was here." Gail's mother's voice startled her.
"I didn't see you come down," Gail's heart was beating loudly in her chest.
Her mother stood at the bottom of the stairs, anger now replacing the hurt Gale had last seen on her face. He stood rigid and still, her eyes hard and unblinking, her hands clenched tightly together in front of her.
"I went to tuck Sarah in and she told me her father had come to visit?" The odler woman's voice was sharp and loud.
Gail's own hands suddenly needed something to do, so she picked up her empty coffee cup from the side table. "Would you like some coffee."
"Gail," her mothers voice rising in pitch, "Was Brent here?"
"No," Gail answered, "No really. We saw him parked on the road, watching the house. That's all."
"That is harassment. He's been ordered to stay away. Have you phoned the police?"
Gail carefully replaced the cup on the table and waited for her emotions to settle. "No mother I haven't. He did nothing. He was only there for a moment."
As her mother walked toward her, Gail could see the older woman's left hand trembling visibly. Was that stress or the first sign of serious illness, Parkinson's perhaps. This was not the first time Gail had notice and wondered about the trembling.
"You are not defending him!" she ordered. "On top of everything else, on top of everything I've done for you, I will not have you defending that man."
Gail could feel tears threatening, "I am not defending him mother. He did nothing, that's all. He drove up to the front of the house and paused for a minute. As soon as he realized he had been seen, he left."
"You are defending him too!" Her mother took hold of her arm in a tight grip. "I will not have you entertaining any foolish thoughts about that man, after all he had put you through. Am I clear?"
Gail wrenched her arm free from her mother's grip, her tears now running down her cheeks. "I am not defending him. I am not entertaining foolish thoughts about him. But I'll think whatever I damn well please to think, mother."
The older woman held her gaze for a moment, reading the contents her soul in her glance. Then she turn suddenly away to the window. "Sarah tells me he was driving a beautiful white car," she said, her voice softer, the anger only slightly suppressed.
"A limousine. He worked his way through college as a driver. I guess that's what he is doing for money now."
Beyond her mother's silhouette framed in the window, Gail could see snow beginning to fall angainst the blackness of the night.
The older woman's back was set and rigid. "You will not go back to that man." She said. "You will not!"
Click here for "Hitting The Wall" part 6
(C) B.E. Fraser, 1997 No copying of this material without the expressed permission of the author is permitted.
