Part 38 (1/2)
Lisa was horrified. ”But how? I never told her, Dave. I swear to G.o.d I didn't.”
”I know you didn't.”
”Then how-”
”I did.”
For the count of three, Lisa stared at him with total disbelief. ”You what what?”
”I told myself that if she was going to marry me, she should know everything about me. No secrets. So I told her.”
”But why? I never would have said a word. She never would have found out.”
”I know. I told myself that I was just trying to be honest with her. But I think . . .” He was silent for a moment. ”I think I was trying to drive her away. Deep down, I was hoping she'd call off the wedding.”
Lisa couldn't have been more shocked if he'd slapped her. ”You didn't want to marry her?”
”No. At the time I didn't really realize why. But somehow I knew. Deep down, I knew it wasn't right.”
”What did she say when you told her what happened between us?”
”She made excuses for me. Told me it was your fault, not mine, and that she knew I'd never do anything like that again.”
”She wasn't angry?”
”Sure she was. At you. It was my fault, and she was angry at you. No matter what I told her, she just kept taking up for me.” He rubbed his hand over the back of his neck. ”Finally I made a decision. If she wasn't going to call it off, I was.”
”You told Carla you didn't want to marry her?”
”Yes.”
”What happened?”
”As soon as I said it, she started to cry. She told me over and over how much she needed me, and said if I walked away from her then, she couldn't go on living.” He paused, then turned to Lisa, a strange light in his eyes. ”Then she told me she knew where her father kept his gun.”
Lisa's mouth dropped open. ”Oh, G.o.d. She didn't.”
”I was stunned. I couldn't believe I'd driven her to something like that. I apologized. I told her that of course we'd get married, and I promised that I'd always be faithful to her so she'd never have to feel that way again. And I never told another soul what happened.”
”But, Dave, you should have. Don't you know that? You should have told somebody what she was doing to you!”
”I was just a kid, Lisa! What was I supposed to do? I was terrified to say anything. I thought if I humiliated Carla by telling someone that I'd even thought about calling off the wedding, she'd kill herself.”
It was as if a curtain had fallen away, exposing as a lie something Lisa had accepted as truth all these years, and she just couldn't believe it. Dave and Carla had seemed like the couple on top of a wedding cake, pristine and perfect, their lives scripted right out of a storybook. Sure, all married couples had their ups and downs, but the fact that there had been a dark side to Carla and Dave's relations.h.i.+p astonished her.
”After we were married, things were fine for a while,” Dave said. ”Then the insecurity started all over again. If I worked late, she'd quiz me, wondering where I'd been. If she found a receipt from a restaurant she didn't recognize, she gave me the third degree about that, too. At the same time, she had no life of her own. I was it. She rarely left the house. I started to see that something more was wrong than just a little bit of insecurity. But she kept telling me that I was all she needed, that I was everything to her. Then she did it again.”
”What?”
”I had to stay late at work one night. When I got home, she accused me of cheating on her. I denied it. She said she knew I was lying, and she threatened to kill herself again. I had to take my guns out of the house, because I believed she might actually do it.”
”But you didn't tell anyone?”
”She said if I ever said anything to anyone, I'd come home and find her dead.”
Lisa slid her hand to her throat. ”Oh, Dave. . . .”
He closed his eyes as dark memories seemed to fill his mind. ”I begged her to see somebody. A doctor. A psychologist. Somebody. But she wouldn't even admit she had a problem. She kept saying that I was all she needed. But pretty soon it was happening all the time. Every time I'd work late, or was gone from home longer than she antic.i.p.ated, she'd accuse me of sleeping around. Then the tears would start, followed by the threats.”
”G.o.d, Dave. How did you deal with that?”
”Not very well. Particularly when Ashley came along. I couldn't imagine her growing up around a mother like that. Carla loved her. She really did. But how can you be a good mother when you're barely able to deal with your own life?”
He dropped his head to his hands, rubbing his temples with his fingertips, and Lisa could see how badly he'd wanted to run away from all of it. How lonely he'd felt. And how he must have lain awake at night sometimes wis.h.i.+ng he were anyplace else on earth.
”Sometimes when Carla was yelling at me, crying, threatening to kill herself, I just couldn't take it. I'd have these flashes, these split second thoughts, when . . .” His voice became a raw whisper. ”When I wished she'd just go ahead and do it.”
Lisa was shocked. ”No. You didn't really feel that way.”
”Yes. I did. Sometimes it was right there on the tip of my tongue. I wanted so badly to say it. I wanted to tell her just to do it, to get it over with so I wouldn't have to deal with her problems anymore.”
Lisa slid her hand against his shoulder. ”I can't believe that you really wanted her to kill herself. You didn't want that.”
”I don't know what I wanted. But I'm telling you, Lisa, the night her car went off that bridge . . .” He choked a little on the words, as if they'd been buried for so long that speaking them was an almost insurmountable task. ”I remember the moment I got the news. The strangest feeling swept over me for a few seconds. It felt like . . . relief. I needed a way out of that prison. That night, I got it.”
As he buried his head in his hands again, she could feel the guilt rising off him like smoke from a smoldering fire. Then she thought about the man on the bridge last week who'd threatened suicide. No wonder Dave had snapped. The echo of Carla in his mind must have been deafening.
”You've felt guilty ever since that night,” Lisa said.
”Wouldn't you? G.o.d, Lisa, just saying it makes me sound like some heartless son of a b.i.t.c.h who wanted his sick wife dead.”
”No. You just wanted out of an intolerable situation that wasn't your fault in the first place. Why should you feel guilty about that?”
He looked up at her. ”Maybe it was my fault.”
”What?”
”I don't know. I kept thinking that if only I'd loved her more, if only I'd made a bigger commitment to her, things would have been different.”
”How much more could you have committed? You married her, and you promised to be a faithful husband. And you were.”
”Yes. But my heart wasn't with her. She knew that. From the moment I told her about you, she knew it.”
”But, Dave, there was nothing between us! It was just a kiss. We got caught up in an emotional situation. That's all. It didn't mean a thing!”
”It didn't?”