Chapter 3
Women and their secrets
copyright @ calibeachgirl
all rights reserved, 2011
I thank everyone who returned for this final chapter. I have put at the end of the story the recipe for Esther's raisin chocolate cookies.
I hope that everyone understands that part of the story is told in flashback as Vince remembers his life with his three wives and the story was bookended with what was the present time in the story.
Chapter 3 - You have to play the cards you are dealt...
I should have been shocked when Belle got up and walked to Nancy's table and sat down but truth be told, I wasn't. They were talking quietly for quite a while so I waved to the waitress and ordered another piece of pie. Whatever Belle was doing, she was doing at her own pace and after all these years, I knew there was nothing I could do about it. It took a strong-willed woman to do what she had done for Esther and me. It took a strong-willed woman to put up with my quirks and stubbornness. It took a strong-willed woman to love me as much, if not more than I loved her.
It took a strong-willed man to survive everything that has happened and somehow find the strength to continue on.
She gave me the respect and worshiped the ground I walked on. We were our own mutual admiration society.
The damn truth of the matter was, though, I'd rather just get the hell up and out of the restaurant as soon as I could... but, I knew I couldn't leave. Whatever was going to happen was going to happen and a small, inaccessible part of me wanted to know what had happened to her all these years.
I had dreaded the day I would ever meet Nancy again. The woman I thought was the love of my life had somehow betrayed me without... without what? Warning? It was all there, if I had been knowledgeable to recognize the signs.
You truly can't see the forest for the trees.
Belle reached out, took Nancy's hand and then they both came back to where I was sitting. I gripped the table edge as best I could to keep from shaking in both anger and... fear? Fear? I had to be kidding myself... not after all these years... it was more a realization of what had been lost that night... the next twenty years without her... the next twenty years without children... the next twenty years without a twenty-fifth anniversary which should have been this year.
The only thing worse in my life was Esther's death.
I remembered the day the divorce was final. I felt as if a huge hand had taken my insides and force fed them back to me. It was a day I had both looked forward to and dreaded. The good times outnumbered the bad ones but the bad ones... it was like trying to compare the Grand Canyon with a small drainage ditch on the side of the road.
Fortunately for me, I had already become close friends with Esther and Mary Belle and they helped me pick up the pieces of my life so well that I loved and married both of them.
"I asked Nancy to join us, Vince. There are a great many things you need to hear about. Please, just listen and don't say anything. I know your stomach must be churning right now and you probably want to kill us both for ambushing you like this but I couldn't see any other way to do this.
"When we're done, you can decide what you want to do."
I said nothing and stared at the two of them. I wanted some water for my dry mouth but my hand had let go of the table edge and was shaking too much.
Belle moved over and Nancy slid in on the booth's bench directly across from me. I tried to look away but couldn't. Deep, deep, deep down, locked in my heart and put away for almost two decades, was my love for her, the girl I first loved, married and would have died for until she killed my soul and my dreams and my trust... but, never my love. That, I just locked away until now... oh, God, what had my Belle done to me?
"Maybe, I should start this, Vince," said Belle, "it would make more sense, that way.
"Four years ago..."
I jerked my head and looked at my wife and my ex-wife and just shook my head in disbelief. Belle and I would have a long, long talk when we got home... maybe, earlier... much earlier.
"Four years ago, Nancy wrote me a letter. She begged for forgiveness but knew that you wouldn't want to see her... so she contacted me.
"About eight years ago, she was diagnosed with Bipolar -- Manic Depression. I went to several doctors to learn about it for myself.
"Vince, she had absolutely no control over anything she did during... well, when she was with you. It had nothing to do with you. It would have happened even if she had been living the life of a hermit. Since then, she's been taking a drug called Lithium. It didn't exist back in the 60s, well, maybe it did but no doctor knew how to treat her condition with it.
"She's not cured. There is no cure. It can only be contained as long as things don't get out too far out of hand.
"She... I... I want us to give her an apartment to live in, Vince. It was devastating what happened, both before and after and I don't think we can ever forget that but I've found it in my heart to forgive her and I'd like you, too.
"I know I've had four years to reach this point and you're still at day one but, please trust me on this. I know what I'm talking about. If not for her, do it for me. You'll see; it will turn out all right."
I didn't know what to say, I really didn't. I had always tried my best to keep the women I loved deliriously happy. It didn't work out so well with Nancy but how could I compete with a mental illness. In truth, the only thing I recognized was the 'depressive' part and figured the rest was just as bad, if not worse.
Both Esther and Belle had planned out the rest of my life after that and the next twenty years were filled with love and joy and loss.
I grudgingly allow Nancy to move into the second bedroom. I sent the maintenance guys over to her rundown apartment to get the few things she still had until an apartment would open up for her in one of my buildings.
It should have been no surprise to me that the two of them had become friends... close friends. Indeed, my wife and my ex-wife had had four years to become reacquainted while I was still at day one, wondering just what the hell had just happened. Every time I saw her or heard her voice, it was another pinprick into my soul and I prayed to God it wasn't going to be the death of my marriage to Belle.
I sat, pretending to read the latest Analog. Over the years, I learned to enjoy science fiction... at least, good... well, somewhat readable science fiction. Some months were better than others and some months were just trash.
In the spring of 1977, Belle and I had gone to the Airport Marriott for an SF convention. While the featured film was Logan's Run and they had people run around with the movie's guns shooting each other, however, the twenty minute Star Wars presentation brought down the house. People were jumping up and down screaming... no, demanding to see it again.
We met Mark Hamill and spoke to him for quite a while. After the movie opened, of course, he became untouchable and his invitation to have lunch sometime became forgotten.
Belle and I went to Grauman's Chinese to see it.
That summer, we saw it at least ten times. The last time was August 16th and when we got in the car to drive home, the DJ said Elvis was dead. For some crazy reason, we started laughing. I don't know, it was just that he made it sound like the end of the world.
It's funny what strange things you remember at the oddest times.
I leaned back in my recliner, occasionally glancing at Nancy. She and Belle were talking quietly and eating some raisin chocolate cookies from the recipe from Esther.
It was a scene out of the Twilight Zone. Three wives, one a ghost, all crowded into the living room with me.
I remembered, oh, how I remembered, resting there, that unbelievable day with Esther...
It started out like any other incredibly beautiful Southern California day. The hot sun was beginning to peek out on the eastern horizon and I woke pressed against Esther's back, my arm protectively around her waist.
I nuzzled her neck just behind her ear and she stirred in her sleep as I inhaled her scent. I was aroused by her closeness... and I knew I had to intimately touch her, to feel the smooth softness of her skin, to kiss her black hair now streaked with silver.
"mmmhmphhh," she moaned, shifting in the bed as her body started to respond to my touch. Lately, Esther had been going to bed earlier and earlier, begging off, saying she was just a little tired and not to worry about it.
During the night, I could feel her move around under the covers and I had thought she was just trying to get comfortable but once in a while, in the dim light I glimpsed a look of pain on her face as she tossed and turned without waking.
She was approaching her forty-fifth birthday and I foolishly thought she was just reacting to getting older and with menopause and all. Oh, foolish me, I was so stupidly in the dark about what was happening and neither woman told me what I so desperately needed to know.
She woke with a start, her abrupt jerk shaking the bed, but my hand gently reassured her somehow and she drifted back into a fitful sleep.
I looked at the nightstand clock. It was only six-eighteen... too late to sleep again, too early to get up.
I lay there, staring at the ceiling. I didn't want to leave my wife's warmth, either physically or emotionally. I was madly in love with this older woman and I felt wonderful, more so than with all my tempestuous time with Nancy.
Where she saw lines and slight sags and grey hair, I saw life and love and happiness.
She woke again, this time taking my hand and placing it on her left breast. I could feel her excitement as her nipple hardened under my fingers and she began to move back against me. I felt her leg lift just enough and I slipped inside, gently pushing deeper until I was completely in, my body tight against hers. Quietly, deliberately, she started moving again, tightly holding me in as her slick warmth enveloped me with a desperation that I didn't understand until after her letter was given to me by Belle.
Her movements continued, until finally I felt her tingle, then shake over and over like a 6.0 California earthquake.
"Thank you," she whispered, "thank you, my love."
I found out much later Esther had not been feeling well those last few weeks and seemed to be losing weight. At the time, I had commented on that, telling her that she was more than beautiful just the way she was didn't need to diet for me. She turned several shades of red. She gave me a shy wistful smile and seemed to search my face, touch my face as if she wanted to know it to its fullest, to remember it forever.
Later that morning, she had an upset stomach that didn't seem to leave her until we left for lunch. I had a great surprise for her and wanted it to be as romantic as possible.
The Warehouse in Marina del Rey was a restaurant that had just enough light to see comfortably but dark enough for privacy and their tables were all inset into large cubbyholes.
One of my manuscripts on coaching had been accepted for publishing and they had sent a check against royalties for five thousand dollars. I was going to take her to Jerusalem, something she had wanted to do since the liberation of the camps.
We ate as I excitedly told her what I would like to happen, I could see a sad and pensive look in her eyes, as though she was thinking of something somehow lost and seemed preoccupied with something, just a sad yearning that I didn't understand until so much later and it broke my heart all over again whenever I remember that afternoon.
