Night Deposit Ch. 03

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.

"Honey, what's the problem? You look out of it, somehow." I put down my fork and waited for an answer, running my fingers across the table cloth. She used to say I did things like that whenever I was worried.

"Huh? Oh, Vince, you're funny, there's nothing wrong. I was just thinking of something, that's all..." Her voice dropped off to a whisper and she looked down at her hands in her lap.

I could tell that it wasn't 'that's all.'

I had taken some of the money and bought her a pearl necklace. I put it on her; she was speechless. It either broke apart in the street or somehow disappeared somewhere on the way to the hospital.

I had my arm around my love as we crossed the street, together for one last time.

Eventually, I had enough watching the two of them together and saying goodnight, I reached for my cane and went to bed even though it was only nine o'clock.

Here I was, almost 50 years old and my life was once again upside down, all caused by the women in my life.

Over the next couple of weeks, what started as a guarded politeness eventually became something closer to normal. I was polite but tried to limit my contact with Nancy. Honestly, it had galled me how easily the two of them got along.

I learned all I could about Nancy's situation. This 'bi-polar' she had was an unbelievably serious condition. Unknown and untreated, it had destroyed our marriage.

I made an appointment to see Dr. Deanna Hemphill, a psychologist, initially to learn about my ex-wife's condition but I kept seeing her for my own state of mind.

She was surprised when I told her everything about Nancy. She said that marriages with bi-polar people usually last only a year or two, the spouses finally giving up.

We can say 'ex-wife' all we want but there still remains that memory, real or imagined, of what good times there were and there were good times.

Finally, I came to realize there was nothing she could have done but what she did. Promiscuity was, and still is, I guess, the major symptom for bi-polar women. During those manic periods, Nancy was out of control like a crashing airplane.

Dr. Hemphill and I sadly determined that my ex-wife was probably sleeping around from the beginning.

I was crying at the end of that session and when Belle started to drive us home, I told her I wanted to go to the Redondo pier, instead.

I wanted to get my thoughts together before having to face my ex-wife. I stood at the railing, leaning against it, for quite a long-time, thinking back to my marriage with Nancy... the good times and the bad times.

The good times did outnumber the bad times, but that one very bad time outweighed everything else at the time.

We had a quiet dinner at Tony's and I spent a good amount of time just watching the waves roll in. I had the cod and Belle had the halibut. I had fries and she had the baked potato. I had iced tea and she had coffee. We both were going to be up for hours later than we should.

"Well?"

"Well, what?" I asked back.

"Do you understand, now?" She had folded her hands on the table. I knew what that meant: she wanted a serious discussion whether I did or not... but, she was right, now was the time to talk about it and I knew it... it was why I wanted to go out to dinner.

I looked at my wife, her dark complexion lit up by the setting sun. I looked into her dark eyes delving into my soul.

I said nothing for a great while and stalled for time, buttering my sourdough roll.

"Why?" I finally asked.

"If she had the flu... if she had, God forbid, cancer..."

At the mention of cancer, Belle immediately knew she had said the wrong damn thing.

She continued on, though. "Well, would you blame her? Would you hate her?"

It was a hard question, straight to the matter. I put my hand down on my right leg, trying to soothe the burning that had been with me ever since I left the hospital and its drugs.

"Of course, not." I said and fell into the logical trap my loving wife had carefully laid for me. After all these years, she knew everything about me and how I would react to stressful situations... like this one... just as I could read her like an open book.

"It's the same thing, Vince," she continued, determined to make me see her position.

"No, it's not... and you know it. You know how she was, is... whatever..." I was starting to get angry but Belle wouldn't stop.

That same perseverance is what kept her with Esther and me, quietly waiting for her time to be my wife. Sometimes, I wondered what would have happened if I had decided not to marry again.

"Yes, I do know it's not the same but I truly understand her, now... and you should, too."

"Belle..."

"Don't you 'Belle' me, Vince."

"Look, Belle, even if I understand...

"How can I forget?"

"I don't know, baby, I don't know... maybe, never... but, you've got to try to forgive. If not for her... then, for us, Vince.

I think she's been hurt enough, don't you?" She gave me that serious look she did when she didn't want 'no' for an answer... and I looked back with the 'I don't care' face I had for situations like that.

"Belle, I never once... well, that one time with the police and burning her clothes...

"No, I don't want to hurt her... and, I don't want her to hurt. I... look, darling, it's been twenty years. Whatever love I have for her is based on those good times we had... but, it's in the past, the distant past." She could see I was lying and not doing it very well. I never could lie to these women in my life.

"After talking with Dr. Hemphill, I don't hate her anymore. I hated her, then, I really did... but, I never hurt her as much as I wanted to kill her and every man she slept with."

I could see Belle's logic but it didn't help me that much. It still didn't answer what Belle wanted with Nancy after all this time.

Or, what the two of them wanted with me.

I took her hand in mine. "Sweetheart, suppose that we do get her an apartment in one of the buildings. Then what? I mean, what's your final goal?

Is this something like you and Esther dreamed up? Are you sick? I can't live through time another like that. I'd rather die."

"Oh, God, no, Vince, she rapidly said. "Oh, God, no.

When Nancy contacted me four years ago, I was just as shocked as you are now. She asked me to meet her at her doctor's office, a psychiatrist named Alexa Green.

Dr. Green explained everything to me. It was hard, Vince, for me to sit there and listen but I did. I began attending Nancy's sessions with her doctor and all three of us struggled through each week. There were normal times with her and there were horrible times and the doctor would calm her down and find out that her everlasting despair is how you were hurt and she's wanted to do anything possible to have you forgive her for something she couldn't help.

"Vince, honey, what if it had been you? Would you like to go through what's left of your life alone and miserable?"

At some point in our long and heartbreaking talk, I began to change my mind about having Nancy with us.

"OK," I finally said.

"OK, what?" She couldn't believe what she was hearing, I supposed... that I would capitulate so quickly... but the truth of the matter was that I had thinking about Nancy every day since she came home with us.

My mind journeyed back to that last month we were together. I remembered her little smile as she walked in the door to the dinner I had cooked for her...

...and then, I lost my composure thinking about it. Was she smiling because she had just been fucked by one of them men she met at work? Damn it!

I slammed my fist down on the table, rattling everything on it.

This was going to be SO much harder than I had thought or hoped.

I considered throwing the whole thing out right then and there and telling Belle that Nancy had to leave, the sooner the better... like yesterday.

I could see the fear on Belle's face as she recognized the anger in me and although I kept quiet, inside I was seething as the anger resurfaced once again.

I realized people were looking at us. For what I had done, not for whom we were. That had gone away years ago and a white man with a black woman wasn't the surprise it had been twenty years ago.