Chapter 12

That night I was fixing my bed on the sofa when Frank came out and put his hand on my shoulder. I turned to look at him, looking up now, for though he was barefoot so was I, and while I'm not tiny I'm not six feet tall. "Yes, Frank?" I said.

"Genesis, I'd like for you to sleep with me tonight."

"Sleep with you?" I'm not sure what expression was on my face – my mind was experiencing a traffic jam, and I wasn't sure whether to be happy or fearful or simply surprised.

My tone must have told Frank more about my reaction than I could grasp just then. "I mean the phrase in its literal sense, Gen, not the euphemistic one. I have no intentions toward you. If something happens, fine, but it'll only be with our mutual consent and desire. And if nothing happens other than my wife sleeping beside me again, I'll be happy."

"Are you sure, Frank?" I was becoming clearer in my reaction – I knew that, as much as I'd missed being in the same bed with my husband, now that the time was here I was frightened.

"I'm sure, Gen. Here, sit down with me." He drew me down to the sofa, the blanket soft under us. "We have made progress in the past month or so. We're communicating again, as difficult as it sometimes is. We're treating each other during the day as husband and wife, rather than as enemies who must share the same dwelling. We've both admitted – or proclaimed, if you prefer that word, and I think I do – that we love each other. What, then, prevents us from sleeping in the same bed as husbands and wives ought to do?"

It was a rhetorical question, yet I had the sense that I ought to answer it. I wasn't exactly certain why – call it feminine intuition, if you wish – but I knew I couldn't let the question be, even if Frank hadn't intended for me to respond to it. "There is the matter," I said painfully, "of my adultery."

"I know." There was pain in Frank's voice too. "I don't accuse you of thinking that I've forgotten, but I remind you that I have not. I don't know if I ever can forget that. But I'm trying to leave what happened in the past. It was, after all, a year ago, not yesterday."

"Frank, do you realize how judgmental you sound when you put it that way?" I quickly touched his lips with a finger to forestall an angry response. "I'm not condemning you, Frank. If I were in your position I probably would be judgmental too. What I'm asking you if whether you've listened to yourself when you say such things."

"Genesis, it's hard for me to hear such a question, and such an explanation, without anger." He swallowed, convulsively. "But I'm trying, just as you're trying not to anger me. The answer to your question is that no, I haven't listened to myself. But now that you ask me that, I replay my words in my mind, and I see your point. I don't entirely agree with that point, but I do see it."

"Then for now we'll leave that. I'm not trying to push you faster than you can go. I just want you, Frank, to be aware of what your words can do to me. We're both still fragile, and just as I'm being careful with you, I need you to be careful with me."

"I understand, Genesis," he said, and I believed he meant it. But equally I doubted that he truly did understand. I was only beginning to understand what he had endured as a result of my adultery, and I didn't think that he could fully understand, not yet anyway, what I endured when he became cold and rigid.

But that wasn't the point. The point was that Frank was making an effort which couldn't have been easy for him. I leaned my head against his shoulder. "As to your first question," I said, "I would be honored to sleep with you tonight."

Frank wasn't an arrogant man, at least not when he wasn't carrying a monstrous burden of pain and anger, but neither was he a paragon of humility. I realized that when I heard the humility in his answer. "Genesis, I am not sure that accepting my invitation will be an honor to you. You did wrong, yes – we both know that. But I have been less than honorable myself in my treatment of you. I'm no prize, Gen, I'm beginning to see that. I think that your acceptance honors me, rather than you."

I turned my face up and kissed my husband, for the first time in a long time, with a kiss that carried in it all my love for him. "Then we'll forget about honor," I said, "and just think about each other."

I woke up the next morning confused. I opened my eyes and nothing looked familiar. I wasn't used to the feeling that I didn't know where I was, and for a moment I was frightened, wondering where I was and how I'd gotten there. Then I sat up, and realized where I was – in my own bed, in my own bedroom.

Frank was already up, for his side of the bed was empty. The pillow still held the print of his head, though when I felt the place where he'd slept there was no residual warmth left. I glanced at the alarm clock on the bedside table, and saw that it was nearly time for him to leave for work. I got out of bed and put on a robe over my nightgown, and opening the door I went out into the living room. Frank was there, tying his shoes.

He looked up as I came around the sofa. "Did you sleep well, Genesis?" he asked.

I reached down and took his hand, and pulled him up. When he was standing I wrapped my arms around him and leaned against him, and I felt his arms coming around me. One of his hands rested between my shoulder blades, the fingers caressing me a little. My voice muffled against his chest, I said, "I slept better than I've slept in a long while, Frank. Thank you."

"I slept very well too, Gen." He moved me back gently, just far enough for him to look into my eyes. "I haven't slept very well either this past year."

I rested my hands against his chest. "I'm sorry, Frank. I nearly destroyed us, didn't I?"

"Certainly what you did was part of it. Without that the rest wouldn't have happened. But I can't allow you to take all the blame, Gen. I wasn't much of a husband to you."

I bowed my head. Frank's admission touched me more than I cared to admit, even to myself. When I had my face under control I looked up again. "As long as you're my husband now, Frank..."

"I'm trying to be, Gen. I just wish it hadn't taken..."

"I know what you mean," said when he didn't finish the sentence. "I wish that too." I became brisk, and pushed myself away from him. "But you'd better get to work, or we'll have to sell that bed in order to have something to eat."

He smiled at me. "Genesis, you don't know how good it is to see you back."

"I could say the same about you, Frank."

"Therefore I shall depart, in order to prevent that." He bent down and kissed me, and was gone. I sat down on the sofa, grateful that today I didn't need to pick up the blanket and pillow and put them away. I remembered the night before, when I'd gingerly laid down next Frank. In his phrase, nothing had happened. After so long, so much hurt on both sides, I felt no desire, and if Frank did – and I knew, by then, something of male responses – he didn't indicate it. Instead he kissed me gently, and then turned on his side, his back toward me, and drew my arm across his chest. I snuggled up to his back, and the last thing I remembered before going to sleep was my husband's warmth within the circle of my arms.

I knew that if we kept making progress desire would return, and some night we would have a new beginning to that part of our marriage as well. But for me, it was just as important to be able to sleep beside my husband, to hold him in the night, to know that he loved me and was willing once again to receive my love. It had indeed been a very long time.

I put on a sleeveless blouse and a pair of cutoff jeans, willing to wear such clothing now that I was gaining my weight back and, with the work I was doing around the house, beginning to tone up again. I wasn't in any shape to wear a bikini to the pool, but then I'd never owned a bikini in my life, so that wasn't ever going to be a problem. I did my housework that morning smiling, dusting and washing and straightening with greater happiness than I'd had since my confession. Some couples might find sleeping in separate beds acceptable, but since my wedding night I'd never spent a night apart from Frank till my adultery drove us apart. And those who do sleep in separate beds do so by mutual agreement; I had been sleeping apart from my husband by his angry decree, the separation involuntary on my part.

As I made the bed I smiled again. I had forgotten how warm it can be on even the coldest night when someone is asleep beside you, someone you love and who loves you. I could almost swear that when a man and a woman love each other the body heat they create, just lying in bed, is greater than the heat any other two people would generate. It probably wouldn't pass a scientific test, but I could easily believe that love adds a few degrees to the warmth of two people sleeping beside each other.

On impulse I decided to go out to eat lunch. Frank's salary as a fast food restaurant manager was as much as he'd made pastoring, which says something about how little a pastor can expect to become wealthy. I wasn't bringing in an income anymore, and hadn't been for months, but by being careful we were able, occasionally, to do little things like that. We hadn't had much occasion lately, and I had gone months without leaving the house, so my little fund of saved allowance was actually fairly substantial. It wouldn't have covered a trip to Paris, but then I didn't care to visit Paris, and lunch at Denny's was certainly within my budget.

I took off the shorts and put on a pair of black jeans, and my running shoes. I kept the blouse, for it was a nice day with a slight breeze and I knew the sun and moving air would feel delicious on my bare arms. I got my money and ID out of my pocketbook and stuffed them into the pockets of my jeans. I locked the door behind me and walked, deliberately retracing the path I'd followed two months earlier.

I had walked into traffic then, and though I'd resisted the idea when Tyrone introduced it, I now realized that he was right – it had been a species of suicide attempt. I had been right to an extent – I did always check the traffic; now, crossing Elizabeth, where with the ending of the rush hour there was no traffic at all, I automatically looked both ways before and during the crossing. The reason I hadn't checked the traffic that day in February was that I had decided that living wasn't worth it, and my self-defense habits consequently lapsed. Later I would consciously try to kill myself; that day I did it at the behest of inner compulsions I hadn't understood or recognized.

As I walked along Menaul I thought about how things had changed. The past few days had seemed almost like another life, it had gone so well. I knew I had to guard against a desire to think it was all over. I might be ready to let go of what had happened, and try to forget it, or at least live without it hanging over my head. But I wondered if Frank could do that yet. I knew my husband better now than I ever had. I knew how he hid his feelings, how he refused to admit and express them even to himself, how he clamped a lid of ice on top of them, becoming so hurtful to me in his resistance to breaking down. And I remembered what Tyrone had said Saturday about Frank's eventual breakdown. Probably before that came Frank would be hurtful again, doing his utmost to hold his emotions in check.

I remembered my father. He had cried easily, without shame. There was a time when I was perhaps 13, when he'd disciplined me for something, and I'd screamed that I hated him. I didn't, of course, but in the throes of teen turmoil I'd said it, and I still remembered how his face had shown the pain, and then the tears had run down his face. And I remembered what he'd said then: "Genesis, when you're older you'll know what you've said, and you'll regret it."