Chapter 3

Frank didn't return until late. By the time he got back I'd taken off the robe and fixed myself some supper, and gotten undressed again and put on my nightgown. I was sitting on the sofa looking at nothing when he came in. He saw me, and seemed to almost turn around and start to leave again, but he instead closed the door behind him and flipped the deadbolt.

He looked steadily at me and said one word: "Genesis."

"Hello, Frank."

"I need to apologize to you. I said things, in heat, which I should not have said. Whatever difficulties or walls now exist between us, I had no right to speak as I did, and I crave your forgiveness." He was back to the cold of the glacier.

I stared at him for several seconds. Finally I said, "Frank, I really don't want your apology for being angry. What I want is you."

"Genesis, you have as much of me as you can have, now."

"But that's just your name, and your house, and the ... privilege ... of cooking meals that you are often not here to eat."

"That is more than you merit, Genesis. I have the right, you know, to divorce you. Neither the court nor the church could hold me blameless for divorcing you as an adulteress."

"I know what I am, Frank. But I'm not sure that you know."

He raised an eyebrow. "You are a woman who has betrayed two men – her husband, and her husband's friend."

"Bill was my friend too, you know."

He acknowledged that with a dip of his head. "So there are three betrayals, then."

"Yes, yes, I know I betrayed you and Bill. You don't have to remind me." The note of asperity in my voice was welcome – it wasn't deadness. "But I am a repentant adulteress, Frank, and I don't think you understand that."

"Ah, yes – you have promised never to commit adultery again." He looked at me with what appeared to be perfect serenity. "But I remember another promise you made, when you wore a white dress and I put a ring on your finger. And that promise you broke."

I stood abruptly. "Frank, you are a wicked beast. I think I hate you." And I whirled and strode down the hall to the bedroom. And I halted there, just inside the door. I couldn't get into bed – I hadn't slept in that bed since the day of my confession. I snarled, an ugly sound that came to my ears as if from a distance, and snatched my blanket and pillow from the chair where I'd thrown them that morning. I returned to the living room, where Frank was standing by the sofa, looking as far as I could tell at nothing.

"Mr. Carter," I said, trying to copy his cold formality, "I believe I will go to bed now. I hope you will allow me to sleep."

"By all means, Genesis," he said, with the true ice in his voice and manner. "I'll read in the bedroom for a while before I turn in, should you need me for anything."

I flung the pillow and blanket down on the sofa. "When I need you," I said harshly, "I think we'd better notify the networks. You certainly don't need me, and I'm beginning to wonder if I ever needed you."

He raised an eyebrow again, and went into the bedroom without another word. I numbly fixed my makeshift bed on the sofa, and turned off the lights, and laid down. And then the floodgates opened, and I wept until, exhausted, I finally fell asleep.

After that, I left Frank alone all winter. I just couldn't muster the energy to try to get some sort of reaction from him. And the one time I had gotten a reaction, it had just been worse for me afterwards. I sank into apathy, and the whole winter passed by unseen. I don't think I left the house once from October to February, not even to go out to the back yard. I kept house, and I fixed Frank's meals and washed his clothes, and that was about it. He by force of necessity took over the shopping, for I was incapable even of doing that. He did it without a word of complaint, and without a word of inquiry into my condition either.

It was the last day of February when I finally left the house. That morning Frank had gone off to work as usual – he'd found a job managing some sort of fast food restaurant – and I was standing in the living room. It had come to where I'd find myself in a room with no idea how I'd gotten there, or why I was there, and this was one of those times. I looked around, and saw that I was keeping a reasonably neat house at least. And it occurred to me to wonder what I looked like.

I supposed I'd used mirrors during those months, but I couldn't remember it. I supposed I'd showered, but I couldn't think when. I was running on automatic pilot in those days, and I was paying less and less attention to where the pilot was taking me.

I went into the bathroom and looked into the mirror over the sink. I was not a pretty sight. My red curls were stringy and looked like I hadn't washed them in a week. My face was pale and gaunt, and except for the fact that I had no makeup on looked like it belonged to one of the worn-out prostitutes on Central Avenue. I opened my robe, but with my nightgown on I couldn't tell a thing about the rest of me.

There was a mirror over the dresser in the bedroom. It wasn't full length either, but it was big enough that by standing back I could get a better view of myself. I went into the bedroom, and stood in front of that mirror, and undressed. And looking at myself I felt disgust. "Of course he doesn't want you," I said, thinking aloud as I'd taken to doing when Frank wasn't home. "I don't want you." I was saggy and droopy and I could have played a part in a movie about a concentration camp. I wasn't, yet, that absolutely bone thin, but I looked starved.

And I might as well. I realized that I had hardly eaten anything yesterday, and hadn't eaten anything yet today, and I'd been eating very little for months past. I had no appetite, and what was the point anyway. My husband had rejected me. There were divorced couples who cared more for each other than Frank cared for me, and I wondered dully if I still cared for him. "I don't care about anything, really," I said into the dead stillness of the house.

There wasn't even an echo.

I picked up my robe and nightgown from the bed and put them away, and walked across the hall and into the bathroom. I got a long hot shower, making sure to shampoo my hair. I had to have been taking showers, but I felt so clean when I got out of this one that I wondered how carefully I'd been taking them. "Maybe I've just been getting in and getting clean and getting out," I said to the walls. I dried off and dried my hair, and used the blow dryer and brush to shape my hair into something resembling the curly mass that it had been before my confession. I hadn't gotten it cut in all these months – it was eight months now, I realized with shock. I'd lost track of time.

I hadn't realized my hair was so long either. I'd always kept it around shoulder length, sometimes a little shorter, sometimes a little longer, but around that length. But now it was well past my shoulder blades, when it was fully dry and showing something like the body it had had before my confession. "At least that's not completely ugly," I told myself.

I unplugged the blow dryer and set the brush down, and walked back across the hall into the bedroom. I put on clean underwear, and found a white shirt with small black shiny buttons, some sort of plastic that imitated onyx. I put that on, and a pair of jeans with legs that remained narrow all the way down to my ankles. I found a pair of socks, and pulled them on, and a pair of black low heeled boots that I wore outside my jeans. I found my long black wool coat in the closet, and put that on.

I had a moment of panic when I couldn't find my purse. I hadn't been out in so long I had no idea where I'd put it. Finally I did locate it, on the closet shelf, where it was behind a box of photo albums. I made a mental note of that box, I didn't know why, perhaps because I couldn't think why my purse was behind it, and took the purse into the living room. Going through it, I found the keys to the house and to my car, and my pocketbook. I looked through the pocketbook. I had a couple of credit cards, which as far as I knew were still good. Pastoring had never been a high income occupation for Frank, not even at Gilead which had paid well for a church, and he was making about as much running his "store" as he had running the church. But I certainly hadn't been using the cards, so any balance that had been on them ought to be smaller than it had been.

I found my checkbook, with the last check – the last entry in the register, for that matter – being back in June ... the day before my confession, I realized. Frank must have been keeping records in his checkbook, without consulting me, not that I would have known how to respond if he had. I had no idea how much we had in the bank, and I put the checkbook back. The debit card was still there, and on impulse I took it out and put it in my coat pocket. I didn't know why I did that – a debit card takes money out of a checking account just as a check does.

And I found some cash. I counted it – nearly $50 in bills. There was some change there, too, and I transferred that to my jeans pocket, and wrapped the bills around the debit card and tucked the bundle into the inside pocket of my coat. I dithered for a moment, and then left the purse on the coffee table, the pocketbook beside it.

At the door I found that I had to force myself to turn the knob. I'd never been agoraphobic, but the months of isolation, fueled by a desire to hide away from the world, had brought me to something very like a fear of going outside. Finally I got the door open, and stepped out onto the front step. I took a breath of fresh air, and pulled the door closed behind me. I turned around to lock it, and then turned again, just looking at the world around me. It was the first time since October that I'd seen things without looking through a pane of glass.

I didn't know the neighborhood. Woodland Avenue made a T intersection with Elizabeth just a couple of doors to the north, so I walked slowly that way, and followed Woodland to Morris. I turned south on Morris, and then crossed Morris and followed Menaul east. At first I had to force myself to walk, to move out of the circle that I could see through the living room window and thus "knew," into areas that I didn't know and was afraid of. But as I walked on I became calmer, more like I had been before my adultery. And by the time I came to the intersection of Menaul and Juan Tabo I felt almost like my old self – almost. I couldn't walk away from the fact that I had betrayed my husband, or that he no longer desired or loved me, or that I was in fact totally undesirable.

There was a Subway at that intersection, and a Denny's right on the corner. I went into the Denny's, and since it was morning ordered breakfast. I ate mechanically, without noticing what I ate, and finished it all – more than I'd eaten at one time since ... I couldn't remember when. I paid the check, and put my money back in my pocket.