Chapter 25

"You love me?" Max asked, her voice like a wounded little girl's. "After this, you still love me?"

"We didn't actually say 'for better or for worse, ' Max, but we might as well have. I promised to love you, and that was easy, because I already loved you when I said it. And I'm not going back on my word."

She looked intently at me, as though trying to read my mind by the look of my face. "It's not just an obligation, is it?"

"No. It is an obligation, yes – I gave my word, and I intend to keep my word. But it's more than an obligation. It's a privilege to love you. It's an honor. I won't deny that this has hurt me badly. You're crying now, and I'm not, but before this is completely behind us I'll have cried rivers. I don't know exactly how I feel right now – hurt, and anger, and disbelief, and I'm not sure what else, are all jammed up inside me fighting to see which will get out first. But the reason I'm in this state is that I love you. If I didn't, what you've said wouldn't bother me."

"I don't know how you can love me."

"Max, if I'd done the same thing, would you still love me?" It could have been a cruel question, and I kept my voice as gentle as I could to mitigate that.

She shook her head, not in negation but in the baffled way of someone who doesn't know what to do or say. "I don't know, Derek. Maybe I'll never know unless I'm in that position."

"Okay, that's fair. I won't press you. But I think I know the answer." I reached out and gathered her to me, pulling her against me, pulling her head against my shoulder. "I'm confident that you would love me, even after that."

"I hope so, beloved. I really hope I would." Hearing that word in Max's voice sent a thrill through me, and I kissed her hair very gently.

"You would, Max. And I love you, even after this. You were right – the reasons you did it were reasons, not excuses. But to a small extent, I can understand the reasons. I've done enough reading to know that severe stress leads people to ... oh, I don't know, perpetuate the species, I guess. I've read of German civilians in the last days of World War II, in their bombed out cities, lying down in the rubble in plain view, the urge was so strong. I don't approve of what you did, sweetheart," I said, as tears begin rolling down my face and dropping on her hair, "but I can, I think, understand it a little bit. And if anything, that makes me love you more. And the fact that it bothers you so much that I noticed something was wrong makes me love you even more. It proves you're a good, loving, Christian woman, committed to your God and to your husband. How can I not love you, Max?"

She moved against the pressure of my hand, and I relaxed and let her raise her head. She looked up at me, and then reached up to brush tears from my cheek. "That makes sense. But I don't feel it. I feel like a horrible sinner, I feel like I'm unworthy of your love and God's love..."

"You are unworthy, Max. But so am I. And so is everyone else. And I do love you. And God loves you." In the back of my mind I realized I was using the word and more often than I usually do, but my education could take a rest for the moment. "My love isn't something you earned by being good, and so it's not something you can forfeit by falling down once. No, you're not going to feel like it, but I do love you – no matter what."

"Would you love me even if I left you?"

"I ought to give you a rhetorical answer," I said, able to actually smile a little at the feeble joke. "Of course I would, but you never will. You love me too, after all."

"It's true..."

I changed the subject. "I'd help you unpack, but I don't know where this stuff goes."

She looked at her suitcase, with its disordered jumble of garments, and the pile of clothing that I'd put on the bed at the beginning of the discussion. "I know where they go, and besides, there are some things there that men don't need to deal with."

I smiled again, a little more strongly. "We are married, you know."

And now Max smiled, very weakly, but even so the most genuine smile, I thought, since she'd returned from Iraq. "We are, and in the darkness at certain moments you may deal with whatever you care to. But it's daylight, and it's not one of those moments, so get out of here while I put things back where they belong."

I got out.

Sitting on the sofa while Max put her clothes back and, judging from what I heard, cried now and then, I considered our situation. What I'd told her was true – I did love her, in spite of what she'd done. I loved her, no matter what. That was the truth.

Something else I'd told her was also true. The worst pain a man could feel – at least, the worst pain I'd ever felt – was a blow to the groin. And emotionally the news of her adultery had hit me the same way. I was now getting my emotions sorted out, and I was very angry, very hurt, and ready to cry and rage simultaneously. Now that the need for discipline and control in the discussion with Max was gone, I found myself sobbing brokenly, and in the midst of the sobs I heard my cracked voice asking "Why? Why? Why?" I dimly realized that my fist was beating on the coffee table.

And suddenly something caught my fist, and then arms were around me, and Max was saying in my ear, "It's okay, beloved. It's okay."

But it wasn't okay. I calmed down as she held me, hearing her crying on my shoulder and knowing that my pain was part of what had caused hers. But being calmer, and being well, aren't the same. I was not well. I had sustained a horrific blow, and it would be a good while before I recovered.

"It's okay," Max said in my ear.

I didn't argue. Finally, when I was able to speak coherently, I said, "Yes." It could have meant anything or nothing, but it seemed to satisfy Max.

She pulled away a little bit, looking at me. "Derek," she said, "if you want me to, I'll sleep on the sofa tonight, and every night as long as you want."

It was tempting. To go where someone else had gone before me ... But if I let my thoughts go down that road, I'd go insane. It had happened, and I couldn't change it, so I had to deal with now and in the future. And now was when I'd told Max I still loved her. So I said, "No, babe, you're my wife and you'll sleep like it."

"Are you sure?"

I decided to be completely honest. "I'm as sure as I can be, but please, don't tempt me to change my mind."

She looked into my eyes. "Okay, beloved, I'll accept your answer as it stands." She brushed a finger across my lips. "May I kiss you?"

For answer I gathered her to me, and kissed her – tentatively, almost as though it were our first kiss, but refusing to let one night in Iraq come between us at that moment.

Recovering from a spouse's adultery, I found, isn't a five-minute exercise. At odd moments the pain would rear up inside me, and almost tear me apart. I'd be elbow deep in an engine, and suddenly I'd be unable to see what I was doing, or think of it, and I'd have to walk off and compose myself. I'd be sitting on the sofa with a book, and suddenly the pages would blur and tears would drop on the paper. Sometimes at night I'd reach for Max, and the memory would rise up and suddenly I'd be as cold and dead as a corpse.

It was those moments that hurt her the most, I think. She knew what caused them, and whenever they happened she would cry bitterly. "It's my fault!" she wailed once, when it had happened and nothing either of us could do would revive me.

"Max, it's not a question of whose fault it is," I told her.

"But it is my fault, even if we don't talk about it."

"Okay, it's your fault," I said. I could have said it wasn't, but if we ever needed honesty it was now. "All right, that's the fact, and we'll live with it. Now let's move on."

"Move on how?" she asked. She'd given up her attempts, and now lay limply, her head pillowed on my chest and her hand gently moving up and down my arm.

"There's more to marriage than that," I told her. "I love just lying here with you, for instance. Touching your skin is a joy all by itself." I placed my palm against her back, below her shoulder blades – it was a joy to touch her skin. "I love looking at you, I love hearing your voice, I love being with you. Max, whatever difficulties we have with this one thing, that's one small part of our marriage, and it'll solve itself. Meanwhile we have so much more."

"How will it solve itself?"

I'd had plenty of time to think about that, since I was the one the problem affected. "As time goes by, the memory will lose its sharpness. Or the knowledge – the memory is what you live with, I guess." She nodded, and in the faint light through the bedroom window I could see tears glistening on her face. "As time goes on it'll hit me with less and less force. And it only does this to me occasionally anyway, so it's not like we've lost an entire area of our life together. Anyway, the day will come when it happens for the last time, and a few years later we'll be able to look back and realize that."

"How can you be so philosophical about it, beloved?"

I shrugged, the motion moving Max's blonde head. I ran my fingertips up and down her spine. "It's either that, or leave you – and I won't leave you."

"And then there's what I did to God," Max said, changing the subject.

"There's what we've all done to God," I told her. "I haven't been a Christian as long as you have, but I know that much. None of us deserve His love."

"I feel like the prodigal son..."