James Grippando - The Pardon

Gina glanced at the clay pot on the porch that hid her extra key-a spare only a few people knew about. The pot had been moved.

Before Gina could back away, the door slammed shut, pushing her back and spilling the contents of her purse onto the porch.

Panic gripped the two women as they grabbed for each other. When they heard the chain coming off the door, they screamed in unison as they raced down the stairs. Gina led the way, kicking off her shoes and negotiating the steps like a steeplechase racer. Cindy’s left heel caught on the bottom step, and she tumbled to the sidewalk.

“Gina, help!” she cried, sprawled out on her hands and knees. But her friend never looked back.

“Gina!”

“Hey!” Jack shouted as the door flew open at the top of the steps. “Hey! It’s me!”

Gina kept running, but Cindy stopped and looked up from the foot of the stairs. “Jack?” she called out as she picked herself up from the sidewalk.

Jack waved from the top of the stairs. “It’s okay. It’s just me.”

“You son of a bitch!” Gina shouted on her way back from the parking lot. “What the hell are you doing here?”

Good question, thought Jack. Back at the bar, he’d yielded to Mike’s urging and switched from beers to Bahama Mamas. And in no time flat he was feeling the effects of the grain alcohol. He rarely drank hard liquor, so when he did, it went straight to his head. Rather than kill someone trying to drive all the way home, he’d stopped at Gina’s, hoping to find Cindy.

“I don’t know what I’m doing here,” he said with a shrug, speaking to himself more than anyone else. Then he looked at Cindy. “Sorry, guess I had a little too much to drink. I just wanted to talk to you, find out what was going on with us.”

“Jack,” Cindy sighed, “this is not the place-”

“I just want to talk, Cindy. You owe me at least that.” As he spoke he wobbled slightly and used the railing to regain his balance.

Cindy struggled. Seeing Jack made her regret the way she’d handled their problem. “I’m not sure I can talk-at least tonight. I honestly haven’t made up my-”

“Her mind is made up,” Gina contradicted. “Forget it, Jack. She’s leaving you. Like it or not, she’s a better person without you. Just let her go.”

Cindy shot an exasperated book at her friend.

Jack was suddenly embarrassed by the spectacle he was making of himself.

“Just forget it,” he said as he shook his head and then started down the stairs.

Cindy hesitated a moment, then moved to stop him. “No, you’re right, we do need to talk. Let me get my car keys. We can talk at home.”

He looked back at Gina, then turned to Cindy. “You’re sure?”

She gave a quick nod, avoiding his eyes. “Go ahead, get in your car. I’ll follow.”

There is no line more palpable than the one that runs down the middle of the bed. The room may be dark. The eyes may be shut. But it is there, silent testament to the deep division that can separate a couple.

The line between Jack and Cindy began to emerge as they drove from Gina’s in separate cars, parked in their driveway, and headed into the house single file. It became more pronounced as they undressed in silence, and by the time they tucked themselves into their respective corners of the king-size mattress, it was the Berlin Wall born again. Jack knew they had to talk, but after a night of drinking, he was afraid of what he might say. He played it safe. He flipped off the light, mumbled a clipped “night,” and pretended to be asleep, though it was actually hours before his troubled mind finally let his body rest.

Cindy didn’t try to keep him up, but she couldn’t fall asleep either. She was thinking of how he’d asked her to move in with him, almost ten months ago. He’d covered her eyes with his hands and led her to his bedroom, and when he took his hands away she saw little yellow ribbons tied to the handles on half the dresser drawers, marking the empty ones. “Those are yours,” he’d told her. Now, lying in their bed, she closed her eyes and thought of yellow ribbons-ribbons and lace and streamers. As her thoughts melted into sleep, the last waking image was of a room decorated for a party. A lavish party with hundreds of guests. Instinctively, she knew that it was important Jack be there, but when she looked for him, when she called out his name, no one answered.

“Jack,” she whispered barely three hours later as the heat from the morning sun warmed her forehead. The sound of her own voice speaking in a dream woke her, and she rolled over onto her side. “Jack,” she said, nudging his shoulder. “We need to talk.”

“Huh?” Jack rubbed his eyes and turned to face her. He stole a look at the alarm clock and saw that it was just 7:00 A.M.

“Be back in a second,” he said as he slid to the side of the bed, stood up, then sat right back down. “Whoa,” he groaned, feeling the first throb of a hangover so massive that had someone suggested amputation as the only cure, he might have considered it. He sighed, resigning himself to remaining seated. “Listen,” he said as he glanced over his shoulder at Cindy, “I’m sorry about last night, okay?”

Cindy sat up, then hesitated, deciding whether to cross the line between them. It was strange, but after ten months of living with him, she suddenly felt uncomfortable about Jack, sitting there in his striped underwear, and about herself, wearing only an oversized T-shirt.

“I’m sorry too,” she said as she slid tentatively across the bed. She sat on the edge, beside him, though she kept her distance. “But it’s not enough just to exchange apologies. We need to talk. I’ve been giving this a lot of thought.”

“Giving what a lot of thought?”

She grimaced. “I’ve been offered a photo shoot for the Italian Trade Consulate. In Italy.”

He smiled, relieved it was good news. “That’s fantastic, absolutely terrific,” he said as he reached out and squeezed her hand. “That’s the kind of thing you’ve always dreamed about. Why didn’t you tell me before?”

“Because I’d have to leave right away-and it’ll take me away for three or four months.”

He shrugged it off. “We can survive that.”

“That’s just it,” she said, averting her eyes. “I’m not so sure we can.”

“What do you mean?” he asked, his smile fading.

She sighed. “What I mean is, we have problems, Jack. And the problem isn’t really us. It’s something inside you that for some reason you just won’t share.”

He looked away. She was right. The problem was inside him.

“We’ve been over this before,” he said. “I mope-get in these lousy moods. A lot of it’s work-the job I do” He thought for a second of telling her he’d quit the Freedom Institute, but decided that being jobless wouldn’t help his case. “But I’m dealing with it.”

“There’s just something that makes you unable or unwilling to communicate and expose yourself emotionally. I can’t just dismiss it. As long as we’ve been together, you’ve been completely incapable of reaching out to your own father and solving whatever it is that keeps you two apart. It worries me that you handle relationship problems that way. It worries me so much that I took the Goss trial as an opportunity to get away from you for a few days. To think about us. . whether we have a future. I honestly wasn’t sure how I was going to leave it. Whether I’d say, ‘Let’s just go our separate ways’ or ‘I still love you, I’ll phone and write and see you when I get back from Europe.’ “

“And you were going to make that decision by yourself?” he asked, now somewhat annoyed. “I was just supposed to go along with whatever you announced?”