Promise (5)

The Lie

by Adriana Carcu

"Who is this woman?"

"What woman?"

"Don't pretend that you don't know whom I am talking about."

He was just falling asleep thinking of Dido when Penelope's question rang into his ear.  He gave a start scared by her intuitions.   After he had met Dido in the gym he could retrace last night's events but still wasn't able to give them an explanation.  Maybe that's why he ignored her.  He didn't know what to say to her. He didn't want to excuse himself because deep down he knew there was nothing to excuse there.  She has looked at him for one second and left the room.  She is strange.  That woman would never come up to him of her own will. She had to be forced, and still he started realizing that not force was the language she responded to.  What was it then?

Penelope sat up in bed and was looking at him in the dark. "Dido, the woman you were talking about on the phone with Paul."

"That's a work colleague of us. Dido. I am thinking about using her for building up a football team.  She's good with organizing things."

Yes, he was good at that.  She liked that about him.  He had a talent with people and he knew how to get the best out of every situation.  Even if he wasn't home a lot, she could be always sure that he would use every opportunity for their benefit, hers and the girls'. She remembered the other day when they met this big guy with the beautiful blue eyes. When she found out that the guy was a gardener all she had to do was whisper to him that she wanted flowers for her garden and he arranged right away with the guy to bring along the plants he wasn't selling. Today she found again chrysanthemums in the back yard.  She liked the way they looked in the wooden box on the garden table and she wished that she had been at home when the tall guy with blue eyes had put them there.  He had the most beautiful eyes she had ever seen.

"So, you want to start another team now?  What will that bring you?"

"It will help to consolidate my position in the company"

"You must know."

He always knew what was best for all four of them. She didn't need to worry about that.  Now when she looked back, things had come out pretty well.  At the beginning, when they first met at the football club, she was so smitten that all she knew was that she wanted this man by any means.  He saw him looking at her fake Rolex and she saw the way his eyes were shining when she said that she was living in a house with a tower.  He saw a castle and she let him see it.  Later on he would joke saying he had married her because he thought she was rich. She liked the way the wind was playing with her hair, diving full speed in his convertible car and shouting along "And she said she was pretending!" When he heard that she was pregnant it didn't take him long to make up his mind. The fear of begetting bastards inherited from his father had helped there.  Now they were married for ten years, she was home taking care of the children and he was out and about providing for them. He sure knew what was best. She knew him well enough by now.  He wasn't the kind of guy who talked much; he would be silent for days, withdrawn in his own thoughts; he would go away for days, he would spend the evenings in the pub, but she knew that he would always come back to her and the girls.  They were his anchor.  His family. She liked the way he put his arms around them each Sunday in the church after the service, when the priestess gave her blessings.  And yet, she knew that she couldn't have him for herself alone. She was not enough.  She couldn't make him happy.  This certitude had become painfully clear in the evening when she gave birth to Anna.  After the birth he called her and sang drunkenly "Wonderful Tonight" to her together with his friend Thomas, and she only got to see him three days later, when he picked them up.  The husband of the woman she was sharing the room with had spent the whole night sleeping with his head on the bed.  This how she wanted him but she knew that he will never be like that.

When he said that woman's name there was something in his voice she hadn't heard before. It was sadness.  It was as if he didn't want to share that name with anyone out of fear that just pronouncing it would change the order of things. 

"I found a silver bracelet on your desk."

"So?"

"How did it get there?"

"Did you ask the girls?"

"C'mon, the girls never wore a thing like that."

With the eyes wide open in the dark the man said: "I don't know how it got there."