Tenn and Lark

Chapter 18: Free Time

After I watched Tenn banish my family and make sure they drove away, I headed up to my room. A few minutes later, Tenn knocked softly on my closed door.

"Lark?" he called. "Can I come in?"

"Sure," I said.

Tenn came in and sat beside me on the bed. He didn't say anything, just sat beside me quietly and for some reason, that made me start crying. When my tears slowed and then stopped, I found myself feeling adrift.

"I've never felt this alone in my whole life."

"You don't believe me, and rightfully so when I let you down so badly, but I'm here."

"It's hard to believe someone who broke your heart."

"I'm here. I'm not going anywhere."

"You don't know how badly I want to believe that, Tenn. But every time you say something like that, my mind says yeah, you're here...until the next woman comes along."

He didn't say anything to that, which surprised me.

"What?" he asked when he saw my look.

"Should I take your silence to mean you agree that another woman will come along?"

His eyes were filled with sorrow.

Probably like mine were.

Trying to save a marriage wasn't for the weak of heart. It was hard work. It was painful. It was planting your feet and standing your ground when you often wanted to turn and run away. It was putting a stake in the ground and saying our love is worth this salvage attempt.

But it was hard.

Heartbreaking in a different way than calling it quits would have been.

"No, my silence is not agreement at all," Tenn was saying. "But I think you've had enough of my words because, as you've said, they're just words. And only time will show you that I'm here to stay. That I'm never going to betray you again."

"I feel like I've lost you and my family, as if the only ones I have left in my life are Leona and Janie."

Tenn put his hand on my thigh, palm up. It was an old thing between us. Whichever one of us was in the wrong after a fight would put our hand on the other person's thigh, palm up. The other person had the option to take ahold of the other person's hand...or not. It was somewhere between I love you and I forgive you and I still think you're an idiot but I'm feeling generous so I might not kill you.

"You have me, Lark."

Tenn had once told me that waiting for me to take his hand killed him. That he counted the seconds, each one feeling like an eternity, until he felt my hand slide over his and he could breathe again.

"Tenn, I'm trying," I said to him, my throat feeling so thick that my voice was husky. "But I just can't tonight." 

So I stood up, dislodging his hand from my thigh, and he stood up, too, the look in his eye pained, his face calm and understanding. 

I read once that in the Raiders of the Lost Ark movie, they used a glass barrier to separate the snakes from Indiana Jones in the famous snake pit scene. Looking at Tenn, I had the sensation that we were also separated by an invisible barrier -- his infidelity -- but I didn't know how to break it down, to let him get to me. I was at a complete loss as to how to get past the barrier between us. How to forgive, rebuild, move forward.

"I understand," Tenn responded, and he hesitated, wanting to say more, to perhaps plead his case again, but in the end he kept his words inside and didn't say anything more except to wish me a good night and to say I love you, Lark.