Truth, by Omission Read online

  “I have to go pee,” she said, jumping up. “Sorry, I should have gone as soon as we got here. I’m bursting.” And she left for the bathroom.

  Something about the intimacy of that sudden announcement made her even more attractive to me, and I realized that I was in the midst of totally abandoning my defenses. Primal feelings began to mix with my anxiety. But not primal feelings of lust. Primal feelings of wanting to love someone, of just giving in and being totally in the presence of someone. I closed my eyes, enjoying this warm feeling that was swooning over me, and rested back into the couch. I heard Anna come back but I didn’t want to open my eyes in case I was wrong about everything and in case this wonderful feeling left me. I wanted to savor it as long as possible.

  I felt a glass on my lips, tipping gently for me to sip. Taking it from her I opened my eyes as she sat back down.

  “What are you thinking, Freddie?”

  Still not sure about giving up my complete guard, I replied with another question. “What are you thinking, Anna?”

  “I’m thinking … I’m hoping that you aren’t mad at me. I hope you’re feeling a little bit the way I’m feeling.”

  “And how are you feeling?”

  “I’m feeling like I’ve fallen in love with you, and you are too stupid, or maybe too busy, to have noticed. Or, maybe you have noticed and you’re just not interested.”

  This was just one example, among many, that endeared Anna to me at that moment and over all our subsequent years together—her forthrightness.

  “Stupid and busy,” I said. “Very stupid … and a little bit busy. Not very good excuses, I guess.”

  “And what do you think?” she asked.

  I had no clue what to answer. I didn’t know exactly what she was asking. I wasn’t sure if she was asking what I thought about her falling in love with me, or what I thought about me being stupid. So, I lamely sought clarification. “What do I think?”

  “Should I have told you this? Should I have brought you here this weekend … alone like this?”

  “I’d like to learn to ski,” I said. At which she closed her eyes and put her hands over her face. Sensing she was about to cry, I instantly wished I could have taken that back. It was clearly the wrong time to have tried to be humorous. I set my glass on the side table, swung a leg over, straddling her lap, pried her hands from her face and kissed her on the lips. More than on the lips, we kissed passionately, neither of us letting it come to an end for the longest time. Even then, it was only to push her back fully on the couch and lay on top of her where I could feel the full length of her body against mine.

  I never did learn to ski until several years later when we moved to Colorado. We didn’t even get to the hill that weekend. In fact, we only made two trips outside the cabin, both for more wine. We used every piece of firewood that they had left us, weren’t out of the bed long enough to ever bother making it, and brought home most of the food that we had taken up with us.

  This was far from the first time I had been with a woman, but this was the first time I understood what was meant by making love with someone. No one had to tell us we were making love, we knew it. We knew it was different than what either of us had ever experienced before. The fullness of me enraptured with every inch of her creamy white body and her fascination with the entirety of my muscular ebony frame simply fueled more admiration for each other. We made no verbal pledges at all, but we both somehow knew we were now committed to each other—it was a given, an unspoken dedication.

  That was the beginning of us—us together. Many times over the years we’ve laughed and joked about that first weekend together. I tease her about deceiving and trapping me, and she claims I was just so blind that I missed all the hints she had been dropping for weeks. It’s one of our go-to stories when we are at parties. And it’s one of my go-to memories whenever I am away from her for any length of time. We celebrate this weekend in March as our anniversary, since it has more meaning for both of us than our formal wedding date, which wasn’t actually all that formal.

  * * *

  With Anna lying here beside me, now, seventeen years after that first blissful weekend together in Le Mont-Dore, her peaceful, slight smile is finally showing signs of returning. Her face is softening as she sleeps. I haven’t seen this from her in months. Perhaps tonight is a turning point—for both of us. I certainly hope it is. I know things will never be the same, that our lives are now headed in a much different direction than they were a month ago, before we buried our sweet baby. Watching Anna sleep, I resolve to do my part in helping us move through this horrible chapter in our life.

  Later this morning, when I go into work, I’ll start to clear my schedule for January. I’ll talk to Mark, Brie, and Luis, my partners in the clinical practice that we share. They’ll understand. They’ve been urging me to take some time off. I suppose they’ve noticed the changes in me since Steph passed, all the little things that I hadn’t noticed in myself, all the things that others had probably also noticed. Anna has certainly had to put up with changes in me. Maybe I’m past that now. Tonight was a good start. I feel refreshed, rejuvenated, ready to move on. I’ll let Anna make the plans and reservations for our vacation. She’ll enjoy searching all the options and then surprising me with a booking. It doesn’t matter to me where we go. Anna needs a good break as much as I do, and we both need the time together to reconnect and recharge.

  But as the hours pass and sleep eludes me, the feeling of rejuvenation slips away. Glancing at the clock again, it’s 3:00, and I’m now wishing desperately for some sleep. I need at least a few hours before going to the clinic, knowing that without it I won’t be able to function well. I’m having one of those nights where the harder I try to fall asleep the more awake I feel; the more I try to relax and empty my mind, the more it fills up and flits from one thought to another. I roll my head to the side and see Anna still soundly asleep, the peaceful smile of old still resting on her serene countenance. Cautious not to wake her, I roll on my side and prop myself up on my elbow, affording a better view. The moon, slightly lower now, lays a pale-yellow glow across her nakedness. I am tempted to lean over and touch my lips to her body, stroke her back to arousal and make love again. But I know how much she needs this rest, depleted after months of care and worry for Stephanie, so I content myself with just looking.

  I watch her for a few minutes longer and then lay back down, looking up at the ceiling, staring at nothing in particular, wishing for sleep. Bored with this I glance around the room. Elongated shadows cast by the moonlight accentuate every article in the room, the bed plush with a deep mattress, the recliner chair I use for quiet reading, Anna’s vanity, her jewelry box, the television affixed into a custom wall unit, the overpriced print hanging above the bed. All of these things, and this is just our bedroom. Beyond the door there are three full bathrooms, Steph’s room, a spare bedroom, the living room lavish with furniture we never even sit in, the den with the large screen television and custom sound system, my office lined with shelves filled with books, Anna’s office furnished the same, a playroom, and a gym in the basement, two vehicles in the garage. All of this stuff, accumulated over the years. And to what end?

  When Anna and I left Paris sixteen years ago we had two suitcases each, having given away all of our limited possessions that wouldn’t fit in the airline baggage allotment. And for the year and a half before that we’d lived like so many other students, never missing what we didn’t have, optimistic that life would provide whatever we needed, and sustained by the exuberance of youthful love.

  Us, France

  The drive back from Le Mont-Dore after our first weekend together in the ski chalet was bittersweet, neither of us wanting the fairy tale to end but both of us excited to see where this uncertain new relationship might take us. We were careful as we tested the tentative limits of what we had started, both tiptoeing, trying not to overstep our boundaries. I was conce
rned about what the others would think if we were to let them know that we had spent the weekend together, but Anna couldn’t care less about it. I also fretted about what they all might think of Anna and me being in some sort of relationship. Typically, I overthought everything, and Anna was her carefree self, not worrying ahead of time about things that didn’t need excess energy wasted on them. This has remained one of my faults that I can’t seem to correct, while Anna’s carefree spirit continues to be one of those qualities that just endears her to me all the more.

  On the drive home I raised one of my worries. “What do you think I should tell François?”

  “About what?”

  “About us, the weekend alone.” It was obvious to me.

  “We’ll tell him we had a great time alone together.” That seemed pretty obvious to her.

  “What about the rest of the gang?”

  “Same thing. We had a great time alone together,” she said, looking straight ahead at the road.

  She didn’t seem to understand how much more complicated everything really was. The dynamics of my relationship with François would surely change, and the whole dynamic of the group could also change. I was worried about whether they would even accept us as a couple and whether we could still count on their friendships.

  “It’s not that simple, Anna.”

  She slowed down the car a bit so that she could glance at me while she drove and talked. “Alfred, they all knew we were going away for the weekend. And they all know how I feel about you. You’re the only one who seemed not to understand.”

  This was definitely news to me. “What do you mean they all know? François doesn’t know. He’d have told me something.”

  “François knows. He’s the one who came up with the idea of us going away for the weekend,” she said.

  “No! I guess I’m pretty thick.”

  “Yes, you are.” She smiled. “Everyone knows. So, we might as well just get it all out in the open as soon as we can. As soon as we see them we’ll tell them we had a fantastic time, we got along great and fucked our brains out all weekend.”

  Not exactly the way I would have put it, but just a bit more of Anna’s charming American forthrightness.

  A little while later, after several miles of silence between us, Anna raised another topic. “Freddie, I’d like to tell my parents about you. But I’m not sure what to say.”

  “Why not just tell them that we’re getting along great, having a fantastic time, and fucking our brains out?”

  We both laughed at this as she eased on the brake again. And then we just contagiously laughed at each other, laughing until tears streamed from us both.

  Once we got over our hysterics I ventured to ask, “Will they have a problem with me being black?”

  “God, no,” she replied quickly. “That won’t be an issue.”

  And it wasn’t. Just like the whole thing of Anna and me hooking up wasn’t an issue to François or any of our friends. There were a few practical things that might have been concerns but no one ever made a big deal of them, like François having to put up with Anna’s and my lovemaking every time she stayed over at our place, especially when it quickly morphed from pure lovemaking into sexual antics. And then there were times when we just wanted to be alone and some of the others couldn’t get their heads around that. But it all worked out fine, once again confirming Anna to be right in not wasting time worrying about needless things.

  Anna proved to be unbelievably patient and considerate in not prying into those areas of my past in Africa that I had shied away from. Then one night not too long after our trip to Le Mont-Dore, we were lying in her bed facing each other, existing in that zone of pleasure right after having made love, when she reached up and traced the scar on my face, from my hairline right down through my eyebrow to the side of my jaw.

  “Is there a story with this?”

  I was embarrassed by this permanent record of my past, ashamed of it. I tried to ignore it, but it faced me every time I looked in a mirror. I had pretended that Anna somehow hadn’t noticed. But of course, she had seen it. It glared out at everyone who looked at me. She just had been considerate enough to have never brought it up until today. But why shouldn’t she ask now? We had shared so many things already—personal things, family things, aspirations.

  “A machete,” I said. “We all used them in my village from the time we were very young.” This was true, just not quite the whole truth. I hoped it would suffice. And it did, sort of, until she gently rolled me onto my stomach and began to trace the patchwork of scars on my back.

  “What about these? These aren’t from a machete.”

  “No, no, they’re not. Those are proof that there is still a lot of work to be done in Africa.”

  She continued in silence, softly tracing the scars with her finger. Again, I had not lied to her, just avoided part of the truth. I hoped that this answer would suffice because I had begun to weep into my pillow. I attempted to stifle my tears as the shame made me tense and the weeping turned to sobs. I was ashamed at what those scars really said about me, ashamed at the person I really was, ashamed that I couldn’t tell Anna the whole truth, ashamed that I was lying there crying in front of her.

  Anna pulled on me to turn me onto my back. I rolled over but brought the pillow around with me to keep it over my face, shielding my shame from her. She took the pillow and pulled it away, and I cried, cried like a baby, uncontrollably. She wrapped me in her arms, and I knew she was crying too. I just let her cradle me like an infant, let her mother me to sleep.

  Anna never asked me again about my scars. She often traces them softly when we lay together but she never asks about them.

  Stephanie, however, asked a few times. “Daddy, what are those marks on you?”

  And Anna discreetly interjected for me. “Childhood can be hard in Africa, Steph. Someday Daddy might tell you, not today though, honey.”

  There was another elephant in the room during those early days and weeks of our relationship, and it had nothing to do with my past. It was mid-April and the school term was ending in about six weeks. I had lined up a job through Vincent as a hospital orderly for the summer months. I’d also tried to study ahead as much as I could and to prepare my applications for med school. But Anna was due to go home. She had been accepted at HEIP for only one school year and that was almost up. She was planning to take her LSAT during the summer and complete her degree at the University of Colorado, where she had started it. I dared not mention the topic, not wanting to jinx or dampen the charm that we had going, but I thought of it daily. I was pretty sure that Anna was thinking of it too, and not knowing what to do about it, either. Then it came up finally.

  “I bought my ticket home today,” she said as she sat down at our usual table in the café. “I leave on June sixth.”

  This was the deflating news that I had known would come eventually. I looked down and nodded my head, a little bit afraid I might start crying if I looked directly at her. I didn’t want to speak for the same reason.

  “And I’ve registered to take the LSAT on August first,” she said. “Then I’ll be back here August fourteenth.”

  “You’re coming back for a few weeks before you start school? That’s great!” I was ecstatic. I hadn’t expected this. I thought maybe we could somehow get a visit in over Christmas or something. This was way better than I had hoped for.

  “Yeah. I’ll have a few weeks of vacation and then I’ll continue on here at HEIP. They’ve accepted me for my final year of undergrad!”

  I was ecstatic. And she was beaming at being able to deliver me such a surprise, leaving no doubt that she was every bit as happy. I spilled both coffees as I sprawled across the table to hug her.

  “What about your family? What did your parents say?”

  “They’re a little disappointed that I won’t be staying home but I convinced th
em that the international undergrad would come in handy, maybe even get me into a better law school. Daddy figured out right away that there must be a man involved, and Mom swears that she didn’t tell him. They said they’d help me out again, but I had to promise them both that I would return to the States after graduating.”

  Even with this great news I immediately set to worrying about the new doomsday to come, now simply postponed to fifteen months away. Anna wouldn’t even talk about that situation. She was so much better at living and enjoying the moment than I. But we had our reprieve. She’d only be gone for a few months over the summer.

  We spent the last couple of months we had together before Anna returned to America just being young lovers. We had very limited funds, but that didn’t matter, we had each other. We found a small apartment, even by Parisian standards, and I moved in the week after Anna left for home. I tried to fix it up the way I thought she would like it, and I worked hard to keep it scrupulously clean, even though I knew she wouldn’t be back for two months. I just didn’t want to disappoint Anna in any way, even if she wasn’t there to see it. Silly.

  In some ways the two months seemed to go by slowly, but in other ways they just flew by. My job as an orderly at the hospital kept me busy much of the time. Vincent had assured me that a job like that would not hurt on my résumé when I applied for med school. I was able to pick up a full seven-hour shift each day because many of the regular staff were on holiday. This allowed me about eight hours per day of good solid study time. I was very diligent about my studies and hardly took a day off from them while I waited for Anna’s return. So that’s what made time pass—work and study.