For George, the only thing which spoiled the trip for him was his inability to make proper love to his lovely wife. He failed every night of the trip, and even though Molly was very understanding, and showed not a bit of disappointment in his failure, he was, nevertheless, highly disappointed in himself.
For Molly, it seemed that their years were simply blending into one, punctuated only by sad events in their families and the next cruise or holiday that they’d booked.
After the Europe cruise, they went over to visit with Jesse and Maureen and go through the annual ritual of sharing the details of their vacation with them. However, it simply was not the same with Aunt Dolores missing.
It simply wasn’t the same any more, period.
Her marriage was adrift, and they both knew it.
And so did the man at work – the one who had fallen in love with her.
As much as it broke her heart, Molly knew that she couldn’t stay married to George. Despite everything they shared, it was no longer enough. It was her soul that needed love and vacations, not her body.
Chapter 12
* * *
Love at first sight
* * *
You looked very beautiful tonight standing by the store room door.
After you left, Danny asked me who the pretty girl was.
I told him just a friend.
I’d like to tell them all that you are my one and only.
Charlie’s first love letter
He was helplessly smitten in an instant. He didn't even know who she was, although she obviously worked in the factory. She simply came to the window of the tool and stock room, where he had worked for the past six months, to requisition a box of pencils.
He took the requisition slip from her in a daze, his hand trembling.
The woman began to flush under the intensity of his gaze, so he tore his eyes away from her and forced himself to look at the slip. Pencils. Pencils. Think of something to say about pencils, he told himself. But she seemed to have taken away his power of speech.
He found the box he needed instantly and yet he still leaned against the shelf for a moment, pretending he was still searching. What was happening to him? This was a woman he had never seen before. He didn't even know her name. And how could he even find it out? She was dressed in typical factory attire, including the usual smock worn by the female employees, and while she was very attractive and seemed to be about his age, he wasn’t sure how that description was going to help him in a factory employing dozens of women. “Attractive and about my age” could apply to many of them.
When he could sustain his fake search no longer, he returned to the window and slid the box across to her, signing the requisition slip at the same time.
‘Don’t use them all at once,’ he said in an attempt at a joke, but even as the words were leaving his lips he chastised himself. She should use them all at once. Then she’d have to come back.
‘I promise,’ said the woman solemnly, but her eyes were twinkling above freckled cheeks that were still tinged with pink. ‘Bye.’
Too soon she was gone, leaving her impression imprinted eternally on Charlie’s heart.
Her smile was devastatingly beautiful. Charlie was so flustered that he hadn’t even thought to introduce himself, or find out her name. Feeling foolish, he realised that he could easily have made her sign the requisition slip too. He could have made something up. Instead he had let her slip through his fingers, and he began to panic, thinking that he might never see her again. That, too, was highly unlikely, as all employees visited the stock room from time to time, but deep down he was aware that he wasn’t prepared to leave it to chance.
He had to see her again.
Charlie knew that this was the proverbial ‘love at first sight’. He’d read a few novels in the prison library, and from how it was apparently meant to feel, he knew this was it: a pounding heart, a tunnelling of time and space, a feeling that the other half of his soul had just walked away with a carton of pencils.
And yet, how was that possible? He was a married man with three small children, and a fourth on the way – and not just a married man, but a happily married man. Wasn’t he? He was certainly still content in his married life, and there had never been any serious problems during nearly three years of marriage.
On the other hand, he had essentially no experience with romantic love, having married a very young Muriel immediately after being released from a twenty-year period of monastic life in prison, at the age of thirty-five. He had known family love before – and during – his incarceration, but prison was practically devoid of love apart from the bond of brotherhood that had bound them together as inmates, and, of course, his enduring devotion to God. His only connection to romantic love was what he’d read about in the prison library, and what he believed he’d felt for Muriel. Of late, he’d become increasingly aware that they might even have been falling short of Muriel’s own fantasies about what married life might be like, but he’d never for a moment imagined himself wanting to break his marriage vows.