Spoken in Anger

Ed asked, "Did... did you do anything to him?"

"No. I... in the original plan, I was going to do... something to him. I hadn't decided what. But I'd ruined my life and ended hers. Destroyed her family, blew up all my friendships. I thought that was enough senseless destruction. Don't you?" He averted his eyes.

Mary croaked, "It's not your fault. You didn't know."

I snorted. "Yes it fucking is, Mary. Just like it was your fault when Sam killed himself." I wished, as soon as I'd said it, that I hadn't. My grief's body count just kept going up, ruining more people who didn't deserve it.

She snarled, "You asshole. You fucking asshole. I fucking know that!" She was on her feet and in my face, even as Gina tried to pull her back. "Sam had a mental illness, he was clinically depressed! I killed my husband because..." She swallowed, regaining the tiniest bit of control. "Because I couldn't handle it anymore. I thought I could fix him, that he'd be another one of my 'projects,' like he said. I didn't... I didn't get it; I thought he was just sad, thought that's all that depression was. But it wasn't... isn't."

Her manner became agitated and erratic as tears streamed down her face. This wasn't her usual self-flagellation, intended to act as both a pep talk for the newbies that things could be worse, while also allowing her a public exhibition to martyr herself for her sins. This was different. This was a breakdown. Or maybe a breakthrough. I guess we'd see which.

"I didn't get it. I'm sorry, Sam, I didn't. I do now. I know... I know what it's like to have to take the pills and have them change who you are and how you think. How afraid you are when you get sad, because they might have stopped working. How hard it is when you can't get to your therapist, don't have someone to talk to who understands."

She stood in the circle, inviting our judgment. Her face was in her hands, muffling her words. "I'm sorry, Sam. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I killed you, I'm sorry. I didn't... I thought Anne would get there in time, didn't..."

Her shoulders shook with rueful laughter as her gaze went to the ceiling. "Forgot she was her own kind of fucked up. Didn't put snow chains on her car, in the middle of fucking December. Forgot to charge her phone as usual. And then she got in the accident-- accident, a fucking fender bender-- couldn't call or text to let us know, didn't even... stupid bitch didn't even think to look for a pay phone, she was so deep in her own learned fucking helplessness. A five minute drive, a twenty minute fucking walk, and she couldn't get there in an hour."

Her voice dropped. "I should have stayed. But I didn't. Should have... shouldn't have cheated. Should have fought harder." Almost a whisper. "I'm sorry, Sam."

Then she rounded on me. "But you, you fucking asshole! You didn't kill your wife! You... you don't get to pretend to be the cause of her death, you don't get that! You didn't know she'd react like that. Yeah, you were a fucking dick, and you should be ashamed of yourself for that. But you..." She spat at my feet. "Fuck you. Fucking fuck you. We're nothing alike. I killed my husband. Your wife was a dumb bitch that threw away her marriage because she had a quarter life crisis."

Breakdown or no, this was too much. Nobody was going to talk about my Sandy like that. I'd never hit a woman in my life, but that was about to change. I was on my feet in an instant, fists balled and ready to lash out, but then Ray and Ed both grabbed me, and Gina grabbed Mary, and we each got dragged back to our chairs.

Ray's shaky voice said, "Maybe we should, ah, leave things here tonight."

"No." Gina's voice, clear and distinct. "No, we shouldn't." Gina didn't speak often, and that made her voice carry so much more impact than Mary's or Ray's.

"It's..." The tone was soft and kind. Everything about her said, "caregiver." "It's okay to feel conflicted about them. About our spouses. Todd, you're not a monster for being... for being angry at her, even for hating her. Mary's right, you didn't kill her. It was a terrible, tragic accident, but you didn't kill her."

She turned to Mary. "And Mary, do you think Sam would want you to do this? To become him? Did he love you?" Mary reluctantly nodded. "Do you think he'd ever want you to suffer from what he suffered from? Of course not." She sighed. "I know that you have a lot of guilt over what happened to him. That's... honestly, you're going to feel some of that for the rest of your life. But, I want to tell you: I am so proud that you're putting yourself out there, trying to meet someone new. That's really great, and I think Sam would be proud of you, too." Mary looked away, face etched with shame.

Gina turned back to me. "Todd, if Sandra had died in an unrelated accident, if she had never known that you found out about her affair, what do you think she would have wanted?"

I sighed. "It doesn't matter. She didn't."

"Please." Her soft voice gently implored. "Just, if she had, what do you think she'd want? For you to live the rest of your life alone and unhappy?"

"... No."

She nodded. "And if her... coworker was correct that she felt guilty, even if what you did was cruel, do you think that answer would change?"

The cigarette was almost all ash now, barely smoked. I took a drag and stubbed it out, putting the butt in my pocket next to the other one. "I don't know."

The way she spoke was magnetic, almost mesmerizing. I don't know if it was because she spoke so rarely that every word seemed more important, or if it was just a quality of who she was and what she had to say. "Then let's go through it one piece at a time." She smiled. "Did she love you?"

I snarled, "She cheated on me."

"That's not what I asked. I asked if she loved you. Let's make it simpler: if I had asked you that a year before her death, what would you have said?"

"I'd have said yes."

Her pleasant tone was slightly reproachful now, an instructor leading a recalcitrant student along to an obvious point. "And, if her coworker was reliable, which you seem to believe, she felt regret for what she had done. Perhaps enough to confess, perhaps not. But that would indicate that she still loved you, or at least cared about you. And if that's the case, then..."

"I killed her. You'd think that might change how she felt." I deserved this pain. I wasn't going to let her get me out of it this easily.

Gina smiled sadly. "You didn't kill her. Mary didn't kill Sam, as much as she might want to insist that; she made bad choices that led to his death. That's not the same thing. You did, too, but Sandy's death..." She glanced apologetically at Mary. "Mary's choices were bad ones that carried an element of risk she should have understood. She did, and even tried to account for them. But..."

She sighed and returned to me. "What about yours? They were cruel, yes, but was there any... had she ever given you any reason to believe she'd act like that? Any previous history of mental illness? Panic attacks, emotional instability, depression?" I shook my head. "Then it was what the police called it, Todd. A tragic accident."

Her pious act was really starting to piss me off. I didn't need a confessor to forgive my sins. "It wasn't!"

"It was. You feel guilty for being cruel. For being angry at her and letting that become something monstrous. But..." She looked at her hands. "That... that doesn't make you culpable for what happened. Your anger didn't kill her, and your guilt won't bring her back. It's not good for anything but making you a victim to the past."

"I--"

She continued, ignoring me. "Everyone in this room--" She smiled beatifically at Ed. "-- Almost everyone... we're stuck here because we can't get past what we've done. Or didn't do. Or meant to do. Mine was less dramatic than yours or Mary's, but..."

Gina chewed her lip, then cleared her voice. "Rick was ill for... for a long time. At first, I was the supportive wife. I did everything I could for him. We had kids, young ones. So I had to take care of them, and him, and work to keep our insurance, and to pay for our house and food and..."

I watched her closely. We all did. She had talked about Rick's death before many times, as a way to talk about dealing with grief, to help new people feel welcome. But this wasn't that. This wasn't about grief over his death; it was grief about something else.

"It wears on you. Wore on me. The first time, before his remission, I bore it as bravely as I could. He was in so much pain, emotionally and physically. And the kids... thank god that they were too young to understand then, but they were also so young that I had to take care of a pair of toddlers by myself, while also caring for my husband that... that I thought was dying."

A single tear slid down her cheek. "I was... God, I was so grateful to have him back. To... to know he was going to live, that we'd made it past the worst time in our lives. And then... then we had almost two happy years together. We lived those two years fiercely. Unafraid. We knew this was ours by right, that we'd earned it. That we'd always have it."

Gina's lip trembled. "But then the cancer came back. And it was... I'd never had heartbreak like that before. The first time, it was a hammerblow. But the second..."

She wiped her eyes. "I grew up poor. Really poor. We were on food stamps, but sometimes they weren't enough. One time... one time the power went out on our block, and the food in our fridge spoiled. It was the summer, so no school meals. For half a week, we ate whatever dried goods we had. And then, for the rest of the week, we starved. All of our neighbors were in the same spot, and the local food bank was bare, and... and there just wasn't enough to go around.

"It was awful. Painful. Watching the shame on my parents' face hurt almost as much as the gnawing hunger. But then, payday came, and dad was able to stock the fridge again, get more dried goods in. Every time the power went out after that, I remembered that hunger. That terrible, awful, inescapable pain. It was so much worse than the actual starvation, because that was something I had no choice but to endure. The fear, though, that was just something always on the edge of my perception, and when the power went out from then on, I spent the entire time in fear of what could happen."

Mary put her hand on Gina's shoulder and held it there. Gina spared her a brief, grateful glance, then continued. "Rick's relapse was like that. I knew what the diagnosis meant, what the future held for us, even if he went into remission again. The kids were older, which was... trying to explain to a pair of kids that barely had a concept of death what might happen, and as Rick grew sicker, what would happen..." She shook her head.

"I resented him. Hated him. I knew it wasn't his fault. I knew it was irrational. But I still felt it. I loved him so much, and he was doing this to me, to us. We had won, why couldn't he have just... just... Why couldn't that have been enough? Why did we have to fight again?"

Gina bowed her head. "Why did we have to lose? Why did he make me... why did he have to make me... I wanted him to die. Was waiting for it at the end. To be free. To be free of this, this awful pain. I wanted him to be free, too, but I mostly--"

Ed exclaimed, "For Christ's sake! Did any of you love your spouses, just love them?"

Gina's head shot up, pain on her tearstained face, mouth opened but unspeaking. Mary's turned to Ed, pure rage in her eyes.

"Fuck you, Ed." Ray. Ray spoke. It wasn't Ray's voice, not his unctuous counselor voice or his disappointed vice principal one, either. It was sharp and cold, like a knife. "We all loved our spouses. Fuck, we probably loved them more than, what was her name, Irene? Sorry, they all blend together after a while. I'm sure she was special to you, but she's just another dead wife in the long list." What the fuck?

He sneered. "Fuck, I'm so sick of you goddamned tourists." Ed opened his mouth. "Shut up! It's my turn! My turn to tell you how--" He glared at all of us.

"God, you weak fucks. I listen to folks like Ed, the ones that come in and drop out quickly, and I'm glad to see that, glad to see they got what they needed." He looked at Ed. "You will never suffer the way these people have suffered, and you should be grateful for that. Be glad that the only thing you ever felt for your wife was love, that you have nothing to feel ashamed about. You're done here. Congratulations! You graduate! Get the fuck out."

He turned his face to each of the rest of us in turn. "You're all... you're so fucking needy. So sure that what you did and how you feel is so unforgivable." He pointed at Mary. "Sam was an asshole that wouldn't keep doing the things he needed to keep him sane. You weren't equipped to deal with it. But you can't accept that, because you have this goddamned savior complex that requires you to fix everyone, so it just had to be your fucking fault."

Gina was next. "You. You... god, Gina, I can't even really be angry at you. It's like kicking a puppy. You're so fucking good." He almost spat the last word, like saying it made him realize how he couldn't measure up; bitter in his mouth, just as he was bitter. He sneered at Mary. "Hey, Mare? This. This is what you should be doing if you want that sainthood." Cruel aside done, he returned his gaze to Gina. "You, of any of these folks, are the only one I feel sorry for, really sorry for. Because you were so ready to be done with his pain, and then you were, and it just made you more miserable.

"You just can't let go of your fucking guilt at the resentment that literally ANYone would feel. You're special, Gina, yeah. But you're not that goddamned special. You keep telling everyone else how their husbands or their wives wouldn't want them to suffer, would want them to go on with their own lives. Well, physician, heal thy fucking self."

Ray's face had grown monstrous, a mask of fury as he fixed me with his gaze. Or maybe the mask he always wore had finally come off. "And you. You sat here the whole time, judging us, with that superior fucking air, like your pain was somehow so much worse. Just had to drop a bombshell in here. Had to be the focus. 'I murdered my cheating slut of a wife wah wah wah.' Grow the fuck up. People cheat every day. People are cruel every day. People make mistakes every day. Congratulations! You hit the trifecta, and she's dead and you're--"

My rage from Mary's words hadn't dissipated; it was just waiting for a new target, and Ray was it. I launched myself from my chair, taking him and me to the ground, and started to just fucking wail on him. His glasses flew off, skittering somewhere into the darkness. His arms were up at first, deflecting the blows, but then he dropped them, a huge, lunatic smile on his face. I paused, and Ray shouted, "Come on! Do it! I fucking deserve it, and you're so desperate to hit someone, because you can't man up and throw yourself off a bridge!" He smirked at Mary. "Oh, sorry."

I pulled back and away, sickened at myself and at him. Stood to get away from this thing that he'd become. Horrified. He laughed. "Fucking pussy. Not surprised." His nose was bloody, and he licked the top of his lip, then grabbed a tissue as he stood and pinched the nostril shut. "All of you. All of you! You all have reasons to hate your spouses, and you just feel guilty about that. I... I killed my wife, and I did it accidentally, and I did it without hate. I called Ed a tourist, but you're... god, you're like the ugly Americans in the group, so obnoxious and loud in your grief. I..."

His eyes closed. "Fuck it. This is my last session. I can't..." He swallowed. "You want to know why I killed my wife? Because I wasn't ready to leave a party. We'd both come after work, brought our own cars. She'd been drinking, but I didn't realize how much. I'd been drinking enough that it didn't register. She was feeling sick, and I just waved her off, told her I'd meet her at home. And then, an hour later, a state trooper called me on her phone. So, yeah. I killed my wife. Not because she cheated, not because she was crazy, not because of some horrible illness, just because I was lazy and having fun " He laughed without humor. "Beat that, assholes."

His eyes were flooded with tears as he fished in his pocket. "Ray..." Gina began, and he glared at her.

Ray pulled out a couple of keys and threw them at her. "Lock up when you're done." And then the oldest of the old timers left, slamming the door behind him.

Ed was next, sparing a horrified glance back at us. "I-- I hope you can find the peace that you..." He shook his head and left. And then it was just we three, the ugly Americans.

Mary quietly said, "I'm sorry, Todd. I shouldn't... shouldn't have said that about Sandra. I wasn't... I was the one having the quarter life crisis, not her, and I was mad at myself and just--"

"No, Mary. She was, too. It... it's just easier if I can blame... if it's my fault. If she died because of me, and only because of me. Then I don't have to deal with..." I couldn't say it, wasn't sure even what exactly I meant.

Gina almost whispered, "Because then you don't have to think about whether you would have been able to forgive her. You knew that what you did was cruel, and knew you'd feel bad about it later, because you still loved her." I nodded, a lump in my throat. "And you know, now, if you could go back and do it again, you would. Because you know what it's like to lose her in a way that you can't undo."

I hung my head. "No. No, that's not it. It's close but... It's that I know I wouldn't have been able to. I... the only way I would have been able to forgive her is... is what happened. I was so sure that what she did was just something I couldn't get past. That's what I can't deal with. Knowing what I know now, I'd forgive her in an instant. But if she hadn't... if it hadn't happened, I never would have been able to. I only know how much I love her and how much she meant to me because she died."

I'd said it now. The thing that had eaten away from me for a year. I only really knew what love meant, what forgiveness meant, when it no longer mattered. When regret was just a word.

Mary surprised me then. She hugged me. I'd been ready to hit her before, like I had Ray, but she just threw her arms around me and held me as I cried. I never knew how much I loved Sandy until she was gone. Mary had never known how much she loved Sam until he was. Knowing what we knew now, we'd have borne any weight to have them back. But we only had that knowledge because we lost them. We'd both give anything to have our loved ones back, and we never could. I hugged her close as we both sobbed.

Gina let us stay like that for a while. When we finished, Mary and I looked at her. My heart went out to the quiet core of our group, the leader Ray had desperately wanted to be but could never quite manage. We wanted to help her out of her pain, but the shape of it was so different from ours. We held out our hands to her, but she shrunk back, smiling. "Thank you, but..." She swallowed. "I'm glad that you're... you're not coming back, are you? Either of you?" It was hopeful and sweet.

I looked at Mary and she at me, then both back at Gina. I gave a little shake of my head. "I know why I came here now. I... thank you, Gina And you, too, Mary. But I... it's time to move on. You were right, Gina, even with what I'd done, Sandy would want me to move on, just like Sam would want Mary to. But... Gina, Rick would want you to move on, too."

Gina laughed quietly. "Yeah, maybe so. But..." She shook her head. "But I don't want to. Not yet. Once I do... Once I leave here and put him behind me, he'll be gone, really gone. I'll forget him a little bit more each day. I hated his illness and what it put us through. Hated him, too, for doing that to us. But... I love him. If coming here and holding on to my grief, both over his death and how badly I dealt with it, is how I keep that love strong, for just a little while longer? I'll live with it." She smiled. "And if I can help people? Then... then it's like he's still here with me, sort of. Like we're not trying to get through his illness anymore, but through other folks'."