Michael had always been a faithful husband, but with the world at work so much more pleasant and fulfilling than the one at home, he was tempted. Already he was falling into justifications and rationalizations... With what I’ve been through, with the stress I’ve been under, who could blame me?
But he had not yet acted on these impulses. Perhaps he was still “Saint” Satariano, at heart; or maybe he just still loved his wife, the woman who had taken this dangerous road with him even though he had warned her of his deal with the Chicago devil, the woman who had given birth to Mike and Anna, the pretty prom queen from DeKalb he had fallen in love with so many years ago...
On a Thursday evening, two months into their new life, Michael took Pat to Vincent’s for a romantic dinner. In part, this was to send a signal to his flirtatious assistant manager; but he also wanted to encourage Pat to rejoin the world. His world. Their world.
While not Pat’s first visit to Vincent’s, this was the first time their daughter hadn’t been along. Tonight Anna was staying with the neighbor girl, Cindy — desert-trail riding followed by a slumber party. And Michael and Pat were anxious for Anna to expand her circle of friends.
They shared Chateaubriand and an especially expensive bottle of French wine from Vincent’s cellar of over one thousand. In the candlelight, against a window of sparkling city lights, Pat looked lovely and even happy. They mostly talked about Anna, since Pat didn’t have anything else going in her life right now, except television and the household.
“This is going to be a hard weekend for our little girl,” Pat said.
“Really? Why?”
“Saturday night — back home? Prom.”
“...Oh.”
Pat sipped her wine. Then she shrugged with her eyebrows and said, “She still carries the torch for that Gary.”
“Well, he’s a handsome kid, nice enough. Star quarterback, president of the class... Hasn’t been any contact, has there?”
This time Pat shrugged her shoulders, which were bare; she wore a chic white dress, lace over a satin shell. “If so, she’s hiding the letters well. I’ve been through her things a thousand times.”
“Terrible.” He shook his head.
“What choice do I have?”
“Oh, I’m not being critical. It’s just... what this... situation reduces us to.”
She sipped her wine.
He nodded toward the cityscape in the window beside them and said, “Pat, if you gave this town half a chance, you’d really love it.”
“I don’t have any problem with this town.”
“Honey, you’ve barely seen it.”
“I’m just keeping a low profile, that’s all. Aren’t we supposed—”
“Actually, we’re supposed to live our lives.” He reached across the linen-covered table and took her hand. “And, darling, you need to start living yours. We need to start living ours.”
She smiled just a little. Her eyes flicked toward the assistant manager, who wore a white shirt with tux tie and black trousers, mannish attire that made her no less a strikingly attractive woman. “Has she moved in on you yet?”
“...What?”
“Your little minx assistant. Has she made her move yet? She’s had her eye on you from the beginning.”
He waved that off. “Don’t be silly. I’m not interested in anybody but you.”
Her mouth twitched a bitter knowing smile. “I wasn’t talking about you, Michael. I was talking about that little predatory bitch.”
He sighed, gave her half a grin. “Let’s just say I haven’t let her make a move.”
“Don’t.” Now she reached her hand across and squeezed his. “I know I... haven’t been very romantic lately...”
They’d made love perhaps half a dozen times since moving in at Paradise Estates, strictly perfunctory.
“No problem,” he said.
She shook her head. “No. No, I’ll make it up to you. Michael, I will make it up to you...”
Several hours later, she did.
Like all the Paradise Estates backyards, theirs was fenced off. Just a little drunk, they swam nude in their pool under a swatch of blue velvet flung across the sky, scattered with jewels, held together by a big polished pearl button. He dogpaddled after her and chased her and cornered her and kissed her, sometimes on the mouth. They crawled out, and without drying off lay on a big beach towel on the Bermuda grass and necked and petted like teenagers.
He sat on the edge of the towel, heel of his hand wedged against the cloth and ground beneath, and he gazed down at his still-lovely wife, with her slender fine body pearled with water, the breasts full firm handfuls, the legs sleek and long and soon to be wrapped around him.
“I love you, Patsy Ann O’Hara,” he said.
As she lay on her back, her blonde hair splayed against the towel, her pale flesh washed ivory in the moonlight, she held her arms open, her legs, too, and her eyes were wide, her lips parted, in an expression perched at the brink of smiling, or perhaps crying.
“I love you, too, Michael Satariano,” she said.
He lowered himself into her embrace, and indeed those legs locked around him as he entered her, and he kissed her mouth and her neck and her breasts, and she laughed and sobbed and held on to him so tight, it was as if she were trying to meld herself with him, disappear into him.
He came harder than he had in many months, perhaps years, and her cries of pleasure may well have alarmed the neighbors. They lay together, laughing quietly, stroking each other’s faces, and kissed a while.
“Everything but the fireworks,” he said.
“Huh?”
He played with a lock of blonde hair. “In the moonlight, you remind me of that first night, after I got back from service?... We were in your father’s Buick, backseat, parked by that cornfield...”
“Fourth of July!”
“Yes, and we could see the fireworks.”
“Oh, Michael...” She smiled at him, and her look was so loving, she broke his heart even while warming it. “...I saw the fireworks. Didn’t you?”
The coolness of the night got to them after a while — Arizona could get damn cold after dark — and they padded into the kitchen. She got robes for both of them — after all, Anna was just across the street at Cindy’s — and they sat and had decaf.
He was trying to find the words for something when she said, “What, Michael? What is it?”
“Would you... please think about starting to go to mass again? And getting involved with a church?”
Her face fell. “Oh, Michael.”
He leaned forward, patted her hand. “Honey, it would be so good for you.”
She smirked. “You mean, keep me busy?”
“Is that bad? It’s not busywork, it’s... meaningful.”
She studied him; she was almost staring. “Don’t tell me... Oh, Michael, don’t tell me you still believe.”
“What do you mean?”
Her eyes were huge. “You believe in God? After all this, you really still believe in God, and the fucking Catholic Church, and all that pomp and circumstance?”
He shrugged; oddly, he felt embarrassed. “Tradition isn’t a bad thing. It gives things an order. Puts a framework on.”
She laughed humorlessly. “Then you don’t t believe. It’s just... social. Like a country club without the golf. A nice thing for a family to do. A way to expose your kids to a moral outlook on life, and give them some... some structure.”
He was shaking his head. “You’re wrong, darling. I do believe there’s something out there, something bigger than us, a father who loves us and understands us. And forgives us.”