Under a Maui Moon by Robin Jones Gunn
Carissa let her plate clang as she dropped it in the sink.
“Are you going to have Heidi come stay here while I’m gone?”
“No.”
“Does that mean you feel safe enough to stay here alone?”
Carissa had put that part of the stressful events of the last few days out of her mind. She didn’t know how to answer.
Richard came over to the sink. Looking at her he said, “It takes two people, willing to communicate, to make a marriage work.”
At first she gave him no reply. Silence seemed her only ammunition. Then, as he turned to go, she shot out, “I did communicate, Richard. I told you what I was feeling Wednesday night, how frightened and vulnerable I was. You weren’t even willing to validate my feelings. Instead, you tried to shame me for having a strong reaction when my private space was violated by a Peeping Tom, who has a police record for violence and for who knows what else!”
“Why are my clients such a problem for you all of a sudden? I’ve had unstable clients off and on for the past ten years. You knew that. Why are you going into such a tailspin?”
“Because this is the first time one of them came to our house! And when it really mattered, you chose that client and his well-being over me. That’s why this is a problem. It’s a huge problem, and I don’t see you showing any interest in fixing it. You can fix everyone else’s injured marriage, but when it comes to ours, you don’t care! Can you tell me why that is, Richard?”
Instead of his face turning red, as it did when he was about to blow off steam, Richard turned a pale shade of gray. “I’ll tell you why. My clients respect me.”
“I would respect you, too, if you cared for me the way you care for them.”
Carissa felt the uncommon strength from the night before filling her up. You can leave him. Now. Just go.
Following her impulse, she picked up her purse, strode to the garage without a good-bye, and backed her car out before the tears fogged her vision.
Why did I have to say all that? Why couldn’t I just let it go? He doesn’t see it as a problem. He’s not going to change.
Wiping her eyes, Carissa was washed with the memory of when they first met at church summer camp. Under the soaring evergreens of Camp Maranatha, Carissa spotted tall, good-looking Richard Lathrop with his sensitive eyes and golden-blond hair. He noticed her, too. Before the week was over, Carissa had given her heart to both God and Richard in a package deal. Richard made the same decision.
They nurtured their budding affection with prayers and promises. They protected it with purity. They worked steadily toward the goal of their wedding day, which came on the heels of Carissa’s nineteenth birthday. Marrying Richard was the fulfillment of every dream Carissa had for her young life. She knew he would never leave her the way her father had.
Now, here they were, twenty-four years after vowing to “love, honor, and cherish,” and Carissa knew it was over. They both had changed. A lot. They weren’t the same people they were then.
Reaching deep inside, she found some leftover courage in the rubble of the past few days. She rallied her thoughts and focused on what waited for her at work. She could do this. She was good at compartmentalizing.
On her way to work Carissa’s phone beeped. She thought Richard might be texting her. At the stoplight, she checked her cell phone and saw that the beep was a reminder on her calendar. Today was her friend Ruthie’s birthday. Ruthie was Dr. Chan’s assistant, and she had been out yesterday on a personal day. Carissa wondered if Ruthie knew yet that Carissa was leaving the office. In the chaos of the day before, she hadn’t thought to call her close friend and tell her the depressing news. Especially since Ruthie was at the spa for the day, celebrating her birthday with her cousin, who was in town.
Making a U-turn, Carissa drove to Le Petite Sweet and bought two dozen éclairs since she was the one who signed up a month ago to bring treats for Ruthie’s birthday.
When Carissa arrived at work, Molly was already there, sitting at Carissa’s desk inputting her preferred music into Carissa’s computer.
“I’m going to be in the break room,” Carissa said.
“Okay. Take your time. This is going to take me awhile.”
Let it go. Don’t say anything you’ll regret later. All you have to do is make it through today. It’s Ruthie’s birthday. Be happy for her if you can’t find anything else to be happy about.
Setting out the éclairs and pulling together some impromptu decorations, Carissa was glad she could do this for her friend. Over the years Ruthie had always been there for her, and now it was Carissa’s turn to do this small thing.
Just as Carissa affixed to the table the last paper flower she had made from a napkin, Ruthie walked into the break room. She stopped and looked at the lovely table and at Carissa. Then her eyes misted over.
“Carissa, what are you doing?”
“I’m celebrating you. It’s your birthday.”
“But you’re leaving.”
“I know. I’m sorry I didn’t call to tell you last night. Did you have fun with your cousin?”
“Yes, we had a fantastic time.” Petite Ruthie stepped closer and put her arms around Carissa. “Don’t leave.”
Carissa rested the side of her face on top of her friend’s fragrant, dark hair. In whispered words she knew her friend would understand, Carissa said, “I don’t want to leave. This is really, really hard. I’m not doing well, Ruthie. I’m not doing well at all.”
Ruthie pulled back and looked at Carissa with her intense green eyes, still misty. “Oh, Carissa. This is awful. I’m so sorry.”
In an even lower voice, Carissa confided to her friend, “Things are horrible right now with Richard. Really awful. This is the worst possible time for me to be let go.”
“Can you fight the decision?”
“I’m scheduled to talk to Dr. Garrett at nine-thirty, but from the impression I got yesterday, I don’t think I’ll be staying on.”
“This is so awful.” Ruthie gave Carissa a big, consoling squeeze just as Ginger from the reception desk entered the break room.
“Ooo, did you bring cupcakes, Carissa?” Ginger asked. “As soon as I saw that you were the one bringing birthday treats, my mouth started watering for your daisy cupcakes.”
“I didn’t have time to make cupcakes last night.”
“She brought my favorite, éclairs,” Ruthie said, quickly picking up the pace. “I’m going first, since I’m the birthday girl.”
Carissa joined her, picking up one of the éclairs and raising the decadent pastry toward Ruthie. In keeping with her desire to celebrate her friend, she said, “Happy birthday, Ruthie. You are one in a million.”
Ruthie smiled warmly and sympathetically at Carissa. “Thank you. I’ll miss seeing you every day more than you’ll ever know. But we’ll still have our monthly movie nights.” Ruthie dabbed a bit of pastry crumbs at the corner of her mouth. “We’ll just have more to talk about now when we see each other.”
Ginger looked oddly at Carissa. “Are you leaving?”
Carissa nodded. She didn’t know what to add.
Ruthie came to her rescue, saying, “Dr. Walters is retiring.”
“He is? How did I miss all this? You guys always have the inside scoop in the back office. We never know what’s going on out front.”
A few others entered, delighted to find birthday goodies. Ginger stepped over to Carissa and gave her a hug. “I’m going to miss you, too.”
“Thanks, Ginger.” Carissa made a quick exit to her office and got to work with Molly. At nine-thirty she had her brief conversation with Dr. Garrett. When he made it clear that her employment at Hillside Family Physicians was over, Carissa returned quietly to her office and cleaned out her desk.
Ruthie popped her head in twice during the day to offer encouraging smiles. Others from the office came in throughout the day and offered their awkward good-byes. Through it all Carissa tried to keep strong.
At five o’clock,
Extending her open palm to him, she said, “You wanted me to hold this for you. Here you go.”
A wonderful grin rolled across his lips. His eyebrows rose. “Actually, I wanted you to hold on to it until I checked with Betty. She agreed with me. We want you to take that key and make good use of it.”
“Okay,” she answered slowly. “And what does the key go to?”
“A very important door.” This statement seemed to delight him for some reason. Plunging his hands into the large pockets in the front of his lab coat, Dr. Walters dipped his chin and peered at her over the top rim of his glasses, as if he had a scrumptious secret he was just dying to tell her.
“A door?”
“Yes, a door. You know how Betty and I spend the winter months on Maui?”
“Yes.”
“This key unlocks the front door of our cottage.”
Carissa wasn’t tracking with him. “Do you want me to make duplicates of the key for you?”
He chuckled. “No, I have enough duplicates. I want you to take that key and go open that door and stay there as long as you can. This is my farewell gift to you.”
The reality sank in. “You’re offering me your place on Maui? I can go stay there?”
He grinned and nodded, rocking back and forth on his heels. “Betty and I don’t plan to go back over until the rain starts up here again. I’d say that gives you a stretch of about three months to decide when you want to make good use of that key. Go as soon as you can. Stay as long as you can.”
Carissa stared at the key and back at Dr. Walters. “Are you sure?”
“Very sure.” He reached over and curled her fingers atop her open palm so that the key was securely in her grasp. “Take that hardworking husband of yours and go have yourselves a vacation. More than a vacation. A second honeymoon. Do you think you can get him over there with you before the summer is out?”
Carissa scrambled to compose an appropriate answer. “I …I don’t know. Richard is in Sacramento this weekend and has another conference coming up in Denver.”
Dr. Walters examined her expression briefly and then made his diagnosis. “Then you go. The sooner the better. You need to come apart before you come apart. The Lord will meet you there. Actually, he’s already there waiting for you.”
Carissa gave Dr. Walters a courteous smile. He was a deeply spiritual, God-fearing man. While she would say that her beliefs were in alignment with his, it had been quite some time since she had “met with the Lord” anywhere.
“I appreciate this more than I can say. Please tell Betty thank-you for me, too. This is unbelievably kind of you. Of both of you.”
“Our pleasure. I’m sure you’ve heard me talk about my brother, Dan. He and Irene live just on the other side of the row of banana trees at the front of our cottage. If you need anything, they’ll be there to help you. Betty will give them a call, once you decide when you’re going. I’m sure my wife will have a few things she would like you to take over with you in your suitcase, if you don’t mind. Some new towels, I think she said. Why don’t you give her a call? You two can decide on a time to meet up.”
Wasting no time, Carissa phoned Betty and made plans to stop by Saturday morning.
“I should warn you,” Betty said over the phone. “The place is small. Only one bedroom. It has a full kitchen, a nice living room area. Some patio furniture out back. Not much of a view to speak of, but the palm trees we put in make for some good shade in the afternoons.”
“Sounds like paradise to me.”
“We think so.”
Carissa drove straight home. She couldn’t believe she had been offered a hideaway. A safe place to go where she could be on her own. None of Richard’s clients would be there.
Richard wouldn’t be there. She wanted to go immediately.
The sting of leaving her job was overshadowed by the rush of plans Carissa made as soon as she arrived home. She found a last-minute flight online for a fantastic end-of-summer price. The flight left Portland on Sunday and went directly to Maui. With a breath of courage, she hit enter on the keyboard. Less than a minute later the confirmation e-mail appeared in her inbox.
A small detail she had been avoiding remained. She needed to call Richard and tell him what she was doing. She had justified the trip, telling herself that Richard was usually the one jetting off to conferences. He didn’t seem to feel the need to clear his travels with her ahead of time. Why did she feel she had to receive his blessing for her trip? It was a gift. A bonus compensation for the loss of her job.
Despite all her reasoning, Carissa still felt nervous when she pressed Richard’s cell phone number into her phone. She hated that he had left with the two of them not speaking. While she knew she shouldn’t have raged at him the way she did in the kitchen, she still felt he should have done something more to unravel their problems. The unsettledness between them felt torturous.
When Richard’s voice mail picked up her call, she made a quick decision to leave a short message. “It’s me. Umm, I …I guess I want to say I really wish things between us weren’t the way they are. I know we need to talk more sometime. But I, uh …I have something I should tell you so if you have a chance to call me after your workshop, I’d appreciate it.”
After she hung up, Carissa made sure the alarm system was set on the house and then went to work organizing and packing. She did all the laundry and took out the trash. It hardly concerned her that she was home alone. She made sure everything was locked up tight and that Murphy was with her inside the house when she went to bed.
Saturday morning she met with Betty to pick up the towels and a list of details. Saturday afternoon she finished packing.
Saturday evening Richard called.
He sounded buoyant. “Thanks for calling last night. Sorry I couldn’t call back sooner.”
“That’s okay. How’s the conference going?” Carissa felt as if they had slipped back into their familiar cordial mode that had marked their relationship over the last eighteen months. At least that was better than arguing.
“Good. Very good, actually. I found out I received high reviews for the workshop I gave this morning. This was a practice run for the Denver conference next week. I’m feeling a lot of weight off me.”
Carissa realized the pressure from the two conference presentations must have been causing him a lot more stress than she knew about during the past week. Why hadn’t she factored that into the tension level on his side? Probably because he hadn’t said anything about the stress he was feeling.
And he’s the one telling me I should do a better job of communicating.
“What happened at work yesterday? Did you talk to Dr. Garrett? Did you convince him to keep you on staff?”
“No.”
“You didn’t talk to him?”
“I did talk to him. He told me his decision was final. Yesterday was my last day.”
Silence followed on Richard’s end of the phone. “I thought we agreed you were going to try to stay on there at least part time.”
Carissa squeezed her eyes shut in frustration. “You arrived at that solution, but you don’t understand. That wasn’t an option offered to me. I asked Dr. Garrett if I could be considered for future part-time employment, and he flat out said no.”
“Okay, don’t get upset. I’m only going by what we talked about. So, what are you going to do?”
Carissa hesitated. She knew she had to tell him. All this independence was so new to her that she didn’t know what to do except make an announcement.
“Well, to start with, I’m going to Maui tomorrow.”
Nothing went well in their phone conversation after that. It didn’t seem to matter to Richard that Carissa had been given
“If you wanted a vacation, why didn’t you arrange to go with me to Denver next week?”
An acrid memory came back of one of the conventions she had attended with him a few years ago in which she had spent the first day sitting through a series of workshops on addictions and psychotic behaviors. While Richard hobnobbed with renowned specialists and got his therapist batteries recharged, she was miserable.
“Going to a conference with you in Denver wouldn’t be a vacation for me, Richard.”
“And going to Maui by yourself would be?”
She couldn’t deny it. The answer popped out. “Yes.”
Richard hung up on her. She couldn’t believe it. He had never done that before.
His line about marriage taking two people willing to communicate came back to her with a sardonic twist. This time he was the one pulling away. If he wasn’t willing to communicate with her, she couldn’t do anything about it. That was his problem, not hers. How many times over the years had she heard him say she couldn’t fix other people’s problems? They have to arrive at their own realization of what they are doing wrong and be willing to work on changing.
Well, this time that was the position she was going to take with her husband. She couldn’t make him change. In the morning she would fly to Maui, where she was looking forward to a real vacation with time to rest and refocus. All she could hope was that the time she and Richard spent away from each other would help both of them think through what should happen next.
Carissa was thinking she already knew what the “next” was going to be. She just didn’t want to think about it. Not yet.
5
“Ha mau! He le o lani
Ke mele ‘ia mai.