Fairytales by Cynthia Freeman Page A

astute enough at the time, he really didn’t know Catherine at all. Certainly there was a sexual attraction. She was beautiful, different and spirited with a provocative uninhibitedness. In the beginning, he made excuses for her possessiveness, her demands upon him which later he felt, in all honesty, were unreasonable. To have no more illusions is a devastating thing. To see someone as they are is a shattering experience and when he could no longer blind himself to Catherine’s caprices, he took a long … long look and what he saw under the facade of her external self was a woman without understanding of how to take or give in a marriage. She even mistook the act of childbearing as a gift to him, feeling that she had immortalized his being for posterity. She did not consider that having children was, in reality, the sacred culmination born out of the love of two people. Dominic tried with all his might to be honest in his evaluation of Catherine, but in the end, he could not delude himself. She had tried to carry on a traditional Italian household, perpetuate in the children a pride of their heritage, and as a mother, although she was possessive and demanding, she was devoted and loving and made them the center of her existence. But Dominic felt that his function as a father had ceased after the birth of Vincente. Catherine battled him all the way, as though she begrudged his success. When the thought first came to him, Dominic tried to fight it down saying he was imagining it … but the thought persisted until he could no longer deny it. What bothered him almost more than anything was her unwillingness to be with him when he was away. Naturally, he knew it would have been impossible for her to travel with him constantly, but never once did she seem to feel her obligation toward him. If the children had not been provided for with loving care, then he could have understood, but that wasn’t the case… The residue of all his reflections left him with one painful reality, that his marriage was a failure from which he could not escape, because not only was he a devout Roman Catholic, but he had seven children and how could he walk away from them. He was trapped, beholden to an illusion of his youth…

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    T HE BALANCE WHEEL OF destiny turned and where it stopped was at the door with the name of Henricks, Wilcocks and Lang. Dominic, indeed, had his memories. In his desperation to escape the lonely absence of children’s voices echoing in his ears, he attended a cocktail party his friend, Lawrence Henricks, was giving, having just moved into the penthouse suite of the Hills Tower building. At first, he disregarded the invitation, feeling in no mood, so he tore it up and sent a flower arrangement with a note of congratulations, as well as regrets for not being able to attend. But at the end of the day he sat in his office, listlessly, wondering how he was going to endure the evening. Catherine had been away for a week and the walls of that house seemed to close in on him. He swiveled in the large red leather chair with a pencil between his teeth. Impulsively, he reached for the phone and dialed his mother’s flat, but in that split second before the ringing started, he hung up, thinking no, he couldn’t go through the pretending tonight. Knowing his mother would guess something was wrong since he had not taken the children to see her after mass on Sunday which was what he did every week in view of the fact that it was the only time she saw them. He had made some ridiculous excuse, knowing she was not taken in, but at that moment he simply couldn’t bring himself to say Catherine had taken the children and gone home. So that still left him adrift tonight. He placed his elbows on the long hand-carved Italian desk, buried his face in his hands and saw a kaleidoscope of images emerge out of his mind. Suddenly, Lawrence J. Henricks became a part of the fabric of his imagery. He looked at his watch … it was seven. What the