Free Acts of Contrition by Jennifer Handford Page A

her knees in victory. Tom stands and roars. “Yeah!!
That’s
the way!”
    I watch as Tom and Sally exchange a look, common nods of their heads. Their backyard practice has paid off. When the crowd calms down and the game resumes, Tom’s in an entirely different mood. Sally’s goal was the perfect distraction, the perfect head fake. Tom’s ecstatic, and doesn’t give a damn about Landon James. I know we’re back on the same side.

    After soccer we head to Cracker Barrel. Tom’s parents are in town for the day, up from their condo in Virginia Beach, and since it is Sal’s birthday, they wanted to meet for breakfast. When we arrive, Colleen and Sean Morrissey are rocking comfortably in the wooden chairs that fill the spacious deck, sipping coffee and reading the newspaper. The kids run to them, fall into their laps with hugs and kisses, competing with stories to get their attention.
    Tom’s mother, Colleen, is lovely. She’s supportive and generous and always has a kind word of encouragement for me. Whether she’s praising my parenting or laundry skills, she gushes compliments at me as though my proficiency is groundbreaking, as if she herself has never raised kids or gotten a chocolate stain out of a white blouse.
    Colleen wears her hair in a perfectly highlighted flip, her acrylic nails are always painted and glossy, her jewelry is a flawless complement to her country-club ensemble. Colleen’s on Facebook, she texts on her iPhone, she takes spinning classes and does Pilates, she works a master Sudoku puzzle in pen. At the age of forty-five, she earned an online bachelor’s degree in philosophy. Five years ago she joined the pink-ribbon crusade when she got and beat breast cancer inside of a year.
    And for reasons unknown to me, she’s remained devoted to her husband of forty-five years, a man who drinks too much and, according to Tom, has stepped out on Colleen more than once. To look at Sean, it seems unfathomable. To look at him,
to know him,
he seems like the quintessential family man. He’s the guy who carries a photo of each of his five grandchildren in his wallet. He’s the guy who pulls out his brag stack of photos for just about anyone to see. He’s the guy who will call occasionally, just to say “I love you” and “I’m proud of you.” Without reserve, he cried at Tom’s and my wedding, the births of our children. He refers to me as his daughter, as if the “in-law” part is just a pesky appendage that serves no use.
    Sean is decent-looking, with the same amber waves as Tom, though his face has turned ruddy from too much whiskey and his midsection is a tight medicine ball. He’s funny and affectionate and hangs on your every word, shaking his head back and forth in amusement, scattering heavy doses of “Oh my!” and “Who would have thought!” and “Isn’t that the best!”
    In the beginning, I almost didn’t believe Tom. “Are you sure?” I’d implore. “Are you sure he really had affairs?” Even though I was a firsthand deceiver, it was still hard to believe that betrayal could be so perfectly disguised within such an affectionate man.
    Sean struggles to keep his whiskey consumption under control and, in twisted measure, he claims success compared to his father, a guy who took his first swallow every morning with breakfast. Similarly, Sean’s father claimed success compared to his father, Tom’s great-grandfather, who was the real-life version of the archetypal drunken Irishman, stumbling out of Dublin bars after drinking away his entire week’s wages. The spiral of alcoholic DNA stopped swirling with Tom, not necessarily because he wasn’t susceptible but because he stayed away from the hard stuff just in case. For as long as I’ve known my husband, he’s never once had a drink of whiskey. The occasional beer, a glass of nice red wine with dinner, that’s fine, but Tom knows better than to lean too far over his family’s Irish cliff, for fear of falling to his