Bound to Happen
Mary Kay McComas
For those so loved, they feel they can take love for granted.
A Biography of Mary Kay McComas
“W
HAT DID I
say?” Leslie asked, holding her hands out, bewildered.
“That’s exactly what I want to know,” her mother said, brushing past her, angry and frustrated. She rattled the knob on the bathroom door, casting Leslie an exasperated glare. Finally, in a too-calm voice she called, “Beth? Beth, honey, open the door. It’s Mom, honey. You can come out now.”
A mournful wail came from the bathroom, and once again, Leslie felt her mother’s gaze on her.
“Lord, Leslie, what have you done now?” the older woman asked.
“Nothing. One minute we were just having a little talk, and the next thing I knew, she was crying and running into the bathroom, locking the door behind her.”
“Well, what on earth were you talking about?”
“Nothing much,” Leslie said thoughtfully, going back over the conversation in her mind. “I was asking her how she knew Paul was the right man to marry.”
Mrs. Rothe groaned wearily. “And you couldn’t have asked her that question six months ago? Before we invited the Senators, and before we ordered the three hundred pounds of shrimp?”
“To be truthful, I didn’t really think she’d get this far. I—”
“Leslie, don’t be truthful. Lie. I’ve told you a hundred times, total honesty is not the virtue it’s cracked up to be,” Mrs. Rothe said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “Really. I’m surprised that in all these years you’ve never heard of tact or diplomacy.”
Leslie sighed in dejection. It was the same old story. She’d ask Beth a simple question, Beth would end up in hysterics, and somehow it was always Leslie’s fault. Was it her fault Beth was an emotional flake?
“Beth, honey,” her mother called again. “Please come out. Leslie didn’t mean anything by grilling you. You know how she is …”
“I didn’t grill her,” Leslie muttered in a low voice.
Her mother had once commented that if Leslie had half of Beth’s feelings and Beth had half of Leslie’s brains and spirit, she would have two normal daughters. As it was, she had one with no feelings and one with no brains.
Leslie hadn’t appreciated the comparison. She had just as many feelings as Beth. She simply didn’t let them hang out like her sister did. She kept them safe and sheltered and didn’t waste them on little things, like every other man who walked by.
As for Beth being brainless, well, at times like this, that charge was a little hard to argue with, Leslie admitted to herself.
“What’s going on in here?” Leslie’s father asked from the doorway of the vestibule. “The guests are getting antsy.”
Leslie and her mother exchanged looks. Mrs. Rothe spoke first. “It’s my fault, Stan. I lost my mind for a couple of minutes and left the girls alone in the same room. Now Beth’s locked herself in the bathroom, and all she keeps saying is, There’s more to it than love.”
Stan Rothe frowned in confusion and moved into the room. “More to what than love?”
“Marriage, I suppose. That is what you were grilling her about, wasn’t it?” Leslie’s mother asked, turning the focus of guilt on her older daughter.
Leslie nodded, then looked at her father and shrugged helplessly. Of all the people in the world he seemed to understand her best. He winked at Leslie sympathetically and patted her shoulder.
“It’s a little like the dinosaur question, honey,” he said under his breath for only Leslie to hear. For years now, he’d been using that example to let Leslie know that some questions didn’t have factual answers. There had been dinosaurs, their bones were the proof. But nobody knows what they really looked like or where they went. Leslie had to accept that they were there once and let someone else drive themselves nuts with how they looked and what happened to them. In essence he was telling Leslie not to toil too hard over the questions of love and marriage, because they just existed with no tangible or logical facts to support them.
He moved on to copy his wife’s actions by first rattling the door knob, then calling through the bathroom door. “Bethy. It’s Dad. Unlock the door and come out now. If you’ve changed your mind about the wedding, we’ll work it out. If you’re just confused, we’ll talk. But we can’t settle anything if you stay in there.”
“Leslie says love isn’t enough. It’s an emotion that can be easily mistaken for simple lust, which isn’t love at all,” Beth said rather tearfully from the other side of the door. “What if I’m just feeling lust?”
“Then you won’t have a dull honeymoon,” her father said, more to himself than his daughter. But after a not so playful whack on the arm from his wife, he called, “Beth, you know in your heart what you’re feeling. Haven’t I always told you to listen to your heart? And that if you did, it would always make the wisest decisions for you?”
Beth sniffed loudly. “Yes.”
“So, what is it telling you?”
“It says I love Paul. I’ll die without him.”
Leslie threw up her hands in defeat. Even Beth’s wise old heart was overly dramatic. No wonder the poor girl couldn’t think straight.
“Good,” Stan Rothe said. “Then come on out and let’s have a wedding.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Leslie isn’t stupid. You say so all the time. If she says there has to be more to it than just love, then there probably is. I have to have at least two real reasons for marrying Paul.”
Mr. and Mrs. Rothe grimaced and glared at Leslie. Again a dejected sigh escaped her. Would she ever learn to stop talking to her poor brainless sister, she wondered with self-derision.
“No, Beth. You don’t need two real reasons. You need to listen to your heart. In fact, Leslie was so upset at having upset you, she left,” her father was telling the bride to be, his eyes pleading with the maid of honor for understanding—and a hasty departure. Leslie nodded and turned to go. “Leslie wanted me to be sure and tell you that she thinks Paul is the right man for you and …”
Leslie moved out into the hall, the door closing softly behind her. The anger and self-disgust she was feeling made her heartsick. She had wanted answers to her questions, she needed them. But she should have known better than to try and get them from Beth. Not that Beth hadn’t tried to help her. To the best of her ability she’d tried.
But Beth couldn’t give definite examples of the ways in which Paul made her “feel good.” She couldn’t give exact reasons why she would trust Paul with her life or trust him to be faithful to her. What had Paul done to deserve such faith? In the end Beth had become so frustrated trying to explain that she’d begun doubting herself. The added doubts combined with the normal nervousness of a bride had turned Beth into a basket case. And it was Leslie’s fault. She should have known better. She’d been dealing with her sister for twenty-three years and hadn’t gotten one logical answer from her yet.
Once in the parking lot, Leslie suddenly realized she’d forgotten to change out of her gown. It was a hideous affair with a low-cut bodice and bell-shaped skirt that was so like Beth and so unlike herself, she could hardly stand looking at it. And what was Beth going to do for a maid of honor, she wondered.
She turned to retrace her steps, then changed her mind. Her mother would handle it. She’d substitute a bride’s maid for Leslie, and no one would be the wiser—if the wedding actually took place at all. And Leslie certainly didn’t want to go back in there to change clothes. She could change at home and leave it to her mother to retrieve the clothes she’d worn to the church that morning.
She was in the process of wadding the hoop and voluminous skirt into something she could sit on, when she heard the church door open and close behind her.
Her mother approached, her gown swishing louder than her footsteps in the silence between them. Without hesitation, she took Leslie’s face between her hands and came eye to eye with her eldest daughter.
“For what it’s worth,” she said, “I know you didn’t intend for this to happen.”
“I’m really sorry.”
“I know, honey. And I’d rather you didn’t leave, but it might be for the best. Beth has always looked up to you and admired you so. She thinks you have all the answers to everything.” Eve Rothe smiled sympathetically at her daughter. “She’d be surprised if she stopped to realize you were coming to her for an answer this time, wouldn’t she?”
Leslie grinned back at her mother self-consciously. “Yeah.”
“When it happens to you, dear—and it’s bound to happen—you won’t be able to explain it any better than Beth could. Try not to let that interfere with it, though. Love has no rhyme or reason. It just is.”
Leslie nodded to pacify her mother, but she still didn’t understand. How could the whole world make such a big deal out of something so … unreal? Air, vapor, radio waves … there were lots of things that couldn’t be seen, touched, smelled, or heard and still had perfectly good explanations behind them. Why didn’t love? And how did you find it if you didn’t know anything about it?
“Are you still going to take your vacation?” her mother asked.
“Yes. I was tired before all this. Now I really need it,” Leslie said, again gathering the skirt, trying to decide the best way to get it into her Volvo, finally deciding to just hike up the gown and sit flat on the seat. Pushing the skirt down around her, she looked up to see that her mother had moved up beside the car door.
“Well, try not to dwell on this. I think you’ve learned your lesson. And I’m sure your father will be able to talk her out of the bathroom soon. It’ll work out. You go. Rest up. And come back as your old sweet self. You’ve been working too hard lately. Lighten up. Have a little fun.”
“Okay, Mom,” Leslie agreed halfheartedly as she kissed her mother’s cheek. “I’ll try.”
Depressed, disgruntled, and feeling disgraced by her part in the disastrous prenuptial incident with Beth, Leslie took the freeway on her way home.
It was a clear, warm midsummer Saturday in Denver. The car windows were down, and the wind whipped at her hair. The Rockies rose tall and majestic in the distance. The jagged blue mountain line seemed to rise up and join with the cloudless blue of the sky like one continuous curtain marking the end of the earth, one part so solid, the other so empty and yet so perfect and complete.
For Leslie there was something ethereal and soothing about the scene before her. It’s agelessness, the way it never changed, made her life seem simple and at the same time, valuable. The mountains called out to her and lifted her spirits. She suddenly was glad to be alive, to be able to feel the heat of the sun on her skin and the wind in her hair.
The events at the church and her doubts and loneliness slowly slipped away as she kept driving, heading straight for the mountains. She saw the exit she needed to take to get home and watched it slip by. Normally not an impulsive person, she rarely was taken by whims. But this time, the impulse was too strong and seemed so right.
Oh, she knew somewhere in the back of her mind that if she were adamant about going to the mountains, she should go home first and maybe eat something—and definitely change her clothes—but this whim knew her too well. It knew that if it allowed Leslie to stop for anything practical or levelheaded, she would come to her senses and nip it in the bud. So it took advantage of her weakened state of mind and gained full control.
In less than an hour she’d passed through the town of Bailey, her destination firmly set in her mind. As the data-research analyst for a large property-development company, Leslie had been studying a particular parcel of land deep inside the Gunnison National Forest as a site for a proposed ski resort. Unfortunately, it hadn’t been her only project. For months now, she’d been running herself ragged preparing proposals for projects in locations all over the Rocky Mountain states. And she never had the time to actually see the proposal sites.
It wasn’t necessary for her to see them in person. The maps, the geological studies, national park records, and a multitude of other surveys and reports were all indicators she used to determine whether to recommend or reject a particular site. The one she was heading for had all the earmarks of being an excellent location for a winter playground for the elite. Leslie had wanted to see the before and after of a new project, and this one was of particular interest to her because of the considerable uproar environmental groups had caused throughout the planning.
