Bridge To Happiness (29 page)

Renee and
Keely
were sitting at the kitchen table while Tyler napped in my room and Miranda did ballet leaps out in the courtyard before she dressed the poor cat up in a holiday outfit made of orange kitchen towels, bag clips, and a pumpkin shaped oven mitt.

“Hi, Auntie Molly!” Miranda shouted.

I turned around just as Molly walked in through the back doors, laughing and holding hands with a stunningly handsome, and way-too-old for her Spider Olsen.

I finished off the wine in my glass as if it were Evian.

“We’re here!” Molly called out. Within minutes everyone was in the room talking at once, my sons welcoming Olsen like an old friend and no one seeming to question the two of them being together.

I had been had.

Spider looked at me over my daughter’s red head and smiled charmingly. He pulled himself away from her and crossed the room “March,” he said and handed me two dozen amazing tangerine colored roses I so badly wanted to hate. “Thanks for inviting me.”

It took everything I had in me not to say ‘I didn’t invite you.’ I smiled instead, but it felt brittle. “Well, this is a surprise.”

Molly shot me a look that almost dared me to say something, which I knew now explained exactly why she had been avoiding me.

“Happy Thanksgiving,” I said to him as sweetly as I could, not wanting to ruin the day.

Molly had just lost the father she adored, and now suddenly she’s dating this older man? A man who I knew was hard on women? At the casino he’d said he was a grandfather. My daughter was only twenty four.

I turned away, feeling sick, as they headed for the TV room and walked over to the sink and stood there, gripping the sides. My prescription bottle sat next to the soap dish so I opened the bottle, went over to the island, refilled my glass and washed the medication down with another glass of Mike’s best wine.

Nothing would help me. I understood all too well what had been happening when I was self-absorbed by my grief. There wasn’t enough Zoloft in the world to numb me to the fact that Molly had not been watching out for me that night in our house Tahoe. She had been watching Spider.

Everyone was sitting
at the table, hungry and expectant, when I walked into the dining room carrying a big platter of turkey. Phil got up quickly and took it from me. “Wow, look at this,” he said, holding the heavy platter up.

“Yeah, amazing,” Scott said. “It’s not smoked, fried, or pickled.”

The kids laughed and I said, “Your father would love this bird.” I had to admit that sitting on that huge silver platter, this turkey looked to be the most golden brown, perfectly-roasted bird I’d ever seen. Even with half of it sliced, it looked like the November cover of
Bon Appetite
.

Phillip set the platter on the table and the serving fork fell on the floor, so I went down to pick it up, and saw Spider’s hand resting halfway up my daughter’s thigh.

When I straightened, I could feel the imaginary red horns sprout on my head . I was already holding the long meat fork in my fist, ready to leap across the table and stab him in his black heart. But someone suggested we needed to say grace, so I had to sit down and behave. I couldn’t murder him during a prayer, even though the Good Lord and I had been on shaky ground for a while.

So I tried for a rare second or two to actually speak to God.
Save my daughter, save my daughter, save my daughter
I mentally chanted. After all, He had saved my son last night.

But the moment was gone with an ‘amen’ and it was immediately chaos with wine bottles and serving bowls passing hand over hand, while gravy boats and butter plates and bread baskets all made the rounds of the table, everyone talking at once.

“This is the best.” Phil held the serving bowl and dumped half of it on his plate. “Sausage stuffing.”

“Oh, Phillip, don’t eat it all,”
Keely
said. She took the bowl and went out to the kitchen to refill it.

“Oh my God . . . no!” Renee stood up quickly.

“Renee? What are you doing? You don’t even like stuffing.” Scott said, frowning at his wife. He looked up at her. “What’s wrong with you?

“My water broke.” Renee looked down, helpless, then up, her face showing she was ready to cry. “Oh, Mom, I ruined your good chair.”

“It’s fine,” I said, moving quickly to her side. “Are you having contractions?”

She nodded. “Since last night.”

“What?” Scott burst out, and Renee nodded, then burst into tears.

Tyler looked at his mother, then at his father, and his small face turned bright red and he started wailing. “It’s okay sweetheart,” I said, trying to calm him.

“Since last
night?”
Scott was not happy.
“
Why the hell didn’t you tell me?”

“Because it’s Thanksgiving,” Renee said sobbing.

I turned away from Tyler and said, “Stop shouting at her, Scott.” Then I took a deep breath and added more calmly, “Take it easy. We’ll time her contractions and then call her doctor.”

Renee moaned and doubled over, gripping the back of the chair.

“There’s a good one.” Scott looked at his watch but forgot about his wife.

“For heaven’s sakes, don’t leave her standing there. Help her onto that sofa.”

Tyler screamed again and Miranda told him to shut up and danced around the table plucking up the candy corn she’d been eating all afternoon, and spinning around the room in circles from all the sugar.

Renee grabbed her belly and I could see the contraction writhe across her bulging stomach. I remembered that pain even all those years later.

“One minute apart,” Scott said. “Can that be right?” He looked up from his watch while Renee dug her nails into his hand.

“Mickey,” I said quickly. “Go call 911.”

“Okay.” He dropped his bread roll and got up, but stopped suddenly and squinted at me from his good eye. “What for?”

“Renee’s baby!” I shouted at him. “It’s okay, Tyler. It’s okay. Your mommy’s fine. G-Mo didn’t mean to yell. Phillip, stop shoveling food in your mouth and go see about your wife. And you, Molly, tear your goo-goo eyes away from Spider, who is old enough to be your father, by the way, and pay attention to what’s going on in here.” Miranda was spinning toward her parents. “Will someone
please
take these kids?”

Everyone sprang into action at once. But when Molly sent Spider over to take Miranda out of the room, I shouted, “No! She’s too young.” And I handed him Tyler.

“Mother!” My daughter gave me a horrified look.

But Spider laughed at me.

“I’m sorry,” I said distractedly, waving my hand in the air. But I wasn’t .

Keely
had walked back into the room before Phil could go find her and she looked at Renee, took in her contracting belly, red face, and pain-filled moans, and the blood drained from
Keely’s
face.

I knew that look. “Catch your wife, Phillip. She’s going to faint.”

“I need to push!” Renee cried.

“No!” everyone shouted at her at once.

I could hear the ambulance sirens so close. Thank God the fire station was only a few blocks away. Within minutes the paramedics were inside, bags on the floor as they hovered over Renee and I just stood there, having a private conversation with God. I figured He just might have had something to do with the fact that on my husband’s favorite holiday, at four twenty-two p.m., Michael David Cantrell the Third came into the world.

“You have got to help me do something about your sister.” I paced the floor of in front of Phillip’s desk.

“If you’ll remember, Ma, I tried to sell her to the neighbor when I was ten.”

“I’m serious.” My voice sounded strident. It was the Monday after Thanksgiving and I’d kept my grandkids over the weekend to help out Renee and Scott, and on top of everything, I hadn’t slept much. I’d been panicking about Molly and waking up at three a.m., and I’d seen Mike again. My nerves were shot.

“I don’t get involved in her love life,” Phillip looked away and shuffled some papers. “She’d eat me alive.”

“You can’t possibly be afraid of your little sister.”

“Oh, and you aren’t? She’s run the family since she came home from the hospital. Besides, she’s a big girl. She can make her own mistakes.”

“See?
You
think it’s a mistake, too. Spider’s way too old for her, and she’s vulnerable, after just losing your dad, and the fact that she hasn’t had a relationship in a while. I’m really worried about this.”

“Spider’s a good guy.”

I ignored him. “She would have listened to your dad, so she might listen to you or Scott.”

“No. She won’t listen to us because we’re not talking to her about Spider Olsen.”

“I haven’t even talked to Scott yet.”

“He and I already talked. Mom, sit down. You’re making me dizzy. Scott and I agreed not to get involved. Besides, as grandpa used to say, the horse is out of that barn.”

I sat and crossed my legs. I knew what Phillip was saying. Molly was already sleeping with Spider. “I know. I could tell.”

“How could you tell?”

“Besides the fact that he was groping her under the dinner table? Mothers just know these things.”

“If that’s true, then how come you didn’t know they were together in Tahoe?”

“I’d be willing to bet she hadn’t slept with him when we were in Tahoe.”

Phillip frowned at me and asked, “You can actually tell when she’s slept with someone?”

“I can usually tell when all my children are sleeping with someone.”

His face was priceless.

“You and Julie Gardner after the prom. Angela Winston. Jennifer
Wasinski
. Scott and Crystal
McCafferty
.” I didn’t mention Molly.

She had been a freshman in high school and fallen hard for a boy who broke her heart, and she would never talk to me about it. She talked to Mike, not about sex, but about being in love and being so hurt when the boy dumped her for a blond cheerleader.

Mike told me he was certain the punk who broke Molly’s heart dropped her for a girl who would give out. I never told him Molly was the one who had given out. I had no proof, just instinct and a certain look, but I knew.

For a long time I would broach the subject of boys when Molly and I had some time alone, but she always changed the subject, as if talking to me about dating or sex broke some kind of teenaged taboo.

Before she was twelve, I gave her the mother-daughter sex explanation and risk talk, and later again the about self-respect and owning your body and your choices. Because I wanted her to understand the value and power a woman had, and that she didn’t have to bargain with her body. That she heard about the facts of life from me was important, to understand what I wanted her to know about love and sex, and love versus sex.

But I tried to make her understand she could always come to me about her problems, about boys or men or heartaches. But she never did. The fact that she wouldn’t talk to me was painful and made me feel like somehow, unknowingly, I had failed my daughter.

Phillip came around from his desk and settled his hands on my shoulders and massaged them. “You look a million miles away.”