Bygones (4 page)

Everyone was waiting for Bess to respond to the news but she wasn't ready yet, emotionally. She felt like breaking down and bawling, and had to swallow hard before she could speak at all.

“Your dad and I need to talk about a few things first. Would you give us a day or two to do that?”

“Sure.” Lisa withdrew her hand and sat back.

“Would that be okay with you, Michael?” Bess asked him.

“Of course.”

Bess deposited her napkin on the table and pushed her chair back. “Then I'll call you, or Dad will.”

“Fine. But you aren't leaving yet, are you? I've got dessert.”

“It's late. I've got to be at the store early tomorrow. I really should be going.”

“But it's not even eight yet.”

“I know, but . . .” Bess rose, dusting crumbs from her skirt, anxious to excape and examine her true feelings, to crumple and get angry if she so desired.

“Dad, will you stay and have dessert? I got a French silk pie from Baker's Square.”

“I think I'll pass, too, honey. Maybe I can stop by tomorrow night and have some with you.”

Michael rose, followed by Lisa, and they all stood awkwardly a moment, politely pretending this was not a scenario in which parents were running, distraught, from the announcement that their daughter was knocked up and planning a shotgun wedding, pretending this was merely a polite, everyday leave-taking.

“Well, I'll get your coats, then,” Lisa said with a quavery smile.

“I will, sweetheart,” Mark offered, and went to do so. In the crowded entry he politely held Bess's coat, then handed Michael's to him. There was another clumsy moment after Michael slipped his coat on, when the two men confronted each other, wondering what to say or do next. Michael offered his hand and Mark gripped it.

“We'll talk soon,” Michael said.

“Thank you, sir.”

Even more awkwardly, the young man faced Bess. “Good night, Mrs. Curran,” Mark offered.

“Good night, Mark.”

Unsure of himself, he hovered, and finally Bess raised her cheek to touch his gingerly. In the cramped space before the entry door Michael gave Lisa a hug, leaving only the mother and daughter to exchange some gesture of good night. Bess found herself unable, so Lisa made the move. Once Bess felt her daughter's arms around her, however, she clung, feeling her emotions billow, her tears come close to exposing themselves. Her precious firstborn, her Lisa, who had learned to drink from a straw before she was one, who had carried a black doll named Gertrude all over the neighborhood until she was five, and, dressed in feet pajamas, had clambered into bed between her mommy and daddy on Saturday mornings when she got old enough to climb out of her crib unaided.

Lisa, whom she and Michael had wanted so badly.

Lisa, the product of those optimistic times.

Lisa, who now carried their grandchild.

Bess clutched Lisa and whispered throatily, “I love you, Lee-lee,” the pet name Michael had given her long ago, in a golden time when they'd all believed they'd live happily ever after.

“I love you, too, Mom.”

“I just need a little time, please, darling.”

“I know.”

Michael stood waiting with the door open, touched by Bess's use of the familiar baby name.

Bess drew back, squeezing Lisa's arm. “Get lots of rest. I'll call you.”

She passed Michael and headed down the hall, clasping her clutch purse under one arm, pulling on her gloves, her raspberry high heels clicking on the tiled floor. He closed the apartment door and followed, buttoning his coat, turning up its collar, watching her speed along with an air of efficiency, as if she were late for a business appointment.

At the far end of the hall she descended two stairs before her bravado dissolved. Abruptly she stopped, gripped the rail with one hand and listed over it, the other hand to her mouth, her back to him, crying.

He stopped on the step above her with his hands in his coat pockets, watching her shoulders shake. He felt melancholy himself, and witnessing her display of emotions amplified his own. Though she tried to stifle them, tiny mewling sounds escaped her throat. Reluctantly, he touched her shoulder blade. “Aw, Bess . . .”

Her words were muffled behind a gloved hand. “I'm sorry, Michael, I know I should be taking this better . . . but it's such a disappointment.”

“Of course it is. For me, too.” He returned his hand to his coat pocket.

She sniffed, snapped her purse open and found a tissue inside. Still with her back turned, mopping her face, she said, “I'm appalled at myself for breaking down in front of you this way.”

“Oh, hell, Bess, I've seen you cry before.”

She blew her nose. “When we were married, yes, but this is different.”

With the tissue tucked away and her purse again beneath an arm she turned to face him, touching her lower eyelids with the fingertips of her expensive raspberry leather gloves. “Oh, God,” she said, and emptied her lungs in a big gust. She drooped back with her hips against the black metal handrail and fixed her tired stare on the opposite railing.

For a while neither of them spoke, only stood in the murky hallway, helpless to stop their daughter's future from taking a downhill dive. Finally Bess said, “I can't pretend this is anything but terrible, our only daughter and a shotgun wedding.”

“I know.”

“Do you feel like you've failed again?” She looked up at him with red-rimmed eyes, shiny at the corners with a new batch of tears.

He drew a deep, tired breath and took stock of their surroundings. “I don't think I want to discuss it in the hallway of this apartment building. You want to go to a restaurant, have a cup of coffee or something?”

“Now?”

“Unless you really have to hurry home.”

“No, that was just an excuse to escape. My first appointment isn't until ten in the morning.”

“All right, then, how about The Ground Round on White Bear Avenue?”

“The Ground Round would be fine.”

They turned and continued down the stairs, lagging now, slowed by distress. He opened the plate-glass door for her, experiencing a fleeting sense of déjà vu. How many times in the course of a courtship and marriage had he opened the door for her? There were times during their breakup when he'd angrily walked out before her and let the door close in her face. Tonight, faced with an emotional upheaval, it felt reassuring to perform the small courtesy again.

Outside, their breath hung milky in the cold air, and the snow, compressing beneath their feet, gave off a hard-candy crunch like chewing resounding within one's ear. At the foot of the sidewalk, where it gave onto the parking lot, she paused and half-turned as he caught up with her.

“I'll see you there,” she said.

“I'll follow you.”

Heading in opposite directions toward their cars, they started the long, rocky journey back toward amity.

 

THEY MET IN THE LOBBY of the restaurant and followed a glossy-haired, effeminate young man who said, “Right this way.” Michael felt the same déjà vu as earlier, trailing Bess as he'd done countless times before, watching the sway of her coat, the movement of her arms as she took off her gloves, inhaling the faint drift of her perfume, the same rosy scent she'd worn for years.

The perfume was the only familiar thing about her. Everything else was new—the professionally streaked blonde hair nearly touching her shoulder, the expensive clothes, the self-assurance, the brittleness. These had all been acquired since their divorce.

They sat at a table beside a window, their faces tinted by an overhead fixture with a bowl-shaped orange globe and the pinkish glow of the phosphorescent lamps reflecting off the snow outside. The supper crowd had gone, and a hockey game was in progress on a TV above the bar somewhere around a corner. It murmured a background descant to the piped-in orchestra music falling from the ceiling.

Michael removed his coat and folded it over an empty chair while Bess left hers over her shoulders.

A teenage waitress with a frizzy hairdo came and asked if they'd like menus.

“No, thank you. Just coffee,” Michael answered.

“Two?”

Michael deferred to Bess with a glance. “Yes, two,” she answered, with a quick glance at the girl.

When they were alone again, Bess fixed her gaze on Michael's hands, wrapped palm-over-palm above a paper place mat. He had square, shapely hands, with neatly trimmed nails and long fingers. Bess had always loved his hands. They were, she'd said many times, the kind of hands you'd welcome on your dentist. Even in the dead of winter his skin never entirely paled. His wrists held a whisk of dark hair that trailed low and made his white cuffs appear whiter. There was an undeniable appeal about the sight of a man's clean hands foiled by white shirt cuffs and the darker edge of a suit sleeve. Oftentimes after the divorce, at odd, unexpected moments—in a restaurant, or a department store—Bess would find herself staring at the hands of some stranger and remembering Michael's. Then reality would return, and she would damn herself for becoming vulnerable to memory and loneliness.

In a restaurant, six years after their divorce, she drew her gaze from Michael's hands and lifted it to his face, daunted by the admission that she still found him handsome. He had perfect eyebrows above attractive hazel eyes, full lips and a head of gorgeous black hair. For the first time she noticed a few skeins of gray above his ears, discernible only under the direct light.

“Well . . .” she began, “this has been a night of surprises.”

He chuckled quietly in reply.

“This is the last place I expected to end up when I told Lisa I'd come for supper,” Bess told him.

“Me too.”

“I don't think you're as shocked by all this as I am, though.”

“I was shocked when you opened that door, I can tell you that.”

“I wouldn't have been there if I'd known what Lisa had up her sleeve.”

“Neither would I.”

Silence for a moment, then, “Listen, Michael, I'm sorry about all that . . . well, Lisa's obvious attempt to revive something between us—our old dishes and the stroganoff and the corn pudding and the candlelight. She should have known better.”

“It was damned uncomfortable, wasn't it?”

“Yes, it was. It still is.”

“I know.”

Their coffee came: something neutral to focus on instead of each other. When the waitress went away Bess asked, “Did you hear what Lisa said to me when we were alone in the kitchen?”

“No. What?”

“The gist of her message was, Grow up, Mother, you've been acting like a child for six years. I had no idea she was so angry about our antagonism, did you?”

“Only in retrospect, when she'd talk about Mark's family and how close and loving they are.”

“She's talked to you about that?”

His eyes answered above his cup while he took a sip of coffee.

“When?” Bess demanded.

“I don't know—a couple different times.”

“She never told me she talked to you so often.”

“You put up barriers, Bess, that's why. You're putting up a new one right now. You should see the expression on your face.”

“Well, it hurts to know she's talked to you about these things, and that Mark's family knows her better than we know Mark.”

“Sure it hurts, but why wouldn't the two of them gravitate toward the family that stayed together? It's only natural.”

“So what do you think of Mark?”

“I don't know him very well. I think I've only talked to him a couple of times before tonight.”

“That's my point. How could this have happened when they've been dating such a short time that we've scarcely met the boy?”

“First of all, he's not a boy. You have to admit, he certainly faced the situation like a man. I was impressed with him tonight.”

“You were?”

“Well, hell, he was there beside her, facing us head on instead of leaving her to break the news by herself. Doesn't that impress you?”

“I guess so.”

“And by the sound of it, he comes from a good family.”

Bess had decided something on the way to the restaurant. “I don't want to meet them.”

“Aw, come on, Bess, that's silly—why not?”

“I didn't say I
won't
meet them. I will, if I have to, but I don't
want
to.”

“Why?”

“Because it's hard to be with happy families. It makes our own failure that much harder to bear. They have what we wanted to have and thought we'd have. Only we don't, and after six years I still haven't gotten over the feeling of failure.”

He considered awhile, then admitted, “Yeah, I know what you mean. And now for me, it's twice.”

She sipped her coffee, curious and hesitant while meeting his eyes across the table.

“I can't believe I'm asking this, but what happened?”

“Between Darla and me?”

She nodded.

He stared at his cup, toying with its handle. “What happened was that it was the wrong combination from the beginning. We were each unhappy in the marriage we had, and we thought . . . well, hell . . . you know. We married each other on the rebound. We were lonely and, like you said, feeling like failures, and it seemed important to get another relationship going and to succeed at it, to sweeten the bitterness, I guess. What it really turned out to be was five years of coming to terms with the fact that we really never loved each other.”

After some time Bess said, “That's what I'm afraid is going to happen to Lisa.”

His steady hazel eyes held her brown ones while each of them pondered their daughter's future, longing for it to be happier than their own. From the bar around the corner came the whine of a blender.

When it stopped Michael said, “But the choice isn't ours to make for her.”

“Maybe not the choice but isn't it our responsibility to make her consider all the ramifications?”

“Which are?”

“They're so young.”

“They're older than we were when we got married, and they both seem to know what they want.”

“That's what they told us but what else would you expect them to say, under the circumstances?”

He considered awhile then remarked thoughtfully, “I don't know, Bess, they seemed pretty sure of themselves. Mark made some points that had a lot of merit. If they had already talked about when they wanted to have babies, they were a jump ahead of about ninety percent of the couples who get married. And, frankly, I don't see anything wrong with their thinking. Like Mark said, they have good jobs, a home, the baby would have two willing parents—that's a pretty solid start for a kid. You have your kids when you're young, you have more patience, health, zest—and then when they're gone from home you're still young enough to enjoy your freedom.”

“So you don't think we should try to talk them out of it?”

“No, I don't. What would the other options be? Abortion, adoption, or Lisa raising a baby alone. When the two of them love each other and want to get married? Wouldn't make much sense at all.”

Bess sighed and crossed her forearms on the table. “I guess I'm just reacting like a mother, wanting a guarantee that her daughter will be happy.”

His eyes told her what he thought about hoping for guarantees.

After a moment she said, “Just answer me this—when we got married, didn't you think it would be for life?”

“Of course, but you can't advise your child not to marry because you're afraid she'll make the same mistakes you did. That's not realistic. What you have to do is be truthful with her, but first of all you have to be truthful with yourself. If you—I guess I should be saying
we—
can admit what we did wrong and caution them to avoid the same pitfalls, maybe
that's
how we can redeem ourselves.”

While Bess was pondering the point the waitress came and refilled their cups. When she went away, Bess took a sip of her steaming coffee and asked, “So, what do you think about the rest? About us walking down the aisle with her and her wearing my old wedding dress and everything?”

They sat silently awhile, their glances occasionally touching, then dropping as they thought about putting on a show of harmony before a couple hundred guests, some, undoubtedly, who'd been guests at their own wedding. The idea revolted them both.

“What do you think, Bess?”

Bess drew a deep breath and sighed. “It wasn't pleasant, getting chewed out by my own daughter. She said some things that really made me angry. I thought, How dare you preach to me, you young whelp!”

“And now?” Michael prodded.

“Well, we're talking, aren't we?”

The question gave them pause to consider the six years of silence and how it had affected their children.

“Do you think you could go through with it?”

“I don't know. . . .” Bess looked out the window at the cars in the parking lot, imagining herself walking down an aisle with Michael . . . again. Seeing her wedding gown in use . . . again. Sitting beside him at a wedding banquet . . . again. More quietly, she repeated, “I don't know.”

“I guess I don't see that we have any other choice.”

“So you want me to give her the go-ahead for this dinner at the Padgetts'?”

“I think we can fake our way through it, for her sake.”

“All right, but first I want to talk to her, Michael, please allow me that. Just to make sure she isn't marrying him under duress, and to assure her that if she makes some other choice you and I will be supportive. May I do that first?”

“Of course. I think you should.”

“And the dress, what should I say about the dress?”

This issue touched closer to home than all the others.

“What harm would it do if she wore it?”

“Oh, Michael—” Her eyes skittered away, suddenly self-conscious.

“You think just because you wore it and the marriage didn't last, the thing is jinxed? Or that somebody in the crowd might recognize it and think it's bad judgment? Be sensible, Bess. Who in that entire church besides you and me and possibly your mother would even know? I say let her wear it. It'll save me five hundred dollars.”

“You always were putty in her hands.”

“Yup. And I kind of enjoyed it.”

“Need I mention that the piano will have to be moved again?”

“I'm aware of that.”

“On their limited budget, it'll be a drain.”

“I'll pay for it. I told her when I bought it I'd foot the bill for the piano-moving for the life of the instrument, or the life of me, whichever ended first.”

“You told her that?” Bess sounded surprised.

“I told her not to tell you. You had such a bug up your ass about the piano anyway.”

Bess almost laughed. They eyed each other, repressing grins.

“All right, let's back up, boy, to that remark you made about saving five hundred dollars. I take it from that that you're going to offer to pay for the wedding.”

“I thought it was damned noble of the two of them not to ask for any help, but what kind of Scrooge would let his kid lay out money like that when he's earning a hundred thousand a year?”

Bess raised her eyebrows. “Oooo . . . you dropped that in there very neatly, just to make sure I'd know, huh? Well, it just so happens I'm doing quite well myself. Not a hundred grand a year but enough that I insist on paying half of everything.”

“Okay, it's a deal.” Michael extended his open hand above their coffee cups.

She shook it and they felt the shock of familiarity: the fit hadn't changed. Their expressions grew guilt-tinged and immediately they broke the contact.