Bygones (7 page)

“Well, you do. You’ve really changed since we divorced.”

Her anger flared. “Oh, you’re really smooth. You’re without a wife- What?
A month?
Two?
And you’re telling me how great I look? Don’t insult me, Michael.”

“I didn’t mean to.”

At that moment Jake Padgett stood up with a glass in his hand. “I think a toast is in order here. Mark’s our first to get married, and naturally we hoped he’d pick somebody we liked. Well, we sure got our wish. Lisa, honey, we want to welcome you and say how nice it is to have you and your family here with us tonight.” He saluted Michael and Bess and nodded to Randy. “And so”- he raised his glass to the engaged couple-“here’s to a smooth road ahead for Lisa and Mark.”

Jake resumed his seat, and there passed between Michael and Bess a silent message, the kind husbands and wives of long standing can execute merely by the expression in their eyes.

Somebody should
mininke
a toast on our side.

You want to do it? No, you.

Michael rose, pressing his tie to his shirt, lifting his glass.
“Jake,
Hildy
-all of you-thank you for inviting us.
It’s the proper way to, start a young couple off, with the families united and showing their support. Lisa’s mother and I are proud of her and happy for her, and we welcome Mark as her husband-to-be. Lisa, Mark, you have our love. Good luck to you.”

As everyone joined in the toast, Bess felt herself in an emotional turmoil. It was the proper way to start the young couple off, but how bittersweet, having their own immediate family reassembled for the first time amidst all these undercurrents.

Coffee and dessert were served-dessert a layered concoction of angel food cake and strawberries.

Bess watched Michael watching Randy while he ate. Randy ignored his father and visited with the
Padgetts
seventeen-year-old daughter, Maryann, on his left.

Michael said, “This whole thing is turning out to
be
 
tougher
than I thought.”

“Don’t give up on him, Michael. Please.”

He looked at his son again. “He really hates me.”

“I think he wants to, but it’s costing him,”

“What’s your stake in all this, Bess? Why all of a sudden the push to see Randy and me reconcile?”

“You’re his father-nothing more complicated than that. I’m beginning to see what harm we’ve done by forcing the kids into this cold war we’ve waged.”

He released a weary sigh. “All right, Bess. I’ll try.”

ON equals way home from
White Bear Lake
, Randy acted surly.

Bess said, “Do you want to tell me what’s on your mind?”

He cast
her a
glance, then returned his eyes to the road. “What’s going on with you and the old man?”

“Nothing.
He’s your father. He’s trying to make amends to you.”

“Great!” Randy shouted. “All of a sudden he’s my father and I’m supposed to love him, when for six years you haven’t kept it any secret that you hate his guts.”

“Well, maybe I was wrong. Whatever I felt, maybe I shouldn’t have imposed the feelings on you.”

“I’ve got a mind of my own, Ma. I didn’t need to pick up vibes from you. He had another woman, and he broke up our home I”

“All right!”
Bess shouted, and repeated more calmly, “All right, he did. But there’s such a thing as forgiveness.”

“I can’t believe what I’m hearing. He’s getting to you, isn’t he?
Cozying up to you just as soon as his other wife throws him over.
He makes me sick.”

Guilt struck Bess for having instilled such hate in her son without a thought for its effect on him. “Randy, I’m sorry you feel this way.”

“Yeah, well, it’s a pretty quick switch for you, isn’t it, Mom? I’d just hate to see him make a fool of you a second time.”

She felt a surge of exasperation with him for voicing what she’d been feeling. Let this be a lesson, she thought. If you mend fences between yourself and Michael, keep your distance while doing it.

Chapter Five

The following day was Sunday. There was Mass in the morning, prefaced by a battle to make Randy get up and go, followed at home by a lonely lunch of chicken breasts for two, with very little table conversation.

Randy left immediately afterward to go to his friend Bernie’s house to watch a football game on television. When he was gone, Bess changed into a
sweatsuit
and returned downstairs, where the silent,
familyless
rooms held a gloom that was only amplified by bright day beating at the windows.

She did His, some
designwork
for a while, but found concentrating difficult. She I gave up, distracted by thoughts of Michael and their sundered family. She was not a tearful person, yet her aloneness had magnitude enough to force a pressure behind her eyes. In time it drove her to pick up the telephone, dial her mother, and ask if she could visit.

“I’d love it,” Stella
Dorner
said in her usual cheerful voice.

Stella lived in a town house on Oak Glen Golf Course, on the western edge of
Stillwater
. She had bought it within a year after her husband died, and had furnished it with sassy new furniture, declaring she hadn’t been buried along with him and wasn’t going to act as if she had. Though she was nearly sixty at the time, she’d on
tir
her job as an on-call operating-room nurse, had taken golf lessons, and had even signed up with a dating service. But she claimed that all the crotchety old men she’d been paired up with couldn’t keep up with her. Stella answered the door dressed in a
sweatsuit
the colors of a paint rag-white with smears of hot pink, yellow, and purple. Over it she wore a disreputable lavender smock.

“Bess, darling.
I’m so glad you called.”

She hugged her gingerly. “Careful! I don’t want to get any paint on you.”

“Paint?”

“I’m taking a painting class. I’m working on my first picture.”

Stella led the way into the living room, where the west window was
unreached
yet by the afternoon sun. Before the window stood an easel with a partially finished rendering of an African violet. “What do you think?” Stella asked.

“
Mmm
. . .” Removing her jacket, Bess studied the painting.
“Looks good to me.”

“It probably won’t be, but what the heck.

The class is fun, and that’s the object. Can I get you a Coke?”

“’Thanks.
I’ll get it. You keep on with your work.” Bess went into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator.

“How are the kids?” Stella called.

“That’s what I came to talk to you about.” Bess entered the room, sipping her pop, and sat herself on the sofa, drawing her knees up.

“Oh-oh.
This sounds serious.”

“
Lisa’s getting
married . . . and she’s expecting a baby.”

Stella studied her daughter. “Maybe I’d better put these paints away.” She reached for a rag and cleaned her brush, then joined Bess, on the sofa. “Well . . . does she want the baby?”

“Yes, very much.”

“Ah, that’s a relief”

“Guess what else.”

“There’s more?”

“I’ve seen Michael,” Bess told her.

“My goodness, you have had a week, haven’t you?”

“Lisa set us up. She invited us both to her apartment to announce the news.”

Stella laughed. “Good for Lisa. That girl’s got style.”

“I could have throttled her.”

“And how is Michael?”

“
Disdetached
again, on his way to getting another divorce.”

“Oh, my.
No wonder you wanted to talk. Where is Randy in all this?”
com”@nlere
he’s always been very resentful, shunning his father.”

“And you?”

Bess sighed and said, “I don’t know, Mother.” She gazed at her knees for a long time.

“I’ve been carrying around all this anger for six years. It’s very hard to let it go.”

Stella waited. Nearly a minute passed before Bess went on. “Mother, when we were getting the divorce, you never said much.”

“It wasn’t my place.”

“When I found out that Michael was having an affair, I wanted you to be angry for me-to raise your fist, to take my side-but you never did. There must have been some reason.
” .

“And you’re sure you’re ready to hear it now?”

“Is it going to make me mad?”

“That depends on how much you’ve grown up in six years.”

“It was partly my fault, is that what you’re saying?”

“It always takes two, honey. But when a man retaliates by having an affair, he’s usually the one who gets all the blame.”

“ All
right, what did I do?” Bess’s voice grew defensive. “I went back to college to get my degree! Was that so wrong?” she asked.

“Not at all.
But while you were doing it you totally forgot about your husband.”

“I did not! He wouldn’t let me forget about him. I still had to cook and do laundry and keep the house in shape.”

“I’m talking about your personal relationship.”

“Mother, there wasn’t time!”

“Now, there, I think, you’ve put your finger on it.” Stella let that sink in, then said, “Remember when you were first married, how you used to ask Dad and me to take the kids occasionally so you and Michael could go off camping by yourselves? And the April Foals’ Day when you had that Fanny Farmer box delivered to Michael’s office and it was full of nuts and bolts?”

Bess stared at the snowy golf course, her Coke forgotten.

“Those kinds of things should never stop,” her mother said.

“You got awfully caught up in school and, after that, in opening your store. When you’d stop over to see Dad and me, you were always rushing between two places.”

“That’s when Michael accused me of letting myself go.”

“As I recall, you did.”

“But I asked Michael for help around the house, and he refused to give it. Isn’t he partly to blame?”

“Maybe.
But maybe he’d have helped you if he hadn’t fallen to the bottom of your priority list. How was your sex life?”

“Rotten.”

“You didn’t have time for it, right?”

“I thought once I got through school and had my own business, I’d have more time, and everything would fall back into place.”

“Only he didn’t wait.”

Bess got up and went to stand near the window. Then she turned to Stella. “Last night he told me I looked great, and do you know how angry it made me?”

“
disfty
?”

“Because!”
Bess flung up one hand.
“Because- I don’t know.
Because he’s just sloughed off another wife and he’s probably lonely, and I don’t want him crawling back to me under those circumstances. I don’t want him crawling back to me at all!”

Bess covered her eyes with one hand and shook her head vehemently.

“It’s just that all of a sudden I’m so lonely, and I’m caught in this wedding situation, and I’m . .
.I’m
asking myself questions.”

Stella rose, went to her daughter, and from behind massaged Bess’s shoulders. “You’re going through a catharsis that’s been six years coming. All the time you’ve blamed him, and now you’re starting to explore your own fault in the matter. That’s not easy.”

“I don’t love him anymore, Mother. I really don’t.”

“All right, so you don’t.”

“Then why does it hurt so much to see him?”

“Because he’s making you take this second look at yourself. Here.” Stella produced a tissue, and Bess blew her nose in it. “Feel better now?”

“Yes, sort of.”

“Then sit down, tell me, about the wedding plans, and about Lisa’s young man, and about what I have to wear to this shindig, and if you think I might meet any interesting men there.”

Bess laughed. “Mother, you’re incorrigible.”

She gave Stella an impulsive hug.

“Maybe I never told you this before, but you’re my idol. I wish I could be more like you.”

Stella hugged her back. “You are a lot like me. Now, speaking of men, how are you and Keith getting along?”

“Oh . . . Keith.”
Bess made a face and shrugged. “He got upset because I had to break a dinner date with him to go to the engagement dinner. You know how he is, where the kids are concerned.”

“I’ll tell you something,” Stella said, “since we’re being honest with each other today. That man is not for you.”