Cameo Lake (28 page)

Thirty-nine

B
athed dressed in their best non-jeans pants, hair restrained in a barrette for Lily and combed into submission for Tim, my children made their way down the street and over two blocks to have Thanksgiving with their massive family. I was still in my grungy jeans and sweatshirt, flour and bits of pie dough stuck here and there. Grace and Joanie had said three-thirty was early enough. I had a couple of hours to get myself presentable and the pies for both occasions done.

Ben's unexpected call had cheered up a day when I had fully expected my primary emotions to be depression, alienation, and grumpiness. I actually hummed as I rolled out the pie dough. I had our date to look forward to, two weeks hence, and it felt like spotting a life ring while drowning in a choppy sea.

Typical of Grace, she filled their second-floor flat with the homeless waifs from her classes. Students whose families were too far away to make going home feasible, foreign graduate students who enjoyed the American feast without completely getting into the conceptual significance. Besides the turkey, there was an array of vegetarian, Chinese, Turkish, and Greek foods on the trestle tables built with sawhorses and doors. Lacking enough chairs, many of us stood or sat on the floor in a quintessentially sixties fashion to eat. It was loud,
crowded, and lively. At some point I cornered Grace and whispered that I'd heard from Ben, that he was pretty much okay. I left out the part about going to Boston to see him. I had no use for a lecture today.

I enjoyed meeting the students and sampling the odd array of foods, but it wasn't my tradition and I was glad to slip away. On my way out Grace caught my arm. “If you talk to Ben again, tell him I'm thinking about him too.”

“I will.”

It was a nice evening, brisk and dry. No wind. I parked the minivan at home and walked to Alice's with the pies in the special basket Sean had given me one Mother's Day. They were heavy and cumbersome, but still I liked the idea of arriving on foot, Thanksgiving basket in hand. Off to Grandmother's house I go.

I recognized the variety of minivans and Hondas Sean's siblings drove. I picked out Connecticut, that was Frannie; Rhode Island times two, Margaret and Siohban; Pennsylvania, Mary Alice; and a rental car, must be Colleen's, I thought. I felt a slight flutter of nervousness in my chest, it would be the first time I'd been in the whole company since Sean and I split. But I trusted Alice's welcome and thought I could depend on my sisters-in-law to be happy to see me.

Sean's blue Volvo was in the driveway. The pies felt very heavy at that point and I didn't stop to grumble about his being late to leave. I knew it would be hard for him to pull himself away from the gathering, so I kept moving toward the back door with a tolerance I might not have ordinarily felt. As I approached, the back door opened and Sean quickly stepped out. Automatically I handed him the pie basket. Reflexively he bent to kiss my cheek. I let him. Then we both stepped back, remembering ourselves.

“Mother sent me out to look for you.”

“I'm not late, am I?”

“I think she harbors hope that if we're left alone for a few minutes we'll . . . well, I suppose the correct word is reconcile.” He made a
sound through his nose which might have been derision, or maybe it was just against the weight of the basket, which he then shifted to the other hand.

“Is that what you want, Sean?”

He shook his head sadly, not looking at me but beyond, toward the street. “No, not really.”

“Me either.” Even to myself, I sounded like a little kid.

“Cleo, you have to understand something. I'm happy. I haven't been for a long time and it's not that putting you through all this hasn't been painful to me. But, I know that it's best. We haven't made each other happy for a long time.”

“Sean. I wasn't unhappy.”

“No. But I was.” Sean hefted the basket and opened the screen door to let me go in first.

I didn't move. “You bastard. How did I make your life so unhappy?” Sean's words were so hurtful to me that I felt physically weakened by them. “Tell me how?”

“Cleo, look, just drop it. We can't go into it right now.” He stood there, the door still held ajar. “Are you coming in?”

“Yes. Yes I am.” I pushed past him, bumping the pie basket painfully against my hip.

The kitchen was exactly as it had been every other Thanksgiving in my twenty-year memory of McCarthy holidays. Redolent of cooking, half cleaned up, half still filled with the dinner dishes which couldn't fit into the dishwasher, voices loud and cheerful coming from the dining room, laughter. I stood in the dining room archway. The evening's dark was warmed by the light of the chandelier over the massive, cluttered dining room table, a perfect setting for this close-knit family. With Sean's words I understood for the first time that I stood outside of it. I was in danger of losing my place in the family. The only family I had.

A voice chimed in above the din and clatter of china dessert plates being distributed. A high-pitched unfamiliar one, laden with abrasive Cranston vowels. Eleanor's voice. I realized that Alice was coming to me as I stood immobilized in the archway. The look on her face was a
blend of regret and stubbornness. I could tell that this was not her idea, but that she had capitulated to Sean's demands as she always had when it came to the favored only son, and would defend her right to do so.

“Why didn't you tell me she was here?” I might have been speaking to Alice, facing me, or Sean, still behind me. Neither one said anything. I knew then that Alice had sent Sean out to warn me and he had lacked the guts to do so. Picking a fight instead, so as to ratify his contention I was hateful. “What did I do to deserve this?”

Alice had taken hold of my wrist, as one would a naughty child. “Cleo, come have dessert with us.”

I shook her off with a wrench of my arm. “At the very least they should have been out of here before there was any chance I would arrive.”

“Cleo. Sean is my son. He doesn't have to leave at all.”

I felt as though I'd been slapped. “No, but Lily and Tim are my children, and they do.” I pushed past Alice and walked past the table, now terribly silent. I did not look at any of them, I strode past as if I were walking through an empty room into the big front parlor, which was set up as the children's dining room. I caught my children by their hands and sent them to fetch their coats. It was an interminable five minutes. I smiled at the gathered innocents, the myriad cousins, assuring them they bore no fault. I loved them still.

Not one of the adults spoke, just kept their eyes on their empty dessert plates and their hands on their wineglasses. They had never been shy about entering into each other's marital arguments before, but somehow something had shifted. A daughter-in-law is no match against an only son.

As we made for the front door Alice did come to me and repeated, “Stay, Cleo. Please. Have dessert with us.” Sotto voce, a more gentle hand on my arm, she said, “They'll be leaving in a few minutes. Stay.”

I shook my head, not trusting my voice, opened the front door, and walked out, one child gripped in each hand. Lily started to
protest but I shushed her with enough vehemence that even she knew not to whine.

Not since the beginning of this drama had I felt so wrenched. I could almost hear the tearing of my emotional fabric. My ties to the family had been sundered and now I stood on the other side of the chasm.

Forty

S
ean came to the house the next day. I saw him coming, my pie basket-in his hand. He knocked on the back door and I was slow to unlock it.

“Can we talk for a minute?”

“Come in.” I took the basket from him and set it on the table between us. We were forced to look through the tall fixed handle, and I was reminded of a confessional. Sean moved the basket.

“My mother is very hurt by your walking out yesterday.”

“Your mother is hurt? How does she think I feel?” I stood up, outraged at Sean for putting forth such a patent lie.

“Look, I know it was a bad idea to be there when you came, but my mother had nothing to do with that. We would have left in a few minutes anyway.”

“Your mother sat that woman down at her table and fed her. In my mind that means she's accepted her.”

“What if she has?”

I had no answer for that. “Just leave, Sean.”

“Can I see the kids?”

“They're still in bed. Come back later.”

“No. Cleo, listen to me. Eleanor is in my life. I don't know if it will last, I just know that I'm trying as hard as I can to make this easy.”

“Easy for whom? Certainly not me. Certainly not your children. Easy for you. As always, Sean. What's best for Seannie is best for everyone. Even for your mother. It's easier to turn on me than make you leave your doxy at home.”

“My mother loves you . . .”

“She has a funny way of showing it.”

“Cleo, she does. She always will.”

“You once said
you
would always love me. Love changes, doesn't it?”

“I can't talk to you.”

I pressed my hands flat against the wooden surface of the table-top. “It's over, Sean. We both know it. We should never have prolonged the dying with futile efforts at life support.” Even as I spoke them, the words made me think of Talia Brightman and Ben's nearly year and a half of watching her die.

Sean got up from the chair. He hadn't removed his tan overcoat and I noticed a grease stain near a buttonhole. He looked fat and rumpled and a little remorseful. “Shouldn't we wait until after Christmas?”

“No, I'm giving you your freedom and for Christmas giving you to Eleanor.”

“And what do you get?”

I smiled, feeling suddenly empowered and in control of my life. It was a kind of bliss, knowing that, as painful as the next few weeks might be, as contentious and difficult, I had asserted my own will into this situation and I was now free. “Sean, I get my life back.”

Even as I closed the door behind Sean, I felt comforted by knowing-that Ben and I had reconnected. By freeing myself from the confines of this blighted marriage, I was launching myself into new waters, at once still, deep, and unknown. Ben was to me in this moment like the raft, midway between shores. A safe place to rest.

I knew it was only a matter of time before Alice came to see me. She didn't knock. I was in the office, thumping on my laptop. I heard the back door and knew without a doubt Alice had arrived. “I'm in here!” I saved my work and got up from the desk chair.

“Cleo, you can't give up now.”

“Alice, it isn't giving up, it's acknowledging the end.” I led her back into the kitchen and put the kettle on. “It's a dead issue. He loves Eleanor. Although my money says he'll eventually cheat on her, too.”

Alice sat on the chair Sean had used and kept her hands folded as she leaned her arms against the table. She didn't say anything, and when I turned around I saw that she was weeping.

I knelt beside her and took her hands. “Alice, Ma, it doesn't have to mean we can't be friends.”

“No, Cleo. That's not it.” Abruptly she pulled away from me and reached for a paper napkin. She blew her nose. “I'm just sorry I didn't have the courage you have. I slapped Francis across the face when I found out about him. I told him I must never catch him cheating again. But I knew, I knew he was doing it. I was the laughingstock of our parish. For the sake of the children I stayed. I could have left. But I stayed.”

“Alice, where would you have gone?”

“I had relatives who would have taken me. There was only me and the first two girls then. My sister would have done.” As she spoke, Alice regained her composure and waved me off to mind the boiling kettle. “Of course, if I had gone, I wouldn't have my others. They were and are more precious to me than anything.”

“You were right to make your decision the way you did. But I need to keep to mine in my way.”

“You don't love him at all?”

“Not right now. I'm very angry with him.”

“But you still wear your ring.” Did she imagine that this oversight meant something, that there was some subconscious hope left for this marriage?

I looked down at my left hand and stared at the wide gold band as if I had never seen it before. It had never even occurred to me to remove it. I did so now, tugging a little against the snug fit. I set the ring down on the kitchen table and rubbed the vacated finger. “Not anymore.”