In Memoriam (10 page)

Lisa knew about her, saw pictures of her in a swimsuit with the Miss New York banner plastered across her chest.

“Why? I mean, how’d that come about?” Her heart was pounding hard, and she felt strange, a combination of confusion and disgust.

“I was in the office, and evidently she ran into Catherine somewhere in town. It was a congratulatory call.”

“How’d meeting for a beer get into the picture?”

“She asked me to have one with her, and I said yes. I didn’t want to come back to the house too soon, you know, before your mother left.”

Lisa could feel a little self-righteous indignation brewing and didn’t want to challenge him. “I hope you didn’t plan on using my mother as an excuse to sit in a pub with another woman. That definitely won’t cut it with me.” She took a deep breath. “Ever.”

“It’s not a big deal.”

“Maybe to you it isn’t, but to me it’s huge. I had your son today, in case you forgot. You making plans to have a drink with another woman, using the excuse of my family being here to see the baby, is
not
okay. Now if you think I’m being unreasonable, we need to work this out right now because I’m not letting another second pass with the misunderstanding hovering over us.”

He finished drying his hands and reached for the baby. “There’s no misunderstanding. I got it.”

Lisa reluctantly gave the baby up to him, because she wasn’t sure he
did
get it. Realizing she wasn’t in the best frame of mind for a showdown, she decided to let it go for now. “Let’s go eat, shall we? Then I’ll lie down while the baby’s sleeping.”

Dan wanted to complain about Gladys but stopped himself and followed silently behind his wife.

The table was beautifully set, adorned with flowers someone had sent the new parents. “Oh, wow, this looks so lovely,” Dan said, trying to make nice. “And smells fabulous, too.”

“Why thank you, Dan,” Gladys said, her eyes sparkling. “This dish is Big Ed’s favorite. He’s on his way, by the way. Lisa watched me make it in case you want it again.”

Dan looked at Lisa, but she was frowning.

“Don’t get any ideas,” she said, but burst out laughing, defusing the mood. “If I have to cook to make Dan happy, we’re in big trouble here.”

“I never liked it much myself,” Gladys admitted. “As a matter of fact, Big Ed will tell you that you’re the only one I cook for anymore.” She turned her back and fussed with something in the sink, but what she’d said moved Dan, and he stood up with baby Marcus in his arms to go to her.

“Join us, Gladys,” he said. “You’re not our cook. I’ll hire someone for the kitchen if I have to.”

Gladys let him lead her to the table, but she protested about the need to hire someone. “This kitchen is a joy to work in, trust me. When I don’t want to cook any longer, I’ll let you know.”

They agreed to let things be and had a pleasant meal together, for the time being, anyway.

Chapter 10

Nelda decided to go back to Brooklyn with Sandra and the children. Being at Lisa’s, she felt invigorated running around with Miranda. And little Brent was so adorable. He reminded her of her own children as infants and wanted to revisit that time in her life when she wasn’t at her best. She’d make it up to herself, giving loving care to her grandchildren.

Why was hindsight always twenty-twenty? In her youth, she knew that what she was doing—drinking to excess—would be detrimental to her family, but she didn’t care. Taking care of her own problems, getting her needs met was more important than what might happen to her children. She’d raised four seemingly healthy, well-adjusted daughters, and it wasn’t until the past few years, actually when Jack Smith died, that the reality of what she’d done to them surfaced. It was easier to finish out her life by pretending that none of it happened, except when faced with the evidence of it every day.

Pam practiced avoidance in its most powerful form: denial…and the effect was as far-reaching as Nelda’s alcoholism had been. Although Nelda could see Pam was making strides in overcoming the challenges having an alcoholic mother had given her, the resulting problems would manifest over time.

Poor Marie. What could Nelda say or do about Marie that would make any difference now? She was dead, long-suffering, victimized repeatedly because of, Nelda believed, her own parenting deficiencies. Unprepared for another child, Marie’s birth plunged Nelda into a postpartum depression made worse by alcohol. Pam stepped in at age eleven and played mother to the girls, waiting for her to pull out of it. Nelda never did until her husband, Frank, died. Without his enabling, it was too difficult to keep up the lifestyle of a drunk. She was faced with the choice to either give up and drink herself to death or get sober. She chose sobriety.

Her other two daughters, Susan and Sharon, independent and living hours away, tolerated Nelda, but just barely. Their resentment simmered under the surface with their need to get restitution, something that was never going to happen because there was no way Nelda could make it up to them. So mother and daughters avoided each other unless absolutely necessary, and that usually meant Pam had a reason for them to get together. Now, because of Lisa’s new baby, Nelda was worried Pam might invite them to the beach. The escape to Sandra’s house was the one way Nelda could cope with her guilt, and Pam was fine with it.

The car stopped in front of Sandra’s brownstone. “I’ve never been here,” Nelda said. “Not that it’s important, it just occurred to me.”

“Well, I’m sorry about that,” Sandra said. “Life got so hectic. Tom’s mother, who you’ve met, was here all the time. That’s going to change now, of course.”

“What will you do about work?”

“Get a nanny, like everyone else does,” Sandra replied. “Valarie watches Brent at the office for me. I’ll see if she can come here. If you want to stay with me, you can supervise. I think she’d be too much for you to handle permanently.”

“Yes, I have to agree, unfortunately,” Nelda said. “I don’t think I want to watch a child now all day, anyway. I really love living at Pam’s, too. Bernice is great fun. Never a dull moment.”

Sandra laughed. “I believe it.”

“It’s quiet at the beach now,” Nelda said. “Remember how Pam had an open-door policy? People came and went all summer. Not any more.” Nelda thought about her own family, how close everyone seemed to be until Pam’s beach house was no longer available for holiday celebrations. Suddenly, nobody was that excited to get together.

“We really did have some wonderful times,” Sandra said, lying. Fighting with Marie every weekend was more like it.

“I guess I could stay here on Monday. You know, to
supervise
.”

“Oh, would you? I’m sure it will be fine with Valarie, but just to make sure Miranda is okay with her.”

“It’s a deal,” Nelda replied.

~ ~ ~

After dinner, Lisa went upstairs to sleep while Gladys and Dan took care of the baby. Dan was the baby of
his
family and had little experience with an infant. Gladys helped him get comfortable on the couch in the den while she put Megan to bed for the night.

Once he was alone with Marcus, he took a closer look at him. The nurse said it was too early to tell what color his eyes would be, but Dan was sure they’d be black like his were. The baby looked exactly like him. The hair—wiry spikes—the ruddy complexion, also a baby thing according to the nurse, but Dan figured she’d never seen a native baby before. Even his little ears looked like Dan’s ears. All the poking around woke him up, and after a few seconds, the baby’s eyes focused on Dan’s face. Later, he would tell an unbelieving Lisa that Marcus stared right at him, made eye contact with him, grasping his finger with his tiny hand. He wished he’d had his phone so he could take a picture of it. His son knew who he was, an experience that would pull him into fatherhood so that later, when his patience with marriage was tested, he’d have the powerful love for his son to fall back on.

~ ~ ~

Stuck in traffic for over four hours, Big Ed Ford finally arrived. Gladys was curled up on the couch with a book when she saw the car lights sweep the front of the house. She pushed the curtains aside excitedly. Hopping off the couch, she had the door open before he got to the porch.

“They’re sleeping,” she whispered. “It’s been a long day around here.”

“I’m sorry I’m so late,” he replied. “I almost gave up, traffic was that bad. Saturday getting into the city, I guess.”

“Well, whatever, you’re here now.” She closed the door behind him, and as she turned around, he took her in his arms.

“Boy, I don’t know how you feel about it, but I really missed you this week. I kinda think I like having you around more than I thought I would.”

Gladys laughed. “Is that right?”

Ed embraced her, kissing her neck. “So do we sleep together tonight, or is this all I’m getting?”

“Shush, they’ll hear you,” Gladys said, giggling. “No, we get to sleep together in the den. The couch pulls out into a bed. As soon as Dan went to bed, I made it up for us.”

“Well, let’s get going, woman. You must be beat, and I’m about ready to keel over. If there’s any action tonight it better happen in the next thirty minutes.”

“Oh God, Ed, you’re wooing me with all your sweet talk. Their bedroom is right over the den, too, so keep it down.”

“Just like at home,” he replied, laughing.

After locking up for the night, they walked back to the den hand in hand.

Baby Marcus woke up at midnight to eat. Lisa was sitting up in bed nursing when she heard the first sound. “Dan,” she whispered, waking him up.

“What? Are you okay?”

“Yes, but listen. What is that sound?”

He sat up in bed and listened for minute, and it took him just a few seconds to figure it out. Snickering, he wagged his finger at her to get closer so he could whisper to her. “I think your mother-in-law has a visitor.”

“Who? What does that have to do with it?”

“It sounds like that old couch in the den is getting a workout,” Dan said. “Big Ed must have arrived.”

“Oh no, I don’t want that in my head now! Is it even proper to do in other people’s homes?”

Dan thought he might have found a reason for Lisa to send Gladys back to New Jersey. “Yes, what nerve,” he said, but then he laughed. “They’ve been apart all week, Lisa. I think it’s kind of nice. It gives me hope for us when we’re old.”

But she wasn’t convinced. “I don’t want to know it if they’re doing it. I never had an inkling my mother and father were doing it! It’s supposed to be private.”

“Kids know their parents have an intimate relationship. In some cultures, the whole family sleeps in the same room.”

“Too bad,” Lisa replied. “My kids won’t know when we do it. It’s our private business. Now I feel guilty because my negativity is pouring down on Gladys and Ed when they’re trying to make love.”

“Well, don’t get carried away, dear. It sounds like they’re fine.”

The squeaking had stopped. Lisa strained to listen for voices but could only hear water running from somewhere in the house, probably one of them in the bathroom, freshening up.

The baby fell asleep, and Lisa put him back in his bassinet. She snuggled down in the bed, wide-awake.
How much can you pack into one day?
she thought. She just had a baby less than eighteen hours earlier. She’d entertained her husband’s family in the birthing room; his sisters, who were old enough to be her mother, stood at the foot of the bed, pointing at her vagina and yelling, “The head! We can see the head!”

Then her mother and what was left of her family showed up, and instead of the focus being where it should have been—on her son—she discovered that her brother was basically lying to her for weeks before he died. Sandra Benson would be the last person on earth she’d picture Brent being interested in having a relationship with. And now, she had his son. As much as Lisa didn’t want to believe that child was Brent’s, she couldn’t deny that he looked exactly like her brother.

Now, her main source of support was in the room below her, having just had sex. Gladys and sex in the same sentence grated on the nerves. She was the altar lady at church. She took the Sunday flower arrangements to the local nursing home every week so they wouldn’t go to waste. Gladys baked homemade biscuits for breakfast, washed Lisa’s bras by hand, curled Megan’s hair with pink sponge curlers from the 1970s. She didn’t lay on the couch in the den, naked, with Big Ed in between her open legs. It wasn’t possible.

Turning over in bed, Lisa could see Dan’s profile in the light from the streetlight outside the house. Dan. He said her text saved him from having to have a drink with a former beauty queen. What on earth was she thinking when she married him? The savior he’d started out being had chinks visible in his armor as the weeks passed, and she knew she was being punished for not only infidelity, but betraying her own mother. Because of it, she didn’t feel like she could go to Pam and complain about Dan. She certainly couldn’t complain about him to Gladys.

Going to the pub to meet Cara Ellison was so in Dan’s character, she wasn’t as angry as she should have been. But she wasn’t going to tolerate even a hint of shenanigans. Not after what her mother had gone through with her father. The concern that history was repeating itself frightened her. Right before she fell asleep, she made the promise to herself that she’d tighten up the reins of her marriage and take control or get out of it. There was no alternative. She was not going to end up like Pam.

Chapter 11

Pam fixed a light supper for Bernice and Annabelle. It was quiet in the house without Nelda, but Pam was glad she’d offered to go to Brooklyn with Sandra. The two children were Pam and Nelda’s flesh and blood; little Miranda needed more input from Marie’s relatives now that Tom was out of the picture. Pam always knew he and his mother, Virginia, were more involved with her care than Sandra was, so now they needed to step it up and lend a hand. She wasn’t even sure Miranda should stay with Sandra. It was a matter she’d discuss with Nelda as soon as she returned to the beach.