Ivy Secrets (36 page)

Peter shook his head as he pulled back the covers and got into bed. “There’s no way.”

“She could find out. What if she checks hospital records? What if she finds out I was never pregnant?”

“She doesn’t think I’m Jenny’s father; she doesn’t suspect you’re not her mother.”

Charlie folded back the down comforter that spanned their king-size bed then climbed in beside her husband. “Maybe my father was right. Maybe these things never work out.”

Peter took off his glasses and set them on the night-stand. “My guess is that Mother will never mention it again.”

“But she seemed so definite.”

“She tried to buy you off. It didn’t work. The only way
she can feel like she’s won is to watch you squirm. Mother enjoys holding things over people’s heads.”

Charlie ran her hand across the light hairs of his chest. “You sound as though you speak from experience.”

He rolled onto his side so she could not see his face. “My father had a mistress.” He laughed. “Can you blame him? Anyway, when Mother found out, she made his life hell. She told him if he didn’t stop seeing her, she would get everything he had. Apparently he ended the affair, but Mother proceeded to take everything anyway, bit by bit, right under his nose. I think it’s what killed him.”

“You were so young when he died. How do you know?”

“Servants talk.”

Charlie rubbed his shoulders, massaged his back. Under her fingers, his tense muscles began to relax. “Maybe we should get it over with. Maybe we should tell her the truth.”

“Never. If Mother ever knew that Jenny is Marina’s daughter it would be worse. She’d probably threaten to turn it into an international incident. She’d have Marina begging for mercy.”

“You’re forgetting that Jenny is not Marina’s daughter. She’s our daughter. We adopted her. Legally. What if we only told her that? If we only told her that Jenny is adopted, but not about Marina?”

“She would be suspicious as to why newlyweds would adopt a baby without trying to have our own first.”

“We could tell her I can’t have children.”

Peter turned over and looked at Charlie. In his eyes, she saw pain. “Now you’re the one who’s forgetting something. We want to have a family. We want to have our own children, too, don’t we?”

“Of course we do. Oh, Peter, I’m so confused.”

“I think I have the answer.” He moved his hands beneath her nightgown. “Let’s start our own family right away. As soon as you’re pregnant this will blow over. She’ll accept Jenny, and she’ll accept us. Especially once she has a grandson she can groom to take over the next generation of Hobart Textiles.”

Charlie slipped her arms around him. “I think that’s a positively brilliant idea, Mr. Hobart.” She kissed him slowly and warmed to his caresses.

“And in the meantime,” Peter whispered, “maybe you could try your best to make Mother like you.”

Charlie winced. “Oh, Peter, I don’t think that’s possible.”

“Of course it is. You’re bright and beautiful and charming as hell. If you show Mother that side of you instead of always trying to avoid her, I’m sure she’ll fall in love with you the way I did.”

“I wouldn’t know where to start.”

“You’ll think of something.”

But somewhere deep inside her, Charlie couldn’t believe Elizabeth Hobart would ever accept her, would ever accept Jenny.

    For two years, Charlie tried to get pregnant. Her gynecologist explained that she had a tipped uterus, a condition that reduced her chances but did not make them impossible.

“Relax,” the doctor recommended.

“Relax,” her mother echoed when Charlie told her one night on the phone. “I have a tipped uterus, too. And six kids.”

But Charlie couldn’t relax. Each morning she opened her eyes, hopeful that today would be the day her life would become all that it was supposed to have been. Each night she prayed that tomorrow Elizabeth Hobart would perhaps give Charlie some encouragement, perhaps say just one kind word. But the words never came, and Charlie soon realized she could at least be thankful that—as Peter predicted—Elizabeth had not acted on her accusations. If icy stares and cold shoulders were the woman’s idea of “making Charlie squirm,” Charlie was determined to endure them. Peter—and Jenny—were worth it.

With Peter away so much at the office and halfway around the world, Charlie spent her time taking care of Jenny. She marveled at the way Jenny’s tiny limbs grew sturdy, at her wide, warm smile, her soft, giving hugs. At a year old, Jenny started to walk. Soon after, she began to form words.

“Mama,” was her first.

Charlie felt a special delight, clouded only by the truth that Jenny, indeed, looked nothing like the woman she called
Mama, and nothing like Peter. She longed for the day when they would have their own child together, their own flesh and blood, a product of their love for each other, not merely of their love for Marina.

One crisp autumn morning in 1982, Charlie walked slowly, hand in hand with Jenny, keeping pace with the child’s delightfully jerky, short steps. They strolled around the grounds of the manor and stopped, as usual, at the stables. “Horsie” had become one of Jenny’s favorite words.

Charlie loved the fall, with warm leaves smelling like Northampton, reminding her of cozy days at Smith, reminding her of the laughter and the love she’d shared with her friends. She was lost in her memories of Marina and Tess, of long talks and cold pizza, when Peter caught up with them.

“How are my beautiful women today?” he asked as he planted a kiss on Charlie’s cheek, then Jenny’s.

“Horsie,” Jenny responded.

Peter laughed, then turned to Charlie. “I have to go away for a few days.”

“Again?” It seemed as though Peter was gone more than he was around. It was almost as though Elizabeth purposely kept them apart, kept them from having some kind of normalcy in their lives. She wondered if it was part of the plan of holding Jenny over their heads.

“Sorry, honey. Duty calls.”

Charlie lifted Jenny and adjusted the small corduroy hat on the child’s head. “The more you’re away, the less our chances are of having me get pregnant.”

“You remember what the doctor said. You have to relax.”

“It’s hard to relax when you leave me here alone.”

“You’re not alone.”

Charlie started walking again. There was no need to remind him that, except for Jenny, she might as well have been alone. She often wondered if it would have been easier to let Elizabeth claim victory two years ago.

“I’ll be home by the end of the week,” Peter called after her.

Charlie nodded but could not look back. Neither could she look forward to a string of empty days without him here again, empty days, a prisoner in Hobart Manor.

His footsteps jogged up to them. “Why don’t you visit your folks for a few days?”

“No. They’re both working now.” She didn’t dare tell him that she didn’t have the courage to go home: she was the one child the O’Briens didn’t have to worry about. She could not disappoint them, and she could not risk them saying “We told you so,” no matter how well meaning the words would be. She hoisted Jenny onto her hip. “What I need, Peter, is a job.”

“You don’t need a job. You have a job. You’re a mother.”

Charlie didn’t respond.

“Will you be all right while I’m gone?”

“I always am.”

He feigned a laugh. “Someday I’m afraid I’ll return to find that you and Mother have bludgeoned each other to death.”

“Your mother doesn’t come close enough to me to bludgeon me.”

“Maybe you should try a little harder, Charlie.”

She stopped by the side of the corral, where the trainer was leading a sleek chestnut mare around the split-rail fence. Elizabeth insisted on maintaining a stable of a half-dozen horses, although she rarely set foot inside the building. She had no interest in the horses, yet she paid handsomely for their upkeep, their grooming, their trainers, and frequently rewarded the lucky equestrians who were paid to win blue ribbons at the horse shows she never attended. It was, Charlie reasoned, all part of the facade, part of the plastic soul of Elizabeth Hobart.

She watched the mare
clip-clop
and wondered how many blue ribbons it needed to win to keep from being sold off for slaughter.

“Why am I the one who has to try harder, Peter? Why is it always my fault?”

Peter put a hand on her shoulder. “Mother’s getting old. It’s harder for her to bend.”

Charlie couldn’t respond.

“Just try a little harder, honey. Please. Do it for me.”

“I’ve been trying, Peter. I’ve been trying for two years.”

Peter kissed her again. “I know you have. I know it hasn’t been easy.”

“No,” she answered. “No, it hasn’t been easy.”

Peter had no idea how difficult it was. Whenever he was away, Charlie had learned it was best to have a dinner tray sent to her room. But today he had asked her to try harder, so she dressed in a new rust silk dress with matching suede pumps, put on fresh makeup and long strands of pearls, reinforced her fortitude with a large glass of sherry, and joined her mother-in-law in the dining room at eight.

She sat at the long cherry table now, eating in silence, though Elizabeth was only four chairs away. Each night the matriarch took her place at the head of the table, even when no one else was present, even when no one was there to witness her power. Charlie wondered if the servants also thought it absurd.

“Jenny and I had a nice walk to the stables today,” Charlie forced herself to say. “She’s quite taken with the horses. I expect she’ll want to start riding any day now.” She tasted her warm pumpkin soup and pretended not to let it bother her that Elizabeth didn’t answer.
Try harder?
she thought.
How much harder was possible?

She set down her sterling spoon and stared at the woman.
Damn her. Damn Peter for making me do this.

She sipped from her Baccarat water goblet and wondered what it would take to get the bitch to crack. She clenched the glass, tossed back her hair, and smiled.

“How old was Peter when he started riding?”

Elizabeth didn’t respond.

Charlie cleared her throat. “I said,” she repeated, “ ‘How old was Peter when he started riding?’ ”

Elizabeth glared down the table at her. “I have no idea,” she said, then pushed her bowl aside, raised the crystal bell at her place, and rang for Arlene, the kitchen girl.

Charlie put her hands in her lap and watched the heavy-set, middle-aged woman enter from the kitchen and remove the soup bowls in silence.

“I will have the sole now,” Elizabeth instructed.

“So will I,” Charlie interjected. If her mother-in-law wanted to play games, Charlie was ready tonight.

Arlene nodded and left the room.

“Elizabeth,” Charlie said, for the first time using the woman’s first name, “we need to talk.”

“We’ve nothing to talk about.”

“Yes, we do. We need to talk about us. About our relationship.”

“I have nothing to say on the subject.”

“Please, Elizabeth. Can’t we be friends?”

“Why?”

Arlene opened the door carrying two plates. Charlie kept silent as the woman set one in front of Elizabeth, then waddled the length of the table to serve Charlie. Charlie looked down at her plate: sole florentine. She hated spinach—had always hated spinach—but tonight, she would eat it. Tonight Elizabeth could accuse her of doing nothing wrong. She had to prove to Peter, and to herself, that she was capable of trying. She picked up her fork and waited until Arlene was gone again.

“We should be friends because you’re my husband’s mother,” Charlie said. “You are my mother-in-law, yet we live under the same roof as though we are total strangers.”

“This is
my
roof, Charlene.
I
am allowing you to live under it, because it seems that is what my son thinks he wants.”

“It’s my home now, too. Mine, and Jenny’s.” She put a forkful of fish and spinach into her mouth.

“Your home? Yours and your bastard child’s?”

Charlie wanted to scream. At the very least, she wanted to spit the disgusting spinach into Elizabeth’s face. She grabbed her water goblet and forced the food down. Then she watched Elizabeth chew slowly, wished the woman would choke on a bone, and prayed that Arlene didn’t know the Heimlich maneuver.

Elizabeth set down her fork and smiled. “Perhaps you would prefer to return to your people in, where is it, Pennsylvania?”

“Pittsburgh, Elizabeth. It’s Pittsburgh and you know it. It’s not too far from where you were raised. On the other side of the Hobart tracks.”

Elizabeth barely flinched. “You may have attended Smith College, but I see they did nothing to improve your upbringing.”

“Why do you hate me?” Charlie cried. “What have I ever done to make you hate me so much?”

The woman propped her fingers together. “You are a
tramp,” she said. “Your mother was probably a tramp, too. Breeding, what is it,
six
children?”

Charlie could not speak. She could not move.

“Why don’t you go back where you belong, Charlene? Back to your tramp of a mother and beer-drinking father.” A sudden leer crossed Elizabeth’s face. “Oh, my, it’s a wonder I haven’t thought of it before, but I suppose there’s a good chance that your father is the child’s father, too. I understand there’s a lot of that in poor Irish families. Fathers getting drunk and fucking their daughters.”