Silver Girl (31 page)

“I didn’t want to have a baby,” Connie said to Dan now. “I was just a kid; I still had living to do, a lot of living. I wanted to travel to Europe the way Meredith had done; I wanted to be the maid of honor in Meredith’s wedding and look hot in my dress. I wanted to discover myself, live up to my potential. I had a degree from Villanova in sociology, and I wanted to prove the people wrong who said such a degree couldn’t be put to use. Whatever, I didn’t want a baby.”

“And your husband?”

“My boyfriend?” Connie said. “Yes, he decided he wanted a baby.”

Wolf had been as adamant about having the baby as Connie was adamant about not having the baby. He had been raised Protestant, but the first thing he did was to appeal to Connie’s Catholic faith. Hadn’t she been taught to believe in the sanctity of life? Yes, of course. But everyone made mistakes, and Connie had reconciled herself to the fact that this abortion was going to be her one grave mistake. She had her own accounting system as far as God was concerned, a system of checks and balances. She had lived cleanly up until that point—premarital sex aside—and she figured that even if she did commit this one mortal sin, she could dedicate the rest of her life to good works and still come out okay. She would get her
MSW
and become a social worker on the terrifying streets of North Philadelphia. She could fight homelessness and teen pregnancy.

Wolf said, “I’m not okay with you killing a living thing that God created.”

Connie couldn’t believe he was taking this kind of hard-line moral position.

“It’s an embryo,” she said.

“It will turn into a person,” Wolf said. “A boy or a girl. A man or a woman. Our child. Our first child, the next generation of my family… The future of the Flutes is
right here.
” He rested his hands on her abdomen.

She got it then. Wolf was under the intoxicating influence of the family weekend. He felt the pressure of his parents and his grandparents; he wanted to do his part in sustaining the dynasty, continuing the family line. Connie shook her head, looked away.

They didn’t do anything for a week, then another week. Connie returned to Villanova, to her job waiting tables at Aronimink, a job made harder by her condition. The smell of eggs—unavoidable at brunch—made her hurl, and she could no longer join the rest of the staff for late-night benders at the bar. Well, she
could,
she reasoned, since she wasn’t keeping the baby. But she didn’t.

She and Wolf talked every night on the phone. He said he loved her. He said he wanted to marry her.

“I knew if I had an abortion, I would lose Wolf,” Connie said. “And I didn’t want to lose Wolf. I was madly in love with him. I wanted to marry him. But I wanted to marry him properly, in good time, and I wanted to be married to him for a while before we had children. I made this argument, but the man would not be moved. He wanted the baby. He was so sure about it that I finally felt secure enough to agree. He promised me everything would be okay. He promised me everything would be better than okay.”

Connie and Wolf got married at Christmas in a small ceremony in Villanova. Meredith wore a red velvet cocktail dress and served as maid of honor. Freddy couldn’t attend because of a work thing. Toby showed up with a nineteen-year-old girl who had crewed on one of his boats, but there had been one song when Toby had danced with Meredith, and the girl—Connie had forgotten her name—had thrown herself at Wolf’s brother, Jake. Overall, however, the wedding was lovely. Connie wore a demure shade of ivory—according to Veronica, anything lighter would have been in poor taste—but what Connie remembered was looking longingly at the flutes of champagne, and longingly at Meredith’s twenty-four-inch waist, and wishing that she wasn’t pregnant.

Connie and Dan were sitting on the bottom step of the stairs of the public landing. They were still holding hands, and although Connie knew that it must be long past eight, Dan seemed in no hurry to get anywhere. This seemed like true luxury: being with someone who was content to listen. Connie suddenly believed that rehashing the past like this was going to lead her somewhere. But even if it didn’t lead her anywhere, it felt good.

“When the baby came, there were complications,” Connie said. “Ashlyn rotated during labor, her leg got stuck, I was howling in pain—though just like they all promise, I can only remember the howling, not the pain. At some point during this, my uterus ruptured, and I was rushed into surgery. When this kind of thing happened in the Middle Ages, the baby died and the mother died. But I was at Washington Hospital Center. They were good; they did a Cesarean, pulled Ashlyn out and stopped me from bleeding internally.”

“Jesus, Connie,” Dan said. He squeezed her hand, and Connie felt a rush of pure ecstasy, then chastised herself for using her most grisly story to get sympathetic attention. But it was true. It had happened; she had survived.

“I was convinced that the complication with the pregnancy was my punishment.”

“Punishment for what?” Dan said. “You didn’t terminate the pregnancy.”

“Punishment, I don’t know… for being me, maybe, for all of my transgressions. For
wanting
to terminate the pregnancy.”

“Oh, come on, you don’t believe that,” Dan said.

“I believed it at the time. Ashlyn and I have had a difficult relationship from the get-go. Since her birth. Since conception.”

Dan laughed. “You’re as insane as I am.”

“I know,” Connie said. But even when Connie and Ashlyn were getting along, Connie was always holding her breath, waiting for the other shoe to drop. And it always did: Ashlyn said something cutting, cruel, dismissive. If Ashlyn was unhappy, Connie was blamed, and Connie accepted the blame. She would always feel guilty about not wanting to have Ashlyn in the first place.

“Wolf adored Ashlyn,” Connie said. “She was his pride and joy. And, in her eyes, he could do no wrong.”

Dan said, “Sounds familiar, in a way. Our kids bonded more closely with our spouses than they did with us. But that doesn’t mean we failed, Connie.”

But Connie
had
failed. She had always given a hundred percent, but there were times when she had resented it. Ashlyn was an amazing, brilliant child, but emotionally, she was made of granite. She was still, today.

Connie decided she would stop there; she didn’t want to say anything more. But Dan was curious. “So why the rift?” he said. “What happened?”

“Mmm,” Connie said.

She didn’t want to tell him what happened.

But this was her chance to speak. Connie started by telling Dan the easy things: high school, college, medical school. Ashlyn excelled on all fronts. They were a happy family. Even when Wolf was diagnosed with prostate cancer, they were united. But then came Ashlyn’s trip home with Bridget. The discovery of Ashlyn’s sexual orientation converged with the discovery of Wolf’s brain tumors. Wolf refused treatment because of his commissions; Ashlyn thought it was a rejection of her. She should have been angry at Wolf, but she’d directed her fury at Connie, of course, because Connie was the one who remained.

“And then at the funeral…” Connie said. She closed her eyes. Was she going to tell Dan what happened at the funeral? She took a breath of soupy, marshy air. “I was as supportive as I could be about Ashlyn’s relationship with Bridget. I mean, I wasn’t exactly
happy
about it, but I was happy that Ashlyn was happy. I was happy that Ashlyn had someone, that she wasn’t alone.”

Still, Connie thought, she should have done a better job acting happy about it. Ashlyn and Bridget had sat together in the front pew of Saint Barnabas Episcopal Church, holding hands. And this had
bothered
Connie. Wolf was dead, Connie was in the worst emotional shape of her life, she had a church filled with everyone she had ever known, as well as many, many people she didn’t know, and her daughter was holding hands with another woman in the front pew. Connie had glowered at Ashlyn the same way that her own father had glowered at her when she walked through the King of Prussia Mall with her hand in the back pocket of Drew Van Dyke’s Levis. Connie had wanted to lean over and whisper:
Cool it with the
PDA
. Reverend Joel is watching. Your great-aunt Bette is watching.
But unlike her own father, who might have made a scene, Connie held her tongue. She was, at that point, proud of herself.

During the reception at Jake and Iris’s house in Silver Spring, Ashlyn and Bridget slipped away. Connie noticed them leave the room, still ostentatiously holding hands, but Connie was tied up with a bridge partner of Iris’s who had just lost
her
husband to emphysema. Connie discovered Ashlyn and Bridget later, on her way to the bathroom. Connie had headed upstairs in an attempt to escape awkward conversation with the mourners who were standing in line for the first-floor powder room. She found Ashlyn and Bridget standing in the doorway of one of the guest rooms. Bridget had her hands on either side of Ashlyn’s face, and they were kissing.

Connie had relived this moment many times in her imagination, wanting the outcome to be different from what it had been. She had seen Ashlyn and Bridget kissing—lips, tongues, hands, shifting bodies—and she had cried out, “Jesus Christ, Ashlyn! Stop it! Stop it right now!”

Ashlyn had turned to her mother, her expression one of humiliation and anger and defiance, and she had raced down the stairs and out of the house. And Bridget had followed her.

Later, Connie tried to apologize. She had called Ashlyn’s apartment but got voice mail. She considered contacting Ashlyn at the hospital, but it took her several days to build up the courage to do this. She told herself that the more time she put between her outburst and her inevitable conversation with Ashlyn about it, the better. However, when Connie finally made it to the hospital, she was informed that Dr. Flute had tendered her resignation.

It was only at the lawyer’s office when they settled the particulars of Wolf’s will that Connie learned that Bridget had been offered a prestigious fellowship at a large university hospital, and that Ashlyn was going with her. Ashlyn refused to say where the hospital was. Ashlyn didn’t speak directly to Connie at all, except to laugh spitefully when Connie offered her apology.

“I didn’t mean anything by it,” Connie said. She had convinced herself that her reaction was no more or less severe than Bill O’Brien’s would have been had he found Connie and a boyfriend kissing at the top of the stairs during a funeral reception. (What would he have said? She tried to channel him, channel any parent.
What are you doing up here? This is neither the time nor the place!
) But the slippery, stinky truth of the matter was that the time and the place had little to do with what made Connie react as she did. It had discomfited her to witness her daughter kissing another woman. It had made her… squeamish. Did that make Connie a bad person? Wasn’t it, on some level, understandable?

“You two took me by surprise,” Connie said. “I didn’t expect to find you there. And I was very emotional that day. Ashlyn, I’m sorry.”

Ashlyn had treated Connie to derisive laughter, and then once in the Aston Martin, a car Wolf had adored, Ashlyn drove away.

“And that’s the last I heard from her,” Connie told Dan. “I found out that she’s practicing medicine in Tallahassee. She’s working at some community health clinic, I guess. Her career is secondary to Bridget’s. So maybe that’s why she won’t talk to me, maybe she’s ashamed of what she’s settled for. Of course, she was angry before the funeral. She holds me responsible for Wolf’s death.”

Dan put his arm around Connie and squeezed her, but the predictable tears didn’t come. It was just like Dan had said: In talking about it, finally, with someone who was essentially a complete stranger to the situation, she was able to gain some distance. She was able to look at herself as someone who had lived through that story. Had it sounded awful to Dan?
Jesus Christ, Ashlyn!
It was nothing Connie hadn’t said to her daughter a dozen times over the years in extreme anger or frustration—in response to nail polish spilled on the Persian rug, or a badly broken curfew, or the atrocious state of her bedroom. Had it sounded like the rejection of Ashlyn’s sexuality? Had it sounded like a shout-out against tolerance? Did Dan think she was a bigot? Connie had never quite known how to grapple with her outburst—because there had been something in her tone of voice, some emotion that she couldn’t name. Anger? Embarrassment? Disgust? Certainly not. But maybe, yes, just a little bit. And now Connie was being punished. She was being punished for not celebrating the fact that her daughter was in love with another woman.

She had learned her lesson. Connie would give anything—her house, her money, her right arm—
just to hear Ashlyn’s voice.

Dan cleared his throat. “That’s difficult stuff,” he said.

“It’s the most difficult stuff I’ve got,” Connie said. She laughed a little. “Remember, you asked for it.”

“I’m not sure I know what to say, except I know how you feel. Sort of. I have an inkling.”

They sat in silence a few seconds. Connie’s mind was racing, she could feel this time coming to an end. She wasn’t sure she could just get in her car and drive away after having given this man her most intimate confidence. The sun was high, it was hot, Connie needed water, shade, a swim. But she would sit here and freckle and burn as long as she could be beside Dan.

“You’re missing work,” she said.

“That I am,” Dan said happily. He pulled her up by the hand. “Come on, I’m taking you to lunch.”

It was only nine thirty, a little early for lunch they both agreed, though Connie had been up since five, so to her it felt like midday. She left her car in the parking lot there in Monomoy and climbed into Dan’s Jeep. She was trembling, either from heat stroke or relief. She had told him the worst of it, and he still wanted to be with her.

“I’d better get these groceries home,” he said. “We’ll swing by my house, if that’s okay with you?”

“Okay with me,” Connie said.

They drove back to Milestone Road and Dan turned on to Sheep Commons Lane. He pulled into a circular driveway. The house had gray shingles and white trim, just like Connie’s house, and a crisp brick chimney and a front porch with a nice-looking swing, and a ten-speed bike leaning against the railing. Connie gazed into a lush, landscaped side yard with a stone bench among the hostas.