That Camden Summer (32 page)

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with me again. Don't throw me out and get all independent and uppity. Let us fight this thing together."

"Why would you want to, Gabriel?" she asked, gripping his arm with both her hands. "Why? I've got to know. If it's true, go ahead and say it so we can both know where we stand."

The right side of his mouth was pressed against her hair. His heart was pounding against her back. But he took the plunge and whispered, "Because I love you, Roberta."

The grip of her hands on his arm tightened, as if she were afraid he might slip away and change his mind.

"I love you too, Gabriel, I hope you'll believe that. But if I don't run off and marry you in a week or two or three, you mustn't be discouraged. I've only kissed you for the second time today, and half the time I've known you we haven't been on amicable terms. Besides that, you know me. You know that I have to fight my own battles and win my own way, whether it's getting rid of an unfaithful husband or keeping my beloved daughters. So I have to fight this my way."

"And marrying me wouldn't be your way." "No. "

He turned her to face him and held her by her upper arms. "Roberta, please

"No, because if I did that, anything they'd say about me would go unchallenged, and I'm a good mother. A good one! I won't let anybody say different!"

"But if you'd marry me they wouldn't

challenge you at all, so why put yourself through that?"

"We don't know that I'll have to. So far it's just a rumor."

He could see he wasn't going to convince her tonight, so he pulled her loosely into his arms and they stood in an easy embrace.

"Gabriel?" she said quietly after a while. "What, love?"

"Thank you for asking me, and for telling me you love me, and for being here to bolster me. You've been doing that ever since I moved to Camden., and I've never told you how much I appreciate it. 11

"You're welcome. You bolstered me too." "I riled you up."

"That, too. But somehow I always came back for more, so I must have enjoyed it."

She rested against his sturdy bulk and it felt good to be there. In Roberta's life there had been too few times when she'd rested against a man, s sturdy bulk.

"Do you know what you just called me?" she said after a while.

"What did I just call you?" "Love. You said, 'What, love?"' "Did P"

She smiled against his neck and said, "There might be hope for us yet. Also, because you're a very good kisser."

He smiled. "'Course I am. And you're not so bad yourself, once you decide to get started." She let herself stay in his arms a bit before

getting back to a sterner reality.

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"I've made a decision," she said. "Which is?"

"To talk to my mother and see what she knows about this Benevolent Society." Roberta drew back and looked into Gabriel's eyes. "Because if she's a party to this ... if she's one of the women who wants my children taken away from me, I can't remain in this town, Gabe. Surely you must understand that."

It hadn't entered his mind.

He gripped her arms again. "Don't scare me that way. Now that I've finally overcome my fear of loving you, don't scare me, Roberta."

"It's how I am, Gabriel. I see things very clearly - which path I should take, which one I should avoid. Then I chart my course and follow it. Is that the kind of woman you'd want to marry?"

"Here ... yes. Not in Boston or Philadelphia or some other town I've never been to. Camden is my home. This is where I want to stay."

She pulled back slowly until she was standing free. "Then we'd better wait and see, hadn't we, Gabe?"

He sighed and felt heavy with foreboding. Though he was reluctant to agree, he knew at that moment she was thinking much more clearly than he.

"Yes, I suppose," he finally agreed. "We'd better wait and see."

And on that forlorn note they went out to face the glowing eyes of their children for whom they had no answers yet.

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OING home should have been more inviting, Roberta thought as she approached

GMyra's house. Stepping into a mother's kitchen should feel like a welcome respite, a lush sinking into loving security that ought to have outlasted growing up and becoming independent oneself, and moving away and having babies of one's own.

Instead, approaching Myra's back door brought only dread.

Roberta knocked, which brought a regret of its own: She'd never felt comfortable simply opening the door and walking in like Isobel did at her house.

Instead of Roberta dear, come in, are you all right, let's talk, she heard, "Oh, it's you."

She entered uninvited.

Myra's kitchen was painted a dull moss green and smelled of drying chamomile and tansy, for the teas she brewed all winter. The same painted wooden table dominated the center of the room, and the same wooden bowls and crockery canisters lined the open shelves. The same displeasure corrugated Myra's face.

"Hello, Mother," Roberta said resignedly. "May I sit down?"

"Have you been to Grace's?"

"No, Mother. Why would I have been to Grace's?"

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"Well, I don't know. To set things right, I hoped."

Roberta studied her mother a long time, silent, oppressed, thinking, I will never treat my children this way. Never. No matter what they've done. Finally she sat, taking the chair she had not been invited to take while Myra remained standing with the table between them.

"No, Mother, I came here hoping to do that. "

"Well, I'm not the one you hurt! You should see your sister. She's been crying for three days! "

"Over what?"

"Over what!" Myra's eyes bulged as she seated herself erect as an eagle on the farthest chair from Roberta. "How dare you come here and say a thing like that. May God forgive you for what you've done to your sister."

"What have I done to my sister?"

"Made a fool of her before this whole town, that's what! "

"Would you like to hear my side of it, Mother? Just this once? Because I think you should. I think you should hear my side of what that bunch of wizened old biddies is gossiping about at the Benevolent Society!" As she spoke her voice grew stronger and her head jutted forward. "I think we should finally air what we both have known about Grace and Elfred, and their miserable marriage" - she rapped the tabletop - "and Elfred's philandering ... and how you've refused to acknowledge it for what? Ten years? Twelve? As long as they've been

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rnarried?" Her knuckles kept hitting the tabletop as she made each point. "And I think we should talk about why. Today. Here. Now. Get it all out in the open because I can't live this way anymore, wondering why you dislike me so much! "

Myra's mouth snapped shut. Her eyes receded.

"Don't be foolish. I don't dislike you." "No? Well, you could have fooled me!" "I'm your mother, for heaven's sake," Myra

said, as if that explained everything.

"Mothers stand behind their children. You never did, not for as long as I can remember. It was always Grace, Grace, Grace! I couldn't please you if I had married the King of Siam! So why not?"

"Roberta, you're overwrought." Myra popped to her feet.

"Y' damned right I am! Sit down, Mother! You're not running away from this."

Myra sat. Roberta composed herself and lowered her voice to a more reasonable level. "When I was in seventh grade I won a poetry

award, and they were giving me a certificate at school, but you didn't come to watch me get it. Do you remember why?" Myra sat wide-eyed and silent, as if watching a cobra. "Because Gracie got sick, that's why. Poor little Gracie had one of her ten colds a year, or an earache, or something else equally as unimportant. You could have left her with Daddy, but you didn't. You stayed home and took care of Gracie and let me receive my award without either of my

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parents in the audience. When I got home I ran in to give you my certificate and do you know what you did with it?" Myra didn't, of course. "I asked you where it was a day or two later, and you said, 'Oh, it must have gotten burned up with some newspapers.' And I went to my room and bawled my eyes out.

"But I learned something from that experience. I learned not to depend on my mother loving me or supporting me, because you never did. Whatever I achieved, or wanted to do, you denigrated in one way or another, did you know that? When I graduated with honors you thought I should have stayed and worked in the mill. When I said I was going to move to Boston you said, 'You'll be sorry.' When I said I was getting married you said, 'Is he rich?' When Grace said she was getting married you bragged to the whole town about how handsome Elfred was, and how successful he was going to be someday. I wrote and asked you to come when I had my babies - well, the first two, anyway. After that I learned not to ask because you weren't going to come anyway. Of course you never came. As my children grew up and I wrote to tell you about their accomplishments you never failed to write back praising whatever Grace's kids were doing at the moment. When George began his affairs and I needed someone so badly, what did you offer then? Nothing. Not to come to me or comfort me in any way. That was probably when Grace had her shingles and you had to go over there and cook for them. And when I finally couldn't put up with any

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rnore of George's women, or with his fleecing rne for every penny he could get, I got rid of him the only way I knew how, but - what else would you do, Mother? - you blamed me for the divorce. You actually blamed me!

"And now!" Roberta rose and bent over the table as her ire elevated. "Now that gang of know-it-all old hypocrites you have tea with has decided I'm not a fit mother and they're talking about going to the authorities to try to get my children taken away from me. And if you're a part of it, Mother, you'd better hear the whole story first! "

Myra gasped. "How could you believe -

"I could believe it because you've never once in your life spoken up for me. They say I've been having an affair with Gabriel. I'm not. They say I'm having another one with Elfred. I'm not. But let me tell you about your precious Elfred. From the time I set foot in this town, he's been trying. After all, I'm just a loose divorced woman, right? I must be easy prey for a slick, handsome devil like him, right? After all, he's seduced woman after woman while his wife was right in the room - the whole town jokes about it, but Grace pretends it isn't happening. That's why she gets the shingles, Mother! Because her husband has promiscuous affairs with anyone he can, only this woman" - Roberta tapped her chest - "wouldn't fall for it. This woman"

- Roberta's voice began losing its fight and she sank back onto her chair - "this woman said no, and slapped him, and forbid him in her house until With her forearms flat,

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Roberta gripped the sides of the table. "Until three days ago when my car ran out of gas out in the country on Hope Road, and Elfred came along and found me." Very softly, she asked, "And what do you suppose he did, Mother?"

Myra had drawn back hard against the rungs of her chair and covered her mouth with four fingers.

A beat of intense silence passed before Roberta said, "He raped me."

Behind her hand Myra whispered, "Oh no." "That's why Gabriel beat him up, and that's why Grace has been hiding, and that's why my car was seen at Gabriel's house late that night

- he was doing what my mother should have done, taking care of me, holding me while I cried, letting me take a bath at his place and calming my fears. But I couldn't come to you

- isn't that sad, Mother? I couldn't come to you because you'd have blamed me, just as you always have. You'd have said surely I must have done something to tempt Elfred. You're probably thinking it now, aren't you?"

Behind her hand, Myra quivered.

"Well, I didn't. And because I didn't, he gave me this." Roberta tipped back her head. "It's a cigar burn. It's how he made me stop fighting. "

Tears had actually formed in Myra's eyes as Roberta leveled her chin and sat back tiredly in her chair. Her emotional weariness equaled that of the night she was raped, combining as it did a fresh recollection of the assault with the confrontation she'd undertaken here today.

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Myra, however, kept her reactions under tight rein, sealing herself off in a peculiar trancelike fashion, showing little more than the glitter of tears in her eyes.

Studying her, letting her own weariness show, Roberta said quietly, "Now I have to know, Mother. Are you one of the Benevolent Society who wants to see my children taken away from me?"

It took Myra a long time to gather her equilibrium and whisper, "No. I didn't know a thing about it till now."

Roberta breathed a hidden sigh. "Well, that's one good thing anyway." She waited for her mother to express anguish or concern about her condition, the way Gabe had, but Myra was too steeped in her selfishness to go that far. She sat instead, gazing through her tears at a spot to the left of Roberta's shoulder, perhaps mourning the end of her delusions about Elfred and Grace.

"Maybe I did favor Grace," she said to the window frame. "Yes, I . . . I suppose I did. But there was a reason." She paused, still without meeting Roberta's eyes.

"Well, tell me," Roberta said impatiently. "I'm waiting."

Myra collected herself dramatically, heaving an overburdened sigh and letting her jowls and shoulders sag while dropping her eyes to her joined hands. "I was raised in a very strict household -- church every Sunday, reciting the Commandments every night at bedtime on our knees. There was no swearing there, no laughter, very little fun. Fun was godlessness, work would

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get you closer to heaven, they preached, and I believed them. It was a somber upbringing, but I loved them, my mother and father. They had come over from Denmark and used to tell us about the land there, and about our grandparents.

"At any rate, they arranged a marriage for me to a rather somber young man named Carl Halburton. There wasn't much to our courtship, no ... well, you know ... none of the silliness and mooning you'd associate with it today. But we married and he was a good man. Never very outgoing or warm, but a hard worker and a good provider. When Grace was born he was very proud.