Bygones Read online

  “I guess so.”

  “And by the sound of it, he comes from a good family.”

  Bess had decided something on the way to the restaurant. “I don't want to meet them.”

  “Aw, come on, Bess, that's silly—why not?”

  “I didn't say I won't meet them. I will, if I have to, but I don't want to.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it's hard to be with happy families. It makes our own failure that much harder to bear. They have what we wanted to have and thought we'd have. Only we don't, and after six years I still haven't gotten over the feeling of failure.”

  He considered awhile, then admitted, “Yeah, I know what you mean. And now for me, it's twice.”

  She sipped her coffee, curious and hesitant while meeting his eyes across the table.

  “I can't believe I'm asking this, but what happened?”

  “Between Darla and me?”

  She nodded.

  He stared at his cup, toying with its handle. “What happened was that it was the wrong combination from the beginning. We were each unhappy in the marriage we had, and we thought . . . well, hell . . . you know. We married each other on the rebound. We were lonely and, like you said, feeling like failures, and it seemed important to get another relationship going and to succeed at it, to sweeten the bitterness, I guess. What it really turned out to be was five years of coming to terms with the fact that we really never loved each other.”

  After some time Bess said, “That's what I'm afraid is going to happen to Lisa.”

  His steady hazel eyes held her brown ones while each of them pondered their daughter's future, longing for it to be happier than their own. From the bar around the corner came the whine of a blender.

  When it stopped Michael said, “But the choice isn't ours to make for her.”

  “Maybe not the choice but isn't it our responsibility to make her consider all the ramifications?”

  “Which are?”

  “They're so young.”

  “They're older than we were when we got married, and they both seem to know what they want.”

  “That's what they told us but what else would you expect them to say, under the circumstances?”

  He considered awhile then remarked thoughtfully, “I don't know, Bess, they seemed pretty sure of themselves. Mark made some points that had a lot of merit. If they had already talked about when they wanted to have babies, they were a jump ahead of about ninety percent of the couples who get married. And, frankly, I don't see anything wrong with their thinking. Like Mark said, they have good jobs, a home, the baby would have two willing parents—that's a pretty solid start for a kid. You have your kids when you're young, you have more patience, health, zest—and then when they're gone from home you're still young enough to enjoy your freedom.”

  “So you don't think we should try to talk them out of it?”

  “No, I don't. What would the other options be? Abortion, adoption, or Lisa raising a baby alone. When the two of them love each other and want to get married? Wouldn't make much sense at all.”

  Bess sighed and crossed her forearms on the table. “I guess I'm just reacting like a mother, wanting a guarantee that her daughter will be happy.”

  His eyes told her what he thought about hoping for guarantees.

  After a moment she said, “Just answer me this—when we got married, didn't you think it would be for life?”

  “Of course, but you can't advise your child not to marry because you're afraid she'll make the same mistakes you did. That's not realistic. What you have to do is be truthful with her, but first of all you have to be truthful with yourself. If you—I guess I should be saying we—can admit what we did wrong and caution them to avoid the same pitfalls, maybe that's how we can redeem ourselves.”

  While Bess was pondering the point the waitress came and refilled their cups. When she went away, Bess took a sip of her steaming coffee and asked, “So, what do you think about the rest? About us walking down the aisle with her and her wearing my old wedding dress and everything?”

  They sat silently awhile, their glances occasionally touching, then dropping as they thought about putting on a show of harmony before a couple hundred guests, some, undoubtedly, who'd been guests at their own wedding. The idea revolted them both.

  “What do you think, Bess?”

  Bess drew a deep breath and sighed. “It wasn't pleasant, getting chewed out by my own daughter. She said some things that really made me angry. I thought, How dare you preach to me, you young whelp!”

  “And now?” Michael prodded.

  “Well, we're talking, aren't we?”

  The question gave them pause to consider the six years of silence and how it had affected their children.

  “Do you think you could go through with it?”

  “I don't know. . . .” Bess looked out the window at the cars in the parking lot, imagining herself walking down an aisle with Michael . . . again. Seeing her wedding gown in use . . . again. Sitting beside him at a wedding banquet . . . again. More quietly, she repeated, “I don't know.”

  “I guess I don't see that we have any other choice.”

  “So you want me to give her the go-ahead for this dinner at the Padgetts'?”

  “I think we can fake our way through it, for her sake.”

  “All right, but first I want to talk to her, Michael, please allow me that. Just to make sure she isn't marrying him under duress, and to assure her that if she makes some other choice you and I will be supportive. May I do that first?”

  “Of course. I think you should.”

  “And the dress, what should I say about the dress?”

  This issue touched closer to home than all the others.

  “What harm would it do if she wore it?”

  “Oh, Michael—” Her eyes skittered away, suddenly self-conscious.

  “You think just because you wore it and the marriage didn't last, the thing is jinxed? Or that somebody in the crowd might recognize it and think it's bad judgment? Be sensible, Bess. Who in that entire church besides you and me and possibly your mother would even know? I say let her wear it. It'll save me five hundred dollars.”

  “You always were putty in her hands.”

  “Yup. And I kind of enjoyed it.”

  “Need I mention that the piano will have to be moved again?”

  “I'm aware of that.”

  “On their limited budget, it'll be a drain.”

  “I'll pay for it. I told her when I bought it I'd foot the bill for the piano-moving for the life of the instrument, or the life of me, whichever ended first.”

  “You told her that?” Bess sounded surprised.

  “I told her not to tell you. You had such a bug up your ass about the piano anyway.”

  Bess almost laughed. They eyed each other, repressing grins.

  “All right, let's back up, boy, to that remark you made about saving five hundred dollars. I take it from that that you're going to offer to pay for the wedding.”

  “I thought it was damned noble of the two of them not to ask for any help, but what kind of Scrooge would let his kid lay out money like that when he's earning a hundred thousand a year?”

  Bess raised her eyebrows. “Oooo . . . you dropped that in there very neatly, just to make sure I'd know, huh? Well, it just so happens I'm doing quite well myself. Not a hundred grand a year but enough that I insist on paying half of everything.”

  “Okay, it's a deal.” Michael extended his open hand above their coffee cups.

  She shook it and they felt the shock of familiarity: the fit hadn't changed. Their expressions grew guilt-tinged and immediately they broke the contact.

  “Well,” Michael said, expanding his chest and touching his stomach. “I've had enough coffee to keep me awake until three.”

  “Me too.”

  “You ready to go then?” She nodded and they hitched their chairs back from the table. While they were donning their coats, he inquired, “How's your
mother?”

  “Indefatigable as always. Makes me breathless just listening to her.”

  He smiled and said, “Say hi to the old doll for me, will you? I've missed her.”

  “I'll do that. But if this wedding comes off, you'll undoubtedly be able to say hello to her yourself.”

  “And your sister, Joan. She still in Colorado?”

  “Yes. Still married to that jerk and refusing to consider divorce because she's Catholic.”

  “Do you ever see her?”

  “Not very often. We just don't have anything in common anymore. By the way, Michael . . .” She paused, her coat on. For the first time her eyes softened as she looked at him. “I was very sorry about your mother.”

  “And I was sorry about your dad.”

  They had each lost a parent since the divorce but she still had one left. He now had none.

  “I appreciated your coming to the funeral. She always liked you,” Michael told Bess. She had attended and had taken the children, of course, but had not spoken to Michael. Likewise, he had attended her father's funeral, but they had remained stubbornly aloof from one another, exchanging only the most perfunctory condolences. They had each liked the other's parents. It had been one of the connections hardest to sever.

  “It was damned hard when Mother died,” Michael admitted. “I kept wishing I had some brothers and sisters, but . . . aw, hell, what good are wishes? I'm forty-three years old. You'd think I'd have gotten used to it by now.”

  His whole life he'd hated being an only child and had talked about it often with her. She, too, had missed having a sister she was close to. There was a seven years' age difference between herself and Joan, which left them little in the way of childhood nostalgia regarding play, or friends, or even school. In her memory, Joan seemed more like a third parent than a sister. When she'd married and moved to Denver it had made little difference in Bess's life, and though they occasionally exchanged letters, these were merely duty missives.

  It felt odd to both Bess and Michael, standing in the doorway of a restaurant, commiserating with each other about their loneliness and their loss of loved ones. They'd handled bitterness well, knew exactly how to handle it, but this empathy was an imposition. It made them eager to part.

  “Well,” Bess said. “It's late. I'd better be going.”

  She left the restaurant ahead of him and at the door felt the brief touch of his hand in the center of her back.

  Memories.

  In the parking lot at the point of parting, he said, “Chances are we aren't going to get through this whole wedding without having to contact each other. I've moved. . . .” He handed her a business card. “Here's my new address and phone number. If I'm not there, leave a message on the recorder, or call the office.”

  “All right.” She put the card in her coat pocket.

  They paused, groping for parting words while this present good-bye melded into a montage of a hundred others from their courting years—New Year's Eves, dances and parties, all followed by long passionate sessions on her doorstep. The flashback lasted only seconds before Michael spoke.

  “You'll call Lisa, then?”

  “Yes.”

  “Maybe I'll call her, too, just to let her know we're in agreement.”

  “All right . . . well, good night.”

  “ 'Night, Bess.”

  Again came that momentary void, with neither of them moving, then they turned and went to their separate cars.

  Bess started her engine and waited while it warmed. He had taught her that long ago: in Minnesota a car lasts longer if you let it warm in winter. That was in their struggling days, when they'd kept cars for five or six years. Now she could afford a new one every two years. Presently she drove a Buick Park Avenue. She waited to see what kind of car he was driving—her curiosity some odd possessive holdover she could not control. She heard the muffled growl of his engine as he passed behind her, and caught a glimpse of a silver roofline in the rearview mirror, turning only as he eased into a pool of illumination from a tall pole light to identify a Cadillac Seville. So it was true—he was doing well. She sat awhile attempting to sort out her feelings about that. Six years ago she would gladly have stuck pins in a voodoo doll of Michael Curran. Tonight, however, she felt an inexplicable touch of pride that once, long ago, she'd chosen a winner, and that now, faced with an impromptu wedding, there would be no need to stint their daughter.

  Remembering Michael's card, she snapped on the overhead light and fished it from her pocket.

  5011 Lake Avenue, White Bear Lake.

  He'd moved to White Bear Lake? Back within ten miles of her? Why, when he'd lived clear over in a western suburb of Minneapolis for the past five years? Too close for comfort, she decided, stuffing the card back into her coat pocket and putting her car in gear.

  * * *

  Twenty minutes later she pulled into the horseshoe-shaped driveway of the house she and Michael had shared in Stillwater, Minnesota. It was a two-story Georgian on Third Avenue, high above the St. Croix River, a beautifully balanced home with a center door and bow windows on either side. The entry was guarded by four fluted round columns supporting a semicircular railed roof. From behind the sturdy railing a great fanlight overlooked the front yard from the second story. The place had a look of permanence, of security, the kind of house pictured in children's readers, Bess had told Michael when they'd found it, the kind of house where only a happy family would live.

  They had fallen in love with it on sight; then they'd gone inside and had seen the magnificent view, clear across the St. Croix River to Wisconsin, beyond, and the lot itself, cresting the bluff, with its great, grand maple tree dead center out back, and the sparkling river lying below. They had seen the place and had gasped in mutual delight.

  Nothing that had happened since had changed Bess's opinion of the house. She still loved it; enough to be making payments on Michael's legal half of it since Randy had turned eighteen.

  She pulled into the double attached garage, lowered the automatic door and entered the service door to the kitchen. She'd redone the room since her business had flourished, had installed matte white Formica cabinets with butcher-block tops, a new vinyl floor in shades of seafoam blue and plush, cream-colored carpeting in the attached family room. The new furniture was a blend of smoky blues and apricots, inspired by the view of the river and the spectacular sunrises that unfolded beyond the tall east windows of the house.

  Bess bypassed the U-shaped kitchen and dropped her coat onto a sofa facing the wall of glass. She switched on a shoulder-high floor lamp with a thick, twisted ceramic base and a cymbal-shaped shade and went to the window to draw up the blinds. The window treatments were lavish above, simple below: great billowing valances in a busy blue-and-apricot floral, paired with pleated horizontal blinds of pale apricot. The pattern of the curtains was repeated in two deep, chubby chairs; a coordinating splash of waves appeared on the long sofa with its baker's dozen of loose cushions.

  Bess drew up the blinds and stood looking out the window at the winter view—the smooth yard, swathed in snow, sloping down to the sheer bluff covered by scrub brush; the granddaddy maple standing sentinel at the yard's edge; the great pale path of the wide river and, on the Wisconsin side, a half mile away, dots of window light glimmering here and there on the dark, high, wooded bank.

  She thought of Michael . . . of Lisa . . . of Michael again . . . and of their unborn grandchild. The word had not been mentioned but it had been there in that restaurant between them as surely as their cups of steaming coffee.

  My God, we're going to have a grandchild.

  The thought thundered through her, brought her hand to her mouth and a lump to her throat. It was difficult to hate a man with whom you were sharing this milestone.

  The lights across the river became starbursts and she realized there were tears in her eyes. Grandparenthood had been something that happened to others. It was symbolized by television commercials with sixty-five-year-old gra
y-haired couples with round, rosy cheeks baking cookies with youngsters; calling their grandchildren long distance; opening their doors at Christmastime and welcoming two generations with open arms.

  This child would have none of that. He would have a handsome young grandfather, recently divorced, living in White Bear Lake, and a businesswoman of a grandma too busy for cookie-making, living in Stillwater.

  Many times since her divorce Bess had felt regret for the loss of tradition and an unbroken family line but never so powerfully as tonight, when facing the advent of the next generation. She herself had known grandparents, Molly and Ed LeClair, her mother's folks, who'd died when she was in high school. Recalling them brought a wistful expression to her face, for they'd lived right here in Stillwater through her younger years, in a house on North Hill to which she'd ridden her bike whenever she wanted, to raid Grandma Molly's cookie jar or her strawberry patch, or to watch Grandpa Ed paint his birdhouses in his little workshop out back. He'd known the tricks of attracting bluebirds—a house with a slanted roof, no perch and a removable bottom, he'd taught her—and always in the summer their backyard had bluebirds flitting above Grandma Molly's gardens and the open meadow beyond.

  Times had changed. Lisa's child would have to visit his grandma in her interior design shop, and his grandfather only after he got old enough to drive a car.

  Moreover, the bluebirds had disappeared from Stillwater.

  Bess sighed and turned away from the window. She removed her suit and left it on the sofa. Dressed in her blouse, slip and nylons, she built a fire in the family-room fireplace and sat on the floor before it, staring, disconsolate. She wondered what Michael thought about becoming a grandfather, and where Randy was, and what kind of husband Mark Padgett would make, and if Lisa truly loved him, and how she herself was going to survive this charade Lisa was asking of her. Already, after only one night with Michael, she was bluer than she'd been in months.

  The telephone rang and Bess glanced at her watch. It was going on eleven. She picked up the receiver from a glass-top table between the two tub chairs.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi. Just checking in.”