“Oh, well. They remember you fondly and certainly don’t think you’re ill-mannered, Mrs. White.”
She looked me up and down like something the cat dragged in and said, as though I had grown up in a tent in the woods, “I should suppose not.”
“Mother,” Dan said. “We will have a lifetime to celebrate together.”
“Would have been nice to dance at my own son’s wedding is all... ,” she said under her breath.
Father White leaned back from the table and lit his pipe, its sweet smoke filling the air and overpowering the smell of the roast on the table. “Now, darling, just you calm down. You’ve got two more chances with two more sons.”
I smiled politely and said, “This roast is just delicious. I can’t thank you enough for having me.”
Jane looked up from her plate dully and said, “Well, you’re my daughter-in-law.”
The subtext that hung in the air was,I didn’t have any choice but to invite you.
With that she set her napkin on the table, scooted out her chair and said, “Dan, I could use your help with something in the kitchen.”
The nausea was rapidly returning. I expected there to be a few bumps in the road when Dan and I ran off and got married. That was reasonable. But I hadn’t expected such coldness from my new mother-in-law. I took a sip of my tea, swallowing hard, trying to keep the tears lodged in my throat from coming down my face.
Father White got up and took Dan’s seat beside me at the table. With his pipe still in the corner of his mouth he said, “Now don’t you mind Jane. She can be a bit of a bitch.”
I could feel my eyes widening. I’d heard my fair share of cuss words—you had to when you were best friends with Katie Jo—but I couldn’t imagine one coming out of the mouth of this handsome, dignified man who was a preacher, no less. I couldn’t help but laugh.
He put his arm around my shoulder and squeezed, taking a puff of the pipe that smelled so good I wished Dan would start smoking one too. Then he whispered, “You know, darling, sometimes the shoe just fits.”
From that moment on, he was sealed in my heart as one of my all-time favorite men. Good, kind, true, witty, handsome and well-to-do, Dan’s father was the pinnacle of men to me from that lunch forward. As soon as I found out I was pregnant with Sally, I hoped against hope that she and any other daughter I ever had could find a man just like that.
Annabelle
Absolutely Everything
There are going to be ups and downs in every life. And, if you can hunker down and hold tight through the challenges, Lovey says another victory will be right around the corner. It was a bit of consolation during that terrible time, but, looking back now, I don’t know how I possibly could have lived like I did for so long, pretending that everything was normal and okay, when, in fact, I was an absolute wreck. Every time I looked at Ben’s lips I could imagine them on Laura Anne’s body. Every time I heard him breathe I imagined his breath in her ear, his whispers for her like they had been for me such a short time ago.
I had avoided him at every turn since that day I saw him with Laura Anne, pretending that the door I had slammed to my affection, leaving him out in the cold, was over the stress of Lovey’s injury and my new hours at the job that, in reality, felt like my only saving grace.
In such a short time, my singular obsession had snapped like ataut rubber band from the family I would make with Ben to how to get out of this thing most gracefully and transition into the next step, missing as few beats as possible.
I didn’t know how I could live my life knowing that I had never told Ben he had a child. The part of me that still loved him, that still wished we could have that fairy-tale life together, knew that he had a right to know, that he would be a wonderful father and that he should get to make a mark on this life that he created. But the other part of me thought that Holden was right: No baby deserves to be unstable and shuffled around, feel torn between his parents. Just like with clothes off the rack, which, in all likelihood, I would never wear again once I was with Holden, sometimes, none of the options available seem to fit quite right.
I had shown up at work right at two, as promised that day I left Raleigh and Lovey. Rob had sent me home immediately, and I was so grateful. Exhausted from the two-hour drive and the confrontation with Lovey, the pounding in my head from the things I had said to her, the words that I wished I could take back, I left the church and went to the pool house to take a bath, the cool cloth on my head feeling clearing and calming in direct contrast to the steaming tub of water. I wondered if I should even be taking a bath. When I had called the doctor, the nurse had said, “Congratulations! But it’s so early now. We’ll see you in five weeks to check how everything is coming along.”Five weeks. It was coming up. Soon this would all be real. I couldn’t avoid it anymore.
The nurse had said, “In the meantime, no alcohol, no sushi, no fancy cheeses. Just swing by here to pick up your prenatal kit and vitamins.” She hadn’t said anything about taking a bath.
So I lay there, completely still. And I just thought—or plotted, more like it. Somewhere between a cartographer and a big-screenvillain, I plotted my next course, worked through what I would say and what I would do.
I knew that I could pull the trigger now, let the bullet of the truth that I knew so well fly at Ben. Because I had Holden to run to. I had a man that was going to stand by me even in this horrible scenario. And I was grateful. Because, pregnant with someone else’s child, who was going to want me now?
I would push aside my anger at Lovey because, as Rob so astutely stated, she had given me everything good and true in my life—even if the truth wasn’t exactly as I had seen it. And I understood her better now. A child changes absolutely everything. She would ultimately, I knew, be the one to help me heal, to help me love again, trust again, to lead me through this maze of unanswered questions with the sage wisdom that only a dump truck load of life experience can provide.
I was beginning to feel better, in control again, in charge of my future and my destiny, when I heard the back door close tightly and Ben’s footsteps down the hall.
I slid my toe up to the silver lever on the tub and pushed down, the water beginning to flow out. My body, made buoyant by the gallons surrounding me, was suddenly heavy, the pull of the water on my skin feeling like a man bearing the weight of himself down on top of me. It occurred to me how long it had been since I had given in to the lure of Ben, to the calming, soothing satisfaction of total, blissful, thoughtless freedom. I was already pregnant, after all. What was the worst that could happen?
Pushing the thoughts ofherout of my mind, of the other woman whose total demise occupied the vast majority of the spaces that used to be full with loving Ben, I decided that, since I wasn’t completely ready to move on yet, my plan not fully intact, there was no use inhim getting so suspicious, of wondering how our love life had gone from full saturation to bone dry in a matter of weeks. And, as the last of the water gurgled its way down the pipes and out to the sewer, I called, “Oh, Ben!”
I had forgotten how easy it could be to completely lose myself, to feel that love well up in my cells and flow in and out of my bone marrow. It must have been the thing that overtook my need to control, that superseded the strategic agonizing. It was like living and breathing itself, the essence of everything good. And, when it was over, when we were both lying there, my head on his beating heart, his fingers trailing lazily down my relaxed back muscles, though I hadn’t planned it, though it hadn’t been plotted down on paper for my ideal timing and my perfect, graceful exit, with my bags packed, in the light of day, trudging home to my future, I couldn’t hold it in any longer. Like one thin, straight line out of a fresh Elmer’s bottle, my words marched across the blank expanse of his chest. “I’m leaving you, Ben.”
No emotion, no tears, not even a crack in my voice to indicate the devastation I felt would undoubtedly hide out in the deepest crevices of my ability to love for the rest of my life.
