Bygones

  “I see nothing inappropriate about it at all. You were married once. You loved each other and you had me, and you're still my parents. Why shouldn't I wear the dress?”

  “I leave that entirely to your mother.” Michael glanced at Bess, who was still laboring under the shock of the news, sitting with her ringless left hand to her lips, her brown eyes very troubled.

  “Mother, please. We can do this without your cooperation but we'd rather have it. From both of you.” Lisa included Michael in her earnest plea. “And as long as I'm laying out our plans, I may as well tell you the rest. I want to walk down the aisle between you. I want my mom and my dad both there, one on either side of me, without all this animosity you've had for the past six years. I want to have you in the dressing room, Mom, when I'm getting ready; and afterwards, at my reception, I want to dance with you, Dad. But without tension, without . . . well, you know what I mean. It's the only wedding present I want from either one of you.”

  The room fell into an uneasy silence. Bess and Michael found it impossible to meet each other's eyes.

  Finally Bess spoke. “Where will you live?”

  “Mark's apartment is nicer than mine, so we'll live over there.”

  And the piano will need to be moved again. It took great control for Bess to refrain from voicing the thought. “I don't even know where he lives.”

  Mark said, “In Maplewood, near the hospital.”

  She studied Mark. He had a pleasant enough face but he looked terribly young. “I must apologize, Mark, I've been so taken off guard here. The truth is, I feel as though I barely know you. You do some kind of factory work, I think.”

  “Yes, I'm a machinist. But I've been with the same company for three years, and I make good money, and I have good benefits. Lisa and I won't have any problems that way.”

  “And you met Lisa—?”

  “At a pool hall, actually. We were introduced by mutual friends.”

  At a pool hall. A machinist. A bodybuilder with a neck like a bridge abutment.

  “Isn't this awfully sudden? You and Lisa have known each other—what?—less than a year. I mean, couldn't you wait, say a half a year or so and give yourselves time to get to know one another better, and to plan a wedding properly, and us a chance to meet your family?”

  Mark's eyes sought Lisa's. His cheeks colored. His forearms rested on the table edge, so muscular they appeared unable to comfortably touch his sides.

  “I'm afraid not, Mrs. Curran.” Quietly, without challenge, he said, “You see, Lisa and I are going to have a baby.”

  An invisible mushroom cloud seemed to form over the table.

  Michael covered his mouth with a hand and frowned. Bess drew a breath, held her mouth open and slowly closed it, staring at Mark, then at Lisa. Lisa sat quietly, relaxed.

  “We're actually quite happy about it,” Mark added, “and we hoped you'd be, too.”

  Bess dropped her forehead onto one hand, the opposite arm propped across her stomach. Her only daughter pregnant and planning a hasty wedding, and she should be happy?

  “You're sure about it?” Michael was asking.

  “I've already seen a doctor. I'm six weeks along. Actually I thought maybe you'd guess, because I'm drinking the Perrier instead of wine.”

  Bess lifted her head and encountered Michael, somber, his food forgotten. He met her dismayed eyes, straightened his shoulders and said, “Well . . .” clearing his throat. Obviously, he was at as great a loss as she.

  Mark rose and went to stand behind Lisa's chair with his hands on her shoulders. “I think I should say something here, Mr. and Mrs. Curran. I love your daughter very much, and she loves me. We want to get married. We've both got jobs and a decent place to live. This baby could have a lot worse starts than that.”

  Bess came out of her stupor. “In this day and age, Lisa—”

  Michael interrupted. “Bess, come on, not now.”

  “What do you mean, not now! We live in an enlightened age and—”

  “I said, not now, Bess! The kids are doing the honorable thing, telling us their plans, asking for our support. I think we should give it to them.”

  She bit back her retort about birth control and sat simmering while Michael went on, remarkably cool-headed.

  “You're sure this is what you want to do, Lisa?” he asked.

  “Very sure. Mark and I had talked about getting married even before I got pregnant, and we had agreed that we'd both like to have a family when we were young, and that we wouldn't do like so many yuppies do, and both of us work until we got so independent that things began mattering more than having children. So none of this was nearly as much of a shock to us as it is to you. We're happy, Dad, honest we are, and I do love Mark very much.”

  Lisa sounded wholly convincing.

  Michael looked up at Mark, still standing behind Lisa with his hands on her collar. “Have you told your parents yet?”

  “Yes, last night.”

  Michael felt a shaft of disappointment at being last to learn but what could he expect when Mark's family was, apparently, still an intact, happy unit? “What did they say?”

  “Well, they were a little surprised at first, naturally, but they know Lisa a lot better than you know me, so they got over it and we had a little celebration.”

  Lisa leaned forward and covered her mother's hand on the tabletop. “Mark has wonderful parents, Mom. They're anxious to meet you and Dad, and I promised them we'd introduce you all soon. Right away Mark's mother suggested a dinner party at their house. She said if you two are agreeable, I could set a date.”

  This isn't how it's supposed to be, Bess thought, battling tears, Michael and I practically strangers to our future son-in-law and total strangers to his family. Whatever happened to girls marrying the boy next door? Or the little brat who pulled her pigtails in the third grade? Or the one who did wheelies on his BMX bike in our driveway to impress her in junior high? Those lucky, simpler times were bygone with the era of transient executives and upward mobility, of rising divorce rates and single-parent homes.

  Everyone was waiting for Bess to respond to the news but she wasn't ready yet, emotionally. She felt like breaking down and bawling, and had to swallow hard before she could speak at all.

  “Your dad and I need to talk about a few things first. Would you give us a day or two to do that?”

  “Sure.” Lisa withdrew her hand and sat back.

  “Would that be okay with you, Michael?” Bess asked him.

  “Of course.”

  Bess deposited her napkin on the table and pushed her chair back. “Then I'll call you, or Dad will.”

  “Fine. But you aren't leaving yet, are you? I've got dessert.”

  “It's late. I've got to be at the store early tomorrow. I really should be going.”

  “But it's not even eight yet.”

  “I know, but . . .” Bess rose, dusting crumbs from her skirt, anxious to excape and examine her true feelings, to crumple and get angry if she so desired.

  “Dad, will you stay and have dessert? I got a French silk pie from Baker's Square.”

  “I think I'll pass, too, honey. Maybe I can stop by tomorrow night and have some with you.”

  Michael rose, followed by Lisa, and they all stood awkwardly a moment, politely pretending this was not a scenario in which parents were running, distraught, from the announcement that their daughter was knocked up and planning a shotgun wedding, pretending this was merely a polite, everyday leave-taking.

  “Well, I'll get your coats, then,” Lisa said with a quavery smile.

  “I will, sweetheart,” Mark offered, and went to do so. In the crowded entry he politely held Bess's coat, then handed Michael's to him. There was another clumsy moment after Michael slipped his coat on, when the two men confronted each other, wondering what to say or do next. Michael offered his hand and Mark gripped it.

  “We'll talk soon,” Michael said.

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Even more aw
kwardly, the young man faced Bess. “Good night, Mrs. Curran,” Mark offered.

  “Good night, Mark.”

  Unsure of himself, he hovered, and finally Bess raised her cheek to touch his gingerly. In the cramped space before the entry door Michael gave Lisa a hug, leaving only the mother and daughter to exchange some gesture of good night. Bess found herself unable, so Lisa made the move. Once Bess felt her daughter's arms around her, however, she clung, feeling her emotions billow, her tears come close to exposing themselves. Her precious firstborn, her Lisa, who had learned to drink from a straw before she was one, who had carried a black doll named Gertrude all over the neighborhood until she was five, and, dressed in feet pajamas, had clambered into bed between her mommy and daddy on Saturday mornings when she got old enough to climb out of her crib unaided.

  Lisa, whom she and Michael had wanted so badly.

  Lisa, the product of those optimistic times.

  Lisa, who now carried their grandchild.

  Bess clutched Lisa and whispered throatily, “I love you, Lee-lee,” the pet name Michael had given her long ago, in a golden time when they'd all believed they'd live happily ever after.

  “I love you, too, Mom.”

  “I just need a little time, please, darling.”

  “I know.”

  Michael stood waiting with the door open, touched by Bess's use of the familiar baby name.

  Bess drew back, squeezing Lisa's arm. “Get lots of rest. I'll call you.”

  She passed Michael and headed down the hall, clasping her clutch purse under one arm, pulling on her gloves, her raspberry high heels clicking on the tiled floor. He closed the apartment door and followed, buttoning his coat, turning up its collar, watching her speed along with an air of efficiency, as if she were late for a business appointment.

  At the far end of the hall she descended two stairs before her bravado dissolved. Abruptly she stopped, gripped the rail with one hand and listed over it, the other hand to her mouth, her back to him, crying.

  He stopped on the step above her with his hands in his coat pockets, watching her shoulders shake. He felt melancholy himself, and witnessing her display of emotions amplified his own. Though she tried to stifle them, tiny mewling sounds escaped her throat. Reluctantly, he touched her shoulder blade. “Aw, Bess . . .”

  Her words were muffled behind a gloved hand. “I'm sorry, Michael, I know I should be taking this better . . . but it's such a disappointment.”

  “Of course it is. For me, too.” He returned his hand to his coat pocket.

  She sniffed, snapped her purse open and found a tissue inside. Still with her back turned, mopping her face, she said, “I'm appalled at myself for breaking down in front of you this way.”

  “Oh, hell, Bess, I've seen you cry before.”

  She blew her nose. “When we were married, yes, but this is different.”

  With the tissue tucked away and her purse again beneath an arm she turned to face him, touching her lower eyelids with the fingertips of her expensive raspberry leather gloves. “Oh, God,” she said, and emptied her lungs in a big gust. She drooped back with her hips against the black metal handrail and fixed her tired stare on the opposite railing.

  For a while neither of them spoke, only stood in the murky hallway, helpless to stop their daughter's future from taking a downhill dive. Finally Bess said, “I can't pretend this is anything but terrible, our only daughter and a shotgun wedding.”

  “I know.”

  “Do you feel like you've failed again?” She looked up at him with red-rimmed eyes, shiny at the corners with a new batch of tears.

  He drew a deep, tired breath and took stock of their surroundings. “I don't think I want to discuss it in the hallway of this apartment building. You want to go to a restaurant, have a cup of coffee or something?”

  “Now?”

  “Unless you really have to hurry home.”

  “No, that was just an excuse to escape. My first appointment isn't until ten in the morning.”

  “All right, then, how about The Ground Round on White Bear Avenue?”

  “The Ground Round would be fine.”

  They turned and continued down the stairs, lagging now, slowed by distress. He opened the plate-glass door for her, experiencing a fleeting sense of déjà vu. How many times in the course of a courtship and marriage had he opened the door for her? There were times during their breakup when he'd angrily walked out before her and let the door close in her face. Tonight, faced with an emotional upheaval, it felt reassuring to perform the small courtesy again.

  Outside, their breath hung milky in the cold air, and the snow, compressing beneath their feet, gave off a hard-candy crunch like chewing resounding within one's ear. At the foot of the sidewalk, where it gave onto the parking lot, she paused and half-turned as he caught up with her.

  “I'll see you there,” she said.

  “I'll follow you.”

  Heading in opposite directions toward their cars, they started the long, rocky journey back toward amity.

  Chapter 2

  THEY MET IN THE LOBBY of the restaurant and followed a glossy-haired, effeminate young man who said, “Right this way.” Michael felt the same déjà vu as earlier, trailing Bess as he'd done countless times before, watching the sway of her coat, the movement of her arms as she took off her gloves, inhaling the faint drift of her perfume, the same rosy scent she'd worn for years.

  The perfume was the only familiar thing about her. Everything else was new—the professionally streaked blonde hair nearly touching her shoulder, the expensive clothes, the self-assurance, the brittleness. These had all been acquired since their divorce.

  They sat at a table beside a window, their faces tinted by an overhead fixture with a bowl-shaped orange globe and the pinkish glow of the phosphorescent lamps reflecting off the snow outside. The supper crowd had gone, and a hockey game was in progress on a TV above the bar somewhere around a corner. It murmured a background descant to the piped-in orchestra music falling from the ceiling.

  Michael removed his coat and folded it over an empty chair while Bess left hers over her shoulders.

  A teenage waitress with a frizzy hairdo came and asked if they'd like menus.

  “No, thank you. Just coffee,” Michael answered.

  “Two?”

  Michael deferred to Bess with a glance. “Yes, two,” she answered, with a quick glance at the girl.

  When they were alone again, Bess fixed her gaze on Michael's hands, wrapped palm-over-palm above a paper place mat. He had square, shapely hands, with neatly trimmed nails and long fingers. Bess had always loved his hands. They were, she'd said many times, the kind of hands you'd welcome on your dentist. Even in the dead of winter his skin never entirely paled. His wrists held a whisk of dark hair that trailed low and made his white cuffs appear whiter. There was an undeniable appeal about the sight of a man's clean hands foiled by white shirt cuffs and the darker edge of a suit sleeve. Oftentimes after the divorce, at odd, unexpected moments—in a restaurant, or a department store—Bess would find herself staring at the hands of some stranger and remembering Michael's. Then reality would return, and she would damn herself for becoming vulnerable to memory and loneliness.

  In a restaurant, six years after their divorce, she drew her gaze from Michael's hands and lifted it to his face, daunted by the admission that she still found him handsome. He had perfect eyebrows above attractive hazel eyes, full lips and a head of gorgeous black hair. For the first time she noticed a few skeins of gray above his ears, discernible only under the direct light.

  “Well . . .” she began, “this has been a night of surprises.”

  He chuckled quietly in reply.

  “This is the last place I expected to end up when I told Lisa I'd come for supper,” Bess told him.

  “Me too.”

  “I don't think you're as shocked by all this as I am, though.”

  “I was shocked when you opened that door, I can tell you that.”
/>
  “I wouldn't have been there if I'd known what Lisa had up her sleeve.”

  “Neither would I.”

  Silence for a moment, then, “Listen, Michael, I'm sorry about all that . . . well, Lisa's obvious attempt to revive something between us—our old dishes and the stroganoff and the corn pudding and the candlelight. She should have known better.”

  “It was damned uncomfortable, wasn't it?”

  “Yes, it was. It still is.”

  “I know.”

  Their coffee came: something neutral to focus on instead of each other. When the waitress went away Bess asked, “Did you hear what Lisa said to me when we were alone in the kitchen?”

  “No. What?”

  “The gist of her message was, Grow up, Mother, you've been acting like a child for six years. I had no idea she was so angry about our antagonism, did you?”

  “Only in retrospect, when she'd talk about Mark's family and how close and loving they are.”

  “She's talked to you about that?”

  His eyes answered above his cup while he took a sip of coffee.

  “When?” Bess demanded.

  “I don't know—a couple different times.”

  “She never told me she talked to you so often.”

  “You put up barriers, Bess, that's why. You're putting up a new one right now. You should see the expression on your face.”

  “Well, it hurts to know she's talked to you about these things, and that Mark's family knows her better than we know Mark.”

  “Sure it hurts, but why wouldn't the two of them gravitate toward the family that stayed together? It's only natural.”

  “So what do you think of Mark?”

  “I don't know him very well. I think I've only talked to him a couple of times before tonight.”

  “That's my point. How could this have happened when they've been dating such a short time that we've scarcely met the boy?”

  “First of all, he's not a boy. You have to admit, he certainly faced the situation like a man. I was impressed with him tonight.”

  “You were?”

  “Well, hell, he was there beside her, facing us head on instead of leaving her to break the news by herself. Doesn't that impress you?”