Bygones

  “Oh, Lisa,” Bess whispered, and moved to take Lisa in her arms, this very young woman who had found a love to believe in the way every woman hopes she will one day. It was at once shattering and gratifying to learn that Lisa had grown up in a short span of time while she, Bess, had not been as attentive as she should have been. How humbling it was to realize that Lisa had learned something at age twenty-one that Bess herself had not at age forty. Lisa and Mark had discovered how to communicate, they had found the proper balance between praising each other's virtues and overlooking each other's shortcomings, which translated not only into love but into respect, as well. It was something Bess and Michael had never quite managed.

  “Lisa, darling, if you feel that way about him I'm so happy for you.”

  “Yes, be happy. Because I am.” While they were still hugging, Lisa added, “There's just one more thing I want to say.” She set Bess away from herself and told her point-blank, “I know you're probably wondering how an educated young woman of the eighties could possibly be so stupid that she got pregnant when there are at least a dozen ways to prevent it. Remember when we went skiing up at Lutsen before Christmas? Well, I forgot my birth control pills that weekend, and we realized we might very well be making a choice if we made love. So we talked about it beforehand. What if we risked it and I got pregnant? He told me then that he wanted to marry me, and that if I got pregnant that weekend, it was fine with him, and I agreed. So, you see, Mom, we're not just handing you a pile of gas when we say we're happy about the baby. What you're worrying about . . . well, you just don't have to. Mark and I are going to be great . . . you'll see.”

  Bess tenderly touched her daughter's face. “Where have I been while you did all this growing up?”

  “You were there.”

  “Exactly . . . there. Running my business. But I suddenly feel as if I spent too much time at it and not enough with you during the past few years. If I had, I'd have seen this relationship between you and Mark blossoming. I wouldn't have been caught so off guard last night.”

  “Mom, you handled it okay, believe me.”

  “No, you handled it okay, and so did Mark. Your dad was totally impressed by him.”

  “I know. I talked to him today. So did Mark's mother. She said she was going to call you, too. Did she?”

  “Yes, she did. She's delightful.”

  “I knew you'd think so. So everything is set for Saturday night? No objections?”

  “Now that I know how you feel, none.”

  “Whew! That's a relief. So Dad said you two talked about the rest—the dress, and all of us walking down the aisle together, and you'll do it, huh?”

  “Yes, we'll do it.”

  “And I can wear the dress?”

  “If it'll fit you, yes.”

  “Hey, Mom? I know what you're thinking about the dress, that it might put some kind of hex on my wedding or something, but that's really a lot of crap. It isn't dresses that make weddings work, it's people, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “I just like the dress, that's all. I used to play in it when you weren't home. You never knew that, did you?”

  “No, I didn't.”

  “Well, that's what you get for putting something so irresistible off limits. Someday I'll tell you some of the other stuff that Randy and I used to do when you guys were gone.”

  Bess's grin became suspicious. “Like what?”

  “Remember that sex manual you used to keep hidden between the spare blankets in the linen closet in your bathroom? The one with all the drawings of all the positions? You didn't think we knew it was there, did you?”

  “Why, you little devils!”

  “Yup, that's us. And remember that vase that disappeared and you could never find it again? That white one with the pink hearts around the top? We broke it one night when we were playing monster in the dark. We used to turn off all the lights and one of us would hide and the other one would walk like Frankenstein, with his arms out, roaring, and one night—chink!—over went your vase. We knew you'd be royally pissed if we told you, so we hid the pieces in a tomato-juice can we found in the garbage and pretended we didn't know anything about it. But I just knew, Mom, that one day you'd have more vases than the Monticello Flea Market, and sure enough, look at you now. You probably have twenty of them in your store as we speak.”

  How could Bess resist laughing at such flippancy?

  “And all the while I was sending you to catechism classes and teaching you to be good, honest children.”

  “Well, we were, basically. Look at me today. I'm going to marry the boy I got into trouble and give his baby a name.”

  When Bess finished laughing, she said, “It's getting late. I should go. It's been a long day.”

  Rising from the sofa, Lisa said, “You work too hard, Mom. You should take more time to yourself.”

  “I take all I want.”

  “Oh, sure you do. But I have a feeling that when Mark and I have this baby we're going to lure you away from your little loft in the sky more often. Just feature that, would y'—my mom a grandma. What do you think about that?”

  “I think my hair needs bleaching. The roots are beginning to show.”

  “You'll get used to the idea. What does Dad think about being a grandpa?”

  “We didn't discuss it.”

  “Oo . . . I hear a cool note.”

  “You bet you do. Now that the emotional part is over I can tell you that was an underhanded trick you pulled last night.”

  “It worked though, didn't it?”

  “We've drawn a truce for the duration of the wedding festivities, nothing more.”

  “Oh yeah? Randy said you were playing ‘Homecoming' when he got home last night.”

  “Good heavens, have I no privacy at all?” The two of them moved to the apartment door.

  “Think about it, Mom . . . Dad and you together again, coming to visit us and your grandchild. That'd be wild, huh? The two of you wouldn't have to fight about taking care of the housework and kids anymore, because we're all grown up and you have a housekeeper. And you're all done with college so he couldn't be barking at you about that. And he's got his own cabin now so you wouldn't have to stay behind when he goes hunting. And since he's all washed up with Darla—”

  “Lisa, you're hallucinating.” Bess drew on her coat with an air of finality.

  “Yeah, well, think about it, I said.” Lisa braced one shoulder against the wall.

  “I will not! I'll treat him civilly but that's the extent of it. Besides, you're forgetting about Keith.”

  “Old bald-headed Keith the rag man? Don't make me laugh, Mom. You've been dating him for three years and Randy says you don't even spend nights with him. Take it from me, Bess, the rag man's not for you.”

  “I don't know what's come over you tonight, Lisa, but you're being intentionally outrageous.” Bess opened the apartment door.

  “I'm in love. I want the rest of the world to be, too.” Lisa popped a kiss on her mother's mouth. “Hey, see you Saturday night, huh? You know how to get there?”

  “Yes, Hildy gave me directions.”

  “Great. And don't forget my little brother.”

  Heading for her car, Bess had totally lost her melancholy mood of earlier. Lisa truly had a gift for making people laugh at their own foibles. Not that she, Bess, had any intention of reviving anything between herself and Michael. As she'd said, there was Keith to consider. The thought of Keith brought a frown: he wasn't going to be pleased about her breaking their date Saturday night.

  She called him from the phone in her bedroom the moment she got her suit and hosiery off.

  He answered after the fifth ring.

  “Hello?”

  “Keith, it's Bess. Did I get you away from something?”

  “Just got out of the shower.”

  There wasn't and never had been any sexual innuendo following convenient lead-ins such as this. It was one of the things Bess missed in their relationship, yet she
never felt compelled to start it and since he didn't, humorous and intimate repartee was missing.

  “I can call back later.”

  “No, no it's fine. What's up?”

  “Keith, I'm really sorry but I'm going to have to cancel our dinner date Saturday night.”

  In the pause that followed she imagined he'd stopped drying himself. “Why?”

  “The Padgetts are having a dinner at their house so both sides of the family can meet.”

  “Didn't anyone ask you if you were busy?”

  “Everyone else was able to make it. I hardly thought I could ask them to delay it for me alone, and given how short a time there is before the wedding, I thought it best if the two families met right away.”

  “I suppose your ex will be there?”

  Bess massaged her forehead. “Oh, Keith.”

  “Well, won't he?”

  “Yes, he will.”

  “Oh, fine, just fine!”

  “Keith, for heaven's sake, it's our daughter's wedding. I can't very well avoid him.”

  “No, of course you can't!” Keith snapped. “Well, when you have time for me, Bess, give me a call.”

  “Keith, wait . . .”

  “No . . . no . . .” he said sarcastically, “don't worry about me. Just go ahead and do what you have to do with Michael. I understand.”

  She detested this brittleness he adopted whenever he became jealous of her time with the children.

  “Keith, I don't want you to hang up mad at me.”

  “I've got to go, Bess. I'm getting the carpet wet.”

  “All right but call me soon.”

  “Sure,” he replied brusquely.

  When she'd hung up, Bess rubbed her eyes. Sometimes Keith could be so insufferably childish. Did he always have to see these conflicts as a choice between her children and him? Once again she wondered why she continued seeing him. It would probably be best for both of them, she thought, if she broke it off entirely.

  She dropped her arms and thought wearily of the design work she'd brought home and left downstairs on the dining-room table. She hated designing when she felt this way. Somehow it seemed her moroseness might creep into the design itself.

  But she had three jobs waiting after this one, and customers eager to get her phone call setting up their presentations, and more house calls on her calendar in the days ahead.

  With a sigh she rose from her desk and went downstairs to put in two more hours.

  Chapter 4

  ON SATURDAY NIGHT Bess took pains with her hair. It was nearly shoulder-length, its shades of blonde as varied as an October prairie. She curled it only enough to give it lift, and pouffed it out behind her ears, where it billowed like the sleeves of a choir gown caught in the wind. Her makeup was subtle but applied with extreme care—twelve steps from concealer to mascara. The finished results enlarged her brown eyes and plumped her lips. She stared at her reflection in the mirror, sober, smiling, then sober once again.

  Unquestionably she wanted to impress Michael tonight: there was an element of pride involved. Toward the end of their marriage, when she'd been caught up in the rigors of studying for her degree and maintaining a domicile and a family of four, he had said during one of their fights, “Look at you, you don't even take care of yourself anymore. All you ever wear is blue jeans and sweatshirts, and your hair hangs in strings. You didn't look like that when I married you!”

  How his accusation had stung. She'd been burning the candle at both ends trying to achieve something for herself, but he'd failed to recognize that her output of time meant some cuts were necessary. So her hair had gone uncurled, her nails unpainted and she had forsaken makeup. Blue jeans and a sweatshirt were the easiest to launder, the quickest to grab, so they became her customary uniform. At the end of a six-hour school day she'd come home to face studying and housework while he'd grow obstinate about helping with the latter. He'd been raised in a traditional household where women's work was exactly that, where men didn't peel potatoes or wash laundry or run a vacuum cleaner. When she'd suggested that he try these, he'd suggested she take a few less credits per quarter and resume the duties she'd agreed to do when they got married.

  His narrow-mindedness had enraged her.

  Her continued lack of attention to herself and to the house eventually drove him out of it, and he found a woman with beautiful curled tresses, who wore high heels and Pierre Cardin suits to work every day and painted her nails and brought him coffee and dialed his clients for him.

  Bess had seen Darla occasionally, most often at the company Christmas parties, where she wore sequined dresses and dyed-to-match satin pumps and lipstick that sparkled nearly as much as her dangly earrings. Had Michael simply left Bess, she might have acceded to maintaining a speaking relationship with him; but he'd left her for another woman, and a stunning beauty at that. The realization had galled Bess ever since.

  After she'd gotten her degree, one of the first things she had done was lay out three hundred dollars for a beauty make-over. Under the tutelage of a professional she'd learned what colors suited her best, what clothing silhouettes most flattered her shape, what shades of makeup to wear and how to apply them. She'd even learned what size and shape of handbag and shoes suited her build and what style of earring most flattered her facial features. She'd had her hair color changed from muskrat brown to tawny blonde, its style lightly permed into the bon vivant wind-fluffed look, which she still wore. She'd grown her fingernails and kept them meticulously polished in a hue that matched her lipstick. And over a span of years she'd acquired a new wardrobe to which she added judiciously only those pieces which perfectly matched the color and style guidelines she'd learned from the professionals.

  When Michael Curran got a load of her tonight there'd be no ketchup on her jabot, no shine to her makeup and no hair out of place.

  She chose a red dinner suit with a straight skirt and an asymmetrical jacket sporting one black triangular-shaped lapel rising from a single black waist-button. With it she wore oversized gold door-knocker earrings that drew attention to her winged hairstyle and her rather dramatic jawline.

  When the suit jacket was buttoned she pressed both hands to her abdomen and turned to view herself in profile. She needed to lose ten pounds—it was a constant struggle. But since her mid-thirties the pounds seemed to go on so much faster than they came off. She'd shaved off the four extra pounds she'd gained over the holidays but she had merely to look at a dessert to put it back on.

  Ah, well—she was satisfied with one full hour's efforts at grooming, anyway. She switched out her bedroom light and went down two flights to Randy's room. When he was sixteen he'd chosen to hole up in an unfinished room on the walkout level because it was twice as large as the upstairs bedrooms and two walls were backfilled with yard so the neighbors wouldn't complain about his drums.

  They filled one corner, his prized set of Pearls—twelve pieces of gleaming stainless steel, including his pride and joy, three graduated sizes of rototoms, whose pitch could be changed with a simple twist of the revolving heads. The two concrete-block walls behind the drums were painted black. Fanned on one were posters of his idols, Bon Jovi, Motley Crüe and Cinderella. From an overhead strip a half-dozen canister lights picked out the drums. One of the remaining walls was white, the other covered with cork that gave the room the perennial smell of charcoal. The corkboard was hung with pictures of old girlfriends, beer ads, band schedules and prom garters. Since the room had no closet, Randy's clothes hung on a piece of steel pipe suspended from the ceiling by two chains. The floor was littered with several years' issues of Car & Driver magazine, dozens of compact discs, empty fast-food wrappings, shoes and overdue video rentals.

  There was a compact disc player, a television, a VCR, a microphone and a fairly sophisticated taping setup. Among all this, the water bed—sporting disheveled leopard sheets—seemed almost incidental.

  When Bess came to the door Paula Abdul was blasting “Opposites Attract” from the CD
player, and Randy was standing before his dresser adjusting the knot in a skinny gray leather tie. He was dressed in baggy, pleated trousers, a silvery-gray double-breasted sport coat and a plaid shirt in muted shades of purple, gray and white. He'd put something on his hair to make it glossy and though he'd had it cut, as promised, it still hung to his collar in natural ringlets.

  Coming upon him this way, while he was engaged in tying his tie, looking spiffy for once, brought a catch to Bess's heart. He was so good-looking, and bright, and charming when he wanted to be, but the path of resistance he'd chosen to take had put so many obstacles between them. Today, however, entering his room Bess felt a shaft of uncomplicated love. He was her son, and he was getting to look more like his father every year, and in spite of her animosity toward Michael, he was undeniably a handsome man. The aroma of masculine toiletries drifted to Bess as she entered Randy's room. She had missed such smells since Michael's departure. For that brief moment it was almost like having a husband and a happy marriage back.

  Without glancing his mother's way, Randy said to the mirror, “I promised Lisa I'd have it cut, and I did but this is as short as I go.”

  She went to the CD player, glanced at the flashing control panel and shouted, “How do I turn this thing down?”

  He came and did it for her, dropping one shoulder with unconscious masculine grace. The music ceased. Randy straightened and let a grin lift one side of his mouth while his eyes scanned her outfit and hair. “Lookin' vicious, Mom.”

  “Thank you, so are you. New clothes?” She touched his tie.

  “It's a hot deal—the elder sister tying the big knot.”

  “Where'd you get the money?”

  “I do have a job, Mom.”

  “Yes, of course you do. Listen, I thought we could ride over together.”

  “Yeah, sure, whatever you say.”

  “I left my car in the driveway. We may as well take it.”