Roses

They had spread a picnic on a knoll overlooking one of the many lakes in the Belton area. He had come for the weekend, staying as usual at a boardinghouse whose proprietor now greeted him as a regular visitor. It was June and already hot in East Texas. Percy loosened his tie, thinking how much he disliked eating outdoors in heat and humidity. Mercifully, the day was overcast, but as Lucy began to unpack their basket, the clouds parted and the sun’s rays bore down.

  “Damn!” he swore. “The sun’s come out.”

  “Never you mind,” Lucy said in her unflappable manner. “It’s merely peeped out to see what we’re having for lunch. It’ll go back in a minute.”

  Sure enough, after a quick inspection, the sun disappeared behind clouds and remained hidden all day. Amused, Percy lay back and watched Lucy set out the picnic items, impressed once again by her original way of looking at things. School was almost adjourned, and she was thinking of accepting a position at Bellington Hall in Atlanta for the coming year.

  He watched her busily piling his plate with sandwiches, cutting him a large slice of chocolate cake she’d baked especially for him, sugaring his iced tea the way he liked it. “Lucy?” he said. “Will you marry me?”

  Chapter Thirty-five

  They married the first of July and honeymooned in the Caribbean for two weeks before returning for Jeremy and Beatrice’s annual trip to Maine while Percy ran the company. By the time his parents were back in Howbutker from their two months’ respite from the heat, Percy’s marriage had begun to founder in the unexpected mire of his sexual apathy.

  “I simply cannot believe it!” Lucy screamed at him. “The great Percy Warwick with no lightning to his rod! Who would have thought it? Ollie with one leg shot away has probably got more heft to his barrel than you’ve ever had.”

  “Lucy, please be quiet. My folks will hear you,” Percy implored, astonished anew at her familiar command of such language. Once more, he regretted accepting his parents’ offer of a wing at Warwick Hall as a temporary residence until they could build a house of their own.

  And once more, he caught himself benumbed by the fact that he had married Lucy. “You were vulnerable,” his mother explained, her look mirroring the despair of Percy’s. “I saw it, but I had no way to protect you. Something has to have caused this sudden change in Lucy’s feelings for you, Percy. She’s always been so slavishly adoring. Has she found out about you and Mary?”

  It was as good an explanation as any. Percy turned away to keep his mother from reading the lie in his eyes. “Yes,” he said.

  The truth was that he had lost all desire for Lucy. As was his wont, he had never engaged in the sex act with a woman he did not like or respect, and he had come to feel neither for Lucy in or out of the marriage bed.

  The turn in his affections had not come about inauspiciously. There had been no reason to believe when they left the church for the cruise ship that the sun would not shine brightly on their future together, especially the physical pleasures of marriage both were eagerly anticipating. Lucy’s adoring look on that day would have melted the doubt of any man wondering if he’d made a mistake in marrying a woman to whom he had not yet felt inclined to say, “I love you.”

  But his ardor had begun to cool almost from the point of sailing. Lucy, giddy on champagne and her first taste of sex earlier in their stateroom, had stopped conversation cold at the captain’s table when she pronounced to a matron draped in pearls and married to a knight of the English realm, “No need to poke about in that shrimp, Lady Carr. They scare the do-do out of them when they catch them.”

  By the last night of the cruise, she had reason to ask when he abruptly extricated himself from her tenacious legs, “What happened? What went wrong?”

  What could he say? That within two weeks he’d come to feel a heart-sinking disrelish for the woman he had married? Her desire to rut at a change of clothes, her insensibility to his sensibilities, her disinterest in matters cultural or intellectual, offended him. He was now embarrassed by what had attracted him to her—her salty speech, breezy disregard for convention, and carefree opinions that flew out of her mouth like random bullets regardless of whom they might strike. He knew himself well. Despite his own lusty appetites, he was a man of propriety, and it was inevitable that he would carry his distaste to bed.

  He muttered an answer: “Nothing, Lucy. It’s just me. I’m tired.”

  “From what, for God’s sake? Playing Ping-Pong?” Her aggrieved tone made it clear that once again she’d expected chocolate cake and been given boiled custard.

  His mother had tried to warn him. “That ripe little melon has too many seeds, Percy.”

  “True, Mother,” he’d countered, “but the more the seeds, the sweeter the fruit.”

  How could he have been so blind… so wrong to have thought he’d be happy with Lucy? He could only believe that his despair in knowing there would never be another Mary had led him to marry her opposite.

  Yet in no way would he allow her to believe the fault of his failure lay with her. The truth would be more devastating than the lie, and he owed her the lie. She had married him in good faith, believing he accepted her the way she was, while he had married her for the sole reason that he’d not wanted to be alone when Mary and Ollie came home.

  “It’s not you, Lucy; it’s me,” he’d say.

  In the first month, tears had marked the aftermath of this admission. After that, stony silence followed, and then one night, he heard softly in the darkness, “Why don’t you want me, Percy? Don’t you like sex?”

  Not with you, he thought. He knew he had only to give her the satisfaction she craved to make her bearable to live with, but husbandly duty or not, he wouldn’t be used as a stud to slake her thirst when all the other pleasures he’d expected from marriage went begging. With that uncanny ability to read his mind, she said, “You—you eunuch! You were supposed to be the best stallion that ever covered a mare. By merely looking at a girl, you could get her to lift her tail—”

  “Oh, Lord, Lucy, your language—”

  “My language?” With the ball of her foot, she shoved at Percy sitting on the edge of the bed and sent him toppling, his head narrowly missing a sharp corner of the hope chest at its foot. “Is that your concern in this pathetic situation? My language?” Her voice had risen to a shriek. She threw off the covers and stormed around the bed to where Percy, still stunned, sat naked on the floor, legs sprawled apart, manhood exposed. “What about my pride, my feelings, my needs, my due, huh? What about them, Percy?” She clutched at him savagely, short fingers curved into pincers.

  Percy inched back rapidly, slapping her hand away from its target until he’d regained his feet. It was with great restraint that he did not strike her, reminding himself that none of this was her fault. He’d married her knowing it was the idol she loved and not the man. She knew hardly anything about the man, and in the few months of their marriage, she had expended little energy in learning. It was the idol she struck at now, the idol who had deceived her and crumbled to dust at her feet.

  He had thought all of this out at length and determined that what he must do was turn her attention to the man. But after such episodes, he came to wonder if he had the heart for that, either.

  He’d married Lucy believing that eventually he’d grow to love her, but now he hardly remembered the girl with whom he’d been so taken or why. Her lilting laughter had died, the mischievous twinkle had vanished from her eyes. Her sweet little rosebud lips were perpetually distorted into the bitterest shapes imaginable. Sadly, blaming himself entirely, he watched the girl he could have loved disappear before he’d barely glimpsed her.

  Reassurance that it was not her fault had given her neither solace nor compassion. “Well, isn’t that mighty white of you,” she jeered. “You’re damn right it’s not my fault. It’s yours, Percy Warwick. Your reputation has been a lie all these years. I’ll bet Mary sensed it all along. That’s why she never set her cap for you.”

  He preserved a careful insc
rutability when she mentioned Mary. Percy wondered how he could have ever thought Lucy fond of her based on their history together at Bellington Hall. His wife had never cared for Mary at all. Lucy had used her, as she’d manipulated his parents, to be near him. To his surprise, Lucy had not asked the name of the girl he’d loved and lost to another man—perhaps because she could not have endured her jealousy—but he saw her sharp eye wander over the faces of women in their social circle, wondering which one had managed to win his heart. God forbid she should ever discover the woman was Mary. “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned” would be a minor description of Lucy.

  By the middle of October, confronted as he was each day by her sulks and her physical and emotional battering at night, he decided to propose an annulment. He was fed up with her obsession with sex, her language, her rages, her resentment toward his mother, whom she blamed as responsible for his “condition,” as she called it. He’d set her free and pay her expenses the rest of her life, if she’d only get out of his.

  But before he could open his mouth to broach the subject, his wife said, “Get ready for a laugh. I’m pregnant.”

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Beatrice laid Ollie’s cable in her lap and removed her spectacles. She looked across the drawing room at her son pouring the round of aperitifs the family enjoyed before the nightly meal. Lucy rarely joined in this ritual. Sometimes she did not even appear for supper. “How nice of Ollie to let us know when they’ll be home. You will serve as the child’s godfather?”

  “Of course,” Percy said. “I’m honored to be asked.”

  “I know they’ll be glad to be home,” Jeremy said. “Abel can hardly wait to hold that grandson. We’ll have to have something for them, Beatrice, a little celebration of some kind?”

  They all knew the problem. It was Lucy. In her erratic and unpredictable state these days, how could they rely on her to behave herself at a homecoming party for the DuMonts? “Leave Lucy to me,” Beatrice said, responding to the concern in her husband’s request. “She’ll cooperate.”

  Percy sipped his Scotch. If anyone could handle Lucy, it was his mother, but lately she had begun kicking even those traces. The early discomforts of pregnancy, coupled with her disgust of him, were driving her to act in ways that even she had not thought possible. She’d insulted several tradesmen, boxed the ears of the milk delivery boy, and called Doc Tanner a quack to his face. Several longtime servants had quit, and entertaining had been curbed owing to the uncertainty of Lucy being able to suffer gladly those fools the Warwicks had tolerated socially for years. Only the restraints of her Bellington Hall training, awe of her mother-in-law, and a faltering hope for their marriage kept her from popping all her stays, Percy believed. With Mary and Ollie’s return, all hell might break loose.

  But it was still the senior Warwicks’ house and she its mistress, Beatrice maintained. With or without Lucy’s cooperation, they would throw a party to welcome the DuMonts home.

  On the evening of the event, an emergency at the lumberyard called Percy away, and he missed the arrival of the guests of honor. Invited to come early, they were already seated in the parlor with his parents and Abel, Mary beside the bassinet they’d brought along, when he appeared in the doorway. Lucy had not come down, he noted with relief. He focused first on Ollie rather than the lissome figure in ivory who rose with her husband as Percy entered.

  “Percy! You old son of a gun!” Ollie exclaimed, grinning from ear to ear as he pushed toward him on his crutches. They embraced heartily, Percy brought almost to tears by the joy of having him home again.

  “Welcome back, old friend,” he said. “You’ve been sorely missed around here, I can tell you.” He turned to Mary. “You, too, Mary Lamb.”

  There was a new look of maturity about her that had settled mainly in her eyes. He would never have believed a woman could look so beautiful. The soft color of her dress gave her skin the hue of honey and deepened the blackness of her hair, bobbed now and set off with a headband of ivory sequins.

  They did not embrace. Percy had wondered if she would avoid eye contact, but she looked straight into his gaze with an intensity that broke his heart. Giving him her hand, she said softly, “We’ve missed you, too, Percy. It’s wonderful to be home.” He lowered his head to kiss her cheek, the one away from the group looking on, and closed his eyes in a small moment of private grief. Her fingers tightened in his clasp. He pressed them gently and let them go. Turning from her with a smile, he said, “Now, let’s have a look at the little fellow, shall we?”

  He peered into the bassinet, and the others joined him. “Isn’t he beautiful?” Abel said. “I may sound prejudiced, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more perfectly formed baby.”

  “Go ahead and sound prejudiced,” Beatrice said. “I intend to when ours is born.”

  “He’s something all right,” Percy murmured, gazing at the sleeping infant. Not so much as a cowlick of Ollie had found its way into the physical makeup of the child. He was a Toliver from the narrow, elegant feet to the cap of rich black hair on the well-shaped head. Stirred by an almost choking tenderness, Percy stroked the tiny palm. Immediately, the child woke and seized Percy’s finger in a minute grip, fixing his eyes upon him with a glint of curiosity. Percy drew back and laughed, enjoying the exquisite feel of the small fingers. “How old is this little tiger?”

  “Three months,” the parents chorused together, and Ollie added, adjusting the armrests of his crutches, “and he’s going to have to rely on his godfather to teach him to play ball.”

  “It will be my pleasure,” Percy said, still held captive by the tiny hand. “What is my little godson’s name?”

  “Matthew,” Mary said from the other side of the bassinet. “Matthew Toliver DuMont.”

  He glanced across at her. “Of course,” he said, immediately dropping his eyes back to the child, unable to bear the assault—and memory—of her beauty. He watched, delighted, as the tiny mouth opened in a pink, round yawn, suckled air briefly, then closed in sleep. With great unwillingness, he slipped his finger from the soft clutch and left the side of the bassinet to greet the arrival of the other guests and his wife coming down the stairs.

  In a flowing dress Abel had recommended to match the color of her eyes, she was charm itself as she circulated among Howbutker’s social elite. She addressed Percy as “darling,” slipped her arm through his, and threw him smiles from across the room. He was not deceived. He understood perfectly his wife’s motivation for presenting herself as an exemplary hostess. This was her first big party as the wife of Percy Warwick, and plainly and simply, she’d have no one wonder why he had married her instead of the stunning Mary Toliver. She may not be beautiful, but she was warmer in personality, easier to make laugh, to engage in conversation. No one felt intimidated by her. She may have been rumored to indulge in quick flashes of temper and salty language, but weren’t they normal aberrations of pregnancy?

  After a brief peer into Matthew’s bassinet, Lucy ignored the child. “Well,” she declared, “I guess you have to claim it, Mary, what with all that black hair and widow’s peak and all. And look at the chin dimple! Ollie, is there any part of you in this baby?”

  Mary answered for him. “His heart, I hope.”

  “Yes, let us do hope,” Lucy said.

  The gazes of the two women locked. The former roommates had greeted each other with reserve. No exchange of hugs and kisses marked their reunion. Now their masks of friendship dropped entirely. A war of sorts was declared in their silent stares.

  “Mary dear, perhaps it would be best to take the bassinet into the library and leave the little man to his peace,” Ollie suggested calmly.

  “What a splendid idea,” Lucy said.

  That night, when Percy went into his wife’s room to say good night, she remarked from her seat at the dressing table, “Well, Ollie certainly cleaned up his mud hen nicely, though she’s so tall and stalky, it must be like climbing a tree to fuck her.”

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sp; Percy’s jaw clenched. “Mary is five feet seven, which must make you feel like a dwarf in her presence,” he said in a tone that belied his urge to slap her.

  Lucy skewed a glance at him, her expression unsure of whether he’d meant the comment as an insult. “I could tell you were mightily taken with her kid,” she said.

  “His name is Matthew, Lucy. And, yes, he’s a handsome lad. If we have a son, I’m hoping he and our child will enjoy the friendship that Ollie and I have known.”

  “Well, we’ll see about that. I wish you’d demonstrate half as much interest in our unborn child as you showed tonight in Ollie and Mary’s.”

  “The atmosphere around here has not been exactly conducive to that,” Percy reminded her dryly.

  “And you think it’ll be any better once the baby gets here? Well, you might as well know now that you are not going to have much say in raising this baby. This baby is mine. You owe him to me.”

  “The baby is ours, Lucy. You can’t use him as a hammer to keep beating me over the head.” Percy was unmoved by her threat. His wife understood there was a line she’d better not cross. His guilt would serve only so far in taking her abuse. But he could not fault her for thinking that he had shown little excitement in the coming birth of the baby. Despite their marital situation, he thought his apathy odd and wondered how Ollie had felt before the arrival of Matthew. He must ask him.

  The Percy Warwicks now occupied two bedrooms, giving as the reason to the household that Lucy’s pregnancy required that she sleep in a separate bed. Percy had no idea what excuse they’d give afterward. He was at the door to leave when Lucy said, “You just watch me, Percy. Why would I want you to have anything to do with raising my child?”

  “Why wouldn’t you?” he asked curiously, coming back into the room. “I’m his father.” Like Lucy, he thought of the baby as “him.”

  “Because…” He saw a bolt of alarm light her blue eyes at his calm, deliberate approach, and she got hastily to her feet.