A Peculiar Grace (42 page)

Beth was advancing a litany of complaint over the day. The cost of the school, the long silent ride there and back, how Meredith more or less abandoned her for the campus tour, even what she perceived as the brusque tone of the “parent counselor” assigned to her. Hewitt did his best to murmur sympathetically without committing himself.

Seated across from his sister at the table, wondering if he might get up and snag a beer from the fridge. Slowly he became aware she was no longer looking at him but down at the table before him and he followed her gaze only to discover one renegade hand drumming fingertips on the table. He stopped this and was looking up with a skewed grin to meet his sister’s eyes when their mother turned from the stove and spoke.

Mary Margaret said, “You two are driving me mad. Look,” she paused and pointed at the clock. “It’s after five. Why don’t you get something to drink and go outside and leave me be. Do that, or I’ll
drive you out with a broom. And at the moment I’m inclined to a heavy hand.”

Beth said, “I’d love a gin and tonic.”

Hewitt stood. “Want me to make one for you? A beer’s all I want for now.”

Beth said, standing, “I’ll make my own, if you don’t mind.”

Hewitt said, “We’re leaving, Mother. There’s nothing wrong with the cabbage except for the splash of sugar you’ve forgotten to add.”

B
ROTHER AND SISTER
were outside, down from the porch and stood side by side in the draining heat of the day.

He looked at Beth and said, “So. Is there somewhere on the old place you’d like to see again? We could go into the gardens or up the hill to the orchard.”

Without pause she said, “I want to go to your studio.”

He knew what she meant but still had to say, “Where?”

“Your, I don’t know Hewitt. Where you do your work.”

“Okay,” he said. “But why? I mean, you’re welcome. You never expressed interest before.”

She looked at him and said, “Should I apologize for that, Hewitt? That’s where I’d like to sit and chat with you. It’s private there, isn’t it?”

Hewitt said, “Come on then.”

He perched up on his usual spot on the bench by the big vise while she wandered around and peered into the hearth, picking up tools and putting them down again in not quite the right place and he said nothing. It was warm but not hot here and after a time she pulled out his small Windsor chair from his drawing table and sat. He then slid off the bench and opened one half of the big double doors so a little more air flowed through.

There was a silence. It drew out and lingered and then began to gain weight. Until it lay between them palpable as a cable.

She said, “By any chance, do you have any dope?”

It was the last thing he expected to hear from her. But her asking made clear the deep reach of her need, that she wanted something from him never before touched upon. He said, “Well, maybe so.”

He slid off the bench and pulled open the drawer and without ceremony lifted the tin on to the bench, opened it and crunched a bud and rolled a joint. Still silent he lit it and smoked and handed it to his sister. She smoked and passed it back. They did this without speaking right down to the point where they were using his needle-nose pliers to pass the roach back and forth. When it was done he set the pliers, still clamping the tiny resin-soaked tip, on the bench. Then he hoisted himself again on to the bench and sipped his beer, watching Beth with her tall gin and tonic—he’d watched her make it and the splash of tonic was a mere gesture.

“This is where you work.”

“Yup.”

“There’s something peaceful about it.”

“Mostly it’s the hard work. There are times when I forget about everything else except what I’m working on. That’s pretty cool. But there’s nothing mystical about it. It just means I’m doing the job the right way. Or have figured out what needs to be done and the work takes over.”

“I’ve never once in my life known that feeling. I mean, I know when I’m doing a good job. But it never gets under my skin. That’s what you’re talking about, isn’t it?”

Hewitt said, “It’s true, I get pretty wrapped up in the work. Sometimes I can’t tell where the work ends and my life begins. But when a job’s done, it’s done. And I have to start all over again. From scratch. That can be scary, sometimes.”

Beth said, “I never thought about that part, the unknown, the starting over. I always assumed you just did it. I mean shit, Hewitt, my biggest pain in the ass is being called at three in the morning because the setup crew is short three tables for a morning banquet for four hundred people. Like, what? I’m supposed to have them in my closet? No. Because I’m
the person to call at three in the morning. I like my job, but it’s just details. Otherwise it’s the same thing over and over.”

He sipped the beer, then took up the pliers and the matches and worked to get one more small hit from the roach.

He said, “Beth.”

Beth said, “Jesus, Hewitt, I’m blasted. I’m stoned as a river. What was I thinking of? I haven’t smoked pot in years. This is really strong. And I just spent a long day getting far too stressed out with my almost adult daughter whom I’ve lectured no end about the evils of drugs and now in what, half an hour, I’m supposed to walk up and sit down to supper and I know the first thing I’m going to do is look across at Merry and think she’s got no idea her mother is wasted and right then I’m going to start laughing and fall off my chair. Jesus.”

“Hey,” he said. “You’re okay. It’s good but old, it’ll wear off pretty quick. And I can always walk up and get another drink for you and that’ll help and we can sit here as long as we need to. Nobody’ll bother us.”

“Wow,” said Beth, looking out the windows at the slow summer evening. “I’d forgotten how pretty it can be here. The light, the air so clear, none of that humid haze I’ve gotten used to.”

“Hey Beth?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m glad you’re appreciating the evening. Just don’t ask me if I’ve ever really looked at my hand, okay?”

She studied him a minute and then broke out laughing. Not stoned giggles but a good deep laugh and listening, he had to wonder how long it’d been since she’d laughed like that.

When she regained herself, her face had softened and it was only then Hewitt realized how old she looked. Worn in the small ways of a woman who worked out, exercised, watched what she ate, dressed carefully and used cosmetics artfully.

She said, “Do you know I’ve always been jealous of you?”

“Really? You didn’t think I was some kind of fuckup? I thought I got lumped in there along with whatever else it was you were leaving behind. I mean, Beth, you made no secret you were going and not looking back.”

“Well, Dad and I didn’t get along very well once I hit my teens. I know he always thought that was his fault. You know Hewitt, you get to our ages and you start to understand what regret truly means.”

“I know that pretty well.”

“Once I got past my teenage pissy pants stage and well on into my twenties I realized it was my fault, that business with Dad and I.”

“Me.”

“What?”

“Dad and me, not Dad and I.”

She grinned and said, “Will you stop?”

“You know how Mother is about grammar. Christ I’d like to tape her sometime so she could hear herself, all that Irish slipping in.”

“She’d be mortified.”

“No,” Hewitt said. “She’d wave it off. Tell us English was her second language or something like that.”

“God, Hewitt, when was the last time we sat and talked to each other like this.”

He paused. Then he said, “Probably the spring you threw out my gallon jars of tadpoles.”

She said, “You called me a fucking moron with no curiosity and I asked how many years in a row it would take for you to understand that tadpoles always turn into frogs.”

“Is that what we said?”

“It is.” He sipped for a pause and said, “Beth?”

“Hewitt?”

“Mother told me about you and Evan. Is that what you want to talk about? We can talk about anything. I just wanted that out in the air.”

She was quiet a moment and then said, “It’s not only Evan I’m trying to sort out. But he’s a good part of it.”

Hewitt said, “Okeydoke. Let’s tackle it.”

She leaned back in the chair, her long legs sprawled. She said, “If I tell you, you have to promise you won’t tell anyone else.”

He said, “Scout’s honor.”

She said, “Damn it, Hewitt, you were never a scout.”

“I didn’t mean it as a joke. On my honor then. Lips sealed until death and beyond if needed.”

She said, “Evan’s gay.”

He was quiet a moment and then said, “Jesus, Bethy. I’m sorry.”

“Sorry? It’s nothing to be sorry for. Now, at least. I know what you mean but sorry was for all the years things seemed wrong without a reason. I wasn’t even angry, Hewitt. I was relieved. It explained things that otherwise kept falling back on me. Years of that. Did you think it was my choice to have only one child? That I’m one of those dried-up women married to her work? Hell no. As far as I can tell I like sex as much as the next woman—in fact between us chickens sometimes I thought I wanted it too much. Still do, as far as that’s concerned. Although I tried my damnedest to be good and mostly was. The funny thing is, once he broke down and told me, I stopped any of that, uh, extracurricular activity. For the time being. I guess because I didn’t need it for the moment and also, there was enough else going on. And more than before, there was Merry to think of.”

“Does she know?”

“Not yet.”

“Does he, uh—”

“Have a boyfriend? Of course. I don’t know how it works for other men but for Evan he always wondered, that’s how he put it, but didn’t know until he met the man he’s in love with. Hewitt, he was crying when he told me. Even as I sat comforting him and holding his head in my lap and angry as hell I also knew it was one of the most difficult moments of his life. You can’t live with and love another person
without understanding them that deeply. And yes, I do love Evan. Among other things, we’re always going to have Meredith. Whom, I might add, thinks her parents are candidates for disaster anyway, but that’s another story.”

“Umm,” Hewitt said. “Is all this a little bit behind the idea of her going to school up here or was that fully her idea?”

“Evan and I’ve worked hard not to let on about any of this. Perhaps we were wrong—”

“Beth, she’s pretty sharp and there’s bound to be some seepage, if you know what I mean.”

“It’s been two years, Hewitt. I imagine there’s been some, as you say, seepage. But here’s the sweet part—it was Evan so determined to try and maintain things for her. I can’t tell you if that was his only incentive. It’s going to be a nightmare for him when the time comes and perhaps he wanted time to prepare himself. I do know he’s been incredibly discreet. In fact, I haven’t met the other man myself. Not because I wasn’t willing, and not because Evan doesn’t want me to, but simply because he’s terrified he’ll lose his daughter. The guy, and yes I know his name is, like Evan, from an old Carolina family and so understands just what a shitstorm it’s going to be and I think’s wise enough to stand back and let Evan pick and choose his time. Which brings me to the next part of the story.

“After we get home from this jaunt and hopefully Merry has her eyes wide on the future we’re going to take a week at the condo on the Outer Banks, just the three of us, before school starts. And we’re going to sit down and explain it to her. This was Evan’s idea but I agree with him. He’s not going anywhere, not yet. But he says it would be unfair to wait until she’s all set to start college and dump it on her then, and at the same time break apart the home, the house she grew up in. So the idea’s to explain things, rather in less detail, and then assure her how much we love not only her but also each other and go through another year, letting her get used to the idea without it being a stark reality. Knowing Merry, she’s as likely to pipe up and ask why Dad took so
long to tell her what she already knew, as to break down and get angry or whatever. She could do both. She could fly apart and force the issue—we know that. But that’s the immediate big picture.”

Beth took a big drink. Hewitt said, “Does Mother know any of this?”

“She thinks she does. But she thinks it’s all about me. A nasty bit of me’s waiting for the surprise to register on her face. Of course, I’ll still catch hell, she’ll be sure it was my fault somehow, but there’s nothing I can do about that.”

Hewitt shook his head. “Bethy?”

She sat, her silence the question.

He took a breath and said, “I just want to say I think you’re crack-erjack. You, you and Evan both, are handling this incredibly thoughtfully. And kind, it sounds like. I mean, as tough as this is, it could’ve been a real mess. I’m just, I’m just, well, proud of you.”

She shot him a grin. “Thanks, Hewitt. Although, you know I have to consider the source.”

He grinned back, then asked, “So, do you have … plans?”

She said, “I’ve been talking to people at work. I have to sort things out with Meredith and Evan and I want to see Meredith through her senior year and her first year at college. By then I’ll be ready for a change. They own resorts all over but the two I’m interested in are in Arizona and Hawaii and, well, I’m pretty much guaranteed a job at either place when I’m ready.”

Hewitt already knew what else she was speaking of. He said, “It sounds like a good idea to me.”

“I don’t know what Mother will do. How she’ll take it.”

“Don’t worry about Mother. I can’t see her chasing you around, especially once you get things tied up and done there in North Carolina. I get the sense she’s pretty happy with her life. She was complaining about getting old but also made it clear she’s in a place that feels right to her.”

“That might change if I wasn’t twenty minutes away.”

“It might. But you can’t worry about that.”

“Perhaps you should. What if she moved back here?”

“I don’t know, Beth. But I haven’t heard the least thing makes me think she’d ever want to live up here again. And if she has other ideas, well, I’ll just deal with that when the time comes.”