Bygones (42 page)

Bess and Michael scanned the room from the doorway, then tiptoed to the bassinet and stood on either side of it, looking down at their new granddaughter.

They spoke in whispers.

“Oh, just look at her, Michael, isn't she beautiful?” And to the baby, Bess said, “Hello, precious, how are you today? You look a lot prettier than you did last night.”

They both reached down and touched the baby's blankets, her downy cheek, rapt in her presence. Michael whispered, “Hi there, little lady. Grandma and Grandpa came to see you.”

“Michael, look . . . her mouth is just like your mother's.”

“Wouldn't my mother have loved her.”

“So would my dad.”

“She's got more hair than I thought. Last night it seemed as if she didn't have hardly any but today it looks quite dark.”

“Do you think it would be okay if we picked her up?” Bess looked up into Michael's eyes. He smiled conspiratorially, and she slipped her hands beneath the soft pink flannel blanket and lifted Natalie from the bassinet. They stood shoulder-to-shoulder, inundated by love as pure and exquisite as any they had ever felt, stunned once again by a sense of completeness, by the idea of leaving their mark on the future through this child.

“Isn't it something, how she makes us feel?”

Michael kissed the baby's forehead, then straightened and smiled at her. “Wait till you're one or two or so. You'll come to our house to stay and we'll spoil you plenty, won't we, Grandma?”

“You bet we will. And someday when you're old enough, we'll tell you all about how your birth made your grandpa propose to me and brought us back together again. Of course we'll have to edit out the part about the condoms and how your grandpa threw them all over the steps but . . .”

Michael smothered his laughter. “Bess, these are delicate ears!”

“Well, she comes from a randy lot, and if—”

From behind them, Lisa spoke. “What are you two whispering about over there?”

They looked back over their shoulders. Lisa looked sleepy but wore a soft smile.

“Actually, your mother was talking about condoms.”

“Michael!” Bess shouted.

“Well, she was. I told her Natalie was too young to hear such things but she wouldn't listen to me.”

Lisa boosted herself up. “All right, what's going on between you two? I wake up and you're whispering and giggling . . .” She reached with both hands. “And bring my baby here, will you?”

Lisa pressed a button that raised the head of the bed, and they went to take her the baby, then sit one on each side of her and lean over simultaneously to kiss her cheeks.

“She was awake so we didn't think we'd get in trouble for picking her up.”

“She's been a good girl . . . haven't you, Natalie?” Lisa fingered the baby's hair. “She slept five hours between feedings.”

They talked about how Lisa was feeling, whom she'd called, who'd sent flowers (she thanked them for theirs), when Mark was expected to return, the fact that Randy hadn't called or stopped by, the probability of his visiting that evening, and Grandma Dorner, too. They admired the baby, and Bess offered reminiscences about Lisa's birth, and what a good sleeper she'd been, and what a lusty set of lungs she'd had when she decided not to sleep.

After all that, while they still sat one on either side of Lisa, Bess glanced at Michael and sent him a silent message. He captured her hand and, resting it on the bedspread covering Lisa's stomach, said, “Your mother and I have something to tell you, Lisa.” He let Bess speak the words.

“We're going to get married again.”

A radiant smile lit Lisa's face as she lunged forward, the baby still on her right arm, clasping Michael with her left as Bess, too, bent into the awkward, three-way embrace. The baby started complaining at being squashed between two bodies but they ignored her, allowing the moment its due, cleaving to one another, their throats thick with emotion.

Against Lisa's hair, Bess whispered simply, “Thank you, darling, for forcing two stubborn people back together.”

Lisa kissed her mother's mouth, her father's mouth. “You've made me so happy.”

“We've made
us
so happy.” Michael chuckled, drawing a like response from the others as they drew back, all of them a little glisteny-eyed and flushed. They all laughed self-consciously. Lisa sniffed, and Bess ran the edge of a hand under her eye.

“When?”

“Right away.”

“As soon as we can get it arranged.”

“Oh, you guys, I'm
so
happy!” This hug was one of hallelujah, a near banging together of cheeks before Lisa held Natalie straight out and rejoiced, “We did it, kiddo, we did it!”

Stella spoke from the doorway. “May I get in on this celebration?”

“Grandma! Come in, quick! Mom and Dad have some great news! Tell her, Mom!”

Stella approached the bed. “Don't tell me. You're going to get married again.” Bess nodded, smiling widely. Stella made a victor's fist. “I knew it! I knew it!” She kissed Bess first, because she was closer, then went at Michael with her arms up. “Come here, you handsome, wonderful hunk of a son-in-law, you!” She met him at the foot of the bed as he came around to scoop her up. “I thought that daughter of mine was crazy to divorce you in the first place.” Released, she fanned her face and turned toward the bed. “Whoo! How much excitement can a woman stand in one day? All this and a great-grandchild, too! Let me see the new arrival—and Lisa, you little matchmaking mother, don't you look happy enough to float?”

It was an afternoon of celebration. Mark arrived, followed by the rest of the Padgetts as well as two women Lisa worked with, and one of her high-school friends. Bess and Michael's news was received with as much excitement as was their new granddaughter.

At one point Lisa asked, “Where are you going to live?”

They gaped at each other and shrugged.

Bess replied, “We don't know. We haven't talked about it yet.”

Leaving the hospital at 4:15 P.M., Bess said, “Where
are
we going to live?”

“I don't know.”

“I suppose we should talk about it. Want to come over to the house?”

Michael affected a salacious grin and said, “Of course I want to come over to the house.”

They were driving separate cars but arrived at the house simultaneously. Bess parked in the garage and Michael pulled up behind her, went into the garage and waited beside her car while she switched off the radio and collected her purse and turned up the visor. As he opened her door and stood waiting, he found himself happier than he could recall being in years, for simply being with her, feeling certain that the last half of his life was going to be less tumultuous than the first. Everything seemed near perfect—the new baby, the marriage plans, the children all grown up, happiness, wealth and health; he found himself tempted toward smugness as he stood beside Bess's car.

From behind the wheel she looked up at him and said, “You know what?”

She could have announced that she'd taken a job as a palm reader and was going to travel the country with a carnival, and he wouldn't have objected at that moment, as long as he could tag along. Her face looked young and glad, her eyes content. “I couldn't guess.”

She got out of the car. He slammed the door but they remained beside it, in the concrete coolness of the garage with its peculiar mixture of scents—mower gas and rubber hoses and garden chemicals. “I've discovered something about myself that surprises me,” Bess told him.

“What?”

“That I really don't care about this house as much as I used to. As a matter of fact, I absolutely love your condo.”

He couldn't have been more surprised. “Are you saying you want to live there?”

“Where do
you
want to live?”

“In my condo, but I thought for sure you'd have a fit if I said so.”

She burst out laughing, draped her arms around his neck and dropped back against the side of her car, taking him with her. With his body fit to hers she smiled up into his eyes. “Oh, Michael, isn't it wonderful, getting older? Learning to sort out what's really important from what's petty and superficial?” She kissed him briefly and told him, “I'd love to live in your condo. But if you'd said you wanted to move back into the house, that would have been all right, too, because it's not so important
where
we live as that we live there together from now on.”

He rested his hands on the sides of her breasts and said, “I've been thinking about that same thing, too. Are you sure you aren't saying you like the condo better just because you think it's what I want?”

“I'm sure. In more ways than one we sort of outgrew this house. It was grand while the kids were little but now it's—I don't know—a new phase of life, time to move on. There are a lot of sad memories here, as well as happy ones. The condo is a fresh start . . . and after all, we did decorate it together, to both of our tastes. Why, it makes perfect sense to live there! It's newer, it's got as wonderful a view as this does, nobody has to take care of the yard, it's still close enough for me to get to my store in fifteen minutes and for you to get to downtown St. Paul fast, and there's the beach and the parks, and—”

“Listen, Bess, you don't have to convince me. I'll be overjoyed to stay there. There's only one question.”

“Which is?”

“What about Randy?”

She put her hands on his collarbone and absently smoothed his shirt. She let her hands fall still on his chest, lifted her gaze and said calmly, “It's time to cut Randy loose, don't you think?”

Michael made no reply. He had told her essentially the same thing that first night Lisa had tricked them into facing each other at her apartment.

“He has a job now,” she went on. “Friends. It's time he got out on his own.”

“You're sure?”

“I'm sure.”

“Because it strikes me that even though parents think they ought to treat all their kids equally, it's not always possible. Some of them need us more than others, and I think Randy will always need more of our help than Lisa ever did.”

“That may be true but it's still time for him to live in his own place.”

They let a kiss seal their decision, sharing it leaning against the car with the late afternoon sunlight flooding in, and the sound of condensation dripping off the auto air conditioner, and the smell of gasoline coming from the nearby lawn mower.

When Michael lifted his head he looked serene. “This time I'm staying with you till he gets home, and we'll tell him together.”

“Agreed.” She smiled and threaded one arm around his waist, turning him toward the kitchen door.

They entered the house to find the phone ringing. Bess answered, unprepared in her radiant state for the voice at the other end of the line.

“Mrs. Curran?”

“Yes.”

“This is Danny Scarfelli. I'm one of the guys in Randy's band. Listen, I don't mean to scare you but something's happened to him and he's not . . . well, I think it's pretty serious, and they're taking him by ambulance to the hospital.”

“What? A car accident, you mean?” Bess's terrified eyes locked on Michael's.

“No. We were just playing, you know, and all of a sudden he's laying on the floor. He says it's something with his heart is all I know. He asked me to call you.”

“Which hospital?”

“Stillwater. They've already left.”

“Thank you.” She hung up. “It's Randy. Something's wrong with his heart and they're taking him to the hospital in an ambulance.”

“Let's go.”

He grabbed her hand and they ran out the way they'd entered, to his car. “I'll drive.”

All the way to Lakeview Hospital, they sat stiff-spined, fearful, thinking, Why now? Why now? It's taken us all this time to get our lives back on track, and we deserve some unconfounded happiness. Michael ignored stop signs and broke speed limits. Gripping the steering wheel with both hands, he thought, There must be something I should be saying to Bess. I should touch her shoulder, squeeze her hand. But he drove in his own insular parcel of dread, as silent as she, inexplicably reft from her by this threat to their child.

His heart? What could be wrong with the heart of a nineteen-year-old boy?

They reached the emergency room of Lakeview at the same time as the ambulance, catching a mere glimpse of Randy as they ran behind the gurney bearing him along a short hall to a curtained section of the area. An alarming number of medical staff materialized at once, speaking in brusque spurts, in their own indigenous lexicon, focused on the patient with unquestionable life-and-death intensity, ignoring Michael and Bess, who hovered on the sidelines, gripping each other's hands now as they had not in the car.

“Got a sinus tach here.”

“What's his blood pressure?”

“One eighty over one hundred.”