Bygones (9 page)

“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.

 

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.”

She let him drive, deriving a secret maternal pleasure from being escorted by her full-grown son, something she had fantasized about when he was a young boy, something that happened all too infrequently since he'd become a man. They took highway 96 to White Bear Lake, ten miles due west. The ride led them through snow-covered countryside, past horse ranches and long stretches where no electric lights shone. The lake itself appeared, a blanket of blue-gray in the thin light of an eighth-moon, and rimming it, like a necklace of amber, the lights from lakeshore homes. The lake shared its name with the town that lay on its northwest curve, paling the night sky with its halo.

As they were approaching the city lights, with a bay of the lake on their left, Mark said, “That's where the old man lives.”

“Where?”

“In those condos.”

Bess looked over her shoulder and caught a glimpse of lights receding behind them, tall skeletal trees and an imposing building she'd often admired when driving past.

“How do you know?”

“Lisa told me.”

“Your dad will be there tonight, you know.”

Randy glanced her way but said nothing.

“See what you can do to act natural around him, okay?”

“Yes, Mother.”

“For Lisa's sake.”

“Yes, Mother.”

“Randy, if you say yes Mother one more time I'm going to sock you.”

“Yes, Mother.”

She socked him and they both chuckled.

“You know what I'm saying about your dad.”

“I'll try not to punch his lights out.”

The Padgetts lived on the west side of town in a middle-class residential neighborhood as flat as an elephant's foot. Randy found the house without a misturn and escorted his mother along the edge of a driveway filled with cars to a sidewalk that curved between snowbanks and led to the front door.

They rang the bell and waited.

Mark and Lisa answered, followed by a short woman shaped like a chest of drawers, in a blue dress with a pleated skirt and a white collar. She had brown hair, frizzled in a bowl-shape, and a smile that put six dimples in her cheeks and made her eyes all but disappear.

Mark said simply, with an arm around her shoulder, “This is my mom, Hildy.”

And Lisa said, “This is my mom, Bess, and my brother, Randy.”

Hildy Padgett had a grip like a stevedore's and a contralto voice.

“Glad to meet you. Jake, come over here!” she called, and they were joined by Mark's father, straight, tall, thin-haired and smiling, with a hearing aid in his left ear. He was wearing brown trousers and a plaid shirt, open at the throat and rolled up at the cuff. No jacket.

There would be—Bess saw—no dog put on by the Padgetts, not even at a wedding. She liked them immediately.

The living room stretched off to the left, decorated like a country keeping room with blue-and-white plaid wallpaper and a plate rail running the perimeter of the room, a foot below the ceiling. The furniture was thick and comfortable-looking and filled with people. Among them, standing near the archway to the dining room, was Michael Curran.

At the sound of the doorbell Michael turned to watch Bess come in, looking very voguish, followed by Randy, looking surprisingly tall in an outsized overcoat with baggy shoulders and a turned-up collar. The sight of Bess coming in escorted by their son caught Michael in a vulnerable spot. Lord, Randy had grown up! The last time Michael had seen him was nearly three years ago in a busy shopping center. It was Easter, Michael recalled, and the mall had been turned into a miniature farm, with children everywhere, petting baby goats and chickens and ducks. Michael had just bought a spring jacket and come out of J. Riggings to find Randy moving toward him in the foot traffic, talking animatedly with another boy about his age. Michael had smiled and headed toward him but when Randy spied him, he'd halted, sobered, grabbed his friend's arm and done a brusque right-face, disappearing into a convenient women's clothing store.

Now here he was, three years later, taller than his mother and shockingly good-looking. His face had filled out and resembled Michael's own, though Randy was much handsomer. Michael felt a paternal thrill at the sight of that dark hair so much like his; the eyes, mouth and cheeks that had at last taken on the mature planes and curves they would keep into middle age.

He watched Randy shaking hands, giving up his overcoat, and finally Randy's deep brown eyes found Michael's. His hand stopped smoothing down his tie. The smile dropped from his mouth.

Michael felt his chest constrict. His heart flopped crazily. They stood for a light-year, across the room from one another while the past rushed forth to polarize them both. How simple, Michael thought, to cross the room, speak his name, embrace him, this young man who as a boy had idolized his father, had followed like a shadow beside him when he mowed the lawn and shoveled the driveway and changed the oil in the car and said, “Daddy, can I help?”

But Michael could not move. He could only stand across the room with a lump in his throat, trapped by his own mistaken past.

Someone came between them—Jake Padgett, extending his hand in welcome, and Randy's attention swerved to him.

Bess moved into Michael's line of vision. They forced smiles while he committed himself to his spot in the dining-room archway. He might have moved forward to speak to Randy while Bess was near at hand to act as a buffer but the hurt of Randy's last snub returned, sharp and real as if it had happened only yesterday. Bess's admonitions the other night at Lisa's rang clearly in Michael's head—Randy needs a father, be one to him.