Bygones (19 page)
Inside, the entry chandelier was aglow, as well as the lights in the upstairs hall. He started up the steps. At the end of the hall his mother’s bedroom door was open, and that light was on, too.
“Mom?” he called.
No answer.
He proceeded to the doorway.
“Mom, you all right?”
Again, no answer, so he stepped inside.
What he saw made Randy’s face flame, but just as he moved to retreat, Michael awoke.
“Randy?”
“You got nerve, man,” Randy sneered, “coming here like this.”
“Hey, Randy, just a min –
“ But
Randy was gone, his footfalls thundering down the steps.
Bess squinted awake. “Michael, what time is it?”
“
. . . . Bess, Randy’s home.”
“Oh. So now he knows. Shut off the lamp, please.”
Michael shut off the lamp.
IN the morning, when he awakened, he found Bess studying him.
“Hi,” she said.—Hi.”
She smiled. “So we got caught, huh?”
“Did
we
ever.”
“What are we going to tell him?”
“I don’t know. You got any ideas?”
Bess braced her jaw on one hand and reached over to ruffle his hair. “He probably won’t get up till nine or so. I can talk to him.”
“You’re not the one he’ll be angry with. It’ll be me. I’m not leaving you here to do my dirty work.”
Michael sat up on the edge of the bed, at her hip. They smiled at each other a long time. He braced a hand on either side of her. It was one of those sterling stretches that come along rarely in a relationship. She hated to tarnish it.
“Michael, listen,” she began. “I’m not going to tell Randy you and I
are
getting married again, because it’s just not true. I need time to think things through. This - this affair we’ve started . . . well, if Randy has trouble adjusting to it, then so be it, but I won’t vindicate myself with a lie. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“Sure. We’ll be setting a great example for our kids, won’t we? Michael.”
He rose and dressed, saying angrily, “I want to marry you, and you’re saying no, you’d rather have an affair. Well, what kind of -“
“That’s not what I’m saying.” She grabbed her terry cover-up, flung it over her, and stood before him, a little angry, a little repentant. “I don’t want to make the same mistake again, that’s all.”
“Okay,” he said. “I’ve called you twice. It’s your turn next time.” He strode toward the door.
“Michael. . .” The tone of her voice was tantamount to a reaching hand, but he’d already disappeared into the hall.
He called back as he reached the top of the stairs, “Tell Randy I’ll call him and explain.”
Randy’s voice
came
from
below. “You don’t have to. He’s here.”
Michael’s footsteps faltered, then continued more slowly to the bottom of the steps, where Randy stood, bare but for his blue jeans. “Randy
. .
I’m sorry we woke you.”
“I’ll just bet you are.”
“I didn’t mean it that way. I had every intention of talking to you about this. I wasn’t going to skip out and leave it to your mother.”
“Oh, yeah?
Well, that’s the way it liked to me. Why don’t you just leave her alone?”
“Because I love her, that’s why.”
“Love - don’t make me laugh. I suppose you loved her when you walked out on her. I supposed you loved me and Lisa, too! Well, that’s some way to show your kids you love ‘
em
. You want to know how it feels to have your father write you
off?
It hurts, that’s how it feels!”
“I didn’t write you off.”
“Aw, man, you left her, you left us. I was thirteen years old. You know how a thirteen-year-old thinks? I figured it must’ve been my fault. Then Mom finally tells me you had another woman, and I wanted to find you and smash your face. Now here you are, back again. Well maybe I should smash it now, huh?”
From the top of the stairs Bess reprimanded, “Randy!”
His icy eyes looked up. “This is between him and me Ma.”
“Randy!” She started down the stairs. “You will apologize to him at once.”
Randy’s face wrinkled with disbelief. “Why are you taking his side? Can’t you see he’s just using you again? Comes down here saying he loves you. He probably said the same thing to that floozy he married, but he couldn’t make that marriage stick, either. He’s a loser, Ma, and he doesn’t deserve you!” She slapped Randy’s face.
He stared at her in shock. Tears spurted into his eyes.
“I’m sorry I had to do that. But I cannot allow you to stand there berating your father and me. Now, I think, Randy,” she said quietly, “that you owe us both an apology.”
Randy stared at her.
At Michael.
Back at her, before spinning and heading downstairs for his bedroom without another word.
When he was gone, Bess felt her cheeks burning. She turned to Michael, who stood forlornly studying his shoes, and put her arms around him. “Michael, I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“It’s been coming for a long time.”
He pulled back, adding in a choked voice, “I’d better go. I’ll. . .” He didn’t know what he’d do. “I’ll see you, Bess,” he said, and left, closing the door behind him.
IN
ins
room, Randy sat on the edge of his bed, doubled forward, holding his head in both hands.
Crying.
He wanted a dad, wanted a mom,
wanted
love, like other kids. But why did it have to be so painful getting it? He’d been hurt so much by their divorce. Why shouldn’t he be allowed to vent the fury that had been building in him since they’d split? Couldn’t they see what jerks they were making of themselves, falling back together this way for convenience? It wasn’t as if they talked about getting married again. Damn Lisa for stirring this all up.
It had been bad holding things inside all these years, but letting them out hadn’t felt much good, either.
Seeing the look of pain on his dad’s face when he had yelled, “it hurts”-that was what he’d wanted, wasn’t it? To hurt his old man the way the old man had hurt him? So why was he here bawling like a baby? I’m so confused. I wish I had somebody to talk to, somebody who’d listen and make me understand who I’m angry at and why. Maryann. . .
I was going to show you I could be worthy of you. But I’m not. I talk like a gutter rat, and smoke pot, and even my own mother slaps me. Somebody help me understand!
“Randy?” His mother had come to his door and knocked softly. He swiped his eyes with the
bedsheet
, hopped up, and pretended to be busy at the CD player.
“Yeah.
It’s open.”
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have slapped you.”
He watched the knobs on the control panel blur as his eyes refilled with tears. “Yeah …well . . .”
She came up behind him and touched his shoulder.
“Randy, I just want you to know something. Your dad asked me to marry him again, but I’m the one who said no.”
Randy blinked, and the tears dropped onto his chest.
“Why?”
“Because I’m afraid of getting hurt again-the same as you.”
“I’m never apologizing to him.
Never.”
“Randy, he loves you very much. I know you don’t believe that, but he does. And whether you believe it or not, you love him. That’s why you’re hurting so badly now.” She paused before continuing.
“The two of you will have to talk someday-really talk, without anger, about all your feelings. Please, Randy, don’t wait too long.”
She left, and he remained in his windowless room, willing away tears that refused his bidding. He imagined going to his father’s place and knocking on his door and simply walking into his arms and hugging him hard enough to snap their bones. But how did people manage to do that after they’d been hurt this bad?
Affix the night Randy discovered them in bed, Michael didn’t call Bess. She missed him horribly, and in early August broke down and called him on the pretext of advising him about some nice pieces of sculpture on display at a gallery in
Minneapolis
. He was brusque, declining to ask anything personal or to thank her for recommending the gallery.
She submerged herself in work; it helped little. She told Randy she wanted to come out some night and hear him play; he said no, he didn’t think the kind of bars he played in would be her style. She attended a baby shower for Lisa, given by Mark’s sisters; it only reminded her she would soon be a grandmother facing old age alone. Keith called and said he missed her, wanted to see her again; she told him no. Then she found a batik wall hanging that would have been stunning in Michael’s dining room, but she refused to call him for fear he’d treat her rudely again. Or worse, what if she broke down and suggested their getting together for an evening?
Chapter Fifteen
Lisa called the Blue Iris at
on August 16 and said she had gone into labor. She and Mark had already asked both the
Padgetts
and Bess and Michael to be present for the birth. But there was no reason for Bess to come to the hospital yet; Mark would call to tell her when it was time.
Bess canceled two appointments,
then
called Randy. Their relationship had been bumping along since the day she’d slapped him. She would talk; he’d grunt. She made an effort; he made none.
Now he answered on the third ring.
“Randy, I’m so glad you’re still home. I just wanted you to know that Lisa’s gone into labor.”
“Yeah?
Well, tell her good luck.”
“Can’t you tell her yourself?
” .
“The band’s heading out for
Bemidji
at
.”
“
Bemidji
. . . . When will you be back?”
“Sometime tomorrow morning: We’re playing in
White Bear Lake
tomorrow afternoon.”
“I’ll leave a note at home if the baby is here. Otherwise, call me at the store.”
“Okay. Ma, I
gotta
go:”
“All right, but listen, I love you.”
He paused too long before replying, “Yeah, same here,” as if pronouncing the actual words was more than he could manage. Bess hung up feeling like a failure as a mother, understanding how Michael had felt all these years, wondering how to mend these fences between
herself
and Randy. It was hard to concentrate on work knowing Lisa was in labor. She waited on customers and checked her watch a dozen times an hour. Then Mark called shortly before
, and Bess barely took time to hang up, before grabbing her purse and running.
Mark was there wearing sterile blue scrubs, along with a smiley nurse whose name tag read JAN MEERS, R.n. Lisa was lying on the bed, with two sensors attached to her belly, their leads dropping to a machine beside the bed. Bess kissed Lisa. “Hi, honey. Hi, Mark How’s everything going?”
“Pretty good.
Got me all hog-tied to this machine so we can tell if the baby changes his mind or something. And this is the lady who’s going to put me through the seven tortures.”
Ms.
Meers
laughed. “Oh, I hope not. Look here now.” She rested a hand on the machine where an orange digital number glowed beside a tiny orange heart that flashed in rhythm with a sound like a scratchy phonograph record. “This is the ultrasound. That’s the baby’s heartbeat you hear. And this one”-she indicated a green number beside the orange one equals “shows your contractions, Lisa. Mark, one of your jobs will be to watch it. Between contractions it’ll read around thirteen or fourteen. The instant you see it rising, you should remind Lisa to start breathing. It’ll take about thirty seconds for the contraction to reach its peak, and by forty-five seconds it’ll be tapering off.”
Ms.
Meers
had scarcely finished her instructions before Mark said, “It’s going up!”
Lisa stiffened, and he reminded her, “Okay, here we go now. Remember, three pants arid one blow.
Pant, pant, pant, blow.
Okay, now again.”
Bess stood by uselessly, watching Lisa ride out the pain, feeling her own innards seizing up, while Mark remained a bastion of strength, smiling into Lisa’s eyes.
Bess checked the clock. It was
Mark’s mother arrived, greeting everyone, giving Mark a quick squeeze.
Hildy
kissed Lisa’s cheek and said, “I don’t know why, but I think it’s going to be a boy.”