Double Wedding Ring (18 page)

“She can,” Malorie insisted. “Can't you, Mother? I saw her two days ago, when I came in from work.”

“Clinging to that rail,” Betsy said, nodding toward the metal bar. “What good does that do, I ask you, a step or two at a time?”

“It's progress,” Susan said, staring into the plate of food she didn't feel like swallowing and hoping she wouldn't cry.

Debbie touched Susan's arm. “Well, of course it is. My goodness, that seems like a lot of progress to me.”

The tone of Debbie's voice sounded to Susan a lot like the tone Betsy used to compliment Cody on an impossible-to-decipher drawing. Telling herself Debbie meant well, she managed an upbeat smile for her sister-in-law.

Another few minutes of silence followed before Steve could think of another way to coax a conversation out of them.

“Mal, I hear you've got a job. How's that going?”

“Fine.” Malorie sounded inclined to let that be the end of it. Susan looked up, their eyes met, and Malorie added, “I'm working at the Lawn & Garden. It's fun, actually.”

Steve looked surprised. “At Hutchins'?”

“That's right.”

Betsy thrust a bowl at her son. “More sweet potatoes?”

“Thanks, Mom.” He scooped out a heaping spoonful. “I thought Mrs. Hutchins died a few months ago. Who's keeping the place open?”

“Shall I bring more rolls from the kitchen?” Betsy asked.

Malorie raised a stubborn chin and stared at her grandmother through narrowed eyes. “Her son owns the place now. You probably know him, Uncle Steve. Tag Hutchins.”

“Tag?” Steve put the serving spoon back in the sweet potato soufflé and looked incredulously from Malorie to Susan. “Tag's back in town? Why didn't somebody tell me?”

Susan saw the excitement in her brother's eyes and knew she had an ally. “He's been helping me read.”

“Helping you read? Really?” Steve's smile grew broader yet. “Is he staying at the house?”

Malorie patted her lips primly with one of the Pilgrim-hatted turkeys on the corner of her napkin. “Why, yes. I suspect he's there right now.”

“Well, I'll be. I'll have to run over there after dinner. Deb, you've got to meet Tag.”

Betsy shoved abruptly away from the table. “I'll bring another pitcher of tea.”

She stalked out of the dining room. Steve looked around. “What's her problem?”

“She doesn't like Tag,” Susan said simply.

“Still? After all this time?”

Malorie leaned across the table and lowered her voice. “He's been so sweet to help Mother, and he gave me a job and everything, but Grandmother refuses to be civil to him. I'll bet you anything he's sitting over there alone right now, and—”

Steve's fork clattered to his plate. “You're kidding? Alone on Thanksgiving Day? When we've got a twenty-pound turkey in the kitchen and enough food to feed an army?”

He stood. “I'm going to get him.”

Debbie reached for his sleeve. “Now, Steve, if Betsy—”

“Tell Mother to set another plate.”

He was out the door before anyone could react. Going to the shopping bag her uncle had brought in, Malorie retrieved another paper plate and napkin. Susan noted the tremble in her daughter's hands as she set the place and hated herself for allowing her daughter to grow up with such a weak mother for an example. Even Debbie glanced anxiously in the direction of the kitchen.

“Oh, dear,” she said softly. “Betsy isn't going to like this, is she?”

Malorie dropped back into her chair, running a hand over Cody's blond curls as she did. “Betsy has run the show long enough.”

Susan took courage from her daughter's tone of voice. Debbie shrank into her chair.

When Betsy returned with a pitcher of tea, she glanced at Steve's empty chair and the extra place Malorie had set. She circled the table refilling glasses, then sat again stiffly. No one spoke. No one ate except Cody, who had just discovered the raisins in his sweet potatoes. Betsy didn't even bother to correct him as he mined for raisins.

All four of the women stiffened further when the front door opened. Steve's boisterous voice carried into the room, and Susan looked up to watch Tag walk in.

He was dressed haphazardly, heedless of the holiday in frayed jeans and a University of Alabama sweatshirt that had been washed so many times the Crimson Tide was pink. His hair was uncombed save for a distracted sweep of his fingers, although it shone from his morning shower. His mustache captured Susan's attention; she remembered the soft feel of it against her lips when they kissed.

Suddenly the room brightened, although the sky outside was still the color of dull pewter.

Tag's first glance was for Susan—his eyes were hungry and solemn and apologetic—but he first went to Malorie and greeted her with a kiss on the cheek. A family kind of gesture, it seemed to Susan. Then he turned to Cody, who had crowed with delight the minute Tag appeared, and spent a moment or two pretending to steal the boy's plate of food. He met Steve's wife, displaying all the Hutchins charm. Then he turned to Betsy and, standing behind the chair that had been placed at the table for him, said, “Thank you, Betsy, for the invitation.”

Betsy's cheeks grew red, whether with anger or embarrassment or both, Susan wasn't certain. Betsy stared at the centerpiece Malorie had made and brought home from the store. Susan noted that Steve, too, stood behind his chair, as if waiting for Betsy's reaction.

If Betsy noticed that her son was waiting for Tag to be made welcome, she gave it no mind. She nodded curtly, and Susan supposed that was the most she could unbend.

“Mom.” Steve's prod held a warning tone.

She glanced up at her son. “Please, everyone, sit.”

Tag sat, although Susan doubted he felt very welcome. She wondered if he was only trying to get Steve to sit, to avoid the confrontation. Beneath the table, she reached for his hand and squeezed it. He squeezed back, although his smile was uncomfortable.

Steve, once seated, pretended to be oblivious to the tension in the room. He started grilling Tag on his escapades, and Tag obliged with subdued stories of drag racing and dirt track motorcycle races and treks across the southeast to do stunt work for movies being shot on location.

“Mr. Hutchins, I had no idea you were so glamorous!” Malorie exclaimed.

“I'm glad Steve never had that kind of adventurous streak in him,” Debbie said, her smile still nervous. “I'd be scared to death.”

Tag chuckled. “Didn't your husband ever tell you what all his buddies called him in the old days?”

When Debbie shook her head, Tag gave Steve a devilish look and said, “We all called him Crash. And it wasn't because he could learn all the algebra he needed the night before an exam, either.”

The conversation grew lively, despite Betsy's bitter silence. Despite Susan's relative silence, too, for she couldn't help but hear these additional details about Tag's life with renewed trepidation.

He had mentioned all of this before, briefly, the night he came to her room. But they hadn't really discussed it. In fact, Susan realized now, she had purposely let it drop, allowed herself to shove her concerns to the back of her mind. But hearing about Tag's life this way made the gulf that lay between them all too obvious.

Adventure and excitement had accompanied Tag wherever he went, whereas her life had been nothing but dull routine. She had even given up her dancing, except for her late-night sessions after the dance school closed. That was all she had allowed herself, lest the hunger for what might have been grew too strong.

Now even that would be denied her. Now she would be trapped in a body that did her bidding only haltingly and imperfectly.

She tried to imagine Tag tied to her and her limited future. Pictured him settling for that. How could she even think of trapping him with her limitations? She supposed she must be recovering some of her mental faculties, she thought with bitter irony, for the reality struck her full force.

“You okay?” Tag whispered when Debbie and Betsy returned to the kitchen for servings of pecan and pumpkin pie.

When he looked at her like that, she was perfectly okay, so she nodded. When he looked at her like that, she felt capable of flying, so how difficult could it be to walk and talk and read and drive?

“I'm sorry about this, but your brother wouldn't take no for an answer.”

“I'm glad you're here.”

He grinned. “Me, too. Actually, I didn't fight him real hard. I...I hadn't realized how tough it would be, sitting over there all by myself. I used to be able to handle it. I guess I'm not such a tough guy anymore.”

The way he said it made her feel that he credited her with the change and that it was a good change. Susan smiled.

Betsy and Debbie set generous slices of pie in front of each of them—and a slice of both pumpkin and pecan in front of Steve.

“A man named Crash needs plenty of fortification,” Debbie teased as she sat and took a small bite of her sliver of pecan pie.

Standing beside her chair, Betsy grimaced. “I certainly hope this doesn't mean we're going to resurrect that contemptible nickname.”

Debbie's cheeks flamed at the rebuke.

Steve and Malorie spoke at once.

“Grandmother!”

“Mom!”

Betsy looked at Malorie, then put an end to further comment by circling the table with her imperious gaze. She stopped on Tag. “We're good, decent people. We haven't squandered our lives on race cars and film crews and heaven knows what else.” She looked around the table again. “If it suits everyone, I would just as soon we kept it that way.”

Tag was already balling up his napkin, tossing it onto the table. Steve pushed his chair back. Susan felt such anger she wanted to overturn the table. Cody looked bewildered, and Debbie stared into her lap.

But it was Malorie who stood, rattling the table and almost overturning her chair with the suddenness of her movement.

“I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm finished being a coward,” she announced, looking at them all with an expression as fierce as Betsy's had been cold. “Grandmother, you've ruled our lives with manipulation and guilt for as long as I can remember.” Her glance went to Tag, then Susan. “And a lot longer than that, apparently. Well, I'm done. The rest of you can do what you want. But I'm taking my life back.”

When Malorie whirled and dashed out of the house, Susan thought she'd never been so proud of her daughter as she was at that very moment.

Before anyone else could say a word, Betsy snapped, “I wash my hands of this.”

Then she, too, disappeared, her sensible shoes thudding heavily on the stairs as she retreated to her room.

The four adults who remained stared awkwardly at one another. Then Steve raised his glass of tea in the air and said, “Here's to Malorie for having the guts to say what the rest of us have been too chicken to say for the past thirty years.”

Slowly the others raised their glasses in a tentative toast. And as they sipped, Tag raised his in Susan's direction and said, “And here's to taking our lives back.”

She drank to Tag's toast. But as she did, she wondered if it was possible in her case. And if it wasn't, how many hearts would be broken in facing the truth?

* * *

T
HE TREE DECORATING
was in full swing by the time Malorie arrived at the church.

After storming out of the house, she had walked for more than an hour. She had tracked Willow Creek all the way back to the covered bridge, where she sat on the bank and studied the calming ripple of the water, looking for answers. Looking mostly for serenity in the face of a turbulent reality.

She had meant what she said. She was ready to take the reins of her own life. She wasn't yet certain what that might mean. And it definitely didn't mean she faced the prospect without trepidation. But anything was better than knowing next Thanksgiving and the one after that and the one after that would be as sterile and meaningless as the one Betsy Foster had wanted all of them to experience this year.

She tossed a stick into the icy, clear water and watched it bounce and bobble its way downstream, buffeted by forces it couldn't control.

“Not me,” she said.

Then she walked back to town, through the park and over to Jasmine Court. She looked longingly at the down-at-the-heels Victorian houses and made up happy stories about each one.

It was while she meandered the street that Sam had introduced her to weeks earlier that Malorie remembered the tree trimming. The volunteers had decided to make a party of decorating the church's angel tree, where gifts for needy children would be collected. Rose had suggested doing it Thanksgiving afternoon as a reminder of how much they all had to be thankful for.

“Beats falling asleep on the couch after overdosing on pecan pie,” she'd said. Everyone had laughed and agreed.

Malorie backtracked to the church. Already a half dozen cars had gathered in the parking lot. She felt lighter of heart as she approached the building. Laughter floated through the open front door. She was smiling as she climbed the steps.

The first person she saw when she stepped inside the vestibule was Sam. He was helping Maxine's little boy, Rex, untangle a string of lights. They were laughing. Sam stood by patiently as Rex insisted on taking the lead. Thinking how patient Sam had always been with Cody, Malorie felt stabbed by a sharp sense of loss.

“Welcome!” Maxine's melodious voice rose above the holiday music wafting from someone's boom box. “We need all the hands we can get. God—and the good people at Hutchins' Lawn & Garden, I understand—sent us an enormous tree. We have one crew filling out more angel cards, because we hadn't prepared enough for such a fine specimen. And that means we'll be able to help more children than we had anticipated.”