Once Upon a Marriage (13 page)

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

T
HE
 
WEDDING
 
WAS
 
scheduled for ten o'clock Saturday morning. To be followed by a catered brunch in the bridal suite.

On Friday night, while Elliott and Liam went with Bruce down to the card tables, Gabi and Marie spent the evening with Barbara, in her suite. They ordered shrimp and steak and lobster. The best champagne. And girly movies. Bruce had three cosmetologists sent up with portable whirlpool footbaths to give all three women manicures and pedicures with a full array of polish colors to choose from.

Barbara chose a light pink to match the pink gown with embossed white roses that she'd chosen to wear for her wedding. Gabi's nail color was a cross between red and orange. Pale, not bold.

Marie chose a deep maroon. With a hint of sparkle. For both her hands and her feet. By the end of the night all of them were wearing moderate-length gel-polished acrylic nails.

They ate and cried over
Fried Green Tomatoes.
And when Liam called saying the guys were on their way up, Gabi met him at the door and left. Marie was staying with her mother Friday night, while Bruce and Elliott both had rooms of their own.

The next day Marie would move into Bruce's room and he'd stay in the bridal suite with his new wife.

Bruce's older brother and his wife were also coming in the next day. Marie had never met them, but Barbara assured her the couple was lovely.

They were getting ready for bed. A king-size pillow-topped mattress on a platform.

Marie climbed beneath the covers on one side, feeling awkward. Strange. Sharing a room with her mom instead of Gabi.

The last time she'd seen her mom—when she and Gabi had taken a couple of days to go to Arizona between Christmas and New Year's—she and Gabi slept in twin beds in Barbara's guest room. They'd stayed up half the night talking. About being single. About the fact that Marie was never going to fall in love with Burton. They'd talked about Barbara and the way she seemed to have recovered from her ex-husband's most recent attempt to reconcile. They'd talked about the shop and Threefold. They'd been due to finalize paperwork on the LLC when they got back after the holiday.

They talked about Liam and the way he stood up to his father's abuse while still respecting the old man. About the woman he'd been engaged to...

And now, four months later, Gabi and Liam were married. Barbara was getting married to someone other than Marie's father. Burton was getting married.

And Marie was...

“You okay, sweetie?” Barbara's voice came from the other side of the bed. She didn't sound the least bit tired.

“Fine.” Marie instilled her voice with a bit of the fatigue she'd been feeling. Not to be confused with sleepiness. No, her exhaustion was more emotional. But if her mother mistook it and left her in peace...

“You're not lying on your stomach. You always sleep on your stomach.”

She'd been lying on her side. To stare out the fortieth-floor window at the scrolling and changing lighted billboards that lined the famous Las Vegas strip. Avoiding her mother, who was so close and yet so far away.

“You haven't seen me sleep in years,” she said. They'd been sharing and talking all evening. She and Gabi and Barbara. She didn't want to share any more right now. “Things change.”

“I saw you sleep when you were home for Christmas,” Barbara said.

“You checked in on me?”

“Every night. Just like I've done since the day you were born.”

Okay, that was weird. Or was it?

Would she ever know how a mother felt when she did that? She'd had her thirtieth birthday and...

No, now, that really was maudlin. She had lots of time before she had to start worrying about biology and her clocks.

“Tell me about this editor of Liam's,” Barbara said next. Completely random. And yet Marie wasn't surprised her mother had picked up on the topic.

Gabi had mentioned that Liam had been texting with his editor before he left their room to go downstairs to play cards. Gabi had half thought Liam might be back upstairs early, to do some last-minute revisions. But had said she'd still stay for their girls' night together.

Marie rolled to her back. Staring at the mirror—she could see her mother, who was also lying on her back, without actually turning to face her in the bed. “What's to tell?” she said. “She's publishing a series he's writing on his father.”

“You asked Gabi about her on three different occasions.”

No. She'd just asked about her once. When Gabi had mentioned the text. And...no, wait, there'd been that second time. They'd been talking about Walter's affairs and Liam's taking over a lot of the responsibility of his father's company, and Marie had asked what June Fryberg, Liam's editor, had thought of the move in light of the story Liam had been writing.

Oh, and then there at the end, when Gabi had been leaving and Marie had wondered if Liam would be up late writing...

Okay, there had been no reason to bring up the editor again that last time, but...

“I'm just... I don't want Gabi hurt...” Marie's voice faded off. She didn't want Gabi hurt the way her mother had been hurt. Loving a man who might adore her but not be able to be faithful. A good man. Like Marie's father. One who would do almost anything for her.

And whose one weakness was enough to debilitate her.

“And you think Liam will hurt her? Something to do with this editor woman?”

“No!” Well. Maybe. “It's just... Liam has always had a bit of a roving eye where women are concerned. He used to talk to us about his girlfriends. And he told us how even when he was steady with someone...well, other women still attracted him.”

“You've always told me Liam was the best man you'd ever known. You and Gabi, both. He's your best friend. You trust him with your lives. You went into business with him.”

“He is! We do! I don't... I never expected the two of them to get married. I mean, I saw it happening, and I was happy for them. I
am
happy for them. I want them together. It's just that it was all so fast—going from best friends to...more than that. And I want them together forever. Not just for now.”

She couldn't believe she was having this conversation. And knew that while she'd give her life for Gabi, it wasn't really just Gabi she was worried about. If she was going to believe that Gabi and Liam could make their marriage work, she had to open the door to the fact that a lot of marriages did work. That maybe Barbara and Bruce would live happily ever after, too. That maybe she'd been depriving herself of any chance to find out what that meant.

“More marriages work than fail, sweetie.” Barbara's tone was soft. Somber.

Marie turned her head, looking at the woman who'd raised her, single-handedly when necessary. The woman who, no matter what she'd been going through, had always been there for her only child. “That's not what the most recent studies show,” she said, though, as she'd told Elliott, she took the studies with a grain of salt.

Still, there was some truth to them. And Barbara had put a lot of stock in them.

“A psychiatrist, one of Bruce's colleagues from Harvard, actually, recently had an article published in a national journal of psychology. He says that some of those studies, the ones I used to take to heart and repeat to you, were not created by real statistics garnered from scientifically gathered information, but were results of skewed polls conducted by marketing companies who had been hired to promote companies that help others get over infidelity. Online relationship finders. That kind of thing.”

“Places like the one where you read that seventy percent of men polled admitted to cheating on their wives?”

“Yes.”

“But the US has national statistics. And those show that forty to fifty percent of first marriages end in divorce.” She hated to admit it, but she'd looked. Three days ago.

“They also show that the divorce rate is declining. That ninety percent of the American public is married by age forty, and that women with college degrees who marry after the age of twenty-five are at the lowest risk of divorce.”

Yeah, she'd read that, too. But...

“I made some mistakes, Marie.” Barbara's tone was serious. “With you. I quoted statistics and figures, and maybe made some of the more bogus ones sound legitimate, because I was so afraid for you. You've always been so social. So open and loving. Ready to like everyone. You've got a huge heart. I was scared to death that as you got into your teens and early twenties, you'd be gooey-eyed like I was. And end up hurt. Like I was.”

There were tears in Barbara's eyes. Choked up, Marie stared at her mother in the light coming through the window.

“I didn't want you to be like me. I didn't want you to follow in my footsteps,” Barbara nearly whispered. “It was bad enough that my choices had ruined my life, but I felt so responsible for you, for the example I was setting. For the things you were learning at my hand...”

“I learned how to love at your hand,” Marie said softly, trying to swallow the lump in her throat. And she'd learned how to protect herself by choosing men who didn't put her first.

“You were so trusting,” Barbara said now. “It scared me to death. I was petrified some man was going to come along and take advantage of you. They say girls go for men like their fathers and...”

Marie wasn't trusting anymore. Not where men were concerned. If she'd ever been.

These days she was so lacking in an ability to trust a man that she was even doubting that her second-best friend in the world would be true to his wife. Her first best friend.

And she was alone.

Completely and totally alone.

“I'm just... I'm worried. I see what I've done to you, and I don't know how to fix it.” Barbara started, stopped, and started again.

“You want me to suddenly open up and trust every man I meet?” Marie tried to lighten the moment. Life was what it was. People were, in part, what life made them. Experience had taught her that.

“No.” Barbara didn't smile. “And that's the worst part of it.” she said. “I still worry that you'll be hurt. I want you to be discerning. I just don't want you to spend your life alone.”

Marie didn't want to have this conversation. Didn't know what to say. Except “I'm glad for the things you taught me, Mom. I'm glad you love me so much. I love you, too.”

It wasn't quite what she'd meant to say. So she tried again. “And I'm an adult now. I have my own mind and heart, my own accountability. It's up to me to learn from you and from everything else life has taught me.”

“I know.”

“I guess what I'm trying to say is that the choices I make aren't your responsibility. Or your fault, either.”

That also didn't come out right.

“You're right, of course. But a mother never quits being a mother. She never quits worrying or looking out for her children no matter how old they get.”

“I know.”

So. Good. They'd reached an understanding. Marie was alone because alone was where her choices had led her.

And if she didn't like it, only she could change that.

But
not
being alone meant that someone else had to be involved. And she had no control over that someone's choices. Like Gabi choosing to marry Liam and move out.

Like what's-his-name choosing to move home to marry a girl from his church. And her med student choosing her coworker over her...

Like Burton choosing to go steady with the woman of his dreams. And her mother choosing to marry Bruce.

Like her father choosing to have girlfriends while he was married...

“I know you think my marriage to Bruce is too sudden.” Barbara's voice once again broke the silence that had fallen. Only this time, Marie welcomed the sound.

Wished for a second there that she was young again. Young enough to roll over, snuggle up and be held within her mother's safe embrace

“I just don't want you to be hurt again,” she said instead. The strong one. A role she'd taken on so many years ago she couldn't remember being without it.

And yet she had memories of the capable and confident woman her mother had once been.

“You know life gives us no guarantees of that. Tragedy could strike any of us tomorrow.”

Yes, but...

“All the more reason to control the areas in our lives where we can prevent being hurt.”

“So you think you hurt less alone than you would if you took a chance on loving completely?”

The question was curious, coming from her mother.

“You used to.”

“No, sweetie, I didn't. Why do you think I took your father back? And kept letting him visit even though I was telling him we weren't ever going to get back together?”

“Because you loved him.”

“Yes, but also because I loved having his companionship. Because he was my man, and I didn't want to be alone.”

“So now you have a new man? You suddenly just stop loving Dad?”

When she said the words out loud, she sounded to herself like a disgruntled kid.

But that wasn't how she was feeling inside. At all.

“I'll probably always have warm feelings for your father. He's the father of my child,” Barbara said. And then shook her head on the pillow. “But I haven't been in love with him, romantically, for years. He broke my heart, Marie. So many times. Until all that was left was scar tissue.”

“You were still vulnerable to him.”

“Yes. I still believed I needed him.”

Turning to her side, Marie was inches from her mother, face-to-face, which was all that was showing of either woman, with covers up over their shoulders. “So how do you know you aren't just believing that you need or love Bruce?”