Wedding Ring (36 page)

“Ladies, if you will excuse us? Nancy and I have plans to finish.” Balancing Tessa on his hip as Nancy had, Billy put his free arm around his wife and pulled her to stand beside him, taking time to kiss her hair in a show of husbandly affection. Then, with Nancy in tow, he started out of the room.

Caroline followed, but she waited until they were in the upstairs hallway and the other women were out of earshot before she spoke.

“How dare you make a scene in front of my friends, William?” she said. Like Billy, she was clearly furious.

“How dare
you
?” He whirled and faced her, eyes blazing. “This is my wife! You were treating her like the exterminator or the garbageman. I knew things weren’t good here, but I had no idea they were
this
bad.”

Caroline exploded. “Bad? I’ve put up with this…this hillbilly for more than a year now. She has no manners, no education, no abilities worth discussion. And why? Because you couldn’t keep your trousers zipped!”

Billy stepped toward his mother, and for a moment Nancy was afraid he was going to lift his hand against her. Then he stepped back slowly. “You will apologize,” he told his mother. “Immediately. Or you will never see any of us again. Is that clear?”

“Apologize?”

“Now! And then we will forget this ever happened. The whole family will return to pretending we care about something more than the way we look. Nancy, Tessa and I will visit on holidays. You will pretend you’re glad to see us and glad you have a beautiful little granddaughter. You can tell your friends what a perfect family we have and even show them photographs. But if you don’t…”

There was no need to repeat the threat. Caroline’s anger had changed to fear. Nancy wasn’t certain at what point in Billy’s tirade that had happened, but clearly her mother-in-law was no longer in charge of the situation, and she knew it.

Caroline looked at Nancy; then she looked away. She lifted her chin. “I’m sorry I lost my temper.”

Nancy tried to find the words to forgive her and failed. “So am I,” she said at last.

Caroline looked at her son as if to say “See?” Billy shook his head. “You’re lucky she didn’t just take Tessa and disappear,” he told his mother. “You’re damned lucky she’s still standing here. Because I never would have forgiven you if you’d run her off.”

He turned to Nancy. “Can you forgive
me
for leaving you here so long?”

She would have forgiven him anything. She smiled tremulously. “You didn’t know.”

“Oh, but I suspected. It was just easier not to act on it.” He turned back to his mother. “We’ll be celebrating this Christmas alone. Now we’re going to pack, then we’ll be out of here for good.”

Caroline’s eyes filled with tears, which surprised Nancy. “Don’t let her turn you against us, William. We’re your family.”

Billy nodded toward Nancy and Tessa. “No,
this
is my family.”

“T
hat afternoon was the real start of our marriage,” Nancy told Tessa.

The sky had darkened as Nancy told her story, and Tessa had finally folded the quilt to work on another day. Besides, her mother’s reminiscences were all the entertainment she’d needed. Only now that Nancy’s story had ended she didn’t feel entertained, she felt angry.

“I can’t understand why you put up with so much from Grandmother.”

“Can’t you?” Nancy slapped a mosquito on her thigh.

“The way you’ve told it, she was making a calculated effort to drive you away.”

Nancy considered. “That’s exactly what she was doing. I don’t think your grandmother was a bad person, and I don’t really want to leave you with that impression. But she wasn’t a warm woman, and she was very protective of her image. I didn’t fit. I’m afraid it’s that simple and that complicated.”

“You put up with it for more than a year?”

“Tessa, you can’t possibly understand how insecure I felt, because you’ve never experienced anything like it. I was young. For all practical purposes I was alone. I had a baby I adored and no other place to go with her except home, where I thought I wasn’t welcome. Now I know Mama would have been more understanding than I gave her credit for. But you have to remember, I’d had a lifetime of her pushing me away, and that’s all I knew about her. And we were so poor. I knew another mouth to feed would be her undoing.”

Tessa tried to put herself in Nancy’s place. Young. Alone. Pregnant. The words rang a bell. Did Cissy feel what Nancy had? Was she at the Claiborne house simply because she had no other alternative?

Nancy focused on a spot just beyond Tessa. “Your daddy and I moved back to Charlottesville that night. He found us a room in the house of an old woman who lived right in the center of town. She was lonely, and having a baby in the house delighted her. He sold his Corvette and bought an old Chevy that broke down every week or so. I got a part-time job to help with expenses, and our landlady took care of you. It was a nearly perfect situation. Harry relented and continued sending checks so your daddy could finish school. And when he graduated, we went back to Richmond so he could join the firm. We bought a little house on the other side of town and settled in. By then your grandmother was resigned to the inevitable, and she was always polite to me. She even made sure I was welcome in her social circle. In her own way she was good to you, as well, particularly as you got older. She wasn’t a baby person.”

“Happily ever after?”

Nancy shrugged.

“It doesn’t sound happy to me, Mom.” When Nancy didn’t respond, Tessa went on. “You settled for so little. You married a man who didn’t love you, lived in a situation where you were treated like Cinderella before the ball. And you’ve stayed with Daddy all these years, even though the two of you don’t have a thing in common—”

“We have you. We had Kayley.”

The mention of her daughter’s name didn’t even slow Tessa down. “You settled for so little,” she repeated. She was appalled. She had always believed that her parents stayed together because there was some strong emotion that bound them, emotion that was invisible to the naked eye, perhaps, but there for the two of them to draw on. Now she knew that only circumstance had kept their marriage intact.

“There’s a lot you don’t understand about marriage.” Nancy sat forward, and her eyes sparkled with anger. “Marriage is about working toward common goals. Love isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. It plays a part, sure, but common goals and ideals are what hold a marriage together.”

“Come on! I share a million goals and ideals with a million different people. And I wouldn’t want to be married to any of them. You gave up on love and settled for security. Isn’t that incredibly shallow?”

“And isn’t that what you’ve always thought about me anyway? That I’m shallow and silly and useless? That I always settle for less than your own lofty goals? That I wouldn’t know love and loyalty from a Kate Spade handbag?”

Tessa knew her anger was out of control. She even knew she was aiming it at her mother because she was a safe target. But she couldn’t stop herself.

“No, I think you’re comfortable with your life. You got what you wanted, and you didn’t want to give it up. I think you’ve tried to make the best of it, but in the end it’s a house of cards. What exactly do you have besides an address in Windsor Farms and membership in a prestigious country club?”

Nancy sat back and stared at her. Tessa was instantly contrite when she saw the wounded expression on her mother’s face. “I’m sorry. What’s wrong with me? This really isn’t my call, is it?”

“Maybe you’re sorry and maybe you aren’t,” Nancy said quietly. “But here’s the truth, Tessa. I’ve struggled my whole life, and struggle is the right word. I’ve tried to do what was right for you and your dad. I’ve tried to be a good wife and a good mother, to make up for getting pregnant by doing everything I could to make your daddy’s life a happy one.”

“But Daddy was there when it happened, too. Nobody asked you to struggle by yourself.”

Nancy held up her hand. “And now we’re going to talk about
you
. Because how can
you
talk, how can you dare criticize me, when you’ve taken the coward’s way out and stopped fighting for your own marriage? Is your way better? Is it better to abandon somebody you love when the going gets rough? Maybe I have a membership in a prestigious country club, but your personal club is even more exclusive. You’re the one and only member, and you won’t let anyone else in the front door.”

Now it was Tessa’s turn to fall silent.

Nancy got to her newly sandaled feet. “It’s getting late, and I’m tired. I’m going to bed. I’ll make up the bed in the room at the end of the hall for your father. The bed in my room is narrow, and he’ll sleep better by himself. It will be cooler.”

It
wasn’t
late, but Tessa didn’t argue. Their entire conversation, particularly the last minute of it, was still whirling in her head. She watched her mother walk gracefully into the house. The screen door flapped behind her. She wondered if now, on top of everything else, she was going to be responsible for a rift in her parents’ marriage.

She was still on the porch an hour later when her father pulled into the driveway. He looked tired as he came up the steps, his shirt wrinkled, his tie no longer in evidence. “Hi, sweetheart. I hope you’re not sitting out here waiting for me. I’m later than I thought I’d be. I just couldn’t get away as soon as I wanted.” He paused and looked around. “Where’s your mother?”

“She’s gone to bed.”

“Oh.”

Tessa tried to read his expression and couldn’t. That was usually the case. Her father had been well-trained as a child not to inflict his feelings on anyone else.

“Mom made up a bed for you in the room at the end of the hall.” She waited again to see if he reacted. He looked slightly puzzled, she thought, but even that disappeared quickly.

Tessa started to her feet. “Would you like a drink? I made lemonade.”

“That would be nice. It feels like pea soup out here, but it’s even hotter in Richmond. At least here you can catch a breeze.”

Tessa let him make himself comfortable and took her time in the kitchen. Back out on the porch with two cold glasses of lemonade, she found him reclining with his eyes closed and his head back. He looked older than usual, and even more tired than she’d noted earlier.

“Daddy?”

He opened his eyes and smiled. “Just catching up on my sleep.”

“Aren’t you sleeping well at home?”

“I don’t seem to be sleeping as well as usual. Maybe it’s the heat.”

She doubted that, since the house in Windsor Farms had four zones of air-conditioning and was as climate-controlled as the National Gallery of Art.

“Did your meeting go well?” she asked.

“As well as these things ever do.”

The remark was unlike him. Billy rarely complained or even hinted he was unhappy. She supposed that and a monumental blind spot were the major reasons she had not realized her parents’ marriage was so bloodless and contrived.

“You don’t enjoy your job?” she asked.

“It’s nothing for you to worry about. I’m good at it. That’s the main thing.”

“Well, no, it really isn’t the main thing. I mean, do you make a habit of doing what you don’t like to simply because it’s expected?”

He seemed to wake up then, to really focus on what she was saying and her tone. “I didn’t say that.”

“No, but it fits with the other things I’ve heard tonight.”

“What things?”

“The story of your marriage. How you married Mom because she was pregnant, how you made the final commitment to her when you realized that your mother was mistreating her.”

“Nancy told you that?”

“I found your marriage certificate. It explained a lot. Mom explained the rest when she realized I wasn’t going to take no for an answer. She’s a lot like you in that regard. Putting on appearances is important to both of you.”

“Your mother and I have been married for almost forty years.”

“That’s proof of inertia, Dad, nothing more.”

“I’m sorry, Tessa, but when did we give you permission to question our marriage or our lives?”

“When you decided not to use a condom one hot summer night.”

“Stop it!”

“I don’t think so. The truth is, I need to understand what’s kept you together. If it’s me, then I’m bearing a huge burden here, and I don’t want to anymore.”

“This really isn’t like you.”

“Maybe this is who I need to be.”

“This is not your business.”

“Oh, come on. Whose business is it, then?”

“Mine and your mother’s.”

“How could you marry her and live with her all these years when you didn’t love her? Didn’t she deserve better? Didn’t you? Didn’t
I?
”

“I’m not sure how you got into that equation.”

“Because I spent my whole childhood trying to please her, that’s how. And she was trying to please you, and maybe even your mother. Because, damn it, she wanted you to love her. That’s all she wanted.” Tessa realized she was about to cry. She swallowed hard and looked away.

“A lifetime of people trying to please each other and never quite succeeding,” he said.

She looked up to find her father staring at the stars.

“We failed you,” he said. “Even though we tried so desperately not to.”

“I never said you failed me.”

He turned his gaze to her. “No, but we did. Nancy and I, trying so hard to please everybody, pleasing nobody, not even ourselves. You never saw the kind of marriage you needed to, the kind where people talk about their feelings, about what really matters to them—”

She knew where this was leading and tried to head him off. “Dad, it’s not about me.”

“You just told me it was, remember? You can’t have it both ways. You didn’t learn how to deal with sadness by watching us. You’ve tried to deal with it by yourself, just the way your mother and I would have—and did. You didn’t learn how to share, and now you’re paying the price.”

“Don’t turn this into therapy. This is about you and Mom.”

“There are a million things between your mother and me that you will never be able to understand. We’ve been married a long time. There’s a lot I can’t and won’t explain. You’ll have to be satisfied with that.” He stood. “You said the end of the hall?”

“I’m not trying to make things worse. I’m just trying to…” She stopped, no longer sure what she was trying to do.

“If we’re going bird-watching tomorrow, I need some sleep. You do, too.” He left her on the porch.

She asked herself why she had chosen this moment, this place, this situation, to finally begin exploring her feelings and the feelings of the people she loved.