Bitter Sweet (19 page)
‘Well, I don’t see why not. I might want to be reassured myself about what you’re going to do to the place.’
‘Absolutely. As soon as I have estimates and plans, you’ll be the first to see them.’
‘One other thing.’
‘What?’
‘I’m not trying to pry, and you don’t have to answer if you’d rather not, but have you got the money to carry this thing through? When Northridge came applying, the thing that convinced the board was the amount of money they had allotted for the project.’
‘Money is no problem, Eric. When an airliner that size goes down the survivors are paid well.’
‘Good. Now tell me who you’ve got lined up to give you estimates on the work.’ The talk moved on to engineers, workmen, architecture, nothing more personal. She told him she’d get in touch with him when the time came that she’d need his help again, thanked him and they bade good-bye with a very proper handshake.
Shortly after
that night, Eric and Nancy were undressing on opposite sides of their bedroom when she remarked, ‘Well, Maggie whatever-her-name-is didn’t waste any time coming on to you, did she?’
Eric paused with his tie half-loosened. ‘I figured this was coming.’
“I’ll bet you figured!’
Nancy
glared at him in the mirror while removing her earrings. ‘I could have curled up with mortification. My husband flirting with his old flame and half the town looking on!’
‘I wasn’t flirting any more than she was.’
‘Well, what would you call it then?’ She threw the earrings into a cut glass dish and yanked a bangle bracelet off her wrist.
‘You were there, you heard. We were talking about the business she wants to open up.’
‘And what were you talking about over by the window?
Don’t tell me that was business, too!’
Eric turned to her, holding up both palms to forestall her.
‘Listen, I’ve had a couple of martinis and so have you. Why don’t we just shelve this discussion until morning?’
‘Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you!’ She pulled her dress over her head and flung it aside. ‘Then you could run off to your precious boat in the middle of it and not have to answer me at all!’
Eric yanked his tie from under his collar and hung it on the closet door, followed by his suit jacket. ‘We were friends in high school. What did you expect me to do? Ignore her?’
‘I didn’t expect you to fawn over her right out in front of the damned church and to leave me alone in the middle of a wedding reception to go make calf eyes at her!’
‘Calf eyes!’ His head thrust forward. He stood still with his shirttails half-out of his trousers.
‘Don’t lie, Eric, I saw you! I never took my eyes off the pair of you!’
‘She was telling me about how she missed her husband and that it was the first time she’s been able to face going out without him.’
‘She didn’t seem to be missing him very badly when she made calf eyes back at you!’
‘
Nancy
, what the hell’s got into you! In all the years we’ve been married, when have I ever so much as looked at another woman?’ With his shoulders a tilt, he propped both hands on his hips and faced her.
‘Never. But then you didn’t have any old flames around till now, did you?’
‘She’s not my old flame.’ He returned to undressing.
‘You could’ve fooled me. Were you lovers in high school?’
Nancy
asked blithely, dropping to the bed to remove her nylons.
‘
Nancy
, for God’s sake, drop it.’
‘You were, weren’t you? I knew it the minute I saw you walk over to her on the church steps. When she turned around and saw you it was as plain as the dent in her chin.’ Dressed in a pair of brief navy-blue satin undergarments
Nancy
moved to the vanity mirror, raised her chin and ran four fingertips up her throat. ‘Well, I’ll say one thing for you, you’ve got good taste. You pick ‘em pretty.’
It struck him as he watched her that she was too beautiful for her own good. The idea of his paying even minimal attention to another woman became a disproportionate threat. As he watched, she went on reassuring herself, running .her fingertips up her taut throat, admiring her reflection.
Apparently finding her beauty intact, she dropped her chin and reached to her nape to free the gold barrette, then began brushing her hair violently.
‘I don’t want you helping that woman.’
‘I already told her I would.’
‘That’s it then? You’ll do it whether I object or not?’
‘You’re blowing this thing out of all proportion,
Nancy
.’
She threw down the brush and spun to face him. ‘Oh, am I? I’m on the road five days a week and I should leave you here to squire your old lover around to committee meetings while I’m gone?’
‘You’re on the road five days a week by choice, my dear!’
Angrily, he pointed a finger at her.
‘Oh, now we’re going to start that old whining, are we?’ ‘Not we. You! You started the whole thing, so let’s finish it once and for all. Let’s get it nice and clear that I’d like my wife to live with me, not just drop in on weekends!’
‘And what about what I want!’ She spread a hand on her chest. ‘I married a man who said he wanted to be a corporate executive and live in Chicago, and all of a sudden he announces that he’s going to pitch it all and become a... a .fisherman!” She threw up her hands. ‘A fisherman, for Chrissake! Did you ask me if I wanted to be a fisherman’s wife?’ She splayed a hand on her chest and leaned forward from the waist. ‘Did you ask me if I wanted to live in this godforsaken no-man’s land, eighty miles from civilization and -’
‘Your idea of civilization and mine are two different things,
Nancy
. That’s our trouble.’
‘Our trouble, Mr Severson, is that you changed course in the middle of our marriage, and all of a sudden it no longer mattered to you that I had a blossoming career that mattered as much to me as your precious fishing mattered to you!’
‘If you’ll strain your memory, my dear, you’ll recall that we did talk about your career, which, at the time, we thought would only last a couple more years and then we’d start a family.’
‘No, that was what you thought, Eric, not me. You were the one who outlined the five year plan, not me. And when I indicated that I wasn’t interested in having a family you turned a deaf ear.’
‘And obviously that’s what you expect me to keep doing. Well, time’s running out,
Nancy
. I’m already forty years old.’
She turned away. ‘You knew it when we got married.’
‘No.’ He grabbed her by the arm and made her stay. ‘No, I never knew it. I assumed -’
‘Well, you assumed wrong! I never said I wanted children! Never!’
‘Why,
Nancy
?’
‘You know why.’
‘Yes, I do, but I’d like to hear you say it.’
‘Make sense, Eric. What do you think we’ve been talking about here? I’ve got a job I love, with perks a thousand women would kill to have- trips to
Boca Raton
. I’ve worked hard to get every one of them and you’re asking me to give that up to stick myself here in this.., this cracker box and raise babies?’
Her chosen phrasing cut deep. As if they’d be just anybody’s babies, as if it scarcely mattered to her the babies would be his and hers. He sighed and gave up. He could throw her narcissism in her face, but what purpose would it serve? He loved her and he had no desire to hurt her. To be truthful, he, too, had loved her beauty. But as the years went by that physical pulchritude mattered less and less.
Long ago, he had realized he would love her as much - perhaps even more - if her hips widened and she lost the ultra-chic thinness she so carefully safeguarded by dieting. He’d love her as much if she appeared in the kitchen at seven in the morning with a squalling infant on her shoulder and her makeup still in the pots on her vanity. If she dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt instead of couturier creations from” Saks and Neiman-Marcus.
‘Let’s go to bed,’ he said disconsolately, scraping down the covers, then dropping heavily to the edge of the mattress to pull his socks off. He flung them aside and sat staring at them, slump-shouldered.
She watched him for a long time from across the room, feeling the framework of their marriage cracking, wondering what, short of children, would hold it together. She padded to him barefoot and knelt between his knees. ‘Eric, please understand.’ She circled him with both arms and pressed her face to his chest. ‘A woman has no business conceiving a baby she’d resent.’
Put your arms around her, Severson, she’s your wife and you love her and she’s trying to make peace between you. But he couldn’t. Or wouldn’t. He sat with his hands folded over the edge of the mattress, feeling the awful weight of finality settle in his vitals, in the past when they’d had this same argument it had had no succinct end, but had taken days petering out while she nursed her displeasure with him. But that very open-endedness had always left him feeling they’d talk - argue - about it again before the issue was settled.
Tonight, however,
Nancy
presented a calm, reasonable defence against which there was no arguing. For he would no more wish his child onto a resentful mother than she would.
Chapter 6
Upon Maggie’s return to
Seattle
her life became a frenzy.
The school principal said he was sorry to see her leave, but he’d have no trouble hiring another full-time teacher to replace her, Before she left the building she had cleaned out her desk. At home she raked the dead pine needles, trimmed the shrubs, called an acquaintance and realtor, Elliott Tipton, and before he left the house a lockbox hung on her door. At Elliott’s suggestion, she contacted workers to repaint the trim on the outside of the house, and repaper one bathroom. She called Waterways Marina and told them to shear two thousand dollars off the price of the boat: she wanted to unload it fast. She called Allied Van Lines and got a moving estimate. She heard from Thomas Chopp who informed her Harding House had dry rot in the porch floors, wet rot in one of the walls (the maid’s room corner where the plumbing had leaked and carpenter ants had been busy), no insulation, inadequate wiring, too small a furnace, and would need new flashings and roof vents. The roof, however, he said, was in surprisingly good shape, as were the floor stringers and interior-bearing walls, therefore it was his opinion the place could be renovated but it would be costly.
She received the Health and Social Services pamphlet governing bed-and-breakfast establishments for the state of
She called Althea Munne and gave her the order to have papers prepared for the final purchase and hold them until further notice. She contacted three
She called her father who said she was welcome at their house for as long as it took to make her own liveable.
She spoke to her mother who gave her a string of orders, including the warning not to cross those mountains by herself if there was snow.
And finally, she called Katy.
‘You’re going to what!’
‘Move back to
‘And sell the house in
Seattle
?’ Katy’s voice rose with dismay.
‘Yes.’
‘Mother, how could you!’
‘What do you mean, how could I? It would be senseless to keep two houses.’
‘But it’s the house where I was born and raised! It’s been my home for as long as I remember! You mean I’ll never have a chance to see it again?’
‘You’ll be able to come to my house in Fish Creek anytime.’
‘But it’s not the same! My friends are in
Seattle
. And my old room will be gone, and ... and ... well, just everything!’
‘Katy, I’ll still be there for you, no matter where I live.’
Katy’s voice grew angry. ‘Don’t pull your parental psychology on me, Mother. I think it’s a lousy thing to do, sell the house right out from under me the minute I’m gone. You wouldn’t like it either.’
Maggie hid her dismay at Katy’s anger. ‘Katy, I thought you’d be happy to have me closer, so you could come home more often. Why, it’s close enough that you can even drive up on weekends, and on holidays we can be with Grandpa and Grandma, too.’
‘Grandpa and Grandma. I hardly even know them.’
For the first time Maggie’s voice grew sharp. “Well, perhaps it’s time you got to! It seems to me, Katy, that you’re being rather selfish about this whole thing.’