Bitter Sweet (64 page)
She trimmed the leaves from the pink roses Eric had sent and hung them upside down to preserve them, but they were dry and bound with a mauve ribbon and still she hadn’t heard a word from him.
To Suzanne she murmured, ‘Do you think he’ll come to us?’ But Suzanne only crossed her eyes and hiccuped.
Thanksgiving came and still no word from Eric. Maggie and Suzanne spent the holiday at Brookie’s.
On December 8 it snowed. Maggie found herself wandering from window to window, watching the white fluff cover the yard in a soft, level blanket, and wondering where Eric was and if she’d hear from him soon.
She began making Christmas preparations and wrote to Katy, asking If she DC nOITIC, rlcr Ily was a ouu note: ‘Mother . . . I’m going to
Seattle
with Smitty for Christmas. Don’t buy me anything. Kay.’ Maggie read it fighting tears, then called
Roy
. “Oh Daddy,’ she wailed. ‘It seems like I’ve made everybody unhappy having this baby. Mother won’t talk to me. Katy won’t talk to me. You’re going to have a miserable Christmas. I’m going to have a miserable Christmas. What should I do, Daddy?’
Roy replied, ‘You should put Suzanne in a snowsuit and take her for a buggy ride and get her acquainted with winter and spend a little time yourself looking around at the snow on the pines, and the sky when it’s the colour of an old tin kettle, and realize there’s a lot out there to be grateful for.’
‘But, Daddy, I feel so bad that I’ve driven Mother away, and where does that leave you on Christmas?’
‘Well, I may have to take a walk and look at the pines and the sky every now and then myself, but I’ll get by. You just see after yourself and Suzanne.’
‘You’re such a good person, Daddy.’
‘There, you see?’
Roy
replied with jocularity in his voice.
‘That’s one thing you’ve got to be grateful for right there.’
So
Roy
and Brookie saw her through.
For Maggie it was a Christmas of mixed blessings- with a new daughter but without the rest of her family. And still with no word from Eric. She spent the holiday at Brookie’s again and on New Year’s made a resolution to put Eric Severson behind and accept the apparent fact that if she hadn’t seen him by now she wasn’t going to.
One day in January she was taking Suzanne to the doctor for her two-month checkup, sitting at a red light in
Maggie stared. And Eric stared.
The middle of her breastbone ached. Drawing the next breath became a milestone.
The light changed and behind her a car horn honked, but she didn’t move.
Eric’s gaze shifted to the pair of tiny hands beating the air with excitement - all he could see of Suzanne, who sat strapped into her infant seat, watching a paper cut-out revolve in the breeze from the windshield defroster.
The car horn honked again, longer, and Maggie pulled away from the light, losing sight of his truck when he made a left-hand turn and disappeared from her rearview mirror.
Desolate, she told Brookie about it later. “He didn’t even wave. He didn’t even try to stop me.’
For the first dine, Brookie had no words of consolation.
The winter grew harsher in every way after that. Harding House seemed oppressive, so big and empty with only two in it and not a prospect of more. Maggie took up needlework to fill her time, but often dropped her hands to her lap and rested her head against the back of the chair, If he’s left her, why doesn’t he come to me?
February was bitter and Suzanne got her first cold.
Maggie walked the floor with her at night, haggard from loss of sleep, wishing for someone to take the baby from her arms and nudge her toward bed.
In March letters began arriving requesting reservations for the summer and Maggie realized she’d have to make her decision about whether or not to put Harding House up for sale. The best time to do so, of course, would be when the spring rush began.
In April she called Althea Munne and asked her to come over and appraise the house. The day that the For sale sign went up in the yard, Maggie took Suzanne and drove her down to Tani’s in Green Bay because she couldn’t bear to look at the sign and wait for strangers to come poking and prodding through the place into which she’d poured so much of her heart.
In May Gene Kerschner came and hitched up the dock to his big green John Deere tractor and rolled it back into the water for the summer. The following day while Suzanne was taking her afternoon nap, Maggie set to work giving it a coat of white paint.
She was on her knees with her backside pointed toward the house, her head wrapped in a red bandanna, peering up at the underside of the arbour seat when she heard footsteps on the dock behind her. She backed up, turned, and felt an explosion of emotion.
Coming down the dock, dressed in white jeans, a blue shirt and a white skipper’s hat was Eric Severson.
She watched him moving toward her while adrenalin shot through her system. Oh, how the appearance of one person could change the complexion of a day, a year, a life!
She forgot the paintbrush in her hand. Forgot she was barefoot and dressed in faded black sweatpants and a baggy grey T-shirt. Forgot everything but the long-awaited sight of him approaching.
He stopped on the opposite side of the paint can and looked down.
“Hello,’ he said, as if heaven had not suddenly shown itself to her.
‘Hello,’ she whispered, her pulse drumming everywhere, everywhere.
‘I brought you something.’ He handed her a white envelope.
It took moments before she could force her arm to move.
She took the envelope wordlessly, staring up at him as he stood silhouetted against a sky of crayon blue - the same blue as his eyes. The sun glinted off the black visor of his cap, lit his shoulders and the tip of his chin.
‘Open it, please.’
She balanced the paintbrush on the edge of the can, wiped her hand on her thigh and began opening the envelope with trembling hands while he stood above her, watching.
Watching. She drew the papers out and opened them - a thick white sheaf that wanted to spring together at the folds.
As she read, the tremor from her hands twitched the corners of the sheets.
Findings for Fact, Condusion of Law, Order for Judgment, Judgment and Decree.
She read the heading and lifted uncertain eyes.
‘What is it?
‘My divorce papers.’
The shock rushed up pushing tears before it. She dropped her chin and saw the lines of type wash sideways before two huge tears plopped onto the paper. Abashed, she buried her face against it.
‘Aw, Maggie...’ He went down on one knee and touched her head, warm from the sun and bound by the ugly red hanky. ‘Maggie, don’t cry. The crying’s all over.’
She felt his arms pull her close and realized he was on his knees before her. He was here at last and the agony was over. She threw her arms around his neck, weeping, confessing brokenly. ‘I th... thought you weren’t c...coming back.’
His wide hand clasped the back of her head, holding her fiercely against him. ‘My mother made me promise I wouldn’t until I had my divorce papers in hand.’
‘I thought ... I thought ... I don’t know what I thought.’ She felt childish, babbling so, but she’d been totally unprepared, and the relief was so immense.
‘You thought I didn’t love you anymore?’
‘I thought I’d b... be alone for the rest of my l... life, and that Suzanne would n... never know you, and I d...didn’t know how to face it without you.’
‘Oh, Maggie,’ he said, closing his eyes. ‘I’m here and I’m staying.’
She cried awhile, her nose against his neck, his hand stroking her hair beneath the scarf.
At length he whispered, ‘I missed you so much.’
She had missed him, too, but adequate words had not been coined to express the complexity of her feelings. To have him back was to taste the bitter turn to sweet, to feel the missing piece of herself settle into place.
Drawing away, she looked into his face, her own glossy wet in the sun. ‘You’re really divorced, then?’
He dried her eyes with his thumbs and answered quietly, I’ m really divorced.’
She attempted a quivering smile. His thumbs stopped moving. The pain left his clear blue eyes and his head slowly lowered. It was a tender first kiss, flavoured with May and tears and perhaps a tinge of turpentine. His mouth dropped soft and open upon hers - a tentative first taste, as if neither could believe this reverse of fortune, while he held her face in his broad hands. Their tongues touched and his head moved, swaying above hers as their mouths opened fully.
Still kneeling, he drew her hips flush against his and held her there as if forever. Great cotton clouds moved across the blue sky above, and the breeze touched her hair as he removed her scarf and cupped her head firmly. To kiss was enough - to kneel beneath the May sun with tongues joined and feel the agony of separation dissolve and know that no law of God or man stood between them any longer.
In time he drew back, found her eyes, told her eloquent things with his own, then folded her against him more loosely. For moments they remained so, motionless, empty vessels no more.
‘I went through hall after I saw you in
‘I wanted you to stop me, force me over to the side of the road and carry me away.’
‘I wanted to leave the truck there in the middle of the street and get into your car and drive off someplace, to
Africa
where nobody could find us.’
She chuckled shakily. ‘You can’t drive to
Africa
, silly.’
‘I feel like I could right now.’ With an open hand he robbed her spine. ‘With you I feel like anything is possible.’
‘A thousand times I stopped myself calling you.’
“I drove past your house night after night. I’d see the light in your kitchen window and think about coming in and sitting with you. Not kissing you or making love, just...just being in the same room with you would have been enough. Talking, looking at you, laughing, the way we used to do.’
‘I wrote you a letter once.’
“Did you send it?’
‘What did you say?’
With her eyes upon a thin white cloud she answered, ‘Thank you for the roses.’
He sat back on his heels and she followed suit, their hands linked loosely between them.
‘You knew, then?’
‘Of course. They were pink.’
‘I wanted to bring them myself. There was so much I wanted to say.’
‘You did, with the roses.’
He shook his head sadly, remembering that time. ‘I wanted to be there when she was born, come and visit you and claim her and say to hell with the world.’
“I dried the roses and saved them for Suzanne when she gets older, in case.., well, just in case.’
‘Where is she?’ He glanced toward the house.
‘Inside, sleeping.’
‘Could I see her?’
Maggie smiled. ‘Of course. It’s what I’ve been waiting for.”
They rose from their knees, his cracking - and they walked hand in hand to the house, through the gold-bright rays of midafternoon, across the rolling lawn where the maples were lcafing out and the irises already blooming, up the wide front verandah and inside, up the staircase they’d climbed together on so many occasions.
‘Halfway up, he whispered, I’m shaking.’
‘You have a right. It’s not every day a father meets his six-month-old daughter for the first time.’
She led him into The Sarah, a south-facing room trimmed in yellow with billowing white lace at the deep, wide box window where a giant wooden rocker sat. A guest bed stood against one wall. Opposite was the crib- spooled maple with a tall peaked canopy cascading with white lace.
The crib of a princess.
And there she was.
Suzanne.
She lay on her side, both arms outflung and her feet tangled in a pastel quilt covered with patchwork animals.
Her hair was the colour of clover honey, her eyelashes a shade paler, her cheeks plump and bright as peaches. Her mouth was most certainly the sweetest one in all of creation, and as he studied it, Eric choked up.
‘Oh, Maggie, she’s beautiful,’ he whispered.
‘Yes she is.’
‘She’s so big already.’ Studying the slumbering baby he rued every missed day that had passed since he’d seen her through a plate-glass window.
‘She has one little tooth. Wait till you see it.’ Maggie leaned over and gently brushed the baby’s cheek with one finger. ‘Suzanne,’ she crooned softly. ‘Hey, sleepyhead, wake up and see who’s here.’