Eve's Daughters (41 page)

“But you could have had all that and a nursing career too,” Suzanne said.

“I didn’t care about a career. I grew up in an era when women were supposed to be helpless and frail. We needed a husband, not a career, if we wanted to be powerful. Besides, I had a full-time job learning to be a wife and mother because I didn’t have a clue what real wives and mothers were supposed to do. My mother had never cooked a meal that included all the basic food groups in my entire life. Our two-room apartment above the Mulligan sisters was practically bare.”

“So you just let Daddy’s decorator design everything for you.” Suzanne raked her dark hair from her eyes with an impatient flip of her hand.

“Yes, because I didn’t have a clue where to begin with a real home. I used to study homemaking books when I was first married, and believe it or not, they told me I should comb my hair and put on makeup before my husband came home at night. I was supposed to have the house in order, dinner on the table, and a smile on my face. I shouldn’t hit him with all my domestic problems when he walked through the door, the experts said, or present him with two naughty kids that needed to be spanked.”

Suzanne looked unconvinced. “So you can honestly tell me you never wished you could return to nursing?”

“I’ll admit it was hard after you and Robert went away to college. I felt useless and unneeded for a while. But my volunteer work is just as fulfilling as any nine-to-five job—with the added bonus that I can arrange my hours around your father’s schedule. I’m available when he needs me.”

“Are you going to tell Daddy what we found out in Bremenville?”

“Of course. I tell him everything. And I’m going to ask his medical opinion about how the mumps might have affected my father.”

Suzanne seemed deep in thought. She reminded Grace of Stephen when he had a difficult medical diagnosis to make. Like her father’s, Suzanne’s analytical mind had to process all the information in an orderly way until she was satisfied she had reached the correct solution.

“I have a question,” she said suddenly. “Which of your five ‘fathers’ do you think helped Grandma the most?”

Grace reminded herself to be patient, even though she didn’t like where this line of questioning was headed. “Well, I’d have to say either Booty or O’Brien. Mick, Black Jack, and Father O’Duggan were more my friends than hers.”

“That makes sense . . .” Suzanne mused to herself. “Booty was married . . . Mrs. Higgins didn’t like you . . .”

Grace climbed from the car and retrieved her suitcase from the trunk. Then she walked around to the driver’s side to talk to Suzanne again. “Thanks for an interesting weekend. Will I see you soon?”

“How about next Saturday night? Can you and Daddy come for dinner? Bring Grandma too.”

“I hope you’re not inviting us so you can interrogate Grandma.”

Suzanne made a face. “No, I’m inviting you to keep me company. Jeff’s taking the girls out somewhere that night.”

“Sure. We’d love to come. I’m sorry for questioning your motives, but it’s just that I have a very bad feeling that this trip is only the beginning, as far as you’re concerned, and not the end. Am I right?”

“There are too many unanswered questions, Mom.”

“Like what?”

“Is Karl Bauer your real father or not?”

“It doesn’t matter to me if he is or he isn’t. I have a heavenly Father who loves me.”

Grace reached through the open window and rested her hand on Suzanne’s shoulder. “Sue . . . is there anything I can say that will convince you to drop all this nonsense about my father?”

“No, I’m sorry, Mom. I have to know the truth.”

The facade qf Suzanne’s home, a two-story brick Colonial, was tastefully lit with floodlights, the yard immaculately groomed and landscaped, but Emma couldn’t help thinking it looked vacant and cold as she and Grace pulled into the driveway. “It doesn’t look as though anyone is home,” she said to Grace. “Are you sure we have the right night?”

“I’m sure. Sue is home alone. Jeff took the girls somewhere for the weekend. I think she invited us to dinner to help chase away the blues.”

Suzanne had the door open before they reached the front step. “Where’s Daddy? Didn’t he know he was invited?”

“He was called to the hospital just as we were leaving. He promised to come over as soon as he’s finished.”

“That’s typical. I might have known he wouldn’t come.” Suzanne’s voice had a bitter edge to it.

“You feel so thin, Suzy!” Emma said as she hugged her. “Have you lost weight?”

“I don’t know. Jeff took the bathroom scale.”

At first Emma didn’t realize what she meant, then she walked into Suzanne’s living room and saw the gaping holes, like extracted teeth, where Jeff’s belongings had once been. Faded rectangles on the walls marked the places where his paintings had hung, dusty shelves stood empty where stereo components and books were missing. Twin scars of crushed carpeting revealed the absence of Jeff’s favorite recline.

Emma’s eyes filled with tears. Two lives, joined together as one flesh, had been cruelly ripped apart. “Where did it all go?” she murmured, meaning the love that had once flamed between Suzanne and Jeff.

“He boxed everything up and stored it in the garage until he finds an apartment in Chicago,” Suzanne replied. “And that was just the stuff we agreed on. There are a bunch of other things, like the antique rolltop desk in the den, that we’re still battling over.”

“I hope you don’t argue in front of the girls,” Grace said.

“Sometimes it can’t be helped. When the girls and I came home the other day, he had a real estate agent here appraising the house. Needless to say, I lost my temper. This house is joint property, in both of our names. He can’t sell it unless I agree—and I don’t!”

“Can you afford a house this big on what you make at the magazine?” Grace asked.

“Of course not, but Jeff can. He’s going to pay big time too! I refuse to live the typical, substandard life of a single mother.” Suzanne bent to pick up a few scattered toys, as if she needed an outlet for her restlessness.

“This bitterness and greed is so unlike you,” Emma said.

“Well, you and Mom should know firsthand that the majority of single mothers live well below the poverty line. Would you rather the girls and I subsisted like you did during the depression?”

“Divorce is such an ugly word,” Emma said with a sigh.

“Supper is all ready, so we may as well eat,” Suzanne said, gesturing to the dining room. “We would have starved to death years ago if we had always waited for Daddy.”

Emma followed Suzanne into the dining room, where the table was beautifully set for dinner. Nothing seemed to be missing from that room, but when they took their seats around the table and Suzanne served the food, Stephen’s empty place setting was an unwelcome reminder that they were three women on their own, without husbands. The sadness that enshrouded the house began to descend on Emma.

“You know, Suzanne, Karl Bauer was a prosperous man,” Emma said. “I
was very well-to-do when I was married to him. But it isn’t the loss of material things or the poverty that makes divorce so difficult. It’s the loneliness. In my case, I was lonely before I left Karl. We’d never had a loving relationship to begin with. But from the very first time I ever laid eyes on Jeff, the two of you were twined together like a vine and a trellis. You loved each other.”

“That was ages ago, Grandma,” Suzanne said briskly. “We’ve been busy raising a family and building careers since then.”

“Maybe you and Jeff should have worked as hard on your marriage as you did on your careers,” Grace said.

“Mom, please. I didn’t invite you here to give me a lecture.”

“I know. You need our company and our support. Believe me, honey, Grandma and I do support you—but not in the way that you think. We’re not going to take your side against Jeff—”

Suzanne slammed down the bread basket. “Oh, that’s a switch! You and Daddy should be happy we’re getting a divorce, since you didn’t want me to marry him in the first place.”

“I was wrong about that.” Grace’s voice remained gentle in spite of Suzanne’s bitterness. “I’ve grown to love Jeff. He’s the father of my grandchildren. God joined the two of you together, and I’m not giving up until your marriage is restored.”

Suzanne shook her head. “Well, that isn’t going to happen. Jeff’s gone.”

A sorrow-filled silence descended over the table. Emma ate the casserole Suzanne had prepared without tasting it. Grace didn’t even pretend to eat. Emma saw tears in her eyes.

“Sue, what do your girls think about their father leaving them?” Grace asked. “What will they think about God because of it? Will they think that He’ll leave them and move far away too? Remember what Father O’Duggan once told me about how our fathers shape our attitudes toward God? How will Amy’s and Melissa’s attitude toward God be affected if you get a divorce?”

“It was Jeff’s choice to leave home, not mine.”

“But it was your decision not to move to Chicago and make a new home with him there.”

Suzanne pushed back her chair and sprang to her feet. “Did you ever stop to consider what I learned about God from Daddy? That I have to constantly work to win his approval, that I’m always begging for the smallest scraps of his love, that he’s always too busy for me!” She picked up Stephen’s unused dinner plate and threw it to the floor, shattering it.

Emma quickly rose and drew Suzanne into her arms. She had never been
fooled, like most people, by Suzanne’s tough exterior and fiery independence—inside, she was a wounded child. In spite of Suzanne’s seeming indifference, the breakup of her marriage was hurting her deeply. Emma remembered well the painful years after her own divorce, and how—even as she’d made everyone around her laugh—she’d wept within.

Grace sat across the table from them in stunned disbelief. “Suzanne . . .? Is that really the way you see your father?”

Suzanne was weeping too hard to answer. Emma answered for her. “You’re much too close to Stephen to see it, Gracie, but Sue has tried all of her life to win his approval—even at the cost of her own happiness. But she could never be the kind of daughter Stephen expected. She could never be you, Gracie. Sue is too independent, too spirited . . . too much like me! I did the same thing when I was young. I tried so hard to fit into my mother’s mold, to be the kind of daughter Papa wanted. That’s why I married Karl. But I didn’t fit Mama’s mold, I wasn’t like her at all, and the effort to be someone I wasn’t cost me dearly.”

Grace looked shocked. “So you’re saying Suzanne should do the same thing you did? Divorce her husband?”

“Not at all! I think leff and Sue were perfectly suited for each other-free-spirited, creative, life-embracing. That’s why they fell in love, and that’s why I encouraged them to get married against your wishes. But Jeff is not in the least like Stephen, and Sue is nothing like you . . . and I think they both tried to fit your molds to win your approval. It didn’t work. And I think that’s why they fell out of love. Am I right, Suzanne?”

“It’s such a mess, Grandma.” Suzanne’s hands still covered her face. “We started out so happy . . . and now everything is in such a mess.”

Emma bent to pick up the pieces of the shattered plate, laying them one by one on the tablecloth in front of Suzanne. “Your mother is right. It isn’t too late to put the pieces of your marriage back together. But it won’t be the same marriage it was before. It shouldn’t be. That pattern was flawed, which is why it broke apart to begin with.”

She gently pulled Suzanne’s hands from her face and held them in her own. “I’m taking a pottery course at Birch Grove,” Emma said. “It’s great fun, you know, getting splattered with mud up to my eyeballs! But one thing I learned is that before you can create a good pot, you have to get the clay perfectly centered on the wheel. Otherwise, as you try to shape it, the pot gets more and more deformed as the wheel spins faster, until the whole mess flies off and crashes into the wall. How did your marriage get off-center, Sue? How
did it come to this?” Emma gestured to the shattered plate. “How did you get here from where you started?”

Suzanne scrubbed impatiently at her tears. “I don’t know . . . I suppose there’s a lot of truth in what you said about wanting to please Daddy and not fitting into Mom’s mold. . . .”

TWENTY-FOUR

From the time I was a little girl, I knew I wasn’t cut to fit Mom’s mold. I think I first realized it one day while playing hospital with my brother, Bobby. I was five years old and he was seven. He had gotten a toy doctor’s kit for Christmas, and I, of course, got a nurse’s kit. We used my Betsy Wetsy doll and some stuffed animals for the patients and set up an operating room on the coffee table in the den.

“Scalpel!” Bobby demanded, his hand outstretched. His voice was crisp and bossy like Daddy’s. He always tried to be exactly like Daddy, from his crew cut to his arrogant swagger. “Nurse! Scissors!”

It didn’t take long for me to grow tired of doing the boring jobs, like handing Bobby all his surgical instruments. I looked at his outstretched hand and rebelled.

“No. It’s my turn to operate now. It’s my doll.” I folded my arms across my chest.