Souvenir (9 page)

Tonight the low chirping of crickets outside the porch spoke of good luck, something she felt sorely short of just now. Yet as quickly as this self-pity reared up, she pushed it down; she had no right to feel sorry for herself,
none
, and she buried the urge by remembering that, short of the unstoppable medical crises she’d faced now and then as a doctor, she was responsible for everything in her life, good
and
bad.

Responsible:
that
was the trait that made her rescue her parents from looming foreclosure and allow her sisters to finish growing up there on the farm, instead of crammed into some tiny, roach-infested apartment. That was the trait that kept her from seeking out a definitive answer to Savannah’s paternity. The trait made her a popular, respected doctor—and tempered her guilt when things went wrong even after she’d done everything right. She was always careful, responsible, even when she didn’t want to be. Almost always.

But in the same way her mother could not, despite valiant efforts, save the family from the ruin that seemed sure until Meg married Brian, Meg’s effort had not been able to save the Langs’ baby. Nor had it secured the satisfying life she’d rationalized would follow her marriage in due time. You could work hard, stick to all the rules, and still fail.

Which made her wonder why, then, she bothered to be so damn careful.

The sweet, musky smell of aging honeysuckle blooms drifted to Meg on the warm night’s breeze. She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply, putting aside the heavy thoughts, her worry about her arm, the guilt she felt over losing the Langs’ baby, and the odd lack of guilt she felt for having encouraged Clay’s attentions. Putting them aside and simply filling herself with nature’s sensual buffet. A warm spring night. Sweetly scented flowers. Damp soil. The smell of wild mint and freshly mowed grass.

The grass brought her back, for a moment, to something Brian said earlier. She’d told him about the stillbirth, and he was, of course, sympathetic. “Jesus, Meg, how awful for them,” he said. But then he added, “I don’t mean to sound insensitive, but do you think Lang will still do our lawn?”

Ever practical.

A mockingbird, apparently confused about the hour, began its litany of calls someplace off on the east side of their property, a three-acre estate in a community of similar ones. Meg turned in the direction of the sound, as if it was possible to see the bird at three
AM.
She saw the silhouettes of towering pines and oaks and magnolias and wondered if maybe the bird, too, was trying to shake off a bad day: some offense by its mate, or a wound inflicted by too zealous a flight. She thought maybe
she
ought to sing too, despite the hour; singing worked for Savannah. It worked, she supposed, for Carson.

She drew her bare legs up and wrapped her arms around them—both arms behaving just the way they should, go figure. Resting her chin on her knees, she let herself be distracted by thoughts of Carson and the news that he was about to be married.

Probably she should just satisfy her curiosity and go read the details—maybe even plan to send them a gift. Whoever Valerie Haas was, she would have to be very impressive, considering how long Carson had been single, and how eligible he was.

Probably she should get the details about his wedding and his bride so that she wouldn’t be distracted any further, so that she could close that chapter of her life—hadn’t it been open for far too long as it was?

Carson, married. In love—a
good
thing, even if the thought of it gave her a pang of possessiveness that hurt. Even if imagining him permanently joined to anyone else brought pain like a sharp stone being pressed into her heart.

Thirteen

M
EG TOOK ONE OF THE NOTEBOOK DIARIES WITH HER TO WORK
M
ONDAY,
reading it in her office during her lunch break.

December 5, 1987

Carolyn and I were talking about the kids today, over to the co-op. Carson’s thinking of buying Meggie a ring for Christmas. He hasn’t told Meggie. Nothing could be more natural than the two of them married. Caro thinks he means to have an April wedding, since Meggie loves springtime. To be purely honest, the timing couldn’t be better for her moving in with Carson, because if things keep up like they are, we’ll lose the whole farm by May.

But of course it hadn’t gone like that. It was Brian who proposed—in a sense—two weeks before Christmas, a time when she couldn’t fail to see the romance in his gesture.

He hadn’t been her supervisor for several months, but she saw him often. Back in early fall he’d told her that the reason he’d moved himself out of front-end management and into Investments was because he hoped to date her. He wasn’t pushy about it, and he assured her that her job was in no way affected by her firm refusals to do anything more than have a platonic lunch with him now and then. She never let him pay.

This lunch, though, was unlike any that had come before.

They went to Margot’s, a café she couldn’t afford to eat at on her own, by way, he said, of a “Christmas bonus—my treat.” The place was done up for the holidays, with swags of fresh holly and twinkling white lights and deep red velvet ribbon hanging above every doorway. Brian sat across from her at an intimate, white-draped table and told her he had an outrageous proposition. Would she just listen and promise to give it some thought?

“Meg,” he said, “I heard something impressive a while back, one Friday when you weren’t at the Trough. I usually don’t listen much to gossip, but—well, here’s what I heard: Vicki was telling Mark how you give your whole paycheck to your parents to help pay their bills, that you’ve been doing it since you started with us.”

Her cheeks burned; Vicky wasn’t supposed to tell anyone about that—and
especially
not when someone like Brian could overhear. Her family’s difficulties embarrassed her, made her look bad by association. She said, “Yeah, well, they’ve had some money problems. One of the stallions fractured a leg, and—”

“Oh, don’t get me wrong—I think you’re amazing. That’s so generous. So loyal. What kid is willing to sacrifice their own agenda to help their parents these days?”

Meg shrugged. “I have to help if I can.” The choice was simple to her, automatic as breathing.

“And, you’ve been loyal to the bank, working here, what?—over two years now? Then there’s your loyalty to your boyfriend—which I’m
not
so crazy about.” He laughed.

She shrugged again, embarrassed but flattered, too, which she feared was
dis
loyal, and her face grew even hotter.

He reached over and took her hand in his cool, smooth ones, white-collar hands. “I admire you, and you know I really like you, Meg. You work hard, you take care of your family—and Jesus, you’re
so
pretty. We’ve known each other for a while, right? We worked well together, we get along—and, I know this sounds crazy, but, I…I want to help you out. You have to give me a shot, Meg; you owe it to yourself to see if you think we’re as compatible as I already know we are. And if you do, I want you to consider marrying me.”

She was sure she heard him wrong. “You want
what
?”

“If you agreed to marry me, well, Dad and I would be in a position to help your parents with their mortgage.” He held up one hand to stop her protest. “I know, it sounds like a bribe, but think of it as an incentive. A bonus.”

“How do you know about their mortgage?” Even she knew little about the details of her parents’ finances.

“We hold it,” Brian said. “They refinanced with us a couple years ago. I’ve had Dad delay the foreclosure proceedings until after I talked to you today.” He leaned closer, looked into her eyes. “Look, Meg, I’m not a crazy person; I’m just a man who knows his mind. We could be really good together, I’m sure of it. Maybe you think you love Carson, and maybe you do love him, in a way. But what is that?
Adolescent
love, which never lasts. He’s been your escape from a stressful, crazy life, but you won’t need that—him—anymore; you’ll be able to solve your family’s problems. You’ll be the hero.”

Then he kissed her, and she was too astonished to object. “Say you’ll think about it.”

She hated to, but how could she not?

She couldn’t tell Carson, Brian said; no one could know, because of the “creative financing” that would take place if things worked out. She didn’t exactly want to tell Carson anyway; the whole situation felt outrageous, unseemly—and yet, it could be a lightning strike of good fortune for her family. Maybe even fate.

She had to save her family if she could. It was the right choice. The moral choice. By choosing Brian, she could save her sisters from a family reputation even lower than it was already. She could lift them up to a higher social plateau, where they’d have a chance to be popular at school and never have to give up their free time just to keep the family in bread and milk. Without the overwhelming debt, her parents would have money for extras: Kara wanted to go with the high school’s Spanish Club to Mexico City; Beth wanted to take piano lessons; Julianne wanted riding boots and an English saddle and regulation jump bars to practice with so that she might compete. The girls could
dress
better.

As much as any of those things, Meg wanted her mother to be able to sleep nights instead of wandering the house like a restless spirit. So how could she selfishly hold on to Carson and watch the rest of them spiral into misery, deprived of the land that gave them, if nothing else, room to own a piece of sky, a shaggy oak, a footpath to a shallow pond where beautiful, if mostly barren, horses stood in the morning to drink?

So she’d gone along with it, meaning to give Brian a fair try. There was truth in what he said about adolescent love; she couldn’t argue with this even now, on its theoretical basis. But in her nontheoretical life, the answer that had seemed so clean and obvious to her at the time of Brian’s proposal became murkier as time passed. She liked Brian, liked the new work schedule that allowed her to commute to Gainesville three days a week for school, liked the places she got to go with him: New York, Puerto Rico, Washington, D.C. But she missed Carson like she’d miss her right hand if she woke up to find it suddenly gone. Though there was no real choice but to marry Brian, she felt so guilty about her decision that she literally ached, as though her heart had weakened but was forced to keep beating. She just could not understand why what was supposed to be right felt so wrong.

Well, she understood better now.

Leaving her sandwich untouched, she read her mother’s entry from the day she married Brian.

August 20, 1989

I’m exhausted, but what a beautiful day we had for a wedding! Thank God the country club’s air-conditioning didn’t wear itself out, or none of us would’ve lasted until midnight the way we did. Spencer was in his element with all those horse people….

Creamy white orchids and red roses and white satin ribbon everywhere, but Meggie was the loveliest of all. Four thousand dollars for just her dress! Heavens, it was beautiful, that strapless style that’s in all the magazines, smooth satin on top, seed pearls and tiny crystals on every inch of the skirt. And the train! I can’t get over it. It was a gift from Nancy Hamilton, Brian’s grandmother, so how could we say no? They are all treating our girl like royalty. Spencer insisted we pay for the girls’ dresses, and they were princesses too. Beth and Julianne were asleep in the car five minutes after we left the reception, and I’ll bet Kara won’t last much longer. She’s been on the phone with some boy she met there since we got home half an hour ago. I’m still too wound up to settle into bed, but when I do, well! I plan to sleep until eight! The horses won’t starve if their breakfast’s a little late.

She looked happy. Well, a little dazed, but what bride isn’t? We raised her right, I have to say. She has plenty of poise. I couldn’t stand being the center of that much attention, I know that.

My biggest fear, I admit it, was that people would look at us and know how little we had to do with putting on the wedding. If not for that famous Preakness trainer buying Spencer’s baby, Earned Luck, last week, we wouldn’t have seemed anywhere close to successful enough to pay for such a party. It made it easy to sound like our fortunes had turned around.

Well, they have, haven’t they? She went through with it after all. Bruce took Spencer aside just before the reception, told him it’ll all be taken care of Monday. That’s almost three thousand dollars a month it’ll save us. Three thousand! I hardly know how to sit here and write happy thoughts, when usually I’m just trying to figure out a new way to rob Peter. What good luck Meggie has had.

I remember when she first came to Spencer and me to ask about the mortgage. Was it true, she wanted to know, that we’d been late for seven or eight months in a row? Was it true we’d heard from the bank that they were starting foreclosure proceedings? That we could lose the whole business and the house, too, in just a few months’ time? I felt so ashamed. Spencer hedged, not wanting to worry her with all that mess, but then she told us why she was asking. Told us that Brian wanted to help us out—depending. I was against it at first, but not Spencer. He washed the doubt right out of Meggie’s eyes and mine with his enthusiasm for the idea. It was up to her, of course, but since she was asking, well, we had to say it was a terrific bit of luck that Brian had taken a shine to her. An amazing opportunity for her, if she wanted to take it.

She did look happy today. The more I think about it, the more I’m sure of it. And I’m sure she never saw Carson’s truck parked down the street from the church. He’ll find someone else before too long, now that he’s seen she isn’t ever coming back to him. My heart ached for him, but he’s young, he’ll be fine. They’re all so young. They can make their lives be whatever they want. Isn’t that how it works?

“Sure. Whatever we want,” Meg whispered.

Her nurse, Laurie, knocked once and opened the door. “Your one o’clock’s here.”

“Thanks. Give me three minutes.”

She closed the notebook and stuffed it back into her satchel, certain that this foray into the past wasn’t doing her any good. The spinning blades were uncomfortably close right now.