Accompanying Alice (28 page)

“I left him a note,” her daughter said defensively. “He’ll see it when he gets home.”

“Did you fight? Will he know why you left?”

Becky dipped her head deeper toward the steps. Her voice was small. “No.”

“Rebecca Sue—”

“Ah, Mom.” Becky lifted miserable features to her mother. “When I told him I thought I was pregnant he didn’t even get upset. He got this look on his face like I was the most wonderful thing he’d ever seen. Then he started to laugh and hug me and he said,
“Good, now you’ll
have to marry me.”
He went right out and bought an engagement ring and roses and he knelt down and it was so romantic, Ma. We went down to the courthouse the day after graduation, and they told us if we had an hour’s worth of counseling, we wouldn’t even need blood tests, so that’s what we did. And Grace and Phil were there, and we witnessed for them, and they witnessed for us and—”

“
What?
Wait a minute, back up,” Alice said. “You stood up for Grace and Phil?”

“Yeah.” Becky nodded. “Didn’t she tell you? She said she would, I mean they helped
us
out, it was only fair. She was so upset about the way everybody was making plans for her wedding and not listening to her, and you know how she is about ceremonies and crowds and everybody just wanting to add two more guests. And you know Grandma. She’d give anyone who asked the shirt off her back, then turn and offer ‘em yours, too. She can’t say no to anyone. Grace said she and Phil eloped so Grandma wouldn’t have to say anything to anybody anymore. They figured all they had to do was hand Aunt Helen the guest list and let her organize calling off the wedding. Didn’t they?”

Alice shut her eyes and rubbed her nose. And this was only Wednesday, she thought. What more could happen before Saturday morning? Don’t tell me, she admonished the fates hastily, silently, I don’t want to know. “No,” she said aloud, “Grace hasn’t said anything about her wedding yet. But never mind, let’s get back to you. What happened to all that romance? Did Mike,” she said slowly, hating what she had to ask, “do...anything? Did he...hurt you?”

“No!” Becky was off the step in a flash to face her mother, face flaming with indignation. “How can you even ask? I’m only in love, I’m not stupid! Mike’s the kindest, sweetest, most generous, loving—”

“You didn’t tell me you wanted to get married,” Alice interrupted her, ticking the points off on her fingers. “You didn’t tell me you were pregnant, but a week later you catch a ride home to me in the middle of the night with a couple of strangers and Mike doesn’t know you’ve left?” She shook her head, bewildered. “What else should I ask you, Becky? If everything’s so wonderful and he hasn’t hurt you and you didn’t have a fight,
why
did you run away from him? I mean, you wanted him so badly you ran away
with
him in the first place. Cut me some slack here, kid! If you want me to treat you like a responsible adult, then
be
one. Quit pussyfooting around whatever it was you think you did and
tell
me.”

Becky drew herself up to her full height at the challenge and looked Alice in the eye. “I’m...” Her shoulders drooped and she wilted. “Can we go up to Big Boy and get some coffee first?” she asked.

***

“Is it serious?” Gabriel asked a minute or so later when Alice followed the scent of eggs burning over a charcoal grill around the back of the house to tell him that she and Becky were leaving for a while. “Do you need me to beat
up anybody?”

Alice tried to smile, failed. “I don’t know yet.” She looked up at him, troubled, when he cupped her face. “She says Grace and Phil got married the same day she and Mike did and that Grace is going to call off the church wedding. I suppose that’s going to tick off a few of the relatives, but why Becky came home...” She shrugged helplessly. “She’s having such a hard time telling me, it must be bad. But if Mike hasn’t done anything, and they didn’t fight, I can’t imagine...” She lifted her shoulders, let them drop. “I don’t know, maybe it’ll be easier for her to say with a table between us. Sometimes being a parent is such a bitch.”

Gabriel turned his head to hide a grin. “I wouldn’t know,” he said. “Would you trade it?”

Alice heaved a long-suffering are-you-kidding sigh. “Not a chance.”

“I didn’t think so.” Gabriel chuckled. “Hey.” He caught her hand when she turned to go and drew her back. “Whether it’s serious or not, if you need a place to dump
it,
I’m here.”

“I know.” Alice looked at him, surprised by a knowledge she hadn’t known she possessed. She touched his jaw in wonder, stood on her toes and kissed him hard. “I know you are,” she repeated with evident satisfaction, then went.

*

“My period started last night,” Becky announced suddenly after toying with a glass of soda and a plate of scrambled eggs for fifteen silent minutes. “Mom, I’m not pregnant.”

Caught off guard, Alice opened her mouth, and coffee dribbled down her chin. She snatched up her napkin to catch the liquid before it dripped onto her blouse. “What?”

“Oh, there, see?” Becky moaned. “I knew you’d be upset. Just think how Mike’ll feel when I tell him. It’ll be like I betrayed him or something.”

Alice cleared her throat around a soundless involuntary
Thank you God!
and remained carefully joyless and noncommittal. “He doesn’t know?”

“Mom, how could I tell him? We got married because we thought I was pregnant. Now that I’m not, what’s he gonna say? He says he wants kids right away, Ma, but he thought—when he said it—and his parents already think I tried to trap him. He told ‘em to go blow, that his wife
didn’t have to take that kind of crap from his parents and that he wasn’t going to let any kid of his grow up without a father. But now that we’re not having a baby things might change. You know?”

Alice nodded. “I see,” she said, then shook her head. “No, I don’t. Help me out here, Beck. Marriage is a tough proposition for anyone at any age, let alone for a couple of kids who are pregnant. I’d think maybe it’d be...easier for you and Mike if you’re not. To begin with.”

“No, Ma, don’t you see?” Becky said passionately. “A baby made everything different. Possible, you know? When we went down to the courthouse, I didn’t have any doubts about what we were doing. I don’t think Mike did, either. We’d have had the baby and struggled to make ends meet and it would have been great.” She looked down at her hands. “But now... I feel like a fraud—like I married him under false pretenses. I love Mike, Mom. I want to be with him for the rest of my life, but now I sort of wonder if we didn’t do this too soon, if I messed up and he’s going to feel trapped like his parents said. I mean, maybe we should just call the whole thing off, you know? Maybe...”

Alice spread her hands in front of her on the table. I can’t think of her as me, she told herself for the thirtieth time. She’s not me. And Mike is not Matt. “What do you need from me, Becky?” she asked. “Permission to come home and be my little girl again? It doesn’t work that way, babe. You’ve got a husband, a whole life in front of you. I can’t get between you and Mike. Not now. That’s not the mother-in-law’s job. My house is always yours, but—”

“Tell me what to do, Ma,” Becky pleaded. “Tell me how to handle this.”

“Oh, Becky, I can’t.” Alice gestured inadequately. “You made your choices. I can’t unmake them for you. Only you can do that. Even if I wanted to, you’d only resent me for it later. I love you, darlin’, but I’d rather have you hate me now and get it over with than wait until you’re thirty and have you dump my interference back on me in spades.”

Alice touched her daughter’s hand, praying she was saying the right things. “Whatever you decide, I’ll back you up, you know that. But it’s your choice, Becky. You decide.”

Mother and daughter stared at one another across the table, across the span of years and experiences that separated them. They weren’t so different from one another right now, Alice realized. They were closer in age than they’d ever been. They’d each spent the past chaotic week vainly trying to get a fit in their new lives, trying to figure out men, and how much a couple of men in particular meant to them—and to their lives, their homes, their beds and their independence.

And to their futures.

Alice took a sip of coffee to wash down her own confusion over that one. Her daughter had been too wrapped up in her own problems to ask Alice anything about Gabriel yet. Alice had no idea what she’d say about him when Becky did. Except that he was...
Special.
She watched her
daughter take a deep swallow of decision with a mouthful of soda.

“Okay, Mom,” Becky sighed. “You got it. I’ll talk to Mike. But...” Her lips twitched and her eyes sparkled suddenly. “I don’t suppose—” She tipped her head and viewed her mother with mock calculation. “I don’t suppose,” she repeated, “that since you won’t tell me what you
want
me to do, maybe you could at least tell me what you
hope
I’ll do?”

Alice smiled broadly and shook her head. How could she tell her daughter what she couldn’t tell herself? “Not on your life,” she said.

*

Meanwhile, back on the home front, Gabriel was having an equally revealing morning. He learned, for instance, that Aunt Kate liked steak with her scrambled-egg substitute for breakfast and that Alice kept neither in the house. He learned that Uncle Delbert liked his toast burned to a crisp and covered with Alice’s homemade mint jelly. He learned that Mamie enjoyed “playfully” swatting men’s buns at the end of a joke, and that George was not nearly as henpecked as he appeared. And he learned that the best way to cook breakfast outside with the boys was to put the toaster on the picnic table and hook it up to the extension cord, hand them a jug of milk, a bottle of imitation maple syrup and two or three boxes of frozen waffles and yell, “Have at it, guys,”
and with that they were perfectly content.

He also discovered with a great deal of surprise that, aside from the odd intrusive thought about Markum, he was thoroughly enjoying himself.

“No,” he said into the phone to Edith, who was calling for Helen, who had already called twice in the past half hour. “She cannot bake cookies today. No, when she gets back, I will not ask her to call you so you can make her feel guilty about not doing it. Doesn’t anyone else in this
family know how to do anything? Yes, I’m sure if she said she’d do blueberry cheesecakes that she did them. I don’t care if she’s forgotten to do things sometimes in the past. I’m sure it’s because of all the things you all line up for her to do. No, I’m not sorry for saying that even if I don’t know you very well. There’s just something about this family that invites that sort of comment. Uh-huh, yes, I feel...right at home around you, too.” He waggled his fingers goodbye at Aunt Kate and company as they went out the door to spend the day in Detroit. “No, Edith, I’m sure. You tell Helen, Alice is tied up, busy, not available all day. No, I’ll get her there tonight, I promise. She’ll be there by six o’clock but not before. No, goodbye, I’m hanging up now, Edith. Goodbye.”

Gabriel cradled the phone firmly, found the phone’s ringer volume control and turned it off. Then he ran a hand through his hair, trying to remember where he’d been before Edith called. Now he understood why the few men with large families he’d met in the past seemed to regard childrearing like a course in military maneuvers: you had to treat a passel of kids like rookie marines in self-defense. Fathers would never know where they were if they ran their families
otherwise—and the truth of the matter was, they probably rarely knew where they were, anyway, and the military maneuvers ploy was all for show. It wasn’t like him to forget his place this way, Gabriel thought. In fact, up until Monday, he didn’t think he’d ever before
had
a problem remembering where he was or what he was doing. He’d been too busy trying to survive to lose his place.