Bridge To Happiness (41 page)

“Oh yeah, I’ve got it so easy. You and your wife pop out kids like rabbits . . . in the damned dining room. You don’t even need a goddamned hospital, while I almost lost my wife just trying to carry one baby. She cries every night because she can’t get pregnant. Yeah, my life is so easy. What can I do right? I can’t drive, and apparently I can’t fuck right either.”

 
Scott fired back. “And isn’t it all too easy to look back now and say I should have taken the American Express endorsement deal, or worked out the new insurance contract for the company. Or to say that we could have made more money if I expanded the clothing lines. The list of what I should have done is as long as my arm!” Scott drove his hand through his thick hair and spun around and faced his brother. “And who the hell are you to call me a coward, to say that I’m afraid of risk? That’s bullshit. You are supposed to be the wild one, the risk taker, the gambler. You are the hip, cool brother, not the square conservative one. I’m a coward? So tell me Joe Cool, why is it that you won’t drive a car since Dad died?”

Molly came down the stairs, clearly stunned by her brothers’ fight.

“Fuck you, Scott.” Phillip shouted.

“You brought it up, asshole.”

“Stop it! Both of you!” I walked into the fray. “Is that true, Phillip?” My mind scrolled backwards over time and I tried to remember if I could remember Phillip driving. What I could remember were two instances when he weaseled out of driving, one of them at Christmas and
Keely
was driving her car at Thanksgiving. “Do you not drive?”

“He doesn’t drive anymore?” Molly asked, as surprised as I was.

Scott was still fuming but he nodded.

“You don’t drive anymore because of your dad’s accident?”

“It started then,” Scott volunteered.

That Phillip was stonily quiet pretty much told me it was true. Molly was eyeing him curiously and she seemed to have dropped her animosity a little.

I felt like a failure, standing there with my three oldest children all of whom were having deep troubles. I hadn’t been paying attention. Scott knew what was going on with Phillip but I hadn’t noticed. Phillip had been deeply traumatized by his father’s accident and I didn’t notice.

My son who stopped by to check on me, teased me and watched out for me. The most sensitive of my four, the one who covered all of his tragedies by joking his way around them. I had no Pledge cans for him. I hadn’t even noticed what was going on. I grasped my middle son’s hand. “It’s okay Phil. It’s okay.”

He raised his head and looked at me. His eyes were moist and his lips thin as a needle. My son was lost, deep in those eyes I knew so well, my son was lost and afraid and alone. He broke eye contact and said, “Drop it, Ma.’

I took a deep breath and said firmly, “You both have to stop fighting. You two are the company now. It’s both of you, profits and loss, mistakes and brilliant new ideas. But you stop this, now. Neither of you are leaving until you work things out.”

“Come on, Molly.” I took her gently by her stiff shoulders and led her toward my room. “You and I are going to talk. In my bedroom.” I stopped and turned around. I looked at my sons. “I mean it. You two work out this horrible dark thing between you.”

In the bedroom and I said to Molly, “Okay. Sit down.”

She did.

“So you want to marry Spider?”

She nodded, twisting engagement ring on her finger.

“You know how I feel about him.”

“But you aren’t marrying him. I am.”

“That’s true,” I said, refusing to rise to the bait. “Molly, marriage is not easy. Believe me. You’re going into this with the deck stacked against you. Even if the age difference weren’t a problem, his marriages have been. He has failed three times. What makes you think this time with you will be different?”

She shrugged but wouldn’t look me in the eye. “No one can predict the future. I could marry someone who has never been married and we would have a thirty three percent chance of getting a divorce.”

She was right. But Spider? I took a deep breath and knew it was time for me to back down. “Are you sure this is what you want?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said firmly. “We’re getting married in three months.”

“Three months? Why so soon?”

“We made the decision. I don’t want a long engagement.” She looked at me squarely. “Are you refusing to help me with the wedding?”

My mind went back to another time, another place, in a white kitchen with ivy wallpaper and another question
Are we really arguing about my wedding?

I closed the distance between us, just a mere couple of feet, I sat down next to her and wrapped my arms around her. “Never.”

And I sat there holding her for a long time, my hand cupping her head like I had when she was colicky and crying in the middle of the night. Only now, my baby stood on her own two feet. I forced back the tears I could feel rising in my throat. “I’m not certain we can get the dress ordered in three months.”

“I know you, mom. You can work miracles. You can get anything done.” Molly stepped back out of my arms and looked at me with a look I hadn’t seen in a long time. She needed me. “I thought if you would come home right away we can start planning everything.”

My only daughter was determined to marry the wrong man, for what I was certain were the wrong reasons. Mike could have talked some sense into her. But he wasn’t here and she needed me. Planning a wedding was important, a rare mother daughter moment. Our fragile, unraveling relationship needed all the mother daughter bonding it could get.

“I thought that we could go home tomorrow,” she said.

Tomorrow. I thought about Rio, but that was only that new part of me who loved the peace I had with him. My kids needed me.

Maybe this would be good for us. Some distance might make me less confused about how quickly my heart had become so tangled with his.

My sons were still yelling in the other room and Molly looked at me. “I brought some bride magazines. Will you look at them with me?”

Did she think I would refuse?
I slipped my arm around her shoulders and smiled. “Sure.”

She leaned her head against my shoulder. We sat there, my chin resting on my prickly daughter’s head. She pulled away after a few minutes and hugged me, something she hadn’t done in a very long time and stood up. “I’ll run and get them.”

I watched her walk away, fully aware that she was not certain about this marriage. Underneath all that attitude she was scared.

“Molly?”

“Yeah, Mom?”

“It will be okay. Everything will be okay.” But in my heart, as I listened to the shouting and cursing and name-calling by my sons in the other room, I was certain I was wrong.

The next day was too quiet. All through the morning. No shouting. No raised voices. Apparently for my sons working things out meant utter silence and one word answers. There was a strategy known to larger families—avoidance tactics when you didn’t want to be confronted by those who knew when you were lying. With two stories and a large house, Phillip and Scott stayed a step ahead of me and Molly was the distraction, talking to me about nothing while her brothers disappeared separately on some trumped up task, like changing the heater filter or checking the propane tank.

We closed up the house, and I had thought we were to leave at the same time, but when I walked outside, only Scott was standing by my car, his car next to mine, his collar pulled up tightly as a light snow drifted down. Molly’s car was gone, the tracks in the drive still deep.

Scott looked up as I locked the front door and walked down the steps. He opened the door for me. “I have a plan.”

What I had planned was to be alone with Phillip.

“Molly and Phillip already left,” he said in a rush.

“I can see that.” I climbed inside. They knew me too well.

“The snow might be bad on 50. I thought I should follow you back.”

No, you all cooked this up so Phillip wouldn’t have to be alone in a car with me for two hours
.

I buckled up. “I’ve been driving in snow since before you were born, Scott.” I faced him. “Afraid I’ll make a run for it, rob a Seven Eleven, and end up in the slammer again? Or maybe I’ll go throw my panties at Justin
Bieber
.”

“Now that I’d pay to see, Mom.”

“Don’t hold your breath. He’s probably too old for me.” I started the car and drove home, with two hours alone to think about my crazy feelings and my life for the last year.

Molly was waiting
in the driveway when I pulled in and parked. I grabbed my small suitcase and she met me at the inside door.

“I called the wedding planner and we have an appointment tomorrow morning at ten. I was afraid you wouldn’t check your messages.”

I chose not to remind her that I was an adult and knew how voicemail worked. Then I remembered how I had been pretending to be at home instead of with Rio. She followed me chattering and I went upstairs toward the master bedroom. I opened the double doors and dropped my luggage inside.

“My God, Mom,” Molly said, hovering at my back. “The room is completely different!”

“That was the point. If I was going to change it, I was going to really change it. It was difficult to live here the way it had always been. For my sanity I had to start over completely.” My voice was odd, a little strident, and I was sorry.

“I hate change,” she said, but her tone wasn’t angry. “Truthfully? I thought I would hate it,” she said quietly.

“You don’t?”

“No.” She smiled and squeezed my hand. “I don’t. It’s lovely. And it looks like you.”

That surprised me.

She turned away for a second and I heard her breath catch.

I turned. “What is it?”

She bent down and picked up something off the floor. There in the palm of her hand was a white feather.

“A white feather.” She stared at it.

“That must have come from the bedding or pillows,” I said, walking toward the bed to touch the new bedding; it was thick and creamy looking, the pillows plump and lined up along a damask covered headboard with
nailhead
trim. A cashmere throw lay on the end of the bed. “Everything is new. New down pillows and comforters, new sheets, new mattress, new room.” I turned slowly.

My master bedroom was finished, except for a chair in the sitting area that had been delayed at the upholsterer’s. Mike’s chair, of all things.

“I have to run.” Molly gave me a quick kiss. Her mood was suddenly light and too cheery and I looked at her oddly for a minute. “We start our appointment schedule tomorrow,” she said. “I’ll pick you up at quarter to ten.” And she rushed out the door. I stared at the empty spot where she just stood and felt as if I had been fly-by fruited.

My mercurial daughter.

I turned back. I was standing in the middle of the room. I closed my eyes and imagined what it had been like for years, the rugs, the chairs, the clothes lined up in the closet, his side, my side. The bed, his side, my side. Then I opened my eyes.

The room was every shade of white, crisp and clean, like a new sheet of paper. The crown molding, the door and window frames, all had been repainted in white, and the fireplace surround was painted in a creamy off white, antique washed, and hand rubbed to match some of the furniture pieces. On either side of the bed hung long beveled mirrors that reflected the light from the tall hand painted lamps on the each nightstand—one was a round table from France with delicate curved legs and a mirrored top and the other a mirrored chest with a marble top.