Bridge To Happiness (44 page)

I joined her and we took out the ice cream cartons. “I craved black-eyed peas and ham with Scott, shepherd’s pie with Phillip, root beer floats and pizza with you, and chili cheese omelets with Mickey. There’s a lot ahead of you. A lifetime, really. Kids are forever.”

“I told
Keely
today.”

I groaned. “That poor girl.”

“I know. Everyone around her is having babies.”

“She and Phillip have options. I expect they will be okay.”

“Phillip is back driving to work again. The Porsche must have done the trick. Good idea, Mom, giving him Dad’s car.”

Only Phillip and I knew the real story, and it was our secret. It wasn’t the car. The car only got us both to the place we needed to be.

Molly and I sat down at the game table, bowls in hands. “Hmmm. This is so good.”

“So how do you feel?” I asked.

“I’m not as tired. I’m so glad we called off the wedding. So glad.”

“Yes, well, Ellie can’t wait to burn things from someone else’s marriage mistakes for a change. She claims she has eventually burned every dress she ever wore to get married in as a sacrifice to the divorce gods.

“She would,” Molly said. “You old broads are pushy lot.”

“Ah. I’ve graduated from cougar to old broad. How sweet.”

“Speaking of sweet, how is your boy candy?” Then Molly laughed.

“I talked to him last night. He said hi and to tell you that you can only marry a man you give your panties to.” I took a bite of ice cream and then added, “Did I ever tell you that I tried to set him up with you when I met him on the chairlift?”

She stared at me and I saw when she realized it was true.

I shrugged and said, “Yes, well, we mothers are a pushy lot. You’ll see.”

“Why
is
that exactly?”

“I can only speak for me. I think it’s because I feel like I want you to have everything. I want you to have it all. Although there have been times when I’ve felt as if I had turned into this obnoxious, overbearing mother who thinks she knows what’s best for you.” I paused.

Molly merely took another spoonful of ice cream.

“Okay, here’s the part where you’re supposed to say, ‘Oh no, no, no! Mother, you could never be that horrible person.’”

We laughed together and she took my hands in hers. “I know you’re coming from a good place, and I love you for it.”

“Well,” I admitted. “I didn’t listen to my mom either. I remember sitting in the kitchen and thinking she was so out of touch. She couldn’t possibly understand what it was like to get married. I was certain she had forgotten all the things I thought were important.”

“I miss Grandma.”

“Me, too.” I smiled, open the game table drawer and took out a different set of cards. “Set the bowl down, Shortcake, and I’ll teach you Canasta.”

“So pour me another Cosmo, March.”
Ellie held her martini glass up in the air and I leaned over my trio of dearest friends and refilled their glasses.

“Me, too. I need another drink before we throw away a small fortune in engraved wedding invitations.”

“
Harrie
? You’re the doctor,” Ellie asked. “With my body fat, how much alcohol can I consume before I’m legally drunk?”

“What body fat would that be Ellie? You
lipo’d
most of it out when you were married to the plastic surgeon.”

“So how big should we make this fire?” MC took a poker to the fireplace and stoked the flames, then threw on some more wood. She stood back, eyeing the fire for much longer than necessary. She was stalling.

Four large white boxes stamped with Crane were stacked in the center of the family room floor and MC,
Harrie
, and Ellie had come over ostensibly to help me get rid of them. But that was three and half hours ago and not a single invite was yet burned. But we were on our third pitcher of cocktails.

Rio was coming tonight.

“Hand me a box. Let’s burn them,” Ellie sipped her drink. “I should have burned the invitations to all my marriages and cancelled the ceremonies, too.”

“Maybe if you stand close to the fire, Ellie, you can get a faux peel,”
Harrie
said. “Cheaper than divorce from the city’s top plastic surgeon.”

“Bitch. What medical school did you graduate from?”

“Fuck U.”

“
Harrie
!,” MC shrieked. But the rest of us were laughing.

“That was good,
Harrie
. Let me pour you another,” Ellie took the cocktail shaker and dumped it into
Harrie’s
glass. “The more you drink, the funnier you are.”

“That’s because she drinks so seldom,” MC said.” Would you want your doctor to be a drunk?”

“That’s why I divorced the plastic surgeon,” Ellie said, and she tossed half of a box of invitations in the fire and they flared and snapped and the heat in the room swelled more than I thought was smart.

MC jumped back. “Maybe this isn’t such a good idea. Let’s recycle.”

I picked up the boxes and carried them out toward the garage. Recycling was my original idea. Ellie and the others just used the ceremonial burning as an excuse to meet Rio.

Just as I kicked the back door closed, I heard the doorbell. As I walked past the family room, my friends were tiptoeing (like the Pink Panther) into the living room, closer and closer to the front door. I was laughing when I opened it.

“Hey
darlin
’.” That voice, that voice . . . .

I heard Ellie suck in a breath.

Rio pulled me into his arms and kissed me senseless.

MC was giggling.

He pulled back and looked into my eyes. “We’re not alone.”

I shook my head.

Rio looked over my shoulder, where a few yards away my best friends were lined up like foot soldiers in the living room.

Ellie stepped away first, her Cosmo in her hand. She walked closer and eyed him up and down. “So you’re the singing cowboy?”

I laughed because it was so Ellie.

“I’m the singing cowboy,” he said. “And you must the infamous Ellie.” He went down on one knee before she could blink and he began singing with a forced, off note twang about an old cowhand on the Rio Grande only he changed the words to encompass his downfall from a bad woman named Ellie.

I had not seen Ellie blush and laugh so hard in thirty years.

He met the others and we talked for a while. Every so often one of my friends would give me the okay sign.

Finally he went into the bathroom and I stood up. “Okay. You need to leave now. Go. Go. He’s mine.”

“Okay, okay! You’re no fun at all, March.”

“Is Eugene outside?”

“Of course. We’re drinking aren’t we?”

I waited for Rio. “My friends have to leave,” I said pointedly and he walked with us outside.

He’d left his bag and a guitar case by the door and he picked them up as he came inside. A few minutes later we were in the house with the doors closed.

“I’ve missed you,” he said.

My arms were around his neck in an instant, his arms were around me, and I was in a world of his scent and taste, and it wasn’t long before we went upstairs.

About eleven that night,
after we had messed up the sheets and taken a shower, I came out from blowing my hair dry and Rio was on the bed, leaning against the huge pillows wearing only jeans and his guitar. His hair was still damp from the shower and I just took in the view. He was picking out a tune.

It was okay, seeing him there. He belonged in my bed, wherever that was. He was deep inside my heart, and my head. I loved him, madly, deeply loved him.

“I have a present for you,” he said. “Come sit.” He patted the bed. I crawled on top and sat cross-legged.

“It’s called
Because He Loved You
.”

The title registered and I put my hand on his thigh. I smiled at him, looking at me and wearing that familiar tender look I knew was for me alone, and his face grew fuzzy through my teary eyes, and Rio began to sing:

You met him too young with stars in your eyes,

He taught you truths and never told lies.

His love was honest and not for show

He had a dream to fly upon snow.

Together you made his dreams come true

Because he loved you . . .

Because he loved you . . . .

The years of my youth were wild and free,

I searched for someone who could see the real me.

And you were in another place and time,

A place where you could never be mine.

You learned what it meant—a heart that was true,

Because he loved you . . .

Because he loved you . . .

The world said my love was a sin

I loved and lost again and again.

And I paid the price with my name

No one could ever forget my fame.

But you and he knew what to do,

Because he loved you . . .

Because he loved you . . .

I thought I could never love again

But then, but then, but then . . .

There you were
sittin
’ next to me

Willing to see me for what I could be.

And soon, together, our hearts are true

Because he loved you . . .

Because he loved you . . . ..

Spring in Sparks Nevada is a mercurial thing. You can get frosted by snow, or blown by wind, pelted with rain, or turned bright red from the hot rays of high altitude sunshine. Today is a celebration, of three generations of families, brought together because of mistakes and tragedy, kept together by a simple but sometimes elusive thing called love.

As I sit on a bench under a sprawling oak tree and watch my family with the Sierra Mountains behind them and a great blue bowl of Nevada sky over us, a year from the day I stood here and married a forty five year old singing cowboy, before all our children and their families, Scott and Renee, Phil and
Keely
, pregnant again with another set of twins, Molly, Mickey and Rio’s son Duncan, and the grandchildren Miranda, Tyler and Trey (Turkey), Phillip’s twin girls Lola and Eva, Molly’s flame haired daughter Bea, named after my mother, all forming a happy, warm circle around us, our friends watching nearby. I didn’t know I could find that kind of joy again.

How lucky am I? I am March Randolph Cantrell Paxton, and I was named for the time of year I came into the world. My heart was crushed one night on a one way street in San Francisco, and in its place was left a black stone so hard and so painful, I could hardly live with it inside me, let alone carry it around; I did not know how to go on. So I limped and trudged and fell my way through the days, never thinking, never believing, I could find my heart again.