Keeper of Dreams (99 page)

Perhaps they were both aching for release, because this was enough to set them both to laughing. Uncontrollably, for several minutes, while Rachel and Sarah looked on. Rachel had no idea what Sarah was making of all this. For that matter, Rachel had no idea what
she
was making of it. She had heard from Jared about some of the legendary quarrels he had with his mother, but in all their umpty-four years of marriage she had never seen anything like this. Now, at last, she understood what the great secret of Jared’s family had been. Hazel had seemed to be the sweetest, most kind and understanding woman in the world when Rachel was growing up. But behind closed doors, she had a temper that must surely be listed in the
Guinness Book of World Records
, at least in the top five.

They stopped laughing. Jared spoke again, more softly. The moment he opened his mouth, Hazel started to speak, but Jared laid his hand on her shoulder and she stopped. The gesture looked familiar. Then Rachel realized: It was the same thing Jared’s father had always done, when things were getting tense. A hand on the shoulder, as if there was a button there that when you pressed it, Hazel became calm and quiet, at least for a moment, at least long enough to speak a few words of conciliation.

“Mother,” Jared said, “Mattie Maw was wrong. She may have been right about her feeling that you never truly belonged—she was a snob—and she was maybe right about
you
never feeling that you belonged because you’re a reverse snob, you’ve spent your whole life knowing that you were never worthy of associating with the only people that you thought were worth associating with . . .”

Hazel started to interrupt—apparently the hand on the shoulder was only good for a few sentences—but now Jared raised his other hand to signal her to wait. Stage two? How many gestures does he have left, Rachel wondered.

“But I wish you would look at reality. The reality is that Dad’s brother who married the apostle’s daughter hasn’t been in church for thirty years and my cousins are all suntanned men of the world who drive Porsches
and have divorces and marry younger women who get older after all but you’d never know it because their faces are stretched so tight you could use them as trampolines . . . but
you
, the one who wasn’t worthy to marry the grandson of an apostle and of the general president of whatever, not to
mention
the non-general authority colonizer,
you
were the one who kept your family in the Church and every single one of your children is now a temple-attending Latter-day Saint and frankly I think that counts for something. I think it counts for a hell of a lot more than whose marriage might have been the social event of the season in Salt Lake in 1935.”

“I can’t have done too well,” said Hazel, “because I raised a son who says ‘hell’ to his mother.”

Jared was furious. “You mean that out of all I said, that’s the only thing you heard?”

“Jared,” said Rachel, patting his arm—
her
calming gesture. “Jared, she was joking.”

He looked more closely at his mother, who, despite the tears running down her cheeks, wore a kind of smile.

“Oh. I guess it was funny then. I missed the point.”

“Well, I got the point. And yes, having worthy children
is
more important,” said Hazel. “But in case you didn’t notice, that’s exactly what I was telling Sarah. That the children make up for everything. You live in the children. You might get in your husband’s way, but if the children make him proud then it’s all worth it.” She started to cry again. “When your father was lying there in that hospital bed having all those heart attacks in a row do you know what he said to me? He said, You made us some good children, Hazie. That was the last coherent thing he said to me. Talking about
you
, Jared. And your brothers and sisters, of course, but you. And that was my career, my children. You married somebody who could do it all, children
and
being a good public wife. But all I could do was the children, and what I was telling Sarah, before I got interrupted, what I was telling her was that the children are
enough
. Only
you
had to burst in and demonstrate to her that even when you succeed in raising children who are every bit worthy to be part of this
distinguished
lineage, some of those children will still look you in the eye and tell you that you’re too stupid to live.”

“I didn’t say that you were—”

“I may not be college-educated, I may not have graduate degrees and your magma-come-louder—and
yes
I know it’s Latin and it’s magna cum laude but I also don’t care—because I still know when someone has called me stupid and that’s what you called me tonight, and I . . . don’t . . . have to . . . stand . . . for that.”

Hazel pulled away from him and hobbled to the stairs, starting the long climb up two flights to her bedroom.

Rachel started after her. Jared put his hand on her arm and mouthed, barely whispering, “Let her have her dramatic exit.”

“I heard that, you smart-alecky brat,” said Hazel from the stairs.

“No you didn’t, Mother. You always say you heard us, but you never do.”

“I should never have come to live here,” said Hazel.

“But at least it wasn’t your daughter-in-law you fought with,” said Jared. “It was your son.”

“Don’t rub it in,” she said. And, as she finally, arthritically, disappeared up the last few steps, she continued to recite, “How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child.”

“Jared, you have to let me go to her,” said Rachel. “She’s going to move out.”

“I’ll go to her,” said Jared. “But I’ve got to give her time to start packing. It’ll never work if she hasn’t got a bag open on her bed.”

“Are you serious? Are you taking this so lightly?”

“You forget that I grew up with this,” said Jared. “I was always the one she’d listen to. The fact is that she’s still acting mad but it’s over. She doesn’t say ‘smart-alecky brat’ until the fever’s broken.” He turned to Sarah. “My mother meant well, Sarah, but she’s wrong. You’re not just like her.”

“Yes I am,” said Sarah. “I’ve known it all along. If you’d only listened to me you wouldn’t have had to quarrel with your mother because
I’m
the one who told
her
that I’m not worthy to be part of this family and I’ve always known it, I knew it when Will asked me to marry him and I should have turned him down and now I have the two brattiest children in the family and I know that everybody looks at me and pities me because I can’t produce
good
children like Dawn the writer and Buck the historian or—”

“Sarah,” said Jared.

“I’m just so tired all the time and so I started crying as I was putting the boys to bed and Hazel asked me what was wrong and so I told her, I couldn’t help it, I’ve kept it to myself but I finally had to admit it to somebody that I know I’m failing at this and
that’s
why she was telling me the things she—”

“Sarah,” said Jared, “you’re not failing.”

“Of course you’re going to try to comfort me now and tell me that I’m doing just fine but we both know that it’s a—”

“Sarah,” said Jared softly, “do I have to fight with you the way I fought with my mother before you shut up and let me talk to you?”

She fell silent.

“I grew up with my mother. I grew up knowing how Mattie Maw judged my mother and how my mother judged herself and you know something? I actually
learned
from the experience. And Rachel was born with a good set of values or else her parents did something right but anyway, we both feel the same about this. Absolutely the same. I’m going to say it this once. And then I’m going to say it again every time you seem to need to hear it, until you finally hear these words echoing in your head when you go to sleep and when you wake up. Are you ready to hear this?”

“Yes,
sir
,” said Sarah, only a little bit snottily. Only pretending to be rebellious.

“All that matters to Rachel and me is that our children be good. That they stay firm in their faith and love the Lord and do good to everyone around them. You know what I’m talking about? It’s called the gospel. That’s what we care about. And all these years as we’ve watched our kids growing up, we’ve been so afraid, what if they find someone who won’t keep them strong in the Church? Especially Will. Because he’s so brilliant, he relies on his mind for everything, his concept of the gospel was always completely intellectual and he never realized it, he didn’t see that anything was missing. So I worried about him. And then he found you, and I thought, well, the boy has his head on straight after all. He didn’t go for one of his law school groupies or some high-powered on-the-make colleague. He didn’t go for a trophy wife. He married a good woman who is filled with love—so much love that the Lord even trusts her with two impossible children and she’s doing
splendidly
with them I might
add—and then at Thanksgiving comes the clincher. It turns out that Will, my intellectual son, has chosen a woman who completely fills the hole in his life. He married a woman who has visions sometimes. And he believes in those visions, and honors the goodness in his wife that keeps her that close to the Spirit. Are you listening to me, Sarah?”

“Yes,” she murmured.

“What I’m explaining to you is that I’m not an idiot and I wish you wouldn’t be one either. I’m smart enough to know that Will found the wife who is the answer to our prayers. I wish you would realize that, too.”

She burst into tears again and fell into Jared’s arms and hung there, weeping into his shirt. Rachel reached over and patted Sarah’s shoulder. “Me, too, Sarah,” she murmured. “What he said.” Then she looked up at Jared and air-kissed him. “I’m going upstairs before our guests form a search party. And you need to get up and talk to your mother before she calls a cab.”

As Rachel left, she could hear Jared saying to Sarah, “Will you be all right? Have we settled this nonsense, for the next couple of days at least?”

“Yes,” said Sarah.

“All right, repeat after me, Will is very lucky to have me. And his father and grandmother are
not
strange.”

Laughing, she started to repeat it and then cried again and then laughed and then Rachel was upstairs circulating among the guests.

Later than night she watched as Jared undressed wearily. “We have too many friends,” he said. “I’m getting too old to host these parties.”

“Don’t worry,” said Rachel. “Our friends are getting older, too. They’ll start dying off and then our parties will be smaller and more manageable.”

“I can’t believe you’d say something so heartless and morbid.”

“Jared, it’s about time you knew how heartless and morbid I am.”

He must have detected from her tone of voice that she wasn’t joking now. He turned to face her, gave her his whole attention.

“You gave me too much credit tonight, down there with Sarah. Maybe
you
valued her for what she means in Will’s life, but never once did I think of it that way. In fact I always sort of thought that Will married beneath him.”

“Do you think that now?” Jared asked seriously.

“Are you kidding? No, I don’t think that at all, now. In my heart I always knew better, anyway. Thanksgiving, when she and Will told about her having a dream that their baby was a girl and they both obviously believed it was from the Lord, that dream, I got this really uncomfortable feeling and for days and days I thought it was because there was something wrong with Sarah for having visions. But you know what I realized tonight? It was something wrong with
me
. Because her spirituality, it’s something wonderful, just like you said, it’s what Will needs. Only
I
was being a snob, I was looking down at her family and their cars on the lawn and—”

“You
are
a dreadful disappointment to me,” said Jared. “But you know what? I’ve decided to overlook this flaw in you and—”

“I’m not joking, you know. That was a very serious confession.”

He immediately dropped his teasing manner. “I know you had misgivings about Sarah, and I know you didn’t like her having visions. I kind of hoped that when she bared her soul to you about being molested as a child it would break down the barrier but it didn’t, not completely. Not till tonight.”

“So when you said what you did about how I was born with enough sense not to misjudge Sarah—you were lying?”

“It was future truth,” said Jared. “I knew that the moment I said it, it would become true. And it did, didn’t it?”

She pulled him down onto the bed beside her.

“I’m really, really tired, Rachel, even though you are still the most beautiful woman in the known universe. At least the most beautiful one with arms and a head—I’ve always had a soft place in my heart for the Venus de Milo.”

“I just want you to hold me for a minute.”

“I can do that,” he said.

“Your mother and Sarah both think I’m perfect, don’t they?”

“So do I,” said Jared.

“I’m not, though,” said Rachel.

“Close enough.”

“But while you’re busy understanding everything about me, I understand something about
you
.”

“What?” asked Jared.

“Tonight something happened. You’re not hung up tonight the way you have been ever since your father died.”