Magnolia Wednesdays (20 page)

“You know,” Melanie said in the silence. “I’m going to need to say something to the kids about their cousin-to-be. I don’t want them surprised in the wrong way or unclear about what’s going on.”

Vivien nodded.

“Now, tell me how Stone feels about the baby.”

Vivien continued to stare up into the ceiling, but there were no answers there. It was an incredible relief not to be shouldering the burden of her secret alone anymore. She’d been dying to talk to Melanie about her pregnancy. She’d begun to feel overwhelmed by the enormity of what lay ahead and was keen to share the experience with someone who had already been through it. But accepting help and support also opened her up to unwanted advice. Melanie considered marriage and motherhood her greatest achievements; she would never understand Vivien’s reservations about either.

“He doesn’t know,” Vivien said so quietly that she almost didn’t hear it.

“What did you say?” Melanie sat up on the foot of the bed and waited for Vivien to do the same.

Shoulder to shoulder, they turned to face each other.

“He doesn’t know I’m pregnant,” Vivien said. “I haven’t told him yet.”

Melanie’s forehead creased in confusion. “I don’t understand,” she said. “Don’t you love him? Are you afraid he won’t want to be involved?”

“No,” Vivien said, all the laughter gone as if it had never been. She caught a glimpse of the two of them in the dresser mirror. She was fuller and rounder than Melanie; her hair was shorter. Her eyes more uncertain. But at the moment they wore equally earnest expressions.

“Just the opposite,” Vivien said. “I’m completely afraid that he will.”

MELANIE WAITED IN the kitchen while Vivien changed into the black knit maternity top and slacks. No doubt she’d need at least one trip to the potty before they could leave to meet Ruth and Angela, who had offered to come before class to help decorate the ballroom for the holidays.

Melanie closed her eyes and massaged her forehead as she contemplated the Christmas season—their third without J.J.—that lay ahead. Once again they’d have to decorate without him, bake cookies and drink cider without him, wake up Christmas morning and exchange presents without him. Time was supposed to heal all wounds and in many ways the gaping hole in their lives had begun to knit; it just took so little to tear it back open.

Opening her eyes, Melanie turned her attention to the mound of clutter that covered her kitchen counter. Needing to be busy, she pulled the trash can over and began to work her way through it. The circulars and sales pieces went into the trash. The school notices and miscellaneous were stuffed into a cubicle above her kitchen desk where they would most likely sit until the beginning of the next school year when she would finally feel safe in jettisoning them. The most difficult to deal with were the quasi-personal things like the flood of Christmas letters that had begun to arrive. Some were from people she hadn’t spoken to in years but who apparently felt the need to fill her in on every single thing that had happened in the past twelve months.

Pretty much none of these letters mentioned children who had ended up in jail, were still living at home because they refused or were unable to get a job, or whose social skills were nonexistent. In these letters only the positive was worth mentioning, and the more positive the better. Even those couched in humor were designed to make the recipient feel as if their family didn’t quite measure up. They were exercises in one-upmanship cloaked in holiday cheer.

Catherine Dennison’s, which had been mailed despite the fact that the woman lived only a few houses away, was a prime example.
Claire, Pucci, and I wish you the best of holidays. We will be celebrating with friends in Aspen again this year and can hardly wait to hit the slopes.
A photo of the three of them—who knew skis came doggie-sized—was included. Pucci’s ski clothes were the height of doggie couture, and the small ball of fur looked quite determined behind his designer ski goggles.

In the new year, Claire, who has been identified as a potential merit scholar, will take the SAT. Although we typically travel to Europe over spring break, this April will be spent touring Ivy League schools. We will do our best to keep you posted.

Melanie crumpled the letter and dropped it in the trash. She couldn’t even get Shelby to talk about the SAT let alone sign up to prepare for it; their relationship seemed to worsen by the hour.

“Viv!” she shouted up the stairs before heading out to fire up the van. “Hurry up! We’re going to be late.”

Despite Melanie’s impatience, Vivien stopped in the downstairs guest bathroom to make what seemed like the millionth pit stop of the day. As she washed her hands she noticed that the washbasin didn’t exactly sparkle. When she looked up at her reflection in the vanity mirror, it was pockmarked with water spots. Rushing out to the garage, she spied several black streaks on the hardwood floor.

As they pulled out of the neighborhood and onto 120, she said, “You need to have a talk with your cleaning people, Mel. I think they’ve gotten a bit lazy.”

Melanie didn’t look at her as she said, “I had to let Amanda go eight months ago. I just couldn’t justify the expense.”

“Oh,” Vivien said, realizing as she spoke that she hadn’t actually seen a cleaning person since she’d been at Melanie’s. “I thought she came while we were out.” She turned to Melanie, who was still looking straight ahead. “But someone’s been changing my sheets every week and delivering fresh towels. And . . .” Vivien’s voice trailed off as she realized who that someone was. “Good God, Mel, why didn’t you say something?”

Melanie shrugged, finally turning to look at her. “What was there to say?”

“Well, I would have at least taken care of my own room and bath.” Vivien cringed when she thought of all the work she must have added to Melanie’s already overwhelming load; the wet towels she’d dropped in the hamper without a second thought. “I sure as hell hope Shelby and Trip have been helping.”

Melanie snorted. “Right. You’ve seen what it takes to get them to clear the table or do the dishes. It takes a lot more energy to force them to do something than it does to do it myself.”

“Have you been doing everyone’s laundry?”

Melanie continued to stare out the windshield, her eyes on the road. “I taught both kids how and every year I swear I’m not going to touch their clothes. But Shelby would just wait until she didn’t have a single clean thing to wear and then use that as an excuse for not being able to get ready for school. And Trip would keep wearing his dirty clothes until you could barely be in the same city block with him. It just wasn’t worth the hassle.”

“Well, that’s ridiculous. You can’t do everything all the time. We need to get them on the stick and I’ll certainly help.”

“Have you ever mopped a floor or really scrubbed a toilet bowl?”

“Well . . .”

“I never had, either. I mean we always had Evangeline and whoever she was torturing at the time. And after J.J. and I got married he insisted we have someone in every other week for the heavy cleaning. But the economy sucks and I had a lot of the insurance money in stocks and, of course, business at the studio is down.” She paused as she slowed for a light. “I just can’t see spending money on a cleaning service when I can handle it myself.”

“Right,” Vivi said as she berated herself for being so dense. Tonight she’d discovered how little attention she’d paid to her sister’s pregnancies, but at least she’d had the excuse of distance and work. How could she have been living in her sister’s house for over a month and not noticed that her sister was the maid?

20

A
T THE MAGNOLIA Ballroom, a low samba played over the speakers. In a far corner a couple practiced a choreographed routine while an instructor looked on. The man was tall and lithe with silver hair and patrician features. The clothes he wore were black and well tailored. His partner looked a good twenty years younger and had a dancer’s svelte body. They moved gracefully in each other’s arms, each movement of the head and hand intentional and eye-catching. “That’s Lawrence Reardon and his partner, Carlotta. They’re competing next weekend,” Melanie explained. “They’ve been with Enrique for a long time; he does all their choreography.”

Ruth and Angela stood near a group of tables piled high with cardboard boxes marked “Xmas.” Ruth held an electric menorah. Angela, who was wearing what Vivi had come to think of as her trademark baggy black, stood next to an artificial Christmas tree roughly her height. She flashed both of them a smile.

Ruth gave Melanie a big hug. Vivien got a nod and the once-over. Without preamble Ruth asked, “When are you due?”

Nonplussed, Vivien bit back the “None of your business” and “What makes you think I’m pregnant?” that sprang to her lips.

“She didn’t think anybody had noticed,” Melanie said.

Ruth snorted. “I may be getting old, but I’m not blind. Although at first I did think she was just getting fat.”

“Well, I hadn’t noticed,” Angela said with an odd little grimace at the word “fat.” “That’s great. Congratulations.”

“Yes,” Ruth added somewhat grudgingly. “Mazel tov. I didn’t realize you were married.”

Vivien felt the heat rise in her cheeks. “I’m not, and according to my ob-gyn it’s not actually a requirement.”

“No. But it’s a lot better for the children to have two parents,” the older woman replied.

“Yes, well,” Melanie said stiffly. “That may be. But it doesn’t always work out that way.” She slipped an arm around Vivien’s waist in a show of solidarity. “For all sorts of reasons.”

It was Ruth’s turn to flush. She was clearly unused to being at odds in any way with Melanie. “Of course not, but . . .”

“And I don’t think any of us need to pass judgment on the other.”

“Well, of course not, but . . .”

Melanie didn’t let Ruth finish. “Here,” she said as she turned to the boxes and began to open them. “Let’s put the snowflakes up first. That’ll be the biggest job, because I want to cover the whole ceiling except the area immediately around the chandeliers.”

The three of them began unpacking the boxes while Melanie went to get the ladder. “She always protects you,” Ruth said to Vivien. “No matter what you do. Or don’t do.”

“I know,” Vivien said. “And I know I don’t deserve it. But it’s kind of amazing, isn’t it?”

“I think it’s great,” Angela said, her hands overflowing with snowflakes, her expression wistful. “Both James and I are only children. I, for one, would love to have a sister or brother to run interference for me. Or at least deflect some of my parents’ attention.”

Vivien looked at the bride-to-be and wondered, not for the first time, about the mixed signals she sent. She was young and attractive and engaged to the son of a major sports celebrity, yet she hid what appeared to be an above-average figure in clothes at least a size too big and seemed oddly determined not to call attention to herself.

Vivi would have liked to know why, but it wasn’t really her business nor did she want to get too personal. She was just passing through. Observing and reporting. She shouldn’t get any more involved with the people here than a scientist might get with the earthworm he was dissecting.

Parental distance was apparently an alien concept to Ruth Melnick. “You believe a parent can give too much attention, too much love?”

Vivien looked at Ruth. “Do you really think love and attention are the same thing? We’re debating mother love versus mother attention,” Vivien said when Melanie returned, curious to see whether Melanie, who was not only Caroline’s daughter but a mother in her own right, would feel the same as Ruth. “Ruth thinks they’re one and the same. I’m not so sure.”

“Well,” Melanie said. She’d gotten the ladder positioned and was now giving the question serious thought. “I think everything I direct at Shelby and Trip is out of love and wanting what’s best for them, though they probably wouldn’t agree. But I know from being our mother’s daughter that a lot of things she thought were best for me weren’t. And that loving your child doesn’t automatically make you right.

“I mean, if I’d listened to Caroline, I never would have married a . . . gasp . . . Republican,” Melanie continued.

“Or chosen to live in the suburbs. Or sent my children to public school, even one as good as Pemberton.” She looked at Vivi. “And if you had paid the slightest bit of attention to her, you certainly wouldn’t have become a network-level investigative reporter living in New York City. But I think in her way she loves us. She just loves us best when we’re doing what she thinks is right.”

Vivien was having a hard enough time coming to grips with the idea of becoming a parent without thinking that she might be the kind of parent Caroline was.

“I’ll do the hanging if you want to hand the snowflakes up to me,” Angela volunteered.

Still intent on their conversation they formed a chain, sort of like an old-fashioned bucket brigade, but they passed gossamer snowflakes on string instead of pails of water.

“My mother has become someone I hardly recognize,” Angela said as she climbed the ladder then reached down for the first snowflake. “My parents have always been so levelheaded and supportive. Now they’re obsessed with the details of the wedding. I know part of it’s their relief that I’m actually getting married; the other part is their amazement that I’m marrying Cole Wesley’s son. That’s how my parents say it, ‘Our Angela is marrying Cole Wesley’s son.’ I’m having a hard time believing it myself.”

Angela removed the ceiling tile and hung a snowflake at each corner before replacing it. Then she climbed down to reposition the ladder. “I mean it’s such a big step.”

Melanie offered another snowflake. “Being married to J.J. was the best thing that ever happened to me,” she said. “Well, that and having Shelby and Trip. Being a family.” Her eyes glistened. “There’s nothing better than that.

“Don’t you agree, Ruth?” Melanie asked.

On the dance floor the couple glided effortlessly while Enrique watched, but they might have been on another planet. Vivien felt like the four of them were an island unto themselves.

“I would have said the same as Melanie when I was her age,” Ruth finally said. “Even a few years ago, I wouldn’t have questioned the life I’ve had with Ira. Or that we would simply go on like we always have. But now . . .” Her voice trailed off as she seemed to struggle to find the right words. “Now, well, things are a lot different than I expected.”

They worked until the entire ceiling appeared to shimmer and glow, softening the stark angles of the ballroom.

“I love the snowflakes,” Melanie said as she pulled strands of tiny white lights from one of the boxes. “Let’s put these around the mirrors.”

“Our lives have been so different.” Angela picked up their thread of conversation as they began to frame the mirrored walls with strings of the lights. “I’d barely been to a professional sporting event before I knew James. Between his dad and his work, sports are pretty much his life. I can’t go to everything; I don’t even want to. But I hate for him to feel like I’m not interested.”

“What do you think?” Melanie asked once they’d gotten the lights plugged in.

“Festively elegant,” Ruth said and all of them agreed as they considered their collective reflection in the mirror. They were different ages and sizes and, Vivi thought, they had little in common but membership in a dance class and their regard for Melanie.

“Well, I’m sure James’s feelings for you aren’t based on how many games you make it to. Or how you feel about sports.” Again, Melanie was all reassurance, a veritable poster child for love and commitment.

“If you ever can’t make it to something, I happen to have a nephew who would love to fill in for you,” Vivien said. “Don’t you think Trip would enjoy going out with James and his father sometime, Mel?”

Melanie blushed and shot Vivi a look. “We wouldn’t want to put the Wesleys on the spot, Vivi. I’m sure they . . .”

“No, I’m sure James and Cole would enjoy having him along,” Angela said. “I’ll check and see what’s coming up.”

Melanie raised a warning eyebrow at her sister as she thanked Angela. “We need to finish up,” she said. “There’s Naranya and Lourdes. It’s almost time for class.”

They began to move more quickly then, doing more decorating and less talking.

“You never did say when you’re due,” Angela said as they tidied up and prepared to join the others. “And I don’t know how to tell by looking.”

“Around the twelfth of April.” Vivien gulped. Just saying the date aloud made it so much more real.

“That’s just a week before the wedding,” Angela said, also gulping. Her face did not reflect unadulterated joy. “I guess it’s going to be a big month.”

Vivien just nodded her head. But what she was really thinking was that her due date was now barely four months away. There was a decisive movement in her belly and as her hand flew to the spot, she had the thought that the baby wasn’t any happier about that than she was.

“So I suppose that’s actually why you’re here. To have your baby,” Ruth muttered under her breath as they moved into their places in front of the now-twinkly mirror.

If she’d said it louder, Vivien might have felt compelled to argue with her. But now as she weighed the accusation, Vivi realized that it was true. She’d told herself she was here to research and write her column, pretended—even to herself—that she didn’t actually need anything from her sister or her parents. But that was just a great big rationalization. Once again Ruth Melnick was right about her, she thought after the Shipley sisters and Sally arrived and they stretched out into two ragged lines. When Vivien had found herself unemployed and pregnant, she hadn’t turned to Stone or drawn strength from her own life; she’d thrown up her hands and come running home to her family.

Her lack of self-awareness might have been comical if it hadn’t been so pathetic.

Vivien sighed as they began to stretch. Following Naranya was not as difficult now, so she could actually think even as her body moved. For someone who’d always hunted for and demanded answers, it was amazing how many she’d allowed herself to sidestep. Lying to others was bad. Lying to yourself was infinitely worse.

The kids were already up in their rooms when they got back to Melanie’s. Tired and out of sorts, Vivien hugged her sister good night and went up to her room. Logging on to her email account, she spotted an email from Stone and hesitated; just the sight of his name in her inbox dredged up a mixture of guilt and longing that practically paralyzed her. Bracing herself, she clicked it open. The email was short and carried none of the probing questions or recriminations she knew she deserved. Her relief at being let off the hook made her feel even worse.

Now know exactly what the middle of nowhere looks like. In fact, we’ve got footage of it. Have been on the northern border where the army is focusing its efforts on rooting out militant strongholds. The villages we passthrough barely have names and don’t appear on maps. Another aid worker was abducted this morning and I’ve got a lead, so we’re packing up to head back into the field. Don’t know when I’ll be able to be in touch again. Send me an email and I’ll pick it up when I can. Need to know that you’re okay and how investigation is going. Miss you, Stone.

She sat for a few long moments wishing Stone were here and a few more glad that he wasn’t. He was exactly where he was supposed to be, doing exactly what he was meant to do. He didn’t need his thoughts muddied by news of his impending fatherhood.

The house grew quiet around her. Vivien had been waiting for an opportunity to search J.J.’s study and when she felt certain that everyone was either asleep or at least in their room for the night, she tiptoed downstairs and went inside, pulling the door closed behind her.

She’d been in the room several times, but never alone. As before, the mahogany gun cabinet, emptied of all but dust, dominated the wall opposite the door. A deer head with an impressive rack and suitably glassy eyes had been mounted beside it.

The walls were a warm putty color and were covered with framed photos that spanned J.J.’s political career. There were shots of J.J. with his tie loosened and shirt-sleeves rolled up, shaking hands on what must have been a campaign stop, a shot of him in the county commission chambers where he’d begun his professional political career, another being sworn in to the Georgia House of Representatives. On the adjoining wall were the obligatory photos of J.J. with other political figures; one with each of the President Bushes, another with Governor Sonny Perdue. There was even a shot of him with California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, the two of them mugging for the camera and flexing their muscles.

The rest of the wall was covered with plaques and commendations, including one from Georgia State University. Easing herself into the executive chair behind the large and decidedly masculine desk, Vivien began her search. The first few drawers yielded little more than stray rubber bands and paper clips, a few dried-out pens, notepads with company names or logos on them. She wondered what Clay Alexander had been looking for. And whether he’d found it.