Once Upon a Time, There Was You (26 page)

He put down the brush, looked at himself in the mirror. He straightened his pajama top, hiked up his bottoms. Then he came back out into the living room. She was sleeping, now. He sat in a chair and watched her. He looked at the curve of her hip and the spread of her hair across the pillow, and he thought of other times he had done this, stood watching the rise and fall of her chest, trying sometimes to interpret the movements in her face caused by fleeting thoughts or dreams. He thought of the night he brought her home from the hospital after Sadie was born, how deeply she slept then; he couldn’t rouse her to eat, but her eyes would fly open at the faintest whimper from her child. He thought of a time they’d had a pretty spectacular night of sex, and she’d fallen asleep in her getup as she called it, a red, lacy nightgown he’d seen on a mannequin and brought home to her on Valentine’s Day. She didn’t like to fall asleep with it on; she feared Sadie seeing her in it. Most often, she would change back into her usual sleepwear: one of his T-shirts and a pair of her flannel pajama
bottoms. The other day, he’d seen one of those T-shirts in the laundry basket and he’d been glad for it.

He thought about going to watch Sadie sleep, but there was only so much a man could take in. Or bear.

“End of the line!” the bus driver says.

Indeed.

John sits still for a moment, lost in regret, and then sees that the driver is checking him out in the rearview, trying to see if he’s okay.

John stands quickly and holds up a hand. “Thanks!” he says, and goes onto the street. The sun is out now, the city brilliant in the light, and his heart lifts in spite of himself. Give the city its due: it actually is a dazzling place. He’ll walk around, see what’s for sale. Just for fun. Just for the relief of putting business in his brain.

27

F
or some time, Irene sits at the kitchen table, thinking. Oil and water, she and John seem to be, even now. She doesn’t know why.

She makes a cup of tea and nurses the idle hope that Sadie will hear the noise and come into the kitchen, seeking out her company. She doesn’t, of course. She stays in her room. And why not, when the pattern has been that all Irene does is try to talk her out of something she’s fiercely committed to? Irene was convinced that Sadie had been—possibly was still—in shock, that she had (again,
understandably
) rushed to the illusion of safety that her boyfriend and marriage represented. But now she was home! She was safe! She could take in a breath, reassess the situation. Surely she could see that she had made a mistake.

But now Irene wonders if the person in shock isn’t herself, if her own ability to reason and perceive isn’t hampered by a maelstrom of feelings, by her sense that she’s not quite in her own body, not able to employ any kind of rational thought. In the end, her daughter, her healthy and intelligent and strong daughter, is eighteen, and she’s gotten married. Is that the end of the world?

She finishes her tea, washes out her cup, and on the way to Sadie’s room decides to offer her daughter the gift of truly listening. Sadie knows how Irene has felt about this marriage; she
seems to understand the reasons for all her mother’s objections. But maybe Irene doesn’t really understand how Sadie feels.

On the way home, Irene thought that, of all the terrible fates that can befall one’s child, getting married too young didn’t even register. John has helped her to see that. Never mind that the two of them can’t seem to find a place of lasting comfort; he does help her gain perspective when it comes to their daughter. He has always done that. Damn it; she
likes
him, why can’t they get along?

She knocks on Sadie’s door.

“Yes.”

“It’s me. Can I come in?”

“Yeah!”

Okay
, Irene thinks.
She’s in a good mood. Don’t blow it
.

When she opens the door, Sadie is sitting cross-legged on her bed, making a list. “What are you doing?” Irene asks.

Sadie puts the list aside, covers it with a magazine. “Just trying to think of things we’ll need.”

“Can I see?”

Sadie hesitates, then hands her mother the list.
Dishware
, Irene reads.
Cheap vacuum. Dresser (use crates?). Mattress. Two lamps
.

Irene’s eyes fill, and she puts down the list and reaches for her daughter. Sadie is stiff at first, and then she is not. She hugs her mother back, then pulls away to sit expectantly before her.

“When we first got married,” Irene tells Sadie, “we got so many presents. A lot of fancy stuff that I had no use for, really: Silver trays, fancy cutlery. Cheese boards and fondue pots. Ice tongs, for Pete’s sake! But you know what I did like? I liked the little juice glasses with oranges on them. They were the kind of thing you could get at the dime store for next to nothing, and I just loved them. I used to set the table at night for breakfast the next morning. Two coffee cups, two plates, two forks, knives, and
spoons. I’d fold the paper napkins into triangles, and stick them in the tines of the forks, very fancy, you know.”

Sadie smiles.

“Someone gave us an electric coffeepot, and I would set that up, too, put in the grounds and the water the night before, and then leave it on the table ready to be plugged in, so convenient for when you wanted another cup! I thought we’d sit there every morning like Ward and June Cleaver.”

Sadie’s smile fades. “Didn’t you?”

Irene shrugs. “Not so much. We hardly ever had breakfast together until you came along.”

“Why not?”

“Well, mostly because your father didn’t like to eat breakfast.”

“He does now.”

“Well, he didn’t then.” Her voice has gotten thin, edgy.

“I believe you, Mom.”

“I’m sorry. I just …

“Okay. Let me see if I can say this. I think what’s bothering me most about your being married is that I’m scared for you, Sadie. That’s all. I want you to be happy in a marriage, and marriage is just so hard.”

Sadie studies her mother’s face. “Why? Why do you think it’s so hard?”

Irene looks across the room and out the window, where the sky has cleared and a redemptive ray of sunlight brings out subtle pastel colors in glass that is normally clear. She can smell the scent of after-rain, that hopeful mix of concrete and water and leaves and fresher air. She wishes, suddenly, that she were sitting on a bench outside alone, nothing on her mind but a jostling mass of birds at her feet, going after the crumbs she throws. Because Sadie’s question is too big, it’s too difficult to answer.

Finally, she says, “Here’s an example. Your dad and I had been
married about two weeks when I came home from work late—I used to do that now and then, stay late and catch up on paperwork. And after I left the hospital, I’d gone to get these smoked sausages that I liked. I was really hungry, and I wanted to cook up some of those sausages when I got home. Your dad was sleeping and I tried to be really quiet, but he came into the kitchen and said, ‘What are you
doing
, Irene?’ I still remember exactly how he said it. He was so pissed off, standing there squinting in the light. And I told him I was making sausages, I was hungry. He said, ‘It’s ten-thirty!’ and I said, ‘Oh, okay. I’ll just tell my hunger that you said that.’ And he went back to bed, and I just stood there thinking,
I can’t cook sausages late at night anymore
. And indeed, I never did again.”

“Mom,” Sadie says. “Can I speak honestly?”

“Yes. Please.”

“So what?”

“Okay,” Irene says. “I know that’s kind of a stupid story, but I only mean that once you get married, you—”

“First of all, you could have told Dad to go to hell. In a nice way. You could have said, ‘You know, once in a while I’m going to need to eat late, so get used to it.’ ”

With some difficulty, Irene holds her tongue.

“Or you could have decided that, since he had to get up early, you’d eat out when you wanted to eat late at night.”

“But I wanted to come home and eat,” Irene says.

“And Dad wanted to sleep. Jesus, Mom.”

“Please don’t talk that way to me.”

Sadie looks at Irene, shaking her head. “We are not at all alike,” she says, finally.

Irene says nothing. It hurts to hear her daughter say this, with such superiority, with such evident relief.

“So … Did you want something?” Sadie asks. “I mean, when you first came in here?”

“Yes. I wanted to ask you to invite Ron and his mother to dinner tomorrow night.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“Really.”

“Yes!” Though now she is not so sure anymore.

“What time?” Sadie asks.

“Seven.”

“Okay,” Sadie says, happily. “I’ll ask.”

Irene looks around the room. Sadie has made a pile of things to be thrown away. In it is a Barbie doll, lying so her legs are splayed at a ridiculous angle. “Throwing away your dolls?”

“Well, I thought I’d donate them somewhere. Although they might not want that one on top. I gave her a haircut. Didn’t turn out too well.”

Irene smiles. “I did that once. I cut my Ginny doll’s hair, and it looked awful. I tried to glue it back, and then it looked even worse. I was going to throw her away, but I thought it was unfair. So I buried her. I gave a funeral, and all the neighborhood kids came. We had cookies and cherry Kool-Aid afterward.” She smiles at Sadie. “Huh. My first catering experience.”

She goes over to pick up the doll, straightens her legs. Then she holds it up to face Sadie and speaks for it in a high voice. “Hey, Sadie!”

Nothing.

Irene puts the doll back in the pile. Nothing works anymore. Nothing.

She stands. “Sadie? I can help you with household things. I have a lot I can give you.”

“Thanks.”

“And also, I want to say that … Well, I’m almost there.”

“Okay.”

“But if you could just tell me one thing,” Irene says, coming to sit on the bed beside her daughter. “Right before you took your vows, right before you said ‘I do,’ was there any hesitation? Did you feel any ambivalence at all?”

“No, that was you,” Sadie says, looking directly into her mother’s eyes.

So it was
.

“All right. I’m going tell you something,” Irene says.

Sadie waits, wary.

“I had a friend in high school who got married when she was seventeen, the day after graduation. Lisa Weltner. I still hear from her every now and then. I think she has the happiest marriage I’ve ever seen. So I just want to say, I know you can get married young and have it be successful. There. There’s your first wedding gift from me.”

“Thanks, Mom. Seriously.”

“Although I must also tell you the guy she married was five years
older
. Five years makes such a difference at this time in your life.” She looks at Sadie. “I mean, you’ll grant me that, right?”

Sadie leans back so violently she bumps her head hard against the bed frame.

“Are you all right?” Irene asks, automatically.

“How come you can’t give with both hands, Mom? How come you have to give with one and take away with the other?”

“I’m only trying to suggest that you haven’t acknowledged that so much of this is … Sadie, I believe you care for Ron. I believe you love him. But what you’re undertaking is so much harder than you know. Not because you’re so young.
Nobody
knows how hard it’s going to be until they’re in the middle of it, no matter what age they are when they get married! But by entering into this so young, you’re just handicapping yourself further. Couldn’t you have waited a couple of years to get married?
Couldn’t you have trusted that everything would last that long? What are you so afraid of that you had to get married so soon?”

“What were you and Dad so afraid of that you had to wait so long?”

Irene sighs.

“I need to be alone, now,” Sadie says. “Please.”

Before Irene goes out the door, Sadie says, “So … is dinner still on?”

“Yes,” Irene says, but she thinks her daughter probably knows something about what she is feeling. Which is that she wishes she could rescind the invitation. She’s not ready after all. Even if she wants to be, she’s not.

“Can Meghan come?”

Irene turns around. “Sadie. Sadie. One of the reasons I’m struggling with this is that you seem to think this is … This isn’t fun. This isn’t a
lark
. This is serious. My inviting these people to dinner because—”

“
These people
are my husband and my mother-in-law. And the only reason I’m not living with them right now is because Ron wants me to try to get things right with you before we find our own place.”

Irene ignores this, which is a little like ignoring a knife in your side. She speaks calmly. “Inviting Ron and his mother to dinner is not so much a social event as it is—”

“An inquisition?”

Irene looks at the thin band of gold Sadie is wearing on her left hand. Sadie told her she and Ron picked it out at a pawnshop. She thinks of a friend of hers, whose daughter recently got a two-carat diamond and was planning a wedding that would cost over one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Irene thought it was gross. She remembers thinking,
I hope when Sadie gets married, she keeps it simple
.

“I’m trying to meet you in the middle, Sadie. I really am.”

Sadie nods. “Yeah. When’s Dad coming back?”

“I have no idea.”

Irene closes her daughter’s door, goes into her bedroom, which at the moment is not even her bedroom, and closes that door, too. She sits at the edge of her bed, stares into her lap.

Fine. Let her go. Good riddance. She sees John’s sneakers by the bed, and she picks up one and flings it at the closet door.
When’s Dad coming back?
She picks up the other shoe and throws that one, too.

From Sadie’s room come the muffled sounds of her talking. Telling someone about her nutty mother, no doubt. Good riddance.

28

“O
kay, so we’ll be there at seven tomorrow night,” Ron says. “My mom wants to know what we should bring.”