Wedding Ring (42 page)

“It’s nice that way.”

She waited for the hard slam of gratitude that always followed his compliments and was pleased when it didn’t surface. “I’m glad everything’s okay at home. Work’s going okay?”

“As well as it can when pension plans keep shrinking no matter what I do.”

She felt no huge surge of sympathy, only enough to make her feel pleasantly human. “It probably feels like you have a finger in the dike. What more can you do, though?”

He smiled a little. “Exactly.”

She waited for him to say more, perhaps to tell her why he had come. She wondered how many times she had feared that any new conversation with Billy would begin, “Nancy, you know this marriage isn’t working, don’t you?” Now she was almost anxious to hear him say it, to put an end, once and for all, to the fear that he would leave her.

Instead he said, “Tessa told me about the quilt show. It’s a nice idea.”

Nice was not the word she would have chosen. She told herself he hadn’t meant to sound patronizing, but she wasn’t sure she believed it.

“Yes, well, she deserves the recognition. But she’s going to raise holy hell when she finds out about it.”

He gave the first genuine smile she’d noted so far. “You’ll find a way to bring her in line. You always do.”

“I don’t want to bring her or anyone else in line.”

He looked surprised.

“I just want her to be happy,” she continued. “I hope she will be. If she’s not, I’ll probably spend the rest of my life apologizing. But I don’t think I’ll have to.”

“Why don’t you show me what you have planned?”

She considered. She was about to tell him that wasn’t necessary when she realized that would be the old Nancy talking. The old Nancy let Billy off the emotional hook. She spoke for him, figured out what would please him most, decided how to provide it no matter what it cost her—and only rarely was the cost financial.

“I’ll be glad to,” she said instead. “We can start right here.” She gestured toward the trees. “We’re going to do part of the show out here. It’s such a lovely area, we want to use it to best advantage. We’ll string the quilts on lines between the trees. Over there,” she pointed, “we’ll have wooden stepladders with poles between them and some of the quilts hanging from the poles. We’ll add some other touches for decoration. An old cider press with a bushel of early apples, a wooden wheelbarrow filled with folded quilts, some potted flowers.”

“Very down-home and country,” he said.

She bristled. It took her a moment to soothe her own ruffled feathers. “I’ll show you what we’re planning indoors.”

They walked back up to the church in silence. The other women were in the foyer preparing to leave, and Nancy performed a quick introduction to Billy before they said goodbye. Once they were gone, the church seemed deathly quiet. All too suitable for the funeral of a long marriage.

“The church has a new social hall, very simple, clean lines, with white walls and wide windows. We’ll display eight quilts in here.” She led him into the hall and pointed out the places where the quilts would hang.

“We’re lucky,” she continued. “They sometimes use the hall as an art gallery. See what looks like a chair rail up high? We’ll pin hooks to the quilts—carefully, of course—and hang them from the rail. We don’t have to make more than an adjustment or two. Some of the women are working on that now.”

“Helen’s quilts will certainly brighten up the place.”

She was annoyed again. Pink flamingos and neon hotel signs would brighten up the place, too. Did Billy realize how condescending he sounded? Or was she just trying to find fault with him to make whatever was coming easier?

She took him into the hallway where the “giveaway” quilts would hang with their framed testimonials beside them.

“The quilts have meant a lot to people through the years,” she said.

“Sometimes even the smallest thing can have such a large impact.”

She bristled again. “Small? Mama’s quilts are no small thing. It takes her hours to make each one, even the simplest.”

“I just meant that at times of crisis, an act of simple kindness, like the giving of a quilt, can start someone on the road to a happier life.”

His answer was a good save. He’d been raised to practice tact and good manners, to say the things people wanted to hear. He had turned a put-down into a psalm. She didn’t believe a word of it.

“I’ll show you the rest of it. The lay leaders decided that using the sanctuary would be appropriate, so we’re choosing quilt patterns that fit there. Crown of Thorns. Tree of Life. Job’s Troubles.”

They peeked into the sanctuary, and he nodded approvingly. “There’s nothing that can take you back in time as quickly as a country chapel.”

“There’s nothing very sweet or simple about this place,” she said acidly. “They have an aggressive social outreach program and discussion groups on everything from Liberation Theology to the Jesus Seminar. The minister has turned them on their ears. Some people left in a huff, but more started coming. Mama’s not sure whether Sam’s an angel or the devil.”

He looked surprised, as if she was rarely so perceptive. “How do you know all that?”

She exploded. “I pay attention! That’s how I moved up from being the hillbilly you accidentally knocked up to the president of the James River Historical Association.”

He took her arm. “What’s going on here?”

She shook off his hand. “I’m just tired of your condescension, Billy. This isn’t some quaint little country-girl pastime. This is about my mother’s heart and soul, about all the things she is inside, about the way life can rob you of everything that matters, and you can still go on and create beauty.”

He was staring at her. “I don’t think your anger is about Helen’s life at all. I think it’s about yours. Do you think I’m condescending to
you
?”

She gave a short, humorless laugh. “I think you’ve done it so long, and I’ve encouraged it so long, that neither of us recognizes it for what it is. But yes, through the fog of too many years of marriage, I smell the stench of condescension.”

“Too many years?”

She turned away from him, staring out a long window that framed a distant mountain. “Too many years of groveling, Billy, of being ashamed of who I am, of wishing you really cared about me instead of merely felt a duty to stay married and remain a gentleman to your deathbed. I am so ashamed I bought into all that. I understand now why I did, what I was looking for that I’d never found at home. But I’m way past the age when I can blame who I am on anybody else. Not Mama, and not you. I just kept going on old feelings, old needs. So in the long run, the only person I can blame is myself.”

“Blame?” He took her arm and pulled her around to face him. “For what?”

“For staying in a marriage where I wasn’t appreciated. Being home these weeks, doing something constructive, something important right to the bone, it’s made me look at a lot of issues. Things are clearer here. People are easier to read, and I realized I’d stopped being genuine the day I said ‘I do’ in that storefront church in Nelson County. I’ve been trying to be someone or something I don’t even respect. Trying to imitate a woman I didn’t even like.”

“My mother?”

“Who else?”

He dropped her arm. “Nobody asked you to be like Mother.”

“Oh, I see that, and I take responsibility for my own shortcomings. But for the first time I can also see that I’m better than the people in your family, every one of them but you. And I have talents and feelings that matter, and a lot of love to give somebody who really wants it.”

His eyes were veiled, as they so often were. She had no idea what he was thinking.

“Was it a contest?” he asked at last. “Your background measured against mine, your family tree standing in the shade of mine? No one told me.”

“No one had to.”

“How long have you been unhappy?”

She wished it was that clear, that she could say “since the summer of 1976 or 1984,” and mean it. But of course things were never that simple.

“I wish I could tell you,” she said, staring out another window. “But I’ve been so out of touch with what I feel, I can’t. There were so many things about our life together that made me happy. Tessa, then Kayley. A lot of the committee work I did wasn’t important, but some of it was. I had a chance to make a difference. That meant a lot to me.”

“And what about me?”

She turned her gaze to him, drinking in all the things she had always loved about Billy Whitlock. “You married me because you had to, Billy. I tried to bury it, but I never forgot. I wanted desperately to measure up, to make you love me, but the harder I tried, the further apart we grew. I didn’t want to face up to it, but I should have a long time ago.”

“You didn’t want to face any problems we had because you didn’t want to lose the life you’d made for yourself in Richmond.”

His words hurt, but she deserved them. At least partly. Still, there was another part, the most important, he hadn’t touched on. “I didn’t want to lose
you
,” she said. “The life was secondary. I was willing to accept your crumbs because I didn’t think I was worth more. Now I know better.”

“That sounds like an announcement.”

“Better than a plea. That’s a significant step for me.”

“Why didn’t you want to lose me? Because of what I represent? Because I’m Tessa’s father? Because in Richmond, when you say you’re married to a Whitlock, all kinds of doors open that you thought were closed to you?”

She had danced around the truth. She was as bad as Billy when it came to expressing her deepest feelings. That thought made her sadder. Two people, married for so many decades, yet still unable to be emotionally honest.

The time had come. She knew it, but still, it was the most difficult thing she’d ever said to anyone.

“I had this fantasy that one day you’d look at me, and I would see that you felt a tenth of what I feel for you, and that would have been plenty. I love you, but I can’t live with that kind of fantasy anymore. I’m ashamed of myself for groveling. I’m worth more.”

His shoulders slumped. Billy, whose posture was so erect it seemed to add inches to his height. “I thought you were going to ask me for a divorce.”

“It could come to that.” She paused, because he was shaking his head. “Couldn’t it?”

He smiled his warmest smile; then he reached out and touched her cheek. “Nancy, I’m not giving you a divorce. You don’t want one. I don’t want one. We’ve had a good stretch of time here to think about it, and way down deep, we both know I’m right. That’s why we can finally have this conversation. At last.”

She had summoned every bit of resolve to tell him this much. Now, to be undone by kindness, seemed particularly cruel. Yet she couldn’t move away.

“I love you, too,” he said. “Maybe I didn’t at first, although I’m not even sure that’s true anymore. You were so different from the women I’d known. Insecure, yes. Vain, silly at times, always trying to be more than you needed to—”

She opened suspiciously damp eyes and glared at him. “This doesn’t sound like love.”

“But also warmhearted, unflinchingly loyal, so very bright and perceptive, except when it came to yourself.”

“And how perceptive were
you
? Didn’t you think that maybe once in a while I’d like to hear that you loved me? If you really did?”

“I did. Do. Will. But to be honest, I wasn’t absolutely sure how
you
felt. You’re right, you married me because you had to. I knew I stood for security, and later there was Tessa. We never seemed able to talk about anything important, like our feelings. I didn’t know how to ask. How
do
you ask?”

His hand crept through her hair and cupped the back of her neck. “But it was more than that. I just took the way I felt for granted. I took you for granted. It’s taken a lonely summer for me to get it in perspective. That’s why I’ve stayed so far away. I needed time to figure out exactly how to spend the rest of our life together. And now I’m going to need more time to figure out what this new Nancy means.”

“It’s not new. This is who I am. I’m just getting through the layers again.”

“I love the layers, too. But maybe I don’t love them as much as I love the woman who threw the tomato at me all those years ago.”

She realized with some surprise that she was not stunned by his words. She was not even vastly relieved. She felt very little except joy that this was finally all out in the open.

Because deep down, under all those layers, for all these years, she had been smarter and more perceptive than she had given herself credit for. Yes, now, nearly at the end of mid-life, her faith in this man and in herself had faltered, and the sad habits of a lifetime had left her confused and hurting.

But hadn’t she known all along that Billy cared about her? Despite all her fears and inadequacies, despite his inability to tell her so, despite her own inability to be honest about her feelings. Hadn’t she known that love had grown and eventually come to stay? Wasn’t that why she had remained married to him?

Because despite all the mistakes, the inadequacies, despite everything, she had
known
?