Wife-In-Law (17 page)

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Authors: Haywood Smith

Tags: #Fiction, #Contemporary Women

BOOK: Wife-In-Law
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Since he’d given me the house, I decided it would be too rude to say no. “Just for a minute.”
He stepped inside, then closed the door behind him. Glancing around, he said, “You know, I never appreciated this the way I should have.” He looked at me with intensity. “I never appreciated
you
the way I should have.”
Two years ago, I’d have killed to hear those words, but now, they just made me wonder what he was after.
He looked down at his feet. “Betsy, I’m so sorry for what happened.”
Not what he
did,
what
happened,
like having an earthquake open up the ground and swallow him, instead of choosing to throw me away.
He ventured a glance at my face. “It didn’t take long for me to realize what a horrible mistake it all was.”
Translation: his secretary wouldn’t wait on him hand and foot the way I had. I took perverse satisfaction in that.
His voice was hoarse when he said, “It’s so lonely on my own.”
I met his eyes with a confidence born in the ashes of what I’d lost, and for the first time, I saw him for the man he was, his strengths balanced by very human flaws, just like me. Just like everybody else in this crazy world.
Mistaking my acceptance for encouragement, he ventured, “Do you think there’s a chance … Do you think you could ever forgive me?”
I shook my head, feeling pity for him. “I did that a long time ago, Greg, for my own survival. I couldn’t have healed if I didn’t.”
He brightened. “’Cause I’d like to see you, if that’s okay. Start over. Give it another chance.”
To my awe and amazement, I wasn’t even tempted. It felt so wonderful.
In that moment of insight, I realized that I had helped make him the spoiled, self-centered man he was, but I wasn’t stupid enough to sell myself back into his service. I truly felt sorry for the guy. “Greg, for the girls’ sake, it would be nice for us to be on friendly terms. I’d like that. But I can’t see you anymore.”
I didn’t even feel compelled to explain!
“I swear,” he said, “I’ve changed.”
“So have I.” Thank God, thank God. “Greg, you deserve to be loved for who you are. I hope you find that. But I’m very happy on my own now, and I don’t want to complicate things with a relationship—with anybody.”
I could tell he was shocked. He’d probably thought I would fall into his arms and beg him to come home.
Men.
I could see the wheels turning in his brain. “Okay, friends, then,” he said. “We could see each other as friends.”
Translation: “I’ll wear her down.”
I took Greg’s arm and steered him toward the door. “Time to go. I’ll see you tomorrow when ya’ll get back from the museum.”
Greg hadn’t gotten as far as he’d gotten by giving up. “Come with us. It’s not a date. Just family time.”
I opened the door and steered him toward the porch. “Go home. I’m exhausted. Or have you forgotten? We buried your best friend today.”
“I haven’t,” he said. “And I don’t have a home to go to, just a house, with nobody there.”
The world’s smallest violin played “Hearts and Flowers,” but I couldn’t blame him for trying. “Nice to see you. Bye.”
To my horror, he spun around and took my face in his hands, drawing me hard against him the way Richard Gere grabbed Guinevere in
First Knight,
one of my favorite movies. Then he planted a foul, demanding kiss on me, his tongue trying to part my tightly closed lips.
Gross!
Instinct told me to knee him in the groin, but a deeper wisdom sent me absolutely inert, teeth locked behind compressed lips and arms rigid at my sides.
It took a few seconds for him to realize the siege hadn’t worked. He let me go and stepped back. “Sorry. I … I just miss you so much, and I wanted to … sorry.”
It was pretty funny, actually. “Had to try that, did you?” I asked, deadpan.
Greg smiled like a kid caught with his fingers in his mother’s wallet. “I thought …”
I put my splayed hand on his chest and shoved him out the door. “Well, now that you know, go forth and find somebody to love. With your money, that shouldn’t be hard. Good luck, and good night.”
He stood there in dismay as I closed and locked the door, then armed the alarm. “Good night!” I repeated through the door.
And it had been a good one. A very good one. No more ghosts hovered on the corners of my heart or my house.
Greg would find somebody else to take care of him.
I just never in a million years imagined it would be Kat.
 
 
A
week after I got home from visiting Amelia in California, my phone scared me awake at one o’clock in the morning. Fearing the worst, I groped for the cordless receiver on my bedside table, then fumbled with the buttons in the dark.
I hit the red one instead of the green one, and the ringing stopped.
Rats. Who’d be calling me at this hour, and why?
I sat up and turned on the two-fifty bulb in my bedside lamp, blinding me as I squinted down at the bedside table and poked around for my reading glasses amid the cable remote, my night cream, the ceiling fan control, my lip balm, and my bedtime pill minder. I found them hiding under the TV listings from the paper. By the time I got my glasses on and looked to see who’d called, the phone rang again in my hand, jarring me so, I almost dropped it. This time I hit the green button and answered with an anxious, “Hello?”
“Why didn’t you tell me he was getting married?” Mama’s voice accused.
“Lord, Mama, you scared me half to death. It’s one o’clock in the morning!”
“Well, it’s only ten in L.A. where Amelia lives.” Mama scolded. “She just called me and spilled the beans. So that sorry ex of yours has taken up with that hippie girl, right across the street, in your face. I’d scratch the bitch’s eyes out. And his.”
This was why I hadn’t told her. I’d never hear the end of it. I didn’t respond.
“According to Amelia, this has been going on for months,” Mama accused. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Mama, that’s none of my business anymore. I’ve told you a hundred times, I’m over Greg. What he does and who he sees is none of my business.”
“That’s the biggest load of hogwash I’ve ever heard of in my life,” Mama countered. “Why in God’s good green earth would that woman want anything to do with him, in the first place? She has to know how many assets he hid from the courts during your divorce. The man’s nothing but a liar and a cheat.”
“No, Mama,” I countered, amazed to find myself taking up for Greg. “He lied and he cheated, but that’s not all he is. He was a wonderful husband to me for more than twenty years, and a great father to the girls. What he did when we broke up doesn’t erase that.”
“Blah, blah, blah,” Mama responded. “You might be able to put that baloney over on the girls, but this is Mama. I don’t buy it.”
Fuming, I told her, “Greg made a big, fat, wretched mistake that ruined things between us, but that doesn’t define him. I loved him once, so it makes sense that somebody else might love him too.” I meant that, but it came out sounding hollow, even to me.
“That hippie girl has betrayed you,” Mama accused for the jillionth time.
Mama had only met Kat twice, and briefly, decades ago when Kat had ridden with me on my food runs. Mama had been so rude both times that Kat had avoided her ever since, staying in the car whenever she’d accompanied me after that.
Mama’s harangue went on. “She never has been worthy of your friendship. Havin’ you arrested. Goin’ around lookin’ like some old washerwoman who just fell out of a hayloft.”
“Mama, if you start in on Kat again,” I warned, “I’m going to hang up and unplug the phone for three days. I mean it.”
A disgruntled pause followed, then, “Well, if you ask me, it’s adding insult to injury, them living there across the street in sin.”
“Mama,” I scolded.
“And that wedding. Of all the places in all the world, they’re getting married
there
?” Mama let out a derisive snort. “I can’t believe they’re rubbing your nose in it that way.”
That did it. Miserable, I hung up, then unplugged the phone and turned off the light. Flouncing back under the sheet, I tried to shoo away the hurt and anger that had bloomed inside me, but Mama had laid the situation out straight, and her resentment was contagious.
Maybe they were rubbing my nose in it, but seeing it that way would only make me miserable, and I had no intention of letting that happen.
After ten minutes of tossing and fretting, I got up and went to the bathroom, then took five milligrams of Ambien. On further consideration, I took another five milligrams, then drank a cold bottle of water from the white minifridge on the far side of the bed, and promptly fell asleep.
As I began to come back from the depths of oblivion the next morning, I dreamed that Kat and I were in her kitchen, both of us wearing the wedding rings Greg had bought us, arguing with him over some awful, elusive thing. In the safety of my dream, I finally felt the anger I hadn’t allowed myself when he’d betrayed me. As Greg screamed at me, blaming me for everything he had done, I surrendered to my fury for a terrifying, exhilarating ride, and Kat was riding with me.
Then, without warning, Kat turned and stabbed Greg right in the stomach, releasing a fire hose of blood. Eyes and mouth open wide in surprise, Greg looked at the life spurting from him, then toppled like a fifty-foot pine. Shocked, yet eerily calm, I bent to find his pulse, but there was none. And the awful thing was, that made me happy.
Kat dropped the knife, then hugged me hard, repeating, “It’s over. It’s over. It’s over.” A tidal wave of relief brought me awake.
Then, immediately, guilt and practicality pounced on me.
Horrible, to wish such a thing on the father of my children. And stupid, to be glad Greg was dead.
Greg carried a shipload of life insurance, but he’d told Emma that Kat was the beneficiary now. So if he died, Kat would be sitting pretty, and I’d be left high and dry—since his pension had gone with the wind, along with Arthur Andersen—with just half his Social Security to keep up my house and sky-high taxes. Not a happy prospect.
Since the divorce, I’d supplemented my alimony by doing makeovers for business types and special occasions, but I could never live, even modestly, on what that brought in.
So I definitely didn’t want Greg dead. I needed him alive and paying alimony.
Just not across the street.
 
The day of the wedding dawned clear, but as hot and muggy as the butterfly house at the botanical gardens. Emma was still sleeping when I went down to the mailbox at eight to get my paper before breakfast. Three steps into the humidity, I felt perspiration coat my whole body like a soggy blanket. The weatherman said it was the hottest decade in recorded history, and I believed it.
How had I managed, growing up in heat like this without air-conditioning?
I remembered taking off my nightgown as a child and standing in front of the roaring box fan in my window, the night air like an oven as it blew past me. Mama wouldn’t run the attic fan, because it sucked up the bills and junk mail that were lying all over everything stacked in the hallway.
Just thinking about it gave me a hot flash.
Grateful that I didn’t have to go back to that life, I hurried into the house and splashed cold water on my face, then wiped my arms and neck with a cool, damp paper towel. Outside, I heard the roar and jingle of a truck, and looked out the sidelight in the foyer to see a lawn crew pull up and start cutting my grass.
Guess Greg didn’t want anybody thinking I wasn’t well provided for.
Worked for me.
Happy to have it done, I made the coffee, then fixed my usual breakfast: three pieces of bacon microwaved inside thick paper towels till it was crisp and dry, and three scrambled eggs with just a little water and margarine. I’d been doing low-carb to get rid of the pounds I’d gained in L.A., and I was almost back down to a bearable weight of 150. With my height and big bones, I looked almost slim at that weight—if I dressed very carefully, which I always did, even when I was just home by myself.
The truth was, I was afraid not to. Sure as I let myself go, some rich, gorgeous, caring unattached male would turn up on my doorstep, and there I’d be, looking like the Wicked Witch of the West. Plus, image was my business. I had to look my best.
At the sound of air brakes out in the cul-de-sac, I left my halfeaten eggs and looked out to see an Aaron Rents truck pull into Kat’s driveway and start unloading white-slip-covered gilt chairs for the wedding. And unloading. And unloading.
How many people had they asked to this thing, anyway?
Not that it mattered. I’d just be glad when it was all over and things settled down again.
Pouring my Eight O’clock coffee, I wondered idly where Kat and Greg were going for their honeymoon. Greg took me to Gatlinburg, Tennessee, but he’d probably take Kat somewhere expensive and exotic. Not that I cared. At least they’d be gone for a while.
A fleeting thought of arson flitted through my mind before guilt extinguished it.
I had just settled down to finish my eggs and bacon when my phone rang.
I looked at my watch. Eight-thirty.
Probably Mama.
Rats.
I considered not answering, but got up and went for the receiver anyway. It might not be Mama. Maybe it was Kat, telling me she’d come to her senses.
It wasn’t Kat; it was Amelia, calling at the wee hours in L.A.
“Hey, honey,” I answered in a worried tone. “Is everything okay?”
“Oh, Mama,” she said, her nose stopped up from crying. “I just can’t stand that Daddy’s doing this to you.”
Oh, for heaven’s sake. “Sweetie, he’s not doing this
to
me. He’s doing it for himself. I’m glad he’s turned his life back around. He has a right to be happy.”
“Not after what he did to you,” she said. Her tone dropped for a menacing, “I want him to suffer, the way he made you suffer.”
I had to laugh. “Honey, you don’t mean that. He’s your father, and he loves you. And anyway, if I’m okay with this, why aren’t you?”
“Because I know you’re not, not really,” she countered, “not down inside. You’re a one-man woman, just like me.”
I didn’t want to tell her that I’d never felt the passion for her father that she felt for Sonny. “Sweetie, I am currently a
no-
man woman, which suits me absolutely fine. I wish I could convince you. Why won’t you believe me?”
“Because I can’t stand for you to be so alone now, that’s why.” She blew her nose, but it didn’t help. “Why don’t you come here and live with us?”
I heard a groggy, startled, “What? You said what?” from Sonny in the background, but Amelia ignored him.
“I mean it, Mama. You could sell the house and make a new start. Prices here are better than they’ve been in decades. You could have a fabulous condo. It would be fun.”
Not for me.
I liked breathing, and I was too firmly rooted. “Sweetie, you know I can’t leave your grandmother.”
“Well …” Amelia paused to consider, then resumed with a bright but stopped-up, “I know. We could find her a little place out here and fix it up really cute, then give her a Mickey Finn and keep her knocked out till she wakes up in her new house. Fly her by air ambulance.”
Amelia, Amelia. She just didn’t get it.
“Honey, she can’t leave her home or her things. It would destroy her. She’s too sick to make an adjustment like that.”
Chastened, Amelia said, “Well, maybe there’s some treatment—”
“She won’t take the meds, and I can’t shove them down her throat. Mama’s crazy, but she’s not incompetent. The kindest thing I can do is let her stay where she is and visit her and bring food, so she eats decently.”
Amelia started to cry again. “There you go, looking after everybody but yourself. Mama, you have a right to be happy too. At least move to somewhere else in Atlanta.”
I bristled. “I am not going to let this run me out of my home. I love this house. I have it just the way I want it, and I’m not going anywhere.” Shades of Mama.
“Well, at least leave for the rest of the day, then. Promise me you won’t be there when they … Just go to a movie. Or have lunch with one of your
real
friends, then go shopping. Pick out a new outfit, my treat. Just please don’t stay there. That would be too tragic to endure.”
For whom? But Amelia always had overdramatized. Still, she really was upset.
“I might go out for lunch and a movie,” I conceded, “but I’m not promising anything. It’s too hot to go anywhere.”
“I’m glad it’s hot,” Amelia said. “I hope they all roast at Kat’s, and everybody stays home.”
“Amelia,” I scolded, “that is most ungracious of you, and it pains me to hear you say such things.”
“Then I won’t say them. But you can’t stop me from thinking them.”
I couldn’t stop
myself
from thinking them, but I kept that to myself.
Emma appeared at the door, yawning. “Who’s that?”
Good. Let
her
deal with her sister. “It’s Amelia.” I proffered the phone. “Why don’t you talk to her while I fix your breakfast?”
Emma brightened. “Great.” She took the phone. “Hey, Mealy”—a nickname Amelia had always hated—“what are you doing up at this hour? It’s like, five there, right?” She made a face as Amelia started in about the wedding. Unable to get a word in edgewise, Emma covered the mouthpiece and whispered, “Whole wheat bagels with low-fat strawberry cream cheese, please.”
As if I didn’t know. She’d been eating bagels since way before bagels were in. “Coming up.” I left the dregs of my now-cold eggs and went to defrost some bagels.
I tried not to eavesdrop, but couldn’t help it.
Listening to Amelia’s tirade, Emma sighed in disapproval. “Amelia, why are you being hysterical about this? It’s not gonna change anything. Daddy’s a free agent, and so is Kat. So just get over it, okay?”
I could hear Amelia’s outrage from where I was standing.
Emma scowled. “I am
not
being disloyal to Mama!” She pulled the phone away from her ear to ask, “Mama, do you think I’m being disloyal to you if I go to the wedding?”
I put the bagels into the toaster oven, then took the phone. “Emma is not being disloyal to me by going to the wedding. Amelia, honey, you’ve got to let go of this, or you’ll make yourself sick. I’m fine.”
“Mama,” she said in a calmer tone, “please let me speak to Emma.”
“Only if you promise not to let this come between you. That’s the only thing that bothers me about this wedding. I don’t want it to come between you and your sister.”
Chastened, Amelia promised it wouldn’t.
“All right then,” I told her. I handed the phone back to Emma, who accepted her sister’s apology, then told her to go back to bed, and hung up.
The toaster oven dinged, and I fixed the bagels, then served them to Emma with some orange juice.
“Thanks, Mama.” She licked some cream cheese from one. “Man. What a drama queen.” She took a bite, then paused, studying me as I sat across from her to drink my coffee. “You don’t really think I’m betraying you by accepting this thing with Kat and Daddy, do you?”
“Don’t talk with your mouth full,” I chided.
Emma’s expression clouded. “You didn’t answer my question.”
I shook my head. “How many times am I going to have to tell you girls I’m okay before you believe it?”
“Sorry.” My younger daughter sent me a worried look. “It’s just, well, Amelia said it’s not natural for you to be so calm about all this.”
Oh, good grief. Why can’t a person be well adjusted? “Would you rather I shut myself away like Mama did?” I asked. “Or maybe you’d feel better if I go Jerry Springer during the ceremony. Would that be better?”
Emma laughed. “No. I think you’ve been great about this, Mama, really I do. I just don’t want you to stuff it all inside. That could eat you up.”
I lifted my coffee mug her way. “Don’t worry, honey. I get it all out of my system in my dreams.”
She cocked back with a grin. “Tell, tell.”
“Never. Now eat your breakfast so you can go to the salon and get your hair done for the wedding.” As usual, she’d put her thick, wavy brown mane into a hasty ponytail.
I reached into my purse and handed her the certificate I’d gotten before she came. “Here. Manicure and pedicure, my treat.”
“Rad!” She accepted it with delight, then sobered. “I sure wish Amelia could be as sane as you are. All she wants to do anymore is rag on Kat and Daddy.”
“She’ll have to work this out with her daddy in her own time,” I said, “but you are certainly entitled to tell her that subject is off limits.”
“Good idea.” Emma got up and gave me a hug. “Thanks, Mama. Not just for the manicure.”
I savored the feel of her in my arms. “For what, then?”
“For being so surrealistically
good.
”
She wouldn’t think so if she could read my mind—or my dreams.
Emma nestled against my shoulder the way she had as a child. “I sure do miss you in Alaska.”
“I miss you too.” I gave her a brief squeeze, then pulled back to look at this plump, confident woman my little girl had become. “Any chance I can talk you into moving back home?”
She smiled, shaking her head no. “Down here, men look right through me because I’m not some blond flat-belly. But in Alaska, women are so scarce that I’m the belle of the ball.” Pride radiated from her. “I get asked out all the time, and not just by the nerds. I’m talking
manly
men. Gotta tell ya, it’s great.”
“Try not to break too many hearts,” I said as we released each other.
“I’ll think about it.”
Thirty minutes later, the house was spotless and Emma was off to the salon. I went into her room to lay out the slenderizing dress we’d picked out for her to wear, and I decided to give it a fresh press. Then I hung it in her closet and went back to my room to pile up in bed and watch back episodes of
What Not to Wear
I’d recorded on the DVR.
Usually, this was a real treat for me, but on that particular day, I felt restless after only two episodes. I got the cable remote and went through everything on the guide, but nothing appealed to me. On Saturdays, even cable left a lot to be desired if you weren’t a kid or a sports fan. Nothing worth watching on the pay-per-view either.
Nonplussed, I turned off the set and got up to check the laundry. The hampers were empty, and so were all the trash cans in the house, leaving me without a single chore to pass the time.
Back in the bedroom, I decided that maybe I
should
have lunch and go shopping with somebody.
I got out my address book and started calling the girls I knew fairly well from church and charity work. The first two didn’t answer, so I didn’t leave a message. The next three I called were tied up for the day. After all, it was last-minute.
I made five more phone calls before I ran out of people I felt comfortable asking, which made me pretty grumpy.

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