On the rare occasions when she brought the necklace out, I would finger the velvet case—purple, the color of royalty—and stare at all those blinking diamonds wondering, as any little girl might, if the necklace had magical powers. I felt sure it did.
“The maharaja personally selected each gem,” my mother would insist. “Imagine . . . every topaz, sapphire, and diamond handpicked from thousands.”
The story would change a bit with each retelling, but never the great fortune of its recipients—that Mughal empress, rajmata, princess . . . and, someday, me.
More than anything, my mother loved telling how her father had hidden the necklace from her mother, who’d fallen in love with it on a trip to India. Apparently, my grandmother wanted it desperately, but my grandfather scoffed at her. Don’t be ridiculous, Vivian. It’s far too extravagant. But secretly, he’d bought it for her, telling the jeweler if he ever breathed a word to Memsahib—and here, my mother always paused for effect—he’d cut out the poor man’s tongue.
But we all know that getting what you wish for often comes at a price. Vivian’s life was upended once again by a husband who had multiple affairs and secretly fathered a child out of wedlock. When Malabar graduated from college, my grandmother gave her the necklace in an elaborate gesture. She placed the crushed-velvet box into a larger box and wrapped that box, then she put that gift-wrapped box into a larger box and wrapped that one too, going on and on until there were ten nested boxes, the final one big enough to hold a television set. As my young mother opened one box after the next, did she dare to hope about what might be inside? I imagine she did.
The old refrain from my childhood echoed in my head: Rennie, you must promise me that you’ll never, ever sell or give away this necklace, no matter what.
My reply: I never will.
I’m not sure if I can trust you with it. Another refrain.
You can, I always insisted.
I should bequeath the necklace to a museum where it will be safe and appreciated.
I’ll treasure it forever, I promised.
Always?
Always.
Well, then, my mother would say, if you’re very, very good, you shall wear it on your wedding day.
I couldn’t believe that it was finally happening.
Seventeen
The call came on a Sunday morning in late February, a month that saw no notable seasonal change in Southern California. The days were shorter and slightly cooler, but mostly, San Diego remained as it always was: bright, sunny, temperate. We were still in bed when Jack picked up the receiver and said hello. We’d been talking about our upcoming wedding, now five short months away.
So far, plans were proceeding smoothly. The invitations, simple and elegant, had arrived and needed only to be addressed. Jack’s groomsmen were enthusiastic about the prospect of a week on Cape Cod, and my bridesmaids were all lined up: Kyra and three other close friends, one from childhood, two from college. My mother had found a caterer, my father a jazz quartet, and my aunt, a minister, had agreed to officiate. In two months, Jack and I would make a last prewedding trip to Massachusetts to sample the menu, taste the wine, select music for the official dances, and finalize everything from flowers to tablecloths to wedding cake to wedding vows.
There had been only one glitch so far: Earlier in the week, while watching the local news, we’d learned that the owners of the La Jolla bridal boutique where I’d purchased my wedding gown had filed for bankruptcy and skipped town, leaving dozens of brides-to-be without dresses. Luckily for me, time was on my side. I was disheartened and inconvenienced, but I knew I’d be able to find another dress between now and July.
What had rattled me more than anything was the deception. Just a few weeks earlier, I’d entered the store and felt at home immediately. I’d brought along a photograph of my mother’s necklace with the goal of finding a wedding gown that could do it justice. The owner of the store, a stately older woman, took her time with me. She examined the picture of the heirloom carefully and determined a portrait-style neckline would best highlight the piece.
I spent hours trying on gowns, stepping up onto a white-skirted platform surrounded by large mirrors as the woman positioned every dress just so and elaborated on its unique attributes—pearl buttons, a well-placed ruffle, intricate lacework. I could take in my reflection from every angle. Meanwhile, she fussed over me like a daughter, describing how each dress made me look—sophisticated, innocent, regal. When I stepped into an unadorned pleated silk gown, she said, “That’s the one.”
I saw that she was right. The dress was perfect.
“My work here is done,” she said. “You’re going to be spectacularly beautiful in this gown and the necklace will shine.” She went on to offer me bits of marital advice while showing me shoes, veils, and other bridal accoutrements. “Best buy it all at once. You’ll feel great not to have to think about any of this again.”
I was grateful for her kindness and happy to pay the hefty deposit, 50 percent of the total. Of course, it had all been a charade, an elaborate scheme to rob me and, no doubt, other unsuspecting brides. The proprietor had to have known all along that she was going out of business.
“Hello,” Jack said again into the receiver.
I heard the rasp of Lily’s scratchy voice greet him on the other end, but she moved quickly past small talk. Jack’s mother had some urgent news to impart.
“Take it easy, Mom,” Jack said, trying to calm her. “I can’t hear you. You need to slow down,” he said gently. He looked confused. Lily had been having heart problems and I wondered if she’d gotten bad news about her health.
Then abruptly, Ben got on the line.
“What’s up?” Jack asked. “Why’s Mom so upset?”
I could hear Ben’s voice as clearly as if he were talking on speakerphone and it took only about three words for me to realize that this was the conversation. It was finally happening, this moment. The scene that my mother and I had imagined unfolding in a thousand different ways was unraveling before me right now as I sat in bed with Ben’s son.
My heart sped up. I bolted upright and looked at Jack, who was staring back at me dumbfounded, uncomprehending.
I nodded and tried to convey absolutely everything to Jack in a look, my mind careening from thought to thought: Yes, this is the secret I was telling you about . . . I’m sorry, I should have told you myself . . . I didn’t have a lot of options . . . It wasn’t my fault . . . There’s no road map for this . . . What are you supposed to do when you fall in love with your mother’s lover’s son?
But at this moment, I heard these for what they were: excuses. Jack would now surely hate my mother for breaking up his family, and he’d blame me for keeping her secret. His mother would never forgive me for my role in the affair. This would be the end of us.
Here was Ben, revealing the secret we’d tended for a decade, but the conversation was not proceeding how my mother or I had imagined it would. Ben was apologizing profusely, yes, I could hear that, but he was not explaining to Jack the difficult road that lay ahead for their family. He was not telling his son that while he cared deeply for Jack’s mother, Lily, he had fallen in love with someone else, my mother, Malabar. Ben was decidedly not explaining that he was leaving his marriage of forty-five years.
No, something different was happening. Ben was apologizing for the “terrible mistake” he’d made. This “betrayal,” was how he put it, this “affair.” The person on the other end of the line did not sound like the man I knew. Where was the self-assuredness and the swagger? Where was the confident man who knew how to do everything from dress a deer to take over a company? There was desperation in this voice. He was pleading. This was not the man who’d promised he’d always love and take care of my mother.
Where the hell was that Ben?
The man on the line wanted his wife’s forgiveness. He wanted his son’s forgiveness. He was begging for it. This man, this stranger on the phone, evidently had a great deal a
t stake.
“I’m so sorry—” the voice said.
Had Ben already called my mother? I wondered. Or was it possible that Malabar was still savoring a late-morning cup of tea along with a buttered slice of toast and fresh preserves, enjoying what would turn out to be the last moments she would ever have thinking Ben Souther would always choose her over Lily? I glanced at the clock on our bedside table. It was almost noon on the East Coast. Instantaneously, my worry had shifted from the catastrophe befalling Jack to the one raining down on my mother. I was already swimming in her grief.
“I’m so ashamed for what I’ve put you and your mother and your sister through,” Ben continued. “I hope someday you’ll be able to forgive me.”
I hadn’t been included in the list of aggrieved parties. If there were good guys and bad guys in this fiasco, it was clear that I was in the wrong camp, and Lily knew it. I felt nauseated and my hands started to shake.
Jack, however, remained as calm as ever. He seemed to have skipped right over shock, disbelief, and anger and landed on the terra firma of rationality.
“I understand, Dad,” he said into the receiver. “Yes, I understand,” he repeated. I watched his head go up and down in a barely perceptible nod. “It’s understandable, it’s just not acceptable.”
No part of me should have been surprised at the speed with which my fiancé reconciled himself to the idea that his father had been having a decade-long love affair—never mind that the woman was his godfather’s wife, his mother’s friend, and, most incredibly, his soon-to-be mother-in-law.
(In the weeks and months to come, Jack would often repeat variations on the phrase Understandable but not acceptable. It became our mantra, a distilled morsel of truth that we could chew on as we tried to swallow a decade of deceit, my own included.)
Somehow this phone conversation was still not over. Ben had one final thing to say, a last promise to make. He swore to Jack on everything he held dear that he would never see or speak to my mother again.
Jack and I were getting married in July. Ben’s promise would be impossible to keep, of course, and we all knew it. There would be other family occasions as well, perhaps grandchildren someday. Our union would ensure these two families remained enmeshed for years to come.
“I’m so, so sorry,” I whispered after Jack hung up. Tears stung my eyes.
“You knew this. You knew about this,” Jack said.
I nodded.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Jack asked.
“I tried,” I said. “I honestly tried.” It wasn’t easy to explain to him what I didn’t understand myself. The narrative I had convinced myself of—that I’d tried to tell Jack the truth and he’d opted not to know—suddenly seemed ludicrous. “I was only fourteen,” I said, and I apologized again.
“Look, Rennie, it’s not your fault,” Jack said.
Oh, but it is, I thought. Perhaps some part of me had been hungering for this disaster all along. At least now Jack would finally see me for who I really was: a girl so lost she couldn’t tell right from wrong or separate her own feelings from her mother’s. And perhaps, if we teased apart these emotions and untangled my complicated history, we could set things straight and have a fresh start. He would know what I’d done and love me despite it, and I’d be free from the immense burden I’d been carrying.
“It’s their fault,” Jack insisted. “My father. Your mother. Two of the most unbelievably self-centered people I’ve ever known. Charles was my godfather. He was Dad’s best friend. What kind of person sleeps with his best friend’s wife? And think about my mother. Can you imagine what she’s going through? You think you love and know someone only to find out he’s been deceiving you. Honestly, the whole thing is reprehensible.”
I began to weep. Wasn’t that exactly what I’d done to Jack? Kept him in the dark? And I’d never once tried to imagine what Lily might feel.
“And you,” said Jack, taking my face in his hands. “You were just a kid. That’s the most unbearable part of it.”
I stifled the urge to insist on my own complicity. I wanted to see things from Jack’s perspective, one in which I was an innocent sucked into a drama not of my own making or choosing, in which I was blameless.
“How could my father possibly have gone along with involving you? And your mother. That woman is—”
“My mom was just—” I was about to explain that Malabar couldn’t help falling in love.
“Stop,” Jack interrupted me. “You don’t even want to know what I think of Malabar.”
Eighteen
A few weeks later, Jack and I headed to Massachusetts to visit our parents and finalize wedding plans. Since Ben had chosen to stay with Lily, my mother was in a state of abject despair. Every one of our conversations ended with her bewildered “How could he have done this to me, Rennie?” But I could not attend to her broken heart just yet. Our first stop was the Southers in Plymouth. No sooner had I pushed through the revolving doors at Logan Airport in Boston and gotten a whiff of brackish New England air than I experienced Lily’s anguish like a slap across the face. Even though she was still forty miles away, her pain felt more real to me here than it had in California. As we cruised down I-93 toward Cape Cod and the islands, it felt less like Jack was driving and more like we were being pulled home by some invisible force.
We would spend two days with Jack’s parents, the balance of the week with my mother, and then have dinner with my father, who lived on Cape Cod when he wasn’t in San Diego with Margot. This arrangement felt like yet another divorce, reminding me of my failure to be fair, always granting a disproportionate amount of time to my mother.
Jack’s foot was heavy on the gas pedal, and the afternoon sun pulsed through the trees along the highway, rhythmic and hypnotic, dislodging bits of a disjointed monologue I hadn’t known was stored in my head.
I’m so sorry, Lily. I was only fourteen. I never meant to hurt you. I love your son, I promise I do. I am sorry. I am sorry. I am sorry.
A day or two after Jack received the call from his parents, I’d sent my mother-in-law-to-be a letter apologizing for my involvement in the affair. To apologize seemed like the proper thing to do, although the correct response in this situation was anybody’s guess. I also wanted to present an official version of events from my perspective, to set the record straight. As I recall, everything I wrote in the letter was true, and yet I must have padded corners and rounded edges to accommodate the aspects of myself that needed protection: my mother’s confidante, Jack’s fiancée, a mixed-up young woman who desperately wanted to feel like she was still a good person.
“Everything okay?” Jack asked in the car, resting a hand on my thigh.
Everything was decidedly not okay. I didn’t know how I could face Lily. Or Ben, for that matter. And I kept imagining my mother nursing her broken heart with a bottle of bourbon. My skin crawled with invisible ants, and the seat belt dug into my neck. I focused on a flock of geese flying overhead in a long V.
“Remember, this is about them, not us,” he said.
I didn’t know how he could believe this, though it wouldn’t serve me well to press the point. It was far easier for us to fixate on their problems and not our own.
If Jack felt anger or concern that I’d kept this secret from him, he hadn’t expressed it. Jack placed blame squarely on Ben and Malabar’s shoulders. He was furious with our parents. I understood his rage and perspective, but I had no sense of an injustice done to me. Instead, I was guilt-ridden and made excuses for everyone’s behavior, my own included.
One kiss, and Malabar had fallen hopelessly in love with Ben. Was that so very wrong? This was what I kept asking myself. Malabar hadn’t set out to hurt anyone. She just wanted the happy ending that had been promised. And what was she to do now that the prince had gone off script? My mother’s broken heart felt like my own. Lily and Ben still had each other—their life together, their home, all those exotic trips. Malabar was the one who had come up empty.
I had grown up with this drama, and even though I was starting to see the situation with adult eyes, my fealty remained with my mother, whose pain seemed to eclipse all others’. I also knew that if Jack’s and my roles had been reversed, I wouldn’t have been able to forgive him so readily or overlook the fundamental issue of misplaced loyalty. I’d cleaved to my mother rather than the man I’d promised to spend my life with, a fundamental—indeed biblical—betrayal.
We drove the rest of the way to Plymouth in silence.
Even as early as May, Lily’s garden was something to behold. Along the Southers’ driveway, cherry trees blossomed and tulips and daffodils burst forth with the promise of more to come, which, after a brutal New England winter, was no small covenant. From the bright green hill of their front lawn, a flock of white pigeons took off in synchronized flight. Beautiful, I thought. As if reading my mind, Jack mentioned that they might be dinner. There was a pigeon coop on the other side of the house and a bucket over which Ben would drain the pigeons’ blood after slitting their necks.
I heard Ben before I saw him.
“How do!” he called, rushing out to greet us.
He and Jack back-patted briefly, and then Ben came around to my side. I felt Lily’s eyes on us from somewhere, behind a curtain perhaps. I glanced up at the kitchen window, but its reflection yielded nothing. Ben hugged me tightly and didn’t let go.
“I’m so sorry, honey,” he whispered into my ear, and I felt his shoulders heave against mine. His cheeks were smooth and smelled of shaving cream. “I love you so much, and I hope someday you’ll forgive me. You’ll never know how I regret my actions.”
So here was my apology at last, but what did sorry mean in this context? Did Ben regret that he’d involved me as a child without thinking through the ramifications? Was he sorry for the pain he was causing his son and, by extension, me? Or was he talking to my mother, sending her a private message that I was supposed to deliver? Or, another possibility, was he sorry for colossally miscalculating what his wife’s reaction would be? For that is how Lily found out, I learned. In the end, Ben had simply decided to tell her.
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