by Becky Durfee
“You know what? I have.” Jenny made eye contact. “And I like it.” She walked past him to the formal living room.
Greg followed her to the doorway. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Renovating.” This time it was Jenny’s turn to respond without looking. She picked up her putty knife and started to scrape at the wallpaper. “I figure since I have some free time, I’ll help you.”
“Unbelievable,” Greg muttered as he walked away. Jenny looked at the open doorway where Greg had just been standing, her smile so broad it rivaled her happiest moment. She returned to her scraping, eager to busy her mind with trivial tasks. As selfish as it seemed, for the next few hours she needed to not be psychic. Ideally, she wouldn’t even have had to be a wife.
She found herself looking very forward to Greg’s bachelor party weekend back in Kentucky. Three days without Greg seemed like a vacation; a lifetime without him would have been even better.
Later that night, Jenny sat in a guest bedroom, surrounded by six of her favorite paintings. She admired each one, periodically reaching out to touch their surfaces. Her fingers traced along the path of a river in a painting she’d made after her freshman year of college. With the weight of her final exams behind her, she’d relished heading off to the water’s edge each day to work on that painting in solitude. With the sun on her back and the birds chirping in the background, she’d felt invincible when she made that scene.
A second painting featured an autumn landscape with a mountain in the background. Creating this piece had provided her with solace when one of her dearest friends had moved away near the end of high school. Jenny smiled as she touched the spot on the mountain that had actually been a mistake but turned out to look better than her original intent. She remembered thinking at the time that she needed to allow herself to venture from the plan more often, but that wasn’t in her nature. Once she had an idea of how the painting should look, she only deviated by accident. Going forward, she decided in the guest bedroom, she would paint more freely; perhaps she could surprise herself with ability she didn’t know she had.
She turned to a third painting of a meadow, noting the golden-honey color of the wheat in the foreground. She had made this painting simply because she felt like it, which invoked a smile in her. She didn’t need a reason to paint. She enjoyed it, and that was reason enough.
After deliberating each of the remaining paintings, she delicately rewrapped five of them and put them back into storage. She left the sixth leaning against the guest bedroom wall, admiring it one last time before she walked away.
The following day Jenny’s task was to remove the quarter round from all of the baseboards so the floor could eventually be replaced. While the task wasn’t difficult, the constant crouching and gripping of the tool made her stiff and sore. By the time she had completed the upstairs and part of the downstairs, she was in desperate need of a break.
In the foyer she stopped to stand up and stretch for a moment. “You have three minutes to tell me why the fuck you’re here, and then I’m calling the police.”
The male voice was unfamiliar, so Jenny closed her eyes, trying to remain calm and still. A bald man in a sport coat materialized before her, looking very angry. The same voice from the construction site resonated through Jenny. “I’m here because I love your daughter. I want to iron out any differences you and I have because I’d like to propose to her, and I want to do it with your blessing.”
The bald man let out a laugh. “You might as well just leave now, because you’ll never get my blessing.”
“Sir, I want you to know I wasn’t taking advantage of Elanor. I truly love her, more than I’ve ever loved anybody else. I want to show you and the rest of the world that my intentions are honest. I want to be able to be with her freely instead of having to sneak around. I’m tired of sneaking around. I want to marry her, sir.”
“Over my dead body.”
Jenny felt frustration and disappointment building inside her. “Let me say this differently. I am going to propose to her, and I do believe she will say yes. I’d like to have you on board with the idea.”
“There is no way in hell my daughter is going to marry you.”
“She’s twenty, sir. She can make her own decisions.”
The bald man stuck his finger in Jenny’s face. “Now you listen to me. My daughter is not going to marry you. Do you hear?”
“No sir.”
The bald man lowered his finger and gritted his teeth. “You don’t know who you’re messing with.” The psychotic look in his eye would have frightened most people, but Jenny didn’t feel fear.
“I’m sorry this didn’t go better, sir.” Jenny felt herself growing distant, knowing this was the point the two men parted ways. She opened her eyes slowly, leery that she would still see the angry bald man in her foyer, but the entryway was empty. She ran her fingers through her hair and shivered, still spooked by the notion of what was happening to her.
A debate ensued in Jenny’s head. She wanted to report her findings Elanor immediately, but she knew she had been pushing her luck at home. Although she was discovering how fundamentally lopsided her marriage was, she had agreed to be a partner in the renovation, and she had to admit she was being much less involved than she had promised. She decided to finish the quarter round removal before she headed to Maple Estates that evening. Still sore but newly motivated, she got back on her hands and knees and continued.
Chapter 11
Jenny walked into Elanor’s room to find her with oxygen tubes in her nose. The sight caught Jenny off guard, but she quickly regained her composure, hoping that she did so before Elanor had a chance to notice her reaction.
“What’s that under your arm?” Elanor asked.
“It’s a painting,” Jenny said sheepishly.
“Let me see.” Jenny slowly turned the canvas to show Elanor the painting of the meadow. “That’s beautiful. You painted that?”
“Yes ma’am, several years ago.”
“Wow. You certainly are talented. That looks like a professional painting!”
“Thank you,” Jenny replied. “I was actually thinking it would look nice hanging in here. I noticed you have some empty wall space.”
Elanor gasped. “You would like me to have that? Thank you so much. I will love looking at it. It will remind me of you.”
Jenny smiled. “Where would you like me to hang it?”
“Oh, don’t hang it. Leave it over there.” Elanor pointed to the counter by the kitchen area. “This will give me an excuse to call the maintenance man in here. He sure is nice to look at, that one. I’m always looking for reasons to get him in here.”
Jenny laughed, and then pretended to be appalled. “Miss Elanor!”
“What? I ain’t dead yet.”
Jenny placed the painting on the counter and sat in her recliner. “So how are you doing?” she asked in a more serious tone.
Elanor let out a sigh. “Okay. I can’t decide what to feel, though. One minute I’m happy that Steve didn’t leave me, the next I’m sad because of what happened, then I get angry about it.” She fiddled with the tubes in her nose. “I guess you’d call it an emotional roller coaster.” Elanor let out a laugh. “But then I get tired and fall asleep. That’s an old person’s roller coaster.”
Keeping Susan’s advice in mind, Jenny replied, “I’m about to add a loop-de-loop to your little coaster.”
“Oh dear,”
“Do you want to hear it? I don’t have to tell you if you’d rather not know.”
“No, I’d like to hear it.” Elanor sucked in a deep breath. “I just need to tighten my seat belt first.”
Jenny recounted the latest vision she’d had, informing Elanor of both Steve’s intent to propose and her father’s insistence that the marriage never take place. Elanor remained uncharacteristically quiet through the whole story, her expressionless face giving no indication of her mindset. “What are you thinking, Miss Elanor?”
&nb
sp; “I’m not sure,” she confessed. “I guess I should be happy to know that Steve intended to propose to me. Although, in a way, that makes me sad. I got robbed of the opportunity to spend my life with him.”
Jenny made a face.
“What?” Elanor asked.
“Nothing.”
“No. Not nothing. You clearly thought of something, now spill it.” Elanor’s tone was pleasant despite the demanding nature of the words.
Jenny had been raised to always be polite, even if it meant speaking mistruths; with Elanor she knew she needed to speak the truth, even if it meant being impolite. “Well, when I was engaged to my husband, I thought being married to him was going to the most amazing experience in the world. I imagined myself feeling like I’d be walking on air all the time. But the reality of my marriage falls way short of what I’d envisioned.” Jenny raised her shoulders to her ears, protecting herself from Elanor’s potentially heated response. “It just occurred to me that maybe if you had married Steve, you might have been a little disappointed in how things turned out, too.”
Elanor frowned as she considered what Jenny said. “You could be right. I do have this impossible image of what my life would have been like if I got to be with Steve.” She let out a snort. “Maybe the real thing would have been disappointing.”
“Or maybe it wouldn’t have,” Jenny added. “I don’t mean to rain on your parade.”
“No, it’s not rain; it’s reality. A little dose of truth never hurt anyone.” Elanor looked kindly at Jenny. “So in what ways do you think your marriage has fallen short?”
Jenny paused for a moment, unable to believe she was about to publicly voice the grievances she’d harbored privately for so long. Saying them out loud would make them real; they would no longer be silly notions she could explain away inside her own head. However, she knew she couldn’t live in denial much longer. She and Greg were a ticking time bomb, and an explosion was coming whether she allowed herself to admit it or not.
“It’s just not as much of a partnership as I would have hoped,” Jenny confessed. “My marriage revolves around his happiness. It’s like my role is to make sure everything he desires comes true, even if that means my own wishes get ignored.”
“You do realize that can only happen if you let it,” Elanor proclaimed casually.
Jenny thought about all of the fights she backed down from, the conversations where she kept her ideas to herself, and the countless concessions she’d made over the years. “You’re absolutely right,” she admitted. “I have been letting it happen.”
“You’ve got to stand up for yourself, dear. You are important, too—equally as important as your partner. There are no sidekicks in marriages.”
A sickening rock formed in Jenny’s stomach as she acknowledged she had indeed spent the last seven years being a mere stage hand in the Greg show. Emotion choked Jenny as she quietly confessed, “It’s the only role I’ve ever known.”
“Uh oh,” Elanor said.
Jenny released some pent-up anxiety with a shaky breath. “I spent my whole life feeling overshadowed by my three older brothers. They were all very promising baseball players, and clearly that was valued in my house. My father would introduce us to people as my son Brad who plays first base, Tyler who plays short stop and Brandon who pitches. And my daughter Jenny. That was it. It wasn’t Jenny who paints or Jenny who reads two years above grade level. I was always just Jenny. Jenny who hadn’t accomplished anything worth mentioning.”
“I can see that in you,” Elanor said. “When I look at you I see a lovely young woman with lots of excellent qualities and talents, but I also see a woman who doesn’t recognize she has them.”
Jenny nodded slowly. Elanor’s words had to be true in order for them to sting that much.
“Were your brothers treated special because they were athletes?”
“Oh, yeah,” Jenny replied. “Big time. We always had the team back to our house after victories. They were allowed special privileges when they won titles. The house was covered in pictures of them in uniform and framed newspaper clippings with their names highlighted. Every time I finished a painting my father would look at it and say, ‘that’s nice,’ and that was all the reaction I’d get. I’d spend a week on it, and it seemed to only be worth a second of his time. I guess since painting is not a spectator sport and can’t earn you a scholarship, he didn’t find it to be a worthwhile hobby.”
“That’s a shame,” Elanor commented. “In more ways than one. I think you are amazingly talented, and I wish that would have been fostered for you. You should be proud of your paintings instead of being under-confident in your ability. But not only that, do you realize you went on to marry a man who didn’t value your paintings either?” Elanor pointed at the painting on the counter. “That should be on display. That shouldn’t be tucked away because it clashes with furniture. Your husband needs to appreciate how beautiful and special that is. I don’t know many people who can make a picture like that.”
Jenny silently absorbed Elanor’s words. She had nothing to say in return, becoming increasingly aware that even she never recognized the value in herself.
“Don’t feel bad about it, dear,” Elanor said lightly, as if she were sharing her favorite recipe. “It’s the daughter trap. A lot of us fall into it. Little girls often grow up to either marry someone who is just like their father or someone who is the exact opposite. You went for the ‘similar’ approach. I never got married, but the closest I got was Steve, and he was definitely the opposite of my father. You conformed, I rebelled. We’re all guilty of something. It’s our baggage.”
Jenny hadn’t considered the similarities between Greg and her father before, recognizing for the first time the incredible knack both men had for making her feel inadequate. She had spent twenty years trying to earn praise from her father, and then she spent the last six trying to earn it from Greg. That ever-elusive praise seemed to flow freely from Elanor, making Jenny realize she was indeed worthy of it.
Perhaps she had wasted a lifetime seeking affirmation from two men who simply were incapable of giving it.
Jenny lowered her eyebrows in thought and added, “You know, Greg was even an athlete. He played football. I guess I figured if I couldn’t be the star athlete my father wanted, I could at least bring one home. Maybe then my father would have been proud of me.” Jenny could feel her own puzzle pieces clicking into place.
“Did it work?”
“Actually, it did,” Jenny said, “for a while, at least. My dad would sit in the stands of the football games when I was in college, cheering and bragging the way he used to do with my brothers. I guess I did feel proud then—like I’d finally accomplished something my father approved of.” Jenny looked down at her lap. “Real great way to pick a husband, huh? Choose one that my father would like.”
“A lot of us do it.” Elanor laughed. “In fact, if women didn’t do that, I wouldn’t have had a livelihood. The whole focus of my magazine was to make sure women didn’t operate on auto-pilot. I wanted them to make conscious choices and not let their baggage call all the shots.” Elanor waved her finger at Jenny. “If you had been aware of your issues, you could have made more educated decisions instead of just hopping out of the frying pan into the fire.”
Jenny’s face reflected the disappointment she felt in herself.
“Like I said, don’t feel bad. The sad truth is that when people grow up in a particular environment, they often don’t realize there’s any other way to do things. You may not have even been aware that it was possible for a man to value what you have to offer.” Elanor made a sympathetic face. “Believe it or not, you may have sub-consciously sought out a guy who made you feel inadequate, simply because that was what you were comfortable with. I imagine if a guy came along and treated you like you were an artistic genius, you wouldn’t have known what to do with that.”
Jenny thought back to a harmless young man named Toby who did, in fact, worship the ground she walke
d on back in high school. She also thought about how repelled she’d been by him, even though she couldn’t pinpoint a specific reason why she’d felt that way. Perhaps his attentiveness had violated her comfort zone. Maybe in her mind, affection was only worth getting if she had to work for it.
Hanging her head, she shifted her focus to the fact that she and Greg shared so few common interests. Leisure days had always meant Jenny agreed to the activity of Greg’s choice, even though she would have inevitably selected to do something different if the option had been hers. She began to wonder why that had even been appealing to her. Why hadn’t she waited until she found a man who enjoyed the same hobbies that she did? Why had she been so eager to commit to a relationship that required so much compromise on her part? Realizing the mess she had gotten herself into, she placed her head in her hands and declared, “I married my husband for all the wrong reasons.”
“If it makes you feel any better, if it wasn’t for Steve, I would have done the same thing. I’m sure of it.”
Jenny lifted her eyes to Elanor, waiting for elaboration.
“If Steve hadn’t fascinated me the way that he did, I guarantee I would have grown up and done everything my parents expected me to. In fact, I was well on that path when Steve showed up at my door. I was banking on meeting a rich boy who may or may not have had a personality, but who had a pedigree I could have been proud of. And a good-looking face, of course. Those were my only requirements until I discovered the importance of character. All I can say is thank God Steve rang my doorbell that day. He saved me from a life of fake smiles and pretentious tea parties.”
Although she was happy that Elanor was able to dodge that bullet, Jenny felt overcome with personal regret, wondering exactly where she could have been in life had she made better choices along the way. “I needed to meet Steve,” she said softly.
“You did,” Elanor reminded her.
“A little too late.”
“It’s never too late. Look at me. I’m old as hell, and I’m still making discoveries about my life. Shoot, my entire world is getting turned upside down, right here at the end.”