“Drink first?” Linda asked.
Sarah nodded and followed them into the formal living room. She accepted a glass of white wine, hoping it would take the edge off but doubting it would. Nothing was going to make this easy.
The small talk grated on her. Mostly it was Linda who generated the conversation. Her father looked decidedly restless, and Sarah impulsively decided that it was now or never. Screw dinner and presents and all that superficial crap, which meant nothing to her because she didn’t want to be here and most certainly didn’t want to pretend she was having a good time or that they were a cozy little family sharing Christmas Eve. The idea of spending another minute here made her stomach turn.
She took a deep breath and set her glass down. “Dad, we need to talk.”
Color drained from Linda’s face, as though she sensed the fissure between father and daughter was about to open much, much wider. “Do you want me to leave the room, Sarah?”
“No. You can stay.” She looked at her father, resisting the urge to feel sorry for him. Whatever had been going on between them for years was at least fifty percent his fault. More if you took into account that he was the parent, the adult for most of those years. “Daddy, I can’t do this anymore. I can’t pretend to be someone I’m not when I’m around you, even if it means…if it means…” She couldn’t complete the threat.
Her father’s lawyer mask, devoid of all emotion except for condemnation, was firmly in place. She was ten again, being quizzed about a bad grade in math, her most hated subject. “What are you talking about Sarah?” he asked in his deep baritone voice. “What, exactly, are you pretending to be around me?”
Sarah clutched her hands together to keep them from shaking. She felt like an uncooperative witness being grilled on the stand. “I feel like I’m not someone you respect. Like I’m someone you’ll never respect until I hold down some kind of nine-to-five job that meets with your approval. I feel like…like…” Sarah’s voice began to quaver, and it took a couple of deep breaths to settle herself. “Like a failure when I’m around you. And that can’t happen any more.”
Peter Young cleared his throat, but his expression did not change. “You’re not a failure, Sarah. But neither, to be frank, are you a success.”
“No.” Sarah pinned him with her eyes. “You’re wrong. I am a success, even if my bank account doesn’t reflect it.” But it would soon reflect it, now that she’d signed the deal with the furniture chain. She bit the inside of her cheek to keep from telling him about her good fortune, because it would never be enough to satisfy him. And it shouldn’t be the thing that defined her anyway.
“Hmph, I suspect your bank account doesn’t reflect much, except that you have a father who still supports you, and that…I don’t know what you call that wealthy doctor of yours, but whatever she pays you for—”
“Peter!” Linda yelped.
“It’s okay, Linda,” Sarah replied, keeping her eyes on her father. “He can say what he wants. I’m going for some honesty here.”
“Honesty, huh?” her father continued. “I think you have a lot of nerve, young lady, coming in here and feeling sorry for yourself after all I’ve done for you.”
Heart pounding furiously, Sarah decided she’d have to be the one to keep the discussion from degrading into a slugfest of harmful words. “You have done a lot for me, for which I’m grateful. But you don’t respect me, Daddy. And even though I will never accept another dime from you, you still won’t respect me, because you don’t believe in me. And if you don’t believe in me…” She stood abruptly, knowing she needed to let her feet do the talking. “If you can’t…” She fought it, but her voice faltered. “If you can’t believe in me, then I can’t have a relationship with you anymore. Love is about respect and trust. And you don’t feel those things for me.”
She snatched a last look at her father over her shoulder as she marched to the door. His mouth was moving but nothing was coming out. It was the first time she’d ever seen him speechless. Linda scurried after her.
“Sarah, please. It’s Christmas.”
“I know.” Sarah wiped a tear from her cheek, then busied herself collecting her coat from the foyer closet. “And I’m sorry. But I can no longer pretend that I have any kind of a meaningful relationship with him.”
She pulled open the massive oak door and walked out. Expelling a deep breath, she felt, for the first time in years, cleansed. Free. Frightened too, like the ground had shifted beneath her feet. But finally in control of her own life. There was no parachute, no one to be her savior any more. She was on her own.
* * *
Everything about her family home reminded Joss of the South and its more genteel, antebellum era. She’d always loved the hanging tree moss, the azaleas and magnolias in the yard, the large white two-story house with its tall columns, full-length front porch and dark shutters alongside the narrow windows. Rattan rocking chairs provided the perfect place to sit and sip mint juleps, she thought with a wisp of nostalgia that was more fantasy than real. She’d rarely made the time to do things like sip a cool drink on a lazy, sweltering afternoon in the shade of her mother’s porch. Her mother, she supposed, often whiled away her afternoons on the porch with a good book, judging by the wear on the faded rockers.
Joss knew all too well that Madeline was a product of a different era, where the subtle but potent power of Southern ladies was shrouded in syrupy charm and cloying manners. Her mother’s default, on the surface at least, was to smooth things over with a healthy dose of denial, but Joss wouldn’t let that happen today. She wanted answers, wanted the truth about her father and about her parents’ marriage. The fact that it was Christmas, well, the timing was unfortunate, but Joss had a heavy schedule at the hospital the rest of the week. She didn’t want their talk to wait any longer.
She rapped on the iron door knocker before walking in.
“Merry Christmas, dear,” Madeline yelled from somewhere inside. “I’m in the parlor, setting out your gifts.”
Guilt washed over Joss. She’d chickened out of contacting Sarah about the sketch she planned to give her mother for Christmas. Now, as she took her time joining her mother, she glanced again at the pathetically impersonal bottle of bourbon in the snowman gift bag she cradled in her arm. It was an expensive bourbon, at least—a limited edition twelve-year-old that had set her back almost four hundred dollars—but not nearly as meaningful as the portrait would have been.
“Ah, there, you are,” Madeline said, rushing to give her daughter a kiss on the cheek.
A fire blazed in the parlor’s grate. Applewood, by the smell, and it instantly warmed Joss and made her forget about her last-minute gift. Then her eyes were drawn to the painting sitting on the mantel.
“Holy shit,” she exclaimed, the expensive bourbon nearly slipping from her grasp.
Madeline smiled proudly. “It’s absolutely beautiful, Joss. Sarah dropped it off yesterday. She said the portrait was your Christmas gift to me. It’s the best Christmas gift you’ve ever given me, dear. Thank you so much.”
“I, ah—” Joss was rarely thrown enough to be at a loss for words. Sarah, however, always seemed to be the cause lately of her newfound knack for muteness. “I didn’t know she was bringing it over. I…We hadn’t arranged that part.”
“That’s all right. We had a cup of tea yesterday, though she couldn’t stay long. She seemed, I don’t know, in a rush. Preoccupied. Have a seat and I’ll bring the coffee in.”
Joss set the bourbon under the tree. Sarah was here? Yesterday? They hadn’t had any communication in days, but still, why hadn’t she let her know she was bringing the painting over? They could have presented it together. Or she could have retrieved the painting from Sarah and brought it over herself. She doesn’t want to see you, that’s why.
Joss stared at the painting of herself. A painting that was supposed to only be a sketch. God, she thought, it looks just like me. Only better. She’s made me look almost beautiful. It was strang
e, discomfiting, to see her likeness in oil on the wall, and it was a stunning piece of work. She would never have known by looking at this piece that Sarah rarely painted portraits. It was the eyes, she decided, that made the painting. It’s the eyes because I’m looking at her like I’m completely in love with her. Oh God! The thought made her a bit faint. Had Sarah noticed the same thing? Had her mother?
Her mother clattered into the room, setting a tray on a side table. Joss helped herself to a cup.
“So what do you think of it?” Madeline’s eyes again roamed over the painting with appreciation.
“I don’t know what to think. I mean, it’s very good, but honestly, I thought she was doing a charcoal sketch, not an actual painting.”
“Well, she’s captured your spirit perfectly. The spirit you rarely show anyone.”
Joss did not want to talk about Sarah and her ability to read her so well. If she were lucky, they wouldn’t talk about Sarah for the rest of the visit, although that, she supposed, was wishful thinking.
“Speaking of spirits.” Okay, that’s a lame way to change the subject. “I brought you a bottle of your favorite.”
“Thank you dear. Are you going home before we go to your Aunt Ellen’s later, or will you stay until it’s time?”
“I don’t know if I’m going to go.”
Madeline’s eyebrows rose in alarm. “What do you mean? Are you not feeling well? We’ve been having Christmas dinner at Ellen’s for, what, twelve or thirteen years now? Surely you aren’t thinking—”
“I don’t much feel like celebrating Christmas.”
Madeline fixed herself a cup of coffee and returned to the wingback chair opposite Joss. “Does this have something to do with Sarah?”
“Why do you think everything has to do with Sarah these days?” Joss snapped.
Madeline gave her a smile that acknowledged she’d hit the bull’s-eye. “You look decidedly miserable. And so did Sarah yesterday.”
“She did?”
“Come now, what’s going on between you two?”
Joss didn’t want to talk about Sarah or about herself. She’d come here to talk about her father. She needed to connect the dots, to delve into the areas of her father’s and her parents’ life that she’d not been privy to before. But Sarah, like it or not, was the reason she was here pushing for an honest conversation with her mother.
“We’re…not together.”
“Well, I know that, dear, and I was hoping your little trip south would fix that.”
“No, I mean. We were, we did. In Florida, I mean.” Damn, why couldn’t she form coherent sentences whenever the subject was Sarah? “She doesn’t want to see me any more. At all.”
Madeline’s face dropped. “But why? You two seemed so good together. You seemed so happy with her, Joss, happier than you’ve ever been. Well, since you were about five, anyway.”
Yes, she thought. That’s the problem right there. A part of her hadn’t really been happy since about that long ago. Back before she began trying to prove herself worthy of her father’s nearly impossible to earn admiration and attention.
“Mama, I can’t do relationships, that’s the problem.” She took a deep breath, let it out slowly. “And I think the reason I can’t is because of Daddy.”
There was an interior struggle going on behind her mother’s eyes—Joss was assaulting her facade that Joss’s father had been perfect in every way. Yet here, in Joss’s unhappy admission, was evidence to the contrary. “What does your father have to do with any of this?”
“It started out that I was too busy for a girlfriend. Busy with college, med school, residency. I was busy trying to be the best surgeon I could. I convinced myself I didn’t have the time or energy for a relationship.”
“Of course you didn’t. And that’s how it should be when you’re starting out.”
“No, Mama, you’re wrong. High school, college, that’s when you start figuring out how to do relationships. It’s like an apprenticeship, so that when the right person comes along, you don’t mess things up. Like I’ve done with Sarah.”
“I’m sure there’s time to—”
“No. I don’t know that there is.” It was typical of her mother to gloss over things, to diminish problems, to make excuses, and it infuriated Joss. “I was naïve. Stupid. I thought, look at Daddy, he’s busy all the time, he’s a great doctor, and yet he doesn’t have to put much effort into his marriage or family life. He just gets to be, and everyone else fits their life around him. But he was selfish, Mama. And I am too, except I have just enough decency and self-awareness to know that it’s not right to treat a partner that way. That’s the reason I’m not with Sarah.”
Madeline’s frown was her only show of emotion. “You’re oversimplifying things.”
“Am I?” Joss flew out of her chair and began pacing. “Why did you love him, Mama?”
“What do you mean?” Madeline began shaking out her hands as if they were wet.
Joss stopped in front of her and tried to soften her voice, but the air crackled with tension. “Our not talking honestly about him is hurting me, Mama. I want to know why you loved him, what he brought to your relationship. I mean, what made you stay all those years with a man who made an art out of being absent?”
Madeline’s lips pursed so tightly, they were almost white. “Joss, really, I don’t think—”
“No. I need for us to talk about this.”
“All right, fine.” She set her cup down with a loud clink and straightened up as though she were sitting in a church pew. “I fell in love with your father the first time I ever set eyes on him. I was a college freshman. He was in his final year of medical school. He was so handsome, so smart. We went out twice, and then he told me he didn’t want to get involved, that he needed to focus on his studies.”
Joss winced at how similar to her own life that sounded. She’d acted the same way many times with women.
“It was three years later, when he was a resident, that we met again at a party. I’d never forgotten him, of course. Told him as much. He warned me that his career came first, that it always would. I told him I was fine with it, that he was the most important thing to me. He made us wait years, though, until we got married. Maybe,” she said with a self-deprecating laugh, “he was hoping I would get tired of him and leave.”
“I suppose,” Joss said with a sharpness intended to be hurtful, “you told him something to the effect that you loved him enough for the both of you. That you would make things work no matter what, that you would always stand behind him like the good Southern lady you are.”
Madeline’s face colored. “It’s what you do when you love someone, when you take a vow of marriage.”
Joss sat down, rubbed her face in frustration. “That doesn’t cut it in relationships anymore, Mama. And maybe it never did. Not with most people.”
“Well,” Madeline huffed. “I don’t care what works for most people. Your father and I, we made it work.”
“Did you?”
A vein in her mother’s forehead pulsed noticeably. “Joss, my marriage with your father isn’t your—”
“It is my business. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. I learned about relationships from the two of you, don’t you see? I learned that one does all the giving, and the other—the world gets to revolve around the other, whether they deserve it to or not.”
“That’s not fair.”
“I think it’s an accurate assessment. And while we’re talking about Daddy, do you know he only told me he loved me twice? And he never once said he was proud of me?” Joss’s voice began to shake.
“Oh, Joss, darling. Of course he loved you. And he was very proud of you. You were the apple of his eye.”
“Was I?” Joss had to swallow back tears. “Why couldn’t he ever say it? Or show it?”
“He wasn’t that kind of man, that’s all.”
Joss stood, her emotions tangling up inside her, making it impossible to sit still any longe
r. “Well, it’s not good enough for me anymore. And it’s certainly not good enough for a woman like Sarah.”
“Joss, don’t. Please.”
“No, Mama, it’s the truth. Daddy lived in his own world. We were just the decorations. The afterthoughts. And I spent my entire life until he died trying to please him, trying to make him notice me. Christ, I’m even pandering to his ghost now.”
Madeline leapt from her chair and slapped Joss across the face.
The sting of it made her eyes water. She instinctively touched her cheek and watched as her mother’s face collapsed in anguish. Her mother had never struck her before. Then again, they’d never before addressed the issues festering below the surface of their family life.
Joss turned and, without a look back, walked out on her mother for the first time in her life.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Sarah had given Roxi her first real set of paints for Christmas, and now, four days later and only nine days after her heart transplant, they were able to try them out together. Roxi was getting a little stronger every day, but she was still fragile. Today’s art session lasted only twenty minutes, but to Sarah’s delight, it was five minutes longer than yesterday’s.
She had told Roxi that she was going to be busy the next few weeks. Busy, of course, being an understatement now that she had only weeks to come up with a few more paintings for The Comfort Zone. She also wanted a few pieces on hand in case a gallery came calling, which all meant twelve-hour days in her studio for the foreseeable future. Roxi took the news in stride, vowing to practice on her own as much as she could.
Sarah kissed the girl on her cheek. “I’ll still come by every few days, okay? And hopefully you’ll be able to go home in a couple more weeks.”
“Okay,” Roxi replied, her smile no longer so shy and reserved. “When I go home, can we still be friends?”
By Mutual Consent Page 20