I sat down, noting that I was probably the only person in the world who loved the feel of sand on her rear end. But I did. It felt like summer. And exfoliant. Two for one.
Mark sat down beside me and took my hand. “I get to dance our first dance with you right here, babe,” he said, kissing my hand.
“I’m so sorry to interrupt,” a girl’s voice said from beside me.
I smiled up at a pretty teenager with sun-bleached wavy hair and her friend who stood beside her. They both had on mismatched bikinis. I knew it was in style, but I just didn’t get it. Who wanted to look like they had gotten dressed in the dark?
“Could we please get a picture with you?” the other girl asked.
I smiled. “Sure,” I said, as Mark exhaled too loudly and too forcefully. I shot him a disapproving look.
“Thanks, girls,” I said when they had taken a group selfie and a separate photo with each of them.
Mark stood up and shoved his board out into the water the moment the girls started walking away from us.
“Wait, are you ready to go back already?”
He threw his hands up in the air. “Well, the morning’s ruined. Might as well.”
I could feel my mouth open in amazement. His morning was ruined because two sweet little girls who were probably dreaming of becoming actresses wanted to take a picture? It took maybe thirty seconds. Probably less. But I didn’t feel like getting into it with him. I wanted to rewind to the hand-kiss-on-the-beach part of the day. Was he right? Was it me? Had I ruined our day? Surely not. At least, I didn’t think so. Seeing fans was the best part of my days.
We paddled back to the house in silence, and I was caught somewhere between guilt and anger and total and complete disinterest in this situation. But regardless of Mark’s feelings about it, this was my life. It wasn’t going to change. At least, I hoped it wasn’t. I assumed it was only going to keep getting more frequent, God willing.
He held his hand up to help me onto the dock and then pulled my paddleboard up behind him. “I’m sorry,” he finally said, while he was spraying off the boards. “I just want you all to myself.”
I nodded slowly. “I get that, babe. I really do. But that’s not reality.”
“Reality is what we choose,” he said. “It’s what we make it.”
Was it? Because I was sure as hell willing his mother to go away, and that hadn’t happened yet. I didn’t say that, of course.
I didn’t want to keep feeling bad or guilty today. So I simply said, “I need to get back to the house. I need to talk to my sisters and figure out what we’re going to do about Jack.”
He nodded, and I hoped he noticed that I didn’t kiss him good-bye.
It will get better once we’re married and settled, I reassured myself. It’s all the uncertainty that’s making him like this.
I was good at convincing myself of the things I wished were true. I always had been. But even I had to wonder if that was as misguided as the people who have babies to fix their broken marriages. As I made my way up the front steps, I had to consider that maybe Mark wasn’t the problem. Maybe everything else in my life that had gone wrong was clouding my feelings about our relationship, the one thing that I had always known to be right.
TWENTY-THREE
ansley: the thought
I guess I expected Jack to come after me. I wanted him to, I realized. I wanted him to come find me and tell me that I was the one and that girl meant nothing to him. But I was fifty-eight years old. And I knew that life was more complicated than all that. He loved her. Of course he did. He was married to the woman, for heaven’s sake. If you could even call a “Lauren” a woman, that is.
I had had innumerable friends go through divorces that had dragged on for years, way past their love’s expiration date. I had never had any reason to feel anything less than adored by Jack, and I knew he wasn’t trying to pull a fast one on me. But we had planned a future together down to the nth degree. It seemed like something he should have at least mentioned.
I was standing in the kitchen, staring like a crazy person, trying to decide what to do now. Should I make a cup of coffee? Go to work? Cry? I felt paralyzed. So I decided to make some pancakes. Pancakes helped everything.
As I was measuring and stirring, Sloane and Caroline walked into the kitchen. I felt my blood pressure rise. I knew they were angry with me, but quite frankly, I felt angry with them—or maybe I was more defensive. I didn’t lie to them. They knew their entire lives that Carter wasn’t their biological father. That Jack happened to be wasn’t really pertinent. I should have told them, but I didn’t. And damn, I wasn’t perfect all the time. Weren’t they old enough to know that?
I looked at them, licking batter off the back of my hand, and turned back to the griddle to ladle out several pancakes. For myself, I guess. I was hoping Vivi would come traipsing in and I could feed her, too.
“Why do I get the feeling that you’re mad at us?” Sloane asked.
I didn’t respond. If they could ice me out, I could ice them out, too. Let them see how it felt.
“I think she’s giving us the silent treatment,” Caroline said, “which is ridiculous, because if anyone has a right to be angry, it’s us.”
That did it. “But Caroline,” I said sarcastically, “how can you be angry?”
“What do you mean, how can I be angry?” She crossed her arms, so indignant and self-righteous I honestly wanted to smack her. I mean, I would never actually hit her, of course. But I thought it would have felt good right about then.
“Well, if it weren’t for Jack, you wouldn’t be here,” I said calmly and slowly. Then I added, “And then who would the world revolve around?”
Sloane burst out laughing, while Caroline’s eyes widened and her mouth dropped.
I had taken her crap for thirty-five years. All the cards were on the table now. No more secrets, no more surprises. This was it, the good, the bad, and the ugly, and if she couldn’t handle it, then she could take her moody self and her bad temper somewhere else. I didn’t mean that, of course. One day without her had nearly killed me. But I was so worked up over the whole Lauren and Jack situation that I was feeling brazen. It was wildly uncharacteristic.
Even Caroline couldn’t help but smile. “The world does revolve around me, doesn’t it?” she said lightly.
There was a tap on the back door, and I realized that whoever it was had probably been standing there watching this all play out. I assumed it was Jack. But I caught a flash of blond hair out of the corner of my eye. And I wondered how it was remotely possible that this day could get any worse.
“Who is that?” Sloane asked.
“Oh,” I said as I opened the door. “This is Lauren. This is Jack’s wife.”
Lauren raised her eyebrows. I had shocked her. I liked that.
“Ex-wife,” Caroline corrected.
“Nope,” I said, slamming the door behind Lauren. “Do you like pancakes?” I asked, realizing that my daughters had fled like cockroaches in a spotlight.
Lauren walked by me and into the living room, where she sat down on the couch without my offering. How rude. Well, she might be a model-esque teenager who had the man I wanted, but at least I had manners.
“I guess we’re sitting down,” I said under my breath. I sat in a chair opposite her, where I had the water view. Another small victory for Ansley.
I wanted to be mad, but I noticed she had tears in her eyes. And this was her life falling apart here. She was so young I felt sort of maternal toward her, unfortunately. I hated my good nature.
“Do you know that Jack talks in his sleep?”
Before I could stop myself and be a little gentler, I spat out, “I was hearing Jack talk in his sleep before you were even born.”
She sucked in her cheeks and closed her eyes, and I knew that had stung.
“I’m sorry,” I said softly. “I truly apologize. He’s your husband. He’s not mine. You have more right to be upset here than I do.”
> She shrugged. “I let him go, Ansley. I pushed him away and brushed him aside. I wish I hadn’t, but I did.” She paused. “He never told me about you. Ever. Not once.”
That sent actual pain shooting to the spot around my heart, but I supposed I understood it. Talking about exes was kind of childish, and even more than that, it could have opened the door for too much to come out. I had wondered, briefly, if he had told her about us, about the children we had made together, about the role he never got to hold in their lives. I knew now that he hadn’t. That, at least, was a relief.
I stopped Lauren. “Look. I don’t know what you’re getting at—”
“You don’t,” she said. “You don’t understand. Because what I’m trying to tell you is that he never mentioned you. But he talked about you in his sleep all the time.”
“So?”
“So, I am lying beside this man in the home we share, studying my diamond, and he is muttering, ‘Don’t go, Ansley. I love you, Ansley.’ ” She paused. “I swear to God, the way he would talk about you, the things he would say, I thought you were dead.”
I smiled ironically. “Just almost,” I said. “You never asked him who he was dreaming about?” I was impressed with her maturity.
She shrugged. “No. I mean, I was over there having my fair share of sex dreams about our hot plumber. We can’t control our subconscious mind. It didn’t seem relevant at the time.”
“So what are you doing in my living room, Lauren?” Part of me didn’t want to know, but part of me wanted to get this over with.
“I wanted to tell you myself that I am signing the papers.” She gave me a small smile. “I mean, I’m having Jack sign over that gorgeous house to me, and then I’m signing the papers.”
I felt myself go pale. That was all I needed. Lauren strutting around in her bikini all day in the house next door.
“I’m kidding,” she said. “I took the house in Aspen instead.”
Great, I thought. I hate to be cold, and if I never look at a pair of skis again, that is fine with me.
“You’re making the right decision,” I said, and I didn’t only mean it because her decision gave me what I wanted. “I know I don’t know you from Adam’s house cat, but what I do know is that if you give up having children for a man, you will resent him for the rest of your life.”
I paused, swallowing the lump in my throat. His not wanting children had been the very reason I hadn’t married Jack to begin with. It had been the reason I had walked away.
“There is nothing in all the world that is better than the love of your children. However they come to you, whether you birth them or adopt them or whatever it may be, if that’s something you want, you shouldn’t give up on it.”
She cocked her head to the side. “Yeah.” She sighed. “I mean, I know you’re right. But it’s hard—I still love him. I went back out there and started dating this Calvin Klein model, and even though he was so beautiful, I missed Jack anyway. That’s really saying something.”
I laughed. Jack was a very handsome man, but I would venture to say he could no longer appear on a billboard. “Ah,” I said.
“He chose you, Ansley,” she said, her shoulders slumping the tiniest bit in defeat.
I put my hands up. “There is no logical reason why he would choose me.”
She stood up, rubbed her hands down the length of her dress, and said, “Logic never matters. You know that. Logic tells me to keep fighting, but my gut tells me I’ve lost.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I honestly am. I don’t want to break up a marriage. I don’t want to take your husband.”
She smiled at me sadly. “Oh, Ansley. You know as well as anyone that he was never really mine.”
I shrugged.
“OK, then. I’m off to meet someone with willing sperm.”
“Keep in touch,” I said, half meaning it, closing the door behind Lauren.
When I turned, I gasped. Jack was right behind me, on his knees. For a split second, I thought he was proposing, but I realized, one, he was on two knees, two, he had already proposed to me, and three, I had made him promise never to propose when my hair and makeup weren’t done. Which they now most definitely were not.
“Please don’t leave me, Ansley,” he said. “I swear I will die. I won’t survive. I didn’t tell you I wasn’t divorced yet because it didn’t matter. We had been separated for almost two years, and we weren’t divorced because she wouldn’t sign the damn papers. It wasn’t my lingering feelings for her or because we were trying to work it out. I promise you.”
I moved closer to him, and he hugged me around my thighs, which were, I might add, about twice the size and half the tone of Lauren’s. Still, I couldn’t help but run my fingers through his thick hair.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I am so sorry.”
This reminded me of years earlier, when Carter and I had passed Jack on the dock, when Jack’s shock at my Emerson-pregnant belly had unwittingly told Carter that Jack was Caroline and Sloane’s father. Carter had been so angry at me, and I had been the one, like Jack, on my knees, begging for forgiveness.
So I said what Carter had said to me all those years ago. “Get up. You’re too beautiful for the floor.”
Jack swept me up in his arms and kissed me, and it felt so right that I couldn’t imagine that only a few minutes earlier, I had even momentarily entertained the idea that he could choose someone else.
He carried me up the stairs, and though I never wanted to think about Lauren again, I knew why she loved him. I knew why she wanted him back. He was a passionate man who seemed almost immortal. To be loved by him, truly loved, was more than a woman could wish for, as I was remembering now.
Lying beside him later, in the silence, I asked, “Jack, did you ever think about me?”
“What?” he asked, lazily trailing his fingers up and down my arm.
“All those years we were apart, when you were married to Lauren, when our lives were going in different directions, did you think about me?”
He laughed and rolled over onto his side. I pulled the covers up over my chest, and he pulled them back down. “Ansley, you have been my every thought, my only thought, the thought, for most of my life.”
I rolled over, facing him. “So why didn’t you at least call me? Why didn’t you tell me you were getting married?”
“You were very clear about my role in your life. You made it plain that I was to leave you and your family alone and that I was never to contact you again.”
“But that’s when the girls were young,” I whispered. “When Carter was alive. You scared me so badly, Jack. You have to understand that.”
“And you have to understand, my beautiful Ansley,” he said, as he pushed a strand of hair out of my face and tucked it behind my ear, “that your being afraid of me broke me. Not just a little bit of me. All of me.”
I nodded. Of course it had. I understood that. It had broken me, too. I knew the way I acted would make Jack stay away from me, from the girls he wanted to know. I had to get him out of our lives in order to keep our secret. I didn’t want to hurt Jack then, and I didn’t want to hurt him now. But if I had to do it over again, I would do that same thing.
“So that’s why you didn’t find me before you got married?” I asked. “Because I had hurt you?”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “Because I was happy—or as happy as I believed I could be without you. And I knew if I even so much as heard the sound of your voice, that would be over.”
I smiled and kissed him softly. He pulled me close to him, and I laid my head on his chest.
“Did you really think that I would even for a minute consider going back to her?”
I propped myself up on my elbow and looked at him. “I mean, I won’t lie. If Ryan Gosling walked in right now and declared his everlasting love for me, I would still choose you, but it would give me pause.”
“It would not,” he said, laughing.
“Yeah. You’re rig
ht. It wouldn’t.”
“When can we get married?” he whispered.
I thought, When things are right with the girls, but I didn’t want to spoil the moment.
So, instead, I said, “I love you.”
“I love you more.”
Sometimes there isn’t any more to say.
TWENTY-FOUR
emerson: a nice tie
You never think of your mother as a real person. I mean, obviously, you know she’s a person. But it’s hard to think of your mother as a human being who has a life and interactions that don’t involve the orbit she has always taken around you.
So when Caroline told me about Lauren before our walk that morning—and everything she had heard from eavesdropping on their conversation—it was a bit of a shock to me. It was hard enough to wrap my mind around the fact that my mother could actually be in love with and marrying a man who wasn’t my father. To wrap my mind around the idea that she was involved in some sort of seedy love triangle was almost more than I could take.
Caroline whispered, “She was Gigi Hadid gorgeous.”
I widened my eyes. That wasn’t a term Caroline and I threw around. We had a lot of levels of beautiful in our repertoire. But Gigi Hadid was the highest level a woman could attain.
“And he chose Mom anyway?”
She looked at me, never slowing her pace or the furious swinging of her arms. “I have to think that, really, he chose us. All of us.”
I laughed ironically. “You, maybe. And Sloane. His daughters. And Mom, the mother of his children. But he sure as hell didn’t choose me. I’m just some poor orphan kid next door.”
Even though I could only see her side profile as we walked down the street, I could tell that Caroline was rolling her eyes.
“You’re so damn dramatic about everything. He’s a sperm donor, Em. It’s not like we spent every other weekend and Wednesdays with him and now he’s here to reclaim us. We’re Mom’s grown kids. We’re part of the very large package that comes with marrying her.”
The Southern Side of Paradise Page 17