Choices (A Woman's Life)

by Marie Ferrarella

  From the interior of the car, Shanna shifted forward in her seat and watched the scrawny man in torn khaki trousers shuffling slowly down the block. People moved to the left or right of him as if he didn’t exist.

  A nonentity. Shanna felt a wave of empathy. She understood what it was like to be treated as if you didn’t exist. “Maybe,” she said quietly. “But whether or not he tries to get a job tomorrow doesn’t change the fact that he’s hungry now.”

  Jordan straightened his tie and glanced critically at his clothes. He knew he had to look fresh for the next stop. “So someone else’ll feed him. He’s not your problem, Shanna. This election is the only thing you should be thinking about. Right?” He waited until she nodded her head. It was like trying to train a stupid pet. He placed his hand over hers on the seat. “When I get elected, I can look into what we can do for these homeless people.”

  A campaign promise, she thought. Her husband was making her a campaign promise in order to appease her. She wondered if he thought of her as one of his constituents. In either case, it served no purpose to argue with him.

  Liz Conway, Jordan’s campaign secretary, leaned in on Shanna’s side. The woman was incredibly well built and consciously dressed to accent her main assets. Her turquoise sweater was so tight, Shanna wondered how the woman managed to breathe at all.

  Liz handed Shanna a clipboard and nodded for her to pass it to Jordan. Beyond that, she ignored her. “Here’s your schedule for the rest of the afternoon, Mr. Calhoun.” She indicated the plaza with her eyes. “It looks like we made a pretty good impression here.”

  “Couldn’t have done it without you.”

  Liz beamed in response to Jordan’s words.

  Impulsively Shanna pulled a bill out of her purse. She was vaguely aware that she had twenties and fifties in her wallet, but didn’t bother to verify the denomination as she handed it to Liz. “Here. Give this to that vagrant across the street.”

  Jordan muttered something about her wasting money on fools as he signaled the chauffeur to leave.

  Liz stood, staring at the fifty in her hand as the limousine turned a corner. “What vagrant?” she asked aloud as she looked around. All she saw were the men and women Jordan had come to charm. In the distance she thought she saw a hunched old man scuttle off.

  With a shrug, she slipped the bill into her own pocket. She wasn’t about to go running off on some fool errand. Jordan might need her.

  At least she could hope so.

  Chapter 7

  A gust of wind accompanied Shanna as she pushed open the large ornately carved mahogany door and hurried inside the French restaurant. It took a moment for sensation to return to her cheeks. The tops of her ears stung painfully as they registered the sudden change in temperature.

  I’m defrosting, she thought with a grin as she slowly peeled off her black leather gloves. The ambience soothed her. Chez Charles felt like an old, kindly friend as the familiar surroundings enveloped her.

  “Ah.” The Mediterranean-looking maitre d’ clapped his hands together softly and crossed the short distance from his desk to the entrance. His smile was warm and genuine. “You have arrived a little early, Mrs. Calhoun.” He took her hand and bowed at the waist.

  Even in that position, he was able to look her straight in the eye. He was tall, she thought, and so thin. It always amazed her that someone surrounded by food could stay slender. With practiced grace, he helped her out with her heavy winter coat.

  Shanna slipped her gloves into her purse. Her fingertips were beginning to thaw. Washington, fresh out of one snowstorm, was just on the threshold of another. For once, the weatherman had been right in his forecast. This time Shanna would have gladly welcomed another mistake. She hated snow in the city.

  “No one keeps my grandmother waiting,” she answered pleasantly. She looked around. There was an inviting fire burning in the hearth. The winged armchairs that faced the fireplace were, as yet, empty. Only a few people were in the restaurant.

  “I take it she hasn’t arrived?” The maitre d’ shook his head as he placed Shanna’s coat into her hands. Shanna frowned. She shouldn’t have agreed to meeting her here. What if something had happened? The chauffeur’s reflexes weren’t what they used to be. “The weather’s so awful, I hope everything’s all right.”

  Behind her, the heavy door creaked slightly as the wind picked up, whistling mournfully. When Eloise had called this morning, asking to meet her for lunch at the French restaurant they had frequented ever since Shanna had been a small child, Shanna had suggested coming to her grandmother’s house instead. The weather promised to be much too nasty for her grandmother to venture out. But Eloise had been adamant and, as always, got her way. Shanna wished now that she had insisted.

  Taking a menu from his desk, the maitre d’ was quick to reassure her. “It is undoubtedly only a matter of traffic impeding the fine lady.” His eyes lit as the front door burst open, propelled by the force of the wind and guided by a human hand. “Ah, I am right again.” He gestured with a flourish behind her.

  Shanna turned as the door yawned closed. Her grandmother, seated in the mobilized wheelchair that had become part of her daily life shortly after Thanksgiving, approached her. Mildred, the matronly black woman who was her companion—Eloise refused to refer to the woman as a nurse—followed directly behind her.

  Seeing Shanna, Mildred smiled, shaking off the remnants of snowflakes that were melting into her hair. “Your grandmother is a stubborn old woman, Mrs. Calhoun.” Mildred opened the top two buttons of her coat and loosened her scarf. “I couldn’t get her to listen to reason.”

  Eloise shifted the control on her wheelchair, turning the vehicle just enough to look up at Mildred. With the determination that was the hallmark of her life, Eloise had spent hours practicing in the wheelchair until her turns were butter smooth and the chair’s movements steady and flawless. Despite the hard-won expertise, she hated the damn vehicle, hated what it represented. That she was growing weaker. She knew eventually she had to surrender to the inevitable and it made her angry.

  “No one’s been able to do it for seventy-nine years, Mildred, why should you?” Turning on what seemed almost a dime’s worth of space, she faced the maitre d’. “So, Andre, is our favorite table ready?”

  “Always.” Andre smiled. Eloise Fitzhugh had been coming to his restaurant ever since he had first opened it with the money she had discreetly loaned him. A place of honor remained set aside for her even on the busiest nights. It was her table and no one else’s. “Right this way, Mrs. Fitzhugh.”

  He led them to a table that looked out on the Potomac. Today, the river was dark and restless, its choppy water fruitlessly slapping at the oncoming snow.

  Andre pulled out her chair and Shanna exchanged light pleasantries with the man until he left. As always, he had personally taken their order for hors d’oeuvres and drinks.

  “I still don’t see why I couldn’t just come over to your house, Grandmother,” Shanna said after Mildred took Eloise’s fur wrap, quietly leaving the two women alone. Mildred had murmured something about getting a little shopping done while they had their lunch. Shanna knew it was just an excuse and was grateful. She didn’t feel like sharing Eloise with anyone today. Visits were so few and far between that their time together was precious.

  Shanna glanced at the menu out of habit, though she knew everything on it by heart. It rarely changed. The restaurant’s attraction was in its excellence, not its variety. “Alice could have made us a little lunch and—“

  Eloise waved away the suggestion impatiently. “I’m tired of Alice’s cooking.” She nodded at the young waiter as he brought their hors d’oeuvres, a basket of bread, and their beverages. When he was gone, she continued, “Tired of sitting at home. Tired,” she murmured with a sigh. She saw the concerned expression on Shanna’s face. She hadn’t asked her here to look for pity. “I was born and raised in Minnesota, child,” Eloise reminded her. “I don’t break apart in cold weather.”
Softening, she winked. “Humor me.”

  Shanna grinned as she broke off a piece of the loaf. She had an incredible weakness for warm French bread. “I’d be afraid not to.”

  Eloise lowered her fork as she looked at her granddaughter sharply. “Don’t be.”

  Shanna swallowed her first bite quickly. She saw no reason for the sudden change in her grandmother’s mood. “What?”

  She was overreacting, Eloise thought But this was not the time for benign, halted actions. There might not be another time after today. She could feel it. “Don’t be afraid, Shanna. Never, never be afraid. Fear is for the weak.”

  The look in her grandmother’s eyes worried her. Shanna searched for a way to lighten the conversation. “You were never afraid?”

  Eloise snapped out the answer. “No.”

  And then she smiled, momentarily transcending the wrinkled and sagging skin to look like a young girl with a naughty secret. “At least not so anyone would ever notice. Otherwise,” Eloise added more seriously, for this was the crux of everything she believed in, the crux of what she wanted Shanna to realize, “I would have been trampled on.”

  She covered her granddaughter’s hand with her own. Now there was no strength left to give the girl, only warmth, Eloise thought sadly. A last few precious moments of warmth. “The way I’m afraid that you will be.” She watched the surprised look bloom in Shanna’s eyes. “See, I am afraid of something, but I’ll only admit it to you.”

  The waiter arrived with Shanna’s hot chocolate. It was a treat she liked to indulge herself in around her grandmother, for to sip hot chocolate and sit by Eloise was to be surrounded with wonderful memories she shared in this place. Jordan had laughed at her habit, saying that hot chocolate was not the sort of thing she was expected to drink at parties. Image, always image. So she never drank hot chocolate around him.

  She reacted now to the concern she saw in her grandmother’s face. She didn’t want the woman worrying about her. She had enough to deal with in her failing health. “Grandmother, I’m all right.”

  Her grandmother’s thin lips pressed into a hard line. “No, you have the potential to be all right. The power. But you have to take control of your own life.” She signaled Shanna to be silent as the waiter returned.

  “Is everything all right?” he asked solicitously. When he received an affirmative answer, he took their order and retreated. He returned shortly thereafter with their main course.

  Food no longer interested Shanna. She tried to discern what Eloise was driving at. Was her grandmother referring to the way she was living now, with Jordan’s campaign throwing everything on its ear? There were complete blocks of days when she didn’t see him at all.

  “Are you talking about Jordan’s campaign?” She knew she had, for all intents and purposes, stepped into the shadows as a human being, but that was only temporary. That always happened with a candidate’s wife, except perhaps for Eleanor Roosevelt and Jacqueline Kennedy. And her mother. But they were the rare exceptions. Other candidates’ wives licked envelopes, made speeches, and stood in the background, cheering their husbands on.

  If it was only a matter of that, perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad. But Eloise knew it went a lot deeper than that. “I’m talking about your whole life, Shanna. God gave you a fine father who was too busy to realize what a treasure he had produced and a mother who was too vain to take the time to love you the way you should have been loved. Even I’ve failed you—“

  “Grandmother—“ Was that what this meeting was about? Guilt? Her grandmother was responsible for all the happy memories she had of her childhood. Shanna reached for the woman’s hand, but Eloise pulled it back. She was far from finished.

  “And as for your husband—“

  Eloise’s look was as dark as the storm outside threatened to be. So, she had made up her mind about Jordan, Shanna thought sadly. She picked at her food. “You don’t like him, do your?”

  Eloise looked at the prettily arranged plate of coq au vin and found she had no appetite either. “I don’t feel that anyone is good enough for you, but I would have been willing to compromise if I felt that Jordan really loved you. If I saw love in his eyes.”

  Her protests, she knew, would have only fallen on deaf ears and Shanna had always respected her grandmother’s natural instincts. “Why, Grandmother, what is it that you do see?”

  “Someone wrapped up in himself.”

  Shanna thought of the small, tender moments during their whirlwind courtship, the way he had made her feel when he told her he loved her. No, it couldn’t be true. He couldn’t have treated her that way and not cared. “You’re wrong, Grandmother.”

  The girl had a stubborn streak. There was hope, Eloise thought. As long as the stubbornness wasn’t coupled with blindness. “I sincerely hope so.”

  The slight feeling of nausea that had been ebbing and flowing within Shanna all morning suddenly reared up violently. The world around her shrank to a tiny black pinprick. Shanna went numb.

  Eloise looked up as Shanna’s fork clattered to her plate. The girl had turned white as a sheet. Eloise grew alarmed. “Shanna, what’s the matter?”

  Shanna fought her way back up to the surface, pushing aside the darkness that had momentarily enshrouded her. After a beat, the restaurant came back into focus. She realized that her grandmother was talking to her.

  “Hmm?” Shanna dragged air into her lungs, trying to steady the frantic beating of her heart. She ran her hands over her face. “Oh, I’m sorry. It’s nothing, really.” She didn’t want to make a big thing out of this. “I just felt dizzy again.”

  “Again?” Eloise’s concern changed gears, from worry to interest. She peered more closely at Shanna’s face, looking for a sign.

  “It comes and goes.” Shanna shrugged, relieved that she hadn’t made a fool of herself and passed out. “I even fainted once last week.” She stared down at her plate and decided that she really couldn’t eat what she had ordered after all. She turned her attention to the cup of hot chocolate the waiter had refilled. “There’s a lot of flu going around this time of year.”

  Eloise leaned forward and grasped Shanna’s wrist. There was more strength in the small, frail hand than Shanna would have thought. Maybe her grandmother’s health was improving after all. At least she could hope so. “Have you been feeling sick in the morning?”

  In the last fourteen days, misery had hopscotched through her life, attacking every other day. “Yes, that is—“ She saw the light that came into her grandmother’s eyes. She knew exactly what the woman was hoping for. Shanna hated to disappoint her, but there never had been any lies or half-truths between them. “Oh, Grandmother.” She shook her head. “I’m not pregnant.”

  Eloise guessed at the reason. “You’re still taking your pills.”

  “Yes, I am.”

  Eloise refused to be convinced. She knew what she saw. “They’re not foolproof, you know, and considering the fool you’ve been sleeping with—“ Shanna opened her mouth to refute her reference to Jordan. Eloise released her wrist, waving her hand. “Yes, yes, I know, he loves you,” she agreed impatiently, then softened for Shanna’s sake when she saw the uncertainty in the girl’s eyes. “Perhaps he does, but I would like to see proof with my own eyes.”

  She leaned back and sampled the wine sauce her chicken was swimming in. She was certain that it was excellent, but her taste buds had all but faded. Another curse of old age, she thought, disgruntled. One of her passions had always been eating fine foods, though she had managed to remain whisper thin over the years. Well, she’d be food herself soon enough. Food for worms.

  She leveled an intent look at Shanna. “Is he considerate of your feelings?”

  “Yes,” Shanna answered quickly, then reiterated more slowly. “Yes, he is.”

  Her taste buds might have been fading, but not her hearing. “I hear a ‘but’ in your voice. What is it, child?”

  Shanna shrugged. “It’s nothing.”

  “I’ve a
lways preferred to judge things for myself.”

  Shanna hadn’t voiced this aloud and maybe she needed to. “I don’t know. I feel like there’s something missing.” She gestured helplessly, palms up. Maybe she was just crazy, demanding too much. “I can’t even put it into words.”

  Eloise understood what she meant perfectly. “When something is right, you know. Without words.”

  It went against her grain, but she found that she couldn’t leave her granddaughter without a shred of hope. Shanna did love that narcissistic idiot of a husband of hers. “Maybe it’ll take time,” Eloise said, though her tone said that she doubted it. “In the meanwhile, I want you to take care of yourself.” She looked pointedly at Shanna’s small waist. “And my great-grandchild.”

  Shanna laughed, casually passing her hand along her flat stomach. It did no harm to humor her grandmother, though she knew that she just had a touch of the flu.

  Besides, what harm would it do to pretend? She couldn’t think of anything she wanted more than to have Jordan’s child. To have a baby that smiled up at her with Jordan’s wonderful smile. “I promise if it’s a girl, I’ll name her after you.”

  Eloise looked at Shanna as if she’d lost her mind. “You’ll do nothing of the kind.”

  “Why not?”

  “I may be vain, child, but I’m not vengeful. Picture how unhappy that girl will be, saddled with a name like Eloise.” She shuddered just from the thought of it. “I always hated that name, though it was far better suited to my generation than to yours.”

  “I never knew that.” When her grandmother looked at her quizzically, Shanna quickly explained. “That you hated your name.”

  Eloise chuckled softly. Too late. It was too late to share so many things she would have wanted to share. Hindsight wasn’t wonderful. It was a curse. “There’s a lot of things about me you don’t know.”