Secrets of a Happy Marriage

by Cathy Kelly

‘Better get used to dry heat, lots of cattle and men with guns,’ Mary-Kate said grimly.

  ‘I don’t care about any heat in the future,’ said Faenia, because the baby was sticking a knee or something into her bladder and she needed the bathroom. ‘Plenty of guns at home and cattle too, just not enough in my family. Just rocky land that only sheep like.’

  Faenia kept working her shifts in the diner but she insisted that there would be no wedding until after the baby was born.

  ‘Why not, honey?’ demanded Chuck, the closest Faenia had ever seen him come to anger.

  ‘Because you say now that you love me and you love this baby but—’ She cradled her belly. ‘Let’s see how you feel when the baby is born. I made a big rash decision once – not again. I love you, Chuck,’ she said, and she felt joy that she meant it.

  This big kind man had brought so much to her life: laughter, acceptance, love. It wasn’t the wild, childish passion she’d had with Peadar. This was more real, the careful slow love of a woman who knew this man cared for her and her child. She valued his love and kindness. But she still wouldn’t marry him yet.

  ‘Let’s just wait.’

  Chuck bought her an engagement ring and she wore it proudly. She knew it hurt him that she wouldn’t marry him before the baby was born but it was a risk Faenia couldn’t take. She had to take care of this baby, not rely on anyone else, even someone as special as Chuck.

  One night, after a long, hard shift, at six months’ pregnant, Faenia had come home alone because Chuck had to work late. Mary-Kate was at a church fundraiser and, for once, Faenia had the house to herself.

  She was in the small kitchen, sitting at the blue Formica table with the metallic edge, imagining a time when she might have her own table and a modern top-loader washing machine instead of handwashing and using the launderette with the big stuff. She’d make curtains better than the ones Mary-Kate had.

  Mary-Kate was a sweetheart, a little prickly sometimes, but a kind woman and yet style wasn’t on her agenda. For all that she was stuck in large pregnancy clothes now, Faenia found she liked clothes, loved looking at the old fashion magazines people sometimes left in the diner, loved watching professional women coming in and out, elegant in their little suits and hats, those fabulous shirred stockings making their legs look endless. She watched one woman in particular: she was small, dark, with deep-set eyes and an exotic accent and yet her clothes … Faenia didn’t know, couldn’t tell if they were expensive or not, not like some of the women she’d seen in New York or in the magazines, but this woman had style. She favoured a white shirt, always crisp, a bangle on one wrist, an unusual necklace around her neck and plain dark pants from which elegant ankles emerged in what looked like little ballet shoes.

  She brought style into the diner and Faenia followed her with her eyes.

  When Faenia had had her darling baby, she was going to buy white shirts and dark pants, and little ballet flats … she was just dreaming

  And then the pain ripped through her, suddenly, like the worst cramps she’d ever felt but it was worse, so much worse. She gripped the metal edge of the table with both hands and gasped with the pain, felt the flood of water between her legs and knew her waters had broken. But this was early. Too early.

  Thirteen

  ‘Everyone has a chapter

  they don’t read out loud.’

  Anonymous

  In the weeks since Jojo had come to Tanglewood and ripped a hole in their marriage, Bess knew that her relationship with Edward had plummeted. Even though she now had an ally in Nora, someone she felt that she could talk to, Edward was still cutting her out as if he were somehow trying to make things better with his daughter by not speaking to his new wife. As a strategy for marital harmony, it was completely hopeless.

  Bess still had her own chartered accountancy firm, but she had a partner now and she had cut back on her hours when she married Edward. Not that he’d cut back on his hours, but there was something about being a new bride that made her think she wanted to be there more, there to help their love and their relationship grow.

  It was a strange sensation for Bess, a woman who had been brought up to know that she and only she could bring home the bacon.

  Edward had encouraged her cutting back on work too.

  ‘You’ve worked so hard all your life, darling,’ he’d said. ‘Why don’t you cut back a bit, take your foot off the pedal just a little. Don’t kill me for saying that.’

  And he’d laughed and she’d laughed.

  With any other man, she might have shot him a fierce glare for such misogynistic comments, but with Edward it had been lovely, a sign that he cared about her, that someone loved her enough to worry about her working herself into the ground the way she had for so many years.

  Consequently, she did a lot of the cooking around the place, a role that she had found herself settling into with remarkable ease. Because she’d lived alone in her apartment for so many years, she’d got into the habit of eating sparingly and easily: salads and quickly prepared stir-frys and the other light meals that she’d enjoyed. The single, working woman’s diet.

  But now she enjoyed making beautiful meals for herself and her husband. She’d light candles mid-week for no reason, use cloth napkins, put on music they both liked. And they’d talk – about anything and everything. It had been bliss. Had been. Past tense.

  Since the confrontation with Jojo, all the joy and love had gone out of those dinners.

  If she was home before Edward and started cooking, she’d listen for the sound of his key in the door and be full of anticipation, hoping that this evening was the one where they rekindled what they’d had before.

  Then he’d come into the kitchen and say, politely but still quite formal, ‘Hello, how was your day? What are we having tonight?’

  The words weren’t the problem – it was the way he said them.

  As if he was talking to a housekeeper, not her, not Bess.

  ‘I’m doing beef stroganoff,’ she’d say, checking the casserole in the oven, lifting the lid to let the glorious scent out even more. It was the sort of thing she’d never have cooked before but Edward loved his meaty dishes.

  ‘How was your day?’ she’d ask, hating herself for sounding just as formal.

  It was impossible to lean against him and beg for it all to go back to the way it had been before: all she could do was steel herself for this coolness and hope, pray, it would end.

  ‘Fine, fine,’ he’d reply, ‘a bit busy but nothing much. I’ll just go up and change out of my suit.’

  And that would be it. No hug, no kiss, no him leaning over and peering at what she was doing on the stove with one arm around her, and his face taking a slight detour into her neck to plant a gentle, loving kiss there. That was all gone.

  Bess was heartbroken because she missed it so much.

  Before Edward, she hadn’t known that sort of love existed. Now it was gone, it left a gaping hole inside her. She had messed up and yet she had no tools for fixing it. She was too old to try to fix it. Too old to change her leopard’s spots. Perhaps her mother was right and she should have just got used to being alone, because, as Maura used to say: ‘We all die alone.’

  Charming and cheerful. That was her mother.

  It was too late to resist all the conditioning now.

  Worse, growing away inside her like a canker was the knowledge, via Nora, that Lottie had told Edward that he needed to find someone else when she was gone. She had given him permission to find another woman, had encouraged him too.

  Yet he had never said that to her.

  Had never explained it to Jojo, which would have made all their lives so much easier. With that information, perhaps Jojo mightn’t have hated her. Perhaps there would have been hope for their marriage.

  Bess decided sadly that there could be only one explanation for this – Edward still wasn’t sure if he wanted to truly be with Bess for the rest of his life, so he was keeping his cards close to his chest
. And that Bess couldn’t forgive.

  ‘How are things?’ Nora asked on the telephone.

  Bess didn’t regret seeking her sister-in-law out for help but she was beginning to wonder if it was all beyond help now.

  ‘We’re not talking much,’ she said to Nora.

  ‘You have to talk to Jojo,’ Nora went on. That was her main point: sit down and talk to Jojo and get some of this out into the open, yet Bess was damned if she was going to tell Jojo that her dying mother had urged her father to find someone new. That had been Edward’s job and he hadn’t done it. He had not made it easy for Bess, and that was pushing her out of his life.

  ‘Plus, you and Edward have to talk about the past, talk about Lottie and how her death affected Jojo. They were very close and he needs to sit down with Jojo and discuss all of that. She’s hurting really badly, and there is something else there …’ Nora had said.

  Nora said she didn’t know what it was, but she sensed a great unhappiness in her niece, an unhappiness that was coming from more than just her mother’s death.

  ‘Edward doesn’t talk to me, Nora,’ said Bess angrily. ‘I can’t cope with it much longer, being second best, waiting …’

  ‘Hold in there,’ Nora advised. ‘It will come right. I know it will.’

  Bess had to believe her. But the secrets Edward was keeping from her and Jojo – why did people get married and keep secrets? What hope was there for marriage without honesty?

  ‘Don’t leave him, Bess,’ said Nora. ‘He needs you.’

  Bess had hung up, wanting to cry. She knew that Nora was wise about people and their emotional states in a way that she, Bess, had never been.

  Look at her relationship with Amy, another example of where her once-orderly life was falling apart.

  She had been trying so hard lately but Amy was definitely holding her at a distance.

  Bess was no coward. She was able to look back with a cold eye and she knew that she hadn’t tried as hard as she could with her daughter. She had focused on the material things, on keeping a roof over their heads and food on the table – all those sorts of things, and hadn’t realised that Amy was nothing like her, that Amy needed a different sort of love, a gentler love, one that Bess probably wasn’t suited to giving her.

  All of which brought Bess round in a horrible circle to where she was now: married to a man who was working late in the evening, every evening and all because his daughter hated Bess. Worse, her own daughter, Amy, barely rang and had sent an actual text message to say: ‘Party sounds great, thanks, would love to come.’

  There had been no phone call, no cosy conversation along the lines of: ‘Will we go shopping for clothes together or do you need any help with the arrangements?’

  None of that. Just one brisk little text message from a daughter who knew that Bess was perfectly capable of organising a presidential visit never mind a seventieth birthday party with no help whatsoever.

  She thought of how removed Amy had been from Bess and Edward’s wedding, and how she’d never realised it might be hard for Amy to see her mother marry another man. The thought simply hadn’t occurred to her. Amy was an adult and Dennis wasn’t part of either of their lives. And yet …

  Bess had not wanted a hen night for her second wedding.

  ‘I couldn’t think of anything worse,’ she had said to Edward.

  ‘You must do something to celebrate the end of your single years,’ he replied, teasing her.

  He was going out with his son Paul, his son-in-law Hugh and his two brothers. It wasn’t going to be a wild rampaging night through the town, but they were going out to dinner and then possibly to a pub for a few more drinks.

  ‘Not a late one,’ Edward had said. He had a few cigars with him, even though none of them smoked. Bess figured it was some male bonding behaviour and had smiled at the thought of her dear Edward and the others standing outside a pub, smoking and coughing because cigars were part of it all, weren’t they?

  In lieu of a proper hen night, Bess and Amy had gone out to dinner the night before the wedding. Even then Bess had known there was absolutely no point in inviting her soon-to-be stepdaughter to come out with her.

  Edward had suggested it, muttering how perhaps she could ask Jojo …? Deftly, Bess had steered him away from this.

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘I feel terribly guilty I haven’t being spending any time with Amy and us being alone together tonight is very important to me,’ she said. It was all true: she hadn’t been spending very much time for Amy, because Amy had weirdly absented herself from the whole wedding process. Bess guiltily knew this was her fault, her fault for desperately wanting her daughter to fit in with the beautiful Brannigan girls. It was her fault for making Amy endure three testing make-up sessions: it was her fault for not being there for Amy so much of her life. Surrounded by the evidence of Lottie’s huge love for her children, a love that Edward could talk about so easily, not knowing that when he did so it wounded Bess, that self-evident love made Bess realise she hadn’t been that sort of mother. She’d have to be different, she knew that. But it didn’t make it any easier, and now the guilt had set in. Bess wanted to change it all but was it too late?

  She and Amy had gone to a very simple restaurant they used to go to years ago when they hadn’t had any money at all. It was cheap and cheerful and Amy used to love it.

  ‘Brilliant idea, Mum,’ she said, when they met there.

  As usual, Amy had insisted on meeting her mother there and not meeting up in advance and then going to the restaurant together. It was one of those weird things that Bess didn’t understand.

  Why was Amy always pushing her away, insisting they meet in the restaurant? Bess had only been inside Amy’s new apartment in Delaney Gardens a couple of times, not that it was anything to write home about, and then Bess remembered criticising it and looking at the couch and saying something about how impractical a colour it was because really, a cream couch? How would you get any stains out?

  ‘It’s IKEA,’ Amy had said flatly. ‘The cover is washable.’

  Thinking about it made Bess cringe. Weren’t you supposed to get wiser as you got older and not make more cretinious mistakes than ever?

  ‘I thought we deserved to come here now that we have enough money to have a starter, a main course and dessert,’ Bess said, recovering, and she put her arm through Amy’s as they went in.

  She could feel Amy stiffen slightly but she held on.

  It was never too late, never too late at all. And Amy was hers, the deepest part of her, and tomorrow – well, Bess was anxious about tomorrow for all that she was marrying Edward whom she adored.

  Because with Edward came Jojo and Jojo hated her. Bess tried to bring the conversation round to the wedding a couple of times, but Amy seemed to be avoiding it.

  ‘What do you think of Jojo?’ Bess asked, trying to sound bright.

  Amy gave her a shrewd look. ‘She seems nice but she doesn’t like you, does she?’

  ‘No.’ Bess seemed to sink in on herself, her normally upright bearing deserting her at this moment. ‘I think she hates me. I’ve dealt with people who didn’t like my methods in business and didn’t like that I was a tough woman in quite a male dominated business and yet this …’ She rubbed the bridge of her nose feeling a tension headache start. ‘This hatred is just awful.’

  ‘Has she ever said anything specifically to you?’ Amy asked.

  ‘No,’ admitted Bess, ‘but she glares at me and it’s freaky. And when her father told her that we were getting married, she went crazy. Not exactly the recipe for a dream wedding.’

  ‘It’s her issue to deal with,’ Amy said calmly. ‘You can’t live other people’s lives for them.’

  Bess looked at her daughter in astonishment. How wise.

  ‘That’s very deep, Amy,’ she said.

  ‘I can be deep, Mum,’ Amy replied, laughing, ‘you just normally never give me a chance to let you see that side of me.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said
Bess, humbled. She was hopeless with people, hopeless.

  ‘I hope you enjoy tomorrow,’ Bess added. ‘I know weddings aren’t really your cup of tea and I know the whole getting your make-up done three times and everything was awful, it’s just that Jojo is so stunning—’

  ‘And I’m not,’ snapped Amy. ‘You know, it was hard enough growing up with the fact that you believed that I was overweight and needed to be monitored like an escapee from fat camp, but I’m a grown-up now and it’s frankly upsetting and demeaning to have my own mother treat me like that.’

  ‘Well,’ stammered Bess, ‘I’m sorry but you should have said something.’

  ‘I’m saying it now,’ said Amy. ‘You know what, I’m not really in the mood for this. Let’s just have a main course and go.’

  ‘But we can have everything: three courses, wine,’ pleaded Bess.

  Amy looked at her almost pityingly. ‘Mum, it’s fine, one course is fine. I don’t cry if I don’t get dessert any more.’

  Now, Bess thought of that night before her wedding with a heavy heart. She, Bess, had made it that way. She had, without meaning to, treated Amy precisely the way her mother had treated her: like a creature to be trained and then sent off into the world.

  Maura had told her men were hopeless, that women should rule the world, that no sane woman relied on a man for anything. Maura had taught her to be hard and Bess had never wondered if these were the right lessons to be learning, or the right lessons to pass along to her only child.

  How could she try to be a good wife at this stage in her life when she’d been a cool, unemotional mother who had hated her daughter’s weight gain as a symbol of everything that was wrong with their small family? Amy had just been a kid with puppy fat and she was right, Bess had policed her when it came to food.

  She had failed, Bess thought miserably, failed at everything. Failed at marrying that first time. Failed with Amy. And now she was failing with Edward because his daughter hated her and she wasn’t warm or kind enough to make Jojo love her. Edward should have married someone like Lottie: a fey, sweet woman who loved stray animals. Jojo could have cared for that woman, or learned to like her at least.