Lies and Other Acts of Love

by Kristy Woodson Harvey

  About halfway through dinner, I couldn’t take the suspense any longer, and, so, I finally said, smiling, “I met a man.”

  That did it. Daddy banged his fist onto the table, his napkin clenched inside. “I told you we should go after her, Lily Ann. I told you she’d meet some damn Yankee and be gone forever.”

  Momma’s face was white. To the outsider it might seem like she was afraid of Daddy’s anger. But I knew better. She was afraid of me. Coming home and saying I’d met a Yankee was only a step off saying I was marrying a Catholic.

  “Calm down, Daddy.” I laughed. “He’s from New Bern. Do you remember Dan from school?”

  Momma nodded. “Really? Dan?”

  I nodded. “He’s a soldier now.”

  Momma exhaled deeply, and Daddy actually smiled. “A soldier, eh? Must be a fine fellow. I like a man who isn’t afraid to fight for what he believes in.”

  It was my turn to smile. “Well, I think you’ll like him a lot. You remember his daddy used to be the preacher at our church. And Dan has grown up so handsome.” I could feel myself swooning at the table over the hand that had spent the month in mine, the lips on my cheek. We kissed on the street corner, and I felt like I was starring in my own show. A famous starlet meets her true love, and, emboldened by passion and the forward-thinking ways of the city, she isn’t even afraid to kiss him in public of all places. Oh my Lord, I remember thinking, being young and in love is the best feeling in the world.

  “I’m so glad you found somebody you like,” Momma said.

  “He’s actually going off to college now that the war’s over.” I paused. You could tell by the change in their faces that they knew what was coming. “And, well, I was thinking that I might like to go to college too.”

  Daddy sighed and Momma said, “Did you really not miss us at all? You just want to run off again to college?”

  “Momma,” I protested, “I’m not running off and leaving you. I’m bettering myself. I want to go to college, be a teacher, make a difference.”

  “But—” Momma started, but Daddy cut her off.

  “Sweetheart, it isn’t fair for us to keep Lynn here like she’s in prison. Lib went to WC so it’s only fair that Lynn gets to go too.”

  “Well, actually,” I began nervously. “I was thinking that I might go to UNC.”

  I think both of my parents were stunned speechless, so I continued. “Dan is going there, and we thought if we could both go, then we could go ahead and get married, live in married student housing. We could be together while we’re getting an education.”

  Daddy laughed ironically. “I can’t believe that you would even mention something as crass as going to a men’s college.”

  “But it isn’t a men’s college,” I said, shifting in my chair, trying to keep my tone in check. “It’s coeducational.”

  I’ve never been as shocked as when Momma said, “But she wouldn’t be going as a girl. She’d be going as someone’s wife. I think that’s different.”

  I smiled at her, so grateful for her support. “Right,” I said. “I’d be living with my husband there, so it wouldn’t be inappropriate at all.”

  Daddy looked at Momma warily, and she nodded her approval.

  Holy hell and hallelujah, I had pulled it off. I was going to college.

  Only, I found out the next day it wasn’t going to be as simple as all that. I thought Dan looked a little pale as he was opening the passenger-side door of the car, but I didn’t say anything.

  “Guess what!” I practically sang as he got behind the wheel. We were going to get ice cream at that same shop where we’d had our first kiss as kids, to tell Haney that, in the most unlikely way, we had found our way back to each other. I thought it was impossibly romantic.

  “What?” Dan asked, his enthusiasm not quite as strong as mine.

  “Momma and Daddy went for it. They said if I was going to UNC as your wife, then I could go.”

  Dan pulled the car over on the side of the road, put it in park and looked at me. He turned, took my hand and said, “Lynn, it didn’t go as well with my parents.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “They told me that it wasn’t suitable or proper for a man to get married until he was educated, settled in his business and had enough money in the bank to provide for his family . . .” He turned and looked out the window. “They’ve always said that, but I thought once they saw how in love I was they would change their minds.”

  “Oh,” I said, feeling the tears coming to my eyes, the glee of my morning so instantly replaced with an intense sadness.

  “They said they wouldn’t pay for my college if we got married now.” He paused and looked back at me. “So I’m not going to go.”

  “Not going to go!” I protested. “Don’t be ridiculous, Dan. Of course you’re going to go.”

  “But I love you, Lynn.”

  “And you’ll love me four years from now. You go to UNC, I’ll go to WC, and when we graduate, we’ll get married. Plain and simple.”

  “But, Lynn, can you wait that long?”

  “Sure,” I lied. I reached over and kissed him softly. “We have our whole lives to be together. What’s four years in the scheme of things?”

  I realized a few minutes later that the ice cream at Haney’s shop didn’t taste as sweet when it was mixed with the first lie I had ever told the man I loved.

  Annabelle

  We’re Living

  The Lord gives and the Lord takes away all on His own time. And there isn’t anything a man or woman can do to really change that, according to Lovey. There wasn’t any other good explanation as to why a twenty-three-year-old who’d never had so much as an imperfect checkup still wasn’t pregnant.

  It had been only a little over a year, sure. But something inside Ben and me as a couple just needed that little person to complete our family. In retrospect, I wonder if that deep longing for a child of our own was a bit of a cop-out, an insurance policy in case we realized that everyone was right: We hadn’t known each other well enough to get married. If it were only the two of us, it would be easy to walk away. If another person were in our lives, it would keep us together, would force us to tunnel underneath the ground of those hard years and come out the other side as in love as we ever were.

  I could picture this tiny, energetic son of ours, twirling in the grass at music festivals, listening to his daddy sing onstage and wanting to be just like him. I could see myself, a crown of flowers in my hair, rocking a brown-eyed baby girl on my lap underneath the stars outside the RV.

  At one of those very festivals where I was dreaming about our little mini-mes, an agent approached Ben about cutting a demo.

  I was so excited I could scarcely breathe. Maybe it’s because I was so intoxicated by the sound of his voice onstage, but I knew that Ben could have been someone really important in the music world.

  “You know,” he said to the agent, as I was sure he was about to sign on the dotted line, “I really appreciate that. But I just sort of make music for fun.”

  It was our first real fight.

  Back in the RV, I’d said, “Are you crazy? Do you know how many people wait a lifetime for an opportunity like that? How many people scrape and fight and claw to try to get anyone to even listen to them? And you have it handed to you on a silver platter and say, ‘no thanks’?”

  Ben shrugged. “I love music, and I don’t want that to change. Albums and tour dates and pressure . . .” He waved his hand. “I don’t want all that.”

  “But, sweetheart,” I said, softening, changing my tactic, “you could do what you love for a living.”

  He shook his head and peeked it into the refrigerator, emerging with a beer. “We’re living right now, aren’t we? Besides, I just want a simple life.”

  “Sure, Ben, yeah. I mean, we’re living. But what about when we’r
e older, what about when we have kids? You could be up there onstage every night and selling albums every day and paying for our house and private school and college funds just by singing.”

  Ben looked at me in bewilderment. “Private school? Are you kidding me? There’s no way our kids are going to private school.”

  I had taken my private school education for granted, just always assumed that my kids would go there too. And, in reality, the only kids I had considered having were with Holden, so there wasn’t much of a question. But I knew that where our kids went to school wasn’t really the issue that night. So I said, “I guess we can cross that bridge when we get to it.”

  “The bridge to public school,” Ben said under his breath.

  I couldn’t understand it then. Maybe I was too young or too naïve, but I couldn’t reason out why someone would throw away his chance at fame. Now I realize that being happy isn’t about any of that. And that happiness is something you have to hold on to no matter what. But, that night, I said, “Are you seriously that unmotivated? Or are you afraid of failure? Or what? I do not get it.”

  Ben sat down beside me on the couch and tried to pull me to him. But I was too worked up to give in. “It’s not any of that,” he said quietly. “I have everything I want. I finally found the woman of my dreams, and I don’t want to risk you or this happy life for anything.”

  I shook my head, knowing I couldn’t stand my ground against an argument like that. I leaned over and kissed him. “I love you,” I whispered. “I just want you to get what you deserve.”

  “I love you too,” he said. “And, maybe you don’t get this, but our happiness in our little life is the only thing that matters to me.”

  In the entirety of that wanderlust year, it became the only thing that mattered to me too. There was no shortage of beautiful women fawning over my husband, but never once in that entire year did I ever feel anything but glorified by him. He would stare at me as he sang, dedicate his newest love songs to his only true love. And I could scarcely wait to get him alone again to show him my appreciation. It was a dream year, like wading through the fog and mist with no real responsibilities. It is a chance I’ll always be glad we took, because when in your life do you ever get to be that carefree and that in love?

  I hate to admit now that we really didn’t talk about the future, as evidenced by our private-school fight. I wasn’t sure when he’d be ready to stop singing or where we’d make a life when we got finished. My brain had spent a lifetime as a clogged drain of questions, stray hair and fingernail clippings and matted dirt preventing me from just being in the moment. And I was making up for it.

  But those days were over—at least for now—I reminded myself, lounging by the pool, eating grapes, clearing yet another text from Holden. I’m here and I love you, it said. If you change your mind, my door is always open.

  I sighed. I didn’t want his damn open door. I looked over the pool and considered the idea that, while it was lovely to be waited on hand and foot and spend my days hanging out with my mother-in-law, I needed a job.

  My phone beeped again. That meeting in NYC that you always loved so much is next month . . . Sure would be nice to have a pretty girl on the plane with me.

  I rolled my eyes. Maybe that was a part of the problem. When I knew I was going to marry Holden, working was almost out of the question. He traveled constantly on business, and it went without saying that part of the responsibility of being his wife was wining and dining and shopping with the other spouses. But that wasn’t the life I chose. And I felt pretty certain that in any life, without a bigger purpose, I was always going to feel bored and antsy.

  When Ben got home that night from the CPA grind, the shocked expression on his face was no surprise. It was the first night since we had moved in that I was waiting for him fully clothed. “What gives, TL?” he asked, loosening his tie.

  “I need to talk to you.”

  He sat down beside me on the couch, pulled me close and hoisted my legs onto his lap. “I love talking to you too,” he whispered into my ear.

  When I didn’t return his steamy kiss, Ben pulled back. “Oh,” he said. “You’re serious.”

  I smiled. “I’ve just been thinking that I can’t hang around here all the time.”

  “You ready to move on? Or get our own house?”

  I shook my head. “No. I think I could stay in this pool house comfortably for the rest of my life and have your mom wait on me . . . but I think I need to get a job.”

  Ben smiled. “That’s awesome! Have you found something you really want to do?”

  I looked skeptical. “I don’t have a clue what I really want to do.”

  “So why are you getting a job? I’m making plenty and we have like no bills.”

  “I just feel like I need to do something with my time; I need a purpose.”

  Ben rubbed my shoulder. I knew he was trying to be supportive because he was always supportive. He only wanted what was best for me. “But, TL, you’ll be pregnant soon, and there’s no use in stressing yourself out with a job unless it totally fulfills you, you know?”

  Every logical cell in my body knew that he was trying to take the pressure off of me, to let me know that I didn’t have to do anything just because I felt like I should. But I could feel myself getting angry anyway. “Oh, so being a CPA fulfills you?”

  Ben shook his head. “No. It’s a job. But I do it because I’m your husband, and I like taking care of you. And my dad needs me. And making both of you happy fulfills me, so revision to my previous answer. Actually, being a CPA does fulfill me.”

  He had responded to my snap as coolly and calmly as I could imagine. But, for the first time in the fifteen months I had known Ben, I needed him to argue with me. I had to feel him waver just an inch from that sheet-glass countenance of his. “And quit saying soon I’m going to be pregnant. I’m not pregnant, and the last thing I need is you reminding me that I’m failing at my only responsibility.”

  Instead of fighting with me, Ben lowered his eyes to the ground, making me feel a hair off of Hitler, and said, “TL, I love you madly, and I think you’re the perfect woman. I don’t need a baby from you to be happy or fulfilled or anything. Let’s just not worry about it.”

  What I needed to do was cry. I needed to crawl into my adoring husband’s lap and sob about the baby I had dreamed of and how scared I was to even find out why it had yet to appear. We could be adults, talk through it together, and make a plan for either moving forward or putting it on the back burner. But, instead, I stomped off into our bedroom, like the relative child I was, closed the door rather forcefully and yelled, “I told your parents we’d have dinner with them at seven.”

  Friends always asked me if it was hard having a therapist as a mother-in-law. Until that night, I had always answered, “No.” Until that night, it had always been easy and normal and like any other mother-in-law. But, until that night, I had been transparently happy. As soon as we sat down outside in the gorgeous iron coral chairs around their outdoor dining table, Emily said, “Oh no, kids. I sense some tension. Should we talk it out?”

  “Everything’s fine, Mom.”

  “Well, are you having enough sex? Because you know if you aren’t having enough sex—”

  “Jesus, Emily,” Ben’s father Greg interrupted.

  “They’re grown-ups, Greg. They’re married.”

  “I know, Emily, but no one wants to talk to his mother about . . .” He paused and waved his fork around in a circle. “That.”

  “Well, I was simply asking,” she said, turning toward Ben, “because—”

  “Yes, Mom,” he interjected before she could go any further down her line of psychological questioning. “We have lots of sex, if you must know.”

  I could feel myself looking into my salad as though it was a criminal in an interrogation room, and I was the bad cop.

 
“Yes,” she started up again, “but sex for procreation and sex for recreation can sometimes feel different. You don’t want to feel like you’ve lost all the fun of it on the quest for baby.”

  I knew my face was redder than the tomatoes on the plate, but I turned to Ben and said, “You told them we were trying to have a baby?”

  He shrugged, his fork and knife in midair. “I didn’t know it was a secret.”

  “Great,” I said, thinking that if it wasn’t enough for the two of us to be thinking something was wrong with me, now the entire family thought something was wrong with me.

  “If it makes you feel better,” Greg said, “I didn’t know about the baby.”

  I laughed ironically. “Probably because there isn’t a baby to know about.”

  I could feel tears gathering in my eyes, and I was beyond embarrassed. I wanted to stop them, so I looked down in my lap and gulped my water.

  “Oh, pumpkin,” Emily said. “We think you are absolutely glorious. You don’t need to have a baby to prove that.”

  I nodded and swallowed, hoping the tears standing in my eyes weren’t obvious. “Oh, I know,” I said. “It’s just that Ben is so perfect and has been so incredible that I want to give him something in return, and this is the only thing I can think of that he can’t have on his own.”

  Greg looked at his son and said, “Sport, you’re on your own here. I’m going to my study.”

  “TL,” Ben said, an amused look on his face. “You are my entire world. The sun rises and sets around your face. All I could ever want from you is you. Nothing in heaven or on earth can change that.”

  “See what I mean?” Emily said. “It’s no coincidence that procreation and pressure both start with pr.”

  I actually laughed at that in spite of how uncomfortable I thought it was to talk about sex with Emily.

  That night, we put the procreation on the back burner. And my husband and I discovered that fighting with your spouse is the best thing you can do—as long as you get to make up.