by Joy Fielding
“Bram…”
“Don’t worry about Disney World. I have no intention of tagging along and ruining everybody’s good time. It’s not really my thing anyway.” His hand reached for the doorknob.
“Bram….” This time the voice that stopped him wasn’t Charley’s, but his mother’s. Bram reluctantly released his grip on the door handle and slowly turned around. “Please,” Elizabeth said. “There’s something I need to say to you.”
“Apology accepted,” Bram decreed preemptively. “Can I go now?”
“This isn’t another apology.” Elizabeth pulled her shoulders back, clasped her hands together in front of her, and took a deep breath, as if she were about to deliver a speech in front of a crowded auditorium.
“Well, then,” Bram said. “You have something to say? Then, by all means, spit it out.”
Charley watched her mother take another deep breath, then took the next one along with her. It felt as if an eternity passed before her mother spoke again.
“I know you don’t believe me, but I really do understand your pain.”
“Of course you do.”
“And I understand your anger. I even sympathize with it. It was a terrible thing I did, running away to Australia, leaving you and your sisters in that house. And I will regret it till my dying day.”
“You’ve said this already.”
“But there’s nothing I can do about any of that now,” Elizabeth continued as if Bram hadn’t spoken. “What’s done is done. I made my choices. Right or wrong, I made them, and I can’t go back and unmake them. I may be every bit as selfish and awful as you seem to think. I may be guilty of every horrible, neglectful thing you accuse me of. But you can only blame your mother for so long. Eventually you have to accept some responsibility for the way your life turns out. You’re not two years old anymore, Bram. You’re all grown up, and what happens to you from now on is your choice. You can choose to stay stuck in the past, to drink and dope yourself into oblivion, and it’s still not going to change what happened. It’s time to move forward, time to make a real life for yourself. With me or without me. I didn’t give you a choice when I walked out on you all those years ago. But you have one now. I want to be a part of your life more than anything in the world. But I can’t spend the rest of my life apologizing. It doesn’t do either of us any good.”
“You’re telling me you messed up, but it’s my problem now? Is that what you’re saying?”
“I know it’s not fair, but…”
“Well, you’re certainly right about that. Anything else you want to say?”
“Just that I love you.”
Bram nodded, his hands forming fists at his sides. “Okay. So, I can go now?”
“Bram, please,” Charley cautioned as her brother opened the front door. “Don’t do anything stupid.”
“Bye, Charley. Thanks for dinner.” He walked quickly toward the nondescript, white rental car that was parked at the corner. “Happy birthday,” he called out, climbing inside and waving as he pulled away from the curb. “And in case I don’t see you next week, many happy returns of the day.”
It was almost midnight when Charley climbed into bed and picked up the phone. He’d still be up, she was thinking. He always stayed up late, catching up on his reading until well past twelve o’clock. She’d been debating whether to call him ever since her mother left, her mother’s words to Bram still bouncing around in her brain, like pebbles tossed against a window pane. I made my choices…. I can’t go back and unmake them…. I may be guilty of every horrible, neglectful thing you accuse me of…. Eventually you have to accept some responsibility for the way your life turns out…. You’re all grown up, and what happens to you from now on is your choice…. You can choose to stay stuck in the past…. It’s time to move forward, time to make a real life for yourself…. You can only blame your mother for so long.
“Or your father,” Charley said aloud, pressing the appropriate numbers before she could change her mind, and listening as the phone rang once, then twice, before being picked up.
“Robert Webb,” the elegant voice said, without a hint of fatigue.
Charley heard the rustle of paper, and wondered which one of the three daily newspapers he read every night—The New York Times, The Washington Post, and New Haven Register—she was taking him away from. “Dad, it’s me. Charley.” There was silence, and for an instant, Charley wasn’t sure whether or not her father had hung up the phone without so much as a word. “Dad?”
“What can I do for you, Charlotte?”
Charley felt her breath escape her chest in a series of short, painful spasms. Her father’s voice betrayed not a hint of what he might be feeling, which didn’t surprise Charley, who’d often wondered whether he had any feelings at all. Still, it was almost midnight and she hadn’t spoken to him in almost two years. Did he have to sound so matter-of-fact? “How are you?” she ventured meekly.
“Fine.”
He obviously wasn’t going to make this easy. “I’m sorry to be calling so late. I remembered you rarely go to sleep before one.”
Silence. Then, “Is there a reason for this call, Charlotte?”
“Not really. I mean, there’s nothing wrong or anything like that. The kids are great. I’m not in any trouble. It was more an impulse kind of thing.”
“More an impulse kind of thing,” he repeated. Charley could almost see him wince as he dissected her grammar.
“I was just wondering how you are, what you’ve been doing….”
“I’m fine. I’m basically doing the same thing I’ve always done. Teaching, going to meetings, reading.”
“Have you seen much of Emily and Anne?”
“They keep in touch.”
“Anne’s book is doing really well.”
“So it would seem.”
“Have you read it? It’s pretty good, actually. I mean, it’s not high art or anything,” she found herself equivocating, sensing his disapproval, “but I was surprised how much I enjoyed it. I couldn’t put it down. That should count for something.”
“Should it?”
Charley could feel him glancing at the clock beside his bed. She took a deep breath. “I’ve actually just made a deal with a publisher to do a book. Nonfiction. About Jill Rohmer. She killed three little children she used to baby-sit….”
“Sounds like something you’d be interested in.”
Charley tried to ignore the dismissiveness in her father’s voice, but it pierced at her heart, like the sting of a wasp. “You always talked about writing a book,” she said. “Whatever happened to that?”
“Serious literature demands a great deal of time and thought. It’s not something one can toss off in one’s spare time. Something of which I have perilously little, I’m afraid.”
“Sometimes you just have to make time,” Charley said.
“I’ll bear that in mind. Anything else?”
“No. Yes,” Charley corrected, continuing on before she lost her nerve, the words pouring from her mouth like water from a tap. “You’re my father. We’re family. And we never see each other. We never speak. And it doesn’t have to be this way. I’m sorry if I’ve disappointed you. I really am. I know I’m not the perfect daughter. Far from it. But you’ve disappointed me as well. There are all sorts of ways I wish you were different. But you’re not. You’re who you are, and I have to accept that. Just as I hope you can accept me for who I am. We’re human beings. We make choices, and we make mistakes. But that’s part of what being an adult is all about, isn’t it? Accepting responsibility for one’s choices, learning to accept the choices of others, and moving on, moving forward?”
“And the point of this little diatribe is…?”
“The point is that whether or not I choose to have a relationship with my mother shouldn’t affect my relationship with you. One doesn’t negate the other. My seeing her again doesn’t cancel out the things you did for me, or the education you provided me with, or the fact you were ther
e when she wasn’t. But because she left us doesn’t mean she ceased to exist, just like her coming back doesn’t mean you’ve ceased to matter. She’s my mother. You’re my father. I shouldn’t have to choose between you.”
There was a pause. For the second time, Charley wondered whether her father had disconnected the line. “Are you finished?” he asked finally.
Charley nodded, then realized she needed to say the word out loud. “Yes.”
“Well, that was quite the speech. Aside from a few lapses in grammar, and an unfortunate tendency toward the trite, it was reasonably succinct and well-delivered. I have no doubt you’re as sincere as you are misguided.”
“Misguided?”
“Please allow me the same courtesy I allowed you, and let me speak without further interruption.”
“I’m sorry,” Charley mumbled. “Go on.”
“You talk about choices. Well, I made my choice twenty-two years ago when your mother walked out and sued for divorce. I made the decision to be angry and bitter and unforgiving for the rest of my life.”
“But that’s…”
“Crazy? Ridiculous? Maybe it is. But it’s still my choice,” he said loudly, biting off each word. “I have no interest in forgiving your mother, or in making things easier for you. This is the way things are for me, the way I have chosen to live my life. Your mother betrayed me. She betrayed all of us. And I consider your subsequent embrace of her to be a betrayal of me. So if you want to forgive her, then you’re right, that’s your choice, and I have to accept it. But I don’t have to like it. I don’t have to approve of it. And I certainly don’t have to welcome a traitor back into my midst.”
“A traitor? Dad, for God’s sake….”
“I thought I made it perfectly clear during our last conversation that I wouldn’t tolerate such treachery. Maybe you shouldn’t have to choose between your mother and your father, but you do. And you’ve made your choice. Unless, of course, you’ve changed your mind. In which case, things can return to the way they were before. Is that why you’ve called, Charlotte? To tell me you’ve changed your mind?”
There was a long pause. “I haven’t changed my mind,” Charley said.
This time the silence of the line going dead in her hands was unmistakable.
CHAPTER 31
WEBB SITE
Families. You gotta love ’em. Right?
Take mine, for example. I have two glorious children, whom I adore. I also have a mother I’m just starting to get to know, a father who refuses to talk to me, two sisters I rarely see, and a brother who is usually too preoccupied to see anything.
Which brings me to last weekend.
For whatever reasons—and I’m sure at least one of them made sense at the time—I decided it was time to reunite my siblings with their mother. The past is past, I reasoned. It was time to live and let live. So I essentially blackmailed my sisters and bullied my brother into accepting my invitation for dinner, persuaded my mother to make her famous chicken, then bathed the kids, brushed the dog, and prayed we’d all find a way to get along. After all, we’re family. Right?
Tell that to my sisters, who canceled at the last minute, or my brother, who refused to look at his mother all night, no matter how many times—and how sincerely—she apologized for abandoning us as children. So much for forgiveness. So much for the past being past. No one, it seems, is ready to let go. We have too much invested in the way things were to try to change the way things are.
The sad truth is that the past is never really past. It’s always with us. Sometimes it’s strong and supportive, pushing us toward the future like a friendly wind at our backs. But more often than not, it’s wound tightly around our shoulders like a shroud, its weight dragging us down, tethering us to the ground, occasionally even burying us alive. The strange thing is that given the opportunity to rid ourselves of these deadly wraps, we often cling to them instead.
“You’re not two years old anymore,” my mother told my brother in exasperation at the conclusion of our meal. “Everything you say about me may be true, but you’re all grown up, and it’s your problem now.” I’m paraphrasing and condensing here, but the message is clear: You’re an adult. Shit happens. Deal with it.
It wasn’t just my brother, I realized in that moment. I’m an adult, too, with problems of my own. My father, for example, to whom I hadn’t spoken in far too long. He’d chosen to interpret my acceptance of my mother as a rejection of him. I needed to make peace, for my sake as much as his. So I picked up the phone and called him in New Haven. I apologized for the lateness of the hour and any hurt I might have caused him over the years and, burying my pride, all but begged him not to make me choose between my mother and him any longer. He turned me down cold. Word for word, this is what he said: “Twenty-two years ago I made the decision to be angry and bitter and unforgiving for the rest of my life.”
Huh?!
Why would anyone make the conscious choice to be angry and bitter and unforgiving for the rest of his life? To be deliberately, actively, and even aggressively unhappy? Does this make any sense at all? Apparently it does. At least to him. You’re either with me or against me, he is saying. Deal with it.
So, okay. I’m dealing with it, Dad. I’m saying that some people aren’t worth the pain it takes to love them, because love must be valued as well as earned, and that if this is how you choose to live your life, then you’ll have to live it without me. As a child, your rage and bitterness made me feel wretched and alone. You were callous in your words and careless in your deeds. You frightened me. You frighten me even more now. I have children of my own. They must be protected from people like you.
Which isn’t to say I’ve given up on my family altogether. I’m still hoping to get my brother and sisters over for dinner one night so that we can enjoy Mom’s famous chicken and, if not bury the past, at least put it in its proper place. As for now, I’m leaving the dog with a neighbor for the weekend, packing up my kids, my mother, and the new man in my life, and we’re heading off to Disney World to celebrate my birthday.
It seems I’ve finally come of age.
Charley stared at her computer screen, reading and then rereading the column she’d written for this Sunday’s paper. She’d probably have to cut out the word shit, but what the hell, she’d leave it in there for the time being, give Mitchell something to edit. Would her sisters see it? Bram? Her father? Probably not. “It doesn’t matter,” she said out loud, forwarding the article to Mitchell’s e-mail.
“What doesn’t matter?”
Charley spun around in her seat. “Glen!” She jumped up, her eyes absorbing the darkly handsome man in the white silk shirt and tailored black pants standing at the entrance to her cubicle. What was he doing here? “When did you get back to town? And why didn’t the receptionist page me?”
“I got in last night. And she didn’t page you because I told her I wanted to surprise you. Am I interrupting anything?”
“No. As a matter of fact, I just finished Sunday’s column.”
“So how’ve you been? You look wonderful, as always.”
“I feel pretty good.” Had he come to tell her he wanted Bandit back as soon as possible? “How was your visit with your son?”
“Fabulous. Best kid in the world.”
There was something about the tone in Glen’s voice that gave Charley pause. “Problems?”
“Not really. Can we talk about this at lunch?”
“Lunch?”
“I made a reservation at Renato’s.”
Charley felt the color drain from her face. “Oh, my God. Did we have a…?”
“A date? No. I’m just being my usual smug and presumptuous self. What do you say? Are you free?”
Charley checked her watch. It was almost noon, and she had her interview with Jill at two o’clock. “Well, normally I’m quite partial to smug and presumptuous, but I have to be in Pembroke Pines by two. How’s coffee…?”
“Coffee’s good.”
&n
bsp; “There’s a cafeteria on the main floor.”
“Lead the way.”
“It’s not exactly Renato’s,” she apologized as they entered the large room minutes later. It smelled of tuna casseroles and gravy, and was already pretty crowded. All eyes shot immediately in her direction.
“Just like high school,” Glen remarked, following Charley through the rows of long tables toward the coffee machines at the back.
“Hi, Jeff…. Anita,” Charley greeted two of her coworkers. They looked vaguely stunned by her acknowledgment. “So, what’s the problem with your son?” she asked as she and Glen settled into two chairs at a small table near the back wall several minutes later, coffees in hand.
“There’s no problem with Eliot.” Glen looked toward the recessed ceiling. “It’s my ex-wife….”
“She’s giving you a hard time?”
“It’s not that.”
“You still love her?”
“God, no.”
“What then?”
“It’s her husband. I don’t know. I guess I’m afraid…”
“You’ll always be Eliot’s father, Glen,” Charley told him.
Glen took a sip of his coffee. “You always finish other people’s sentences for them?”
Charley smiled sheepishly. “Just being my usual smug and presumptuous self.”
He laughed. “There. See, I knew we were kindred spirits. So, how’s your book coming along?”
Charley told him about her book deal and her interviews with Jill. “Did you know that Ethan Rohmer used to deal drugs out of one of your clubs in Fort Lauderdale?”
“Really? Who told you that?”
“Is it true?”
Glen looked annoyed as he took another sip of coffee. “I wouldn’t know. It didn’t happen on my watch.”
“You ever meet him?”
“Not that I remember. Why?”
“Just curious.”