Balancing Act (Silhouette Special Edition)

by Darcy, Lilian

  All the big issues of trust and communication and sharing that they were mired in, and this was the thing that had made him crack, that made him confront her as he’d known he had to do. Just this. Picking a tree.

  “Okay, Libby, what is it?” he said, putting his hands heavily on her shoulders. “This time, I’m going to ask you about it, and you’re going to answer me. This time, we’re not getting distracted, I’m not telling myself it doesn’t matter, that I need to give you space, and we’re going to talk!”

  His voice was quiet and controlled, but Libby had no doubt that he meant business, and that she’d be crazy to pretend there wasn’t a problem. Even so, the answer that came out was inadequate, and she knew it. “I guess I’d just forgotten that I don’t really enjoy this very much.”

  The memories came flooding back as she spoke, with an intensity that almost winded her.

  Icy-cold Minnesota air, aching-cold Minnesota snow. It wasn’t pretty, magical, Christmassy cold when she stood there in it for so long as the token, acquiescent partner. It was dead cold, empty cold, cold that mirrored all the dead, empty places in her marriage. And she had to ignore the cold, in the tree lot and in her marriage, because it seemed she was the only one who felt it.

  There were so many trees, and all of them were pretty much the same. Somehow, though, the choice assumed an enormous importance. There was a range of minor variables. One tree might have a couple of thinly greened branches, another might have a crooked trunk. Sometimes it had felt to her as if Glenn was determined to examine every single one.

  “What do you think?” he’d say.

  Time and again, she’d answer, “Yes, that one’s nice,” and he’d reject it and keep looking. Occasionally, just occasionally, she’d say, “That one’s a bit fat,” or “That one’s flat on one side,” and he’d move on and then it would always seem as if the fat tree or the flat tree was the one he’d come back to.

  “No, after all,” he’d say, “I think I like this one. This is the one we’ll take,” and she was never sure, really, that he didn’t do it on purpose.

  Maybe he honestly hadn’t noticed that he’d picked one of the trees she’d told him she didn’t like. Except that, actually, not noticing was almost as bad, because it meant that, as usual, her opinion, her feelings, herself, didn’t really count.

  Later, he would praise her pretty decorations approvingly and she’d think, locking herself back into her obedient box, “Well, I guess the tree isn’t so flat. The flat side’s against the wall.”

  “What, Libby, too much choice?” Brady said. “Too much green? What?”

  “No,” she answered, still thinking of tree-shopping in Minnesota, when she’d had no choice at all. “Too little.”

  “There’s a thousand trees here!”

  “Okay, so choose,” she yelled, whipping herself out from beneath his heavy hands on her shoulders. “Just choose.” Her voice cracked. “Get it over with, please, and let’s go.”

  “We’re choosing together, aren’t we? Libby, talk to me.” His voice was a low rumble. “I thought we were.” He studied her face. “Choosing together.”

  “If that’s what’s really happening…” she said.

  “It is, Lib. If you’re not enjoying it, let’s make it quick. Tell me your three favorite trees, off the top of your head, just the ones you can see from here, and I’ll pick one out of those. Isn’t that fair? Isn’t it? Talk to me! The girls are running wild. We need to get out of here.”

  “Fair? You care about whether it’s fair!” She started crying, but she was laughing, too. Heaven help her, she was hysterical, crazy. Feeling like this! Reacting like this! Over a tree!

  “I love that. That’s so simple,” she sobbed. “Oh, listen to me!” She laughed, sniffed, sobbed again. “It’s so obvious. Why couldn’t Glenn ever have thought of that?”

  “This is about Glenn?”

  “Oh. Yeah, or about me not standing up to him, or something. Because at first—at first—when we met, I—I guess I needed it, for some reason?” She frowned. “But, oh, after a couple of years, I got so frozen, and we went back and forth, trees and trees and trees, and nothing I said mattered. And every year I’d—slow learner, sucker for the Christmas spirit—I’d forget. How much I hated it and how long it took and how cold I got and how defeated I felt as we drove home, because, as with everything else, there was nothing I could do to make him see there was a problem.”

  “But you’ve bought trees since.” He was still challenging her. “You’ve had four Christmases since.”

  “I got one of those little artificial ones, around three feet high, and put it on a pedestal in the window. It was white and silver, it was pretty, and it was mine. I hung it with golden balls and green lights, and it looked like something out of a magazine. This year, in the car, I was thinking about the girls, and how they’d run around and get excited.”

  “Yep, they’re doing that.”

  “And that they’d get even more excited when they realized what we were going to do with the tree when we got it home, and then suddenly, with all these stands and stands of trees, and my coat, and it not being cold and snowy enough, the other part of it, all those married-without-children Christmases, they all came back.” She shook her head. “Like every other decision in our marriage. Glenn made it. Never consulted me, because it was his right. He earned the major money.”

  “You never stood up to that?”

  “I—I tried. Not hard enough. Guess I felt… At least he was there, thinking about the two of us, putting his energy into the relationship, even if it was done in a way I didn’t like. You know, he never let me take a permanent teaching position because he wanted my working hours to be flexible so they could fit in with his. I didn’t like per diem teaching. I wanted a kindergarten class of my own, so I could stay with the same kids all year and watch them learn and grow. But, you know, he never listened. He said I was selfish. I—” she shook her head “—guess he convinced me it was true. I definitely felt self-contained, after a while.”

  He held her and kissed her, looked into her face. “Okay, I know this doesn’t solve everything, but… Choose. You choose. Whichever tree you want.”

  “I liked your idea better.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah, Brady. I’m going to pick three, right now, and then I want to see which one of those you choose.”

  They’d traveled an important distance tonight. Brady was convinced of it, and it gave him a giddy, happy, lightheaded feeling that he didn’t quite know what to do with. From Libby’s selection of three trees, he picked a big Douglas fir, and they paid for it and he wrestled it onto the roof-rack he’d clamped on top of the car.

  At home, the girls thought it was great that they were going to have a big, resin-scented blue-green, real live tree in their living room, and they didn’t want to go to bed. But it was late, and they were tired, so they eventually did, which left Brady free to trim down the base of the trunk, fix it into the stand and set it up in front of the window to settle overnight. They’d decorate it tomorrow.

  While he was working on the tree, Libby heated up some pea and ham soup she’d made earlier. He lit a fire for the first time this season, and they sat in front of it, watching the flames and drinking their soup out of mugs, just like his mom did. Brady discovered it was good that way.

  Libby was quiet, obviously tired. She didn’t say much, but Brady felt that even after what she’d said at the garden center, they weren’t finished yet. He decided to push. He decided he had to learn to push, and now was a good time to start.

  “Libby, what you told me tonight about you and Glenn and choosing a tree, and the other stuff—”

  “I…uh…that, yes. You listened, and—”

  “No, no, hang on. I’m guessing it was pretty difficult and miserable at times. I’m thinking you made changes after he died.”

  “Redecorated the house from top to bottom.” She smiled. She was trying to keep it light, but he didn’
t want it light right now.

  “More important changes than that,” he said.

  “I, yes, I enjoyed discovering more independence.”

  “And is that why you don’t want to consider giving up that ridiculous job?”

  Okay, bad move, bad wording. He’d lost her. He saw that at once. She’d retreated into politeness. Wallpapering. Any second now, she’d ask him if he wanted more soup and he’d probably yell at her. Which wouldn’t help.

  “I didn’t realize,” she said politely, “that you had problems with the job.”

  “I just—I don’t,” he answered quickly. Not truthfully. “Well, the hours. I thought you’d want—Scarlett and Colleen aren’t spending much time together.”

  “More than we initially planned, since I haven’t moved out.”

  His fluency returned in a fresh rush of anger. “Libby, we planned squat! We were flying by the seat of our pants. We still are. If we’d been married to each other from the beginning, and if we’d had the girls together from the beginning, we wouldn’t be doing it like this.”

  “Well, no.”

  “Is there any way two parents would do it like this with siblings, let alone identical twins? We wouldn’t have them at day care on opposite sides of town. Mom’s asking about it. When does she get to have Colleen on Fridays, too? And if Colleen can wear little pink outfits every day, why can’t Scarlett? I want you to give up the job.”

  It hurt, Libby discovered.

  It hurt to a stupid extent.

  It probably should have made her angry, and she should have attacked back, challenged his right to issue such an abrupt command, but instead she just felt as if she’d been hit in some exposed and vulnerable spot, and reacted in her usual instinctive way.

  She hid what she felt.

  She took the last gulp of soup, masking her face behind the mug, then said, steady and polite, “What are you suggesting instead?”

  “That you don’t work at all, for a few years. Or at most, that you work part-time. I’m jealous, Libby—jealous that Colleen has you with her all day and Scarlett doesn’t. I feel like they should be together during the day, because if they’re not, why have we done this? I look at how tired you get, too, getting up so early, working with other people’s difficult kids all day while you’re trying to have something left for Colleen—and for Scarlett—and there just doesn’t seem a lot of point to it, when you don’t have to.”

  “Is it possible that I enjoy it?”

  “No. Don’t tell me that. I’ve seen how you look when you get home. You don’t enjoy it enough to work those hours.”

  “I’m not going to let you bully me into this, Brady.”

  “I hope I don’t ever bully you,” he answered quietly. “I said what I wanted. I thought it would be a factor for you. I thought Scarlett’s needs would be a factor for you, too.”

  “They are. But she—I—”

  “It’s okay. Keep the job if it’s important. For whatever reason. We’ll forget this conversation ever happened.”

  “I don’t know how to work this out.”

  “Forget it, I said. It’s late. I guess you want to get to bed. I’ll clean up, okay?”

  “Thanks.”

  When Libby went upstairs, she folded herself into Brady’s bed, as usual, instead of into her own, mainly because she was afraid that if she didn’t, if she slept alone, he’d want to challenge her on that issue, too.

  Chapter Eleven

  “Are you sure you don’t want me Wednesday, Lisa-Belle?” Libby’s mother asked on the phone. “I can change my flight.”

  “Thursday is fine,” she answered. “The Thursday morning appointment with Dr. Crichton is just a preliminary, just routine, to make sure I’m fit for the surgery on Friday. Colleen has a play date with my friend Angie and her daughter. Angie and I will visit a little, and then I’ll try and get some sorting-out done at the house during the afternoon.”

  “So you’re selling?”

  “I’m still not sure. I want to see how I feel about the house when I see it again.”

  “Then I’m coming Wednesday,” Mom said. “You won’t get anything done at the house with Colleen underfoot. In any case, honey, I’m getting so excited about actually spending some time with her.”

  “I’m glad about that, Mom.” Libby recognized that her mother was trying to make amends for hanging back for so long.

  The days had flown by over Christmas and New Year, and Libby’s scheduled surgery was just a week away. She continued to struggle with the question of telling Brady, but had no new answers. She’d read enough pop psychology articles in magazines to know that communication was supposed to be a good thing in a relationship, but what happened if the only feelings you communicated to each other were negative? Was silence still a form of lying?

  This whole thing was happening in her own body, and she didn’t want to risk an input from Brady that might be wrong. Her fear about it seemed out of proportion, however. Even when they’d argued, the day they’d bought the Christmas tree, it hadn’t killed them. Why did this scare her so much?

  Almost as soon as she’d put down the phone after talking to her mother, Libby heard Brady and Scarlett outside. As it was Friday, Scarlett had been at Delia’s today.

  Knowing that Brady would have overheard a crucial part of the conversation if he’d arrived just two minutes sooner, Libby experienced the familiar stab of guilt and panic that was only growing worse as the days passed.

  She wanted this marriage to work. She and Brady got on so well when they joked with each other and talked about day-to-day things. The girls had loved their Christmas, and it had been a joy to watch for both adults.

  Scarlett and Colleen had found their gifts when they first woke up, in stockings hung on the mantel-piece and beneath the tree. They’d torn the paper off with shrieks of excitement to find tricycles, blocks, dolls, chocolate coins covered in gold paper and other delights.

  Brady and Libby hadn’t even attempted to open their gifts to each other until the girls had finished. Libby had bought Brady a jacket in soft brown leather. It was a very personal gift, a wordless tribute to how much she loved his body—its strength and its tenderness. He had given her jewelry, and she loved the fine white gold he’d chosen, in matching bracelet, necklace and earrings.

  Both of them admitted at the end of the day that they’d enjoyed the time they spent with just the two girls and each other more that the busier Buchanan gathering later in the day.

  They both had to hang on to positives like this.

  Mindful of Brady’s criticism of her long working hours, Libby had begun to put even more effort into keeping the house immaculate and the kitchen productive. As well, she’d started picking Scarlett up from day care at the end of her own working day so that she could spend an hour or two each day playing with both girls before Brady came home.

  Did he appreciate her efforts? Did they rob him of his conviction that she should give up her job? She wasn’t sure. They hadn’t talked about it.

  “Have you arranged for any Realtors to come look at the house?” he asked her half an hour later, as they ate.

  “There’s one who’s happy to handle a sale or a rental, and she’s going to take a look at it on Thursday afternoon. I’ll make a decision by then.”

  “It’s your call, Libby. I’ve said that.”

  “I know. Thanks.”

  “It should sell pretty fast, shouldn’t it, and rent out just as easily? It’s a nice place.”

  “I hope so.”

  Brady reached across the table and took her hand. “I appreciate that you were willing to uproot your life. I know it was harder for you than you said when it was happening.”

  “It was the sensible option,” she answered. “I had less to uproot than you did.”

  “I didn’t know you very well, then. I think I bulldozed you into it.”

  “I guess I let you because there were good reasons.”

  “We’re still allowed to
fight about things, Libby. We can fight it out, when we disagree.”

  “Oh, you’re telling me we don’t fight enough?”

  He laughed, then frowned. “Weird, but true. We don’t. And I think that’s my fault, too.”

  The red numbers on the clock radio showed 4:03 a.m. when Libby rolled over in Brady’s bed and looked at it in the dark.

  It was five days after that strange statement of his about fighting—that she couldn’t agree with—and she was flying to Minnesota today. It would be a long day, and she should be sleeping, but she’d woken at three and still her mind wouldn’t slow down. Brady lay beside her, a big, warm, familiar shape under the hump of thick quilt, and even the fact that she was awake and he was asleep seemed to emphasize the distance between them.

  It’ll be better once I’ve had the surgery and dealt with the house. I’ll look for a better job. This is working in the ways we wanted. Scarlett calls me Mommy now. The girls are really starting to act like sisters. Sometimes it’s as if they can read each other’s thoughts.

  So why was she so convinced, deep in her heart, that this wasn’t enough? What more did she yearn for?

  For no reason that she could pinpoint, a scene from her past flashed into her head—the night Glenn had asked her to marry him.

  “We love each other,” he’d said, and she’d felt giddy with happiness that he took such a momentous thing for granted and was willing to say it out loud, to declare his ongoing stake in her life. “We should get married.”

  She hadn’t thought of this memory in years, but now, as she revisited it, she heard his words from a very different perspective.

  He never had asked her to marry him. He’d never said, “I love you,” and listened for her reply. He’d made a declaration for both of them, without room in his mind for doubt.

  We love each other.

  And he hadn’t said, “Will you?” He’d said, “We should.”

  Even if she’d had the sense to doubt him, she wouldn’t have had the courage to tell him he was wrong. For some reason, back then, she’d needed Glenn’s easy, authoritative certainties. Why? She’d been just nineteen. In college. Feeling grown up. Her father had died a year earlier, but she hadn’t seen him or heard from him or had anything to do with him for six years before that.