“I just wish you’d tried couples counseling,” Mary Bliss said.
“Hey,” Katharine said loudly, determined to get Mary Bliss off the therapy track. “Did I tell you what I did today?”
“You mean yesterday,” Mary Bliss said, checking her wristwatch. “It’s officially past midnight. And I shudder to think about what you did.”
Katharine giggled. “I called Grimmy. Actually, she called me first. Looking for Charlie. He won’t return her calls. He’s been out of the house two months, and he still hasn’t broken it to his mommy that he’s getting divorced. Keeps saying her poor old heart won’t take it. Which is a load of crap. Grimmy’s just playing possum. That old biddy will be playing bridge tournaments when we’re all dead and in the grave. Charlie just doesn’t want to admit to Grimmy that there’s trouble in paradise.”
“You didn’t tell her, did you?” Like everybody else in town, Mary Bliss McGowan was terrified of Katharine’s mother-in-law. Sarah Grimes Weidman, known to all as Grimmy, was eighty years old, and as far as Mary Bliss knew, nobody had ever gotten the better of her. “Didn’t Grimmy have bypass surgery last year?”
“Sure did,” Katharine said. “And then she went on a cruise to Alaska with the Sojourner’s Sunday School class at Fair Oaks First United Methodist six weeks later. I’m tired of everybody tippy-toeing around that old bag. So when she called yesterday, I told her, ‘Look, Grimmy. You and Charlie need to have a chat. He’s got some important news to share with you.’ ”
Katharine fished around in her plastic cup until she found the slice of lime. She sucked on it loudly. “Know what Grimmy thought? She thought maybe Charlie lost a big wad in the stock market. Talk about denial. She still thinks Chip was born two months premature. The world’s only eleven-pound preemie.”
She shook her head. “Gawd. So I said, ‘Grimmy, here’s the deal. Charlie’s left me and I’m divorcing his ass. He’s moved in with his girlfriend. Your son is pushing fifty and he’s living with a twenty-nine-year-old named Tara. And here’s the rest of the news flash: I am not a natural blonde, and I haven’t been a virgin since I was fifteen. Also—Chip didn’t go to Woodward Academy because he wanted to play lacrosse, he went because his grades weren’t good enough to get into Westminster, and we couldn’t afford to donate a new library so they’d bend the rules.’ ”
“What did she do?” Mary Bliss’s voice was hushed.
“She hung up. Ten minutes later, she called back, tried to disguise her voice, and asked for Chip. So I hung up on her. It felt so good, I called her back and hung up again as soon as she answered the phone.”
“That’s awful,” Mary Bliss said. “Even if it is Grimmy. What if she’d had a heart attack? Wouldn’t you have felt guilty?”
“No way,” Katharine said, shaking her head vehemently. “I hope she does blow a valve. When she dies, all the Coca-Cola stock goes to Chip. And he’s not speaking to his dad right now.”
“You want my advice?”
“No, I do not.”
Mary Bliss plunged ahead. She’d been offering Katharine unsolicited advice ever since the day they’d met at the Fair Oaks Country Club swim meet, when Chip was seven and her own daughter, Erin, was six, and Mary Bliss had taken Katharine aside and tactfully suggested that a thong bathing suit was not appropriate for youth-oriented events. Not club-sponsored ones, anyway. Katharine had laughed in her face, told her not to be such a biddy, and offered her a wine cooler. They had been friends ever since. Katharine never took her advice, but it made Mary Bliss feel better to be the voice of reason.
“Clean up your act, Kate,” Mary Bliss said. “Don’t alienate Charlie’s friends and family. Stop leaving those obscene messages on his answering machine. Stop ordering all that Victoria’s Secret stuff and putting it on his American Express card just to piss off Tara. Face facts. Charlie’s not totally over you. Why else would he still be coming over for Sunday supper? It’s not like he comes to see Chip. Chip doesn’t even speak to his daddy. Charlie comes over because he wants to see you. To keep the door open.”
Katharine made a disparaging, pooting noise. “That ship has sailed, honey. You and I both know he’s freeloading off me because Tara the bitch-whore can’t even fix microwave popcorn. And this is his way of keeping her guessing. But I’m not guessing anything. Trust me, M. B., it’s over.”
“You’re telling me you wouldn’t take him back? Right now? If he showed up at your door and said it had all been a hideous mistake, and he wanted to take you to Paris and prove how much he still loved you?”
“Not even if he showed up with a twelve-carat diamond and grew a twelve-inch penis and knew what to do with it,” Katharine said. She jiggled the ice in her cup impatiently, wanting to fix herself another drink, but knew it would just get Mary Bliss on a jag about her drinking.
“Talk about denial,” Mary Bliss said. “Face it, sugar. It’s not over yet. You’ve only been separated a few months. You and Charlie are right for each other. You’re too screwed up for anybody else. It’s destiny, Katharine. Besides, you know my theory about marriage.”
Katharine deliberately crunched a piece of ice, knowing it set Mary Bliss on edge, just as did gum-smacking or finger-tapping. “Which cockeyed theory is that? The one that says if a man makes more than a hundred thousand a year and has full medical and dental coverage, you’re morally obligated to have sex with him more than once a pay period?”
“I never said that,” Mary Bliss said. “Don’t be crude.”
“Spiritual commitments? Children of broken homes inherit a legacy of shame and guilt?”
“You know what I’m talking about,” Mary Bliss said, ignoring the ice-crunching. “A marriage is like a pet poodle. Poodles have a certain life expectancy. But lots of times, the poor thing just keeps on ticking and takes a licking. It may be old and blind and make tee-tee all over the rug in the den, but it has a life force of its own. It doesn’t matter when you think it’s over. It’s not over until it’s all played out. And your marriage isn’t all played out yet, Katharine. Believe me, I’ve seen it happen so many times. Right now, you’re hurt and upset, so you’re trying to strike out at Charlie. But really, you’re only hurting yourself.”
“Gawd,” Katharine said, fumbling around on the floor of the Jeep for the gin bottle. “What do you call that figure of speech? An anachronism? That’s the worst kind of anachronism I ever heard. Comparing marriage to an incontinent poodle.”
Mary Bliss had been an English major. “It’s called an analogy,” she said.
Katharine found the bottle and shakily poured more gin into her plastic cup. The tonic bottle had rolled out of reach, so she didn’t bother with the niceties. She was tired of niceties, and she was even more tired of well-meaning advice. “That’s the worst damn aneurysm in the history of Western civilization.” She knew she was drunk and she knew she was slurring her words. Sloppy drunk. Stinking drunk for the fourth night in a row. She felt great.
She steadied herself and held her cup at a distance, to signal that she had something important to say.
“My marriage is nothing like some damn Pekinese. For your information, Mrs. McGowan, my marriage is dead. Flatline. No pulse, no brain activity. Certainly no sex activity. Go on inside now, Mary Bliss. Tell Parker McGowan what a lucky man he is. Hell, give him a blow job while you’re at it. I can drive home. It’s only a block.”
Mary Bliss grabbed the drink out of Katharine’s hand and threw it out the window of the Jeep. “Stop it. You’re revolting. Just leave the car here and walk home. I’ll walk with you.”
“No way,” Katharine said. “Charlie cruises the neighborhood every night, after he thinks I’ve already gone to bed. If the Jeep isn’t there, he’ll start calling and raising hell. If he sees it over here, he’ll think I’m over here boo-hooing to you and Parker.”
“Maybe he’ll think you miss him,” Mary Bliss said. “Maybe he’s already come to his senses. He wouldn’t go looking for you unless he missed you, idiot.”
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“He’s the idiot,” Katharine said, yawning. “He misses the Jeep, not me.” She reached over and opened Mary Bliss’s door. “Shoo. Go home. Parker probably thinks you’ve been abducted by aliens.”
Mary Bliss reached for her beach bag. “Parker knows I’m with you. And he agrees with me that you and Charlie should get back together. He even told Charlie that.”
Katharine climbed over the console and into the driver’s seat. Nimble as anything, despite her advanced state of intoxication.
“You know the problem with you, Mary Bliss? You keep assuming that everybody else’s marriage is like yours. You have no idea what a real marriage is like. You and Parker are like Ozzie and Harriet, Mary Bliss. You’re a couple of dinosaurs.”
“Nice aneurysm. Maybe so,” Mary Bliss said. She blew Katharine a kiss. “Sweet dreams, Kate. And don’t forget to lock up.”
3
All the lights were on, the television in the den was blaring, and the CD player in the kitchen was blaring Erin’s current favorite music, some sort of gangster rap whose nasty lyrics made the large vein in Mary Bliss’s forehead throb in indignation.
She walked through the house, switching off lights, the television, and the CD player. She set the burglar alarm in the kitchen, put some dirty dishes in the dishwasher, and turned it on.
The bedroom was dark. She could just see the green glow of the clock radio. Twelve-thirty. She felt her way to the closet, dropped her damp bathing suit and shorts in the hamper there, and pulled on a clean cotton nightgown.
In the bathroom, she brushed her teeth and creamed her face with moisturizers, frowning at the memory of Katharine’s wrinkled neck. Mary Bliss’s mother’s skin had been magnolia-smooth until she was in her fifties, until the time the cancer began eating its way through her body and her skin grew translucent and waxen yellow. Mary Bliss peered into the mirror, to see if she could find any trace of her mother there. Her eyes were certainly Mama’s—hazel-green, dark-lashed, with surprisingly strong, dark eyebrows.
But the nose was Daddy’s—stubby, no-nonsense, a workingman’s nose—her lips full and lush, Harker lips, her mother informed her, pursing her own narrow lips, a sign that Harker lips were not a desirable family trait.
Erin was a McGowan through and through, everybody said. Meemaw had peered through the glass in the Piedmont Hospital nursery and just crowed with delight at the sight of her long, narrow granddaughter. “Look at those feet! She’s got her daddy’s feet for sure.”
Mary Bliss never said as much, but she’d done a complete inventory and found several of her own family traits in her infant daughter—the folds of her ear, the long neck, the high forehead, even Mary Bliss’s own thick, dark hair. She’d watched anxiously as Erin grew and changed, anxious that those small traces of Mary Bliss’s own family, all dead and gone now, would remain in her own child.
She switched off the bathroom light and made her way easily to her side of the bed. She pulled back the sheets on the big four-poster bed. No pillows. She smiled to herself. Parker had stolen them again. He was such a pillow hog.
“Honey?” she whispered tentatively. She pulled herself close to the warm, drowsing form in the middle of the bed. “Park? You awake?”
But the smell was all wrong. Perfume instead of antiperspirant. And long, thick hair, curled over a bare shoulder.
“Mommy?” Erin’s voice was groggy. “Where’s Daddy?”
4
She sat on the floor of Parker’s closet, held the note in her hand, and dialed Parker’s cell phone number. No answer. She dialed again, squinting at the readout window on her own phone to make sure she hadn’t made a mistake. But the number was correct, and nobody was answering.
Mary Bliss put the phone down again and looked at the note.
The bastard hadn’t even bothered to use a whole sheet of paper. It was written on the back of a junk mail envelope.
“MB,” it said.
“I’m gone. Mama’s all paid up at the nursing home. Tell Erin I’ll call when I’m settled. You are a good woman, and I’m sorry things didn’t work out. Sincerely, A. Parker McGowan.”
“Mama?”
Mary Bliss crawled to the door of the closet. Erin was wrapped in the big comforter, huddled in the middle of the king-sized bed. Her dark hair stood on end. One side of the oversized T-shirt had slipped off her slender shoulder, and the hazel eyes were clouded with sleep and confusion. Again, as always, her daughter reminded her of a just-hatched duckling. Mary Bliss thought she felt a jagged pain ripping through her right ventricle. It was only love.
“Did you forget again? That Daddy was going out of town?”
Of course. Out of town. Way out of town.
“Stupid old me,” Mary Bliss said, grimacing, giving herself a comic knock on the head. “Katharine made me drink gin and tonic at the pool tonight. You know how your mama gets when she drinks likker. Of course Daddy’s out of town. Dallas, I think. What time did you get home, sweet girl?”
Her lies came out smoothly, easily. Mary Bliss swallowed and felt the bile rising in her throat. They were just little lies.
“The movie got out at ten,” Erin said. “But Lizbeth had to have her quarter-pounder and fries, so we went to McDonald’s afterwards. I swear, that girl must have a tapeworm. And she never gets a zit or gains a pound. I hate her guts. And she told me tonight that she has a crush on Andrew Gilbert. Oh my God! Can you believe that? Last year he asked her out every day, and she wouldn’t even look at him. When we got home tonight, I came in here to watch Letterman. The cable’s messed up in my room. Guess I fell asleep. Are you sure Daddy’s in Dallas?”
A fine bead of sweat raised itself on Mary Bliss’s upper lip. She looked down. Her cotton gown was soaked, clinging to her chest and arms. She had to catch her breath, had to think.
She stood up and walked unsteadily to the bed, catching the bedpost with her right hand, grateful for the support.
“Honey, to tell the truth, I can’t keep it all straight. You know Daddy. He’s always on the move. With the holiday and all, Libby must have forgotten to fax me his itinerary. I’ll check in the morning.”
Erin nodded and yawned widely. “Okay if I sleep in here with you? It’s so hot in my room. I think you need to get the air conditioning people over here. I won’t wake you when I go to work in the morning.”
Erin had a summer job at the Gap. It paid better than lifeguarding at the club, which she had done last summer, and she also got a discount on clothes.
“You better wake me up,” Mary Bliss said, easing down into the bed. “I can’t sleep all day long, you know. Just because it’s summer. Teachers have stuff to do too.”
It was an unspoken rule in the McGowan house. Whenever one of them was away, Erin usually slept in the big bed upstairs. None of them felt this was odd or inappropriate, even though Erin was seventeen, going to be a senior this year at Fair Oaks Academy. Anyway, it was mostly Mary Bliss who ended up sharing the bed with Erin. Parker’s software consulting business seemed to take him out of town two or three weeks of every month.
She waited until Erin’s breath grew soft and sweet and regular, then peered over the mound of pillows her daughter had stacked up, like a moat surrounding a castle.
Erin had been a fretful baby, never sleeping through the night until she was nearly four. Now, though, she seemed to be catching up on all those lost hours. She slept as late as she dared on school mornings, liked a nap in the afternoons, and slept ’til noon most Saturdays.
Mary Bliss kissed her fingertip and planted it tenderly on the top of her daughter’s head.
She took the note, crumpled and damp with her own sweat, and read it again. She swept her hands through the row of clothes hanging on Parker’s side of the closet. His dress shirts, slacks, suits, sport coats, and ties were undisturbed. The shoe trees poked out of the line of wingtips and loafers. She opened the top drawer of the dresser. Neat balls of dark dress socks. But no white socks. She opened the next drawer down.
His underwear had been cleaned out. Same with his shorts and T-shirts. She looked again at the row of shoes. No tennis shoes. He’d packed, all right, but not for business.
She flipped off the closet light and tiptoed downstairs to the den.
Parker had laughed at her when she told him this was her dream house. It was just a little cottage, really, a Craftsman bungalow on the nicest street in Fair Oaks. The house had been a shabby mess when they’d bought it, just before Erin was born. Parker always meant for them to move out of Fair Oaks and into Druid Hills, which he considered a nicer Atlanta neighborhood. He wanted them to join the Druid Hills Country Club, one of the more exclusive golf clubs in town, like the Piedmont Driving Club, or Ansley or the Peachtree Golf Club.
Parker had talked about taking up golf, once his business was doing really well. Fair Oaks Country Club was nice enough, but in the past it didn’t really have the glamour of the better-known clubs. The price of in-town housing in Atlanta had skyrocketed in the past five years, and now Fair Oaks was considered an enclave of exclusivity. Suddenly their cozy little four-bedroom, two-bath on the big half-acre lot was worth maybe ten times what they’d originally paid for it. It made Mary Bliss dizzy to think about it.
This den was supposed to be their little boy’s room. She’d waited, kept Erin’s crib there, along with the toy chest and the changing table. Then she hit thirty, and then Parker hit forty, and she knew there would be no second child. She’d fretted about it but knew better than to bring up the subject of infertility with Parker, who liked things just the way they were, thank you.
When Erin was twelve, Mary Bliss had found a leather sofa on sale at Rich’s, and she’d had some bookshelves made and refinished Parker’s granddaddy’s desk from the textile mill, hand-polished the old walnut until it shone like satin.
Little Bitty Lies Page 2