Annette was caught up in it. Given all she felt for Jean-Paul, she identified with the lovers. Their fate saddened her.
Granted, she was in the mood to be saddened. She hadn’t talked with him since the night before last, an eternity in her lifetime with him. Oh, he’d sent flowers yesterday morning with a card that said, simply, “Je t’aime.” And he’d called yesterday afternoon while she’d been in Downlee, and left a sweet message with Gwen. But nothing could substitute for the sound of his voice.
“Never,” Caroline repeated. “According to Simon, she never returned to Downlee.”
“What did she do?”
“I assume that if she went so far as to follow her husband home, she stayed with him. Women didn’t divorce freely in those days.”
“What about her lover?” Leah asked.
“Simon says he was never the same.”
“Did he ever marry?”
“I didn’t ask.”
“I hope not,” Annette decided. “I can’t imagine he had much left to give to another woman, not loving the first one that way.”
“Wouldn’t he eventually get over her?”
“I don’t believe it. If something happened to Jean-Paul, I’d never get over it.”
“That’s because you and Jean-Paul are married,” Caroline reasoned. “You’ve been with him for nearly twenty years. You have kids. He’s an indelible part of your life. But what if something had happened to him before all that?”
“Even then,” Annette insisted.
“Really?”
She hesitated. To say more was to tread on shaky ground at a time when she and her sisters were enjoying a truce of sorts. They could either end up arguing, or understanding each other better.
She decided to take the risk. “I know neither of you want to believe this,” she said quietly, “but with Jean-Paul and me, it was love at first sight. One look, and I was hooked. Same with him. You call me a hopeless romantic, but that’s how it was. If something had happened to him before we were married, I’d have felt the loss for the rest of my life. I might have married someone else, but that someone else would have always suffered in comparison to Jean-Paul.”
“What if that someone else was even better than Jean-Paul?” Caroline asked.
Annette shook her head. “No one could be better for me than Jean-Paul.” Her eyes watered. “Another kind of man might be better for you, or for you, Leah, but Jean-Paul is it for me.” She wished he would call. Oh, she knew they were all fine without her. She just wanted to hear Jean-Paul’s voice.
“You don’t think it’s possible to love more than one man?” Leah asked.
Annette took a moment to recompose herself. “Not the same way. You may love another man for his companionship, or his intellect, or his body, but the whole package only comes once.”
“That is very scary,” Caroline said.
Leah’s stricken look said she agreed.
“But it’s also lovely,” Annette added. “It means that if you’re lucky enough to land the package, you experience something unique.”
“Unique,” Caroline mused. “Go on.”
“Jean-Paul and I share a vision. We agree on what we want in life and how to get it. We’re partners on the same team. What I lack, he has, and vice versa. We complement each other.”
“Do you ever argue?”
Annette thought of her last conversation with Jean-Paul. “Yell and scream and storm out the door? No. But we do disagree sometimes. Like about my calling home from here.” She felt her eyes tearing again. “Jean-Paul thinks I shouldn’t do it so much. He says I’m ramming my love down their throats.” She looked at her sisters, waiting for criticism. When it didn’t come, she said, “I never thought it was possible to love too much.”
Leah gave her knee a reassuring touch, but it was Caroline, with surprising gentleness, who spoke. “He’s saying you’re overattentive. That doesn’t mean you’re wrong in the fact that you love them.”
“They mean the world to me,” Annette swore. “If I bore you when I talk about them, I’m sorry, but they’re my life. They’re what I do. I’m a wife and a mother before I’m anything else in this world.”
“I know.”
“And I’m dying,” she rushed on, because she felt that a window was open on sympathy, and she was desperate for encouragement. “I told Jean-Paul that I wouldn’t call again, and that he should call me if there was a problem, and it’s not that I want there to be a problem, but I really want him to call.”
“He has called,” Leah pointed out, “just not when you’re here.”
That was small solace, as far as Annette was concerned. “We’ve always been so close. We haven’t ever been separated this way before.”
“Chances are,” Caroline offered, “that he’s overwhelmed taking care of the kids after a full day of work. He’ll appreciate you far more for this, Annette. And in the meantime, you’re taking a well-deserved vacation.”
“But I miss him. He’s my husband.”
“You can still have a separate identity.”
“I don’t want a separate identity. I don’t want to be a lawyer. I don’t want to chair some big charity function.”
“I’m not talking about your being something else,” Caroline said. “I’m talking about your being you.” She sat back in her chair and included Leah in the field of a grin. “Right now, I’m no one’s lawyer. I’m no one’s lover. I’m just me. Sitting here. Relaxing. Breathing. I’m not thinking about the brief I’m supposed to be putting together. I’m not thinking about the decisions Ben wants me to make. I’m not thinking about my law firm and who may or may not be stealing my work.” She sighed. “I’m having lunch on a deck that someone else has to clean. Call it selfish if you will. But everyone needs to be selfish once in a while.” She stared at Annette. “That’s what you have to learn how to do. Be selfish.”
Annette looked at Leah. “Is she right?”
Leah was slow in answering. She seemed to pull herself in from a distance when she took a deep breath and smiled. “Much as I hate to give her satisfaction by admitting it, she is. Jean-Paul loves you. You know that. He sent flowers, and he’s called. So, you haven’t connected on the phone. That’s okay. He’s back in St. Louis keeping tabs on things while you spend time with your mother.” She made a face. “Granted, she hasn’t quite shown up, but we’re here. So relax and enjoy doing nothing. It won’t last for long.”
Annette agreed with that, at least. “I should, I suppose. They were the ones who told me to come.”
“You’ve paid your dues,” Caroline added. “You’ve shouldered nonstop responsibility for years. You’ve earned a break.”
Annette followed the flight of a gull along the bluff. She sighed and settled more comfortably into her chair. She hadn’t been lazy in years. She wasn’t sure she knew how to be lazy. Her eyes lit on the pool, the flower beds beside and beyond, then the bluffs. “It is beautiful here—peaceful. I could do worse.”
The portable phone rang. Annette sat up straight—forgetting beauty and peace and relaxation—and held her breath while Caroline answered. Only when her eyes, then the telephone, went to Leah, did Annette release the breath and sink back.
They were right, she supposed. She was going to have to learn to relax. After all, the children were getting older. Before long, they would be going off to college and beyond. And then what would she do? Sit by the phone waiting for them to call? Imagine that everything she read about in the newspapers was happening to them? Butt into their lives?
She couldn’t. Nor could she call Jean-Paul every few minutes just to hear the sound of his voice. She’d have to go to work. Either that, or she’d have to learn to be a lady of leisure.
Like Ginny.
It was an absurd thought. She couldn’t do nothing. It wasn’t in her nature. Then again, Caroline was right. She’d paid her dues. She’d earned a break.
“That was Julia,” Leah said excitedly. “She says my bread went fast. She
wants more.”
Annette could see how pleased she was and wondered whether anyone in her superslick world ever made her feel pleased that way. “That’s great,” she said enthusiastically.
Caroline turned her face to the sun. “This is your vacation. You’re not supposed to work.”
“Baking isn’t work. It’s fun. Like making lunch. It’s such a treat.”
“I think you should do it,” Annette said.
“Mistake,” Caroline mumbled.
“Look at it this way,” Leah told Caroline, rising and scooping up her plate. “You think I do nothing in Washington—”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You think it. So look at my baking bread for Julia as a vacation from doing nothing.”
“Leah—” Annette called when she started off. The argument was an echo of the past. But she didn’t want to return to the ill will that had characterized the past with her sisters. She liked the camaraderie that had sprung up between them.
She turned on Caroline, furious at her for having disturbed their lovely balance, but Caroline was already out of her lounge, going after Leah. And then the phone rang again.
Annette’s pulse skipped. She slipped from her chair to the one Caroline had left, beside which lay the phone. “Hello?”
“Hi, Mom.”
“Nat?” Maternal instinct surged back with its monumental world of fears. Nat was her baby, eight years old and wearing out Nikes every three months. The sound of his little-boy voice made her own crack. “What’s wrong, sweetie?”
“Thomas is being mean.”
Annette let out a long, relieved sigh. Only then did she realize that Leah and Caroline were crowding close. She shot them apologetic looks. “Are you guys fighting?” she asked Nat.
“He won’t let me play with his Game Boy.”
“What Game Boy?”
“The one Daddy bought him yesterday. Daddy said I could use it, too, but Thomas isn’t sharing. Will you tell him he has to, Mom?”
“Back up a minute, Nat. Game Boy was supposed to be Thomas’s birthday gift.” To Caroline and Leah, she said, “He’s been begging for it since last Christmas, when two of his best friends got it. We agreed on November, when he turns thirteen.” She asked Nat, “Why did Daddy buy it now?”
“Because Thomas is bored.”
“Bored? Good gracious, I left a whole schedule there with practically every minute planned out.”
“But Daddy didn’t think Nicky and Dev should take us to the club, and the VCR wasn’t working right, so the only thing we could think of to do was to go to the movies, but the movies they wanted to see weren’t the movies we wanted to see, so we decided to stay home, and Thomas was bored.”
Annette was having trouble buying into the dilemma. For one thing, the basic premise was wrong. “Why didn’t Daddy want you at the club?”
“Because Thomas can’t go swimming,” Nat said impatiently.
“Whyever not?”
“Because he can’t get his cast wet!”
“What cast?” Annette demanded, chalking one up for maternal instinct, indeed.
“The one on his arm. Mom, he won’t share!”
“What did Thomas do to his arm?”
“Easy, Annette,” Caroline murmured.
Leah whispered, “Jean-Paul would have called if it were anything serious.”
Annette took a steadying breath and more quietly repeated the question. But Nat was suddenly talking to someone else, sounding angry, then defensive, and within seconds Devon came on the line. “Nat can be such a little jerk. He wasn’t supposed to say anything. Thomas is fine, Mom. He just broke his arm.”
“Just broke it?” Annette asked in disbelief.
“He was riding his mountain bike on the trail in the woods behind school—”
“That trail is notorious for spills. He wasn’t supposed to be riding there.” And he wouldn’t have, if she’d been home. She’d known it was a lousy time for her to be gone. She’d told Jean-Paul so.
“Thomas knows that,” Devon said, sounding calm, sensible, and mature. “So this is his punishment.”
Annette rubbed her forehead. “What happened, exactly?”
“He fell and skidded down a bumpy little hill. It was a simple break. He didn’t need an operation or anything.”
“When did it happen?”
“Day before yesterday. Right before supper.”
“And you were at the hospital most of the evening,” which explained why she hadn’t been able to get through until late.
“It was awhile before Thomas made it home,” Devon explained, “and then we had to wait a long time at the hospital because Dad didn’t want anyone but Dr. Olmstead putting on the cast, and he was out to dinner with his wife. Thomas wanted to call you from the hospital, but Daddy said you’d only worry. You’re lucky you’re not here, Mom. Thomas is being a brat.”
“Is he in pain?”
“Yes, he’s a pain. He thinks everyone should be waiting on him just because he broke his arm.”
“Which arm?”
“His right. He complains that he can’t do things, but school’s out, so he doesn’t have to write, and he can just as easily stuff food in his mouth with his left hand. So he can’t go swimming until the cast hardens more. So what. That’s his problem. He was the one riding his bike where he wasn’t supposed to.” Her voice shifted direction. “It’s the truth, Thomas. Dad said so. Yes, I know you were wearing a helmet, but that didn’t make it okay.”
“Put him on,” Annette said and seconds later heard Thomas’s voice. It was low in the way of prepubescent twelve-year-olds who imagined themselves men.
“It wasn’t my fault, Mom. Someone left empty beer cans up there, and I swerved so I wouldn’t hit them. It’s not like I put them there.”
“Thank heaven for that,” Annette remarked. He didn’t sound terribly hurt. Defensive, yes. Defiant, yes. But hurt? “How does your arm feel?”
“It aches. Robbie’s gone to rent videos—”
“I thought the VCR was broken?”
“The guy just fixed it, and Nicole’s making popcorn to eat while we watch, but all Nat wants to do is play with my Game Boy.” In a voice that was suddenly twelve again, he said, “It’s awesome, Mom. Wait’ll you see it. No, you can’t play with it, Nat!”
Squabbling was part of family life. But it struck Annette that, just then, she was glad not to be there. “Let him play,” she urged.
“Devon wants to talk again.”
“Are you having fun, Mom?”
Annette looked at her sisters, then beyond, at the deck where the shadows were starting to lengthen. She thought of laziness and selfishness, of the cry of gulls and the roar of the surf. When she opened herself to those thoughts, she felt removed from the chaos back home. “Actually, I am.”
“Is Grandma there yet?”
“No. Maybe Saturday.”
“Are you being nice to the aunts?”
She looked at Caroline and Leah. “Very nice.”
“That’s good. Stop it, guys. I have to run, Mom. Thomas and Nat are fighting. Wouldn’t it be smarter if I just bought Nat his own Game Boy? I’ll put it on the Visa—”
“Don’t put it on the Visa. I left that for emergencies. Buying a second Game Boy is not an emergency. Find something else for Nat to do. Be inventive. It’s good training for the time when you’re a mother, yourself.”
“This isn’t mothering. It’s refereeing.”
“So now you know,” Annette said, smiling, pleased indeed not to be there just then. “Be good, sweetie. Kiss everyone for me. Love you.”
“Love you, too, Mom.”
Annette hung up the phone. She stared at it for a minute, then swung a wary glance at her sisters. “Maybe I should fly home.”
“No!” they both said at once.
“You talked with Thomas,” Caroline reasoned. “You know that he’s fine.”
“He broke his arm.”
“So did y
ou, as I recall, when you were eight, and you survived.”
“But he and Nat are fighting. It’s not fair to the others to have to deal with that.” The words were right. She wanted to be talked out of guilt.
“Why shouldn’t they have to deal with it?” Caroline asked. “They’re all part of the family. Squabbles go with the territory.”
“They were the ones who told you to come up here,” Leah pointed out. “They insisted they could manage on their own, so let them do it. Jean-Paul will be home in a few hours. Let him deal with the squabbles.”
“I should,” Annette said. “It’d serve him right. It was eleven-thirty when I reached him the other night. They must have just walked in from the hospital, and he didn’t say a word about it, the rat.”
“He was trying to protect you.”
“Yeah, and how much more is he hiding? Did Thomas do permanent damage to his hand? Will he get full dexterity back? What else is happening that they’re not saying?”
Caroline snorted. “Given how good Nat is at keeping secrets, I can’t imagine there’s much.”
Annette suspected she was right, and, anyway, it seemed they were all surviving the broken arm. Devon sounded annoyed with her brothers but otherwise composed, and cheery Nicole was close-by in the kitchen, and then there was trusty Rob and good old levelheaded Jean-Paul.
Jean-Paul would have seen that Thomas had the best of medical care. It wasn’t worth Annette’s time to even begin to worry on that score.
But old habits died hard. The more she thought, the worse it was. “I feel guilty. I should be there.”
“Because Ginny never was?” Leah asked.
“Yes, and because I like being there when my kids need me.”
Leah and Caroline exchanged a glance.
Annette sighed. “You’re thinking that the kids don’t need me right now. Well, maybe they don’t. Let me rephrase that. It’s my need to be there when my kids are sick or hurt. Sometimes there’s nothing to be done but hold a hand, or plump a pillow, or sit in the chair by the window and read, but it’s satisfying. If either of you had children, you’d know what I mean.”
For My Daughters Page 18