“No. I said I would go, and I will. Dennis, can we talk about this privately?”
“It seems,” Dennis said, “that your mind is already made up. As usual.” He tossed his napkin on the table. “If you’ll excuse me.”
His departure left a thick atmosphere of tension in the room.
“Really, Birdie…” Rose began.
“I’ve made up my mind. I’m going.” She paused and said more gently, “I need to go.”
“Can I go with you?” Hannah begged again. “I really want to go. School’s out next week for Easter break, anyway, and I’ve nothing to do at home.”
“Oh, Hannah…” She didn’t need any more stress right now. It was on the tip of her tongue to say no. The last thing she needed to do was look after her daughter during all of this.
“Please, Mom?”
Looking into Hannah’s face, upturned, eager, eyes shining with hope, Birdie couldn’t do it. She wanted to find her lost youth on this trip, but here before her was her own daughter, caught in the quandaries of losing that same confidence and joy.
“Okay,” she replied, feeling a sudden pleasure at the surprise and excitement that flushed Hannah’s face. “I’ll just go tell your father.”
Birdie walked to the guest room to find Dennis tossing his clothes into their black suitcase. She stood with her hand on the doorknob and her heart in her throat.
“Where are you going?” Her voice rang with an authority she used to mask her fear.
“What do you care?” In contrast, his was void of emotion.
“Dennis, you’re behaving like a child.”
He tossed a pair of dark socks into the suitcase. “Thank you.”
She watched him walk into the closet and come out again with three shirts and a few ties in his hand. He didn’t bother to fold them, just threw them into the suitcase.
“You’re doing it again,” she said. “You’re withdrawing.” When he didn’t reply, she came into the room and closed the door behind her. She hated this guest room, with its prissy white lace everywhere. She didn’t feel comfortable in here.
“Stop packing for a minute, Dennis,” she said, sounding more like his mother than his wife. She softened her tone, wanting him to listen. “We have things to talk about.”
He stopped, thought a moment and then lifted his head. When he spoke again it was with a controlled and deliberate voice, but his dark eyes flashed behind his glasses.
“I don’t see that there’s much to talk about. You’ve decided to go off on this wild-goose chase without talking to me, so I’ve decided to go on one of my own.”
“Go? Go where?”
“I don’t know. Somewhere. A trip. I need a vacation. A break.” His laugh was short. “Maybe on a motorcycle.” He went into the small, pink-and-green-tiled bathroom and began tossing toiletries into his leather bag.
“A trip?” she asked, trailing after him. “Where did this come from? What are you talking about?”
“Talk, talk, talk, talk.” He walked past her back into the bedroom and put the toiletry bag into his suitcase. When he looked up again, his expression was inscrutable. “We don’t engage in that particular sport. Talk, conversation, discussion. That’s a pleasant exercise that uses words to communicate. We don’t do that. You use words to order me around. You use words to tell me what I’m doing wrong, or to tell Hannah what she’s doing wrong. You find things to complain about, things to shout about. But talk?” He shook his head. “No, Birdie, we don’t do that.”
“You don’t talk, either!” she cried, retaliating. “You never discuss anything with me. You clam up.”
“It’s hard to discuss something when the other person is dictating.”
Her face pulled tight, like a wall. “That’s not fair. I’ll be at the table and I’ll bring up topic after topic after topic and you just sit there and don’t respond. It’s true, I know. I’ve tested you. I’ve sat through a whole meal, deliberately not talking, just to see if you’d pick up the slack. You don’t. Neither does Hannah. There’s utter silence till I think I’ll go mad with the sound of metal hitting china.”
“Some people might call that peace.”
“I give up,” she said, throwing up her hands. “Really, I’ve had it. You and Hannah both. You—”
“And that’s another thing!” he roared, spinning on his heel to face her, surprising her with his vehemence. “You attack Hannah. You’re on her case all the time. Don’t you see what you’re doing to her? She sulks and stuffs her face—”
“Don’t you dare blame me for that! Don’t you dare!”
He skipped a beat and she could feel her own heart thumping wildly in her chest.
“You can come after me all you want, but you leave her out of it.” His voice was low again, but trembling with rage, and she caught an unmistakable flicker of cold hatred across his face.
She was undone. Her breath whooshed out. “I don’t—”
“Yes,” he snapped, cutting her off. “You do. Nothing she does is right. You order her around like a drill sergeant. You’re on top of her all the time. You’re on me, too. It’s abuse. And I want it to stop.”
She shuddered with revulsion at the thought she was verbally abusing her own daughter. She loved no one in the whole world more than Hannah. He was wrong.
And yet, some voice in her mind shouted out that what Dennis said was true. She’d recognized the anger in herself. It spiraled higher and higher lately, out of her control. She’d been trying to stop the cycle, attempting to find ways to get close to Hannah again, but she’d failed.
“Dennis, don’t you see what’s going on with her? She’s so depressed and remote. And look at her eating. It’s out of control. And the more weight she gains, the more depressed she gets. It’s a vicious, dangerous cycle for a teenage girl. Of course I’m watching her like a hawk. Depression runs rampant at this age.”
“She’s not depressed. She’s just going through a phase.”
“That’s too easy. If you want to turn the other way, that’s your business. I love her too much to just throw her out in the world to fend for herself. My parents did that with Jilly. No child of mine is going to slip through the cracks.”
“For God’s sake, Birdie. She’s not slipping through the cracks! She’s a good kid. Ease up.”
“Of course she’s a good kid! That’s why I’m grabbing tight.”
“You’re overreacting!”
Her back went straight. “You’re underreacting!”
He released a short, bitter laugh and shook his head with remorse. “See what I mean? We don’t talk….” His voice trailed off.
“I’m trying…I’m trying so hard to be a good mother.” Her voice caught and she whipped her hands to cover her eyes. Damn, she hated herself for this emotion. He’d only use it to throw back at her.
But, surprisingly, her tears calmed him. He lowered his shoulders, raking both hands through his hair as he exhaled a long breath. “I know you are.”
He sounded more like himself again, except sad. Very sad. And that frightened her even more. She dropped her hand to search his face for clues.
“I know you’re a good mother. And I know your heart’s in the right place. But you take on too much, Birdie. You think you can do everything. You want to prove something to the world, but you end up so overburdened everything is a battle. You want everything to be perfect—but life isn’t.”
He lowered his voice. “You may be right. I’m withdrawing. The more you nag, the more I pull in.” He looked her in the eyes and said without anger, “You’re turning into a nag, Birdie.” He put his hands on his hips, warring with himself, then said quietly, definitively, “And I can’t take it anymore.”
A long, deadly silence filled the room. Birdie’s face drained with shock and hurt. He was looking at her critically, dispassionately, in such a way that made her self-consciously aware of the dumpiness of her figure, the old sweatshirt she had on, her flat, uncombed hair. Time dragged on while she
studied Dennis, too, as though for the last time. She saw details as though they were blown up on a screen: his dark piercing eyes were edged with deep lines, his light brown hair was thinner and streaked with more gray than she’d remembered, his full lips were pale from anger or exhaustion—or both.
They’d grown old together, she realized with a start. And they’d grown apart.
He rested his hands on the suitcase, then closed it with a flip of his wrists and zipped it. “You may have been trying with Hannah, I recognize that.” He jabbed his index finger to his chest. “But you haven’t been trying with me. I’m tired of getting the short end of the stick every time. I need more. I need a connection. I need some fun. Goddammit, I need some sex. I’m not getting any younger. And you know what really makes me burn?”
She shook her head and wrapped her arms around herself protectively. She knew this one would hurt.
“I wanted to go on a trip with you. For years I’ve practically begged you to come away with me, anywhere. I’ve brought brochures home from travel agents. I’ve even gone so far as to book flights. But you’ve always been too busy, or you wouldn’t go without Hannah. Not even for a weekend! And now you tell me you’re going off on a trip with your sisters? At the last minute? Somehow you can manage to arrange coverage for them but not for me. How the hell do you think that makes me feel?”
He turned his head downward, but not before she caught the flash of tears that she knew embarrassed him. “Try to understand, Dennis,” she said in a voice made husky with emotion. “It’s hard to explain. I need to take this trip. I know it in my gut. I don’t know why, but I think it’s all tied in somehow with why I’ve been so unhappy lately. It has to do with me, not you. Can you understand that?”
He nodded.
She took a long breath, relieved.
“I know there’s something wrong with you,” he said, but his voice wasn’t sympathetic. It was flat. Unforgiving. “And you’re half of this marriage. So I want out.”
He said it with such coldness of feeling it burned like dry ice. She stood with her mouth open and her arms hanging at her sides as he grabbed hold of his suitcase and walked out the door.
10
DENNIS STORMED INTO THE KITCHEN. “Come on, Hannah,” he ordered. “We’re leaving.”
Jilly and Hannah both sat bolt upright in their chairs. Jilly had seen the worry and indecision cloud Hannah’s face when the shouting began upstairs so she’d brought her into the kitchen, closed the door and, to distract her, begun making a list of things they’d need to bring for the car trip. Now Hannah was sitting with her eyes wide with shock at seeing her father in such uncharacteristic fury.
“What’s going on?” Jilly asked.
He didn’t look at her but kept his gaze on Hannah. “We’re going home. Get your stuff.”
“No, I’m not,” Hannah countered, her face rebellious. She glanced at Jilly, her eyes pleading for help.
“Birdie said she could come along with us,” Jilly replied in an easy tone. “Why not let her? She’ll have a good time.”
“I said no. Go on,” he ordered Hannah.
“No!” Hannah bolted from the chair. “I won’t go home. And you can’t make me.” She pushed away from the table and ran out the back door, leaving the screen door banging open, caught in a gust of wind.
Dennis was hot on her trail. Jilly leaped to her feet and hurried after him. “Let her go,” she called out, catching up to him on the back porch and grabbing hold of his arm. She saw Hannah dart across the yard and out through the tall hedge “Give her a minute. She’ll be back. Where’s she going to go?”
She felt the tension in his arm tighten, then subside. She released her grip, feeling a bit embarrassed at having grabbed him. Dennis raked his hand through his hair as he stared out at the empty yard, then he turned toward her with critical eyes.
“Why are you doing this?”
“Doing what?”
“Getting everyone to go on this quest of yours.”
“Me getting everyone to go?”
“You always get people to do what you want. You always have.”
“I don’t know which makes me angrier,” she replied, stepping back. “That you call this search a quest, or that you think I was the one who started it. You’re wrong on both counts. If anyone’s a victim here, it’s me.”
“Then stop this madness.”
She drew herself up, warring inside with a thousand things she could tell him. Her head was swirling with what felt like a swarm of angry bees—all stinging. “Just what is it that bothers you the most about this?” She was acting on instinct, letting one of her bees out to sting him and test his reaction.
“Okay. Okay, I’ll tell you. I wanted a little time with my wife but she never has the time to give. Then suddenly, out of the blue, bam! She has time for you.”
“She’s not doing this for me. She’s doing this for herself. And more power to her. If you’d think of someone other than yourself, you’d see how unhappy she is.”
His face mottled. “I see. So this search is all altruistic on your part, is it? Did you every stop to think how the child—this Spring—might feel about being found? Maybe she doesn’t want to be located. Maybe she doesn’t want to face her long lost mother. You could be ruining her life.”
After a short laugh Jilly said, “Mr. Collins warned me I’d hear stuff like that, but I didn’t expect it so soon. And certainly not from you.”
“If you hear it it’s because it’s true. And you’re not only ruining her life. Look what you’re doing to ours.”
Jilly’s head snapped up and she eyed him narrowly. “Just what am I doing to your life?”
“You don’t know what this trip will unearth.” His eyes were questioning. Challenging.
She squinted. “Go on.”
He looked down as the cold air billowed around them. She held her breath.
“I’ve got to know, Jilly,” he said in a confidential whisper. “Am I the father?”
She knew it was coming, but hearing the words still came as a shock.
“Well!” She exhaled, stepping back again. “It’s a little late to be asking that question.”
“Am I?”
She looked down at her bare feet, her head spinning. She wasn’t sure what to tell him—a hell of a predicament after twenty-six years. She studied her fuchsia-pink toenails as she wondered whether to say no. It would be the easiest reply to give. Just like when her mother had asked, Is it that Connor boy? That one word, “no,” made everyone happy and got them all off her case. She could do it again.
Except that she was done pretending. She’d vowed when she decided to face her ghosts that there would be no more lies in her life. She wouldn’t sacrifice herself again for the sake of peace or another’s well-being.
She looked into Dennis’s brown eyes and said, “I don’t know.” There, it was said. She felt years younger.
Dennis looked years older. “What…what do you mean? I could be the father?”
“Yes.”
He swore under his breath and the look he gave her was tinged with accusation.
“I didn’t sleep around,” she fired off. “And you know it. There was only that one time with you. And one other boy.”
She saw in his glazed look that they were both remembering that emotional summer week.
She and Dennis had dated for most of the summer of 1972. Dennis was popular enough but a loner. Kind of weird smart, the editor of the school paper and yearbook. He was cute enough to attract the girls and good enough in basketball to pass muster with the guys. It was his eleventh-hour heroism on the television show It’s Academic, when he answered a remote literature question for the win that first attracted Jilly to him. He was different, sensitive, intriguing…adorable with that cleft in his chin.
So she set her sights for Dennis Connor, and it didn’t take long. Terribly flattered to be wooed by someone as popular as Jillian Season, Dennis promptly fell under her spell.
It was a lovely summer. They lived at the beach, hanging out with Jilly’s most popular group. Dennis soaked in the envy of the other guys as he spread suntan oil on her luscious bikini-clad body. The nights were balmy. They drove in packs to McDonald’s to hang out, then headed back to the beach to sprawl out on blankets and make out, draped by the dark night and the roar of the surf.
She was his first time. It was a mistake, she knew instantly, not only because she didn’t feel a spark with him, but also because after they made love he became slavishly devoted. Jillian was wise enough to know it was just the sex, but Dennis didn’t. He tagged around like a hungry puppy, always touching, always eager, so she had to break it off with him. The following week she met an adorable college boy at a party and after too many beers, she let him in the back of his car. Dennis heard about it, as he was supposed to, and stopped calling.
“You broke my heart with that college man, you know.” He was only half-serious, and his smile was sheepish.
“We both know that neither one of us was in love. We were in high school, for God’s sake.”
“When I found out years later that you’d had a baby, I was stunned and couldn’t help but wonder if it was mine. I did the math. Then I figured you would have told me and let it go. It was easier. And Jesus, I was married to your sister. The last thing I wanted to think about was the possibility of having had a child with you.”
“You may not have.”
“Just the possibility…”
“Did you love Birdie when you married her?”
He seemed surprised by the question. “Madly, desperately. Truly.”
“Thank God,” she murmured. “I’d always wondered.”
His face pinched and he looked up toward the bedroom. “She’s always been anxious that the two of us dated. Even for such a short time. I told her it was ridiculous, that it was long before I ever dated her. But if she hears this, she’ll be devastated.”
“I’m not going to tell her.”
“You may not have to. What if the baby looks like me?”
The Four Seasons Page 15