The Game of Denial

by Brenda Adcock

  "It's not that bad," Fran said, pretending to sulk.

  As Joan started to leave the room, Evey said, "If you go to the barn, would you tell Ralph, my farm manager, that dinner will be ready in about...," she paused to look at the kitchen clock, "two hours?"

  A FEW MINUTES later Joan walked onto the front porch and gazed at the lush greenery surrounding the house. The flowerbeds around the house looked as if they had been recently worked and the scent of fresh soil wafted up to greet her. She could hear the sound of horses nickering in the distance as she strolled down the front steps toward the barn and stable area. When she got closer, she heard the sound of children's laughter and followed it until she reached a large enclosure on the far side of the stables. The young man Fran had told her was Brad's brother, Tully, was on a beautiful chestnut horse, sitting calmly in the saddle as the animal went through a series of movements within the enclosure. Tucker stood near the fence, Morgana seated on his shoulders with her arms folded in front of her and resting on her father's head. Mitchell sat on the top rail, asking a hundred questions of the older man seated next to him.

  Joan had seen the man briefly when they arrived, but hadn't been introduced. She walked up next to Tucker, letting her hand rub over his back.

  "Hi, Mom," Tucker said. "They run you out of the house too?" He looked up at the man sitting next to Mitchell. "I don't think you've met Mrs. Chase's farm manager. This is Ralph Tannenbaum. Ralph, my mother, Joan Carmichael."

  Ralph nodded and extended a callused hand. "Miz Carmichael."

  Joan returned his smile. "I'm supposed to let you know that dinner will be ready in a couple of hours, Mr. Tannenbaum. From the smell of it so far, it should be delicious."

  Ralph readjusted his cap. "Always is. Miz Evey's a good cook." Then he leaned closer to Mitchell, pointed at the horse, and said something Joan couldn't hear. Mitchell nodded furiously.

  Tucker reached out and wrapped his arm around Joan's shoulders and gave her a gentle hug. "You doing all right?" he asked.

  "Of course, dear. It's beautiful here."

  "So where are all the womenfolk?" Tucker asked in a twangy voice.

  Joan chuckled. "Well, Giselle is happily making bread," she said holding up one finger. "Frannie is learning to cook beans and mashed potatoes, I think. As for the other two, Charmaine is probably taking her afternoon beauty nap or whispering sweet nothings on her cell to Giancarlo, and Meg is possibly dead after blowing her brains out with heavy metal music."

  Tucker laughed. "So everything is pretty much status quo?"

  "What's states go?" Morgana asked.

  "It means nothing has changed, sweet cheeks," Joan answered, patting the girl's chubby thigh. "I haven't seen Brad or his sister."

  "They're in the barn, uh, cleanin' up," Ralph said.

  "What's that Tully's doing?" Joan asked.

  "All the horses have a training session every day. This one usually performs in dressage competitions, so Tully's going through a stage one exercise with him, just so he don't forget what he's supposed to be doing. On account of the wedding Miz Evey cancelled most of her training sessions and their riders won't be running in and out until after the ceremony." Ralph paused before saying, "Tully's not too happy about having to put other people's horses through their paces when he could be working with his own, but that's just the breaks in the training business."

  "Mrs. Chase is a trainer?" Joan asked.

  Ralph nodded. "A riding teacher and performance trainer. The farm used to breed and sell horses until Miz Evey's husband took over the business. He was a professional rider hisself like Miz Evey. Les wasn't interested in breeding so much. Miz Evey still does some though."

  Joan continued to watch what was going on inside the enclosure for a while, but soon felt the need to stretch her legs. She patted Tucker on the back. "I'm going for a walk," she said. "I didn't have a chance to run before we left New York."

  "If you're not back in an hour or so at least we have horses so we can send out a posse to look for you," Tucker said.

  Chapter Four

  BY THE TIME dinner was ready, everyone was awake and hungry. Joan couldn't help but look around the table and take in the smiling faces of her children and grandchildren all together, perhaps for the last time in a long while. In a few days her family would be joined with an almost equally large family and she prayed they would always be as close as they now seemed to be. Even Meg had found someone who also seemed to enjoy the music she had only recently begun to embrace. Beth Chase was only two or three years older than Meg and offered up the names of legendary heavy metal groups from a few years earlier. Joan noticed the sullen look on Tully's face and gathered he was unaccustomed to being ignored by young women. He devoured his meal quickly and excused himself, presumably to finish some work at the stables.

  Most of the children disappeared once the meal was finished. Fran and Evey stored the leftovers while Joan carried plates and glasses into the kitchen. She hadn't noticed earlier, but was surprised that the one appliance Evey Chase didn't have was a dishwasher. Joan admittedly hadn't spent much time in her own kitchen, leaving meals first to Martine and later to a cook, but couldn't remember the last time she'd seen a kitchen without a dishwasher. She looked under the sink and found dishwashing liquid and filled the sink with hot sudsy water.

  "I'll wash the dishes, Joan," Evey said. "Go relax."

  "That's all I've done since we arrived," Joan said. "I'll wash if you dry."

  Evey pulled a dish towel from a hook near the sink and leaned against the counter. "I usually use this as my thinking time," she said.

  "What do you think about?" Joan asked as she twisted a dish rag inside a glass and rinsed it before handing it to Evey.

  "Whatever comes into my mind," Evey said. "Next week's grocery list, the future, what I need to do tomorrow, life, just whatever."

  "Sounds like a pleasant way to escape," Joan said. "Maybe I should start washing dishes more often."

  "What do you need to escape from?"

  "The past. Life has a tendency to be cruel...sometimes."

  AFTER THE DISHES were done, Evey hiked to the stables to check on the horses and make sure they were settled down for the evening. The kids assembled into teams for a game of horseshoes in an open area between the main house and the guest house. Joan took a phone call from Cleo to stay caught up with the latest advertising campaigns her company had been entrusted with. Joan had only been gone for one day, but so far Cleo seemed to have everything well under control.

  The weather turned slightly cooler and there was a light breeze that carried the scent of flowers with it as it skimmed across the front yard, drawing Joan to walk along a path that led toward the stables. She strolled down the walkway in front of the stalls and stopped to rest her arms on the entrance to one of the stalls. The animal slowly munching its feed raised its head and gazed at her with curious brown eyes. The light breeze flowed along the covered walkway, ruffling Joan's short hair. She reached up unconsciously to run her fingers through it, brushing it to the side. Meadowbrook Farm was an idyllic place. The sounds and smells brought back memories of her childhood when her family had lived a simple, unhurried life.

  "Hey, Mom," Tucker's voice said. Joan turned her head and smiled at the sight walking toward her. It was something she hadn't seen since before Martine died. Tucker and his family, accompanied by Charmaine, Francesca, and Meg were casually approaching. To see them all together, the family she and Martine had created, brought tears to her eyes. She blinked them away.

  "This is a surprise," she said. "What are you all doing?"

  "Taking an after dinner stroll," Charmaine answered. "The kids were getting a little antsy. So before they killed someone with an errant horseshoe we thought maybe we could work off their extra energy." Charmaine shrugged. "I heard it works for dogs."

  Mitchell ran up to Joan and wrapped his arms around her. She gazed down and ran her fingers through his strawberry-blond hair. "Hello, sweet boy," she s
aid softly, pressing him against her body.

  "You look sad, Gramma," the eight-year-old said.

  "Just thinking how beautiful you all are," Joan replied, bending down to kiss the top of his head.

  She greeted Morgana in the same way when the five-year-old joined her brother and threw her arms around Joan's leg. Joan picked her up and planted a loud, sloppy kiss on the girl's cheek, which was followed by a fit of giggling.

  "Thinking about Mama?" Fran asked.

  Joan looked at Morgana and smiled. "Always," she said. "Right, mon chou?"

  "Tell us about her," Meg said.

  "You've all heard everything about her a million times before."

  "We'll never get tired of hearing your stories about Mama," Tucker said. "We don't want to forget her either."

  Joan carried Morgana to a row of hay bales leaning against the wall of the stable and sat down. Tucker pulled several bales into a semi-circle as if they were sitting around a campfire.

  "What do you want to know?" Joan asked as she smoothed her granddaughter's hair and tucked it behind her little ears.

  "Tell us how you and Mama met," Fran said. "I could listen to that story a million times. It's so romantic."

  Joan leaned back against the wooden wall. Morgana rested her head on Joan's shoulder and she was sure her granddaughter would be asleep soon. "Now you're asking me to really reach back into my memory closet." She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. "I was very young. Not much older than Meg is now and on my very first trip overseas for a spring fashion week. Everything I saw left me in awe and I wasn't sure I could take it all in and actually write a decent story for the magazine I worked for. I was so fresh and brash, trying to cover for the insecurity I felt inside. I wasn't sure how to approach these rock stars of the fashion world, but soon found out that would be left to the more experienced writers. My job was to give a behind-the-scenes report. Write about the little people. Little of it would ever be in print anyway, but I thought I was the reporting guru of fashion," Joan said.

  "Anyway, one of the smaller couture houses presented their spring fashion line at a cocktail party rather than on a runway. It was near the end of the week and I was ordered to attend as a representative of the magazine. Everyone else was too partied out by then."

  Charmaine said. "I can just see someone trying to give you orders now."

  "What did you wear?" Fran asked.

  "I bet it wasn't anything comfortable," Meg said.

  "No, it wasn't," Joan said. "But I was pretty close to the end of my wardrobe by then. I wore a rather shamefully short black cocktail dress that fastened around my neck and very uncomfortable high heels."

  "No cleavage?" Tucker asked. Giselle poked him playfully on the arm. He pulled his wife closer and kissed her.

  "Even when I was much younger, I didn't have enough cleavage to get excited about, so I chose the mysterious approach," Joan said. "I spent most of the evening hiding behind one potted plant or another, coming out only to refill my champagne glass." A smile lifted the corners of her mouth. She lowered her voice and her children leaned closer to hear. "Then I saw her. The most beautiful creature I had ever seen was staring right at me. I thought perhaps there was something wrong with my dress or stockings. I screwed my head around to check my rear and when I turned back around, she was walking toward me. She seemed to prowl like a panther stalking its prey, her hair flowing wildly around her face like a mane. I had never seen anyone so magnificent in my life."

  "Hot, huh?" Meg asked.

  Joan opened her eyes and met Meg's. "Hotter than the center of a flame," she answered. "I thought I might combust right there on the spot."

  "What does hot mean?" Mitchell asked, turning his head toward his mother.

  "It means very attractive," Giselle said softly.

  "And all of you are the result of that first meeting," Joan said.

  "I think you left out the part between meeting and us," Charmaine said.

  Joan cleared her throat. "I fell in love with your Mama that evening and until Tuck came along our private lives remained just that, private."

  "When did you decide to have children?" Giselle asked.

  "Martine wanted to have children right away, but I wanted to wait. She put up with my reluctance for almost two years before announcing it was time. She had spent the previous two years getting everything in order. She contacted Ron and Gerard, as well as a doctor. The only question was who would become pregnant first. Martine thought we both should carry children. It would make us more of a family if we were both invested in it, although she would have gladly become pregnant with each one of you. She came up with the coin toss idea. I called heads and won, or lost. Tucker is the result. Sorry sweetie, but I can't honestly say I was that excited. The idea of becoming pregnant had never appealed to me, even as a young girl."

  "How did you become pregnant?" Giselle asked.

  Joan cleared her throat. "Martine believed children were created by the love shared between two people. She made an appointment with our doctor who instructed her how the insemination process worked. She brought the sperm from Uncle Gerard home and I probably shouldn't tell anything else in front of the children. Suffice it to say, I became pregnant and was scared to death.

  "Martine hovered over me for the next nine months. She decorated the nursery and read every book she could lay her hands on. She worried that Tucker would kick a hole through my abdomen. She made me eat foods that may have been wonderful for a growing baby, but were truly disgusting. And despite the fact that I went to work every day, she still made me exercise every evening before we went to bed.

  "The morning Tucker was born was so chaotic and, of course, Martine insisted on being with me during the birth. I wanted to be anywhere except in that room. It's true what they say about giving birth. It may be a beautiful process, but it hurt like hell and I called Martine a few very unkind names. During each contraction she would lean down and whisper into my ear, telling me how much she loved me and thanking me for the gift I was giving her. When I looked into her eyes, the pain didn't seem as bad. Our doctor allowed her to stay through the entire delivery and even let her cut the umbilical cord. Actually Mama was the first one to hold Tucker after the nurses counted his fingers and toes," Joan said, the memory floating through her mind. "I was so exhausted I fell asleep almost immediately. When I woke up Martine was sitting in a rocking chair next to my bed holding Tucker in her arms, cooing to him in French. She looked as radiant as if she had given birth to him. I didn't know beforehand, but she had collected baby pictures of me and Ron along with hers and Gerard's. She would hold you for hours and compare you to those pictures."

  "What about the rest of us?" Fran urged Joan to continue.

  Joan took a deep breath and absently ran her fingers through Morgana's hair. "Fortunately for me, Martine won the next two coin tosses. Actually, it was almost more difficult for me to see her suffering during delivery than it had been to deliver myself."

  "Did Mama call you names, too?" Charmaine asked.

  "Oh yes," Joan said. "Quite a few. But they didn't sound so bad in French."

  "Why did you stop having children after me?" Meg asked. "Saving the best for last no doubt," she said using a superior tone.

  Charmaine shoved her sister and snorted. "I saw you after you were born, honey. You looked like a corpse. Like they scraped the bottom of the gene pool. Anyone would have called it quits after that."

  Even though she had to smile at Charmaine's comment, Joan said, "You were beautiful to us, darling. Basically, I decided four was enough. I was just getting the business off the ground. We were having a child every two years at the pace we were going and the business was making it very difficult to continue. Mama finally agreed." Joan gently hugged Morgana. "This little one needs to lie down."

  Tucker stood and lifted his daughter from Joan's arms. "I'll put her down for a nap and we can continue with our walk."

  "I'll sit with her while you're gone," Joan sai
d.

  AS THE GROUP made their way back toward the guest house, Evey stepped out of a stall and watched them walk away. She had enjoyed listening to Joan's story. It was obvious how much she loved the children she and her partner had produced and how much in love with Martine she had been. Joan Carmichael was nothing like the woman Evey had imagined. She admired how easily Joan was able to speak about her emotions, how unashamed she was to reveal that side of herself to her children. And she wondered what such an intense, long-lasting, and vibrant relationship between two women must be like. She hadn't thought about such a thing in many years.

  Chapter Five

  EVEY LEANED ON the rake she used to clean out the horses' stalls and watched Joan run easily down the drive toward the main road. She had already been up and working for nearly an hour when she saw Joan leave the house. Joan had been relatively quiet throughout dinner the evening before. She had complimented Evey for the delicious meal and then spent the remainder of the evening listening as Fran and Brad described their plans for the wedding. Occasionally she had laughed lightly as her other children made a point of telling Brad every silly thing Fran had done as a child. Charmaine even managed to produce a few embarrassing pictures of a naked baby Francesca.

  Joan passed the pictures to Evey, who again saw the look of sadness that passed over Joan's face. She took the small stack of pictures gently, reverently. Brad sat next to his mother on their well-used early American couch and leaned over to look at the pictures with her.

  "Hey! I recognize that butt," he said with a leer at Fran on his other side. "It hasn't changed a bit."

  Fran slapped his arm and blushed.