Bridge To Happiness

by Jill Barnett

  Scott looked up as I locked the front door and walked down the steps. He opened the door for me. “I have a plan.”

  What I had planned was to be alone with Phillip.

  “Molly and Phillip already left,” he said in a rush.

  “I can see that.” I climbed inside. They knew me too well.

  “The snow might be bad on 50. I thought I should follow you back.”

  No, you all cooked this up so Phillip wouldn’t have to be alone in a car with me for two hours.

  I buckled up. “I’ve been driving in snow since before you were born, Scott.” I faced him. “Afraid I’ll make a run for it, rob a Seven Eleven, and end up in the slammer again? Or maybe I’ll go throw my panties at Justin Bieber.”

  “Now that I’d pay to see, Mom.”

  “Don’t hold your breath. He’s probably too old for me.” I started the car and drove home, with two hours alone to think about my crazy feelings and my life for the last year.

  Molly was waiting in the driveway when I pulled in and parked. I grabbed my small suitcase and she met me at the inside door.

  “I called the wedding planner and we have an appointment tomorrow morning at ten. I was afraid you wouldn’t check your messages.”

  I chose not to remind her that I was an adult and knew how voicemail worked. Then I remembered how I had been pretending to be at home instead of with Rio. She followed me chattering and I went upstairs toward the master bedroom. I opened the double doors and dropped my luggage inside.

  “My God, Mom,” Molly said, hovering at my back. “The room is completely different!”

  “That was the point. If I was going to change it, I was going to really change it. It was difficult to live here the way it had always been. For my sanity I had to start over completely.” My voice was odd, a little strident, and I was sorry.

  “I hate change,” she said, but her tone wasn’t angry. “Truthfully? I thought I would hate it,” she said quietly.

  “You don’t?”

  “No.” She smiled and squeezed my hand. “I don’t. It’s lovely. And it looks like you.”

  That surprised me.

  She turned away for a second and I heard her breath catch.

  I turned. “What is it?”

  She bent down and picked up something off the floor. There in the palm of her hand was a white feather.

  “A white feather.” She stared at it.

  “That must have come from the bedding or pillows,” I said, walking toward the bed to touch the new bedding; it was thick and creamy looking, the pillows plump and lined up along a damask covered headboard with nailhead trim. A cashmere throw lay on the end of the bed. “Everything is new. New down pillows and comforters, new sheets, new mattress, new room.” I turned slowly.

  My master bedroom was finished, except for a chair in the sitting area that had been delayed at the upholsterer’s. Mike’s chair, of all things.

  “I have to run.” Molly gave me a quick kiss. Her mood was suddenly light and too cheery and I looked at her oddly for a minute. “We start our appointment schedule tomorrow,” she said. “I’ll pick you up at quarter to ten.” And she rushed out the door. I stared at the empty spot where she just stood and felt as if I had been fly-by fruited.

  My mercurial daughter.

  I turned back. I was standing in the middle of the room. I closed my eyes and imagined what it had been like for years, the rugs, the chairs, the clothes lined up in the closet, his side, my side. The bed, his side, my side. Then I opened my eyes.

  The room was every shade of white, crisp and clean, like a new sheet of paper. The crown molding, the door and window frames, all had been repainted in white, and the fireplace surround was painted in a creamy off white, antique washed, and hand rubbed to match some of the furniture pieces. On either side of the bed hung long beveled mirrors that reflected the light from the tall hand painted lamps on the each nightstand—one was a round table from France with delicate curved legs and a mirrored top and the other a mirrored chest with a marble top.

  Tall palms and trees and other deep green plants filled cold corners and each accessory was placed perfectly, many of them with mirror bases, so the light reflected everywhere. The master bath was all white with silver tiles and more large mirrors, hand painted cabinetry and clear vessel sinks. Two sides. Both mine.

  White, white, white.

  I had the screwiest thought and laughed and asked the room, “Where is Saint Peter? Where are the Pearly Gates?” I paused, my hand pressed to my stomach and asked quietly, “Where is my life?”

  I walked over to the French doors and looked out at the tree. The limbs had been trimmed neatly and they could no longer rub against the house. I wondered if they could still cast shadows shaped like my husband.

  So I turned back, quickly, suddenly, expecting to see him in our room.

  The room wasn’t us and he wasn’t there.

  As I stood there, I had a feeling the room could be me, and then I had the strangest warm and odd feeling of peace come over me. Peace.

  I loved my husband more than anything. I wanted to grow old with him, holding our gnarled hands in wheelchairs side by side, and leaving this world together. The perfect lifetime.

  But only in dreams was life perfect. I didn’t ask to have him torn from me, to have our life together ended so horrifically. I didn’t ask to live without him.

  Without him, I didn’t want to live in our life anymore. I needed to live my own.

  I walked back to the bathroom and started a bath. It was another test: all the times I had seen visions of Mike when I was walking out of the bathroom in a towel.

  Tonight there was no Mike. And I paused in my towel and waited, and my heart broke all over again, like that night over a year ago when the policeman stood at my door and told me my life as I had known it was over. Mike was gone.

  I was no longer a wife. I was a widow. God in Heaven but I hated being defined by loss. I’d rather be defined by all the years we had together—a real gift of my lifetime. I hugged myself as I looked at the new bed. I didn’t see Mike’s spot. I didn’t see him missing. And I lay down and I cried like before, but this time over what I couldn’t see anymore. I just cried and cried, because this was goodbye.

  For the next seven nights, I slept like the dead. And I never saw Mike again, not even in the rooms downstairs that I had yet to change. I didn’t cry again, which was something. The tree never cast a shadow. There was no size 17/35 shirt for me to sleep in. There was no more haunting.

  After a full two days of looking at venues for Molly’s reception, I climbed into bed early, snuggled down under the covers. As I turned to set the alarm, I paused to look at our picture sitting on the nightstand in a new sleek sterling silver frame. It wasn’t hidden in a drawer or stuffed under the bed. It wasn’t hidden from me at all; it had been there from the moment I stepped into this new room. Our face stared back at me, and I smiled.

  I paused, then threw back the covers and got out of bed. Picture in hand, I walked over to the custom bookshelves and moved some things around, then set the photo there, angled it right, then left, the right again. Then I moved it up one shelf. I crawled back into bed and looked at it from across the room. It belonged in the bookcase with beloved family photos scattered on shelves, between stacks of books, those glimpses of our lives captured so we could never forget.

  Mike would always be my blood and bone, so much a part of who I am and the woman I have become. He is my history. He is love defined by my decades of life with him. I did not and do not walk away easily from him. I never could. Ours was a separation forced by fate, and I fought the reality of it with everything I had. I resisted, I imagined, I fell apart. I did not want to go on in a world without Mike.

  But I am here and he is gone. To not live my life to its fullest every hour, every minute and second would mean death has more meaning for us than life, than love, than all we were.

  He is not here to finish my journey beside me. But he is w
ith me . . . in my mind and my heart, and my children’s heartbeats.

  The morning we were supposed to look at wedding dresses, I got a frantic call from Molly as I sat drinking coffee and waiting for her. “I’m late, Mom. I’ll have to meet you there.”

  She was panicked and I tried to remember as I drove to Union Square, if I had been that high strung the day I chose my dress. I didn’t think so. I bought the first one I tried on. How easy decisions were when I was young. My mistakes didn’t influence me, or make me tentative. But then back in those days I didn’t think I made any mistakes, which reminded me of Molly.

  Two hours later my pale daughter was standing on a pedestal surrounded by mirrors and sales people, silk organza and satin and seed pearls and lace and netting seemingly everywhere.

  “I look like a marshmallow,” Molly said, turning and glancing over her shoulder festooned with a large bow. “Everything is puffy.” She grabbed a puffed sleeve, frowning. “What do you think?”

  She did look like a marshmallow and I had to laugh. She and that dress would be at war just walking or flouncing down the aisle. “I think all we’re missing are the singing bluebirds and a mouse named Gus.”

  And Molly laughed then, but not with her usual energy. She had been running late all week and came into the bridal department looking like hell in a UCLA sweatshirt and jeans, flip flops, no make-up and her hair pulled up in a ponytail. The wedding must have made her off, because I couldn’t ever remember seeing her so unkempt.

  She grabbed the silk and tulle skirts, pulled them up and trudged back to the dressing room. Soon the marshmallow dress came out carried by a sales associate. A moment later I heard a commotion back behind the dressing room wall.

  The saleswoman came rushing out. “Mrs. Cantrell? Quick. Come here.” I followed her.

  Inside the large dressing room, Molly was lying on a damask sofa, her face so pale she matched the dresses.

  “Honey, what’s wrong?”

  She moaned, looked at me as if she wanted to say something, and then stood and ran to the bathroom. I followed her inside, feeling as ill as she looked. She was vomiting in one of the stalls. It went on for a long time and when she stopped, I said,” Do you need some help?”

  She was crying when she came out, wiping her mouth and her tears. “I’m pregnant.”

  Chapter Thirty One

  We sat at a red light close to home. Molly was in the seat next to me, still crying. We’d left her car at the parking garage. She was too queasy to drive.

  “I’m so embarrassed,” she said, her hands covering her face.

  “Why?” The light changed and I drove on, and then turned onto our street.

  “You saw what happened,” Molly said. “I almost threw up on a two thousand dollar dress.”

  “A two thousand dollar marshmallow,” I said, hoping to get a smile out of her. “And you made it to the bathroom.”

  “I’m still embarrassed.”

  I stopped in the driveway, pressed the garage opener and sat waiting for the door to open. I looked at my daughter, who now looked more than unkempt; she looked pitiful, with her bright red blotchy face and nose. “You’re embarrassed because of the people in the bridal salon?”

  She nodded.

  I tried not to laugh when she looked so upset. “Sweetheart, believe me, you are not first pregnant bride they’ve had in there with an attack of morning sickness. Come on,” I reached across the seat and rubbed her arm. “Let’s go inside and we can talk.”

  “Okay,” she said wanly.

  We walked into the kitchen and I stopped. “Your room or mine or the living room?”

  “Your room,” she said, and then stopped looking like someone had slapped her. “It’s all new and what if I get sick?”

  I popped open a can of ginger ale, poured it over some crushed ice, and grabbed some saltines out of the pantry. “This will help. And don’t worry about my room.” I led her up the staircase and into my bedroom, and tucked her into the bed. I set the ginger ale down. “Ginger ale and saltine crackers. Still the best remedy in the world for morning sickness. Sip the ginger ale and eat small bits of the crackers. You’ll feel better before you know it.” I climbed in with her, both of us lounging against the huge downy pillows.

  She tilted her head back against the pillow and took a shallow breath.“ I feel so awful all the time.”

  “During the first trimester I used to throw up every morning if I brushed my teeth past my cuspids.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. You’re normal, dear. My gag reflex was always touchy when I was pregnant. And I got sick at night, too, more often than in the morning. Around dinner time, about six thirty, I’d go to bed to lay down and sleep all the way through until the next morning.” I paused as she sipped the ginger ale, then asked her the big question. “How long have you known?”

  She started crying all over again.

  I put my arms around her, and she curled into me like a toddler. I rested my chin on the top of her head and just held her. “It’s okay. Everything’s going to be okay.” Yet inside I hated that it was something so difficult that gave me my daughter back.

  Time and the years disappeared and I remembered sitting like this. Molly was maybe two and I was holding her, rocking her to sleep almost every night. She was the daughter I wanted so badly in a house full of boys, born with my mother’s glorious red hair.

  When did all that change? When did she leave me?

  “Spider didn’t ask me to marry him until I told him I was pregnant.”

  What an ass, I thought, wishing I could throttle him. “What exactly did he say?”

  “That we should get married for the baby’s sake.”

  “No, I love you, Molly? No, I want to marry you?”

  She shook her head again.

  “I see,” I said tightly.” Okay, tell me again why you want to marry Spider. Are you in love with him?”

  Molly took her time, which in itself was pretty telling. “I think I could be,” she said finally.

  “That’s not exactly the most reassuring answer, Shortcake. Marriage is difficult enough if you love each other madly. If you don’t have that going for you, I’m not certain what will keep you together, much less keep all of you happy. The baby is involved, too.”

  “Why don’t you like him? He says it’s because you’re jealous.”

  “What?” Oh, God . . . Mike, Mike, Mike. I wish you were alive to punch his lights out again.

  “He told me that you flirted with him in Calgary.”

  I’ll wrap my hands around his throat and squeeze and squeeze and squeeze . . . . What I said was, “He said that, huh?”

  “And that Daddy blamed him.”

  “We were in bar in Calgary. Your father punched him out cold.”

  She ate a saltine and took another sip of the ginger ale. “You’re not denying it.”

  “Do I really need to? Have you ever known your father to be unfair?”

  “God no.” Molly almost laughed. “He worried his head off about being fair and equal to everyone, especially us. Remember how he used to measure and weigh the birthday cake and divide our Halloween candy evenly? I remember when you got so frustrated with him and called him Karl Marx.” Now she did laugh, and I did too.

  “Spider was drunk and put his hands all over me, more than once.”

  “That sounds more like the truth,” she admitted.

  “There doesn’t have be this huge rush to the altar,” I said evenly. “I was married in June and Scott was born in October.”

  “You were pregnant when you got married?”

  “My stomach was already huge. I walked across the grass to your father with your brother kicking my ribs all the way.”

  “But then you chose to get married, too.”

  “We did. But your father I loved each other. To everyone who knew us we were March and Mike, Mike and March and we were already planning on getting married. Your brother was just an extra surprise. We were ma
d about each other and inseparable from the moment we met,”

  “The night you first slept with him.”

  I laughed softly. “I am going to regret that outburst, aren’t I?”

  “I goaded you into it. I was upset because of Daddy,” she admitted with her head down.

  I took an action from Rio and tilted her chin up so she was looking at me. “I understand, more than you probably know.”

  “The Baileys were really supportive of you, Mom. They thought I knew you were seeing someone. I should tell you that. Jeff said he liked Rio.”

  “I like Rio. You’re probably going to have to get used to having him around, because I don’t think I want to give him up. He is a really good man and good men are not easy to find. Like your dad.”

  She was quietly thinking. I could see the wheels turning. My daughter was smart. She could put two and two together and get four. She faced me. “So what do you think I should do?”

  Don’t marry him! My mind screamed.

  But instead I chose my words carefully. “It’s your decision, not mine. Just like keeping and raising your baby is your decision. I will tell you this. You do not need a man to raise that child growing inside of you, and you do not have to marry its father. You have a whole family of men and women who will love you and love your child. I will do anything for you. We can raise your child together, and we, your family, will be there to catch you if you fall or your child falls. If you don’t love Spider, then I would say to you think long and hard about what kind of marriage you want, what kind of marriage environment you want your child, or children, growing up in.”

  Molly was leaning back against the pillow and her eyes were heavy. She was exhausted and this was weighing heavily on her.

  I patted her arm and said, “Take some time and think about it. But right now I think you need some sleep.” I started to get up, but I looked at her and knew I didn’t want to leave her, so I lay back down and slept by her side.