“I don’t know,” I said. “Do I have to make up my mind this instant?”
“Of course not.” He paused, and we had another awkward silence. “Do you want me to leave?”
Through the shadows, he could not see me panicking. Alone… with a baby… even as good a baby as Julie was turning out to be….
“Suit yourself,” I said.
Another awkward pause. Then he said quietly, “I’ll wait until you’re back on your feet. I want to make sure—” Yet another pause. “I want to know that you and Julie are all right.”
He never left.
For the first few weeks, he never approached Julie, never looked at her, never held her. I kept her in the bedroom, far out of his sight. Of course, given that finals were right around the corner, he was deep in his books, but he didn’t even go to the library to study, as I might have expected. (He also curtailed his smoking in the house.) When I tentatively mentioned having Julie baptized, because both Daddy and the Ashmores were calling me up hounding me about it, he looked up from his drafting long enough to say “Fine,” and he left all the details up to me. The families all came up again for the big day. Daddy took rolls of pictures, and, to this day, I hate looking at them. Not because of how I looked, because actually I didn’t look half bad, but because Richard seemed bent on playing the invisible man.
And, then, the ultimate insult.
Julie liked him better. Richard’s voice combines Philip’s Virginia drawl and Peggy’s Irish lilt, and it appealed to her. By the time she was just a few weeks old, she was starting to listen for him. The few times he reluctantly helped me out (although he always made himself scarce when it was time to change a diaper), she took her bottle better and fell asleep faster, lulled by that voice. I could see that he liked her. Maybe it was that protective streak, maybe it was just that Richard has always been a sucker for the weak and helpless, but he couldn’t help himself. He liked Julie.
The great thaw began.
But not towards me. Here, I worked like a fiend to get my figure back, and everyone said I looked better than ever, but my husband didn’t notice I was alive. He never talked to me. He scarcely even looked at me. Most of the time, I might as well not have been in the house.
I took that for a couple of months, and then I rebelled. I had cabin fever. I was tired of being in the house all day with a baby, and when my group called and asked when I was coming back, I said, “Tonight.” Then I called Lucy and said, “Let’s go out to dinner.”
Richard walked in the door, and I said directly, “I’m going out with Lucy. Watch Julie.”
He startled me by saying, “Sure. Take your time, Di.”
“And, by the way,” I said sweetly, pausing at the door, “she needs to be changed.” And I ran.
Lucy and I had a great dinner. Then I went to group and stayed late, I admit out of pure meanness. But, when I let myself in, bracing for whatever cold aspersions he could cast on me, my character, and my total lack of motherhood instinct, I found him stretched out on the sofa, Julie cuddled on his chest.
I looked down at them, contentedly asleep, oblivious to my presence, and I felt an uneasiness crawling down my neck.
He and Julie were a twosome, from then on, and I was odd man out. Richard became human again, no longer the ice man, and gradually he remembered to smile at me occasionally. It didn’t matter even when he did. I no longer mattered. He’d come in the door from class, and he’d head right for Julie’s playpen. I’d hear his “How’s my girl?” and I knew that I wasn’t, not anymore.
I had created my own rival.
Francie kindly pointed it out for me, just in case I hadn’t noticed, when we took Julie back home for a visit. “Looks like Richard’s in love, Di.”
Trust that bitch to rub it in! I fought the temptation to pinch her – after all, we weren’t children anymore, at least I wasn’t – and settled for an airy “Yes, Richard adores Julie. Isn’t that wonderful?”
“I meant,” said Francie, matching me sweetness for sweetness, “that he doesn’t seem to pay attention to you anymore.”
I started to snap back that everything was fine, and realized just in time that Francie was watching me oddly. There was something… calculating, assessing, in the way she watched me. She wasn’t just angling for the usual jab.
So I took refuge in silence. I decided to show her that her remark meant nothing to me, that it hadn’t landed its mark….
But it had. I could feel the weight of all those months of Richard’s silence and coldness in my own refusal to answer Francie, and I felt, eerily enough, that she could too.
She watched me the rest of the day, always that strange, appraising look, and gradually I could feel my own anger rising. Bad enough that Peggy was monopolizing Julie, bad enough that I had scarcely seen my own child the entire day… bad enough that Daddy had started on my case about going back to voice… bad enough that all I heard from the Ashmores was how much Julie reminded them of Richard when he was a baby… but to have to tolerate Francie and those all-too-knowing eyes (and she was sixteen now, old enough to sense, old enough to see)… that was too much. I sat through the most interminable dinner, listening to everyone, knowing that Francie was staring, knowing that even Laurie was beginning to wonder.
Then Richard did the unforgivable. I don’t even think anyone else heard him.
He asked Francie about her latest boyfriend. And that little tramp stopped staring at me long enough to say, “I’m still waiting for you, Richard. When are you going to wise up and dump Di?”
She meant it, too.
And, instead of being smart and saying, “You can rot in hell waiting for that, sweetheart,” Richard merely laughed.
And then, then, that idiot said, “Good to know I’m still someone’s standard.”
And he winked at her.
And Francie aimed at me the most blood-curdling smirk.
And then she smiled at him and said, “Oh, please, Richard. Like you don’t define perfection.”
And he laughed again. And then he turned and started talking to Philip about a horse, and Francie lowered her eyes.
Mr. Perfect himself. Mr. Perfect Richard Ashmore.
I wanted to tear her heart out. And him…. I couldn’t think of anything terrible enough to smash his face into. I couldn’t think of anything harder than concrete, and by that time, concrete was an old, familiar image.
Peggy had given us his old room. For the first time in over a year, we were going to have to share a room. We didn’t even have Julie to buffer us; Peggy had snatched her away for the night, claiming grandmother’s privilege. The nightgown Peggy had bought for me, long and silky and slinky (“When you’re a new mother, sometimes you have to remember you’re still a wife”), should have encouraged me. Instead, it galled me, as I got ready for bed, because I had actually thought… and Richard himself didn’t seem to mind. He seemed relaxed; he started to talk about that damned stupid Folly and how Philip was going to sign over the title to him…. I don’t think he had really talked to me like that for ages.
And then his voice changed, got even deeper… I knew that tone. I’d heard that tone, in his car, at the cottage on Ash Marine, in my bedroom after he’d climbed the tree and I had locked my door against Daddy, in my college room when he had come in to help me with my math… I had heard that tone murmuring my name, while his mouth moved all over me, while he moved inside me… and then, then, he came over behind me and put his hands on my shoulders.
“My God, Di,” I remember every word, every syllable, “you are so beautiful.” And he dropped a kiss on my shoulder.
I thought of Francie and her staring, Francie and her barbed words, Francie and that triumphant smirk… And Richard, not having the good sense to keep his winks to himself.
I said immediately, “Get your hands off me.”
We weren’t standing near a mirror, so I couldn’t see him behind me. But his hands dropped instantly.
He said nothing. The silence st
arted off with a second, and then it grew and grew and grew…. I picked up a brush and started to pull it through my hair, and I felt my hand shaking.
I was schooled in silence, but even so, I had to turn around. He hadn’t moved. He was staring at me, his hands hanging by his side, his eyes going blank before me, as they swallowed his desire for me and buried it forever underground.
He never approached me again.
That was sixteen years ago, and I know now what I didn’t know then, because I focused so on Francie. I didn’t understand him that night. He handed me the perfect chance to reclaim it all, to make good the past between us, and I – I threw it all away in a fit of temper at a malicious remark by a jealous teenager and a wink by a man who meant nothing by it at all.
If I could have one moment back in my life, that one is it.
I was very stupid when I was a young woman.
~•~
In the months and years after that, I often thought that I would do anything to break down the wall of politeness between us. There were no more fights. No more nasty comments. We went out of our way to be considerate of each other. Richard stopped smoking cigarettes around me; I stopped smoking dope around him. We did small things for each other occasionally. I ran errands for him, when he barely had time to raise his head from his books. I cheered for him when he graduated with top honors. He attended my senior recital the next year, Julie in tow, and stood by my side at the reception that followed. He helped me write my resume so that I could get a teaching job to tide us over the remaining year of his master’s program.
We were a perfect couple, beautiful, considerate of each other, devoted to our child.
We had no heat, no passion, nothing at all between us.
Richard assumed that I was content with the status quo, so he went on with his life, which had nothing to do with me. He slept on the sofa. I slept in the bedroom. We made sure that we were always fully dressed in front of each other. We never brushed by each other in the hall. Neither of us ever walked into the bathroom on the other. And sometimes I woke up in the middle of the night to find my face wet with tears, wondering if this was all I had to look forward to for the rest of my life.
I didn’t stray. I didn’t dare.
I was afraid that, if I did, and we split up, Julie would want to go with him instead of me.
No one will ever believe this, but I loved my daughter. She was such a little sweetheart. She slept through the night; she didn’t make a fuss when she got dragged out on errands; she sat there patiently, playing with her toys, during all the endless hours of my practices. On the nights when Richard had evening classes and couldn’t usurp me, I bathed her and put her to bed, and some nights I just lay down with her and held that warm little body against me. On those nights, the little ghost voice fell silent.
But I got to love Julie only when Richard wasn’t around. In typical Ashmore fashion, Richard had turned into the perfect father.
Oh, he scrupulously consulted me about Julie, but he clearly considered himself the primary parent. After the first time I said no to one of his ideas and had to endure an hour of explanation about why he was right and I was wrong, I didn’t bother to second-guess him again. Julie needed a yard to play in? We moved to a rental house, and Philip and Richard spent an entire weekend building her a swing set. He didn’t want Julie in day care? He and Lucy coordinated their class schedules so that Julie wouldn’t have to stay with a babysitter; I, of course, got summers, holidays, and weekends. Julie had the sniffles? Simple, Diana, call in sick and stay home and take care of your poor sick child. Julie gave you a rip-roaring cold, Diana? Well, you’d better go in and teach anyway, because you need to save your sick leave for Julie. You’re tired and you don’t feel like getting out of bed this morning, Diana? What the hell kind of mother are you anyway, what kind of example is that to set for your child?
I was too weary – and too intimidated – most of the time to resist.
But except for his ideas on raising the perfect little Ashmore child (instead of letting Julie grow up to be whatever she might like), I had no idea what was going on in his head, because he never talked to me, and he didn’t seem to care what was going on in mine.
Talk about a deafening silence! I lived with such a silence until I couldn’t stand it, and I fled back to my music group. To hell with my voice, to hell with Richard, to hell with my baby! I needed to be me again. No one in the group demanded anything of me except that I play like an angel during rehearsal and like the very devil afterwards. I didn’t care anymore, and apparently Richard didn’t either. The first time I came in stoned, his eyes narrowed, but all he said was that I’d better keep my god-damned drugs away from his daughter.
His daughter. Apparently my twenty-three chromosomes, nine endless months of pregnancy, and five hours of labor counted for nothing.
He scarcely spoke to me at all, the fall of his last year in graduate school. I was desperate for company in that silent house. Even Lucy wasn’t around as much, because she had started law school and was studying almost as much as Richard. “Sorry, Di,” she said after Christmas dinner, while we were washing dishes for Peggy, “I’ve got cases due. I’ve got to live at the library. Why don’t you take Laurie back with you? She’s good company. Besides, poor kid, she could use the break from Dominic.”
Laurie! What a splendid idea! The more I thought about it, the better it sounded. Laurie was a virtual unknown to me, but what I did know was that she was nothing like Francie. She was quiet, sweet, and a good babysitter. She didn’t spend all her time batting her eyes at my husband.
It occurred to me that I really ought to know my last sister a lot better than I did.
“Do you think she’ll come?”
Lucy dried a dish, and she did it so deliberately that I knew, knowing Lucy as I did, that she had a purpose.
“I can’t put my finger on it, Di,” she said at last. “Something is badly wrong with Laurie.”
“Oh?” She had piqued my curiosity now. “What do you mean?”
“She’s changed,” said Lucy. “Oh, she’s always been such a little sober sides, but this last year… did you know she works every day after school in a bookstore at the mall? And Francie says she’s out babysitting every weekend.”
I thought that the answer was perfectly obvious. “She’s trying to make money.”
“Well, of course she is,” said Lucy, and she sounded annoyed, so she must have thought it was obvious too, “but what for? Dominic bought her and Francie a car. Your mother’s estate will pay for college. She’s going to live at home. What does Laurie need so much money for?”
Well, I thought to myself, the winter of my senior year in high school, I’d had to blow every cent I had on the procedure, but I couldn’t imagine Laurie in that fix. She’d been dating some boy during the summer, but that was over. Lucy had a point.
Well, if I hadn’t spent it all on rescuing my future (and a great job I’d done of that), why would I have wanted a lot of money?
An irresistible picture came into my head: a wonderful little pied-à-terre in Paris, my piano for company, an occasional bad boy to fall asleep with. Free from Daddy and Richard and their oppressive desire to run my life.
The frisson of an idea drifted through my head.
Quiet little Laurie doing something radical like—
Like what? Making a break for it?
The thought seemed so alien that I shook it away. That was me, not Laurie. Still….
I went out to the Ashmores’ great room to find this suddenly interesting sister and found that, once again, Richard had trumped me. He needed someone to do some heavy-duty typing on his thesis, and Laurie, eyes unusually bright, had just agreed to come back to Charlottesville and spend her Christmas vacation working for him.
(Honestly, what was it about Richard that we stupid Abbott girls always fell over ourselves to do his bidding?)
“If that’s all right with you, Diana,” Richard said courteously, apparent
ly realizing that I was nominally the hostess of the household and might not appreciate an uninvited guest. But I was long past the stage of wanting to bury him in something hard and cold just because he had nice manners.
“That’s great,” I said, and I really looked at Laurie for the first time. Lucy was right! My withdrawn little sister seemed different, and not just because her hero had shanghaied her into doing slave labor for him. “We’ll have fun, Laurie. I’ll take you out and show you around when you’re not trying to read his handwriting.”
“I want to go to Monticello,” said Laurie, and sneezed. “I want to see Sally’s staircase.”
“They’ve closed it off, but we’ll go there anyway,” said Richard immediately, but he didn’t see what I saw, that Laurie looked different because she was flushed with fever. What maternal instinct I had came to the surface, and I laid my hand on her forehead. She was burning up. Within minutes, Richard had carried her upstairs to one of the guest rooms, Peggy had her tucked in, mothering and comforting her, and Philip was giving her an antibiotic shot, while Laurie protested that she couldn’t be sick, Richard needed her to type his thesis.
“Why don’t you do it, Di?” said Francie, hovering around Laurie with blankets and wet cloths, and looking genuinely worried. (I will give Francie credit for this. If she cared about anyone besides her own precious self, she cared about Laurie.)
“Because I can’t type.” Several sets of incredulous eyes swung my way. But what did they expect? I was a pianist and, reluctantly, a high school music teacher. I wasn’t a secretary. I hadn’t sworn to love, honor, and type his damn papers for the rest of my life.
“Really?” said Francie, as if she had never heard of a female who couldn’t type. “I can. I’ll do it for you, Richard.”
And, all at once—
Me: “Oh, no—”
Richard: “Fran, are you sure you want to give up your vacation for this?”
Francie: “I’d love to help you out, Richard.”
All Who Are Lost (Ashmore's Folly Book 1) Page 47