“Is he still working in that warehouse?”
“When he bothers.”
“Still smoking pot?”
“I think so but he's careful not to do it in the house. I told him if I ever smell it in there again I'll throw him out.”
“Maybe you should. Maybe that would straighten him up.”
“And then again maybe it wouldn't. He's my son, and I love him, and I'm trying my best to make him see the light but if I give up on him, what hope will he have? He certainly never gets any guidance from his father.”
“What do you want me to do, Bess?” Michael spread his arms wide, the glass in one hand. “I've offered him the money to go to college or trade school if he wants but he doesn't want anything to do with school. So what in the hell do you expect me to do? Take him in with me? A pothead who goes to work when he feels like it?”
Bess glared at him. “I expect you to call him, take him out to dinner, take him hunting with you, rebuild a relationship with him, make him realize he still has a father who loves him and cares about what happens to him. But it's easier to slough him off on me, isn't it, Michael? Just like it was when the kids were little and you ran off with your guns and your fishing rods and your . . . your mistress! Well, I can't seem to find the answers for him anymore. Our son is a mess, Michael, and I'm very much afraid of what's going to become of him but I can't straighten him out alone.”
Their eyes met and held, each of them aware that their divorce had been the blow from which Randy had never recovered. Until age thirteen he had been a happy kid, a good student, a willing helper around the house, a carefree teenager who brought his friends in to eat them out of house and home, watch football games and roughhouse on the living-room floor. From the day they'd told him they were getting a divorce, he had changed. He had become withdrawn, uncommunicative and increasingly lackadaisical about responsibilities, both in school and at home. He stopped bringing his friends home and eventually found new ones who wore weird hairdos and army jackets and one earring, and dragged their boot heels when they walked. He lay on his bed listening to rap music through his headphones, began smelling like burned garbage and coming home at two in the morning with his pupils dilated. He resented school counseling, ran away from home when Bess tried to ground him and graduated from high school by his cuticles, with the lowest grade-point average allowable.
No, their marriage was certainly not their only failure.
“For your information,” Michael said, “I have called him. He called me a son of a bitch and hung up.” Michael tipped forward, propping his elbows on his knees, drawing gyroscopic patterns in the air with the bottom of his glass. “I know he's messed up, Bess, and we did it to him, didn't we?” Still hunched forward, he looked over his shoulder at her. On the stereo the song changed to “Lyin' Eyes.”
“Not we. You. He's never gotten over you leaving your family for another woman.''
“That's right, blame it all on me, just like you always did. What about you leaving your family to go to college?”
“You still begrudge me that, don't you, Michael? And you still can't believe I actually became an interior designer and made a success of it.”
Michael slammed down his glass, leapt to his feet and pointed a finger at her from the far side of the coffee table. “You got custody of the kids because you wanted it, but afterwards you were so damned busy at that store of yours that you weren't around to be their parent!”
“How would you know? You weren't around, either!”
“Because you wouldn't let me in the goddamn house! My house! The house I paid for and furnished and painted and loved just as much as you did!” He jabbed a finger for emphasis. “Don't tell me I wasn't around when you're the one who refused to speak to me, thereby setting an example for our son to follow. I was willing to be sensible, for the kids' sake, but no, you wanted to show me, didn't you? You were going to take those kids and brainwash them and make them believe I was the only one in the wrong where our marriage was concerned; and don't lie to me and say different, because I've talked to Lisa and she's told me some of the shit you've told her.”
“Like what?”
“Like, our marriage broke up because I had an affair with Darla.”
“Well, didn't it?”
He threw up his hands and rolled his eyes to the ceiling. “God, Bess, take off your blinders. Things had soured between us before I even met Darla and you know it.”
“If things soured between us it was because—”
The apartment door opened. Bess clapped her mouth shut while she and Michael exchanged a glare of compressed volatility. Her cheeks were bright with anger. His lips were set in a grim line. She rose, donning a veneer of propriety, while he closed a button on his suit jacket and retrieved his glass from the coffee table. As he straightened, Lisa rounded the corner into the living room. Behind her came the young man whose picture stood on the piano.
Had Pablo Picasso painted the scene, he might have entitled it Still Life with Four Adults and Anger. The words of the abandoned argument still reverberated in the air.
Finally Lisa moved. “Hello, Mother. Hello, Dad.”
She hugged her father first, while he easily closed his arms around her and kissed her cheek. She was nearly his height, dark-haired and pretty, with lovely brown eyes, an attractive combination of the best features of both her parents. She went next to hug Bess, saying, “Missed hugging you the first time around, Mom, glad you could come.” Retreating from her mother's arms, she said, “You both remember Mark Padgett, don't you?”
“Mr. and Mrs. Curran,” Mark said, shaking hands with each of them. He had a shiny all-American face and naturally curly brown hair, crew-cut on top and trailing in thinned tendrils over his collar. He sported the brawn of a bodybuilder and a hand to match. When he shook their hands, they felt it.
“Mark's going to have supper with us. I hope you stirred the stroganoff, Mom.” Lisa headed jauntily for the kitchen, where she went to the sink, turned on the hot water and began filling a saucepan. Right behind her came Bess, snagging Lisa's elbow and forcing her to do an about-face.
“Just what in the world do you think you're doing!” she demanded in a pinched whisper, covered by the sound of the running water and “Desperado” from the other side of the wall.
“Boiling noodles for the stroganoff.” Lisa swung the kettle to the stove and switched on a blue flame, with Bess dogging her shoulder.
“Don't be obtuse with me, Lisa. I'm so damned angry I could fling that stroganoff down the disposal and you right along with it.” She pointed a finger. “There's a pint of sour cream in that refrigerator and you know it! You set us up!”
Lisa pushed her mother's arm as if it were a turnstile and moved beyond it to open the refrigerator door. “I certainly did. How'd it go?” she asked blithely, removing the carton of sour cream and curling its cover off.
“Lisa Curran, I could dump that sour cream on your head!”
“I really don't care, Mother. Somebody had to make you come to your senses.”
“Your father and I are not a couple of twenty-year-olds you can fix up on a blind date!”
“No, you're not!” Lisa slammed down the carton of sour cream and faced her mother, nose-to-nose, whispering angrily. “You're forty years old but you're acting like a child! For six years you've refused to be in the same room with Dad, refused to treat him civilly, even for your children's sake. Well, I'm putting an end to that if I have to humiliate you to do it. Tonight is important to me and all I'm asking you to do is grow up, Mother!”
Bess stared at her daughter, feeling her cheeks flare, stunned into silence. From the countertop Lisa snagged a bag of egg noodles and stuffed them into Bess's hands. “Would you please add these to the water while I finish the stroganoff, then let's go into the living room and join the men as if we all know the meaning of gracious manners.”
When they entered the living room it was clear the two men, seated on the sofa, had been doing thei
r best at redeeming a sticky situation in which the tension was as obvious as the cheeseball meant to mitigate it. Lisa picked up the plate from the coffee table.
“Daddy? Mark? Cheeseball anyone?”
Bess stationed a kitchen chair clear across the room, where the living-room carpet met the vinyl kitchen floor, and sat down, full of indignation and the niggling bite of shame at being reprimanded by her own daughter. Mark and Michael each spread a cracker with cheese and ate it. Lisa carried the plate to her mother and stopped beside Bess's rigidly crossed knees.
“Mother?” she said sweetly.
“No, thank you,” Bess snapped.
“I see you two have found something to drink,” Lisa noted cheerfully. “Mark, would you like something?”
Mark said, “No, I'll wait.”
“Mother, do you need a refill?”
Bess flicked a hand in reply.
Lisa took the only free seat, between the two men.
“Well . . .” she said brightly, clasping her crossed knees with twined hands and swinging her foot. She glanced between Michael and Bess. “I haven't seen either one of you since Christmas. What's new?”
They somehow managed to weather the next fifteen minutes. Bess, struggling to lose the ten extra pounds she consistently carried, refused the Ritz crackers with cheese but allowed herself to be socially manipulated by her daughter while trying to avoid Michael's hazel eyes. Once he managed to pin her with them while sinking his even, white teeth into a Ritz. You might at least try, he seemed to be admonishing, for Lisa's sake. She glanced away, wishing he'd bite into a rock and break off his damnable perfect incisors at the gums!
They sat down to eat at 7:15 in the chairs Lisa indicated, her mother and dad opposite each other so they could scarcely avoid exchanging glances across the candlelit table and their familiar old blue-and-white dishes.
Setting out the last of the four salad dishes, Lisa requested, “Will you open the Perrier, Mark, while I get the hot foods? Mom, Dad, would you prefer Perrier or wine?”
“Wine,” they answered simultaneously.
The older couple sat obediently while the younger one got the bottled water, lime slices, wine, bread basket, noodles, stroganoff and a vegetable casserole, working together until everything was in place. Finally Lisa took her chair while Mark made the rounds, pouring.
When the glasses were filled and Mark, too, was seated, Lisa picked up her glass of Perrier and said, “Happy new year, everyone. And here's to a happier decade ahead.”
The glasses touched in every combination but one. After a conspicuous pause, Michael and Bess made a final tingg with the rims of their old household stemware, a gift from some friend or family member many years ago. He nodded silently while she dropped her gaze and damned herself for disheveling her hair in an angry fit an hour ago, and for dropping ketchup on her jabot at noon, and for not stopping at home and putting on fresh makeup. She still hated him but that hate stemmed from a fiery pride, bruised at the moment. He had left her for someone ten years younger and ten pounds underweight, who undoubtedly never appeared at social functions with her hair on end, her forehead shiny and lunch on her jabot.
Lisa began passing the serving bowls and the room became filled with the sounds of spoons rapping on glass.
“Mmm . . . stroganoff,” Michael noted, pleased, while he loaded his plate.
“Yup,” Lisa replied. “Mom's recipe. And your favorite corn pudding, too.” She passed him a casserole dish. “I learned to make it just like Mom. Be careful, it's hot.” He set the dish beside his plate and took an immense helping. “I figured since you're living alone again you'd appreciate a good home-cooked meal. Mom, pass me the pepper, would you?”
Complying, Bess met Michael's eyes across the table, both of them grossly uncomfortable with Lisa's transparent machinations. It was the first point upon which they'd agreed since this unfortunate encounter began.
Michael tasted his food and said, “You've turned into a good little cook, honey.”
“She sure has,” put in Mark. “You'd be surprised how many girls today can't even boil water. When I found out she could cook I told my mother, I think I've found the girl of my dreams.”
Three people at the table laughed. Bess, discomfited, hid behind a sip of rosé, recalling that one of the things Michael had criticized after she'd returned to college had been her neglecting the chores she'd always done. Cooking was one of them. She had argued, What about you, why can't you take over some of the household chores? But Michael had stubbornly refused to learn. It was one of many small wedges that had insidiously opened a chasm between them.
“How about you, Mark,” Bess asked. “Do you cook?”
Lisa answered. “Does he ever! His specialty is steak soup. He takes a big old slab of sirloin and cubes it up and browns it and adds all these big hunks of potatoes and carrots, and what else do you put in it, honey?”
Bess shot a glance at her daugher. Honey?
“Garlic, and pearl barley to thicken it.”
“Steak soup?” Bess repeated, turning her regard to Mark.
“Mm-hmm,” Mark replied. “It's an old family favorite.”
Bess stared at the young man who was shaped like Mount Rushmore. His neck was so thick his collar button wouldn't close. His hairdo was moussed on top and girlish on the bottom. And he thickened his steak soup with pearl barley?
Lisa grinned proudly at Mark. “He irons, too.”
“Irons?” Michael repeated.
“My mother made me learn when I graduated from high school. She works, and she said she had no intention of doing my laundry till I was twenty-five. I like my sleeves and jeans with nice creases in them, so . . .” Mark raised his hands—his fork in one, a roll in the other—and let them drop. “I'm actually going to make some woman a pretty good housewife.” He and Lisa exchanged a smile bearing some ulterior satisfaction, and Bess caught Michael adding it up before he swept his uncertain glance back to her.
Lisa said, “We might as well tell them, Mark.” The two exchanged another smile before Lisa wiped her mouth, replaced her napkin on her lap and picked up her glass of sparkling water. “Mom, Dad . . .” With her eyes fixed radiantly on the young man across the table, Lisa announced, “We've invited you here tonight to tell you that Mark and I are going to get married.”
In almost comical unison, Bess and Michael set down their forks. They gaped at their daughter. They gaped at each other.
Mark had stopped eating.
The tape player had stopped playing.
From an adjacent apartment the grumble of a TV could be heard through the wall.
“Well,” Lisa said, “say something.”
Michael and Bess remained speechless. Finally Michael cleared his throat, wiped his mouth on his napkin and said, “Well . . . my goodness.”
“Daddy,” Lisa chided. “Is that all you have to say?”
Michael forced an uncertain smile. “You caught me a little by surprise here, Lisa.”
“Aren't you even going to congratulate us?”
“Well . . . yes . . . sure, of course, congratulations, both of you.”
“Mother?” Lisa's eyes settled on Bess.
Bess emerged from her stupor. “Married?” she repeated disbelievingly. “But Lisa . . .” We hardly know this young man. You've only known him for a year, or is it that long? We had no idea you were this serious about him.
“Smile, Mother, and repeat after me, Congratulations, Lisa and Mark.”
“Oh, dear . . .” Bess's gaze fluttered to her ex-husband, back to her daughter.
“Bess,” Michael admonished quietly.
“Oh, I'm sorry. Of course, congratulations, Lisa . . . and Mark, but . . . but when did all this happen?”
“This weekend. We're really sold on each other, and we're tired of living apart, so we decided to commit.”
“When is the big event?” Michael inquired.
“Soon,” Lisa answered. “Very soon. Six weeks, as a matter of
fact.”
“Six weeks!” Bess yelped.
“I know that doesn't give us much time, but we've got it all figured out.”
“What kind of wedding can you plan in six weeks? You can't even find a church in six weeks.”
“We can if we're married on a Friday night.”
“A Friday night . . . oh, Lisa.”
“Now listen, both of you. Mark and I love each other and we want to get married but we want to do it the right way. We both want to have a real church wedding with all the trimmings, so here's what we've arranged. We can be married at St. Mary's on March second, and have the reception at the Riverwood Club. I've already checked and the club's not booked. Mark's aunt is a caterer and she's agreed to do the food. One of the guys I work with plays in a band that'll give us a pretty decent price. We're only going to have one attendant each—by the way, Randy has agreed to be one of them, and he even said he'll cut his hair. With only one attendant there'll be no trouble matching bridesmaids' dresses—Mark's sister can buy one anywhere; and as for the tuxes, we'll rent them. Flowers are no problem. We'll use silk ones and keep them modest. The cake we'll order from Wuollet's on Grand Avenue, and I'm pretty sure we can still find a photographer—having it on a Friday night, we're finding out, makes last-minute arrangements pretty easy. Well?”
Beleaguered, Bess felt her lips hanging open but seemed unable to close them. “What about your dress?”
A meaningful look passed between Lisa and Mark, this one without a smile.
“That's where I'll need your cooperation. I want to wear yours, Mom.”
Bess looked dumbfounded. “Mine . . . but . . .”
“I'm pretty sure it'll fit.”
“Oh, Lisa.” Bess let her face show clear dismay.
“Oh, Lisa, what?”
Michael spoke. “What your mother is trying to say is that she isn't sure it's appropriate under the circumstances, isn't that right, Bess?”
“Because you're divorced?” Lisa looked from one parent to the other.
Michael gestured with his hands: that's how it is.