Authors: Gwynne Forster
She didn’t hear him come back into the living room. “After all these years, why have you come?”
Where should she begin? She had pictured herself telling off a younger, strapping man, and hadn’t counted on the damage that years and circumstances had inflicted. She plunged in without preliminaries.
“I don’t like myself, and I have a hard time believing that anybody other than Alexis could love me. I figured you could make me understand why I’m this way.”
He sipped his coffee—black and without sugar—
seemingly glad to have an excuse not to look at her. “Is Alexis all right?”
“She fine, but I didn’t come here to talk about her. Why didn’t you and Mama love me and my sister?”
He nearly dropped the cup. “How can you ask me such a question?”
“Because you didn’t, and the way you left me to handle that funeral… I didn’t even know what one was like or why people had them.”
He put the cup in the saucer and rubbed his left hand across his forehead. “I know it was hard for you, but I couldn’t stay there another minute. She was everywhere. When I saw you at the door, I nearly fainted until you spoke. You look just like her, but your voice is soft where hers had become harsh.”
“Why, Papa?”
He inhaled deeply and blew out a long breath as if resigned. “Your mother hated intimacy, and we fought constantly about that. She wouldn’t have minded if I had taken a mistress, but it never once occurred to me to commit adultery. I loved her.” He leaned back and closed his eyes. “Oh, I loved that woman. I soon learned that she was more accommodating after a bitter fight, and I staged them. I know it was sick. It was a neurosis of hers, and I fueled it.
“She wanted to send you and Alexis to a boarding school, but I wouldn’t agree. A really ugly fight ensued, one that I didn’t stage. She scratched and bit me, finally telling me she was going to kill herself. Furious as I was, I told her to suit herself, that I didn’t care what she did.
“She ran out of the house wearing a nightgown, raincoat and bedroom slippers. I thought she was going to drive somewhere, but she didn’t get in the car. You know the rest.
“I loved my daughters, but the older you got, the more
ashamed I was. I knew you listened to the unsavory things that went on between your mother and me. I couldn’t change that, so I withdrew and saw as little of my children as possible.”
Velma wanted to cover her ears, to stop him and save him the embarrassment of telling his daughter such personal things. But he continued talking, and she could see that, the more he spoke, the less pain the revelations appeared to cause him.
“I had to leave there, Velma. She was everywhere, all over the house. And I knew she was dead before they found her. I couldn’t stand the guilt, knowing I could have stopped her. I had to go. I knew you would take care of Alexis. You always had.”
His eyes pleaded with her. “If I had stayed there, I would have killed myself. You may say that I deserted you, but don’t ever say that I didn’t love you.”
She stood, but realizing that she was unsteady, she sat down again. “Thanks for talking to me. I…uh…I’d better leave now.”
He held out his hand to her and then quickly withdrew it. “Don’t ever say I didn’t love you,” he croaked out. “A hundred nights I walked the floor with you when you were a baby. And you were so smart, and I was so proud of you.”
“Then how could you do what you did?”
He closed his eyes as tears rolled down his face. “Guilt. Yes, and fear. She was everything to me, young and beautiful like you are now, and I was so scared she’d leave me. She was always threatening to leave me.
“It was an awful environment for two girls. She…she walked out that night in twelve-degree temperature, knowing she would freeze. And she did. Guilt. Not an hour has passed in the last fourteen years that I didn’t think of her. Right in the middle of a lecture, she’s there before me. I live in hell.”
“I’m so sorry, Papa. Terribly sorry.” And she was; she hurt for him.
“Are you?” She nodded. “Well, thanks for that redemption. Do you have a picture of Alexis?”
“No, sir, but I have one of her daughter, Tara. She’s five and precious.”
He looked at the picture of his granddaughter. “She’s beautiful. I’ve missed so much. Do you have children?”
“No, sir. I’ve never married.”
“I don’t ask the two of you to forgive me, but please try to understand.”
If she didn’t get out of there, she would come apart, and she didn’t want him to see her crumble. “Yes, sir,” she said. “I’ll try, and I’ll tell Alexis.”
He thanked her for coming to see him, though he hadn’t once asked her how she found him. They said goodbye, and she stepped out into the twilight. So much to digest, piled on her like wood on a woodpile. She hadn’t guessed what a miserable family they had been, and as she blinked back the tears, she almost wished she hadn’t found out. A glance at her watch confirmed that it was a quarter of six. With luck… She phoned the airline, got a reservation on a seven-forty flight to Baltimore, canceled her hotel reservation and walked into her house at midnight.
She got ready for bed, slid under the covers and began to shake as tremors plowed through her. She tried to hold back the tears, but they came, escalating into sobs.
“Russ. Russ, I need you,” she whispered, but for her, there was no Russ, and she cried herself to sleep.
“I can’t believe she just walked out without a word,” Russ said to Alexis after he’d searched the house, the grounds and the banks of the Monacacy River.
He’d never known Alexis to appear dumbfounded, but
nothing else would explain her demeanor. “She called a minute ago,” Alexis said. “I hadn’t seen the note she left, but I found it after I talked with her.”
“Why did she leave?” It was a rhetorical question, because he was increasingly certain that he knew the answer and that Alexis didn’t.
“It’ll sort itself out, Russ. You’re bound to have little misunderstandings,” Telford said in an obvious attempt to reassure him.
He didn’t want to be consoled, because it wouldn’t help. “There’s nothing little about this, Telford. I’ve hurt her. I couldn’t help it, and I don’t see how I can repair it.”
He felt Tara’s little arms hugging his leg. “Didn’t you kiss her, Uncle Russ? My dad kisses my mummy after he upsets her.”
He looked down at the precious little girl. “Didn’t I… She didn’t give me a chance.” As badly as he hurt, he couldn’t help laughing. Tara illumined his life. Immediately, his thoughts returned to Velma, and he wondered if he would ever laugh again without thinking of her, the woman who taught him the joy of laughter.
“I’m heading out of here,” he told them. “Be seeing you.” He threw his overnight bag into the trunk of his car and headed for Baltimore. She didn’t answer her cellular phone, and her house phone didn’t ring. “I’ll get through this,” he promised himself. “Six months from now, I hope I won’t give a damn.”
He threw himself into rebuilding the house that bore his father’s name. Telford and Drake stayed closer to him than usual, in their quiet way, giving him moral support as they had always done when he needed them. The full crew of twenty-three men finished the work in three weeks, and the landscapers began beautifying the lawns. He should have been happy.
Where Russ was out of sorts, Velma used her misery to push herself toward her goal. She worked out in a gym daily, took her medicine and ate properly. However, two weeks of that regimen netted her a loss of only one pound and a half.
“I’m through torturing myself,” she told her gym instructor when he begged her not to discontinue her exercise program. “I’m fine just like I am,” she informed him in an in-your-face manner that she knew was not typical of her. “I don’t have to be a string bean.” While she dressed, rebellion welled up in her. “I’m going to be the way that suits me,” she said to herself, left the gym and went to the hairdresser.
“I want a pixie cut and style, Bea. I’m tired of this long hair.”
Bea shrugged and got the scissors. “It’s past time.”
She admired the results in the mirror, left the hairdresser and stopped at the first shoe store that she saw. “I want a pair of dress shoes with one-inch heels, size seven and a half.” She wore the new shoes and dropped the three-inch-heel slippers into the first refuse bin she saw.
“Thank God my silly years are over. Now, I can walk a block without my feet killing me.”
“This silence has continued long enough,” Alexis said to her in a phone call one morning not long after Velma’s epiphany. “This isn’t like you. You promised to talk, but you chat about everything except why you don’t come here and what happened between you and Russ. And he’s become as tight-lipped as he was the day I met him.”
“All right. I wanted to wait till we were together, but too much time has already passed. I was content with myself, or thought I was, till I fell in love with Russ, saw you in your
wedding dress and how Telford adores you. No one but you had ever loved me, and I couldn’t accept that a man would love me and want me for himself alone when there were so many tall, beautiful women like you that he could choose from. Russ was impatient with it.
“Two professionals told me that my problem went much deeper, and I know enough psychology to grant them their point. I went to Montreal to talk with our father.” She related her experience during that visit, adding, “I don’t know when it started after that meeting, but I’ve begun to see myself differently. I don’t want to look like anybody but me, and I’ve changed me to suit myself.”
“I had a feeling you’d done that, but I didn’t ask for fear the news would be bad. I wish you’d told me. I’d have gone with you.”
“I know, but I had to settle something with him. I have his telephone number if you want to call him.” She read it to her.
She heard her sister’s sigh of relief. “Good. I’ll use it. I wish you would make up with Russ. He’s not happy.”
“Neither am I. For me, happiness is a man named Russ. We’ll talk.”
“Call Russ. You’re the one who walked out.”
“What will be, will be, Sis.”
Several hours later, she received a call from her real-estate agent. “Nine o’clock Thursday morning, we have to appear at the housing commissioner’s office. Bring your proposal. I have pictures of the warehouse and the neighborhood.”
“I’ll be there.” But her thoughts were not of the warehouse, but of Russ, whether he would be there to witness for Sam Jenkins, and what he would say to her if she lost the bid.
That Thursday morning, she walked into the office of the commissioner looking like a new woman, in a knee-length
flounce skirt, one-inch patent leather shoes and her new short pixie hairstyle. Russ sat with Sam and another man in the official’s twelve-by-twelve-foot office, the intimacy of the setting giving her no privacy from him. He nodded to her, but she couldn’t respond; they were boxers in opposing corners of a ring.
Sam spoke as a man accustomed to having his way. In answer to the official’s questions, Sam said he would hire twenty-two to thirty workers; she would hire a maximum of twelve. With each comparison, she lost to Sam.
Exasperated, she asked Sam, “Why would upper-class people want to join a health club in that neighborhood? Why do you want that warehouse?”
“Why not? I’m starting a business.”
“In addition to my business there, I’m planning to give six-month cooking classes twice yearly for up to eighteen students who live in the neighborhood. What will
you
give to the neighborhood?”
“Jobs.”
To each of the official’s remaining questions, Sam bested her. She saw herself losing the warehouse and turned her back so that Russ wouldn’t see her without her composure. Her real-estate agent placed his arms around her in an attempt to comfort her, and she leaned to him.
“Did you try to find another building, Sam?”
At the sound of Russ’s voice, dark and angry, her head snapped around.
“What’s with you, man?” Sam asked Russ. “As I explained to you, I don’t want to lay out a lot of money to have a real-estate agent canvass Baltimore for a site.”
“Ms. Brighton paid me to do precisely that,” her agent said.
Russ stood and looked down at his friend. “Try to find another place, man.”
“What’s with you, Russ? Whose side are you on?”
His eyes narrowed and he slammed his right fist into his left palm. “
Hers, dammit.
I gave you my word, Sam, but you’re demanding too much. I love this woman. She’s my soul mate, and you’re asking me to deprive her of something she needs for her livelihood. I can’t do it. I won’t do it.” He looked directly at her. “Give him the warehouse. I’ll find a spot and build whatever you want.”
She stared at him in wonder, excited and afraid that her ears had misled her. “Are you… Do you mean that?” She moved out of her agent’s arms. “Do you?”
“You bet I mean it.” He turned to Sam. “I’ll always be grateful for what you did for me when we were in college, but Sam, don’t ask this of me. I can’t hurt her like that.”
“Sorry, Russ. I didn’t realize it was so serious. I’m sure I can find a place in a more suitable neighborhood.” He threw up his hand for a high five. “Don’t let grass grow under your feet, brother. She’s choice.”
“Don’t I know it! Let me know when you find a place, and I’ll redesign it for you.”
“Will do. Be seeing you, Ms. Brighton.”
She thought she nodded; she wasn’t sure. Every nerve in her body jumped to alert as Russ walked toward her, slowly, as if measuring his steps. “I’d like you to leave with me. Will you?”
She turned to the real-estate agent and thanked him. “I’d love to,” she then said to Russ, “but who gets the warehouse?”
“It’s yours, Ms. Brighton,” the official said. “Step in the office across the hall, and you can sign the papers.”
She didn’t move. How could she? He stood within a foot of her, reaching for her hand. “Let’s go sign those papers.”
She signed the papers, accepted a copy of the deed and
the key to the warehouse and walked out of the municipal building with Russ holding her hand.
“I want us to go someplace where we can talk,” he said.