Everything to Gain

‘Mother, I hardly know him.’

‘He’s very nice, Mal.’

‘I’m sure he is … he’s seemed pleasant enough, very cordial on those few occasions I’ve met him.’

‘I love him, Mal, and he loves me. We’re very good together, extremely compatible. I’ve been lonely. Very lonely, really, and for a very long time. And so has David, ever since his wife died seven years ago. We’ve been seeing each other fairly steadily for the past year, and when David asked me to marry him, last week, I suddenly realized how much he meant to me. There doesn’t seem to be any good reason why we shouldn’t get married.’

Something akin to a quizzical look had slipped onto my mother’s face and her eyes now searched mine; it occurred to me that she was seeking my approval.

I said, ‘There’s no reason at all why you shouldn’t get married, Mom. I’m glad.’ I smiled at her, asked, ‘Does David have any children?’

‘A son, Mark, who’s married and has one child. A boy, David, named for his grandfather. Mark and his wife Angela live in Westchester. He’s a lawyer, like David.’

A son, that’s a blessed relief, I thought, no possessive, overly-protective daughter floating around Papa David, one likely to upset the apple cart. Now that I knew about it I was all in favour of this union, wanted it to go ahead without a hitch. I probed, ‘And when do you plan to get married, Mother?’

‘As soon as I can, as soon as I’m free.’

‘Have you started divorce proceedings?’

‘No, but I’m going to see Alan Fuller later this week. There won’t be a problem, considering that your father and I have been separated such a long time.’ She paused, then added, ‘Fifteen years,’ as though I didn’t know this.

‘Have you told Daddy?’

‘No, not yet.’

‘I see.’

‘Don’t look so pained, Mal. I think he might —’

‘I’m not looking pained,’ I protested, wondering how she could ever think such a thing. I didn’t have any pained feelings about anything. Actually, I was pleased she wasn’t living in a kind of decisionless limbo any longer.

‘I was going to say, before you interrupted me, that I believe your father will be relieved I’ve finally taken this step.’

I nodded. ‘You’re right, Mother. I’m positive he will be.’

The sound of heels clicking against the polished wood floor of the gallery immediately outside the kitchen made my mother sit up straighter. She brought her forefinger to her lips and, staring hard at me, mouthed silently, ‘It’s a secret.’

Another swift, acquiescent nod from me.

Diana pushed open the door and glided into the kitchen just as my mind was focusing on secrets. There were so many in our family; instantly I pushed this thought far, far away from me, as I invariably did. I never wanted to face those secrets from my childhood. Better to forget them; better still to pretend they did not exist. But they did. My childhood was constructed on secrets layered one on top of the other.

Faking insouciance, I smiled at Diana. It was a beatific smile, belying what I had been thinking. I asked myself if she was my father’s lover. And if so, would this sudden change in his circumstances affect his life with her? Would the seemingly imminent divorce make him think of marriage … to her? Was my mother-in-law about to become … my stepmother? I swallowed the incipient laughter rising in my throat; nevertheless, I still had to glance away as my mouth twitched involuntarily.

Diana was cheerfully saying, ‘Good morning, Jessica dear. It’s lovely to see you.’

My mother immediately sprang to her feet, and embraced her. ‘I’m glad you’re here, Diana. You look wonderful.’

‘Thanks, I feel good,’ Diana responded, smiled her sunny smile, and added, ‘I must say, you look pretty nifty yourself, the picture of good health.’

I studied them as they talked.

How different they were in appearance, these two women of middle age, our mothers.

Mine was all blonde curls and fair skin, with delicate, perfectly-sculpted features, a very pretty woman, a cool Nordic type, slim and lissome and with a special kind of inbred elegance that was enviable.

Diana was much darker in colouring, with a lovely golden complexion, and straight silky brown hair, pulled back in a pony tail this morning. Her face was broader, her features more boldly defined, and her large, luminous eyes were of a blue so pale and transparent they were almost grey. She was smaller in height, not quite as tall as my mother.

‘I’m a Celt,’ she had once said to me. ‘There’s more of my Scottish ancestry in my genes than the English part.’ Diana’s appeal was in her warm, tawny looks; she was a handsome woman by any standards, who, like my mother, carried her sixty-one years equally well, seemed years younger.

Their characters and personalities were totally different.

Diana was a much more serious woman than my mother was, more studious and intellectually inclined; and the worlds they occupied, the lives they lived, were not remotely similar. Diana was something of a workaholic, running her antiques business and loving every minute of it. My mother was a social butterfly who did not care to work, and who fortunately did not have to. She lived on a comfortable income derived from investments, family trusts and a small allowance from my father. Why she accepted this from him I’ll never know.

Their personalities were distinct, and quite opposite. My mother had always been somewhat quiet and shy, introverted. At times I even thought of her as being repressed. Yet she was a social animal and when she wanted to she could exude great charm.

My mother-in-law was much more spontaneous and outgoing, filled with a joie de vivre that was infectious. I always felt happy when Diana was around; she had that effect on everyone.

Two very different women, my mother and my mother-in-law. And yet they had always been amiable with each other, appeared on the surface to get on reasonably well. Perhaps we were the bond between them, Andrew and I and the twins. Certainly they were thrilled and relieved that we had such a happy marriage, that our union had been so successful, so blessed. Maybe the four of us validated their troubled lives, and diminished their failures.

The two of them sat down, continuing to chat, to catch up, and I rose, walked to the far end of the kitchen. Here I busied myself at the sink, pulling apart several heads of lettuce, washing the leaves scrupulously.

My mind was preoccupied with marriage, my mother’s impending one to be precise. But then I thought of my father. His life had not been a happy one, far from it, except for his work, of course. That had given him a great deal of satisfaction, and still did. He was proud of his standing as an archaeologist. His marriage had been such a disappointment, a terrible failure, and he had expected so much from it, he had once confided in me. It had gone hopelessly awry when I was a child.

What a pity my father had never been lucky enough to have what Andrew and I have. Sadness for him filtered through me; I was saddened even more that he had never found love with someone else when he was a younger man. He was sixty-five now; that was not old, and perhaps it wasn’t too late for him. I sighed under my breath. I blamed my mother for his pain, I always had; he had never been at fault. In my eyes he had always been the hero in a bitter, thankless marriage.

As this random thought surfaced, floated to the front of my head, I examined it as carefully as I was washing the lettuce leaves under the running water. Wasn’t I being just a little bit unfair? No one in this world is perfect, least of all my father. He was a human being, after all, not a God, even if he had seemed like one to me when I was growing up. He had been all golden and shining and beautiful, the most handsome, the most dashing, the most brilliant man in the world. And the most perfect. Of course. Yes, he had been all those things to me as a child. But he must have had his flaws and his frailties, like we all do, hangups and weaknesses as well as strengths. So … should I not perhaps give my mother the benefit of the doubt?

This was so startling a thought I took a moment to adjust to it.

Finally, I glanced over my shoulder at her. She was calmly sitting there at my kitchen table, talking to Diana, methodically making her famous potato salad, one she had prepared so religiously every fourth of July throughout my entire childhood and teenage years.

Unbidden and unexpected, taking me by surprise, it came rushing back to me, a fragment of a memory, a memory prodigiously beaten into submission, carefully boxed and buried and thankfully forgotten. Suddenly resurrected, it was flailing at me now, free-falling into my consciousness. And as it did I found myself looking down the corridor of time. I saw a day long, long ago, twenty-eight years ago to be exact. I was five years old, and an unwilling witness to marital savagery so shocking, so painful to bear I had done the only thing possible. I had obliterated it.

Echoing back to me along that shadowy, perilous tunnel of the past came a mingling of familiar voices which dredged up that day, dragged it back into the present. Exhumed, exposed, it lived again.

My mother is here, young and beautiful, an ethereal, dreamlike creature in her white muslin summer frock, her golden hair burnished in the sunlight. She is standing in the middle of the huge kitchen of my grandmother’s summer house in Southampton. But her voice contrasts markedly with her loveliness. It is harsh and angry and accusatory.

I am afraid.

She is telling my father he cannot leave. Not today, not the fourth, not with all the family coming, all of the festivities planned. He cannot leave her and her parents and me. ‘Think of your child, Edward. She adores you,’ she cries. ‘Mallory needs you to be here for her today.’ She is repeating this, over and over and over again like a shrill litany.

And my father is explaining that he must go, that he has to catch his plane to Egypt, explaining that the new dig is about to start, telling her that as head of the archaeological team he must be there at the outset.

My mother starts to scream at him. Her face is ugly with rage. She is accusing him of going to her, to his mistress, not to the expedition at all.

My father is defending himself, protesting his innocence, telling my mother she is a fool, and a jealous fool, at that. Then he tells her more softly that she has no reason to be jealous. He vows that he loves only her; he explains, very patiently, that he must go because he must do his work, must work to support us.

My mother is shaking her head vehemently from side to side, denying, denying.