Everything to Gain and a Secret Affair (10 page)

Diana was much darker in coloring, with a lovely golden complexion and straight silky brown hair, pulled back in a ponytail 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 gray. She was 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 standard, who, like my mother, carried her sixty-one years well, seeming 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 antique 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.

My mother was actually somewhat quiet and shy. 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 disparate 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 me 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 and 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 my thoughts took an unexpected curve, zeroed in on 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, hang-ups and weaknesses as well as strengths. 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, 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, 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 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.

The bowl of potato salad is suddenly in her hands, then it is leaving her hands as it is violently flung. It is sailing through the air, hitting the wall behind my father, bouncing off the wall, splattering his dark blue blazer with bits of potato and mayonnaise before it crashes to the floor with a thud, like a bomb exploding.

My father is turning away angrily, leaving the kitchen; his handsome face is miserable, contorted
with pain. There is a helplessness about him.

My mother is weeping hysterically.

I am cringing in the butler's pantry, clinging to Elvira, my grandma's cook, who is my best friend, my only friend, except for my father, in this house of anger and secrets and lies.

My mother is storming out of the kitchen, running after my father, in her anguish not noticing Elvira and me as she races past the open door of the pantry.

Again she is shouting loudly. “I hate you! I hate you! I'll never give you a divorce.
Never.
Not as long as I live. Mercedes will never have the pleasure of being your wife, Edward Jordan. I swear to you she won't. And if you leave me, you'll never see Mallory again. Not ever again. I'll make sure of that. I have my father's money behind
me
. It will build a barrier, Edward. A barrier to keep you away from Mallory.”

I hear her running upstairs after my father, railing on at him remorselessly, her voice shrill and bitter and condemning.

Elvira is stroking my hair, soothing me. “Pay no mind, honeychile mine,” she is whispering, her plump black arms encircling me, keeping me safe. “Pay no mind, chile. The big folks is always mouthing the stupidest things . . . things they doan never mean . . . things no chile needs hear. Pay no mind, honeychile mine. Your momma doan mean not a word she ses.”

My father is here.

He does not leave. An armed truce is struck between them; it lasts only through the Fourth of July. The following morning he kisses me good-bye. He drives back to Manhattan and flies off to Egypt.

He does not come back for five months.

* * *

I closed my eyes, squeezing back the tears, pressing down the pain this unexpected memory, so long concealed, has evoked in me.

Slowly, I lifted my lids and stared at the kitchen wall. With infinite care, I placed the lettuce leaves in the colander to drain, covering them with a large piece of paper towel. My hands felt heavy, like dead weights, and nausea fluttered in my stomach. Holding on to the edge of the sink, I calmed myself and endeavored to regain my equilibrium before I walked across the kitchen.

Eventually, I was able to move.

I paused at the kitchen table and looked down at my mother.

It struck me, with a rush of clarity and something akin to shock, that she had probably suffered greatly as a young wife. I should stop my silent condemnation of her. All of my father's long absences must have been difficult to endure, unimaginably lonely and painful for her.
Had
there been a mistress?
Had
a woman called Mercedes really existed? Had there been many other women over the years? Most probably, I thought, with a sinking feeling. My father was a good-looking, normal, healthy man, and when he was younger he must have sought out female company. For as long as I could recall, he and my mother had had separate bedrooms, and this situation had existed long before he had left for good, when I was eighteen. He had stayed in that terrible marriage for me. I had long believed this, had long accepted it. Somehow, today, I knew it to be true.

Perhaps my mother had experienced humiliation and despair and more heartache than I ever realized. But I would never get the real truth from her. She never talked about the past, never confided in me. It was as if she wanted to bury those years, forget them, perhaps even pretend they never happened. Maybe that was why she
was so remote with me at times. Maybe I reminded her of things
she
wanted to expunge from
her
memory.

My mother was looking up at me.

She caught my eye and smiled uncertainly, and for the first time in my adult life I asked myself if I
had
been unfair, if I had done her a terrible injustice all these years.

“What is it, Mal?” she asked, her blonde brows puckering, a spark of concern flickering in her hazel eyes.

I cleared my throat and took a moment to answer. At last I said in a carefully modulated voice, “Nothing, Mom. I'm fine. Listen, I've just washed all the lettuce. It's draining. Could you put it in the fridge in a few minutes, please?” It seemed important to me at this moment to speak of mundane things.

“Of course,” she answered.

“What can
I
do to help, Mal? Should I fix the salad dressing?” Diana asked.

“Yes, please, and then perhaps the two of you could take out the hamburger meat and start making the patties.”

“Done,” Diana said, immediately jumping up and going into the pantry.

Looking at my mother again, I said, “I'm going to go and set the tables.”

She nodded, smiling at me, and this time her smile was more sure. She turned back to her potato salad, mixing in the mayonnaise.

Pushing open the kitchen door, I went outside into the garden with Trixy at my heels, leaving the two women alone.

I paused near the door and took several deep breaths. I felt shaken inside, not only by the memory but by the sudden knowledge that all the years I was growing up I had been terrified my father would leave us forever, my mother and I, terrified that one day he would never come back.

I
t was very hot and airless in the garden, and within seconds my T-shirt was damp and clinging to me. Even Trixy, trotting along next to me, looked slightly wilted; wisely, she flopped down under one of the trestle tables when we reached them.

Late last night Andrew and I had placed the tables under the trees, and now I was glad that we had.

The maples and oaks which formed a semicircle near my studio were old, huge, and extravagant, with thick, gnarled trunks and widely spreading branches abundant with leaves. The branches arched up to form a wonderful, giant parasol of leafy green that was cool and inviting and offered plenty of protection from the sun. We were going to need such a shady spot; by one o'clock it would be a real scorcher of a day, just as Nora had predicted to me on Friday.

Early this morning I had carried red-and-white checked cloths and a big basket of flatware out here, and now I began to set the tables. I had almost finished the largest table, where the adults would sit, when I heard someone calling, “Coo-ee!”

I recognized Sarah's voice at once and looked up. I waved; she waved back.

She was wearing a white terrycloth robe and dark glasses. Her jet-black hair was piled up on top of her head, and there was a mug in her hand. As she drew closer, I could see that her face was woebegone.

“God, I feel
awful,”
she moaned, lowering herself gingerly onto the bench in front of the smaller table.

“I'm not surprised,” I said, “and good morning to you, Miss Parfait.” This was one of my affectionate nicknames for her.

“Good morning, Little Mother,” she answered, using one of her pet names for me.

I grinned and tipped the remainder of the knives and forks out onto the table.

“Oh, please, Mal,” she groaned, “have a heart. Hold the noise down. My head's splitting, I feel positively ill.”

“It's your own fault, you know, you really did tie one on last night.”

“Thanks a lot, friend, for all your sympathy.”