“I’m well aware of that.”
“And we still don’t have a dress, and we haven’t solidified the menu, and we haven’t even checked on all the invitations...”
“Amanda. I’m here now. Okay?” she said, placing a hand on her daughter's arm to calm her.
Amanda closed her eyes and heaved a sigh. It had always been this way with Amanda. Sometimes, she got so locked in her head, in the way “things had to be,” that she struggled to see the big picture. Susan longed to tell her that she would wear a paper bag as a dress if she had to. The only thing that mattered to her was that time had whirled itself around, and she was suddenly allowed to marry Scott Frampton, just as she’d always planned to back in her teenage years. What more could she want?
“I picked out a few. They’re on the rack over there.” Amanda pointed a sad finger toward the left-hand side of the boutique.
The woman who owned the boutique made notes to herself near the register. She had hardly grunted a “hello” when Susan had entered. Probably, she was ready to close up for the day, and Amanda had pressed her for more time.
“Okay. I’ll try a few on.”
Susan wanted nothing less than stuffing herself into a few gowns, especially now that she wanted to sink herself into Marcie Shean’s case. She rose up and placed two fingers on either side of the delicate lace of one of the designer gowns. At forty-five, it felt half-ridiculous to put one of these dresses on. They seemed fit for a prom queen.
Susan stepped behind the curtain and removed her burgundy suit. Amanda’s feet appeared beneath the curtain as she paced.
“So, where were you, anyway?” Amanda finally asked. “I mean, we didn’t have any other appointments on the schedule.”
“We had a walk-in, actually.”
“Oh?”
Susan pulled off her camisole and blinked at herself in the mirror. Bra, panties, long legs that needed a shave. She hadn’t spent the past few nights at Scott’s, as she’d needed to look over some documents for the Sunrise Cove with her father and had then fallen into conversation with Lola or Christine or Audrey or Amanda. They had such a cozy club. It made it difficult sometimes for her to return to Scott’s quaint cabin by the water.
“Mom? Who was the walk-in?”
Susan sensed already that her daughter would be none-too-pleased about the added workload. Amanda had already cited Susan as the ultimate “workaholic” and had even left a magazine open on her desk, which spoke about the dangers of stress. Her doctor certainly wouldn’t be too thrilled. Still, Amanda was one to talk: she loved adding more and more items to her to-do list. It was just the Sheridan-Harris way.
Susan grabbed one of the wedding dresses and shuffled herself into it. Back when she had first married Richard, they’d had only a few pennies to rub together and she’d worn something she had found on a back rack at a second-hand shop. If she remembered correctly, the dress had cost around seventy-five dollars, and she’d still cursed herself for being so greedy. Life was so different now. She had to be grateful for it.
Susan hardly blinked at herself in the mirror.
“Mom? Are you going to tell me? Or—”
Susan pushed the curtain to the side to reveal herself. She placed her hands on her hips and made heavy eye contact with Amanda, whose face was initially difficult to read. After a long moment of silence, however, Amanda burst into laughter.
“You look like an ‘80s music video nightmare.”
Susan grinned. “Is it that bad?” She stepped out of the little changing area and turned to find a horrible portrait of herself in the mirror. It was true. She looked like a bride from a distant era. The sequins on the garment were totally outdated, and the cut of it was high up on her waist so that she looked much chunkier than her ordinary slim frame.
“I did not put that dress in there!” Amanda howled with laughter and clutched her stomach. “Where did you get that?”
“What? It was hanging in there! Isn’t this the one you hung up?”
Tears sprung in Amanda’s eyes as she continued to laugh uncontrollably at her mother’s appearance. The wedding dress shop owner glared at them. Probably, this dress cost thousands of dollars and was sought-after by some of the ritziest tourists of Martha’s Vineyard, hungry for the next era of fashion. Everyone wanted to make a statement. Susan, on the other hand, just needed something white to walk down the aisle in.
“This one is a hard no, Mom,” Amanda said finally as she wiped the tears from her cheeks. “How heavy is it?”
Susan shifted up on her toes to feel. “It weighs about as much as a MAC truck, I think.”
“I figured. We’d need to tow you down the aisle.”
“Are you sure you don’t want your mother looking like a nightmare version of Madonna?” Susan asked as she dropped her lower lip out. “Because I think this look could really suit me.”
“No!” Amanda cried. Her grin widened. She placed her hands on her hips and heaved a sigh. “Mom, we have to focus. If you’re going to get married on June 19, we need to nail all this down. ASAP. Do you understand?”
“Where did that tone come from?” Susan teased. A moment later, she burst out laughing once again and gave her daughter a playful salute.
“If you’re going to act like a teenager, then I’m going to treat you like one. I—”
But at that moment, the wedding dress store’s door flew open. Christine flourished from the outside world. Her dark hair whirled around her shoulders, and her perfect bohemian style made her look as though she, too, had stepped from a magazine — albeit a much more current and beautiful one. She gripped her knees to catch her breath as Amanda and Susan gaped at her.
“You’re late,” Amanda chided.
Christine lifted her chin. Tears filled her eyes as she found Susan’s gaze. Susan knew something was off, but she had no idea what.
Susan stepped toward her younger sister and lifted her back to standing. Her brow furrowed when she whispered, “Are you okay, Chris?”
In the corner, the wedding dress shop owner grumbled inwardly. Obviously, she wouldn’t make a sale that night, and these women were taking up her much-needed clean-up time.
Finally, Christine pressed her fingers against her eyes as her shoulders quivered. “I’m sorry. I just don’t even know how to say it.”
Susan drew her head around to find Amanda’s gaze. Her heart panged with fear. Already, the Sheridans had been through so much the previous year; Susan herself had only just beaten cancer and their father, Wes, continued to decline with dementia. What else could possibly happen? What would hit them next?
Christine dropped her hands to her sides. After a long gasp, she said three little words, words upon which the Sheridans could hang endless dreams and hopes.
“I am pregnant.”
Chapter Three
The wedding dress shop owner whacked the “CLOSED” sign onto the door just as Susan, Christine, and Amanda hurried out into the growing darkness. Susan flung her arm around Christine and howled to the sky. “You have got to be kidding me, Christine! The odds were stacked against you for so many years! — and then suddenly, out of the blue, Zach knocks you up at age forty-two?”
Christine shivered against Susan. “Zach is still in shock. He had to open the bistro tonight, and I swear he keeps messing up. I watched him chop all this garlic and then accidentally throw it into the trash.”
Amanda burst into laughter. She jangled her keys from her pocket and beckoned the two of them toward her car. “I don’t think either of you can drive right now. You both look giddy.”
“Let’s let the responsible one take us back home. We can grab our cars tomorrow,” Susan said. “I’ll text Lola. We need supplies—lots of supplies.”
“For what?” Christine asked as she slid into the back seat.
“A celebration! We can’t just let this day pass by without doing something about it,” Susan affirmed. In a flash, she wrote Lola, who texted back immediately.
LOLA:
A celebration? For what?
SUSAN: You’ll see. It’ll blow your socks off.
LOLA: I’m wearing sandals.
SUSAN: Omg, just buy wine and snacks. Maybe order a pizza? Hire a mariachi band. We need to celebrate.
LOLA: You sound insane, sis. Did you buy a dress?
SUSAN: Just get the stuff.
LOLA: I hate when you get all big-sister on me.
SUSAN: Too bad! Just trust me.
Amanda was one of the more responsible drivers Susan had ever known. She remembered even back when she had first taught Amanda how to drive, almost seven years ago or so, when Amanda had kept her hands eternally at ten-and-two and grumbled about anyone else going two or three miles over the speed limit. Susan had laughed at Richard at the time and said, “Our teenage girl is about to turn into an eighty-five-year-old woman.” “They grow up so fast,” Richard had joked in return.
“Do you have the stick with you?” Susan asked from the passenger seat. She yanked around to catch Christine in the midst of another cry.
Christine leafed through her purse for a plastic baggie, in which she had placed the pink and white pregnancy test. Sure enough, two bright pink lines declared her uterus baby-ready.
“What did that feel like?” Susan asked, almost breathless.
Christine slipped her teeth over her lower lip. Finally, as Amanda muttered something about an “irresponsible driver up ahead,” Christine said, “It felt like all these doors I’d always thought were locked suddenly flew open. Suddenly, I can see a future for myself that I had always hoped for but never truly imagined. And to be fully honest... one of the first things I did was go into my bedroom and look up at the ceiling and started talking to Mom.”
Susan’s heart swelled at her sister’s words. In truth, when she had first gotten pregnant with Jake when she was just a young thing, totally broke with only a boyfriend and tremendous fear — she, too, had spoken to Anna. “Help,” had been her general prayer. “I don’t know what I’m doing. And I need you here.”
“Anyway. It probably sounds crazy,” Christine whispered.
“No. It sounds like the most natural thing in the world,” Susan assured her.
Back at home, the Sheridan house was dark and shadowed, yet warm from a rather glorious blue-skied day. The three of them entered the house through the back and found Audrey on the couch with a sleeping Max across her upper chest. His perfect, chubby cheek bulged up from the towel beneath it. Audrey’s eyes were tired yet filled with light.
“Hi! Mom should be back soon,” she whispered. “She said we’re celebrating something?”
Wes’s bedroom door was shut downstairs. She pointed at it as Audrey explained that he didn’t feel so good. “He coughed a few times this afternoon. I think it’s just a cold or something. We’re monitoring it.”
Audrey rose and headed upstairs to place Max in his crib. She reappeared in a fresh dress with the baby monitor in her right hand. Christine seemed not to know what to do with herself. She hovered near the porch door and drew her hands together. Audrey and Christine — who had a special connection — made heavy eye contact.
“You’re acting so weird,” Audrey said finally. “Is there something wrong?”
Suddenly, Lola burst through the back door. There was the rustling of plastic bags as she hustled in, armed with bottles of wine and bags of chips in her left hand and two large pizza boxes in her right. She stopped dead in the hallway between the mudroom and the kitchen and blinked at Christine. There was a strange, pregnant silence.
“Oh my god,” Lola blurted.
“What?” Christine shifted her weight.
“I know. I know what this is about,” Lola breathed. She placed the pizza boxes on the counter. She’d brought with her the growing chill of the evening. Her cheeks were flushed. “You’re pregnant, aren’t you?”
Audrey screamed as her mother’s words registered in her brain. “I knew it!” She placed her hands on her cheeks and gave Christine a bug-eyed look. Christine’s eyes closed as her shoulders shook. She nodded just once as Audrey flung her arms around Christine’s shoulders and held her tight. Lola, Susan, and Amanda hustled over, and together, the five Sheridan girls wrapped themselves into a big, multi-armed ball of love and energy and hope. In no time at all, each of their faces was wet with tears.
“Music! We need music.” Lola rushed toward the side of the room, where she connected her phone to the speaker system. She played one of Christine’s favorites — “Angel Baby,” but the John Lennon version.
Lola then beckoned for Christine to come out to the center of the living room, where they slow-danced and swayed to the music. Christine tossed her head back so that her long hair swept to the very bottom of her back. Susan touched her hair sheepishly. It had grown out so long since she’d been cleared of cancer, but it still didn’t have the luster of her sisters’.
That was what time did to you, Susan thought now. It gave you so many blessings, but it took something for itself, too. In this case: she aged. She grew sick. She championed through. But she hadn’t the glow of her twenties. Her eyes were circled with crow’s feet. Her back occasionally ached when she slept on it wrong.
The five of them wrapped up in sweaters and blankets and sat around the picnic table on the porch. They took a portable speaker with them and played more “baby-themed” songs, just loud enough to create an ambiance and not loud enough that they woke Wes.
They loaded their plates with all the goods: gooey, cheesy pizza, handfuls of chips, and potato salad. Spring was heavy in the air, and with it came the promise of future BBQs, sizzling bonfires and nights beneath the splendorous, twinkling night sky. Christine, herself, seemed to glow even brighter than the moon. She placed her hand on her stomach throughout much of the dinner as though she already wanted to keep the little being safe.
“Bad planning, Christine,” Audrey teased her. “We should have been pregnant at the same time. It would have been so much more fun. Or at least, not as heinous.”
Christine laughed. “I would have been pregnant years ago if I could have. I’m guessing a pregnancy at forty-two won’t be the easiest thing in the world.”
“Women do it all the time,” Lola assured her. “Especially in the bigger cities. Some of my friends in Boston had babies at forty-five, forty-six. The doctor will monitor everything and we’ll keep you safe and cozy.”
“And Max will have someone to grow up with!” Audrey said brightly. “They’re going to be best friends.”
Christine’s smile was wider than Susan had ever seen. Back in the early days, Christine had always been the surly Sheridan sister — the darker one, the one apt to drink and stew in the corner. Motherhood would bring out even more of the nuances of her personality. Susan couldn’t wait to learn all these new parts of Christine. It would be a journey for all of them.
Lola poured some wine for those who wanted it and a glass of sparkling water for Christine. “I don’t know what we’ll do without our champion wine-drinker drinking all summer long, but we’ll have to make do,” Lola teased. “Although I’m sure the wine industry will really suffer.”
“Stop...” Christine laughed outright as she lifted her sparkling water. “I’m sure the wine industry will survive without me.”
“But in all seriousness, I want to make a toast to my older sister,” Lola beamed. “Nobody in the world deserves this happiness more than you. We will be by your side every single day that ticks by. And Baby Sheridan-Walters? We love you to pieces.”
Something weighed heavily on Susan’s mind. After the toast, she sipped her wine and then headed inside for a moment, where she traced a path toward the upstairs trunk. There, she discovered their mother, Anna’s diaries, which were dated all the way back to before Susan was born. She muttered to herself as she hunted for the one she had in mind. In a moment, she found it: dark grey leather on the outside, worn from everyday opening and closing. Even the pages were yellowed and weathered with wrinkles.
; Back downstairs, Susan placed the diary on the table and collapsed back in her chair.
“What do you have there?” Lola asked as she lifted her glass of wine.
“Mom’s diary?” Christine furrowed her brow.
“Yes. From the year she was pregnant with you,” Susan clarified.
“Susan Sheridan! You’re too much.” Christine reached for the diary and flipped through the pages as tears welled in her eyes. “I just told Amanda and Susan that one of the first things I did was talk to Mom when I found out.”
Lola nodded. “I did the same.” She reached over and squeezed Audrey’s hand over the table. “Gosh, it’s just one of the saddest things in the world that our mother can’t know the both of you. And baby Max. And Baby Walters-Sheridan.”
Christine cleared her throat. The others grew silent and turned toward her.
“She wrote this when she was about seven months pregnant with me; it looks like,” Christine breathed. “She says, ‘It’s so very late, but Susan is up with a horrible ear infection and Wes has to man the front desk tonight. Here I am in this big house, alone with a pregnant belly and a toddler. Sometimes, the loneliness of being the person who has to be strong, the strongest of all, gets to be too much — but then I look in Susan’s eyes and I know it’s all worth it. What Wes and I have built here is a tremendous amount of love, probably more love than I deserve.
I try to imagine what this baby will be like. We’ve decided again not to learn the sex. Wes is fully on board for a boy, but I have already begun to imagine two little girls in matching dresses holding hands as we walk along the water. There’s such a beauty — and a horror of being a woman. We must be strong yet feminine. We must bear life and thus bear an infinite amount of sadness. I worry already about the tremendous amounts of pain my girls will go through. I worry about the heartaches and the fears. I worry so endlessly — which is almost a relief because it means that I no longer worry so much about myself. Maybe that’s the secret of motherhood. At least, for a little while, you no longer look in the mirror. You see only the ones who need you.’”
A Vineyard Wedding Page 2
