The Widows of Sea Trail-Vivienne of Sugar Sands

by Jacqueline DeGroot

  We found a lovely pair of heels in bright green leather with a fun pom on them plus I got talked into the matching purse. Somehow I had lost five more pounds and realized with the advent of the matching belt, that I had also lost four inches. I was one hot mama, if I did say so myself.

  We went back to my place for drinks and to enjoy the late rays of sunshine on my back porch, watching the golfers “perform” for us as we laughed and sipped gin and tonics. The phone rang and Mom asked if she could come over, she had just made a batch of pumpkin spice cookies and when I told the girls with my hand cupped over the phone, they both yelled, “Bring ‘em on!” It was the only time they ever wanted to see my mom—when she had a tray of baked goodies for us. She was an outstanding baker, making everything from scratch, using vanilla beans she ordered

  Vivienne of Sugar Sands

  from a friend in Madagascar, and exotic candied gingers and fruits she made herself. “She should have aspired to be a Keebler elf instead of a damned witch,” Cat said as she poured another round for us. She patted her flat tummy. “Of course, I don’t need too many of her wonderful treats, so maybe it was a good thing she didn’t take that route.”

  Tessa was thoughtful then said, “Why?”

  “Why what?” I asked.

  “Why did she want to be a witch?”

  “Why don’t you ask her?”

  “When she gets here, maybe I will,” she said defiantly.

  “Maybe I will!” I had to admit, I was curious to know the answer to that myself.

  “Has she told anyone how your uncle knew where that girl was, yet?”

  “No,” I said. “I think he told her not to.”

  “You don’t think it was magic, do you?”

  “No, of course not! My uncle is just smart, very logical and thorough. Somebody missed something that he saw, that’s all there is to it.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yeah, why? You don’t believe in magic do you?”

  “I believe in Merlin. And I’m thinking you’re believing in him right about now too.”

  I smiled at Cat. “Yeah, there is that.”

  “It is kind of uncanny, the two of us. And now you.”

  “Are you going to marry him, Viv?”

  “He hasn’t exactly asked.”

  “I thought it was assumed. And didn’t he say you two were getting married while on your first date, at The Isles, didn’t he say you were going to be marrying him?”

  “Yeah, but that was just first date stuff. It was posturing, after all the matchmaking stuff leading up to that date, he was supposed to do that. He may not even be thinking marriage now, he hasn’t mentioned it for a while.”

  “You don’t seem to mind.”

  “No, I don’t really. I’m happy right now. Genuinely happy.”

  The doorbell rang.

  “Well, I was,” I murmured as I stood to go let my mother in.

  I was shocked to open the door and see a man standing there. A man I didn’t recognize.

  “Yes?”

  “I I. . my name is Michael.” Clearly he was nervous, I could see sweat breaking out on his upper lip. “Michael H-H-Howard,” he continued, still stammering. “I’m your son.”

  I could feel the presence of Tessa and Cat right behind me, and I could see Mom getting out of her car at the end of the driveway.

  “You must be mistaken. I don’t have a son. I don’t have any children.”

  “I was born in 1949. In Philadelphia, at the University Hospital. The hospital records say that Vivienne Taylor was my mother.”

  1949. Dear God. I had been fourteen. I had been raped and this was my 49-year old son.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Just when things were going so well . . . Iinvited Michael in, motioned for my mother to hurry up the walk and asked Tessa and Cat to sit beside me on the couch. My mother could tell something was really wrong, and my girlfriends, who saw my worry and sensed my stress level rising, quickly sat on the couch at opposite ends, each tugging on one of my hands until I was ensconced between them. I knew I was pale. I had felt it when my blood had drained from my face, now I felt my eyeballs going dry from not blinking, from just staring dazedly at this stranger’s face.

  I gestured for Michael to sit in the only unoccupied chair left. My mother cocked her head and looked at me as if to say, “What’s up?”

  I nodded to Michael, then asked him to introduce himself again.

  “My name is Michael H-Howard. I was born in 1949 in Philadelphia at the University Hospital. I’ve been told that you’re my mother. Is it true, are you?”

  My mom gasped and clamped her hand over her mouth and Cat and Tessa took in deep breaths and looked over at me.

  I closed my eyes and began to shake. Mom came over and knelt at my feet, then as she heard the sobs begin, she gathered me into her arms and I simply fell off the couch and into her. Tessa and Cat both stood, “Maybe we’d better leave.”

  My mom looked up at them and said, “Maybe that would be best.”

  “No!” I shouted and reached a hand up to clutch at Cat’s. “No, I need you now. Please stay.”

  They both collapsed on the floor, surrounding me with their arms and all three of them rocked me while I cried. Then Tessa got up and got a box of Kleenex and I had a few hearty blows before looking over at Michael.

  “Why are you here? No one was supposed to know. Ever.”

  He hung his head, clearly distraught that I wasn’t taking this better. “The laws, they uh . . . have c-changed since 1949. It’s n-not so h-hard to find out who your real parents are anymore. I’ve actually known who you were for about ten years.”

  “So why are you here now?” It was a plaintive wail, and I knew it, but I honestly did not want him here. I didn’t want to be reminded that he even existed.

  “I’m in trouble. Bad trouble. I need a kidney or I’ll die. I thought maybe . . .” his voice faltered and he didn’t continue, he didn’t need to. We all knew why he was here now.

  “Shit!” Cat said, as she got up and made her way to the kitchen. “I think this calls for coffee.”

  “With whiskey,” Tessa called and got up to join her.

  I heard them whispering while puttering around in the kitchen trying to find things.

  I suddenly felt queasy and excused myself to go to the bathroom. I stared at my pale face in the mirror over the sink and blinked my eyes wide trying to fight off the nausea. Then I gave up and knelt at the toilet and retched. I not only had managed to forget about the night I had delivered a baby boy two months early, but I had managed to forget the night my older cousin had put it in me. I had been just thirteen at the time and I didn’t tell anyone. It never occurred to me that I could get pregnant. I had just started to menstruate a few months earlier so I wasn’t regular by any means. By the time my mom noticed my swollen belly and took me to the doctor, I was five months along and it was too late to abort, not that I would have anyway, I guess. I really don’t know. I was just a kid. It being moot, I never really pressed myself with a what-if-I’d-known-earlier scenario. Two months later I was rushed to the hospital with massive bleeding and I delivered the baby and what was left of my womb spontaneously in the elevator on the way up to delivery. I had been unconscious at the time and near death. I never saw the baby. As a minor, and one so young, my mother signed the baby over to the State and two weeks later she took me home. I would never have another baby. My cousin had not only taken my innocence but my ability to have a baby of my own.

  My mother had cried for months. I never cried. What would have been the point, I told myself. What was done was done. I didn’t let another man touch me in that way until Dale took me home to be his wife. Then I told him and gave him the option of backing out. He shook his head and took his time with me, teaching me about pleasure and lovemaking. And I had been happy, very happy. Now it all came back, and now, now of all times, I was crying. Blubbering like a fool when I had never shed a single tear before.

/>   There was a soft tap on the door and Tessa came in with a cup of tea in one hand a brandy snifter in the other. She put them on the counter and came to kneel beside me on the cold tile.

  “Sweetheart, I’m so sorry. Your mom told us what happened. God, you were only a baby . . . I didn’t know which one you wanted, or needed the most. Got you some tea, got you some brandy. Cat’s bringing coffee and some of your momma’s cookies.”

  There was another knock and Cat came in bearing a loaded tray. “Hey, sweetie, brought you some chocolate kisses and some pumpkin spice cookies.”

  “Not hungry,” I moaned.

  Another tap on the door. Mom came in with a baggie containing god-knows-what and dumped a clump into my tea. “Got you some Diviner’s Sage to take the edge off.”

  I had to laugh. Everyone was bringing me something to numb the pain I was feeling from the tragedy that happened fifty years ago. I had to snap out of this, to be this upset now was ridiculous. “Did ya’ll just leave Michael sittin’ there?”

  They all looked at each other and nodded.

  Tessa said, “You were our primary concern, we don’t know him enough to be concerned about him. But we love you.”

  “I love you too, but please go out there and be hospitable while I put myself back together.”

  “Drink your tea,” Mom said as she slinked out.

  “Have some brandy,” Tessa said and slipped out the door.

  “For god sakes, just eat the damned chocolate,” Cat said as she unwrapped a handful of kisses and shoved one into my mouth before leaving.

  I stood and looked back at the woman in the mirror imagining her as the grown up fourteen-year-old she’d had to be. A lot had happened to that woman staring back at me. Then I remembered the dress I had bought today, and the shoes and purse to go with it, and the reason I’d bought them in the first place—Philip. I conceded I hadn’t had the perfect life, not by a long shot. But it had been good. And it was going to get a lot better. I still had a lot of living left and I was determined I was going to love every minute I possibly could.

  I brushed my teeth, washed my face, and touched up my lipstick. Then went out to meet the boy I had given birth to, because I could never really consider him my son. Another woman had raised him. And he was only coming to me now because he wanted something from me. He had inadvertently taken my womb, now he wanted a kidney. “Children,” I muttered, “it was all take, take, take with them.” I had to laugh at the absurdity of my thoughts.

  Turned out Michael didn’t really stutter, only when he was introducing himself to his mother for the first time. He was married, living in Texas, with two kids, one girl, sixteen, and one boy fourteen. And he was a teacher at the local community college. He’d had kidney disease for fifteen years and had only one barely functioning kidney at this point. He needed dialysis three times a week and fairly soon, even that would not be an option. It was now or never for him and so he’d looked me up, phoning whenever he could get the courage, then chickening out when I answered the phone. He was my mystery caller. The one time he’d said he was my son, and called me Mom, he’d been drunk and it had been his wife yelling at him in the background that this was not the way to approach me. She had finally put him on a plane and said, “Go find her, and ask her. All she can do is say no—then we can make plans. But, Michael, just think what it would mean if she’d say yes.” And so he’d come to find the woman whose tissue type was about as close as anyone’s could be, and stood on my doorstep until the sound of my mother’s car pulling into the driveway had finally spurred him to action.

  I listened to him, asked him questions about his family and his job, and then told him I would have to think about what he was asking. I wasn’t a young person anymore and I had to consider all the risks. He nodded and said he understood. He seemed genuinely upset that he had been the product of rape and the reason I hadn’t had any kids of my own. I assured him over and over again that none of that was his fault. Then he asked the one question I’d been avoiding. “So, if you’d known, would you have gotten rid of me?”

  I looked up at his blue eyes, very much like mine, and said, “You know, it wasn’t legal back in 1949, so it probably wouldn’t have been an option.” I did not tell him that my mother knew an assortment of drugs that would have taken care of the matter had she only known. And that I suspected that was why she had cried so much, she’d known how to fix things, but she hadn’t known in time to do anything about it. Looking up at him, a fine strapping lad with two teenaged children of his own, I was glad we hadn’t known until it was too late. It was the first time I was ever glad I’d given birth to him.

  “Did you happen to ask your father? I know that his name was listed on the birth certificate. It had to be for us to prosecute.”

  “Yeah, I did,” he replied, and I could tell by his tone that the experience had been an enlightening one. “I tracked him all the way to Montana where he was working at a food processing plant. After I’d introduced myself and asked for his help, he looked like he wanted to spit on me. Instead, he sneered and said, ‘Hell no! You’re the reason I spent two years in Juve—the bitch would have kept quiet if it weren’t for you, so why would I help you out?’All the years I had wondered about my real dad, imagining what he was like and that was what I got. The people on the plane with me back to Texas saw a broken man. It all makes sense now . . . knowing what you told me and I gotta tell ya, it pains me to no end now to know there’s a part of him in me.”

  I touched a shock of his hair where it was white at the root line. “You dye this?” I asked.

  Looking directly at me, he knew exactly what I was asking about. I’m sure that my definitive white streak had all but confirmed my identity upon my opening the door to him.

  “Yes, but I never will again now that I know how I came to have it.”

  I knew right then that I’d give him a kidney if I could. If my doctor said it would be all right, I’d arrange it. The only thing I didn’t know was how I was going to tell Philip. And, of course, it had to be a kidney he needed. How ironic was that? Phillip would have a fit and I knew it.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Story time After everyone left I longed for more of Peter’s book to read. I needed something to distract my mind, and I kept looking at the computer screen as if waiting for new pages to magically appear. This thing with Michael was very upsetting coming out of the blue like this, and I had so many different feelings running through me that I needed to put it out of my mind for now or go crazy. It was just too much sadness, too much pain from the past, and too much of an unsettled feeling in the pit of my stomach to tolerate for long—it was making me insane, going over and over the what-ifs and the whyme’s. When I bothered to actually go into the email program, I was delighted to see something from peterpeterpeater. My heart leapt—the much-needed distraction I sought was just a click a way. But when I opened his email all he’d written was:

  “I’m waiting.” How was I going to pull this one off, he wanted a picture of my naked crotch. Well, the 1979 Playboy was just not going to cut it for this one, I thought. I’d been shaved down there, and that just wasn’t something the girls did back then. There was only one place I knew of where I could get that type of magazine.

  I argued with myself for the better part of an hour and then I got out of my lounging pajamas, got dressed, and drove all the way to Myrtle Beach to a Scotsman gas station I remembered Dale had gone to a few times. Once in a blue moon, he’d bring home a “special” DVD or a “special” magazine to get us in the mood. I complained good-naturedly that he only got ones with naked girls, and how was that going to help me? So on my birthday he bought some magazines and DVDs with naked men in them. And boy did those movies do the trick for us. But each time his kids were due to show up for vacation, he tossed them, saying that they wouldn’t understand if they stumbled onto them accidentally. As if us old farts weren’t allowed to have sex, as if it was something invented for only the younger generation to
enjoy. I argued with him about it because I could never understand why his kids didn’t respect the boundaries of privacy that I had grown up with, but they didn’t, they thought everything was theirs and that their father and I weren’t entitled to any privacy in our own home, even in our bedroom for that matter. I had tolerated their visits because I loved the grandkids, but now that they were all turning out pretty much the same as their parents—selfish and whiny, and only out for number one—I didn’t have to. I was glad Michael was different, or at least he seemed different. I supposed if I went through with what he was asking, I’d be getting to know him and his family a whole lot better, and I’d find out for sure.

  I pulled up to the Scotsman, put my sunglasses on even though it was now dark, and I had my cash, ready in hand. I ran in, found the magazine I was looking for, and ran out, hoping to God no one I knew saw me.

  I didn’t even open it until I got home to see if there was even anything in it I could use. So, there I was sitting on my sofa, clandestinely flipping through page after page looking at pictures of women’s bodies and trying to find a pussy that was even remotely similar to mine, when the phone rang. I swear I nearly jumped to the ceiling.

  I had to take several deep breaths to calm myself as I made my way to the phone to answer it. The caller ID showed it was Philip’s number and I actually hid the Maxim magazine under a sofa cushion before hitting the talk button and answering.

  His deep voice immediately soothed my jangled nerves. “Hey, how are ya?”

  “I’m good. And you?” I had decided pretty much right away that Philip was not going to know about Michael, at least not until I had decided what I was going to about him, so I feigned a good mood, even though I was far from being in one.

  “I couldn’t be better. You’re coming to see me tomorrow, and I’m going to show you Charlotte. I want you to see so much, is it possible for you to come earlier than we had discussed?”

  “How early?”