Relative Happiness

by Lesley Crewe

  Kate started to cry. “I feel so badly. I never meant to start all this. I was scared you wouldn’t come and visit me, Mom. Please come sometimes. Please.”

  “Kate,” Mom said, “I want to apologize. I never realized how I’ve hurt you. I didn’t know how to handle it. I wasn’t sure how to act. I assumed if I carried on as if I knew nothing, it would be better all around. I can see I was wrong.”

  “Oh Mom, I’m sorry I said such awful things. I didn’t mean it.”

  Mom smiled sadly and patted Kate’s hand. “If it makes you feel any better, Lexie can tell you that I do a lot of pretending. It’s a way of life with me. So don’t take it too personally. Right, Lexie?”

  “Right, Mom.”

  Lexie went back to Mom’s in the morning, to wave Kate goodbye. She didn’t get much sleep. She knew no one else did either. They were too battered and bruised to rest easy.

  Beth didn’t come to say goodbye. She didn’t want to see Gabby. Gabby and Mom were in the driveway when Lexie showed up.

  Gabby pulled Kate to her. “I’m sorry about last night. I hope you’ll forgive me.”

  Kate hugged her. “It’s all right Gabby. We’re in a pretty sad way at the moment. It isn’t easy. I’m sorry, too.”

  Gabby let her go and walked back into the house.

  It was Mom’s turn. “Take care of yourself, darling. I promise I’ll come and see you and Daphne very soon. I’d love to see your house. Lexie tells me it’s beautiful.” She started to cry. “I’ll miss you so much. It’s been wonderful to have you here. Thank you for being with me.” She turned around quickly and went into the house as well.

  Kate went over to Lexie and put her arms around her. “Lexie, you’ll take care of her won’t you? She doesn’t have anyone now.”

  “Of course, she does. She has us.”

  “I mean she doesn’t have her mate. It must be awful to be alone.”

  “Yes.”

  “Thanks for always being here for me, Lexie. I’m so grateful you stuck up for me. I didn’t think I’d do it, but you were there and I felt safe.”

  “Don’t worry about it. I’m always here for you.”

  She looked at Lexie sadly. “That’s the trouble. You’re always here for everyone. We depend on you so much. Sometimes I can’t bear it. You remind me so much of Dad.”

  She gave Lexie one more squeeze then hurried into the van and drove away.

  On her way back to work, Lexie stopped at Beth’s, to make sure she was okay.

  “Hello, anyone home?”

  “I’m in here.” Beth sat in the family room, surrounded by a mountain of toys. Madison was asleep on her shoulder as Beth rocked her.

  Lexie waved. “Hi. You alright?”

  “I’m fine.”

  She sat on the coffee table. Beth’s cheek was still red. “What did Rory say when you got home last night?”

  “God love him,” she smiled, “he wanted to go over and knock her block off. I told him I’d done that already.”

  Lexie smiled at her. “Ya sure did.”

  Beth shook her head. “I don’t know where most of that came from. I know I can be mouthy, but I didn’t intend to beat her up like that.”

  “She’ll get over it.”

  “Maybe. Will you talk to her now? You should, you know. It feels good to fire off a missile every once in awhile.”

  “You know me, Beth. I’m not good with weapons of mass destruction. I’m more your squirt-gun type.”

  They laughed until they woke Maddie.

  Gabby stayed away from Lexie. Every time Lexie went to Mom’s, Gabby was out, or occupied with something. Mom was distracted, naturally, and only seemed herself when she was with Josh. Lexie suggested finding a babysitter, until things calmed down a bit, but Mom gave her such a look of horror, Lexie immediately retracted the idea. To lose two men in her life was not an option.

  Her mother did have help from her friends. Jeanne and Eleanor always had a little too much chicken pie, or macaroni and cheese. They’d pop by and have a cup of tea, coordinating it so that Mom was never alone all day. Lexie wasn’t sure Mom noticed, but Lexie did and she called them both to thank them.

  “It’s no trouble, sweetie,” Jeanne said. “You can bet she’d do the same for us, if we were in her shoes. God love her, she’s been through a lot.”

  She knows. They all do. Lexie was ashamed, as if she were responsible for her father’s behaviour. She wanted to cry on Jeanne’s shoulder, but she knew her mother would consider that a betrayal. Jeanne would never betray her. She pretended she didn’t know at all.

  That November was dreary. Cold, with a biting wind that flew off the water. Everything was grey and drab—no finery on the trees, no flowers left in their beds, and plenty of colourless stalks that drooped or were trampled down. They waited for winter to come so that they could hide their sad remains beneath the pure white snow.

  Lexie and her mother braved the elements to take Joshua for a walk. He needed the fresh air, or so her mother (and the women of her generation) thought. Lucky for her, Josh had a strong constitution.

  Along the boardwalk, they braved the wind that gathered its strength offshore. Fog sat snug over the coastline. It too waited for its chance to creep in.

  “Your father used to love to walk here,” Mom told her. “Whenever he had a bad day, or heaven forbid, lost a patient, he would pace along this shore and let the ocean breeze carry away his woe.”

  “He never talked about his cases, did he? Not that I remember, anyway.”

  “Well, he couldn’t. Doctor/patient privilege and all that. Thank the lord. Would you want to know who had lice?”

  Lexie smiled. They walked along in comfortable silence. She and her mother didn’t walk together often. Lexie ran to Dad when she needed someone to talk too. It never occurred to her to wonder if this bothered Mom. Now, Lexie began to notice her for the first time.

  She was smaller, and seemed to be curved inward, her shoulders slumped forward. She had been tall, and always moved with an easy grace. Now Lexie saw her hunched into the wind, a thin, fragile version of herself. Lexie’s throat got tight. She didn’t want to lose her mother. What if she wasn’t around to drive them crazy or love them dearly? What would happen then? She’d be an orphan.

  Mom broke into her frantic thoughts. “Honey, your sister wants to leave soon.”

  She didn’t have to ask which one. “When?”

  “In a day or so. I think it’s time you two talked. You’ve avoided each other and that can’t go on.”

  “I haven’t avoided her. She’s avoided me. Every time I go to your place, she’s never there, or she’s having a lie down, or she’s in the tub. It’s not a coincidence.”

  “No, that’s quite true,” Mom said. “She doesn’t know how to approach you, so she hasn’t. I think you’ll have to be the bigger person.”

  “I am the bigger person,” Lexie laughed.

  Mom stayed quiet. Then she said, “You haven’t seen a lot of your sister because she spends most of her time at your father’s grave.”

  Lexie looked at her. “I didn’t know that.”

  “She goes out there almost every day. She takes a blanket and sits under the birch trees. I’m afraid she’ll get sick.”

  Lexie didn’t know what to say.

  “She’s not strong. I worry about her.”

  “She must feel awful she didn’t see Dad for the last two years of his life.”

  “Of course,” Mom said. “That only stands to reason. But I think it’s more than that. And I think it revolves around you, so I wish you’d talk to her before she goes. Who knows when she’ll come back to us again.”

  Lexie called Gabby on the phone that night and asked her to come over after Josh was in bed. Gabby hesitated before she said yes, then sounded resigned. Lexie told her it wasn’t her execution, which made Gabby laugh and broke the tension a little. But Lexie was nervous. She cracked open a bottle of wine and drank two big glasses very quickly. She want
ed to be on a more equal footing with glamour girl, so she made sure she looked pretty darn good by the time Gabby got there.

  Gabby noticed. She sat down on the sofa, took the glass of wine Lexie offered her and gazed at the fire. Lexie wondered if she thought of the night she left with Adrian.

  “You look beautiful Lexie. I’ve meant to tell you since I got home, but the time was never right.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I’ve tried to figure out why it is. At first I thought it was the haircut and makeup. Then I wondered if it was the clothes, but now I think it’s because you’re a mother. You have a softness about you. It’s very alluring.”

  “Goodness. Am I being seduced?”

  She laughed. “That would be Kate’s department.”

  “Gabby, don’t talk like that.”

  “Why not? It’s true. She’s the one who wants us to know all about it. Never mind, I don’t want to get into that anymore. I’m glad she’s happy with Daphne. She seems nice.”

  “Daphne’s very nice. And it doesn’t hurt her family’s quite well off.”

  “Good for Kate. She’s not stupid anyway. You might as well fall for the rich ones. It makes life a lot easier.”

  “Is that what it’s about? Having it easy?”

  Gabby looked at her. “Maybe.”

  “Will you ever settle down, Gabby?”

  “Will you?”

  “Don’t you dare put me in your category. I’ve had about two boyfriends and you’ve had ten times that number. You lucky duck.”

  “Not so lucky. It’s an insecure way of living. I’m not sure how it started. Obviously I’ve quite a reputation. I better not disappoint.” She drank from her glass until it was empty, and held it out for another.

  Lexie poured her some more. “Beth didn’t mean to be so hard on you, Gabby. She told me so. She probably deserved to be slapped for what she said. But her remarks came from a dark place. You have no idea how she’s suffered.”

  “I know. Or I should say, I can only imagine. I’ve never lost a baby. Or had a baby to lose. What’s it like, Lex, to have a baby?”

  “I couldn’t explain it if I lived to be a thousand.” She gave her sister a big smile. “He’s the most precious thing in my life. He’s the reason I put one foot in front of the other. I can’t imagine my life without him. I waited for him to come to me. And he did.”

  “What was his father like?”

  Lexie blushed. “I knew him for seven days. We made love twenty-four hours after we met.”

  “Good Grief. You guys talk about me!”

  “Oh, Gabby, he was gorgeous,” she gushed. “He was so big and he made me feel beautiful. It was magic. I never knew it could be like that. Never.”

  “Well, for heaven’s sake, why aren’t you with him?”

  Lexie looked into her wine glass. “I don’t know where he is. God, I don’t know anything about him. We didn’t talk about it.” She took a sip of her wine. “It seems hard to believe, but it’s like we didn’t want to know anything else. We had no time to talk.”

  “Sounds like your bodies did the talking instead.”

  “That’s true.”

  It was good to be with Gabby. All the pain Lexie agonized over disappeared. The things she wanted to get off her chest seemed to vanish. It really didn’t matter anymore. Lexie just wanted her sister back. She needed to be loved by her and she needed to love her again. The loss of their father made everything different. Their family was smaller. They had to huddle down and stay safe. It felt right to be together.

  They drank two bottles of wine and were on their third. It was midnight and they decided Gabby should stay the night. Then that thing happened that always happens when you’ve laughed your guts out and yelled about things you remember when you were a kid. You get worn out, tired, then the real stuff comes to the surface.

  Lexie poured the last of the third bottle. Thank God Josh slept through the night. She’d pay for this tomorrow.

  Gabby took another big sip of wine. “I can’t believe Daddy’s dead. I pretend he’s away, because he’s always away from me. Pardon me, I’m always away from him. Same difference I guess.” Her head nodded and she drank some more.

  “Why did you stay away so long?”

  “How could I come back and face you?”

  “For God’s sake, what did you think I’d do?” Lexie shouted. “Kill you the minute your big toe hit the tarmac?”

  Gabby looked at her wine. “I wouldn’t blame you.”

  “Oh, shut up. Blood’s thicker than water. I’d have forgiven you long before this.”

  Gabby stayed quiet. Lexie thought she was sleepy. She wondered if they should go to bed.

  Then Gabby said, “I didn’t know, Lexie.”

  “You didn’t know what?” Lexie downed her drink.

  “That you loved him.”

  She put her wineglass on the floor. “I didn’t know either. Until he left.”

  “I also didn’t know something else.”

  Lexie gave her a goofy grin like Josh’s. “What?”

  “He loved you.”

  There was silence.

  “Don’t do this to me Gabby.”

  She looked at Lexie in earnest. “I’m not doing anything.”

  “You better explain it to me then, because I’d like to know how someone can love you when they make love to your sister in your own house, leave town without a word and are never heard from again. How’s that love, may I ask?”

  Gabby warned her. “I won’t tell you anything if you talk, if you fight me while I try to get it out. It’s too difficult. It’s really difficult, all right?”

  “Okay.”

  Gabby looked into the embers of the fire.

  “The night I met Adrian I didn’t see anyone else that evening. My body was pulled in his direction wherever he happened to be. I’ve never felt anything like it. You have to believe me, Lexie. I’ve been with many men. I’m not sure why I never stay with them too long. Perhaps because I’ve never felt that.”

  She put her hand through her hair to get it off her face. “Adrian looked at me and I was sure he felt the same way. I didn’t want Richard to come near me. I called Adrian the next day when you were at work. He said he would meet me. That was it. He touched me and it was as if I’d never been touched before.”

  She gave a big sigh. “You finding us was an accident. We didn’t want to hurt you, ever. When I saw the look on your face, I didn’t know what to think. But I knew I didn’t want to be around you. I panicked and asked Adrian to leave with me. He didn’t want to at first. He said he needed to talk to you.”

  She looked at Lexie. “I convinced him to go. Finally he said yes, because we didn’t know what else to do.”

  She sounded weary. “It was everything I wanted. It was everything I dreamed of. But then, little by little, he got quiet. Except on the subject of you. He said how beautiful you were and how you felt like home. He felt such guilt over you.”

  She looked at the fireplace. “I didn’t know how to fight that. He wanted me and then he didn’t. He was with me, but he wasn’t. He’d wander for hours alone. I asked him what was wrong and he said ‘nothing.’ One night he started to cry. He couldn’t explain why. He couldn’t get it out. He’d have nightmares.”

  Gabby rested her forehead against her cold glass. “I tried to help him, but he wouldn’t let me. Finally he said he had to go away and figure out why he hurts the people he loves, why he always leaves. He meant you. The only man I’ve ever loved loves you.”

  Lexie sat across from her and said nothing.

  Gabby looked so sad. “I’m sorry, Lexie. For everything.”

  “It doesn’t matter anymore.”

  “Yes, it does. I thought he was your roommate. Nothing more. I wouldn’t have hurt you like that if I’d known. I want you to believe me.”

  “I do. I just don’t believe the rest of it.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t believe he loved me.”r />
  “He did. I know he did. You didn’t see his face when he talked about you.”

  “Listen,” Lexie said, “a man you say loves me left you a long time ago. Where’s he been? He didn’t come here. He’s never tried to get in touch with me. Does that sound like a man who loves me?”

  Gabby didn’t say anything at first. Then she agreed. “It doesn’t make sense, does it? I can’t explain it, but I know what I know. He had something inside that ate him alive. I was helpless to do anything. He wouldn’t let me in.”

  Lexie nodded. “I told Beth I thought he was in trouble. Dad talked about it the night before he died. He said Adrian was lost, that something was wrong.”

  “This is great, isn’t it?” Gabby said. “We both love a man who’s disappeared, and we don’t know why.”

  It was the wine that made Lexie talk. “He hasn’t completely disappeared.”

  Gabby gave her a look. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean I saw him in May.”

  She was shocked. “My God. Where?”

  “In Montreal.”

  “Why were you in Montreal?”

  “It doesn’t matter. The fact is I saw him.”

  “Did he see you?”

  “At first he didn’t, but then I think he recognized me.” Lexie told her what happened.

  Gabby was incredulous. “Why wouldn’t he call out to you? I don’t understand.”

  Lexie suddenly knew she wouldn’t say anything about the little girl. The only explanation she had come to was that Adrian had a family, and she didn’t want Gabby to know. What was the point? She’d been hurt enough.

  Gabby was still trying to figure it out. “You should’ve tried to talk to him. Why did you run?”

  “I didn’t know what to do. I pushed Josh into the car so fast, I didn’t know I was in until we started to move.” She was tired and didn’t want to talk about it anymore. “Let’s go to bed, Gabby. I’ve had it.” She nudged her head towards the staircase.

  “You’re right, it’s been a long night.” Gabby got up and followed Lexie upstairs. They looked in on Josh for a minute. Lexie rubbed her hand on his head.