THE FALL

by Marie Force

  "Do yourself a favor, son, and don't marry a shameless flirt," Theo said. "You can't let your guard down for a minute."

  Ted smiled. "I'll try to remember that, Grampa." How he loved the two of them, and how he hurt when he thought of all the years he would have to get by without them. Would they live to see him married with children of his own? He thought of Caroline. Maybe.

  "How was the beach?" Tish asked, jolting Ted from his reverie.

  "Good. You should've come."

  "I had to nap." She patted her rounded belly. "Or I wouldn't have gotten through tonight."

  "Mom said you've been really tired."

  "That's what I get for being a pregnant old lady," she joked. She was thirty-five and had their father's hazel eyes and light brown hair that she wore in a cute pageboy.

  Ted ran a hand over her baby belly, covered tonight in a black maternity gown. "Don't shoot me for asking, but…"

  "Yes, I'm bigger than I should be for seven months," she said with a sigh. "Steven's mother waits until I'm already pregnant to tell me he was a twelve-pound baby. Can I sue her for withholding that information?"

  Ted laughed. "I would think so. Check with Parker. He can give you some advice on that."

  "You take your time having that big baby, Tish," Theo said. "The words 'great-grandfather' make me sound so old."

  "You are old, Theo," Lillian chimed in as she linked her arm with his. "But I still think you're cute."

  "Cute," he muttered.

  Hand-in-hand, Ted's parents came into the room. Mitzi was gorgeous in a navy gown, and her blue eyes danced with excitement. "Look at what your father gave me!" She held out her hand to show off a diamond anniversary band.

  "That's beautiful, Mom!" Tish said.

  "Very nice," Ted added. "Good job, Dad."

  Edward handed a box to his mother. "Something for the other bride."

  "Honey!" Lillian said. "You shouldn't have."

  "You're making me look bad, son," Theo grumbled.

  Lillian's gift was a diamond pin in the shape of a dolphin, her favorite animal. "Oh, it's lovely," she said with a kiss for her son. "Thank you."

  Mitzi helped Lillian put the pin on her dress and kissed her mother-in-law's cheek. "You look beautiful, Lil. The dress is perfect."

  "I have you to thank for that, honey."

  "Well, look at this handsome family," Smitty said as he came in with Caroline, Parker, Chip, and Elise, who had brought her camera.

  "How about a family portrait?" Elise asked.

  "That would be wonderful," Mitzi said. "Let's go out on the deck."

  Elise arranged the family so the sunset was in the background.

  "Where's Steven?" Mitzi asked, looking for her son-in-law.

  "I'll get him," Parker offered. He returned a few minutes later with a sheepish-looking Steven, who tugged on his tuxedo jacket as he joined them on the deck.

  "Sorry. I was watching the end of the Sox game."

  "Did they win?" Ted asked.

  "Sure did," Steven said, putting his arm around Tish for the photo.

  Caroline leaned against the porch rail, and Ted wanted to yell, "Wait! Stop! There's someone missing." But he swallowed the urge and smiled on command.

  "How about one with all the boys?" Mitzi asked.

  Parker and Chip stood on one side of the four Duffys while Smitty and Ted took the other side.

  Ted's parents and grandparents stepped out of the next photo. As he felt Parker's hand on one shoulder and Smitty's on the other, Ted thought of the many photos of the four of them that had been taken over the years. Would this be the last one?

  Judging by Caroline's pained expression, she wondered the same thing.

  Elise took another shot of Ted and Tish with their parents and then one with their grandparents before they moved to the tent to greet the first of their guests.

  Mitzi and Lillian had gone with a Polynesian theme in the tent, which was decorated with palm trees and tiki torches.

  "Wow," Ted heard Caroline say as they were greeted by the scent of lush flowers that adorned the top of every table.

  A lone musician in a festive Hawaiian shirt strummed a ukulele as guests began to filter into the tent. Waitresses wearing grass skirts circulated with hot hors d'oeuvres—or pupu as they were called in Hawaii. The large panels on the side of the tent facing the pond had been rolled up to maximize the view of the sunset and to allow in the warm summer breeze.

  "I think Mitzi and Lillian have finally topped themselves," Smitty said, awestruck.

  "It's beautiful," Elise agreed as she took more photos.

  Ted was directed to a table in the front of the room to dine with his family. He scanned the crowd in search of his friends and almost stopped breathing as he watched Smitty pluck a red hibiscus bloom from the arrangement on their table and tuck it into Caroline's hair. She smiled at him, and he leaned in to kiss her.

  "Son of a bitch," Ted whispered, his gut clenching with impotent, jealous rage.

  "Sweetheart?" Lillian rested her hand on his arm and glanced up at him with concern. "What is it?" She followed his eyes to where Smitty sat with his arm around Caroline.

  "Nothing." Ted shook it off and forced a smile for his grandmother. "Are you having a good time, Grandy?"

  "How long have you been in love with her?" Lillian asked.

  Ted blanched. "What? In love with who?"

  "Take a stroll with your old granny." She tugged at his arm to lead him to the open side of the tent.

  "Not now, Grandy," Ted said with a hint of desperation in his voice. "You can't leave your guests."

  "Your mother has everything under control, and dinner won't be served for another half hour."

  Realizing she wasn't going to take no for an answer, Ted escorted her from the tent. Mindful of her long skirt, he walked her slowly along the dirt path that led to shore.

  "Talk to me, honey," she said when they were a good distance from the tent. The air was filled with the distant sounds of laughter, the tinkle of crystal glasses, and the ukulele music. "What's going on?"

  "I don't know what you want me to say, Grandy." Ted worked at keeping his tone light and amused. "I'm not in love with anyone."

  Her eyes narrowed. "You're in love with Caroline."

  Shocked, he stopped and turned to her. "But how, I mean… How do you know?"

  "It's all over your face when you think no one's watching. But don't panic, I don't think anyone else has figured it out—at least not yet."

  Ted's jaw clenched with tension as he fixed his eyes on the pond.

  "Oh, honey." She put her arms around him and rested her head on his chest. "What are you going to do?"

  "I don't know," Ted whispered.

  "How does she feel?"

  "The same way I do, apparently," he said with a touch of awe over the still-new reality of it.

  Lillian gasped. "Then what's she doing with Smitty?"

  "She's going to end it with him after this weekend."

  "Poor Smitty," Lillian sighed. "I think your mother was right this morning when she said he has a bad case for her."

  "I keep hoping I'll find some clean way out where I can have her and still be friends with him, but so far I haven't had any luck with that."

  "I've waited so long to see you fall in love with the right girl and settle down. I'm so sorry it had to happen this way."

  "I am, too. You have no idea how sorry. But I'm not sorry I love her. I just … I never had any idea it could be like this."

  Lillian took his hands. "I'm going to tell you something about me that only your grandfather knows. Even your parents have never heard this." She took a deep breath and squeezed his hands as if to give both of them courage. "I was supposed to marry someone else."

  "Who?" Ted asked, astounded.

  "He was a family friend, someone I grew up with. We were very good friends, and I was perfectly content with the idea of marrying him until I met Theo at a dance at the university. After two hours wi
th him, I knew there was no way I could marry anyone else."

  Flabbergasted, Ted tried to imagine his grandmother as a young woman caught between two men. "What did you do?"

  "Well, at first I was afraid to say anything. The last thing I wanted was to disappoint my parents or cause them embarrassment with his parents who were their good friends. I was so sad about the pain I was going to cause a very nice young man who didn't deserve it. But the more time I spent with Theo, the more madly in love I was. Finally, I reached a point where I just couldn't hide how I felt any longer."

  "You told your parents?"

  She nodded, and Ted could tell by her expression that she had traveled back in time to that fateful moment. "Your grandfather came to the house, and we told them together. They were furious. My father screamed and yelled and told me I had made promises that I was going to keep. My mother, as I expected, was mostly worried about what everyone would think. Times were different then. Good girls didn't go around dumping lifelong friends for a man they met at a dance, even if he was a handsome medical school student."

  "Yet here we are celebrating your sixty-fifth anniversary. Clearly you made the right decision."

  "But at a terrible cost." She looked up at him with sadness in her eyes. "My parents never accepted Theo as a member of our family, and they hardly knew our boys. I made the right choice, but it was a choice, Ted. I chose Theo over my parents. I missed them every day for the rest of their lives, but I've never regretted for one minute that I chose him. He filled all the empty spaces."

  "That's such an amazing story. I knew from my dad that your parents were never really a part of his life, but I had no idea why."

  "Neither did he. Maybe now you can see why we were always such involved grandparents," she said with the twinkle returning to her eye.

  Ted chuckled. "Involved. Yes, that's a good way of putting it."

  "You understand why I told you this, don't you, sweetheart?"

  "Yes, I think I do." He kissed her cheek. "Thank you, Grandy."

  She reached for his face. "You're a kind and decent man, Ted Duffy. You have a difficult road ahead of you, but don't you think for one minute that loving this woman makes you a bad person or a bad friend. You've been a wonderful friend to Smitty for so many years, and eventually he'll understand that you never would've hurt him like this on purpose. He may be angry at first, but in his heart he'll have to know it wasn't intentional."

  "Our family is his family, Grandy. If he loses me, he loses all of you, too," Ted said, expressing a thought that had been weighing heavily on his mind.

  "Your mother and I have made him a part of our family, and that'll never change. I love him like one of my own, but I love you more, and I'll support you no matter what you choose to do. Don't you ever question that. You saved me after I lost my Tommy," she said, referring to her younger son who died in Vietnam. "When you were born you gave me a reason to live again, and I love you as much as it's possible to love anyone."

  Ted had heard that his whole life and had never doubted it was true, but hearing her say it always put a lump in his throat.

  "If she's the one for you, and she feels the same way about you, find a way to be with her. The rest will work itself out as it's meant to."

  "Even if it means I lose the three of them?"

  "She'll fill the empty spaces."

  He hugged her. "I love you, Grandy."

  "And I adore you. If you need someone to talk to, you know where I am, right?"

  "Always." He offered her his arm. "Shall we rejoin your party?"

  She tucked her hand into his elbow. "Lead the way."

  Chapter 14

  "Oh, there you two are," Mitzi said when Ted and Lillian returned to the tent. "We were just starting to worry."

  "We took a walk to watch the sunset," Lillian said with a private smile for Ted as he helped her into a chair at their table.

  "I heard my wife was seen leaving the tent with a young blond stud," Theo said, sliding into the seat next to Lillian. "I'm glad it was only you, Ted."

  Ted surprised his grandfather when he leaned over to kiss his cheek. "She's all yours, Grampa. I wouldn't dream of interfering with a match made in heaven." His grandmother winked at him as he took the seat on the other side of her.

  They dined on traditional Hawaiian luau fare that included avocado salad, beef and shrimp, rice, kalua pork, pineapple broiled in ginger, and vegetable kabobs.

  "This is outrageously good, Grandy," Ted said. "Who did you get to do it?"

  "An outfit out of Boston. We thought it would be fun."

  "It's fabulous." Ted watched his father get up to greet a late-arriving couple—his old friend and Ted's boss Martin Nickerson and his wife Jenny. Ed Duffy had been Martin's boss and mentor. When Ed retired, Martin became the chief of pediatric oncology and later hired Ted. He stood to shake Martin's hand.

  "So sorry we're late," Martin said. "The ferry was running behind."

  Mitzi squeezed Martin and Jenny into their table between Ted and Lillian and had dinner served to them.

  "It was good of you to come, Marty," Ted said.

  "We wouldn't miss a Mitzi and Lillian production. They've outdone themselves tonight."

  "I couldn't agree more."

  "I don't mean to talk shop, but I've been trying to get down to see you all week. You've been having a tough run of it lately."

  Ted's gut clenched at the reminder of the recent string of losses. "It hasn't been my best month."

  "You've been around this long enough by now to know we all go through these rough patches."

  "That doesn't make them any easier. Losing Joey was a particularly tough blow."

  "I'm sure you're taking good care of your people through it all," Martin said, sipping from his vodka martini.

  "I'm doing my best, but some of them are taking it hard."

  "To be expected. Listen, there's a three-day conference coming up at Sloan Kettering I'd like to send you to. It's personal development stuff about physicians dealing with loss and grief. I know you hate that crap, but in light of what's been going on—"

  Sloan Kettering was in New York City and so was Caroline. "I'll go," Ted said.

  Surprised, Martin studied him. "That was far too easy. I was prepared for all your arguments."

  Ted shrugged. "I could use a change of scenery."

  "All right then. I'll set it up."

  "When is it?"

  "In two weeks."

  "Marty, let Ted enjoy the party, will you?" his wife said, rolling her eyes at Ted.

  "Don't worry, dear. We're done."

  The toasting began right after dinner. Because he knew his mother expected it of him, Ted got up to take the microphone offered by the leader of the band that had been hired for dancing.

  When he had the attention of the guests, Ted said, "On behalf of all the Duffys, I want to thank you for joining us tonight for this very special occasion. Many of you were with us five years ago, but for those of you who weren't, I want to tell you a little about the two couples who raised my sister and me, and about two marriages that, in my opinion, set the gold standard for how marriage should be done.

  "Theo and Lillian met at a dance at Harvard University in the spring of 1941. Their wedding plans were interrupted on December 7, 1941 when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor." Ted recited the story he knew well but was still amazed to realize there had been so much more to it than he—or his father—had ever known.

  "They were married on December 9, and Theo joined the medical corps later that month. He was shipped off to the European theater, and Lillian didn't see him for three long years, during which time she worked as a volunteer for the Red Cross. Their son Edward Theodore Junior was born almost ten months to the day after Theo returned home from the war, and a second son, Thomas, was born three years later. Second Lieutenant Thomas Duffy was killed in Vietnam in 1968. After World War II, Theo completed his medical training and went on to a long and prestigious career as a pediatric onc
ologist in several Boston-area hospitals. Lillian is well known in Boston for her philanthropic work, especially on behalf of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute's Jimmy Fund Clinic, a cause that, as you all know, is near and dear to the Duffy family. Theo and Lillian retired in 1985 and now spend their time playing golf, traveling, and doting on their two grandchildren. And when I say doting, I mean doting," Ted said to laughter. "Soon they'll have a great-grandchild to ruin—I mean spoil."

  Theo shot him a scowl, but his eyes were full of amusement and sentiment.

  "Please join me in congratulating my grandparents, Theo and Lillian Duffy, on the occasion of their sixty-fifth anniversary." Ted led the thunderous applause that filled the tent.

  Theo stood and offered his wife an arm to escort her to the dance floor as the band launched into "The White Cliffs of Dover." Ted watched his elderly grandparents move slowly but smoothly around the dance floor and thought about what she had told him earlier. She had no regrets about the choices she had made, and Ted could only hope he would feel the same way when he looked back on his life.

  In that moment, he acknowledged that he was standing at a crossroads. The choices he made in the next few weeks and months were going to set the course for the rest of his life. He tuned back into the party when the guests applauded at the end of the song.

  Wearing big smiles, Theo and Lillian returned to their table.

  Ted stood to hug and kiss them both before he picked up the microphone again. "Our other guests of honor, my parents Ed and Mitzi Duffy, met in Washington, D.C., during a protest to end the war that later took his brother's life. Like his father before him, Ed was beginning his studies at Harvard Medical School. Mitzi was a junior at Bryn Mawr, and both were active in the student demonstrations that were a hallmark of the sixties. They were married in 1966 and settled in Boston where Ed followed his father into the family business. He retired as head of the pediatric oncology department at Children's Hospital Boston just a few years before he would have had to decide whether or not to hire yours truly." Ted paused when the guests laughed at his joke. "Like her mother-in-law, Mitzi devoted herself to her children and continues to be a tireless advocate on behalf of Dana-Farber and several other charitable causes in the Boston area. Ed and Mitzi will welcome their first grandchild in September. Please join Tish and me in congratulating our parents, Ed and Mitzi Duffy, as they celebrate their fortieth anniversary."