Keeping the peace at all costs wasn’t such a bad thing. It really wasn’t.
Finally, Bess had fallen asleep but had slept badly and woke with a headache that not even two cups of very strong coffee could alleviate.
The sound of someone approaching the kitchen caused Bess to clear her throat and sit up straight in her chair. It was Marta.
“There’s coffee,” Bess said unnecessarily, gesturing toward the row of pots on the counter. She felt a bit fearful. What if Marta wanted to continue her critical rant?
Marta poured herself a cup of the decaf and joined Bess at the island. “I want to apologize for my bad behavior last night,” she said promptly.
Bess noted how tired her friend looked. “Oh, it’s all right,” she said quickly.
Marta made a noise of impatience. “No, don’t just dismiss it. I mean, I’d like to be forgiven but you have a right to feel pissed off at me and a right to be given a very sincere apology.”
“Okay.” Bess took a sip of coffee before going on. “What is it you want to say?”
“I was in a really lousy mood, but I was out of line. I should have just gone down to the beach and walked it off rather than hang around and subject you and the others to my nastiness.”
“What was bothering you?” Bess asked, wondering if she really wanted to know. Yes, she thought. I do. And I don’t. Not if it’s going to sour what’s left of this reunion....
Marta turned slightly to face Bess. “Something back home was preying on my mind. One of my colleagues on the neighborhood watch committee seriously dropped the ball on hiring decent vendors for the end-of-summer party and now we’re stuck hiring lousy vendors and for a price far above what their services are worth.”
“Oh,” Bess said. The situation sounded annoying but not annoying enough to cause such a foul mood. Could Marta be lying?
“Mike took me to task last night,” Marta went on. “He was right, of course. I acted like an ass and I’m sorry. I don’t know what I can do or say to make it up to you.”
“It’s okay,” Bess said, with more conviction than she felt. “Really.”
“But I’m your friend,” Marta pressed. “I should have held my tongue. I probably shouldn’t even have been annoyed in the first place.” She laughed a bit shrilly. “I mean, why should I care about how strangers looked at our gang back in college?”
Or about how I see us now, Bess thought. “We can’t help what we feel,” she said automatically. And then she wondered how many times she had offered that clichéd sentiment as a way out to someone who had hurt or insulted her, when maybe what she should have said was, “You were wrong. I would like an apology.”
“But we can help what we say,” Marta pointed out. If she was stating the obvious Bess was still grateful for it. “Feelings come and go. Words tend to linger. I’m really sorry, Bess. And my timing couldn’t have been worse.”
The look of penitence on Marta’s face, the tone of real regret in her voice, decided Bess. “You’re forgiven,” she said sincerely. “Really.” Before she could offer to make Marta a hot breakfast, Nathan appeared in the entry to the kitchen. Marta shot to her feet as if she had been poked in the rear.
“I’m going to grab a shower,” she said; then she was gone.
“You okay?” Nathan asked, coming into the room and pouring himself a cup of coffee.
Bess nodded. “I guess,” she said quietly, concerned that Marta, possibly still in the hall, might overhear. “She apologized for her behavior last night and I believe she’s sorry. I’m just not so sure I believe the reason she gave for her ‘bad mood.’” Bess related the cause to Nathan; he didn’t buy the story, either.
“Whatever was behind her saying what she did about your take on the old gang,” Nathan went on, “at least she came to realize that it was unkind.”
So, Nathan had been listening to her after all last night. “She said Mike took her to task.” Bess smiled a bit. “I guess that’s part of being a couple. Calling each other on bad behavior.”
“Without being a scold or a cop,” Nathan added. “It’s one thing to offer constructive criticism, but it’s another to set oneself up as a morally superior know-it-all.”
Another thing to negotiate, Bess thought worriedly. Would she ever get marriage right?
“Want an English muffin?” Nathan asked. “There’s a brand-new jar of blueberry jam just waiting to be popped open.”
“Sure,” she said with a smile. “I love blueberry jam.”
Nathan plunked the new jar on the counter. “Have at it,” he said with a smile. “You deserve to enjoy what you love.”
Chapter 68
It was almost eleven o’clock. Marta and Mike were alone in their bedroom. Marta, already in her nightgown, was shaking out her T-shirts, refolding them, and laying them back in a drawer of the dresser. Mike was scrolling through his messages from the office.
Marta had spent the day largely on her own after apologizing to the others who had witnessed her bad behavior the night before. (She was particularly sorry that she had said what she had about motherhood being a thankless job, especially in front of Allison.) Hiding was in some ways easier than facing her friends, but in another way the isolation had only served to highlight her distress. And a million little things had gone wrong since morning, most of them while she had been doing something for someone else. No good deed ever went unpunished. Wasn’t that the old saw?
While sewing a button on Mike’s shirt she had stuck herself with the needle. She had thrown the shirt across the room before grudgingly retrieving it and completing the domestic task. Why couldn’t Mike learn to replace the buttons on his shirts? If he was going to be rough enough on his clothing to damage it he should be adult enough to take responsibility for the repairs!
When she had wandered into the kitchen mid-morning for a bottle of water she found a jar of marmalade uncovered, a fly sitting on the jar’s edge. The jar was sticky and when she went to the sink to wash her hands after cleaning the jar and putting it in the fridge, the water spurted out in a boiling torrent. Well, almost boiling. Marta had a red mark on her finger to prove it. The mark wouldn’t be there if people learned to pick up after themselves.
Not long after that she had offered to watch Thomas so that Chuck and Dean could get a nap; the baby had cried most of the night, keeping both men awake and watchful. (Thomas’s cries had woken Marta from a deep sleep, too. It had taken a fuzzy moment before she realized that the baby was not her responsibility.) The men had eagerly accepted Marta’s offer. “No one else offered their babysitting services,” Dean said. “Thanks, Marta.”
Marta was a mother. This is what mothers did. They volunteered to watch their friends’ baby and didn’t complain when the child threw up all over them. No, she had thought, as she cleaned the baby and rinsed her blouse, it was Mike she was annoyed with. It was Mike and his resistance to the idea of a vasectomy that had landed her in her current situation, forty-two, pregnant, and facing another lifetime—okay, not a lifetime but years—of servitude.
Marta was tired. She closed the dresser drawer and gasped. Mike had come up behind her. He began to gently rub her shoulders. This was followed by a nuzzle and a kiss on her neck. His message was clear.
The very last thing Marta wanted at that moment was to have sex. The very last thing. Why were his needs always so important? Why was he so selfish? Didn’t he even notice that she wasn’t in the mood, or did all he see when he looked at her was his possession, his sidekick, his little woman?
“I’m not in the mood, Mike,” she said flatly.
Mike did not reply; he was too busy kissing her, his hands holding her shoulders.
“Stop!” Marta cried, yanking out of his grasp and whirling to face him. “I said I don’t want to!”
Mike stepped back and held his hands in the air. “Okay. Sorry. You don’t have to yell.”
“Yeah,” Marta said raggedly. “Sometimes I do have to yell, otherwise no one hears me.”
“I can’t take any more,” Marta cried, heedless of her friends just down the hall.
“What do you mean?” Mike asked, his voice a deliberate whisper.
Marta sunk onto the edge of the bed and put her head in her hands. The truth was going to come out now, whether she wanted it to or not. She sighed, dropped her hands, and looked up at her husband. “I mean,” she said, “that I don’t want this baby.”
If Mike recoiled—and he did—so did Marta. The words sounded so brutal when spoken aloud. But the words were out now. There was no taking them back. She didn’t want to take them back.
The silence lengthened and grew heavy. “I don’t understand,” Mike said finally. “You’ve always loved being a mother. It’s what you’ve always wanted to do.”
“I do love it,” Marta agreed. “But I’ve realized that being a mother can’t be my forever-after. And by the time this baby is in middle school, and that’s another ten years or so, I’ll be in my fifties starting out.”
“What do you mean, starting out? Starting out where?” Suddenly, Mike blanched. “You’re not thinking of leaving me, are you?”
At that moment, Marta felt not an ounce of sympathy for her husband. “No, Mike,” she said with a twinge of mockery in her voice. “I’m not leaving you. This is not about you. This is about me. This is about me wanting . . . wanting something new, an intellectual challenge, a career . . .” Marta shook her head. “There are times lately when I regret not having gone to law school.”
“Do you want to go now?” Mike asked quickly. “It’s not too late. I’ll make it happen. Just say the word.”
“I don’t know,” Marta replied testily. She didn’t like it that Mike had co-opted her future. He would make it happen . . . Good old Mike, always trying to fix problems before taking the time to understand them! “Maybe. No, I don’t want to go to law school, but I do want to do something worthwhile, something that has nothing to do with . . . nothing to do with you or the kids.”
“I see,” Mike said.
Marta wasn’t at all sure he did see. To be fair, how could he?
“So,” he went on, “where do we go from here? I guess I should have . . . I should have gone to the doctor. I’m sorry.”
“Yes,” Marta said fiercely. “You should have. This whole mess is your fault!”
“Wait a minute. Mine? You were the one who said we could have sex using some other birth control method until . . .” Mike rubbed his forehead. “Look, if you had said no, I might not have been happy about it, but I would have accepted your decision. And I . . . and I would have gotten a vasectomy.”
Marta laughed. Would he have? “I wouldn’t have had to make a bad compromise if you had been man enough in the first place to agree to the vasectomy! You’re a selfish man, Mike. You always have been.” Was that what she had really meant to say? Marta wondered. Maybe.
“Selfish?” Mike said, shaking his head. “Everything I do is for the sake of you and the kids. And I don’t mind because I’m doing it so that my family is as safe and secure as I can make them in this insane world. Look, I’m not a saint. I make mistakes, lots of them. But I’ve never, not once, knowingly put my own needs before the needs of you and the kids.”
Marta could not deny this. She had misspoken badly when she called Mike a selfish man. He might have selfish moments—what person didn’t?—but he was fundamentally a selfless man. But an apology wouldn’t come to her lips. She looked away from Mike.
After a moment, he knelt by her side and reached for her hands. Marta let him take them, but they lay lifeless in his grip. “Why didn’t you tell me immediately that you were unhappy?” he asked. “Don’t you trust me? Did you think I was going to be angry with you for not being totally thrilled? I know having another baby won’t be easy for you. But did you expect me to be a mind reader?” Mike sighed. “So that’s why you didn’t want to tell the others about the pregnancy. You’d have to fake it with them, too.”
Still Marta found that she couldn’t speak. It was as if a perverse spirit was preventing her from communicating with her husband, from taking the all-important first step toward making things right again.
Suddenly, Mike let go of her hands and got to his feet. “Were you planning on keeping this a secret from me for the rest of your life?” he demanded, beginning to pace the room. “For the rest of our lives? Do you have so little respect for me?” Suddenly, he came to a stop and turned to face her. “Wait,” he said. “Have you told the others about the pregnancy, about how you’re so unhappy? Am I the topic of conversation in every other bedroom in this house tonight?”
“No one is talking about you, for God’s sake!” Marta cried. With effort, she took a deep breath and told herself to be calm, or at least to appear that way. “Sorry. I can’t seem to stop raising my voice. I’ve been silent for so long.”
“I haven’t kept you silent, Marta,” Mike protested. “I’ve never wanted you to be some mindless little appendage who just sits in the corner, nodding yes to whatever idiocy comes out of my mouth.”
No, she thought. She had been the one to allow her situation to render her silent.
“I haven’t said anything to anyone about the pregnancy or about what I’ve been feeling,” she told him. “What with Allison’s divorce looming and Bess’s wedding just around the corner, and Chuck dealing with his diagnosis . . .” Marta shook her head. “I didn’t want to add to my friends’ burdens.”
“They’re our friends, Marta. Not just yours. They mean as much to me as they do to you.”
Marta hadn’t been aware of her choice of words. “Of course,” she amended. “Our friends. The point is I hate to appear needy.”
“Even with me it seems.” Mike’s tone was bitter.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
Mike made no reply. Marta realized she felt frightened. She had never seen Mike so upset, not in this way. She had hurt him, badly. It was not a nice feeling, to be guilty of hurting someone you loved. Even if he had acted like a jerk. Even if . . .
Without another word, they both made their way into the bed. Mike turned off his bedside lamp, flipped to his side so that his back was facing Marta, and lay perfectly still. Even an hour later Marta couldn’t tell if he was asleep or awake. She lay there beside the man she had loved unreservedly for so many years, feeling absolutely alone. Absolutely miserable. And terribly frightened.
Chapter 69
Allison felt very cozy tucked into her own bed in her own room. It had taken her a long time after Chris’s desertion before she began to appreciate the pleasures of sleeping alone. There were moments now when she thought she might never allow anyone to spend the entire night next to her. Even in a queen bed like this one there was so much space in which to stretch out!
Sleep was rapidly approaching, but memories of the day just passed were still popping into her consciousness. Marta, for example, had apologized for her outburst the night before. It was a sincere apology. Allison had been tempted to ask Marta what was bothering her, but her gut told her that in Marta’s current mood she would resent the question.
Otherwise Allison had spent a pleasant day sketching the magnificently gnarled tree and napping on the lawn, where her new feline friend had joined her. He had even curled against her leg and allowed her to rest a hand on his furry, muscular back.
Allison yawned and shifted to her side. And it was then that she heard raised voices. That was definitely Marta’s voice and, yes, Mike’s as well. Allison shut her eyes, as if that would help block out the sound of anger. It was deeply unpleasant to be privy to an argument between two people you cared about. Something very unhappy was going on between Mike and Marta these days. Whatever it was, Allison sincerely hoped they could work it out before there was another divorce for Bess to worry about.
Please, she prayed fervently to whomever or whatever might be listening, don’t let Bess be hearing this fight.
Chapter 70
Nathan was asleep. Bess was not. She was thinking hard about the decision she had to make. To go with Nathan to Stockholm. To tell Nathan he would have to turn down the promotion and transfer. To let Nathan go to Stockholm on his own, and to spend the first two years of their marriage as a long-distance commuter couple. No. Not that.
Earlier, Bess had considered calling her mother to seek her advice. The idea had surprised her. Bess never turned to her mother for anything. In the end, she decided against making the call. She knew what her mother would say. “Do what makes you happy.” But would Mrs. Culpepper say that? Or would she say: “Your duty is to your husband.”
Bess sighed quietly. And that was when she heard the raised voices coming from down the hall. Allison was on her own, so it had to be Mike and Marta. Bess put her hands over her ears as the voices became louder and angrier. What could they be fighting about? What was so important that it couldn’t wait until they were in the privacy of their own home?
Please, Bess prayed fervently. Please, God, don’t let anything else bad happen to my friends.
Chapter 71
The sun was warm; the breeze slight but fresh; the stretch of beach spread out before her largely empty. Marta sat perched on a large rock at the top of the sand; it wasn’t the most comfortable seat, but it was solitary. Besides, Marta wasn’t sure she deserved comfort at the moment.
She and Mike had barely spoken to each other that morning and what they had said had been delivered in polite and measured tones. “You can use the bathroom first.” “Did you sleep all right?” “Fine, thanks. You?” “Fine.” Marta knew that Mike was hurt and she hated herself for having hurt him. She had underestimated him badly. She should have told him her true feelings about the pregnancy immediately. Not to have done so was an insult. And it was cowardly. Maybe together they could have tackled the situation and come to a happier state than that in which they found themselves now. When you were married—legally or not—two minds and hearts were always better than one. They had to be.
A Wedding on the Beach Page 28
