The House On Hope Street

by Steel, Danielle

  They sat down to their Thanksgiving meal at five o’clock as they always did, and she said grace, as they bowed their heads. She thanked God for the many blessings they shared, the people at their table, and those who were absent, and specifically Jack. There was a long moment of silence after she said it, and Megan looked pointedly at Bill Webster. And then Liz said “Amen” and went out to the kitchen with Peter to get the turkey.

  Peter was seated at the head of the table, which reminded everyone again that things were different, and the new face seated next to Liz emphasized it even further.

  The bird itself was a splendid specimen, and Liz had cooked it to perfection. Carole was off for the weekend, and the girls had helped her make the stuffing. Rachel particularly liked to cook, and Jamie had helped them. But when Peter tried to carve, he proved to be hopelessly inept, and Liz had never been good at carving. Bill stepped to the head of the table with a smile.

  “Let me give you a hand, son,” he said amiably. He was enjoying the family scene around the table. It had been years since he’d celebrated a real Thanksgiving. He was always working. But his choice of words had run through Megan’s heart like a sword, and she spoke barely audibly but loud enough for Bill to hear her.

  “He’s not your son,” she said in a venomous tone. Bill looked surprised and glanced at Liz, and then turned to Megan.

  “I’m sorry, Megan. I didn’t mean to offend anyone.” There was total silence then as he carved the bird, and he was good at it. And as Liz handed out their full plates she chatted a little too much and a little too hard to compensate for the awkward moment. But by the time Bill sat down again, everyone had calmed down.

  The table was quieter than usual this year. It was their first Thanksgiving without their father, and everyone was aware that the agony of Christmas was coming.

  Bill asked if they’d done their Christmas shopping yet, and everyone looked mournful at the question. They were not an easy group to entertain, but eventually Jamie made them laugh at something he said, and Annie chimed in, and reminded them of the year that Dad had dropped the turkey on the kitchen floor while he was carving it, and no one had told Mom. She never knew it had slid halfway across the floor before she served it.

  Bill laughed along with them, and Liz poured him another glass of wine, and when they took the plates out to the kitchen and brought back the pies, Rachel said loudly that he drank too much, and Bill heard her.

  “It’s okay, Rachel, I’m not on call today,” he said with a warm smile, but she didn’t respond, and he went on talking to Jamie. Bill was certainly not drunk, but he’d had three glasses of wine by then and seemed comfortable and happy. He’d been talking to Jamie about football.

  “Dad hated football.” Megan added insult to injury, she was goading him, and they all knew it.

  “I’m sorry to hear that, Meg. It’s a great sport. I used to play in college.”

  “Dad said only morons and brutes play football,” she said then, stepping over the line, and her mother was quick to stop her.

  “Megan, that’s enough!”

  “Yes, it is, Mom!” She threw down her napkin and stood up with tears in her eyes. “Why does he have to be here with us? He’s not our father, he’s just your boyfriend.”

  The other children looked stunned, and Liz was shaking as she answered. “Bill’s our friend, and it’s Thanksgiving. That’s what Thanksgiving is about, friends joined around a table to give thanks, and to join hands in friendship.”

  “Is that what you do with him? ‘Join hands’? I’ll bet you do a lot more than that, and I’ll bet Daddy hates you for it,” she said, and then ran up the stairs to her room and slammed the door, as Peter leaned over and apologized for her. But one by one, Rachel and Annie left the table too, as Jamie helped himself to a slice of apple pie while no one was looking. It looked too good to waste, and no one else could think about eating.

  “So much for family holidays,” Bill said with a grim look, as Liz looked at him in devastation. She realized now that she had been ambitious in inviting him, and including him in the family wasn’t going to be as easy as he had hoped. In fact, she understood all too well now, it was going to be a nightmare.

  “I’ll go up and talk to her,” Peter said, looking embarrassed for all of them, and then to Bill, “I’m sorry about my sisters.”

  “Don’t worry about it. I understand.” But in fact, he didn’t. He was looking tense and grim when he glanced at Liz, dabbing at her eyes with her napkin.

  “I guess this is harder for them than I thought.”

  “It wasn’t exactly a picnic for me either, Liz,” he said bluntly. “The role of intruder isn’t one I wear very well, I’m afraid. They act like I’m an ax murderer, or as if I killed their father.” His ego was bruised, and his feelings had taken a beating at her children’s hands, and he had no one to take it out on but her. Everyone was angry at her. Bill, and three of her children. Only Jamie looked unconcerned as he kept on eating. There was no one else left at the table.

  “You have to understand how hard this is for them. It’s their first Thanksgiving without their father.”

  “I know that, Liz. But that’s not my fault.” He raised his voice to her as he said it, and Jamie looked at him in consternation.

  “No one said it was, but you’re here and he’s not. This is all my fault. I probably shouldn’t have asked you,” Liz said, still crying, as Jamie watched them in silence.

  “And what about next year? I’ll make sure to sign up for a seventy-two-hour stretch at the hospital over Thanksgiving. It’s obvious I won’t be welcome here, at least not till your kids leave home.” He was overwhelmed by his own anger.

  “Are you coming for Thanksgiving next year?” Jamie asked with interest.

  “I was planning to, but now I’m not so sure,” he snapped at the child and then hated himself for it. He reached out and touched Jamie’s hand, and lowered his voice again so he didn’t scare him. “I’m sorry … I’m just upset.”

  “Megan was rude to Mom,” Jamie said matter-of-factly. “And so was Annie. Don’t they like you?” He looked sad for his friend, and Liz saw Bill’s jaw tense when he answered.

  “I guess not. I guess that’s the crux of it, isn’t it?” He directed his question at Liz, who wanted desperately to reassure him. “I guess I’m persona non grata here, and I’m kidding myself if I think it’s ever going to be any different. As Megan said so succinctly at the beginning of the meal, I’m not their father, and I never will be.”

  “No one’s expecting you to be,” Liz said in the calmest voice she could muster. “All you have to be is their friend. No one’s expecting you to fill Jack’s shoes,” she said softly, fighting back her own tears, as he glowered at her.

  “Maybe I am, Liz. Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe I was deluding myself that I could be important to you, and to them, instead of just an interloper, always playing second best to him. What was it Megan said, ‘a brute and a moron’?”

  “She was just trying to provoke you.” Her loyalty was to her children, but to him too. It was a ghastly situation for her.

  “Well, she succeeded very nicely. In fact,” he stood up and put his napkin down on the table, “I think I’ll give you all some relief, and myself. I think it’s time for me to go back to work.”

  “I thought you weren’t working today,” she said, looking confused and upset. He had told her he was off for the holiday, which was how it had all started.

  “I think I’ll go back anyway. At least I know what I’m doing there. I think family scenes, particularly on holidays, aren’t my strong suit.” In truth, he had done fine, but the deck had been stacked against him, and he knew it. It had been a no-win situation right from the beginning. He looked at Liz from where he stood, and neither of them moved, but she knew that something terrible was happening, and they were both afraid to say it. “Thanks for dinner, Liz. I’ll call you.” And without another word, he walked out the front door and slammed it behin
d him, as she sat staring at it.

  Jamie looked up at her then, having finished his pie, and commented on the situation. “He forgot to say goodbye to me. Is he mad at me?”

  “No, sweetheart. He’s mad at me. Your sisters were very rude to him.”

  “Are you going to spank them?” She smiled at the question. She never had, and she wasn’t planning to start now at their age, but the suggestion was certainly tempting.

  “No, but someone should.”

  “Santa Claus is going to put coal in their stockings,” Jamie said with a solemn look, and Liz smiled sadly. Just thinking about Christmas made her shudder. It was the anniversary of Jack’s death, and she realized that under no circumstances could she include Bill in what they were doing. The Thanksgiving they had just experienced had taught her a painful lesson.

  She and Jamie cleared the rest of the table then, and afterwards she went upstairs to talk to her daughters. Peter was sitting with all of them, and it was obvious that Megan had been crying.

  “I hate him!” She spat at her mother, but Liz managed to stay calm in spite of the havoc she had caused. She knew what was behind it.

  “I don’t think you do, Meg. What’s to hate? He’s a nice man, even if he did play football in college. What you hate is the fact that your father’s gone. So do I. But there’s nothing we can do about it. And it’s not Bill’s fault. I shouldn’t have invited him to join us today, and I’m sorry.”

  Peter touched her arm with a gentle smile. He admired her so much, she was always straight with them, and he knew how much she loved them. She had been there for him in every possible way after his accident that summer. And he was sorry for her that their Thanksgiving had been such a disaster, and that Bill had been Megan’s scapegoat. Like Liz, he understood perfectly why it had happened. Better than Bill did. In his opinion, Bill had overreacted, and he said as much to his mother when he walked her back to her own room.

  “I’m not sure I blame him. The kids hit pretty hard, and he’s not used to that. He doesn’t have kids, he hasn’t been married in a long time. I think his feelings were hurt. He feels like he can’t measure up to your father.”

  “Give him time,” Peter smiled. “They’ll get used to him,” he said hopefully.

  “I hope so.”

  She lay on her bed in the dark for a while, in her brown velvet suit, with her shoes off, thinking about Jack, and Bill, and her children. It was a complicated situation, and she had her own grief and feelings to contend with. There was hardly room for them, she was always too busy dealing with other people. And as she lay there, she started to cry as she thought of her husband and how much she missed him. He had left a huge hole behind, and sometimes it seemed like there was no way to fill it. She loved Bill, but not the way she had loved her husband. At least not yet, but she thought she might someday. It would always be different because they were different people.

  The phone rang while she was still lying there in the dark, and she reached out a hand to answer it, without turning the light on. It was Bill, and he sounded stressed. He didn’t sound any better than he had when he left. In fact, he sounded slightly worse, but he said there was something he had to tell her.

  “What’s that?” she asked, with her eyes closed, still missing Jack, and feeling terrible about what had happened. She still felt as though she had Everest to climb, and she had been climbing for eleven months now.

  “I’m sorry, Liz. I can’t do this. I’ve thought about it, and I don’t know what happened to me. I think I went kind of crazy for a while. I met you and fell in love with you, and your family looks so wholesome from the outside, and you were so vulnerable, I just fell into it like a trap. But it’s not me, and I want out now.” Her eyes opened brusquely and she stared into the darkness as she listened.

  “What are you saying to me?” But she knew. He had already made it clear, she just didn’t want to hear it.

  “I’m saying that I made a mistake, and it’s over. I love you, and your kids are great. But I just can’t do it. Megan did us all a big favor today. It could have taken us months or even years to see it this clearly. I had blinding clarity after I left. I went running, and it all came clear to me. I was insane for a while, but now I’m not … Liz … I’m sorry … but it’s over.” She couldn’t even find words to say to him. She lay there feeling as though someone had hit her in the chest and knocked the wind out of her. She was speechless. And all she could think of were the waves of panic that had engulfed her when Jack died. And now she was losing Bill. She had barely had time to get used to him, to let him into her heart, but he was lodged there in spite of it, and now he was prying himself out. It was over. In one fell swoop, she had lost him. Thank you, Megan.

  “Don’t you want to think about this for a while?” She tried to reason with him, as she would have one of her children. “You’re panicking, and your feelings are hurt. They’ll get used to you, you know. All they need is time.”

  “There’s no point, Liz. This isn’t what I want. I see that clearly now. We should both be grateful.” But she wasn’t grateful. She was devastated. “I’ll call in a few days to see how you are. I’m sorry, I really am, but this is the way it was meant to be. I know it.” How did he know? And what did he know? Two of her daughters had been rude to him, but they were just children, and they missed their father.

  “Why don’t you just calm down, and we’ll talk about it later.”

  “There’s nothing to talk about.” He sounded panicked.

  “I’m out, Liz. I told you, it’s over. You have to understand that.” Why? Why did she have to understand everyone else’s bad behavior? Why did she have to make excuses for him and her children? Why did she have to be the one who lost every time? They had lost too, but she had lost even more than they had.

  “I love you,” she said clearly, as tears began to choke her.

  “You’ll get over it. So will I. I don’t need another divorce, and you don’t need another headache. You have enough without me. Just tell the kids to relax, the moron is out of their lives. They can celebrate now.” He sounded bitter and angry and like a petulant child, but she couldn’t reach him.

  “Jamie loves you, and so does Peter. What am I supposed to tell them?”

  “That we made a mistake, and we realized it before it was too late. It’ll be a relief to them, and to us too one day. I’m going to hang up now, Liz. There’s nothing left to say. Good-bye.” He said it with such finality that it took her breath away, and he hung up before she could even answer.

  She lay holding the receiver in the dark, and she was crying when she set it down. She couldn’t believe what had just happened. Just like that. He’d had “blinding” clarity and it was over. “Blinding” seemed to be the operative word here. And she wanted to shake him. But she wasn’t even angry at him, she was just devastated. And this time, when she cried herself to sleep that night, it was for Bill, and not her husband.

  The House On Hope Street

  Chapter 11

  Liz dragged herself through the next few days, after the Thanksgiving fiasco, and she didn’t say anything to anyone about Bill walking out on her after Thanksgiving, not even to Victoria when they spoke on the phone, and least of all to her mother, who would have had a lot to say about it. Her mother had told her beforehand that it was a mistake to invite him to Thanksgiving. And Liz had just thought she was jealous, because she hadn’t invited her to come out, although they had talked about her coming for Christmas.

  But after Thanksgiving, Liz hadn’t looked as bad in months. She was sad and tired, and irritable with the children. At first, both Carole and Jean thought it was the agony of the upcoming holidays, and the memories they evoked. But it was Jean who finally understood what had happened. Bill had stopped calling.

  “Did you two have a fight?” she asked gingerly, when Liz came back from court the week after Thanksgiving.

  Liz looked up at her with a grim expression, and there were dark circles under her eyes. She ha
d lost weight in the past few days, and she was sleeping even less than she had been. “He walked out on me. The kids treated him like shit at Thanksgiving, or at least Megan and Annie did. And it was too much for him. They were incredibly rude actually, but apparently that was all he needed to convince him that it was all a big mistake, and our romance was the result of temporary insanity. Two weeks ago, he asked me to marry him on Valentine’s Day. But we never made it through Thanksgiving.”

  “Maybe he’s just panicked,” Jean said cautiously. She hadn’t seen Liz look that bad in months and it worried her. She seemed desperately unhappy, and it hadn’t gone well for her in court that day. She had lost the motion, which just seemed to add to her depression. But the real issue was Bill and not the motion. “He’ll be back, Liz. Let him calm down for a few days.”

  “I don’t think so. I think he meant it.” And she was sure of it when she called him at the end of the week, and he didn’t return her call. And hating herself for it, she paged him. He called her back finally, after a few hours, and said he’d been tied up with an emergency, but his voice was distant and very chilly.

  “I just wanted to see if you were okay,” she said, trying to sound lighthearted, but he clearly had no interest in pursuing a conversation.

  “I’m fine, Liz. Thanks for the call. Look, I’m sorry, but I’m busy.”

  “Call me sometime.” She hated herself for sounding pathetic, but he was as direct as ever with her.

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea right now. We both need to lick our wounds and get over what happened.”

  “What did happen?” she asked, pressing him, and it was obvious he didn’t like it.