Darlene lowered her eyes. “I’m a widow.”
Daddy had been nodding at his place, his head hanging so low it was in danger of crashing into his plate. Suddenly, he perked up. “Darlene has two children. Deirdre is twenty-eight, three years older than Darryl.”
Darlene speared a cucumber with her fork. “My first husband died when Deirdre was eleven.”
Georgina touched her arm. “I’m sorry.”
“It was a long time ago.”
Opposite Daddy at the head of the table, Ruth sat glowering like a malevolent Buddha, her eyes like slits. I glared back at her, willing her to keep her mouth clamped shut before something rude tumbled out. So, the glamorous Darlene had been married at least twice. But, as much as I wanted details about Darlene’s background, for the sake of family harmony I swallowed my questions, even though I was in danger of getting an ulcer from all the nervous acid and tomato sauce churning around in my stomach.
Thankfully, Emily changed the subject, telling us all about New Life Spa in Virginia where Dante had already begun work. “It’s so la-de-dah,” she spoke directly to Darlene, “that you need to make an appointment years ahead of time.”
“Like Greenbrier?”
“You’ve been to Greenbrier?”
“Once,” Darlene said. “In another life.”
Emily studied Darlene curiously, as if waiting for her to elaborate, but when the seconds lengthened and there was nothing more, she said, “It’s sort of like Greenbrier, but way up in the Blue Ridge near Front Royal.”
“Does the spa provide housing?” Scott wanted to know. Typical. He’s an accountant.
Emily shook her head. “I wish! No, we’ve been house-hunting. Fortunately, New Life pays well enough that we’ll actually be able to afford a small house, if we stay outside the Washington metropolitan area.”
Darlene twirled her fork idly in Ruth’s impromptu culinary masterpiece. Apparently she didn’t like the pasta parmesan, either, because there was a mound of it still on her plate. “Are you going to work?” She smiled at Emily. “Outside the home, I mean.”
Emily grinned fondly at Chloe who perched next to her in a high chair, calmly squeezing warm French bread between her fingers, making sure it was thoroughly dead before licking what was left of it off her knuckles. “No. Dante and I plan to homeschool our children.”
This was news to me, but clearly not to Paul, who smiled benignly at his daughter across the table. Or perhaps he had retreated from the battlefield and was mentally far, far away, working on some theorem. Either way, we would discuss this homeschooling nonsense later.
“I sent Darryl and Deirdre to Catholic schools,” Darlene said. “It was all I could afford.”
I had decided that the conversation was going nowhere and had shanghaied Georgina to help me clear the table when Daddy gazed at Darlene, his eyelids at half mast. “Poor Darlene. She’s lost three husbands.”
I nearly dropped the dirty dishes I had been balancing, plate upon plate.
“It’s still hard to talk about.” Darlene bowed her head. Emily skillfully steered the conversation back to the more happy topic of Darlene’s children. Between trips to the kitchen I learned that Deirdre was a graduate student in biology at the University of Maryland and lived in a condo in Bowie.
After a few moments, Ruth joined us at the kitchen sink. “She’s lost three husbands? How careless of her!”
Georgina arranged a row of salad bowls on the top rack of the dishwasher. “Well, it’s not exactly her fault, is it?”
“How do we know?”
“Ruth!” My sister had been watching too many reruns of Murder, She Wrote.
“I’d give my eyeteeth to know what happened to them.”
“Why don’t you just ask?”
Ruth gave me an Oh, Sure look. “She’s after his money. I just know it.”
“You don’t know anything of the kind,” I said. “Did you see the car she’s driving?”
Ruth shook her head.
“A Porsche.”
Georgina, who didn’t have a car of her own, whistled. “They don’t come in Cracker Jack boxes, do they?”
“No, ma’am.” I tapped Ruth’s cheek lightly. “She could have inherited tons of money from her former husbands, sweetie. Maybe she really loves Daddy.”
If we had been taping a TV ad, Ruth’s explosive Ha! would have shattered the wineglass she held. “You realize, don’t you, my dears,” she drawled, “that if Daddy marries That Person and he dies, she’ll get everything. Grandmother’s furniture. Mother’s jewelry. This house. His car. Everything.”
Georgina leaned against the kitchen table. “Don’t be silly, Ruth. There’d be a will!”
I had to agree with Georgina. Daddy loved his family to distraction. He would never enter into a marriage without taking us, and his grandchildren, into consideration. “There’d be a prenup,” I stated with confidence.
Ruth wasn’t swayed. “Once he gets into the clutches of that hussy, absolutely nothing would surprise me.”
“Don’t you think you’re being just a wee bit premature?” Georgina chided. “They’ve only just met and you already have them walking down the aisle.”
“Georgina, dear, did you look at her?”
Georgina nodded.
Ruth upended her wineglass into the dishwasher. “I rest my case.”
But during dessert—Georgina’s homemade deep-dish apple pie, warm from the oven, over which Darlene gushed her approval—Ruth melted a bit around the edges, like a scoop of ice cream à la mode, softening enough to ask Darlene where she had bought her sweater and making it sound as if she really cared.
Unfortunately, Darlene seemed preprogrammed to blow it. “You know, George,” she said as we rose to leave the table, “if you put up a chair rail, you wouldn’t have all those scuff marks on the wallpaper.” She touched the paper, a beige silk floral that Mom and Dad had selected and hung themselves only weeks before Mother had been rushed to the hospital. Darlene leaned toward my father and said, sotto voce, but just loud enough for Ruth and me to hear, “If I ever move in, this ugly wallpaper will have to go.”
Beside me, Ruth stiffened dangerously. I yanked her through the door into the kitchen just in the nick of time. Whether Ruth dropped or threw the dessert plate, I’ll never know, but it hit the baseboard near the dishwasher, splashing melted ice cream all over my mother’s hand-braided rug. “How dare she!” she raged. “That’s it! I’m out of here! It’s high time I found a place of my own.” Her face was an alarming shade of red. “I’ve been nothing more than an unpaid servant ever since Mother died.”
“Ruth …”
She shook off my restraining hand and took a step toward the back door. “Forget it, Hannah.” I could tell Ruth was itching to pack her bags and get out of there. Right away. This minute. Slam the door and leave us all standing there, gaping, with dirty dishes piled sky high in the sink.
I folded Ruth into my arms. It was like hugging a marble column. “Cool it, Ruth,” I whispered against her ear. “If you run out on him now, it’ll leave the house wide open for Darlene to move right in.”
Ruth began to tremble. “I’m going to kill her,” she muttered.
I increased pressure on my sister’s back, squeezing hard until the trembling stopped. “OK now?”
Ruth nodded.
“Ready to go back in there?” I pointed toward the dining room.
“Maybe.”
With my hand against the small of her back, I urged Ruth into the dining room. Except for the dirty dishes, the room was now empty. We followed Daddy’s deep baritone into the living room where we found him seated next to Darlene on the sofa. Georgina sat in Mother’s chair, thank goodness; if Darlene had taken it, Ruth would surely have gone ballistic. I perched on the arm of the love seat next to Paul while Ruth chose to stand, lounging against the doorframe.
We had interrupted something.
Daddy looked at me. “Hannah, I’ve decided to move in with Darlen
e.”
No wonder everyone was sitting there stiff as statues. “But …” Ruth began.
Darlene raised a hand. “He’s not going to stay, girls. We’ve talked it over. He’s just here to pick up his shaving gear.”
“Daddy?” Ruth was blinking rapidly, close to tears.
“It’s all settled.” Darlene reached over and took my father’s hand, drawing it into her lap. No one spoke for several moments. The clock on the mantel ticked as loudly as the telltale heart.
Ruth turned on our father. “Can’t you talk? Does she talk for you now?”
Daddy sank back into the cushions. He looked like a scolded puppy—sad, confused, and a little frightened. “I have to live my own life.”
“I don’t believe this! After all I’ve—” Ruth’s mouth snapped shut.
“Ruth, I love you. And I appreciate everything you’ve done, I really do. But it’s time for me to do what I want for a change.”
“But you’re not even married!” Georgina protested. “It’s not right!”
Darlene gazed serenely at our father. “I think somebody over seventy can live where and with whomever he wants.”
“Georgina’s right,” Ruth said. “It’s a sin, Daddy. Go ahead and ask her. Ask Darlene. What’s her precious pope going to say?”
I stared in wonder. Since when did Ruth, our New Age flower child, care about religion? I was getting dizzy from the verbal Ping-Pong.
Darlene’s head snapped around, taking in each one of us in turn. “You don’t like me. None of you does.” Her voice broke. “You’re all against me.”
Daddy wrapped a solicitous arm around his suffering girlfriend.
“To be real honest,” Georgina commented, “we don’t know very much about you.”
“So, why are you treating me like … like dirt?”
“Don’t be silly,” Georgina soothed. “We’ve only seen you once before. How can you possibly say that?”
“I sense the coldness. What is it?” She looked directly at Ruth. “Do you think I’m a gold digger or something?”
“You said it, I didn’t.”
Darlene, her cheeks as pink as her sweater, sprang to her feet and advanced toward my sister. “Ruth, I’ve tried so hard to be patient with you, to make allowances for how you must feel about this house and about your mother, but …”
“But what, Darlene?”
“Well, I hate to say it, but you’re acting like a selfish brat!”
Ruth stepped aside deftly, turning to Daddy who was bent over, staring at his shoes. “Are you just going to sit there and let her talk to me like that?”
Daddy didn’t answer.
Darlene grasped the back of a chair, the ring on her finger strangling the plump flesh, her knuckles white. Anger simmered in the dry green eyes that were directed at Ruth. “You know what your problem is?” Her voice dripped venom.
Ruth interrupted before Darlene could finish. “I think I’m looking at it.” Ruth traded gaze for steady gaze.
Darlene sucked both thin red lips into her mouth.
Ruth, almost regal in her rage, faced our father in triumph. When Daddy looked away, she turned on Darlene. “Bitch!” And she spun on her toe and sailed out of the room.
No one spoke. In the deafening silence I could hear above the pounding of my own heart Daddy’s labored breathing. I felt as if the world had slipped, violently and dangerously like tectonic plates in the San Andreas fault. Only a few seconds had passed, yet it seemed that a gap had opened in the living room floor; a wide gulf now separated us from our father. I might reach out across the yawning crevice but Daddy, now standing stiffly next to Darlene, was slipping farther and farther away.
After this unfortunate evening I hoped Daddy would see what a terrible person Darlene was, that he’d escort her down the drive to her car and we’d never see her again.
Wrong. Wrong. And wrong again.
chapter
4
One thing’s for sure. Ruth is her father’s child. While she maintained an off-again-on-again relationship with a local real estate agent and occasionally dragged me along on halfhearted house-hunting expeditions to look at South River Colony condos or Eastport fixer-uppers, Daddy apparently bought a spare can of shaving cream and a second toothbrush and was blowing hot and cold about moving in permanently with Darlene.
As often as not, Daddy would be home for dinner and Ruth, though exhausted from a day behind the counter at Mother Earth would, more often than not, be home to cook it for him.
We rarely saw Darlene.
Ruth counted every dinner served at home a major victory in her silent tug of war with the widow Darlene over our father. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to see him happy, even remarried—someday. It was his choice of a running mate that was giving her fits. If Daddy had put an ad in the paper for someone the exact opposite of our mother, she said, and if Darlene had applied, she’d have been the perfect candidate. We couldn’t imagine what he saw in the woman.
“Isn’t that obvious?” Paul said one evening two weeks before Christmas. He stood on a ladder, carefully positioning a crystal star on top of our Christmas tree, a plump, nine-foot spruce that graced the corner of the living room nearest the fireplace.
I hung a favorite blue glass horse on an upper branch where Chloe, who was playing at my feet with a strand of tinsel, couldn’t reach it. “It’s a guy thing, isn’t it?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Other than that, I mean.” I retrieved the tinsel which appeared to be heading for Chloe’s mouth and substituted her Tinky Winky doll.
Paul backed down the ladder, cocked his head to one side, and squinted up at the star. Satisfied, he turned to me and put his hands on my shoulders, his gray eyes unnaturally bright in the reflected candlelight. “Hannah, your father went straight from his mother—who cooked and cleaned and washed his clothes—to the Naval Academy—which told him when to go to bed and when to get up, even what to wear and what to think—to the Navy itself and marriage to your mother. Poor guy’s never sown any wild oats. Maybe it’s time.”
“I just don’t want him taken advantage of.”
“You don’t think he can look after himself?”
“No, I don’t. He’s not thinking with his head, Paul. Mr. Happy’s in control here.”
Paul laughed and pinched my cheek. “He usually is.”
“You’re impossible!” I thought he was going to hug me, but I was holding a gilded angel with wings of delicate filigree and I was afraid he’d crush it. “Here,” I said, handing him the angel. “See if you can’t hang this out of harm’s way.”
Balancing on the ladder, Paul placed the angel on an upper branch, carefully facing her into the room. We’d bought her together for our first Christmas in Ohio more than twenty-five years ago. The only other decorations we could afford for that teeny, tiny tree had been a garland of popcorn, strung together with a needle and thread during an episode of Star Trek, and a box of colorful glass balls from the five-and-ten. We still had the glass balls, nestled in an egg carton, waiting to be hung.
I was reaching for a striped ball when Emily appeared in the doorway between the living and dining rooms, drying her hands on her jeans. “How’s my girl?”
Chloe’s face radiated joy at the appearance of her mother. She held out Tinky Winky, dripping with drool, for Emily’s inspection. “Dah dah dah.”
“Little ingrate,” Emily said cheerfully. She swung Chloe into her arms and, using the tail of her linen shirt, wiped the baby’s chin dry. “Bear her, feed her, change her diapers, and read her stories and the first word out of her mouth is dah.” Emily boosted her daughter over her shoulder and with a firm grip on her ankles, slid Chloe down her back like Santa’s sack. Emily jiggled her gently up and down until the little girl was convulsed with giggles. “Bath and beddie-bye and Goodnight Moon for you, sweetie pie!” She turned to smile at me. “I’ll be back to help with the tree in a bit, OK?” Emily gazed wistfully at the boxes of decoratio
ns and sighed. “Speaking of Dah …” She swiveled her head around and spoke directly to Chloe’s laughing pink face. “I wish your father could be here to help with the decorating.”
Paul laid another log on the fire. “I realize the rich and famous need to be pummeled into shape for the holidays, but doesn’t Dante get time off for Christmas?”
“Like, sure. Three whole days.” Emily stiffened her back and thrust out her chin. “Zoh, ven I tell you ve haf mudge respect for zee family here at New Life, you vill zoh vant to verk vith us.” She giggled. “But it will be great once we find a place of our own, won’t it, Chloe? Then Daddy will come home to us at night.”
Studying my daughter’s face, roundly cherubic in the candlelight, I found myself softening toward my son-in-law. Clearly he cherished Emily and adored his daughter. He was also turning out to be a good provider. While he toiled on a Virginia mountaintop, working his fingers to blunted nubs, I worked to overcome my prejudices and get over the fact that Dante’s degree came from the Rolf Institute in Boulder, Colorado, and not from Haverford.
Paul adjusted the damper in the fireplace. In the gentle draft the ornaments on the tree twinkled. With tears pricking the corners of my eyes I watched a sleigh I had made for my father out of Popsicle sticks revolve into view. I had been only eight when I painted it fire-engine red and stenciled Daddy on the slats in white. That treasure should have hung on the tree at my parents’ house, but Daddy had declared that he didn’t want a tree this year—it was too painful a reminder of Mother—so he’d hauled the decorations out of the attic and begged us to take the boxes away.
Ruth’s box had ended up at my house. Any minute she’d be showing up to help decorate. I prayed she wouldn’t complain about where we’d put the tree. If I knew Ruth, she’d point out that there was better feng shui between the two front windows. Alas, the ancient Chinese hadn’t been around in 1856 to advise our builders of that fact, or instruct them to install an electrical outlet on the wall there, so if I had anything to say about it, our tree was staying put.
Occasion of Revenge Page 4
