Lady in Waiting: A Novel

by Susan Meissner

  Leslie was the one who told me later to waste no time trying to imagine what Brad might have said to anyone that day. Chances are he said nothing.

  “Brad’s a quiet egghead who contemplates far more than he speaks. He always has been. That’s why you fell for him,” she told me. I’d called her two days after Brad left to tell her what had happened.

  “Don’t obsess about why he needs some time away, Jane,” she’d continued. “It’s not attractive, and it’s not why he fell for you.”

  “And how would you know why he fell for me?” In daring her to tell me, I realized, perhaps for the first time, that I’d wanted to know that since the day Brad proposed.

  She hadn’t even hesitated. “Because you were safe and demure and you had that elegant Audrey Hepburn look going on.”

  “Safe?” I didn’t know whether to feel insulted or complimented. “You’re saying he fell in love with me because I was safe?”

  “Yes, safe. Of course, safe. He was probably under the same pressure you were to find a good marriage partner before he left college. Where else would a nice-looking nerd like him and a demure woman like you meet a future spouse?”

  “I wasn’t under any pressure to marry anybody,” I’d exclaimed, but my face had already warmed with color. My parents told me the day I graduated from high school that college would be the best place for a shy girl like me to find a good husband. Pressure from my parents always felt like care before it felt like anything else.

  “Yes, you were,” she said.

  “Like you weren’t?” But I’d said it without conviction. My parents’ expectations for Leslie had been as heavy as the ones they had for me. But Leslie didn’t bend to pressure. And it was clear to me as we drove away in my father’s car that she also didn’t rely on my parents or anyone else to validate her choices. Or make them for her.

  And she never had.

  Leslie decided to reverse our plans and get ice cream first before going to see David Longmont. As we spooned ice cream into our mouths, she congratulated me for reminding our mother the only life she had the right to orchestrate was her own.

  I felt no sense of victory. I wanted instead to pull my cell phone out of my purse and call Mom and at least apologize.

  “Apologize for what?” Leslie was indignant.

  “I think I hurt her feelings.”

  “Well, she hurts yours all the time. Don’t you think she needs to know what that’s like from time to time?”

  “Yes, but she doesn’t mean to.”

  “What she means to do is call all the shots for you. You want her to keep doing that, by all means, call her up.”

  I poked at my ice cream.

  “Look. I’m sorry, Jane. The way she … It just makes me mad. It’s like they are still worried about how we make them look. It’s ridiculous. Drives me crazy.”

  I held my spoon in midair as Leslie’s words—words that I’d actually not considered before—fell about my ears. My parents were worried how the future of my marriage would reflect on them.

  On their choice for me.

  Brad.

  David Longmont peered at the ring through the thick lens of a magnifying glass strapped to his head like motorcycle goggles. Curly tufts of hair as white as cotton caressed the sides of the magnifier by his ears. His goatee moved up and down as he chewed a piece of spearmint gum.

  “Where again did your buyer find this?” His voice was soft like an FM disc jockey at 3 a.m.

  “She bought some boxes of books and dishes at a jumble sale in Wales. In Cardiff. The ring was hidden inside a 1662 prayer book.”

  “What’s a jumble sale?” Leslie asked.

  “It’s like a flea market or swap meet.”

  “But this isn’t a Welsh design,” David continued. “It looks English to me. And pre-Elizabethan.” David looked up at me. “It’s at least a hundred years older than 1662.”

  “Wow!” Leslie crowed, smiling wide.

  “Of course, you will want to have it dated by someone with more experience than me. But as near as I can tell, it’s an authentic mid-sixteenth-century piece.”

  “Cool!” Leslie said. “So how much is it worth?”

  David pushed the magnifier up on his head and handed the ring back to me. “Well, the gems are quality cuts, the sapphire is clear, the rubies are uniform in color, and the diamonds, though small, are uniformly faceted. I have a man’s signet ring from the same time period here in the shop that I wouldn’t let go for anything less than thirty-five hundred dollars. With yours, you have the age of the ring and the stones contributing to its value, so I am thinking at least six thousand. More, depending on whether you can find out who it belonged to.”

  “Holy cow …,” Leslie breathed.

  “What do you mean by ‘who it belonged to’?” I asked.

  David shrugged. “Well, if my signet ring belonged to someone like Oliver Cromwell, it would be worth more. I’m sure if this ring belonged to someone of titled nobility, that fact could increase its value.”

  “Do you think it might have belonged to someone of nobility?” I was afraid for some reason to put the ring back on my finger, and not just because of its monetary value. I reached into my purse for the black ring box.

  “Maybe,” David replied. “I’d say with that inscription, it’s most likely a betrothal or wedding gift. And it certainly is more ring than a commoner could have afforded. Commoners didn’t use Latin, so it would make sense that a highly educated man gave this to a highly educated woman.”

  “But how could a nobleman’s family lose track of it?” I asked. “I mean, I found it in a box of books that apparently had been forgotten for decades.”

  “Well, any number of things could have happened over the years. It could’ve been stolen or the family’s heirs could have fallen on hard times and sold it at some point. Hard to say.”

  “How would I begin to even figure out who it belonged to?”

  “Well, you could start with where your buyer friend found these boxes. And then start inquiring of experts in that time period.”

  “And maybe research aristocratic couples who were wed that year, where the bride’s name was Jane?” Leslie offered.

  David crossed his arms across his chest. “Well, I’m afraid that might be a dead end, going about it that way.”

  Something in the way he said these words pricked me. “How come?”

  “I wouldn’t assume the woman who was given this ring actually married the man who gave it to her.”

  Again, I sensed a deepening sadness, a thrusting into my soul.

  “Why not?” Leslie asked.

  “There are no signs that this ring has been worn. No signs at all on its underside. The engraving shows no evidence that flesh rubbed up against it.”

  “They never married?” Leslie sounded disappointed.

  “I’m just saying it looks like the woman who was given this ring didn’t wear it. And if she didn’t wear it, then something likely happened to her betrothal. Something came between her and the man who gave it to her. Maybe she refused him. Maybe he died before they could marry. Or maybe she did. Who knows?”

  The ring with my name on it felt warm in my hand after David’s handling and assessment.

  I slipped the ring into the tiny black velvet cloud and clasped the box shut.

  Fourteen

  It wasn’t until we arrived at my old high school that I found out the baseball game was more than just a pickup game between old friends. The class that graduated the year after me was having their twenty-fifth reunion that night, and it was their unofficial alumni game Todd was playing in. Todd’s cousin was in that class, and Todd played because they begged him to. Todd was the star pitcher back when they were all seniors and Todd was a junior.

  So instead of the spectators consisting of half a dozen wives and kids, the bleachers were full of people, young and old. There must have been close to a hundred people sitting in the stands and lined up in the shade in collapsible canvas c
hairs.

  “Crud. I guess we should’ve brought chairs,” Leslie said as we arrived at the field at the bottom of the sixth.

  My niece, Paige, stood up from the top row of the bleachers and waved to us, and Leslie and I made our way up, excusing our way past people. I gave my niece a quick hug and then said hello to my nephew. Bryce smiled in relief. No hugs from aunts in public when you are thirteen.

  “Lot of people here,” Leslie remarked, scanning the crowd.

  “There were more before,” Paige said. “Some people left already to get ready for their party tonight. I heard them talking about it.”

  Just then Todd was going up to bat. Leslie began to shout encouragement. Others cheering for the men on Todd’s team joined her.

  I leaned back against the bleacher rails behind me, and I felt my body mentally slide backward in time, back to when this school was my school, and I was on the brink of my adult life. I was dating Kyle then, and life was fairly simple. Kyle didn’t play baseball, but we had mutual friends who did. The last time I was at this field had been when Kyle and I were days away from graduating, and dating other people was far from either one of our thoughts. The bleachers were wooden back then; I was wearing a yellow eyelet sundress, and he and I shared a rainbow snow cone.

  Kyle was the first boy I ever kissed. The first boy whose last name I practiced writing during study hall; the first boy whose presence in a room made me feel anxious and alive.

  My parents liked Kyle, but I had the impression, even then, that they assumed my relationship with Kyle was a flimsy high school romance that would evaporate in time. It alarmed them when it didn’t, though I didn’t see it as alarm back then. Kyle was over to my house often, and I to his. His sister, Jenny, younger than us by just a year, became a good friend, and his mom taught me how to sew. His dad was just like Kyle, kind, but fun to be around, spontaneous, and always in the mood for adventure. They took me on their family vacation to Maine the summer between Kyle’s and my junior and senior year.

  When I came home from that trip, my parents sat me down in my bedroom and told me that I would soon be starting my last year of high school, applying to colleges, and charting a course for the rest of my life. My life choices were going to start to matter in ways they never had before. It was time to start thinking about what lay beyond high school.

  I remember thinking that I wasn’t too familiar with making life choices and that I just wanted to enjoy being a senior.

  They asked me then if I thought I would marry and have kids one day. I had blushed and said, “Well, sure.”

  “Then you might want to rethink your idea to go into hotel management,” Mom had said.

  That had been my dream job when I was seventeen, on the cusp of my last year at home. I wanted to own a fancy inn on Martha’s Vineyard and live like I was on vacation. I had already pictured Kyle at my side, taking care of all the physical aspects of the place. He was a whiz at building things and had already won ribbons at the state fair for construction projects he did in wood shop.

  “Why?” I’d asked.

  “Because you would never have any time off. That is the nature of hotel management. And the busiest time of the year for you would be in the summer, when your kids are out of school. You would never see them. They would basically have to grow up without you. You would regret it in the end, Jane.”

  “You really should consider majoring in education,” Dad had said. “You have excellent grades in every subject. You could easily become a teacher, Jane. A good one. And then you’d have your summers off. You could take those trips to the Vineyard and enjoy your family instead of being isolated from them.”

  “I guess,” I had said.

  “And don’t make any hasty decisions about marriage, Jane. You are so young. Who you marry will determine so much about how and where you spend the rest of your life. There is so much to consider. More than you know.”

  “I’m not … I …,” but I hadn’t been able to finish the sentence.

  “Think about where you want to be in five years. In ten years,” Dad had said. “The decisions you make today are going to determine where you will be. Trust me on this.”

  They never said Kyle’s name in that conversation. Not once. But my suitcase from Maine was still lying open and unpacked at my feet. I still had mosquito bites on my ankles from the trip.

  They knew Kyle was planning on going to vocational school, not college, and that he wanted to spend some time doing relief work in Africa and Asia before settling down to a construction job in the States. They were all for acts of benevolence. They were even supportive of Kyle’s wanting to go overseas to be a part of something grand.

  But they saw no place for me in that picture. At all.

  Later, after I had met Brad, I began to understand that they were actually happy Kyle had his eyes on Kenya a month before we graduated.

  They wanted Kyle as far away from me as possible.

  All during the last year of high school and especially the lazy summer weeks after graduation—before I left for Boston, and Kyle to Virginia—my parents subtly encouraged me to allow Kyle to follow his dreams. Not to make demands of him. And to consider my own future and study load.

  The week before we were to part, after Kyle picked me up from my last day at David Longmont’s store, I asked Kyle if he thought we should give ourselves the freedom to date other people.

  “Is that what you want?” he had said.

  “My parents think it’s a good idea. They said I need to let you follow your dreams. And that I need to follow mine.”

  Several long moments passed before he told me that maybe they were right.

  We didn’t call it breaking up. We called it letting go.

  And we had parted as friends. We called and wrote to each other off and on the first year. But Kyle’s letters became infrequent after he left for Africa.

  And then, of course, in my sophomore year at Boston, I met Brad, whom my parents welcomed with open arms.

  I lost touch with Kyle after that.

  He was still in Kenya the following summer when I married Brad. At my ten-year high-school reunion, I heard Kyle was in Nepal. At our twenty-year reunion, no one knew where Kyle was. I could barely remember what his voice sounded like.

  Todd hit a rocket into left field, and I was yanked out of my reverie. All around me people rose to their feet and began to yell. I stood also, but my cheering voice sounded fake in my ears.

  It suddenly seemed absurd to me that all the men on the field, and all of us in the bleachers, were acting as if time had reversed itself and we were all back in high school. It was as if no time had passed, as if we all hadn’t lived a quarter of a century since high school in the folds of our many choices.

  We could just pull out a baseball bat and a ball and make the past and everything about it simply evaporate. And pick up somehow where we left off.

  As if it were that simple. As if that’s what we really wanted.

  Fifteen

  Leslie was ecstatic about the necklace. She convinced me to let her open the gift before the other guests arrived. She and Todd and the kids were staying at Todd’s parents’ house across town, but she came back to our parents’ house to get ready for the party after the baseball game. We were in my old bedroom when she opened my present to her.

  “I totally love it,” she gushed. She floated over to the full-length mirror in her gauzy white strapless dress and pulled the necklace on over her head. It hung past her navel, just like I thought it would. She doubled the length, and the tassel-like pendant hung halfway down her chest. “It’s perfect. Where did you find it? Is it an antique?”

  “I got it in Philly a couple months ago. It’s Edwardian.”

  “Okay. What does that mean?”

  “King Edward was the son of Queen Victoria, so we’re talking turn of the century.”

  “So, that’s like, a hundred years old!” Her eyes widened. “Does that mean I have to keep it in a box?”

/>   “No. I want you to wear it.”

  She grinned, cinched the second loop around her neck, and grabbed the pendant, swinging it around like a flapper in the roaring twenties. “I love it, doll!”

  “I thought you would.”

  Leslie struck a pose in front of the mirror. “You should wear that ring at the party tonight. People will ask about it, and then you can tell them it’s from the Dark Ages, and all of Mom and Dad’s friends will start gasping for air and peppering them with questions about why on earth you are wearing it.”

  I laughed. “Not exactly the Dark Ages, Les. And I really don’t know if I should keep wearing it. I don’t even know if I should keep it.”

  “Of course you should keep it! It has your name on it!”

  “That doesn’t make it mine.”

  She walked over and stretched out on the bed next to me. “You bought it, Jane. That makes it yours.”

  “Well, I bought some books, and it just happened to be hidden inside one of them.”

  “So?”

  “I paid one hundred pounds for the books and dishes, and the ring is worth seven thousand dollars.”

  “Six. David said six.”

  “I think if the person whom Emma bought it from had the prayer book in their family, then—”

  Leslie sat up on the bed. “No, Jane. Don’t even go there. They sold that book fair and square. The book is obviously ancient, and they sold it anyway. That’s how much they care about old things. Don’t you even think of offering that ring back to them. I’ll never speak to you again if you do.”

  “Such nasty words from a birthday girl.”

  “I’m serious!” But she was smiling.

  I took the black box out of my purse and opened it. The ring glinted a hello to me. “I would like to try to find out whose it was, though.”