Jill Churchill: A Farewell to Yarns

“No, but apparently Fiona can. You're sounding like the press. Remember the flap when it was revealed that Richie'd been married—?"

“Of course! Who could forget? Every girl in America thought she'd been personally jilted.”

“And then the reporters just about crucified Fiona when she remarried. As if it was really anybody's business."

“I'd forgotten that, but I can see why. It's sort of like an ex-president running for county dogcatcher.”

They were silent for a few moments, then Jane spoke again. "It makes me sad. If I'd been married to Richie Divine, I'd have never considered remarriage."

“Stay a widow, forever worshipping at the shrine? Is that how you feel about your husband?"

“Lord, no! But Steve was hardly Richie Divine."

“Maybe Richie Divine wasn't either.”

“What in the world does that mean?"

“I'm not sure," Shelley said. "It's just that he might not have been so 'divine' to live with. To be young and idolized might have made him an egotistical bastard at home. It would have been odd if it didn't. And it can't be fun living in the glare of public scrutiny—bodyguards everywhere, not being able to just run to the mall and shop or do anything like a normal person. You remember last year when Paul had that convention of his franchisers?"

“Yes?"

“Well, I got a little taste of very minor celebrity at the convention. Everybody was either toadying to me or resenting me because I was the boss's wife. It was creepy. I can see how Fiona's glad to be out of it."

“I guess so, but why pick somebody like Albert Howard, the ultimate nerd?"

“Maybe he's terrific in bed," Shelley speculated.

“Hmmmm—" Jane was sorry the subject had come up. Her imagination in such matters, after nearly a year of widowhood and celibacy, was beginning to revive like a desert plant suddenly watered.

“Forget hormones," Shelley advised. "Let's figure out how to get rid of your houseguests.”

SIX

It was too short a ride to come up with any clear plan. They discussed and discarded murder, arson, bribery, rumors of epidemic, and outright rudeness. Shelley dropped Jane at the sidewalk and tore off to fulfill her school obligation.

Jane had just gotten in the house when the Jaguar was delivered. Jane was amazed at the way things worked for Phyllis. Perhaps there was something in her credit card number that tipped merchants off that they'd hooked a big one. The man who delivered her car all but swept off a cape and offered to let her walk on it.

Within minutes of the car's delivery, Bobby was gone, without apology, explanation, or indication of his anticipated return schedule. Phyllis gave him a handful of money and watched him screech away. A sickeningly fond look remained on her face long after he disappeared. Jane thought the odds were pretty good that he'd wreck the Jag by evening.

Phyllis went to her room to finish unpacking. Jane noticed that it was only one o'clock. This had already seemed a very long day, and it wasn't half done yet. She sat down at the kitchen table and smoked another cigarette. How many was that today? Far too many. What was she going to do with these people?

“Are you hungry?" she asked Phyllis when she came down from her room. She'd changed into jeans and a plaid shirt with a red sweater over it. Common enough outfit, but the jeans were so perfectly fitted and faded that Jane was certain they'd cost a fortune, and the sweater was probably hand knit from certifiably virgin Scottish sheep.

“Starving," Phyllis answered.

Jane grabbed a package of lunch meat, a head of lettuce, and some mayonnaise from the refrigerator and pulled out a loaf of whole wheat bread that didn't have any green fuzzy spots on it yet. Phyllis, who was probably accustomed to meals that cost as much as Jane's car was worth, fell to making a lunch meat sandwich as if it were gourmet stuff. Jane reflected that while Phyllis could be irritating, there was still a streak of enduring innocence in her that had drawn Jane to her so many years ago. She suspected that Phyllis really didn't recognize a difference between pâté de foie gras and plastic packaged lunch meat.

Jane smiled. How must Chet have felt all these years about handing the world on a silver platter to a woman who would have been happy with Melmac?

“Well, I guess you're dying to know all about Bobby?" Phyllis asked a they sat down to eat. Jane wanted to say she'd rather have a Papsmear than know anything more about Bobby, but courtesy won out. "Yes, tell me everything.”

"Everything," about Bobby turned out to be mercifully concise. According to Phyllis, she and a high school classmate had run off to get married when she was only fifteen and he a year and a half older. Both sets of parents went after them and three days later dragged them back to Philadelphia. The annulment mechanism was put into action, and in no time, the marriage was as if it had never been.

Except that Phyllis was pregnant.

Her parents arranged for her to go to Chicago and live with her aunt until the baby was born and could be put up for adoption. That duly accomplished, Phyllis had stayed on in Chicagoto take a secretarial course, partly because she got along far better with her aunt than she ever had with her parents. She was working as a secretary when she met Chet Wagner, married him, and lived happily ever after.

“What about the boy? The one you married? Did he know about the baby?"

“Heavens, no!" Phyllis aid. "I wanted to tell him at first. I was really happy about it. Then I thought it over. My parents made me think it over. I may not be brilliant, but I was smart enough to see how relieved he'd been when the marriage was annulled. And I couldn't blame him. It wasn't as if we were madly in love or anything. In fact, we'd only had two or three dates when we ran off together. We only did it, I think, because we were both unhappy at home, and that seemed a way out.”

Jane felt this didn't ring quite true. The part about the boy being relieved might be so,. but Phyllis sounded like she'd probably been crushed by the knowledge that he'd been glad to be free of her. Had this version—not really in love, just wanting out—come to her then, or was it the product of long years of thought and reflection? Jane was astonished to learn that Phyllis had actually undergone such emotional upheaval. "Didn't you regret that it didn't work out?" she asked.

“No, if I'd stayed married to him, I'd have never met Chet. I liked him—the boy I ran off with—maybe even loved him, but we were too different. He was real smart, you see. Ambitious and all that, too. He'd have gotten tired of me. Chet's smart and ambitious, too, but in a different kind of way. I don't know quite how to explain it.”

In spite of herself, Jane was fascinated. She wished Phyllis were more articulate. "Did you ever see the boy you married again?”

Phyllis paused, as if trying to remember. After a moment she said, "We never met again. I didn't go back home except once or twice, and he moved away as soon as he finished high school.”

Jane suddenly had a devastating sense of exactly what they were talking about. The Phyllis who ran away and got married was about the same age as Jane's daughter, Katie, and the boy had been the age of her son Mike. Katie and Mike were babies! Yes, Jane would probably have done just what Phyllis's parents haddone—break it up, put the baby up for adoption, and let the kids have another chance at life. To cover an involuntary shudder, Jane got up and fetched a bag of potato chips and a plastic carton of dip. "So what about Bobby?" she asked when she sat back down. "How did you find him—and why?"

“Well, I'd never told a soul about having a baby. Not even Chet. It was the only secret I had from him, and it always bothered me. Then, about a year ago, Chet was out on the ocean in his boat, and there was a terrible storm. While I was waiting for word, I realized that if Chet died, I'd have that secret on my conscience forever. So when he got back safe and sound, I told him about having Bobby. I mean, about the baby, I didn't know his name was Bobby."