Carole Page - Decidedly Married

Julie poured her tea, wishing her mother was still around to share it with her. But they had buried her mother—the lovely, charming, devoted Ruth Currey—nearly a year ago. That was another truth still frozen inside Julie waiting to thaw.

I say the words in my head every day, but they never take root. They never seem real. I expect to drive through the canyon and past the lake and around the bend to the house in Crescent City where I grew up, the house just two hours away where my father lives in solitary silence, never opening his door or his heart to the likes of his only child, his wayward daughter, Julie Ryan.

Maybe he never forgave me for getting pregnant at eighteen, marrying a man he didn’t know, giving up my chance for a career to put my young husband through school. Maybe he never forgave me for not dying instead of Mama Or maybe he never forgave me for being born.

Julie took her steaming teacup upstairs to her bedroom and settled back on the sofa in her cozy retreat. As she set her tea beside her on a TV tray, she caught a glimpse of her reflection in the TV screen.

I’m wearing an old nightgown and my scuzzy robe that’s soft as fleece but clouds out, adding twenty pounds to my girth. I haven’t dressed all day. I tell myself it’s because I’m sick. I have a cold. I have a right to lounge around and be sloppy and comfortable. Every other day I have to shimmy and wiggle into garments that make me look attractive, that befit my position as administrative assistant to the vice president of Leland-Myer Tool Company. But it’s a glorified title with a beggar’s pay.

I’m a glorified secretary, nothing more. But it’s a life. Not like painting, of course. Nothing matches that. But it’s something. At least my job gives me a satisfaction Michael doesn’t offer these days.

Michael.

Oh, yes. Michael.

Julie had found the note in his shirt pocket this afternoon—she wasn’t snooping, she was sorting the laundry. She sat on the sofa now and stared at it, studied it as if by memorizing every word she could somehow decipher its meaning.

Suddenly she knew what she had to do. Call that number. Like the TV commercial says, “Reach out and touch someone.” She had to reach out and touch this Beth. Make sense of her words. Perhaps it was all a silly, horrible mistake. Maybe Beth was a colleague of Michael’s. Maybe she was sixty and wore geriatric shoes. Maybe Beth was a man’s last name. George Beth. John Beth. Andrew Beth.

No. The note said, “Love, Beth.”

She wasn’t a colleague or an old woman or a man She was someone beautiful and desirable, someone Michael wanted to be with, would have been with, if…

“Sorry about last night. How about tonight?”

That was it. She knew she had to do it Had to know.

She set down her teacup, got up and went over to the kingsize bed she and Michael shared. She sat down on the fluffy comforter, reached for the cordless phone on the nightstand and dialed the number. Fingers trembling. Mouth like cotton. Heart pounding like congo drums. Two rings, then the answering machine came on. A soft female voice crooned, “Hello, this is Beth. I can’t come to the phone right now, but leave a message and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”

Julie racked her brain for an appropriate response: Hello, Beth, this is your lover’s wife. Sorry, he won’t be there tonight. He already has plans.

Without uttering a sound, Julie slammed the receiver down and covered her mouth with her hands. She was afraid she would vomit.

She returned to the sofa, sat down and sipped her tea, thinking, All I can do is wait. What time will Michael be home tonight? Will he come home at all? Is it already too late?

Julie looked over at the clock on the nightstand. Nearly three. Katie would be home soon, running up the stairs to her bedroom. Her child, her fanciful daughter, her dreamer of impossible dreams. She carries the image of my youth, Julie mused, the likeness of my mother, the steely aloofness of my father. And Michael’s charm. And yet she is so totally her own person I do not know her. Behind the familiar face hides a stranger, a person of such complexity and surprise, I marvel that she came from my body, that she could possibly have been any part of me.

She denies me at every turn, Julie acknowledged darkly, her tea tepid now, tasting bitter on her tongue. In fact, if Katie could manage it she would print a disclaimer for all the world to see: “Any resemblance between my mother and myself is purely coincidental!”

Julie stirred, pushed her teacup away, ran her fingers through her uncombed hair. When Katie walks in the door and sees me still in my robe, she will accuse me of watching soaps and eating bonbons all day She will give me her petulant, condescending look, and she will look exactly like my father. And I will hate her for that. We will argue and exchange heated words. Sling verbal arrows back and forth, aiming for the heart.

And I will lose.

Because I am already frozen inside. I am hanging in dark waters with ice in my veins waiting to be rescued.

Will anyone come in time?

Will anyone come at all?

Julie was heading for the kitchen for more tea when she heard voices outside the carved oak front door. Not loud voices: one-lilting, almost singsong, punctuated by that familiar squeal of laughter that wasn’t quite spontaneous Surely it was her daughter’s deliberate, girlish laugh. But the other voice was deeper, a stranger’s, with a teasingly combative, seductive edge Julie couldn’t distinguish their words, only the muffled rhythm of the sounds, a light, playful cat-and-mouse quality that reminded her of the flirtatious banter of her own youth.

It must be a boy Katie likes, Julie mused, for her to be lingering on the porch with him for so long. But then she has so many friends, boys and girls, always changing, faceless, interchangeable, like strangers coming and going through a revolving door. Which one is it this time?

There was a sudden click of the doorknob. The door opened before Julie could register the fact that she was standing in the white marble foyer in her bathrobe with her honey blond hair a tangled mess, her face devoid of makeup, and her nose puffy and red from sneezing.

Still laughing, Katie sauntered in the door with a tall, strapping young man in T-shirt and jeans, his russet hair hanging down to his shoulders, a gold ring in one ear, and his bronzed arm draped over Katie’s shoulder. He was laughing, too, casually, with a pleased, satisfied smirk, as if they had shared a private, even intimate, joke. When they saw Julie standing in the hallway, they stopped in their tracks, frozen momentarily. The boy dropped his arm from Katie’s shoulder and flashed an apologetic half smile. Katie’s eyes widened with surprise. “Mom, what are you doing home?” she asked, her tone startled, accusing.

“I live here,” Julie flung back, realizing it was a dumb thing to say, the sort of answer Katie would have given her.

“But why aren’t you at work?” Katie persisted, arching one feathery, finely plucked brow. Her pale pink complexion had reddened, giving her high cheekbones a rosy, self-conscious glow.

“I took the day off, Katie. I’m sick. Can’t you tell?”

Katie nodded, her pouty, cranberry red lips drooping slightly. “Yeah, you look totally awful, Mom!”

“Thanks,” said Julie. She could have turned the remark back on her daughter. You look totally awful, too! Katie stood there in a skimpy tank top and baggy jeans with gaping holes in the knees, one of her typical “ugly” outfits Julie complained about constantly, to no avail. Her long, auburn brown hair was clipped back artlessly and free-falling around her shoulders. Katie’s icy blue eyes cut into Julie’s soul with a single glance. She had her father’s eyes—shrewd, cunning at times, unreadable, defensive; eyes containing such pure, luminous color they could steal one’s breath.