Bitter Sweet (66 page)

Roy
’s offering was a small Louis XIV antique chair for the front parlour, which be had stripped, refinished and re upholstered, it also earned him a hug from his daughter and a round of enthusiastic inspection and compliments from all the guests. There was, too, something from Suzanne (though nobody would confess to having brought it): a greeting card with a picture of a Victorian family - father, mother and child - setting a toy boat sail beside a grassy banked pond with a willow tree in the background. Inside, someone had written, To my mommy and daddy on their wedding day... With lots of love, Suzanne.

When they’d read it, Maggie and Eric exchanged a look of such expressive love that every eye in the room became misty They were sitting on the window seat of the dining room at the time, with their gifts strewn about them and Suzanne nearby in her grandpa’s arms. Eric touched Maggie’s jaw, then reached for the baby.

‘Thank you, Suzanne,’ he said, taking her, kissing her cheek. ‘And thank you all. We want you to know what it’s meant to us to have you all with us tonight. We love you all and we thank you from the bottom of our hearts.’

Suzanne started rubbing her eyes and whining, and it seemed an appropriate time to end the festivities. Each good-bye was emotional, but
Roy
lingered till last.

Hugging Maggie, he said, ‘Honey, I’m so sorry your mother and Katy weren’t here. They both should have been. ‘

There was no denying their absence hurt. ‘Oh, Daddy . . I guess we can’t have everything perfect in this life, can we?’

He patted her shoulder, then drew back. ‘I want you to know something, Maggie. You’ve taught me a lot during these last few months that I wish I’d have learned when I was a much younger man. Nobody can make you happy but yourself. You’ve done it, and now I’m going to do it.

I’m going to start by taking a little time off work. You know, in all the years I worked at that store I don’t think I took more than four vacations, and I used all of them to paint the house. I’m going to be gone for a few days- take a little time for myself.’

‘Isn’t Mother going with you?’

“No, she isn’t. But I don’t want you to worry. I’ll talk to you when I get back, okay?’

‘Okay, Daddy. But where-’

‘You just keep on being happy, will you, sweetheart? It does my heart good to see you that way. Now I’d better say goodnight.’ He kissed Maggie, rubbed Suzanne’s head and thumped Eric between the shoulders. ‘Thank you, son,’ he said with tears in his eyes, and left.

They stood on the back verandah and watched him climb the steps to the road, Eric holding Suzanne, Maggie with her arms crossed.

‘Daddy is troubled,’ Maggie said reflectively.

Eric dropped an arm around her shoulders and ripped her against his side. ‘Not about us though.’

She smiled softly and looked up. ‘No, not about us.’

For a moment they lingered in each other’s eyes before Eric said, low, ‘Come on. Let’s put Suzanne to bed.’

Suzanne was tired and grumpy and fell asleep before her thumb reached her mouth. They stood awhile looking at her, holding hands.

‘I feel like I’ve never lived before,’ he said quietly. ‘Like everything began with you.., and her.’

‘It did.’

He turned her into his arms and held her in a loose embrace. ‘My wife,’ he whispered.

She pressed her cheek against his lapel and replied in matching quietude, ‘My husband.’

They stood motionless a moment, as if receiving a blessing, then walked across the hall to the Belvedere Room where the great carved bed waited.

Roy Pearson drove home slowly. He went the long way around, by way of the switchback, up the hill from Maggie’s, and out between the up-country fields, then down the curving highway to the stop sign at
Main
. He turned right, passed the store where he’d worked all of his adult life, recounting its sights and sounds and smells - ageing fruit and garlicky sandwich meats, the tangy stink of pickled herring. The rumble of the old-fashioned door on the meat case when it rolled open. The bing of the cash register up front. (Actually, the old cash register had been gone four years and the new one went dit-ditodit-dit, but when
Roy
thought of cash registers he still thought of bells.) Helen McCrossen coming in every Tuesday, promptly at eleven .., so promptly you could set your watch by her, asking, ‘How is the liverwurst today,
Roy
, is it fresh?’ The feel of the cleaver in his hand, thudding against the butcher block. The cold, tallowy smell of the cooler.

He would miss the store.

At home, he pulled around the rear, parked before the closed garage doors and crossed the backyard to the house.

The grass was dewy and his shoes got wet - Vera would scold if she were up. But the house was quiet and dim. He disregarded the back rug and crossed the kitchen floor, heading directly for the storage space beneath the stairs. He emerged with a flimsy cloth suitcase and a cardboard box which he carried upstairs to his bedroom.

Vera was awake, swathed in a hairnet, reading by the light of the bedlamp which was clamped to the headboard above her shoulder.

‘So?’ she said as one might order a dog, ‘Speak!’

Roy
set down his suitcase and box and made no reply.

‘Well, she’s married to him, then.’

‘Yes, she is.’

‘Who was there? Was Katy there?’

‘You should have come and seen for yourself, Vera.’

‘Hmph!’ Vera returned to her book.

Roy
snapped on the ceiling light and opened a dresser drawer.

For the first time Vera noticed the suitcase. ‘
Roy
, what are you doing?’

‘I’m leaving you, Vera.’

‘You’re what!’

‘I’m leaving you.’

‘
Roy
, don’t be a fool! Put that suitcase away and get to bed.’

He calmly began emptying drawers and loading the suitcase. The box. Carried three hangers from the closet and laid them across the foot of the bed.

‘
Roy
, you’re going to wrinkle those trousers and I just ironed them yesterday. Now, put them away this minute!’

‘I’m all done taking orders from you, Vera. I’ve been taking them for forty-six years, and now I’m done.’

‘What in the world has got into you! Have you gone crazy?’

‘No, you might say I’ve come to my senses. I have at the most maybe ten, fifteen good healthy years left, and I’m going to try to get a little happiness out of them the way my daughter did.’

‘Your daughter. She’s behind this, isn’t she?’

‘No, Vera, she’s not. You are. You and all forty-six years of being told where to take off my shoes, and how to put the Christmas tree in the stand, and how much fat to trim off the pork chops, and where I can’t put my feet, and how loud the television can be, and how I never did a thing right. I want you to know I didn’t just decide this overnight either.

I’ve been thinking about it for five years. It just took Maggie’s courage to finally make me work up a little courage of my own. I’ve been watching her the last year, forging ahead, making a new life for herself, making herself happy against all the odds, and I said to myself, Roy, you can learn something from that young woman.’

‘
Roy
, you’re not serious!’

‘Yes, I am.’

‘But you can’t just.., just leave’

‘There’s nothing here for me, Vera. No warmth, no happiness, no love. You’re a woman who’s incapable of love. ‘

‘Why, that’s ridiculous.’

‘Is it? If I asked you right now, Vera, do you love me, could you say it?’

She stared at him, tight-lipped.

‘When have you ever said it? Or shown it- to either me or Maggie? Where were you tonight? Where were you when Suzanne was born? You were here, nursing your bitterness, congratulating yourself on being right once again. Well, I made up my mind when that baby was born that I’d give you just so long to come to your senses and be a mother to Maggie and a grandmother to Suzanne, and tonight when you failed to go to your own daughter’s wedding, I said to myself, Roy, what’s the use? She’ll never change. And I don’t believe you will.’

Roy
laid a folded shirt in the suitcase. Vera stared at him, incapable of moving.

‘Is there another woman?’

‘Oh, for pity’s sake. Look at me. I’m old enough to collect Social Security, I’m damn near bald, and I haven’t h/l-good hardn’m rh-lsteigM years What would I do with another woman?’

It began to dawn on Vera that he really intended to leave.

‘But where will you go?’

‘For starters, I’m going down to Chicago to see Katy and try to talk some sense into her and make her see that if she keeps on the way she is, she’s going to turn out just like her grandma. Then I don’t know. I’ve quit at the store, but I asked them not to say anything about it up till now. I may just retire and collect that Social Security after all. I may take my tools and set up a little fix-it shop somewhere and make doll furniture for my new granddaughter, I’d like to do some fishing with Eric. I don’t know.’

‘You’ve quit the store?’

He nodded, stuffing a stack of socks into the box.

‘Without even telling me?’

‘I’m telling you now.’

‘But . . . but what about us? Are you coming back?’

When he continued packing without looking up, she asked in a quiet, shaken voice, ‘Are you saying you want a divorce?’

He looked at her sadly. His voice, when he replied, was quiet and deep. ‘Yes, I am, Vera.’

‘But can’t we talk about it... can’t we... can’t we...’

She made a fist and pressed it to her lips. ‘Dear God,’ she whispered.

‘No, I don’t want to talk about anything, I just want to go.’

‘But,
Roy
, forty-six years.., you can’t just turn your back on forty-six years.’

He latched the suitcase and set it on the floor.

‘I’ve taken half the money out of our savings account, and cashed in half of our certificates of deposit. The rest I left for you. We’ll let the lawyers work out details about our retirement account. I’m taking the car but I’ll be back when I find a place, to get the rest of my clothes and my power tools. The house you can have. It was always more yours than mine anyway, the way you kept me from soiling and using things.’

Vera was sitting up on the edge of the bed, looking bewildered and scared. ‘
Roy
, don’t go...
Roy
, I’m sorry.’

‘Yes, I’m sure you are now. But it’s a few years too late, Vera.’

‘Please...’ she pleaded, with tears in her eyes as he left the room to collect some toilet articles in the bathroom. He returned in less than a minute and dropped them into the cardboard box.

‘One thing you should make sure you do right away, Vera, is get yourself a driver’s licence. You’re going to need one, that’s for sure.’

Vera’s eyes looked terrified. She had one fist folded tight between her breasts. ‘When will you be back?’

‘I don’t know. When I decide what I want to do next.

After
Chicago
I may check out-Phoenix. They say the winters down there are mild and there are a lot of folks our age down there.’

‘Ph . . .
Phoenix
?’ she whispered. ‘
Arizona
?’
Phoenix
was on the other side of the world.

He propped the box on one hip and picked up the suitcase with his free hand.

‘You never asked, but Maggie and Eric had a real nice wedding tonight. They’re going to be mighty happy together, and our granddaughter is a real beauty. You might like to walk up there and meet her someday.’ The last time he’d seen Vera cry this way was when her mother passed away in 1967. He thought it was a good healthy sign: she might manage to change after all.

‘I imagine the minute I walk out of the door you’ll want to call Maggie and cry on her shoulder, but for once in your life would you think of somebody else first and remember it’s her wedding night? She doesn’t know I’m leaving you. I’ll call her in a few days and explain to her.’ His glance circled the room once and came to rest on her. ‘Well... good-bye, Vera. ‘

Without an angry word or trace of bitterness, he left the house.

He surprised the daylights out of Katy when he rang her from the lobby of her dorm. ‘This is Grandpa. I’ve come to take you out to breakfast.’

He took her to a Perkins Restaurant and bought them each a ham and cheese omelette and told her with a great deal of caring in his voice and eyes what he’d come to say.

‘We missed you at the wedding, Katy.’ He waited, but she made no response. ‘It was a real nice wedding, in your mother’s backyard by the lake, and I don’t believe I’ve ever seen two happier people in my life than your mum and Eric. She wore a pretty pink suit and carried apple blossoms, and they said their own vows. They just kept it simple, then afterwards we had some cake and champagne.