Entangled (16 page)

Mother and Handel joined me moments later,
she tugging him along by the arm against his will, perhaps a tad
worried about my reaction to her showing up unannounced. “But you
must stay for a bit, Handel. Billie hasn’t even had time to thank
you properly for picking me up at the airport.”

“Yes,” I said, glaring at him over the rim of
my glass, “Thanks so much, Handel. Of course, if anyone had
informed me that Mother was coming I might have been able to
prepare a more elaborate welcome.” I waved them to the table. “But
please, join me in a glass of wine.”

“Isn’t it a little early to be drinking?”
Mother asked, her brows knit with worry. She picked up the bottle
and eyed the label with suspicion. “Is this from Jack’s private
cellar? I’ve never seen this design before. It looks rather
childish.”

“Very private, Mother. But then you would
know what a secretive person Jack could be, wouldn’t you?” The
words sounded bitter and I wished I could take them back, but once
out, words have a life of their own.

My mother stared at me for a long moment,
clearly rattled, then set the bottle down and left the room. Handel
released a pent-up sigh but didn’t say a word. He went to the
cupboard for another glass, filled it from the bottle, and took a
seat across from me at the table.

“Can I ask what that was about?” he asked
finally.

“No. It’s none of your business.”

I sat up and leaned with my elbows on the
table, staring him down. Daring him to flinch and back off, but he
just smiled and sipped his wine. “If you say so.”

I finished the first glass and poured
another. “You don’t have to stick around, you know. You’ve
performed admirably as Mother’s chauffeur and now you can buzz
off.”

“Holding grudges again, I see.” He drained
his glass in one gulp and stood up. His blonde hair fell across his
forehead as he braced his palms flat on the tabletop and leaned
across the space that separated us, his face mere inches from my
own. “I liked you better when you were eight. At least then you
cared about someone other than yourself.”

He didn’t wait for a response, just turned
away and exited through the back door. I sat there for a long time
staring at the wine in my glass, trying to work up a feeling of
righteous anger at his words, but nothing came to mind other than a
touch of remorse. I felt drained like the bottle before me, emptied
out and unable to replenish myself. Was my mother right? Was I
falling into a dangerous depression?

*****

Mother appeared back in the kitchen sometime
after Handel left. She had freshened her makeup and changed into a
summer top and walking shorts. She tried to pretend nothing was
wrong, that my words had not wounded her, but the pasted on smile
was not convincing. “One of those suitcases was for you,” she
informed me. “I went by your place and picked up a few outfits.
Thought you might be tired of the few you brought.”

“Thanks,” I said, fiddling with the empty
glass on the table.

“Those long flights are debilitating with the
seats so close together. I think I’ll go for a walk and stretch my
legs.” No suggestion of my going along. “Do you have a pair of crew
socks I can borrow? I packed tennis shoes but seem to have
forgotten socks.”

I stood up quickly and felt my legs go
wobbly. Mother’s look of concern was enough to straighten me out
though. “Sure. I’ll get them for you.”

She put out a hand to restrain me. “Don’t
bother. I can find them. Why don’t you lie down on the couch and
rest? You look tired.”

“They’re in the top drawer, right hand side,”
I called after her as she started away.

Taking my mother’s advice, I went to the
living room and stretched out on the couch. Velvety darkness
quickly enveloped my brain and I let it suck me deeper still. The
next thing I knew, Mother was bending over me, shaking me awake, an
expression of shock mingled with a touch of anger in her eyes.

“Billie, where did you get these?” she
demanded, holding the envelope of photographs over my face and
waving it back and forth.

Fully awake now, the sluggishness of sleep
completely evaporated, I sat up and combed my hair back with my
fingers. Mother was physically shaken with the discovery, more so
than I had been. I wondered what other secrets she harbored and
whether I’d ever really known the woman she truly was.

“Well?” She looked desperate, driven, like
someone who will do anything to bury the past.

I bit at my bottom lip before answering. “In
Jack’s cellar.”

“No,” she shook her head. “Jack wouldn’t
leave something like this just lying around waiting to be found. He
promised me.” She paced to the fireplace and back, looking down at
the envelope in her hands as though by sheer will power she could
make it disappear.

“He promised you what, Mother? Not to tell
Dad about your affair?” I stood up, blocking her retreat. “What
kind of woman pits one brother against another, using love as a
weapon?”

Her mouth trembled and her eyes filled with
tears, but I didn’t back down, unable to let go of my own guilt, I
wished to share the pain. She shook her head and two tears coursed
down her cheeks leaving a pale trail in her foundation.

“It wasn’t like that,” she said, her voice
quiet, introspective. “I met Jack first. He was older, and a little
wild. Impetuous. Exciting. I thought that’s what I wanted; thought
I loved him.” She met the accusations in my eyes and released a
heavy sigh. “But things didn’t work out, and then I met your
father. He was the opposite of Jack. He thought things out, took
responsibility seriously, and believed marriage was forever. I
tried to be what he needed. Sometimes I failed.” She wiped the
tears away with her fingertips and sniffed.

“That’s what you call it — failure to be
what Dad needed? What about fidelity? Or plain old loyalty?”

The slap of her palm against my cheek shook
me to the core. I couldn’t remember her ever hitting me. Not like
that. She was usually so restrained, so civilized. My words had
unleashed something in her, something tucked away for many years.
Guilt?

“Don’t you dare speak to me that way. I am
still your mother and you have no business accusing me of something
you know nothing about,” she ground out in measured tones.

I snatched the envelope from her hand,
ripping it apart, and scattering the contents across the wood
floor, the intimate portraits testifying to Mother’s carnality like
witnesses for the prosecution. “I know two things,” I said, before
my brain had time to catch up with my mouth. “I found these the
first time when I was eight. The same week that Dad beat Jack to a
pulp. What I don’t know is whether or not I told him about the
pictures. I can’t remember that part.” My lips trembled and I
swallowed, the lump in my throat making it hard to speak. “I think
maybe I did, and he held it against me. That’s why he changed
toward me, pulled away. Why he quit loving me.”

“Oh, Honey, he never quit loving you.” My
mother wrapped her arms around my stiff body and pulled me close,
forgetting her own anger at the sight of my tears. She smoothed my
hair and whispered those comforting indecipherable words that
mothers always do, and I felt a small part of my heart begin to
mend. Blame shifting was simply reflex. In fact, I wondered if my
childish actions so many years ago had caused a rift in my parent’s
marriage. She pulled back, holding me at arms length and shook her
head. “Billie, you’re not thinking clearly. You’re taking something
that happened when you were eight-years-old and trying to make it
fit with the way your father treated you when you were fifteen. I
don’t believe the one had anything to do with the other.”

I sucked in a shaky breath and nodded.
“You’re probably right.”

“Of course I am. I’m your mother.”

I absently rubbed the side of my face, still
feeling the sting of her slap.

She reached out and put her hand over mine.
“I’m sorry, honey. I shouldn’t have hit you. It was uncalled
for.”

I sniffed, smiling weakly through my tears.
“No, you shouldn’t have. But it was called for.”

Mother’s gaze strayed to the photographs at
our feet and she looked slightly embarrassed, the heightened color
in her cheeks a telltale sign. I knelt down and began picking them
up, turning them facedown in a pile.

“That was a long time ago. I was a different
person.” Mother let out a short laugh tinged with bitterness.
“People always say that when their past sneaks up and bites them in
the ass.” She sat on the edge of the couch, elbows on her knees and
her head in her hands. “I want you to know the whole story, Billie.
Maybe then you’ll understand. Discovering that your parents lived a
whole other life before you were born must be confusing.”

I tapped the remaining pictures into a neat
pile and looked up. “You don’t have to explain anything, Mother. I
should have left the pictures where they were, hidden in that hole
in the cellar, and put them out of my memory as I’ve put everything
else from that time.”

She shook her head. “No. Its time we dealt
with things instead of shoving them under the carpet. Your father
liked to pretend everything was fine, even when it wasn’t. He
couldn’t deal with controversy.”

“You mean he didn’t want to deal with
it.”

“Perhaps. He liked things simple, on time,
and unchanged. He may have been set in his ways but he could also
be loving and kind, generous, and endearingly faithful.”

“Not like Jack.”

“No,” she said softly, “not like Jack.”

We talked on for an hour or more, Mother’s
eyes lighting up at certain points in her story, dissolving into
tears at others. I sat at one end of the couch and she sat on the
other, our legs curled beneath us.

“When I realized I was pregnant, Jack
scoffed, said I couldn’t be. One time wasn’t enough to get me
knocked up. He refused to believe it was his. Actually accused me
of seeing other men.” Mother’s voice wavered and I felt her
withdraw into the pain of her past. She gazed out the window as
though reliving the scene in her mind’s eye.

I wanted to hold her, comfort her somehow,
but the subject was so far beyond what I’d imagined, infringing
upon my reality with surprising repercussions. My earlier shock at
discovering my mother’s secret past was nothing compared to the
freefall my heart did now, plummeting to the sharp rocks of
despair. Was I ever Daddy’s little girl or only a changeling
usurping the place of a true daughter? Was Uncle Jack my father? A
man who didn’t want anything to do with me and then out of guilt
tried to make up for it by spending a couple weeks of his precious
time one summer making wine with an eight-year-old girl? It
certainly cleared up any questions of my inheriting the winery.

Mother was silent for several moments,
leaning her head against the back of the couch as though too
exhausted to hold it up any longer, her eyes closed to further
scrutiny. Perhaps my gaze was too intrusive, my interest too
personal. I stared at her, the lines around her eyes, the droop of
her jaw, the thinning lips, and imagined her as she once was,
before me, before my father, before we aged her with the burden of
our love. But I couldn’t stay quiet for long. The need to know, to
understand how she could hide this side of my identity from me for
so long, was overwhelming in its intensity.

“Mother — why didn’t you tell me that Jack
was my father?” I asked, my voice rough with feelings trying to
break free. I tried to think the whole thing through logically,
with reason, distancing myself from the circumstances as though I
were trying a case in court, but my heart would have none of
it.

“What?” She raised her head and stared at me,
her expression aghast at my suggestion. Did she think I would
listen to the story of her life and not draw any conclusions? She
was pregnant. Jack wouldn’t accept responsibility. And along comes
James, the good brother. I certainly didn’t need a photograph to
fill in the details to that scenario.

“I know Dad was my father in every way that
counts and always will be, but I should have been told about Jack.
I had a right to know,” I persisted.

Mother’s mouth dropped open. Finally she
released a pent up breath and I could see her shoulders slump as if
the last of her secrets had been expelled. Then she leaned forward
across the couch and looked me directly in the eyes. “Jack was not
your father,” she said, her voice taking on that patient tone she
used when I was small, helping me to understand something beyond my
cognitive ability. “Jack was your uncle, that’s all.”

My brows drew into a frown of frustration and
I took mother’s hand in my own, needing her to connect with me
physically as well as emotionally, to understand how hearing the
words out loud would shatter their power over both of us. “Why
can’t you just admit the truth? Dad’s dead. Jack’s dead. There is
no reason to pretend any longer. I can take it. I’m a big
girl.”

She sighed and shook her head, her lips
curved in a patient smile but untold sadness in her eyes. “Billie,
I am telling you the truth. Jack was not your father. The baby…”
she paused and swallowed hard. “I had a miscarriage in my third
trimester. I lost the baby, and Jack and I never saw each other
again — in that way.”

I drew back, slowly releasing her hand.
Relief swept over me from head to toe, and I suddenly realized how
very much I’d wanted to be wrong. My father was not perfect, but he
was the only father I ever knew and I couldn’t imagine replacing
him in my mind with anyone else.

“Did Dad know?” I asked.

“Of course,” she said. “I wouldn’t have
married him otherwise. I told you about my pregnancy to help you
understand the huge difference between your father and Jack. Jack
could be very generous when it came to things, but he wasn’t so
giving with his heart. James, on the other hand, seemed frugal at
times, saving, scrimping, worrying about finances, but he gave his
heart to me without holding anything back.”