Entangled (17 page)

“Then what happened to him?” I asked. I
remembered two fathers. The father I had as a child was exactly
what she described, but the one who appeared after the night Paul
attacked me was someone else. I couldn’t reconcile the two. People
didn’t just change for no reason, and I always believed I was that
reason.

“I don’t know. He wouldn’t talk about it.”
She glanced out the window and swiped at her eyes with the tips of
her fingers. “I couldn’t remember him being so closed down since…
well, since that time we spent here. When we left and went home,
your father fell into a depression of some sort. He wouldn’t talk
about it then either. After about a month or so he seemed to shake
himself out of it. I hoped it had nothing to do with my past
relationship with Jack, because when we married, James swore it was
a new start and nothing that came before would be able to come
between us. He kept his word too and never brought it up in anger.
But after hearing Handel’s version of their fight that summer…
what else can I believe?”

I reached down and picked up the discarded
stack of photographs. “Why do you think Jack kept these, Mom? Was
he still in love with you or did he just want something to hurt Dad
with?”

She closed her eyes and wearily shook her
head. I could tell she was emotionally drained from our
conversation. Perhaps now would be a good time for her to take that
walk. I didn’t want her to hurt anymore. My carelessness had
brought back memories that she obviously never fully dealt
with.

The past would always hold unanswered
questions, secrets left hidden, hearts left broken, love lost to
pride or indecision. Why don’t we ask the important things while
there is still time?
If only
could drive a person to
second-guess their way through life. I was slowly finding that out
for myself.

She finally looked up and smiled,
strengthened once again from some inner place. “Jack used to
collect mementos when he traveled,” she said, “to remember his
experiences. Sort of a period at the end of a sentence in his life.
Perhaps the photos were just that — a period at the end of our
love affair.” She stood and reached out her hand for the
photographs, her lips set in a firm line.

I reluctantly handed them to her, the lawyer
in me silently crying out to preserve the evidence. I didn’t think
any of the photos would turn up in the family photo album. But
shouldn’t there be some record of the tiny life that culminated
from their affair, a baby instantly heaven-bound, but still
indelibly printed on my mother’s heart, and perhaps Jack’s?

“Mom?” I said as she headed for the front
door. She stopped and turned. I swallowed and asked the question
that now burned in my mind. “What was the baby’s name?”

“Henrietta.”

I grinned. “Then she would have been Henry.
Billie and Henry. I think you secretly always wanted boys.”

She laughed and shook her head. “No. You
wanted to be a boy. Wilhelmina is a beautiful, old-fashioned name.
It was my great-grandmother’s. But you chopped a masculine nickname
from it and refused to be called by anything else. Now you have to
live with the consequences.”

“What consequences?”

“Gender confusion,” she called over her
shoulder as she opened the door, then turned to point a finger at
me. “By the way, I haven’t forgotten why I’m here. Next session is
about you.”

After she left, I stretched out on the couch
and stared up at the ceiling, one arm thrown carelessly across my
forehead as the photographs flashed through my minds-eye once
again. I saw them in a different light now. Like an ill-fated love
story on a Hollywood screen, they projected sadness, hopes dashed,
love lost. My mother was the beautiful heroine and Uncle Jack the
handsome but self-centered young man that dangles love and snatches
it away. Dad’s quiet, unassuming friendship must have been a breath
of fresh air after such a tumultuous relationship. She would have
fallen for him slowly, not realizing the cloth of love was being
woven around them, binding them together with strong threads of
mutual respect, kindness, caring, and trust.

I blinked and the ceiling came back into
view. Who was I kidding? If my father trusted my mother, then he
wouldn’t have beat Jack to a pulp twenty years ago. Would he? Or
did that have anything to do with the photographs? Would I ever
know?

~~~

CHAPTER ELEVEN

T
wo days of Mother
roaming the house, watching me surreptitiously from across the
room, waiting for me to fall apart, was almost enough to give me a
breakdown in and of itself. But I did have other things to occupy
my time. The Breckinridge Security Company descended upon the house
and winery, installing a system that would deter the most seasoned
burglar. And Davy showed up again, sneaking across the south
vineyards to avoid the busy road, and his mother’s watchful
eye.

He knocked at the back door about ten in the
morning, startling me from my catatonic perusal of the newspaper.
Before he arrived my eyes were drooping, and I was nearly asleep
where I sat. Sleeping less at night, as though I could stay the
dreams by not giving them enough time to materialize, I walked the
floors and grazed from the refrigerator at three in the morning. I
would either find a way to stop my nightmares in a healthy way or
become an obese insomniac.

“Hello, Davy. What’s up?” I yawned, folded
the paper and pushed it to the side, as he joined me at the
table.

“Nothin’. Just wanted to see what those
trucks were doing here.” He eyed my cold toast with interest and I
slid my plate toward him.

I nodded. “They’re wiring the house and
winery so that no one can break in again. If anyone tries to get
through the doors or windows without the code, the alarm goes off
and the police show up,” I said as I watched him chew.

“Cool. Can I try it?” he asked, obviously
eager to make the local boys in blue work for their donuts.

“Does your mother know where you are? Because
she didn’t seem too happy about you walking over here before
without telling her.” I enjoyed Davy’s company, for the most part,
but I didn’t want to get in the middle of a parent/child tug of
war. If Margaret didn’t want him roaming the neighborhood alone, I
certainly wouldn’t argue.

He put down the toast, ignoring my question.
“Is your grandma visiting again? Uncle Handel said your old lady
would straighten ya out. What’s that mean?” he asked, squinting at
me in the semblance of a frown.

“It means your uncle needs to stay out of
other people’s business,” I said with a tad too much vehemence.
Davy scooted back in his chair and looked ready to take flight.

“Who is a grandma?” Mother demanded as she
entered the room, her hair and makeup perfect as always, without a
jowl in sight, fit and trim as though she still did an hour of
aerobics every morning. How could anyone mistake my mother for a
grandmother? But to an eight-year-old, everyone over twenty-five
looks ancient. I remembered thinking the same thing when I was that
age.

“Davy, you remember my mother, Mrs.
Fredrickson,” I said, winking companionably at the boy across from
me.

“Yes, we met at the funeral,” Mother added,
as she poured herself a cup of coffee. “But unless my daughter gets
married soon and has a lovely baby, I will not allow anyone to call
me Grandma.” She patted Davy on the shoulder and smiled. “You may
call me Sabrina, young man.”

He looked up at her unblinkingly and then
nodded. “Okay, but Mom doesn’t like me to call old people by their
first names.”

Mother let out a burst of laughter tinged
with irony. “I can’t win, can I?”

“Don’t even try,” I said shaking my head.

Davy got up and went to the refrigerator. He
took out the milk carton and set it on the counter before turning
belatedly to me, a half grin on his lips. “Can I have some
milk?”

“Of course you can. A growing boy needs lots
of calcium,” Mother said, stepping in and taking a glass out of the
cupboard. She set it beside the carton and let him pour it himself.
“Strong teeth and bones and all that.”

“That’s what Mom says.”

I stood up and stretched, yawning widely,
afraid if I stayed still much longer I’d fall asleep. I looked out
the window. The brightness of the day contrasted sharply with my
inner turmoil, the edge of depression, as yet undefined in relation
to its root cause. I originally thought it had to do with Mother’s
secret, but after hearing the details of her first love, the
repercussions of that unwise alliance, and the pact she made with
my father to let go of the past, I no longer deemed it worthy of
continued guilt on my part. If my father let his jealousy get away
with him and took it out on his brother one fine summer afternoon,
who was I to take the blame for that? I was only an eight-year-old
child at the time.

Soft, white, puffs of cloud broke up the
expanse of blue sky outside and I felt the need to walk beneath
them. Clouds always amazed me with their ability to float
weightlessly in the heavens. Even gray and filled with rain, they
hung above the world, heavier, but still suspended, not giving in
to the gravity of earth, until finally letting loose their load,
releasing it like so many bad memories, never to be carried again.
“I’m going for a walk. Why don’t you and Sabrina play a game of
hide and seek?” I suggested. Not giving either of them a chance to
protest, I hurried out through the back door.

My feet kicked up a tiny cloud of dust as I
walked down the row of grapevines, my white tennis shoes turning a
murky gray with the settling film. I squinted up into the sun,
remembering the same path by moonlight the other night with Handel.
The image of Handel and I as children, running through the
vineyards at night, had stayed with me, and I could only conclude
that the memory was significant. My therapist said that we pick and
choose the memories we need to remember, not necessarily the most
important ones, but those useful to our continued wellbeing. How
was Handel important to my continued wellbeing?

I stopped to inspect the vines and clusters
of inconspicuous blooms that would soon turn into small, hard,
green, acid berries, growing and ripening eventually into plump,
hardy grapes. The petals fell away at my touch and I saw the
hardened nubs pushing through. It was hard to believe the rocky
soil at my feet was so conducive to growing the best wine berries.
Minnesota farmers complained loudly when the rains weren’t as heavy
as normal, the land green and fertile, or the soil dark and moist.
But they were usually growing corn or beans, pumpkins, or golf
courses.

I heard the crunch of a boot on gravel before
my eye caught the movement of someone walking in the next row over.
I held perfectly still and waited, but obviously I’d been spotted
as well. Handel bent and peered through an opening in the vines,
his blonde hair hanging over his forehead as usual.

“Hey. I thought I saw someone out here,” he
said, beginning to make his way through to my side, careful not to
damage the vines. “Out for a walk? Or are you delving into your new
position as owner of Fredrickson Vineyard?” He straightened up and
smiled, his teeth gleaming brightly in the California sun like a
Hollywood movie star on vacation.

“A little of both, I guess. I needed to get
out of the house, get some exercise, clear my mind.” I started
walking again and he fell into step with me, moving away from the
house and winery.

“You haven’t seen Davy by any chance?” he
asked, peering back at the house in the distance, as though just
remembering he was on a mission. “Margaret’s been looking for him
again. I told her he was probably over here; she shouldn’t worry.
But you know moms.”

“There is no need to worry. I left him in
good hands. The old lady’s.” I laughed softly. “Boy, are you in the
doghouse. And she liked you too.”

Handel had the good sense to appear
chagrined. He cleared his throat. “Great. That kid is going to be
the death of me. He repeats everything he hears. He’d make a
terrific witness for the prosecution.”

We walked another hundred yards or so before
he tugged on my arm to stop. “Hold up, will you?”

I turned and looked up at him, at his blue
eyes, the blonde thatch of hair falling over his forehead, the
tanned skin showing in the open V-neck of his cotton sweater, and
although I was still peeved with his earlier attitude toward me, I
desperately wanted him to kiss me. Desperation doesn’t always show
on a person’s face though, but rather, charges through their veins
at the speed of light, giving an extra bump to the heart
muscle.

He stared at the ground a moment before
raising his gaze to my face, seemingly oblivious to my elevated
blood pressure. “I’m glad I caught you out here. It seems an
appropriate place to talk.” He shrugged, a wistful smile on his
handsome face. “At least it used to be. We could tell each other
anything.”

“Did you want to tell me something?” I pushed
my hands nervously in the front pockets of my jeans. I hoped he
wouldn’t bring up the kiss, remind me that I initiated it, and tell
me he just wanted to be friends. Rejection was not something I took
well.

But he said none of that. Instead, he drew my
hands out and pulled me slowly toward him, then lowered his head
and kissed me. Not an I’m sorry kiss, or let’s just be friends
kiss, but a deep, heart-searing, mind-melding lip-lock that took my
breath away.

“You’re not going to run away this time, are
you?” he asked, once we came up for air.

I shook my head, unable to think of anything
witty to say and he kissed me again. Finally, I pulled away and
stepped back. “Wow,” I breathed.

He grinned. “We’re in agreement then.”