One Year (30 page)

P
at opened the door to the bedroom that had been his as a child. It was where he and Megan regularly stayed when they visited his parents. There was that awful crucifix on the wall over the old wooden dresser. Pat envisioned tearing it down and chucking it out the window. There was a rocking chair big enough only for a toddler or a teddy bear. And there was the old narrow bed that his mother had never replaced with one more suitable for two people. Pat had always thought it was because Mary Bernadette refused to encourage even a married couple lying together under her roof.

Megan was sitting on the edge of that narrow bed, her hands folded in her lap. Pat had another vision of rushing back downstairs and shoving his mother against a wall. With effort he composed himself and sat down next to his wife.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“I'm fine.”

“Well, I'm not. I'm furious.”

Megan sighed. “Look, she's under terrible stress, what with Wynston Meadows and the obvious trouble between Alexis and PJ. You know how she dotes on PJ.”

“Don't make excuses for her. The woman implied we're unfit parents. I can take her garbage, after fifty years of it. But to say something so despicable to you is unforgivable.”

“I'm not making excuses,” Megan protested, “not exactly. I'm just trying to explain her to you—and to myself. There are reasons behind her behavior, motives. There
have
to be, and if I can understand them I can better handle her.”

Pat laughed. “Did it ever occur to you that she's just a nasty person? That she acts in the wretched way she does and says the hurtful things she says just for the heck of it?”

“No. I don't believe that. I'm tempted to at times, but no.”

“Then you're a better person than I am, Meg. Maybe it's due to that Prayer of St. Francis you're so fond of.”

“No,” Megan said. “It's just that we have different perspectives. You're her son, her child. You inherited all that sadness about William. You had to deal with all the pressure she put on you to be like him, all the unfair comparisons to what a dead boy might have been.”

Pat sighed. “When you put it like that it sounds so macabre and Victorian. It
is
pretty insane, isn't it, to be jealous of the dead. You know, sometimes, even now, I wonder what my life would have been like if William had lived. What my mother would have been like. I wonder if we'd all have been happier. Well, of course we would have.”

“It's said there's no pain as horrible as the death of a child,” Megan reminded him. “Losing William truly might have warped your mother's capacity for happiness. I can't imagine what losing PJ or David or Danica would do to me.”

Pat put his arm around his wife. “You wouldn't take out your grief on the surviving children. You wouldn't exclude your husband from your mourning. You wouldn't become like my mother, so cold and deliberate. So hard.”

“So unhappy.”

“Do you want to go home right now?” Pat asked.

“No. That would just make things worse. We'll stay, have dinner, then we can leave tomorrow after you talk with PJ.”

“I almost forgot that's why we came here in the first place. He won't be at dinner tonight?”

Megan shook her head. “He said something about having other plans.”

“Yeah. Avoiding me. But Megan, what if my mother erupts again?”

“She won't. I suspect she feels badly about what happened. I suspect she'll do her best to act as if it never
did
happen.”

“Well, dinner should be a real treat.”

“You'll behave, won't you, Pat?”

“For you, Meg, I'd do anything.” He pulled his wife to his breast and held her tightly.

“And if I suddenly decide to throw a punch,” his wife whispered in his ear, “be sure to stop me.”

A
lexis took a deep breath and pushed opened the door to the Shelby Gallery. She hadn't seen Morgan since their picnic lunch the week before. She had planned her visits to downtown Oliver's Well to be as brief and as infrequent as she could manage, and she had studiously avoided even glancing in the direction of the gallery. But she couldn't avoid Morgan forever. She owed him an answer to his incredibly kind and generous offer of a job. Maybe it was also a self-serving offer. But what was wrong with someone
wanting
to be with her?

After many a sleepless night and many a tortured waking moment, Alexis had decided that there was no way in good conscience she could work with Morgan Shelby and not put her marriage at a grave risk of complete failure. And a failure of her short-lived marriage would be mortifying. She did not think she could stand the shame.

Alexis's decision did not bring her contentment. She wanted to be happy. She believed that she
deserved
to be happy and she wasn't, not now, and she simply couldn't see how she could ever be, not with things the way they were in the world of the Fitzgibbons. At best it could be said that she and PJ were carefully coexisting. It was no way to live. But she had taken a solemn vow before God and her family and her friends to love and to cherish PJ Fitzgibbon for the rest of her life, and she was determined to do everything in her power to keep that vow. She was determined.

Morgan was standing behind the counter when she came through the door. “Hi,” he said with a smile. “It's been a while.”

Alexis thought there was a slight nervousness in his manner, though she suspected that what she perceived was merely a projection of her own distress.

“I've been busy,” she said.

“That's good. Better than being bored, anyway.”

Alexis attempted a smile and failed. “I've been doing a lot of thinking,” she said.

Morgan came around the counter. “Why don't we talk in back?”

Alexis was torn. She didn't want to be entirely alone with Morgan. But she didn't want what she had to say to be interrupted by the arrival of a customer. “All right,” she said. She followed him back to the small hall at the foot of the stairs that led to his apartment.

“Now,” Morgan said. “What have you been thinking about?”

“I can't accept your offer of a job,” Alexis told him. “I wish I could, but I can't.”

Morgan's expression darkened. “Is it because of—”

“No. Yes.”

“Alexis, I—”

“Please, Morgan. I can't—”

Morgan put his hands on her arms and looked at her searchingly. Alexis felt her body lean forward, toward him. And then their faces were very close. Alexis closed her eyes. Her resolve melted away. What there had been of her resistance dissipated.
Let it happen then. I want it to happen
. She felt his warm breath on her cheeks.
This is the turning point
.
There will be no going back. After this moment I will have committed adultery
. And then with a cry, she opened her eyes and tore out of Morgan's embrace.

“I'm sorry,” she said, her hand on her heart. “I shouldn't have . . . I'm so sorry.”

Morgan shook his head. “It's all right. It was my fault.”

“No, it was mine,” Alexis insisted. “The fault is entirely mine.”

“Alexis, please—” Morgan reached out a hand but did not come toward her.

“I have to go now,” Alexis said, tears beginning to dribble down her face. “I—I can't see you again.” Then she turned and ran.

“Alexis, wait!”

The door slammed behind her, its bell furiously clapping. Alexis ran until she was out of sight of the gallery. Then she turned off Main Street onto a block of private homes and, panting, came to a stop. She wiped ineffectually at the tears coursing down her cheeks. She was horrified by her behavior. It
was
all her fault. Morgan Shelby was a good man. She had led him on. She had acted inappropriately. She shouldn't have gone to the gallery today. She should simply have called Morgan and told him that she couldn't accept his offer of a job and then she should have vowed never to seek him out again.

Alexis took a deep, shuddering breath. All along she had been telling herself that there was nothing inappropriate in her relationship with Morgan, and yet all along she had been acting as if their relationship
was
inappropriate. She had never mentioned him to PJ. She had lied about where she had been while spending time with Morgan. She had sat at the dinner table beside her husband, fantasizing about another man.

Yes,
Alexis thought, standing alone outside a trim little brick house with a pretty little garden,
I am as guilty of betrayal as if I'd been sharing Morgan Shelby's bed.

“A
lexis!”

Alexis whirled around. It was Maureen Kline. It seemed like ages since they had last met.

“I saw you from the corner,” Maureen said. “Forgive me for saying so, but you don't look so good. Oh no, you've been crying. Are you sick?”

“Yes.” Alexis put her hand to her forehead. “No. Oh, I don't know . . .”

“Look, come to my house. You're in a good old-fashioned state of distress and we don't want the populace of Oliver's Well making assumptions.”

Alexis let herself be led back to Main Street and then to Maureen's car, which was parked outside her office. Ten minutes later the two women were sitting in Maureen's kitchen, a pitcher of water, a bottle of whiskey, and two glasses on the table before them.

“Medicinal purposes, you understand,” Maureen said with a smile.

Alexis managed an answering smile and took a bracing sip of the whiskey Maureen poured for her.

“Now,” Maureen said, “tell me what's happened.”

Alexis did. She told her about how stifled she had come to feel, living in the cottage in full view of PJ's grandparents. She told her about how Mary Bernadette was always criticizing her and about how PJ never stood up for her. She told her about how she felt at a dead end. And she told her about how she had met Morgan Shelby. He had been nice to her. They had talked about interesting things, things not related to Fitzgibbon Landscaping and the OWHA. He had shown interest in her photography. He had said that he believed in her talent. She did not mention his offer of a job. She did not mention that they had almost kissed.

Alexis sighed. “And that's the whole awful story in a nutshell. I never meant to—to become so attracted to Morgan. And I love my husband. I do. It's just that things between us are so awful right now. It's just that I'm so confused.”

Maureen finished her whiskey and put the glass down with a thump. “Look,” she said, “the first thing we need to do is avoid social disaster. Given the reputation of the Fitzgibbon family and Wynston Meadows's determination to tarnish it, you're a natural target for the gossips.”

Alexis put her hands to her head. “Oh God, what have I done!”

“Nothing yet, if you're telling me the truth.”

“I am,” Alexis said, amazed that her cheeks weren't flaming with the lie. “I swear.”

“All right. The thing is Alexis, you need to be very, very careful when you live in a town like Oliver's Well. I said once that the Fitzgibbons live in each other's back pockets. Well, the same might be said of everyone here. When my former husband was cheating on me, most of the town knew before I did. Unfortunately, I learned about his bad behavior from an old busybody who took some pleasure in letting me know.”

Alexis leaned across the table and put her hand on Maureen's arm. “I'm so sorry.”

Maureen looked down at her empty glass. “People can turn vicious in the presence of another person's grief, even those who are usually quite kind.”

“It's awful here,” Alexis said vehemently, sitting back in her seat. “I hate it.”

“Oliver's Well isn't worse than any other small town. And there's the flip side of the coin. When someone is in real trouble, the neighbors come out in force to help.”

“Is that really true, Maureen? Or is it just a tale people in small towns tell themselves to make the stifling life they live bearable ?”

Maureen did not answer the question; Alexis thought her silence spoke volumes.

“You need,” Maureen said then, “to keep far away from Morgan Shelby. That's the first step toward making things right. Hopefully anyone who might have seen you together will soon forget what they saw if there's nothing new to remind them. And then you have to talk honestly to PJ.”

“But I can't let him know about my feelings for Morgan!” Alexis protested. “He'd be devastated!”

Maureen hesitated a moment before replying. “Yes, well, generally speaking I'm not a fan of secrecy between husband and wife, but in this case I think you're right. From what I know of PJ he's not—forgive me—not mature enough to handle that sort of revelation. He's a lovely young man, but he's got a fair amount of growing up to do. Still, you do have to tell him, calmly and clearly, that you need a—let's say, a path of your own, something that belongs only to you and not the rest of the family.” Maureen paused. “Come to think of it, I'm not sure he'd take kindly to that, either, not with his—attachment—to his grandmother and the Family Ideal. Alexis, I'm sorry. I'm afraid I'm not very good at giving advice.”

Alexis smiled. “But you're kind. You listened to me. I finally feel there's someone in Oliver's Well I can trust. You
won't
say anything to anyone, will you?”

“The cone of silence is firmly in place. Now, would you like me to drive you home?”

Alexis shook her head. “Thanks, but I left my car in the municipal lot.”

And,
Alexis thought as she got up from the table,
to think I once was tempted to dismiss Maureen as someone merely resigned to a life of boredom. There's so much more to her. PJ isn't the only one who needs to grow up
.