Lies and Other Acts of Love Read online

  “Well,” I started. “I just don’t know . . .”

  “Come on, Mom,” Jean pressed. “You know you don’t even look at all this old stuff.”

  I peered down into the drawer on my lap and looked at the stack of papers and clippings in my hand. My girls looked in these drawers and saw a bunch of old junk. They didn’t realize that this receipt from Penney’s was for the pram that Dan surprised me with when we first found out I was pregnant with Sally. Or that I could just see Louise’s happy little face when she brought me this kindergarten report card filled with “satisfactory” marks. I glimpsed a photo of Dan and the girls standing in front of our old house in Bath and realized that, as it is with all lives, the memories that filled these drawers weren’t universally happy. But they were universally mine. I pulled out a boarding pass and smiled again, thinking how passionate Dan was about travel.

  I looked at my girls, sorting through my possessions on the floor. “Fine.” I exhaled. “Sally, put it all in scrapbooks. But don’t you dare throw away one single thing.”

  “Oh, I won’t, Momma. I promise.”

  Sally was as big of a pack rat as I was. “Jean.” I glared at my youngest girl. “Now don’t you even think about helping.”

  She laughed. “The good news for you is that with the election coming up, all my time will be dedicated to signs, speeches and debates.”

  I smiled at her, proud of my boldest girl’s spirit and tenacity. She had lost three times before she was elected mayor. And, as it is in all purposeful lives, the falls taught her just as much as reaching the top. I turned over and looked at my husband, napping in his chair. And it made me think that we ought to shake things up. I knew right well that it made me crazy. But I finally said out loud what I’d been planning the past few weeks all the same. “Girls, I’ve decided I’m taking Daddy to Martha’s Vineyard next week.”

  “Momma!” Sally said. “That’s insanity. Why on earth would you do that?”

  I shrugged. “He loves to travel and, who knows, a trip might perk him up a bit.”

  “Well, I can’t go with you, Momma,” Lauren said. “I absolutely have to work.”

  I caught Jean rolling her eyes at Martha. They were always accusing Lauren of acting like a martyr.

  “I could probably go, Momma,” Louise chimed in. “I could get one of the other teachers to take my classes next week.”

  Louise’s yoga studio was her husband and her child all rolled into one. She had started it before yoga was the trend, and, between the vinyasa classes, chanting meditations and nutrition counseling, her business was bigger and busier than I think even she could have imagined.

  Chartering a plane briefly crossed my mind. But then I thought of single Louise and divorced Lauren, and I worried, as I always do, that they wouldn’t have enough one day. And so, as Dan and I had always planned, I mentally penciled it in the savings account register for my family’s future.

  “No, no, girls. I’ll take a nurse.”

  “A nurse isn’t enough, Momma,” Sally said. “You need one of us to go with you. I’ll see if I can get off of work.”

  Martha smiled. “I wish I could go, Momma, but my kindergarteners are just learning to read, and you know that’s my favorite part of the year.” It briefly broke my heart that Martha and John had never been able to have children of their own. But teaching gave her that connection with the children that she loved so much.

  I know you aren’t supposed to have favorites, but, when you get a little older, maybe it’s that you quit thinking clearly and maybe it’s that you quit caring so much about everyone’s feelings. But I smiled, knowing that one of my girls didn’t have a thing to do next week. “I think I might ask Annabelle to go.”

  “She’s in the middle of moving, Momma,” Jean said, shaking her head.

  “What?” Martha asked.

  Lauren rolled her eyes. “We all know what, Martha. Come on.”

  Louise interrupted. “Y’all don’t know. This might work out perfectly, they might be married for seventy-five years, and you are all going to eat crow.”

  Sally smirked but didn’t say anything.

  Jean put her head in her hands. “Just pray, all of you, every night, that she doesn’t have a baby with him. If she doesn’t have a baby, then we’re okay.” She pointed her finger at Louise. “And you pray to your Buddha or whatever just in case.”

  I rolled my eyes heavenward, thinking that I could have been even more concerned about my daughter’s choice of religion than Jean was about Annabelle’s marriage.

  “Momma, what do you think?” Sally asked.

  I shook my head. “Nope. I’m not going to talk about the poor girl when she isn’t here to defend herself.”

  “But she won’t talk about it when she is here,” Lauren said. “So it’s not like any of us can put in our two cents.”

  “It’s because she doesn’t want any of your two cents,” Louise interjected. “They’re madly in love with each other. I don’t know why y’all can’t see that. The way they look at each other . . .”

  Martha elbowed Jean and, in a loud whisper so we could all hear, said, “Hence the reason she isn’t married.”

  Louise smirked. “Ha. Ha. Ha. Y’all are all so hilarious.”

  “There’s just something about him,” Sally said. “I know they’re crazy about each other, but I just don’t trust him.”

  They all looked at me again, and it took everything I had not to join in the Ben roast. I wanted not to think it, but I couldn’t stop the question from rising to my mind: Wonder how long it’ll last? I inhaled sharply, lecturing myself. It might not have been the future I had imagined for my girl, but she had done it. She had married Ben.

  “Girls, all I know is that her ship is sailing straight without a cloud in the sky. And while it’s that way, we’ll all sail together.” I sighed and smiled, thinking about the way my Dan always used to give me these words of encouragement when we were having a hard time with one of our girls. That’s the most difficult thing about parenting: watching your children go down a path you’re unsure of, letting them make those mistakes. But, oh my goodness, those mistakes are one of the most important parts of growing up. “And when it goes down . . .”

  Five heads, all in unison, clearly thinking of their daddy too, nodded as I finished my sentence. “We’ll swim to the bottom and bring her back up.”

  Annabelle

  Full-Throttle

  The way a man treats his mother is the same way he will eventually treat you. That is something that Lovey knew well. Her mother-in-law was as difficult as they come, but, even still, D-daddy loved and doted on her until the day she died.

  I couldn’t say how Ben was with his mother, because I’d never met the woman. I would venture to say that most people who have been married a year have met their in-laws. It’s a pretty firm prerequisite for saying those vows. But, since Ben and I had eloped and left for his tour the next day, that monumental dating ritual had never taken place.

  And, let me tell you, the longer I waited, the more nervous I became.

  “Do you know,” Ben said, as he flipped pancakes on the tiny stove in the corner of our RV kitchen, “that I am thirty-five years old, and you are the first girl I’ve ever introduced to my parents?”

  I looked up from the Yoga Journal I was flipping through. “What? That’s insane.”

  He shrugged, his back to me. “Obviously, they met my high school girlfriends because they lived in the same town. But I never really had them over for family events or anything.”

  I felt a little shudder run through my spine. What if he hadn’t ever introduced his girlfriends to his parents because they were so judgmental? Or crazy? Or both?

  “So,” I asked, “why do you think that is?”

  “I always knew I’d know when I’d found the right one—just like what happened when you
walked in to hear me play that night. Until then, it seemed sort of pointless.”

  I stared at Ben’s shirtless back, the muscles in his shoulders rippling as he turned the spatula. I couldn’t see the long, diagonal lines that peeked out from over the belt of the khaki shorts slung low around his waist, but I knew they were there. And I couldn’t believe that this man was even sweeter and more romantic than he was startlingly sexy.

  I got up and put my arms around Ben’s waist, pressing the side of my face into his back. I leaned into him and breathed deeply, like I could suck his scent into my lungs and never have to be without it again. He turned to kiss me, and I smiled. “I’m meeting your parents today.”

  I sat back down in a black-and-white-striped Sunbrella dining chair at the tiny three-person table. The RV (“coach” as the salesman had called it) was actually pretty swanky. Housed within quartz countertops and wood cabinets we had painted white were a stainless stove, microwave, sink and oven. Across the wall was a double refrigerator with freezer drawers. Truth be told, we ate out so much on that tour that we filled one refrigerator with groceries, and I took the other one for my shoes. Those were the only cold feet I had that year. The king-sized bedroom with the beautiful flax-colored linens may have been large by moving vehicle standards, but, any way you sliced it, closet space was minimal.

  Ben handed me a plate of pancakes and stretched out on one of the couches that we had re-covered in white faux-ostrich leather with tufted backing, and said, “They are going to love you so much they aren’t going to know what to do.”

  I nodded and furrowed my brow. “I sure hope so.”

  Ben winked. “Doesn’t much matter. If they don’t, it’s too late now.”

  Two hours later, we pulled up to a house that I never could have expected. Knowing Ben like I did, his nonchalance about anything material, his pronouncement that money makes him uncomfortable, I was nowhere near prepared for this place. The huge RV slid right in the front driveway, and ten more would have fit. A black iron gate, complete with camera and keypad entry, ensconced in a huge gray wall led to one of the most gorgeous displays of French-style architecture I had ever seen. A flowing fountain stood in the center of a double-story middle with two curved wings, a beautiful U that made the entire compound, instead of seeming cavernous, envelop me and make me feel right at home. “Wow.” I smirked. “So you’d rather live here than in the RV?”

  “Don’t be silly.” Ben winked. “We’re going to live in the RV in the driveway.”

  Before I could react, Ben’s mother came running out the door, ringlets of auburn hair flying, lifting the bottom of long layers of chiffon so they didn’t catch the wooden wedges underneath them. Driving up to this home, you couldn’t help but picture the lady of the house in an austere Chanel sheath, heels, pearls and pristine blowout firmly in place. She would be lounging on a fainting couch, sipping a gimlet, while the butler opened the door.

  I thought she would run to Ben, but, instead, before I could even get both feet out of the car, she had her hands on either side of my face and planted a kiss right on my lips. Coming from a family where a total stranger was lucky to get a lukewarm handshake, this full-throttle introduction felt a bit foreign. She pulled away, then embraced me in a hug and said, sincerely, “My daughter is so sophisticated and beautiful.”

  “Oh,” I stuttered. I looked around, finally realizing she meant me.

  I looked back at Ben’s mother and studied her face, trying to find pieces of my husband’s in it.

  “Yoo-hoo, Emily,” a neighbor shouted.

  My new mother-in-law shooed me over in front of the gate and called back to an aging, gray-haired woman with two giant sheepdogs, “Isn’t my new daughter-in-law beautiful?”

  “Daughter-in-law?”

  It bothered me for about a half second that Ben’s neighbors didn’t even know he was married. And that determination welled up in my chest again, that desire to prove everyone wrong. It may have been fast and it may have seemed unlikely. But Ben and I were madly in love, and that love was strong enough to carry us through the rest of our lives.

  I could hear the rumor train flying down the tracks already, this harmless-seeming neighbor at altar guild with eight of her closest, loudest-mouthed friends, waxing poetic about Ben’s new wife.

  “I have been dying to tell y’all: Ben Hampton is married.”

  “Married? Well, I certainly wasn’t invited to the wedding, were you?”

  “I most certainly was not.”

  “Well, I feel terrible because the Hamptons went in on a party for all three of my children when they got married, and I didn’t even know to ask.”

  “I never heard rumors of an engagement.”

  “I’ve never known him to go steady with any girl. I was positive he was gay.”

  Gasps.

  “Well, obviously, she’s some groupie he got pregnant.”

  Nods.

  “That’s the only explanation.”

  “So where’s the baby? They’ve been married a year.”

  In unison: “A year?”

  Before Emily could even answer her neighbor’s shocked expression, my father-in-law sauntered into the driveway, pipe in mouth, suit and wingtips looking as though they were custom fit that morning. Now this was who should live in that house. “Ben, my boy,” he said, puffing his pipe and slapping his only son on the back. “Congratulations on picking a fine bride for yourself.”

  I held out my hand, and he said, “I’m pleased to meet you, Annabelle.”

  This was more my kind of man. My parents would feel right at home with him. At least, my mother would. My father probably wouldn’t even bat an eye at Emily’s lip kisses. And it dawned on me that I, like Mom and my father-in-law, was the boring one in the relationship. And I needed someone like Ben in my life to temper me. For every ounce of me that was wound up, uptight, self-conscious and critical, he was laid-back, even keel and free spirited. I smiled, as every single moment like this since our wedding had reassured me of my initial thoughts when I met him: Ben and I were going to be together forever.

  “Let’s get you unpacked in the pool house,” Emily said, putting her arm around me. Then she whispered, “Don’t worry, we’ll be on the lookout for a good rental in case your obnoxious mother-in-law starts getting on your nerves.”

  “I can’t imagine that that would ever happen,” I said. Sure, I had only known Emily for five minutes, but I could already tell that she was exactly like Ben.

  The first thing I showed Emily was my refrigerator/shoe closet. She said, “You find in my line of work that the resourceful women are the ones who go the farthest in life.”

  After my yearlong groupie sabbatical, her comment gave me those nervous butterflies, a reminder that it was time to figure out what I was going to do with my future.

  But I would worry about that next week. Because, as soon as I unloaded my few worldly possessions, I was heading to chaperone Lovey and D-daddy on their trip to Martha’s Vineyard. Lovey was convinced that being in a place they visited every year, somewhere he loved, would bring D-daddy back, if only for a moment.

  I was less sure.

  But whether you’ve been married one year and have just moved to your husband’s hometown or you’ve been married well over a half century and think something is going to unlock the vault of your husband’s brain again, it’s really the same thing that keeps you going: hope.

  Lovey

  Chance

  My momma always thought I was part gypsy. I couldn’t read palms or crystal balls, but, from the time I was little, I’d go anywhere and do anything, sacrifice whatever necessary to have a new experience. My momma never left North Carolina once, and she was just fine with that. But me? I wanted to see the world.

  With Dan, see the world I did. He would hop on a plane at a moment’s notice to practically anywhere, and I’d scramble
to arrange sitters and jump right on board with him.

  One of his favorite things was always taking the ferry from Boston to Martha’s Vineyard. He loved the feel of the wind in his hair, the water rushing by, the cool early fall air in his face. While I was a born Pollyanna, I wasn’t insane. I knew that even with a nurse to transfer Dan, and Annabelle (secretly) to help me, taking a car to the Raleigh airport, a flight from Raleigh to Boston, a cab from the airport to South Station, a bus from South Station to the ferry, the ferry to Woods Hole and a cab to our favorite inn in Edgartown, the Harbor View, was way too much.

  But there was also no way a wheelchair-bound man was going to get into one of those tiny commuter flights on Cape Air that my darling husband was also so fond of. So we did some research, flew to JFK and took a rather large flight into Martha’s Vineyard.

  “Oh, Lovey, it’s so cool,” Annabelle said, grasping my arm tightly as we walked down the winding ramp. I wondered momentarily if they had had to put that out instead of the usual steps to accommodate Dan. But I stood up straighter, held my head up high and reasoned that, if you had lived as long and proud as Dan, concessions should be made.

  She reached her hand forward and squeezed Dan’s shoulder. “So, D-daddy. How you feeling?”

  “Hungry,” he replied shakily.

  Annabelle raised her eyebrows at me, and I could feel the tiniest smile playing on my lips. Sometimes, I went days without hearing that voice, so even two syllables felt like a victory.

  “D-daddy,” she said, “if I remember correctly, you were awfully fond of the sandwiches at Humphrey’s.”

  “Good tea too,” he said, still looking ahead at the people filing into Martha’s Vineyard’s undeniably charming airport. The cedar shakes, the wooden beams . . . It was like a preview of what was to come, an indication that, yes, if the airport was this good, the rest of the island was incredible.