For My Daughters Page 3

  “Please don’t, Mom.”

  “I don’t mind,” she insisted. “Really.”

  “But I do. I don’t want you there. It’s bad enough that I have to warm the bench, but doing it while you’re watching is ten times worse.”

  “But I’ll be cheering for the whole team.”

  “No, Mom.”

  “Look,” she said appeasingly, “let’s not argue. You go to your game and do the best you can. If I get there, I get there; if I don’t, I don’t.” She knew that she would. She would have to be physically debilitated to miss an event in which one of her children was involved, even if, as in Robbie’s case, he had little playing time. Being there for her children was how Annette defined herself. She never, never wanted them to know what it was like to see other parents in the stands and not their own.

  Jean-Paul tried. He went to games and concerts and recitals whenever he could, but that wasn’t often and with good reason. He was a neurosurgeon. His workday ran from seven in the morning until seven at night, and then he had reading to do at home.

  So it was doubly important for Annette to attend things like baseball games. She was sure that Robbie’s protestations were de rigueur for a seventeen-year-old, but that deep down he agreed.

  For that reason, she wasn’t fazed when he ignored her presence in the bleachers and ran past her with the briefest wave when the game was done. Nor did she linger; he would drive himself home when he was ready, and, besides, she had to fetch Thomas from his trumpet lesson and deliver him to his math tutor, then pick up Nat at his friend’s house and get him home for dinner.

  She had barely finished with that first dinner shift when the girls came in, full of chatter about the day that had been. As it happened, they weren’t wild about the dresses, but not because they weren’t black. “We made plans to go shopping with Susie and Beth tomorrow after school,” Nicole said.

  Annette couldn’t see it. “You won’t have time. You have two midterms the next day.”

  “But we’ve already studied,” Devon assured her.

  “You have?”

  “Well, a little, but we can do the rest after we shop.”

  “Honest, Mom,” Nicole insisted. “We’ve been planning this for ages.”

  “But what about these dresses?” Annette asked, gesturing toward the beds.

  “They’re gorgeous.”

  “But they’re you, not us.”

  “They are so you,” Annette argued. “They’re spectacular dresses.”

  “But we wanted to do this ourselves.”

  “You don’t let us do enough, Mom.”

  “Because I love shopping for you.”

  “That’s because Grandma never did it for you and you missed it, but we’ve had it all along.”

  “Speaking of Grandma,” Devon asked, “what did she send in the mail?”

  It was a minute before Annette recalled the letter that still sat downstairs. “I don’t know.”

  “You didn’t open it?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Aren’t you curious?”

  “Not awfully,” Annette said with a smile and a hand out to each daughter. Touches counted. Even little ones. “You girls interest me far more. Do you want to eat now or later?”

  They ate then. Annette kept them company, and did the same when Robbie came home. She didn’t eat, herself, until Jean-Paul arrived, and was putting the last of the dishes in the dishwasher when the letter from Philadelphia materialized before her.

  “Are you deliberately ignoring this?” Jean-Paul asked in his quiet, lightly accented voice. It was a calming voice, a reassuring voice that instilled faith in his patients and comfort in her.

  “I suppose.”

  “Tit for tat?”

  She laughed softly, ruefully.

  He gave the letter a little wave. She took it between a wet thumb and forefinger and tossed it on the counter. “Later. When I’ve finished everything else.” Her first priorities were the children. She didn’t want anything marring her time with them.

  Communication with her mother was bound to do that. It always did. She could more successfully push her sisters from mind, and keep them there, than she could Ginny. Too much resentment remained, sparked by memories of only token closeness and a squandered family life. Ginny had been there, without being there. Annette’s major focus in life was to be there all the way.

  She’d be damned if she’d let her mother thwart her now.

  But she could only drag out the evening so long. In time Nat and Thomas were in bed, and the older three were either studying or on the phone. Each had kissed her an enthusiastic goodnight in a dismissal of the gentlest sort.

  So Annette changed into her nightgown and slipped into bed beside Jean-Paul. He was propped against the pillows, his reading glasses midway down the aristocratic Gallic nose that the twins had mercifully inherited, his long limbs loose and bare beneath the sheets.

  Only then, with the promise of his comfort at hand, did she unfold her mother’s letter and begin to read. Almost immediately she snorted.

  “Quoi?” Jean-Paul asked.

  “She starts off by saying that she assumes the seven of us are well, since she hasn’t heard anything to the contrary from me or my sisters. Poor Mother. She still pretends that we’re one big happy family. But neither Caroline nor Leah would know if one of us was sick. I haven’t talked with them in weeks.”

  “Sad,” he mused, but without criticism. “How would you feel if our children grew up to be strangers?”

  “Terrible, which is why I’m raising them to be friends. They don’t have to compete for my time or affection the way my sisters and I had to do for Ginny’s. I have more than enough to go around.”

  She returned to the letter, only to grunt a minute later. “She’s just back from Palm springs, saying it’s quieter in Philadelphia—” She gasped. “Oh my. She’s sold the house. And bought a new one in Maine?” She frowned at Jean-Paul. “This doesn’t make sense.”

  “Why not?”

  “Mother is first and foremost a fixture of society. She doesn’t know anyone in Maine.” She continued under her breath as she read on. “And this isn’t even Portland. It’s a small coastal town, something of an artists’ colony, from what she says. She’s turning seventy.” Again Annette raised her eyes to Jean-Paul, this time for reassurance, because much as she begrudged Ginny’s performance as a mother, the fact of her aging was unsettling. “Seventy is getting up there.”

  “Your father was older than that when he died.”

  “But Mother’s different. She barely looks sixty.”

  “She’s also female, so you identify with her.”

  “No, I don’t. Not one bit.” She escaped Jean-Paul’s amused look by returning to the letter, but kept up a soft commentary as she read. “Star’s End—that’s the name of the place—is a birthday gift to herself. She says it has a beautiful garden. Leah will be thrilled. She’ll be able to cut and arrange to her heart’s delight. Of course, way up there in Maine there won’t be anyone of import to ooh and aah over her ornamental genius.”

  “Annette,” he chided.

  But Annette had an old gripe to air. “No problem. Mother will ooh and aah. Leah was always her favorite.”

  “Come now.”

  “It’s true. Leah was the only one of us who had any taste for the country club. Uh-oh. Mother says she has a favor to ask of me.” She chuckled dryly. “She says she knows I may refuse. How intuitive, Ginny.”

  “Annette.”

  Finally she felt a twinge of guilt. “Sorry. I have trouble being generous where my mother is concerned.” She fell silent as she read on. The silence lengthened, until Jean-Paul broke it with the rustle of his papers when he set them aside.

  “Quoi?”

  “The woman is amazing. Truly.” She peered inside the envelope, then tossed it to the foot of the bed. “That’s an airline ticket. She wants me to spend the last two weeks in June helping her settle in. She says that she�
��s always admired the warmth in our house here. As though the decor provides the warmth. Doesn’t she understand that it comes from people, not things?”

  “She wants you to decorate the new house?”

  “Not decorate, exactly. More like help christen the place.”

  “It sounds like it would be fun,” Jean-Paul said so seriously that Annette twisted away and gaped up.

  “I’m not going!”

  “Why not?”

  “I have obligations here—obligations that mean a sight more to me than doing my mother a favor. I can’t just pick up and leave here for two weeks. I don’t owe her that. She never did it for me. Besides, it would be one thing if she sent tickets for you and the kids, but that wouldn’t occur to her. She has no idea what my family means to me.”

  “She probably assumed the kids would be in school.”

  “The fact that she assumed wrong shows how far removed she is. They’ll be smack in the limbo period between school and summer plans. Thomas and Nat will be getting into mischief until camp starts, and neither Robbie nor the girls start their jobs until the very end of the month. Those two weeks would be the worst time for me to go. Not that I’d want to go, in any case.”

  “Your mother admires your taste.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “She wouldn’t ask this of you if she didn’t. She isn’t asking Caroline or Leah.”

  Annette had to admit that there was some satisfaction in that. Of the three of them, she most embodied what Ginny had tried but failed to achieve.

  Jean-Paul was quiet. When he didn’t return to his reading, she gave him a nudge. He set his glasses aside and said, “I think you should consider going.”

  “It’s out of the question.”

  “It shouldn’t be. She’s asking you a favor. Yes, I know you feel you don’t owe her anything, but she did give you life. If she hadn’t done that, I wouldn’t have had you, and our children would never have been born. She is your mother, Annette.”

  “But I’m needed here.”

  “Well, that’s what we all believe,” he said with a sigh, “but wouldn’t it be nice to find that we can function without you for two weeks out of our lives.”

  “Of course, you can do that.”

  “Can we? We won’t know unless we try.”

  “But it’s such a bad time.”

  “Actually,” he said slowly, “it’s not a bad time at all. Rob and the girls will be around to watch Thomas and Nat. They could take turns planning activities to keep them busy.”

  Annette rose on an elbow and studied his face. “You’re serious.”

  It was a minute before he offered a thoughtful, “Yes.”

  “But this is my mother, Jean-Paul. You know how I feel about her.”

  “Yes. I know how. But I never totally understood why. What did she do that was so awful?”

  Annette pushed a pillow against the headboard. “It was what she didn’t do.” She collapsed back on the pillow, depriving Jean-Paul of her closeness as punishment for his doubt. “She was an automaton of a mother. She went through the right motions and did everything she was supposed to, only she was never emotionally involved. Not deeply. I told you about the bedroom incident. That’s a perfect example.”

  “I never saw what was so wrong with what she did.”

  “Jean-Paul,” Annette complained, “she treated me like a nothing!”

  “Because she did over your bedroom while you were away at summer camp?”

  “Because she didn’t involve me. She didn’t ask what I wanted. She didn’t ask if I wanted a change. No, she decided what would be done when, and it wasn’t only me. It was Caroline and Leah, too. She just swept through our bedrooms that summer without any consideration of who each of us was. We came home to find bedrooms that were all gorgeous, all nearly identical, all utterly lacking in character.”

  “She wanted you to have pretty things.”

  “She did what she wanted, not what we wanted. She couldn’t be bothered with that, which is my point. She was never really into us or our lives. She always held a part of herself back from us. As children, we always felt she disapproved. We always felt we were the ones lacking for failing to interest her. We always felt we had done something wrong.”

  “Maybe that was just her personality. Not everyone can be warm like you. Not everyone can be as emotionally involved with her family.”

  “But it took a toll, that constant feeling that we couldn’t please her. Caroline became obsessed with being the best lawyer in the world, and she may be that, even if she is a cold fish personally. Leah became obsessed with being loved, and she may be that, for a night here and there.”

  “And you became obsessed with being the best mother in the world.”

  “Not obsessed. That’s too harsh a word.”

  “But accurate. It’s what you want most to do.”

  “Maybe,” she relented, “but what’s wrong with that?”

  “Nothing. Only you’re afraid to leave us for even a few short weeks.”

  “Not afraid.”

  “I think, afraid.”

  Annette would have been offended if she had been less sure of Jean-Paul’s love, but they were best of friends, in addition to the rest. “Explain,” she said now.

  It was a minute before he did so, and then his voice was gentle. “We are your life. You devote yourself solely to us. The love in this family embodies everything you missed when you were a little girl. You are afraid of losing it.”

  She shook her head, but he went on.

  “You are afraid that if you aren’t there to hand us a tissue each time we sneeze, something will be lost. You’ll be negligent, like your mother. The love will vanish.”

  She snorted. “I’m not that bad.”

  “But you are afraid. You are afraid that if you aren’t intimately involved in the lives of our children, they will resent you and drift away from you, the way you drifted away from your mother.”

  “Every woman fears the day when her children leave the nest.”

  “But you don’t have to,” he said more insistently now. “Your children love you. They know how much you love them, and they know how much you do for them. Their experience with you is totally different from your experience with Virginia. They are bound to you, Annette. If you are not here, they will miss you.”

  “There you have it. That’s why I’m not doing Mother’s bidding.”

  His voice lowered gravely. “But they need to know that they can miss you and still survive without you. That’s part of growing up. They need to be able to do without you, then feel joy when they have you back.”

  “But why go without when you don’t have to?”

  “You do have to. You’re too involved sometimes, Annette. You need to let the children breathe.”

  “And you?” she asked with a qualm. “Do you need to breathe, too?”

  He smiled. “Oh, I breathe fine with you by my side.” The smile grew sad. “But you need to breathe, yourself.”

  “I breathe when I’m here with my family.”

  “You need to see yourself as an individual. Everyone needs that. I can do it at work. But with you, work is home and home is work and there isn’t any separation, any way to put it all into perspective. And then there’s your mother. You are right. She’s getting up there. Reaching seventy is a gift in itself. You don’t know how much longer she has.”

  “That’s what she said,” Annette muttered. “Preying on my sympathies.”

  “You ought to make peace with her.”

  “We’re at peace.”

  He studied her, slowly shook his head, said nothing.

  “Well, it’s a kind of peace,” Annette allowed, though she couldn’t seem to shake Ginny’s closing words. We haven’t been close in the past, but that doesn’t mean we can’t find common ground. It would be nice to spend time together. We might talk.

  “You can improve it.”

  “But I don’t want to go.”

  H
e sighed. “I know.” He reached for her and drew her against him. She didn’t resist. “Think about it, though? Think about how you would feel if you were seventy and I was gone—”

  She covered his mouth. “Don’t even think it.”

  He removed her hand and held it tight. “But it may be one day. Think if you were seventy and asked this of one of your children. How would you feel if that child refused?”

  “I’d be crushed, but my mother isn’t me. I doubt she cares deeply one way or the other whether I go.”

  “She went so far as to send you the tickets. She cares.”

  Annette suspected he was right, which was the bitch of it all. He was usually right, Jean-Paul was, in those very few times when he disagreed with her, but he did it in such a nice way that she loved him all the more.

  Of course, the children could survive without her. Of course, they wouldn’t suddenly hate her for spending two weeks with her aging mother. It was a one-time shot. There weren’t any proms or recitals or playoff games during those weeks. She would be back before they knew it. Of course, their love wouldn’t die.

  Her head knew all this, but her heart? Ah, that was something else. And he was right about that, too, Jean-Paul was. She was afraid. Just a little. Of being like her mother.

  three

  LEAH ST. CLAIR LIVED IN FASHIONABLE Woodley Park. On any given day, her travel around town took her past embassies, the State Department, the White House, and the Capitol. On any given night, she hobnobbed with people associated with those buildings. They were her friends, her social circle. Theirs wasn’t the only social circle in Washington, or the most elite, but it was exclusive. Membership was prescribed, attendance at parties predictable, whether those parties’ purposes were political, charitable, or social. At any time Leah knew whom she would see and what she would say. She could run through the conversation in her sleep.

  This evening she had hosted twenty-four for dinner. With the last of those guests now gone and the caterers packing up in the kitchen, she combed the living room, scooping up crumbs, wiping away condensation rings, erasing spills from marble, glass, and wood.

  Great party, Leah. Great food. Gorgeous flowers.