33. Becks All Your Dreams
SATURDAY, AUGUST 28, 1976
Tip: You cannot control the manners of the people around your table, but you can control your own. As hostess, you are the example. When you are met with someone impolite, be even more well-mannered. If you are faced with someone grumpy, be as chipper and charming as ever. When someone else is sad, your warm smile might be all it takes to change their day. The same goes for your children too: though, as my child, I presume you would very much not like to admit it.
Becks Saint James would never leave the table for a long stretch of time during dinner—a fact that headwaiter Charles would know better than anyone. So when Becks heard the knock at the side door, she barely considered it, knowing that Charles, who was in the kitchen, would handle the matter posthaste.
She was more than a little surprised when Charles whispered in her ear, “Ma’am, you have a visitor.”
She shook her head, smiling as the rest of the group conversed, their cutlery clinking against their plates.
“But, ma’am,” Charles murmured under his breath, “the woman says it’s urgent.”
“I don’t care if it’s urgent. It’s rude,” she hissed through gritted teeth, the smile never leaving her face.
“Ma’am,” Charles tried one last time, “she says she’s your mother.”
Townsend studied Becks from the other end of the table, and she met his eye as she put her finger up and silently conveyed that he was to take over. She was positive it wasn’t her mother visiting. Her mother hadn’t visited in forty-one years, had never once stepped foot inside her home. But the idea that someone would lie about that piqued her interest so fully that she had to get up and break all her rules—all her mother’s rules—to see what was going on.
Charles gestured to the library, and when Becks entered, the woman sitting in the dimly lit room, swallowed by Townsend’s favorite chair, was, in fact, Myra Bonner. Becks had come to terms with the fact that, after their last encounter, she would never see her mother again. She had never expected her to show up here.
“Hello, Mother,” Becks said tentatively. Nervous butterflies formed in her stomach.
To her surprise, she only said, “Happy birthday, darling.” It was a tone of voice so opposite from the threatening one she had last heard come out of her mouth that it startled her, unsettled her. Had she ever seen her high-strung mother this calm?
Becks’s heart pounded. She didn’t know what to say to the woman who hadn’t wished her happy birthday in forty birthdays, who had ripped her heart out only a few weeks ago. So Becks did what Becks did best. She acted as that impenetrable woman she had always been.
“Well, thank you, Mother.”
“Have you had a good night?”
Becks glanced over her shoulder into the kitchen at Evelyn and Charles as the other servers fussed over the giant flower-covered cake that would mark her last birthday. “I have had an excellent night. I love hosting dinner parties,” Becks said.
“And you came out to see me in the midst of hostessing?” her mother scolded. “Didn’t I teach you better than that?”
Becks hid her laugh of disbelief. Why are you here, Mother? she wanted to ask. But she didn’t because she didn’t want this conversation to end.
“Well, the visitor was you,” Becks said softly.
Her mother cleared her throat, which made her know—or remember, rather—that she was getting choked up. “Rebecca, I’ve never told you this—I never wanted you to have the fear or worry of it hanging over your head—but you almost didn’t live when you were born.”
Becks’s eyes went wide. “What? What do you mean?”
“You were born in my own bedroom at thirty-one-weeks’ gestation, weighing barely three pounds. Your eyes were only partially open, you were less than sixteen inches long, and your lungs were weak. The doctor said you wouldn’t make it; they wouldn’t even let me see you. Your father thought it was best.”
The idea made Becks’s stomach flip. “That’s awful, Mother.”
Myra nodded. “We had a nurse at the house and, without telling me, she burned a fire in the hearth and wrapped you in our thickest blankets—even though it was August—and with your father’s help, fed you drops of Dextri-Maltose as often as you would take them. Five days later you had beaten the odds. You were still alive. And the nurse brought you to me and said, ‘Mrs. Bonner, do you want to hold your baby?’?”
Becks wasn’t sure where her mother was going with this, but she was rapt with attention all the same.
“I was nearly delirious with grief and lack of sleep, and I thought I was hallucinating. But then she handed you to me, and you wrapped your little hand around my finger, and I knew you were real.
“You were so brave, such a fighter,” Myra continued, her eyes sparkling. “And the woman who saved you, well, we had to name you after her; it was only right. And it was destiny because Rebecca, of course, means ‘determined.’ And you certainly were.”
Still am, she wanted to say. But was she? She felt so defeated now.
Myra leaned forward and took Becks’s hands. “What I came here to tell you was that, during that time, those days when you were your father’s secret, he bonded to you in a way that I can’t quite describe. He always admired your determination; he was proud of you for following your own path.”
Becks blew out her breath. “Well, Mother, he wasn’t proud one big time. That’s for sure.”
Myra shook her head. “That’s what I came here to say. Your father woke up for a few minutes in the hospital when you and Townsend were in the waiting room,” she said, “and he told me he was wrong. How could he stand behind the pulpit each week and preach about tolerance and forgiveness and loving your neighbor as yourself and then cast out his own daughter because the man she loved was of a slightly different faith? Then, of course, he slipped away from me and well… that was that.”
Becks wondered—stupidly, inconsequentially—whether if she hadn’t carried this massive stress she would be dying now. Could stress give people cancer? She didn’t know, but she felt that the place it was growing inside of her was where she carried her biggest burden. And now it was killing her. If her mother had told her this forty years ago, would it have made a difference?
Then she had a thought. “Mother, are you lying?”
“I’m not lying.” She sighed. “I’m truly not.”
“So then why the dramatics? Why did you tell me my entire adult life that I was responsible for killing my father? Why did you disown me?” Do you know what that has done to me?
“I was so angry, Becks, and, somehow, it was easier to put my anger on you than your father or God or anyone or anything else. And over the years, that anger—the lie I told myself—started to feel like it was justified, like the lie was true. I was too proud to tell you I was wrong. But I’m here now. I was wrong. I was so very, very wrong.”
Becks understood then how different she and her mother were. She understood that her mother was a small, sad woman who would rather give her pain to her child than carry it herself. But Becks couldn’t be sorry because that was perhaps why she was the exact opposite.
“Thank you for telling me that, Mother. You can’t know how much it means to me to hear that. This is the best birthday present you could have given me.”
For a split second, Becks wondered if she should tell her mother that she was dying. She wondered if she should prepare her for the inevitable. But she reaffirmed to herself that telling her mother before Townsend would be a betrayal.
“Happy birthday, sweetheart,” her mother said. “I hope all your dreams come true.”
Becks nodded. It was a little late for that, she well knew.
“Oh, and Becks, maybe you could come visit some time? If you aren’t too busy?”
“Sure, Mother,” Becks said. She knew she was close to losing the strength and energy to do so, but to be asked felt like absolution.
She walked through the kitchen, guiding her mother to the side door. “Mom, would you like to stay?” she asked. “I’m worried about you driving alone.”
Myra patted Becks’s arm. “Don’t worry, sweetheart. I won’t disrupt your evening any more than I already have. Besides, I always carry a gun in my glove compartment.”
Becks’s eyes widened. That didn’t seem safe at all. But she had let go of the care and keeping of this mother long ago. She had had to. Becks’s eyes filled when her mother hugged her goodbye. “I love you, Rebecca,” Myra whispered. “I always have.”
“I love you too, Mom.” It felt like the very last thing she needed before she could leave this earth, happy and content.
Becks wiped her eyes, closed the door, and turned to Charles, who was waiting with a question in his eye. The show must go on. “Once I get back to the table, it will be time for the cake,” she said firmly. He gave her a short nod and headed back to the kitchen.
Peter walked by—on his way, she presumed, to the restroom off the library. It unsettled her that he was in her house. It clearly unsettled Virginia too. But maybe she was being dramatic. Maybe her daughter got it all wrong. He could just be a quiet man at the mercy of the gossip mill—a perfect match (presuming he was not, in fact, a murderer) for gregarious Violet, who talked up a storm and ran the show.
As Peter walked by again, Becks felt the skin prick on the back of her neck. But then she thought of her children; she thought of how deeply she wished she could pardon them right now from the news she would have to deliver soon. Peter unnerved her, yes. But, all the same, she had a suspicion he was exactly who she needed right now.