Chapter 23 #2
Elizabeth despised that nickname. She despised that she felt obliged to even sit here.
If only their entrees would arrive so she could wolf hers down and they could make their excuses and leave.
She and Darcy had gone for a long run around the Reservoir that morning, hoping the exercise would help tame her angry ambivalence toward Sylvia, but the woman managed to trigger her resentment anyway.
“Is there a certain someone in your life?” Sylvia smiled sweetly. “You can tell me. I’m open-minded.”
Well, here she goes again. Elizabeth sighed.
No one who so horribly abuses green eyeliner can possibly be open-minded.
Sylvia retained her long-held conviction about Elizabeth.
The moment her younger daughter had kicked a soccer ball and discovered her passion for the game, Sylvia had been sure about the sports-mad girl’s future as a lonely, muscle-bound lesbian.
Elizabeth shifted in her seat, wondering what kind of message her black skirt and heather-gray sweater set was sending.
“As I’ve told you before, I’m neither gay nor bi-, Sylvia,” she said bitingly.
Calling her mother by her first name was a sure way to annoy her, and playing tit-for-tat seemed fair.
“Well, I never heard you mention a boyfriend, Lizabit.” Sylvia peered at her. “Gray sweaters are not helping; you need to show cleavage.”
Touché. Elizabeth nearly laughed out loud. Instead, she bit into a breadstick.
“And your apartment has no personality. It’s so plain. You need to put yourself out there.” Sylvia took a drink of wine, leaned closer and squeezed Elizabeth’s hand. “Honey, you’re twenty-four. You’re not still a virgin, are you?”
“Mom!” Jane whispered, shocked.
Elizabeth took a sip of water and sat very still, her eyes on Jane as her sister’s face disappeared into her napkin.
Once she was certain Jane was stifling horrified laughter and not choking on a piece of bread, Elizabeth turned her attention to her mother—the mother who’d come here to play her part in a lavish wedding in a city where she’d get a free vacation with her boyfriend, and who would forget Elizabeth’s answer to her question within the hour.
She really doesn’t deserve me, or Jane, or my story. I’m not playing the part for her.
She turned to Sylvia and, in a calm voice, replied, “You noticed that I cleaned off my bulletin board? It might have been enlightening to a visitor, but some of the clippings were out of date so I put them in my memory box. You know what’s in that box?
” Elizabeth glanced at Jane while her fingers played with the tines of her fork.
She could feel Sylvia’s distraction and briefly wondered whether she was actually listening or simply waiting to interrupt with another story about herself.
Elizabeth took a breath and tapped her chin in exaggerated deep thought.
“Let’s see, there’s the newspaper clipping from when I was named to the all-state girls’ soccer team, the blue ribbon I won in tenth grade for my poem about the march on Selma, the dried-up rose from my senior prom, and the silk gloves I wore when Dad married Barbara.
Oh, and the hospital bracelets from my surgeries. ”
Elizabeth looked straight at Sylvia; the servers were approaching with their food, and she wanted to finish. “There’s nothing in that box that you’ve ever been part of or expressed an interest in, so I think I’ll keep the state of my sex life private too if it’s all the same to you.”
The happiest girl in New York relished the stunned expression on the face of the woman who had given birth to her and felt the last tendrils of any mother-daughter connection curl up and wither.
The spaghetti Bolognese was very good, she mused a few minutes later, but not as good as the dish Mrs. Reynolds had made the previous week.
After the sisters dispatched Sylvia to New Jersey in a cab they paid for, Jane pulled Elizabeth back into the restaurant’s vestibule.
“That was awesome. You were amazing.” She gave Elizabeth a brief, intense hug before pulling back to shake her head.
“I can’t believe that woman is our mother.
I can’t believe she’s going to be at my wedding. ”
Then her face crumpled, and she slumped down on a bench. “How is it that she just gets worse and worse?”
“I don’t know, and I don’t want to care anymore.” Elizabeth sat and put her arm around her sister. “Will reminded me that she made a choice when she left us, and we can make a choice about accepting her back now. Choices have consequences.”
“She’s our mother.”
“You can have her, Jane. I meant what I said. I’m finished.
” Elizabeth shook her head firmly when her sister started to protest. “Everything is always on her terms, and I refuse to live my life that way. Honestly, I think she wants me to be a lesbian to make her seem trendy or something. Can you believe her?”
“It’s weird. I would have thought she’d disown you for it. I mean, she clearly relishes the idea of my finding a rich man to take care of me.”
“And you wonder why I’d rather she knows nothing about Will.” Elizabeth sighed and pulled out her phone to send a quick text to Darcy’s driver, Rudy. “I’m not changing for her, and it’s clear she is not changing for us.”
“We still have to get through the rehearsal dinner and the wedding.” Jane looked despondent.
“I know. Your rehearsal dinner and your wedding. It’s your day, not hers.”
“She makes it so hard. Like it’s her life’s work to confuse and anger us.”
“Carrot and the stick. She wants us to think she cares a hundred percent of the time, but as soon as one of us gets invested in thinking she’s interested in us, her real goal becomes clear.”
“That is so cold-blooded.”
“Actually, it’s Looney Tunes logic. I think she’s the Roadrunner and we’re the hapless Wile E.
Coyote.” Elizabeth laughed at the incredulous expression on her sister’s face.
“Well, maybe I don’t want to hit her with an anvil or blow her to smithereens, but I have been tempted to wring her neck a time or two. ”
“So you’re giving up on trying?”
Elizabeth shrugged. “Yes. I don’t need the drama or the emotional roller coaster.
Neither of us is alone anymore. Will and Charles want to see us happy.
This is your wedding. Sylvia chose the sidelines a long time ago, and she can stay there.
” She squeezed Jane’s shoulder and looked up at the valet signaling their car had arrived.
“I’ll tell you this. When I get married, she’s not going to be there.”
At the request—or demand, depending on which sibling told the story—of Charles’s mother, her former home on Lexington Avenue was the site of an intimate, family-only rehearsal dinner.
As Darcy was the only member of the wedding party not technically family, and Lynette Smathers-Bingley-Hall adored him, it was an easy enough request to honor.
Elizabeth’s family perched on the stiffly fashionable furniture, making small talk with Louisa and her mother.
Caroline stood sentry, watching for the first sign of a disastrous drink spillage by the caterers or a ruinous social faux pas by the Kowalski-Bennets; it wasn’t clear which would be worse.
She moved off after it was clear all the guests understood the use of coasters.
Elizabeth was happy to hear Charles’s mother pronounce Jane “fab-u-lous.” While they’d spent only a few days together over the past eleven months, it was obvious Jane and her soon to be mother-in-law had bonded over more than their shared love for Charles.
“Charles is his mother’s son,” she had whispered to Darcy earlier in the evening, marveling at the conversational ease Lynette seemed to have with every member of the Kowalski-Bennet family.
She and Barbara were waxing warmly over Charles’s charms, Herb Hurst’s doting on his expectant wife, and Jane’s promising forehand.
Ted’s semi-permanent smirk was in place, his eyebrows rising during the tennis talk before searching out the presence of his second daughter.
Spotting her in the doorway, smiling at someone across the room, he turned and followed her gaze.
His eyes narrowed when he saw Darcy smiling back at her before returning to a spirited conversation with Mary and Lydia.
Caroline soon joined them, and Lydia drifted away.
Darcy glanced at his watch and then at Elizabeth.
In between what felt like a territorial battle for his attention, with Caroline seeking out his company and Mary hovering about him as a protective younger sister and asking about his favorite books, he’d barely had a moment alone with his favorite Bennet.
Of course, that’s what she wanted tonight, she’d said.
“Focus on Jane and Charles, and keep the spotlight off of us.”