CHAPTER 6
6
A LTHOUGH R EBECCA AND I were both keen to keep our wedding ceremony small, particularly as I didn’t have any family of my own, it surprised me how reluctant she was to extend an invitation to her mother. Some years earlier, Vanessa had spent a year on a small island off the west coast of Ireland and, after returning to the mainland, had quickly emigrated to Boston, where she found work in a library. In time, this led to a position with an independent publishing house. Eighteen months later, she married the director of that company. Rebecca chose not to attend their service, feigning illness, but Vanessa, by contrast, decided to come to ours, flying to England with her new husband in tow and inviting us to dinner in their hotel.
I liked my future mother-in-law immediately. She had a quiet dignity to her, an engaging blend of confidence, vulnerability and mettle. Her short dark hair was peppered with unapologetic grey and, although she was dressed smartly, I guessed she was the sort of woman who cared about her appearance up to a point, but wasn’t going to waste too much time worrying about it.
Her and Rebecca’s reunion proved predictably uncomfortable, Vanessa reaching in for a hug that was awkwardly received. Introductions followed between stepdaughter and stepfather, a burly American named Ron who came across as a gentle, thoughtful man, and who made an immediate effort with us both. Despite her misgivings and stated intention to remain stand-offish, I could tell that Rebecca grudgingly recognized his sincerity. As a couple, Vanessa and Ron seemed happy, touching each other’s arms from time to time and laughing at each other’s jokes. Despite being an entire generation older than me, I felt envious of their easy companionship.
It could scarcely have been a more inappropriate thing for me to consider, but I guessed they had a far healthier sex life than Rebecca and I did.
‘Are you a reading man, Aaron?’ Ron asked me over dinner, and I confessed that I wasn’t particularly, that my student years had left me with very little time for anything other than professional textbooks. He asked the same question of Rebecca, who usually had a novel on the go, before producing a small tote bag from beneath the table containing copies of some of the new books he was publishing that season. Years later, I found this same collection on a shelf in our living room and discovered an anthology containing a story by Furia Flyte. When I flicked through it, I discovered notes written in the margins in Rebecca’s hand. If she had known at the time of reading the role the author would play in the end of our marriage, I wonder how different those notes might have been.
‘I still find it astonishing that you’re training to become a pilot,’ Vanessa remarked over the main course, and Rebecca, on high alert for anything that might be considered a slight – possibly even hoping for one – bristled.
‘Why?’ she asked. ‘What did you think I should become?’
‘It’s not that I thought you should become anything. It’s just that it’s an unusual job for a woman, that’s all. Historically speaking. When I was a girl, it would have been unthinkable.’
‘There was a female pilot on the plane coming over to the UK,’ remarked Ron.
‘True,’ she said, leaning forward and lowering her voice. ‘And, of course, the moment she made the announcement – you know the one at the start when the pilot welcomes the passengers and says their name is so and so and the flight time will be however long it will be – there was a groan from some of the men in our cabin. One even said aloud, I hope you can all swim because we’ll be landing in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean , which he obviously thought was hilarious.’
‘She turned around to him,’ said Ron, nodding towards his wife proudly.
‘I did,’ she admitted.
‘She told him off.’
‘I did!’
‘She said, what’s the matter with you? It’s not as if she’d be given control of the cockpit if she didn’t know the clutch from the brake. Show some respect! ’
‘There’s no clutch on a plane,’ said Rebecca.
‘Well, obviously I know nothing about that sort of thing. But I thought, for heaven’s sake, it’s the twenty-first century! Do we still have to deal with men who hold such outdated ideas?’
‘Personally speaking,’ said Ron, ‘if I’d had a daughter, it would have knocked my socks off to see her go into a traditionally male industry and show them who was boss.’
‘The industry itself isn’t traditionally male,’ replied Rebecca. ‘It’s just that over the years the women who’ve worked within it have mostly been reduced to serving food and drinks.’
‘Would you have liked children?’ I asked him, and he nodded enthusiastically.
‘Oh yes. Very much. I just didn’t meet the right woman when I was the right age, that’s all. I had my share of relationships, of course, some good, some not so good, but things never seemed to work out for me on that front. Until Vanessa came along, that is.’
He reached across and took her hand, squeezing it gently.
‘And by then, we were too old to go down that road.’
‘Ron has quite a tight-knit group of nephews and nieces,’ said Vanessa. ‘They came to the wedding,’ she added pointedly. ‘They’ve been very welcoming towards me.’
Rebecca remained silent, forking a carrot and chewing on it meditatively.
‘I put all my paternal longings into those kids,’ said Ron, and I could see his eyes light up as he described them, two boys and three girls, the lives they were living, the boyfriends and girlfriends they had, the ambitions still before them. One was working in his publishing house and he hoped that she might take it over one day. ‘So I’ve no regrets. I think life works out the way it’s supposed to.’ He turned to Rebecca now. ‘The truth is, I thought I was going to be a confirmed old bachelor for the rest of my days, and I’d made my peace with that, but then I met your mother. I thought I was happy until then. Turned out, I didn’t know what happiness really was.’
He looked at Vanessa when he said this, and when she placed a palm gently against his cheek, I felt a strange joy for them. Their affection was so natural and blissful.
Later, they asked where we were hoping to go on our honeymoon and I told them we’d planned four nights in Florence, then three nights in Venice, and Vanessa immediately suggested that we should come to Boston instead.
‘The fall is particularly beautiful there,’ she added. ‘It would be a great time to visit.’
‘The fall?’ asked Rebecca, in as sarcastic a tone as she could muster. ‘You mean the autumn, right?’
‘Sorry,’ she said, laughing a little. ‘I’ve turned into such a native. I say things like sidewalk and elevator these days.’
‘And dude ,’ added Ron, and Vanessa turned to him in outrage, denying that she’d ever called anyone dude in her entire life, but then he made a reference to a young writer whose publicity campaign she’d been working on, and she admitted that yes, she might have called him dude once, but she’d had one too many Cosmopolitans at the time so it shouldn’t be held against her.
‘He won a Pulitzer, you know,’ added Ron.
‘Who did?’ asked Rebecca.
‘The writer,’ he told us. ‘In no small part because of your mother’s hard work. You should be very proud of her. She’s a smart cookie.’
Vanessa remained silent throughout this commendation, taking a sip from her glass of wine, her cheeks flushing a little. I could tell that she was pleased by the compliment, and proud that it was clearly deserved.
‘It’s like you’re a different human being entirely,’ said Rebecca, and it was difficult to tell from her tone whether she meant this in a positive or negative way.
‘How do you mean?’
‘It’s hard to say,’ she replied, shaking her head. ‘It’s like you’re not Vanessa Carvin any more. Not the one I grew up with, anyway. You look like her, for the most part. And you talk like her. But you’re different.’
‘Well, many years have passed, so naturally I’ve changed. It happens.’
‘You’re not even Willow Hale.’
I turned to look at Rebecca, uncertain what she meant by this, and Vanessa exhaled a small, sad sigh.
‘I’m surprised you even remember that name,’ she said.
‘Who’s Willow Hale?’ I asked.
‘Willow Hale was the name my mother assumed when she ran away and left me.’
‘I didn’t run away and leave you, Rebecca,’ replied Vanessa in a measured tone. ‘If anything, I ran away and left me . And I messaged you constantly. I woke up every morning wondering whether your picture would still be on my contacts list or not. If her picture was there, Aaron,’ she said, turning to me, ‘it meant that she was open to me messaging her. If it was gone, then she’d blocked me. It was very random from one day to the next. Honestly, there were times I didn’t even want to look because of how hurtful it could be.’
I turned to look at Rebecca, but she didn’t meet my eyes. She’d told me about the island, and why her mother had gone there, but not about her pseudonym or their lack of interaction during that period.
‘I came to visit,’ she said.
‘You did,’ agreed Vanessa. ‘For a night.’
‘What was it like?’ I asked. ‘The island, I mean.’
Vanessa breathed in deeply and I could tell that she was searching for the right way to describe it.
‘Life-changing,’ she said eventually. ‘Peaceful. Full of strange, wonderful, difficult people. I’m not sure that I’d be sitting here today if I hadn’t gone there.’
Our small group fell silent then and finally, to break the tension, Ron asked about my plans for the future. I told him that I hoped to work with children who’d suffered some form of trauma in their lives.
‘And you’ll stay here?’ he asked.
‘We haven’t made a decision about that yet.’
‘It’s an expensive city, from what I’m told. Especially if you plan on having children.’
‘We don’t,’ said Rebecca decisively, which was news to me, and I realized that we’d never discussed the topic of becoming parents. I suppose I’d always taken it for granted that this would happen in time. I turned to look at her, trying to keep the surprise off my face, and she deliberately stared into the bowl of her wine glass, swilling the contents just enough that they touched the peak of the rim without spilling over.
‘I couldn’t bring a child into this world,’ she continued. ‘I just couldn’t. I think about what your first husband did’ – Rebecca never referred to Brendan as her father, just as her mother’s first husband – ‘and I think about what happened to Aaron when he was a boy—’
‘What happened to you when you were a boy?’ asked Vanessa, looking at me.
‘And I simply refuse to bring another human into such a world. If he or she could just be born as an adult, then that would be fine. But they have to go through childhood first, don’t they? And one way or another, someone will fuck them up. Or just fuck them.’
Vanessa muttered something under her breath and looked away, her jaw tightening. I sensed there were emotions that she wanted to express but that she was uncertain how they might be received. Ron took a sip from his beer while I stared down at my meal. Eventually, Vanessa repeated her question and, in as brief a way as possible, keeping my language plain so as not to turn the evening any darker than it had already become, I explained what had taken place in my life when I was fourteen.
I know he meant well.
I know he was only trying to lighten the mood.
I know he simply didn’t understand the experience I had gone through, but that was when Ron said:
‘Jesus. When I was that age, I would have given my left arm to be seduced by an older woman.’
The moment the words were out of his mouth, I think even he knew that he’d said the wrong thing. Vanessa froze, as did Rebecca. He closed his eyes, and they remained that way for about ten seconds while everyone at the table remained silent.
‘I’m so sorry,’ he said at last. ‘That was such a dumb thing to say. Obviously, I have no understanding of what you went through or the effect it had on you.’
‘He didn’t say he was seduced by an older woman,’ said Rebecca, her voice rising now, her tone enraged. I noticed a couple at a nearby table turning to look in our direction. ‘He said he was raped by one. There’s a big fucking difference, Ron .’
‘I’m very sorry,’ he repeated, reaching his enormous hand across the table and placing it atop mine, an intimate gesture that I found strangely comforting. ‘I’m a big stupid American who speaks before he thinks.’
‘It’s fine,’ I told him, because I knew that his apology was sincere. I’d heard men say things like this before. The same men who would insist that if a thirty-two-year-old man even glanced in a lascivious way towards their fourteen-year-old daughter, they would gladly serve a life sentence for their murder.
Vanessa took her husband’s left hand, leaving three of us physically connected. Only Rebecca held herself apart.
‘I’m sorry, sweetheart,’ Ron whispered to his wife, and she gave him a quick kiss as he looked around the table, his brow furrowed. ‘I know what Vanessa suffered. And, of course, I know what happened to Emma. So it’s not something to make light of. Maybe that’s one of the things that brought you two together?’
Oh Ron , I thought. Stop speaking. Please stop speaking.
Rebecca put her glass down, firmly, and placed her hand against her forehead, holding it there.
‘It’s a terrible world we live in,’ he continued. ‘I had such a happy childhood myself. I hope you’ve found a way to make peace with what happened to you, Aaron.’
‘Well, I try not to allow it to affect my life any deeper than it already has,’ I replied quietly.
‘That seems very sensible,’ said Vanessa. ‘If you don’t mind me asking, what happened to the woman? Did you report her?’
‘Only a couple of years ago. By which time, she’d done a lot of damage to other boys. I should have done it earlier.’
‘You can’t blame yourself for that.’
‘I know, but I regret my delay.’
‘And was she punished?’
‘Yes. Arrested, charged, tried and incarcerated. She admitted to it all. And worse.’
‘What could be worse?’
‘Suffice to say she won’t be setting foot outside prison again in her lifetime.’
‘Well, that’s something.’
‘Please don’t ever mention my sister’s name again,’ said Rebecca quietly, looking down at the table. Her tone made it clear that she’d spent the last couple of minutes seething over Ron’s remarks.
‘Rebecca,’ said Vanessa.
‘I mean it. You didn’t know her. You never met her. So please don’t speak about her as if you have any understanding of who she was or what we lost.’
I turned to her, pleading with my eyes for her to stop, but her attention was focused solely on him.
‘I won’t,’ he replied, his tone entirely sincere. ‘And I apologize for doing so. I didn’t realize it would upset you this much, but I do now and will keep it in mind in the future.’
I could feel the tension in her simmering away, longing to boil over. Her fury that he was being so reasonable and refusing to participate in an argument. She wanted to tear into him, this substitute father, someone who might soak up the rage she felt towards her real one, but he simply wasn’t giving her the opportunity.
‘Perhaps Aaron and I should go for a drink in the bar,’ he suggested finally, looking down at our plates, which were empty now. ‘You two ladies haven’t seen each other in so long. You could probably do with a little time to catch up without us boys getting in the way.’
I felt a sense of relief when Vanessa nodded.
It was more than an hour later before she rejoined us, telling me that Rebecca was waiting for me in the lobby.
‘She’s not coming in to say goodbye?’ I asked, and she shook her head.
‘No, she just wants to go home.’
I said my goodbyes to both and made my way towards the door. Before I could leave, however, Vanessa caught up with me.
‘Aaron,’ she said, standing close to me, ‘I want you to know that I love my daughter very much. I would lay down my life for her if I had to. And obviously I’ve only just met you for the first time tonight, but from what I’ve observed, you seem like a kind, thoughtful young man. She’s lucky to have you. But, out of consideration to you, can I offer you one piece of advice?’
‘Of course,’ I said.
She took both my hands in hers, clutching them tightly, and looked me directly in my eyes.
‘Don’t marry her,’ she said. ‘You’re a fool if you do.’