Chapter 19 Dearly Beloved #2
“It should be funny, but the gelatin needs to be the hero, not the butt of the joke. We just brought D-Zerta on as an advertiser,
and I think they’d eat it up.”
The conversation had left a bad taste in her mouth for a day or two, a bitterness on par with that awful low-cal gelatin,
making her wonder if Friedan’s theory wasn’t as far-fetched as she’d thought. If so, did Margaret’s fluffy vignettes make
her complicit in the conspiracy?
But that really did seem a little grandiose, didn’t it?
After all, she was only one fairly new, fairly unimportant writer. It wasn’t as if some brilliant young woman was going to
read Margaret’s column and decide to drop out of college because of it. And while Margaret might not appreciate his interference,
at the end of the day, Clement was just doing his job. If Margaret wanted to keep her job, she had to play ball.
And she did want to keep her job, very much.
Margaret loved writing. And being paid to do it was the kind of validation that, strange as it sounded, money couldn’t buy.
Every paycheck felt like a declaration that her efforts and the workings of her mind had value. But having boundaries erected
around those workings, limits on what she was permitted to say, took off some of the shine.
When the soda jerk set her banana split down on the counter, Viv dug right in. “Really, girls, what am I going to wear to the party? Pregnant or not, I don’t want to look like a frump.”
“I’ll look through my old maternity dresses,” Margaret said. “Bet I’ve got something that will do.”
Margaret slipped the paper off a straw and took a sip of her soda.
“Charlotte sounded so frazzled when we talked. As if the party wasn’t enough, she’s also got to get Denise packed. She’s taking
three trunks on the ship, and two are just books.”
“Must be exciting, don’t you think?” Bitsy propped an elbow on the counter and rested her chin on her hand. “Sailing across
the ocean? Spending the whole summer touring before she starts school? Viv, what was it like when you sailed to Europe?”
“Crowded,” Viv said. “The bunks were stacked four high, and everybody was puking. I imagine accommodations on the Queen Mary will be a little more deluxe, but if you’re prone to seasickness, it doesn’t matter how nice your cabin is.”
Bitsy sighed. “I envy her, being so young, having the whole world in front of her.”
Viv and Margaret exchanged grins.
“Unlike you, you mean?” Viv asked. “Old, dried-up, and all of twenty-three? With your best years behind you and nothing to
look forward to? And what are you up to these days anyway? Feels like ages since I’ve seen you. How’re things at the barn? More importantly, how’s the
horse?”
“Doing great!” Bitsy beamed. “Since the condition is chronic, we still have to keep an eye on things. But I took Delilah out
on the trail yesterday and she did just fine. King came to the barn last week, and even he had to admit that she looked practically
good as new.”
“Really.” Margaret arched her eyebrows. “And was he willing to admit that you made the right call about Delilah?”
“Oh, well . . . not really. But we’ve been getting along better lately. Also . . .” Bitsy paused to take a sip of her milkshake,
smiling a Cheshire cat smile. “I think maybe I finally do have something to look forward to.”
Margaret gasped. “Oh, Bitsy! Are you? Are you really?”
Bitsy bobbed her head. “I think so. I’m ten days late and have been pretty tired. But it’s still early and I don’t want to jinx anything, so I’m not going to say anything to King until I’ve missed at least two cycles and seen the doctor. No rabbit tests for me, remember?”
“Well, don’t wait too long,” Viv said. “Prenatal care is important. In the meantime, get plenty of rest and watch your diet.”
She dug a spoon into her bowl, scooping out a chunk of banana with the ice cream, frowning thoughtfully. “You know, I’m not
sure this vegetarian thing is a good idea during pregnancy. I’m worried about you getting enough protein.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” Margaret laughed. “She’s fine. Could you stop being a nurse for five minutes and congratulate her?”
“Sorry,” Viv said. “Professional hazard. Congratulations, Bits. You must be thrilled.”
“Oh, I am! It’s such a relief. King will be over the moon once I tell him. You know, things were pretty tense between us for
a while there.”
Margaret sipped her soda, stunned by the magnitude of this understatement.
After the second hot toddy in the barn that night, Bitsy shared the whole story of King’s terrible behavior—how he had revealed
Bitsy’s secret, implying she had dropped out of college due to academic failure, when nothing could have been further from
the truth. Afterward, he had disappeared for days.
After leaving multiple messages with King’s answering service, only to be told he wasn’t picking them up, Bitsy got worried.
When calls to his regular clients turned up nothing, she left Delilah in Joey’s care and went to the police station. The smirking
desk sergeant said husbands went off on benders all the time, but to come back if he was still missing after thirty days.
“Don’t worry,” he’d said. “He’ll turn up. A man would have to be blind or crazy to leave a pretty filly like you alone and
unprotected.” Then he handed her a business card with his phone number on it. “In case you get too lonely.”
It was awful. Bitsy felt furious, guilty, and terrified by turns.
King might be a first-class jerk, but he was still her husband.
Finally, after five days, he showed up with an armload of red roses and a list of excuses, swearing it would never happen again.
Bitsy had made him sleep on the couch for a while. Obviously, that hadn’t lasted.
Margaret understood that forgiveness is an important part of any marriage. It wasn’t easy, but sometimes you had to let things
go, even if you were in the right.
Take Viv and Tony. Tony’s discovery that Viv had concealed her condition from him for weeks had sparked an understandably
heated argument, and her admission that the Bettys already knew made things worse. Viv had come over for coffee a couple of
days later and given Margaret the play-by-play.
“How could you tell your girlfriends but not me?” he’d asked. “And when did I get to be the bad guy here, Vivian? We’re a
team, and you don’t keep secrets from your teammates! If there are obstacles to overcome, we talk it out and make a plan—together.
Just like we’ve always done. That’s what being married means!”
Viv knew he was right and admitted it. Still, Tony wasn’t quite ready to forgive her.
“Then I reminded him of the time he’d re-upped his enlistment without talking to me first,” Viv told her. “That’s the advantage
of being married so long. I know all his weak spots.”
Viv had meant that last part as a joke, but Margaret knew there was truth to it.
For good or for ill, no one knew her the way Walt did. He understood her history, hopes, fears, and vulnerabilities, the words
that could cut her to the quick. He’d said some terribly cutting things in the last few months. But in all the years of their
marriage, he’d never walked out the door and failed to come home, not even for one night, let alone five.
Forgiveness was important. But had Margaret been in Bitsy’s shoes, she wasn’t certain she could have forgiven King. Whether that made Bitsy
the bigger person or the bigger fool wasn’t for Margaret to say. If Bitsy was happy, well . . . she’d just be happy for her.
Margaret wiped her mouth with a paper napkin. “So? Who wants to talk about the book?”
Dearly Beloved was a novel centered on a wedding. Each chapter gave voice to the thoughts of a family member or wedding guest as they listened
to the ceremony. Margaret hadn’t enjoyed it in the way she’d enjoyed Gift from the Sea, but one scene had struck a chord.
Deborah, the mother of the bride, was thinking about her life and marriage, the years spent chauffeuring kids, buying groceries,
making phone calls, and hosting dinner parties, when it suddenly occurred to her that it hadn’t been a life at all—not her life, but only the scraps of other people’s lives. With her daughter set to leave home, perhaps Deborah would finally have
a chance to develop her own interests, become her own person.
The possibility that real life might be ahead of her was a comforting thought. But another, truly terrible thought came quickly
on its heels. What if her real life was already behind her? What if she had missed her chance to be herself, to truly live?
The passage left Margaret on the verge of tears.
Deborah’s thoughts, the sense of waste as she faced the impending departure of the child who had provided a veneer of purpose
to her existence, reminded Margaret of the final months with her mom—the dark rooms and darker moods, the promise Margaret
couldn’t keep. If only her mother had lived until now, to the days of writers like Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Betty Friedan, and
Mary McCarthy, when problems could be spoken of openly instead of hidden in the depths of lonely and unquiet minds, things
might have been different.
Margaret felt a hand on her arm. Viv was looking at her, frowning.
“Are you okay?”
“Hmm? Oh yes. I’m fine. Just thinking about something I forgot to do.” She took another sip of her soda. “Anyway, what did
you think?”
Viv blinked. “You mean of the book? Oh, I loved it.”
“Really? Huh. I didn’t think you would.”
“Well, you were wrong,” Viv said, scooping equal amounts of chocolate, strawberry, and vanilla onto her spoon, assembling
a perfect bite. “Loved it. Thought it was great.”
Margaret was surprised. Viv never loved the book.
“What part did you like best?”
“The part with the wedding.”
“The whole thing is the wedding. Which part—” Margaret stopped midsentence. “You didn’t read it, did you?”
Viv tilted her chin, slipped the spoon daintily into her mouth.
“I did not.”
Margaret tsked her tongue. Viv groaned and tossed out her hands.
“So I didn’t read the book, big deal! I tried to read it. But it was just talk, talk, talk, talk, talk,” Viv said, flapping
her fingers together to mime a blabbing puppet. “And so depressing. So, no. I did not read the book. I did not like the book.”
She shrugged. “Sue me.”
“Oh, please,” Margaret said. “It’s fine if you didn’t read the book. All you had to do was say so.” She turned to Bitsy. “What
about you? How did you like it?”
Bitsy ducked her head and looked guilty.
“I didn’t read it either.”