Chapter 2 #2
“I need it after dinner with your parents. I always feel like they’re going to send me home without dinner if I make some terrible mistake.”
He laughed and poured himself a drink, and sat down next to her on the couch, as though waiting for her to finish.
“She makes me feel like that sometimes too,” he confessed, “but she was in a good mood tonight.” Felicity couldn’t tell.
Elizabeth always aimed the same pointed glances at her, like darts, and she had never encouraged Felicity to call her anything but Mrs. Whitfield.
Felicity felt like she had been on probation with them for three years.
She felt fourteen, not thirty-two, and grossly inadequate, every time she saw them, and had a knot in her stomach throughout the meal, and the food was never good.
They served lamb chops or chicken. The food was always heavy and the meat and vegetables overcooked.
The Whitfields had had the same housekeeper and cook since Taylor was in kindergarten.
She was a sweet woman but a lousy cook, although Felicity had never commented on the food.
The salad was drowned in store-bought dressing.
Dominique always had a French or Italian chef and lighter meals, with lots of fresh food.
Taylor loved eating there. He’d been surprised to find Felicity had no interest in cooking.
Neither did her mother or sisters. All three of the Walker women were more interested in their jobs and careers than the kitchen.
Taylor finished his drink as Felicity put out her cigarette, and he turned to her with a serious expression.
He looked as though he had something important to say, and she almost wondered if he was going to break up with her.
He looked tense and not too happy. She knew his parents would be delighted if he got rid of her. Or his mother anyway.
“Is something wrong?” she asked, suddenly nervous after she had just started to unwind.
“Not at all, quite the reverse,” he said, and pulled something out of his pocket.
She couldn’t see what it was, as he took her hand and looked into her eyes.
“I was going to wait a while, but my parents think it’s time, after three years.
We know each other well by now, and you make me happy, you’re a good person, and you give me good advice about my job.
I think we’ll do well together. Felicity, will you marry me?
” he asked her in a monotone, and then kissed her before she could answer.
Their lovemaking was efficient and experienced, they weren’t innocents, but he wasn’t a man of passion.
Nothing about the relationship was what Felicity had dreamed of for her future, but it had been comfortable for both of them for the past three years.
And he was right, they got along well. But she hadn’t had marriage in mind, and didn’t have it in her sights for at least the next few years.
His proposal had taken her entirely by surprise.
She was shocked that his parents thought their getting engaged was a good idea.
She knew they wanted a grandchild, but why now?
And why her? Their disapproval had been obvious for the past three years.
“Are you serious?” she asked in a shocked voice, which wasn’t the response he had expected or wanted to hear.
“Of course. I wouldn’t have asked you if I weren’t.
And my parents approve. I have their blessing to ask you.
” She thought he sounded childish when he said it.
He opened his hand then to show her the small navy-blue velvet box he’d been holding with his fingers clasped around it so she didn’t see it.
He opened the box, and there was a ring with a small sapphire as the central stone, with a smaller diamond on either side.
He took the ring out of the box and put it on her finger.
“It was my mother’s. She agreed to let me have it.
” Felicity’s mother and grandmother wore more important jewelry, and the ring looked like Elizabeth Whitfield more than Felicity, but she was touched by the gesture.
She stared at it for a minute and then at him.
“I didn’t want to get married this young,” she said honestly, and had said it to him before. “Thirty-two still seems too young to me, and I’m not ready for children.” It wasn’t a yes or a no, it was more of a maybe, but she wasn’t jumping for joy. She’d been completely unprepared for his proposal.
“I’m thirty-seven, and I want to have children before I’m forty and too old to enjoy them.”
She smiled. “I don’t think you’ll be too old to enjoy kids at forty. I kind of thought I’d think about a serious step like marriage after I turn thirty-five. I want to concentrate on my art before that.” It gave her three more years to make her career the priority, and not marriage or a family.
“You can paint on the side when we have kids,” he said, as dismissive as he always was about her work.
“It’s not something I do ‘on the side,’ Taylor. I’m not sure you understand that.”
“Kids sleep a lot when they’re babies. You can paint while they nap.”
“Are you serious?” She looked at him intensely.
“Or you can paint at night while they sleep.”
“When I have kids, I want to give them my full attention, like my mother did.”
“She was younger than you are now when she started her business, and she managed it. I’m sure you can too.
You’re a smart girl, you can figure it out.
It’s all about time management,” he said.
It was also about talent and passion and dedication, which he seemed to overlook entirely.
“You’ll break my heart if you say no,” he added in a choked tone, which made her feel terrible about her reservations.
She loved him, but she wasn’t sure she loved him enough to be married to him for the rest of her life.
And she didn’t want to make a mistake, or rush into something she wasn’t ready for.
Felicity always made careful decisions, never rash ones, and she wanted to be honest with him.
“Can I think about it?” she asked, taking off the ring and handing it back to him. He looked deflated and hurt when she did. “Taylor, it’s more about when than if,” she said as consolation, which wasn’t entirely true, but she wanted to put balm on the wound of her not saying yes immediately.
“If you know you want to marry me, then why not now?” he insisted, with the ring safely back in its box on the table in front of the couch. She felt as though her whole future was trapped in that box, like a butterfly.
“Because now feels too soon. I don’t know if I’m ready for that kind of responsibility, and especially kids.
You want a baby soon, and I know I’m not ready for that.
It seems silly to be engaged for three years.
We live together. That feels like enough for now.
This apartment isn’t set up for kids. If I got pregnant, we’d have to move, and I love my apartment, it works well for me.
” Everything related to her art was of no consequence to him.
That was clear to her and had been for the past three years.
“I want to be a serious artist before I’m a wife and mother, so I can do a good job at all three.
Right now, my art is the priority. It has to be. The rest can wait a few more years.”
“I don’t want to wait,” he said, sounding stubborn and petulant.
He had put his heart and soul into the proposal, and she could see fury bubbling up in him, like lava in a volcano about to erupt.
She had never seen him look like that before.
She had bruised his ego badly. He’d been waiting weeks to ask her, and it had taken him time to get his mother to give him the ring.
She hated to part with it, even though she didn’t wear it anymore.
Phillip had given her a bigger one, finally, for their fortieth anniversary, a four-carat diamond she wore proudly every day.
But she was sentimental about the small sapphire he had given her when they got engaged.
They’d been married for almost fifty years since then.
Taylor seemed agitated and looked angry as he leaned over and kissed her hard, to convince her.
She was touched that he was so earnest and insistent about it, but it scared her more than convinced her.
She was feeling trapped by the idea of marriage.
She kissed him back, more cautiously, to reassure him.
The evening had suddenly become overwhelming, after the tension of dining with his parents.
Taylor became suddenly passionate, enhanced by the Scotches he’d had all evening, which gave him courage and seemed to fuel him.
His ardor was frightening. She could suddenly see that he’d had a lot to drink, more than she’d realized, and he got aggressive sometimes when he drank too much.
This was a powerful force that had him in its grip, and she didn’t want his unexpected proposal to end in a fight.