Souvenir

THIRTEEN

Meg took one of the notebook diaries with her to work Monday, reading it in her office during her lunch break.

December 5, 1987

Carolyn and I were talking about the kids today, over at the co-op. Carson’s thinking of buying Meggie a ring for Christmas. He hasn’t told Meggie. Nothing could be more natural than the two of them married. Caro thinks he means to have an April wedding, since Meggie loves springtime. To be purely honest, the timing couldn’t be better for her moving in with Carson, because if things keep up like they are, we’ll lose the whole farm by May.

But of course it hadn’t gone like that. It was Brian who proposed – in a sense – two weeks before Christmas, a time when she couldn’t fail to see the romance in his gesture.

He hadn’t been her supervisor for several months, but she saw him often. Back in early fall he’d told her that the reason he’d moved himself out of front-end management and into Investments was because he hoped to date her. He wasn’t pushy about it, and he assured her that her job was in no way affected by her firm refusals to do anything more than have a platonic lunch with him now and then. She never let him pay.

This lunch, though, was unlike any that had come before.

They went to Margot’s, a café she couldn’t afford to eat at on her own, by way, he said, of a ‘Christmas bonus – my treat’. The place was done up for the holidays, with swags of fresh holly and twinkling white lights and deep red velvet ribbon hanging above every doorway. Brian sat across from her at an intimate, white-draped table and told her he had an outrageous proposition. Would she just listen and promise to give it some thought?

‘Meg,’ he said, ‘I heard something impressive a while back, one Friday when you weren’t at the Trough. I usually don’t listen much to gossip, but – well, here’s what I heard: Vicki was telling Mark how you give your whole paycheck to your parents to help pay their bills, that you’ve been doing it since you started with us.’

Her cheeks burned; Vicky wasn’t supposed to tell anyone about that – and especially not when someone like Brian could overhear. Her family’s difficulties embarrassed her, made her look bad by association. She said, ‘Yeah, well, they’ve had some money problems. One of the stallions fractured a leg, and—’

‘Oh, don’t get me wrong – I think you’re amazing. That’s so generous. So loyal. What kid is willing to sacrifice their own agenda to help their parents these days?’

Meg shrugged. ‘I have to help if I can.’ The choice was simple to her, automatic as breathing.

‘And, you’ve been loyal to the bank, working here, what? – over two years now? Then there’s your loyalty to your boyfriend – which I’m not so crazy about.’ He laughed.

She shrugged again, embarrassed but flattered, too, which she feared was disloyal, and her face grew even hotter.

He reached over and took her hand in his cool, smooth ones, white-collar hands. ‘I admire you, and you know I really like you, Meg. You work hard, you take care of your family – and Jesus, you’re so pretty. We’ve known each other for a while, right? We worked well together, we get along – and, I know this sounds crazy, but, I … I want to help you out. You have to give me a shot, Meg; you owe it to yourself to see if you think we’re as compatible as I already know we are. And if you do, I want you to consider marrying me.’

She was sure she heard him wrong. ‘You want what?’

‘If you agreed to marry me, well, Dad and I would be in a position to help your parents with their mortgage.’ He held up one hand to stop her protest. ‘I know, it sounds like a bribe, but think of it as an incentive. A bonus.’

‘How do you know about their mortgage?’ Even she knew little about the details of her parents’ finances.

‘We hold it,’ Brian said. ‘They refinanced with us a couple years ago. I’ve had Dad delay the foreclosure proceedings until after I talked to you today.’ He leaned closer, looked into her eyes. ‘Look, Meg, I’m not a crazy person; I’m just a man who knows his mind. We could be really good together, I’m sure of it. Maybe you think you love Carson, and maybe you do love him, in a way. But what is that? Adolescent love, which never lasts. He’s been your escape from a stressful, crazy life, but you won’t need that – him – anymore; you’ll be able to solve your family’s problems. You’ll be the hero.’

Then he kissed her, and she was too astonished to object. ‘Say you’ll think about it.’

She hated to, but how could she not?

She couldn’t tell Carson, Brian said; no one could know, because of the ‘creative financing’ that would take place if things worked out. She didn’t exactly want to tell Carson anyway; the whole situation felt outrageous, unseemly – and yet, it could be a lightning strike of good fortune for her family. Maybe even fate.

She had to save her family if she could. It was the right choice. The moral choice. By choosing Brian, she could save her sisters from a family reputation even lower than it was already. She could lift them up to a higher social plateau, where they’d have a chance to be popular at school and never have to give up their free time just to keep the family in bread and milk. Without the overwhelming debt, her parents would have money for extras: Kara wanted to go with the high school’s Spanish Club to Mexico City; Beth wanted to take piano lessons; Julianne wanted riding boots and an English saddle and regulation jump bars to practice with so that she might compete. The girls could dress better.

As much as any of those things, Meg wanted her mother to be able to sleep nights instead of wandering the house like a restless spirit. So how could she selfishly hold on to Carson and watch the rest of them spiral into misery, deprived of the land that gave them, if nothing else, room to own a piece of sky, a shaggy oak, a footpath to a shallow pond where beautiful, if mostly barren, horses stood in the morning to drink?

So she’d gone along with it, meaning to give Brian a fair try. There was truth in what he said about adolescent love, she couldn’t argue with this even now, on its theoretical basis. But in her nontheoretical life, the answer that had seemed so clean and obvious to her at the time of Brian’s proposal became murkier as time passed. She liked Brian, liked the new work schedule that allowed her to commute to Gainesville three days a week for school, liked the places she got to go with him: New York, Puerto Rico, Washington, DC. But she missed Carson like she’d miss her right hand if she woke up to find it suddenly gone. Though there was no real choice but to marry Brian, she felt so guilty about her decision that she literally ached, as though her heart had weakened but was forced to keep beating. She just could not understand why what was supposed to be right felt so wrong.

Well, she understood better now.

Leaving her sandwich untouched, she read her mother’s entry from the day she married Brian.

August 20, 1989

I’m exhausted, but what a beautiful day we had for a wedding! Thank God the country club’s air-conditioning didn’t wear itself out, or none of us would’ve lasted until midnight the way we did. Spencer was in his element with all those horse people …

Creamy white orchids and red roses and white satin ribbon everywhere, but Meggie was the loveliest of all. Four thousand dollars for just her dress! Heavens, it was beautiful, that strapless style that’s in all the magazines, smooth satin on top, seed pearls and tiny crystals on every inch of the skirt. And the train! I can’t get over it. It was a gift from Nancy Hamilton, Brian’s grandmother, so how could we say no? They are all treating our girl like royalty. Spencer insisted we pay for the girls’ dresses, and they were princesses too. Beth and Julianne were asleep in the car five minutes after we left the reception, and I’ll bezKara won’t last much longer. She’s been on the phone with some boy she met there since we got home half an hour ago. I’m still too wound up to settle into bed, but when I do, well! I plan to sleep until eight! The horses won’t starve if their breakfast’s a little late.

She looked happy. Well, a little dazed, but what bride isn’t? We raised her right, I have to say. She has plenty of poise. I couldn’t stand being the center of that much attention, I know that.

My biggest fear, I admit it, was that people would look at us and know how little we had to do with putting on the wedding. If not for that famous Preakness trainer buying Spencer’s baby, Earned Luck, last week, we wouldn’t have seemed anywhere close to successful enough to pay for such a party. It made it easy to sound like our fortunes had turned around.

Well, they have, haven’t they? She went through with it after all. Bruce took Spencer aside just before the reception, told him it’ll all be taken care of Monday. That’s almost three thousand dollars a month it’ll save us. Three thousand! I hardly know how to sit here and write happy thoughts, when usually I’m just trying to figure out a new way to rob Peter. What good luck Meggie has had.

I remember when she first came to Spencer and me to ask about the mortgage. Was it true, she wanted to know, that we’d been late for seven or eight months in a row? Was it true we’d heard from the bank that they were starting foreclosure proceedings? That we could lose the whole business and the house, too, in just a few months’ time? I felt so ashamed. Spencer hedged, not wanting to worry her with all that mess, but then she told us why she was asking. Told us that Brian wanted to help us out – depending. I was against it at first, but not Spencer. He washed the doubt right out of Meggie’s eyes and mine with his enthusiasm for the idea. It was up to her, of course, but since she was asking, well, we had to say it was a terrific bit of luck that Brian had taken a shine to her. An amazing opportunity for her, if she wanted to take it.

She did look happy today. The more I think about it, the more I’m sure of it. And I’m sure she never saw Carson’s truck parked down the street from the church. He’ll find someone else before too long, now that he’s seen she isn’t ever coming back to him. My heart ached for him, but he’s young, he’ll be fine. They’re all so young. They can make their lives be whatever they want. Isn’t that how it works?

‘Sure. Whatever we want,’ Meg whispered.

Her nurse, Laurie, knocked once and opened the door. ‘Your one o’clock’s here.’

‘Thanks. Give me three minutes.’

She closed the notebook and stuffed it back into her satchel, certain that this foray into the past wasn’t doing her any good. The spinning blades were uncomfortably close right now.

FOURTEEN

On Tuesday, their last morning on the island, Carson woke before Val and lay watching the fan turn lazily above him. Hung over from the night before, he tried to sort out the remains of a dream. Something about Spencer sending him out on one of the mares – to check that she’d been shoed right? Something crazy like that, and as he rode off, he saw Meg standing in Brian’s arms. He tried to turn the horse, but it kept running, and when he looked behind him, he couldn’t even see Meg anymore.

A stupid dream; as it happened, she’d been the one to run.

Val slept soundly next to him, a pillow covering her head, smooth browned arms flung out toward the headboard as if she was surfing in her sleep. He lifted the pillow and looked at her, thinking again how young she was; she looked especially youthful when sleeping, long blond eyelashes against her tan face, no lines around her eyes, lips chapped from salt and sun, just as she must have looked as a teen. Her age – the difference in their ages – didn’t concern him too much, but he did wonder how long it would be before she was ready to slow down some, do the family thing. He wanted kids eventually, would have had them already if not for Meg’s about-face.

He didn’t especially like thinking about Meg, but obviously, with his wedding to Val approaching fast, he could see why all these memories were being triggered. Unfortunately you couldn’t just dump your past to clear the way for your future – although Meg sure seemed to have succeeded at doing just that.

Leaving Val in bed, Carson pulled on shorts and left the villa. After stopping at the outdoor breakfast buffet to grab some coffee and a couple of chocolate croissants, he meandered down to the beach, marveling at the multi-toned clear blue water and the benevolence of morning sunshine – something he had too little of at home in Seattle. He wished his mind felt as peaceful as the scene before him looked. Maybe if he could spend the whole day lying here on a chaise, he’d feel like he was actually having a vacation. That, however, wasn’t in the cards.

Val wanted to stop in Philipsburg to look at wedding bands before their early afternoon flight. Dutch St Martin, or St Maarten, as it was when you crossed the French–Dutch border, was known for having great jewelry at low prices. Already they’d browsed some shops, Val buying platinum-and-diamond tennis bracelets for each of her bridesmaids. He wasn’t eager to have to cram in yet another activity before they headed to Florida for more wedding planning with his parents, but he wanted Val to be happy.

He was a sucker that way, when it came to people he cared about. The last time he’d ventured so far – almost as far as he’d come now with Val – he’d gotten pretty badly singed. Okay, burned; why minimize it?

Though he was looking at the calm water of the bay, he was seeing the past.

It was almost Christmas, ’87. He’d been working for a friend of his dad’s, warehousing fruit for extra money to buy Meg an engagement ring. Later on the day he’d been in town to get the ring – a simple solitaire, less than a third of a carat, set in gold – she called him and asked him to meet her at the tree.

‘Just come over here,’ he told her. By then he’d been living in the shed for two years; they spent most of their free time there.

‘No, I … I’d rather be outside, okay?’

‘Sure.’ Distracted by his excitement about the ring, he missed the tension in her voice. Instead, he thought of how he could give her the ring there at the tree; that was a better plan than the elaborate fancy-dinner-bended-knee thing he’d been thinking of doing. Outdoors, at their spot – a much better plan.

The sun was low, the temperature dropping with it. He threw on his denim jacket, tucked the ring box into one pocket, and hurried through the groves, past the lake, rehearsing his proposal in his head. When he got to the tree, hands in pockets, the box square and promising in his right hand, he saw Meg’s expression and pulled his hands out, empty.

‘What’s the matter?’

She was sitting at the base of their oak tree, arms wrapped around her knees. ‘I’ve been thinking,’ she said.

‘Waste of time,’ he joked, nervous without knowing why. She shrugged and looked past him, biting her lip. He squatted in front of her. ‘Just spit it out.’ Whatever it was couldn’t be so bad, not for the two of them anyway. Must be it had to do with money and the Powells’ farm – the talk was that Spencer was about to go bankrupt.

‘It’s over, Car,’ she said, looking down at her sneakers. She was about to wear a hole in the left one, at the big toe.

‘I heard. What are they planning to do?’

She looked up sharply. ‘Who?’

‘Your parents. Are they filing for bankruptcy or what?’

She shook her head and stood up. ‘No, I mean us.

I … I’m … Did you ever think how we might actually be bad for each other?’

‘What, are you nuts?’

She looked it, wild-eyed and flushed. ‘No, I’m serious. You … you need to experience other … you know, date other people. We – we’re too close. It’s unhealthy. I mean, you’ve never had any other serious girlfriend.’

‘You like it that way,’ he said, mentally scrambling to catch up to what she was saying. ‘What do you mean, too close? We’re just right, we’re perfect.’ The box in his pocket was the proof that he firmly believed his words. Why didn’t she? Why all of a sudden?

‘No, we’re just … you know – kids. We need to get some space between us and … and … and see what else there is in the world. Who else,’ she added, her voice hoarse.

‘We’re not kids. I just turned twenty, you’re nineteen – both legally adults.’ It was a weak response, he knew. The force of her insistence emanated from her like a magnetic field. Already he could feel the futility in arguing.

She looked around them, as though enemies might be hiding in the brush. ‘I can’t see you anymore,’ she said. ‘It’s for both our good.’ He grabbed her wrist, but she was already in motion, already running away before even taking a step. ‘I love you, but I have to go.’

She broke free, and he watched her run, the copper hair he loved so much streaming out behind her like a wild mare’s mane. He would let her run; she wouldn’t go far, he was sure of it.

Carson couldn’t commit to any of the wedding bands on display in the Philipsburg jewelry shop. Each silky platinum or diamond-encrusted gold band looked good, but he couldn’t quite see himself wearing any of them. Too plain, too elaborate, too gaudy, too wide, too narrow; Val and the salesman, whose English was approximately as good as Carson’s Dutch, frowned at him as he pondered.

He pushed the navy blue velvet tray away. ‘You know, our flight’s in ninety minutes … There’s this nice store in Ocala; why don’t we look there when we get in? I guess I’m just not in the mood for this right now.’

‘But the prices are so much better here,’ Val said.

Carson smirked. ‘You can afford the difference. Come on.’ He stood.

‘Okay, fine.’ But she didn’t look fine. She looked disappointed. ‘If you’re sure none of these work.’

She must have an attachment to one, one that he was supposed to also prefer, that maybe she’d been trying to signal him about and he hadn’t caught on. Well, he was still tired, still hung over; every night here was a party and his middle-aged body was feeling the effects.

Wherever Val went, she collected friends. Young, energetic friends, most of whom surfed. He swam pretty well, thanks to years of racing Meg across the lake, but didn’t surf worth a damn, so what he did most during these parties was observe and drink. Oh, people were intrigued with him, sure, but once they’d declared their love of his music and admiration for his ability to create it, they had little else to say. The conversations, when they lasted, usually turned to Val and her career, a subject of common interest.

Val. No one was more charismatic. He often joked that she’d been given an extra dose of personality, maybe the one his bass player Ron seemed to be missing. She was good to everyone around her, and he hated that he’d missed whatever signal she was trying to send about the wedding bands. So he sat down and took another look.

He supposed she wanted him to choose something in platinum, to match her engagement ring and the band she’d wear with it. When they discussed a ring for him, they agreed his didn’t need to match – that it was most important for it to suit him personally, the way hers was such a perfect match for her. The truth was, he’d made such a ‘perfect’ selection simply because when he described Val to the Tiffany clerk, the woman proclaimed he needed the Schlumberger ring – a very large, round diamond encircled by smaller diamonds and, as a modification, some exceptional aquamarines, set only in platinum – and he went along with it.

Glancing at Val’s ring, he pointed to the band that looked like the closest complement, a wide polished band with an inset sweep of nine small diamonds. ‘How about this one?’

She nodded eagerly. ‘You should try it on.’

He did, and she grinned, and when he gave the consent she’d been hoping for, she kicked him out of the shop to make the purchase, insisting that it was bad luck for him to know the price.

He waited on the sidewalk outside, glad to have satisfied her. That was the more important thing. He could wear the ring, flashy as it was. He’d get used to it. A man could get used to just about anything if he set his mind to it. He’d gotten used to being angry at Meg, gotten used to being without her after all their years growing up together. He’d gotten used to feeling incomplete and had even turned that feeling, and the associated ones, into an incredibly lucrative career. He’d gotten used to living on the road for huge chunks of time, to the sharp smell of sweat and exhaustion that filled his tour bus after a concert, to relying on Gene to tell him where to be and when and for how long. He’d gotten used to the idea of never finding a woman worth marrying.