Story 10: The Gathering

Ashley was watching Lydia’s intense conversation with her husband when both of them turned toward her. Ashley retreated into the long, narrow kitchen and wiped her face on the inside of one of the cupboards, then hoped her tears wouldn’t spot the glasses.

“If the punch bowl were a drain,” Lydia said drily as she came into the kitchen, “our in-laws would be going down it.”

Another fencing move by Lydia. What to do when your sister-in-law always drew back after just a touch but wouldn’t let you leave the field? Ashley waited. Sometimes she ferreted out Lydia’s motives so that she could laugh at them, but it was Christmastime, and her mother would no doubt say at least once before the day itself: “Let’s all be nice to each other.” But could they comfort each other? Lydia was waiting too.

Ashley decided to begin a conversation that had been weighing on her for months. “There’s something I’m afraid of,” she told her sister-in-law.

Lydia leaned against the counter, her suit and pumps and hair all the same shade of black. “What’s that?”

“That we’ll start to go our separate ways now that Tom is gone.” Lydia frowned, and for a moment Ashley’s stomach knotted, but she kept talking. “He just seemed to have radar. He could tell when people were about to fight. I used to watch him when we were in college. He could always smooth things over.”

“No one in this family fights,” Lydia pointed out.

“I suppose you’re right,” Ashley said. “When one person in this family gets angry, all the others go off on tangents or bring up the past instead of sticking to the issue. Teddy says that’s why nothing gets resolved.”

“Oh, Teddy,” Lydia shot back. “God knows how long resolving Teddy would take.”

They laughed, but Ashley could sense an undercurrent of anger in Lydia’s voice. “If we do drift apart,” Lydia said, taking a small black leather notebook out of her jacket pocket, “it won’t be because of fights.” She handed the book to Ashley, who opened it wonderingly. It had Tom’s name on the first page and was dated more than twenty years ago.

“Think of it as my late husband’s last gift to you.” Lydia turned abruptly and strode out of the kitchen.

Ashley paged through the book, deciphering Tom’s scrawl about pre-med classes and college activities, especially anything that Teddy, Tom’s big brother, had been involved in. Then she came to a page that had her name on it. As she read, she began to cry again. She put the book down and sobbed softly, hoping no one in the living room would hear. Finally she wiped her face, hid the book in the placemats drawer, and left the kitchen in search of Lydia. She found her talking to Teddy again. The highlights in Lydia’s hair gleamed in the lights from the Christmas tree. When she smiled, all Ashley could see was dark red lipstick stretching. Maybe she’d had too much punch, but the bowl was still half full.

“Tom was the one driving the boat that day,” Lydia said. “That was the day Natalie learned to slalom.”

“That’s right,” Teddy laughed. “Nothing like a snake in the water to help you learn to stand up on a ski.”

“And then that night we roasted marshmallows in the fireplace, and you told ghost stories,” Lydia said. “Between the snakes and the ghosts, Natalie couldn’t sleep and came into our bedroom ’cause it was closer.”

“That’s right, she did. Do you remember, Ash?”

She nodded at his old nickname for her. The shadows the tree cast on the walls mesmerized her. She’d rented a sprayer and applied the orange peel texture when nobody else had wanted to, the first summer they’d spent here. The curtains were also her handiwork. Ashley could go through the house and remember the last few years by what she had sewn and reconstructed and hung on the walls. Everyone else in her family had markers outside, on a road or in a body of water. But she put hers inside, where they kept better.

Teddy kissed her. “You were swaying,” he said, looking at her quizzically. “Are you all right?”

“Just tired. I think I’ll go sit on the dock where it’s cooler.” She turned to Lydia. “Will you come with me?”

Lydia nodded. Teddy fetched their coats, and they went outside, through the porch where all the cousins, Natalie included, had squeezed in and around the glider. They didn’t notice them, too busy with their plans for Christmas break. “Will we have a white Christmas?” someone asked, the eternal Kansas City question, but when Ashley looked back she couldn’t tell who was speaking from the mass of red and gold and green sweaters and wool skirts and pants at the other end of the room. It was cold on the dock but quiet, with just a murmur of voices coming from the porch. Once she heard the glider squeak. She sat on the ladder and leaned against the railing, closing her eyes. Lydia sat down behind her, on a bench.

“It was just a kiss,” Ashley said. “That was all.”

**

A kiss. From Tom, one afternoon more than twenty years ago. Before she was engaged to Teddy, before she’d put anything on the walls in this house. She and Teddy had been about to graduate from the University of Missouri, in May in the heat of Columbia. Even now, only a matter of days before Christmas and years distant, the thought of Missouri heat could keep her warm.

Tom was only a freshman and Teddy’s little brother, but he knew more people than she did at school. People greeted him wherever he went. He was at Teddy’s apartment, helping her prepare for a graduation party. They were the entertainers. Teddy had gone out, talking about politics. She and Tom had made everything they could; no one would arrive for two hours. They were sitting on the apartment patio, on a scruffy couch that only students could love, and he said, “There’s something I want to ask you.”

“What?” she said, turning toward him.

He took her face in his hands and kissed her until she pushed him away so that she could breathe, but his hands still framed her face. She even stopped worrying about bugs in the couch.

“You seem to be immune to the heat,” he said, but his hands on her were not sweaty, just warm and soft. They smelled of avocado and bread. His eyes were a darker brown than Teddy’s, but his hair was lighter, and his face always looked a little hollow.

“It’s because I’m so pale,” she told him. One thing she admired about Teddy’s family was how they could stand in the sun for a moment or two and get a tan. Like flowers that absorbed sunlight and turned it into something colorful and full of life. She could never tolerate the sun for more than half an hour at a time.

“Perhaps,” he said, taking her hands and turning them this way and that to look at her skin.

“What did you want to know?”

He smiled a little ruefully. “Whether you think you’ve been with Teddy long enough.”

A question on the minds of everyone, apparently: she and Teddy, her friends, their parents—though the parents were considerably more subtle about it than the friends. And she and Teddy thought about it often, but they pretended that graduation was all that mattered.

She didn’t want to answer any of them, so she kissed him again, let him maneuver her closer, and stayed there for a while. Only when they stood up and he brushed couch fuzz off her dress did she feel sweat trickling down her back. People would be arriving soon.

“Let me know,” he said to her as they went inside.

And she had decided two weeks later, when Teddy asked her a question, she could never remember exactly what, and offered a ring. For a moment she had stood immobile at the Rose Garden fountain in Loose Park, but then she had begun to reach—for him and a lifetime of more than warmth and softness, for the energy he possessed. Once the ring was on, he tipped them both into the fountain, where they lay shrieking and laughing. Amazing, how many different ways there are to ask.

**

“Just one?” Lydia asked. Her voice was ragged.

Ashley opened her eyes and turned her head. It was so dark on the dock that Lydia’s red lipstick looked black, although her dangling earrings sparkled a little as she shivered.

“Yes, just that one afternoon.”

“You didn’t love him?”

“No,” Ashley said, “I did love him.”

“Then why did you marry Teddy?”

Why? Ashley asked herself now, with icy water lapping at her red holiday shoes, the brilliance of stars in the dark water. Why did I say yes to Teddy and not Tom?

“I think I must have been afraid of too much quiet,” she told Lydia. “Of being bored by comfort.”

For a moment she amused herself by switching lives, putting Lydia in her place. She began to giggle and wanted some more punch. Lydia could never have handled Teddy. He would have worn her out. She must be made of stronger stuff than anyone imagined because after two decades of marriage, he could still surprise her just by coming into a room. She must be as strong as the wall between the lake and the house.

“Tom’s not boring,” Lydia said.

“No, he wasn’t,” Ashley agreed. “But the two of us together—that would have been boring.”

Up at the house, the screen door banged, and shoes came scratching down the path.

Natalie and Lydia’s youngest daughter ventured onto the dock. “You two have been out here a while.”

“Just talking about Tom,” Ashley told them.

Natalie handed her a rum ball. “Don’t stay out here all night, Mom. It’s already below freezing.” Shivering, she raced back to the porch, calling, “She’s on the dock.”

Ashley didn’t know why that should be a revelation to anyone. They’d walked past the entire party to leave the house. After she’d spent the whole day preparing, couldn’t they allow her a little peace, a little conversation?

Lydia’s daughter held out her hand, and slowly Lydia took it and stood up. They walked up the path together. Ignoring them, Ashley turned back to the water.

She and Tom had talked about it at the engagement party his parents had thrown. Needing quiet then as she did now, she had escaped the party to sit outside for a moment, and he had followed her.

“I should have asked sooner,” he said.

“It wouldn’t have made a difference,” Ashley told him.

He put his hand up to her face, and she didn’t move away. “But we’re so comfortable together.”

“Exactly,” she said. “No passion.”

“And you think Teddy can give you that?” he asked doubtfully.

“Yes,” she said. “I’m certain of it.”

That conversation had never really ended. At parties, at family gatherings, they had relived their short moment in looks, in the way he almost kissed her on the mouth in front of their spouses, in the way she would stroke his arm sometimes in passing. Some days she had hoped Teddy or Lydia would notice, but no one had ever said anything. Until now.

When she finally opened the door to the porch, the cousins were still there, wanting to know what she had been thinking about so long. Sometimes the voices of children reminded her of Charlie Brown’s teacher, all sound and no sense. What did they think she could possibly tell them?

“It’s a secret,” she replied very seriously. They were all desperate for more of Tom, but she had nothing to add. “A deep, dark secret for a cold night.”

Her in-laws were sitting down in the living room, conversing in soft tones. She stood there in the doorway for a few seconds, listening to them weave the tapestry of reminiscence. It was nearly ten o’clock, and people began to stir and stretch. A yawn or two. She wanted them to stay longer, have a slumber party. She wanted the distraction of company, just not intense scrutiny. Ashley walked to the punch bowl, filled a glass full enough for her to get tipsy again, and tapped the crystal ladle against the bowl.

“It’s not over yet,” she said. “We haven’t watched The Grinch or A Charlie Brown Christmas.”

“Is that a family tradition?” Lydia asked brightly, even though she was slumped down in the middle of the couch, next to Teddy. He looked up at Ashley and smiled.

“I think it should be,” he said and called out to the porch. “Kids! Come in here!” All the cousins slouched resentfully into the living room. From the lake, a welcome breeze blew in the sounds of branches scratching each other’s backs.

“What?”

“We’re going to watch Christmas shows,” Teddy informed them.

“You mean home movies?”

“No way, man, It’s a Wonderful Life.”

“Noooo, not that again!”

Teddy was a big, graceful man. Without bumping the many bodies heating up the living room, he got up and seated Ashley next to Lydia on the couch, smiling at both in turn. “If you’re tired,” he said to the younger ones, “we have pillows. You can sleep on the floor.” In a few minutes he returned with armfuls of pillows and blankets, and the cousins camped around Teddy on the floor. Natalie put in the tape of The Grinch that Ashley had recorded earlier that week.

The adults had their patterns, Ashley thought. No doubt Tom’s death would change things, but they wouldn’t notice except in those moments of revelation that were always immediately followed by dismissal. Or in the middle of the night when some fading noise awoke them while their partners and children slept hoarsely and seemed to whisper directions in their sleep.

When The Grinch was over, Natalie wanted to watch Charlie Brown, but Lydia’s youngest daughter voted for Frosty the Snowman. Teddy sat up between the girls and suggested sleep: “It’s late. We should all go to bed.”

“No way,” Ashley said, laughing. “We’re watching Charlie Brown, and you’re all sleeping over.” She stood up to get more punch.

“Aunt Lydia can sleep in my room,” Natalie suggested. “That way she won’t have to sleep in the single bed in the office.”

“The kids can sleep down here,” Teddy said quickly, glancing at Lydia. “All six of you on the floor.”

Lydia’s son muttered, “Whatever.”

“Just stay away from me,” his sister said. She had just turned fourteen.

Natalie said, “It’ll be cozy!”

“I want to sleep with you, Mommy,” Lydia’s youngest said. She sat down on her mother’s lap.

And so it went, everyone claiming a place. Ashley would have watched Charlie Brown ten times or more, but the cousins began to mock it during the first showing, so she and Teddy went upstairs. As she was taking off her jewelry, he stepped up behind her and enclosed her in his arms, throwing her off balance a little. The punch was still circulating in her blood, making her feel flushed.

“What were you and Lydia talking about for so long?”

“About Tom,” she said.

Teddy kissed the back of her neck. “She found out that he loved you.”

Ashley felt suddenly afraid. “What makes you think that?” she asked him.

“Because he told me,” he said, gently turning her to face him and kissing her for a long time. “He told me the night of the engagement party.”

She looked up at him with wonder. “You never mentioned it.”

Teddy shook his head. “Why should I? I knew you loved me more.”

“Yes,” Ashley said, feeling how that statement remained true after so many years.

“I’ll talk to Lydia again tomorrow,” he said.

“Do you think that’s a good idea?”

“Yes,” he said, “because I can tell her that she was the love of my brother’s life.” He smiled down at her. “And I don’t think he told me that later just to save face. He truly meant it. She inspired him.”

“And you inspire me,” she told him, pressing up against him and wrapping her arms around his neck.

Even though they made love well into the morning, Ashley awoke before dawn and climbed up to the attic, where she had put in stairs underneath the small hexagonal window. She could perch on the top stair and look out—the closest thing this house had to a window seat. A few ducks foraged around the edges of the lake, which was otherwise undisturbed. Ashley sat there and dreamed she was a sailor who had to reach harbor before the sun rose. Before the spirits that hovered where land met sea were burned up by the sun.

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