The Sins of the Mother

Chapter 13


Peter arrived in Bedford at eight-thirty instead of eight o’clock. The traffic had been heavy, it was Friday night, and people were heading out of the city for the weekend. Olivia had a platter of cold meats and a salad waiting for him with a chilled bottle of wine, and he put his arms around her and kissed her as soon as he walked through the door.

“What a day!” he said, looking worried and exhausted. He was still upset about Phillip walking in on them, and his verbal attack on his mother. “I’m so sorry, darling. Are you all right?”

“Actually, I’m fine,” she said, looking surprised as she poured him a glass of wine. They went out on her patio, looking over the well-manicured gardens, and sat down. It was a pretty house. It was a good size, but not enormous. She had moved there after Joe died, once the children were all grown and her mother had moved to the senior residence. It was an easy home for her, beautifully decorated with elegant antiques and paintings she and Joe had collected over the years. It suited her, and Peter was always comfortable there. His own house had the sad look now of a place where people had been unhappy and disconnected for a long time. He hated going home, but he always loved being here, with her. It was welcoming and warm, like her.

“I don’t know how Phillip turned into the morality police. I think he’s unhappy in his marriage. Amanda is such a social climber, and so cold. I don’t think she’d ever have married him if he didn’t have money and wasn’t going to run the business one day. She probably can’t wait for me to retire or drop dead. She wasn’t a lot of fun on the trip—she never is. And she’s icy cold with him. He doesn’t seem to mind.” She wanted more than that for him, but it was up to him. He had made his choice and seemed satisfied with it.

Peter didn’t like his own daughter-in-law either, but he felt the same way Olivia did. It was up to his son, and it if worked for him, there was nothing for Peter to say. He never interfered. Fortunately, he liked his son-in-law much better, and spent more time with them as a result. He loved his kids, but his children were on their own, grown and gone. The joy in his life was Olivia now, although they spent less time together than he would have liked. But they were both busy and still deeply involved in their work, and she still traveled a lot. He wondered if she’d ever slow down. Probably not. And she would have been unhappy if she did. He knew her well after all these years, and he loved her the way she was. He couldn’t remember a time now when he had loved Emily and had been happy with her, but he knew he had.

They had a quiet dinner in the kitchen, and talked about Phillip and other things. Peter was planning to spend the weekend, so their time together was unrushed and relaxed. He was leaving to play golf on Sunday morning, and Olivia was going to see Maribelle then, for the first time since the trip. Liz had called her mother after she saw her, and reported that her grandmother was happy and looked great. Olivia was always grateful that was the case. Her mother was one of the mainstays of her life, and Peter had become one in the last decade. He gave her good advice, privately and professionally, and he was intelligent and kind. Their interests meshed well, the time they shared was always tender and enjoyable, and they both accepted that they couldn’t be together all the time. This was enough. Olivia had no desire to marry again, and Peter had made it clear from the beginning that he wouldn’t get divorced. He didn’t think that it would be right if he did. Emily was a sick woman, and as long as she continued to refuse treatment, which they now realized she always would, he was going to stay where he was. But he and Olivia had spent many happy times in the past ten years. They had taken several vacations, traveled for business occasionally, and were together for some weekends and a night or two during the week, when she was in town. She wasn’t asking for more than that, which made it easy for him. There was no pressure on him to change anything, and they were good company for each other. They laughed a lot, and they had a good time in bed, which surprised them both. Their love life was as lively and exciting as it had been when it all began.

They had happened into the affair by accident, when they were on a trip. They had both gone to Chicago at the last minute, to avert a strike, and it had turned into a mess. They got stuck there for three weeks while the unions refused to back down, and they negotiated for a peaceful settlement. And by the end of the first week, they wound up in bed after a particularly stressful day, and realized that they were in love. It had been wonderful being together in spite of the strike. They had already worked side by side for nearly five years by then and knew each other well. Adding sex and love to their friendship had deepened it exponentially. They had a profound respect for each other, and he thought her achievements were remarkable. He never interfered with her decisions, but helped her reach them in objective ways, and supported her after she made them, very much as Joe had done. Both men had recognized her genius and never stood in its way, but weren’t afraid to tell her what they thought. She had always listened and heeded their advice. In some ways, Peter had taken up where Joe had left off, although it was different not being married to him, and not sharing children. It left them freer, and they respected each other’s independence. It was the perfect arrangement for them, at this time in their lives, just as Joe had been when she was young. This was another chapter in their lives, closer to the end of the book, although Maribelle’s genes gave them both hope that they would be together for a long time.

They never talked about getting married because it wasn’t an option for them. Emily was sixty-two years old and might live as long as they did, or longer, particularly since she was younger than Olivia, although in poor health after abusing herself for so many years with her addiction to alcohol, and she had a heart condition as a result. But Olivia never expected to become his wife. They were content as lovers, and the secrecy of their relationship heightened the romance in a tender way.

They went to bed early that night, and made love for the first time since she’d left. It was as wonderful as always, and afterward they lay languidly in her enormous bathtub and she told him about the trip. It sounded perfect to him. The money he had made in his lifetime was only a fraction of the fortune she had amassed, but he had a good life, had made sound investments, and could afford to be generous with her. There was a gold bracelet she always wore that her children never knew was from him. She had told them she bought it herself, as well as a pair of diamond stud earrings that he had given her recently for their tenth anniversary. She loved them too. The only jewelry she wore now was from him, along with a ring from Joe and her wedding ring. The two men she had loved had been good to her in countless ways.

They bought groceries together the next day, listened to music, went for a long walk, sat quietly reading for a few hours, and then went to bed again. He admitted to her that he thought of her constantly and wanted to go to bed with her all the time, which made her laugh.

“You must have some kind of fetish for old women,” she teased him, “but I’m happy you do.” She was in good shape and her body was still beautiful, but seventy was not twenty-two. And at his age, he could have had any woman he wanted. Men his age were constantly marrying young women and having new families, but Peter had all he wanted in her. She was the only woman he had been with since marrying Emily thirty-six years before. They were faithful to each other, as they had been to their spouses, and they shared many of the same ideas.

And they made love again on Sunday morning before he left to play golf with friends. She had promised to have lunch with Maribelle, and after she kissed Peter goodbye, she drove to Long Island, thinking about him. It had been a lovely weekend. It always was. She wondered sometimes if it was better because they knew they couldn’t have more, so they appreciated what they had. There was none of the strife that happened sometimes with couples. They never fought. They just had a good time together, and before they knew it, ten years had gone by.

* * *

When Olivia got to Maribelle’s, she was just finishing a game of cards. She had been playing bridge all morning, and poker the night before.

“Mother, you’re turning into a card shark,” Olivia teased her as they went to Maribelle’s apartment for a quiet lunch. Maribelle liked being alone with her, without having her friends drop by their table every five minutes in the main dining room. Everyone wanted to meet Olivia. Maribelle wanted her to herself.

“I heard all about the trip from Liz,” Maribelle said happily. “It sounds fabulous. I looked up the yacht on the Internet. What a gorgeous boat. The owner is a very interesting person too.” When she wasn’t playing cards, she was exploring the Internet on Google, and telling everyone what she learned. Olivia smiled as she listened to her. Her mother was interested in everything about life, and anything that involved young people and what they were doing. She had read Liz’s book and loved it. She agreed with her agent and her mother, and said it could be a huge best seller. And what Olivia valued in her mother was that she was not only full of life, and had a positive view of things, but that she was a wise woman too.

“I had an interesting week,” Olivia said to her. She had decided to tell her about Phillip and his discovery of her affair with Peter.

“You always do,” Maribelle said to her, but she could see in her daughter’s eyes that there was something more she wanted to share with her.

“I had a big fight with Phillip a few days ago,” she confessed in a quiet voice.

“That’s not unusual,” her mother commented. He had been the original angry young man, and had not improved with age. He hadn’t mellowed much over the years.

“This was a bit unusual,” Olivia admitted with a sigh, and then plunged in. “There’s something I’ve never told you. I didn’t think it was important. I thought ‘discretion was the better part of valor,’ as you used to say, was the right course to take.”

“My grandmother taught me that. She was a very wise woman, and lived to be very old. So what were you being discreet about?” She was curious, although she had suspected something for years and was wise enough not to ask.

“I’ve had an affair with Peter Williams for the past ten years. We’ve kept it very quiet. We see each other once or twice a week. He’s a good man, and he’s been very kind to me. I love him, although differently than Joe, of course. We were married forever and had kids. This is not the same.” She wanted to make sure her mother knew that, out of respect to Joe.

“I wouldn’t expect it to be. You were a kid when you married Joe. And so was he. You two grew up together. It’s never the same with adult relationships, but that doesn’t mean you don’t love each other. Just differently. People get married here all the time. Everybody loves the idea of love, at every age. A couple got married last month, she’s ninety-one and he’s ninety-three, they don’t expect it to last forever, but they wanted to get married. Love is different at every age, but it’s still love.”

“Well, that’s the way it is with us, and has been for ten years. Joe had been gone for almost five years when we got involved. I didn’t think it was a disrespect to Joe.”

“You were still young when he died. A woman of fifty-five or sixty needs love too,” she said sensibly.

“You were even younger when Ansel died,” Olivia reminded her, “and you never had anyone else. You were forty.”

“Yes, but after that, I was too busy with all of you. I was happy that way. Sometimes love is about not being alone into your old age. I never was. I had all the companionship I needed with you and Joe and the kids. I didn’t have room or time for anyone else.” She was laughing as she said it, and they both knew it was true.

“Well, anyway, I got involved with him. And to tell you the whole story, he’s married, and he intends to stay that way. He told me that right from the beginning. He’s always been honest with me. His wife is a severe alcoholic, and he doesn’t feel he can leave her. Ten years ago he thought he might still get her into rehab and off the booze. If he had, he would have left her, but she doesn’t want to stop drinking, and now he feels she’s too old for him to leave, and I’m not asking him to. Our arrangement has always worked for me. I don’t want to get married again either, I’m content the way I am, and I’m happy with him. It’s never been an issue, morally, for me. He’s respecting his wife by staying with her, no one knows about us, so we’re not hurting anyone. In the absolute, it’s not an ideal situation, or a moral one, but I made my peace with it a long time ago, before we even started. It is what it is.”

“So what’s different now?”

“Phillip walked in on us this week. We were kissing in my office after hours, which was stupid, admittedly. We’d never done that before, but we hadn’t seen each other since the trip, so we got a little carried away, and he kissed me, right when Phillip walked in. He went crazy. He called me the mistress of a married man, which is true of course, and said I have no principles. He accused me of cheating on his father when they were young, since clearly I’m a person of no morals. He went on and on and on and on. I haven’t heard from him since. I told him it was none of his business, as long as I’m discreet. And he accused me of being a fraud, said that being involved with a married man is immoral, all of which is true. But Peter is a wonderful support for me, and a great comfort. And no, it’s not right that he’s married. But sometimes reality falls a little short of what it should be,” Olivia said, looking unhappily at her mother. She was still upset by what Phillip had said to her, but she had no intention of giving up Peter, even if he was a married man. But it was distressing having her son see her as a moral fraud. Maribelle was shaking her head as she listened, and she looked at her daughter sympathetically.

“Reality always falls short of what it should be. Or most of the time, anyway. There is the absolute, and what we believe in, and then there are things that fall into the gray areas, and all we can do is the best we can, given the situation at hand. I was in the same boat with Ansel Morris too. I don’t know how much you knew or remember. His wife suffered from severe depression, although they didn’t call it that then. They called it melancholy. She had half a dozen miscarriages, a number of stillbirths, and she never succeeded in having a baby, and she pretty much shut down after that. I’m sure it was disappointing for both of them, but he went on with life. She became fanatically religious, severely depressed, and involved in the supernatural. It sounded like she went a little crazy, and she stayed that way. She hardly ever left the house after that. By the time I came along, she had been that way for thirty years, and he’d been faithful to her. He was very respectful in the early years I knew him, we were strictly employer and employee.

“And then our relationship grew and changed. He knew I was struggling financially, and he kept giving me raises. I tried to give him advice about his business to justify them. I tried to help him turn things around and add a younger point of view. My suggestions were very modest, compared to what you’ve done, but it worked, and he was grateful. We worked very closely together for several years, and then we realized we were in love with each other. He told me he’d never leave her, he was afraid she’d kill herself if he did, and she might have. She was mentally very ill.

“At first, I felt terribly guilty for being involved with him, but we weren’t hurting anyone. We were careful, and respectful and discreet. He was wonderful to you. I just couldn’t find any reason to deprive myself of his love for me, just because it didn’t fit with the morality I’d grown up with. And he always said he’d marry me if he lived long enough to do so, and in the end, he didn’t. And no, it wasn’t the ideal thing. It would have been more respectable if we’d been married. But we loved each other just as much as if we had been. He was thirty years older than I was, and in some ways he was like a father to me, and a husband. He took better care of me than anyone ever had, and look what he did for me in the end. Was that so wrong? He stayed married until his wife died of influenza. He was kind to her till the end.”

“Why didn’t you marry him when his wife died? I always wondered about that.” It was the first time her mother had ever opened up with her in just that way. Olivia had had to wait until she was seventy to ask her mother the questions she had wondered all her life. It had been a long time coming, and Maribelle was forthcoming with her now.

“We were going to. But he wanted to wait until a year after his wife’s death. We even set the date. He had given me a ring, and we considered ourselves engaged, although we didn’t tell anyone, not even you. And then he died seven months after she did, so we never got married. But I loved him anyway.”

Olivia sat looking pensive. Her mother had just solved a mystery for her. And then as she looked down at her mother’s hand, she saw the ring and realized what it was. It was a band with three small diamonds on it. Her mother had worn it for most of her life. Maribelle nodded when she saw Olivia looking at it, and she looked wistful thinking of the man who had given it to her.

“Yes, that’s the ring. I never took it off again.”

“I just figured you liked things the way they were when you didn’t marry him. I never had the guts to ask you.”

“Of course I didn’t. It wasn’t respectable being the mistress of a married man in those days, and it isn’t now either. But sometimes you have no choice. If he’d had a viable marriage, it would have been an entirely different story, and I wouldn’t have done it. But he didn’t. His wife was certifiably insane. And it sounds like your friend has a similar situation. Would I have preferred to be married to Ansel? Of course. But I accepted the situation, just as you do. You’d probably rather be married too,” she said simply, but Olivia shook her head.

“Actually, no, I wouldn’t. At least I don’t think so. I like it like this. I’d like it better if he weren’t married. But I had marriage with Joe. I’m not sure I need that again at my age.”

“Well, I certainly don’t at mine,” Maribelle said, laughing, “although the oldest person to get married here was ninety-six. He married a youngster of eighty-two. I think he lived another three years, but I’ll bet they were happy years. And if they hadn’t gotten married, would they have been ‘immoral’? Was I? Technically, yes, and so are you. But technicalities are not real life. Life is about people, the decisions they make, and what they feel they have to do. As long as no one is getting hurt, the immorality is fine with me.” Her mother had just let her off the hook.

“I feel the same way,” Olivia said with a rueful expression, “but my son doesn’t. He’s dealing in the absolute. The technical.”

“Phillip has led a sheltered life. It’s time for him to grow up, and stop judging you. He’s been angry at you for too many years. He needs to try and understand what you were doing and why, and realize that you’re quietly involved with a married man who won’t leave his alcoholic wife. It would be a great deal more immoral if you dragged him away. For me the criterion is always if someone is getting hurt. We all have our moral compass, and we all make compromises, but that’s where the buck stops for me. Phillip needs to have more compassion. How does he know he wouldn’t do the same thing in your shoes? That’s the reality here. We all get angry at our parents. I think you were angry at me for a while because of Ansel, and now look, the dial turns, the years march on, Joe is gone, and you’ve found a man who makes you happy who happens to be married to an alcoholic. How different is that from what I did with Ansel?

“Sooner or later we all do the same things our parents did, no matter how much we criticized them, because in the end we’re all human beings, and subject to the same frailties. We all make the same mistakes, or similar ones in the end. And what it teaches us is to be forgiving, and not so quick to judge. Every one of your children will wind up making some of your mistakes. It’s human nature. So who are they to judge you harshly? ‘There but for the grace of God go I’ is true in the end. Who’s to say that Phillip won’t do the same thing one day? It’s a long life. At sixty, you did something similar to what I did, when I was younger. And maybe one day Phillip will understand that you’re not immoral, you’re human, and so is he.” As she listened to her, Olivia felt a huge wave of relief wash over her. She had thought more or less the same things, but having Maribelle express it so succinctly, from the vantage point of another generation, made it even clearer for her.

“Thank you, Mom,” she said, as she leaned over and kissed her. “I’m glad we talked about it.” She had answered the questions of a lifetime and clarified some important things. She had thought her mother didn’t care about marriage and was some kind of libertine, but as it turned out, they had been engaged and hoping to get married, and he had died before they could. She was as conventional as anyone else, just struggling to make morality and reality meet, which wasn’t always an easy task.

“I’m glad you brought it up,” Maribelle said peacefully, fingering Ansel’s ring again. He had been a good man. And so had Olivia’s father, although they had been married for such a short time before he was killed in the war. Maribelle had been with Ansel Morris for many, many years. Just as Olivia had been with Peter now. Ten years was a long time. Maribelle repeated then what she had said earlier. “Phillip needs to grow up. Life has a way of making us do that, whether we want to or not. It did for both of us,” she said, smiling at her daughter. “And he needs to stop whining about your being gone when he was a boy. He was fine. And if you hadn’t built the business you did, he wouldn’t have the job he has now. You can’t have everything in life. And you were there for him, part of the time, and the rest of the time, he had me and Joe. Liz and John have understood that. Phillip will have to come to it in time.”

“I wish Cass would get there too,” Olivia said wistfully. Her relationship with her youngest child was so badly damaged and such a loss.

“She will. The biggest problem you two have is that she’s so much like you. She fights it all the time. She’s young. She’s a wonderful woman, just like you.”

“I hardly know her anymore. At least she comes to see you.”

“Whenever she can,” Maribelle said, smiling, and with that Olivia stood up. She had been there for a long time and didn’t want to wear her mother out, although that was hard to do. She was probably keeping her from playing cards.

“Thank you, Mother,” Olivia said, and gave her a warm hug. It was heartfelt.

“Just let Phillip simmer down and stew in his own juices. He’ll figure it out. And sooner or later, life will give him a swift kick in the pants and speed it along.”

“I hope so. I hate seeing him with Amanda. She’s so cold.”

“It’s what he wanted,” Maribelle reminded her. “Now he needs to figure out that he deserves better than that.”

“I wonder if he ever will.”

“Maybe so,” Maribelle said, and walked her out. The two women hugged again, and as Olivia drove away, she waved, and her mother smiled broadly. She looked like a woman who was at peace with herself, and now Olivia was too. She was smiling as she drove home.