I should have known better than to bring up my idea for the ballroom that night. Or any night. While my guilt over Eva’s death colored everything I said or did, at that moment I was irritated about J.C.’s coming visit and the scene at the hotel. I wanted some kind of reaction from Press, some sign that I mattered, that our family mattered.
It took several minutes to explain what I wanted, and Press watched me carefully and with a strange curiosity in his eyes, as though I were speaking a foreign language that he didn’t quite understand.
When I finished, he looked over at Michael, who had taken advantage of my inattention and removed a page of one of his books and begun to chew on it. His lips were stained with spots of brown ink.
“Michael!” I hurriedly swept my finger through his wet mouth to get all the paper out. When I finished, he grinned and said, “Eccccchhhh.”
Press watched silently while I took care of Michael. When Michael was quiet, I asked him what he thought about my idea.
He laughed. “Charlotte, you’re talking about a permanent change. There’s no repairing it. It’s a seventy-five-year-old classical ballroom! You have half a dozen other rooms you could turn into a playroom. He has a nursery, and an entire estate to play on.”
“We don’t even use the ballroom, and the theater will be finished any day.”
He stopped. “Oh, I see. This is because you’re jealous about the theater?” He shook his head. “Darling, don’t you think that’s a bit immature?”
A retort about grown adults remodeling an entire theater just to create a more comfortable space in which to waste time came to my lips, but Nonie’s frequent admonition about my picking my battles kept me circumspect.
“It’s not just about Michael. He’ll have little friends. It would be for them to have a big room to play in when the weather is nasty. And I have so many ideas for how it might look. I’ve missed my art so much, Press.” I had been an art history major in college, but I painted as well. I wasn’t terribly good, but had, at least, sold a couple of pieces to strangers at the senior art fair.
“I’ll think about it. You can run it by J.C. if you want. See what she thinks should be done with it.” He paused. “But with just one child in the house, it doesn’t really make sense, does it?” He spoke quietly, as though not wanting to point out my error in judgment too forcefully. Anyone watching us would think that he was being tender. With the firelight just beyond him, his eyes were darker than ever. I couldn’t read them, but I didn’t need to.
I looked down and absently smoothed Michael’s hair where his head rested on my leg. He was contentedly sucking his thumb and reaching out with the other hand to play with the buttons of my cardigan.
It was a brutal question, and one that I couldn’t answer.
“Time for you to go on up to Nonie, big guy.” Press rose swiftly from his chair. He wasn’t a particularly lithe man, but his movements were athletic and oddly graceful. Sweeping our sleepy boy from the floor, he perched him on his shoulder.
“Tell your mama good night.”
Michael waved, opening and closing his small fist. “Mama.”
“Good night, darling. Go right to sleep for Nonie.”
When they were gone, I sat for a moment staring into the fire in the same way Press had. He was right, of course. And he was right to point it out, even if it hurt. I believed I deserved far worse treatment. With tears in my eyes, I picked up the bits of paper from the book’s torn page. Balling the mess in my hand, I tossed it on the burning logs. The paper curled and smoked and quickly turned to blackened ash, indistinguishable from the rest of the burnt wood.
Then I went to the library table where I’d laid the oversize edition of Beatrix Potter stories whose images I had planned to copy and put on the walls. The strange, friendly little community of animals was a perfect bridge from Eva to Michael. Something they both might have loved. I sank down in Press’s chair and turned the pages beneath the warm yellow lamplight.
I was turning the pages blindly, comforted by their familiarity, when Press came back a few minutes later. Surprised, I closed the book and looked up at him.
His footsteps dragged a bit. He had probably rowed early in the morning, and then there had been tennis with J.C. at the Racquet Club. I wondered how things were going to be between us. Would he ever really forgive me? He had told me again and again—every time I needed to hear it—that he didn’t blame me for Eva’s death. I couldn’t quite believe him. If the situation had been reversed, if I had come home to find one of our children crying in his crib and the other child drowned in a bathtub, I would not have forgiven him.
I would have killed him.
The realization shocked me, but as I watched him going about the room, returning books to the shelves and neatening his papers on the desk, I knew it was true. He had to despise me. It would explain why he would break our marriage vows and seek out the company of another woman.
Was that why he’d lied about telling me he’d be at the club?
“Press.”
“What is it? I’m going to bed.”