The Mother-in-Law(10)
“Not good enough for your son, is that it?” Jan asks knowingly.
“No one ever is,” Liz agrees, bizarrely, as she doesn’t have a son.
“I don’t know,” Kathy says, “I’d pay someone to take my Freddie off my hands. I’m terrified he’s going to want to move in with me one of these days so he can quit his job and sit on his backside and watch reality television programs all day, calling himself a ‘carer.’ I’d give anything for a daughter-in-law. Someone to pluck the hairs from my chin and put on my lippy for me when I’m old and grey. Sons are useless at that sort of thing.”
I munch on a couple of fries, and hope they’ll argue it out amongst themselves. The bottom line is, it always takes a little adjustment when a new spouse joins the family. They have different values, different histories, different opinions. It might all work out wonderfully, but, of course, it might not. Patrick has been around a few years now and while I’d been less than thrilled about him, we’ve adjusted. I don’t doubt it will be the same for Lucy if she sticks around. Still, it’s natural to brace a little. A change is coming—of course we’re going to be on our toes for a while.
“Do you think she’s a gold digger?” Jan lays a hand on my forearm, making the comment a little more sinister and exciting.
“No.”
The girls can’t hide their disappointment. “Not another Patrick then?”
I don’t respond. I have my own feelings on Patrick’s little bookkeeping business, which he runs with the enthusiasm of someone who is expecting a sizable inheritance to come and take over his problems. It’s none of my business, and it’s certainly none of Jan’s. Besides, no matter his work ethic, Patrick is family and Nettie loves him. As such I owe him a little loyalty.
“Well, the only thing that matters is that she makes Ollie happy,” Kathy says after a long pause, and everyone hums in agreement. Everyone except me.
If you ask me, everyone is a little too interested in their children’s happiness. Ask anyone what they wish for their kids and they’ll all say they want them to be happy. Happy! Not empathetic contributing members of society. Not humble, wise and tolerant. Not strong in the face of adversity or grateful in the face of misfortune. I, on the other hand, have always wanted hardship for my kids. Real, honest hardship. Challenges big enough to make them empathetic and wise. Take the pregnant refugee girls I deal with every day. They’ve been through unimaginable hardships, and here they are working hard, contributing and grateful.
What more could you want for your kids?
The engagement came faster than I expected—within the year. Ollie announced it at dinner one night, wearing the same proud smile he’d worn at two years old when he’d carried in a dead bird from the garden. Tom, of course, had just about combusted at the news, at one point bursting into actual, flowing tears. For heaven’s sake! That was five months ago. Before the real work of the wedding planning had begun.
“Ready, Mum and Dad?”
I’m sitting beside Lucy’s father, Peter, in Louis XV upholstered armchairs, angled toward a blush, velvet curtain. At intervals, Lucy comes out from behind the curtain and stands on a stage while Rhonda, the assistant, fusses around her. It is, quite frankly, agonizing, for many reasons, not least of which is the fact that Rhonda continues to refer to us as “Mum and Dad” despite that fact that I have twice pointed out that I am not Lucy’s mother, and I am certainly not hers.
“Ready,” we chorus.
I think of what my mother would have said if I’d invited her to a place like this. (“What a load of nonsense! I’ll make your wedding dress, and Ida and Norma from church will help. Ida did the most beautiful little rosettes for her niece Mary’s wedding dress, you should have seen them! Of course she had to let it out because the poor dear had thickened up around the middle by the big day. Got everyone talking, you know . . .”)
I’ll admit I was surprised when Lucy invited me to have an audience today. (Apparently the matron of honor’s daughter had broken her arm falling from the monkey bars this morning and was currently at the children’s hospital awaiting surgery, and Lucy wanted a female opinion.) It was quite the unorthodox little group actually, with Lucy’s father in attendance as well, but Lucy had been firm about that. “He’s been my mother as well as my father since I was thirteen years old, I think he’s more than earned his place here.”
Fair enough too, I thought, though I daren’t give my opinion either way. Mothers were to weigh in on such matters. Mothers-in-law were to wear beige and shut up.
Funnily enough, Lucy had been quite shy when she asked me to come. “I’m sure you’re really busy, but just in case you were free I’d love it if you could make it.”
At fate would have it, I wasn’t busy, and I’d never been much good at making up false excuses. Nettie had been invited too, apparently, but she’d had a conflicting doctor’s appointment much to her chagrin.
“Here she comes!” Rhonda cries, flinging open the velvet curtain and frog marching Lucy onto the stage in a dress that looks exactly like the last one—strapless and full skirted, like Barbie pressed into a child’s birthday cake. She forces Lucy to do a ridiculous twirl.
“Do you like it?” Lucy asks shyly.
Peter tears up, predictably. He rises to his feet, the archetypal ex-professor, from his tweed jacket to his soft white beard and leather lace-up shoes. He produces a handkerchief from his pocket and presses it to his eyes.