These Tangled Vines(21)

She and her friends spent the rest of the week in Disney World with Freddie and his group. A month later, she quit her waitressing job in Chicago and moved to Florida to be with him. She felt fortunate because he was gentle and endearing and he passed the all-important litmus test: he had slender hands that were made to hold a pencil, not punch a hole in a wall. He was creative—an intellectual who read books and wrote poetry. He’d even gone to college to study English.

Lillian was, to put it plainly, astounded by her good fortune. She had once heard that women often married carbon copies of their fathers, but she had vowed never to fall into that trap. After a few regrettable, abusive relationships in her teens and early twenties, she’d begun to dream about the polar opposite of her father. At long last, she had found it in Freddie.

Things moved quickly after that. She got pregnant (they thought they were being careful), so they tied the knot before anyone found out about their inability to use birth control effectively. Sadly, however, a month after the wedding, Lillian lost the baby.

A terrible year of grief followed in which she blamed herself for not protecting her unborn child, and she considered it the worst failure of her life. At one point, she told Freddie that she would understand if he wanted to part ways and start over with someone else, since they’d only gotten married because of the baby.

Freddie gaped at her in shock. “Lil, don’t say that. I could never live without you.” His face went pale, and he nearly worked himself into a panic.

Then Lillian remembered that he had his own issues with loss because his mother had walked out on his family when he was five, and he had never truly gotten over being left behind.

Lillian realized her mistake in suggesting such a thing and took him into her arms. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. I promise I won’t ever leave you.”

Her words reassured him, and over the next few years, she soldiered on, working the front desk at a local hotel, supporting them financially while Freddie pursued his lifelong dream of writing a bestselling novel.

But by 1986, Lillian couldn’t escape the old familiar longings. She had always wanted to be a mother, but she had pushed that dream away after her miscarriage. Perhaps now the deep cut in her heart had finally healed enough to allow her the courage to try again.

She brought it up with Freddie on their fourth wedding anniversary, when they sat on a blanket on a beach in Tallahassee, watching the waves roll in. “So what do you think?” she asked.

Freddie thought about it for a moment before responding. “I don’t know, Lil. It’s a pretty big step. A huge responsibility.”

“Kids usually are,” she replied.

“But don’t you think . . . I don’t know. I feel like I should finish my book first. We don’t even own a house.”

Her heart squeezed with disappointment. “A house would be nice—I’d love that—but we can’t afford it on my salary right now, and if we wait for everything to be perfect, we might end up waiting forever, and it’ll be too late. I’m thirty now, and you know how much I’ve always wanted a baby.”

“Of course I know.” Freddie looked down. “And I want to have a family with you. I just want to be responsible about it. I want us to be ready for it financially.”

“Money isn’t everything,” Lillian argued, feeling grim and not caring if she was being irresponsible. She wanted a baby more than anything, and she’d wasted so much time being afraid. “We’ll figure it out somehow. We could get by.”

“I don’t want to just get by,” Freddie replied. “I want to be able to support you and give us a good life, but how am I supposed to write if we have a baby to look after? You’d have to quit your job, and if I have to go to work, I’ll never finish the book.” He shook his head. “We’ve come so far. I’m almost there. If you could just be patient a little while longer, I’ll get published, and then everything will fall into place. You’ll be able to quit your job and be a stay-at-home mom, and we can live off the advance and royalties while I write another book.”

Lillian watched the colors change in the sky over the Gulf. Freddie’s dream was a lovely one, but how could she be sure it would ever come true? What if no one wanted to buy his book? Ever?

“I’m just afraid,” she carefully said, “that it might take a while for you to find a publisher. You know I believe in you, but you’ve been working on your book for almost three years. You’re only halfway done. Maybe we could just start trying and see what happens, and if I get pregnant, you could work super hard and finish before the baby comes. Maybe you just need a deadline. It might even help.”

He was quiet for a moment, and she worried that she had just stomped all over his lifelong dream.

“I wish I could write faster,” he said. “I wish that more than anything, but you know how it is. I spend so much time researching, and I can’t skip that—otherwise, when I sit down at the typewriter, the words just won’t come. The setting has to come alive for me.” He shook his head in defeat. “Maybe I should just give up. I don’t know anything about Italy. I’m starting to feel like a fraud.”

Lillian inched closer to him on the blanket and linked her arm through his. “You’re not a fraud. You’re brilliant.”

“You don’t know that,” he replied. “Maybe I’m just a no-talent hack.”