Worthy Opponents(5)
After watching her father mismanage it, she had no desire to turn it over to someone else one day when her father finally did retire. She did everything she could to learn all she’d need to know later on. She was quiet and methodical, and Bart had no idea how serious she was. He thought that running the store was just a time-passer for her before marriage and that she never considered it a long-term career.
Spencer was startled when six months after they started dating, Bart proposed. She enjoyed being with him, had come to love him for all the support and advice he gave her. She had been relying on him, and he seemed like the ideal husband because he was so solid and knew so much about her business. He wasn’t as fun-loving as some of the men she’d dated, but he seemed like the right long-term partner for life. It was a decision she made seriously, and they got engaged.
They married after a six-month engagement, a year after they’d started dating. It was long enough to plan a wedding, and she found a beautiful wedding dress and Marcy ordered it through the store. They wanted children, but Spencer planned to wait for several years. She felt too young and didn’t want children until the store was solid again, until after the damage her father had done could be corrected. She assumed that Bart agreed, although they never discussed it in detail.
One of the things she and Bart had in common was how similar their parents were. Neither of their mothers had ever worked or had any interest in business or their husband’s jobs. They preferred more frivolous, feminine pursuits. Both sets of parents were extremely conservative and had old-fashioned ideas, which didn’t seem to bother Bart, although Spencer’s parents were a constant source of annoyance to her. Bart was more tolerant of his, and agreed with them more than Spencer realized. She never fully understood how deeply conservative he was too, much more so than she. Her grandfather had encouraged her to be forward-thinking, innovative, and modern. Bart had no similar influence in his life and was more traditional than he admitted. He didn’t want to seem stuffy to her. And she didn’t want to appear too brash and bold to him.
The first big shock in their marriage hit them hard and fast, shortly after their honeymoon, which they spent skiing in Aspen. Spencer caught a cold that turned rapidly into bronchitis, and a local doctor prescribed an antibiotic, which helped quickly but caused her birth control to fail. Weeks after their honeymoon, she discovered that she was pregnant.
Spencer was in shock. The baby she wanted in several years, not months, was on its way. Bart loved the idea, and Spencer was stunned, and even more so when they learned that it was twins. For the first time, Bart told her clearly that he expected her to give up work when the babies were born. He wanted the kind of mother for his children that he’d had, one who stayed at home, not one who ran a store. The battles began then. Spencer refused to quit her job, and worked for the entire pregnancy, until two weeks before the twins were born. There was a raging battle between Spencer and Bart for nine months. She refused to abandon her grandfather’s store and didn’t see why she should. Bart’s parents were in full agreement with him and disapproved of her. Her own mother sided with them. Spencer felt constantly guilty but stuck to her beliefs and stubbornly refused to quit her job. It was a chronic source of arguments between her and Bart.
She gave birth to identical twin boys ten months after she and Bart were married. They named them Ben and Axel. They weighed five pounds each. And due to the rapid pregnancy, the shock of having twins, the pressures of her job, constant battles with her father, worrying about the store and the way her father was running it, and fights with Bart about not quitting her job, the marriage started to lose altitude almost as soon as it got off the ground.
They spent their entire first year and their first anniversary arguing, with Spencer in tears when Bart told her he thought they should sell the store. Her job was too much for her, he said, and he felt it was incompatible with marriage and trying to raise twins. Her father hated his job and it was only a matter of time before he would retire, and Bart didn’t want her to run the store. He wanted her at home with their boys. Tucker agreed with Bart that they should sell.
“I’m not going to sell the store just because we had twins,” she said to Bart, outraged. “That’s ridiculous.” Feeling guilty, she had gone back to work eight weeks after the boys were born. She and Bart had hired a competent baby nurse who was experienced with twins.
“It’s more ridiculous that you went back to work after eight weeks, and you stopped nursing them.” He had child-rearing ideas she didn’t agree with, since his mother had never worked, and had taken care of him and his brother herself without a nanny. Spencer had grown up with a housekeeper who took care of her. She had spent more time with her than with her mother, although her mother didn’t work, but went to lunch a lot and played bridge with friends. “What are your priorities?” Bart asked Spencer angrily. He seemed to disapprove of everything she did and criticized her constantly. She already felt guilty enough leaving her babies to go back to work, but she had a responsibility to the store too. She was determined to manage both roles successfully.
“My priorities are the same as they were before. You, now our babies, and the store,” she said heatedly. She’d made no secret of it.
“You can’t do it all. You have to pick a lane,” he said angrily. “You can’t be a mother and work.”
“Yes, I can. I can do all three, work, and be a wife and mother.” She sincerely believed that and was trying her best. It was hard at times, but there was room in her heart for all of it.