Meg curled herself up on the upholstered porch swing on her back deck, tucking her legs beneath her white eyelet nightgown. She had wept all the way over the Ravenel Bridge, all the way down Mathis Ferry Road, and all the way to the back of their Mount Pleasant subdivision where her three-story white clapboard home sat at the end of a cul-de-sac that overlooked the inmost fingertip of Molasses Creek.
Preston had dealt with the children without even asking: the bathing, the story reading, the teeth brushing, the vocabulary quizzing, the prayers. And now, as the last of the bedroom lights on the third floor was turned out, she balled herself up even tighter as he made his way out and took a seat beside her.
“You all right, honey?” He reached over and rubbed her knobby knees.
“No.” She looked out toward the marsh. Something was rustling in the tall grass. A squirrel or a possum or a raccoon. Its marble eyes flashed for a moment and then there was a kerplunk sound and the parting of the water as it crossed the narrow waterway to the opposite bank.
Preston yawned, untucked his golf shirt, and ran his fingers through his hair. She knew he’d had a deposition that morning and a Charlestowne Prep board meeting that afternoon. No doubt he was exhausted.
“C’mon now,” he said. “It was a difficult night, but it’s not the end of the world.”
Difficult didn’t begin to describe it. And neither did bad, tough, or challenging. Meg felt exposed. As if someone had ripped the mask off of her face for a moment, revealing the spindly little sister who didn’t have any natural eye or artistic talent. The child who had no scholarships or awards or specific career aspirations. The kid sister whose own kid probably assaulted one of the little vagabonds, sending him to the emergency room. And all of this after she had bragged and bragged about how exceptional her children were, about how superior her mothering was. About how her life’s work was yielding the sweetest of fruit.
Preston leaned over to massage her neck, but she stiffened. He fell back into the cushions, rocking the swing slightly. Then he watched the moon above the live oak trees as it cast its soft light on the creek. The beauty of the night made Meg all the more miserable, and she sucked her teeth as she held back the tears.
“What can I do to make you feel better?”
She gripped the swing’s chain and cleared her throat. Then she swung her head toward him. “You can stop acting like Julia is the bee’s knees.” She scoffed and narrowed her eyes. “Just because she went off to New York and made a living painting bizarre, pointless images in tacky colors.”
Preston gave her a side-angled glance. “The bee’s knees?” He chuckled. “Honey, I know you’ve got some wounds from your childhood, but—”
“Don’t go there.” She held up her small, manicured hand. “Don’t lecture me about my childhood when yours was downright idyllic.”
He rolled his eyes. “Not this again.”
Her throat tightened and she swallowed hard. “You’ve had everything, Preston. And you’ve always had it: two normal parents who stayed together, every material thing imaginable, an exceptional education, a well-paying job your father’s friends hired you to do.”
Preston shook his head and a little burst of air escaped his lips. “Okay, you win, Margaret. Your life was harder than mine. Your dad was a little crazy and your mom was a little clueless.” He shook his head and met her gaze straight on. “But even so, you were loved. And that’s a lot more than a lot of people can claim. You can’t deny that.”
They both sat stone still for several minutes, and Meg became suddenly aware of the crickets chirping. Loved, loved, loved, she thought she heard in their repetitive calling, backing Preston up like a unanimous and unyielding jury.
Eventually her husband stood and stretched and looked back at her. “I’m no shrink, babe. But you and I both know that you can’t hold on to this forever. Whatever it is that ties you in a knot about your family.” He leaned down and stared at her until she looked up. “It’s going to eat you up, Margaret. And it has the potential to devour our marriage and our kids too.”
She turned away from his gaze. There was a gentle breeze that lifted the Spanish moss on the live oaks up and back down again, and it rustled the stiff, long fronds of the palmettos. She heard Preston sigh. Then he stepped away, calling back over his shoulder, “I’m going to check the evening news and the baseball scores, all right?”
Meg sat still as a statue, looking away as he walked back to the door. She heard the doorknob click and then the light come on in the den and then the muffled sound of the television. She looked back at her house and spotted the blue glow of her computer on the kitchen table. She hadn’t posted anything on Facebook today. And she wondered, for a moment, what it would be like if people actually posted what was going on in their lives, what was ripping their hearts apart, what was turning them to stone. Perhaps she would write in her status box, Wounds from my family of origin may destroy my marriage and the lives of my children. Perhaps she would post the image that she had yet to shake after all of these years: driving out to the Edisto house to surprise her father one summer afternoon when she was seventeen. Finding her father embracing her sister’s friend on the porch, a little too long, a little too close. Then meeting the girl’s enormous blue eyes as she turned and stared Meg down. Meg was no fool. She knew just what those eyes were saying as her father backed away and hurried out to greet his daughter: Isn’t this too bad for you, kid sister? Isn’t this too, too bad for you and your sweet little family?
Meg kept the secret from Preston and her friends for as long as she could. She went off to Wofford College that next month and displayed the silver-framed Christmas picture of her family in her dorm room as if they were one happy unit. She pledged Tri-Delt after a long rush season, she studied history and English literature, she joined the community service organization and volunteered at the local soup kitchen, and she met Preston at the University of South Carolina on the weekends for football games and fraternity parties.
She managed to keep the secret under wraps her entire freshman year, though her father had already moved all of his belongings out of the Savage Street house by Christmas, leaving her mother needy and wringing her hands. By Easter her mother informed her that he had filed for divorce.
During this time, Meg learned how to put on a mask, and she busied herself with building friendships, heading up sorority committees, putting enough work into her academic life to get above-average grades, procuring a fine wardrobe, and exercising constantly so that she looked fantastic at all of the socials she attended on Preston’s arm.
It wasn’t until the news of Marney’s pregnancy her senior year that she had to come clean. Her father was living with a woman half his age, and they were starting a second family.
Meg could remember her father showing up outside of her dorm room one October afternoon. He had driven the three hours to Wofford to break the news to her, sitting on her bed with his bushy, unkempt eyebrows furrowed in a look of concern.
“Marney’s expecting, and we’re getting married,” he had said. “I’m sorry, Meg.” He reached across the room to her, and she stepped back. “I didn’t plan for it to turn out this way,” he continued, his thick, tanned arm outstretched, his hands seeking her approval.
“You’re a selfish oaf.” She had stepped back and stared down on him in disgust. “An idiotic narcissist. And I can’t believe I got stuck with you for a father.”
He had dropped his arm and exhaled heavily. When she wouldn’t return his gaze, he looked up at the ceiling of her dorm room, his brown eyes filling with water. “You’re right, Meg.” Then he looked back to her and their eyes met. “Everything you’ve said about me is true.”
“Leave,” she’d said, and he’d shaken his head before standing and shuffling to the door. Before she swung it open, she leaned against it and faced him. “You better provide for me until I get married, Dad. It’s the least you can do.”
He had nodded. “Of course I will.”
Marney had lost that first baby, and for a few years Meg thought maybe that would be the end of it all. That they would split and he would come back to her mother. But when the woman announced her second pregnancy the same month Preston proposed to Meg, she knew that would never happen. And she would have to face her family shame at her own wedding when Marney showed up at the ceremony, bursting at the seams with her father’s child in her womb, as the old ladies clucked and the bridesmaids whispered and giggled.
Now Meg listened to the crickets whose incessant calls were filling the night: Loved. Loved. Loved. And she realized how very worn out she was. How exhausting it was to wear her masks, to build her reputation, to prove to the world day in and day out that even though her parents were fools, she was not. She was a responsible, morally upstanding citizen. She could be counted on. She was worthy of admiration. She would not shame her husband or falter in any way. She had the blessed life, and she would not squander it.
Or would she?
Now Preston was snoring so loudly in the den that she could hear him outside. It was a familiar sound, a comforting sound, and she felt sad that her pain was wearing him down. But how could she help herself?
She uncurled her legs, turned off the porch light, and walked up the stairs to the den where she shook his knee until he roused, cut off the remote, and followed her to bed.
As she checked on each of her children before she tucked herself in beside her husband, pulling her clean white sheets beneath her chin, she replayed the horrid events of the evening in her mind, and then she replayed Preston’s charge: “You were loved. You were loved. You were loved.”
It’s funny what the adult brain pulls up from childhood. There are certain seemingly insignificant moments that are forever seared in the memory. Perhaps children are interpreting the events correctly, but usually they can’t understand the full context. She had read once that children were the best recorders and the worst interpreters, and she supposed that was true.
Meg often recalled the first time she and her father went sailing down Store Creek in the 420 he had bought for her the Christmas after she won the Junior Sailing Award at the Yacht Club. She was ten years old, and she had beaten out Preston Rutledge, who had won the last two years, as well as Tricia Simons, who had won the annual Junior Regatta that July.
Her dad had been a great sailor in his youth too, winning several awards and even sailing on the College of Charleston team, and he was delighted that she enjoyed the sport. Together, they had tied the sails and put the boat in the water, and he took his place by the jib sail and followed her directions as they drifted out into the creek, tacking left and then right into the wind as it carried them toward St. Pierre Creek.
“You make a great skipper,” he had said after she yelled, “Tack!” and let out the main sheet, then ducked beneath the boom. He popped back up once the main sheet was steady again and he watched her until she met his proud gaze.
“You make a good crew member,” she had responded as she held tight to the tiller extension and steered them to the right of a motorboat.
After the passing boat’s wake faded, he reached over and patted her back. “We make a good team, you and me.”
“We do,” she had beamed back at him as the wind pushed them out into the waterway. She couldn’t stop smiling as she held tight to the tiller and mainsheet, calling out the next instruction. To have her father’s attention, to have him proud of her accomplishments, her skill, her independence. That was her true desire. To feel his love, to know that he wanted to build her up and to be a part of something she was good at, something they both loved—it was pure joy.
My dad and I make a good crew, she had thought as they made their way out to the bay, tacking left then right, the warm air filling the sails. She believed this. It was her truth. And she held it like a prized possession close to her heart until that day seven years later when he disproved it right before her teenage eyes, exposed it for the lie that he must have always quietly known that it was.