Annabelle

Full-Throttle

The way a man treats his mother is the same way he will eventually treat you. That is something that Lovey knew well. Her mother-in-law was as difficult as they come, but, even still, D-daddy loved and doted on her until the day she died.

I couldn’t say how Ben was with his mother, because I’d never met the woman. I would venture to say that most people who have been married a year have met their in-laws. It’s a pretty firm prerequisite for saying those vows. But, since Ben and I had eloped and left for his tour the next day, that monumental dating ritual had never taken place.

And, let me tell you, the longer I waited, the more nervous I became.

“Do you know,” Ben said, as he flipped pancakes on the tiny stove in the corner of our RV kitchen, “that I am thirty-five years old, and you are the first girl I’ve ever introduced to my parents?”

I looked up from the Yoga Journal I was flipping through. “What? That’s insane.”

He shrugged, his back to me. “Obviously, they met my high school girlfriends because they lived in the same town. But I never really had them over for family events or anything.”

I felt a little shudder run through my spine. What if he hadn’t ever introduced his girlfriends to his parents because they were so judgmental? Or crazy? Or both?

“So,” I asked, “why do you think that is?”

“I always knew I’d know when I’d found the right one—just like what happened when you walked in to hear me play that night. Until then, it seemed sort of pointless.”

I stared at Ben’s shirtless back, the muscles in his shoulders rippling as he turned the spatula. I couldn’t see the long, diagonal lines that peeked out from over the belt of the khaki shorts slung low around his waist, but I knew they were there. And I couldn’t believe that this man was even sweeter and more romantic than he was startlingly sexy.

I got up and put my arms around Ben’s waist, pressing the side of my face into his back. I leaned into him and breathed deeply, like I could suck his scent into my lungs and never have to be without it again. He turned to kiss me, and I smiled. “I’m meeting your parents today.”

I sat back down in a black-and-white-striped Sunbrella dining chair at the tiny three-person table. The RV (“coach” as the salesman had called it) was actually pretty swanky. Housed within quartz countertops and wood cabinets we had painted white were a stainless stove, microwave, sink and oven. Across the wall was a double refrigerator with freezer drawers. Truth be told, we ate out so much on that tour that we filled one refrigerator with groceries, and I took the other one for my shoes. Those were the only cold feet I had that year. The king-sized bedroom with the beautiful flax-colored linens may have been large by moving vehicle standards, but, any way you sliced it, closet space was minimal.

Ben handed me a plate of pancakes and stretched out on one of the couches that we had re-covered in white faux-ostrich leather with tufted backing, and said, “They are going to love you so much they aren’t going to know what to do.”

I nodded and furrowed my brow. “I sure hope so.”

Ben winked. “Doesn’t much matter. If they don’t, it’s too late now.”

Two hours later, we pulled up to a house that I never could have expected. Knowing Ben like I did, his nonchalance about anything material, his pronouncement that money makes him uncomfortable, I was nowhere near prepared for this place. The huge RV slid right in the front driveway, and ten more would have fit. A black iron gate, complete with camera and keypad entry, ensconced in a huge gray wall led to one of the most gorgeous displays of French-style architecture I had ever seen. A flowing fountain stood in the center of a double-story middle with two curved wings, a beautiful U that made the entire compound, instead of seeming cavernous, envelop me and make me feel right at home. “Wow.” I smirked. “So you’d rather live here than in the RV?”

“Don’t be silly.” Ben winked. “We’re going to live in the RV in the driveway.”

Before I could react, Ben’s mother came running out the door, ringlets of auburn hair flying, lifting the bottom of long layers of chiffon so they didn’t catch the wooden wedges underneath them. Driving up to this home, you couldn’t help but picture the lady of the house in an austere Chanel sheath, heels, pearls and pristine blowout firmly in place. She would be lounging on a fainting couch, sipping a gimlet, while the butler opened the door.

I thought she would run to Ben, but, instead, before I could even get both feet out of the car, she had her hands on either side of my face and planted a kiss right on my lips. Coming from a family where a total stranger was lucky to get a lukewarm handshake, this full-throttle introduction felt a bit foreign. She pulled away, then embraced me in a hug and said, sincerely, “My daughter is so sophisticated and beautiful.”

“Oh,” I stuttered. I looked around, finally realizing she meant me.

I looked back at Ben’s mother and studied her face, trying to find pieces of my husband’s in it.

“Yoo-hoo, Emily,” a neighbor shouted.

My new mother-in-law shooed me over in front of the gate and called back to an aging, gray-haired woman with two giant sheepdogs, “Isn’t my new daughter-in-law beautiful?”

“Daughter-in-law?”

It bothered me for about a half second that Ben’s neighbors didn’t even know he was married. And that determination welled up in my chest again, that desire to prove everyone wrong. It may have been fast and it may have seemed unlikely. But Ben and I were madly in love, and that love was strong enough to carry us through the rest of our lives.

I could hear the rumor train flying down the tracks already, this harmless-seeming neighbor at altar guild with eight of her closest, loudest-mouthed friends, waxing poetic about Ben’s new wife.

“I have been dying to tell y’all: Ben Hampton is married.”

“Married? Well, I certainly wasn’t invited to the wedding, were you?”

“I most certainly was not.”

“Well, I feel terrible because the Hamptons went in on a party for all three of my children when they got married, and I didn’t even know to ask.”

“I never heard rumors of an engagement.”

“I’ve never known him to go steady with any girl. I was positive he was gay.”

Gasps.

“Well, obviously, she’s some groupie he got pregnant.”

Nods.

“That’s the only explanation.”

“So where’s the baby? They’ve been married a year.”

In unison: “A year?”

Before Emily could even answer her neighbor’s shocked expression, my father-in-law sauntered into the driveway, pipe in mouth, suit and wingtips looking as though they were custom fit that morning. Now this was who should live in that house. “Ben, my boy,” he said, puffing his pipe and slapping his only son on the back. “Congratulations on picking a fine bride for yourself.”

I held out my hand, and he said, “I’m pleased to meet you, Annabelle.”

This was more my kind of man. My parents would feel right at home with him. At least, my mother would. My father probably wouldn’t even bat an eye at Emily’s lip kisses. And it dawned on me that I, like Mom and my father-in-law, was the boring one in the relationship. And I needed someone like Ben in my life to temper me. For every ounce of me that was wound up, uptight, self-conscious and critical, he was laid-back, even keel and free spirited. I smiled, as every single moment like this since our wedding had reassured me of my initial thoughts when I met him: Ben and I were going to be together forever.

“Let’s get you unpacked in the pool house,” Emily said, putting her arm around me. Then she whispered, “Don’t worry, we’ll be on the lookout for a good rental in case your obnoxious mother-in-law starts getting on your nerves.”

“I can’t imagine that that would ever happen,” I said. Sure, I had only known Emily for five minutes, but I could already tell that she was exactly like Ben.

The first thing I showed Emily was my refrigerator/shoe closet. She said, “You find in my line of work that the resourceful women are the ones who go the farthest in life.”

After my yearlong groupie sabbatical, her comment gave me those nervous butterflies, a reminder that it was time to figure out what I was going to do with my future.

But I would worry about that next week. Because, as soon as I unloaded my few worldly possessions, I was heading to chaperone Lovey and D-daddy on their trip to Martha’s Vineyard. Lovey was convinced that being in a place they visited every year, somewhere he loved, would bring D-daddy back, if only for a moment.

I was less sure.

But whether you’ve been married one year and have just moved to your husband’s hometown or you’ve been married well over a half century and think something is going to unlock the vault of your husband’s brain again, it’s really the same thing that keeps you going: hope.