A rattled Grace met Cig at the country club. A small stone room, used only occasionally for small parties, provided them with privacy.
“I’m so glad you called me.” Grace started sniveling.
“I had to call from the barn. I ripped the phones out at the house.”
Grace’s eyebrows raised. “Cig, what’s happening to you?” She paused. “What’s happening to me?”
“You first.”
Grace lingered over the decision to go first, then plunged in. “I don’t want to hurt Will. He’s devastated.” Tears brimmed in her eyes. “I never thought he felt that much for me. Oh”—she exhaled violently—“the truth is, I never thought about anyone but me.”
“Can you try to work it out with him?”
“If we can both stop crying. I almost brought him along but he asked Bill Dominquez to come over. He said he needs to talk to another man. Cig, I’ve been blind. He does love me.”
“Women need to feel loved and men need to feel needed.”
“Mom used to say that.” Grace removed a Belgian handkerchief from her Botega Veneta purse.
“Make him feel needed again. Talk to him. If you want this marriage to work—it will.”
“How can I live with him? How can I face him every day after what I’ve done—and him knowing?”
“That’s love.”
Grace buried her face in her hands. “I’m so ashamed.”
“You’re ashamed and vain.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s your vanity that doesn’t want to face Will. If you commit yourself to him you’ve got to surrender your vanity because he’s seen the worst. You know, Grace, loving’s pretty easy. It’s letting someone love you that’s hard.”
Grace bawled some more. “I’m glad Mom’s not alive. I couldn’t face her either.”
“She may not be alive but I bet she’s here.”
“Oh—” Grace cried harder.
“Come on, Sis.”
Blowing her nose, Grace swallowed hard. “I do want my marriage to work.”
Cig opened her hands, palms upward. “Then do it.”
Grace squared her shoulders. “I will. God, I just hope I don’t cry all the time. I can’t stand it.”
Cig shrugged.
Grace continued. “What about you? You’re smashing TVs, tearing out telephones.”
“I didn’t smash the TV. I threw it out.”
“Yes.” Grace’s voice was expectant.
“I hate this century. I hate the constant intrusions on my privacy. I want to go back to something real. A simple life.”
“There’s no simple life.” Grace really did understand her sister’s frustrations. She felt them herself sometimes although she’d never consciously expressed it in such a fashion. “Cig, no one has a simple life. All those Deyhles, Chesterfields, and Buckinghams who fought in World War I and the War Between the States and all those other wars—their lives weren’t simple.”
“They didn’t have TV and telephones,” Cig growled.
“No. And they didn’t have laser surgery and vitamins either.”
“Medical stuff. We traded quiet and understanding for knee surgery.”
“What do you want to do, live like the Amish?”
“It’s not a bad idea.”
“It’s not a good one—they don’t foxhunt.”
“Grace,” Cig exploded, “I’m wrung out!”
“So am I—for different reasons. You told me I couldn’t escape—well, number one sister, neither can you.”
“I don’t know if I can take one more day at Cartwell and McShane. I’ll plunge us into poverty if I quit but I feel like I’ll lose what’s left of my mind if I stay.”
“What would you like to do—if money weren’t an object?”
“Work hard at the stable. Make it a real show barn. I love horses. It’s the only thing I do well. Grace, I am just not cut out for business, at least, not the real estate business. Neither one of us was raised to seriously think about a career—I’m lost.”
Grace pondered that. “I guess we weren’t. We weren’t discouraged from it but we weren’t encouraged either. There was always going to be some man to take care of us.”
“Yeah, and mine died—I had no idea how strung out he was.”
“I know. I know.”
“Grace, I have to work. But I’m unprepared. I don’t like the way men do business—at least Max. Maybe other men are better.”
“It’s the difference between selling and another profession. Will doesn’t think like that.”
Cig fought back the tears. “I don’t know what to do. I think the grief filled me up, you know, but now that it’s passing I can look at my life. I’m totally lost.”
They sat in silence.
“I’m going to get a cup of coffee. Want one? I’m parched.” Grace stood up. “I’ll be right back.”
Returning in ten minutes with two cups of coffee, Grace handed one to Cig.
“Thanks.”
“I called Will. I asked him to forgive me. He said he did. He said he was in this marriage, too, and he needed to get out of his bubble, as he put it. Said Bill helped him see his part in this.”
“That’s good news.”
“Bill’s still there with him.”
“That’s what friends are for.”
“Boy, you sure don’t know it until you need them. You’d be my friend even if you weren’t my sister.”
“Yeah, I think so, too. You’re the expressive one. I’m the quiet one. We’ve got a good balance. When we were kids I let you do the talking.”
“Well, I let you do the thinking.” Grace stirred in the cream. “I love that color.” She indicated the rich tan of coffee with cream. “Do you think you could feed yourself and get the kids through college if you had your hunter barn?”
“No way. The mortgage is taking me down. You know that.”
“Cig, there are different kinds of responsibility. I asked Will. He agrees with me for all the right reasons. I can never pay up emotionally… but I can pay up. We’re going to pay off your mortgage.”
“What!” Cig had to put down her coffee cup or she would have spilled it.
“My reparations.”
“I can’t let you do that. I can’t let will do that.”
“It’s my money, too, remember? Sure, he’s the doctor but who runs the house, writes the checks, organizes the social calendar, the wife stuff—ever think about what a man would have to pay if he hired for that labor?”
“No.”
“Plenty. We’re married. The money is our money. We’re paying off your mortgage.”
“Cig, wasn’t it you who just said to me that loving someone is easier than letting them love you?” When Cig nodded Grace saluted her with her coffee cup. “Prepare to be loved.”
“Love isn’t money.”
“Sometimes it is.”
“I need to think about this.”
“No, you don’t. Abandon yourself to it. Just let it go and kick up your heels and—” She stopped. “Oh, Cig.” She put down her cup, wrapping her arms around Cig’s broad, heaving shoulders. She hadn’t seen her sister cry like that since Blackie died.