Her Mom was shaking, slightly but enough for her daughter to notice. Kerry put her coffee on the dresser and sat to the right of her Mom, pulling her close and kissing the towel circling her hair.
“Kerry, I don’t know about this.”
“What ‘this’ Mom?”
“All of it.” Her voice was soft and her hands were waving. “It’s too much. All of it. I know it’ll just come crashing down the way it did in Chicago. It’s too much. I don’t deserve any of it. I don’t deserve Tommy. I don’t deserve you. I don’t—”
“Mom, we don’t have time to go through all the people you don’t deserve.” And she gave an extra squeeze before pushing away so she could turn to look at her.
“Mom. You deserve every bit of happiness that you’ve gotten. I love two women in this world unreservedly and I know that I don’t deserve the love of either of them.” She shushed with a finger. “Without both you and Suzanne I would be nothing. What happened with Dad happened with Dad. And that was then. What happens with Tom is now and the future. He went through what happened in Chicago. Have you given any indication of going there again?” This was a reference to her drinking relapse.
“No. But—”
“Mom, we, all your family, were there for you then and I don’t think it’ll happen again but if it does you know we will all be there for you. And I know you all, especially you, will always be there for me. I know I’ve lived a charmed life but, Mom, that’s because of you. You need to know that. And I am sure Tom will understand how much of a charmed life he has just by being with you.
“But Mom, stop being so stubborn. Now you’re reminding me of me and Suze when we were both so damn stubborn that we kept ourselves apart for seven fucking months. Sorry”—she did not like such language—”Finally, I let her love me and she let me love her.
“Does Tom love you?”
“I think—”
“No think. DOES HE LOVE YOU?”
“Oh, Kerry, he loves me, yes.”
“And do you love him? Remember, no ‘think’.”
“So much. But that’s what—”
“Jesus, Mom, just answer my questions. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in law school, it’s that people hate giving a simple answer to a simple question. So, yes or no, do you love Tom?”
“Yes.”
“Mom, does he let you love him? Yes or no?”
“Yes.”
“And the big one. Yes or no. Do you let him love you?”
She hesitated.
“Oh, Kerry.”
“Yes or no?”
“Yes, yes, yes.”
“Well, your Honor, I rest my case.”
And Eileen leaned to Kerry and they hugged for a moment and Kerry said, “Now that that’s settled, Kate will have a cow if you don’t get your ass in gear so that we can get you dressed” and Kerry began the process of putting on the corset and other things she would be wearing under her gown.
While this was going on, Andi, Suzanne, and Kate were nervously in the kitchen. Andi and Suzanne, of course, knew what happened to Eileen in Chicago, and Eileen grew comfortable with Kate and revealed it to her. Eileen, they knew, would get through her doubts.
Upstairs, Kerry, after a nod from her Mom, got up and shouted down the stairs, “Will you lazy bitches get your asses up here? We need to get someone to the Church on time.”
St. Mary the Virgin
One thing. Yes, they had to get to a “Church.” Each of the five in the house and nearly all of those who would be in the church were raised Catholic. Suzanne’s Mother, Kate, was deeply religious. The others? Not so much, but certain values of being raised Catholic were embedded in their minds, and hearts, and souls.
Kate fought through her personal crisis-of-faith and at the other end, she emerged with her faith intact but modified. She gravitated to the Episcopal Church in Bronxville, and till she moved to the city in September she was sometimes joined there with Kerry and Suzanne and they too were welcomed.
The Church to which Eileen had to be gotten-to-on-time in Chappaqua. Now Kate was fretting about whether Eileen would actually get into the Church without the rain ruining her gown and hair. She was on the phone with Alan, who assured her the ushers would be ready with large umbrellas when the limo pulled up, to protect Eileen and the others from the biblical storm—which gave Kate a moment’s pause about whether a marriage in a non-Catholic church might not have been the best of ideas—that threatened to continue for the rest of the morning.
We should say who Alan was. He was one of the three men who regularly played tennis with Tom on Sunday mornings at their club, along with Ben and Charlie. All three were at Alan’s doing to Tom what was being done to Eileen a few miles away, albeit without so many items of clothing and with a little, but only a little, less nerve-calming.
Some of Eileen’s angst visited Tom. It came from Wendy, the late, wonderful Wendy, mother to his two children. He spent time in the last week revisiting old photos of the two of them: homecoming games at BC, wedding photos, baby photos. Even photos from her last, horrible months.