The Engagements Read online

  There was one called Let’s Go to the Races in which you picked up a free preprinted betting slip at Stop & Shop and then watched a weekly horse race on TV. If the horse on your slip won, you got the grand prize. Her husband sat before the television each Friday, clutching his ticket, so hopeful. Evelyn couldn’t bring herself to mention that the races had probably been filmed long ago, and whoever had created those tickets in the grocery store knew exactly how many winners there would be.

  The whole situation embarrassed her. They didn’t need anything, after all. But she had come to realize that needing and winning were two entirely different things.

  “A bicycle tour?” she said now. “When was the last time you rode a bicycle?”

  “I’m sure I was a tot in short pants, Evie, but that’s exactly the point—I’m retired! Anything is possible.”

  “Yes. But on the other hand, now you have to fill out all your own entry forms.”

  “True enough,” he said. “If only I could get my wife interested in the job.”

  She pointed a finger at him. “Not a chance. Anyway, what were you saying? I couldn’t hear you.”

  “I was just asking if you needed me to do anything while you’re out.”

  Evelyn smiled. Retirement had made a new man of Gerald, though perhaps more in thought than in deed. He had never before offered to help around the house. But the few times she had taken him up on it in recent weeks, everything went pear-shaped: the dishes were washed and put away with scum all over them, the hedges were clipped to the nubs like a pack of sad poodles.

  “I don’t think so, but you’re a dear to ask,” she said.

  “All the beds upstairs are made?” he asked. “Where should we put him tonight?”

  Evelyn’s body tensed up.

  “He’s not staying,” she said.

  “No?”

  “No.”

  She had told her son that they would have lunch, not dinner, for this very reason.

  “We have six empty bedrooms,” Gerald said.

  Evelyn stared at him. She had conceded many points in this battle already, but on this one she intended to remain firm. It was a good sign that Teddy was coming. She hoped it meant that he had come to his senses. But when Evelyn thought about his wife and children in the house across town, and the fact that he had abandoned them for the past five months, it felt as if someone were twisting her heart like a dishrag.

  Teddy hadn’t mentioned whether or not he planned to sleep at his own house tonight. If not, let him stay in a hotel.

  “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—” Gerald started.

  “No, no. It’s all right.”

  Over the phone last week, Teddy had said he wanted to see them.

  “There are some things we need to discuss,” he said. “And we never got a chance to celebrate Dad’s retirement.”

  It made her sad to see how much this last part pleased Gerald. Never mind that the firm had thrown a lavish retirement party for him two months earlier and Teddy didn’t bother to come up from Florida for that. Her husband always thought the best of their son, despite any and all evidence to the contrary.

  Gerald believed that Teddy was coming home to make things right in his marriage. Evelyn hoped it was true, but she had her doubts. Why had Teddy said that he wanted to come alone when she suggested inviting Julie and the girls to lunch? Gerald said he probably wanted to talk it all through with the two of them before he went to his wife.

  “Maybe even apologize to us,” Gerald remarked.

  Evelyn just nodded when he said it. She cared a great deal about keeping the peace, at home especially. She and Gerald rarely argued, and when they did she quickly nipped it in the bud, silently reciting an Ogden Nash poem entitled “A Word to Husbands,” though she thought it applied just as well to wives:

  To keep your marriage brimming,

  With love in the loving cup,

  Whenever you’re wrong, admit it;

  Whenever you’re right, shut up.

  But these past few months with Teddy had strained things between them. Gerald made it clear that they must stand by him, no matter what, and that if they did, he would realize what he had done wrong. Evelyn had never interfered with her son’s dating life when he was a young man. She had bitten her tongue on several occasions. His first girlfriend was a drinker, and together they were thrown out of nearly every barroom in Boston, usually for having screaming arguments with each other. The next one was arrested after getting into a physical fight with her own mother. Teddy had to ask Gerald for the money to bail her out of jail. But then he married Julie, a wonderful girl, and they had two beautiful daughters.

  Up until then, Evelyn’s biggest regret in life had been that she was only able to have one child. She would have adopted five more if Gerald had let her. But when Julie came along, she felt that she at last had a daughter. They laughed together so much, and traded books and magazines. Julie asked for her recipes, and Evelyn copied them down by hand, giving her the whole collection one Christmas. The ten years since her son’s marriage had been some of the happiest of her life. For the first time, the house felt full. They ate meals together as a family once or twice a week. On Sundays after church, the children fed chunks of stale bread to the ducks that bobbed about at the shallow edges of the pond, as she and Julie sat on the patio drinking lemonade and chatting. Once a year, the four of them dressed up and went for tea at the Ritz. The girls brought their favorite baby dolls, and fed them sips of Earl Grey from delicate china cups.

  Evelyn and Julie met as teachers at the same high school. In the beginning, she observed Julie from afar. Tall and slim, with pretty blond hair, she seemed so at ease with the students, so delighted by them. In the teachers’ lounge, the male faculty members tripped all over themselves to sit next to her at lunch. Evelyn thought immediately of Teddy. This was the type of girl he should be with—someone who loved children, someone steady, with a good heart.

  After a few weeks, Evelyn got up the courage to talk to her. Her stomach fluttered with nerves, as if she herself were the one with the crush. She learned that Julie had moved east from Oregon three months earlier and knew few people in the area. She was the oldest of four siblings. Her parents were academics who had settled on a working cherry farm sometime in the fifties.

  Evelyn told her best friend about her plan. Ruth Dykema taught freshman algebra and always spoke her mind.

  “Careful there,” she said. “Matchmaking can sometimes backfire on a girl.”

  Evelyn tried not to feel hurt, or to wonder whether her friend’s warning had to do with her son’s unsuitability. But Ruthie was so close with her own devoted son that it stung all the more.

  Truly, Evelyn was thinking of Julie’s best interest too. In those days, if a woman wasn’t married by her mid-twenties, she would probably never get married. Julie was twenty-three.

  “You must come to a little party I’m throwing next weekend,” Evelyn said to her at lunch the next day. She could introduce them there. She knew you couldn’t force these things, but surely you could help them along a bit.

  Evelyn was up all night before that party, thinking of the best way to get them talking. If Teddy could sense that the setup was premeditated, he wouldn’t want anything to do with it. To her surprise and delight, they found their way to one another on the front porch the moment they both arrived. When Evelyn opened the door, there they stood, Teddy beaming in a way she hadn’t seen in ages.

  They began seeing each other, and six months later they got engaged. Sometimes she wondered if Teddy had told Julie about his past, or if she herself had some obligation to do so. But eventually she decided not to worry. Julie seemed to have rehabilitated him. Evelyn thought then that perhaps he was just slow to mature. She felt relief, imagining that Teddy would become the sort of man Gerald had with time. The girls were born, and she assumed that was the end of the story. No need to worry anymore. She should have been smart enough to remember that in life you could never predict w
hat would come next.

  Her older granddaughter, Melody, had first told Evelyn the news of his leaving them last spring.

  “Daddy went to Naples on business and he fell in love,” she said plainly, when Evelyn stopped by with tulips from the garden and found her daughter-in-law in tears at the kitchen table.

  Evelyn smoothed Julie’s hair, and fixed two glasses of brandy. She never drank during the day, but the situation seemed to demand it. She assured Julie that this was just a stupid mistake that Teddy would come to regret and for which he would inevitably repent.

  “He called and said he’s staying down in Florida for a while,” Julie said, stunned. “He said no one’s ever made him feel the way this woman does. When I asked him what exactly that meant, he said she makes him feel like a man. She makes him feel free. He sounded so excited. Almost as if he thought I would be happy for him.”

  “He’s lost his mind,” Evelyn said.

  She made them dinner that night, and stayed until the girls were in bed. “He’ll call and apologize in the morning. I know it,” she said. She wondered if he was drinking too much again. She felt like apologizing on his behalf, getting down on her knees and begging Julie to forgive him, though she knew there was no point to that.

  When Evelyn got home and told Gerald the story, he only said, “What a mess.”

  “How could he, Gerald? What should we do about it? Should you fly down to Florida and talk some sense into him?”

  She had expected him to be on her side, but Gerald shook his head with a sorrowful look. “We need to stay out of it, Evie. It’s not right to be plotting with Julie. He’s our son.”

  For a time, she ignored her husband’s advice. She talked to Julie every evening, and strategized ways that they could get Teddy to come home. But eventually, Julie seemed to view her as only an extension of Teddy anyway. Now she saw her grandchildren less and less. Julie didn’t even want to speak to her.

  Evelyn looked at the clock on Gerald’s desk. Teddy would arrive at one. That gave her just under four hours to pick up the roast, and the flowers, and the cake, to get lunch into the oven, and to change her clothes.

  “I’ve got to go, sweetheart,” she said. “I’ll see you in a bit.”

  Gerald walked over to where she stood.

  He placed his hands on her shoulders. “Whatever the day brings, we’ll get through it.”

  She gave him a warm smile. “I know.”

  A few minutes later, she started the car up, feeling hopeful. She would try to focus on the positive. It wasn’t her way to go borrowing trouble. A week ago, before Teddy called, she had believed that he might just never return. But soon he would be here. One day they might look back on this as a dark chapter; that was all. Men made mistakes and when they asked forgiveness, women forgave. It happened every day.

  She took a moment to appreciate the crisp fall morning. The leaves were turning, and all over town the trees burst bright orange and red and gold. Evelyn had to be mindful not to stare too long when she was behind the wheel, lest she drive clear off the road.

  They had been blessed with three wooded acres in Belmont Hill, a house set far back from the street, and a pond twinkling in the distance. Her entire property had welcomed autumn—the yellow leaves looked lovely set against the stately brick; the recent rainstorms had left the grass a robust shade of green, and the boys from O’Malley’s Landscaping had been out to mow it two days earlier. The high lilac trees and rhododendron bushes were long past blossoming, but still green enough to show well. Years ago, she had planted perennials and a vegetable patch and her roses out back. She loved to garden. She volunteered at the Arnold Arboretum once a week, working as a school program guide and organizing an annual fund-raiser, for which she arranged tours of historic Massachusetts homes, including her own.

  Evelyn placed Gerald’s envelopes on the seat beside her, along with her to-do list and her purse, and then opened the windows to let in some air. A tune she recognized and quite liked played on the classical station—Dvorák’s symphony From the New World. She turned the volume up as she drove down the long driveway and out into the street.

  She stopped first at the post office, popping Gerald’s envelopes into the box. These were going toward a record player. For what Gerald had spent on postage, he could practically have purchased his own, but never mind.

  In the town center, she found a parking spot in front of the bookshop. She gathered up her belongings, crossed Leonard Street, and walked toward Sage’s Market a few doors down. When she reached it, out stepped Bernadette Hopkins, holding the hand of a little girl in pigtails. It had been ten years. Bernadette had gained a few pounds around the middle, and she wore her hair high in a bouffant style, but her baby face had not changed a bit. Evelyn never forgot one of her students. So many of them were just marvelous about keeping in touch. Years after she’d taught them, they invited her to their weddings and sent Christmas cards by the dozens with photos of their own babies tucked inside, all of which she saved in a box up in the attic.

  “Mrs. Pearsall!” Bernadette said. She turned to the girl. “Rosie, this is Mrs. Pearsall. She was my favorite teacher in high school.”

  “You can call me Evelyn now,” she said with a smile.

  “Oh no. Never. I couldn’t.”

  Evelyn laughed. It was a common response.

  “Just home for a visit?” she asked.

  Bernadette nodded. “A cousin of mine in Newton had a baby.”

  “Where are you living these days?”

  “We’re in Connecticut. Darien. My husband’s from there. We met in college—he was a Notre Dame guy. And I was at St. Mary’s, of course.” She turned again to the child. “Mrs. Pearsall wrote my letter of recommendation.”

  Evelyn pressed her lips together. It seemed unlikely that the girl could possibly care about a thing like that. Maybe Bernadette had only wanted to let Evelyn know that she remembered.

  “Oh, you were everyone’s favorite,” she continued. “Remember my friend Marjorie Price? She works in the editorial offices of Ladies’ Home Journal in New York City now. She tells people that you’re the reason she became a writer.”

  “I’m honored,” Evelyn said. “Please give her my best. Are you in touch with many of the other girls from your class?”

  She recalled Bernadette as a member of the student council, perhaps not the smartest girl in the room, but certainly one of the most enthusiastic. She had been popular, and kind to everyone, a rare combination.

  “Oh sure,” Bernadette said. “Wendy Rhodes and Joanne Moore are housewives like me. Each of us has a two-year-old and a four-year-old. Joyce Douglas is a dental hygienist, which is funny when you think about the fact that her brothers played hockey all those years. And I assume you heard what happened to poor Nancy Bird?”

  Evelyn shook her head, though she had a hunch what was coming.

  “A year and a half ago, her husband, Roy, was home on leave from Vietnam. He told her his commanding officer had assured them that all Americans would be out for good in six months. He went back, and a few weeks later he was killed.”

  Evelyn felt the weight of this. Poor Nancy, still so young.

  “How is she?” she asked.

  “She’s a wreck. She has a baby boy now. She found out she was pregnant a week before Roy died.”

  Evelyn was startled for a moment, a function of age having turned her into a fuddy-duddy: when she was young, no one said the word pregnant out loud.

  She made a mental note to write Nancy and see if there was anything she could do to help.

  Bernadette’s voice took on a breezy tone now. “When I heard you’d left Belmont High, I felt so sad for my nieces, who would never get a chance to have you in class,” she said. “My sister’s still living in town. Same block as my mom and dad.”

  For a moment, Evelyn thought to ask whether she might know Julie—they would be about the same age—but Bernadette rolled on without stopping for breath. “You look great, by the wa
y. You always were so pretty. I remember all the boys had crushes on you, even though you were so—”

  “Old?” Evelyn suggested.

  “Older than us, is all,” Bernadette said. “But truly, you look just the same.”

  They all said this, too, even though it wasn’t true. Evelyn had worn the same long skirts with high-collared blouses since just after college, and she usually kept her hair up in a loose bun. It had been blond for most of her life, like Julie’s and the girls’, but it had recently turned a not unpleasant shade of silver. She was tall for a woman, five foot nine, and thin, but never skinny. She had been a swimmer all her life, and even competed when she was a student at Wellesley.

  She had retired nine years ago, when her first grandchild was born, so that she’d be around to help Julie whenever she needed her. Evelyn was happy to do it, but she missed being a teacher. Her favorite day of the year was the first of September, the day she finished her summer vacation and returned to school to set up her classroom. She could still recall the sheer pleasure she took in the smell of unused chalk, the sight of the literary quotations written on construction paper, which she hung on the bulletin board each year, and the blank grade book with the names of every new student running down the edge of the page, full of promise.

  She taught sophomore and junior English. Other teachers she knew would do anything to avoid children that age, but she adored them. Even the most troubled or vexing among them had something to offer if you just looked hard enough. Some teachers never wanted to get involved, but she had a passion for it.

  The only child she could never reach was her own son. That was her greatest failing. It was expected that she would quit her job after marriage, as most women did, and she did quit, for a while, to be with Teddy, and to open up a job for someone else during the later years of the Depression. There was real bitterness aimed at working girls at that time, especially the ones with husbands. Most schools in the country wouldn’t hire a woman anymore.