Magnolia Wednesdays Part 31

"And?" they chorused.

"And on the third day when I realized I was a moron and that I'd completely screwed everything up, James showed up on my doorstep. And he told me that he loved me. Completely. And that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me."

She swallowed and they could hear the wonder in her voice. "He said he didn't care how much I weighed when I was twelve or what I'd weigh when I was fifty. That he didn't love me because of what I looked like, although he did want to know if I owned any clothing that wasn't black and too big." She smiled tentatively. "Then he said he'd fallen in love with me the first time he saw my work and that there was so much fabulous stuff inside me he didn't see how there could be room for Fangie or anyone else in there.

"Then he got down on one knee and asked me if I'd go to city hall with him." She pulled a wedding band that cradled her engagement ring from her pocket and slid the set onto her finger so they could see it. "And I did."

There were murmurs of surprise, a few high fives, and plenty of questions. Evangeline brought the coffee in and refilled their cups as they teased Angela about giving everyone the slip. Obviously eager to change the subject, she pulled a copy of the Weekly Encounter from her purse.

"I was a little surprised to see that Scarlett Leigh has resigned," she said. "And apologized."

Vivien popped the last crumbs of cobbler into her mouth and considered excusing herself.

"I'd like to see that," Melanie said. "Don't move, Vivi," she said when Vivi reached for her empty plate. "I think we should all hear what Scarlett had to say this time."

Angela handed the paper to Melanie, who aimed a raised eyebrow at Vivien and then began to read. "For the last six months I've described what I've seen in the strange and alien world of suburbia. I've disparaged and poked fun at all kinds of things from doggie couture to secret lawn watering to parental helicoptering. I said that the parents I met needed to stop living vicariously through their children and begged them to *get a life.'

"But today I am writing not only to resign-there will be no more harangues from suburbia, at least not from me-but to apologize. Because my research was faulty. I was too smug and too lazy. I failed to do my job. If I had bothered to look beneath the surface, I would have also written that it's not just compet.i.tion and self-interest that fuel this involvement. In most cases, it's driven by love. And it is a love so strong that it leads those who feel it to put their families before themselves. It turns women not into doormats, as I sneered, but into the backbone that supports their families, their homes, and their communities. I am humbled by many of the women I've met here, amazed by how much of themselves they give to others. How willing they are to spend their time and energy creating an environment in which others may thrive.

"I was dead wrong. These suburbanites already have a life and it's far richer and fuller and more meaningful than one would ever guess at first glance."

Melanie stopped reading aloud as her eyes skimmed down to the last sentences. Vivien tensed as Melanie looked up at her and then lowered her gaze again. She read more slowly, her voice betraying her emotion. An answering lump formed in Vivien's throat.

"My younger sister, who is a single mother and an incredible individual, taught me a lot of these things. I hope to learn more now that I'm a mother myself. If I'm lucky, I'll end up just like her when I grow up." Melanie paused and swallowed. "It's signed, Vivien Armstrong Gray."

38.

LATE THAT NIGHT, Vivi fed the baby in the old rocking chair that Evangeline and Melanie had hauled up to her room from the bas.e.m.e.nt. She peered down into the baby's face, studying it in the dim light, as he suckled intently. Sometimes she thought she saw the beginnings of Stone's nose, the familiar plane of his cheek. And when he opened his almost navy eyes and stared up at her, she stared back struck with awe at what she and Stone had created.

Vivi had spent the first half of her pregnancy in panic and denial and the last half simply holding on with all her might. But in all that time she had never really stopped and thought about what holding her own child would feel like. She'd had no conception at all of how instant and all-consuming the connection between them would be.

It was little wonder that she'd never understood Melanie or her life; she couldn't believe that now when she was finally in a position to forge a stronger relationship, she'd so completely destroyed the opportunity. And left them both living in an odd sort of limbo.

Melanie came in then and took a seat on the empty bed.

"Did we wake you?" Vivi asked. It had taken her a few minutes to quiet the baby down enough to get him to her breast.

"No," Melanie said. "I just can't seem to get all the way to sleep. Every time I start to nod off I find myself thinking about J.J. and Clay. And how completely out of touch with my own life I must have been."

"Not out of touch. Maybe living a little bit in the land of denial," Vivi said. She looked down at the baby and back at her sister. "It can be a mighty cozy place. I just hope I didn't drive Stone completely away with my stupidity."

Melanie pulled her knees up to her chest and rested her chin on them. "I feel pretty stupid myself."

"I meant what I said to the kids," Vivien replied. "I really believe J.J. loved you all more than anything." Her glance strayed to the bottom drawer of her dresser where she'd hidden J.J.'s note to Melanie.

"Not enough to give up Clay. Or to admit to what he was." Melanie closed her eyes and opened them, drawing in a deep breath as if to steady herself.

But enough to kill himself over, Vivi thought but didn't say.

"I feel like I lost him all over again," Melanie said with such sadness that Vivi didn't think she could bear it. "And you . . . I just feel so betrayed. I don't know how I'm supposed to ever trust you again."

Vivien wondered if the words hurt as much to say as they did to hear. Her gaze strayed to the drawer again then back to her sister's face. Why had she kept J.J.'s note? Why hadn't she simply ripped it to shreds when Clay gave it to her? Had she been keeping her own options open even then? How could she have even considered it?

"You're going to have to let go of him at some point, Mel. Too many things, and way too many people, don't turn out to be what we thought they were, or even what we hoped they'd be. Like J.J. Like Caroline." She looked into her sister's eyes and added, "Like me."

The baby stretched sleepily in her arms as she sought the right words. "But ultimately we have to find a way to move forward. To build something new as best we can. And I . . ." In that moment Vivien knew exactly what she needed to do; the only thing she could do. ". . . I promise I'll never breathe a word about J.J. Not ever, not for any reason. I've sworn off investigating family and friends. No matter what they do. So you can feel free to go out and commit murder, vote Democrat, become a secret super-hero. Whatever.

"I know now that the truth, or what I thought of as the truth, just isn't as important as the people you love. Or the lives it can destroy."

"That sounds good," Melanie said. "And I hope to G.o.d you mean it. Because you're my sister, my flesh and blood. And I guess I don't have a choice but to let you prove it."

Vivi thought about the truth that she'd kept from Stone; the fact that she'd denied him the right to know that he had helped create the incredible new person that was bits and pieces of both of them. The baby's mouth grew slack as he fell back to sleep, but his tiny fist rested against her breast. She watched his face as his breathing grew slow and regular.

As if reading her thoughts, Melanie said, "Are you sure Stone got your message?"

Vivien slid gently to her feet and walked over to the ba.s.sinet to lay the baby down, then tucked a blanket in around him. "Yeah. I, um, spoke to Marty yesterday and he said he did get through to Stone. But he, um, wouldn't say more than that." She looked at Melanie as the love, the doubt, and the fear surged through her. Was it possible he was simply too angry to call her? That her actions had made him a.s.sume she didn't want him involved in his son's life?

"I've really screwed this thing up," she said and then as she did over even the littlest thing these days, she cried. Stupidly. Piteously. Copiously. Until Melanie came over and put her arms around her and shushed her like she did the baby.

"Don't worry, Vivi," she said. "It'll be all right. Stone will come."

When Vivi's tears finally stopped, Melanie gave her a final hug and turned to leave. In the doorway she paused and speared Vivi with a look. "I do love you, Vivi. And I want you-need you-in my life." She shook her head gently. "But you can't let me down again. Because I'm afraid that would be the end of us."

After Melanie left, Vivien went to the bottom drawer and removed J.J.'s suicide note from its hiding place. She read it one last time, tracing over the pain-filled letters with one finger. Then she carefully refolded it, tore it into tiny pieces too small to ever be put back together, and flushed them methodically down the toilet. She felt not an ounce of regret.

Vivien greatly regretted the way she'd excluded Stone from the birth of his child. As the days pa.s.sed, she faced each one with a heaviness that she couldn't seem to shrug off. Now she sat in the kitchen with the baby in her arms while Shelby and Trip ate their breakfasts and prepared to leave for school. Evangeline had found the pots and pans Vivi had used for her niece's morning wakeups in the back of the linen closet and returned them to the kitchen. Then she'd simply plugged in an alarm clock on the nightstand next to Shelby's bed. And that was that.

Even better, Shelby had toned down her clothing choices and remembered to stop when she reached the high school parking lot and so had won back her right to drive. Trip, too, seemed to be regaining his sense of self. Not that he was a human chatterbox or anything, but he did seem more interested in life in general and was looking forward to his next outing with the Wesleys. Even Melanie appeared to be coming out of her two years of mourning; as awful as the revelations about Clay and J.J. had been, they had also provided permission to finally move on.

Vivi was sincerely happy that these things had happened for those she loved and if she'd had any confidence that Stone would forgive her-or even show up and tell her why he wouldn't-she might have felt better about all that lay ahead. But her worry clung to her like a second skin and she could tell that the baby felt it, too. He fussed and fretted right along with her, and Vivi wondered if he'd drunk it in with her milk. Or if the tension simply zinged between their bodies like electrical impulses from switch to bulb.

When she'd finally gotten him down for a nap, Vivi checked email yet again, but the only one she'd received was from John Harcourt, begging her to reconsider her resignation. The response to her last column had been overwhelmingly positive and the Weekly Encounter would let her write the column however she saw fit and under any name she might choose. He promised to more than double her salary and asked her not to say no until they had a chance to talk. She'd also gotten an offer from Good Housekeeping to write features about new motherhood, which Mel had said would serve her right.

She'd just finished the baby's after-nap feeding when she heard a car drive up out front. Melanie was back from teaching her morning cla.s.s, so she didn't hurry downstairs. After fastening her nursing bra and smoothing down her shirt, she put a clean diaper on the baby and snapped him into a fresh onesie just as the doorbell rang.

"Vivi," Melanie called upstairs. "I'm in the middle of something. Can you get the front door?"

Settling the baby up against her shoulder in hopes of a burp, she walked down the front stairs and pulled the door open one-handed. Stone stood on the doorstep, his blue eyes tired and angry, his face covered in stubble, his clothes a ma.s.s of wrinkles. He studied her face, then let his gaze travel down to the baby in her arms. "It's true," he said. "I thought maybe it was some sort of bizarre joke. But it's true." The anger didn't exactly disappear, but it was replaced with a look of awe and wonder as she turned the baby to cradle him in the crook of her arm so that father and son could see each other.

The baby blinked still-sleepy eyes. Stone stared back.

This made her want to cry again, though she didn't know whether it was from stress and panic or the gut wrench of emotion she felt as they solemnly regarded each other. "This is your daddy," she said to the infant in her arms. "Stone, this is your son." She paused and waited for his reaction. Despite all the times she'd seen him on TV, she'd forgotten how physically compelling he was. And how completely he'd always been able to read her. "His name is Pebbles," she admitted. "I was sort of waiting for you to help me come up with a better one."

"Is that right?" His voice was deep and quiet, but the rational tone didn't fool her. Under his obvious jet lag and the vise he'd apparently clamped down on his emotions, he was angrier than she'd ever seen him. And rightfully so.

"Do you want to come in?" she asked, stepping back so that he could enter.

"Of course I want to come in, Vivi. It took three days for your text to reach me. Another three to get back to Kabul and clear things up and hand things over so that I could leave. And another two after that to get here. And the only thing I could think the whole time was, How in the h.e.l.l did this happen? How could she go through an entire pregnancy without telling me?"

"Yes," she said, falling back a step. "That would be a good question."

And then she felt Melanie behind her. "Vivi, what's . . . Oh." She stepped around Vivien to open the door wider. "Hi," she said as she ushered Stone in. "Congratulations on the birth of your son." She said this as if it were the most normal thing in the world. "Look at the way he's staring at you. Don't you just have the weirdest sense he knows exactly who you are?"

They moved into the kitchen, and Vivi sat on a barstool, the baby still in her arms. Stone took the stool next to them while Melanie took out a pitcher of tea, keeping up a steady stream of chatter. The baby was still watching Stone, as was Vivi, who was practically vibrating with the intensity of her conflicting emotions. She wanted to throw her arms around him and bury her face in his neck almost as much as she wanted to run upstairs and hide from the hurt and anger radiating from him. She only hoped he intended to forgive her. She could take anything he had to say as long as it ended that way.

"I would have been here sooner," Stone said, his tone wry. "If I'd had any idea that I had a child on the way." He turned to Melanie. "Don't you think I was ent.i.tled to that piece of information? Your sister and I have been together for three years. I've told her that I love her more times than I can count. Can you think of a good reason why she wouldn't tell me that she was pregnant until the actual moment that she was about to give birth?"

"Yes, well, er . . ." It was clear that Melanie was not any more prepared to defend the indefensible than Vivi. Which was kind of amazing when she considered how long she'd had to come up with . . . something.

He turned to Vivien and once again his eyes traveled down to his son, who stared right back at him. Stone's gaze softened and he stretched out a long finger to trace the curve of the baby's cheek.

Vivien squirmed in her seat as the two communed. The baby yawned and stretched and Stone smiled down at him before turning a much-less-smitten look on her. "Go on, Viv. I've been looking forward to hearing this."

He and the baby yawned at the same time, and Vivien decided to go with the abbreviated version. "I admit I handled this badly."

A sandy eyebrow went up.

"Make that incredibly badly."

He nodded. The baby yawned.

"At first I was just too freaked out to absorb the whole thing. And then I thought I should wait until I hit the three-month mark and knew for sure. And then I didn't want to make you feel responsible or like you had to marry me or settle down or anything when you might not want to."

The other eyebrow joined the first.

"Well, it's not like we didn't always joke about you being a rolling stone that gathered no moss."

"That was a joke, Vivi," he said. "Not a battle cry."

"Well, I know how hard you've worked to get where you are. And senior international correspondents with a specialty in terrorism don't stay home a lot. I didn't want you to feel trapped."

He sighed and ran a hand through his hair, which was already sticking up in more directions than it was designed to. The exhaustion that he'd held off until now began to settle over him.

"And then when things were such a mess there, I didn't want to distract you," Vivi concluded. "There just never seemed like a good time. So, I just . . . didn't."

Stone sighed and it turned into a yawn, but he didn't hedge his words. "I'm incredibly offended that you a.s.sumed so many things about me and that none of them were particularly flattering," he said. "I wouldn't have felt trapped by the fact that the woman I loved was having my baby. Nor would I have been overwhelmed by or unhappy about marrying you and sharing the responsibility of raising our son. And being a correspondent? Frankly, I'm beat. And I think it might be time to explore some other opportunities."

He yawned again and reached out his hands. It took her a minute to realize that he wanted her to hand over the baby. He grasped the baby at the waist and behind the neck and pulled him up against his broad chest with a surprising lack of awkwardness. Father and son yawned identical yawns as he cuddled the baby close.

"I'm way too jet-lagged to argue properly with you right now," Stone said. "If you point me to your room, the little pebble and I will go take a quick nap." He put a hand up to cradle the back of the baby's head, then stood as Melanie directed him to the first room at the top of the stairs. "I'm sure I'll have the strength I need to set you straight once I get a little shut-eye."

With that he marched up the stairs, carrying the already-sleeping baby with him.

"I don't think he's going to disappear on you," Melanie said to Vivi as they watched Stone climb the stairs with his tiny load. "He's going to give you the s.h.i.t you so richly deserve, but he doesn't look like he's planning to bow out of either of your lives."

"You've got that right," Stone called as he stopped to peer down at them from the landing. He looked like someone who'd been traveling days to get here, and the exhaustion in his eyes was clear. But there was love in them, too, and not a single sign of doubt. Vivi's heart constricted almost painfully in her chest as she took in the sight of him cradling their child so gently.

Before Vivien or Melanie could think of an answer, man and baby retreated from view. A moment later the bedroom door clicked shut, leaving the sisters standing together smiling at each other in the silence.

READERS GUIDE TO.

Magnolia Wednesdays.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS.

1. At what point in the story did you suspect that Vivi was pregnant? Did any of her actions before that discovery serve as clues?

2. Do you find Vivi to be a likable character? Does your opinion of her change-perhaps multiple times-as the story progresses? Do you find Mel to be too forgiving of Vivi's missteps?

3. What were your initial feelings about Vivi's investigation into J.J.'s death? Did your opinion change when the truth about his death was revealed?

4. On pages 236-237, Mel, Vivi, Ruth, and Angela discuss how secrets should be kept out of relationships, yet secrets seem to be at the center of each of their lives. Discuss the secrets that exist in each of their relationships. Do you believe that some secrets are better left untold?

5. Do you think that Vivi's reasons for keeping her pregnancy hidden from Stone are valid? Was Stone's reaction surprising? Discuss how you would have reacted in his position.

6. On multiple occasions, Vivi wrestles with whether or not to expose her niece Shelby's dating life to Mel. Do you think that Vivi handles these situations wisely? What, if anything, do you think Vivi's relationship with her niece and nephew says about her own readiness to be a parent?

7. Do you agree with Angela's belief that Vivi's gossip column tells important truths that no one is willing to face on his or her own? Discuss your own reaction to Postcards from Suburbia and whether Vivi has any other choice but to publish the scathing column.

8. Vivi and Mel were brought up to fear, above most everything else, bringing shame upon their family name. Do you believe this upbringing has anything to do with the sisters' inability to recognize certain problems in their own lives? Discuss instances where Vivi and Mel are able to point out each other's flaws, but can't recognize similar flaws within themselves.

9. Discuss the ending of the novel. Are you satisfied by the closure that each character finds? What more do you hope would have happened for Mel, Vivi, Ruth, and Angela?

10. What do you think is the major theme of Magnolia Wednesdays? Are there any lessons to take from this novel regarding both the positive and negative power of secrets, family, and/or friendships?

11. Author Wendy Wax says that she went to the University of Georgia after reading Gone With the Wind too many times. Does this enhance your experience reading Magnolia Wednesdays?

t.i.tles by Wendy Wax.

7 DAYS AND 7 NIGHTS.

LEAVE IT TO CLEAVAGE.