“I want to check and see if my mother was married in 1979,” Winnie said. “Is that something you can help me with?”
Melon stood up and walked over to a large gray filing cabinet. “Name?”
Deep breath. “Winnie Newton.”
“We’re looking in 1979,” Melon said. “What month?”
“Summer?” Winnie said. “July, August?”
“And you said the last name is Newton?”
“That’s my last name,” Winnie said.
Melon smiled at her as though Winnie were telling a joke and she was waiting for the punch line. “Is that the last name I’m looking for?”
“No,” Winnie said. Oh, God, Garrett! “I’m sorry. My mother’s last name at that time was Eyler. Elizabeth Eyler. E-Y-L-E-R.”
Melon nodded definitively as if this made much more sense. She started flipping through the cards in the filing cabinet. “Nope, nope, nope,” she whispered. “Nope, nope, nope.”
Winnie didn’t know what to do with her hands. Putting them in the back pockets of her jean shorts seemed too casual, too teenagerly. She decided it would be more reverent to clasp them in front of her.
“Nope, nope, nope.”
A very small part of Winnie held out hope that this was all a hoax, a mistake, even a lie concocted by the Ronan family. How Winnie would relish telling Garrett he was wrong. If there were no record of the marriage here, then she would never believe it was true.
“Here it is!” Melon said brightly. “Eyler and Ronan. Oh.” Her forehead crinkled. “David Ronan? Your mother was married to David Ronan?” She put a hand up. “Don’t answer that. It is none of my business.” She handed the card to Winnie. “It’s fifty cents for a Xerox copy, and a certified copy costs five dollars and takes three business days.”
Winnie pulled a dollar out of her pocket. Thank God she thought to bring money! “Just one copy, please.”
“My pleasure.” Melon took the dollar bill from Winnie, and removed fifty cents from her desk drawer. Five seconds at the copier and a bright flash of light later, Melon handed Winnie the change and the proof of her mother’s betrayal. Melon smiled again, in an intimate way, and Winnie felt her face turn red. Melon obviously knew David Ronan, and now the news of his secret first marriage would leak out. But, really, what did Winnie care?
When she gazed down at the marriage certificate, the first thing she noticed was the word “Divorced,” stamped in large black letters across the top. Winnie scanned the paper, line by line. Bride’s name: Elizabeth Celia Eyler; Bride’s D.O.B.: May 2, 1958; Groom’s name: David Arthur Ronan; Groom’s D.O.B: September 18, 1957; Date of marriage: August 16, 1979; Officiant: Judge Leon Macy; Witnesses: Kenneth Edwards, James Seamus, Kelly Wilcox. The marriage certificate was all signed, sealed, and official-looking. It was real. Winnie felt like she might vomit up her Cheerios right into Melon’s typewriter. She pressed the paper to her chest, whispered, “Thank you,” and ran from the building.
She sat outside on a park bench with her head between her knees. Okay, this was really bad. This was-not the worst-but the second-to-worst. Her mother and David all signed, sealed, and official on a card in the Town Building where anyone could look, where anybody could get a copy for only fifty cents! Well, she and Garrett had been betrayed, that was all there was to it. Winnie tried to imagine what her father would do if he were still alive and he’d found out this sickening news. She tried to imagine him getting angry, except he didn’t get angry at Beth. He would probably say he was disappointed-not because Beth had been married before, but because she chose to conceal it. Deeper down, he might be sad and maybe even a little jealous. Arch, though, had a way of understanding and then forgiving other people’s flaws-Constance Tyler’s, for example. Arch might even say it wasn’t any of their business-but that thought evaporated immediately. Beth was his wife, their mother! This was their business!
Winnie climbed on her bike. She would go home and lay low until nightfall, when she and Garrett would inflict their revenge. What they planned to do would break their mother’s heart, but Winnie no longer cared. She had a copy of the marriage certificate in her pocket, made official by a younger version of her mother’s signature. Now it was Beth’s turn to learn what it felt like to be shut out, to be excluded from life’s most important knowledge.
Beth was out for a run when Winnie got home. Winnie wrote a note and left it on the kitchen table. “Don’t feel well! Please do not disturb!!!-W.” But of course Beth knocked on her door as soon as she got home. Winnie had anticipated this very situation and moved her small dresser in front of the door as a blockade.
“Winnie,” Beth said gently. “Honey, what’s wrong?”
“Period!” Winnie spat out. How she loathed even the sound of her mother’s voice!
“Did you take any Midol?” Beth asked. “Can I make you some chamomile tea?”
“Go away!” This in the most venomous voice Winnie could muster.
“You’re not acting like yourself,” Beth said. “Are you sure there’s nothing else wrong?”
“I am a self-respecting woman,” Winnie said. Her point being that the woman on the other side of the door could not be described as such. The bigger point being that her own mother, who heretofore had been a paragon of virtue, was now someone else entirely.
Beth tried the door and found herself stymied by the dresser. Winnie couldn’t help smiling with self-satisfaction. There was something about a house with no locking doors-everyone felt justified to barge in on everyone else. But not this time.
“Winnie, what have you done?”
“I said, ‘go away!’ ”
Silence. Then, “Fine, fine, fine. If that’s the way you want it. I’ll be out on the deck eating lunch. Let me know if you need anything.”
When her mother was safely down the stairs, Winnie whispered, “Liar.”
Later, there was a distinctive knock on the door. A Marcus knock.
“Hey,” he said. “Open up.”
For him-yes. But only him. Winnie didn’t even want to see Garrett until later. Winnie shoved the dresser aside and it scraped some green paint off the floor. Oh, well! Winnie didn’t care; it was her mother’s house. She’d finally stopped feeling guilty about breaking the valuable lamp. She couldn’t be bothered anymore about her mother’s heirlooms.
She opened the door to find Marcus holding out a plate: a BLT on toasted Portuguese bread with a handful of Cape Cod chips. Winnie’s stomach reared up. She hadn’t realized she was hungry.
“Your mother told me to tell you that these are Bartlett tomatoes,” he said. “Also, she didn’t put on too much mayonnaise.”
“Mom made the sandwich?” Winnie asked dejectedly. She’d entertained a brief fantasy that Marcus made it.
“Yep.”
“I’m not eating it.”
Marcus walked past Winnie into the room and sat on the bed. Winnie closed the door behind him and slid the dresser against it.
“Well, then, I’m going to eat it,” Marcus said. He took a huge bite out of the corner and tomato seeds slipped down his chin.
“I’ll have half,” Winnie conceded. She was hungry and had no intention of going down for dinner. She and Marcus sat side-by-side on the bed eating the sandwich and all of the chips, using a couple of Kleenex as napkins.