Sasha tried to get them out of the restaurant as quickly as possible, and she suggested brunch on Sunday before their flight. Her mother said she was playing golf with two women friends who were judges, and couldn’t make it.
“I assume you’re seeing your father and his airhead wife tomorrow,” she said coldly.
“Yes, we are,” Sasha said through clenched teeth.
“Enjoy it,” she added sarcastically. “See you at the wedding,” she said to Alex, hugged her daughter awkwardly without an ounce of warmth, got in her Jaguar, and drove away. Alex looked like he was about to collapse on the sidewalk.
“She is one tough woman,” he said looking at Sasha. “How did you grow up with her?”
“She wasn’t as bad then, before the divorce. They were unhappy for a long time, but they kept it quiet. Then he left her, and she turned into the witch in The Wizard of Oz, with the green face. I was out of the house by then, thank God. She badmouthed my father constantly once he left her. I guess her ego was bruised. But when he met Charlotte, the woman he’s married to now, she went insane. She never forgave him for starting a new life and being happy with another woman. And it’s worse because Charlotte is so much younger, and beautiful. And she’s furious they had more kids. Now she hates everyone. I don’t know how her clients stand her. You have to really hate the man you’re divorcing to hire her. She kills them. My sister insists she used to be human once upon a time. I sure don’t remember it. She gets along better with Valentina. My mother and I just don’t make it anymore.” Sasha looked exhausted, and he put an arm around her. “It sure is different than your parents, huh? They’re like a family TV show compared to mine, who are like some kind of horror movie. I try not to come home anymore. It’s just too hard. And Valentina hates my father. She thinks he turned my mother into this by leaving her, and she says his wife is a ditz. She is, but she loves him, and it’s what he wants, and she’s really kind of sweet. We’re not best friends, but I like her. My father has tried to bury the hatchet with my mother, but she won’t let him.” Muriel Hartman was angry at the world.
“She makes it very difficult,” Alex said as they walked back to their hotel. Atlanta seemed like a nice city, but they hadn’t had time to explore it, and all Sasha wanted, whenever she went back to Atlanta now, was to leave town again as soon as she could. She never even called her old friends. Her mother had ruined it for her.
They met her father at his country club for lunch the next day. Steve Hartman was a handsome man, and it was hard to imagine him with Muriel for a day, let alone the twenty-six years they’d been married before he left her. He wasn’t an intellectual or an academic, but he was an intelligent businessman who had done extremely well. He wasn’t as sharp or astute as Sasha’s mother, but he was a kind, warm person, and Alex liked him.
And after lunch they followed him to Buckhead, the very expensive residential part of Atlanta where they lived. They had an enormous house that was more like an estate, with a tennis court and an Olympic-size pool, and beautiful old trees lining the driveway. It was very Southern, and there was a lovely young woman barefoot on the lawn, smiling and waving at them as they drove up, and two beautiful little girls. Steve looked ecstatic as he got out of his car, tossed them in the air, and kissed his wife. As soon as Alex and Sasha got out of their rented car, Sasha saw a problem on the horizon, a big one. Charlotte was pregnant again, which her father hadn’t mentioned, and Muriel was going to split a gut at the wedding when she found out. It would be further proof of his happy marriage to someone else. Her mother had never wanted more children after the twins, and her father had always wanted more. Now he had them. And she could never forgive him for moving on without her, and being happy.
“Congratulations,” Sasha said after hugging Charlotte, and indicated her round belly in the pretty sundress. “That’s exciting.”
“Yes, it is,” her father acknowledged, beaming at his wife. She was thirty years old, as she had told Alex before, two years younger than Sasha, which hadn’t sat well with any of them when he married her at twenty-three, but it no longer mattered to Sasha. Valentina thought it was disgusting, and now she was doing the same thing herself with Bert, who was younger than she was, though not by as many years. Her father and Charlotte were nearly thirty years apart. But so what, if it worked for them?
“When is it due?” Sasha asked, praying it would be before the wedding.
“August,” Charlotte said in her Southern drawl that always annoyed Valentina. An August due date meant that she would be seven months pregnant at the wedding—the picture of maternal splendor on her father’s arm. Sasha nearly groaned when she said it.
“Will you be up to coming to New York for the wedding?” Sasha asked with a false smile.
“My doctor says I can travel till eight months. Both of the girls were late.” Sasha nodded, with a sinking heart. It was one more thing to worry about at the wedding. Elvis Chapel, here we come, she thought.
They sat by the pool while a maid in uniform served lemonade and iced tea and lemon cookies, and her dad offered Alex a mint julep or Pimm’s Cup, which he declined and stuck with lemonade. It was delicious, and the little girls swam while they chatted, and a nanny came out to dry them off. Their mother had had help for her and Valentina too, while she practiced law, but it was always more haphazard and less formal—local young women, college age babysitters, or foreign au pairs. Steve and Charlotte’s nanny was English and formally trained, and extremely polite, as were the children who climbed all over Sasha and called her their big sister, while she teased them and chased them around the lawn. They were cute, and had a wonderful life. Their mother didn’t work and hadn’t since she gave up modeling to marry Steve, and never looked back. Her days consisted of shopping, manicures, a little charity work, and lunch with her friends.
Her father asked Alex about his residency, and they talked until dinnertime, and then had an early dinner in the gazebo on the lawn. They left by eight o’clock, and all Sasha wanted was to go back to New York. It wasn’t anything like their trip to stay with his parents in Chicago, where they actually had fun. With Alex’s family, they all had medicine in common, and his mother was the nicest woman she’d ever met, who actually seemed to care how Sasha felt.
“Thank you for being such a good sport. My parents exhaust me.” She laid her head back against the seat and looked wiped out as they drove back to the hotel.
“Your father is nice,” he said honestly. They were in agreement about her mother and had said it all the night before. Her father and Charlotte were like something in a Southern movie and never seemed real to her. No one was ever tired or dirty or messy or swore, or talked about problems, or things she cared about. It all stayed very superficial.
“My mother is going to have apoplexy when she sees Charlotte pregnant again at the wedding, although she should be used to it by now. And they’ve been divorced for nearly eight years. I think she’ll be pissed till the day she dies, and she wouldn’t want to be married to him anyway. They were both unhappy. I think she forgot.”
“Pride maybe. It doesn’t help that Charlotte’s younger than you are, and she’s a damn pretty girl,” Alex said sensibly.
“Yes, she is.” Sasha sighed. It was too late to catch a flight that night, but she switched their flight to an earlier one the next morning, and they left the hotel at eight o’clock, and were back in New York at one. She wanted to kiss the ground.
“Well, that’s over with,” she said, as they got into a cab at the airport. “We don’t have to see them again till the wedding. Are you ready to back out yet?” she asked him, and he laughed.