“Mmm hmm,” murmured Abby in agreement. She had waited as long as she could stand it and then had stood up and announced her intention to turn in.
They had returned from the party nearly an hour ago. They sat in the living room and rehashed the party…rather, they allowed Sharon to rehash it. Man, did that woman pay attention to details, thought Nick. She should work for the CIA or something.
Sharon gave a recap of the party like she was the National Security Chief reporting to the President. John mixed himself a nightcap and settled into a chair to listen to it. He didn’t care what people wore or how much they drank, but he loved to see his wife revved up about something. It happened so rarely, and it usually augured well for the bedroom. All he had to do was make sure that she knew that he thought that everything she had been part of was perfect, and anything not under her direct control could have used some improvement.
“Could you believe Nora Thomas? My God, the hair! Someone should tell the woman what century she’s in!”
“Nora never changes, does she?” chuckled John. Nora Thomas had worn the same hairstyle since the seventies. And it had been a forties hairstyle even then. But it was Sharon’s opening gambit in any dissection of a social event.
“Unlike Amanda Travis. My goodness, is there a hair color out there that she hasn’t tried?”
“You are being less than charitable, Mother,” said Abby, who wanted to shorten the whole agonizing recitation, so that she could get her arms around Nick. “I thought it was a lovely evening. Thank you both.”
“You’re welcome, Honey,” said her father, smiling at her.
“Yes, thank you,” said Nick. “You made me feel very welcome here. So did your friends. Thank you.”
If Nick and Abby thought they had forestalled Sharon, they were very much mistaken. She smiled at them both and then picked up the report where she had left off. The musicians were very good, didn’t they think, and it wasn’t too loud, she hated that, when the music was too loud, because not everyone danced, some people just wanted to talk and so you didn’t want the music to be too loud.
The music was exactly the right volume, agreed the other three.
And the bars. Two had been enough, didn’t they agree? After all, people weren’t there to drink themselves stupid, although some people seemed to visit it more than others.
Two bars was perfect, said John, before Sharon could tell them who had too much to drink. No lineups, but the bartenders were kept busy.
Sharon droned on with her litany seeking approval for her choices. What about the food? Never had stuffed mushroom caps like them, said John. Never saw shrimp disappear so quickly, put in Abby. No, no, she added, seeing her mother’s eyebrows go up, there were plenty. They were just so good… I was way too nervous to eat, said Nick. He paused, thinking he’d said the wrong thing.
On the contrary.
Why? Sharon wanted to know.
Nick felt the heat of the Sharon spotlight. Aw crap, he thought.
“It was a big night for me,” he began, reaching over and taking Abby’s hand. “I’m not good at meeting new people. It’s kind of weird, I guess, considering what I do for a living, but I’m sorta shy. I don’t talk good…I mean, I don’t speak well in public. I was afraid that I would embarrass you, that I would embarrass Abby.”
“Son,” began Sharon. The word itself was almost enough to make Abby slide off the sofa. “You can put your mind to rest on that score. You handled yourself very well. There was not one person who left that party that did not think that Abigail was a lucky woman for having found you.”
Abby looked at Nick and rolled her eyes. No big compliment, she thought. She could have been there with Godzilla and they all would have thought she was lucky to have found him.
Sharon continued her dissertation. Nick sat quietly and let it roll over him. He didn’t remember any of the names or faces so he had nothing to add. He’d met them all for the first time so he had no way of knowing whether they had put on weight, had a facelift, were drinking more than usual…
“Veronica Fenton…”
Nick’s ears perked up. Here was a name he did recognize.
“…wine. Jeannette thinks it’s beginning to be a bit of a problem.”
“How would Jeannette know?” asked John. “I don’t think she and Miles see them that often, do they?”
“Well, she’d certainly had too much at the Thanksgiving party. She was almost staggering at one point. And then she disappeared, remember. I think she probably had to go have a nap to sober up. She looked a little disheveled when she returned.” Sharon sniffed in memory. “And she was wearing the same dress as tonight.”
“It was a nice dress,” said Abby in a small voice. “It looked great on her.”
“Yes, tonight,” admitted Sharon grudgingly, “but it was totally inappropriate for the other party. Who did she think she was going to impress?”
Abby and Nick looked at each other. They knew the answer to that.
“I’m going to turn in now,” said Abby, hoping to cause a change in the topic of conversation. “It was a great party, perfectly organized as always, Mother.” She touched her cheek to her mother’s. “Thanks, Daddy. No, don’t get up.” She kissed her father on the forehead. She squeezed Nick’s hand as he kissed her cheek.
Nick figured he’d be polite for five more minutes and then head up. He guessed he could listen to Sharon for that long. But she shut up. She didn’t say anything more. There was an agonizing couple of minutes of silence. John didn’t seem to mind. He sipped his drink and looked at his wife, who was smiling back at him. Then they both looked at Nick. Suddenly, he realized that he was keeping them up, not the other way around.
He stood up. “Well, I’ve got an early flight tomorrow, so…uh…”
“Yes, an early flight,” murmured John, rising to his feet.
“Thanks again for everything,” said Nick.
It was our pleasure. Well, good night. See you in the morning. Good night. Good night.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~“That didn’t take long,” said Abby, as Nick closed the door to her sitting room.
“Your parents couldn’t wait to get me out of there,” laughed Nick softly. “I think they’ve got plans.”
“Ewww,” said Abby with a grimace. Her parents’ sex life was not something she wanted to contemplate.
Nick laughed and picked up her hand. “We’ll just have to do something to take your mind off it.” He kissed the palm of her hand.
“Yes,” she said with a sigh. “We’re going to. Come here.” She led him by the hand to the bedroom. She turned back the covers. “Get in.”
Nick climbed into the bed. He lay on his side and patted the space beside him. Abby got on the bed. “Sit up,” she said, and then she moved behind him, so that he was sitting between her legs. She wrapped her arms around him and hugged him tight. She put her lips on his neck by his ear. She kissed him and then whispered. “Tell me about Ronni.”
Nick twitched. He didn’t want to do this. Abby’s arms tightened around him and she laid her head on his back.
“We met at the launch party for AJ’s album…”
It was typical Ronni, thought Abby, as she listened to the pain pour out of Nick. Live on her parents’ money, use people to get what she wanted, get bored and move on to use someone else. When Nick talked about her acting aspirations, Abby laughed.
“She was pretty bad,” admitted Nick.
“She was pretty bad in high school too,” said Abby, “but that didn’t stop her from getting all the lead roles.”
“Why?” asked Nick.
Abby shrugged. “Because she was Ronni. After awhile, no one else even tried out for them.”
“What kinds of roles did you play?” he asked.
“Come on, Nick, do you really think I would have ever had the courage to try out for a play?”
Nick shifted position so that they were both sitting up against the pillows. He pulled Abby into his arms. She put her head on his chest and he stroked her hair. “What did she do to you?” he asked, thinking that the pain Ronni had caused Abby was almost as great as what she caused Nick. It was certainly more long-term. Abby was pretty easy-going about most things, but sure not about Ronni.
“She made my life a living hell,” said Abby tersely. “We met at the Lodge, actually, when we were twelve. She hated me on sight, for some reason. I never knew why. I mean, I was certainly no threat to her. She was pretty and popular and I was…just me.”
“She was jealous,” said Nick. “You were in Rose Cottage. That’s where she wanted to be.”
“Really?” This was a revelation to Abby. Ronni was jealous of her?
“Yeah,” said Nick. “That’s why I picked that spot to…you know. She talked about it all the time when she talked about her past. That’s why I was kinda surprised when I got there and actually saw it. It didn’t seem like her kind of place at all.”
“No, it doesn’t. But then, it wasn’t my kind of place either. Anyway, that’s where it started. She went out of her way to be mean, it seemed. Never directly, never to my face, always behind my back. That’s where she named me Ducky. She organized games and outings and then changed them at the last minute when I wasn’t around. I’d show up, all excited to play volleyball or go sailing or whatever, and they wouldn’t be there.” Abby sighed. “Two weeks of hell.”
“And then?”
“Then, a year later, I went to high school. I’d been going to a girls’ school, but my parents decided that I should go to a co-ed high school. A place to meet prospective husbands. Anyway, I walked in the first day and there she was, as pretty as ever, surrounded by friends, not at all intimidated by being a freshman. And she looked up the hall and said in a loud voice, ‘My God, is that Ducky?’ which of course, made everyone look and then ask her why she called me that. She said, ‘Because some day she’ll turn into a swan. At least, that’s the theory.’”
“What a bitch!” said Nick, forgetting that he was in love with the woman. He’d met people like that in school. Whoever came up with the saying ‘…names will never hurt me…’ had never been called any.
“Yeah, well. Four years of it. It wasn’t a big high school. It was hard to keep out of her way. I had my own friends. Losers stick together. She didn’t pick on them as much. Just me. She really hated me. Silly, really, she was the most popular girl in school, she was in the plays, she was a cheerleader. I was a nobody.”
“Wrong,” said Nick. “You were Abigail Fremont.”
Abby thought Nick was trying to boost her morale. She shook her head, “That was nothing.”
“That was everything to Ronni,” said Nick. “You had more money; you had more status; you had more class.”
“Better grades,” mused Abby.
“There you go. You were smarter.”
“No,” said Abby, lifting her head and looking at him. “I wasn’t,” she said, with a grin. “I was a B student who always got A’s. Ronni was an A student who always got B’s.”
“Because you studied and she didn’t?”
“No, because…” Abby sighed. “The teachers, especially the male ones, couldn’t put beauty and brains together. She was too pretty to be an A student, whereas I… I don’t know if they felt sorry for me, or if they just figured that someone as unattractive as me had to have something going for her. Or maybe my mother was paying them off…hmmm…I never thought of that theory before.”
Nick started to laugh. “So basically what we’re saying here is that Ronni has always been jealous of you. You’ve always had everything she wanted. Starting with Rose Cottage…money, class, good grades…”
And now you, thought Abby. The thought filled her with dread. “It’s an interesting theory,” she said, “but I don’t think so. I think it was the other way around. I was envious of her. I wanted what she had…good looks, personality, boyfriends.”
“You wanted James Fenton?” Nick had been surprised by him too. He didn’t know what he was expecting, but it wasn’t this businessman in a suit. I mean, the guy was good looking, thought Nick, but he wasn’t…larger than life. Yeah, that was it. Ronni had built the guy up so much…
“No, my mother wanted James Fenton…for me,” said Abby. “What a merger that would have been! The Fentons and the Fremonts! Poor James!”
Poor James? Now there were words that had never crossed Nick’s mind.
“He lived in fear of my mother. That she would get her way on it. That he would have to woo and marry the Dreadful Ducky. Ronni teased him about it all the time. It made him mean too.” Abby sighed. “They deserve each other.”
Abby realized that that might have been a very tactless remark and she pressed her lips together determined to say nothing else until Nick said something. Nick didn’t say anything, but lay there with her in his arms, thinking about the emotional devastation one person had caused, was still causing, in fact. Because Nick knew one thing, he couldn’t make love to Abby right now. It wouldn’t be fair. He sighed.
Abby slipped out of his arms. She turned off the light and snuggled back down with her back to him. “Goodnight, Nick,” she whispered.
Nick shifted sideways and wrapped his body around hers. He kissed her gently on the neck. “Goodnight, Abby,” he said.
They lay there together, pretending to be asleep and then eventually, they were.
