Chapter 5
Gwen
Gwen was jealous of women who had purpose. Like Kathryn and her endless charitable pursuits, or Charlotte and those tawdry stories she uploaded to Amazon under a pen name.
Not that Gwen didn’t generally enjoy her day-to-day life. Yet when Lady Ophelia Merange called Gwen to ask her to tea at the local country club that upcoming Friday afternoon, Gwen seriously wished she had a reason to get out of it. “Sorry, I have an important work meeting that day.” “Sorry, I’m donating my eggs to women in fertile need.” “Sorry, I’m rebuilding houses in Puerto Rico.” “Sorry, I’m baking pancakes for orphans.” Nope. The only thing Gwen had tentatively planned for Friday was hitting the gym with Charlotte. Gwen wasn’t an athlete, but she enjoyed spending a couple hours a day at the local members-only gym enjoying badminton with friends and the gab-fests that happened at spa days afterward.
Too bad that wasn’t good enough. Gwen agreed to meet with a sigh on her lips and a palpitation of her heart. While she didn’t dislike James’s mother, she was her own special little trip to attend.
Gwen selected a long-sleeved navy-blue dress and pulled her hair into a tight ponytail that put only a little bit of strain on her neck. It was a blander look than she preferred for her daily life, but the country club – let alone Ophelia’s company – asked for more traditional, stuffier looks that made Gwen feel like she was attending her own funeral. When she asked Rebecca to phone a taxi after lunch, Gwen decided she would go back up to her room and redo her makeup to darker shades instead of the sapphire blue she would normally wear with this dress.
She sat at her vanity, arms wrapped around her torso and forehead pointed down. Coming into this room, with its fresh memories of what she and James had accomplished over several years, was sometimes difficult to bear.
I almost fell in love with him all over again Monday night. Almost. Gwen had been cautious about sparing too many feelings for her partner until she knew for sure what outcome was best for their relationship. But being made love to like that reaffirmed that James still harbored much affection for her. The fact they woke up yesterday morning and spent an extra half hour in bed so they could fool around didn’t help, either. I told myself no more throwing my mouth at his cock, but there I was, chopping down the morning wood. Gwen needed to figure shit out, and quickly.
She supposed seeing Ophelia and perhaps asking her advice would help. Lady Merange had always been Gwen’s biggest ally in the Merange family, after James, of course.
The taxi pulled up before the gates. The guard asked to see her membership card, and while he scanned the chip, she leaned forward to pay her driver. “This is fine,” she asserted. Really, it wasn’t, since she would have to borrow a golf cart from the gatehouse to drive the rest of the way to the main country club house, but that was less of a hassle than dealing with a lost taxi driver running around aimlessly on private property.
“I’m supposed to meet Lady Ophelia Merange in the tearoom,” Gwen said to the guard after getting out of the taxi. “Do you know if she’s here yet?”
“Mr. Weathersby at the concierge desk will help you get situated with that, ma’am.” The guard handed back her card and motioned her toward the lineup of golf carts. “Do you require assistance?”
“No, thank you.” Gwen hopped into the closest cart. Her Prada heels were caught beneath the pedal, but she pretended nothing was amiss as she cheerily smiled at the guard and waved the taxi driver off. “Do let them know I’m on my way, though.” He would do that anyway. It was one of his primary functions!
Fifteen minutes later, after nearly mowing over the bushes lining the country club driveway and scaring a landscaper half to death when she took a corner too quickly, Gwen was inside the main house and led to the sunny tearoom on the second floor of the mansion.
Ophelia was already there, reading the paper and sipping her Bombay Breakfast and munching on her macarons. She stood up when Gwen entered the otherwise empty tearoom and offered to kiss her cheeks in greeting.
Ophelia had aged considerably since Gwen first met her. Gone was the soft auburn of her hair, replaced by strands of silver threads that now crowned her as a matriarch of an old and revered New England clan. Her hands had wrinkled and shook when she didn’t eat enough, which was often, since the Merange family doctor claimed Ophelia was now prone to “fits,” as he old-fashionedly put it. Gwen knew the signs of anxiety. Most of the bartenders she knew had loads of it.
Hard to believe Ophelia was barely in her sixties. She looked at least seventy, albeit sophisticatedly so.
“Do try the Appalachian Summer they just received,” Ophelia said with her wispy voice. Gwen looked up from the tea menu with a quizzical expression. “Tea, dear. They don’t get much of it, but it’s heavenly.”
They made the usual small talk while they had their tea and Gwen indulged in the excellent cucumber sandwiches the country club made on site. It made up for the light lunch she ate back home, which Ophelia was sure to ask about, since she adored the Colonial manor her son bought a few years ago.
“You should come by and see what your son has done with his home office,” Gwen said with a sigh. “Looks like one of Albert’s.”
“Then I don’t need to see. I already know what it will look like.” Ophelia gently brushed aside a silver lock of hair hanging in her face. “Let me guess. Brazenly dark oaken walls and floors, ebony black or forest green throw rugs, and enough amber-hued spirits to make you wonder how he gets any work done in there.”
“That about sums it up.” Ophelia had left out James’s obsession with christening the renovations with a hot and heavy copulation session on his leather couch, though. Then again, maybe she hadn’t, but had the manners to keep her speculations on her son’s sex life to herself.
“He takes too much after his father sometimes. Hopefully in only the right ways.”
Ophelia wouldn’t make eye contact when she said that, as if she were ashamed to think that her son might be too much like her husband. Most of the affluent matriarchs in Gwen’s circles would rather die than think they had begotten children nothing like their fathers. DNA testing may have been a readily available thing in the twenty-first century, but traditional mothers always feared their paranoid husbands would find outrageous grounds to divorce them.
What was Ophelia’s deal in her marriage? Anything she wanted, as long as she looked the other way while her husband conducted a clandestine affair with Madam Welsh over the span of decades? Some of the most disgusting things Gwen had heard over the past year were whispers that Cassandra was actually Albert’s daughter, meaning the child she had with James’s sperm was incest at its best.
Madam Welsh would have never, though. She would ensure her only child was her spouse’s and then get freaky with another woman’s husband.
Gwen felt sorry for Ophelia. They were both black sheep, albeit for different reasons.
“Have you seen my grandson recently?” Ophelia asked during a lull in their conversation.
Gwen swallowed the last of her tea. “Can’t say I have, no.”
“He’s growing so big. Reminds me of James at that age. Baby boys sprout up like little dandelions. Can be quite weedy like them as well.” Ophelia chuckled. “He’s such a cutie-pie. Makes me wish he had come into this world under better circumstances.”
“Yet you knew what the Welshes had done.” Gwen hadn’t meant to sound so accusatory, but how could she avoid it when the topic always angered her?
Ophelia poured the last of her tea from her small China pot. The hand-painted wisteria blooms would have once amazed Gwen, had she not become so jaded to the sort of affluence infecting everything she now touched. Sometimes I miss the days of getting my hands dirty in a middle-class bar. Hell, she would even take a dive bar sometimes. At least she didn’t have to adopt a new set of manners there.
“I did.” Ophelia had never denied it. She would’ve been foolish to claim ignorance, since her name was also on the papers saying the Welshes could use her son’s damned sperm. “I regret it, though. Then again, I regretted it the moment the papers were filed.”
“Because you did it behind James’s back.”
“Yes.” Ophelia swallowed. “I wanted to talk to you today about the men in my family. From one outsider to another.”
Outsider? In what universe was Ophelia a true outsider? Her family had gobs of money, although their reign as the kings of the New England lumber industry had ended when the first of many mills closed in the late early seventies. Ophelia’s family had been quick to arrange a marriage with Albert Merange before the money ran out. They had done it for her sisters, too, and now all four of them could say they had married into more money than their family could currently claim. As the oldest of her sisters, Ophelia had dibs on the most lucrative match, even though everyone knew Albert was in love with Sarah Holliday and often had premarital honeymoons with her all over Europe. There were even rumors that they had eloped before Albert’s marriage to Ophelia, but they were never proven and always denied.
Gwen supposed Ophelia meant that she was an outsider in the mental sense. She had always been a guest in the Merange household. A promise fulfilled to old family friends. She pumped out one baby boy and sealed her place in the Merange legacy. She never wanted for money, healthcare, or excuses to travel the world. Love? That was another story.
“From the time James was a boy, Albert had lobbied for us to arrange a marriage with the little Welsh girl. I told him that was terribly old-fashioned – it was the nineties, you know. Even if we had arranged a marriage, it wouldn’t be legally binding, and James would do as he pleased as he already does.” Ophelia shrugged. “Like his father!”
“I’m sorry.” That was all Gwen could say about that.
“It’s all right.”
“Besides, I already knew that Albert and Sarah conspired to get their kids married. James has told me plenty of times, especially over this past year.”
“I’m sure he heard us talking a time or two. James likes to pretend he’s carefree, but he has a sharp wit, as I’m sure you’ve noticed. Anyway, I proposed we let them become playmates and hope that a natural romance may bloom between them as they grew up. Albert was, of course, for the idea, which is how James and Cassandra became close friends until recent years.”
“He’s been quite distraught by her behavior.” That was an understatement. James always expressed apprehension over his childhood friend’s promiscuity, since he claimed it didn’t come from a genuine place. “She’s using sex as a band-aid for something deeply troubling her,” James said after rumors flew about Cassandra frequenting a local pleasure house. “I worry about her well-being. It’s like she’s one more boyfriend away from a meltdown.” Apparently, Cassandra’s problem was that James wasn’t interested in her after she had pined after him like a silly girl for years. “I would be surprised if they repaired their friendship after so much distrust.”
Ophelia’s eyes were sharper than Gwen had ever seen them. “I know it hasn’t been easy for you, either. I’m so sorry, Gwenyth.”
“Yes, well…” Gwen wouldn’t play the games that somehow absolved Ophelia from her role in this mess. Even if Lady Merange had little choice but to support her husband and his real love in this distasteful endeavor, she still did it knowing how much her son and his girlfriend would be harmed in the process. Greed. Selfishness. Those very things they claimed to fight in their children’s generation. “It has been difficult. James and I are not the same as we used to be, though I understand he knew nothing of these machinations.”
“It can’t be easy. My son doesn’t talk to me about these things, but I know he’s vented frustrations to his father.” That was probably an understatement. Gwen had witnessed James ripping his own father a new asshole over his role in this charade. “The fact that man would rather have a bastard grandson he ripped from my nuts than anything we might have, Gwenny… I can’t forgive him.” She had believed James when he said that, too. I had never seen him so angry before. James wasn’t a man prone to anger. When he popped, it was because some great injustice had been thrust upon the people he loved.
Ophelia folded her hands on the table.
“I asked you here today,” she began, sighing, “because I wanted to talk about your future with my son.”
Gwen did not pale. Nor did her breath hitch in her chest. The only thing giving away her apprehension was her drying throat, and Ophelia could not see that. “I had always considered you one of my biggest supporters, Lady Merange.” Fat lot of good it did Gwen when Ophelia carried so little power in her family. Meant one less person to give her shit during Christmas.
“Which is why I am invested in your well-being, dear. My son’s happiness is my happiness. Your happiness is his happiness. Therefore, your happiness is my happiness.”
Gwen couldn’t help but smile a little. “I appreciate that.”
“You may not have been the woman I would have chosen for my son’s life,” Ophelia continued, sure to cut Gwen off before she could protest, “but that doesn’t mean James has poor taste. I’ve seen you two together for several years now. I understand what he sees in you.”
Gwen sat back. “You do?”
“Of course, dear. You laugh at his terrible jokes and have always been by his side, including through this ordeal. That’s something a mother truly appreciates. The fact you’re very pretty is something he must appreciate as well.”
“Thank you.”
“That said, I completely understand if this is the final straw for you and you wish to cut ties from my son.”
Gwen said nothing.
“Since I’ve seen you two together for so long, I can also see the signs of your relationship falling apart. This distresses me, because I know how much my son has invested in making you his life partner.”
Not sure you know how much, Lady Merange. “There has been much in the way of obstacles in our relationship as of late.”
“Of course. I simply want you to know that I understand and am here for whatever decision you make.”
“Whatever… decision?”
“If you wish to stay with my son and perhaps one day marry him… I will support that, even if my husband may be displeased. Yet if you wish to cut ties and move on with your life, dear, I will also understand that. You’re in the most impossible position in all of this. Not even James could argue that.”
Gwen wouldn’t argue that, either.
“I’ll be frank. My husband has never approved of you once it became clear our son was madly in love with you – and you returned his ardor with the fervor only a mother can see. My husband and I have fought over your relationship more than anything else in our marriage.” Ophelia looked down at her lap, as if she couldn’t believe she was about to admit the following. “Including his affair. Somehow, that was easier to swallow than him forbidding his own son’s happiness like his parents forbade his.”
The tearoom overseer quietly approached the table and asked if Gwen and Ophelia required anything. Ophelia politely yet curtly asked him to leave them be. When a trio of middle-aged women entered the tearoom to have their afternoon sustenance, Ophelia called the overseer back and asked him to sit them as far away as possible. With a nod of the head, the man showed the bubbly, talkative women to the far corner by the sunlit windows. They thought themselves most fortunate to have such a private, beautiful table. It kept them from overhearing the intimate conversation on the other side of the salon. And it prevented Gwen and Ophelia from having to hear the details of horse breeding and racing.
“I know you do not ask my opinion,” Gwen said, “but I feel that your husband is using James to relive the life he wished he had with Sarah Welsh.”
Ophelia did not flinch to hear this truth. “He is. I’ve accused him of such many times.”
What was it like to be trapped in her unhealthy marriage? When she was married off at such a young age, she must have felt such a burden to help her family. Coupled with the era she grew up in, what choice did she have? Now, when support would be greater for her leaving a philandering husband, she was much older and had none of her own money or life skills to support herself. I could never be like that. Gwen didn’t have to be, though. She grew up in a different age with a different set of standards. Her parents would be happy if she carved out a half-decent living for herself, let alone anyone else!
“James has made it clear that he loves you and not Cassandra. I see no reason to not allow you into our family. The role I played in recent events… I’m not proud of them. But I hope you can forgive me.”
“I’m sure you had little power in the situation.”
“Yes, well… nothing a woman likes to admit, of course.”
Gwen mangled the napkin in her lap. Something gnawed at her, begging her to say the one thing she had been keeping locked in her heart for the past two – or was it three? – years. But when she and James made a secret promise to one another, they had agreed to not tell anyone what they had done. No one. Not their parents. Not their best friends. Nobody.
A secret just for them.
“I won’t lie to you,” Gwen said, looking up again. “I have entertained many fantasies of leaving your son this past year. What has happened has been a great strain on not only our relationship, but our own health.”
Ophelia sighed, absorbing much of the blame. “But you love him, of course.”
“It’s not as easy as me packing my bags and going home, or wherever else I may please.”
Something in Gwen’s tone must have roused Ophelia’s full attention, for now both women locked gazes as if nothing else was more important than what Gwen had to say.
If she could bring herself to say it. After all, it meant breaking one of her old promises to James, and she had weighed how much it mattered to her now.
Or how much it mattered to anyone, even him.