First Saturday, Chapter One

 

First Saturday, by Rosemary O’Brien

CHAPTER 1

FEBRUARY 1998

February 6, 1998, Friday

If we knew what our future held, would we dare to venture forth? Would we put one foot in front of the other, moving closer to the inevitable with every step we take? Or would we curl up into ourselves in a dark corner somewhere, afraid of the next hour, the next day, the next year? I don’t know.

Audrey closed her journal carefully and placed it and her pen on her night table. The gold of the pen reflected the red of the tapestry-covered book where it met the cover. Exhaling slowly, she gazed around the spacious bedroom. The forest green of the thick, quilted bedspread beneath her picked up the color of some of the leaves on her flowered wallpaper and matching valances. As she gazed, she noticed the corners captured shadows where the light of the bedside lamp did not reach. Even the sheer, white curtains would not pick up any light from the room as they framed the white window shades. Audrey quickly got up from her place on the bed and turned on all the lights. Satisfied that nothing more could be done to brighten he atmosphere at the moment, she returned to her place in front of the bathroom mirror.

Lifting her right arm, she felt for the spot with the tips of her fingers. There it was, a lump the size of a bb. Audrey had found it accidentally while showering a couple of mornings ago. It was in her right breast, and she was absolutely terrified. How long it had been there, she didn’t know. She had just had her yearly mammogram the day before she found it, but she knew that wasn’t enough. Audrey never gave herself a monthly breast exam,

though she knew she should, and now she regretted her laziness. It might not have saved her from all of this agony , but maybe she would have found the lump when it was a little smaller. Perhaps if it were smaller, it would be easier to deal with, whatever it was.

How was she going to wait until Monday morning to find out? Immediately after she found it, Audrey called her doctor to make an appointment. It was set for Monday after her two daughters left for school. She would find out then what it was, and if it was anything to worry about. In the meantime, she had the rest of the weekend after everyone went home to imagine all of the terrifying possibilities.

Audrey forced herself away from the mirror and left the bathroom, leaving the light on, and continued to dress for her birthday party. She went over to the oak armoire and pulled out the simple black dress she planned to wear for the party. A perfect color for her mood tonight, she thought as she bought it over to the bed and carefully laid it down.

Up until a year ago, Audrey had led a charmed life. She and Mike married one week after college graduation in the church they had both attended while growing  up.  Both twenty-two years old, they thought they knew everything there was to know about love. Little did Audrey know that she would reach thirty-five, a divorced woman with two children, her husband and first and only love having taken up with his secretary.

Audrey pulled the dress off its hanger and stepped into it. What a cliché, she thought as she reached behind to zip up the back of the dress. She had felt so embarrassed when it happened, such a statistic. She had once told Morgan she would almost have felt better if Mike had taken up with some floozy he had met in a bar rather than acting out the having-an-affair-with-his-secretary routine. They had been sneaking around behind Audrey’s back for five whole years, and Audrey had never suspected a thing. She believed Mike when he said he had an important case to work on and had to stay late at the office or go in on a Saturday. After all, other attorney’s wives were left alone with their children while their husbands worked on important cases. Maybe they all slept around, thought Audrey as she secured the top of the zipper and went in search of her shoes.

Apparently their affair began when Audrey was carrying their second child, Julie. Mike hadn’t found Audrey attractive during her first pregnancy and, after her sixth month, had made excuses for not having sex. Audrey wasn’t sure if he had cheated on her then, and it no longer mattered. He told her the whole story one night a year ago, then left a stunned Audrey at the kitchen table, their coffee cups still full, and walked out the door with a suitcase he had packed the day before while she was out grocery shopping with the children.

A month ago, the divorce became final, and two days later Mike married Eve. Audrey cried for an hour when she received the papers, then filed them in her security box, washed her face, and went on with her life. Until this past week. Was this what she had to look forward to now that she was beginning to get used to being divorced and free? Chemotherapy? Possibly a mastectomy?

She shivered slightly, and then decided to try her best to push these thoughts out of her head for the night. Her friends would be arriving soon, and she did not want everyone’s sympathy right now when they should be enjoying themselves at a party for her. It may turn out to be nothing to worry about, she thought.  Just a cyst or something.

She slipped on her shoes and took one last look in the bathroom mirror. Satisfied with what she saw, she straightened her shoulders and left the bedroom, leaving all of the lights blazing.

* * *

Emma stood in front of the full-length mirror holding two scarves: a blue one and a red one. “Honey?” she called out.

“Ye-esssss?” Bobby answered as he walked into the bedroom.

“Which do you think looks better?” she asked, holding first one scarf and then the other up against her off-white sweater.

“I think the red one looks good, but the blue one is pretty, too,” he said with a wink.

“You’re a lot of help!” she said, smiling at her husband’s lack of decision-making capability when it came to her wardrobe. Emma chose the blue scarf and tossed the other one into the drawer. “I’ll be out in a minute!” she called in the direction of the bedroom door.

“Yeah, right!” he called back. Emma could hear the crinkle of the newspaper as he settled into the couch to wait. She laid the scarf on the bed and went into the bathroom to assess her makeup, smiling as she thought of her permanent date waiting for her in the living room.

She had met Bobby almost eight years ago in one of her creative writing classes, her first job out of grad school. She had been the teacher, and he had been one of her students. As he tells the story, he fell for her as soon as she walked in the door. He had thought she was one of the other students. At first, he was surprised to learn she was the professor for that course, but after he got used to having a teacher his own age, he learned a lot. He was always in her office discussing his short stories and asking her advice on how to make them better. Halfway through the semester, he got up enough nerve to ask her out for coffee. He caught her after class one evening.

“I really can’t date a student,” Emma had replied. “It’s one of the rules. If I dated you and you got a good grade, someone could say I was playing favorites.”

“Fine,” he said, and waited until the last day of class when Emma handed out the grades. The official grade reports would go out in the mail at the end of the next week, but she had always hated waiting for her grades so close to Christmas when she was a student. So she handed out the grades, excluding the grade for the final paper, on the last day of class to the students who cared.

Bobby had gotten an A-, but he didn’t seem to care much about his grade. After class, he stayed behind again until everyone had left except for Emma.

“Is this my official grade?”

“Yes, especially since you turned in your paper last week.” Emma smiled. She knew what was coming next.

“Now will you go out for coffee with me?”

“Why do you think I gave out the grades early?” she said, jokingly. “I couldn’t give you my phone number until you were officially not one of my students anymore.  Well, almost officially.”

“Close enough for me,” Bobby grinned, holding the door for Emma. That first coffee led to other dates, and eight months later, Emma and Bobby were married in her parents’ church, grateful for the crummy schedules of new professors which forced Emma to teach a seven o’clock evening class which Bobby took after work.

Emma replaced the toothbrush in its holder, actually a pottery drinking cup she and Bobby had picked up at a craft fair. She quickly examined her face in the mirror, and then got her makeup kit out from under the sink. With the exception of a small smudge under one of her eyes, her face looked fine. She took out her compact and repaired the minor damage, brushing away the excess powder. Replacing the case under the sink, she left the bathroom, turning off the light as she went. She picked up the scarf and turned to the full-length mirror again. She knotted the scarf in a simple twist, turned off the light, and headed out to join Bobby in the living room.

“Ready?” he asked, haphazardly folding the newspaper and laying it on the glass coffee table.

“All set,” she said, giving him a kiss that he fervently returned. “Mmmm! What’s that for?” she asked, grabbing the coats off the back of the couch.

“That’s because you’re very cute and I love you,” Bobby replied as he put his coat on. He headed to the kitchen on the way to the front door.

“I love you, too,” Emma smiled. She buttoned the top of her own coat, turned on the answering machine, and gave the dog a quick rub on the side of her head. “Thanks,” she said to Bobby who handed her the two trays of assorted hors d’oeuvres and cheeses. That afternoon, she had lovingly and painstakingly created the little masterpieces with Bobby’s help. Emma had made them before, and she knew they were all of Audrey’s favorites, so she was sure they would be a hit. Bobby hefted the bags of tossed salad fixings and munchies and turned off the kitchen light.

With one last check to make sure they had everything, they headed out the door to Audrey’s party.

* * *

“Milford! Milford Station!” the conductor bellowed from the speaker above Morgan’s left ear. She was already standing by the door so she would be able to get out quickly when the train stopped. The doors whooshed open, and she hopped off the train, heading for the parking lot. She was already an hour late, and she had promised to help set up for Audrey’s party. The wind blew her hair into her face as she stuck the key in and unlocked her car door. She stowed her bag on the passenger seat, pushed the hair out of her face, and started her car.

A singer, Morgan had studied voice and acting in New York and worked, as she joked, close to Broadway. After several years of doing professional out-of-town shows and living out of a suitcase, she bought her aunt’s house in West Haven and opted for voiceover and commercial work in New York. The work was steady, and she had established a name for herself in that closed circle of professional voiceover talent.

Her house was right on the border with Milford, an area she loved called Prospect Beach. In warmer weather, she was able to take long walks on the beach by just crossing the street, and she loved it. She hardly minded the two-hour train ride into the city. It gave her time to memorize scripts or read a book. Sometimes it was so relaxing that it lulled her to sleep, forcing her to hum to herself on her way to the studio in order to wake up her voice. A small price to pay for a normal life without all those hotel room stays.

Damn, she thought. She still had to stop at her house to pick up the food. Catching sight of herself in the rearview mirror, she realized this was probably a good thing since she looked scarier than she had imagined. The walk to Grand Central Station had been a windy one, and her makeup was as wrecked as her hair. She would make it a point to take a moment and straighten herself out before she went on to Audrey’s.

* * *

“Ben! We have to get going or we’ll be late!” Christine shouted in the direction of her teenage son’s bedroom. She looked around the small kitchen, making sure everything was either in the sink, in the refrigerator, or wrapped up and ready to go. She reached for the aluminum foil and stuffed it in a drawer.

“I’m ready,” Ben said, appearing in the kitchen doorway. “I’m late because I couldn’t find the shirt I wanted to wear.”

Christine smiled at the shirt he had chosen. “Do you mean the one shirt in your closet that hasn’t been ironed?” she asked, stacking an errant dish in the dishwasher.

“Mo-om!” he whined. “It doesn’t look too bad.”

“No, but couldn’t you have picked one that was a little less wrinkled? It looks kind of messy to me, or is it some new style that I’ve missed?”

“I’ll put a sweater over it,” he conceded, heading back into his room.

“Okay, but please hurry up. We need to get there to set up, remember?”

“I remember,” he said, returning with the sweater on and only the collar of the offending shirt peeking from the neck hole.

“Great. Let’s go,” Christine said even though the sweater was almost messier than the shirt it covered. She pulled on her coat before grabbing a baking dish filled with eggplant Parmesan, a specialty of hers and one of Audrey’s favorites. “Can you take the other one for me?”

“Got it,” Ben said, pulling an arm through his coat and picking up the other dish. This one contained meatballs in a tomato and basil sauce. “These smell great, Mom,” Ben said, hoping he would get permission to take one before they left.

“No, you can’t have one right now,” Christine smiled. “Wait until we get there, at least. I don’t want you to stain your sweater.“

“Okay,” he said, and resealed the foil that he had already begun to peel back.

Christine turned off the kitchen light, turned on the living room lamp as she passed through, and followed Ben out the front door. She turned the key in the lock and stood for a moment watching him walk down the front walkway. He looked so much like Jimmy that it hurt sometimes. These were the times she really missed her husband.

She walked to the car remembering how great Ben’s father had been at these kinds of gatherings. He didn’t even have to try. People sought him out in the crowd. That’s what made his death all the more unfair. The world, and his son and wife, lost a great light when he died.

Christine would never forget that awful night. She had just picked Ben up from soccer practice and was about to begin dinner when she got the call from Norwalk Hospital telling her she had better come quickly. Nothing else, just come quickly because something had happened to her husband. She barely remembered calling her neighbors, but the next thing she knew, they were there to watch Ben while she drove to the hospital.

When she got to the hospital, she was told Jimmy had died instantly. Another driver had run him off the road into a Jersey barrier, totaling the car and crushing Jimmy up against the steering wheel. The driver had been given a ticket for speeding on the icy road and would later lose his license to drive a truck.

“He didn’t feel a thing,” the doctor had said.

That knowledge would bring her a bit of comfort in the future, but at that point, Christine barely heard a thing. She numbly signed the forms thrust in front of her.  She remembered seeing Audrey. Later she would find out that Audrey had stopped at her house and heard what was going on from her neighbors. She had driven directly to the hospital, leaving her daughter with the neighbor who was watching Ben so Christine would not be alone and wouldn’t have to drive herself home.

It had been a horrible night, one that Christine was sorry she had remembered just now. But, of course, she usually remembered it on cold nights like this since it happened at this time of year, right around Valentine’s Day. As a matter of fact, Jimmy had already bought Christine a card, which she found the day she went looking for clothing to give to the funeral parlor. She had chosen one of his favorite suits and found the card hidden in the pocket, a clever hiding place that she never would have stumbled upon under normal circumstances. The suit had still been in the plastic from the dry cleaner and buried at the back of the closet, so the card had been completely hidden until she found it. A careful lifting of the plastic covering to make sure the suit was the one she was thinking of, and there it was, sticking out of the left pocket of the suit jacket. She remembered crying hard when she opened it. It had been already signed and everything. “All my love to my beautiful wife, Jimmy,” is what it said in his neat handwriting. If it hadn’t been for Emma and Audrey, she would never have gotten through that awful time in her life.

“Mom! Are you coming?”

Ben’s voice and the cold air bought her back to her front walkway. Her son would always be a wonderful reminder of her beloved husband.

“I’m coming,” she said and made her way to the car. I love my friends, she thought, as she backed the car out of the driveway and drove to the party.