Beauchamp Hall Page 2

  “Glad I missed that,” Winnie whispered back, shot a smile at Barb, and turned on her computer. It felt just like high school, and middle school before that, when they sat next to each other in class. Barb opened a drawer and pointed to three bridal magazines in it and Winnie laughed.

  “I’m throwing the bouquet at you, you know. You’d better be ready to catch it,” Barb said, smiling.

  “I’ll be sure to duck,” Winnie said, checking on an order she had on her screen. It wasn’t ready yet, and they were getting close to deadline. She was going to get on the production department about it immediately. Hamm never realized how vital her services were to him, or never showed it if he did. He never praised her or thanked her.

  “Rob is a great guy, you should marry him. It’s time, Win,” Barb said as a follow-up to her comment about the bouquet.

  “Who says?” she said, looking unconcerned.

  “We’re getting old!”

  “At thirty-eight? You sound like my sister. She got married right out of high school. Thank God we didn’t do that. She could be a grandmother by now, for God’s sake. Now there’s a scary thought.”

  “You’ll be old enough to be one by the time you start having kids, if you don’t hurry up.” There was nothing else to do in Beecher except marry, have kids, go bowling, and play softball in the summer. She didn’t say it, but Winnie wanted more than that, much more. Barb had been engaged once before, after years of dating the same guy, and it hadn’t worked out. He’d cheated on her constantly. Now she was ready to settle down, and in a hurry to have babies. Winnie wasn’t. “Who are you waiting for? Bradley Cooper? Send him a map. You’ve got everything you need right now.” That wasn’t how Winnie saw it, but she didn’t say it. She didn’t know what she wanted, but she knew this wasn’t it, working for Hamm Winslow for the rest of her life. And she wasn’t sure Rob was it either. After eleven years, she knew things weren’t going to get any better than they were now. Their relationship was lackluster at best, but not bad enough to walk away from either. It wasn’t exciting, or romantic. Rob said only women, and men with low testosterone, were romantic and liked all that mushy crap. That was one way to look at it. She didn’t expect him to throw roses at her feet, but a little more attention might be nice. Like shoveling the driveway for her once in a while, so she wouldn’t be late for work and didn’t have to start the day cold and tired. He could have done at least that for her, particularly since he slept there most nights. He bought groceries occasionally, which he thought was a big deal. He always said she owned the house after all, and she wasn’t paying rent, so she could afford to pay for her own food. There was nothing gallant about Rob.

  Both women got busy at work then, Winnie went to push the production department. At the end of the day, Barb turned to her with a question.

  “How about dinner at my place tonight? Pete is going to a dental conference in Detroit.”

  “I’m having dinner at my sister’s,” Winnie said with a sigh.

  “That should be fun. Not.”

  “Yeah, but she makes a big fuss about it when I don’t see her for a while. She claims the boys miss me. I know they don’t. They don’t even talk to me when I’m there. I wouldn’t have at their age either.”

  “Have a good time,” Barb said with a smirk, and they both left work and got in their cars. It was already dark, bitter cold, and the roads were icy. But it was only two miles to Marje and Erik’s house and Winnie was a careful driver. She let herself in the back door when she got there, and the boys, Jimmy and Adam, were watching TV in the basement playroom. You could hear it all the way up to the front door. And as usual, the house was a mess. No one ever cared. Marje’s strong suit was not keeping house, and she made no apology for it. Erik was used to it and didn’t seem to see it. Whenever the mess got to him, he cleaned it up himself.

  She found Marje in the kitchen, getting dinner ready. It was pot roast, which seemed like a hearty meal for a cold night. Her sister was a good cook, and her family were all big eaters, Winnie wasn’t, but it smelled good anyway. Marje was lucky, she hadn’t had a job in years. She was a stay-at-home mom, thanks to Erik’s business, and she got a new car every two years. She drove a Cadillac Escalade, which was a lot nicer than Winnie’s six-year-old SUV.

  “How was work?” Marje asked, as she checked on the pot roast and smiled at Winnie. They were very different, but there was a sisterly bond between them. Marje blamed their mother for encouraging Winnie to be a dreamer. Marje had made fun of her when Winnie had written a paper once in high school about why Mr. Darcy from Pride and Prejudice was her favorite hero of all time and she wanted to marry a man like him. Winnie loved stories from another century, preferably set in England, which her sister thought was ridiculous. Marje loved watching reality shows, and still never read a book. Their mother had given up trying to encourage Marje to read in her teens, and shared her love of books with her younger daughter.

  “Work was okay,” Winnie answered. “Hamm is such a jerk. He’s not happy unless he’s beating someone up and humiliating them in front of everyone else. It gets pretty old.” But they both knew the money was good, and Winnie had seniority now. She didn’t want to start over somewhere else, which was part of what kept her with Rob too. What if she never met anyone and never had another date? It was easier to stick with “the devil she knew,” at work and with Rob.

  They talked for a few minutes about Erik and the kids while Winnie set the table and Marje slid into her favorite subject.

  “So what’s happening with you and Rob?”

  “Nothing. Don’t start that, please. We both go to work, he comes over at night, we fall asleep, and go back to work the next day.”

  “Sounds very exotic,” Marje said, “and a lot like marriage. You’ve had years of practice. You might as well just do it one of these days.”

  “Why are you so hot for me to get married?” It always annoyed her. It was the only thing they ever talked about.

  “I don’t want your life to pass you by. Trust me, at your age it starts to fly. I don’t want you to miss it.”

  “I’m not missing anything. I’m happy.”

  “Really? You don’t like your job, your boss is a horse’s ass, you’re not crazy about your boyfriend, and what else is there in your life?”

  “What’s in your life?” Winnie volleyed back. “Erik and the kids. That’s no more exciting than mine.”

  “It suits me,” Marje said, and Winnie knew it did. “You’ve always been such a dreamer, I’m just afraid you’re going to dream your life away, waiting for some kind of magic to happen. There’s no magic, Winnie. This is all we get.” It sounded sad to Winnie.

  “You mean I don’t get to be Cinderella when I grow up? Mom always said I could be anything I wanted to be. That’s why I went to college and wanted a job in New York.” It would have been so much more than what she had here.

  “Well, that didn’t happen, so you’ve got to work with what you’ve got. ‘Bloom where you’re planted,’ as they say.” That was very philosophical for Marje, and Winnie smiled.

  “Very profound. Don’t I look like I’m blooming?” she teased her sister. She knew Marje meant well, or thought she did, although she could be a pain in the neck at times. And there was a wide chasm between them. They were so different and always had been. That hadn’t changed.

  “Actually,” Marje said, narrowing her eyes to study her, “you look depressed. Why don’t you get highlights or something, or change your hair color? Rob might like it.” It was always about Rob and what might make him propose. Marje had dyed blond hair with three inches of dark roots. Winnie’s was her natural dark brown, almost black, color. Their mother used to say she looked like Snow White.

  “He likes me the way I am,” Winnie argued. “And I’m not depressed. I accept my life as it is.” But she thought about what she’d said again on the way hom
e. Did she accept her life? Had she made her peace with it? Did she still want more? Did she have a right to it? She was no longer sure. Dinner at her sister’s had been the way it always was, always the same conversation between the adults, about work or the kids, brief chaos when the boys joined them at the table, and then Winnie went home to her empty house. Rob was bowling with friends that night.

  She turned on the lights when she got home and sat in front of the fireplace in the living room for a few minutes. She remembered when she used to sit there with her mother, in the last years of her life, talking about the books they read, and the dreams the stories spawned. She still thought she was going back to college in those days, but they never talked about that because it would only happen after her mother was dead. And then she didn’t go back anyway.

  She heard the front door open behind her and turned to see Rob walk in and shake the snow off his boots. He was a big, burly guy with lumberjack looks, and didn’t talk a lot. His family was originally from Norway, and there was a raw, hearty look to him. She had expected him to come home later, he usually did.

  “You’re home early.” She smiled at him. “I just got home from Marje and Erik’s.”

  He went to get a beer, popped it open and took a sip, and sat down on the couch next to her with the can in his hand. “Everyone was tired tonight, and two of the guys were sick. We called it a night early, and went to Murphy’s Bar for a while.” She could smell it on his breath. He wasn’t an alcoholic, but he drank a lot. He said it was the Scandinavian in him. Her brother-in-law drank just as much. Most of the women she knew didn’t. “What are you doing in here?” He looked around the room they never sat in. They either sat in the kitchen or her bedroom. There was an old-lady quality to the living room. She hadn’t changed anything since her mother died. It was full of her mother’s things, and some antiques she’d inherited from her grandmother. Winnie kept the room as a kind of shrine.

  “I was just thinking of my mom when I got home, and the books we used to read. At the end, I used to read aloud to her. Rebecca was one of her favorites.” She didn’t know why she was telling Rob, she knew he didn’t care. Just the thought of reading a book put him to sleep.

  “That sounds maudlin,” he said matter-of-factly, chugged his beer, and got up. “I’m beat. I’m going to bed.”

  She turned off the lights and followed him upstairs. He turned on the TV in her bedroom, dropped his clothes on the floor, and climbed into bed while she took a shower, in case he wanted to make love. Their sex life was pretty good, despite his lack of romantic sensibilities. He was great in bed when he was in the right mood. It had been part of the glue that held them for the last eleven years, the strongest thing between them.

  She started talking to him when she got out of the shower, and he didn’t answer. She walked into the bedroom, and he was sound asleep on his back, snoring loudly. The beers on his bowling night had caught up with him. She looked at him for a moment, put on her pajamas, and tiptoed downstairs to her mother’s bookcase. She knew exactly where the book was that she wanted, she hadn’t read it in years. Jane Eyre. She ran back upstairs with it and got into bed, smiling as she held it. It was like a visit with her mother, and a trip back in time, as she opened the familiar book. There was always something comforting about holding her mother’s books. She loved the familiar feel and smell of them. The pages were yellowed, and it was like meeting up with an old friend as she began reading, and Rob continued to snore next to her. She knew that when she woke up in the morning, he’d be gone again, and he wouldn’t have shoveled the driveway for her if it snowed during the night. Nothing was ever going to change. But as she read the book her mother had given her as a young girl, nothing around her mattered, and her real life faded away. That was one of the best things about reading, she could just disappear and forget everything she didn’t like about her life.

  Chapter Two

  The printing business where Winnie worked was always busy in December, with calendars and Christmas cards, and end-of-the-year reports to deliver. They could hardly keep up and Winnie and Barb had to work late almost every night. Winnie was planning to spend Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with Marje and Erik and their boys as she always did. And Rob went to relatives in Detroit. They never spent Christmas together. His mother was in a nursing home in Detroit. Winnie had never met her. She had Alzheimer’s so there wasn’t much point. He’d never invited her to meet his other relatives. They didn’t have that kind of relationship, he said. With the exception of his bowling league, they spent most of their time together alone, in a kind of bubble suspended in time. She had promised to make dinner for him the night before Christmas Eve, and hurried home from work to do it. He brought venison he’d shot with a friend. Winnie cooked it from a recipe she found on the Internet, and it was delicious. Rob was impressed. She had poured him a glass of red wine with dinner, and he said he’d rather stick with beer.

  “That was a damn fine meal,” he said, smiling at her. “I didn’t think you could cook like that.”

  “Neither did I. The recipe was easy.”

  “What are you doing for Christmas?” he asked, as though he expected it to be different.

  “I’ll be with Marje as usual, same as every year.” The holidays always made her miss her mother, but she didn’t want to tell him that. He wasn’t the kind of man you exposed your soft side to. It would have made him uncomfortable, and Winnie feel too vulnerable.

  “Well, save New Year’s Eve for me. We can go to Murphy’s for dinner, and hang out till midnight, and then come back here.” It was his favorite bar, and she knew he’d spend half the evening shooting pool with his pals who hung out there too. She had nothing else to do. They’d been going to Murphy’s on New Year’s for eleven years. Her life with him was one long déjà vu, but she never met other single men.

  She brought out her presents for him then, a heavy cobalt-blue sweater, a black knit cap, and some thermal gloves with a heated panel that you could put in the microwave to warm them up. He said he really liked them. The sweater fit him perfectly, the hat was warm, and he said the gloves were great.

  “They’ll keep your hands warm while you shovel my driveway,” she teased him, and he grinned.

  “Then I guess I should have gotten a pair for you,” he shot back at her, and then went out to his truck to get his gift for her. It was a medium-sized box in silver Christmas paper with red ribbon. She opened it and found another sweater. He gave her one every year, this year’s was yellow, and when she took it out of the box, she saw that there was a black lace G-string in the box too. He loved seeing her in sexy underwear and bought it for her himself, since she never did. “Why don’t you put it on and show me,” he said. She reached for the sweater, surprised he wanted to see it, and he stopped her and handed her the G-string. “Not the sweater,” he said, laughing at her with a lustful look. There was something about the underwear he gave her that always made her feel cheap. It usually had rhinestones on it, or tassels, or an arrow pointing toward the crotch, but to keep him happy, she disappeared and came back wearing it with the sweater she’d had on, and high heels.

  “Come on, baby, take off the sweater.” He was leering at the G-string, and with her long legs, she looked sensational in it. She peeled off the sweater, pretending to strip for him, and she was wearing a black lace bra that almost matched the lace G-string. “Now that’s more like it!” He grabbed her as soon as she got near him, and lifted her off the ground in his powerful arms and laid her on the couch. He had his own clothes off and was on top of her immediately, making deep guttural sounds. Everything about him was familiar to her. He was an adept lover and knew what she liked best, but there was nothing tender about his lovemaking. He was too aroused by the thong he had given her to wait for long, and he came with a shudder and a fierce shout, then lay still on top of her.

  “God, I love you in that underwear,” he said, as she looked up
at him. It always had the same effect on him. The gift was more for himself than for her, but she always went along with it. She knew it meant a lot to him. They went upstairs then and made love again, and it reminded her why she stayed with him. She couldn’t imagine the sex being as good with anyone else, and finally, exhausted and happy, he rolled over and fell asleep. She got up, put a bathrobe on, and went downstairs to clean up the kitchen. She picked up the G-string from the living room floor and put it in her bathrobe pocket, and then went back upstairs and slid into bed next to him. She knew there should have been something more with him, but there wasn’t, just hot sex when she wore the right underwear and a warm body in her bed. He still hadn’t told her he loved her. He never did. And when she woke up in the morning, he was gone. He hadn’t stayed to wish her a merry Christmas, or left a note to say so. He figured he had given her his best gift the night before, on the couch and in her bed. She knew it was all he had to give and all she’d ever get from him, other than a sweater once a year and sexy underwear.

  She shoveled the light snow from her driveway and left for work. Everyone was in a festive mood. Their office party was set for noon, with a buffet from an Italian restaurant, and after lunch, they could all leave. The office would be closed for a week. No one needed to have anything printed between Christmas and New Year’s Day. Even Hamm, the original Scrooge, was willing to give them the week off.

  “Did you bring your present for the game?” Barb whispered to her, as she took hers out of her desk right before lunch. The whole office played the white elephant game every year. Each employee bought a gift that cost roughly twenty dollars, wrapped it anonymously, and put it in a pile. They all drew numbers and took turns in order picking a gift. The other employees could steal any gift they wanted twice, from whoever picked it, and after that they were safe and could keep the gift they had. And the person a gift was stolen from would get another turn. It usually led to jovial screams of protest as a gift someone wanted was taken, and shouts of victory when someone else got to keep it or stole it back. Some of the gifts were really fun, most weren’t. Winnie thought that she should put Rob’s Christmas G-string in the game one year. She was tired of getting them, but she had bought something respectable for the game, a good-looking cheese platter someone could use over the holidays. There were bottles of wine, and an assortment of odd-shaped gifts people were eyeing, trying to guess what they were.