Kathleen Valentine by My Last Romance, other passions
Authors: My Last Romance, other passions
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to endure the questioning, sympathetic smiles and the well-intentioned meddling.
"Any news?"
"Have you talked to your doctor?"
"Lots of children need good homes..."
It never ended. Each comment on that part of our life was like a personal rebuke however gently offered. Once I invited a particularly annoying neighbor to join us in the bedroom one night and see if she could spot any mistakes we were making. She stopped talking to me. I heard later she told people it was a good thing we didn’t have children because heaven only knew what kind of a mother I would be.
But the horrible part was what I was doing to myself. I’d always known I wasn’t good enough for Rob—beautiful Rob with his prep school elan and his express ride up the corporate ladder—a ladder that his family owned. Despite his copious reassurances, my failure was becoming my most constant form of self-abuse.
That was before Stash. As I start the car and guide it slowly through the lines of tractor-trailers waiting for a container ship to unload, my heart begins to flutter. I have to wait until nine. That’s when the doors to the Seamen’s Haven are locked for the day and no one will be there but Stash.
The day is brilliant but frigid. Swirling ice in the sun-drenched air forms frosty rainbows. I pull into the narrow drive that snakes around to the back of the Haven and let the car idle, my head buzzing with my husband’s revelation just an hour earlier. Stash, I had learned in a quick call to Rob’s Great-Aunt Priscilla, was the love child of her sister Lenore and a Czechoslovakian sailor.
"Lenore?" I said as Great Aunt Pris paused to let the full horror of the scandal sink in. "I’ve never heard of her before." I mentally scanned the family photographs that had once crowded the walls of Rob’s parents’ house in Newport back when they were still together. I couldn’t recall a Lenore.
"No, you wouldn’t," Great Aunt Pris says in a tone I can’t quite decipher. "She was my youngest sister. The family disowned her when she ran off with that horrible man. No surprise that he dumped her once he got her pregnant. She moved to Charlestown or Everett, I forget now."
Great Aunt Pris may be eighty-seven but I’ve never known her to forget a single thing.
"Is she still there?"
"No." There was a long, heavy pause. Aunt Pris lives in Newport in one of the fabulous "cottages" there that has been converted into an assisted living facility. Of all Rob’s relatives she is my favorite. She is arrogant, affected, and a terrible gossip but, from the very beginning, she had been the most genuine and generous of Rob’s family in welcoming me into their circle.
"No, Lenore died years ago." Her voice was brittle and dry. "I tried, Christine. When I heard how sick she was I went to see her and I tried to get her to come to live with Hep and I but she was always so bullheaded."
Great Aunt Pris’s husband, a Boston Brahman with the ponderous name Hepplewhite Townsend Shaw, died long before I was part of the family but she still talks about him as though he is in the other room reading the paper and waiting for her to finish dressing for dinner.
"What became of the child they had?" I asked not sure I was prepared for the answer.
"He took after his father." She said it simply, as though that explained everything.
"What do you mean?"
The pause is so long that I wonder if she has dropped off to sleep, something she has a knack for doing. "He wanted no part of us. He was a sailor like his father. Bobby used to see him now and then." Bobby is Rob’s father. "I don’t think he amounted to much. I expect he’s dead by now, too."
Now, sitting in the driveway of the Haven, gathering my courage to go inside, I try to sort all this new knowledge out in my pounding brain. Stash is more than my husband’s cousin. More than the love child of Great Aunt Pris’s long-lost sister. Stash is my lover—the man who has turned everything in my life upside down. Stash
"Any news?"
"Have you talked to your doctor?"
"Lots of children need good homes..."
It never ended. Each comment on that part of our life was like a personal rebuke however gently offered. Once I invited a particularly annoying neighbor to join us in the bedroom one night and see if she could spot any mistakes we were making. She stopped talking to me. I heard later she told people it was a good thing we didn’t have children because heaven only knew what kind of a mother I would be.
But the horrible part was what I was doing to myself. I’d always known I wasn’t good enough for Rob—beautiful Rob with his prep school elan and his express ride up the corporate ladder—a ladder that his family owned. Despite his copious reassurances, my failure was becoming my most constant form of self-abuse.
That was before Stash. As I start the car and guide it slowly through the lines of tractor-trailers waiting for a container ship to unload, my heart begins to flutter. I have to wait until nine. That’s when the doors to the Seamen’s Haven are locked for the day and no one will be there but Stash.
The day is brilliant but frigid. Swirling ice in the sun-drenched air forms frosty rainbows. I pull into the narrow drive that snakes around to the back of the Haven and let the car idle, my head buzzing with my husband’s revelation just an hour earlier. Stash, I had learned in a quick call to Rob’s Great-Aunt Priscilla, was the love child of her sister Lenore and a Czechoslovakian sailor.
"Lenore?" I said as Great Aunt Pris paused to let the full horror of the scandal sink in. "I’ve never heard of her before." I mentally scanned the family photographs that had once crowded the walls of Rob’s parents’ house in Newport back when they were still together. I couldn’t recall a Lenore.
"No, you wouldn’t," Great Aunt Pris says in a tone I can’t quite decipher. "She was my youngest sister. The family disowned her when she ran off with that horrible man. No surprise that he dumped her once he got her pregnant. She moved to Charlestown or Everett, I forget now."
Great Aunt Pris may be eighty-seven but I’ve never known her to forget a single thing.
"Is she still there?"
"No." There was a long, heavy pause. Aunt Pris lives in Newport in one of the fabulous "cottages" there that has been converted into an assisted living facility. Of all Rob’s relatives she is my favorite. She is arrogant, affected, and a terrible gossip but, from the very beginning, she had been the most genuine and generous of Rob’s family in welcoming me into their circle.
"No, Lenore died years ago." Her voice was brittle and dry. "I tried, Christine. When I heard how sick she was I went to see her and I tried to get her to come to live with Hep and I but she was always so bullheaded."
Great Aunt Pris’s husband, a Boston Brahman with the ponderous name Hepplewhite Townsend Shaw, died long before I was part of the family but she still talks about him as though he is in the other room reading the paper and waiting for her to finish dressing for dinner.
"What became of the child they had?" I asked not sure I was prepared for the answer.
"He took after his father." She said it simply, as though that explained everything.
"What do you mean?"
The pause is so long that I wonder if she has dropped off to sleep, something she has a knack for doing. "He wanted no part of us. He was a sailor like his father. Bobby used to see him now and then." Bobby is Rob’s father. "I don’t think he amounted to much. I expect he’s dead by now, too."
Now, sitting in the driveway of the Haven, gathering my courage to go inside, I try to sort all this new knowledge out in my pounding brain. Stash is more than my husband’s cousin. More than the love child of Great Aunt Pris’s long-lost sister. Stash is my lover—the man who has turned everything in my life upside down. Stash
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