Nancy’s dad has slunk off to hide in the den at the back of the house, parked in front of a football game with a plate of devilled eggs and sliced ham from the ladies’ potluck buffet, leaving Nancy alone among the twittering mass of women.
“Traitor,” Nancy accused him when they met at the punch bowl an hour before. “Thanks for throwing me to the she-wolves.”
“You don’t seriously expect me to stick around with this lot, do you?” he asked. “If I don’t bail out, your mother will pop a doily on top of my head and use my body for a side table to hold the dessert tray. Good luck, Beetle.”
And so, out of options for a reasonable escape, Nancy has spent the past hour opening gifts to a chorus of feminine gasping. As the pile finally dwindles, she reaches out to take the last gift from her aunt Lois. Nancy opens the box to find a truly gorgeous crocheted ivory baby blanket.
“Oh, Aunt Lois, thank you,” Nancy says, and she means it. “It’s beautiful. Did you make it?” She drapes it across her belly and runs her fingers over the intricate pattern.
“I did!” Lois says, grinning a little soppily at the group as the ooohs and ahhhs echo around the room. “Sometimes you just can’t beat handmade, especially for something like this. I made one for Clara when she had her baby last year, too.”
Nancy meets Clara’s eyes over the blanket, but her cousin looks away quickly. They still have never talked about That Night, and it put a wedge between them. They aren’t nearly as close as they used to be.
“Well,” Nancy’s mother chimes in from where she’s been hovering near the buffet table, refilling the punch bowl. “There was no need to go to such trouble, Lois.”
Nancy’s mother and aunt have a relationship that always seems to be locked on the Combat setting. The fact that Clara got married and had her first baby before Nancy did was a sore point, and Aunt Lois loved to remind her sister of this victory at every opportunity.
“Oh, it was no trouble at all, none at all,” Lois trills, lifting a cup of tea to her lips.
Frances sets down the pitcher of punch and glances at Nancy. “It just so happens that I have a little something of my own to give you. Be back in a flash.”
She bustles from the room and Nancy can hear her climbing the stairs. She still moves a bit slowly, but she’s too stubborn to ask Nancy’s father to go fetch whatever it is. Chatter breaks out among the assembled women and several get up to refill their plates of hors d’oeuvres. Nancy sinks back in her chair, grateful the event is nearly over. Her mind starts to wander to the rest of her day. She and Michael have planned to have a nice dinner together and watch the hockey game, since opportunities for that will be thin on the ground a few weeks from now.
When her mother returns a few minutes later, she’s clutching a small box tied with a yellow ribbon.
“Here you are, Nancy, dear,” her mother says, perching herself on the arm of the couch across from Nancy. One of the guests shifts her ample bottom over to make room for Frances, but is ignored. Frances only has eyes for Nancy. “Open it.”
Her mother has already bought countless outfits for the baby, and her parents have helped fund the nursery furniture. Nancy wasn’t expecting another gift. “Mum,” she says, “you didn’t have to do this.”
Balancing the present on her large belly, she gives the ribbon a tug and opens the box.
All the air gets sucked out of the room. It happens instantly, like the door blowing off an airplane at ten thousand feet. Nancy sits there, stunned, staring down at her mother’s gift.
“What is it?” Aunt Lois demands. Her shrill voice cuts through the buzzing in Nancy’s head.
Nancy swallows hard and lifts out the pair of yellow baby booties. Margaret’s booties. She doesn’t even hear the cooing from her mother’s friends.
“They were handmade with a lot of love,” Frances says, her eyes bright.
“Oh, are you knitting now, Frances?” Lois asks pointedly.
“Not me, no.”
Nancy can hardly stand to ask it, but she does anyway. She has to. “Where did you get these, Mum?”
“At, uh, a craft fair down at the Exhibition,” she says. “A local woman makes them.”
“I’ve wondered about setting up a booth at one of those fairs, you know,” Lois chimes in, nodding into her cup of tea. “Lots of ladies willing to spend good money for quality items like that.”
Several women begin talking at once about the craft fair, and the conversation moves on.
Frances walks over to her daughter. Reaching out, she takes Nancy’s cheeks in her hands and stares into her eyes, blue into brown. As always, Nancy can’t read them. Frances plants a kiss on top of her head and lingers for a moment. Electricity passes between them, and then her mother lets go, and shuffles away again to attend to her guests.
Nancy can’t breathe. Clutching the booties, she mumbles something about having to pee and heaves herself up from the chair. She waddles out of the stifling living room, loud once again with chatter, into the cool air of the hallway. She stumbles into the powder room near the kitchen and shuts the door behind her, sits down on the carpeted toilet seat cover.
Is this a message from her mother? A confession? Is this finally happening? Nancy wonders. She wriggles her fingers down into each of the booties in turn, searching for Margaret’s note.
She checks three times, actually turning the booties inside out to make sure she hasn’t missed it, but it isn’t there.
It isn’t there.
The fresh betrayal slashes open the half-healed wound on Nancy heart. She throws the booties onto the floor at her feet and crumples over her swollen belly, clutching at it with shaking hands. Laughter drifts into the hallway from the living room as Nancy begins to sob.
* * *
She arrives back home in the passenger seat of her dad’s car. The back seat and trunk are full to the brim with blankets, toys, teething rings, stuffed animals, and baby clothes. Michael comes out of the house when they pull up, grinning at her through the windshield. She smiles back in an automatic sort of way and gets out of the car.
“Did the guest of honour enjoy herself?” he asks, planting a kiss on her cheek. When she doesn’t respond, he peers at her face. “Hey, are you okay?”
“Of course, yeah, I’m just tired. Overstimulated, you know.”
Michael pats her gently on the back. “Well, we’ve got a nice quiet evening planned anyway, eh?”
He helps her dad unload the haul of gifts while Nancy watches, one hand on her belly and the other clutching her purse. The booties are stuffed into an inside pocket, hidden once again.
When the last of the gifts have been brought into the front hall of their town house, her father turns to her. “Looks like you came out unscathed. Thank you for doing that, Beetle. I can tell your mother had a great time.”
He pulls Nancy into a hug that she returns without passion. When they break apart, she looks up into his face. “Dad…”
He waits. “Yeah?”
Nancy doesn’t know what to say. Should she ask him? Confront him right here on the sidewalk? Did he even know Frances was going to give Margaret’s booties to Nancy? Would he have agreed? Would he have included the note if it had been up to him?