Maine - J. Courtney Sullivan [51]
After six months, Henry still hadn’t introduced Mary to his family, and this caused her great distress. He said he was only waiting for the right time, but Mary was convinced it meant something more. Alice wondered if this was what Richard had been trying to warn her about.
Finally, he brought them both to what he called his father’s beach shack in Newport for the day. Mary baked his mother a blueberry cake and spent an hour fixing her hair. “The shack” turned out to be an enormous ten-bedroom home, complete with its own staff and a tennis court. But Henry’s parents weren’t there. It was just his sisters and a few friends, one of whom had brought along a pair of chubby, grubby two-year-old sons. On the terrace that afternoon, Henry introduced them as, “My sweet girl, Mary, and her sister, Alice, the artist.”
Henry had been to Europe as a child. That day, when Alice told him how badly she had always wanted to go to Paris, he said, “Tell you what, kiddo. I’ll take you and Mary there as soon as all this mayhem ends.” She believed that he would. Alice pinched her sister’s arm, imagining the world that was about to open up for them.
Later, the group walked down to the beach. Mary, predictably, ended up with the children. She held the fat hand of one in her left palm and the other in her right.
“Has she always been so perfect?” Henry asked.
Alice grumbled. “Yes.”
“I take it that bugs you.”
“It’s just that sometimes next to her, I look like a monster, that’s all.”
“I think you and I are alike,” he told her. “We both need to be the stars.”
Perhaps that explained his feelings for Mary. Henry was the type who liked a nice stable girl, someone who’d take care of him and cook for him and fret over him whenever he got so much as a sniffle.
“I suppose so,” Alice said, looking down at the glorious white beach. The rich, it seemed, could even improve upon sand.
“I’d be lost without her,” Henry said. “You’d be amazed how cruel women can be. We’re all fragile, but we don’t like to be reminded of it.”
“What do you mean?” Alice said.
He pointed at his foot. “I played baseball at Harvard, and every girl at Radcliffe wanted to date me. But after this happened—I felt that my chances for happiness were gone.”
Alice shook her head. “Someone like you? I can’t believe it. There must be a million girls out there who would gladly have played Florence Nightingale.”
“But that’s just it,” he said. “I wanted someone who would look at me like women used to look. And that’s what Mary does.”
Alice’s jealousy faded then. He was right, of course: her sister never even complained about the limp, or the horrible pains Henry suffered from time to time that rendered him immobile.
She might have said that her jealousy vanished completely after that, if not for the presents. Alice tried not to feel envious over the fact that frumpy old Mary thought nothing of wearing a brand-new mink stole, a silver bracelet with a heart-shaped charm, or a pair of dove-gray suede gloves with fur trim and heels to match, even though such items had never interested her in the slightest before.
“It must be nice, having someone to buy you whatever you want,” Alice said, watching her sister dress for work one morning.
“Oh, you know I don’t care about all the fancy things he gives me,” Mary replied, making Alice seethe.
“You shouldn’t brag,” she said.
Mary looked perplexed. “I wasn’t. Was I? Besides, the gloves I bought myself, with my own money. They’re the only objects I really care about. Otherwise, it’s just Henry that I want.”
Six more months slipped by without a proposal, or even an introduction to his parents.
“My old man’s business is taking a bad hit,” Henry told Mary. “I know he’ll come to adore you like I do,