Elizabeth Berg - Once Upon a Time, There Was You

Also by Elizabeth Berg

The Last Time I Saw You
Home Safe
The Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted
Dream When Youre Feeling Blue
The Handmaid and the Carpenter
We Are All Welcome Here
The Year of Pleasures
The Art of Mending
Say When
True to Form
Ordinary Life: Stories
Never Change
Open House
Escaping into the Open: The Art of Writing True
Until the Real Thing Comes Along
What We Keep
Joy School
The Pull of the Moon
Range of Motion
Talk Before Sleep
Durable Goods
Family Traditions

Once Upon a Time, There Was You is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright 2011 by Elizabeth Berg

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Random House, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

R ANDOM H OUSE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Berg, Elizabeth.
Once upon a time, there was you: a novel / Elizabeth Berg.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-1-58836-893-5
1. Divorced peopleFiction. 2. Teenage girlsFiction. 3. Parent and childFiction. 4. Domestic Fiction. I. Title.
PS3552.E6996O62 2011
813.54dc22 2010049690

www.atrandom.com

v3.1

To Kate Medina

Marriage is a funny thing. Even when its over.
Maybe especially then.

ROBIN BLACK ,
from If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This

There are two dilemmas that rattle the human skull:
How do you hold on to someone who wont stay?
And how do you get rid of someone who wont leave?

from The War of the Roses

There are rocks deep enough in this earth that no matter what the rupture is, they will never see the surface. There is, I think, a fear of love. There is a fear of love.

COLUM McCANN ,
from Let the Great World Spin

W hen John Marsh was a young boy, he used to watch his mother getting ready to go out for the evening. He stood beside her dressing table and listened to the mbuh sounds she made tamping down her lipstick, and he took note of the three-quarter angle with which she then regarded herself in the mirror, as though she were flirting with herself. He watched how rouge made her cheeks blossom into unnatural color, and how the little comb she used to apply mascara made her blond lashes go black and spiky. She always finished by taking her hair down from pin curls and brushing it into a controlled mass of waves, which she then perfumed with a spicy scent that reminded him of carnations and oranges, both. Finally, How do I look? she would ask him, and he never knew what to say. What he felt was: Gone. For though he had stood beside her, watching her every move as she transformed herself, he was never sure that the made-up woman before him was still his mother, and this made for a mixed feeling of fear and confusion. Nonetheless, he always smiled and said softly, Pretty.

Before he turned six, she was off living in another state with a man who did not care for children. The rare times John saw her, she came and stayed in a nearby Howard Johnson, and she would buy him dinner there. While he ate, she would sit smoking, sneaking looks at her watch.

Many years later, on the eve of his wedding day, thirty-six-year-old John sat in a bar talking to his best friend, Stuart White (Stuart himself happily married for twelve years), about how he was suddenly consumed by doubt. He sat morosely on the stool, chatting now and then with the women there, many of them beautiful, and understood that it wasnt that; it wasnt that he wanted anyone else. When the blonde sitting next to him offered a cigarette, John took it.

What are you doing? Stuart asked. You dont smoke. And Irene hates cigarette smoke.

Yeah, I know, John said. I think she has an allergy or something. He put a match to the end of the cigarette.

Whoa, Stuart said. Are your hands shaking?

My hands arent shaking!

They are, too, man. Look at them.

John looked at his hands, and his friend was right: there was a fine tremor.

He ground out the cigarette, shoved his face into his hands, and moaned.

Stuart said, Okay, okay, buddy, you just need to calm down. Try this. Think about when you asked Irene to marry you. Why did you ask her?

John looked over at him. She didnt wear makeup?

W hen Irene Marsh was a young girl, she used to have a play space in the basement where she lined up her many baby dolls. One by one, she fed them, burped them, and rocked them to sleep. It brought her a rare peace, to care for her babies. It took her away from what went on between her parents, the yelling and the hateful silences, which were worse than the yelling. She sang lullabies into plastic ears and rocked inert little bodies; she prayed each night on her knees to get old enough to live with someone else, in love.

Which was why it was a little surprising that, on her wedding day, she sat weeping in the brides room. The place was ornately decorated: a multitiered chandelier, embossed ivory wallpaper, two elegant club chairs upholstered in tangerine silk, the table between them holding a bouquet of white freesia and a crystal bowl full of Jordan almondsfor good luck, Irene knew. In the adjoining powder room was a vase of creamy white orchids, pristine linen hand towels, and a gold basket of might-needs decorated by a length of wide satin ribbon. When Irene had shown the bathroom to her best friend and only bridesmaid, Valerie Cox (Valerie herself happily married for nine years), Valerie had said, Oh, everything is so pretty! Irene had stood there, imagining herself as the speck on the ground, Valerie as the plane rising higher in the air. What Irene had felt about the dcor was only a sense of outrage, at the excess.

Fifteen minutes before the ceremony was to begin, Irene sat on the bench before the white vanity with her back to the mirror. She had just put on her wedding gown, a dress that was purposefully plain and might in fact work for everyday, were it not floor length and made from ivory Qiana. Her hair was loose about her shoulders, not as yet styled into the upsweep shed planned; her satin heels lay in a little jumble on the floor beside her, her veil across her lap. The bridal bouquet sat unpacked in its box in a corner of the room.

But I thought you were sure, Valerie said. She was standing before Irene, holding her friends trembling hands in her own. You said you were absolutely sure!

I know, but I want to go home. Will you take me?

Well Valerie didnt know what to do. She spoke in a near whisper, saying, Irene. Youre thirty-six years old. If you want children

I know how old I am! But you shouldnt get married just to have children. I cant get married just to have children! She drew in a ragged breath, snatched a tissue off the dressing table, and blew her nose.

Valerie spoke slowly, carefully, saying, I dont know; getting married to have children isnt such a bad idea. And besides, you love John. Dont you?

Irene stared into her lap, picked at one thumbnail with the other.