“Surely he reads books,” Regina offered. “Surely he’s curious, like you are.”
“He can be,” Arietta said. “He’s really busy with work.”
“Of course.” Regina seemed unsure of what to say to that. “I really hope you’re happy.”
Arietta felt the accusation behind her words. “I am happy, Mom. Fred makes me really happy. We’ve had to work on our differences, and I know we come from opposite worlds, but he gets me.”
“I’m sure he’s amazed by you,” Regina said. “I’m sure he can’t believe how lucky he is.”
Arietta wanted to tell her mother the truth—that Fred knew he could have almost any woman. Many women had tried to steal Fred away from Arietta. Everyone was so sure Arietta wasn’t good enough for Fred, if only because she came from the other side of the tracks, so to speak. But she didn’t want tobelittle her mother’s standing in the world. She also didn’t want to talk herself down, not so soon before her wedding.
She wanted to be excited. As the bride-to-be, it was her right to be excited.
Regina got off the bed and stretched her arms over her chest. She’d developed a little bit of a belly beneath her silk nightgown, but it made her look adorable. Arietta adored her mother and the way she opened herself up to life and love and food and fun. Arietta prayed that she would always be the same.
“One last thing,” her mother said, her eyes heavy with meaning.
“All right,” Arietta said.
“Don’t ever let Fred talk down to you,” Regina said. “He knows you’re smarter than he is, and this might bother him down the line. He might try to make you feel smaller than you are, if only to get some power over you. Please, don’t let him.”
Arietta was taken aback, so much so that she didn’t know what to say at first. Her mother continued to the door between her room and the one she shared with Arietta’s father, flipping her hair over her shoulders.
Arietta wanted to tell her mother to take it back. She wanted to say, “Fred would never do that to me!” But she knew that her mother needed to tell her this, if only for her own peace of mind.
Was it possible that Arietta’s own father had made her mother feel less than through the years? Was it possible that many, many wives, regardless of their intellect, felt belittled by their husbands?
Oh, but it was 1999. Arietta and Fred were a part of a new generation. Despite Fred’s background and Arietta's job in journalism, they were coming together in love and understanding. They didn’t have to play by the old rules.
“I love you, honey,” Regina said before slipping into the other room and closing the door behind her.
Arietta lay in bed for a long time with the light still on, gazing at the ceiling. She tried to imagine herself decades from now, perhaps with her own daughter before her wedding day. Would Arietta have wisdom to give her daughter? What could she tell her to prepare her for this deep, unending commitment to someone? She supposed she’d learn that along the way.
Many years later,after Regina was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and began to lose all concept of time and language, she occasionally thought it was a very different year—that she was still a mother that Arietta was required to listen to, that Arietta was much younger and eager to grow and change.
“Honey, I really think you should consider what you’re doing,” Regina said to Arietta one afternoon, when the two of them were in Arietta’s childhood home, drinking tea and eating cookies that Regina had loved as a girl.
Arietta knew something sinister was coming. She knew that her mother didn’t know what year it was, but she decided to play along, if only because she’d grown tired of telling her mother that she was wrong, that she was confused.
“What do you mean?” Arietta asked.
Her mother took a bite of the cookie and set it down. “I know that you and Fred have had a lot of fun together. I know you don’t think his wealth will get in the way of your happiness together. But honey, the fact is, money changes everything! Once you become his wife, you’ll have responsibilities that you never could have fathomed before. My friend back in college, Christine, she married into a very wealthy family, and she always regretted it.”
“I think it’s going to be okay, Mom,” Arietta said, reaching for her mother’s hand. “I think we’re going to be really happy. You have to trust me.”
At this point, Arietta and Fred had been married for nearly twenty years. They had three daughters and three houses. They’d had three family dogs and two cats. They had gone on numerous vacations, seen countless movies, and gone on and off diets together, pushing each other to be as healthy as possible as they got older. They’d even trained for and run a marathon together, after which they’d promised each other never to do that again.
Of course, they’d also discussed divorce.
Arietta had never told anyone about their troubles. She assumed that all married couples had discussed divorce at some point. With marriage failures at 50 percent, she imagined everyone looked at the Exit door and wondered what lay beyond it.
They’d gone to couples therapy exactly twice. During the second session, the therapist told them that they thought they should consider separating, and they quit almost immediately, laughing their way out to the car. After buckling their seat belts, they’d kissed in the car like teenagers, then turned the radio up loud. They weren’t done with each other yet. Arietta didn’t think they ever would be.
“Just think about it,” her mother begged her now.
“All right, Mom.” Arietta sighed. “I’ll think about it.”
Arietta couldn’t figure out why Regina had never really taken to Fred. Everyone else in the world adored him. He could have gotten away with murder with that smile alone. She’d watched him talk his way out of many speeding tickets, and they were always seated at restaurants before everyone else, not just because Fred Peters was an important man to see in public. Hewas charming. She’d always known he was charming. It was part of the reason she’d fallen so hard for him at age nineteen.