“I don’t know,” Megan said. “You sounded uncomfortable when I asked about him.”
Charlene laughed. “Sorry. This is an odd time. I have no job, no place of my own, no idea what’s coming next. The only home I have is Michael’s house in Palo Alto. It shouldn’t be such an adjustment. But it is.”
“I bet you feel dependent for the first time in your life,” Megan suggested.
“Maybe that’s it,” she said. But that wasn’t it. She and Michael were fighting. They’d had a standoff. About marriage, of all things.
* * *
Charley Hempstead met Michael Quincy when she was twenty-two and he was thirty-two. It was supposed to be a rebound fling, not a twenty-two-year love affair. Charley had been through quite a lot by that time in her young life; she’d had a baby out of wedlock at seventeen and had given her up for adoption, was attending college in California—as far away from her mother as she could get—and had been through a string of boyfriends, all useless college boys.
Michael hadn’t fared much better. When they met he was separated from his wife of six years and it was a bitter parting, the divorce promising to be quite messy. He was a professor of political science and had just escaped a shallow, loveless, acrimonious marriage. On the one hand, he was relieved there were no children to suffer through the divorce, but on the other, he worried he might never be a father. He had wanted children. His wife had not.
Both of them embarked on their relationship thinking it would probably be a mere comfortable blip on the radar, a placeholder until they could heal and regain their strength. But they were derailed by passion. Michael, the handsome young professor who all the coeds crushed on, fell in love with Charley. And Charley fell for him. They were living together in a small apartment in Berkeley within a few months. They talked, debated, read and made love constantly. They didn’t marry—at first because of the complications of Michael’s divorce and later because Michael was a little soured on marriage and didn’t want to spoil the relationship they had. Charley, if she was honest with herself, wanted to be different. Modern. And she didn’t mind pissing off her mother. The fact that Charley became pregnant accidentally a few years later changed very little. By then, Michael’s divorce was final, the settlement done, and he bought a small but fashionable home in Palo Alto, a place for them to raise their child. It was the ’90s—people cohabitated and had children together all the time; women even had them alone without suffering much recrimination. So, for Michael, who had feared he might never have a child, and Charley, who had been forced to give one up, the birth of Eric brought much happiness.
Michael did want them to marry one day to establish that their commitment was real, fearless and holy.
“Holy?” she’d asked with a laugh. “When did you get religious?”
“I just mean I’m not afraid to make a lifetime pledge. I want to do that. Someday.”
By the time little Eric was four years old, Charley had graduated from Berkeley and been in the workforce for some time, moving up very quickly in the world of television. She used the name Berkey, dropping Hempstead. She said it was better for television, but truthfully, she was still angry with her parents and secretly hoped it would piss them off. Michael was a full professor at Stanford. Charley went from production in the San Francisco affiliate, to weather reporter, then anchorwoman, and it wasn’t long before she took over a local morning talk show. The ratings soared and she was picked up by other markets. She bought herself a town house in the city—a very nice town house with a view—which she had used every nickel plus loans to buy. It was not only a great investment but convenient. Even though there were two houses between them, they managed to spend most nights together. If they stayed with her in the city, Eric and Michael would head back to Michael’s Palo Alto house and that was where Eric went to school. Charley’s house wasn’t entirely an indulgence. She reported to the studio at four a.m. and as long as she lived in the city the station sent a car for her.
They’d been together for twenty-two years. They’d had arguments here and there, power struggles over how to raise Eric or how the money should be spent, and conflicting political ideas. They managed well for two people with demanding careers and a child they were devoted to; they made such an exceptional team they were the envy of many long-married friends. The subject of their own marriage hardly ever came up.
Then Charley’s world turned on its ear. She had not been prepared for the network to pull her show without warning. She had no backup plan. At almost the same moment Megan was undergoing radical chemo to precede a bone marrow transplant. The doctors gave her a fifty-fifty chance of surviving the cancer, which had spread, and the chemo had already nearly wiped her out. Charley was not prepared to lose another sister.
And she was not prepared to have no career. Her career was her identity; she was proud of it. She had been successful.
“Sounds like a good time for us to get married,” Michael said.
She was stunned. “What, in your twisted mind, makes you think this is a good time for me?” she asked, gobsmacked. “And what, pray, do you think marriage will do to make it good?”
He frowned at her. “You’re not working. You don’t have anything else going on. You said you weren’t prepared to dive into the job search immediately, that you needed a rest and time to think, which is a very good decision. I’m going to Cambridge in the fall for one semester. You should come with me.”
“So you’re going to rescue me?” she asked.
“I hadn’t thought of it exactly like that, but wouldn’t it take some of the stress off you?”
“Very sensitive, Michael,” she said. “My job loss and my dying sister make it a convenient time for you to drag me to England for six months. How perfectly relaxing.”
“If you’re going to be irrational, I withdraw my offer.”
“You needn’t withdraw it,” she said. “I decline the very romantic proposal.”
“You want romance, Charley? Here’s the romance of it! My father died when he was fifty-seven. I’m fifty-four. I’m perfectly comfortable with our relationship except for one thing—Eric. No, that’s not all—there are several things actually. If my fate is similar, I’d like to leave a widow, not a girlfriend. I’d like to bypass inheritance issues. Hell, if I’m sick in a hospital I don’t want you to be denied being at my bedside because you’re not my wife.”
“Who’s going to bar my way? Our son? Your mother, who adores me? Your sister, who wants to be my best friend? Girlfriend! After twenty-two years and a son!”
“You know you’re more than a girlfriend,” he said.
“But apparently you don’t!”
“I didn’t think it mattered, being unmarried,” he said. “Lately it’s started to matter to me. I love you. You love me. I’d like a legal commitment. I want there to be no doubt how we feel about each other.”
“I didn’t think there was any doubt,” she said. “Apparently you have some doubts if you suddenly need to legalize things.”
“It’s not doubt,” he said. “It’s the feeling that something is missing. As I get older that feeling gets stronger.”
“And so you decided that this moment, when I’m crushed by suddenly being fired and terrified that my sister could die...this would be the best moment for me to make a decision like this?”
“We could have an extended honeymoon in England,” he said.
“While you work? What is it you expect me to do while you’re working?”
“I’m sure you wouldn’t be bored. Look, this isn’t just for us but also for Eric. For Eric’s children. But I don’t want to push you into making a commitment you don’t feel.”
“Eric