“No, Mom, it's Brad on the phone. He called us to wish us a Merry Christmas.” And as he said it he hoped that his mother would allow it to remain merry. She took the phone from her youngest son, smoothing a hand over her snowy white hair, and sat down quickly in her desk chair. She was dressed elegantly in a black Dior suit that did extremely well by her still-streamlined youthful figure. She was a woman of fifty-eight, but she could easily have concealed ten or twelve of those years, had she chosen to, which she never did. She had B.J.'s same slate-gray eyes, and the features were much the same too, but whereas on B.J. everything looked easygoing and gentle, on his mother everything looked eternally tense. One always had the feeling that she was listening for something, some superhuman, extraterrestrial whine that was audible only to her. There was always about her a kind of electric tension, and she seemed ever about to pounce, which she did frequently, mostly on her husband, and often on her sons. She was a woman one spoke to carefully and handled with the utmost caution, so as not to set her off, or “get her started,” as her family called it. “Don't get your mother started, boys,” her husband had always implored his sons. And in order not to himself, he hardly ever spoke, but he nodded constant agreement. When they were younger, the boys used to imitate him a lot, B.J. having perfected his father's constant noncommittal, almost mechanical “Ummmmmm.…”
“Hi, Mom. How's everything in New York?”
“Interesting. Very interesting. Eleanor was here for lunch yesterday.” He knew she referred to Mrs. Roosevelt. “The political news these days is certainly ever changing. It's a hard time for her, for all of us really. There are a lot of readjustments going on after the war. But never mind all that, Brad darling. More to the point, how are you?” She said it with an emphasis that ten years before would have made him extremely nervous. But he had got over being intimidated by his mother when he gave up his job in Washington and moved to Pittsburgh to suit himself. It had been a move of which she had violently disapproved, and for the first time in his life he had decided that that wasn't going to change anything for him. “Are you all right, darling? Healthy? Happy? Coming home?”
“Yes to the first three, no to the fourth question, I'm afraid. At least they don't appear to be shipping me Stateside for the moment. But I'm fine, everything's just fine.” He saw Serena's expectant eyes upon him, and for the first time in a long time he realized that he was afraid of his mother. But this time he had to stand up to her, not only for himself, but for Serena. It gave him added courage as he plunged in. “I've got some good news for you.”
“Another promotion, Brad?” She sounded pleased. As much as she disliked having him in the army, as long as he insisted on being in it, his frequent promotions pacified her and pleased her with their prestige.
“Not exactly, Mom. Better than that in fact.” He swallowed hard, realizing suddenly what he had done. Serena was right. He should have called her first. Christ, imagine telling her like this when it was all over. He could feel a thin veil of sweat break out along his hairline and prayed that Serena wouldn't see. “I just got married.” He wanted to close his eyes and gulp air, but he couldn't, not with those expectant, trusting green eyes on him. Instead he smiled at Serena and gestured that everything was going fine.
“You what! You're joking of course.” There was a silence, but before that there had been a tight edge in her voice. He could imagine the tenseness in her face by listening to the tone of her voice. He could picture the elegant almost bony hand with the heavy diamond rings clutching the phone. “What's this all about?”
“It's about a wonderful young lady whom I met in Rome. We were married this morning, Mother, in the English church here.”
There was an endless pause while he waited. At her end her face was suddenly grim, her eyes the color of the Atlantic before a hurricane. “Is there some adequate reason why you've kept this a secret, Brad?”