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Do What You Have To Do by Another Illusion
Summary: Sandy never forgave herself for her actions in Tulsa. When her husband tries to understand her better, he pushes her back to Tulsa, where she must confront everything she has kept to herself over the years.
Author’s Note: I am British so I therefore use British spelling and the suchlike. Thanks as ever to my beta.
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters created by S E Hinton, or ‘Welcome To Wherever You Are’ by Bon Jovi.
“Welcome to wherever you are/ This is your life/ You’ve made it this far …”
Florida, 1971
Sandy awoke to the opening notes of “Gimme Shelter”. Groaning, she turned over and buried her face in the pillow. After a moment she fumbled around the bedside table for her wedding band and then groggily sat up as she slipped it on. She looked at the clock on the table, it was half past seven. She mentally added up the number of hours she had managed to sleep; six, much better than usual.
As the Stones reached their chorus, Sandy was on her way into the kitchen.
“Morning,” she said as she made her way to the kettle. “Is there any coffee in the pot left?”
“Yeah, should still be warm enough to drink,” her husband said, tapping the rhythm of the song on the kitchen counter. “Did I ever tell you that I love this record?”
“I kind of guessed that by the way you play the damn thing so often,” she said, smiling to show him that she didn’t really mind. The fact that Gerry loved the Stones seemed at odds with his smart, businessman attire and mentality.
She poured herself a mug of coffee, then yawned and looked around for a moment.
“Where’s Bella, Gerry?” Bella was their three month old daughter. Her name was Belinda, but both Gerry and Sandy shortened it to Belle or Bella most of the time. Gerry’s mother hated that, she told Sandy it would confuse Bella, but Sandy didn’t particularly care too much what she said. Bella was a sweet name, pretty and simple, and it fit her baby perfectly. Besides, Sandy remembered that Linda was Spanish for ‘pretty’ and she realized that Belinda sounded too much like an order - too much like, ‘be pretty or we’ll disown you.’
“Sleeping,” he said simply. “Y’know, I think she’s finally settled into her routine.”
“Don’t say that, you’ll curse me again,” she said with a small grin. Bella had had severe colic for the first two months and was only just beginning to sleep through the night.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “By the way, we have dinner at my boss’s tonight.”
“We do?” Sandy asked miserably. Gerry’s boss was a nice enough guy, but he was so tedious. It was as if he didn’t really know how to talk about anything but work. And as for his wife, Sandy had taken an instant dislike to her on account of her cold tone and superiority complex.
“Admit it, you really love it,” he said.
“Shut up,” she said, pouting as he walked over to her, putting his arms around her.
“Make me,” he challenged.
Sandy looked at the clock. “Hadn’t you better get ready? They won’t like it if you’re late again,” she teased.
Gerry scowled. “Do I really have to go?” he asked in a low voice, kissing her forehead.
“Gerry.”
“Sandy,” he said with a cheeky grin on his face. Sandy kissed him, running her hands through his thick dark curls. She smiled and leaned against his shoulder. If she had been told three years ago that she would end up married to a guy like Gerry, with financial stability and the most beautiful baby girl ever, she would have laughed in their faces and then probably burst into tears at what she believed she would never have. She didn’t deserve a ‘happy-ever-after’ and she felt like a fraud for doing so well, for being where she was now.
Sandy tried to brush the thoughts from her mind, it wouldn’t do her any good to allow herself to dwell on the past now. Not now, not when she had so much to lose. The only visible reminders of her past were the stretch marks on her stomach --that meant she had been unable to wear any of the fashionable two-piece swimsuits since she was sixteen-- and her telling Tulsan accent.
The phone rang and Gerry sighed. He walked over to the phone and picked it up, annoyed. “Hello? Yeah?”
Sandy idly continued to drink her coffee. By Gerry’s tone and the way he had suddenly looked so stressed, she guessed it was to do with his work.
She walked into their bedroom and skimmed through the closet absentmindedly. Gerry had raised his voice in the kitchen and she could hear him saying something about a deal falling through. She bit her lip and chose a blue top – that would do for today.
Her husband walked into the room, shaking his head. “Goddammit!”
“Are you okay?” Sandy asked.
He suddenly looked at her with an almost surprised expression then shook his head, smiling. “Yeah, I’m fine, baby. It’s just Pete’s screwed up a bit on one of our deals.”
“Oh,” she said, unsure of an appropriate response. Gerry’s work was complicated and far too competitive and cut-throat for her liking. She hated the idea of working in an environment like that. Sandy had liked her old job just fine though. Before Bella was born, she worked in a jewellery shop and it was there that she had met Gerry. He’d stopped in one day, collecting an anniversary present for his dad.
“I need to get ready, I’m needed now,” he said, an annoyed expression on his face. He rummaged in a drawer for a moment and then looked at Sandy.
“Something wrong?” She walked over to him and placed a comforting arm across his back, leaning against him gently.
“Yeah, where’s my tie?” he asked lamely.
“Which one?” Sandy asked with an exasperated sigh.
“The nice one, the one I have for meetings, y’know for fixing Pete’s mistake s-- that tie,” he said, buttoning up his shirt. “It is the one that my sister got me for my birthday.”
“The blue one?” He nodded. “It’s in the third drawer.”
“Thanks, baby, what would I do without you?” he asked, kissing her on the cheek before finding the tie.
“I don’t know, wear bad ties?” she suggested, fiddling with a strand of blonde hair, her teeth worrying her bottom lip. Gerry was wrong if he thought that he was lucky to have her, as he had said before.
Gerry laughed as he went into the bathroom; Sandy could see he was hurrying so left him to it, choosing to look out of the window instead at the city around her. She loved their apartment, despite all the trouble living on the tenth floor caused when the elevator was broken and she had to trudge down the stairs with Bella and her pram. The views were amazing and that seemed to make up for everything.
She had to visit her grandmother today and was not looking forward to it. They didn’t get on particularly well, but she was sick so Sandy had to help. It was just what you did for family. Besides, her grandmother had done one nice thing to help her, never telling Gerry the real reason Sandy came to Florida all those years ago.
Five minutes later, Gerry rushed out of the apartment and Sandy was alone. She walked into Bella’s room quietly, not wanting to wake her up.
Bella was everything to her, and yet at the same time, Sandy found it difficult to be around her and she wasn’t sure why. She was never sure if she was actually doing the right thing, whether the nappy was on right, whether the milk was at the right temperature, whether she was even able to be a good mother to Bella. It didn’t help that one night right after Belinda had been born, completely sleep-deprived and exhausted, Sandy had been convinced that Bella was the little girl she had given up. She had cried until Gerry had come in and asked what was wrong, which hadn’t helped her at all.
Bella was nothing like that girl though, Sandy could hardly remember what the girl had looked like, just that she had been her’s, and that she had cried loudly. She sometimes wondered if the image of her that she kept in her mind was inaccurate, she could hardly remember anything about that night anymore.
Perhaps that was a good thing though.
She cut the sandwich in half and began to make her own lunch -- peanut butter and jelly sandwiches were her ultimate guilty pleasure.
Bella was with Gerry’s parents, as she always was when Sandy visited her grandmother. It was just easier that way, Sandy wasn’t sure why, but it was. It was as if still felt ashamed to have Bella around her despite being married. She just felt like every time her grandmother looked at her, she saw the sixteen year old who had got pregnant, or the eighteen year old who was doing a pretty good job of messing up her life. Her grandmother never seemed to see the twenty one year old who had sorted herself out, got married and was doing really well for herself. Perhaps it was that her grandmother saw the real Sandy, the one she‘d tried so hard to pretend never existed.
“You have a letter,” her grandmother said suddenly, pointing to a letter on the kitchen table. Sandy looked at her grandmother nervously. “It arrived on Tuesday.”
“Who from?” she asked curiously, handing the plate over to her grandmother. “There’s your lunch, Grandma.”
“That brother of yours probably,” she said matter-of-factly, before coughing violently. She took the plate and sat up in her bed. “I was thinking of getting someone to move the TV into my room … it gets lonely and my back still isn’t right.” A few months before, her grandmother had fallen over and damaged part of her back. Sandy couldn’t remember the specific details -- only that she had been confined to bed rest for a while and that it still bothered her.
“I can move it for you, if you want,” Sandy said. “Well, I could … I could ask Gerry to do it, if you wanted me to,” she said reluctantly. Gerry had met her grandmother before, but Sandy tried to keep them apart as much as possible, fearful of what her grandmother might say or reveal. However, Gerry complained about how she never talked about Tulsa, or visited any relatives there, so maybe spending more time with her grandmother would at least make Gerry stop saying he never talked to her family.
“Would you?” Sandy nodded. “There’s a good girl,” her grandmother said, beginning to eat her lunch.
Sandy walked over to the table, sat down and turned the envelope over several times. Her brother was one of the only people back in Tulsa to keep in touch with her. It was through him that she had learned about her parents finally divorcing -- a few years too late, in Sandy’s opinion-- as well the engagement of one of her cousins. He had also told her a little of what had happened to some of her former friends.
From what Mark had told her, Evie was still with Steve, but he had been drafted. Mark didn’t know much from that point, but Sandy expected that if he was still alive, he would be home now. Some of the other girls Sandy had hung around with were now married, or working, a couple had kids, most of them didn’t. She had never asked him about Soda, and he had never told her if he knew anything about what he was he up to these days. Mark seemed to understand that that was part of her life that hurt too much to bring up.
She gingerly opened the letter and began to read its contents. Most of it was Mark raving on about a motorcycle he had bought himself, typical Mark. He mentioned a girl named Judy he was seeing -- apparently she was ‘hot, really hot’. Her brother hadn’t changed, he was still the girl and car loving guy he had been at eighteen.
“Is it from him?” her grandmother asked from her room.
“Yes,” she replied, not volunteering any more information about the contents of the letter. “Who else would it be?” she mumbled to herself.
Sandy finished the letter and placed it in her jeans pocket carefully.
“I’m going to go now,” she said. “I’ll come by soon. Look after yourself, okay?”
“Bye Sandra,” her grandma said, an air of sadness in her tone. Sandy felt bad for her, her grandmother was alone except for Sandy, who visited her once a week.
Sandy left her grandmother’s filled with the familiar memories and feelings. It seemed like the past didn’t go away, no matter how much she wanted it to. Still, it was more of a dull ache than the sharp pain it had been when she was younger. She only thought about it occasionally, and today was one of those days where it was playing on her mind. She felt like a fraud, a fake mother, a fake wife and a liar.
She buttoned up her coat and took a deep breath before making her way back to Gerry’s parents to collect Bella.