by Joy Fielding
“So, what do you want me to tell him,” Liam asked, “assuming he checks in with me again?”
“Tell him you haven’t seen me.”
“You’re sure?”
Marcy felt Vic’s lips brushing gently against hers, felt his fingers tracing delicate lines along her flesh, heard his soft words, You’re beautiful, as they floated tenderly across her skin. It had felt so good to be wanted again, to have a man look at her with something other than pity or contempt. Or worse—indifference. She didn’t deserve to feel so good. Not yet. Not until she’d found Devon. Not until she’d had a chance to make things right. “I’m sure.”
“Good.”
“Good?”
“There was just somethin’ about the man that made me a bit uncomfortable,” Liam said.
“Uncomfortable?”
“I don’t know how else to say it. Something just seemed a little off. You know what I mean?”
Marcy shook her head. In truth, she had no idea what Liam was talking about. Vic Sorvino hadn’t struck her as “off” in any way. But then she’d never been a very good judge of character when it came to men.
“Marcy?” Liam asked. “Are you still there?”
“Oh, yes. Sorry.”
“I haven’t insulted you, have I?”
“How could you insult me?”
“Well, if this Vic fellow is a friend of yours …”
“He isn’t.” He’s just a man I met on a bus, she thought, trying not to feel Vic’s warm body pressing against hers or hear his comforting snores echoing in her ear.
She didn’t deserve to feel comforted.
“You hungry?” Liam was asking.
Marcy immediately felt her stomach cramp. “I am a bit, yes.”
“Pick you up in half an hour,” he said.
TEN
WELL, LET’S SEE. HUSBAND number one was a musician,” Marcy was saying, a little voice in the back of her head telling her she probably shouldn’t be discussing her sister in this way.
“You don’t have to tell me,” Liam said, as if sensing her reservations. “It’s none of my business really. I shouldn’t have asked.”
“It’s no big deal. Judith wouldn’t care.” How many times had she heard her sister boast of being “wildly indiscreet”? Besides, could any woman who’d been married five times really expect not to be talked about?
“I was just trying to take your mind off things.”
“I know.”
By “things,” he meant the fact that despite taking her to one of the most popular gathering spots for young people in all of Cork, they’d yet to spot Devon. Despite showing her daughter’s picture to virtually everyone in the noisy room, they’d yet to find a single person who recognized her.
“Oh, well. It’s early,” he’d said as they settled into the corner booth of the crowded downscale restaurant on Grattan Street. “Maybe she’ll turn up in a bit,” he’d said as they’d placed their dinner orders with the pink-haired waiter. “This place stays busy all night,” he’d remarked as they finished the first of their Irish coffees. “If not tonight,” he’d said reassuringly as they placed their orders for a second, “then tomorrow. She’ll turn up. You’ll see. We’ll find her.”
Marcy had smiled. It felt good to be a “we.”
A unit, she’d thought, feeling Peter’s instant disapproval.
“You grimaced,” Liam had said immediately. “Are you sorry you let me ambush you into coming out tonight?”
He notices everything, Marcy thought, looking around the brightly lit room. “No, I’m glad I came. Why did you ask me out?” she asked in the next breath. “I’m sure there are dozens of young women out there you could have called.”
“Maybe I did. Maybe they all turned me down.” Liam smiled. “Or maybe I don’t find young women all that interesting.”
“And you think I am?”
“I think you just might be.” His smile spread to his eyes.
Marcy had blushed and turned away.
Which was when he’d asked about her family.
“I have an older sister,” she’d told him, relieved to shift the focus off herself. “Judith. She’s been married five times.”
He laughed. “Obviously an optimist.”
“That’s a nice way of putting it.”
Long, slender fingers played with the collar of his black shirt before fanning out around his face, his chin resting in the palm of his hand. “And how would you put it?”
Marcy gave the question a moment’s thought. “I think she’s just afraid of being alone.”
“My mother used to say there was nothing lonelier than an unhappy marriage.”
Marcy nodded. “Your mother’s a very wise woman.”
“Not so sure about that,” Liam said, sipping on his Irish coffee. “So … about those five husbands …”
Marcy began. “Well, let’s see. Husband number one was a musician.”
“You don’t have to tell me. It’s none of my business really. I shouldn’t have asked.”
“It’s no big deal. Judith wouldn’t care.”
“I was just trying to take your mind off things.”
“I know.”
“In that case, what kind of musician?” he asked.
“Drummer.”
“Oh, no. The worst.”
Liam laughed and Marcy laughed with him, deciding to go with the flow. “He really was awful. But she was all of nineteen and I think the fact he made a lot of noise was very appealing to her. It kind of blocked out everything else that was going on.”
“Which was?”
“Way too complicated to get into now,” Marcy said. “Anyway, to absolutely no one’s surprise, the marriage lasted less than a year.”
“What happened?”
“The band broke up.”
“Ah-ha, I see. No more noise.”
Marcy agreed. “No more noise.”
“And husband number two?”
“A photographer she met when she was trying to break into modeling.”
“Your sister was a model?”
“For about ten minutes. Judith has a rather short attention span.”
“And the marriage lasted …?”
“Two weeks.”
“I see what you mean about a short attention span.”
“Actually, that wasn’t the reason they split up,” Marcy clarified. “It turned out he was gay.”
Liam nodded. “Dare I ask about husband number three?”
“An advertising executive. It lasted four years.”
“Well, now, that’s an improvement.”
“He was away a lot.”
“And it broke up because …?”
“He started staying home.”
Again Liam laughed. “Number four?”
“A stockbroker she met at the gym. Nice enough guy until he started taking steroids.”
“It lasted …?”
“Eight years.”
“Perfectly respectable,” Liam said. “Which brings us to husband number five.”
“A lawyer. Specializes in medical malpractice. Does very well indeed. They’ve been married almost fifteen years now.”
“So, he’s a keeper, is he?”
“Well, that remains to be seen.”
“Any children?”
“No. Judith never wanted kids.”
“Unlike you,” Liam stated more than asked.
“Unlike me.”
“So, how many times have you been married?”
Marcy took a deep breath, exhaled slowly. “Only once.”
Liam cocked his head to one side, clearly intrigued. “So … widowed, divorced, happily married?”
“Separated,” Marcy said. “My divorce should be final in another month or so.”
“And how do you feel about that?”
“How am I supposed to feel?” Marcy could hear the sudden testiness in her voice.
“Sorry, I think that was definitely none of my business.”
/> Marcy took a long sip of her Irish coffee, not because she wanted more but because it gave her time to think. “No, it’s all right. It’s just that I haven’t really talked about it with anybody.”
“Do you want to talk about it now?”
“No,” she said. Then, “Maybe.” Then again, “Actually yes, I think I do.”
Liam looked at her expectantly.
“There’s really nothing to say,” Marcy told him after a pause. “I mean, what do you say? My husband left me for another woman. It’s such a cliché.” She took another deep breath, returned the mug of Irish coffee to her lips, then lowered it again immediately. “You asked me how I feel. I’ll tell you. I’m angry. No, I’m furious. I feel betrayed. I feel abandoned. I feel embarrassed. I mean, he left me for one of the golf pros at our country club. They haven’t had a scandal like this in years. And all my friends …” She laughed, a sharp bark that scratched at the air. “My friends. What friends? We didn’t really have that many friends to begin with, and then after what happened with Devon …” She broke off. “I can’t really blame them. It’s hard for people after a tragedy. They don’t know what to say. They don’t know what to do. So instead of saying or doing the wrong thing, they don’t say or do anything. And then pretty soon they stop calling and coming around. And then it’s just the two of you. And you don’t know what to say to each other either because everything you say is a potential land mine waiting to be stepped on, and it makes it hard, it makes it really hard, for a marriage to survive. Not that we didn’t have problems before.” Marcy continued, unable to stem the flow of words that poured from her mouth like water from a tap. “We’d been having problems for a few years, ever since it became obvious that Devon, that Devon, that Devon …” Her voice stuck on her daughter’s name, as if it were a broken record.
“Tell me about your daughter,” Liam said softly.
Marcy hesitated, trying to decide what facts to leave in and which ones to leave out. She didn’t want to violate what little remained of her daughter’s privacy. Unlike Judith, Devon had never willingly put herself out there for public consumption. She’d kept everything to herself, which had only contributed to her problems.
“My daughter is bipolar,” Marcy began, the words somersaulting from her mouth in a series of reluctant syllables. “Do you know what that is?”
“Is it the same thing as schizophrenia?”
“No. Devon doesn’t hear voices. She’s not paranoid. She just has a chemical imbalance.” She continued, trying to remember the exact words the doctor had used to describe the condition, then giving up in frustration. “It used to be known as manic depression.”
“One minute you’re happy, the next you’re bawlin’ your eyes out,” Liam said.
“I guess that about sums it up, yes.”
He apologized immediately. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to sound glib.”
Marcy dismissed his apology with a shake of her head. “It tends to run in families. My mother had it as well. She committed suicide when I was fifteen.”
If Liam was shocked, he didn’t let on. “Is that the reason your sister opted not to have any children of her own?”
“She tried to talk me out of having any. She said I’d always be waiting, watching for signs. She was right.”
“When did you first know?”
“Soon after she turned seventeen.” Marcy thought back to that awful night when she’d found Devon in the kitchen, a broken flower vase at her feet, handfuls of salt at her mouth. She could see her daughter as clearly as if it were yesterday. “I’d suspected it for a while,” she admitted. “Her moods were getting blacker. Her behavior was becoming increasingly erratic. There were times she’d talk so fast I could barely understand what she was saying. But after this one incident, I couldn’t deny it any longer.”
“What did you do?”
“Not enough. Oh, I took her to the doctor, got her started on medication and therapy, tried to comfort her as best I could.…”
“Nothing helped?”
“She didn’t like the way the drugs made her feel.” Like doing the butterfly stroke through a vat of molasses, her mother had said. “She hated her therapist.” Marcy paused, swallowing the catch that was forming in her throat. “She hated me even more.”
“I’m sure she didn’t hate you.”
“How can you not hate someone who looks you right in the eye and still doesn’t see you?”
“I think you’re being very hard on yourself.”
“I lied to her, day in and day out.”
“You lied to her? How?”
“I told her everything would be okay. I told her if she’d just cooperate and take her medication, then everything would work out, that she just had to be patient, give the haloperidol a chance.…”
“Which is what anyone in your situation would have told her.”
“No, you don’t understand.” Tears began falling the length of Marcy’s cheeks, a few sliding between her lips to rest against her tongue. “I had no patience for any of it, for the crying jags and the craziness, for the guys she’d bring home or the trouble she’d get into. You’d have thought that after everything I went through with my mother, it would have made me more understanding. But the exact opposite was true. I didn’t have the stomach for any of it. And I felt so guilty and helpless and angry all the time. I hated her for making me have to go through it all again.”
“What kind of trouble?” Liam asked.
What kind of mother hates her own child? Marcy was thinking. “What?”
“You said Devon got into trouble. What kind of trouble?” he repeated.
“There were a few incidents.” Marcy sighed with the memory. “One day she got into a fight with a neighbor who’d complained she was playing her radio too loud in the backyard. Devon swore at her and threw her shoe at her, just missed her head. And then she stole an expensive bracelet from one of her friends’ mothers, and the woman threatened to go to the police. Another time she got involved with this guy I tried to tell her was trouble.…”
“But she wouldn’t listen.”
“And Peter was no help. He didn’t know what to do or how to cope. Devon had always been a daddy’s girl, and now here she was, his little angel, this child who’d worshipped him her entire life, and he couldn’t get through to her. He couldn’t help her. It made him feel so impotent. Which I guess explains Sarah. The other woman,” Marcy clarified, and Liam nodded, as if no explanation had been necessary. “Anyway, he blamed me. He said he didn’t, but I know he did. And he was right. It was my fault.”
“How do you figure that?”
Marcy shrugged. “They were my genes.”
There’s no mental illness on my side of the family, she remembered Peter saying, although he’d apologized later.
Marcy told Liam the story of Devon’s “accident,” how she’d faked her own death and disappeared.
“And you thought she was dead until—”
“I never believed she was dead. Not really,” Marcy insisted. “And then I saw her walk by your pub.”
It was Liam’s turn to shake his head. “And I thought you were a cop.”
“What?”
“When you came back to Grogan’s, when you showed me her picture and asked if I recognized her, I assumed you were some sort of copper or private investigator. Even after you told me she was your daughter, I didn’t really believe you. I just assumed Audrey’s past had caught up with her.”
“Her past?”
“Well, like I said, I’ve only talked to her a few times. I don’t know that much about her. But I’ve heard rumors. You know.”
“I don’t know. Tell me.”
“Just that she’d been in some sort of trouble in London and that she’d come to Ireland to get away. Stuff like that. Nothing concrete. Like I said, just rumors. So when you showed up, askin’ about her, I assumed you were with Scotland Yard or Interpol.”
“And now?”
“Now I know you’
re tellin’ me the truth.” He smiled, reached across the table for her hand. “Nobody makes up a story like that.”
Marcy smiled. “My husband thinks I do. He thinks I’m crazy.”
“Soon-to-be-ex-husband,” Liam corrected, “and I think he’s crazy, letting a woman like you get away.”
Marcy slowly slipped her hand away from his, placed it in her lap. “You should be careful when you say things like that. They could be taken the wrong way.”
Liam’s green eyes sparkled playfully. “And what way would that be?”
“Some women might think you were coming on to them.”
“And what do you think?”
“I think you’re just being kind.”
He laughed. “First time I’ve ever been accused of that.”
“Are you coming on to me?” Marcy asked, amazed she was actually asking the question out loud.
“Don’t know. Haven’t quite made up my mind.”
Marcy smiled and shook her head. “How old are you, Liam?”
“Thirty-four on my next birthday.”
“I’m fifty.”
“Fifty’s not old.”
“It’s not thirty-four.”
“It’s just a number. And like I said, I’ve never gone much for girls my own age. Lost my virginity when I was twelve to a sixteen-year-old hussy. I’ve had a thing for older women ever since.”
Marcy rubbed her head to keep it from spinning. Surely she was imagining this entire conversation. Maybe she had a concussion after all.
“What are you thinking?” Liam asked.
“I’m thinking that for twenty-five years I had sex with only one man. My husband,” Marcy told him honestly, deciding what the hell, there was no point in being anything else. “And to be truthful, in the last few years, we hardly had sex at all. At least, I hardly had sex. As it turned out, he was having plenty. But anyway, that doesn’t really matter. What matters is that in all those years, no other man expressed the least interest in me, and now I’m fifty years old and I’m having hot flashes and my hair’s a mess.…”
“Your hair is gorgeous.”
“And I come to Ireland,” Marcy continued, ignoring his interruption, “and suddenly, I’m like this femme fatale. I’ve got guys falling all over me. And I don’t know, maybe it’s something they put in the beer over here, or maybe I’m just putting out these vibes of not-so-quiet desperation.…”