The Prize

by Jill Bialosky

  “It could be worse. She’s a good kid.”

  “I know she’s good.” Holly pressed her lips tightly in thought. A pulsing vein of tension appeared on her pale forehead. “I miss her.”

  She cut a piece of chicken and pushed it to the side of her plate. She looked up and her eyes landed on the drapes in the dining room.

  “I’d like to change the window treatments. Look how they’ve faded. And we still haven’t done anything about those trees,” she said, in a tired voice. “Look. Out the window.” Scrawny pines framed the garden bed in front of the house. The needles at the bottom were eaten away by deer and Holly had been on him to take them down. “I can’t stand to see them like that,” she added, and lowered her eyes. Then, perking up slightly, she said, “How was London?”

  He wished he could turn back the clock and erase it all. What if Holly found out? He couldn’t decide which bothered him more: the idea that she’d find out he’d been with Julia, or that she’d find out he’d lost Agnes.

  “The usual carnival. Meetings with artists and curators. At one of the presentations, a performance poet wound through the audience unraveling a piece of yarn. Something about lost connection,” he moaned.

  He stood and offered to clean up the dishes. He reassured her about their daughter. “Don’t worry about Annabel. She’ll come back to us.”

  He kissed her on the forehead and told her he had missed her and was glad to be home. “I’m just not the same man without you two.”

  She raised her head and glanced at him.

  “Maybe you could come with me on my next trip to Europe. We could take Annabel too.”

  “Really?” Holly softened and slipped her hand underneath his sweater and hugged him and he took her in. “That would be fun. I missed you, too.”

  He wanted to bury his head in her shoulder and hold her, but instead she broke away and moved into the kitchen.

  “Why do you do that?” he asked.

  “Do what?”

  “Move away.”

  “I’m putting the dishes in the sink,” she said and went to the sink and turned on the faucet.

  “No, really,” he said.

  “Every time you want to be close you assume I do. It doesn’t work that way.”

  “You never want to be close,” Edward said.

  “It’s you that’s always running away,” Holly said, sharply.

  He stopped to think about she said, watching as she loaded the dishwasher. He started to say something and stopped himself. “I’ll do the dishes,” he offered again, not wanting to start something. “You look tired.”

  He motioned her into the den. The temperature had dropped. The moon cast a shadow on the lawn. Snow started falling, millions of snowflakes like a swirl of fallen stars in the dark. Heat rose in a blast from the furnace. He listened to the little pings of the radiator and the moans and creaks in the wood. Holly was the heart of their house, like the blue pilot light in the furnace providing warmth and sustenance, but he felt her fading away from him. He made out the snowflakes still falling steadily onto a tree limb and felt a weight in his chest. And then he heard the limb bend and crack. He turned away.

  Before the dishes, he went out to the garage—Holly would think he was taking out the trash—and lit a cigarette and took into his lungs the harsh, punishing smoke. The cool air overtook him for a moment. He thought of Julia, her image already drifting into memory so that he could not make out her features, only the vague outlines of her. He pictured her turned on her side in her hotel bed among the soft blankets and pillows where he had last seen her and unease filled him again.

  THE HAND ON their bedroom clock swept slowly past midnight. Annabel missed curfew.

  “Where is she?” Edward said. He got up and paced, looking out the window every time he saw headlights brighten the road. He feared an accident, or something else. He pictured Dan Wasserman. “Why did you say she could ride with that Wasserman kid? He’s two years older than her.”

  “Because she wanted to. Are you blaming me for the fact that she isn’t home?”

  “I just wondered why you let her.”

  “So you are blaming me,” Holly said.

  The key turned in the lock at two in the morning. Holly reached for the remote and muted the sound of the TV. Edward closed his eyes with relief. Annabel stumbled up the stairs.

  “Let me see you?” Holly trailed her into her bedroom and Edward followed. “Annabel, You’ve been drinking.” Holly touched her shoulder.

  “Hey. What the hell, Mom.”

  “Let me see you,” Edward said. Annabel’s face was pale and sweaty and the pupils in her eyes were big and unable to focus. Her shirt had crept up, exposing a sliver of her waist, and slipped off her shoulder to reveal a pink bra strap. He thought about Dan Wasserman again.

  “Your mother’s right. You’re drunk.”

  “I’m not, Daddy.”

  “Edward,” Holly said. “Calm down.”

  “You’re telling me to calm down? Look at her.” His heart was racing.

  “Daddy, I wasn’t drinking,” Annabel slurred.

  “The hell you weren’t. Look at you. You can’t stand up straight.”

  Annabel stumbled and reached for the bedpost. She faltered again.

  He imagined his daughter in a dark basement or the backseat of a car, Dan Wasserman on top of her. “Stop lying.” He instinctively reached out his hand and then he raised it in midair.

  “Edward!” Holly exclaimed and pulled him back. “Don’t.”

  Annabel burst into tears and fell into her mother’s arms.

  “Annabel. At the party—did anyone hurt you?”

  “No one hurt me, Dad.” She stared through him as if he were transparent. Then she turned to her mother. “I . . . only . . . had . . . a . . . few beers . . . And then we did some shots of tequila. All my friends drink. Everyone does.” She wiped her tears with her sleeve. “What am I supposed to do? Not go out with my friends? Stay at home every night with you two?” Her makeup smeared, leaving black marks around her eyes.

  “You’re only fifteen,” Holly said. “And what’s wrong with staying home with us?”

  “Are you joking? I’m always disappointing you.”

  “Disappointing us?” Holly said.

  “I don’t even want to be here. Dad sleeps upstairs. I know what’s going on.” Tears streamed down her cheeks. She rubbed them with the bottom of her shirt.

  Heat rose into his face. He was trembling.

  “I’m sorry, Annabel.”

  Annabel broke out of Holly’s arms. “I feel dizzy. I don’t feel so good.” She ran to the toilet and vomited.

  “Are you okay?” Holly followed. Edward sat on Annabel’s bed, still trembling.

  Annabel skulked back into the room, wiping her face with a damp washcloth. “I don’t feel so good.”

  “Come here.” Edward patted the bed next to him. He put his arm around her. “Your mother and I are fine,” he said, into her hair. “I have trouble sleeping sometimes, that’s all.”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I said that. It’s just, you know, I’m out with my friends. It’s fun. Don’t you remember when you were my age?”

  Of course he remembered. He’d spent most of his senior year getting high and trying to feel up Karen Fairmont. His daughter was changing. The thrill of life was inside her. Things were different now. His daughter could see things in him he might not be aware of. He couldn’t expect the same kind of affection or adoration from her that she’d given freely when she was little. He couldn’t hide from her. Or expect her to be different than other teenagers. He took her in his arms again.

  “We don’t want you to come home in this condition.” He brushed the hair away from her forehead. “We worry about you. You have to make good decisions.”

  “I will, Daddy. I promise.” She looked up at her mother. “Mom, will you take me to the stables tomorrow?” she said in her little-girl voice. “I want to see Rocket.”

&n
bsp; “I’ll take you tomorrow.” Holly said. “Do you need a glass of water? I’ll get some Tylenol.”

  Annabel nodded. She took off her boots and, still in her clothes, crawled underneath the covers. “I’m sorry,” she said again, when Holly came back into the room with the water and Tylenol. She sat up to take the tablets and then lay back down.

  “Love you guys,” Annabel whispered.

  “Love you too,” they both said.

  “What was that all about?” Holly said, once they were alone in their bedroom. “You can’t lose control like that. No matter what she does.”

  “I know,” he said, shaking his head. “Seeing her that way . . . I don’t know what happened.”

  “I don’t know what’s wrong with you.”

  “I’m just tired from all the traveling.”

  “Can you take some time away?”

  “Maybe. Soon,” he said.

  “I’m afraid for her sometimes too,” Holly said, touching his shoulder. “Something isn’t right.”

  “Remember when you were her age? We have to steel ourselves and ride it out. It’s called being a teenager.”

  “That’s not what I meant.” Holly looked at the clock. She turned on her side, her cold toes grazing his leg, and within minutes she seemed to be asleep.

  Uncomfortable, he lay on his back and stared at the ceiling, listening to the rain tap on the roof. Had Annabel intuited something different about him? Did Holly know? He thought about his own parents and their troubled marriage, and how he had often felt that his role was to make them happy to compensate. The thought made him want to protect his daughter. He’d been absorbed in the gallery, in Agnes, and Julia. His dishonor was spilling into all of them. He looked at the clock again. Three in the morning. After an hour or two he crawled out of bed and tiptoed upstairs to his study. As he fell asleep the sun was rising.

  Annabel came downstairs close to noon, her hair pulled back in a ponytail, wearing a long nightshirt. She looked pale. Holly and Edward were reading the paper and drinking coffee in the kitchen, waiting for her to get up before starting their ritual of Sunday brunch.

  “Can I get you a margarita?” Edward said.

  “Thanks, Dad.” Annabel rolled her eyes and then slumped down in a chair.

  He rose to make them eggs. He turned on the grill and put in a slab of butter and the skillet sizzled and then he cracked open the eggs and watched them spread into the pan. He turned his head around to look at his wife and daughter.

  AFTER BRUNCH HE went upstairs to shower and change. One of his artists, Jake Carter, was in town. He dreaded setting foot in the gallery now that Agnes had left him and Savan had stepped in. He’d have to keep his head down, grin and bear it, and avoid Savan at all costs. After his shower, he dressed and grabbed his briefcase and reluctantly proceeded outside to his car. Holly was in the garden with a large shovel in her hand. She’d hacked down the half-eaten dried-out pine trees; they were stacked in a pile like a heap of dead bodies. She wore a blue bandanna tied around her head, gardening gloves, and jeans, her cheeks and the tip of her nose red from the cold.

  “Jesus, Holly. What are you doing?”

  “I couldn’t bear seeing them anymore. We didn’t take care of them. We should have . . .” Her face looked tense.

  “Holly, it’s the deer.” The early afternoon sun flooded the frozen lawn and then a cloud passed over the sun and the garden darkened. “I’ll see you tonight. I’m late for the train.” He kissed her on the cheek. “Annabel’s fine. Everything will be,” he said, his betrayal lurking like an outsider at the edge of the lawn. The pebbles from the driveway shifted underneath his feet as he walked to his car.

  “Edward,” Holly called out.

  He peered back.

  “I don’t want you sleeping in your study anymore. We have to be different.” She gazed toward the empty spokes of the hydrangeas in the garden, bare and exposed, and then back at him with a look that made his heart catch.

  3 NEW YORK

  HE SAT UNCOMFORTABLY in the leather chair across from Clara, unable to meet her eyes. Three weeks had passed since London. He hadn’t spoken to Julia since the airport, after he landed in New York. He didn’t know what he wanted or didn’t want to happen between them and was relieved that Julia was in Vienna working on a commission. His mind darted like a skee ball from Julia, to Agnes, and then to his wife and daughter.

  “What is it?” Clara said. “Where are you?”

  He looked into Clara’s clear eyes behind wire rims and told her about Tess.

  He felt as if he couldn’t breathe and loosened his collar and broke down. He wasn’t a man who cried often.

  “Do you think your wife would love you any less if you told her what you’ve suffered?”

  “I’m not sure. We were young. Tess and me.”

  “Of course you were,” Clara said.

  He broke again. Clara leaned in closer. He looked down at the kilim rug.

  “You’re not responsible for Tess’s death,” she said, her glasses slipping to the end of her nose. “You don’t have that power. No one does. If anyone is at fault it was the driver.”

  “You say that. And of course it’s the rational thing to say. But if things had been different between us she wouldn’t have gone home to Michigan.”

  “So you can control how you’re supposed to feel toward someone? Not possible. Let me ask you.” She stared at him without shifting her eyes. “Are you doing something now that you don’t want Holly to know about?”

  He wanted to tell her about Julia. He thought about it for a few moments, but he didn’t know what to say or how to put it into words. He’d already said too much. He scanned the faded spines of books by philosophers and psychoanalysts on the bookshelf and wondered what they thought about patients who hid from even their therapists. He was a coward. Maybe all men at the heart were cowards.

  He observed other couples they knew in the neighborhood and wondered how much they shared with each other. He preferred keeping certain things about himself private. He couldn’t tell Holly everything about himself. He had to keep his equilibrium, to not appear weak in her eyes.

  “My parents kept things from each other,” he said, looking at the hanging spider plant on her window, its long, spearlike leaves dangling over the pot.

  “Tell me about it,” Clara offered.

  “It’s not something I can put words to.”

  “Do you know you’re angry? I’m telling you this because I think it might help you. Not to scare you. To recognize that your suffering is real.”

  “Did you think I didn’t know it was real?” He tempered an urge to get up from his chair and pull the dead tendrils from the spider plant’s head of sprawling hair.

  “Let’s think about that for our next session,” Clara said, looking at the clock placed strategically on a shelf above his head.

  HE WALKED FROM Clara’s office back to the gallery and told himself to end things with Julia. His family was too precious to risk. Remarkably, when he opened the door to the gallery she was there, sitting in the reception area waiting for him.

  “I hope this is okay,” she said, rising, when he greeted her. “I was in the neighborhood. I just got back.”

  “It’s fine,” he said and led her into his office and closed the door and then turned the blinds. They stood close, looking for a moment long and deep. Julia moved toward him.

  “Your tie’s crooked,” she said, and adjusted it for him. Tears were in her eyes.

  “What’s wrong? What’s happened?”

  She looked shaken and began to talk, something about needing to see him to see whether what actually happened, happened, and whether she had imagined the feeling because she wanted to feel that way again, to feel, and yes, in seeing him she knew it had happened and she apologized for coming without calling because if she called she wondered if she would come at all.

  He gazed at her and she leaned forward and suddenly they were kissing. He could not trust his emoti
ons from one moment to the next. It scared him to lose sight of himself. They remained close, their breaths mingled, hardly any room between their bodies.

  “Since London I can’t stop thinking about you. I know it’s wrong, but I thought if we saw each other maybe it would stop. Maybe I wouldn’t feel it so intensely.”

  He kissed her again, pressing her against the door of his office, wanting her to feel his excitement. The tension of the weeks since he’d been back seemed to fall off of him. They clung to each other and kissed again, his hand on the bare skin between her skirt and blouse, her hands reaching to touch his back and buttocks, her body pressing against him.

  His intercom buzzed and, out of breath, they came apart. Georgia said his four o’clock was here. He gazed at Julia, her face flushed, hair out of place, and clothes ruffled and a little undone. It’s all almost like the first time, the very first time, and I’m a man in my forties. He watched her pulling her blouse down where it had crept up, exposing the full shape of her breasts, and walked toward her again and put his face in her neck.

  “I shouldn’t have come?” Julia said, in a question. “Is that what you’re thinking?”

  “No, I’m glad you did.”

  “I came to say we shouldn’t see each other. That was in my head.”

  “We’ll figure it out,” he said, because he couldn’t lose her.

  “I should go now. I need to get back to the studio.”

  “We’ll talk when our heads are clear,” he said and then took a drink of water from the glass on his desk. He offered the glass to her and she drank a long sip and he watched the way the water drops remained on her lips. She moved toward him and straightened his tie again and before he took her to the reception area, he kissed the drops from her mouth.

  4 CONNECTICUT

  SLOWLY SHE CAME into focus. In the dream he sank into deep pleasure as if it were a warm pool. It had been twenty years since he’d come home to Tess sitting at the breakfast table with her tort law book and notes spread out on the table. She looked bright and beautiful with that glint of irony in her eye and a ponytail on top of her head, wearing her short nylon running shorts and Amherst T-shirt. Just as he relaxed into the pleasure and anticipation of seeing her—it occurred in slow motion, the two of them locking eyes and being slowly drawn together—she faded into the distance.