Good Intentions

by Joy Fielding

  “Keep walking,” Lynn told her.

  Renee continued slowly stepping around the rows of rusted vaults, terrified as she inched her way around each one that she would find her sister sprawled on the ground, bleeding her life away into the dull earth. How could she have said those things to her? And what was she going to say to her now?

  “Renee …” Lynn’s hand on Renee’s elbow stopped her where she stood. Renee looked over at Lynn, then followed the direction of her gaze.

  Kathryn was sitting beneath a giant gumbo-limbo tree, her head down, her back pressed against the tree’s smooth silver bark, her legs splayed haphazardly out in front of her. For a minute, it was impossible to tell whether the still figure was alive or dead. Renee clutched Lynn’s hand. The two women inched forward. The figure under the tree moved. Kathryn raised her head.

  “Please go away,” she said, her words clearly audible despite the lowness of her voice.

  “Kathryn …”

  “No!” Kathryn lifted the gun, which had been resting in her lap, and pressed it against her temple. “Go away.”

  “Please don’t do this, Kathy.”

  Kathryn’s eyes moved suspiciously from her sister to the woman standing beside her, clearly nonplussed by the appearance of this stranger. “Who are you?”

  Lynn stepped forward, the moon catching the side of her face, highlighting her soft brown hair. “It’s Lynn Schuster,” she said, then: “Actually it was Lynn Keaton. We went to school together. I don’t know if you remember.”

  “I remember. Hell of place for a high school reunion.”

  “Why don’t we go someplace else.”

  “This is the end of the line.”

  “I think we could find somewhere better, somewhere we can talk.”

  “I don’t want to talk.”

  “Please, Kathy,” Renee urged, finding her voice. “Let us help you.”

  “I don’t want your help. I don’t deserve your help.” Kathryn looked back at Lynn. “Did she tell you what I did?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Renee said. Oh, please God, don’t say it, she was thinking. Not out loud. Don’t say it.

  “What do you mean, it doesn’t matter? I slept with your husband. How can you say that doesn’t matter?”

  Renee found herself looking to Lynn for her reaction, but if Lynn felt anything—disgust, alarm, surprise—none of it showed in her face. “Honestly, Kathy,” Renee cried, “it doesn’t matter. It’s not important.”

  “What are you talking about? How can you say it’s not important? Philip is your whole life.”

  “No!” Why was she denying it? Philip was her whole life. Hadn’t she spent the past six years making him her whole life?

  “Yes, he is. Just like Arnie was my whole life. I deserve to die,” she said, waving the gun recklessly, as if she were unaware of its existence.

  “You don’t,” Lynn told her steadily.

  “You never knew my husband, did you, Lynn?”

  Lynn shook her head.

  “No, I didn’t think so. I met him just after we graduated from high school. He was a lot older than I was. He was down here on vacation. What can I say? He swept me off my feet.” She laughed, temporarily lost in the memory. “We got married, moved to New York. We were married over twenty years. He took care of me. He did everything for me. We were always together. Just like our mother and father,” she said, glancing back at Renee. “And then one night, he got up from the dinner table—I’d made this spicy meat loaf; I shouldn’t have—and he keeled over, dead.”

  “Kathryn,” Renee started, “how many times can you go over the same thing? It wasn’t your fault.”

  Kathryn continued as if no one had spoken. “He got up from the dinner table and he keeled over, and he was dead. Just like that. And I looked at him lying there on the floor and I saw my whole world collapse. He’d looked after me for twenty years and suddenly I was alone. I felt frightened and desperate and angry.”

  “That’s only natural.”

  “And I felt”—she looked around as if searching for a specific word— “relief.” She said it, then gasped for air, her eyes darting between her sister and her former high school classmate, her hands lifting to the sides of her head, the gun simply another appendage, like an extra finger. Her voice became a dull monotone. “I saw him lying there and I felt … free. All those years of being slowly smothered to death … Oh God! Arnie loved me. He spent his life taking care of me. And I loved him. I really did.”

  “I know you did,” Renee assured her, creeping closer.

  “Then why did I feel that way? Why, when Arnie died, did I suddenly feel as if I’d gotten my own life back? As if I’d been given a second chance?”

  “It’s not unnatural to feel those things,” Renee heard Lynn say as she crept still closer. “You were in a state of shock. All kinds of things go through your mind. Things you can’t control.”

  “Not things like that.”

  “Exactly that,” Lynn told her. “When my mother died, I felt the same anger, the same desperation and isolation. And relief. And not just relief because her suffering was over, because she hadn’t really suffered, or at least she hadn’t known she was suffering. It was my father and I who suffered the most during those last few years. I watched my beautiful mother turn into a virtual stranger. She became a willful child, and then not even a child. Something barely human. She didn’t know who I was. She didn’t know who she was. She kept asking the same pointless, dumb questions. I spent those last few years answering those same stupid questions over and over again, repeating the same things until I wanted to scream.”

  Renee heard the pain in Lynn’s voice, saw her eyes fill with tears. “I was ashamed of her. I knew she couldn’t help it. I knew it was something beyond her control. But I was still ashamed of her. I couldn’t wait for her to die so it would be over and I could get on with my life. And I loved her! I loved her, but I was glad she was dead. Does that make me a bad person?”

  “But you were strong,” Kathryn protested. “Stronger than I am. You made something of your life. You didn’t destroy anyone else’s.”

  “Neither did you.” Lynn took a deep breath, not sure whether or not she should continue, then plunged ahead. “If Renee has problems in her marriage, then they were there long before you came along.” Both women looked to Renee for confirmation.

  Renee nodded. “Let me help you, Kathy,” she pleaded gently. “Please let me help you. Don’t block me out. You need me. I need you.”

  “Why? So I can hurt you some more?” Kathryn looked from her sister to Lynn, her voice remarkably steady in light of what she was saying. “I slept with her husband, you know.”

  Lynn shrugged. “I just got out of bed with the husband of the woman my husband left me for.” She watched Kathryn’s eyes widen.

  “Say that again,” Kathryn said, and almost smiled.

  “If you want the sordid details, you’ll have to put down that gun and come with us. We make quite a pair. I’d say we have a lot to talk about.”

  The gun wavered in Kathryn’s hand. “I never meant to hurt you,” she cried, looking at her sister. “Please believe me. I never meant for it to happen. I wouldn’t hurt you for the world. I love you.”

  Renee rushed to her sister’s side and took her in her arms, feeling the gun drop to the ground with a sickening thud. She sensed Lynn at their side, pulling the weapon out of reach. She heard the sound of sirens, the dull echo of doors slamming, voices approaching, people running. Renee hugged her sister tighter to her chest and rocked her in her arms as she had when they were children. “I love you too,” she whispered.

  “Well? She’s all right, I take it,” Philip said as Renee walked through the front door of their apartment.

  “She will be,” Renee said flatly, brushing past him into the kitchen and pouring herself a tall glass of cold water. She drank it in one noisy gulp, then poured herself another. “The police questioned her, took her to the hospital. They ch
ecked her over pretty thoroughly there.”

  “Is that where she is now?”

  “No. She’s at Lynn’s.” He looked puzzled. “Lynn is a friend of mine.” The word “friend” seemed to confuse him, so she clarified it further, put it into a word she thought he could understand. “A client.” Renee stared at her husband with something approaching disbelief. “Did you really expect me to bring her back here?”

  “I never know what to expect with you, Renee.” His voice was ice cold, colder than the water she was drinking. Renee put the glass in the sink and walked into the living room, Philip right behind her. “First, Debbie and I come home to find out we’re the talk of the building. The doorman can’t wait to give us the news. ‘Frantic phone calls,’ he says. ‘The police. Your sister is missing. She has a gun. She’s going to kill herself.’ We come upstairs. The place looks like it’s been ransacked. Then Debbie tells me the two of you had a terrible fight earlier in the afternoon.”

  Renee approached the window and stared at the black ocean below. “How could you do it, Philip?” she asked quietly, all emotions drained. “How could you sleep with my sister? Not even rats foul their own nests.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “My sister tried to kill herself tonight. She put a loaded gun to her temple and almost pulled the trigger.”

  “And you blame me?”

  “Why on earth would I blame you?”

  “I guess it’s only natural,” he said, as if he were being generous. “It’s been one hell of a night for you. You’re angry. You’re confused. You’re upset. You’re very tired. You look awful. It’s only natural for you to take it out on the person closest to you.”

  “And who would that be?”

  “Look, it’s almost two o’clock in the morning. I suggest we get some sleep. You’ll see things clearer in the morning.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “Renee, you know what happens when you’re tired. You say things you end up regretting. I’m urging you not to put our relationship in jeopardy because of a few ill-chosen words.”

  Renee stared at the man to whom she had been married for the past six years. As he always did when backed into a corner, he was putting their relationship on the line. Their whole marriage, he was telling her, could be jeopardized by what she said next.

  Renee played back the six years of her marriage from the beginning, as if they had been recorded on videotape, fast-forwarding her life, trying to find the good spots, except that when she tried to stop the tape, to slow down for the good times, she found they had been too fleeting. There was nothing to slow down for. She stared at Philip. This was the man she had built her life around, the man she had convinced herself she couldn’t live without.

  Even now, after everything he had done, the thought that he might walk out on her sent her arm reaching for the side of the sofa. Why had she come back? Did she really think there might be something he could say that would change the way things were? She steadied herself and stared deep into his eyes. “You bastard,” she said calmly.

  “All right, Renee,” he said, “if this is going to degenerate into name calling …” He started to leave the room.

  “Don’t you dare walk out on me.”

  “I certainly won’t stay here and be abused.”

  “You’ll stay in this room until I’m finished.”

  “I’d say you’re finished now.”

  “Oh no, I’m just starting.”

  “Renee, as far as I’m concerned, this discussion is over. You’re tired; you’re upset. With good reason. I’m not trying to pretend that you don’t have reasons …”

  “That’s very kind of you.”

  “But you’ll escalate what’s happened out of all proportion. You’ll say things you’ll regret in the morning. I know you, Renee. I know your pattern. You’ll say things you’ll wish you hadn’t come daylight when it’ll be too late to take them back, when the damage will have already been done. I don’t want that to happen. I won’t stand here and let you destroy our relationship.”

  “Me? You won’t stand here and let me destroy our relationship?”

  “I won’t let you erase the memory of the past six years, of what we’ve meant to each other …”

  She almost laughed. “I didn’t know I had that kind of power.”

  “You have that kind of anger.”

  “And I shouldn’t?”

  “It’s not healthy.”

  “So what you’re saying is that whatever happens tonight is my responsibility.”

  “Yes, it will be, if you go any farther.”

  “Good,” Renee said evenly. “It’s about time I assumed some responsibility for my life, wouldn’t you say?”

  “I’d say it’s time you got some sleep. See how you feel in the morning.” Again he turned, about to leave.

  “Don’t you take another step,” she called after him, her voice rising.

  “Lower your voice.” He indicated Debbie’s room with his eyes.

  “You’ll stay here in this room until I’ve finished what I have to say. I warn you, if you try to leave, I’ll follow you. I’ll follow you from room to room, and if you leave this apartment, I’ll follow you down the hall and into the lobby. Past the doorman. That’ll give him something else to talk about. I’ll even follow you into the street. I’ll chase your car, if I have to. Naked, if I have to.” The reference to his first wife was deliberate and could not be missed. For the first time, Renee understood the utter desperation that could drive a woman to such an act.

  Philip turned to her and smiled derisively. “That would be a sight,” he said cruelly, walking slowly back into the center of the room. “Go ahead, Renee. The thought of you running naked into the night screaming is enough to daunt any man. Say what you have to say. Wipe out all that stands in your way. To hell with the consequences.”

  “To hell with you!” Renee shot back. “It wasn’t bad enough that you had to sleep with every Alicia Henderson who crossed your path. That wasn’t enough for you. You had to sleep with my sister!”

  “All right, so I slept with your sister! It was nothing. It didn’t mean anything.”

  “Oh God.”

  “Happy now that I said it? Make you feel better?”

  Renee collapsed onto the sofa. “How could you? How could you do that to me? To her? You knew how fragile she was.”

  “Your sister was not the innocent victim you make her out to be.”

  “My sister turned to you for help. Her husband was dead. She felt guilty and lonely and confused. She didn’t know which end was up.”

  “You underestimate her. She knew exactly which end was up. She knew exactly what she was doing.”

  “My sister almost killed herself tonight, and you have the nerve to tell me that she knew what she was doing. Do you feel no responsibility at all for what happened?”

  “I won’t accept the blame for your sister’s actions.”

  “I don’t care whether you accept it or not,” Renee shouted. “What kind of doctor are you? What kind of person are you?”

  “What’s going on?” Debbie asked, appearing in the doorway, wiping the sleep out of her eyes. “What’s all the yelling about? Did you find Kathryn?”

  Renee stared at the innocent-looking face of the stepdaughter she had tried for six years to befriend, recalling Debbie’s earlier questions. “How much more are you going to stand for?” she had demanded. “Why don’t you just tell him to go to hell? Why don’t you tell me to go to hell?”

  Suddenly Renee smiled. “Go to hell,” she said.

  “Renee, for Christ’s sake,” Philip started.

  “Get back into your room, Debbie, and stay there,” Renee told the surprised girl.

  Debbie automatically took several steps back. Philip’s eyes moved from his wife to his daughter, slowly, carefully, as if he was afraid to make any sudden moves. “Go back to your room, Debbie,” Philip told her. “Kathryn is all right. Renee’s just a bit upset.”<
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  “A bit …” Debbie’s voice was incredulous.

  “Go to your room, Debbie,” Philip instructed forcefully.

  “What’d I do?” Debbie asked, closing her bedroom door behind her.

  “Don’t ever talk to my daughter that way again,” Philip warned.

  “Don’t tell me what to do.”

  “You want to talk to me that way, that’s between us, but I won’t tolerate your talking to Debbie that way.”

  “You won’t have to.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means I’m leaving.” Renee heard the words escape her mouth before she realized she had even been thinking them. Surely they were too awful to think about. Surely she hadn’t said them.

  “You don’t mean that.”

  “You sleep with half the women in this town, including my sister, and I’m just supposed to ignore it because it doesn’t mean anything. You have spent six years undermining my success and my self-confidence and I’m supposed to sit here like a good little girl and thank you for it. I have no friends and no relationship with my partners, and I’m supposed to be thankful because you’ve chosen to stay with me. I’ve eaten myself into emotional oblivion, as your darling daughter would say, and I’m supposed to keep eating my chocolates and growing fat, and actually feel grateful for my own demise.” Renee looked at her husband, clearly astonished at what she was saying. Then she ran from the room.

  “Renee, where are you going? You know none of that is true. You just acknowledged that those affairs meant nothing to me.”

  “What does mean anything to you?” Renee asked, running into the kitchen. “Does anything?”

  “You do,” he said simply.

  “Bullshit!”

  Renee tore open the refrigerator door, rummaging through the bottom shelf. She quickly located the two large bags of miniature chocolate bars at the back of the fridge, and carried them to the sink, tearing open the first bag and watching the chocolate bars tumble one by one into the garburator. Then she turned on the water and flicked on the switch, listening as the machine ground the bars into mush.