by Joy Fielding
“Renee, you’ll break the damn thing …”
“Look at me!” she screamed, emptying the bag and running her hands down the length of her dark green shirt and pants. “I’m a mess!”
“And I suppose I’m responsible for that too?”
“No, you’re not responsible. I’m the one. I did it,” Renee shouted, pouring the contents of the second bag into the garburator. “I did it all by myself. I tried for six years to get you to love me, the same way I’ve tried all my life with my father, and this is where it got me.”
“Don’t compare me to your father.”
“Why not? You’re just like him. I’ve been a damn fool. What makes him so great that I have to beg him to love me? Am I so awful? Is he so wonderful? Are you?”
“Renee, I love you. I know you’re too angry to see that now …”
“No, you don’t love me. What you love is your power over me! You love it that you can turn a smart, capable woman into a quivering bowl of jelly every time she sees you. Listen to me! Everything I say is food-related.”
Renee stared at her husband helplessly, even now hoping that he would somehow be able to reach into his magic bag of tricks and find the correct combination of words to release them all from this horrible spell, that he could somehow come up with the words that would make everything all right again.
Had they ever been all right? Did he really have this kind of power over her that even now she was waiting for him to make things right again simply because that’s the way he said it should be?
“I think I’ve heard enough,” he said instead. “I’ve told you how I feel. It obviously isn’t enough for you. You said you were leaving; you made a decision. Now stick to it. It’s what you want, isn’t it?”
She recognized the tactic. He was calling her bluff, telling her that if she wanted him back now, she would have to backtrack, to apologize, to admit she was wrong. Was she prepared to go that far? Could she really walk out? If only she were prepared to try harder, maybe she could still make it work. She was unloved because she was unlovable. She was nothing without him. Hadn’t he just told her he loved her? What more did she want?
“Is it what you want?” she asked. Even now. Even now!
“What I want isn’t important. It never has been.”
“That’s not true. It’s been everything.” Convince me I’m wrong. Convince me I can make it right. Don’t let me leave. I take it back. I take everything back.
“By your own confession, you turned yourself into a chocolate-guzzling mess,” he continued, seizing control of the conversation. “Was that designed to make me happy? How do you think I felt going places with you? How do you think I felt knowing that everyone was snickering at me because my wife, the psychiatrist’s wife, couldn’t control as simple a thing as her appetite? Can you really blame me for looking elsewhere?” he asked, knowing instinctively that she had asked herself that question many times in the past. Not content with her capitulation, he was seeking no less than her total humiliation. He wanted her to beg. Would she? she wondered. “The woman I married wasn’t a fat slob. She was slim and pretty and took care of her appearance. She had some pride, some self-respect. She didn’t blame everyone else for her inadequacies. Well, what do you think of that assessment?”
“I think …” she began, then faltered under the threat of tears. “I think …”
“Face it, Renee, you haven’t had a coherent thought in years.”
“I think …”
“You feel…” he corrected, interrupting her again.
“I think,” she said again, “that it gives you some sort of twisted pleasure to see me brought to my knees.”
“Where you’ve always done your best work, I’ll give you that.” His face narrowed, as if he were a reflection in a fun-house mirror.
“I think that …”
“You feel,” he insisted again.
Renee felt the threat of tears suddenly vanish. The image in the fun-house mirror disappeared. Her husband stood before her, tall and dark and handsome, just the way the storybooks had promised. “What I feel is anger,” she said succinctly. “What I think is that you are a cold-hearted, manipulative son of a bitch.”
There was a moment’s stunned silence before he spoke. “That’s very good, Renee. I never realized before what advanced vocabularies you lawyers have. Is there anything else you want to say? Because if you’re quite through, then I’d like to go to bed.”
“There’s something else,” Renee said steadily.
He cocked his head, waiting.
“Go to hell,” she said triumphantly, and walked out of their life together.
TWENTY-FIVE
Gary arrived at the house on Saturday morning at nine o’clock sharp to pick up his children for the weekend. Lynn ushered him inside the front door, looking at her husband as if he were a pleasant acquaintance of fairly long-standing, but someone she didn’t really know. She was surprised to discover that her primary feeling toward him wasn’t anger, but rather indifference, and perhaps a mild curiosity, of the sort one might feel toward a stranger. Still, he was the father of her children, even though she understood he was no longer a part of her daily life.
“The kids aren’t packed yet,” she told him, knowing they were waiting anxiously behind their bedroom doors. “They wanted to make sure they were really going this time.” Lynn broke off, seeing him flinch. She hadn’t meant to reproach him. Obviously, she would still have to be very careful about choosing her words around Gary. She had no desire to hurt him any further. They had hurt each other enough.
“I thought we’d go to Disney World,” Gary called out loudly, smiling broadly when he heard his children’s joyful hoots. Nicholas ran into the room, grabbed his father around the waist, and squeezed tightly before running back to his room to pack. Gary laughed, his eyes drifting back toward Lynn’s. “So, how are things?” he asked, tentatively, and Lynn could see he was still wrestling with his demons, not sure whether to be friends or foes.
“Things are fine.” She motioned toward the living room. “Do you want to sit down?” He nodded, and she followed him into the green-and-white room, thinking that perhaps it was time to redecorate. Maybe she would redo the room in soft shades of peach and gray, the colors she had seen in Renee’s office. She wondered briefly how Renee and Kathryn were doing. Renee had accompanied her sister back to New York the day before, after announcing that she had left Philip—left everything, including her white Mercedes—and was giving serious consideration to transferring her practice up North, a move she had always wanted to make. “You could take him for every cent he’s got,” Lynn had told her. “At least take what’s rightfully yours.” But Renee had smiled an enigmatic little half-grin and told her that sometimes it was worth anything just to be rid of them.
Renee’s announcement had propelled Lynn into a few surprise moves of her own. After twelve years of front-line work for the Department of Social Services in Delray Beach, Lynn decided it was high time for a change. She submitted her resignation to an astonished Carl McVee, gave one month’s notice, and accepted the job she had been offered with the Palm Beach County Board of Education. That done, she notified the child welfare agency in Sarasota and apprised them of her concerns regarding one of Sarasota’s newest residents, one Keith Foster, vice president of Data Base International.
“I want to apologize,” Gary was saying, staring into his lap. “It was a rotten thing I did, hauling you into your lawyer’s office, threatening you with custody, reneging on our agreement.”
“I’m not too proud of myself either,” Lynn told him truthfully.
“Divorce brings out the best in people, I guess.” He laughed bitterly. “I’m really sorry I hurt you, Lynn.”
“I’m sorry I hurt you too.”
They sat for several moments in silence, two well-meaning people who for a time had meant only to hurt each other.
“Are you still seeing Marc Cameron?” he asked.
“
Does it matter?”
He shook his head. “Just curious.” Lynn smiled at the word. “It would be ironic, wouldn’t it? If things worked out between you and Marc while they fell apart between me and Suzette?”
Lynn studied his face, trying to remember the way she used to feel when she looked into his eyes. But the face, while handsome, almost kind, held no further allure for her. There was nothing behind it she wanted to see. “I’m sure things will work out between you and Suzette,” she said.
Again he shook his head. “Maybe. At any rate, we’ve decided to cool it for a while. Take a break. Sort things out.” He looked toward the picture window, at the silver-framed photograph of the family he had left. “She lied to me,” he whispered, almost to himself. “I guess that’s what hurts the most.”
Nicholas raced into the room, his overnight bag banging against his side. “I’m ready.”
“Where’s your sister?”
“Getting her toothbrush. I already have mine.”
“Good for you.”
Megan walked slowly into the room, as if she were afraid it was filled with dangerous land mines. And maybe it was. “I’m all packed.”
Gary got to his feet. “Great. Then we’re ready to go.”
“What are you going to do, Mom?” Megan asked, as if she were afraid to leave Lynn alone, sensing that her eagerness to spend the weekend with her father was somehow a betrayal of her mother.
“I’ll be fine,” Lynn told her.
“But what are you going to do?”
“I’m sure your mother has plans,” Gary said.
“You want to come with us?” Nicholas persisted.
“No, sweetheart,” Lynn said gently. “This is your weekend with your father. You go and have a good time. Don’t worry about me.” She hugged her children close before releasing them, then watched them run down the front walk to Gary’s car.
“I’ll have them back tomorrow night around eight o’clock. Is that all right with you?”
“Fine. Drive carefully.”
He nodded, a sad smile creeping onto his face. “Have a good weekend.”
“You too.”
“Come on, Daddy,” Nicholas shouted from the car.
Lynn stood in the doorway to her house. If today was really the first day of the rest of her life, she thought, what was she going to do with it? The security of her old job was gone; she didn’t have a husband; she didn’t even have anything in the house for lunch. What the hell, she shrugged, feeling better than she had in years. Sometimes you just have to take a chance.
Lynn pulled her car into the driveway of Marc Cameron’s apartment building. “Could you buzz Marc Cameron for me, please?” she asked the young doorman, who smiled at her as if she were speaking a foreign language. “Marc Cameron,” Lynn repeated. “He’s in apartment 403.”
“No Cameron in apartment 403,” the doorman, who was obviously new, said, checking his list of tenants.
“He’s renting from the regular tenant.”
The doorman, who was tall and slim and sandy-haired and not more than twenty, flipped through the pages of his register slowly. “Oh yeah, here it is. He’s subletting from Joel Sanders. Apartment 403. You’re right.”
“Can you buzz him for me, please.”
“Sure thing.” His hand lifted languorously to buzz the apartment. Nobody answered. “You want me to phone him?” Lynn nodded quickly, hoping to spur him on, but his fingers pressed the buttons of the telephone as if he had arthritis. Lynn fought the urge to wrest the phone from his hands. Could he possibly be any slower? “No one home,” came the lazy drawl after at least half a dozen rings. Lynn thanked him, about to leave. “Is he a tall guy, reddish-blond hair, beard?”
“Yes.”
The doorman nodded, pleased to have put a face to the name. “He went out a couple of hours ago.”
“Did he say where he was going?”
“Didn’t say nothin’,” the doorman told her. “You want to leave a message?”
Lynn thought for several seconds, deciding it would take too long. “No. No message.”
She got back in her car and turned it toward the beach. It was just as well Marc hadn’t been home. His absence had saved her from making a complete fool of herself. What did she want to get involved with someone like Marc Cameron for anyway? A soon-to-be-divorced writer with two sons and an ailing father. Just because he made her laugh? Because he challenged her, dared her to be things she hadn’t been in years? Because he was caring and intelligent and just looking at him filled her with joy? What kind of reasons were those? Where was the security in loving a man just because he made her feel good?
She stopped the car. What was the matter with feeling good! Since when was security a substitute for love?
She executed an abrupt U-turn in the middle of the crowded street, the cars around her erupting in angry horn blasts. Instantly she knew where to find Marc. Hadn’t he invited her along?
She drove north on Dixie, then west on Lake Drive, hoping Marc would still be there by the time she arrived. The streets were filled with Saturday-afternoon traffic, signaling that the summer was almost at an end. Soon “the season” would be upon them. The “snowbirds” would flock down, followed in predictable holiday bursts by the “snowflakes,” fleeing the colder climes. Traffic would be impossible. The beaches would be filled to overflowing and she would hear the usual grumbles from dissatisfied couples as she passed them at the water’s edge, complaining about the lack of sunshine, the undependability of the Florida weather, the amount of tar that regularly marred the miles of sand. She laughed. They should come down in the summer, she thought. Summer in Delray Beach. There was nothing quite like it.
She passed Military Trail, looking for the cutoff to the road leading to Halcyon Days. Marc had said he’d be visiting his father. He’d invited her along. Yes, but that was then, and a lot could happen in five days. A lot had happened.
Gary had said he and Suzette had decided to cool things for awhile. It was possible that Suzette had called Marc and begged his forgiveness, pleaded for him to come back. Would he? Would she burst into Marc’s father’s room only to find Suzette at his side?
She recognized the car before she saw the driver. The baby blue Lincoln convertible turned off the private road onto Lake Drive and into the traffic going east, the opposite direction. The white top of the car was in place and Lynn watched from a distance of half a block as the driver fiddled with the buttons, the top of the car suddenly lifting and pulling back, folding in on itself like a giant accordion. The driver of the car, license plate PEACHES, smiled broadly, his teeth flashing from behind his beard, his hands tapping out the tune his radio was blasting into the early afternoon sunshine. He looked casually at the cars headed in the opposite direction, his eyes not fixing on any of them, his mind obviously focused on something only he could see.
Lynn’s car inched slowly forward. What was she going to do? She couldn’t make another U-turn in the middle of all this traffic. She could open her window and scream, hope he’d hear her above the noise of his radio. Look at me, she willed, as their cars drew closer together. Look at me. I’m over here.
Marc lifted his hands into the air and stretched, closing his eyes.
“No, damn it, open them,” Lynn said out loud. “I’m over here.”
He rolled his head back, then slowly lifted it up again, turning lazily, without thought, in her direction.
“I’m over here,” she said again, as his eyes came to rest on hers.
The car behind her honked loudly. She looked ahead. The cars were moving. She was being urged, none too gently, to follow.
In one smooth, continuing flow, Lynn threw her car into park, pulled the key from the lock, and opened her car door. The cars behind her honked furiously. “What’s going on?” somebody yelled. “Where the hell are you going?”
She watched Marc’s smile grow wide as she approached his car, until it filled his entire face. He reached over quickly and pushe
d open the door on the passenger side of the blue Lincoln. Savoring the moment, Lynn slowly slid into the seat beside him and closed her eyes.
ALSO BY JOY FIELDING
LOST
Losing Julia has become a constant in Cindy Carver’s life. The first time Julia disappeared, she was five years old and vanished at the playground. That inspired motherly paranoia. The second was when, at age fourteen, Julia decided to move in with her father. That broke Cindy’s heart. But when twenty-one-year-old Julia disappears without a trace after a promising audition with one of Hollywood’s most powerful and influential directors, Cindy begins a frantic search. Secrets are revealed, lives are forever altered, and Cindy is forced to acknowledge the disturbing truth about the young woman she realizes she never really knew….
SEAL BOOKS / ISBN: 978-0-7704-2920-1
ALSO BY JOY FIELDING
MISSING PIECES
Family therapist Kate Sinclair, healer of lost souls, perfect wife and mother, has suddenly become trapped in a nightmare of her own. One of her teenage daughters has just discovered sex, lies and rebellion. Her ex-boyfriend has returned to threaten her marriage. And her once-peaceful hometown is being awakened by chilling headlines: Another woman is missing. Kate can sense the darkness gathering around her, can see the mistakes, the missteps, the missing pieces.
Enter Colin Friendly—a man on trial for abducting and killing thirteen women—the handsome, “misunderstood” sociopath Kate’s troubled sister plans to marry. Colin can’t wait to meet Kate and the girls. And one night when they are home alone, ready for bed….
SEAL BOOKS / ISBN: 978-0-7704-2966-9
ALSO BY JOY FIELDING