by John Saul
Within a year Phyllis had transformed herself from the pretty, if not quite beautiful, young nurse from Philadelphia, into her own version of a woman born into the Crowd.
The Secret Cove Crowd.
She shopped at all the right stores and wore all the right clothes.
In New York, where they spent most of the year, she went to all the right restaurants and served on all the right committees.
When, that is, she was invited to serve on the committees, which, though he’d never told her and never would, was only after he himself had a few words with the other women’s husbands in the privacy of one of their clubs.
But although she wore the right clothes and went to the right places, she somehow had never quite fit in.
Charles, of course, understood it perfectly—with the Secret Cove Crowd, you didn’t simply fit in.
You were born in.
And Phyllis hadn’t been.
But she’d never stopped trying to find herself a place in the Crowd, never stopped trying to become the woman his first wife had been.
Nor had she understood that one of the reasons he’d married her was that she wasn’t Polly.
Still, the marriage had endured, for Charles had long ago decided that he could tolerate any amount of unhappiness in his marriage, as long as it meant he had Melissa with him.
For Melissa, to Charles, was perfect.
If she had any shortcomings, he didn’t see them, or chose to overlook them. He found his daughter’s almost painful shyness to be an endearing quality, and if she didn’t fit in well with the other kids in the Crowd, that was all right with him.
Despite what his wife thought, his private opinion was that Melissa wasn’t missing much. He was sure she would learn a lot more from the books she devoured than from listening to the idle chatter of a lot of kids with nothing to do except feel snobbish about their families.
So he tolerated the marriage, rather than risk losing Melissa as he’d lost Teri. But sometimes—times like today—it was not easy.
“But it’s so thoughtless of you,” he heard Phyllis complaining. “We’ve been invited to dinner at the Stevenses’ day after tomorrow, and now you want me to cancel at the last minute, just so you can fly out to California.”
“You hardly have to cancel,” Charles observed. “It’s not formal, and you know as well as I do that Eleanor always has extra men around. I don’t know where she finds them, but they’re always there.”
Phyllis’s eyes blazed with anger. “So now you don’t care who I go out with?”
A movement outside the window caught Charles’s eye, and he saw Teri and Melissa walking up the driveway, their arms filled with boxes. “Look,” he said, “can’t we deal with this some other time? The girls are coming in, and—”
“No, we can’t!” Phyllis shouted. “How dare you? Do you know how hard I’ve had to work to get that invitation from Eleanor Stevens? Do you know who’s going to be there? The governor, that’s who! And I do not intend to go either by myself or on the arm of one of Eleanor’s prissy decorators! If I’d known how much trouble all this was going to be—”
Suddenly Charles had enough. His fist slammed down on the table and his eyes fixed darkly on his wife. “That’s it!” he exclaimed. “Look! All this isn’t my fault—I didn’t plan on Teri coming to live with us any more than you did! But she’s here, and the least we can both do is make the best of it. And I’m not just her father, in case you didn’t know. I’m also the trustee of her estate.”
“Estate!” Phyllis fairly spat. “My God, everyone knows Polly gave away every cent she had. There isn’t any estate!”
“There’s actually more than you might think. Tom had some insurance, and the house itself was worth a quarter of a million.”
Phyllis’s lips curled into a sneer. “In California that only buys a slum, doesn’t it?”
Exhausted by the argument, Charles shook his head. “All right,” he said. “Do what you want. Go to the party alone or go with someone else. Or don’t go at all. But I have an obligation to Teri, and I intend to carry it out. So just drop it, all right? It doesn’t matter what you think—I’m flying to Los Angeles tomorrow.”
Phyllis opened her mouth as if to carry on the argument, but changed her mind when she saw the look in her husband’s eyes. She knew there was a point beyond which she shouldn’t push him. But still, the idea of having to show up at the Stevenses’ alone, feeling everyone watching her, and wondering if Charles was really away on business or had simply not wanted to come …
They might even think he’d found another woman and was getting ready to leave her.
No, better not to go at all than risk what the gossip might be.
Silently, she turned her back on her husband and walked out of the room, not noticing the look of relief that came over his face as she left.
At the foot of the stairs Teri heard the last few words of the argument between her father and her stepmother, and a flash of anger burned in her mind.
An obligation?
Was that all she was to her father? Just someone he had to deal with because she was his daughter?
Then she felt Melissa’s eyes on her and heard her half sister’s voice, soft and sympathetic. “He didn’t mean that,” Melissa was saying. “It was just a fight with Mom. It—It happens all the time.”
Teri carefully took control of the anger within her, and when she turned to face Melissa, her eyes were damp and her chin quivered slightly. “It’s all right,” she breathed. “I—I just hope someday he’ll learn to love me as much as he loves you, that’s all.”
Melissa impulsively dropped the boxes she was holding and threw her arms around Teri. “He will,” she promised. “I know he will. He’ll love you just as much as I do.”
Teri accepted the embrace in silence.
“I don’t see why we don’t use the club on days like this,” Phyllis said. It was the middle of the afternoon, and she sat in the shade of an umbrella next to the pool. A few feet away Charles was sprawled on his back on a chaise longue, reading yesterday’s Wall Street Journal. Teri was stretched out in the sun, while Melissa swam up and down the pool in a vain attempt to exercise off enough pounds to make her new bathing suit fit her properly.
She hadn’t wanted to wear it at all, but Teri had insisted that it looked fine, and when she’d finally worked up her courage to leave the pool house, her mother had agreed with Teri. “It’s so nice to see you wearing some color for a change. And if you could just lose five pounds—”
“She looks fine just the way she is,” Charles had interrupted, but the remark had already sunk in, and ever since then Melissa had been in the pool, valiantly attempting to achieve at least fifty laps.
“Did you hear me, Charles?” Phyllis asked.
Charles nodded absently. “What’s the point? Our own pool’s almost as big as theirs, and not nearly as crowded.”
“But all our friends are there,” Phyllis went on. “It seems as though we never see anyone.”
Charles put the paper down. “If you want to go, you’re certainly welcome to. I just can’t see putting up with that mob.”
The phone in the pool house rang, and he stood up, but Phyllis stopped him. “Let Cora get it,” she said. “Lord knows, it’s not as if she does much anymore. I think we’re going to have to start thinking about getting someone else, Charles. I know how—”
This time it was her own words that were interrupted as Cora herself stepped out the back door and called across the lawn.
“For you, ma’am. Mrs. Van Arsdale.”
Instantly, Phyllis left her chair and hurried into the pool house, where she picked up the phone. “Yes, Lenore?”
“Hello, Phyllis.” Lenore Van Arsdale’s voice came over the line with a cool tone of confidence that Phyllis had never been able to master. “The most awful thing has happened, and I do hope you’ll forgive me.”
Phyllis held her breath, certain she was about to be told she would be r
eplaced on the Social Committee.
“I suppose you know Brett’s having some of his friends for a bonfire on the beach tomorrow night?”
Phyllis’s jaw tightened. No, she certainly didn’t know any such thing. “Why, yes,” she said, as casually as she could. “I think I heard one of the girls mention it.”
“Well, I’ve just discovered that somehow Melissa’s name got left off the invitation list. I know it’s short notice, but is it too late to invite her? And, of course, Brett would love to have Teri come, too.”
Suddenly Phyllis understood. It wasn’t Melissa who was being invited at all.
It was Teri.
She’d barely met the kids, but already they were taking her in, including her in their group.
Almost involuntarily her eyes went to the window. Teri was sitting up now, listening to Melissa, who was squatting on the terrace at her half sister’s feet, like an over-grown puppy dog, her hair, still soaking wet, hanging limply down her back. Dear God, Phyllis thought, why can’t she even learn to sit like a normal person? Does she have to squat down like a peasant? No wonder the Cove kids didn’t want her around.
“I’m sure they’d both be delighted to come tomorrow night,” she said into the phone. “And it’s so kind of you to include Teri.”
“I’m looking forward to seeing her again,” Lenore replied. “I understand she’s just like Polly.”
They chatted on for a few more minutes, until Lenore finally pleaded other calls to make and hung up. But before she went back out to the pool, Phyllis found herself gazing once more through the window.
They were still together, side by side.
The daughter she’d always wanted, and the daughter she’d actually had.
But now, miraculously, Teri had come home to her, and perhaps things were finally going to work out the way she’d always hoped they would.
Unless Melissa ruined things for Teri, Phyllis thought, the same way she’d ruined things for her.
She stepped out into the bright sunlight, and as the two girls glanced up at her, she smiled. “You two,” she announced, “have just been invited out tomorrow night.”
Now Charles put his paper aside once more. “What’s going on?”
“Brett’s having a bonfire on the beach tomorrow night, and Lenore wants both our girls to go.”
Teri’s face lit up, but then her smile faltered as she heard her father’s next words.
“Isn’t it a little soon for her to start going to parties?” he asked worriedly.
Teri searched her mind for something to say, some way to argue with him, but then her stepmother came to her aid. “Apparently, Lenore Van Arsdale doesn’t think so,” she said. “And I can’t say I do, either. It’s not going to do Teri any good to sit around here with us. She has to start making her own friends.”
Teri’s eyes fixed on her father, who seemed to consider the matter forever before he finally nodded. “Well, I don’t suppose it can do any harm.” Then he turned to Melissa. “What do you think, Missy? Does it sound like fun?”
Melissa bit her lower lip, remembering her birthday party. The same kids who had been there would be at the bonfire tomorrow night.
The same kids who had all but ignored her on the beach yesterday.
“I—I don’t know,” she said finally, unwilling to tell her parents what she was thinking. “I—Well—”
Charles, sensing his daughter’s nervousness, smiled at her encouragingly. “If you don’t want to go, just say so,” he told her. “Just because someone invites you, it doesn’t mean you have to go.”
“I—I’d really rather stay home,” Melissa stammered.
“Then that’s what you’ll do,” Charles declared. He went back to his paper, not noticing the look of annoyance that crossed his wife’s face.
“Perhaps she’ll change her mind,” Phyllis said, her eyes fixing on Melissa.
Though Charles, engrossed in his paper, failed to see his youngest daughter flinch as his wife spoke the words, Teri did not.
CHAPTER 9
Melissa sat silently at the table that evening, staring at the food on her plate, willing herself to eat it. But she kept feeling her mother’s eyes on her, and even though nothing had been said, her mother’s anger still hung over her like a dark cloud, making it impossible for her to eat. But she knew she had to finish her dinner—if she didn’t, her mother would make her sit at the table for at least an hour, listening to a lecture about her bad manners and how she was hurting Cora’s feelings by not eating the meal the housekeeper had worked so hard to prepare.
She sank her fork into the steak which appeared to have somehow grown even larger as it sat on her plate, carefully cut a small piece off, and put it in her mouth.
Her throat seemed to close even as she chewed the meat, and for a moment she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to swallow it at all. But finally it went down, and she started on the next piece. Surreptitiously, she glanced around the table; everyone else had already finished, and her father was laying his knife and fork in the center of the plate and wiping his lips with his napkin. Smiling at her, he pushed his chair back a few inches.
“What does everyone think about going to a movie tonight?” he asked.
Instinctively, Melissa’s eyes flicked to her mother, and for a moment she thought perhaps everything was going to be all right after all. But then Phyllis’s eyes met hers, and she saw that she had not yet been forgiven for saying she didn’t want to go to the bonfire tomorrow night. But what was the big deal? They didn’t even really want her to come—it was Teri they wanted. So why couldn’t Teri go alone?
Her thoughts were interrupted by her mother’s voice. As she heard the words, she felt an icy knot of fear forming in her stomach.
“Why don’t you and Teri go?” Phyllis said to Charles. “The two of you haven’t been able to spend much time together alone, and I think it would be nice if Melissa and I had an evening to ourselves. Just the two of us.”
Melissa’s eyes darted to her father. “Can’t I go, too?” she pleaded. “Please?”
Before Charles could say anything, Phyllis spoke again, this time addressing her daughter. “Melissa, you’re being very, very selfish. You’ve been absolutely monopolizing your father. You mustn’t forget that he’s Teri’s father, too. And,” she added, the hard look in her eyes belying both her words and her smile, “the two of us will have such fun together.”
Melissa wanted to argue with her mother, plead with her father, but she knew it would only make things worse than they already were. Because once her father and Teri were gone …
She forced the thought out of her mind, concentrating instead on making herself finish the food on her plate. “Besides,” she heard her mother go on, repeating the words she’d heard so often before, “you haven’t finished your dinner yet, and you know the rules. We eat what’s put before us, whether we like it or not. You can’t expect to be invited to nice places if you’re going to be rude to your hostess.”
Doing her best to shut the words out of her mind, Melissa attacked her steak once again, cutting the pieces as small as she could, forcing them down one by one. When her father leaned over to kiss her good-bye before he and Teri left for the movie, she wanted to cry, but held back her tears as she heard his murmured words.
“Your mother’s right, sweetheart. I know it’s hard to eat when you’re not hungry, but it’s impolite not to finish what’s on your plate.” He gave her an encouraging hug, and she wanted to throw her arms around him and beg him to take her with him, but knew it would do no good.
Her mother had decided she would stay home, and there was no point in arguing.
Arguing would only make it worse.
Twenty minutes later, under her mother’s watchful eyes, she finally finished her dinner. Around her the other empty plates still sat on the table. She was expected to clear them and then help Cora with the dishes. Silently, afraid that whatever she might say would only make her mother angrier, she
rose to her feet.
“What do we say?” Phyllis instantly demanded.
Melissa froze, then remembered. “M-May I be excused?”
Phyllis nodded curtly, and Melissa gratefully began stacking the dishes. A moment later she backed through the door separating the butler’s pantry from the kitchen. Cora, who’d already finished all the dishes except those that had been left on the table for Melissa to clear, took the stack of plates from Melissa’s hands. “I guess dinner wasn’t very good tonight, was it?” she said.
“It was fine, Cora. I just wasn’t very hungry.”
“Well, I know how that goes.” Cora sighed, putting the plates into the sink. “Sometimes I have days when the very thought of food just makes me sick to my stomach. And it seems to me a body shouldn’t be forced to eat food it doesn’t want.”
Melissa picked up a dish towel and began drying the silverware as Cora placed it in the rack on the sink. Melissa cast a longing eye on the dishwasher under the counter, but knew better than to suggest they use it. On evenings like this, when she was being punished, the use of the dishwasher was strictly forbidden, even for Cora.
“She has to learn to work,” her mother had said more than once. “I won’t have a spoiled child in the house.”
Melissa had just picked up the last plate from the drainer when the door from the butler’s pantry flew open, crashing loudly against the kitchen wall. Melissa jumped, then froze as she felt the plate slip out of her grip and shatter on the floor.
There was a slight gasp from Cora, whose eyes instantly went to the door where Phyllis now stood, staring coldly at her daughter. “It’s all right, honey,” the housekeeper said, stooping down to pick up the shards of china. “Those things happen to us all.”
“Don’t, Cora.” Phyllis’s words, though spoken quietly, held a note of authority that made the housekeeper straighten up before she’d touched the broken plate. “The only way Melissa is going to learn not to be clumsy is to take responsibility for her own messes.” Cora hesitated for a moment, as if she weren’t sure what to do, and Phyllis spoke again. “That will be all for tonight, Cora. Melissa will take care of the rest. You may go.”