The First Time

by Joy Fielding

  Jake almost smiled. No matter what her difficulty, Mattie never had any trouble making herself understood.

  Would he be able to find her? Would he get to her in time? It was entirely possible she wouldn’t even bother trying to change her ticket. She might simply go to the first counter she saw and get on the first available flight. She had her credit cards. There was no law that said she had to fly directly to Chicago. She might choose New York or Los Angeles, worry about catching a connecting flight later. Jake sighed audibly, pressing down on the invisible gas pedal at his feet. Mattie was upset. She was angry. There was no telling what she might do. He had to find her.

  The taxi pulled into the terminal, and Jake tossed several hundred francs into the front seat, not bothering to wait for change. He ran into the terminal, his eyes scanning the large monitors for departing flights. “Excuse me,” he said to one of the agents. “Where are the flights to Chicago?” He was running even before the startled young woman completed her directions.

  “Excuse me,” he said to the elderly gentleman he bumped into. “Excusez-moi,” he apologized to the young woman whose suitcase he sent flying halfway across the floor. “Excuse me. Excusez-moi. Excusez-moi,” Jake kept repeating, when what he really wanted to say to everyone was, “Get the hell out of my way.” He was running blind, not sure where he was going, not seeing anything but his final destination. “Excuse me. Excuse me. Excusez-moi.”

  And then he saw her. She was sitting in a wheelchair at the end of a row of attached orange plastic seats, staring into her lap. She’d done it. All by herself. She’d commandeered a taxi in the pouring rain and navigated the twists and turns of this busy airport without any help from him. She’d found the correct counter, gotten herself a wheelchair, no doubt secured a seat for herself on an earlier flight. God, she was amazing, Jake thought, stopping to catch his breath.

  She took his breath away.

  Now what? he wondered, reviewing all the things he’d thought about saying to her on the seemingly endless drive from the city. He’d prepared a few carefully chosen words in his own defense, silently rehearsed a few key phrases. This was going to be the most important closing argument of his life, he realized, walking toward her. It was important he get it right.

  Suddenly Jake felt his body being propelled violently forward. He fought to maintain his balance as a red-faced, middle-aged man hurtled by in the opposite direction. “Excusez-moi,” the man muttered, not stopping, not even turning around to see if Jake was still standing.

  “Tsk, tsk,” Jake heard someone mutter.

  “Ça va?” someone asked. Are you all right?

  “Thank you, I’m fine,” Jake said, straightening his shoulders, steadying his feet. “Merci. Merci.” He looked toward Mattie.

  She was staring right at him, and for an instant their eyes connected. And then, in the next instant, she was trying to get away, to maneuver the wheelchair out of the space in which she’d been confined, the wheels twisting this way and that, refusing to move, as Mattie’s hands struggled to release the brake.

  “Mattie! Mattie, please.” Jake rushed toward her, his carefully rehearsed words disappearing with each step. Mattie’s hands connected with the brake, releasing it, and the wheelchair shot forward, almost running over his toes.

  “Get out of my way, Jake,” Mattie cried.

  “Please, Mattie. You have to listen to me.”

  “I don’t want to listen to you.”

  “Is there a problem here?” someone asked.

  Jake looked over to see a muscular young man with an American flag sewn across his backpack getting up from his chair.

  “No problem,” Jake said. “Mattie—”

  “It looks like the lady doesn’t want to talk to you,” the young man said.

  “Look, this isn’t any of your business.” Jake blocked Mattie’s continuing efforts to get away.

  “Isn’t that Jake Hart, the lawyer?” someone asked. “I saw his picture on the cover of Chicago magazine a while back.”

  “Is it?” her companion asked.

  “I’m sure it’s him. That woman in the wheelchair called him Jake.”

  “That woman is my wife,” Jake snapped, spinning around angrily, watching as the various travelers waiting for their flight to Chicago shrank back into their seats. “And it’s very important I talk to her.”

  “Go back to the hotel, Jake,” Mattie shouted. “Your girlfriend’s waiting for you.”

  “Oh, my,” someone said.

  “Please, Mattie, it’s not what you think.”

  “Don’t try to tell me that wasn’t Honey Novak,” Mattie said. “Don’t you dare try to insult my intelligence that way.”

  “I’m not going to deny it.”

  “Then what could you possibly have to say that would interest me?”

  “I had no idea she was in Paris,” Jake began, the truth sounding more lame than any excuse he might have dreamed up. Since when was the truth any defense? he recognized. Hadn’t his years practicing law taught him anything at all? “Please believe me, Mattie. I’d broken it off with her. I hadn’t seen her in months.”

  “Then how did she know about our trip? How did she know where we’d be staying?”

  “She came by the office—”

  “You just said you hadn’t seen her in months.”

  Jake looked helplessly around the large waiting area, feeling like a reluctant witness on the stand. “It was just for a few minutes. She dropped by unannounced.”

  “She does that quite a lot.”

  “I had no idea she was in Paris until I saw her in our hotel room.”

  Mattie shook her head, dislodging bitter tears. “You couldn’t wait, could you? You couldn’t pass up a romantic trip to Paris. Couldn’t let it go to waste on your sickly wife.”

  “That’s not true, Mattie. You know it’s not true.”

  “What’s the matter, Jake?” Mattie cried out, her anguish palpable. “Am I taking too long to die?”

  A gasp escaped the lips of several of the onlookers.

  “Mattie—”

  “You want to hear something funny?” Mattie continued. “I like her. I actually like her. Congratulations. Jake Hart has great taste in women.”

  “I told you it was him,” someone whispered loudly.

  “Go back to her, Jake,” Mattie said, resignation replacing indignation. “She loves you.”

  “I don’t love her,” he said simply.

  “Then you’re a fool.”

  “God knows that’s true,” Jake agreed.

  For an instant, it appeared as if Mattie might soften, aS if she might choose to believe him after all. But then suddenly a curtain of fresh resolve fell across her eyes, and she was once again trying to back out of the small space, her hands sliding helplessly against the sides of the wheelchair. “Move, damn you.” Instinctively, Jake’s hands shot out to help her. “Go away, Jake,” she shouted. “Go away. I don’t need you.”

  “You may not need me, lady, but damn it, I need you!” Jake cried, surprising even himself. “I love you, Mattie,” he heard himself say. “I love you.”

  “No,” Mattie said. “Please don’t say that.”

  “I love you,” Jake said again, falling to his knees in front of her wheelchair.

  “Get up, Jake. Please. You don’t have to pretend anymore.”

  “I’m not pretending. Mattie, I love you. Please believe me. I love you. I love you.”

  There was a long silence. It seemed everyone around them was holding their breath. Jake felt his own breath still in his chest. He couldn’t breathe without her, he realized. What would he do if she were to leave him now?

  “I love you,” he repeated, his eyes holding Mattie’s until tears blinded them. He made no move to wipe the tears away. “I love you,” he said again. What else was there to say?

  Another silence. Longer than the first. Interminable.

  “I love you,” Mattie whispered.

  “Oh, God,” Jake
cried. “I love you so much.”

  “I love you so much,” Mattie repeated, crying with him.

  Love you, love you, love you, love you.

  “We’ll go back to the city, find another hotel,” Jake began.

  “No,” Mattie interrupted, her hand brushing awkwardly against his cheek. He grabbed it, held it steady, kissed it. “It’s time, Jake,” Mattie said, as Jake nodded sadly, knowingly. “It’s time to go home.”

  THIRTY-TWO

  They arrived back in Chicago at four o’clock in the afternoon, two days ahead of schedule. “Something’s wrong,” Mattie said, as the limo pulled to a halt in front of their house. An unfamiliar white van sat in the driveway next to her mother’s beat-up old green Plymouth. Why would her mother be here? Mattie wondered, reading the elaborate logo on the side of the van. “Capiletti’s Housecleaning Service,” it announced in swirling red letters.

  “Don’t jump to any conclusions,” Jake cautioned, paying the driver and helping Mattie from the backseat of the limousine.

  “Do you think there was a break-in? Or a fire?” Mattie scanned the front of the house for signs of smoke damage.

  “Everything looks okay.”

  “Hello?” Mattie called as Jake pushed open the front door. “Hello? Mother?” Mattie stepped nervously into the foyer. A woman wearing jeans, a sloppy shirt, and a bandanna over her brown hair suddenly marched across the front hall toward the kitchen, carrying a large green garbage bag. She smiled. “Who are you?” Mattie asked. “What’s going on?”

  “Martha?” her mother called from upstairs as the strange woman disappeared into the kitchen. “Is that you?”

  “Mother? What’s going on here?”

  “Try not to get upset,” Jake urged.

  “You’re early,” her mother said instead of hello, as she hurried down the stairs, stopping abruptly at the bottom. Like the woman in her kitchen, Mattie’s mother was dressed in jeans and a sloppy sweatshirt. Her gray hair was pulled into an awkward bun at the back of her head, more hairs on the outside of the purple scrunchie than inside it. “We weren’t expecting you home for another couple of days.”

  “What’s all this about?” Mattie asked again, not bothering to explain.

  “It’s not as bad as it looks,” her mother began. “Maybe we should sit down.”

  “What’s going on?” Mattie repeated.

  “There was a party. I’m afraid things got a little out of hand. I’d hoped to have everything cleaned up by the time you got back.”

  “You had a party?” Mattie asked in disbelief. When had her mother ever entertained anyone but her dogs?

  “Let’s sit down,” her mother urged, as a burly young man in a white T-shirt and black jeans stepped out of Jake’s office, carrying the Raphael Goldchain photograph Jake had recently purchased, its frame cracked, its glass shattered, the picture of the scantily clad pinup sliced into two neat halves above her buttocks.

  “What do you want me to do with this?” the young man asked, waving the bottom half of the photograph, the pinup’s half-naked backside rippling provocatively.

  Jake was immediately at the young man’s side, lifting the picture from his callused hands. “My God, what happened? Who did this?”

  “The police are trying to find that out,” Mattie’s mother explained. “Please, let’s go into the living room and sit down. You must be exhausted from your trip.”

  Mattie watched Jake drop the torn photograph to the floor, his face a mirror of her own disbelief. What was going on? What had happened here? Suddenly she felt dizzy and faint, collapsing into Jake’s arms as he led her into the living room and sat her down on the edge of the Ultrasuede sofa whose once-smooth surface was stained with beer and ashes.

  “Apparently, Ultrasuede is something of a miracle fabric,” her mother was saying. “Mr. Capiletti says he’s sure he can clean the sofa up as good as new.”

  “That was Mr. Capiletti?” Jake asked, nodding toward the hall.

  “His son. It’s a family business. You might have seen Mrs. Capiletti when you walked in.”

  “What are all these Capilettis doing in my house?” Mattie asked, wondering if she were in the middle of one of her more ridiculous dreams. That’s it, she decided, her body relaxing with the thought. She was still somewhere over the Atlantic, her head nestled against Jake’s chest, the sound of his I love yous echoing in her ear. She’d wake up any minute, she told herself, and he’d still be beside her, still whispering the words she’d waited all her life to hear.

  Except even as Mattie was trying to convince herself this was just another silly, nonsensical product of her overactive imagination, she knew she was wide awake, that she was actually sitting in the middle of her ash-covered, beer-stained sofa in the middle of what looked like a war zone, but was in fact her living room. “There was a party?” she asked again, her eyes absorbing the two rose-and-gold chairs whose fabric had been slashed along its vertical stripes, the baby grand piano whose shapely black legs had been gouged and mutilated, the needlepoint rug whose surface was littered with crumbs and other less identifiable debris, the Ken Davis painting that was splattered with what looked to be raw eggs.

  “I was afraid to touch that,” her mother was saying, following the direction of Mattie’s eyes. “I was afraid if I tried cleaning it, the paint might come off.”

  “When did this happen?”

  “Saturday night.”

  And suddenly, what had happened was very clear. Mattie sighed, closed her eyes, leaned back against the sofa, the smell of stale cigarettes reaching inside her nostrils, the bitter taste of spilled beer settling on her tongue. “Kim,” Mattie said, her voice void of expression.

  “It wasn’t her fault,” Mattie’s mother was quick to explain. “She tried to stop it. It was Kim who called the police.”

  “You gave Kim permission to have a party?” Jake held tightly onto Mattie’s hand.

  “No,” Viv admitted after a pause. “She told me she was going to a party. She didn’t say where.”

  “She neglected to mention she was the hostess of this little shindig,” Jake said.

  “It was just supposed to be a few kids from school, but apparently some people showed up who hadn’t been invited. Kim asked them to leave, but they refused, and things very quickly went from bad to worse. Kim called the police, but whoever the troublemakers were, they got away before the police arrived. Unfortunately, not before they made quite a mess. The Capilettis have been here since first thing this morning. Most of the damage was to the main floor. You’ll have to check and see if anything is missing.”

  “The Falling Man,” Mattie said, referring to the small bronze sculpture by Ernest Trova that used to sit by the piano. “It’s gone.”

  “That funny-looking bald guy, looks sort of like an Oscar?” her mother asked, and Mattie nodded. “The police found it outside on the front lawn. I thought it was some kind of elaborate pepper mill, so I put it in the kitchen.”

  “You thought it was a pepper mill?” Mattie asked incredulously.

  “I never claimed to be an authority on art,” her mother said defensively.

  “Where is Kim now?” Jake asked.

  “She was going to see Rosemary Colicos after school,” Viv said. “Please don’t be too hard on her, Jake. I know what she did was very wrong, but she’s a good girl. She really is. She was terribly upset about what happened, and I know she plans to make it up to you. She’s going to get a summer job, pay for everything that isn’t covered by insurance.”

  “It’s not a question of money.”

  “I know that.” Viv lowered herself carefully into one of the gold-and-rose-striped chairs. “She knows that.”

  Mattie watched a strip of fabric float across her mother’s lap. She’d been meaning to get those chairs re-covered for some time now, Mattie thought absently.

  “So, how was your trip?” her mother asked, as if this were a perfectly normal thing to be asking under the circumstances, as if there
were nothing odd or unusual about the situation, as if everyone returned home prematurely from a trip abroad to find their house in ruins.

  “The trip?” Mattie repeated numbly. “The trip was wonderful.”

  “How was the weather?”

  “The weather was great.”

  “Except for yesterday,” Mattie heard Jake say. “It rained pretty hard yesterday.”

  “Yes, it did,” Mattie agreed.

  “And you saw everything you wanted to see?”

  “We didn’t miss much,” Jake answered.

  “You had no trouble getting around?”

  “No trouble at all,” Jake said, staring at Mattie, who was staring straight ahead, at the empty space where the Trova used to sit. “Mattie, are you all right?”

  “She thought it was a pepper mill,” Mattie said, the absurdity of her homecoming hitting her with such force she could barely breathe.

  And suddenly Mattie was laughing, laughing with such abandon, she felt her sides would split wide open. And Jake was laughing with her. And even her mother, who seemed incomplete somehow without at least one of her beloved dogs at her feet, was laughing, although the guarded look on her face told Mattie she wasn’t quite sure what was so damn funny.

  “Maybe you should go upstairs and lie down,” her mother was saying. “It wasn’t too much of a mess up there, but I changed the sheets on your bed, just in case. Really, I think you need to rest,” she continued over Mattie’s and Jake’s raucous laughter. “The Capilettis and I will take care of things down here. You can call your insurance guy in the morning. I’ll keep Kim with me tonight.”

  “Thank you,” Mattie managed to squeak out between hoots.

  “Tell Kim I’ll be picking her up after school tomorrow,” Jake said, as their laughter faded away. “And tell her we love her,” he added softly, helping Mattie to her feet.

  Viv nodded, pushing herself off the chair.