“Liars! How could you do this to me?”
I sail to the door in a fury, my head screaming for me to slam it with enough force to break the wall.
But at the door my rage deserts me and collapses into defeat. I’ve lost everything. It’s not possible that the most important things in my life are gone. Wiped out, just like that.
The shock of it turns my legs to rubber, and I barely have the strength to pull the door closed behind me. I hear the quiet click and I’m outside with my back pressed against the door, dizzy. Numb. With just enough strength left to propel me to the car.
Would that it were a nightmare! Please, let it be a nightmare that I can wake up from.
But it’s not.
I get in the car and just sit there, stunned. My mind starts searching. I grab at all kinds of thoughts to explain this madness. When could this have happened? It can’t be recent, Jessica hasn’t been here. And not during the years she was in L.A. No, this is earlier. My mind focuses down on that weird time in college that I have never been able to explain. That thing with Todd and Winston. Somehow—I don’t know how—I know it’s got to be connected.
That would mean they have been betraying me for years. All the while pretending to love me.
I turn the key and press my foot down hard on the accelerator. It makes a roar.
And I roar.
Inside my car, with the windows closed, I roar in pain. Like a wounded animal.
I release the brake and put the car in drive, put my foot down, and screech away.
I’m not going to let them see me sitting in the car in front of the house.
I’m not going to let them ever see me again. Anywhere. I swear.
And now Elizabeth was going to be right there. And Jessica and Todd would see her again. No matter what she swore. Was she a fool to do this?
* * *
Liam pulled up at the curb outside the airport exit in his rented black Ford right on time.
“Yo, Liz. Over here!”
Like there was any way to miss this super handsome guy in a gorgeous pinstriped black suit, white shirt, and bright red tie.
“You look great,” Elizabeth said, throwing her knapsack into the backseat. “Why are you leaving Hollywood? You’re obviously movie-star material.”
“Thank you. And you look fabulous. No way you just stepped off a six-hour plane ride.”
“I cheated. I changed in the ladies’ room.”
They chatted comfortably for the hour and a half ride to Sweet Valley. Just before they arrived at the club, Liam asked, “Are you okay?”
“No.”
“Can I help?”
“Only if we can change places, but I don’t do red ties.”
“Have you figured out your entrance?”
“Spoken like a true actor. I just did six hours of entrance practice cross-country. Five hundred different approaches and I still don’t have it right. I don’t know whether to pretend like nothing happened or ignore them. Spit in his face or rap her over the head with a turkey platter or just knee him in the groin. What do you think?”
“You have some nice choices there. But I think since it’s your grandmother’s party I would dump the action stuff. Play it cool, treat them like second cousins once removed you probably won’t ever see again.”
“I like the once-removed part.”
“Feeling better?”
“Not at all. The only thing that keeps me sane is my dread theory.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s simple and absolutely natural. If you dread something, I mean really dread it, right from the heart, it’s going to turn out awesome, like, ninety percent of the time. The converse is that if you can’t wait to get to that party, it’s a sure bomb. But there’s a hitch: It’s got to be real. If you pretend the dread, it doesn’t work.”
“Well, this is a sort of party…”
“And I’m dreading it. Big time.”
“It should work.”
* * *
The country club was as all country clubs are: a sprawling clubhouse set in manicured, rolling green hills surrounded by a golf course and little else, but lovely in the seventy-degree, sunny Southern California weather.
Liam parked in the guest lot and they sat quietly in the car for nearly fifteen minutes until Elizabeth was relaxed enough to get out.
The minute she stood up, she began to tremble. “I love my grandmother, but this is probably a bad idea. I think it’s too soon.”
“Eight months? No. You wait too long and you lose your family. You become the outsider.”
“I feel like I’m an outsider already.” Just that terrible realization garnered Elizabeth’s courage, and outrage. “Damn it, they’re my family, too, and I’m not going to let them just take it away. Along with everything else they’ve stolen from me. I know it’s ugly to feel this way about my own sister, but I really hate her. And him, too.”
Elizabeth stopped just before the tears started. Liam put his hand on her shoulder. “You want me to punch him?”
“Yeah, except he’s bigger than you are. A lot bigger, but it’s nice of you to offer.”
“How about her? That might be more my speed.”
“I’m really glad you came with me.”
“Just remember—keep dreading!”
Elizabeth reached into the backseat and took her grandmother’s gift from her backpack. She smoothed the ribbons and tucked it under her arm. “Come on, I’m ready,” she said, taking Liam’s hand and heading for the clubhouse.
The gravel path up from the parking lot kept Elizabeth unsteady on her heels. As unsteady as she felt in her heart. How sheltered her life had been until now. There had been other times when she was scared and miserable, but because of a freak of nature, she’d never suffered them alone. Not like she was now.
She had run away from everyone and stayed away for the better part of a year. Even if she had their sympathy in the beginning, Jessica was a daughter, too, a sister and a granddaughter, family. They loved her and in these months they would have seen her suffering—she had to be suffering. They would have come to feel compassion for her. It would be natural.
Being there is an enormous advantage. Like teams playing on home territory.
In the beginning, they had sided with Elizabeth, the victim, but time had passed and everyone’s lives had moved on. Maybe they saw how much Jessica and Todd loved each other and their hearts had opened.
The two of them had to love each other completely or they never could have done such a thing. Was there room in Elizabeth’s heart to allow that love? To forgive it?
She would know when she saw them.
* * *
Jessica only found out that Elizabeth was coming that very afternoon when her mother called.
“Did you just find out today?” she asked.
“No, I’ve known since last week, but she wanted to keep it a surprise for Grandmommy.”
“What about me? Like, how could you not tell me?”
Alice Wakefield knew this was going to be difficult. Twenty-seven years of her less-than-perfect—a lot less than perfect but extremely loveable—daughter had taught Alice how to avoid the deepest pitfalls. She had learned that the best way was to keep cool and loving. It wasn’t always easy, but the alternative was tears and shouting and tantrums.
“Look, honey, I know this is hard for you. I understand that, but we’re a family and it’s time we started behaving like one. Not like this angry, broken mess we’ve been. It’s courageous of your sister to come. She’s only doing it because she loves all of us.”
“You maybe, but definitely not me. Between Steven and Elizabeth, everyone is going to hate me. I so can’t go!”
It was at this point in every Jessica argument that Alice Wakefield cut to the chase. “It’s your grandmother’s eightieth birthday. You have to go.” One couldn’t hear the foot coming down, but it did.
“Todd is not going to be happy.”
“Probably no
t, but it’s your grandmother’s happiness we’re interested in right now.”
“Are you like making me go?”
“Yes.”
“That’s the only reason I’m doing it, because you’re making me,” said the twenty-seven/thirteen-year-old. “I don’t know what Todd is going to do.”
“Act like a man, I hope. I expect you both at the club at six thirty.” The conversation ended there, but Alice was certain Jessica and Todd would both be at the party.
Actually, Todd had been in the house the whole time. In fact, he was at his computer in the second bedroom turned office, and he heard enough to guess what was happening. As Jessica said, he wasn’t happy.
Though he was desperately in love with Jessica, after the debacle eight months earlier he was suffering a deep, painful guilt for what he’d done to Elizabeth. Love was a lousy excuse. Even if Elizabeth were to buy it, he could never excuse himself. It was without question the worst thing he had ever done to anybody in his life. And to have done it to one of the best people he’d ever known was unforgivable.
In these last months, as the story spread, he found it harder and harder to be in Sweet Valley. But Jessica refused to move. She was deeply involved in her work. Sometimes he wasn’t sure how much she was suffering, though she seemed to be. He hoped to God she really was, but he couldn’t always tell and that bothered him.
After all these years, he didn’t think he was deluding himself. He’d known Jessica Wakefield since grade school. Yes, she could be self-absorbed, yes, she could be a little selfish, but she was delightful, charming, smarter than most people knew, and utterly captivating. He never would really know her completely, and that mystery fascinated him. He’d never felt that way about any other woman. He couldn’t get enough of her.
And she was in love with him. He was certain of that. She’d sacrificed her sister for him, a thought that tortured him when he couldn’t sweep it out of his mind. But every day that he was with her was glorious despite the family troubles. Maybe he was a shit for feeling that way, but the heart wants what the heart wants. About the worst excuse you could ever conceive of. Until it’s yours.
* * *
Walking up to the front entrance, something Elizabeth had done hundreds of times over the years her parents had belonged to the country club, was almost relaxing in its familiarity. She remembered with warmth that first time, just after her parents had joined when she was twelve, how her eyes had practically popped out of her head at the gorgeous pool and tennis courts and the clubhouse itself, with its extravagant bouquets of flowers in the lobby.
It had been spring and the apple blossoms and forsythia stood tall in their glass vases, almost like small trees. And she thought in her little-girl way, Wouldn’t it be so fun to live here? Like this would be her home. She turned to poke Jessica to share her fantasy, but Jessica poked her first and pointed out a cute boy on the other side of the room. And Elizabeth forgot the flowers and the fantasy and went with her first reaction: He’s not as cute as Todd.
Even then it was Todd.
What if she cried when she saw them today? Totally pathetic thinking for a twenty-seven-year-old. But no matter how she tried to rationalize the ways she should behave, the truth was that she was deeply wounded and still bleeding. Eight months of healing had been wiped out in an instant, and it was today’s raw wound the minute she got off the plane.
As horrible as it would be, it would be better to shout at them than to cry. Anything would be better than tears.
“If this were a play,” Liam said, “and I had to walk into this group and see the two people who had betrayed me, I would rev myself up to rage. Then I would put a lid on it but know the heat was always there, bubbling underneath. Like a weapon, ready to be used. That thought would fortify me enough to keep me from showing any kind of pain. Then I would say my lines, and maybe they’d be benign, but if I was good, really good, no one would miss the fury underneath.”
“You have to be a trained actor for that.”
“No, just hurt and angry.”
“What are my benign lines?”
“‘Hi, everyone!’ And then ‘Happy birthday’ to your grandmother.”
“‘Hi, everyone, including you asshole shitheads, you liar cheaters! Happy birthday, Grandmommy.’ How’s that?”
“You’re letting a little too much of the bubbling stuff show.”
By now they were at the front door, which was being held open by Jose, one of the staff who had been working at the club long enough that his son and daughter-in-law now ran the kitchen. His grandson, whom Elizabeth remembered as a small boy, spent his college vacations collecting balls from the driving range.
Too late to run.
“Is that you, Elizabeth? Or is it Jessica? Whichever, welcome. Good to see you. They’re all there in the small dining room.”
“It’s Elizabeth and thanks, Jose. It’s good to see you, too.”
Elizabeth directed Liam toward the small dining room on the far side of the lobby, which still looked as perfect as the first day she’d seen it. Only she was different, no longer that sweet little twelve-year-old, that nice little girl who didn’t hate.
“I’m not an actor. I’m just going to do whatever hits me.”
“That’s the best. When in doubt, play it honest.”
They walked across the lobby to the private dining room. The double doors were closed, but they could hear the buzz of people inside. Elizabeth’s people.
She was back to claim them.
* * *
Jessica kept glancing over to the door. She hadn’t touched her champagne or the little salmon hors d’oeuvres. She could barely respond to Todd or anyone else who talked to her. All she could do was wait, watching the door for her sister. She couldn’t ever remember being afraid of Elizabeth. But she was now.
She had decided that no matter what Elizabeth said, she would stay calm and say hello and try to look welcoming. That meant a small smile, not a big greeting, very subdued.
What if Elizabeth ignored her? She would still say hello.
Of course, everyone would get up to welcome Elizabeth, and there would be kisses and hugs and all that. Jessica had decided that she would hang back and let Elizabeth take the lead.
She and Todd hadn’t really talked about it too much. It was too painful and so neither had told the other how they were going to handle this first meeting.
She could see that Todd was watching the door as intently as she was.
They weren’t the only ones who were nervous. Her grandmother didn’t know Elizabeth was coming, so she was cool, but her parents were keeping a sharp eye on her and the door. Darting back and forth. Jessica could see how nervous her dad was. He did a lot of tie straightening when he was nervous. Tonight he had straightened his tie so much it was halfway around his neck. Her mother was certainly just as nervous, but she knew she had to be the calm one, and so she forced herself to look the perfect hostess.
Even though it was her own family, Jessica felt as if she were in hostile territory. Steven still hadn’t forgiven her for the business with Cara; his friend, Aaron Dallas, absolutely hated her; Bruce Patman, a close friend of Elizabeth’s, certainly hated her, too.
Out of seven guests so far, she could only count on her parents and her grandmother, Marjorie Robertson, to be in her corner. And soon Elizabeth would come and that would add to the hate list. Her parents and grandmother loved her, of course. Or so she hoped. But the only one she knew truly loved her was Todd. And he was the most important. Without his love, she would have nothing left. Pretty bad for the girl who used to have everything; the one who always got the window seat.
Maybe her sister didn’t hate her.
Why in hell not?
Then the double doors opened and Jessica could see instantly from Elizabeth’s face, from the hard stretch of her mouth and the way she avoided looking in Jessica’s direction, that it was going to be the worst scenario. Her sister did, indeed, detest her.
; Eight months. The longest they had ever been separated. Elizabeth looked different, Jessica thought, older, more beautiful, with a sophistication she hadn’t had before. A New York look—whatever that was. But it was a look. She wore a black empire dress that caught tight just under her breasts, shoestring straps slightly rounded to soften the neckline, which was a bit low for Elizabeth. Even her jewelry was black. Definitely not L.A. Not like Jessica’s own Betsey Johnson little-girl pink. Elizabeth’s hair was different. Shorter, with a center part giving way to a gentle sweep that cascaded along the sides of her face.
Weird, Jessica thought. Exactly the same cut as mine.
Jessica was so concentrated on Elizabeth that for the moment she didn’t see the man behind her. And then she did, and he was gorgeous. He had to be Elizabeth’s boyfriend. Who else would she bring all the way out here? If she had someone, maybe there was a chance. Maybe it wouldn’t be so terrible.
For Bruce Patman, standing there with adoration in his eyes, it was terrible already. He and Elizabeth had never lost their closeness; they were on the phone all the time. In fact, he had flown to New York five times on some business excuse just to see Elizabeth. In all the conversations they’d had, she never mentioned another man—until the phone call the other day when she’d said she was bringing someone to the dinner.
“Someone you’re dating?” Bruce had asked Elizabeth, digging for any information. But she was not forthcoming. Instead, she said it was a long story. He said he had time, but she wasn’t talking. He practically hung up on her. And now, here he was, the boyfriend.
She was introducing him, and Bruce felt sick.
Elizabeth said to Liam, “I’d like you to meet my great friend, Bruce Patman. Bruce, this is Liam O’Connor.”
They shook hands. Bruce wanted to know only one thing, but there was no way to ask, so he just backed away and made room for everyone else.
Elizabeth’s grandmother, Marjorie Robertson, the only one who was truly surprised, let out a little yelp and fairly leaped from her chair, her arms outstretched, ready to hug Elizabeth.
Sweet Valley Confidential: Ten Years Later Page 18