“I love you.” His voice was full, rich. “Remember not to settle. You deserve better than that.”
“Yes.” She laughed softly, remembering that Paul had said those exact same words to her. “I do. Goodbye, Daddy.”
Johanna clicked off the phone and stared at it a long time.
Chapter Twelve
“It can’t be helped,” Harry repeated, his voice rising in agitation, though Johanna hadn’t asked for an explanation. “I have to go to Italy for a few weeks, maybe even a month. Something about the locations shot we decided on not working out because of expired work permits and problems with the crew. The pain-in-the-ass art director can’t seem to get it through his damn thick head that we’re already over budgeted on this.”
Annoyed, Harry paced around his bedroom, throwing things haphazardly into his suitcase. Every so often, he snuck a glance at Johanna. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but she wasn’t herself this morning. He had fully expected some sort of scene after last night. He had never hit her before and a part of him did regret it, even though he couldn’t bring the words out to tell her. Another part of him, the part he listened to, felt that she deserved it, deserved that and more.
But she didn’t seem to expect an apology. Actually, he got the distinct impression that she didn’t care if he apologized. She looked composed, almost serene when he had walked into her room at ten. She was up and dressed while he still had on his robe and pajamas. He had been prepared for tears, for pleas, for hot words. There weren’t any. When he had told her of the sudden change in plans, she had met that without so much as a blink of an eye. Though he should feel relieved, it irked him.
As if she had no objections to his departure and to the things they both knew would be occupying him while he was gone, she calmly followed him to his room when he motioned her there.
She tried not to show how relieved she felt that he was leaving, even for a few weeks. “Who’ll take your place here?”
“Nobody can, but Sara’s going to try and hold the fort together until I get back.” He straightened and leveled a look at her. “You can’t come with me.”
She looked down at her hands to keep from looking at him. Why hadn’t she realized before how much she loathed him? How pitiful he had become. She had deluded herself for so long, deluded herself into thinking that this weakness of his, that his maniacal behavior would all somehow pass. But in reality this turmoil between them had lasted longer than the period of time she had held onto so tenaciously. The Harry before her was one she had known for almost eleven years. The Harry in her heart had lasted less than one third that time. The handwriting had been on the wall a long, long time, but she had been trying to put wallpaper over it without seeing.
She saw now.
“I wasn’t going to ask.”
Harry stopped packing. His sandy brows pulled together as he studied her. What was she up to? “You weren’t? Why not?” he asked suspiciously.
She raised her eyes to his and he damned her for what he saw there, for the coolness with which she regarded him.
It made him angry. And he had no idea what he was angry about, or why, only that he was.
Simplicity was best. She didn’t want another argument, another scene. That would solve nothing at all. “I thought you’d be happier going off without Jocelyn and me tagging along.”
She had a lover. That had to be it. No woman looked that smug, that cool, unless there was a man rolling her in the sheets. Rage filled him.
“Who is it?” He grabbed her arm and jerked her to her feet. “Who the hell is it?”
She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing fear in her eyes. God, she hated him. “Who’s what?” She winced as he dug his fingers into her flesh. “Harry, you’re twisting my arm.”
“I’ll do a good deal more than twist your arm if you don’t tell me who you’re putting out for. Is it that dumb asshole prop carpenter from the set? Is that how your fancy runs these days? Is it?” he demanded, shaking her violently.
Biting off a scream, Johanna managed to yank her arm free and took a step back, away from Harry. He moved to grab her again, but the look in her eyes stopped him.
“Don’t you ever, ever touch me again.” Her voice was low, dangerous.
His face was contorted in a contemptuous sneer. “I’ll touch you whenever I want to. You’re my wife.”
“In name only,” she retorted. “And it won’t even be that much longer.”
“What are you going to do?” He laughed at her, at the idea of her ever leaving. There had been empty threats before. He knew she’d never go. She’d be turning her back on too many comforts. “Get a divorce?”
The look in his eyes was meant to intimidate her, but this time it had no effect. Johanna had been to the depths of hell and back. He was never going to send her there again.
“I’m going to do what I should have done a long time ago.” She turned her back on him and walked out.
“Go ahead, go!” His voice cracked, as did the veneer of control he was displaying.
When she didn’t turn around, Harry immediately moved in front of her and blocked her way. He put his hands on her shoulders, but instead of grabbing her roughly, there was a gentleness to his touch that was reminiscent of a long time ago. Johanna had to hold herself in check. She felt her resolve weakening a little.
“I’m sorry, Jo. I’m sorry.” The words came from him in a sob.
She was moved for a moment, moved to take him in her arms, to soothe him, to comfort him the way she used to before this awful wall had gone up between them. But the aching love, the need to be needed, was gone from her. It was, she knew, too late for them. If she hadn’t been so blind, she would have realized that fact a long time ago. Whoever they might have been fifteen years ago, they were totally wrong for each other now. She wasn’t in love with the man who was, but who had been, or who she thought had been. In either case, he wasn’t here now.
What was before her was a frightened man who saw enemies lurking behind each shadow. There was nothing she could do for him, no solace she could offer. She’d been all through that time and again.
Harry rested his face in her hair, just for one moment, seeking strength. His breathing was labored, as though something was choking him.
“It’s just that there’s this pressure, this damn pressure.” He pulled back, pinching the bridge of his nose, his eyes closed. She could almost see the pain he felt. “Everyone wants something from me, and I don’t have it to give. And when they find out—“ Desperation filled his voice. She had heard it all before. It was this that kept driving him to cocaine, to seek brilliance where there no longer was any.
“You’re still a good director, Harry. Give yourself a chance. You’re choking off your potential, killing it before it has a chance to grow.”
He laughed disparagingly. His eyes looked like those of a haunted man. “You sound like Paul did.”
“Paul was right.” About a lot of things, she added silently.
He crossed back to the bed and the open suitcase and stared at it mutely. He picked up a shirt and just held it in his hands, as if he didn’t know what to do with it.
Johanna took it from him. “I’ll help you pack.” He merely nodded and let her take over.
“Maybe when I get back,” he murmured hopefully, to himself more than to her, “it’ll be different.”
Yes, she thought, it will be. Very different.
He took her silence as agreement. He had to.
She needed time to think, to plan. If she divorced Harry, she would be on her own and the prospect was frightening to her. She had left college just ten credits short of her degree at Harry’s insistence. Things had been moving so fast for him then and he had moved with it, taking her along. He had promised her that she could always go back and get her degree later. Much as she had wanted to, she had never found the time to go back to school. There was always something that came up to prevent her. Being Harry’s wife had been a fu
lltime occupation.
She knew that by law she was entitled to half of everything they owned. She didn’t want it, didn’t want anything to remind her of the hell she had been through. Besides, there wasn’t all that much anyway. Harry was mortgaged up to the limit. His money had been lost in films that didn’t pay back and in the endless stream of cocaine and women that passed through his life.
But without a degree, there was precious little she could do. Be a saleswoman? A waitress? That wouldn’t begin to pay the bills for the two of them and there was Jocelyn to think of. She couldn’t just hurl her daughter into poverty after the life she had led.
The life she had led.
The words echoed back in her mind. Johanna thought of last night, of coming into her daughter’s room and smelling the stale smoke that clung to the walls and furnishings. Jocelyn was too young and too naive to realize that the air conditioning system would only cause the smell to linger that much longer, trapping the air in the room. She hadn’t spoken to Jocelyn about it because she knew her words would be met with resentment and rebellion.
Maybe a good dose of deprivation would be good for the girl after all. Johanna had seen too many privileged children fall victims of their parent’s generosity, ending up as shallow human beings, unable to fend for themselves, unable to stand up to life.
That wasn’t going to happen to Jocelyn.
If she had even entertained second thoughts about leaving Harry, leaving the jaded world they lived in, seeing what was happening to Jocelyn would have pushed her toward it. It was time to make a break. For both of them.
But to where? Johanna knew she didn’t want to go back to Los Angeles. If she lived there, she felt that the cycle would catch up to her again and hurl her back into the center of the hurricane. This time she might not get a second chance to bail out.
Her father would take her in, of course, without a moment’s hesitation. She was tempted, sorely tempted. She wouldn’t have to shoulder so great a burden if she lived with him, at least in the beginning. She thought of the sleepy college town where her father still worked in the same drugstore as a pharmacist. Everyone knew everyone else and it was comfortable, warm. Safe.
But she had outgrown that. She didn’t want safe. Safe didn’t challenge her and she would become too placid. Maybe that was what had been wrong in the first place. She had come from that little town too trusting, too naive, to see what was happening to her and Harry. A more savvy woman would have seen the signs a long time ago and either done something about it or left.
She wouldn’t think about it yet. Somehow, it would work itself out. She needed time just to float, to appreciate the fact that she wasn’t brutally in love with Harry anymore. She needed time to fully realize that she was finally going to heal and find herself at last.
And the first step was to put Megan on notice. She wasn’t going to go on putting up with the girl’s behavior any longer. Johanna marched into the girl’s room after tapping on the door once for form’s sake.
“Mrs. Whitney, I’m not dressed,” Megan protested, raising a towel in front of her. Behind it, the young woman was totally nude.
Johanna arched a brow. “You’re wearing more than you wore for my husband.”
Megan opened her mouth to protest, then looked lost for a proper reply. She held the towel tighter around her slim body.
“You don’t have to lie and I haven’t come to fight you for him. If you’re fool enough to win him, that’s your problem, not mine.” She drew her brows together. “But I will fight you for Jocelyn.”
“Jocelyn?” Megan looked at Johanna, completely bewildered.
“I walked into her room last night and smelled something.”
The marijuana that Harry had given to her. Megan flushed. “I, —“
“No excuses, Megan, no denials, no threats.” Johanna took a step forward, a lioness intent on protecting her cub. “Consider this only a simple warning. If you ever, ever give my daughter that kind of garbage again, I’ll have you up on charges of compromising the morals of a minor so fast your head will spin.”
Megan raised her chin defiantly, her face rigid. “You can’t do that.”
Johanna only smiled. It made Megan’s blood run cold. “Try me.”
Megan’s bravado crumbled. ‘You want me to leave.”
Johanna shook her head. “No.”
Megan looked surprised. “I don’t understand.”
“If you leave, Jocelyn will think I sent you away. She’ll resent me for it.” Johanna thought of the divorce that would come. “There’ll be enough for her to resent me for soon enough. You can stay as long as we remain in London. But I want you to serve as the perfect example of young womanhood in flower.” The words brought a cryptic smile to Johanna’s lips. If Megan could pull that off, she deserved to be in one of Harry’s movies. “Do I make myself perfectly clear, Megan?”
Megan looked down at the rug and curled her toes. “I think so,” she mumbled.
“Think well,” Johanna warned, taking the girl’s chin in her hand and raising it until their eyes met. “No wild parties, no dope, no make-overs. Jocelyn is twelve, going on thirteen, that’s hard enough. She doesn’t have to go on twenty-nine for another seventeen years. You will do things together that are appropriate for someone Jocelyn’s age. Movies, museums, sight-seeing, that kind of thing. No boys, no tight clothes, no walks on the wild side. Do we understand each other?”
Megan nodded slowly. “Yes, Mrs. Whitney.”
Johanna took her hand away from the girl’s chin and extended it to her. “Good.”
Megan took her hand hesitantly. Her towel began to slip and she pulled it up with her other hand quickly.
Johanna tried not to let her lips curve. “And you can call me Johanna.”
Megan licked her lower lip nervously. “About, about Mr. Whitney—“
Johanna was not about to discuss her husband with Megan. “What happened between the two of you is your own business, and probably, your own loss.”
For a moment, there was a touch of compassion in Johanna’s eyes, but then she banished it. Compassion had been her downfall with Harry. She had learned that not everyone deserved it.
She glanced at her watch as she heard the door to Jocelyn’s room open and close. It was almost noon. Time for a truce of sorts. She turned to see her daughter approaching.
“Now, why don’t the three of us go out to lunch at the Chelsea and then you and Megan can plan the rest of your day together?”
“Yes, Mrs. Whit—Johanna,” Megan amended.
Jocelyn stood in the doorway, staring at the two of them. It was hard to say which surprised her more, the fact that Megan was wearing only a towel in her mother’s presence, or that the three of them were going to be going out together to share a lunch. She smiled uncertainly as her mother put an arm around her shoulder.
“Let’s leave Megan to get dressed, Jocey. I’m starved.”
Jocelyn merely nodded.
Chapter Thirteen
Before he left, Harry had promised to call Johanna as soon as he reached Italy.
He didn’t.
Although she hadn’t expected him to, Johanna still marked the incident down in her new diary, labeling it the last promise to her that Harry would break. There would be no more promises because for there to be a promise, the receiver had to believe. Johanna had ceased to believe. That Johanna, the one who took words at their face value, was gone forever.
It both relieved and saddened Johanna to realize that she was no longer trusting, that a certain cynicism had crept into the way she dealt with people and with life itself. In gaining something, she had lost something precious.
In the days that followed Harry’s departure, Johanna initially thought that it was that final scene in the bedroom which had transformed her. Actually, the incident had only been the catalyst. All the ingredients for the metamorphosis had been there all along, simmering, waiting for the final push. Harry and his rage had just sent her over the
top.
The day was dreary. Harry had been gone a week and there had been plenty of time for her to act, to do something about reorganizing her life. Yet she had made no moves. She felt unsettled. She supposed that perhaps, subconsciously, she was making the final adjustment to this new station in life that she had come to.
The weather wasn’t helping her restless mood. There seemed to be no demarcation from early morning, to noon, to late afternoon. The sky was a hazy gray that lightened and darkened whimsically and with no warning, like a frown coming over the face of the sky. Rain fell intermittently and annoyingly.
Johanna felt fidgety, trapped within her hotel room, within her mind. She knew that when Harry returned, whatever shape he was in, she was going to tell him that it was over between them, finally over. She wanted a divorce and nothing more from him than that.
But what came after that? She didn’t know yet.
She heard Jocelyn sneeze. Her daughter’s cold had been growing steadily worse since Harry left.
“Feeling any better?” Johanna asked as she walked into Jocelyn’s bedroom.
Jocelyn sat on her bed, surrounded by magazines, books and cassettes, looking absolutely miserable and displaying no interest in any of the paraphernalia that littered her room. Megan sat over by the window, staring out through the window at the gloomy day. She didn’t even bother to turn around as Johanna entered the room.
“No,” Jocelyn sniffed, then blew her nose into a tissue. The floor was covered with a myriad of wadded up pink tissues that had missed their target, a wastepaper basket which stood off to the side.
Johanna leaned over and felt Jocelyn’s forehead. It seemed to be a little cooler, but the girl was still warm. “Well, your fever seems down.”
Jocelyn thumbed through a magazine, its pages flipping by unnoticed. “That’s not the only thing,” she said glumly.
Johanna looked over toward the dormant television. “Nothing on television?”
“Nothing.” It sounded as if she were pronouncing a death sentence.
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