Dear Emily

by Fern Michaels

  The person in the mirror started to cry. That was Emily Thorn. Emily Thorn always cried when things went wrong. Emily Thorn was speaking so she had to listen. “I wasted my life. Wasted it. I have nothing to show for it, but this…this…whatever I’ve become. I gave away my life, the best of my years for a smile, a pat on the head, and 120 white shirts. I just up and gave it away. And there’s no way for me to get it back. I’m forty years old. Where do I go now, what do I do?”

  Emily turned out the light and sat down on the toilet seat. The Emily Thorn in the mirror went away immediately. Emily clenched her fists and beat at her fat knees until she howled for mercy. If she kept up this abuse on her person, she was going to cripple herself.

  She didn’t like the dark, had never liked the dark, but hadn’t she been living in the dark for a long time? There were no mirrors in the kitchen, she could go back there and be as miserable as she was here in this windowless bathroom.

  In the kitchen again, with the bright sunlight shining through the windows, she fired up a cigarette and chain-smoked for almost an hour before she reached for Ian’s letter. The last thing she was ever going to get from Ian. She brought it close to her face. A tear splashed downward. This letter was written to the Emily Thorn in the bathroom mirror, the one who had wasted her life. She stared at the letter. How many times would she read it? She knew the contents by heart, mouthed the words aloud as she read the letter yet again. Even now, in this, the last thing she would ever get from Ian, he was placing all the blame on her. He was blaming her for his leaving, saying she pointed out to him certain things he never would have thought of himself. “Liar!” she screamed. “Dirty, low-life liar! Lying sack of shit!”

  Dear Emily. “You bastard, the only time you ever called me dear Emily was when you wanted me to do something for you.”

  I wish there was another way to do this, but there isn’t. Trust me when I tell you I am deeply sorry. I won’t be back, Emily. Our marriage hasn’t been working for a long time and we both know it. Knowing you as I do, I know you would never be the one to take the first step. You can file for a divorce anytime you want. I sold the clinics, or maybe I should say the assets of the corporation have been sold. I’m moving on. I’m tired of working, tired of the clinics. I’m forty, as are you, and I want to experience life a little.

  No, Emily, I don’t feel any guilt at all. You made out your wish list and I gave you everything on it except the child. I would have given you that, but I couldn’t. I didn’t find out until a short while ago that I’m sterile. I guess it was from the mumps as a child. So you see, I did what you asked. I’m not leaving you destitute, Emily. I would never do that to you. The cars, the jewelry are yours as is the shore house, the Sunfish, and the house on Sleepy Hollow Road. The houses have large mortgages so you might want to think of selling them. You will get a small amount of equity out of them. The vacation money piled up nicely and quickly, and it’s yours, as is the personal account with ten thousand dollars in it. I did my best to calculate the amount of money you earned over the years and I think I’ve been more than generous. We’re even now.

  Take care of yourself. You’ll always have a special place in my heart, dear Emily.

  Affectionately, Ian.

  “Eat shit, Ian,” Emily sobbed.

  Emily ripped at her clothes as she stumbled her way into the dark bathroom. She flipped on the light to stare at the Emily Thorn in the mirror. “You are fat. No, you are obese. Look at those rolls of fat. There’s absolutely no sign of a waist line. Your boobs are almost to your belly button. Ponderous. Look at your upper arms, at your neck, all the skin is loose and flabby. You can’t even look down and see your pubic hair because of the rolls of fat. Gross.”

  The Emily Thorn in the mirror said, “This is the person Ian saw every day. This is the person he didn’t want to live with anymore. Can you blame him?”

  “No, no, I can’t blame him for that,” Emily whispered. “If he’d said something, if he’d talked to me, really talked to me, treated me like a real person, I would have made the effort.”

  Forty years old, fat and ugly. Unloved. Dumped. She was now an official dumpee. A fat ugly woman who had wasted the best years of her life in the name of love. “Oh, God!” she moaned.

  Emily ran upstairs, so winded she had to sit down on the stool in the bathroom until she could breathe normally. She looked awful, felt worse than awful. The thick support bra she struggled into made her wince. Once, long ago, she’d worn lacy bras with an underwire for support. Now, with all the weight she’d gained, it was necessary to wear ugly, cotton bras with wide straps that cut into her shoulders and covered her entire back. Once she’d been able to wear size five bikini panties. Now she was wearing size nine cotton briefs. Two rolls of fat bulged between the top of her panties and the bottom of her bra. In frustration she brought her hands down on the vanity with so much force a bar of soap sailed across the room.

  From the hook on the back of the bathroom door, Emily pulled a sack dress with no detail, no belt, and nothing to distinguish it from any of the other sack dresses she’d been wearing the past year. She stuffed her feet into sneakers, bent over to work the Velcro bands into place. She was breathing hard with the exertion.

  Emily trundled down the steps, taking them one at a time because of the tears in her eyes. She didn’t need a fall now. At the bottom of the steps she opened the hall closet and pulled out an old raincoat of Ian’s that she couldn’t button. A minute later she was outside, squeezing herself behind the wheel of the Mercedes coupe. This was a joke too. She was so uncomfortable she wasn’t sure she was going to be able to drive.

  Well, by God, she was going to drive. She wanted to see for herself, needed to see if the clinics had really been sold off. She needed proof positive the letter from Ian wasn’t some kind of cruel joke or a nightmare that she would wake from momentarily.

  The clinic on Terrill Road had a sign on the window that said UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT. The one on Mountain Avenue said the same thing. Watchung’s sign said CLOSED TEN DAYS, UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT. Her face was grim when she drove down Watchung Avenue, where she made a right onto Park Avenue. She refused to even look at the building where she’d lived with Ian for so long. When she came to the clinic, she pulled into the parking lot and cut the engine. She struggled from the car, her purse hindering her as she inched past the steering wheel.

  “We’ll make it easier for you, just hand it over,” a voice said from the other side of the car. Emily looked around to see who was talking to whom. In stupefied amazement she watched as four unsavory-looking youths came around the back of her car. “Give us your purse and we won’t hurt you.” Emily clutched the purse tighter.

  “Get away from me or I’ll scream,” Emily threatened.

  “Nobody’s going to hear you. Hand it over,” one of the youths said brazenly. “C’mon, or we’ll take the car too.”

  Emily saw the knife, the wicked-looking, gleaming piece of steel. The moment when she should have screamed was past. She didn’t know what was in her purse—very little money, that much she did know. A few credit cards Ian had probably canceled. She was about to hand it over to one of the youths when it was snatched from her hand.

  “Don’t think about running after us either. You stay planted right here for ten minutes or we’ll come after you. Your address is right inside your wallet, lady. You hear me?” Emily nodded.

  A second youth laughed cruelly. “Fat-ass tub of lard ain’t going to be doing any running. Don’t go reporting this to the police or we’ll get you when you ain’t expecting it. We got lots of friends. You understand, lard-ass?” Emily nodded. “Git in that car and sit there for ten minutes. Now!”

  Emily did as instructed, her face burning with anger and humiliation, not because she was being robbed and threatened but because of the names they’d called her and the fact that they were laughing at her as she struggled to get into the sports car. She sat in the car for ten minutes before she drove back to her house o
n Sleepy Hollow Road.

  The moment she was inside, she bolted all the doors and put on the alarm system. Would they come back? Maybe, when they saw how little cash was in her purse. She hung up Ian’s coat, saw the camcorder on the top shelf. She’d bought it to take videos of her garden to submit to the Garden Club. She could feel her eye start to twitch when she reached for it. She carried it into the living room, where she placed it on top of the wide-screen television. She turned it on before she backed up to sit down on a brocade love seat that clashed with the green dress she was wearing. She stared straight ahead, her eyes on the camcorder as she recounted the past forty-five minutes. Her voice broke when she described the dialogue between the youths and herself. She stood up, fumbled with the buttons of her dress, pulled it over her head. She closed her eyes and took a deep, searing breath. She turned slowly for the camera’s benefit. Tears rolled down her cheeks. “I am Emily Thorn. This is what I’ve become. I did…it doesn’t matter how I got like this. What matters is I did it myself. I am Emily Wyatt Thorn and I am fat and ugly. I am a poor excuse for the woman I once was. My husband has just left me. This is the Emily Thorn he saw every day when he woke up and when he went to bed.” She advanced on the camcorder in her underwear and turned it off. Then she carried it back to the closet and placed it on the shelf. Someday she would look at the video.

  Someday.

  Part Two

  Chapter 8

  The day after. There was always a day after when a disaster occurred. Emily peered through the miniblinds in the kitchen to her outside world. It was morning, the young sun was already a glorious ball in the sky. The dark night was over. Had she slept through it? How did she get to this hour of a new day? She looked around to see if there was a wine bottle on the table, but there wasn’t. There were a lot of cigarette stubs in three overflowing ashtrays, lots of coffee grounds spilled on the counter and floor, lots and lots of bread crumbs all over the kitchen. She was wearing the same clothes she’d worn yesterday; at least she thought they were the same clothes. The Federal Express envelope and Ian’s letter were still on the table, staring up at her like two square, hateful eyes.

  She was numb, her eyes puffy and red, her ribs hurting from all the crying and sobbing. Her feet and hands hurt. She must have hit or kicked something. All in the name of sick, obsessive love and a pile of white shirts.

  Yesterday she’d thought there were no more tears to shed. How wrong that was. Tears dripped down her cheeks. She was never going to see Ian again. She’d never been truly alone in her life before. She’d gone from her parents’ home to life with Ian. How was she going to live? The world stopped for a second when you hit forty, time enough to get your bearings, then time picked up its feet and raced toward that goal no one wanted to reach. “You’re born to die,” she muttered.

  Mendenares. She would call him today for an appointment. She’d go in, get on the couch, wail and moan for three sessions before anything constructive came out. “So, who needs him?” The attorney she’d gone to see might be able to make sense out of this. Emily snorted. One had to be deaf and dumb as well as blind not to see what had happened. “So, who needs him?” Ian really thought she was going to file for a divorce. “Well, think again, you son of a bitch. If you want a divorce, you get it!”

  In some foggy recess, way in the back of her mind, she knew she and she alone had to deal with this. By herself. She’d dragged herself down to this point in time, with Ian’s help. Now, because Ian was gone, she was alone and she had to crawl up and out of her pit.

  Why hadn’t she seen this coming the past year? Maybe if she’d moved into the yellow room, maybe if she’d stayed in the basement, this wouldn’t have happened.

  Emily ran to the windowless bathroom and turned on the light. She had to see the other Emily Thorn, the real Emily Thorn. She jabbed a finger at the mirror. Her eyes narrowed as she backed out of the bathroom. She was in the kitchen again, her back to the gas range. She reached behind her for the tea kettle, grasped it firmly, and headed back to the bathroom. “I hate you, you bitch!” she shouted. “I never want to see you again.” The tea kettle sailed through the air. The mirror shattered into thousands of sparkling shards of glass. She stepped back just in time. When the glittering pieces littered the floor, Emily thumbed her nose at the blank wall with its globs of dried cement and bellowed, “You don’t exist anymore, Emily Thorn!” She slammed the door shut.

  “And what did that little tantrum get you, Mrs. Thorn?” She had to stop talking to herself. Or were you allowed to talk to yourself and it was only bad when you answered yourself? Whatever it was, she didn’t care. So, the old Emily Thorn was dead, she’d smashed her to nothing. Now she had to come up with a new, improved version. Was she losing it? Was she going off the deep end? Only time would tell. The spatula was suddenly in her hand. “You’re born right now, Emily Thorn.” She tapped herself on the head three times. “Happy birthday! You’re alive. You are reasonably healthy. You are overweight. You are alone, which makes you a free spirit, and free spirits are not accountable to anyone. You can do whatever you want, whenever you want.”

  She was exhausted. What was on her schedule for today? Gardening in the morning, two classes in the afternoon, grocery shopping, cooking dinner, studying. “Yeah, well, that was yesterday’s schedule. No more schedules, no more busy time, no more anything that had to do directly or indirectly with Dr. Ian Thorn.”

  Emily marched upstairs into the bedroom she had not shared with her husband. It was dark and somber. She ripped at the hunter green comforter, at the matching drapes. She carried them out to the top of the steps and pushed them over the railing. She made four more trips with sheets, Ian’s leftovers. The laundry basket on the floor in the linen closet was stuffed full of white shirts. They went over the railing too. She couldn’t help but wonder how long it had taken Ian to fold the shirts that had hung in the closet. He must have packed his things when she was at class.

  Don’t think about Ian. Fix this room so you can sleep here. You have to sleep here. This room is part of what happened; you have to come to terms with it. Clean the bathroom, make the bed, make it your room now.

  Emily followed her own orders. She put on a baggy jogging suit, brushed at her cropped hair, and went downstairs to make fresh coffee. No breakfast today. Today was Day One of Ms. Emily Thorn’s new life.

  As she drank her black coffee, Emily made a list of things she wanted to do for the day. Go to the library, the bookstore, the vegetable market, the grocery store. Clean out the refrigerator, get rid of all the fattening foods, go to Herman’s sporting goods store. The bank had to be her first stop. Set aside some time to go through records, providing Ian left records to go through. Think about framing Ian’s letter. Better yet, maybe she should tack it to the wall and throw darts at it.

  It was four o’clock when Emily returned to the house on Sleepy Hollow Road, her car full of purchases that took a half hour to carry into the house. She felt pleased with herself until she entered the kitchen and reality slapped at her. Always before, she knew Ian would be home sometime during the day. Now she had to deal with the fact that he was never going to walk through the door again. Think positive, Emily, think about all those damn white shirts you are never going to have to iron again.

  She made coffee, cleaned up the grounds because she was not a sloppy person. She marked the calendar, the first day of her new diet, one she would stick to or die trying. She was going to exercise too. One of the Herman’s employees was going to drop off the treadmill and the exercycle she’d purchased.

  A brand new day. The first day of Emily Thorn’s new life. “I’m going to do it. I’m going to do it,” she said aloud.

  Emily stared down at the bags and bags of groceries she’d purchased. She had at least fifty cans of tuna fish, seven boxes of tissues, bags of apples, oranges, celery, and carrots. Two whole bags full of diet drinks and two bags of Evian water. Ten pounds of coffee and five boxes of herbal tea. Four boxes of artificial swe
etener. A new scale whose huge, digital numbers glared up at her like red eyes. Two bottles of super-duper vitamins guaranteed to fill her body full of energy. She felt a wild burst of confidence, then scotch-taped Ian’s letter on the bulletin board next to the phone. She tripped over the bags in her frenzied search for the darts she’d picked up at the hardware store. Eight darts. She stood back, took aim, and missed every single time. Well, she’d do better next time. Besides, it was good exercise to bend down to pick them up. She felt pleased with herself.

  The refrigerator was a definite challenge. She tossed everything into huge, green lawn bags and then dragged them outside. Who in her right mind kept seven gallons of ice cream in the freezer? Who in her right mind kept dozens of frozen pies and cakes next to the ice cream? Who in her right mind kept bags and bags of chips, candies, and cookies in the cabinet? Obviously, she was the guilty one. So, I wasn’t in my right mind for a long time. I’m going to get through this, I really am. She felt dizzy with the declaration.

  She washed out the bare refrigerator and stocked it. It looked good. All the vegetables and fruits were washed, the vegetables pared into snack-size bites and placed in Ziploc bags. The fruit went into a huge bowl on the kitchen table.

  Done.

  Now, where was the exercise equipment going to go? In Ian’s office, of course. Because, she told herself, there’s a television set and VCR that I can watch while I’m doing my exercises. She pulled and tugged, shoved and grunted as she put her ample rump up against Ian’s desk to shove it through the deep pile of the carpet to the far side of the room.