by Joy Fielding
"Sounds good to me," David said, almost casually.
"Don't be flip, David. I'm being serious."
“So am I," he said, turning his head in her direction, his eyes searching hers. "I've told you before—I don't want any more children. I have two already I haven't done a very good job with. I'm sorry, Jill," he said, catching the look on her face. "I know you wanted children, but let's face it, I'm not a very good father, and I don't have the energy or the patience—or the desire—to do it again."
"You sound very definite."
"I am very definite."
"Where does that leave me?" Jill asked reluctantly.
"Where do you want to be?"
"With you," she said, after a pause, her voice barely audible.
'Then that's where you are," he said, kissing her forehead.
"I love you," she said, feeling her voice growing softer with each fresh remark.
"I love you, too, sweetheart," he answered. "Come on, turn over, and get some sleep. Let me hold you."
Jill allowed her body to be turned and held, wishing she could crawl inside him, under his skin where she would be safe. So, it had been decided for her, she thought, feeling the muscles in his legs beginning to twitch. She was not to have children. She closed her eyes. She couldn't blame David. It was something he'd already been through, something he'd already done. He didn't want to do it again. To start over from the beginning. She wasn't even surprised. She'd known this would be his decision.
His arm shifted underneath her. She felt him pulling away, withdrawing. "I'm sorry, honey," he was saying, "I've got to turn over."
Jill moved so that David was free to turn around. Normally, she would have moved her body with his, both of them reversing their positions with neither thought nor effort. Tonight, she clung stubbornly to her side of the bed, her body's posture imitating how she felt—isolated, tied up in knots, and barely hanging on.
Chapter 18
The feeling of Deja vu was almost overwhelming. The long table, the uncomfortable chairs, the smoke and the people responsible for it, their tired voices repeating even more tired speeches, all of which Jill was convinced she had heard in their exact entirety a year before. (Welcome to the start of another school year. The fall semester is perhaps the most important term, setting, as it does, the tone for the rest of the year. We wish to welcome—etc., etc.) Jill looked up and down the old, badly scarred table, the people on either side probably not much different from the network people she used to confront across similar tables during the weekly story conferences of the past. Their interests were similar; many of the teachers had, like herself, come from prior jobs in television and radio. And yet, they were not the same. Something was missing, she thought, searching the other faces, each wearing the same tired and bored expression that her own undoubtedly held. The sense of commitment, she decided, a commitment to something larger than simply getting through the day, was flagrantly absent. Though there were obviously many in the room with a deep dedication to what they were doing, there was simply not the same kind of energy flowing through everyone's veins. It was precisely that missing energy that she missed so much— the constant struggle to get your ideas heard and accepted and ultimately recorded and broadcast.
Jill looked down at the floor. She was in deep trouble, she knew, if she was thinking this way already, on this the first day of this the most important semester of the school year. It didn't bode well.
The phone call came halfway into Jack McCreary's lengthy explanation of the recent budget cuts. Jill had honestly thought she was following the familiar monotone closely, and was somewhat startled to find that the sudden tap on her shoulder brought her abruptly back from a heated story conference at the studio, where she had been bowling them over with the sheer brilliance and audacity of her ideas, to the claustrophobic confines of the crowded campus meeting room, where reality was holding court.
"Phone call for you," one of the office secretaries confided, leaning close, trying not to draw attention. “He said it was important."
Jill looked puzzled, but the secretary's shrug indicated she knew nothing else, and so Jill pushed back her chair and self-consciously followed the tiny woman out into the hallway and toward the office. The secretary barely stretched to five feet and Jill felt like a giant trailing after her. Why do they always send the short ones when they want me? She wondered.
"Line three," the woman indicated before sitting down behind her desk.
Jill picked up the phone and pressed the appropriate extension. "Hello?"
'The shit's hit the fan," David's voice said instead of hello.
"What are you talking about?" Jill asked, startled.
"Beth just confessed."
"What?"
"You heard me. Beth Weatherby just confessed—she says she did it—she murdered Al."
"I don't believe it," Jill muttered, feeling for the chair she knew was somewhere behind her and sitting down. She noticed that all typing and other general office activity had ceased. None of the secretaries was making even the slightest effort to conceal her curiosity. 'That's crazy!" she whispered, hearing Beth's voice echo in her other ear. "I did it, Jill," it repeated. "I killed my husband."
"Not as crazy as what else she says," David continued.
"What else does she say?" Jill found herself gripping the side of her chair.
David cleared his throat. "She says it was self-defense."
"Self-defense? You mean, Al was attacking her?"
"No, she admits Al was fast asleep when she started hitting him."
"I don't understand."
"It gets better."
'Tell me."
David gave an abrupt and angry laugh, strangling it in his throat before it could grow. "She claims that he's been beating her for the past twenty-seven years, if you can swallow that one, and that the night she killed him, he'd gone to bed in a drunken rage promising to finish her off once and for all when he woke up." Jill could feel him shaking his head. "Can you imagine her expecting anyone to believe that garbage?"
Jill pictured Al Weatherby dancing romantically with Beth at firm parties, laughing at her jokes, displaying her proudly to his friends and cohorts, holding her hand, sitting close beside her at every opportunity, supporting her when she played badly at bridge. David was right—what Beth was saying was impossible to believe. It couldn't be true. "She must be having some sort of a breakdown," Jill said quietly. "I guess Don will plead temporary insanity."
"I don't know what Don's plans are. He's as confused as the rest of us. She didn't even consult him about her confession. Just called an impromptu press conference. Don heard about it over the radio. Not even her kids knew what she was planning. She just went ahead. The office is in a total shambles—nobody's getting anything done. I’ll probably have to work late tonight."
"Jason and Laurie are coming for dinner," she reminded him quickly, surprised she was still capable of remembering such lesser realities.
"Shit," he swore under his breath. "All right, I'll try to be home." He paused. "Good God, what else could happen?" he asked nervously.
"She told me," Jill muttered to herself, "but I didn't believe her."
There was a second's silence, then David spoke. "What do you mean, she told you? Told you what? What are you talking about?"
Jill realized she had spoken out loud, was aware of the growing alarm and even anger in her husband's voice. "When I went to see her last week," she said softly, reluctantly, sensing how David would react to her admission.
"She told you what exactly?" David was demanding.
"Not anything about the self-defense or about Al's beating her," Jill quickly explained. "Just that she'd killed him," she added weakly.
"Just that she'd killed him," David repeated disdainfully. "You didn't think that was important enough to tell me? To tell Don? Or her children? Especially after they begged you to try and help!"
"Please don't be angry, David," Jill pleaded. "I was so startled. I didn't know wh
at to think. I thought, maybe—"
"You didn't think, period," he exclaimed angrily. "How could you not say anything, Jill? You know everyone's been tearing their hair out!"
"I didn't think it was my place to say anything to anyone," she tried to explain. "Beth said she needed time to think it all through. I thought maybe she'd had a breakdown, gone a little crazy—"
"Sure, crazy like a fox," David interrupted. "The only thing she needed to think through is this ridiculous story of hers. You gave her a week to get it down to a science. Now, all she has to do is plead temporary insanity and she'll probably never even see the inside of a jail cell. In the meantime, she'll drag a wonderful man's name and memory through the mud. The goddamn newspapers will have a field day. I mean, it's just the kind of story they love— big-shot lawyer was a wife-beater for a quarter of a century. They'll eat it up!"
"David, calm down—"
"How could you do it, Jill?" She could see the look of disbelief on his face through the phone wires. "If nothing else, how could you keep it from me?”
Jill swallowed hard. "I wanted to tell you," she began. "I thought about telling you. That afternoon, I called you at the office. I wanted to see you. But you were busy, and after that, I just couldn't. I'm sorry. I just knew that Beth had told me what she did in confidence, and I couldn't bring myself to say anything. I kept hoping you'd figure out I was keeping something from you, the way you usually do, and press me about it, get it out of me the way you did about—" She broke off. About Nicole Clark, she finished in silence. What were you so busy thinking about that you didn't notice I was holding something back?
David's voice was angry. "I don't know what you're talking about, Jill! Are you trying to tell me that it's my fault for not guessing what Beth told you? That I should have figured out you were keeping something from me?"
"No, of course not," she said. Yes, that's it exactly, she thought. You always did before.
There was a long, uncomfortable pause. "I have to go," David said finally. "I only called to tell you about Beth. I didn't realize it would be old news."
"David—"
The receiver went dead in her ear. She sat for a minute without moving, then she replaced the receiver, stood up and, pointedly ignoring the curious stares of the secretaries, walked from the room.
The mood at the dinner table wasn't much better. David had walked in just as Laurie and Jason were beginning an argument on the merits of a certain musical group and one glance at the disgusted look on his face told Jill to stay calm and quiet.
“Can't you keep these kids under control?" he had snapped in her direction, as he took his seat at the table. Jill had said nothing, noting only the surprised look on his children's faces as he spoke. He had never talked to her in such an abrupt fashion before—at least not in their presence. Jill had gone quietly into the kitchen, retrieved his food from the microwave and placed it gingerly in front of him.
"What is it?" he asked, barely looking at it.
"Pork sirloin," she answered.
"How much?"
"What do you mean? How many pounds?"
"How much did it cost?" he asked testily.
Jill looked startled, felt caught off balance. "I don't remember," she said, sitting down. "I've had it in the freezer for a while."
David looked over at his children's plates. "You keep saying they don't eat anything! Why would you cook an expensive piece of meat when you know it'll all go to waste?"
"I'm-m-m eating!" Jason stammered.
"I'm not very hungry," Laurie whispered.
"That's all right," Jill said quickly, feeling her appetite disappearing. "Neither am I."
"Oh, great," David barked. "I have a good idea—next time you kids come to dinner, why don't we just bum some money?"
"Oh, Daddy," Laurie said.
“Don't you 'Oh, Daddy me,' young lady. You look like a walking skeleton and I’m sick of it. You don't leave this table until you finish everything on that plate."
Jill watched as Laurie's eyes welled up with tears. Laurie immediately lowered her head, staring down at her plate. It seemed for several minutes as if no one breathed, and then slowly, Laurie moved her fingers to her fork and stabbed at some of the meat on her plate, bringing a forkful to her mouth. The two never connected, Laurie suddenly dropping the fork to the table and running from the room.
Jill immediately followed the girl into the bedroom despite David's loud protest. Laurie was sitting on the edge of the bed, and while the mirror was located directly in front of her and she was staring straight at it, she didn't appear to be seeing anything at all. Her eyes were stubbornly blank and dry, her lower lip quivering, her upper lip decidedly stiff.
"Laurie," Jill began before she was cut off.
"Could you please leave me alone?" the girl asked.
Jill hesitated. "I just wanted to tell you that you're not the one he's really angry at."
"Could have fooled me," Laurie pouted.
"Well," Jill said gently, "adults are funny people. They don't always say what they mean, and they don't always yell at the person they want to yell at. Sometimes they're not even sure why they're angry and it just comes out at whoever's available, whoever's the easiest target, which tonight happens to be you." Laurie continued to stare straight ahead.
"Actually, it's me your father's angry at. Some things are happening now that have everybody more than a little confused—" She tried to read something from the young girl's expression, but got nothing. "I just wanted you to know that it honestly has nothing to do with you." Jill stood for several seconds before moving toward the doorway.
“Thank you," the small voice said quietly from the bed.
Jill turned in surprise, saw that the girl was still staring with intense absence at the mirror, wondered briefly whether she had said anything at all, and then returned to the dining room.
Jason and his father were sitting in icy silence at the table. Jason, whether out of hunger or intimidation, had finished everything on his plate. For the first time since she had met the boy, he actually looked glad to see her.
"So, how was the first day of school?" Jill asked him, pointedly ignoring her husband.
Jason's face suddenly looked as disgusted as his father's. "Boring," he said. "R-real boring."
"The word you're looking for is 'really,” David said sharply. "Really boring. It's an adverb, as in how boring is it? It's really boring. I, for one, am getting real tired of all this California slang. I find it real boring."
Jason regarded his father as if the poor man had lost control of his senses. "Are you all right?" he asked.
"I'm real fine," David answered.
"Good," Jill piped in. "Then we can change the subject. Who's your homeroom teacher?" she asked, smiling at Jason.
"Mr. F-Fraser," the boy answered. "H-He's okay."
"Your command of the English language amazes me," David said sarcastically.
This time Jason lowered his head, obviously dangerously close to tears. Jill put down her fork in disgust and turned sharply to David. "Don't you think you've said enough for tonight? Are you a professor of language all of a sudden? If you're still angry at me, that's fine. Yell at me. But your kids did not come here tonight for you to take it out on them. Now you've ruined a perfectly good dinner with these histrionics; you have one child very upset in the bedroom and another one here at the table. Instead of just one person in a bad mood, you now have four."
"I'm not a child," Jason spat flawlessly.
"Oh, be quiet," David snapped. "Are you so stupid you can't tell when someone's defending you?"
"I don't need her to defend me!" Jason shouted, pushing his chair back from the table, looking in a rage at Jill. "Who asked you, anyway?" he continued, furious. "Why can't you just keep your big mouth out of everything?" He stormed from the room. Jill pictured the two Plumley adolescents sitting side by side at the foot of her queen-size bed. She wasn't sure if she was more surprised by his outburst or by th
e ferocious ease with which it had been delivered.
"Well," Jill said, starting to clear the table, "a classic case of transference. You're angry at me but you don't want to yell at me in front of the kids, so you transfer your anger directly to them and you yell at them. Then Jason gets angry at you but can't summon the necessary courage to scream at his own father, so he does the next best thing, which is to scream at his nasty stepmother. So—you should be happy. I got yelled at, after all." She took an armload of dishes into the kitchen and piled them inside the dishwasher.
David sat at the dining room table for several minutes without moving, then he brought his plate, largely untouched, into the kitchen.
"I'm not very hungry either," he said, laying his plate down on the counter. Jill said nothing. "I guess I better go and apologize to the kids."
"That's probably a good idea," Jill agreed, wondering if he was about to extend the apology to herself. "I'm sorry," he began. Jill regarded him hopefully, ready to instantly forgive him. "About the dinner," he continued, then turned his back and disappeared down the hallway.
It was a little after eight o'clock when the buzzer sounded. Jill was sitting alone in the den rereading the classified section of the morning paper ("Wanted—tall, muscular god of the Greek variety who likes dancing through golden showers and understands a little French"). David had left about fifteen minutes before to drive the kids’ home. He couldn't be back already, Jill thought, heading toward the kitchen. Anyway, he wouldn't buzz from downstairs. He had a key.
She approached the intercom next to the phone and pressed the buzzer to speak. "Yes?"
"Jilly? It's Don Eliot. Is David home?"
Jill felt her heart begin to race, an unwanted cocoon of guilt beginning to wrap its way around her body. "He just went out to drive his kids’ home," she told the criminal attorney. "He should be back pretty soon, if you'd like to come up and wait."
"Fine," he said. "We're coming up."
Jill pressed the buzzer which allowed the door in the lobby to open and walked to the door of her apartment, opening it slightly and peering out at the long corridor, listening for the sound of the elevator. Had David spoken to Don after their phone conversation that afternoon? Had he told the other lawyer of her alleged deceit, her prior knowledge of Beth's admitted guilt? Would he, too, make her feel like a traitor, an untrustworthy ally who had betrayed all their confidences?