by Dianne Dixon
Livvi wonders if this explanation was meant to make things better, to lessen the ache: it hasn’t. “I was never really part of you,” she says. “I was excluded. Disposable.”
“It wasn’t about exclusion, Olivia. It was about protection.” Andrew waits until he and Livvi are looking directly into each other’s eyes before he tells her: “I hid Grace from you to protect her. There’s no other reason.”
Livvi desperately wants to believe him. She wants, with everything that’s in her, not to go back to being alone. While she’s asking: “How do I know you’re not lying?”
“All the things I’ve ever said to you are the truth, Olivia. I’ve never spoken one lying word to you. I love you. I want to be with you. That’s the truth. It’s what’s important.”
He reaches out to put his arms around her. Livvi pulls away, feeling like she’s in a maze of mirrors, searching for a doorway. “The fact that you have a wife is important. You lied about that…and you lied about Grace…”
“I didn’t lie,” Andrew tells her. “All I did was not spell out every syllable of the truth.”
Livvi thinks about this, then says: “Hiding the truth is the same as telling a lie.” And as she’s finishing her thought, a hard edge of accusation is creeping into her voice. “The lie you told me—hiding Grace, making it seem like she didn’t exist—that was despicable.”
Andrew is no longer trying to hold Livvi in his arms. But he has stepped very close to her, close enough for her to feel the anger in the beat of his heart. “Before you say anything you’ll be sorry for,” he’s warning. “Don’t forget, you play the same game with me. You have plenty of blank spaces you haven’t bothered to fill in. How about the phone calls? The ones that come every once in a while in the middle of the night and leave you rattled for days? Ever talk to me about them? Ever told me who they’re from?”
Livvi looks away, her anger blending with a vague sense of guilt.
“And what about the nightmares?” Andrew is asking. “When you wake up shaking and crying? What’s that about? Maybe your life before you met me? There’s got to be more to your backstory than that you grew up with a single father you haven’t spoken to in years.”
Livvi takes several steps backward, trying to put distance between her secrets and Andrew’s. But he’s quickly closing the gap, telling her: “You never really open up about what’s down deep inside you—you toss me the Cliff Notes. I’m not an idiot, Olivia. Don’t you think I know there’re things in your life you haven’t figured out how to handle? It was obvious from the first night in that butler’s pantry, when I asked you to tell me about yourself and I saw the terror in your eyes. That’s why I let you off the hook—did the fortune-telling act and turned it into a game.”
Andrew is breathing hard, his words coming out in a rasp: “For me, it didn’t make you despicable, it just made you human.”
Livvi’s response is quiet, nearly inaudible—she’s not sure she’s right about what she’s saying. “This is different. What you did is different.”
“The only difference is I’m forty-two and you’re twenty-seven. I’ve had more time—bigger things—to fuck up.”
Still lost in the maze of mirrors, and still searching for the doorway, Livvi tells Andrew: “I called you this morning at five-twenty, when the sun wasn’t even up. After the weather vane crashed into my car.” Her voice is rising now, not with anger, but with uneasiness. Her grip on the stone statue is inadvertently tightening as she says: “You didn’t call back till after ten. Where were you for all that time?”
Andrew is grabbing the statue from Livvi’s hand. Throwing it across the room, smashing it against the wall. Shouting: “I was in goddamn Palos Verdes!”
He draws a deep breath, and then says: “I went down there to try to talk to Kayla—for the first time ever—about a divorce. Grace was spending the night with my parents, it seemed like a perfect chance to explain things. I told Kayla we needed to get a divorce because there was someone special in my life, someone I love. And she completely fell apart.”
Andrew is refusing to take his eyes off Livvi’s. “She tried to kill herself, Olivia. I had to stay with her.”
Before Livvi can speak, Andrew clamps his hand over her mouth. “I stayed because I didn’t have a choice. The mother of my child needed me.” He gently lifts his palm away from Livvi’s mouth, and says: “Yes, my phone was off. It was necessary. Me taking calls and sending texts would only have pushed Kayla over the edge. As it was, it took her until midmorning to calm down enough to fall asleep—and when she did, my first call was to you.”
Andrew looks at Livvi tenderly, for a long moment. “If you were my wife, wouldn’t you want me to take care of you…the best way I could?”
He seems to be begging for Livvi’s compassion. “I feel responsible for what’s happened to Kayla. I’m the one who walked away, the one who broke the promise. I owe her a soft landing. Please tell me you understand.”
Without waiting for an answer Andrew pulls Livvi toward him. His kiss is as possessive and full of desire as it was on that first night—the first time he ever touched her. And for an instant, there is that spellbinding chemistry—that feeling in Livvi of ascending into paradise.
She’s melting. Forgetting. Wanting to forgive.
But then she thinks of Grace. At the bathroom window. Shivering and alone. Waiting for her daddy.
And Livvi is stepping away from Andrew. She’s saying: “You need to leave. You need to get Grace and take her home.”
Andrew seems ready to insist that they stay where they are and work things out—but then he appears to change his mind, and lets Livvi lead him toward the bedroom.
As he’s following her through the bedroom door, Andrew says: “You and I love each other. Nothing is going to change that.”
Livvi stays silent. She doesn’t want to lie to him. And can’t tell him the truth. She doesn’t know what it is.
When they arrive at the bed, where Grace is sleeping, Livvi positions herself in front of Andrew—momentarily blocking his access to his little girl.
Livvi passionately wants to stay with Grace. To protect her. Hold on to her; never let her out of her sight. But Grace is Andrew’s child, not hers. Livvi understands she has no power to do anything but step away.
When she does, it’s as if her heart is being ripped out.
While Andrew is taking his place at Grace’s side, Livvi hands him the lightly woven woolen throw that’s at the foot of the bed. She watches as he wraps Grace in it, reverently—and carries her toward the living room.
Grace and Andrew are slowly disappearing from sight. Grace, in a half-sleep, is murmuring “Daddy!” in the same awestruck way she might whisper the word “Magic!”
In hearing that murmur Livvi is being drawn back into the place where she is Olivia—hungering to feel the beat of her father’s heart, and the warmth of his embrace.
It takes several long moments before Livvi returns to the present. Before she realizes that her phone is ringing.
When she picks the phone up and puts it to her ear, a whispery voice is asking: “Olivia, is that you?”
And there is the sensation of fire and snakes and knives in Livvi.
While the whispery voice is telling her: “If you don’t listen to what I have to say, you will regret it until the day you die.”
Micah
Newport, Rhode Island ~ 2012
A light wind is whispering among the shadows. In the portico. Rustling through the sea of potted palms. Traveling across the black marble steps. And over the tongue-shaped brass knocker that Micah, only seconds ago, let drop—and bang—against the door of this crumbling, subdivided mansion in Newport.
A sudden squeak has come from behind a second-floor window. The drapes have been opened, stealthily. For a half-second, Micah is genuinely frightened.
A crackle is sputtering from the intercom speaker near the door. It’s being followed by a hush—a void in which someone is listening, hoverin
g. Deciding.
Micah is suddenly exhausted. She rests her forehead on the intercom’s rusted, mesh-covered mouth. It has a stale, musty smell. She breathes it in, like a punishment.
After several long beats, she asks: “Do I have to beg you to open the door?”
The hush continues. And continues. Until a woman’s voice, an arrestingly rich contralto, announces: “I don’t receive visitors anymore. Go away.”
Micah steps back from the intercom and looks toward the second-floor window—arms raised, face upturned. Waiting to be seen, to be acknowledged. The hush remains unbroken. The impact of this is like being stripped naked and rolled through broken glass. And Micah wails: “Do you really not recognize me?”
A pause. Followed by an indistinct noise at the other end of the intercom. “Are you someone I knew well?” the woman asks.
“No,” Micah tells her. “I’m your daughter.”
***
“Cry Me a River.” That’s the song that’s playing—the lyrics that are being sung. “Cry me a river, ’cause I’ve cried a river over you.” The singer’s voice is enthralling. Luxuriantly rich and limber in its power and sensuality.
Micah, frustrated with trying to be heard over the volume of the music, is searching for the sound system’s remote control. Her mother’s ornate second-floor sitting room is cluttered with a lifetime’s worth of knickknacks and memorabilia.
After a while, Micah discovers the remote on an enormous tabletop crowded with crystal figurines and dominated by a large, framed portrait. The photo, circa 1970, is of a voluptuous brunette onstage at the London Palladium—her low-cut dress displaying her figure to eye-catching advantage as she’s bowing to the crowd, receiving a riotous standing ovation.
Micah clicks the remote. The music fades. And her mother says: “I thought you were one of my fans—it’s why I didn’t recognize you right away.” She’s stroking the fur of the large, smoke-colored cat that’s curled in her lap. With each pass of her hand, she’s watching the light from the window dance across the jewels on her ringed fingers. “My fans are incredibly loyal,” she’s telling Micah. “There are always emails, letters…and, quite often, visits.”
Her mother’s face, an older version of the one in the framed photograph, is serene as she’s watching Micah. But her tone has an undercurrent of accusation. “I couldn’t have survived without the love and concern of my fans. They are the only thing that sustains me. Without them, I think by now my heart would be completely broken.”
This is meant as an insult, a well-placed barb. Micah sidesteps it. Determined not to take the bait—not to open the floodgates and let the demons loose. Determined that this time, things will be different. Because this time things are different. Micah may be dying. And before it’s too late, she needs to find someone: someone who knows her, who is willing to give her comfort. And reconciliation.
Her mother has turned toward the window, and Micah is wondering if she’s looking at her own reflection—taking an impromptu inventory of her ongoing battle against time. Assessing whether or not, beneath what is now soft and fleshy, she can still find some trace of what was once firm and ripe.
Her mother’s voice is a sigh as she transfers her gaze from the window to the cat and quietly says: “I looked forward to my motherhood with such excitement and it turned into such disappointment.” Then she sits up very straight and speaks directly to Micah. “I expected it to be absolutely miraculous, and you took all the joy out of it.”
She’s shaking her head, puzzled, as she adds: “When you were a baby, you worshipped me and that was sublime, but then when you were a little girl for some reason you changed. You became outrageously selfish. No matter how much I gave you, nothing was good enough. You always wanted something else.” A tremulous, wounded quality is creeping into her voice. “You were horrible to me. You were a horrible, horrible little thing.”
This barb has hit its target—the floodgates are open. The demons are loose. And Micah tells her mother: “They should’ve ripped your uterus out the day you were born.”
“How dare you…? I was a magnificent parent. My god, you celebrated your sixth birthday in Paris and your tenth at the Sydney Opera House.”
“I was backstage on a cot at the fucking Sydney Opera House. With an ear infection.” Micah’s need for comfort is being overwhelmed by a furious desire for justice. She’s slamming the remote against the tabletop, again and again, sending waves of crystal figurines smashing to the floor. “I saw you for maybe five minutes in Australia—during a costume change. And Paris was being alone in a hotel suite with a boxed birthday cake and a rented babysitter. You were across town, launching your ten-millionth concert tour.”
Her mother cuts her off with a shout. “Your goddamn birthday present was a ruby and gold bracelet specially made for you by a jeweler who worked for Cartier. Do you know how excited I was about that present…and how much you hurt me when you weren’t?”
“I was six. I wanted a dollhouse!”
“See? See what I mean? Nothing was ever enough for you. Not the presents, not the trips. Not even my getting you into Harvard.”
“I got into goddamned Harvard on my own!”
“You can’t be simpleminded enough to think once they found out you were my daughter…which I’m sure they must have…that it didn’t help.”
And through gritted teeth, her mother adds: “What did you do in return? You threw it in my face and dropped out.”
“How in hell did my time at Harvard have anything to do with you?”
“That you could even ask…shows how blind and ungrateful you are.” Her mother is now cuddling the smoke-colored cat to her chest, like a child soothing herself with a favorite toy. “Everything you had, everywhere you were able to go, was because of me, because I lived my life as a sacrifice.”
Her mother lowers the cat into her lap and glares at Micah. “Do you give any thought to that—to how much I sacrificed for you? I worked three-hundred sixty-five days a year. Never missing a concert or a recording session. Never refusing an interview, an autograph. Always providing you with the best. The best clothes. The best schools. The finest tutors. You weren’t raised by some drab, faceless little housewife. I gave you the gift of being the child of a music icon—”
“You didn’t give me shit.”
“—and all I ever expected in return was that you would love me in the way I’d always imagined—that you would appreciate me and want to make me happy. I gave so much and asked for something so simple—a child who cared enough to reward me with her devotion. I was an extraordinary mother while you, Micah, were a disaster of a daughter who has never done a single thing to make me proud.”
Micah’s rage—her hurt—is volcanic.
She’s lunging at her mother, dragging her to her feet: the smoke-colored cat shrieking and darting away while Micah is screaming: “What was my favorite bedtime story? How old was I when I got my first period? Who did I go to my senior prom with? How much of your coke did I snort when I was twelve? Where do I live? What do I do for a living? Come on, Mother, pick one! Take your best shot!”
Micah is shaking her mother with such force that she can hear her mother’s teeth chattering—it’s spurring a fleeting desire in Micah to reach in and pull them out by their roots. Shove them down her mother’s throat. And kill her.
Her mother is defiantly observing Micah through narrowed eyes, as if reading her mind—warning Micah: “It won’t do you any good. You’re not in the will.”
Micah’s laugh is spontaneous and bitter. “Fuck you,” she tells her mother. “I’m rich.”
Her mother has pulled away and dropped back into the wing chair near the window. There’s a feisty combativeness in the tilt of her chin. “I haven’t seen or heard from you since you were in your twenties, Micah. Other than to badger me into leaving you my money…what reason could you possibly have for being here? Tell me.”
And now it’s Micah who’s the one being shaken—the one experie
ncing the sensation of having her teeth rattled.
“Well,” her mother says, “what do you want? Whatever it is must be something big—you once swore you’d go to your grave without ever setting foot in this house again.”
Her mother’s words are draining all the fight, and fury, out of Micah. She’s dropping into a sitting position beside the wing chair—and letting her head come to rest against her mother’s thigh.
It has been more than two decades since Micah has touched her mother’s body. Touching it now is like unexpectedly touching heaven, while brushing against hell.
Micah is picturing the future. What it will hold if she decides to fight her cancer. She’s picturing the surgery and the things that will come with it. Chemo. Nausea. Hot putrid vomit. Skull-splitting headaches. The drying-out of her skin and eyes. The steady loosening and falling-away of every hair, every eyelash, every trace of her eyebrows, until her face, which has always been so lovely, is bald and waxy. Nothing but a skull pushing against lard-colored flesh. And there will be searing pain in her legs and arms and feet that will leave her weak. She’ll be robbed of her strength, her beauty. Her breasts. And in the end, there’ll be no guarantee that the cancer won’t win. The toll seems incomprehensible.
And Micah says: “There’s a fight I’m supposed to take on—and I’m not even sure I have a right to be in it. The price of walking away is death, but the end result of staying and fighting might simply be death postponed. I have no idea what to do.
“I need you,” Micah tells her mother. “I’m very, very sick. They might not be able to make me better. I have breast cancer.”
Her mother’s hands flutter up like startled birds. Then slowly come to rest on the crown of Micah’s head.
For the briefest of moments it’s as if Micah is being bathed in the warmth of a fragrant, healing oil.
She is infinitely grateful.
And, for a while, she is where she has always dreamed of being.
Then when her mother moves her hands away, gathering the smoke-colored cat into her lap, she tells Micah: “You didn’t get it from me. I’ve never grown any sort of cancer. No one in my family has.”