Together Alone

by Barbara Delinsky

  Jill quieted. “I’m sorry.” She frowned. “It’s just that I don’t understand. Is something wrong with us? Why does he need to be with them?”

  Emily took a deep, shaky breath. “That’s one of the things I have to ask him.”

  Their drinks arrived, espresso for Emily, mocha latte for Jill. Emily put her fingertips to the cup, but she couldn’t take her eyes off Jill. Her daughter was beautiful, but that was nothing new. What was new was an expression that spoke of illusions dashed. It was the last thing Emily had ever wanted to see.

  “What?” Jill asked.

  “I’m sorry, so sorry for all this.”

  “It’s not your fault.”

  “Maybe if I’d been a different kind of woman, or if I’d grown more along with your father—”

  “Don’t say that. There’s nothing wrong with you. He’s the one with the problem. He cheated on his wife. And on his daughter.”

  “We don’t know that for sure,” Emily cautioned, trying hard, so hard, to be fair. “He walked up a set of steps and into a townhouse. That’s all we saw. We don’t know what goes on inside. It might be innocent.”

  “You’re doing it again, Mom. Don’t defend him. He lied to you. And keeps lying to you. You’re too good. You let him get away with too much. I think you should divorce him.”

  “Shh.” Emily doubted Jill had considered the effect a divorce would have on her life. She had barely started to consider it, herself.

  “Will you?” Jill prodded.

  “Not if there’s an explanation for what we saw today.”

  “There isn’t.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because,” she said, looking at Emily with something so sad and sure that Emily couldn’t possibly doubt her, “this has been coming. You and I both know it. We’ve been walking on eggshells around Daddy for years. We coax him into doing little things with us, and then rush to smooth things over when he gets antsy. We act like nothing’s wrong and that this is just the way things are when a man has to travel the way Daddy does, but he never says, ‘Wow, am I glad to be home.’ He doesn’t plan things for us to do. He doesn’t seem to care if we do anything. You two won’t take a vacation together. We three won’t take a vacation together.”

  “We don’t have the money,” Emily said out of habit, but Jill was knowing, even in that.

  “We don’t,” she replied dryly and studied her drink. She took a breath, seeming ready to say more on that score. Then she closed her mouth and frowned. “He calls me sometimes at school, really talkative. He asks questions about my friends and my classes, and listens to the answers and then asks more questions. I can’t get him off the phone sometimes.”

  “He loves you.” Emily did believe that, at least.

  “It’s guilt. Do you know how far that townhouse is from my dorm? Fifteen minutes by foot, three by car. How often do you think he’s been there since I started school? Once a week?”

  “No. He was in London for two weeks.” When Jill shot her a skeptical look, Emily insisted, “I saw the tags on his luggage.”

  “Was he with her?”

  Emily suspected he was, though she didn’t know for sure.

  Jill wilted. “What am I going to say to him, Mom? I could play the game before, because I wasn’t sure that was him on those steps, but now that I know it was, what am I going to say when he calls? I don’t want to talk with him. Not after what he’s done.”

  Emily took her hand and squeezed it while she searched for an answer. Tell him to go to hell, was what she wanted to say, because Doug didn’t deserve Jill. But Doug wasn’t the one who mattered. Jill was, and Emily wanted only what was best for her. “He’s still your father.”

  “He’s treated us like shit.”

  “If he didn’t love you, he wouldn’t be calling.”

  “He feels guilty, that’s all.”

  He’s not feeling guilty about me, Emily thought. He’s not calling me. He’s not asking me dozens of questions about my life, and keeping me on the phone for hours.

  Wearied by the length of the day and the weight of her thoughts, Emily sighed. “I have to talk with him, Jill. We have questions now, you and I, that can’t be answered until then. We only have one side of the story. We need to hear his side.”

  “Do you think he’ll tell the truth?”

  Emily thought of the folder that stood between her cookbooks, and the identical one safely stowed upstairs. “He’ll tell the truth,” she said with quiet confidence and an undercurrent of unspoken rage.

  That unspoken rage had Emily planted in a corner of the living room sofa when Doug pulled into the garage on Saturday night. She didn’t move when she heard the rev of his car’s engine—never understood why that last rev was necessary before he turned off the engine, other than to give him a sense of power—or the silence that followed, or the slam of the car door, then the trunk, or his footfall on the back stairs.

  The kitchen door opened. “Emily? I’m home!”

  Her rage grew. Calling out that way, he might have been the conquering hero returning from war, fully assuming that she was waiting, just dying to see him.

  Oh, she was dying to see him, all right, but not, she warranted, for the reasons he expected.

  “Emily?” he called again.

  He crossed through the kitchen into the hall, and set his luggage by the foot of the stairs. He looked up them, then turned and caught sight of her.

  “Why in the world are you sitting in the dark?”

  “I’m not in the dark.”

  “Practically.” He switched on the hall light to supplement the small lamp lit by her side, and made a show of shrugging out of his blazer with a tired shift of his shoulders, the weary businessman, home at last from a week of nonstop work.

  She wanted to gag. But she didn’t. Nor did she speak or move. She sat and watched, seething—but sad, and in spite of everything, vaguely intimidated by what she was about to do. Once her words were out there would be no taking them back.

  “Sorry I’m late,” he said, rubbing his back. “I was hoping to be home for dinner, but my last meeting didn’t finish until six, and I-91 was a nightmare. You didn’t cook, did you?”

  “No. I had a feeling you’d be late.” She spoke evenly, but since she was usually upbeat, even that was out of character.

  “You’re angry,” he charged. “Like it was my fault.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You didn’t have to. I can feel your censure. Christ, Emily, do you think I didn’t want to get out of there at noon? But the meeting dragged on. They kept asking me questions. I couldn’t just get up and leave, not with what they’re paying me.”

  Not with us desperate for every last penny, she added silently. “What company was this?”

  “Eldridge Tire. I’m their last resort, before they file for bankruptcy.”

  “That explains their willingness to work on Saturday. What made I-91 a nightmare?”

  “Accidents, one in New Haven, one in Windsor Locks. Traffic was down to two lanes.”

  “I hope no one died. I’ll have to check the paper tomorrow.”

  “Actually,” he backpedaled, “it looked more messy than tragic. I probably hit it at the worst time. An hour before or after, and I would have been fine. How’re things here?”

  “Fine.”

  He slipped his hands in his pockets and looked around. “What have you been doing? Listening to music?”

  “No.”

  “Reading?”

  She shook her head.

  He stared, then sighed. “Well, something’s on your mind. Come on, Emily. I’ve been gone all week, and I’m tired. Do we have to play twenty questions, or will you just blurt it out?”

  “I spent yesterday in Boston.”

  He didn’t blink. “Visiting Jill?”

  “Well, I did that, but it was accidental. I didn’t see her until after I saw you. Until after she saw you.”

  Emily felt a moment’s satisf
action when he blanched, but as quickly he reddened in anger. “Were you following me?”

  “No, I was just sitting on Marlborough Street.”

  “Checking up on me. Waiting for me to appear. Tripping me up just now by talking about Bridgeport, when you knew damn well I wasn’t in Bridgeport at all.”

  “Oh, you were in Bridgeport. I called the hotel. You checked out yesterday morning.”

  “You called the hotel,” he echoed. “What in the hell is this? An inquisition? And who in the hell are you, judge, jury, and executioner? What is it, boredom? You don’t have anything to do, so you’ve decided to stir up a little trouble? Or revenge, getting back at me for being away so much?”

  She marveled at his self-righteousness. “It’s incredible how you do that, turn things around so that I’m the bad guy. But, why not? It’s always worked for you before. I’ve always accepted your argument and run off with my tail between my legs. Only I’m not doing it this time, Doug. I’m not the bad guy here, not by a long shot.”

  “And I am? Me? The one who’s out there earning a living?”

  Irate, she burst from the sofa. “The one who’s out there earning far more than you ever let on and spending the excess on another woman, another child, a three-story townhouse in the Back Bay, clothing that has never seen the inside of this house, a country club membership, plus a slew of other things that come from stores I sure don’t shop in.”

  Absurdly, he said, “I need clothes.”

  “Women’s clothes? Children’s clothes? Are you personally benefiting from enrollment at the Back Bay Montessori School? Or days of beauty at Elizabeth Arden? Or the interior decorating services of a firm called Dayton and Webb?”

  He put his hands on his hips. “You’ve been through my files.”

  “Well, what did you expect?” she cried. “I’m not stupid, Doug. I may have given you the benefit of the doubt for far longer than I should have, but I knew something was wrong—and I have asked you about it, but you keep putting me off, telling me that this is the way things are and that I’m selfish. Not selfish, Doug. Human. How many times did you think you could call and say you’d be delayed another day, without my growing suspicious? How long did you think I would sit here alone, without wondering why you weren’t lonely, too?”

  “I have my work.”

  “Yeah, that’s what you said last weekend, your stock answer, only the truth is that you have far more than that. You have for some time. How long has it been going on, Doug?”

  “How long has what been going on?”

  “Oh, please. The game’s over.”

  “How long has what been going on?”

  She sighed. “Rebecca Mills. Doug, I know. I’ve seen canceled checks and mortgage statements.”

  “You had no right to go through my den.”

  “Your den?” She nearly laughed, because he was doing it again, sidestepping an accusation by making one of his own, only she wasn’t having it. “This is our house. I didn’t pick any locks. I simply looked through papers that were lying right there. It’s a miracle I didn’t stumble across them sooner.”

  He stared at her for a long minute, then said with a look of disgust, “No miracle. You’re such an innocent.”

  “I was. But I’ve lost my cherry, so to speak.” She played her hand. “I have copies of everything I found, and copies of those copies, put away for safekeeping. I also have pictures of you letting yourself into that townhouse with a key yesterday afternoon.”

  Lips thinning, he nodded. “So you poisoned Jill’s mind. You told her I was having an affair.”

  “I didn’t tell Jill a thing.” It had more or less been the other way around, though Emily wouldn’t say that. She didn’t want to turn Doug against Jill. “She saw you let yourself into that townhouse. She was there on that street totally independent of me.”

  “You’ve turned my own child against me.”

  “No, no, no,” Emily cried. She didn’t know who he was trying to kid. Then again, she did. But she was done taking the fall. “If she’s turned against you, it’s your own doing. It’s one thing to treat me like a poor, pathetic halfwit, but when you do it to kids, they smell it faster than a wife who’s trying to hold things together. Jill knew things weren’t right. You’re never here—and don’t say it’s your work,” she said before he could. “People choose what they do. If they’re unhappy, they change things. But you aren’t unhappy, are you?”

  For a minute, he didn’t say anything. Then his eyes grew hard. “What’s to be unhappy about? I have the son I’ve been wanting for nineteen years, ever since the day Daniel was taken from our car because you left him there alone.”

  Emily felt she’d been hit. Short of breath, she took one step back, then another, hating herself for retreating but needing to sit. She had always known Doug blamed her, but hearing the words, hearing, seeing, feeling his hatred was something else.

  “Is the little boy yours?” she asked brokenly.

  “Damn right,” came Doug’s taunt. “Four years old and smart as a whip.”

  Emily thought of Daniel, who had never reached the age of four, and felt her eyes brim. “I didn’t know you wanted a boy so badly. I might have had another one, if we had tried.”

  “Are you kidding?” he shot back, stronger with her weakening. “You had your chance the first time around, but you blew it.”

  “I didn’t kidnap Daniel.”

  “You left him alone. He was in your care, and you blew it. Face it, Emily. You blew it.”

  That was what she had always thought, too, until someone recently had said it wasn’t so. “I didn’t do anything that other parents don’t do all the time,” she argued as Brian had, then as Brian hadn’t, “I didn’t do anything you didn’t do yourself. You left him alone in the car a time or two. I saw.”

  Doug jabbed a thumb at his chest. “But I didn’t lose the kid. You did. You lost my child. My Daniel. God, I adored that little boy.” He pushed a hand through his hair and turned away. “I had dreams of our working the farm together—the father and son team that my father and I could never have been because he was such a mean bastard—and then when Daniel wasn’t there anymore, I didn’t feel the same way about the farm. It became no more than a money-making scheme, and a mediocre one at that, so I built it up and got the hell out, and I’ve never regretted it once. That farm held memories. I couldn’t escape them. I never go past the place now. I think it’d be painful still.”

  “You never talked about the pain.”

  “Yeah, well, what good would it have done?”

  “We might have shared it. We might have grown closer, rather than farther apart.”

  He snorted. “I had my pain, you had yours. Then you turned up pregnant, and I thought there might be another chance. But Jill wasn’t Daniel.”

  “Because she was a girl?”

  “Because she was yours. You two were inseparable, right from the start. You poured everything you had into her. She became your clone. So why would I want her working with me? I’d only look at her and see you and think of Daniel.”

  Emily shrank away, feeling unwanted, unloved, alone, and scared. She hugged her stomach. “Do you do that anyway?”

  “No. Not as long as I separate Jill from the rest.”

  “From me.”

  He didn’t deny it. “It’s easier now that she’s at school. I like calling her.”

  Emily nodded, relieved for Jill, at least. “But she thinks you call her out of guilt. We’ll have to address that, Doug. Children suffer when a marriage ends. Just because she’s eighteen doesn’t mean there won’t be pain.”

  Doug looked up the stairs, then down at his shoes. “So you want a divorce.”

  “Don’t you?” she bit out. She couldn’t imagine continuing on like this.

  He kept his eyes on his shoes.

  “Doug, you have another woman, another child, another home! You hate me! I’d think you’d be dying to get rid of me. Frankly, I don’t know why you sta
yed around so long. I don’t know why you haven’t asked for a divorce yourself.”

  He was quiet for another minute. Then he raised his eyes and said in a petulant voice, “Oh, I want a divorce, but if you plan to soak me, think again. You didn’t help me build my business. I did it in spite of you.”

  Emily was speechless. She hadn’t given a thought to money. Besides, his accusation was absurd! If she had been a golddigger, she would have been at his throat long ago. But no, she had been a prudent little mouse, watching her pennies, accepting their financial straits without complaint.

  Taking her silence for a declaration of war, Doug vowed, “I’ll fight you, Emily. You have a secure little life here. You don’t need much. I’ll give you only what you’re used to. God knows, you haven’t even earned that.”

  Indignance drew her spine ramrod straight and more, brought her to her feet. “Oh, I have,” she told him. “I’ve earned it through sweat and tears, through every imaginable effort to please you, and years of slights and put downs and doing without when there was no reason for it at all. Were you punishing me? Did you make like we were broke just to worry me? Did you cancel out on me at the last minute just to annoy me? Did you tell me over and over and over again that I couldn’t get a decent job, just to make me feel stupid? What about my book? Was that stupid?”

  “That book was a one-time thing,” he scoffed with the wave of his hand. “You had the right material in the right place at the right time. Most anyone half-literate could have gotten it published.”

  Once upon a time Emily would have agreed. But times had changed. “Not according to my editor. She wants me to do another. I always turned her down, because you didn’t want me to work, but that doesn’t make any more sense to me now than before. The issue of having to pay taxes doesn’t hold water. Last time, on one book, I earned enough to cover those taxes and have a tidy sum left over—a tidy sum that you squirreled away into our bank account, ostensibly to keep us solvent, more probably to keep me in the dark as to just how much was accumulating.” She remembered what Kay and Celeste had always said. “But that’s what you want, isn’t it? You want me in the dark. You want me unaware of my own potential. You don’t want me to earn money, and become stronger and more independent of you. If I become a person in my own right, I won’t be quite so naive. I won’t let you walk all over me. I may just tell you to go to hell.”