Too Close

by Hilary Norman

  Over in the corner of the living room, Matisse whined.

  ‘No one exactly said that she did say that.’ In spite of himself, a wave of compassion gripped Ethan.

  ‘You can be damned certain that’s what Richard and Eleanor will be claiming if it comes to prosecution,’ Kate said, anger and fear still keeping her from gentleness.

  ‘Not necessarily,’ Ethan said. ‘Holly’s a minor – that would be enough on its own.’

  Nick stared at both his parents’ faces. ‘She did want to,’ he said, quietly, pleadingly. ‘She always wanted to. You have to believe that.’

  ‘We do believe that,’ Kate said, allowing him that much.

  ‘We know you would never force yourself on a girl,’ Ethan added.

  ‘We also know that you’ve broken the law,’ Kate went on, relentless again, ‘and you’ve betrayed the Bournes and us. To say nothing of Holly.’

  ‘Holly wanted it,’ Nick said again, desperately.

  ‘Stop saying that,’ Kate yelled at him, suddenly. ‘For heaven’s sake, Nick, it isn’t as if it’s the first time you’ve broken the law! We thought all that trouble, all that crazy wildness, was behind you – behind us.’ She shook her head despairingly. ‘My God, Nick, I always thought we’d brought you up to respect the rules, to respect people, but you’ve let us down so badly I can hardly believe it.’

  Matisse whined again, stood up and then lay back down, his head between his paws. And at that instant, Nick understood, for the very first time, what an outsized fool – what a jerk – he had been all those times when he hadn’t told his parents that Holly had been the brains behind his brushes with authority. Even if he had been guilty of going along with her, if he had only talked to them in those days, confided in them instead of playing the dumb white knight, they might have stopped him from seeing Holly; and at least, even if they still blamed him now, they might understand that she wasn’t the wide-eyed innocent the Bournes were claiming she was.

  ‘I guess there’s no point trying to explain about those other times now,’ he said, knowing how lame he sounded.

  ‘No point at all,’ Kate said.

  ‘I don’t see that there’s much to explain,’ Ethan said, softly, and somehow his father’s gentler disappointment was infinitely more wounding to Nick than his mother’s anger.

  ‘I guess not,’ Nick said.

  ‘Promise us one thing,’ Kate said.

  ‘I’ll stop seeing Holly,’ Nick said quickly.

  ‘That has to go without saying,’ Ethan told him.

  ‘Promise us that Holly couldn’t be pregnant.’ Kate’s blue eyes were fixed intently on Nick’s.

  He said nothing. He couldn’t speak.

  ‘Oh, my God,’ Kate said, her face whitening.

  Ethan’s voice was even softer than before. ‘You did take precautions, son, didn’t you?’

  ‘For the love of Christ,’ Kate said, her horror growing, ‘tell us you’re not as irresponsible as that.’

  ‘We did,’ Nick said, hearing his feebleness and nauseated by it. ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘Nick, how could you let us down like this?’ his mother asked.

  ‘How could you let yourself down?’ his father said, and, without another word, walked out of the room.

  Chapter Twelve

  Holly remembers that day, too, and what came after.

  Of course she does.

  If she closes her eyes, even now, all these years later, she can still conjure up the old memories, can vividly remember the hunger and the fabulous, ferocious, sweating feeling of being with Nick at that time when their bodies and all their senses were so young and raw and bursting with life.

  She remembers her parents, too. Especially the naked, blazing fury on her mother’s face when she found them in the summerhouse.

  Oh, how she hated Eleanor that day.

  Not just that day.

  She remembers her mother taking her to a doctor, making her lie on a table while the stranger in a white coat told her to open her legs and then clamped her open with cold steel and put his gloved fingers up inside her. Eleanor thought that she was so mortified by it all. Eleanor didn’t realize that the whole time the doctor was examining her and Holly was lying there, eyes shut, cheeks hot, she wasn’t really there at all – she was thinking of Nick, imagining that the fingers inside her were his, and it was all she could do to stop herself having an orgasm right there on the examination table.

  It was all over now, Eleanor told Holly.

  It wasn’t over, Holly told her mother, because they loved each other.

  That was nonsense, Eleanor said. If Holly believed that Nick loved her, she was a fool. He had taken cruel advantage of her innocence, Eleanor said. He was no better than a beast and he deserved to be punished for it, though Eleanor and Richard were mindful of Holly’s reputation, which was why – for the moment, at least – they would take no action.

  Unless he came near her again.

  ‘You and he are finished.’

  Holly remembers those words.

  Remembers weeping over them. And then laughing, too, secretly in her bedroom. Because they were, of course, a lie, and a measure of her mother’s ignorance, because Nick was her destiny.

  Holly knew that, and so did he. It might take weeks or even months, but it was only a matter of time before they would be together again.

  It never occurred to her back then – not even for a single second – that Nick might betray her, any more than Eric ever had.

  But it is true what they say.

  One lives, and one learns.

  Chapter Thirteen

  I swore to my parents that I would do what the Bournes were demanding and stay away from Holly, as far as that was possible, given that we were still next-door neighbours. I felt so bad about everything – almost everything, at least. That was the weirdest part of the whole catastrophe, in a way. I had expected to feel terrible about breaking up with Holly, yet now that it was over, now that I had been given no choice but to stop seeing her, I felt a kind of relief. I don’t know, maybe – I wonder now, more than a decade later – maybe I had been hoping to get caught. Maybe I had wanted to be stopped.

  The fact was, as the first week passed, and then the second – and Holly was not pregnant, and the full wrath of the Bournes did not descend on me – I found that, while I did desperately miss having sex with Holly, I wasn’t sure how much I actually missed her.

  That thought made me feel guiltier than any of the crimes we had committed together over the last several years. It made me wonder if I was, at heart, a shallow, selfish, callous person, and the very fact that I was now spending more time worrying about my own reactions than about what Holly might be going through next door, made me dislike myself even more.

  Thanks to our parents’ vigilance, I had only one brief encounter alone with Holly during that initial period of disgrace, when I was out walking Matisse one Saturday afternoon in October in the woods behind Leyland Avenue. Holly was sitting on an old tree stump staring at the pond – the same pond in which her brother had drowned – when she saw me. She cried out, jumped to her feet and came running over, flung her arms around my neck and kissed me on the mouth, and I confess that I was startled enough and glad enough to kiss her back for a good few moments before I remembered myself and pulled away.

  Holly told me that she knew I was staying away from her because I had no choice. She said that she knew I wanted us to be together every bit as much as she did, that parental power alone – God damn them, she said, crying a little – was keeping us apart.

  And what did I say to her? Did I seize that opportunity for honesty? Did I tell Holly that I thought maybe our parents were right? Of course I didn’t. I was too cowardly for that. Oh, sure, I excused myself by imagining that I was saving her feelings, but all I was really being was a lousy, stinking coward.

  Holly didn’t realize that it really was over. Holly loved me, God forgive me. That seems an egotistical thing to believe, but
I do believe it was true. As long as we were having those incredibly hot, passionate, secret meetings, my need for Holly had been all-consuming. Now that that had been ended, I think she needed me far more than I needed her. I cared about Holly, I had a lot of complicated feelings about her – I guess I probably had genuinely been in love with her – but I don’t believe now that I ever really loved her.

  Shame on me.

  MAY

  Chapter Fourteen

  Holly has been having a brief post-honeymoon visit with her parents at home in Bethesda. She and Jack left Grand Cayman airport a few days ago, parting with loving, newly-wed embraces before boarding their separate early morning flights to Los Angeles and Washington DC.

  It’s been a pleasant trip back home, with both Richard and Eleanor patently delighted by her happiness. Holly knows that in marrying Jack Taylor, the perfect, conventional choice, she has sealed yet another of Eleanor’s ambitions for her: a wealthy, attractive, professional husband. Eleanor Bourne likes life to be neatly mapped out. The next of her goals for Holly will be a partnership at Zadok, Giulini & O’Connell. Then a first child – ideally a son – for Jack.

  It’s different with her father. Richard likes and respects Jack Taylor, but his greatest concerns are for his daughter’s well-being and happiness rather than for her status or wealth. Holly spent almost twenty minutes in the washroom on her United flight from Grand Cayman perfecting the right expression to convince her father of the joys of the honeymoon. Richard has, after all, spent a lifetime seeing through people on the witness stand and is not an easy man to fool. But then again, Holly knows that she’s a better actor than most – and anyway it’s to her advantage that Richard wants to believe that she’s happy with Jack.

  And she almost is – at least, happy enough to cope. So long as she can go on dreaming about Nick. So long as she can go on fantasizing – as she did every night of her honeymoon – that it’s him making love to her, not her husband.

  It’s the last day of her visit. Richard and Eleanor have a fund-raiser to attend that evening in Georgetown, so Holly has told them that she will take a cab to Dulles in time for her six o’clock flight to Los Angeles.

  ‘Are you sure you’re going to be all right, darling?’ Eleanor asks her before they leave. It’s Carmelita’s day off. ‘I feel so bad leaving you alone like this.’

  ‘I’ll be fine.’ Holly smiles at her mother. ‘It’s been a wonderful few days, Mother. Just like old times.’

  ‘I know your father’s loved having you home again.’ Eleanor’s expression is uncommonly tender. ‘And so have I.’ She pauses. ‘I’m very proud of you, Holly. You do know that, don’t you, darling?’

  ‘I do, Mother,’ Holly says.

  Holly does know it. So far as Eleanor is concerned, she is now a substantial success story, but then again, anything less, Holly also realizes, would in her mother’s eyes be evidence of some failure of her own. Had Eric lived, it might perhaps have been different; with a golden son, there might have been room in Eleanor’s heart for an imperfect daughter. As it is, Holly knows that her mother has long since blocked out the nightmarish Holly-blaming months following Eric’s drowning, just as she thinks that Eleanor has probably by now almost entirely blotted out the sight of her daughter sucking Nick Miller’s cock in their summerhouse thirteen years ago.

  ‘Do you ever hear anything about Nick Miller?’ Holly asks Eleanor now, casually, as Richard descends the staircase, attractive and dignified as always in his dark suit.

  ‘Only more about the success of his little book,’ Eleanor says disparagingly.

  ‘I hear there’s going to be a movie,’ Richard says, adjusting the knot of his grey silk tie in the Queen Anne hall mirror.

  ‘Just a cartoon,’ Eleanor says. Nick Miller could win an Oscar or a Nobel Prize and Eleanor would still dismiss it. Nick has, and always will, represent only three things to her: mediocrity, crudeness and trouble for Holly.

  ‘You don’t ever discuss me with the Millers, do you?’ Holly asks her parents suddenly.

  ‘Of course we don’t,’ her father answers. ‘You asked us not to.’

  Holly looks at her mother. ‘Neither my career nor my marriage?’

  ‘Kate Miller asks about you, of course, from time to time,’ Eleanor says, ‘but I tell her as little as possible. They know that you’re married, and they know that you’re doing well, and that’s all.’

  ‘So they don’t know I’m living in Los Angeles?’

  ‘Certainly not,’ Eleanor assures her. ‘At least, not from us. We hardly ever really see the Millers. We never did have anything much in common.’

  ‘It’s just,’ Holly goes on, ‘that Nick and I have made such a complete break now, and it’s so clearly been the best thing for us both.’

  ‘You don’t need to explain it to us.’ Richard pats her arm.

  ‘The only pity is that it didn’t happen long before,’ Eleanor says.

  ‘Water under the bridge,’ Richard says.

  ‘Now you have Jack,’ her mother adds.

  ‘Looking forward to getting back to him?’ her father asks.

  ‘More than anything,’ Holly answers.

  She waits until their black limousine has turned the corner at the end of the street. Quietly, gently, she closes the front door and walks over the lawn to the house next door. She knows they’re home, saw them through her parents’ drawing room window when they returned, loaded with shopping bags, two hours earlier.

  Ethan Miller opens the door.

  ‘Holly,’ he says. ‘What a nice surprise.’ He says it as easily as Holly remembers him saying most things in the past, but she sees a wariness in his brown eyes. Nick’s eyes.

  ‘I’ve been visiting,’ Holly explains. ‘I thought it might be nice just to say hello. It’s been a while.’

  ‘A long while,’ Ethan says.

  He invites her to come inside. Nothing much, she sees, has altered. The house smells, as it always did, of painting, though the old reek of dog has gone.

  ‘No Matisse,’ she says.

  ‘Matisse died.’ Kate Miller comes out of the kitchen, wearing jeans, T-shirt and white moccasins. ‘Hello, Holly. What brings you here?’

  ‘Holly’s been visiting with her parents,’ Ethan reports.

  ‘I know she has.’ Kate smiles at Holly. ‘We hear congratulations are due. On your marriage,’ she adds, to jog her husband.

  ‘Of course.’ Ethan remembers. ‘It’s great news, Holly,’

  ‘Still in New York?’ Kate asks.

  ‘Where else?’ Holly says.

  They move into the living room. It, too, seems much the same. Shabby in comparison with Eleanor Bourne’s perfection, but many times more comfortable. A home for artists. Holly can feel ghosts shifting inside her. She has a desire to be left alone in this room. In this house. She wants to go up the staircase to Nick’s old room, to lie on his narrow boy’s bed, and to remember. Not that she has forgotten.

  ‘Can we get you something to drink?’ Kate is asking her.

  Holly shakes her head. ‘No,’ she says. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Why don’t you have a seat?’ Ethan offers.

  He removes a book from one of the armchairs, stands holding it. Holly sees that it’s The Catcher in the Rye, old and dog-eared. She remembers Nick loving that novel.

  ‘I won’t stay,’ she says. ‘I just wanted to say how glad I am about Nick’s success with Firefly.’

  ‘Have you read it?’ Ethan asks.

  ‘Of course,’ Holly answers, but offers nothing more.

  ‘It’s been very exciting for them all,’ Kate says.

  ‘I’m sure it must have been.’

  No one mentions Nina by name, or Phoebe, or Nick’s marriage, but the moment is as strained and awkward as the rest of the encounter.

  ‘Are you sure I can’t get you anything?’ Kate asks. ‘A glass of juice or some coffee?’

  ‘No, thank you,’ Holly says again. ‘I’m about to leave for Dul
les.’

  ‘Back to New York,’ Ethan says, just for something to say.

  ‘Back to my husband,’ Holly says.

  She can see a photograph on a table behind Ethan Miller. Nick and the blonde, presumably in their own living room. He is standing behind her, not much taller than she is. His thick, wavy hair is shorter now than it used to be. The art student is long gone. He looks older. His arms are around his wife; his hands, covering hers, are resting on her stomach. Her stomach is flat, but their faces are both filled with pride. There is no doubt.

  The shock almost fells Holly. It takes every ounce of strength to stay standing upright. To keep from screaming.

  ‘I must go now,’ she says, suddenly.

  She gives Kate her cold hand and smiles.

  ‘Have a safe journey home, Holly,’ Kate says. ‘And take care of yourself.’

  Holly shakes Ethan’s hand too. He walks her out to the front door, hesitating briefly, as if debating whether or not he should kiss her cheek. He does not. They have both been pleasant and polite, but she knows they are relieved that she’s leaving.

  ‘Tell Nick I wish him and his wife well,’ Holly says.

  ‘We will,’ Kate says.

  As the Millers’ front door closes behind her, the cab Holly booked earlier draws up outside her parents’ house. The driver, a middle-aged, tired-looking man, gets out.

  ‘I have bags,’ she tells him.

  She gives them to him, asks him to wait for her outside.

  The entrance hall of her parents’ house is cool. Holly’s cheeks are burning hot. She leans against the closed front door and shuts her eyes.

  Nick is going to be a father.

  Nick’s baby.

  The sickness overwhelms her so swiftly that she only just makes it to the powder room in time. Afterwards, she finds that she’s shivering and perspiring. Slowly she gets up from her knees, rinses her mouth, splashes her face, dries herself with one of Eleanor’s fluffy white monogrammed guest towels.

  She looks in the mirror. Her face is white. She closes her eyes again, takes a few deep breaths. She’s beginning to feel better. The desire to scream has left her. Completely.