Too Close

by Hilary Norman

  Ethan stood his ground. ‘I just thought you might prefer to make a horse’s ass of yourself behind closed doors.’ He loathed scenes, always had, but he also believed in the old maxim about standing up to be counted. ‘I thought that you and Richard, of all people,’ he went on, ‘would know that you can’t slander a person by speaking the truth.’

  Kate’s cheeks had grown hot. ‘And maybe you should start being careful what you say, Eleanor, or you could be the one being accused of slander.’ She set her case down on the paved path, trying to calm herself. ‘Eleanor, I can understand how upsetting all this must be for you.’ She put out a hand to touch the other woman’s left arm—

  ‘Don’t you dare touch me!’ Eleanor slapped Kate’s hand away.

  ‘Hey—’ Ethan stepped forward a pace so that he was almost between the two women. ‘Let’s not blow things out of proportion here.’

  ‘Ethan’s right,’ Kate said. ‘We still have to live next door to each other, after all.’

  ‘If you had a shred of decency’ – Eleanor was aware she was out of control, but she couldn’t seem to stop herself – ‘you’d have moved away years ago.’

  ‘Why’s that, Eleanor?’ Kate asked.

  ‘Because your son breaks the law. Because your son is trash.’

  ‘Okay, Eleanor, that’s more than enough,’ Ethan intervened. ‘I think you’d better go home.’

  ‘I’ll go where I damned well like,’ Eleanor snapped.

  ‘Not on our property,’ Kate told her firmly. ‘And certainly not in the mood you’re in.’

  Eleanor’s hands burned to slap the other woman’s face, but she wasn’t so far out of control as to forget either Richard or the State Department.

  ‘Just give your son my message,’ she said.

  Kate picked up her attaché case again. ‘I’ll certainly tell him to mention it to his lawyers.’

  ‘Okay, honey.’ Ethan backed up towards the front door.

  ‘And to the San Francisco police,’ Kate added.

  ‘Don’t start with us, Kate Miller,’ Eleanor warned, ‘or you’ll regret it.’

  ‘So you said,’ Kate said.

  ‘Come on, Kate,’ Ethan urged his wife. ‘Let’s go inside.’

  ‘As soon as Eleanor’s off our path,’ Kate said.

  ‘What do you think I’m going to do?’ Eleanor asked. ‘Steal your roses? Just because your son has a criminal record, you don’t have to imagine decent people can’t tell right from wrong.’

  She swung sharply around and headed back across the grass towards her own house. Two feet from her path, the heel of her right shoe caught in the turf and her ankle twisted. Eleanor bent down, snatched the shoe from her foot and limped the rest of the way, aware that, though Ethan Miller had already gone back inside his house, Kate was still watching.

  Eleanor hung on until her front door had safely closed behind her, and then she burst into tears.

  ‘Damn them,’ she said. ‘Damn Nick Miller.’

  She could not remember the last time she had wept.

  Chapter Sixty-seven

  If Eleanor and Richard are desperately afraid for Holly’s future, Holly is not. All those vaulting law school aspirations that began dying inside her somewhere around the time she first heard that Nick had married Nina, are entirely gone now, yet Holly scarcely notices. All her energies, all her talents, all her skills and attributes, are being poured into the single crucible out of which she lifts her machinations against Nick, like splendid, intriguingly formed, precious nuggets, one after another.

  Every aspect of her life, devoid now of the clutter of parents, husband, employers, employees or clients, is being devoted to the only prize that counts.

  Nick the needy.

  Needing her.

  She has been working hard on her house over the past several weeks. Painting and papering. Another set of talents no one from the past would have guessed she possessed. Needs must. She might, safe in her identity as Barbara Rowe, have used professional decorators, but since she could never have allowed them to visit the only part of the house that really matters to her, she decided to do without their help. Do-it-yourself. Holly Bourne’s new watchwords. Anything from auto theft to carpet laying. You name it, Holly Bourne can do it.

  Holly Bourne can do anything she sets her mind to.

  Anything.

  Vasquez has seen some of the areas Holly has worked on in her house. The nanny is an inquisitive creature; Holly knows how much she loves to be confided in, to be included, and so long as Holly needs her for inside information on the Millers, she knows that she’s going to have to keep her happy in return. If it weren’t for Vasquez, Holly would probably not have bothered painting her living room, or the den, or the kitchen. They aren’t important to Holly. Only two rooms of the house are important to Holly, and neither Vasquez nor anyone else has seen them.

  One is her secret room.

  The other is the nursery.

  Vasquez has asked to see the nursery a number of times, but Holly has told her that for the time being she’s keeping that room under wraps for superstitious reasons. The nanny has expressed disappointment, but she knows better than to argue with the mother-to-be’s fear of something going wrong with her pregnancy.

  Holly is increasingly burdened by that fear. It is what has stopped her from visiting an obstetrician or clinic. She will not not risk her baby being tainted, will not have her exposed to potentially dangerous tests or infections.

  Her.

  Holly knows that she’s going to have a little girl, which is why she has made the nursery utterly, perfectly feminine.

  There has been no ultrasound examination, no amniocentesis, yet still Holly knows.

  She is going to have a little girl, just like Zoë.

  Chapter Sixty-eight

  ‘Are you okay, Nina?’

  ‘That’s the third time you’ve asked me that today, Betty.’

  ‘I’m worried about you.’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘You don’t look fine.’

  ‘I can’t help how I look.’ Snappy.

  ‘If there’s anything I can do to help . . .’ Patient.

  ‘There’s nothing, Betty. I’ve told you, I’m fine. Now can we please concentrate on getting a little work done?’

  Ford Realty was still sliding. Everything was sliding, and Nina was far from being fine. Betty and Harold were not the only ones to notice. William kept calling from Arizona to check on her, no matter how often she assured him she was okay, and Teresa, who understood at least part of the reason for her unhappiness (namely that her husband had moved out), knew that her employer wasn’t coping well. Even Zoë, normally the sunniest of babies, was grizzling more than usual.

  Four weeks had passed since Nina had asked Nick to go, and her anger had already dwindled to a dull, throbbing sadness. She had been seeing Bill Regan and going to daily meetings, and she had not taken another drink, and so her terror of slipping again was, thank God, also starting to recede just a little. She had, she kept telling herself, known too many good, sober years; she had relearned the value of experiencing pure, sharp emotions – for better or worse – unblunted by alcohol. Yet she was still desperately confused by her feelings. Ashamed of herself for appearing to misinterpret Nick’s reaction to Holly’s break-in to his room at the Mistral Inn, she nevertheless – if she was honest – still found it impossible to accept that the whole episode might not have been avoided.

  If Nick had chosen a decent, secure hotel. If he hadn’t gone back to LA at all, if he had just agreed to leave it to the police. If he had come home with her from Arizona when she had asked him to. If he had done any one of those things, they might all be at home together now, safe and sound and at least relatively happy.

  One of the worst things about living without Nick was having no one she could talk to openly. She couldn’t bring herself to tell Bill Regan what was really going on in her life – and loading her troubles onto Phoebe in her present conditi
on would be monstrously unfair. She certainly couldn’t talk to William, whose prejudices against Nick were by now so irrational that it was madness to imagine he might even consider giving his son-in-law the benefit of the doubt. Which left only some kind of a counsellor, and Nina had not the time, energy or the slightest desire to contemplate that.

  The situation was so miserable and crazy. Each day, at an agreed time, Nick came to Antonia Street to spend time with Zoë. Sometimes Nina was home when he came; more often she was not. When she did see him, she thought that Nick looked tired, too thin, sad and afraid. Much as she did, she supposed.

  On November 13th – the thirtieth day of their separation – giving way to a sudden and terrible wave of weakness and longing, Nina poured Nick a cup of coffee in their kitchen and, out of the blue – surprising even herself – asked him if he wanted to come back.

  He took a few moments to answer.

  ‘Are you sure that’s what you really want?’

  ‘I thought it was what you wanted.’ Fresh hurt pounded her hard.

  ‘You know it is.’ His heart was in his voice. ‘But it seems to me that with me out of the house, you’re doing fine.’

  ‘You mean I’m sober,’ Nina said.

  ‘That’s part of it,’ Nick agreed.

  ‘Maybe with you back home again, I might do even better,’ she said, stiffly.

  Nick waited another second or two. ‘And what if something develops, and maybe I feel I have to go away again? Do you know how you’ll cope with that?’

  ‘I thought you said you’ve hardly been out of the Art Center since you left.’

  ‘That’s true,’ he said, ‘but that’s mostly because there’s been nothing to follow up.’

  Nick could hardly believe what he was saying, what he was doing. He’d felt sure that if Nina gave him the smallest hint that she might want him home, he would jump at it. Yet here he was playing devil’s advocate, realizing suddenly how vital it was for him to be honest, for Nina’s sake, no matter how painful it was for them both.

  ‘Not one single clue,’ he went on, making his point. ‘Holly hasn’t used a credit card, hasn’t visited her family, or seen her husband or taken a plane ride – and if she’s practising law anywhere in California or New York State, then she’s not doing it as Holly Bourne or Charlotte Taylor or any combination of the two. She really has disappeared.’

  ‘Isn’t that what we both want?’ Nina asked the question quietly, coolly. ‘For her to disappear off the face of the earth?’

  ‘Of course it is,’ Nick agreed, ‘but only if we’re sure it’s for good.’

  ‘So the truth is you don’t want to come home?’ Nina felt rejection ripping another wound in her self-esteem.

  ‘I think you know I want to come home more than anything in the world,’ Nick told her gently. ‘I just think that maybe we should wait for something to happen one way or another.’

  ‘For you to find Holly, you mean.’

  ‘For someone to find Holly, so that we can have a real shot at some kind of peace and safety.’ Nick paused. ‘In one way, at least, maybe we’re part-way there. Even if they haven’t gotten anywhere yet, at least the police do seem to be really looking for her now. That’s something, isn’t it?’

  Nina looked at him across the pine table.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘That’s something.’

  The resentment she felt told her that Nick was probably right about not coming back yet. The trust was still absent, and without that, their marriage was never going to work, no matter how badly they missed one another.

  That aside, she began to find pretexts on which to ask him to call at Antonia Street. On the thirty-first night of their separation, a pipe under the kitchen sink sprang a leak, and it was nothing that she couldn’t have taped up herself until a plumber called, but she telephoned Nick instead and he came straight over and fixed it. Next day, a piece of stair carpet came loose, and once again, though it was something that she could easily have handled, she asked him to do it for her.

  On November 18th, their thirty-fifth day apart, and the day before Nina was due to leave for Arizona for a visit with Phoebe, Nick dropped in to Ford Realty and they had lunch together in a café on Union Street. And afterwards, they went home and fetched Zoë and her buggy, and took her for a walk in Lafayette Park. They were both aware of the bittersweet quality of their new relationship, conscious that they were starting to feel more like thwarted lovers than estranged partners. And yet Nina still knew that Nick was right. Holly might be missing, but she was still there between them.

  She had a dream that night, in which Norman Capelli phoned to tell her that Holly had thrown herself from the top of Coit Tower and that she was dead. In the dream, Nina was almost overwhelmed by release and joy, was vaguely aware that maybe she should be ashamed for feeling that way; but there was no shame at all. In the dream, it was she who had to break the news to Nick, but just as she was on the point of putting her arms around him and telling him how much she loved him, Nick’s face turned ashen, and he ran out of the house, and Nina knew that it was because he couldn’t face living without Holly Bourne, and she knew, too that he was on his way up to Telegraph Hill to end his own life the same way Holly had.

  She woke from the dream crying out, her eyes wet, and lay still for a long while trying to decide why she didn’t feel more grateful that it had only been a dream. And then she understood that it was because Holly was still alive.

  She told herself that she did, at least, have the comfort of knowing that if such news of Holly’s death were ever to come – though Nick might experience shock and perhaps even some small measure of sorrow for a lost childhood friend – he would also certainly share Nina’s vast sense of relief.

  She thought that he would.

  But she wasn’t entirely certain.

  Chapter Sixty-nine

  Holly is in her secret room.

  She spends most of her time in there these days. It is the place in which she feels closest to Nick.

  It’s filled with him. Photographs. Memorabilia. His belongings. Some from their past, in Bethesda and New York. Some from his present, which Holly has been pilfering from his home during visits to Vasquez.

  Two shirts. A sweater. A vest, taken from the laundry basket a while back, before he left Nina. His scent still on it. A book of rough charcoal sketches. One of his paintbrushes. A palette knife.

  An off-white terry guest towel from the Mistral Inn with which he must have dried his face or hands.

  She always showers before she goes into the room. She goes in naked, then puts on one of the shirts. Sometimes she just sits in a chair and looks at his face in the photographs. Young Nick. Teenage Nick. Adult Nick. Nick signing copies of Firefly – the other woman and her sister cut out of the picture. Nick with the man from Meganimity in the picture which appeared in Variety last January.

  Nick by the paddling pool in Carmel with the naked children.

  Other times, Holly lies down on the bed, his vest in her right hand, closes her eyes, and rubs it over her body. Over her breasts, over the hard nipples on which he used to love to suck. Over her swollen belly, over the womb in which their child is growing. Between her thighs. Not Nick himself, of course, but something at least that was close to him not too long ago, that clung to his body and absorbed his heat and sweat. She opens her eyes, focuses on his face in one of the pictures, and masturbates with his vest. It comes back to her then every time. The way it was with him. The way he felt inside her vagina and in her mouth.

  Holly needs more than this today. She gets up swiftly, her breathing rapid, her breasts and cheeks flushed, finds his paintbrush, wraps the vest, already wet with her juices, tightly around it, lies down again, brings up her knees and forces her homemade Nick-dildo into herself. It’s too big and rough and it hurts, but it’s all she has, and it’s all she needs; just a few thrusts and she’s crying out with orgasm.

  And then, for a few minutes after that, she’s simply cryi
ng.

  Chapter Seventy

  Eight days before Thanksgiving, Phoebe and Nina were in the rose garden at the Waterson Clinic. A little, make-believe slice of England in the Arizona desert, the illusion kept lush and fragrant by the constantly humming sprinklers.

  Phoebe had spent the morning enduring more tests. Another brain scan. Another set of damnable instruments probing her throat, making her retch, examining her larynx for anything the physicians might have missed on previous occasions. Nina had been with her, holding her hand, watching as the tears squeezed from between her eyelids. Dr Chen, for her part, had already as good as said that it was a waste of time and an unnecessary added trauma for Phoebe, and sure enough, nothing had been found, no new solid, physical reason for her continuing silence.

  ‘We’re going to get you out of here soon,’ Nina told her, as they made their way along the smooth, paved path to one of the handsome handcarved wood benches. ‘Now that you’re rid of the casts, and once they’ve got you properly started on the physiotherapy, we can get you home and do the physio by ourselves, okay?’

  It was good having her sister to herself for once, without their father’s constant vigilant presence. Even William, semi-retired from his air freight company in Scottsdale, was sometimes required to take care of business, and Nina’s arrival (happily, from William’s standpoint, without Nick) had convinced him that it might even be in order for him to catch a day’s flying – still always his own best therapy.

  They reached the bench and Phoebe sank down with relief.

  ‘Okay?’ Nina smiled at her.

  Phoebe nodded.

  ‘You’ll be able to write again soon.’

  Phoebe smiled. A more-like-Phoebe smile, shaky, uncertain, but much less remote than it had been for such a long time. Mary Chen had told Nina that soon after the plaster of Paris had been cut from her arms and hands two days ago, they had tried to help Phoebe to start communicating with the kind of letter board often used by head injury and stroke patients. Phoebe had tolerated it for a short time, using one fingertip to spell out brief, basic responses to questions, but it had been clear that she hated the method. They had tried, some weeks earlier, to persuade her to do the same thing using her toes, but both her depression and the dosage of her pain-relief drugs had been more intense back then, and Phoebe had refused point blank to cooperate at all.