by Joy Fielding
“What is it you think I’m going to do, Jane?”
“I don’t know. You’re very slick. I can never see it coming. Like last night.”
“Last night? Oh, yes. You think I tampered with your drink.”
“Didn’t you?”
“No.”
“I just suddenly started to feel woozy and sick, and had to be carried up to bed?”
“It’s not the first time it’s happened.”
“So?”
“So, you’ve been a very sick girl. The day was nothing if not dramatic: You pulled a knife on our housekeeper, for God’s sake; you invited a couple of people you couldn’t even remember over for dinner; you had to get dressed, made up; you had to lie. You don’t think that required a great deal of effort? You don’t think that maybe your body is just completely run down and that the strain of yesterday’s events might not have taken its toll?”
Jane shook her head. No, she didn’t believe it. Did she? “You’re so damn convincing,” she said.
“If I’m convincing, it’s because it’s the truth. I didn’t put anything in your drink, Jane. I swear to you, I didn’t.”
Jane bit down on her lower lip until she felt the skin split and she tasted blood. “Tell me about what happened the day I disappeared. Tell me about the money. Tell me about the blood.”
“Maybe you should sit down.”
“I don’t want to sit down.” Another lie, she realized as soon as it was out of her mouth. She wanted desperately to sit down. She wasn’t sure how long she could remain standing.
“Please, let me help you.” Michael took a step toward her, and she stumbled back, out of his reach, the backs of her legs hitting the side of a chair and sending her to her knees. Michael was immediately at her side on the floor, his arms on hers, trying to guide her into a sitting position.
“No, don’t touch me!”
“Jane, for God’s sake. Do you think I have a syringe up my sleeve?”
“It wouldn’t be the first time it’s happened,” she said, parroting his earlier words.
He stood up and quickly pulled all his pockets inside out. “There. See? Nothing.” He removed his jacket, throwing it over the closest chair, revealing his short-sleeved shirt. “Nothing up my sleeves. What now? I’ll take off all my clothes if that will satisfy you.”
“I just want you to tell me the truth.”
There was a long pause during which Jane allowed her body to sink into the waiting chair. “Please believe me, Jane, when I tell you that the only reason I haven’t been completely honest with you is that I believed I was acting in your best interests. If I’d known you knew anything about the money and the blood, I might have handled this whole thing differently. God,” he whispered, shaking his head. “No wonder you’ve been so frightened, so paranoid. So many things fall into place now, why you’ve been so suspicious of me.” His fingers absently traced the line of the scar above his hairline.
“You admit you’ve been lying to me?”
Michael pulled out the chair opposite hers and sat down, his eyes never leaving her face. “I didn’t want to cause you any more grief. I kept hoping that your memory would come back on its own when you were ready to face reality. I just didn’t want to be the one to have to remind you. Trust me, Jane. I didn’t want to hurt you any more than you’ve been hurt already.”
“Tell me.”
“I’m not sure I know how to start.”
“Is it really so complicated?”
He nodded. “More.”
“Tell me,” she persisted, her voice a mixture of impatience and fear.
“I guess I have to go back at least a year,” he began, then stopped. “To the accident that killed your mother.”
Jane found herself holding her breath.
“You and your mother,” he began again, “were very close. You couldn’t accept what happened. You were angry and very bitter. You’d always had a temper, as you’ve been remembering, but after the accident, you were even more prone to violent outbursts. Nothing serious,” he rushed to assure her. “You’d break things, smash dishes, hurl hairbrushes across the room, that kind of thing. I tried to talk you into seeing a therapist but you weren’t interested. You insisted you could handle your grief privately, so I decided to be patient, see what happened. And sure enough, after a while, you seemed to be coping better. We resumed our normal lives. We started socializing again, went out with our friends. For about six months, everything looked like it was going to be okay again.”
“And then what happened?”
Michael swallowed, his fingers massaging the bridge of his nose, moving down to hide his mouth, now pursed with worry. “As the first anniversary of the accident approached, you started getting more and more agitated. You were obsessing on the accident all the time, repeating the terrible details over and over again, making yourself crazy. It was almost as if the accident had just happened. You talked about nothing else. You couldn’t sleep. When you did, you had nightmares. You couldn’t concentrate. You felt guilty. Survivor’s guilt, I guess the books would call it.” He looked around the room, as if deliberating how to continue, what to say next.
“What do you mean, survivor’s guilt?”
“You decided to visit the cemetery,” he said, avoiding her question, his eyes slowly returning to hers. “I tried to talk you out of it. It was an unseasonably cold day, and I didn’t think it was a very good idea, especially in the mood you’d been in. You hadn’t slept at all that night; you hadn’t eaten in days; you were this close to breaking down altogether.” His fingers indicated a space of perhaps a quarter of an inch. “I asked you to at least wait for the weekend, that way I could go with you, you wouldn’t have to be alone. But you were insistent, said you preferred to be alone, that you didn’t want to wait for the weekend, that this was the anniversary of your mother’s death, and you had to go that day. Period. No further discussion. I should leave you ‘the hell alone,’ I believe is how you put it. I offered to cancel my appointments, but that only enraged you. ‘I can do it on my own,’ you shouted. ‘I’m not a little girl you have to take by the hand.’ So what could I do? I went to work. I didn’t want to, but I felt I had no choice. I went to the hospital and you went to the cemetery.
“I called a few times that morning to see if you’d gotten home all right, but there was never any answer. I started to get worried. Then Carole phoned.”
“Carole Bishop?”
“Yes. She was very upset, said she’d seen you pull into the driveway and had gone over to ask you something, and that you were frantic. You wouldn’t talk to her. In fact, she said it was almost as if you couldn’t talk, you were so upset. She tried to calm you down, and you just pushed her out of the way and ran into the house. Naturally, she was very concerned about your behavior, and she decided to call me at the hospital. I rushed right home.
“When I got there, and I drove like hell, it couldn’t have taken more than fifteen minutes, you were in our bedroom, throwing a bunch of your clothes into a bag. You hadn’t even taken off your coat. You looked wild-eyed, possessed. I tried to talk to you, to ask you what had happened that morning, but you wouldn’t tell me. You were hysterical, screaming at me, then lashing out at me. I grabbed you; I might even have shaken you. I don’t remember. I just remember trying to find out what happened.
“But you were like a crazy person. You were screaming, telling me you had to leave, that it was for my own good, that you were like an albatross around my neck, that you would only bring me down, that you’d end up destroying me, like everything else you’d ever loved.”
Michael shook his head, as if unable to digest the meaning of his words even now.
“But why would I say those things?”
Michael stared at the floor.
“Michael …”
“Maybe we could just stick to what happened for the time being, save the whys till later,” he offered softly.
“Why would I say I’d end up destroying you, li
ke everything else I’d ever loved?” Jane persisted.
Michael’s jaw stiffened. His words, when they finally emerged, sounded choked, hoarse. “After the accident, you were overwhelmed with your grief for a long time. Paralyzed. You did things that were totally out of character. I don’t mean the tantrums or the throwing dishes across the room,” he added, then fell silent.
“What do you mean?”
He paused, his hands forming unconscious fists against the top of the table. “You used to go running with Daniel Bishop a few times a week.” Another pause. “Suddenly you were out running every morning. At first I thought that was great, just what you needed, something to get rid of all that frustration and anger. But somewhere along the way, I guess you decided that running wasn’t enough. You and Daniel …”
“We had an affair,” Jane acknowledged, finishing his sentence. “How did you find out?”
Michael made a sound that was halfway between a laugh and a gasp. “You told me! Mentioned it casually one night when we were in bed.” He shook his head. “I really don’t want to go into all that now.”
“What did you do?”
“I really don’t recall.” He laughed. “You see, you’re not the only one who blocks out things they’d rather not remember.”
“I obviously hurt you very much.”
“Yes, but you really weren’t yourself. I understood that. At least that’s what I told myself. That was when I first suggested counseling, but you wouldn’t hear of it. So, I just decided to wait things out. What else could I do? I loved you. I didn’t want to lose you.”
“So, I was packing to leave you when you came home….”
“I tried to reason with you, to get you to sit still long enough for me to talk some sense into you, but you were beyond that. You raced downstairs and into the sunroom. I followed you. You were running around in circles, flailing about. You started hitting me, telling me that I was a fool to hang on to you, that I was worse than a fool if I thought Daniel Bishop was the only man you’d been involved with, that there had been others since Daniel, that you’d just come from the latest one’s bed.”
Pat Rutherford, Jane thought, feeling sick to her stomach, recalling the name on the note she’d found in her pocket. Pat Rutherford, R. 31, 12:30. Was it possible she had visited her mother’s gravesite, then met with Pat Rutherford in room 31 of some shady motel, an encounter that had so shaken her she had come away convinced she had to leave her husband, more for his sake than her own?
“I guess at that point, I just lost control,” Michael was saying. “I started shaking you. We got into a kind of scuffle, pushing at each other blindly. And then, suddenly, I felt this flash of intense pain, like someone had lifted the top of my scalp right off, and the next thing I knew I was stumbling toward you, bleeding—God, there was so much blood—and I fell against you, and then I guess I blacked out. When I woke up a few minutes later, I was lying in my own blood next to the sofa-swing, and you were gone. You’d left the suitcase, your purse, everything. Later on, I discovered that you’d already cleaned out our joint checking account. Something in the vicinity of ten thousand dollars.”
There were several seconds of intense silence. “Why didn’t you report my disappearance to the police?”
He shook his head, almost laughed. “Frankly, I didn’t realize you’d disappeared. I thought you’d run off with this other guy. You’ve got to remember that I wasn’t thinking too clearly myself at this point. And I was hurt and angry. I thought maybe the best thing to do was to do nothing until I heard from you.”
Jane struggled to keep control of all the facts. “But when the police first phoned you, you lied. You said I was visiting my brother.”
“I really can’t explain that. I don’t know what I was thinking about other than that I was embarrassed; I didn’t feel like getting into the whole sordid mess with a bunch of strangers. As you’ve discovered, I do have a reputation in the community. But when they told me you were in the hospital and couldn’t remember who you were, I realized just how far things had deteriorated, and I knew that I had to do everything that I could to help you.”
“And the drugs?”
Jane saw Michael try to turn from the intensity of her gaze, understood that he couldn’t. “In the months following the accident, you suffered from severe depression. Your doctor prescribed Haldol. I talked to Dr. Meloff about it. When the Ativan didn’t seem to be working, and you were slipping back into a deep depression, he suggested we try the Haldol again, see if that might help.”
Jane began pacing back and forth, frequently banging into the side of the table, ignoring Michael’s offers of support. “Something is wrong. Something is missing,” she muttered, stopping, standing very still. “What aren’t you telling me?”
“Believe me, Jane, I’ve told you everything.”
“No, you haven’t. I know you well enough to know when you’re keeping something from me. Tell me.”
“Jane, please, I’ve said enough.”
“Tell me, Michael!” Her voice was a shout. “You said that after my mother died, I suffered from survivor’s guilt. But that doesn’t make sense. Why would I suffer from survivor’s guilt unless I was in the car too? Unless I survived the accident and she didn’t?” The shout became a whisper. “Is that it, Michael? Was I in the car?”
Michael lowered his head until his chin almost disappeared into his chest. “You were driving.”
Jane felt her knees buckle. In the next instant, she was a crumpled heap on the floor, Michael on his knees before her. “I was driving? I was responsible for the accident that killed my mother?”
Michael spoke slowly, choosing his words carefully. “You’d promised to take her shopping that morning. But you were supposed to attend a meeting at Emily’s school that afternoon, and I guess you were running a bit late. Anyway, maybe you were going a little faster than you should have been, maybe you rushed a turn, I don’t know exactly how it happened. According to witnesses, you made a left-hand turn without signaling, and some car was speeding along in the opposite direction and rammed into the passenger side of your car.” Michael moved to her side and took her in his arms, holding her tightly against him. “Your mother was killed instantly.”
“Oh, my God. Oh, my good God.”
“You blamed yourself, of course. Even after the police determined that the other driver was the one at fault, you berated yourself constantly. ‘I shouldn’t have tried for that turn,’ you kept saying. ‘I shouldn’t have been in such a hurry.’ You wouldn’t let anyone comfort you.” His eyes searched the room, as if he were searching for possible solutions. “But it’s gone on for too long, Jane, and you have to stop blaming yourself. It was an accident. Tragic, yes, but it happened, and it’s over. And life goes on. I know you don’t want to accept that, but you have to or it will be too late for all of us.”
Jane became aware of his tears on her cheek, and she quickly pulled out of his embrace. “There’s more, isn’t there?” she demanded, watching his expression carefully. “There’s more that you’re still not telling me.”
“No.”
“Yes! Don’t lie to me, Michael. You have to stop lying to me!”
“Please,” he begged. “Can’t the rest wait until you’re stronger? There’s only so much your mind can handle, Jane. We know that now.”
“What haven’t you told me?”
Michael struggled for several seconds before he was able to say the word, and when it finally emerged, it came out in ripples. “Emily,” he said, his eyes glazing over, filling with tears.
Jane clutched her stomach, feeling her daughter’s name form a fist and ram into her gut. “No. Oh, no!”
“She was in the backseat behind your mother. Apparently, she’d taken off her seat belt. The force of the collision….” His voice trailed off, then returned. “She died in your arms while you were waiting for the ambulance. When they were finally able to pry her away from you, the entire front of your dress was covered in
her blood.”
Jane gasped.
“You just went kind of crazy after that. The next year was hell, the violent outbursts, the other men, basically what I’ve already told you. Nobody else knew how bad it had become. It was like you were Jekyll and Hyde, one way with our friends and neighbors, another way at home with me. I kept hoping it would get better, that you’d eventually come out of it, that you’d come back to me.” He stifled a loud sob. “You were all I had left. I couldn’t bear the thought of losing you too.” He wiped at his eyes with the back of his hand. “But it just got to be too much, even for me, I’m ashamed to admit.” He pushed himself to his feet. “When I came home and found you packing, I tried to reason with you, stop you, and in the struggle, you hit me with the vase. It was one we’d bought in the Orient. It was brass and it had all these weird protuberances sticking out of it, and it caught me at some weird angle and damn near scalped me. I collapsed against you and it must have seemed like the accident all over again. I guess the sight of all that blood on your dress was just too much for your sanity to take. You decided you couldn’t deal with your life anymore. So you just walked away from it. I really can’t say that I blame you.”
“Our daughter is dead?” Jane half-asked, half-confirmed.
“You still can’t remember any of this?”
Jane shook her head. “I killed my mother and my daughter,” she mumbled.
“It was an accident, Jane. The police absolved you of any blame. It wasn’t your fault.”
“But they’re both dead.”
“Yes.”
“And I was driving.”
“Yes. But it wasn’t your fault.”
“Impatient and in a hurry, isn’t that what you said?”
“That’s what you said after the accident.”
“And I’m the one who would know. I’m the one who lived to tell the tale.”
“Did you?” Michael asked. “How many lives is this accident going to claim, Jane? How many people are you going to let it destroy?”