Tides of the Heart

by Jean Stone

  Adjusting her oversized sunglasses, she tried to relax, which she knew would be much easier if the elastic of her underpants didn’t feel like a girdle around her gut.

  Girdles, she thought with a laugh. “Now there’s something I haven’t thought about for a while.”

  Of course, Ginny had never worn one. Not even in the sixties, when everyone else did. Girdles were so … restrictive. And you never knew when you’d need to take one off quickly, when a man would desire to touch your flesh and not want to come up with a handful of rubber, even if the rubber had been hand-edged with lace.

  Her thoughts drifted to Jess, who had been too tiny to need a girdle, then to Susan, whose broad ass could most definitely have benefited from one, but who probably felt her long tunics, love beads, and caftans compensated for the enormous shimmy of her enormous butt. P.J. was probably the only one of the girls at Larchwood who had worn one: not that she needed to, but a mother as uptight and prissy as P.J.’s probably had insisted. After all, what would the church ladies think if she didn’t?

  None of them, of course, could have squeezed into girdles at Larchwood Hall, where their stomachs were bloated with unexpected babies, where their mountainlike mounds hid their adolescent ages.

  With a twinge of unexpected feelings, Ginny realized she was glad that Jess’s baby was not dead. She had been so cruel to Jess when they were kids: stealing her money, then stealing her ring—even though she gave it back in the end—she’d been cruel to her and had not cared that Jess was such a scared little girl. “Hell, we were all scared little girls,” Ginny said aloud.

  She turned onto the road toward town and resolved to call Jess this afternoon, after she had had her emotional fix from Lisa, after she’d pulled up her bootstraps one more time for the world.

  Maybe she’d even have a diet special for lunch: a watercress salad with endive and sprouts and balsamic vinegar. Puke.

  The soundstage was quiet, an unusual event for a hit like Devonshire Place.

  Ginny’s heels clicked against the wood floor as she picked her way in the darkness amid cables and cameras and lights and booms. Stopping in the center of the stage, she let the hollow sound envelop her, return her to those days so long ago when she had tried so hard to be a star, when all she wanted in the world was her name up in lights and people kissing her ass. A small memory struggled to come to the surface: a memory from Larchwood Hall days, when she lay on her bed devouring movie magazines, dreaming of capri pants and high heels and standing on the corner of Hollywood and Vine, Ginny Stevens, the star, the sought-after box office sensation waiting for her pink Cadillac to come and collect her and whisk her off to another cocktail party, another premiere.

  Her dreams, of course, had been just that. Oh, there had been a few small parts—damn few and damn small—when she’d first dragged her mother from Boston to L.A. once her stepfather was dead, once Lisa had been born, born and permanently (she thought) ensconced with the family who had signed the appropriate papers and come up with the appropriate bucks.

  There had been a few small parts, long before her dress creased across her middle. A few parts and many husbands—three before Jake: the cigar-stinking agent who died and left her his floundering business and beat-up car; the studly young Texan whose heart-stopping face and her fifteen percent of it landed him enough roles to put Ginny back on her feet and not give a shit when he announced he was gay; the soft-porn writer with the hard-core imagination who prodded his wife into cavorting with other women until he found religion and traded his life with Ginny for one of the cloth.

  Bit parts, bit husbands, until Jake. Until Jake Edwards, the documentary producer, who had given Ginny some decent roles, then a decent home, a respectable life.

  God, she thought, the ghosts of the fantasy moviemakers swirling around her in echoes of missed lines and lost opportunities, I was such a bitch to Jake. Until she met Lisa, it had been true. Ginny had been an insufferable, ungrateful bitch, a tough, hardened woman who’d spent her whole life on guard because she’d not had much choice if she wanted to survive.

  “You looking for something, lady?” someone called from across the stage.

  Ginny began to speak, then cleared her throat. She quickly dabbed the small tears that had found their way down her swollen, puffed cheeks. “Lisa,” she said. “I’m looking for Lisa Andrews.”

  The man stepped into the dimness. “You and half the world.” He carried a clipboard and wore a tired-out look on his face. “How’d you get in here?”

  He thinks I’m a fan, Ginny thought. He thinks I’m a crazed, obsessed fan, maybe even a woman from Dubuque. “You don’t understand,” she said, “I’m Ginny Edwards. I got ‘in here’ because Jake Edwards was my husband.” If there was any recognition on his part, he did not respond. “Lisa Andrews is my daughter.”

  He lifted a curious eyebrow. “Your daughter?”

  Ginny wasn’t sure whether he couldn’t believe Lisa would have a mother so young or a mother who was such a god-awful mess. “What is your name?” she demanded.

  “O’Brien. I’m a grip.”

  “Well, O’Brien, I suggest you tell me where Lisa is,” she said firmly, “or I’ll find Harry Lyons and ask him myself.” She was pleased—and surprised—she’d remembered the name of Lisa’s director, the porker who had sucked down her food after Jake’s funeral.

  “They finished blocking for the day,” the grip said. “If she’s still on the lot, she’s probably in her dressing room.” He pointed to a corridor off to the left. “Third door on the left. The one just before Harry’s office. Better knock, though. Her boyfriend’s with her.”

  Boyfriend?

  Ginny stared at him a moment, then decided he must be joking. If Lisa had a boyfriend, surely Ginny would have been the first to know. Then again, how long had it really been since they’d talked?

  A boyfriend? Was it possible?

  She left the stage, heading in the direction of the dressing rooms.

  The door did not have a red wooden star on the front, merely a metal slot into which a plastic nameplate had been slid. Andrews, the nameplate read in neat, disposable print. Star today, gone tomorrow, Ginny thought. Life molded by the ratings. Not like the old studio days, when stars were stars. Guaranteed by their contracts. Not that Ginny had ever seen one.

  She reached for the doorknob then suddenly stopped.

  Boyfriend?

  Glancing over her shoulder, Ginny saw no one. She pressed her ear to the door and listened. No laughter, no conversation. And definitely, she thought again, no boyfriend.

  Still, she raised her hand and knocked. There was no answer. Shit, she thought. Sheet. So much for emotional support. So much for the daughter who would want to see her anytime, anywhere.

  Turning on her heel to leave the studio, she suddenly heard a sound from inside the dressing room. She stepped back and knocked again.

  “Go away, O’Brien,” Lisa’s voice said from the other side of the door. “I’ll be out in a minute.”

  So Lisa was there. Ginny smoothed the crease from her dress and turned the knob. “Lisa,” she said, opening the door and entering the small room, “it’s Ginny.” But as soon as the words were out of her mouth, she stopped. She froze. Her body went cold. Solid as a marble statue on a museum pedestal. Stiff as the dick that pointed at her from across the room. The big ramrod dick with the too-familiar head. Brad’s dick.

  The scream that shot from Ginny’s lips fired down the hall and reverberated onto the soundstage.

  “You bastard!” she shrieked, pushing past her half-naked daughter and lunging for her stepson.

  “Ginny!” Lisa shouted. She grabbed Ginny’s waist and pulled her back. “Leave him alone.”

  Ginny fought to grab his dick, to rip it off, to make him pay. “You bastard! You filthy bastard!”

  Brad stepped back. And grinned. “Mommie dearest,” he said, “what an unpleasant surprise.”

  Her arms flailed toward him. Lisa held her back. />
  “O’Brien!” Lisa yelled. “Help!”

  Slowly, Brad leaned over and removed his jeans from the back of a chair. He slipped into them as Ginny still struggled with her daughter, his eyes and his grin fixed on Ginny. He stuffed his still-hard dick into his pants, and just as he began zipping the fly, O’Brien bolted into the room.

  “Christ,” he said, wrangling Ginny from Lisa’s grasp. “Do you want the police?”

  “No,” Lisa said, “just get her out of here. Please.”

  The grip tightened Ginny’s hands behind her back. “I knew she couldn’t be your mother. Any mother of yours would have a lot more class.”

  Her anger went limp. “Bastards,” she muttered, as O’Brien pushed her from the studio. “All of you.”

  • • •

  She wasn’t wearing red spandex, but the promise of sex was there, just because they were a male and a female and adults, for the most part, and because there certainly seemed no reason to hold back.

  Phillip had taken her to a small Italian restaurant on West Fifty-fourth not far from her apartment. He tried to enchant her with first-date enthusiasm. He knew, of course, that she could not be enchanted. There was nothing enchanting about corporate law, especially to a do-gooder children’s rights advocate who probably detested the white-collar world in which she was raised. Still, she appeared interested, and for that he was grateful. Phillip never missed being with a woman until he was with one.

  Toying with his rigatoni and sun-dried tomatoes he finally said, “Stop. Enough about me. Tell me about yourself. Do you like the law?”

  She sipped her Chianti, her deep red lipstick not leaving a mark on the glass. “Not at all. I’m only getting my law degree to spite my father.” Her words were matter-of-fact. Phillip mentally groaned, Oh, no. Not another weirdo.

  “To …” he stuttered a bit, sipped from his own glass. “To spite your father?” He couldn’t imagine doing anything to spite his father, his mother, or even Joseph.

  Nicole smiled. “Daddy wanted me to be a teacher. Or a doctor. Anything but a lawyer. He says it’s become such a despised field.”

  “Oh.” Phillip took a mouthful of rigatoni, grateful that Nicole wasn’t weird, after all, but not sure if her comment meant he was despised too. “Well, I guess there are rotten apples in every bushel.” He wondered if he had his cliché right, and if Nicole was too bright for clichés. “So to speak,” he added.

  “But let’s face it,” she continued, “lawyering is where the money is. Especially with the kinds of contacts Daddy has made.”

  Phillip was getting confused. “But your father does big divorces. If you’re getting into children’s rights …”

  Nicole grinned, “I’m no liberal, Phillip. Divorced people have children. And who could despise someone who fights for kids?”

  Phillip nodded. He couldn’t.

  “Your mother’s nice,” Nicole said suddenly.

  He smiled.

  “I think Daddy secretly hoped that I’d be like your mother. You know, domestic.” She said the word as if it were sour.

  Phillip laughed. “You don’t seem anything like my mother.”

  “Oh, believe me,” Nicole said, her wide lips curling into a smile. “I’m not.”

  “You’re an independent woman.”

  “Very.”

  “And smart.”

  “Extremely.”

  “And you know what you want.”

  She leaned back in her chair and sipped her wine again. “You know what law school is like, Phillip. You work and work and hardly have time for a life. Well, I want a life. Part of a life anyway. I want dinners like this, and I want a man to share them with. I want a man who understands the demands I have and who can adapt. I want him to be my lover.” She swirled the ruby liquid in her glass. “Are you interested?”

  At least she didn’t say she had a fiancé in San Antonio.

  Chapter 10

  The sheets on her bed were not satin: they were rumpled and soft, with the familiar feel of a bed that was probably not changed often enough. Phillip lay on his back, smiling, watching the early-morning sunlight that played above him stir dust specks in the air and suspend them like stars. He wondered why it was that dust specks always seemed so evenly spaced, why they were never clumped all together or spread too far apart. Then he wondered why he was wondering about such trivia; it was Saturday, a day when he was out from under the inquisitive eyes of his brother, a day he should be using to plan his next move to find Jess’s baby.

  But he didn’t think Jess would mind.

  He stared up at the high ceiling in Nicole’s brick-walled loft, listening to the gentle sleep-breathing of the young woman beside him. The sex had been—well, phenomenal. Fast, heated, Oh-God-I’m-losing-it sex. There had been no time for bells or fireworks: it was sex for sex’s sake; direct, need-based sex that provided release if not passion. It had certainly not been unpleasant.

  His eyes moved around the big, open room, which, for all its potential, was in need of a decorator. The tall, arched windows were adorned only by iron bars; there were no pictures, no sculptures, no textures scattered about, merely a litter of law books stacked on plain, open bookshelves, strewn across a metal computer workstation and heaped on a single tattered rug that covered the stone floor. Nicole had been right about one thing: She certainly was not domestic.

  Phillip smiled again. For all his mess and all his clutter, he was pleased that at least his apartment had warmth, with its living, if not thriving, trio of plants; his large framed photos of marathons in which he had run; and his favorite pictures: two of P.J.’s original watercolors, scenes from the Hamptons. P.J. had enjoyed so many years there with Bob Jaffee, the man who had been her lover, the man who had wanted to marry her, the man who had moved to Australia after P.J. died.

  He looked off toward the windows again and wondered what miracles Jess could create there with fabric and color and feeling. He was wondering this as, next to him, Nicole began to stir.

  She gently rubbed her eyes, her hair. Phillip had a quick desire to touch her, to make love in the morning. Maybe they could take their time this time, maybe the frenzy of first-time sex could give way to tenderness.

  But before he could touch her, Nicole pulled herself up and sat on the edge of the bed.

  “I guess this is the part where I’m supposed to offer to fix breakfast,” she said.

  Phillip laughed. “I know. You’re not domestic.”

  She pulled a T-shirt over her small, delectable breasts and stood up. “Not entirely true. I have some blueberry muffins. And orange juice.”

  If he couldn’t have sex he would prefer coffee.

  “No coffee,” she said, as if reading his mind. “I don’t drink it.”

  “Orange juice is fine. And a muffin would be great.” He waited until she had disappeared into the bathroom before sitting on the edge of the bed and pulling on his clothes. He knew his modesty was ridiculous, as if the intimacy of being naked was only acceptable when sex was involved.

  Tucking in his shirt, Phillip regretted that they had not had morning sex. Had Nicole’s previous lovers always let her call the shots in the relationship, always let her have her own way? Last night she’d said she wanted a man who could adapt; the message was clear that if he couldn’t, she’d find someone who would. Love, apparently, did not enter into it—law school left little time or energy for the entanglements of emotions.

  It’s no wonder attorneys are so despised, he mused then wondered how Jeanine Archambault would feel if she knew she’d selected a girl who had no intention of falling in love with her bachelor son.

  Phillip looked around the room for a mirror, so he could check whether his light brown hair was, as usual, sticking up in the back. But there was no mirror, just the iron-barred window that offered little reflection.

  “It’s all yours,” Nicole said, emerging from the bathroom.

  In the closet-sized room was an old-fashioned toilet with the wate
r tank on top. Phillip studied it, a moment, used it, then hoped that pulling the chain would make it flush. It did. He glanced at the narrow shower stall and wished he could take one: but there was only one towel draped on a hook on the door. Apparently, Nicole had not intended for her guest to stay very long. He splashed cold water on his face, looked in the small oval mirror over the round pedestal sink and tried to wet down the cowlick that was indeed standing up on the crown of his head.

  “I have an early class,” Nicole said when he came out of the bathroom. She pulled an oversized sweatshirt over her head, stepped into jeans, and pinned back her hair with a large silver clip. She pointed to the counter by what would be the kitchen sink if there were a kitchen, if this were more than a one-room loft. “Breakfast is on the counter,” she said. “Sorry it’s not more.”

  Phillip went over to the counter. A lone muffin sat on a square of paper napkin. Next to it was a cardboard container of orange juice, individual-size. He smiled as he saw she had removed the plastic straw from the side of the box and inserted it in the hole for him. Who says you’re not domestic? he thought.

  Then she was next to him, her arms loaded with books. “I hate to rush you,” she said, “but I’ve got Ethics this morning. I don’t want to be late.” She stood waiting.

  Phillip grabbed the muffin in one hand, the juice in another. “Lead the way,” he said.

  When they were out of the apartment and getting onto the elevator, he asked, “Can I see you again?”

  “Well,” Nicole replied, her mind clearly now on her studies, “tomorrow I’ll be in the law library.”

  “Perfect,” he said. “I’ll meet you there.” He had planned to go to the law library at some point; he intended to start there to find Jess’s baby. He and Nicole could do their own work but be together. Then maybe after, they could have Chinese food. Chinese food and sex. Not a bad idea, he thought with a smile on his face and a tingle in his groin.

  It wasn’t until they were out on the street and gone in different directions that Phillip realized Nicole hadn’t given him a chance to kiss her good-bye.