by Joy Fielding
Donna felt her body go cold. None of this was happening. She felt her throat begin to constrict.
“I love you, Donna. I really love you. I know, believe me, I know all you’ve been through and all you’re going through now. I understand. Maybe if it were just me, I could stick it out a little longer. I’m not sure. I really don’t know. It’s a moot point because it isn’t just me. There’s an eight-year-old girl up there who’s going to celebrate her fortieth birthday soon, if I’m not careful. Six months ago, she was the happiest kid on the block. Now she’s afraid to move. She spilled her milk the other night, you took after her like she’d deliberately engineered the whole occasion just to get on your nerves. She’s afraid to say anything around you because it’s always the wrong thing to say. She’s afraid to do anything around you because it’s always the wrong thing to do! Donna, listen to me, isn’t this ringing any bells?! Doesn’t any of this sound achingly familiar to you?”
Donna tried to speak but couldn’t.
“Think, Donna,” Mel continued, “Stop and think for a minute what you’re doing to my kid!” He looked helplessly around the room. “And to me! Yeah,” he bellowed, widening his circle, “we might as well get it all out while we’re at it. I feel like I’m always walking in a mine field—one wrong move and whammo!—we all go up in flames. I have to censor every bloody thing I tell you—if an interesting case at the clinic has anything to do with children, well, then, I can’t tell you about it because talking about children upsets you, which makes it doubly hard on me because I happen to enjoy talking about children. I happen to enjoy my child, for God’s sake. I guess I’ve been operating these last few months under the misapprehension that the Donna I fell in love with was going to come back to her senses in just a short while. I remember that Donna, you see. I remember the first time I saw her; I remember the first time I kissed her, the first time we made love, when she looked like a boy scout; I remember what she was like those first months after her divorce; I even remember her with fondness when she was a desperately unhappy married lady, because at least then, she was a fighter. Not an alley-fighter like she’s become, but someone who was fighting for her survival. Now you just fight to destroy.” His voice was suddenly very tired. “Victor did just what he said he was going to do, Donna—he obliterated you. You’re nowhere to be seen.” He stopped, then abruptly started again, his voice picking up greater speed, greater urgency as he went on. “What I can’t understand is why you’ve let him. You ran away from him when you were married rather than let yourself be destroyed. Now, it’s like you can’t run fast enough the other way.” He shook his head. “You know, my mother once said something else—it was when I had to tell her that Kate and I were splitting up, just about four months, I guess, before she died. I was trying to explain it to her, about Kate’s need to find herself, that sort of thing, and you know what she said to me? She said that all this modern business about finding yourself is a lot of crap. She said that you are what you do, you are the way you behave.” He paused. “She was right.” He ran a tired hand through his hair. “You were married to Victor for six years, Donna. I figure that’s enough for both of us.”
Donna stood numbly in the center of the room. For several minutes, there was absolute silence. “You’re telling me you don’t want me around anymore?” Her voice was like a child’s.
“I’m telling you that I love Donna Cressy. But I can’t live with who she’s letting herself become.”
Donna began frantically moving her head from side to side. “So, you just desert me too? I mean, my children are gone, why not finish me right off? Is that the idea? Let’s all get Donna.”
“This isn’t the way I want it.”
“You are what you do, Doctor!” she snapped. Mel lowered his gaze to the floor. “You said you’d never leave me! You promised me you’d never leave me!”
Slowly, he raised his face to hers, but no words came. Only pain. Anguish.
“You promised me you’d help me find my children!”
“We tried, Donna. We did everything that was humanly possible. But how long can you live your life waiting for the phone to ring? How many times can you stop little children on the street because they’re the same height as your son? How many strollers can you run after because it might be Sharon inside? I’m not saying you have to give up hope—”
“No!” She was starting to scream, no longer listening to him.
He continued speaking. “I’m just trying to tell you that regardless of whether or not you find your children, you, Donna Cressy, have a life of your own.”
She was hysterical, beyond calming down. “You lied to me,” she cried. “You lied!”
“Donna—” He moved toward her.
“Liar! Liar!”
“Donna—” He raised his arms to try and comfort her.
“No!” she shouted.
“Try and calm down.” He started to move toward the door. “Let’s just cool off for a few minutes. I’ll get you a drink of something—”
“I don’t want anything from you! I just want to get out of here.” She moved in his direction.
“You’re not going anywhere tonight.”
“The hell I’m not!”
“Donna, you’re not going anywhere now. Let’s try and get some sleep—we’ll talk in the morning—”
She tried to push past him to the door. “I am not sleeping here! You can’t make me stay here!”
She began shoving her body against his.
“Donna—”
“Get out of my way. I don’t need you. You’re just a liar! Let me out of here or I’ll wake up the whole bloody house. I promise you!”
Mel again tried to raise his arms toward her, but she slapped them down with her hands. “Get out of my way! Don’t touch me!” Then the words gave way to sounds, pure sounds, gutteral howls that seemed to shoot straight from her heart. She was screaming as if he were killing her, an already wounded animal, her foot helplessly caught in a steel strap, the hunter approaching with his knife.
Mel’s hand shot to her mouth, trying to stifle her screams. The action terrified Donna, stopping her breath, suffocating her. She bit down hard on his hand. He cried out with the sudden pain, trying to surround her body with his larger bulk. She was everywhere, all over him, scratching, kicking, pounding at him. “Get out of my way!”
He stood firm, not bending to her blows. “I hate you, goddamn it,” she bellowed. Then she slapped him full and hard against his cheek.
Instinctively, his right hand rose up and slapped her back with equal force. Then each recoiled with the sudden horror of what they were doing.
He was the first to speak. “Donna, I’m so sorry—”
“No,” she cut in. “I don’t want to hear any more.” She looked into his worn brown eyes. “You’re worse than Victor,” she said quietly. “Victor was many things, but he never hit me.”
Mel moved out of Donna’s way as she walked to the door. His voice was soft behind her. “Sometimes, it’s easier to kill someone without ever having to lay a hand on them.”
Donna opened the door and walked out without looking back.
NINETEEN
She had been coming to this playground every day now for four weeks. She wasn’t sure just how the whole thing had started, at what point a chance occasion had turned into a well-worn ritual, but every afternoon from the hours of three to five, Donna found herself sitting on the same low green bench on the same side of the small narrow playground off Flagler Boulevard watching the children play.
It seemed a fitting way to end each day, days that were spent filling time with empty thoughts until it grew dark enough to get into bed again and go to sleep. She woke up between seven and eight each morning, took an endless amount of time washing, brushing her teeth, doing whatever else was required before getting dressed, wearing whatever was closest to the bed until it was too dirty to wear anymore, then going for a walk, sometimes by the ocean, sometimes all the way over to Worth Aven
ue, avoiding the looks of the well-dressed tourists who poured in and out of Gucci and Van Cleef and Arpels as if they were the local five-and-dimes. Sometimes she walked up toward the Palm Beach Mall or over toward Southern Boulevard. Sometimes she stopped for lunch; more often she skipped it altogether. Always, she ended up here, in this narrow playground. No matter what direction she started off in, all roads led to here.
It had been one of Adam’s favourite places, perhaps because of the numerous animal-shaped swings and slides that galloped, jumped and generally cavorted about in place. Not that she really thought he would be here, she told herself. Still, there was the remote possibility that Victor had never taken the children out of Palm Beach at all, or that he had returned after a brief absence. She shook the thought out of her head. No, Palm Beach was too small a county. There were too many people who might spot them, too many chances they might be discovered. Besides, the detective had combed the entire state, checking real estate offices, nurseries, housekeeping agencies. Victor was definitely not in Florida. Or hadn’t been, her mind persisted. He might have come back—
Donna’s eyes trailed after a small dark-haired boy as he ran from the entranceway of the park to one of the brightly painted jungle gyms. She watched him as he climbed to the top and hung by his ankles upside down. Where was his mother? she wondered angrily. You don’t let small children play unattended in a potentially dangerous environment. The boy was no older than Adam. It was sheer irresponsibility to let him run free without supervision. She looked harder at the child—he even looked a bit like Adam, she thought, at least from this distance, and facing into the sun as she was. If she squinted just slightly, she could almost believe—
“Todd, where are you?” a woman’s shrill voice called out. The woman ran into the playground area and then angrily walked toward the boy. “How many times have I asked you to wait for me and not run so far ahead. You know I can’t run so fast anymore.” Donna looked at the woman’s body. She was perhaps six or seven months pregnant, five or six years her junior. Then she looked down at her own body. She was the thinnest she’d ever been, her slight frame accentuated by hair that was just a touch too long to be attractive.
“God, I don’t know how I’m ever going to manage with two,” the woman said, ambling over to Donna and sitting down beside her. Donna was surprised to find she appreciated the woman’s presence, the chance to converse. It had been a long while since she had actually talked to anyone, uttered more than a necessary hello or goodbye.
“You’ll manage,” she said, smiling. “It’s hard at first, you don’t think you’ll ever get organized, but you do, and then it’s really nice.”
“Yeah?” the woman asked, straightening her blonde hair under her bandana, her black roots protruding about half an inch into the sunlight. “I hope so. We can’t afford no help or anything. And Todd, he was such a rotten baby, cried all the time. I don’t think I could go through that all over again.”
“My first was the same,” Donna said. “Adam cried for three straight months. But then he stopped and he was terrific. Sharon never cried at all. Maybe you’ll be just as lucky with your second.”
“I sure hope so.” The woman looked over at the playing children, a total of ten now that Todd was among them. “Which ones are yours?”
The question caught Donna off guard. She found herself stammering her reply. “They’re—they’re not here.” The woman looked surprised. You don’t have to have children with you to sit in a playground, Donna wanted to tell her. Instead she said, “They’re with their father. He took them to Disney World.”
“Oh, that’s nice. We were there last year. I liked it more than Todd.” Donna smiled. The woman looked at her questioningly. “You’re not spending Christmas together?”
Donna stared at the younger woman in surprise. How could she have forgotten it was Christmas in just a matter of days? She looked around her, at the palm trees, the green grass, felt the warm December air around her shoulders. It was easy to forget it was Christmas, she decided. The weather was the same as it always seemed to be, sometimes hotter, sometimes less so; there was no one around to shop for, no one to ask daily, is it Christmas yet? No one had sent her any Christmas cards—how could they? No one knew where she was.
She had taken up a quasi-permanent residence at the Mt. Vernon Motel on Belvedere. At first, it had been intended as transitional, a sort of half-way home between Mel’s house and a new apartment of her own. The lease on her rented home had expired, its owners returning to claim their territory. And so, she had moved some of her more portable belongings into the Mt. Vernon Motel and put the rest into storage. After the tourist season was over, she’d see about finding a regular apartment. Probably.
“I forgot it was Christmas,” Donna said, and immediately wished she hadn’t.
The younger woman withdrew, a look almost of fear crossing her eyes. Donna suddenly remembered the large Christmas tree at the end of Worth Avenue, saw it lit up and glowing against the night, saw the store windows all filled with Christmas trappings. It was amazing what the mind could block out, she thought. She had actually managed to make Christmas disappear. A not altogether small accomplishment.
The woman smiled feebly in Donna’s direction, pushed herself into a standing position, mumbled something about helping her son, and then walked with relative speed, for a woman in her condition, to where the boy was dangling. When she concluded whatever it was she had thought up to say to him, she proceeded to another bench on the other side of the narrow, elongated park and sat down, pulling a book from her purse, and not once looking back in Donna’s direction. What kind of a lunatic forgets it’s Christmas? Donna asked herself again; then she stood up and slowly walked in the direction of the exit.
The man was tall and skinny and didn’t look anything like John Travolta, she decided, wondering why she had thought he had in the first place. John Travolta was dark and had elastic hips. This boy—he was just a boy, she could see now, despite the dim lighting—had only average brown hair coloring, a mildly sensual look about him as opposed to one that was overwhelming, and his hips were only eager. What was she doing here? No, that was wrongly phrased. What was he doing here? They were in her motel room, after all. She was sitting on her own bed; he was standing over by the dresser combing his hair in the mirror. He wore tight black jeans and high-heeled boots. No shirt. Quickly, Donna checked her own body—she was still wearing the light blue velour shorts and matching top she’d been wearing for the last several days. Had they made love already? Was she dressed again and waiting for him to finish preening and leave?
She looked back over in the youth’s direction. That was a good word for him, she decided. Youth. Slightly more than a boy, not quite a man. At least ten years younger than herself. What was he doing in her motel room? Where had she found him?
“What day is it?” she asked him suddenly.
He turned slowly in her direction, a look of puzzlement crossing his face. “Friday,” he answered. His voice was strange to her; she couldn’t remember whether or not this was the first time she had heard him speak. “Be with you in a minute, babe.” He was studying his profile in the mirror, much more interested in his own perfection than in her.
“What date is it?” Her own voice sounded strange to her as well. As if she were listening to it on tape. In fact, the whole scene felt like something she was watching from across the room: two strangers, one partially clad and standing, absorbed in his own image, the other still dressed, sitting on the bed and waiting. Waiting for what? For him to leave? To approach her? Make love to her? Who was this boy? How had he gotten into her motel room? What day was it? “What date is it?” the voice asked again, almost feverishly.
“Hey, babe, you keep asking me that. What’s the matter? Are you all right?”
“What date is it?” So they had spoken before.
“It’s still Friday, December thirty-first.” He turned back to the mirror, then checked his watch, which she had notic
ed he had removed and put on the dresser. “Like I told you in the park, I can’t stay long. I got a date tonight.” He smiled sheepishly. “New Year’s and all.”
Had they already made love? Was that why he was here? She watched from somewhere outside of her body as he expertly kicked off his boots, walked away from the mirror and moved to within two feet of the confused woman in blue who sat on the bed. Both women now watched as he teasingly unbuckled his belt and inched his black jeans down over his hips. He wore no underwear.
“You have a nice body,” she heard the woman’s voice say. He kicked free of his pants and then took a few dancing steps back toward the mirror, examining his now naked body from all angles.
“Great, huh?” he said, more than asked. “I work out in a gym every day. Just around the corner from the park. Gotta keep in shape,” he said, moving back in the woman’s direction, “you know, for the chicks.”