by Joy Fielding
Not that Tracey was secretive or rude or even difficult. No, her daughter was unfailingly polite, supportive, sweet. She answered all her mother’s questions—about school, her friends, boys—with candor and ease. In a nutshell, school was fine, her friends were great, there were a few boys hovering on the horizon. When Barbara occasionally pressed her for more details, Tracey provided them immediately, relaying the mundane facts of her days with precision and care, as if she were reciting a poem in front of her class. She seemed to have no real ambition, no burning desire to be this or that, and as a consequence, was rarely, if ever, disappointed or depressed. She’d taken her parents’ divorce in her stride, adapted well to her growing new family, went on about the business of getting on with her life in a way her mother could only stand back and admire because she was so incapable of doing it herself.
“Tracey?” Barbara asked again, but Tracey’s eyes remained stubbornly closed.
Barbara stroked her daughter’s cheeks, understanding she didn’t know her only child very well at all.
You’re doing a wonderful job, her friends assured her. Tracey’s a great kid, they agreed.
Which couldn’t be said of all the daughters of Grand Avenue.
While Vicki’s daughter, Kirsten, had turned out remarkably well—remarkable in light of the fact she’d been raised by a succession of nannies and rarely saw her mother at all, a direct reflection of how Vicki herself had been raised, Barbara realized—Susan’s firstborn, Ariel, was a sullen child at best, and downright surly at her worst. Which was most of the time, according to her mother. Ariel was rebellious and combative, quick to anger and slow to forgive, in almost every way the exact opposite of Susan.
As for Chris’s daughter, Montana …
Barbara said a silent prayer, then closed her eyes. Chris had rarely left her thoughts since her run-in with Tony several weeks earlier. But she couldn’t afford to think about Chris now. If she allowed Chris entry into her thoughts, she’d be there all night, and it was late, she was tired, it was time to get some sleep. Barbara flopped onto her back, thoughts of Chris circling behind her eyes, like a lost plane searching for a runway in the dark.
She told herself to relax. Start with your toes, she remembered reading in a recent issue of Victoria. Toes, relax, she instructed silently, feeling them twitch beneath the covers. Now move up your body slowly. First your feet. Feet, relax. Now the ankles. Ankles, relax. Probably if she were to start wearing more practical shoes, her feet wouldn’t take so long to get comfortable, Barbara thought. Calves, relax. Now the knees. Next the thighs. My big fat thighs, Barbara thought impatiently. She used to have such great legs, won the bathing suit competition hands down. Now look at them! No, don’t look at them. All you’d see was cellulite and varicose veins and unsightly ingrown hairs. “Legs, relax,” Barbara ordered out loud, bouncing restlessly on the bed. Now your ass, she thought. Oh, that’s a good one. My big, fat, ever-expanding rear end. If she relaxed it any further, it would take over the whole bed. “Relax, damn you,” Barbara hissed, her thoughts wrapping around her stomach. My big, fat, bloated stomach, Barbara thought with disgust. Stupid goddamn thing. First thing in the morning, she was calling Dr. Steeves, making an appointment, to hell with the pain, to hell with what it cost, to hell with everything.
Barbara lurched up in bed and threw off her covers. Well, that little exercise was a roaring success, she thought, her adrenaline pumping. She might as well have mainlined a dose of caffeine. Now she’d be up all night. “Goddamnit!” She searched out Tracey in the dark. “Tracey? Tracey, are you awake?”
Tracey’s response was to sigh, roll over onto her side, face the opposite wall.
“Damn.” Barbara’s head turned restlessly from side to side. She debated getting out of bed, going to the bathroom, decided she couldn’t be bothered. She reached for her book, grabbed the phone instead. “Almost midnight,” she noted with satisfaction, punching in the numbers her fingers knew by heart. “You should be all comfy by now.”
The phone rang once … twice …
“Hello?” The young woman’s voice was heavy with sleep.
Barbara smiled. Oh, you poor thing, did I wake you?
“Hello?” the voice asked again.
Stupid girl, Barbara thought. You’d think she’d learn.
“Barbara, is that you?” Pam asked suddenly.
Barbara dropped the phone into its carriage, her fingers burning as if they’d been sprayed with acid. Her heart was pounding so wildly it threatened to burst out of her chest. Dear God, what had she done?
Calm down. Relax. “Heart, relax,” she said, and laughed out loud, a high-pitched shriek that chipped at the darkness like a pick through ice.
“Mom?” Tracey murmured, turning her head toward her mother.
“It’s okay, sweetie.” Barbara patted her daughter’s shoulder. “I just had a bad dream. Go back to sleep.”
It’s okay, she repeated silently. Everything was all right. Pam was just guessing, throwing out the first name that popped into her head. There was no way she could prove anything. It’s okay. Lie down. Try to get some sleep.
It took a few minutes, but gradually Barbara’s heartbeat returned to normal. Exhausted, frightened, spent, she finally drifted into a restless sleep in which she was being chased down Grand Avenue by a rabid Doberman. The dog was nipping at her heels, about to take a bite of her flesh, when it suddenly stopped, turned its head, listened. To what? Barbara found herself wondering.
Then she heard the noise.
Barbara bolted up in bed, glanced at the clock. Ten minutes after midnight. She waited, deciding the noise had been part of her dream, praying the phone call to Pam had been part of that same dream. She was about to lie back down when she heard the noise again.
What was it?
Her first thought was that it must be Tracey, that she’d gotten up, gone to the kitchen to make herself a snack. But Tracey was sleeping soundly beside her, Barbara understood without looking, which meant it was something else, someone else, and that someone was moving around downstairs. A burglar?
Why would a burglar choose her house when there were so many nicer homes on the street, homes that didn’t speak of abandonment and neglect? Why would anyone choose this house?
Unless they knew who lived here. Unless there was a personal reason for the visit.
Tony.
It had to be, Barbara realized, holding her breath. He’d threatened her. Bad things happen to people who don’t mind their own business, he’d said. Those were his exact words. And now he was here to make good on his threat.
Dear God, what could she do? If he so much as touched Tracey …
Barbara was reaching for the phone to call 911 when she felt the dull thud of footsteps on the stairs, heard the familiar voice.
“Barbara,” the voice said, then again, with greater insistence, “Barbara.”
She closed her eyes, not sure whether to laugh or cry. She didn’t have to ask who it was. She knew that voice as well as her own. Wordlessly, Barbara climbed out of bed and gathered a dark blue housecoat over her powder blue nightgown. She glanced back at Tracey, still sleeping soundly, then pushed her feet toward the hall.
He was waiting for her at the top of the stairs, angry shoulders rigid beneath his heavy winter coat.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“What the hell are you doing?” he asked in return.
Barbara brought her fingers to her lips. “Tracey’s asleep,” she whispered. “We should go downstairs.”
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he asked again before they reached the living room.
“I might ask you the same thing,” Barbara said, feeling surprisingly calm as she confronted her ex-husband face-to-face. Didn’t Vicki always claim the best defense was a good offense? “How did you get in?”
“I have a key,” Ron reminded her.
“I’d like it back.”
“This is my house.”
“I have no right?”
“Could you lower your voice please? I don’t think you want Tracey to hear you.”
“Maybe I do. Maybe I think it’s time Tracey found out what her mother does with her spare time.”
Oh, God. “Ron, this is unnecessary.”
“Unnecessary? Unnecessary?”
“Please, let’s just calm down.”
Ron paced back and forth in front of her, waving his hands in all directions at once, so that flakes of snow flew off his black coat, as if he’d brought the weather inside. Even in his fury, he was handsome, Barbara couldn’t stop herself from thinking. Even now, she had to fight the urge to throw herself into those angry arms, beg him to come back to her. What was the matter with her? Had she no self-respect?
“What the hell do you think you’re doing, calling my house at all hours of the night, upsetting my wife?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Did she really expect him to believe that?
“Don’t bullshit me, Barbara. I know it’s you making those calls. What I don’t know is why. You get some sort of perverse thrill from upsetting my family? Is that what it is? Because I’ve had it. We’ve all had it. And I’m here to warn you that if it doesn’t stop, and stop right now, I’m going to the police.”
“The police?”
“And the courts.”
“The courts? What are you talking about?” What was happening? When had she lost control of the conversation, the situation? What had happened to her best defense?
The separation agreement appeared miraculously in Ron’s hands. He waved it in front of her face. “This isn’t written in stone, you know. If I have to, I’ll go back to court.”
Barbara heard Tracey’s footsteps overhead, understood her daughter was listening at the top of the stairs. “I think you need to calm down.”
“I’ve had it, Barbara. I’m warning you. One more call, I make a few calls of my own.”
“There won’t be any more calls,” Barbara said quietly, watching Ron’s hands fall to his sides.
“Place is a mess,” he said, almost to himself.
Barbara looked at the fashion magazines scattered across the floor, at the water marks on the coffee table in front of the crumpled green floral sofa. He was right—even softened by the moonlight, the place was a mess. “I had to cut back on the cleaning lady. There isn’t enough money.”
“I give you plenty of money.”
“It’s not enough.”
“It’s more than enough.”
“This house is expensive to maintain.”
“So, sell it.”
“And give you half?”
“That’s the deal you signed.”
“The deal says I get to stay here until Tracey finishes high school.”
“In a house you can’t afford to maintain properly?”
“In a house I love.”
“You could find something smaller.”
“I don’t want anything smaller.”
“You could rent, for God’s sake. Or buy a condo. There’s all sorts of great deals on the market right now.”
“I don’t want a condo. I don’t want to rent,” Barbara told him, trying to keep up with the conversation. “I don’t want to uproot Tracey.”
“Tracey is fine. She’d have no problem with moving.”
“I’d have a problem with moving.”
“Why? Half your friends have moved away. What’s keeping you here except spite?”
“I don’t have to justify myself to you.”
“I’m a professor, Barbara,” he said, trying to sound reasonable. “I don’t make a lot of money. I can’t afford to maintain two families.”
“Maybe you should have thought of that before you left,” Barbara said bitterly, “before you decided to have more children.”
“Is that what this is about?” The look in Ron’s eyes hovered between pity and contempt. “That I have a son? That Pam and I are expecting another baby?”
“Tracey is your child too.”
“I know that. And I fully intend to provide for Tracey. Be reasonable, Barbara. It’s not like I’m asking you to live on the streets.”
“I won’t leave Grand Avenue.”
“You’re just doing this out of spite.”
“Doing what? Surviving?”
“Surviving very nicely I’d say, judging by, my Visa bills.”
“That was your idea.”
“The idea was that it be used only in the event of an emergency.”
“Really? That’s not how I interpreted it.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Ron said, shaking his head resolutely. “As of this minute, consider your credit canceled.”
“What?”
“Your credit’s no good, lady.”
“You can’t do that.”
“Just watch me.”
“I’ll call my lawyer.”
“And I’ll call mine. I’m sure a judge will be very understanding of the three-thousand-dollar Armani emergency you had last month, especially in light of the late-night phone calls you’ve been making to my house.”
Barbara glanced toward the stairs. “Would you please lower your voice!”
“Do me a favor, would you, Barbara? Next time you go to the doctor for a face-lift, have your head examined.”
The force of Ron’s venom slammed Barbara back against the wall. “Get out of here,” she said quietly, too numb to move. “I want you out of my house right now.”
Ron gathered his coat around him, strode toward the front door. “You need help, Barbara. You’ve turned into a bitter, bloodsucking, dried-up old prune, and all the plastic surgery in the world isn’t going to do a damn thing to change that.”
The front door slammed shut behind him. Immediately Barbara’s knees gave way, collapsing under her. She slithered down the wall to the floor, lay in a crumpled heap, like laundry someone had piled up, then forgotten.
She was still sitting there when Tracey ventured meekly down the stairs a few minutes later. “Mom? Mom, are you all right?”
Barbara nodded, said nothing, not trusting her voice.
“He’s just angry,” Tracey said, kneeling beside her mother on the tired green broadloom. “You know he didn’t mean any of the things he said. Mom?”
The word trailed a host of unspoken sentences behind it. Mom, what was Dad doing here? Mom, why was he so upset? What phone calls was he talking about? Mom, please talk to me. Tell me what tonight was really all about. Was it my fault?
“Mom?”
Barbara smiled at Tracey through eyes heavy with tears, amazed, as she always was, by the miracle she’d produced. Tracey stared back at her mother with round, dark eyes that revealed nothing. What does she really think of me? Barbara wondered, reaching up, gently stroking her daughter’s hair, her fingers becoming enmeshed in the twisted maze of sleep-tossed curls. Does she see what Ron sees—a pathetic, middle-aged divorcée, abandoned by her husband, left sitting alone in the dark, clinging to fading dreams of past glories? A bitter, bloodsucking, dried-up old prune? “You should be asleep,” Barbara said to her daughter.
“So should you.”
Maybe she should take Ron’s advice, however acrimoniously it had been hurled at her head, and see a therapist, someone who could help her deal with her problems, someone who could help her get on with her life. Except that therapists cost money, and Ron had informed her in no uncertain terms that the bank was closed. “You should go to bed,” Barbara told Tracey.
“So should you.”
“You go, sweetie. I’ll be up in a few minutes.”
“I’ll wait.”
“No, you go,” Barbara insisted. “Please, sweetie. I’ll be fine. I just need a few minutes.”
Tracey looked at her mother through eyes too tired to argue, then pushed herself to her bare feet. “You promise you won’t be long?”
“Two minutes.”
Tracey leaned down, kissed her mother on the forehead, then slowly backed out of the room.
“Thank you,” Barbara said.
“For what?”
“For taking such good care of me.”
“Try not to think about what Daddy said,” Tracey advised, as if she could read her mother’s thoughts, as if they were emblazoned on her forehead, as if they were glowing in the dark.
“It’s already forgotten,” Barbara lied, closing her eyes to the soothing blackness that surrounded her as Tracey reluctantly left her side.
“Mom?” Tracey called down from upstairs almost immediately. “It’s two minutes. Are you coming up?”
With a weary smile, Barbara pushed herself off the floor, walking, as if in a trance, toward the stairs. She was on the first step, her hand on the railing, when she heard a car in the driveway, footsteps on the front path. Ron? she wondered. Returning to spew more hatred at her, to share some choice words he’d forgotten during the first go-round? Would he knock this time or just use his key? She’d have to go to the hardware store tomorrow, arrange for all the locks to be changed. Send Rotten Ron the bill. Show him the dried-up old prune had a few more wrinkles up her sleeve.
But the knock on the door was gentle, even timid, although as she hesitated, it was growing in insistency. Barbara approached the door slowly, stared through the peephole into the bitterly cold night. “Oh, my God.”
“Mom,” Tracey called from upstairs. “Who is it?”
Barbara opened the door and extended her arms. In the next instant, Chris collapsed inside them.
Seventeen
My God, what happened to you?” Barbara’s hands fluttered all around Chris, not sure where to land. She touched her trembling shoulders, her snow-dampened hair, her tearstained face. “Tracey, bring me some blankets. Hurry!”
Chris looked back toward the driveway, at the cabdriver who was leaning against the car door, watching nervously. “It’s his jacket,” she whispered hoarsely, slipping the ratty black leather jacket off her shoulders. Barbara caught it before it reached the floor. “I don’t have any money.”