her arms behind her as he forced her down to the floor, where he cradled her in his arms.
“Oh, babe, I'm so sorry…”
“Sorry?” It was a shriek between laughter and tears as she struggled free. “You come in here and tell me that you're leaving me for someone else and you're ‘sorry’? Jesus Christ…” She took a deep breath then and pushed away from him. “Let me go, dammit.” She looked at him with raw pain, and when he saw that she was calmer, he let go of her arms. She was still breathless from her attack on him, but now she walked slowly to the dark green velvet couch and sat down. She looked smaller suddenly, and very young, the thick sheet of pale blond hair hanging down as she buried her face in her hands, and then slowly she raised her face again, her eyes awash with tears. “Do you really love her?” Somehow it was impossible to believe.
“I think so.” He nodded slowly. “The worst part is that I love you both.”
“Why?” Samantha looked past him into an empty space, seeing nothing and understanding still less. “What was missing between us?”
Slowly he sat down. It had to be told. She had to know. He had been wrong to keep it from her for so long. “It happened during the election coverage last year.”
“And it's been going on since then?” Her eyes widened as she wiped away fresh tears with the back of one hand. “Ten months, and I didn't know it?” He nodded and said nothing. “My God.” And then she looked at him strangely. “Then why now? Why did you walk in here today like this and tell me? Why don't you stop seeing her? Why aren't you trying to save a marriage we've had for more than seven years? What the hell do you mean ‘I'm having an affair and I'm moving out’? Is that all this means to you?”
She was beginning to shriek again and John Taylor almost cringed. He hated this, hated what he was doing to her, but he knew he had to, he had to go. Liz had something he desperately wanted, she had a quality that he needed, a kind of low profile that pleased him. He and Samantha were too much alike in some ways, too visible, too spectacular, too quick, too beautiful. He liked Liz's sensible plainness, her less-dazzling intelligence, her quiet style, her willingness to take a backseat, to be obscure, while helping him to be more of what he was. She was the perfect foil for him, it was why they worked so well as a team. On camera, doing the news, John was undeniably the star, and Liz helped make him look that way. He liked that. She was so much quieter than Samantha, so much less flamboyant, so much less exciting, and he had finally discovered that that was what he wanted. He didn't feel anxious when he was with her, he didn't have to compete. He was automatically the star.
And there was more to it now. She was pregnant and it was his child, he knew it. It was the one thing he wanted more than all else. A son, to play with and love and teach to play football. It was what he had always wanted, and what Samantha couldn't give him. It had taken the doctors three years to discover what the problem was, and when they did, they were sure. Samantha was sterile. She would never have a child. “Why now, John?” Samantha's voice dragged him back to the present, and he slowly shook his head.
“It doesn't matter. It's not important. It just had to be done. I had to tell you. There is no good day for something like this.”
“Are you willing to end it?” She was pushing and she knew it, but she had to ask, had to push him; she still couldn't understand what had happened, and why. Why on this blistering hot day had her husband come home from the television station where he reported the news every night and told her that he was leaving her for someone else? “Will you stop seeing her, John?”
Slowly he had shaken his head. “No, Sam, I won't.”
“Why?” Her voice had dwindled, childlike, and there had been a fresh wave of tears. “What does she have that I don't have? She's plain, and she's boring… and you-you always said you didn't like her… and you hated working with her, and-” She couldn't go on, and he watched her, almost feeling her pain as his own.
“I have to go, Sam.”
“Why?” She grew frantic as he moved into the bedroom to pack his clothes.
“Because I do, that's all. Look, it's not fair of me to stay here and let you go on like this.”
“Please stay…” Panic crept into her voice like a dangerous beast. “It's okay, we'll work it out… honest… please… John…” The tears were streaming down her face, and he suddenly turned hard and distant as he packed. He became almost frantic, as though he had to leave in a hurry before he fell apart too.
And then suddenly he turned on her. “Stop it, dammit! Stop it… Sam, please…”
“Please what? Please don't cry because my husband is leaving me after seven years, eleven if you count the time at Yale before we were married? Or please don't make you feel guilty while you leave me for some goddamn whore? Is that what you want, John? For me to wish you luck and help you pack? Christ, you walk in here and blow my whole life apart and what do you want from me? Understanding? Well, I can't give it to you. I can't do anything except cry, and if I have to, I'll beg… I'll beg, do you hear me…?” And with that, she collapsed in a chair and began to sob again. With a firm hand he clasped the suitcase into which he had thrown half a dozen shirts, a pair of sneakers, two pairs of dress shoes, and a summer suit. Half of it was hanging out of the suitcase, and he was carrying a fistful of ties in one hand. It was impossible. He couldn't think straight, let alone pack.
“I'll come back Monday when you're at work.”
“I'm not going to work.”
“Why not?” He looked disheveled and distracted, and Samantha looked up at him and laughed softly through her tears.
“Because my husband just left me, you jackass, and I don't think I'm going to feel like going to work on Monday. Do you mind?”
He hadn't smiled, hadn't softened in any way. He just looked at her awkwardly, nodded, and walked quickly out the door. He dropped two ties as he went, and after he was gone, Samantha picked them up and held them for a long time as she lay on the couch and cried.
She had done a lot of crying on the couch since August, but John hadn't come back. In October he had gone to the Dominican Republic for a long weekend, gotten a divorce, and five days later married Liz. Samantha knew now that Liz was pregnant, and when she had first heard, the news had cut through her like a knife. Liz had announced it one night on the broadcast, and Sam had watched her, her mouth open, shocked. So that was why he had left her. For a kid… a baby… a son that she couldn't give him. But in time she came to understand that it wasn't only that.
There had been a lot about their marriage that she hadn't seen, hadn't wanted to see, because she loved John so much. His sense of competition with her, his sense of insecurity over Sam's success in her own field. No matter that he was one of the top newscasters in the nation, no matter that people flocked for his autograph everywhere they went, John always seemed to feel that his success was an ephemeral thing, that any day it could be over, that they might replace him, that the ratings could change his life. For Sam, it was different. As assistant creative director of the second largest advertising agency in the country, her position was tenuous, but less so than his. Hers was a fickle profession as well, but she had too many award-winning campaigns behind her to make her feel vulnerable to the winds of change. As she sat alone in her apartment all through the autumn, she remembered bits and pieces, snatches of conversations, things he had said…
“For chrissake, Sam, you've made it to the top at thirty. Shit, with bonuses you make more money than I do.” And now she knew that that had bugged him too. But what should she have done? Quit? Why? In her case why not work? They couldn't have a baby and John had never wanted to adopt one. “It's not the same if it's not your own.” “But it becomes your own. Look, we could adopt a newborn, we're young enough to qualify for the best. A baby would mean so much, sweetheart, think about it…” Her eyes had glowed when they discussed it, his had always glazed, and then he would shake his head. The answer to the question of adoption was always no. And now he didn't have to worry about it anymore. In three more months he would have his first child. His own. The thought of it always hit Samantha like a physical blow.
Samantha tried not to think about it as she reached the top landing and opened her front door. The apartment had a musty smell these days. The windows were always closed, the heat was too high, her plants were all dying and she had neither thrown them out nor taken care of them. The entire apartment had an aura of unlove, of disuse, as though someone were only changing clothes there, but nothing more than that. And it was true. Samantha hadn't cooked anything more than coffee there since September. She skipped breakfast, ate lunch with clients as a rule, or with other executives of Crane, Harper, and Laub, and dinner she usually forgot. Or if she was absolutely starving, she grabbed a sandwich on the way home and ate it in the waxed paper, juggling it on one knee as she glanced at the news on TV. She hadn't seen her plates since the summer and she didn't really care. She hadn't really lived since the summer, and sometimes she wondered if she ever would again. All she could think of
