siblings.
“I’m so sorry,” Anne says.
“You have nothing to apologize for.”
“Thank you. You’re very generous.”
Nina smiles-beautiful Nina. “I need some time, Anne.” Then she starts into the ballroom.
Anne doesn’t want to lose her. There are few people whose opinion she trusts more.
“Nina?” she calls. Nina turns and Anne lowers her voice: “His new book, is it really that good?”
Nina looks at Anne for a long moment. “Yes,” she says.
And then she walks away.
Anne stands there in the cold expanse and a chill runs up her neck. She heads into the ballroom, hoping she’ll be able to sit still through the lunch.
39
Emma is curled up in bed with all the lights off, staring at a paint chip on the wall. She hasn’t eaten in two days, hasn’t bathed in a while. The red neon glow streams in the window and she can hear voices down on the street below, happy voices, and all Emma wants to do is die. She feels like she’s back in the hospital, during those endless early months when she lay on her bed unable to move and the doctors came and talked to her and she couldn’t answer because she didn’t understand what they were saying, because the words made no sense, coming from so far away, from that other world. Emma’s world ends, then and now, at the edge of her bed, just falls away, black and hopeless.
After a weekend of the phone constantly ringing, Charles hasn’t called once all day. He’s given up, come to his senses. Why would he ever leave a woman like Anne Turner for a girl like her, a girl with no family, no breeding, no education, a BadGirlSickGirl. Emma shrinks further into herself on the bed. She turns and gets caught up in the tangle of bedclothes; they’re sweaty and dirty and dank and all she wants is the energy to climb up to the roof and jump, fly into nothingness-sweet release.
And then there’s a knock on the door.
“Emma? It’s me.”
Emma stumbles out of bed and switches on a light. The place is a mess. She frantically straightens the bed, shoves papers under the sofa.
“Emma?”
“Coming,” she calls, slipping on a robe over her T-shirt and panties. She takes a deep breath and opens the door.
How strange he looks-sunken and tortured and scared. Does she smell whiskey on his breath? He needs her as much as she needs him-that’s it! These days apart have been an equal agony for her poor Charles.
He kicks the door closed behind him and pushes her against the wall and kisses her hard, his body pressing insistently into hers. He opens her robe and grabs her panties in his fist and rips them and pushes down his pants and enters her. His thrusts are violent and Emma is scared by his need and she’s knocking into the wall and she wants him to stop and take her to the bed and make gentle love to her but still he thrusts and thrusts-and then there’s nothing but his smell and his tongue and his cock and she wraps her legs and arms around him and thrusts back again and again and again, matching his violence with her own.
It’s after one in the morning when Charles finally walks in the front door. The apartment is dark. He’s so exhausted; he’s never been this exhausted before-beyond thought, beyond feeling. He only wants to sleep, to sleep and wake up in a better world. He walks into the living room and over to the bar. He pours himself a stiff Scotch and downs it. That moment-his hands pushing Portia-floods back and he shudders. He can smell himself, rank with sweat and fear. What has he done?
“Welcome home.”
Charles spins around to see Anne sitting on the couch by the fireplace. In the dim light, her face looks hard and angular. He has a sudden urge to confess, to be forgiven, absolved, cleansed. No. That would destroy everything.
“I didn’t see you there,” he says.
“I didn’t expect you would. Hard night?”
“Let’s not be childish, Anne.”
“No, let’s not. Let’s be very adult. How much longer do you need to finish your book?”
“About two weeks.”
“Today’s Monday. On Friday I’ll leave for a week in Los Angeles. Kayla and I have some business plans. When I come back, I want her out of your life.”
“I appreciate this.”
“I don’t want your appreciation. I want our marriage back.”
The world goes on and people like Anne put one foot in front of the other and do what they have to do.
“So do I, darling,” he says.
“I’m three months pregnant.”
Charles sits beside Anne and she recoils slightly-his smell, no doubt. He takes her hand and holds it to his cheek, smells it, kisses it. Then he gently touches her stomach.
“Thank you… for everything,” he says.
They sit there without speaking. It’s been such a long day. But worth it. He’ll deliver a great book-for Anne, for their child, for the man he once was and still at heart remains.
40
It’s early, but Emma is already at her typewriter. She’s exhausted, hasn’t even dressed yet, but Charles will be arriving soon and she wants him to find her at work. They’re nearing the end of the book and she’s finding it almost impossible to write. She wants the boy, Zack, to get away from his mother, escape their squalid, sorry life. She imagines him rescued by his aunt, a shadowy but important character in the book. Rescued, taken away-as she hadn’t been. She can see him playing in the sun on the fresh green lawn of his aunt’s house. Safe. Happy. Saved.
But no, Charles won’t hear of it. He says it would read like a tacked-on Hollywood ending; it would lack dramatic punch and tragic resonance, sabotage the climax they’d been building up to. He’s been fierce and unrelenting on this point, has mocked all of her objections. There’s only one way to end it, he insists: have Zack kill his mother. Not pretty, but honest. Bold. Horrifying. • •
That March night, as the soft snow fell outside the window, the small town lay curled in on itself and Emma lay coiled on her bed, her body covered with wounds and welts, trembling with fear and rage, staring at her bedroom door, barricaded with all the room’s furniture, waiting, almost afraid to breathe, her mother, the devil, in the middle of a three-day speed-fueled fit, a fury, and then suddenly-she must have crept close-a crashing as she threw her skinny venomous body against the door again and again and again, screaming, and the furniture started to slide across the floor and her mother started to laugh and Emma realized with a sudden clarity that her mother was insane and so was she, they were both crazy, sick crazy, and she hated her mother for making her crazy, wanted only to kill her, and then the door was halfway open and Emma looked out at the snow and it was so pretty…
And so Emma writes, each word like blood, and dreams of when it will be over. And then what? She hears his key in the door and quickly lowers her head, hoping to feel his lips on her neck. Instead he says, “Good morning,” and moves to the kitchen area.
“Good morning,” Emma says, looking up. Charles hasn’t shaved, his hair is greasy, and there are dark circles under his eyes. He looks drawn and bloated at the same time. He’s carrying a shopping bag, which he sets down on the counter. Some food, some wonderful treats, Emma thinks. But he reaches into the bag and lifts out a
