Four Wives (24 page)

S
TANDING IN THE CENTER
of her tiny makeshift bedroom, Love scanned the corners for items she was forgetting to pack. It had been years since she’d traveled anywhere without her kids in tow, and her mind was simply unaccustomed to the self-indulgent worries that were now upon her.
Bring a swimsuit or not? Pack two pairs of shoes or one ? Remember contact lens solution, face moisturizer, a neck pillow for the plane.
The few times they had ventured forth on a family trip, she’d packed late at night, shoving what she could into the remaining spaces of the bags. After the kids’ clothing, toys, books, diapers and bottles, there was never enough room, or time, to consider her own needs. And in the end, it mattered little. The word
vacation
when small children were involved meant nothing more than a trip away from home.

This wouldn’t be much different, she told herself. It was a two-day sprint to L.A., accompanying her mother home’and meeting with her father.

She’d fought Yvonne for nearly a week, using Bill for cover. Something had happened between the two of them, some plate-shifting quake that now had them worlds apart’Yvonne convinced that Love needed resolution with the past, and Bill adamantly opposed to the idea. The moment he left for work, Yvonne would sneak upstairs to lobby her cause.
Read that damned book already! Call your father.
And when he returned home, her husband would present her with the latest viral research from around the globe. Back and forth she’d gone in her mind.
I’m fine. I’m dying.
And the uncertainty had become unbearable.

Then, two days ago she’d put a stop to it. For reasons she still didn’t understand completely, she’d closed herself in the bathroom with the phone, unfolded the piece of paper with his number, and dialed. Her heart raced with each ring, though she knew what she would say. She had written it down and placed the script on the sink counter where she could see it clearly. The talking points were simple. First, the obligatory inquiries into his state of being:
How are you, congratulations on the book
’
can’t wait to read it.
Then there would be her answers to the same questions:
I’m great, I love being a mom, no regrets.
The conversation would die a quick, awkward death, and the subject would turn to his letter. This is where it would get tricky.
Of course
’she would love to see him, catch up. But this wasn’t the right time. The baby was little, her back, no one to watch the kids. Maybe he could contact her when he got back to New York. Maybe they could have a quick lunch. There would be no mention of his meeting her children.

Back in the bathroom now, searching the drawers for old cosmetics, jewelry, facial creams’the things she used to use to look beautiful’it was hard to imagine that her life had taken such a sharp turn. The call that had started out exactly as planned had ended in the unexpected.

“It’s wonderful to hear your voice,” he’d said, his own voice trailing off at the end with the heavy breath of a surge of emotion in an unemotional man.

“Dad?”

“I’m all right.” Then, in a serious tone, he’d asked again. “Please, won’t you come see me?”

Love had paused long enough to consider the course she was about to take. Looking back on that brief moment when her father was hanging on the line for an answer, it was clear to her that the decision had already been made. The careful balancing act of reason and fear had, somehow, been completed. The resolve to prevent the disruption in her life abandoned. It must have been, because the words had flown from her mouth.
I’ll come.

She heard Bill now, calling from downstairs. “Where’s Jessie’s big doll?”

He was beyond furious and she couldn’t blame him. There had been little notice, mere days, and the decision had been made without him. In spite of him. It happened too quickly for Love to really believe, though she was gaining conviction with each moment that passed. There were so many reasons not to go. First, and most compelling, was the gamble with her back. The pain was still strong, and Bill was convinced that whatever was causing it would only worsen after two long plane rides. Then there was the fundraiser at the end of the week. She was barely going to make it back for the event, let alone help with final details. Bill, the kids’all of them begged her to change her mind. Bill with his disapproving, terrified eyes. Henry and Jessica with their incessant fighting, and Baby Will with the strength of his little hands as he clung to her neck. But after hearing her father’s voice, she knew she had to go before these reasons caught up to her. There was no longer any doubt how gravely she needed to take this chance, how decisively her peace of mind depended on taking it. So she was going to L.A.

At the top of the stairs now, Love yelled back. “It’s in my car.”

She heard Bill walk away, though he didn’t answer. He was hassled on top of everything else, but she couldn’t help that’not now. He was watching the kids for two days, and it had taken a great deal of work. Shuffling appointments to the other doctors in the practice, rescheduling others for the following week’Bill had made sure she knew just how much of an effort it had been.

After a few minutes of searching, the doll was found and Bill was back in their bedroom. He tossed his shirt in the dry-cleaning pile, then hung up his tie.

“Do you really think seeing your father is going to fix your back?” His words were crafted as a question, but they did nothing more than restate his objections’the same objections she’d heard since his feud with Yvonne began.
Your mother is crary. L.A. is crary. Sensory-motor work is nonsense … no basis in scientific research … it’s all just hocus-pocus.
More than that, he was certain the trip would cause more harm.

“I don’t know,” returning from the bathroom, Love answered him, a hint of sarcasm in her voice.

“I don’t see the point.” He put on a sweatshirt, hung up his belt.

“Really?” Love said, her tone just one step behind her own anger, which was pushing its way to the surface. This visit was years’decades’ overdue.

After pulling on a pair of jeans, Bill stepped out from behind the closet door. “I just don’t see it. That world is what nearly killed you.” It was a serious blow.

Love moved to her dresser on the other side of the bed to put some distance between them. They rarely spoke of the night they met. It was too humiliating for Love, too terrifying for Bill. Still, he had pulled it from his arsenal on a few, carefully chosen moments’when she was approached about selling her story for a TV bio, when she’d considered taking classes at Columbia to finish her degree. Watching his face now as he spoke of that night, Love could see the picture coming together. Never had he rejoiced in her potential. Even when they’d taken Henry for an evaluation, Bill had described her mind as “abnormal” when giving the family’s psychological history. He loved her, she knew. As a mother, yes. As a wife, yes. But he had been a far too eager accomplice in keeping the rest of her hidden.

“I’ve wondered sometimes … ,” she said, feeling the rush of adrenaline, “whether you would still love me if I tried to get some of it back.”

This was where he ran to her, told her he would never stop loving her. How could she even think it? But Bill stood by the closet, his face unwavering.

“This is about
you
not wanting to face what might be wrong with your body.”

“That’s not fair.”

“Fair or not, it’s the truth. This trip can’t help you. Do you even know what your father wants with you after all this time?”

“No. I don’t.”

Bill stood now, moving toward the door. “Do you know what I think? I think this is all an excuse to go back to that world,” he said, an injured look coming over his face. “And here I’ve been believing this would be enough for you.”

With her back leaning now against the wall, Love shook her head. She didn’t know how to answer him, and the weight of his disappointment’his worry’came tumbling upon her.

As he was turning to leave, he cast one last stone.

“Have you even stopped to think about your children?”

Love lay facedown on the bed, her arms pulled beneath her. The pain was getting sharper, her head was spinning. She felt the tears dampen her quilt. Her body, her entire life, felt intolerable, and going to L.A. could very well break her. Of course she had thought about her children. They were the reason she had to go. For years now, she had been only half present in their lives. Half there being a wife. And though it was agonizing, Love knew they all had felt it. Henry with his compulsive sense of order, desperate to maintain control wherever he could. Baby Will clinging to her hip. Jessica trying to
become
her. It was the reason for the chronic exhaustion, life’s daily tasks being done by half a person. And it was the reason she had become so disconnected from her husband. Part of her could not embrace him’the part that she’d left wrapped up with her past so many years ago. Whether he liked it or not, she had to go back, as much for them as for herself.

She drew a breath and tried to relax her muscles. The decision was made’she had to see it through.
Focus,
she thought. The packing was almost done. Yvonne had organized the kids’ things for Bill, written out a schedule. She could do this.

And when it was done, she would face her husband with the truth’and the choices she’d made in the aftermath of despair so many years ago.

G
AYLE SAT ON
D
R.
T
ED’S
couch in his Upper East Side office, wondering how much to say. Paul was gone, though she could still feel the warmth of his arms around her that day in his apartment. When she closed her eyes, she saw the look on his face when he’d rushed into her kitchen to rescue her from her husband. And when she looked in the mirror, she saw his sketch of her, sad but beautiful. She missed him in the mornings as she descended the stairs. There was no smell of coffee, no sound of china cups being placed on a tray. There was no sound at all after Oliver left for school. There was nothing but a profound loneliness, and her own thoughts that had been churning like a whirlpool inside her head.

“So,” Dr. Ted began, as he always did. Nestled in his black leather office chair like a snail in its shell, his expression morphed into a mixture of concern and wisdom’what Gayle had come to think of as his shrink face. “How has the week been?”

Week by week’that was how they managed her existence. A little anxious? Up the Xanax. A little depressed? Up the Zoloft. Gayle would talk about Troy’s temper, and Dr. Ted would remind her that she was a highly sensitive person.
Did he strike you or Oliver?
Dr. Ted would ask rhetorically.
No.
He never went that far. It was well established on the invisible patient chart he had constructed for her that she had chosen poorly in marrying Troy Beck. But they had also decided that leaving him would be catastrophic. How would she manage? How could she, possibly, when her life had become
about
being married? An entire social structure had been built around the Becks. Weddings, funerals, dinner parties and charity events that never ended’the invitations that read
MR.
&
MRS. TROY BECK.
She had no job, no life of her own anymore. And then there was a small child whose entire well-being rested on her shoulders, on her decisions. How could she leave him without a father? This treacherous landscape had been thoroughly explored, and, as a result, was no longer discussed.

But something had changed. Someone had broken through the wall and seen inside her, and now, through that small opening, she could see out as well. And what she saw was an entirely different picture.

“I’ve had a lot of thoughts about my childhood,” Gayle said.

Dr. Ted looked at her with surprise, though he maintained his poise. “I see. Why do you think that is?”

“I’m not sure,” she lied. “But I’ve been thinking that it affected me.”

Dr. Ted seemed relieved. “Well, of course! We’re all affected by our childhood.”

“But I think I was affected
badly.”

“How so?”

Gayle took a long breath, stalling for time. Her mother was also a patient of Dr. Ted’s, and they had an unspoken rule about not discussing her in these sessions. Still, it was the Haywood matriarch who had been on her mind, and the image of her rage that Gayle had been able to see clearly for the first time in her adult life.

“There was a lot of yelling in my house,” she said, starting out cautiously.

“Yelling?”

“Yes, and anger. I’ve been remembering lately.”

“Why do you think that is?” Dr. Ted asked again.

“I don’t know.”

“There must be a reason, some catalyst.”

Gayle had not told him about those few minutes in Paul’s apartment, and she hesitated even now.

“It may have been a conversation I had with someone about growing up.”

“Who?”

Again, Gayle hesitated. But then she answered. “Paul, before Troy fired him.”

Dr. Ted seemed pleased, though Gayle could not imagine why.

“That explains it,” he said, smiling with unusual empathy. He leaned forward in his chair and looked at Gayle with great intensity. “Don’t you see? “ He began speaking slowly, the way a teacher might do with a child. “Paul wanted to get closer to you. He honed in on something in your life’ Troy’s temper, which we all know can be upsetting. Then he used that to pry into your past.”

Gayle felt a wave of panic rush in. “Why? Why would he do that?”

Dr. Ted shrugged. “Who knows? These transients can have all kinds of reasons. Maybe he needed money.”

“Money?” Gayle said, her mind struggling to process this line of questioning. It was true that she had trusted Paul unconditionally from the start. He had that way about him. Still, it had been three years. They paid him well, he lived comfortably.

“How much do you know about him?”

Gayle thought hard to recall the sparse facts she had gathered over the years. He had come from California through an agency. He’d been married once. Liked to travel. Had she really asked nothing more about him?

Her face grew concerned as Dr. Ted persisted. “Something may have changed’an old debt that caught up with him. A person he felt obligated to support may have needed help. Maybe it was time for him to move on and he was looking for a way to cash in on your trust. You said Troy fired him.”

“Yes,” Gayle answered through the growing haze of disbelief and self-doubt. Could she have been so wrong all this time? Was she so desperate for attention that she had not seen the truth about him? Could anything be real if Paul turned out not to be?

“Why did Troy fire him?”

“I don’t know.”

“I think you must have some idea.”

“Paul walked in when we were fighting.”

“Ah, you see? You opened up to him, and he looked for a chance to come between you and your husband. Then you would have to turn to him.”

“Are you saying he was trying to break up my marriage?”

“It’s possible. It happens all the time, Gayle. A wealthy but vulnerable woman’it’s possible.”

Gayle traced the steps backwards. He’d insisted on helping her that night with the gala. Then there’d been the wine and conversation.
I’m not the only one who lives alone in this house.
He’d pressed her on her childhood, left those sketches out for her to see. Had he lingered in his kitchen on purpose’giving her the time to go through them, to find the one of her? Gayle felt a gasp of breath enter her chest.

“No,” she said.

Dr. Ted sat back, giving her a moment to face it all. “This must be very painful for you.”

Gayle felt the tears wash down her face. They were beyond her control like everything else now appeared to be. She felt helpless, like an infant’ wholly incapable of navigating the world.

“Tell me what to do. I can’t survive this.”

Dr. Ted leaned forward and handed her a tissue. “Yes, you can. We’re going to make this all right. No harm has been done. Troy took care of Paul. You haven’t done anything that can’t be fixed. Your marriage, your son. Everything is still in place.”

“Yes,” Gayle nodded, following his path of reason. Troy, Oliver, the house. She could get a new cook in a few days from the agency.

Dr. Ted pulled his prescription pad from his coat pocket and began writing.

“I’m going to change your medication.”

Resignation settled back into place and the tears stopped.

When he was through writing, Dr. Ted handed Gayle the small, square papers.

“This is not going to be hard, I promise. You
will be
all right.”

“What do I do now?”

“Follow the prescription. I’ve written it all down.”