Full Circle (37 page)

“Hello?” Tana felt her heart stop, and she sat there endlessly staring into the night, and then hurriedly she put down the phone.

Her heart was pounding hideously, she felt dizzy, awkward, disoriented, strange. She couldn't believe what she had heard. She had to have dialed the wrong number, she told herself, but before she could compose herself to try again, the phone rang, and she heard Drew's voice, and suddenly she knew. He must have known she'd called and now he was panicking. She felt as though her whole life had just come to an end.

“Who was that?” She sounded half hysterical, and he sounded nervous too.

“What?”

“The woman who answered your phone.” She fought for composure but her voice was totally out of control.

“I don't know what you mean.”

“Drew! … answer me … ! Please…” She was half crying, half shouting at him.

“We have to talk.”

“Oh, my God … goddammit, what have you done to me?”

“Don't be so melodramatic for chrissake…” She cut him off with a shriek.

“Melodramatic? I call you at eleven o'clock at night and a woman answers your phone, and you tell me I'm being melodramatic? How would you like to have a man answer you when you call me here?”

“Stop it, Tan. It was Eileen.”

“Obviously.” Instinctively, she had known.

“And where are the girls?” She didn't even know why she had asked.

“In Malibu.”

“In Malibu? You mean you're alone with her?”

“We had to talk.” His voice sounded dead suddenly.

“Alone? At this hour? What the hell does that mean? Did she sign?”

“Yes, no … look, I have to talk to you.…”

“Oh, now you have to talk to me…” She was being cruel to him and now they were both beginning to sound hysterical. “What the fuck is going on down there?” There was an endless silence which he couldn't fill. Tana hung up and cried all night, and he arrived in San Francisco the next day. It was Saturday and he found her at home, as he knew he would. He used his key and let himself in, and he found her sitting mournfully on her deck looking out over the Bay. She didn't even turn when she heard him come in, but spoke to him with her back turned. “Why did you bother to come up?”

He knelt beside her and touched her neck with his fingertips. “Because I love you, Tan.”

“No, you don't.” She shook her head. “You love her. You always did.”

“That's not true.…” But they both knew it was, in fact, all three of them did. “The truth is that I love both of you. That's an awful thing to say, but it's the truth. I don't know how to stop loving her, and at the same time I'm in love with you.”

“That's sick.” She continued to stare out at the Bay, passing judgment on him, and he tugged at her hair to make her look at him, and when she did, he saw tears on her face and it broke his heart.

“I can't help what I feel. And I don't know what to do about what's happening. Elizabeth almost flunked out of school, she's so upset about us, Eileen and me. Julie is having nightmares. Eileen quit her job at the OAS, she turned down the ambassadorial post they tried to tempt her with, and she came home, with the girls.…”

“They're living with you?” Tana looked as though he had just driven a stake into her heart, and he nodded. He didn't want to lie to her anymore. “When did all this happen?”

“We talked about it a lot in Washington on Easter week … but I didn't want to upset you when you were working so hard, Tan…” She wanted to kick him for what he'd said. How could he not tell her something like that? “And nothing was sure. She did it all without consulting me, and just showed up last week. And now what do you expect me to do? Throw them out?”

“Yes. You should never have let them in again.”

“She's my wife, and they're my kids.” He looked as though he were on the verge of tears but Tana stood up then.

“I guess that solves it then, doesn't it?” She walked slowly to the door and looked at him. “Goodbye, Drew.”

“I'm not leaving here like this. I'm in love with you.”

“Then get rid of your wife. It's as simple as that.”

“No it's
not,
goddammit!” He was shouting now. She refused to understand what he was going through. “You don't know what it's like … what I feel … the guilt … the agony…” He started to cry and she felt sick as she looked at him. She turned away and had to fight to speak above the tears in her own voice.

“Please go.…”

“I won't.” He pulled her into his arms, and she tried to push him away, but he wouldn't let her do that, and suddenly, without wanting to, she succumbed, and they made love again, crying, begging, shouting, railing at each other and the Fates, and when it was all over, they lay spent in each other' arms and she looked at him.

“What are we going to do?”

“I don't know. Just give me time.”

She sighed painfully. “I swore I'd never do something like this…” But she couldn't bear the thought of losing him, nor he the pain of giving her up. They cried and lay in each other's arms for the next two days, and when he flew back to Los Angeles, nothing was solved, except they both knew it wasn't over yet. She had agreed to give him more time, and he had promised her he'd work it out, and for the next six months they drove each other mad with promises and threats, ultimatums and hysteria. Tana called and hung up on Eileen a thousand times. Drew begged her not to do anything rash. The children were even aware of what terrible shape he was in. And Tana began avoiding everyone, especially Harry and Averil. She couldn't bear the questions she saw in his eyes, the sweetness of his wife, the children which only reminded her of Drew's. It was an intolerable situation for all of them, and Eileen was even aware of it, but she said that she wasn't moving out again. She would wait for him to work it out, she wasn't going anywhere, and Tana felt as though she were going mad. She spent her birthday and the Fourth of July and Labor Day and Thanksgiving alone, predictably.…

“What do you expect of me, Tana? You want me to just walk out on them?”

“Maybe I do. Maybe that's exactly what I expect of you. Why should I be the one who's always alone? It matters to me too.…”

“But I've got the kids.…”

“Go fuck yourself.” But she didn't say that for real, until she had spent Christmas alone. He had promised to come up, both then and on New Year's Eve, and she sat and waited for him all night and he never came. She sat in an evening dress until nine A.M. on New Year's Day, and then slowly, irrevocably, she took it off and threw it in the trash. She had bought the dress just for him. She had the locks changed the next day, and packed up all the things he'd left with her over the past year and a half and had them sent to him in an unmarked box. And after that she sent him a telegram which said it all. “Goodbye. Don't come back again.” And she lay drowning in her tears. For all the bravery, the final straw had almost broken her back, and he came flying up as soon as he began to get the messages, the telegram, the package, he was terrified that she might mean it this time, and when he tried his key in her lock, he knew she did. He drove frantically to her office and insisted on seeing her, and when he did her eyes were cold and the greenest he had ever seen.

“I have nothing left to say to you, Drew.” A part of her had died. He had killed it with the hopes that had never been fulfilled, the lies he'd told to both of them, and most of all himself. She wondered now how her mother had stood it for all those years without killing herself. It was the worst torture Tana had ever been through and she never wanted to go through it again, for anyone. And least of all for him.

“Tana, please.…”

“Goodbye.” She walked out of her office and down the hall, disappearing into a conference room, and she left the building shortly after that, but she didn't go home for hours. And when she did, he was still waiting there, outside, in the driving rain. She slowed her car, and she saw him and drove off again. She spent the night in a motel on Lombard Street, and the next morning when she went back, he was sleeping in his car. When instinctively he heard her step, he woke and leapt out to talk to her. “If you don't leave me alone, I'll call the police.” She sounded tough and threatening, looked furious to his eyes, but what he didn't see was how broken she felt inside, how long she sobbed once he was gone, how desperate she felt at the thought of never seeing him again. She actually thought of jumping off the Bridge, but something stopped her when she thought of it and she didn't even know what. And then, as though by miracle, Harry sensed something wrong when he called repeatedly and no one answered the phone. She thought it was Drew, and she lay on the living room floor and sobbed, thinking of the time when they had made love there and he had proposed to her. And then suddenly there was a pounding on the door and she heard Harry's voice. She looked like a derelict when she opened it, standing there in her tear-stained face and bare feet, her skirt covered with lint from the rug, her sweater all askew.

“My God, what happened to you?” She looked as though she'd been drinking for a week, or had been beaten up, or as though something terrible had happened to her. Only the last was true. “Tana?” She dissolved in tears as he looked at her, and he held her close to him as she hovered awkwardly over his chair, and then he sat her down on the couch and she told him her tale.

“It's all over now … I'll never see him again.…”

“You're better off.” Harry looked grim. “You can't live like this. You've looked like shit for the past six months. It's just not fair to you.”

“I know … but maybe if I'd waited … I think eventually…” She felt weak and hysterical, and suddenly she had lost her resolve and Harry shouted at her.

“No! Stop that! He's never going to leave his wife if he hasn't by now. She came back to him seven months ago, damn it, Tan, and she's still there. If he wanted out, he'd have found the door by now. Don't kid yourself.”

“I have been for a year and a half.”

“That's how things go sometimes.” He tried to sound philosophical, but he wanted to kill the son of a bitch who had done this to her. “You just have to pick yourself up and go on.”

“Oh yeah, sure…” She started to cry again, forgetting who she was talking to, “That's easy for you to say.”

He looked long and hard at her. “Do you remember when you dragged me back to life by the teeth, and then into law school the same way? Remember me? Well, don't give me that shit, Tan. If I made it, so can you. You'll live through it.”

“I've never loved anyone like I loved him.” She whimpered horribly and it broke his heart as she looked at him, with those huge green eyes. She didn't look more than twelve years old and he wanted to make everything all right for her, but he couldn't make Drew's wife disappear, although he would have liked to do that for her. Anything for Tan, his best and dearest friend.

“Someone else will come along. Better than him.”

“I don't want someone else. I don't want anyone.” And Harry feared that more than anything.

And in the next year she set out to prove just that. She refused to see anyone except her colleagues at work. She went nowhere, saw no one, and when Christmas came, she even refused to see Averil and Harry. She had turned thirty-two alone, had spent her nights alone, would have eaten Thanksgiving turkey alone, if she'd bothered to eat any at all, which she didn't. She worked overtime and double time and golden time and all the time, sitting at her desk until ten and eleven o'clock at night, taking on more cases than she ever had before, and for literally a year, she had no fun at all. She rarely laughed, called no one, had no dates with anyone, and took weeks to answer Harry's calls.

“Congratulations.” He finally reached her in February. She had mourned Drew Lands for more than a year, and she had inadvertently learned through mutual friends that he and Eileen were still together and had just bought a beautiful new home in Beverly Hills. “Okay, asshole.” Harry was tired of chasing her. “How come you don't return my calls anymore?”

“I've been busy for the last few weeks. Don't you read the papers? I'm waiting for a verdict to come in.”

“I don't give a fuck about that, in case you're interested, and that doesn't account for the last thirteen months. You
never
call me anymore. I always call you. Is it my breath, my feet, or my IQ?” She laughed. Harry never changed.

“All of the above.”

“Asshole. Are you going to go on feeling sorry for yourself for the rest of your life? The guy wasn't worth it, Tan. And a whole year is ridiculous.”

“It had nothing to do with that.” But they both knew that wasn't true. It had everything to do with Drew Lands, and his not leaving his wife.

“That's new too. You never used to lie to me.”

“All right, all right. It's been easier not to see anybody.”

“Why? You ought to celebrate! You could have done what your mother did and sat there for fifteen years. Instead, you were smart enough to get the hell out. So what did you lose, Tan? Your virginity? Eighteen months? So what? Other women lose ten years over married men … they lose their hearts, their sanity, their time, their lives. You got off lucky if you ask me.”

“Yeah.” Somewhere in her heart, she knew he was right, but it still didn't feel good yet. Maybe it never would. She still alternated between missing him and being angry at him. It wasn't the indifference she would have liked to feel, and she finally admitted that to Harry when she let him take her to lunch.

“That takes time, Tan. And a little water over the dam. You have to go out with some other people. Fill your head with other stuff, not just him. You can't just work all the time.” He smiled gently at her, he loved her so much, and he knew he always would. It wasn't like what he felt for his wife. She was more like a sister to him now. He remembered the tremendous crush he had had on her for years and he reminded her of that now. “And I survived.”

“That wasn't the same thing. Shit, Drew had proposed marriage to me. He was the only man I'd ever even wanted to marry. Do you know that?”

“Yes, I do.” He knew her better than anyone. “So, he's a jerk. We already know that. And you're a little slow. But you'll want to get married again. Someone else will come along.”