Sins of Innocence (10 page)

“It looks like the kind of thing you get after a blood test,” he said.

“Then I guess that’s what it is.”

She picked up a sable brush and began adding pink to her cheeks.

“I thought you had your checkup the other day.”

P.J. shrugged. “Must be from that. It must have fallen off in my closet.” Her words sounded strong, but her heart was pounding. She didn’t want to tell Bob. Not yet. Maybe not ever. Anyway, it was none of his business. She glanced at him in the mirror. He was studying the cotton ball.

“This is so exciting,” P.J. rambled. “I haven’t seen Jess in years.”

He wadded the cotton and tossed it into the wastebasket. Case closed, P.J. hoped.

“Is she an old friend from college?”

“No. Well, sort of. From college days.”

“Tell me about her.”

P.J. pulled off the top of a tube, and turned up the mandarin-colored lipstick. She carefully outlined her lips, filled them in, then smiled into the mirror. She realized that she hadn’t smiled since noontime. She turned to Bob and ruffled his hair.

“Out!” she shouted. “Out of my house! I’ll call you later.” She pushed him through the doorway, back into the living room. The doorbell rang.

“Looks like I’ll at least get a look at the woman who put you back in a good mood.”

P.J. put a hand on his cheek and kissed him. “I’m okay, really I am.” At that moment P.J. almost believed herself. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll call you later.”

Bob followed her to the front door. P.J. took a deep breath and opened it.

On the other side stood barely a whisper of a woman. Tiny and fragile, just as she’d always been. Hair still light, cheekbones still protruding.

“P.J.,” the woman said. “My gosh, I’d know you anywhere.”

“Jess,” P.J. responded, suddenly feeling unsure of this. She stiffened a moment, then relaxed. She held open her arms. “It’s wonderful to see you.” The women hugged. P.J. heard Bob clear his throat.

“Excuse me, ladies,” he said. “I was just leaving.”

“Oh,” Jess said. “I’m sorry. I hate to drop in.…”

“It’s all right. That’s Bob.”

“Nice to meet you.” He feigned a tipped hat toward P.J. “Call me later,” he said.

He closed the door behind him. P.J. stood and stared at Jess.

“Husband?” Jess asked.

“What? Oh, no. I’m not married. Bob’s just a friend.”

“
Good
friend?” Jess joked.

“
Good
friend,” P.J. laughed. “Now come in, come in.” With her arm still around Jess, P.J. guided her into the living room. “Can I get you a drink? Or coffee? Tea?”

Jess sat on the sofa. The same place where, only a little while before, P.J. had sat so alone, so afraid.

“Actually a drink would be great. Do you have any wine?”

P.J. went toward the bar, with the afternoon, and Monday, pushed as far from her mind as she could manage. “You look wonderful, Jess,” she said, as she opened the small refrigerator and took out a bottle. “What about you? Are you married?”

“Oh, yes. Twenty years. Three kids.”

“Wow.” She poured the wine into Baccarat stemware.

“What about you? Are you divorced or something?”

P.J. carried the glasses to the sofa. She handed one to Jess, then sat down beside her. “No,” she said. “I never married.”

Jess took a sip. “I can’t believe it! You never married? You, who out of all of us, could have had any man you wanted?”

P.J. swallowed her wine. She looked at Jess, once a child, now a confident woman, a wife, a mother. P.J. no longer felt like a successful art-director-turned-ad-agency-executive. She felt twenty years old again, unsure of the future, unsure of herself. She was suddenly impatient to know why this woman was here. “Thanks for the compliment. But no, I guess I never found Mr. Right.” She set her glass on the table. “Tell me, Jess, how did you find me? And what brings you here?”

“Your mother told me where you were. I got a hold of her through Miss Taylor.”

“Miss Taylor?” P.J.’s mind drifted back in time. She pictured the housemother, her bright red lips, her lavender scent, her tobacco-stained fingers. Then P.J. felt the ache again. It welled up inside her like a lion in a cage. Miss Taylor. Larchwood Hall. Without thinking, P.J. touched her stomach.

“You never had any more children?” Jess was asking.

“No. No more.”

“That’s too bad.”

P.J. stood up and crossed the room to the Monet print. Damn, why couldn’t that hang straight?

“Your mother said you’re an artist.”

P.J. shrugged. “Commercial. Designer, actually.” She wanted to say she was about to become a partner in the agency, but something stopped her. Her life was beginning to feel so small, so inconsequential.

“So you went back to college after …” Jess was the one who hesitated now. “After Larchwood?”

P.J. nodded and returned to the sofa. “Chicago Art Institute.”

“That’s nice,” Jess said, and looked around the room. “You’ve done very well.”

P.J. took another sip of wine. “Why, Jess?” she asked. “Why are you here?”

Jess closed her eyes. For the first time P.J. noticed Jess was still impeccably dressed, and that she still wore the massive emerald-and-diamond ring. Except for the translucent film of maturity, Jess could have been that fifteen-year-old girl of 1968. Innocent, lost, and oh, so sad. Odd, P.J. thought, how memories of people are locked within the framework of the time in which we knew them.

“I’ve seen Susan,” Jess said.

“Susan?” It took a moment before P.J. recalled the tall, severe figure of Susan Levin, her broad nose buried in a book, her brusque attitude not exactly endearing the others to her. “God,” she said. “How is Susan?”

“She seems fine. She’s teaching college. She’s divorced and has a son.”

P.J. ran a finger around the rim of the Baccarat. “She had a son, too, didn’t she?” she asked quietly. “At Larchwood?”

Jess nodded.

P.J. leaned back on the sofa. “He’ll be twenty-five this year. My son.”

“And my daughter,” Jess added, but P.J. barely heard her. She was thinking of her son, the baby she’d given up. Over the years she’d allowed the memory to fade. It came infrequently now, usually when she least expected it, always when she thought of her father. She’d had to make that memory fade, too, in order to survive, in order to be strong.

“I’m planning a reunion,” Jess said.

P.J. picked up her head and looked at Jess. “With Susan? God, she wasn’t exactly one of our favorite people, Jess.” She laughed. “I mean, we got through it, somehow. But I think we all knew that when it was over … well, it was over.”

Jess set down her glass and twisted her ring. “A reunion with Susan, yes,” she continued. “And you and me. And Ginny, if she’ll come.”

“Ginny?”

“And our children.”

The lion inside her screeched. “What?” P.J. asked.

“Saturday, October sixteenth. At Larchwood Hall.”

P.J. laughed. “You can’t be serious, Jess.” But something about the look on Jess’s face told P.J. she was. “Why would we want to do that?” Her voice sounded louder than she’d intended.

“Because I think it’s time,” the soft voice answered.

The room became eerily quiet. P.J. looked at the Monet print, at the wash of colors, at the picture—unclear, unreal, like a memory.

“He’s not my son,” she said. “He’s someone else’s son. I came to terms with that years ago.”

Jess looked at P.J. in a long, pondering way. “Did you, P.J.? Did you really?”

P.J. thought about the nights she’d spent alone, lying in bed, wondering about the purpose of her life. She loved her career, she loved the fulfillment it gave her. But when she was alone, when her room was dark and sleep eluded her, P.J. was one with her emptiness. It was then that she thought about her son, then that she knew she had given up more than a baby; she had sacrificed happiness. And she’d done it because she knew she didn’t deserve it.

“No,” she answered honestly now. “No. I guess I never have.”

“Will you come?” Jess’s voice quivered in anticipation. “Will you come, and maybe meet your son?”

The reality of Monday slapped P.J. in the face. “It’s not that easy,” she said. “There are complications in my life now.”

“Complications? What complications? You’re not married. You have no other kids.”

“No.”

“It can’t be your mother. P.J., she lives two hundred miles away. She’d never have to know.”

God, P.J. thought. She hadn’t even thought about her. “No,” she said again. “It’s not my mother.”

“What then? What could possibly stop you?”

It was the right time to tell Jess about the biopsy, about the possibility that in less than seventy-two hours, she might be without one of her breasts. It was the right time to say it out loud, and Jess was the right person to say it to. Someone who had cared about her, even though it had been years ago. Someone she could trust, as she had then. As they had, if nothing else, all grown to trust each other. Yes, it was the right time.

“Wouldn’t you like to see him?” Jess asked, and the moment passed. Jess didn’t know her, not really. She saw P.J. only as a twenty-year-old unwed mother, not as a top advertising executive faced with the prospect of the end of her life. Alone.

But if she met her son, she wouldn’t be alone
.

Her son. A part of her. A living, breathing part of her.

Maybe it was time to fill the emptiness inside her—the emptiness she’d put on hold for so many, many years. And her son was almost twenty-five years old now, a man. It wouldn’t be as though she’d have to be a
mother
or anything. Not a
real
mother. It wouldn’t be as though she’d have to love him, if she didn’t want to. It wouldn’t be as though he’d have to love her.

“Yes,” P.J. heard herself answer. “I would like to see him.”

Jess stood up. “Saturday, October sixteenth,” she repeated. “We women will meet at two o’clock. Our children will come at three. If they want to meet their mothers.”

P.J. rose. Her legs tottered a little; she steadied herself on the arm of the sofa. Did she dare let herself get excited about this? Yes, dammit, she thought. Yes. And the dread of the biopsy settled into a comfortable, I-can-get-through-it place, for now there was a new goal to reach, a new accomplishment to achieve.

“I think the children will want to meet us,” she said. “All of them.”

“We’ll see,” Jess replied, then walked to the door and let herself out.

P.J. smiled as she watched the door close. She was about to get the biggest promotion of her life. She was going to meet her son. She would have the biopsy on Monday, and everything would be fine.

Medical advancements be damned.

Ginny

She leaned against the white grand piano, kicked one foot out of her four-inch-heeled silver sandal, and rested it against the calf of her other leg: a gesture that, Ginny knew, wormed the hem of her strapless hot-pink body dress closer to her crotch. But Ginny Stevens-Rosen-Smith-Levesque-Edwards wasn’t performing for the middle-aged, platinum-haired woman who stood before her, rambling with the same old shit cocktail-party small talk: She was doing it for the tight-assed bartender who stood, halfway across the massive living room, checking her out. She slowly rubbed her calf with her foot and ran
her tongue around the rim of her martini glass. Her eyes locked with the bartender’s.

“How many children do you have?” the woman was asking.

Ginny flicked her gaze to the woman. “Two. Stepchildren.” Christ. How much longer did she have to stay here?

“Well, then, you know what I mean.”

Know what you mean? Lady, I don’t even know what you said, Ginny thought.

“How old are they?”

“Brad. He’s thirty. Jodi’s twenty-eight.”

“Oh my,” the woman exclaimed and pressed her hand to the paste diamonds at her throat. “They’re not that much younger than you.”

Ginny smiled. “Nope. Not much.” Stupid bitch, she thought.

“What do they do?” the woman asked.

Ginny sighed. “Brad’s ‘between jobs.’ Jodi works at a rehab center.” It was the standard answer that Ginny and Jake used when asked about his children. As far as they knew, Bad’s last job had been as a studio page when he was seventeen, and though he was vague about where his money came from now, he drove a flashy sports car and occasionally lived with wealthy, older women; Jodi was working at a rehab center mopping floors and cleaning shit—a job she was forced to do, like all the other “recovering” junkies who had been sentenced by the court to stay there. It was Jodi’s fourth time in the place.