Child's Play

by Danielle Steel

  “Alicia, don’t…I’m so sorry. I wanted to tell you. I was terrified I’d lose you.”

  “You just did.” She was rubbing the knuckles of her right hand. It had cost her to hit him that hard, but she had no regrets. “And if you ever come near me again, I’ll kick your ass from here to Brooklyn. Stay away from me!” she shouted at him.

  “You’ve given me a black eye.” He was gingerly touching his cheek.

  “I meant to. I could have done a lot worse.”

  “It’s your damn right hook. I love you. I swear I’ll clean up this mess,” but he wasn’t sure he would, and she could sense that now too.

  “Tell that to your fiancée. Best of luck, asshole,” she said, turned her back, and walked away. He didn’t see the tears running down her cheeks. All he saw from behind as he watched her was the proud set of her shoulders, the straight back, and the quick step as she disappeared, trying to get as far away from him as she could.

  Alicia turned the corner, and then ran to the subway sobbing. Her hand was throbbing from when she’d punched him. She couldn’t believe he’d done this to her. She had believed in him, and trusted him, and he’d been lying to her the whole time. The worst of it was that she loved him too, but she never wanted to see him again. He’d only left a few things there, some T-shirts, jeans, a pair of sneakers they’d bought together. She threw them in the trash in her apartment building, along with everything he’d given her, some souvenirs, a book, some dried flowers she’d saved, a pink dinosaur he’d won for her at Coney Island. She wanted no reminders of him anywhere. But the real reminders of him were her memories and the heart he had stolen from her dishonestly. She wanted to hate him, but she didn’t. All she wanted to do was forget him. They had taken some pictures together in a photo booth and she threw those away too. She blocked his number on her phone, and then she lay on her bed sobbing, until she fell asleep.

  * * *

  —

  By the time Anthony got home to Amanda’s apartment, his eye was swollen shut, his chest and stomach were aching, and he felt sick. He didn’t blame Alicia for hitting him. Knowing her abilities, she hadn’t hit him with her full strength or she would have knocked him out cold. Unfortunately, Amanda was home that night. She’d had dinner with some girlfriends from Vogue, and he had told her he had to work late. He was bent over as he walked into the apartment, and ran into her in the kitchen, when he went to get some ice for his eye. She screamed when she saw him, and rushed to help him.

  “Oh my God, what happened?” She pulled up a stool so he could sit down.

  “It’s nothing, I’m fine. I got mugged on the subway,” yeah, by a hundred-and-ten-pound girl.

  “Did they get your watch and your money?” She put some ice in a Ziploc bag and handed it to him, and he winced when he put it on his eye. Alicia had given him a good one. It was his final gift from her.

  “No, I chased them off. There were three of them,” he embellished the story, and he knew that if he was going to do this right, he had to be honest with Amanda too, but he couldn’t. Before he canceled the wedding and ruined her life, he wanted to see how he felt about her when he didn’t have Alicia in his arms every day. He needed to find out if Amanda was enough on her own. He didn’t know anymore. Maybe Alicia would fade from memory and he’d be glad she did. He needed to find that out.

  “Can I run a hot bath for you?” she offered.

  “No, I’ll take a shower.” He smiled at her, but all he could think of was how beautiful Alicia looked when she was raging at him, and how wounded. It had almost been a relief when she swung at him, no matter how much it hurt. He knew he had injured her even more.

  He got into the shower and let the hot water rain down on him. He realized he’d have to change gyms now. He couldn’t go back there again, or to any of the places where they’d been. They’d had a whole life together for almost two months. It had been as though there was no one else in his life. Amanda had ceased to exist whenever he was with Alicia. But Alicia had come home with him, and when Amanda droned on about the wedding, it was Alicia’s voice he heard in his head, her body that he longed for.

  Amanda was waiting in the bedroom for him, watching TV, as he stood in the shower, crying for the woman he had just given up for her. He should have told Alicia right in the beginning, but then the last two months would never have happened, and they were the most precious memories he had now. He wondered if he would feel the same way about Amanda if he broke up with her.

  He walked into the bedroom, still bent over, and his eye was turning a nasty purple. He slid into bed next to Amanda between clean freshly pressed sheets, and he lay there for a minute with his eyes closed, and felt her hand on his chest, moving slowly downward. He opened his one good eye, and grabbed her wrist more harshly than he meant to.

  “I can’t. They hit me in the chest and the stomach, and my eye is killing me.”

  “Did they hit you there too?” She looked worried and he shook his head, but if Alicia had thought of it, she probably would have.

  “I’m sorry, I’ll be okay tomorrow,” but he wondered if he would ever be fully okay again. He had no idea how he was going to live without Alicia, with only Amanda to keep him company forever.

  * * *

  —

  Anthony waited until the following weekend to visit his grandmother, who he hadn’t seen in several weeks. He felt guilty about not having seen her for so long. He had neglected everyone to be with Alicia. He hadn’t heard from her in the last week and didn’t expect to. He knew how proud she was. He would never hear from her again, and he knew that his plan to go back to her if he canceled the wedding would never happen. Alicia would never let him near her again, and he didn’t blame her for that. He had been an asshole, just as she said.

  His spectacular shiner had turned into an ordinary one by the time he visited his grandmother. It was dark blue with streaks of yellow, impressive, but nothing compared to what it had been in the beginning.

  “Good lord! How did you get that?” Margaret asked him, and he had stuck with the same story for everyone.

  “I got mugged on the subway, by three guys.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t take it anymore.”

  “I’ll be okay.” He was less chatty than usual and she asked him about what he was working on, and some details about the wedding. She thought he looked distracted and thinner than usual, which wasn’t explained by the mugging. She looked at him after a while, and patted his hand gently.

  “Are you all right, Anthony?” He hesitated and she waited for the answer. He confided in her sometimes and she wondered if he would now.

  “I don’t know, Grandma. I’ve been confused lately,” he said, hanging his head, not looking her in the eye, and then he looked at her and she saw the two pools of pain.

  “What kind of confused?”

  He lowered his voice as though afraid someone would hear him, but there was no one else in the apartment. “I met someone a couple of months ago. She’s an amazing woman. I was so damn attracted to her. Even talking to her was exciting. She’s very different. But Amanda is the kind of woman you marry. Sometimes I’m confused about both of them. I’m not sure what to do.” She could see that he was in agony, and searching for answers, and she didn’t know why, but she had the oddest feeling that the black eye had something to do with it. If so, this woman certainly was “very different” from the women he knew.

  “It’s not about comparing two women, Anthony. Don’t fall into that trap. That’ll only confuse you more. First of all, Amanda is ‘the kind of woman you marry’ if you’re in love with her, enough to spend the next fifty years with her, maybe sixty if you’re lucky. If you’re not that in love with her, it doesn’t matter what ‘kind’ of woman she is. All kinds of women get married, and probably all kinds of women would suit you. It’s not about a job description, it’s only about how much
you love her. The second thing to think about is the fact that you were attracted to someone else. If you’re crazy about Amanda other women shouldn’t be appealing. If they are, you need to look at that, because you’re going to cross paths with a lot of attractive women over the next fifty years. If you’re already looking at others now, it’s not a good sign. First, you need to figure out if Amanda is the right woman for you, since you’re engaged to her, and if she’s not, then you can check out all the others. Take a good long look at what you’re getting with Amanda. Make sure it’s what you want. And one question, just out of curiosity, about the ‘amazing, very different’ woman. She doesn’t happen to be a female prizefighter, does she?” She nodded toward his eye, and Anthony laughed. His grandmother was a sharp old bird and she didn’t buy the mugging story. Everyone else had, even his mother.

  “She’s an amateur, actually, lightweight, but effective.” He grinned at her.

  “I thought so.” Margaret smiled at him. “She must be an interesting woman. She packs quite a punch.”

  “I deserved it,” he said remorsefully, and she nodded.

  “I suspect you did.” She hugged him then, and he left a few minutes later. His grandmother never ceased to amaze him, and he knew she had given him good advice. She always did.

  * * *

  —

  He made love to Amanda that night, for the first time in a month. He had made excuses which Amanda had been willing to accept, and he’d been out late every night, hoping Amanda would be asleep when he got home. But he was trying to feel for her now everything he had for Alicia for the two magical months he’d been with her. He tried to imagine making love to Amanda for the next ten, twenty, forty years. It was a daunting thought. She was already asleep next to him, snoring softly with her mouth open. He wondered what it would be like to look at her next to him twenty years from now. It seemed like a lifetime to him, several of them. It was hard to imagine it, or what they would find to talk about after the wedding, even if they had children. There was nothing else.

  Chapter 7

  One of the things Tammy loved about working for Chanel, other than the generous clothing allowance, the challenging job, and the trips to Europe, were the four weeks of vacation she was able to take every year. She kept two weeks to go on trips to interesting places during the year, often in Europe. She’d been to Prague, Croatia, skiing in Courchevel, and to South America and Mexico over the years. She combined travel in Asia with business, and loved Tokyo and Hong Kong, and had visited the temples in Kyoto. She spent two weeks on an island in Maine every August, relaxing, wearing old T-shirts and jeans, and going sailing in the small dinghy that came with the house they rented. She’d been going there for seven years, and Stacey Adams always came with her. Stacey was a busy pediatrician, forty-one years old, and needed the break as much as Tammy did. They took a stack of books, their hiking gear, and hardly talked to each other. It was exactly the kind of vacation from the pressures of their jobs that they both needed. Stacey dealt with anxious parents and sick children all year, and Tammy dealt with the sharks in the fashion business. Maine was like being in Heaven for two weeks for both of them. Their trip was a week away, and Tammy had just gotten her mother’s invitation to their family birthday dinner for Kate the day after Labor Day. The invitation from her mother was still on her computer screen when Stacey walked into the kitchen, trying to break in a pair of new hiking boots. Like a homing pigeon, she saw the invitation on Tammy’s computer and stared at it for a minute.

  “Let me guess,” she said with a hurt expression. “You’re not taking me again this year. Why am I not surprised at that?” She turned away from it, and Tammy switched her computer off. She was annoyed at herself for having left it there, but she’d gotten busy with something in the kitchen. She didn’t like hurting Stacey’s feelings. She was such a good person, such a kind woman, and Tammy hated causing her pain. Stacey was pretending to be busy, putting the dishes away, and Tammy walked over to her.

  “You know I can’t take you to dinner at my mother’s.” There was apology mixed with regret in Tammy’s tone.

  “Why not? We’ve lived together for seven years.”

  “They think we’re roommates.” She had even told her mother that Stacey had moved out a year or two before, afraid that she was getting suspicious. But Kate never came downtown to visit and had never met Stacey. Kate was busy too, Tammy often worked late, and traveled frequently. There was always a plausible excuse for Kate not to come to Tammy’s apartment and it was easier for Kate if Tammy came uptown, which she was willing to do. As a result, she had no idea that Stacey was still living there, and even less that they were partners. No one in Tammy’s family had ever suspected it. She didn’t fit the stereotype of what they thought a gay woman would look like. They just thought that Tammy worked too hard to date, which was what she told them, and they believed her. She had lived a lie with them for most of her life, and for the last seven years with Stacey. They had met at an extremely discreet forum for gay women in business.

  “It’s pretty amazing that I still haven’t made the cut after seven years,” Stacey said, looking discouraged.

  “I haven’t made it after thirty-two.” When she had first met Stacey she had promised to tell her family, but she’d never had the guts to do it. It was just simpler not to rather than having to deal with their reaction. Tammy was certain they would never understand or accept the relationship. “You know what my family’s mantra is. Be perfect at everything. My mother is. My brother and sister are. They think I am.”

  “You are perfect.” Stacey smiled at her. “You can’t be gay and perfect?”

  “I don’t think so. My grandmother would probably survive it, but I don’t think my mother would. She would take it as some kind of personal failure. My poor grandmother is always worried about me being an old maid.”

  “I’d like us to get married one of these days, and have a baby.” She kissed Tammy when she said it and Tammy liked the idea too. “Do you suppose they’d let me come to the wedding?” Stacey teased her.

  “Not a chance. We could hire some actor as a beard to be the groom, and you could pretend to be my maid of honor.” It was sad for both of them, not being able to be open with Tammy’s family, but she couldn’t see it happening. Stacey had made peace with her own family when she was in college, they were crazy about Tammy, and she liked them too. Her family was educated and warm. They were unpretentious people from the Midwest. Her father was a general practitioner in a small town, and her mother had been a nurse. They had known she was gay since her teens, and accepted it. Tammy’s family were sophisticated New Yorkers but much less open-minded than Stacey’s and Tammy knew they would be shocked.

  Stacey was more obviously gay than Tammy. Most of her patients were aware of it and didn’t care. She loved wearing very elegant men’s shoes, which Tammy bought her at John Lobb in Paris. She wore them with well-tailored jeans, beautifully made men’s shirts, and tweed jackets she bought in London. Tammy’s look was ultra-feminine and pure Chanel. She was always drop-dead chic, representing the brand, which made it all the more relaxing to live in old shorts and faded T-shirts and ripped jeans in Maine. Stacey’s hair was short and prematurely gray, and Tammy’s was long and blond like her mother’s.

  They spent the rest of the day packing and getting ready for their trip. They did errands in the neighborhood, and bought a stack of books they both wanted to read. They were a consummately harmonious couple and complemented each other, and couldn’t wait to spend two weeks in Maine together.

  Tammy still intended to tell her family about Stacey one day. She hadn’t entirely given up on it, she just didn’t see how or when she would do it. There would have to be an opportune moment, and there hadn’t been one so far, in seven years. They used to fight about it. Now Stacey hardly ever mentioned it, except at times like Kate’s birthday, or Christmas and Thanksgiving. She went home
to her own family for the holidays, it was too depressing waiting around the apartment for Tammy to come back from family festivities she wasn’t invited to. She was Tammy’s dark secret, and a well-kept one. Tammy never slipped. They had separate phone lines and used their cellphones anyway. And Kate would never drop in on Tammy unannounced. It didn’t even occur to her. Kate considered all the trendy areas downtown like another city. It took half an hour to get there and Kate preferred her children to visit her at home, which they did occasionally, or they met at a restaurant so no one had to cook. She hadn’t been to Anthony’s apartment either since he got it, and knew it would be a mess. He treated it like a college dorm room. And Claire wasn’t a homemaker either in her tiny studio apartment.

  Tammy always went uptown to see her mother and her grandmother. She hated the dishonesty of it, but she didn’t see what choice she had. She’d made a decision long ago. She’d rather be a liar than a pariah or the outcast, as she was afraid she would be if she told the truth.

  She had almost told Anthony several times when she was younger, but she wasn’t sure how he would handle it either. They were all very traditional, and lived up to what their mother expected of them. They had never broken with tradition, and no one in the family had ever done anything shocking. Tammy didn’t want to be the one to do that. She loved them too much to be the one to break their hearts. She wondered how her father would have reacted to it, but she had a feeling he wouldn’t have accepted it either.

  “Well, I guess it’s tough on her, but your mother will just have to get through another birthday without me,” Stacey teased her and Tammy smiled. She wished it could be different, but she knew it couldn’t. And Stacey was so nice about it, which made it worse.