I don’t care what you do with anything I’ve left behind. Give Scarletta whatever she wants, or donate it to some charity. Frankly, I don’t want to carry very much from my old life into my new. It would take away from my sense of being reborn.
You can activate your mother’s precious prenuptial for us.
See. I finally made her happy.
Doreen
She had even printed out her signature. How cold.
I was surprised by the tears on my cheeks. I hadn’t realized I was crying. Before one fell on the paper, I folded it and put it back in the envelope.
All my life, I had tried to be like her, and she wrote that I was more like my father? I would get over her deserting us sooner than my father would? Was all the love she did manage to show me all pretend? Was all the wisdom she wanted me to have really unimportant to her? It was unimportant whether I absorbed it or not? What had I done to deserve this indifference? She didn’t write one word of real regret when it came to me. Why wouldn’t she write me my own letter anyway?
I gazed at the framed photo of her that my father was still keeping next to his bed. She wasn’t even smiling in it. It looked more like the photographer had snapped the shot while she was unaware, but smile or not, she was beautiful. Wasn’t it painful for him to look at her picture now?
It was for me.
I slammed the envelope back on top of my father’s bureau, slammed it so hard that my palm stung.
And then I hurried downstairs, anxious to continue with my own life, enjoy myself, and, if I could, forget her.
Pru
WE COULD NOT get what was happening to me out of our minds. We had our glasses of Graham’s Vintage Port, something Chandler had bought a month or so ago, and sat and talked softly, Chandler trying to tiptoe around the subject of my stalker and talk more about his work, a new negotiation involving a large commercial tract of land in San Bernardino.
I didn’t want to show him how worried I was about the roses, but I couldn’t help glancing at them. If this was Douglas Thomas’s work, it meant he wasn’t going to stop. He was probably encouraged by the fact that I hadn’t called the police. Maybe in his distorted way of thinking, this was proof that I really liked him and wanted him to return. Who knew what he would do next? Perhaps publishing the pictures on the Internet would happen, and one of my fellow employees at the hospital would surely pick it up. Some of them fed off the Internet social media like a newborn calf off its mother.
“You all right?” Chandler asked. He could see I wasn’t really listening.
“Yes. I’m sorry. I was distracted for a moment. What did you ask?”
He smiled and stood up. He took my glass from me, took my hand, and said, “Let’s go to bed.”
When I stood, he kissed me.
We both took longer than usual to prepare for bed. It was as if neither of us wanted to be the first one lying there and then have to look desirable and interested in sex when the other approached. I was in after him. He was under the blanket and had his hands behind his head, staring up at the ceiling, so deep in thought that he didn’t notice I had come in.
“Hey,” I said, and crawled in beside him. He put his arm around me. “Why are you so pensive? Now wishing you never got involved with someone with all this baggage? Do you regret asking to sit at my table that day? Or are you just dreaming of someone else?”
“You have to be kidding. Dreaming of someone else? We’ve been on a whirlwind romance for a little more than five months,” he said. “I haven’t really looked at another woman since that day you and I met in the hospital cafeteria. I look through them and see you standing there.”
“How sweet,” I said. “If it’s true.”
“It’s true,” he protested. “All this time, I haven’t suggested a double date with one of my associates because I didn’t want to share a minute with you. And I haven’t pushed you to introduce me to any girlfriends or remotely suggest we double-date with one.”
“I told you. I’m not close with any of the other girls who work with me. I value sincere friendship and avoid acquaintances who I can tell will amount to nothing.”
“That’s fine. I’m greedy about the time we have together, between your schedule and mine, but I can’t get away from the feeling that I don’t really have your full attention all the time, Pru. I mean, I have you, but sometimes it’s like holding hands with a ghost.”
“Boo,” I said, and he laughed.
“No, seriously. I think the problem, if I can call it a problem, is that you don’t talk that much about yourself, your youth. Sometimes I feel like you’re just here, you just arrived as you are. You don’t talk about your teenage years and your nursing-school experience unless I ask a specific question. Somehow, most of the time, we’re talking about me.”
“I know what you’re after, Mr. Lawyer Guy,” I said. “I can see right through you despite all that sophistication.”
I put my right forefinger on the center of his breastbone and pressed.
“Ow. What?”
“You want to know if I had any sort of relationship with another woman in nursing school. I saw how you reacted to what I told you Scarletta was saying on the phone, her sex talk. You think it’s possible an old love of mine has reappeared on the scene and this is only about that. I won’t face it, and so I’ve come up with all this other stuff about the other nurses and nursing assistants.”
“Has she? I mean, was there someone like that?”
“My father once warned me that the worst thing a woman can do to the man she loves is talk about someone else she loved or attempted to love.”
“Was he speaking from experience? Is that what your mother did to him?”
“Maybe.”
“All beside the point. I think you’re evading the question, Miss Dunning,” he said. “There’s possible contempt of court here.”
“This is my fault. I have no one to blame but myself, starting a relationship with a lawyer. Yes,” I said after taking a deep breath. “I experimented a little with lesbianism, but it wasn’t enough to result in a deep relationship. I would never call it love. It was only a slight infatuation, the sexual curiosity of a young, impressionable girl, nothing more.”
“Maybe that’s the way it was for you but not your partner,” he suggested. “We often misread how someone else is reacting to what we say and do. How long did this shallow relationship last?”
“Only a few weeks. She was in the experimental mode herself, and we both concluded that we were heterosexuals. When she landed a boyfriend soon afterward, I remember how she looked at me, her eyes full of far more sparkle than they had when she was with me. She looked . . . boastful. She had won the heart of a man faster than I had and had therefore washed away any memory of my touch, embrace, or kiss. Drowned me out.”
“Maybe it all surfaced again recently.”
“No,” I said sharply.
“How can you be so sure? What did she look like?”
“Nothing like the woman I thought was following me the other night. And I certainly would remember what she sounded like.”
“What was her name?”
“It wasn’t Scarletta or anything like it. Drop the theory,” I said firmly, as firmly as one of the judges on one of his cases might say it.
“Maybe she just chose that name for now.”
“No. Stop. I told you I’d recognize her voice.”
“People can disguise their voices.”
I turned away.
“Just trying to figure it out for you,” he said. He leaned over to kiss me on the neck.
“I’ll figure it out for myself. I’ll end it.”
“Okay.”
I turned back to him, and he kissed me. I wasn’t as receptive as he wished. “Sorry,” he said. “I don’t mean to upset you any more than you are with all this.”
“It’s all right. I’m just tired of talking about it. Actually, I’m just tired.”
“Of course. There’s always tomorr
ow. We’ll make up for it. With a vengeance,” he added, with that lusty smile rippling across his lips.
I laughed and kissed him a little better than the last time and then fell back against my pillow.
Neither of us spoke for a few moments. Not surprising—he was still thinking about what I had revealed.
“I think your father was right about what a woman should keep to herself,” he said. “Wise man.”
“Yes. Wise man. I didn’t want to do it, but you wouldn’t stop your relentless cross-examination.”
“Guilty as charged,” he said. “Court adjourned. Good night.”
I closed my eyes. Who had left those roses? I asked myself, and then, rushing to escape, drifted into something more akin to a coma.
We didn’t make love in the morning as Chandler had promised. It wasn’t his fault. I was still too deeply asleep when he awoke. I didn’t realize he had risen until he was fully dressed and standing in the doorway, sipping a cup of coffee, and looking at me. He had left some of his clothes here in my closet just so he could go right to work whenever he slept over.
“Welcome to tomorrow,” he said when my eyelids fluttered. “I wasn’t sure you’d get here.”
“Oh. I guess I was more tired than I thought.”
“Are you on duty tonight? I forgot your schedule.”
“No. I’m on a special from nine to three.”
“And when do you have two days off?”
“Tomorrow.”
“Good. I decided to take off from work whenever you were off and take us to Palm Springs for at least two nights. You need a change of scenery. Matter of fact, so do I.”
“Sounds like a good idea,” I said.
“Don’t get up. I’ll bring you a cup. After that, I have to rush out and get to Beverly Hills. One of the partners just sent me a text wanting to have breakfast with me. I think he’s been given the task of either offering me the partnership or letting me go.”
“You don’t seem too nervous about it.”
“I’m not. I have another offer in my back pocket if I need it,” he said, and went into the kitchen to get my cup of coffee.
When he returned, I was sitting up. He kissed me and gave me the coffee.
“That was pretty creepy, those roses,” he said, watching me take a sip. “Whoever she is, she has a sick sense of humor.”
I shrugged. “Nice roses. I’ll put them in water.”
He shook his head but smiled. “You’re a piece of work, Nurse Dunning. I’ll call you to let you know how the breakfast conference went. We’re meeting at that place close by on Doheny Street. Call me if there is any—”
“I will. Stop worrying,” I said. “Concentrate on what’s important. Don’t let this rule our lives.”
“Exactly my thoughts and intentions,” he said.
He kissed me again and started out. Then he returned to the doorway.
“You’re putting that answering machine back, right?”
“Okay, okay,” I said. “We’ll do it your way.”
“Thatta girl.”
I heard him leave. I put the cup down on the night table to my left and leaned back on the pillow. It was then that I looked at his pillow. He had not said a word, not even nodded at it, but lying there on the pillow was the reason for the aborted bottle of champagne at dinner last night, a small box that obviously contained an engagement ring. For a while, I simply stared at it like someone expecting that it would open itself.
I always suspected that most, if not many, women used the words I love you too quickly or too matter-of-factly, and I always feared I might be one of them. Some of the girls I knew in high school who had sex, even when they were only in the ninth or tenth grade, wrapped those words around themselves to give some justification for their willingness or eagerness. If I asked them how they could do it so quickly, I’d hear something like “I love him, stupid. And he loves me.”
If I asked others whether they loved the boy, some said, “It’s just sex.” They made it sound like nothing more than having a good pizza. If love wasn’t as important as sex, than what was love, anyway? Was it simply words you were supposed to say, like reciting lines in a play?
In a world where divorce was becoming as common as birthdays, piles of those three words discarded were everywhere, and yet they were supposed to be so precious, so everlasting. The essence of them was trust. You were opening the doors to your heart, your emotions, and your soul when you said them. What could possibly hurt more than telling someone you loved him only to have him reject you or casually say, “I’m sorry. I don’t love you.” You’ve already gone too far out on that limb. The fall is devastating.
I had no doubt that Chandler had meant it when he said he loved me. The voice inside me that had always come to life whenever I was about to commit to something serious, even my nursing career, was at it again. When you reach for that box, when you open it, and when you slip the ring on your finger, you will have to smother any doubt. You’ll have to trust a man, something you haven’t done since you trusted your father. Are you ready to do that?
Yes, I thought. This morning, I’m sure. I’m ready to do that.
Even so, my hand seemed to be the hand of someone else as it moved toward the ring box. I felt like I had stepped out of my body to watch myself. My fingers closed on it, and I brought it to me without opening it.
Don’t open it. Put it back on the pillow, one voice said.
Of course, it’s time to open it. Don’t risk losing him. You won’t find another man who will love you as much, a different voice replied.
It’s not possible. Don’t be foolish. Love is a dream, a fantasy.
Shut up! I heard myself screaming inside. Shut up, shut up!
I opened the box and took out the ring. It was beautiful, a twisted infinity halo diamond. It slipped on easily, and when I held my hand up, I was overwhelmed with the beauty. As I turned my hand to catch the light from all angles, it occurred to me that I had no one really with whom I could share my joy. This was the moment most mothers and daughters lived to experience, wasn’t it? I didn’t have a father to show it to, either.
I had yet to meet Chandler’s parents or sisters in person. I had spoken to them with Chandler on Skype, and we were planning on visiting his parents for his father’s seventy-fifth birthday in June. His sisters, all his family, would be there. Now we would have this announcement, unless he had already told them.
Of course, I worried about how they would react to me. Would they be instantly comparing me to other girls he had dated, wishing he had given the ring to one of them? And what if I didn’t like them? Could I pretend enough to convince them I did? Would I rationalize and tell myself we lived far enough away from each other, so it wouldn’t matter one way or the other? Could you love someone and dislike his family? He didn’t have that worry. He had only me to like and love. My family was in the ether, adrift in memories, resurrected for only a few seconds or so when I deigned to mention something one of them had said or done. I never did it once without there being a short debate inside me.
The phone rang. I looked at it. I hadn’t yet reconnected the answering machine. If I picked up that receiver and it was Scarletta and I couldn’t play back what she had said, Chandler would be upset. Another opportunity to put this to an end was lost. Just let it ring, I told myself.
But I couldn’t resist. I’ll hang up right away if it’s her and then reconnect the machine because she’ll call back, I thought.
I brought the phone slowly to my ear and said, “Hello.”
“Are you wearing anything new?” Chandler asked. “Maybe on your finger?”
“You sneak.”
“It was right in front of you. I couldn’t believe you didn’t see it.”
“I was half awake, remember?”
“And?”
“I’m wearing it,” I said.
He was silent.
“You’re not regretting leaving it here, are you? Hoping I was going to say no or n
ot yet?”
“Of course not. I was just happily absorbing it all. We’ll have a test run of our honeymoon day after tomorrow, then, and when we leave, we’ll leave all the baggage behind. Okay?”
“I can if you can.”
“Today is different from yesterday. I feel like I can do anything I have to do to please you.”
“Have you told your family?”
“I gave Julia a heads-up. I’ve been closer to her than I’ve been with Lydia. Julia was more of a big sister, second mother, if you know what I mean. I’m sure she kept it to herself. I figured you and I would Skype my parents, maybe after our short holiday. You can show my mother the ring. I’ll call my sister Lydia immediately afterward. But in the meantime, until we leave, let’s not forget our little problem and be sure to—”
“Reconnect the answering machine. I know. I’ll do it now,” I promised.
“Oh, here he comes. He’s not smiling. I’ll call you again in about an hour with the play-by-play and results.”
“Good luck,” I said.
Now I was wide awake. I rose, brought my coffee cup to the kitchen, and took the answering machine out of the garbage. After I reconnected it, I stared at it hatefully. Go on, I thought. Call and threaten. We’ll get you. We’ll make you pay. You’re not ruining my life, especially not now.
I started on some breakfast. I watched local news while I ate. I had a small television set in the kitchen where I usually ate breakfast alone on the maple wood table. While I watched the newscasters go from accidents and fires to murders and rapes, I fantasized my story being reported. Cedars-Sinai nurse’s stalker caught. A tale of a vengeful nurse. Surely that was worth twenty seconds on the morning news.
After I finished, I cleared off the table the way my mother would, practically sterilizing it, and then started for the shower just as the phone rang. It was about when Chandler was to call, but my hand trembled again as I picked up the receiver. I was poised to hit the Record button.
The Silhouette Girl Page 16
