Going Back

by Judith Arnold

  Daphne shaped an overly bright smile. “I’ll do my best,” she promised, not bothering to finish the sentence: she’d do her best to behave maturely and courteously if and when she had to spend any time with Brad Torrance. She’d do her best to pretend that that horrible Saturday night eight years ago had never occurred.

  ***

  “NO, MOM, it’s all right,” Brad said into the phone. Christ, he hadn’t even unpacked yet. He’d barely had a chance to put down his bags before Penelope Torrance had phoned his cell.

  “You keep telling me it’s all right,” she said in a lofty tone, “but I don’t see how it can be all right for you to be spending time right here in New York City and not be staying with your own mother.”

  “Mom,” Brad said as calmly as he could, “Eric is my friend. He and Andrea have tons of space here...” He heard Eric snickering behind him when he said that. So maybe they didn’t have tons of space. Brad would sleep on their fire escape before he’d consider staying at his mother’s apartment.

  “Space isn’t the issue. The issue is, you have a home in New York, and that’s where you belong.”

  “I don’t have a home, yet, but I plan to buy one,” Brad said, his voice becoming hoarse with fatigue. After a wearying flight out of Seattle, with delays during take-off and landing and a screaming toddler seated just two rows behind him, he didn’t have the stamina to deal with his mother right now. His composure slipping, he tugged off his jacket and draped it across the back of a chair. Andrea picked it up, and Brad watched her carry it toward the coat closet. Distracted by a magazine she glimpsed along the way, she dropped the jacket onto an end table, lifted the magazine and wandered in the direction of the kitchen, reading as she went.

  Living with Eric and Andrea wasn’t going to be as easy as staying in a hotel would have been. But it would be much more fun than living with his mother—and it wouldn’t be for long. As soon as he found a new house, he could return to Seattle and close up his condominium there.

  “It’s because of your father, isn’t it,” his mother charged. “You’re going to move in with him.”

  “No, Mom, I’m not,” Brad said wearily. He felt a tap on his shoulder and turned to find Eric presenting him with a cold bottle of beer. Brad took it and nodded his thanks. “I’m not staying with either of you,” he said back into the phone. “I’m staying with Eric and Andrea for a week or so, and then—”

  “Do you know what housing is like around here?” his mother interrupted. “You aren’t going to find a place so fast.”

  “I’m not going to live in New York,” he explained, certain that he’d had an identical conversation with the woman less than a week ago, when he’d called her from Seattle to let her know what day he’d be arriving to begin his house-hunting. “I don’t want to live in the city. I’m sick of city living. I’m going to find a place outside the city, and—”

  “Do you know what housing is like in the suburbs?” his mother again cut him off.

  “I’m willing to learn. I’ve got to go, Mom. When things calm down a little, I promise I’ll call you and we’ll get together. I love you. Good-bye.” He hung up before she could speak.

  “Welcome to New York,” Eric said, grinning and lifting his own bottle of beer in a mocking toast.

  Brad trudged across the living room and collapsed onto the couch. He used the toe of his left foot to pry off his right loafer, then reversed the process. Once both shoes were off, he propped his feet up on the coffee table and took a long drink of beer. “Maybe I should change my cell phone number,” he said.

  Eric sat on the leather easy chair across the room from Brad. “Even if you do, you’re going to have to give her the number.”

  Brad sighed. “Yeah. And if I gave her the number, I’d have to give it to my father, too.” Another sigh, and he allowed himself a reluctant laugh. “I really appreciate your putting me up. It’s bad enough having to talk to my mother for five minutes on the phone. If I had to stay with her...”

  “Your mother isn’t any worse than most mothers,” Eric argued. “I met her at our graduation, and she seemed okay to me.”

  “She is okay,” Brad conceded. “She’s better than okay. She’s a lovely lady, and I really like her—most of the time.”

  “She’s a looker, too, if I remember correctly,” Eric remarked.

  Brad grimaced. Until recently, he had been quite proud of the fact that he had a great-looking mother. He used to love it when, in grammar school, he’d bring his classmates home to play and they’d comment on how little like an actual mother Penelope Torrance looked.

  His mother’s appearance hadn’t been a concern of Brad’s until recently, when it occurred to him that men other than his father might find her attractive, and might choose to act on it. If another man entered the picture—if another man hadn’t already entered the picture—his parents marriage might be beyond salvation. “The thing is...” He sighed yet again. Merely thinking about his parents affected his respiration, making him feel oddly asthmatic. “At the moment, they’re kind of split.”

  “Your parents are divorced?” Eric looked properly concerned. “Hey, man, that’s too bad. When did it happen? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “They aren’t divorced,” Brad corrected Eric. “They’re split, separated, going through some sort of weirdness at the moment. They live in two apartments these days, but they get together every few days, either to bicker or to screw around in bed. Then they go their separate ways again, and bitch about each other to me. If I stayed with my mother while I was in the city, she’d spend the whole time telling me how awful my father is. If I stayed with him, he’d hand me the same lines about my mother.”

  “So they’re living apart,” Eric summed up.

  Brad nodded. “The whole thing is incredibly extravagant. I know what housing costs are like in Manhattan. It seems like such a waste to be spending their money paying for two apartments.”

  “They can afford it,” Eric reminded him. “They’re rich.”

  “That they are.” Brad nodded and took another sip of beer.

  Brad’s parents weren’t just rich; they were rich in the way only certain New Yorkers could be. They weren’t high society, they weren’t glitterati, but they lived extremely comfortably in a city where only the well-to-do could live the least bit comfortably. Both of them had descended from affluent families, and Brad’s father had supplemented what they’d inherited by buying his own seat on the stock exchange. His mother didn’t deck herself out in jewels, and his father didn’t collect Ferraris, but money was a given in the Torrance household. It had always been assumed that Brad would attend private schools, that he would dress in clothing from the better stores, and that he would grow up knowing that he was entitled to certain things simply by virtue of his being a Torrance.

  It was also assumed that if Penelope and Robert Torrance were in the midst of a marital squabble, they would live in separate apartments. Expense was not an issue. The only issue, as far as Brad could tell, was to which parent Brad would extend his allegiance. So far he’d managed to maintain his neutrality, but now, with this promotion and transfer to New York, his parents were both actively campaigning for his loyalty.

  “So, when are you supposed to start your new job?” Eric asked him.

  Brad rolled his head backward until it was resting against the top of the sofa’s bolster cushion. He was exhausted. He’d spent the past few weeks overseeing the sale of his condo, negotiating with various moving companies, and helping to break in the fellow who’d been promoted to replace him at the Seattle office of the executive placement firm he worked for.

  Brad knew that in a few months the move would be behind him. He’d look forward to taking on the responsibilities of his new position. But at the moment, he didn’t even want to think about it. He was too damned tired.

  “They said I can start whenever I’m ready,” he told Eric. “But I can’t shake the suspicion that if I’m not ready within a month or two
, I’ll wind up on everybody’s shit list.”

  “It sounds like a great job,” Eric reminded him, evidently sensing that Brad’s enthusiasm was at a low ebb. “Vice President of Something, isn’t it?”

  “Assistant Vice President for Marketing Services,” Brad recited. A pompous title, but he liked the sound of it. More than that, he liked the prestige and power it encompassed. He was shrewd and talented, and he made it point to excel at just about everything he considered important: at one time schoolwork, and now his career, his squash game, his investments. Being a Torrance might mean taking certain things for granted, but it also meant putting forth a superior effort to achieve what he wanted.

  Andrea materialized in the doorway leading to the dining room, minus her magazine. Her hair was a dark shag of curls and her Mickey Mouse sweat shirt had a mysterious pink stain on one sleeve. In all the years Brad had known Andrea, she’d never quite figured out how to put herself together. She was an attractive, intelligent woman, and he could understand how Eric would have fallen in love with her. But she was also had a tendency to look like a bag lady much of the time.

  “How’s your mom?” she asked Brad.

  “You don’t want to know,” Eric answered for him. “It’s one of those stories that makes you realize we’re a lot less exciting than our parents.”

  “Yeah, I tell you, we’ve got to keep an eye on their generation,” Andrea said, reaching over the back of Eric’s easy chair and filching his beer bottle. “They’re a wild and crazy group.” She took a sip, handed the bottle back to her husband, then crossed to the couch and plopped herself down next to Brad. “So, Brad, not that I want you to feel unwelcome or anything, but when do you plan to start house-hunting?”

  “The sooner, the better,” he answered. Andrea’s question didn’t make him feel unwelcome. He knew she approached all issues directly, and he admired her lack of coyness. “It’s really nice of you to put me up. But if I start stinking like a fish after three days, I can always hit the firm up for a hotel room.”

  “You don’t have to move out in three days!” Eric protested.

  “Of course he doesn’t,” Andrea agreed before turning back to Brad. “But if you’re interested in finding a house, the person you should get in touch with is Daphne Stoltz. Did you know she’s a real estate broker? She’s got an office in Verona, New Jersey, and—”

  “Daphne Stoltz?” Stunned, Brad uttered her name in a taut, raspy voice.

  Andrea stared at Brad, apparently bewildered by his reaction. “Daphne Stoltz. From school. You remember her, don’t you? She was taller than me, with kind of frizzy light blond hair, eyeglasses—”

  “I remember her,” Brad said, anxious to silence Andrea. He took a deep, desperate swig of beer and turned to stare through the window at the purple night sky.

  Daphne Stoltz. Daffy, everybody used to call her, with her pale, kinky cascade of hair, her even paler skin, her green eyes hidden behind a pair of thick-lensed wire-rimmed glasses. She was a little too tall, a little too pudgy, a little too undefined. She’d been a close friend of Andrea’s, along with that stacked chick who used to frost her hair, Phyllis Something-or-other. But whenever their entire crowd of friends got together—Andrea and her friends from her dormitory, Eric and his buddies from the fraternity—Daffy had always been on the periphery, hanging back, smiling mysteriously and keeping her secrets to herself. It wasn’t that she was ugly or stupid, but... She hadn’t been like the other girls. She hadn’t been loud or wild or aggressive. She hadn’t talked non-stop about herself. She hadn’t dressed particularly well. All in all, she’d done nothing to make herself noticeable.

  Except for one night, when she’d approached Brad. Out of the blue, just like that. They had never exchanged more than stereotypical greetings and superficial remarks about their classes before that night; they scarcely knew each other. But suddenly there she was, presenting him with something no normal twenty-one year old male would ever turn down.

  Brad had been a normal twenty-one year old male. And afterwards, he’d hated himself. Eventually, the hate had softened to disgust, and then to a lingering guilt. In time, he had succeeded in convincing himself that he hadn’t really done anything so terribly unforgivable, that Daphne had probably been almost as much to blame for what had happened as he was, and that it was time to put the incident behind him, to forget about it and move on.

  That was years ago. It had been simple enough to shove the entire incident out of his mind when he’d presumed he would never see Daphne Stoltz again.

  “Daphne Stoltz,” he murmured, half to himself. Hearing his voice shape her name jarred him from his thoughts. He scanned his surroundings—a high-ceilinged living room in an ornate pre-War building on Riverside Drive in Manhattan, with the man who was arguably his best friend seated across the room from him, and his best friend’s wife on the couch beside Brad—and absorbed the fact that his best friend’s wife had some insane idea that he should get in touch with Daphne Stoltz. “Why am I supposed to see her?” he asked, scrambling to remember what it was that Andrea had been telling him.

  She scowled. “Jet lag,” she diagnosed his confusion before explaining, “The reason you’re supposed to see her is that she’s a realtor. She manages the Verona office of a small real estate firm. They’ve got, oh, maybe half a dozen offices scattered around northern New Jersey, and I know she’d love to show you some properties. Are you interested in living in northern New Jersey?”

  Brad wasn’t going to lie just to avoid having to see Daphne. He was interested in living anywhere that would offer him an uncomplicated commute to Manhattan.

  Besides, even if he swore that he didn’t want to look for a house in New Jersey, he’d probably have to see Daphne anyway. She was Andrea’s friend, and he was Andrea’s house guest. One way or another, he was going to have to face Daphne Stoltz.

  “Verona,” he mumbled. He hoped his discomfort wasn’t evident to Andrea, since she was pushy enough to question him about it if she noticed. “Where’s that?”

  “West of Newark, maybe a half hour out of the city,” Andrea told him. “It’s got good bus service into the city—and there’s a train station not far away, in Montclair, I think. Of course, you could commute by car, but nobody in his right mind would drive into Manhattan every day.”

  Nobody in his right mind would do business with a woman he’d once treated so shabbily, Brad thought. At least nobody who had a heart would. Brad wanted to think that, whatever sins he might have committed in the past, he wasn’t heartless.

  “Sure,” he said. Maybe he had a heart, but he also had enough sense not to let Andrea recognize how very much he’d like to avoid Daphne. Spending a day with her might be an uncomfortable experience, but it was preferable to letting Andrea know that, one night during his careless, thoughtless youth, he’d been a first-class bastard—and that Andrea’s dear friend Daphne had been the one to suffer for it.

  Chapter Two

  THE VERONA BRANCH of the Horizon Realty Corporation was located on the town’s main thoroughfare, a winding avenue lined with shops and offices. Few had familiar names; there weren’t many chain-store franchises or national outlets in Verona’s downtown shopping district. Most of the stores seemed to be modest mom-and-pop establishments: a hardware store, an ice cream parlor, a five-and-ten, a bakery, a children’s clothing boutique.

  Brad liked Verona. He’d made up his mind that he didn’t want to live in New York City, but he hadn’t really been eager to become a suburbanite, certainly not if the all the suburbs had to offer were tract houses and big-box malls. No doubt some suburbs fit that description, but Verona seemed more like a self-contained village, homey and welcoming. Brad could picture himself living in a town like this.

  He didn’t want to like Verona. He didn’t want to like anything at all today. He had driven west from Manhattan in the Ford Escort the firm had rented for him, figuring he’d kill a day looking at houses with Daphne Stoltz and get the damned thing over wit
h. Then he could return to Eric’s apartment with a clear conscience. He could swear to Andrea that he’d taken her advice and allowed Daphne to show him every house she knew of for sale in northern New Jersey, that he’d despised each and every one of them, and that he wanted to try his luck with a new broker in a different part of the tri-state area. And then Andrea would have to get off his back.

  The only problem was, Verona appealed to him. The photographs of houses displayed in the front window of the realty office might have absurdly high prices printed underneath them, but the houses looked attractive and comfortable. Brad wasn’t going to reject a promising swath of the New York City suburbs merely because he didn’t want to have to go house-hunting with Daphne Stoltz.

  She was expecting him. Andrea had called her last night and told her Brad wanted her to show him some houses—Brad had considered this a gross misrepresentation of what he wanted, but he’d kept his mouth shut—and Daphne had told Andrea to have Brad come to the office the following day. She hadn’t balked, so Brad couldn’t balk, either. If Daphne was going to be stoical about this compulsory reunion, so would he.

  Inhaling deeply, he straightened his jacket with a shrug of his shoulders, raked his fingers through his hair, and entered the office.

  The interior was bright. Ceiling lights reflected off the white walls to give the room an almost offensive cheerfulness. Huge bulletin boards displaying more photographs of houses in hung on opposite sides of the room. A couple of flourishing plants stood in clay pots near the front window, drinking in the morning sunlight through the glass. Four desks were arranged symmetrically, two on either side of the door. Each contained a prism-shaped brass name plate, but none of the those name plates displayed Daphne’s name.