Bittersweet

by Danielle Steel

  It also made her wonder for a moment if Paul was going to be there for her. But he had said nothing about that. They talked to each other almost every day, about everything that crossed their minds, and shared their most hidden secrets, but nothing had ever been said between them about the future. And this hardly seemed the time to ask him.

  “Do you know where he is?” Paul asked, as she blew her nose.

  “I have no idea. He never called to tell me.”

  “He will eventually. Maybe this is for the best. I think you should call a lawyer.” But she didn't feel ready to do that. There was still a chance that Doug would calm down and come back, and they could still limp hand in hand into the future. “Can you get some sleep?” he asked sympathetically. He wished he were there to comfort her. She sounded like a frightened child as he listened to her.

  “I don't think so.” It was already four o'clock in the morning.

  “Try, before the kids get up. I'll call you in the morning.”

  “Thanks, Paul,” she said, as tears filled her eyes again. She was still feeling overwhelmed by everything that had happened, but he understood that.

  “Everything's going to be all right,” he told her, sounding confident. He had the confidence for her that he no longer had for his own life.

  After they hung up, she lay in bed for a while, thinking about him, and about Doug, and everything that had happened in the past six months. And all she could think of in the dark of night was that she was going to be alone now.

  And on the boat, Paul was staring unhappily out to sea, thinking of her and the constant abuse she was taking from Doug. He was sick of it on her behalf, wished he could say as much to Doug, and tell him never to come near her again. But he knew he had no right to do that.

  He took the tender out after a while, and went to the Cipriani, and found the magazine her photos were in. He stood and looked at them in the lobby. They were sensational, and if Doug objected to them, as far as Paul was concerned, he was crazy. Paul couldn't have been more proud of her, and he called her at nine o'clock, her time, to tell her.

  “You really like them?” she asked, sounding incredulous and pleased. Doug still hadn't called, and she was standing barefoot in her nightgown in the kitchen, making coffee. The kids were still sleeping.

  “I've never seen anything so moving or so impressive. You made me cry when I read it.”

  “Me too,” she admitted. But all Doug had seen was the sleaziness of the prostitution ring and somehow associated India with it.

  “Did you get any sleep?” he asked, still sounding worried.

  “Not much. About an hour. I fell asleep around seven.”

  “Try and take a nap today. And give yourself a big pat on the back from me, for this story.”

  “Thank you,” she said. They talked for a few more minutes, and then hung up. Raoul called her a little later, and said essentially the same thing Paul had about the story.

  “If you don't win a Pulitzer for this, India, I'll invent a new prize for you myself. This is the most powerful thing I've ever seen in pictures.”

  “Thank you.”

  “What did your husband say?” he asked, sure that this would finally convince him to let her do the work she was so good at, and that meant so much to her.

  “He left me.”

  There was a long pause as Raoul listened. “You're kidding, right?”

  “No, I'm not. He walked out last night. I told you, he means business.”

  “He's crazy. He should be carrying you around on his shoulders.”

  “Not exactly.”

  “I'm sorry, India.” He sounded as though he meant it. He had always liked her, and never had understood her husband's position about her working.

  “Me too,” she said sadly.

  “Maybe he'll come back after he calms down.”

  “I hope so,” she said, but she no longer knew what she did hope. And Paul was slowly becoming part of an ever more tangled picture. She no longer knew if she wanted to fix it with Doug, or dare to believe that somehow, somewhere, she and Paul would manage to crawl through their respective griefs and manage to find each other. The hope of that, slim as it was, was becoming increasingly appealing. But he had never made any indication to her that that was even a remote possibility, and most of the time, she was fairly sure it wasn't. She couldn't leave a seventeen-year marriage for a vague fantasy she had about a man who swore he would never again have a woman in his life, and was determined to spend the rest of his life hiding on a sailboat. Whatever it was she had with Paul meant a great deal to her, but it was only a slim reed to hang on to. And in truth, it was more friendship than romance.

  After she talked to Raoul, she and the children managed to get through the day, and she told them that Doug had had to go out of town on business to see clients. She never heard from him all weekend or from Paul again, and on Monday morning, she called Doug at the office.

  “How are you?” she asked bleakly.

  “I still feel the same way, if that's what you're asking,” he said tersely. “Nothing's going to change, India, unless you do.” And they were both beginning to realize that was unlikely.

  “Where does that leave us?”

  “In pretty deep water, if you ask me,” Doug said unsympathetically.

  “That's a pretty tough thing to do to the kids over Christmas. Don't you think we could at least put this aside until after the holidays, and then try to resolve it?” It was a reasonable solution, if not to the problem, then at least to not ruining Christmas for the children.

  “I'll think about it,” he answered, and then told her he had to meet with clients. He had told her the hotel where he was staying, and she didn't hear from him for the next two days. And on Wednesday he called her, and agreed to come back, at least through Christmas. “For the kids' sake.” But he made no apology to her, and held out no olive branch, and she guessed correctly that his return to the house would be extremely stressful.

  She talked to Paul every day that week. He called her most of the time, but she called him occasionally for moral support, and on Friday night, a week after he had left, Doug returned to Westport. It was only four days before Christmas, and the kids were beginning to wonder why he had been gone since the previous weekend. The excuse that he had to see clients had been wearing thin, and they all seemed pleased to see him.

  But Doug's return complicated things for India. It made it impossible for Paul to call her again, but she went to a phone booth every day over the weekend. On Monday, it was Christmas Eve, and on her way home from the grocery store, she called Paul collect from a pay phone. He sounded as depressed as she was. He was keening for Serena. And she was miserable with Doug. He had devoted himself to making the holidays as difficult as he could for her, and she just hoped they made it through Christmas, for the children.

  “We're a mess, aren't we?” Paul smiled wistfully as he talked to her. Even being on the boat no longer cheered him. He just kept sifting through his memories, and had even gone through some of the things she had left in their cabin. “I still can't believe she's gone,” he said to India, sounding bereft. And she still couldn't believe she was about to lose her marriage. It was hard to understand how lives got so screwed up, how people made such a mess of things. Paul, of course, didn't have to blame himself, or feel it was his fault. But India still wondered in her own case. Doug was so willing to blame her for everything, that at times she actually believed him.

  “Are you going to do anything nice over the holidays?” she asked, wishing she could think of something to cheer him. But staying on the boat, as he did, she hadn't even been able to send him a present. She had written him a silly poem, and faxed it to the boat that morning from the post office, and he'd said he loved it. But that didn't solve their larger problems. “Are you going to church?” Venice certainly seemed a good place to do that.

  “God and I are having a little problem these days, I don't believe in Him, and He doesn't believe in me.
For the moment, it's a standoff.”

  “It might just be pretty and make you feel good,” she suggested, stamping her feet in the freezing cold in the outdoor phone booth.

  “It's more likely to make me angry, and feel worse,” he said, sounding stubborn. In his opinion, if there was a God, he wouldn't have lost Serena, and India didn't want to argue with him about religion. “What about you? Do you go to church on Christmas Eve?”

  “We do. We go to midnight mass and take the children.”

  “Doug should be doing some serious soul searching for the way he's been treating you in the last six months.” Not to mention before that. And then, out of the blue, “I miss her so much, India, I can't stand it. Sometimes I think that the sheer pain of it is going to blow me to bits, I feel like it's going to rip my chest out.”

  “Just keep thinking of what she would have said to you. Don't forget that. Listen to her …she wouldn't want you to feel like this forever.” And he wouldn't, but right now was the worst. She had been gone for less than four months, and it was Christmas. India felt helpless in the face of his agony, and at this distance. If they were together, at least she might have been able to put her arms around him, and hug him. That might have been something. But Paul couldn't even find solace in India's words now.

  “Serena always had more guts than I did.”

  “No, she didn't. You were pretty evenly matched in that way, I suspect,” India said firmly. “You can take it, if you have to. You have no choice now. You just have to get through it. There's a light at the end of that tunnel somewhere,” she said, trying to make him hold on for as long as he had to. She would have liked to tell him that she would be there for him, but who knew what was going to happen to them. Nothing was sure now.

  “What about you? What light do you see at the end of your tunnel?” He sounded more depressed than she had ever heard him.

  “I don't know yet. I'm not that far. I just hope there is one.”

  “There will be. You'll find what you want at some point.” Would she? She was beginning to wonder, and he did not seem to want to volunteer to be there for her either. At this point, he still felt he couldn't. He was still looking back, at Serena. And then he startled India completely with what he did say. “I wish I could tell you I'd be there for you, India. I wish I could be. But I know I won't be. I'm not going to be the light at the end of the tunnel for you. I can't even be there for myself anymore, let alone for someone else.” Let alone a woman fourteen years younger than he, with a whole life ahead of her, and four young children to take care of. He had thought of it more than once, and no matter how fond he was of her, or how much they needed each other now, he knew that in the long run he had nothing to give her. He had already come to that conclusion. Only that morning, in fact, as he stood looking out at Saint Mark's Square, from the Sea Star. “I have nothing left to give anyone,” he went on. “I gave it all to Serena.”

  “I understand,” India said quietly. “It's all right. I don't expect anything from you, Paul. All we can do is be here for each other as friends right now. Hopefully, later on, we'll both be in a better place to make it on our own.” But right then, they were both acutely aware that they needed each other's hand to get over the rough places they were facing. But he had certainly made himself clear to her. He would not be at the end of the tunnel for her. He didn't want to be there. It was a taste of reality for her, and left her few illusions. It was not what she had been hoping for, whether she had faced it or not, but it was honest. Paul was always honest with her.

  They talked for a little while longer, and finally she knew she had to go home. She was frozen to the bone by then anyway, and it had not been a happy conversation. And with tears in her eyes, she wished him a Merry Christmas.

  “You too, India …” he said sadly. “I hope next year is better for both of us. We both deserve it.”

  And then, for no sane reason she could fathom given what he'd said to her, she wanted to tell him that she loved him, but she didn't. That would have been crazy. But it was something they both needed, and had too little of, except from each other. The words remained unsaid, but the gifts they had given each other, of time and caring and tenderness, spoke for themselves, whether or not they heard them, or chose to.

  She went back home after her call, with a heavy heart. He had told her what she had been wondering for months, and didn't want to hear, but at least she couldn't fool herself now about what might happen someday, or what she meant to him. It was precisely what she had told herself it was, nothing more than an extraordinary friendship. She could not use him as a safety net into which to leap from her burning marriage. And in her heart of hearts, she knew he was right not to be that.

  She and Doug went to midnight mass, as they always did, and took all four children with them. And when they got home, she put the last presents under the tree, while Sam put out cookies for Santa, and carrots and salt for the reindeer. The others were good sports about leaving him his illusions.

  And in the morning, there were squeals of delight as they opened their gifts. She had chosen them carefully and spent a lot of time on it, and even Doug was pleased with what she gave him. She gave him a new blazer, which he needed desperately, and a handsome new leather briefcase. The gifts were without fantasy, but they suited him to perfection, and genuinely pleased him. And he had given her a plain gold bracelet, which she also liked. What she didn't like was the continuing atmosphere of hostility between them.

  The cease-fire between them was brief, and by that night, she could sense the tension increasing, when they retreated to their bedroom. And she was afraid that he was going to leave again now that Christmas was behind them. But when she brought the subject up, somewhat anxiously, he said he had decided to stay until after New Year's. He was taking the week off between the holidays, which she thought might help, but in fact it made things worse and they seemed to be fighting daily.

  She went out to call Paul whenever she could, but she missed him a couple of times when he was off the boat, and she had told him he couldn't call her until after New Year's.

  And it was just after New Year's in fact when Doug walked into the kitchen carrying an envelope, with his face as white as the paper he held, and his dark eyes blazing. He had just picked their mail up, and he stood in front of her, while she was folding towels, and waved the envelope in her face. It looked like their phone bill.

  “Just exactly what is this?” he said, almost too enraged to speak as he threw it at her.

  “It looks like our phone bill.” She wondered if it was too high, and then suddenly she remembered with a sense of panic. She had called Paul several times from home during the week Doug had left her.

  “You're damn right it is,” he said, pacing around the room like a lion. “Is that what all this was about? Is that it? It had nothing to do with your ‘career,’ did it, all this crap for all these months? How long have you been sleeping with him, India? Ever since the summer?”

  She picked the bill up and looked at it. There were five calls to the Sea Star.

  “I'm not sleeping with him, Doug. We're friends,” she said quietly, but her heart was pounding. How could she ever explain it to him? It was obvious what it looked like, and she wasn't sure she blamed him. But it truly was nothing more than a friendship. Even Paul had confirmed it. “I was upset. You had walked out on me. He's called a couple of times to talk about his wife. He knows I liked her. He's desperately unhappy. That's all it is. Two unhappy people crying on each other's shoulders.” It was embarrassing to admit, but in truth there wasn't a lot more to tell him.

  “I don't believe you,” Doug said with utter fury. “I think you've been sleeping with him since last summer.”

  “That's not true, and you know it. If I were, I wouldn't be as upset about us, or trying so hard to get through to you.”

  “Bullshit. All you've done is fight for your ‘career,’ so you could dump me and the kids and get out of here. Did you meet him in London?”
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  “Of course not,” she said calmly, although she didn't feel it. She felt sad and afraid and somewhat guilty. It was as though the last shred of what was left between them had just gone up in smoke. There was nothing left to fight for. It was hopeless.

  “Did he call you?”

  “Yes, he did,” she said honestly.

  “What do you do? Have sex on the phone with him? Some kind of kinky disgusting kicks that turn you both on?” The image he painted for her made her shudder.

  “No, he cries about his wife. And I cry about you. It's not exactly sexy.”

  “You're both sick, and you deserve each other.” She wished she did, but unfortunately, that was not the case either. “I'm not going to put up with this, India. I've had it. You're of no use to me, and you'll be of no use to him either. You're a lousy wife, and a lousy lover,” he threw in for good measure, though she wasn't even sure why he did it, except maybe to hurt her. “All you're interested in is your career, that's all you care about now. Well, India, you've got it.” And as though to punctuate his words and the plummeting of her heart, the phone rang. She picked it up, praying it wasn't Paul, to make matters still worse, but it wasn't. It was Raoul, and he sounded excited. She told him she couldn't talk just now, but he insisted she had to, and she saw that Doug was watching, and she was afraid he would think it was Paul, so she let him tell her what he wanted.

  He had an assignment for her, right here in the States. In Montana. It was about a religious cult that had cropped up and seemingly gone berserk. They were laying siege, holding hostages, and the FBI was camped around them. There were over a hundred people involved, at least half of them children.