by Wendy Wax
“I just wanted to make sure you know how sorry I am.” Emma’s voice cracked on the apology, bending it all out of shape. “I never meant to hurt you. Or anyone else. I love you more than anything. I . . . I only wanted to protect you.”
“Protect me? From what?” Zoe demanded. “From knowing who my father really was? From knowing that I was a mistake you wish you never made?” She buried her chin back in her knees. “Did Calvin know I’m not his?”
Emma nodded carefully.
“Well, at least now I know why he never acted like a father. I always thought there was something wrong with me that made him not be interested.”
“Oh, Zoe.” Emma’s heart throbbed painfully in her chest. How had she made such an incredible mess of things?
“If I was such a bad mistake. So bad you didn’t even want to admit it to anyone, why . . . why did you even have me at all?”
“But I did want you. I never once even considered not having you.” The words she’d held back for so long rushed out. “You were unplanned, just like I was, but I wanted you. And I fell completely in love with you before I ever even saw you. I was just so worried about hurting Mackenzie.”
“Yeah, well then maybe you shouldn’t have slept with her boyfriend.”
This was an undeniably good point. “That was wrong of me,” Emma said. “Adam and Mackenzie were good friends of mine. If anyone knew that that shouldn’t have happened, even after they’d broken up, it was me. I behaved so stupidly. I drank too much and I trampled all over my friendship with Mackenzie. That was the mistake I’ve regretted ever since. But not you, Zoe. Never you.”
Zoe turned to look out the window as tears slid down her cheeks.
It was all Emma could do not to look away. But now with the scrim of fear and denial ripped away, Emma could see just how much of Adam her daughter carried. The man had a lot of good qualities. Enough for Mackenzie to have fallen in love with him and stayed married to him all these years.
“You’re such a hypocrite. You’ve always told me to be honest,” Zoe said. “To always tell you the truth. But you didn’t tell me the truth at all.”
“I know.” The admission was painful. “And I—I don’t even have a valid excuse. I was afraid to tell the truth. Afraid of losing Mackenzie’s friendship. Afraid of how it would make me look.” Emma saw it now for what it was. How selfish she’d been. Unable to accept the reality of what she’d done, she’d twisted it around and convinced herself that what she wanted and needed was what was best for others. Just like Eve had always done.
She’d not only lied to her friends and to her daughter, she’d lied to herself.
“I’m really and truly sorry,” she said, meeting and holding her daughter’s eyes. “I don’t even know how to tell you how sorry I am.” She dashed away tears with the back of her hand. “But I promise I won’t lie to you again.”
Zoe studied Emma’s face long enough to make Emma squirm before she nodded. “And will you promise to listen when I tell you things?”
“Of course. I always listen to . . .”
“No.” Zoe cut her off. “I mean really listen. Even if it’s not something you want to hear.”
“Like?” Emma felt the first stirring of hope. If they could talk this through, surely they could find a way to move forward, to put this behind them. If Zoe could forgive her maybe someday Mackenzie and Adam could, too.
“Like, just because you didn’t want to act when you were a kid doesn’t mean I shouldn’t be allowed to. Acting does something to me. It makes me bigger, stronger. I don’t know, just happier.” Zoe’s arms opened as she spoke. Her knees came away from her chest, her long legs crisscrossed on the cushioned seat as her face grew animated. “That’s how I feel in front of an audience, or a film camera, or even a microphone.”
Emma smiled at Zoe. “I feel the same way. It’s in our blood. I just couldn’t stand being forced to do it.” By people who didn’t seem to care whether she liked it or not.
“But you wouldn’t be forcing me,” Zoe said quietly. “You’d be letting me.”
They studied each other for a few long minutes. Emma knew this was not the end of this conversation, but only the beginning. And it wasn’t as if the hurt she’d inflicted was suddenly going to disappear. There was so much to atone for, so much lost time to try to make up.
“I’m not promising you a film with Eve. But I imagine we can find a way to let you get started in the business in a way we can both live with.” Emma reached for Zoe’s hand hoping that her daughter would allow it. “I might not have the right to ask it right now, but I need you to know how important you are to me. And I need you to forgive me.”
She waited, barely breathing as Zoe accepted her hand.
“Did you ever forgive your mother?” Zoe asked.
She thought about Eve and then about herself. She had no idea why her mother had made the choices she had, had never asked a single question or even tried to understand her. She’d only nursed her own hurts and looked for a way to escape. She thought about her father and what his coming out would mean to Eve. How hard her mother had tried to pretend her marriage was something it wasn’t and could never be. Who was Emma to say that her own reasons were purer?
“No,” Emma said. “I never did.” She grasped her daughter’s hand more tightly. Zoe’s fingers were longer and younger and in some ways even stronger than her own. She thought about what Eve was facing and how she’d chosen to try to use Zoe to soften it. She was not Eve, would never be. “But then I don’t remember her ever asking me to.”
As Serena drew closer Brooks Anderson unfolded his long legs, brushed off the seat of his dress pants, and stood.
Grateful for the years of acting under her belt, she squared her shoulders and raised her chin, moving forward without a single missed step. When she reached him she tilted her head and pretended to look behind him. Reaching down deep she located a teasing tone. “You didn’t bring your wife with you, did you?”
“No.” He had the grace to look embarrassed. “But the old guy next door came out dressed in a really beautiful ball gown and invited me to wait inside.”
“That’s quite a compliment,” she said, settling herself as she might in the first lines of a scene. “Jason Merrimen is a very well-known and highly respected drag queen. He doesn’t invite just anyone in.”
Brooks laughed and she saw him relax a notch.
“You see what you missed by not living in the Village?” she asked.
“I do.” He reached for the grocery bag. “Here, let me take some of that.” He hesitated. “Assuming you have a few minutes to hear an apology and don’t mind if I come in?”
“Why would I mind?” she asked stepping past him. She would play this scene out and send him on his way. And then, well, no need to look any further than that. She took the steps lightly. As she opened the door she did her best to block her memories of the two of them standing in this spot drenched and eager to rip off each other’s clothes. She blushed when she looked at the foyer wall he’d taken her against and thought she saw him doing the same.
She led him into the kitchen. He set the bag on the counter.
“I . . . I understand you spoke to Diana.” His eyes sought hers and she met them evenly.
“Oh, yes. Because you were in the shower and couldn’t come to the phone.” She said this with a combination of wide-eyed innocence and the slightest of shrugs. She would not give him the satisfaction of knowing how much that had hurt.
“Just so you know. I wasn’t expecting her. She took me by surprise when she waltzed into my hotel room.”
She remembered her own surprise when Diana had answered the phone. How her heart had constricted. The agony of embarrassment as she’d realized that she’d fallen into bed with him without first finding out what was really going on. She managed to say nothing only by carrying the ice cream to the fre
ezer then putting the few groceries away as slowly as possible.
She walked back to face him, careful to keep the island between them. She fished beneath the sink for a vase, which she filled with water. She was playing the part of a woman who is not surprised by betrayal. Even in this case it was not actually a stretch. “Imagine my surprise when she made it clear that your marriage was not actually ‘finished.’ I believe that was the word you used?”
He shifted uncomfortably and she wondered what he’d expected. Chest beating? Wailing? “I thought we were finished,” he said a bit sheepishly as if he wasn’t quite sure how they’d gotten their signals crossed. “We agreed to a trial separation. I was ready to file for divorce.”
She noted the word “was” as she reached for the flowers and began to remove the cellophane. She’d known that she’d “lost” if in fact she’d ever been in the running, when she’d heard Diana’s smug voice on the phone. “But you’re not anymore.”
He shook his head slowly. His eyes were filled with what looked like genuine regret. “I left you messages asking you to call me,” he said.
“I know. But there didn’t seem to be any reason to listen or call. It’s clear that whatever this was is over.” It took all of her strength to keep her voice even. She had to keep reminding herself that this was a part she was playing, not her real life at all. She found the scissors and carefully began to cut the stem of the nearest sunflower.
“Before you toss me out, I want you to know something,” he said and she had the feeling that he, too, had been rehearsing his lines.
She nodded but held her features in check. She was, after all, a professional. She was paid large sums of money to do this.
“The choice was never Diana over you. It was what life I was brave enough to live,” he said, taking her by surprise. “I handled it all so badly. Then and now. But I didn’t start things up again in order to take advantage and I never meant to hurt you.”
She closed her eyes for a brief moment under the guise of putting the trimmed flower into the vase. Too late for that.
“The thing is I’ve always admired you, Serena. You’re one of the bravest people I’ve ever known.” He spoke with an obvious sincerity that could not be shrugged off. She was grateful for the role she’d adopted. Because otherwise she might be launching herself into his arms and begging him to reconsider.
She picked up another stem and went about making it shorter.
“You’ve never let anything stop you,” he said. “And even when you get knocked down you get right back up. You’ve never let anyone, not even me, get in the way of your dreams. While I . . .” Brooks gave her a rueful smile. “I didn’t have the guts to turn my back on what was expected of me. Or to see how I stacked up here in New York. I chose the safe and the familiar. I did it back all those years ago.” He shrugged, but not lightly. “And I’m doing it again now. I only wish I had half your courage.”
She put the flower she’d been sawing on in the water. And watched it practically disappear under the surface. “Well, I appreciate your honesty, Brooks. And your . . . admiration.” She reached for another stem to keep her hands busy and so she’d have something else to look at besides the regret that suffused his face and the way he was looking at her lips. As if he was trying to remember how they tasted.
She felt herself begin to weaken. Felt the first prick of tears. No. She raised her chin and made a firm cut into the sunflower. This script might call for flower mutilation, but it did not call for tears. If she deviated she’d be doomed. She would not cry. Not now in front of him. And not later, either.
Buck up, she told herself. Then from what felt like nowhere, Maya Angelou’s words floated into her head and filled her mind: When someone shows you who they are, believe them. The scissors slipped from her hands, clattering to the floor. As she bent to retrieve them it hit her: Brooks had shown her quite clearly who he was, not once but twice. Now he had come out and told her. How could she possibly ignore him?
“Are you all right?” he asked as she stood, frozen, trying to process this revelation.
Yes,” she said as she studied him. It was almost as if she were seeing him for the first time. Brooks had never been the man who could share her dreams or think any bigger than what he’d grown up with. How tightly he’d clung to the life she’d been so desperate to escape.
Serena grasped another stem and began to hack it to bits. She’d spent so many years looking at what she’d lost that she hadn’t paid enough attention to what she’d gained. Then she’d been so grateful that he’d “come back to her” and “chosen her” that she hadn’t asked herself whether she should choose him.
She took a deep breath, felt her lungs fill with air. She imagined the bonds that had held her in thrall to Brooks and stuck in an endless stream of dead-end relationships, breaking apart and falling away.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” He reached out and took away her scissors as if unarming a possibly deranged individual. “You’re, well, are you sure you want those flowers so short?” He held up the one she’d just trimmed. It no longer had a stem of any kind. It was just one big yellow flower face. “I’m afraid if you put this in the vase like that it’ll . . . I don’t know; can flowers drown?”
“Oops,” she said. But as she looked at him she felt freer and lighter than any flower, regardless of its height. For the first time, she saw what she’d never allowed herself to see. Brooks Anderson was not the great love of her life that had been unfairly denied her. He was just a really good-looking man she’d wasted decades pining for, but whom she did not actually love and who could never have shared the life she’d chosen. Like her role tonight, she had played her version of Scarlett O’Hara dreaming of Ashley Wilkes, who had far too little backbone for Scarlett, when there were probably scores of potential, and unmarried, Rhett Butlers who might.
“I kind of hope there’s no flower abuse hotline.” Serena felt almost giddy with relief as she shed all of the roles she’d been playing. She no longer had need of them. She did not understand how this had happened, but she was finally ready to escort Brooks Anderson out of her life, her heart, and her head.
“So,” she said almost gaily as she took him by the arm. “I really appreciate you coming by to explain things to me.” She brought them to a halt in the foyer then reached for the doorknob. “I hope you’ll give my regards to your parents,” she said as she pulled open the door.
“Thank you. I will.” He blinked in surprise when he found himself out on the front stoop. Like someone who’d been watching a video he knew well but that suddenly fast-forwarded to a scene he’d never seen before and hadn’t expected to watch. “Will you be all right?” he asked solicitously.
“Yes, I will,” she said with absolute certainty. “You shouldn’t have any trouble catching a cab over on the corner.” She pointed him in the right direction.
She was careful not to smile too broadly at the relief that coursed through her. She still felt battered and bruised. But she was miraculously free of her obsession with Brooks Anderson.
She filled her lungs with another breath of heavy summer air and found it delightful. “You and Diana be sure and have yourselves a nice life, you hear?” she called after Brooks.
She stood on her stoop overlooking her neighborhood in the city that she loved. She was going to have that glass of wine in the garden. And then maybe the ice cream for dinner. After that she’d get a good night’s sleep.
She’d think about Emma and Mackenzie tomorrow. After all, as Margaret Mitchell had once famously pointed out, “Tomorrow is another day.”
Forty-one
The day was half gone, the air thick and sticky with humidity as Mackenzie emerged from the subway station at Sixth and Fourteenth and made her way toward Parsons The New School for Design. At the corner of Fifth she lingered in front of the University Center. At Thirteenth she peered into the lobby of the Sh
eila C. Johnson Design Center. New buildings dotted the historic Greenwich campus and she marveled at how much had changed. She’d attended her first classes weak kneed with fear and anticipation. To this day she did not understand how she’d not only made it into Parsons, but graduated from it. Graduates like Donna Karan, Marc Jacobs, and Tom Ford had left their marks on the fashion world. Mackenzie had spent the vast majority of her “career” designing shoestring costumes for a tiny theater in an even tinier town.
With no destination in mind, she wandered through Washington Square Park and the surrounding NYU campus, which was part and parcel of the historic neighborhoods it had been built within. She’d fallen in love with New York in those years and especially with the Village, which had been an intimate if grungier place back then filled with mom-and-pop stores, hole-in-the-wall restaurants, cafés, and clubs.
When they had the money they’d hit Cafe Wha?, the Village Gate, the Blue Note, the Bitter End. It had been a heady time. But as much as she’d loved living in the city that did not, in fact, ever sleep it had been the unlikely friendship with Emma—then Amelia—and Serena, both of whom were so much more beautiful and self-assured than Mackenzie had ever dreamed of being, that had made her feel as if she belonged there. And now that friendship had been trampled. They were both lost to her.
Her steps slowed in front of a small triangular-shaped garden at the apex of two sharply angled streets. She leaned against a section of wrought iron gate remembering how she had felt as a part of their inner circle, how accepted, how unexpectedly validated. Adam had been the icing on her cake of happiness.
Even the years of struggling to find a way to try to break into the fashion world, while Adam acted and directed plays in tiny theaters so far off Broadway that they might as well have been on the moon, had been invigorating. For a time everything had seemed so bright and possible. Once she had not only welcomed change, she had sought it out, done everything in her power to initiate it. And then she’d gotten pregnant and gone scurrying back to the small town she’d fought so hard to get out of. And she’d dragged Adam with her.
