Captive Hearts

by Harper Bliss

  “We do this together,” she said, and I couldn’t argue with her.

  We pace around the house as though we’ve taken some nervous energy drug until the chime of the doorbell announces it’s show time. This is it. I inhale deeply and open the door to Miranda. She has brought a bunch of gorgeous dahlias and a bottle of wine, because Miranda is the kind of person who can not be invited somewhere and not bring two courtesy gifts at the very least.

  “This is so nice of you, Alice,” she says. “I do hope a new tradition is born.” She walks into the living room and hugs her daughter. “I feel like I never see you anymore. You do still live in London, don’t you?” she asks Joy playfully. “Or do they work you too hard at your new job?”

  I serve nibbles and red wine while we chit-chat in the lounge. After much debate, Joy and I agreed to tell her after we’ve eaten.

  “Why not just tell her as soon as we sit down?” Joy asked. “I’m not sure I can hold my nerve for so long. We will have to pretend we’re just acquaintances, Alice. Do you know how hard that is?”

  “It’s nothing compared to actually telling her,” I replied, which shut Joy up quickly.

  I can tell how nervous Joy is, though, by how she chatters ceaselessly. About the guy she sits across from at work and how his beard is untrimmed and gross and so passé, and how Marcy and Ben are trying to get pregnant but have had no luck just yet, and how a friend named Rupert she has mentioned a few times to me has come out at work and on and on.

  If she keeps this up, Miranda will grow suspicious very quickly, I think. But Miranda just seems to enjoy being in her daughter’s company and then I’m about to conclude that maybe this is how they are together—Joy talking, Miranda listening—when it dawns on me that we’ve finished our meal and I rise to clear the plates.

  “I’ll help you,” Joy says, and we both grab Miranda’s plate at the same time, our combined nervousness filling the room, and we both let go at the same time as well, leaving Miranda with a puzzled look on her face.

  After we clear the table and I’ve poured Miranda a generous helping of wine, I look at Joy and nod. We’ve agreed that she’ll do the actual talking and I’ll jump in when needed and try to answer the questions that Miranda will surely have.

  “Mum, I, er, we, have something to tell you.”

  I can’t look at Miranda so I focus my gaze on a spot on the wall behind her.

  “You do?” From the corner of my eye, I see Miranda twirl the stem of her wine glass between her fingers. I can’t look at Joy, either.

  “In Quinta, Alice and I got to know each other a lot better. We hadn’t seen each other since before I left for the US, and, well, what I’m trying to say is that we”—she pauses to quickly look at me—“we’ve fallen in love, Mum. Alice and I are in love.”

  Miranda straightens in her chair and she looks at Joy, then at me, then back to Joy, an incredulous smile splitting her face. “Excuse me, darling. Can you repeat that, please? You and Alice have fallen in love?” Her tone is high-pitched, her voice shaky. “In love?” she repeats, then starts chuckling. Her chuckle turns into a loud cackle and then into a full-blown bout of uncontrollable laughter. Joy and I are too tense to look at each other—and I’m too perplexed by Miranda’s reaction to move a muscle. I guess it’s easy enough to laugh it off as a silly, grotesque joke.

  “I’m all for a good joke, darling, but this is just too far out to appreciate,” Miranda says when the laughter has died down.

  “Mum, it’s not a joke. I realise it must be hard to take in, to even understand, but this is for real. We’ve been seeing each other for a few weeks now.” Joy tries to convince her.

  “What do you mean you’ve been seeing each other?” For the first time since this conversation has started, Miranda looks at me. Her gaze is hard and unflinching. “What does she mean, Alice?” Her direct address makes my stomach do a flip-flop, but she doesn’t give me time to reply, because she refocuses her attention on her daughter. “You see, darling, the reason why this must be a joke is because this is Alice you’re talking about. Alice hasn’t shown any romantic interest in anyone in fifteen years, and—just a little detail—if she were a lesbian, I, as her best friend, would surely know, don’t you think?” Anger rises in Miranda’s voice. I take it as my turn to say something.

  “Miranda.” There’s a hitch in my voice and the middle part of her name comes out as an exasperated huff. “Though everything you just said about me used to be true, it’s no longer valid.”

  “Oh, so seeing my daughter again has suddenly turned you gay, has it? You’re a big old lesbian now. Look, I see what this is. It’s menopause. I’ve been there, Alice, and it can be brutal. Suddenly, you find yourself questioning your very sanity. And you”—she turns to Joy again—“you’ve only ever displayed a very questionable taste in women. This is taking it a bit too far, granted, but, I can see that, too. I can understand how this has come about. How you’ve both fooled yourself into believing this is actually something to bother me with.” She holds up her hands. “Well, here’s my suggestion. I’m going to pretend that this conversation never happened. As soon as I walk out of this door, it will be erased from my memory. And then I will wait… I presume a few weeks, but if it takes two or three months to get this madness out of your system, then I’ll just display more patience. Because I have time. I will wait until this passes and, meanwhile, you will not refer to it, neither to this evening nor this conversation. This might be real in your… hormone-crippled brains, but it certainly is not real in my life. There. That’s all I have to say.”

  “Mum, come on.” I see a tear slip down Joy’s cheek. “I know this—”

  “Joy, darling.” Miranda’s voice is unwavering. “Just stop. I’m leaving. And I’m not leaving this house with images of my daughter and my best friend”—she curls her fingers into air quotes—“‘falling in love’ in Portugal in my head. Do you understand me?”

  “No,” Joy shouts. “I will not have you do this, Mum.”

  I put a hand on Joy’s arm to calm her down and Miranda’s gaze fastens on it. She shoves her chair back and gets up. “And I will not listen to one more second of this utter nonsense.”

  “Let’s all calm down,” I offer, but I see Joy is seething with held-back rage, and Miranda clearly doesn’t have a full grasp on what is happening, on how a cosy Friday evening turned into this travesty. I understand them both.

  “I’m leaving, and I stand by my words.” Miranda takes a pace in Joy’s direction and puts a hand on her shoulder before kissing her on the top of the head. “Come by the house this weekend, darling. I have clean laundry for you.” She stands still for a moment to look Joy over, then sighs. When she turns to me, she says, “Thank you for dinner, Alice.” Her face is as blank as I’ve ever seen it. Miranda is always full of chatter, her features always brimming with emotions. This has hit her hard, and she has chosen denial to use as a coping mechanism. If I were in her shoes, I’d probably do the same.

  “Fucking laundry,” Joy hisses after Miranda has left. “That’s what she says to me?”

  “If this was the right thing to do, it sure as hell didn’t feel like it,” I say, ignoring Joy’s rage—and probably not making it any better with my words. I just stand there, grasping the back of a chair with my hands until my knuckles go white. I can’t even imagine kissing Joy after facing Miranda like this, let alone taking her to bed. It’s as though confronting Miranda has made me realise—really see—who Joy is exactly. A girl I met when she was a four-hours-old baby. A baby born after her mother and I had forged our own bond. Miranda, who believed in me and took me under her wing. Miranda, whom, I believe, I have never let down as long as I have known her. And look at me now. What must she think of me now?

  “Alice.” Out of nowhere, Joy is by my side. “Don’t let what she said get into your head. Don’t forget why we told her in the first place.” She touches two fingers to my arm, and I find myself shrinking away—that’s how disgusted I am with
myself. Because, I think, what if she’s right? What if Miranda’s words were the exact truth of why Joy and I are together? She’s an intelligent woman, who knows much more about relationships than I do. Maybe I did just want a bright young thing to stave off a looming midlife crisis. And Miranda is doing me a huge courtesy by offering to pretend my mistake never happened.

  “I’m sorry, Joy.” I back away from her, only a fraction but enough to let her know that I can’t bear to be touched right now. “I think I need some space to process this.”

  “No way, Alice.” Joy pulls back a chair and sits. “If I leave now I know exactly what’s going to happen. You’ll get yourself into a state, you’ll start panicking again, and fear will take over, and you’ll make a decision you’ll regret.” She lets her face fall into her hands, then looks back up. “I also need you, Alice. I need you by my side. I’m not going anywhere.”

  I glance at beautiful, stubborn, enraged Joy and images of her life blink on and off in my mind. These images might be based on pictures Miranda has shown me over the years, or on times I actually saw Joy, I don’t know. But I see her in her first school uniform. I see her doing her homework at Miranda’s desk when she was seven. I see her sitting at the dinner table as a sullen teenager. I see many things, but what I don’t see is a woman who is my lover. Yet, I love her. And I can’t help but wonder exactly where down the line I lost myself so much that I couldn’t see what was happening? When I was gripped by a madness so foreign to me it turned me into its slave. But this is life, not some fairy tale. Miranda isn’t an evil witch whose plans we must thwart. She’s Joy’s mother. The person who loves her most in the world.

  “We were wrong to do this, Joy.” I want to crouch down next to her, kneel by her side, and tell her everything will be all right, but it would be as great a lie as the ones I’ve been feeding myself since that first kiss in Portugal. I should have stopped it there and then. Or at least should have had the wherewithal not to get involved with her in London, to have let it fade into a brooding memory—because that’s all it was meant to be. “So wrong.”

  “Alice, I beg of you, don’t do this. Not now.” Joy has buried her face in her hands again. “Don’t be a coward now.”

  “It’s not cowardice. It’s realism.”

  Joy shoots up from her chair. “I don’t need this now, so fuck you, Alice. Take the weekend. Take however fucking long you want. Call me when you want to… to feel alive again.” Tears stream down her cheeks. “This is bloody unbelievable.”

  Instead of saying her name, or taking the slightest action to keep her from leaving, I just stand there. Immobile and inert. I stand there like the coward she says I am.

  After I hear my front door lock with a loud, offended bang for the second time that evening, I start to cry. I cry the way I’ve only cried twice in my life: when Alan left me for someone so much younger, better, and more capable as a wife; and when Paul passed away and my best friend, and her fifteen-year-old daughter were so grief-stricken I couldn’t bear the unfairness of it all.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Saturday is dreary and wretched and, in an action so unlike me I find myself staring at the ceiling instead of slipping into a restorative, forgetful sleep, I take to my bed in the middle of the afternoon. Normally, I would go to the office, but I’ve managed to taint the safest haven I have in this world with my foolish actions as well. Although there is no chance of Miranda being there on a Saturday afternoon—she stopped working weekends when she turned forty-five—I fear I might see her there nonetheless, that her words would linger and be amplified in the corridors of the building where we’ve built our professional life together.

  So, instead, I swing my legs out of bed, contemplate calling Joy for the millionth time since she left last night, but decide I need some more time—just a little—and take a shower. Then, I walk. I don’t care that it’s raining. If anything, it’s penance for the ghastly acts I’ve engaged in. And then, to punish me even more, a whole other set of images are projected into my mind. Joy topless. Joy pushing herself out of the pool. Joy leaning in to kiss me. Joy’s hair tickling my belly while her face is buried between my legs. And then, to make matters even worse, images of me. Of me and Joy smiling, of just me grinning like an idiot. Of me smiling the sort of smile I’m not even sure I ever managed before Joy’s arrival in Portugal. Of me being not-me.

  Because I have no idea who I am anymore. Am I hard-working, responsible, decent Alice? Or am I lustful… joyful Alice? Or am I both? The pair of them don’t seem to go together very well. And then I think of the question Joy asked me the weekend before: is it a choice between me and my mother now? That was not the right question to ask, however. The right question, the one that’s been on my mind ever since I realised I had fallen for Joy is: when will I be ready to choose me? Will I ever be capable?

  I walk along the streets of London, of this city that is such a part of me, and think of the other thing Joy said: short of running away together, telling Miranda is the only option if we want to be happy. Then my mind stops short at thoughts of Joy again. At the incredibly bright ray of sunshine she has shone into my life. How, from the dark recesses of my subconscious, she has unearthed a woman with true, valid desires, a woman who wants more from life than what she allowed herself. It’s as though Joy has transported some of the Portugal sun with her, as though she soaked so much of it up when she was a child, that she travels with it wherever she goes.

  My stomach starts growling because I haven’t eaten anything apart from a few bites of chicken last night, so I go into a pub near Covent Garden. I thank a man who is friendly enough to hold the door open for me and I stare straight into a face I would recognise anywhere, anytime, no matter the amount of wrinkles that have accumulated, and the vast distance his hairline has receded: the face of my ex-husband.

  “Alice,” he says.

  “Christ,” I mutter, “Alan.” As though saying each other’s name will make this less awkward.

  “It’s been a while.” he says.

  Quite the understatement, I think. “It has. How have you been?” I couldn’t be less interested in the physical—let alone emotional—well-being of the man who left me, but it’s that pesky ingrained politeness that just won’t leave me be.

  “Good. And you? My goodness, it really has been ages.” We stand there, with the door still half-open, until he lets the knob slip from his hand and it falls shut behind me. “I was just leaving, but I have time for a drink. What do you say?”

  Say no, I tell myself. By all means, say no. “Of course,” I say, because with Alan, the old Alice thrived. We never had children, but another person was birthed while we were married: this version of me that I’m now so desperately trying to cling on to. The one who’s so adamant to push Joy away.

  “Splendid. Why don’t you sit down and I’ll get us a drink. Earl Grey tea?” he asks, presumptuously.

  “I’ll have a glass of red wine, please.” I take a good look at his face while I make my request. Despite the extra wrinkles and the hair loss, he looks good for a man of his age. His posture is straight-backed, and there’s no sign of a paunch beneath his sports jacket. Yet, the mere thought of waking up with a man like him—the way I would have done if we hadn’t divorced—chills me to my core.

  Alan regards me with those heavy-lidded eyes of his, as if to say: are you sure you want to drink an alcoholic beverage at this time of the day. “Coming right up.”

  When he returns and deposits our drinks on the table, I’m mostly baffled by how much I don’t care about learning anything about his life. Not because it’s too painful—on the contrary. Time has done its bit. My wounds have healed and all the scar tissue has, in fact, disintegrated. He’s just a man sitting across from me. And, if he’s anything to me, he’s a glimpse into the future I could have had. We could be sitting in this pub as husband and wife. A completely legitimate couple of whom no one would ask themselves any questions. Not like when I’m out with Joy and I’m always
a little ill at ease. But at what cost does it come? I wonder. What price am I willing to pay to appear conventional, to avoid upsetting complete strangers, people who know absolutely nothing about my life?

  “Still going strong at Jones & McAllister?” he asks.

  “Business is thriving.” As I say the words, I can’t help but wonder what I’m doing sitting in this touristy pub with my ex-husband, a man who sparks zero emotions within me, when I could be spending the weekend with a woman whom I love. A woman who, compared to this man that I married and intended to spend the rest of my life with, has given me ten times more pleasure in a few weeks than he did in years. “Alan, I’m very sorry. Thank you for the wine, but I just realised I have to be somewhere. It slipped my mind. It was good seeing you. I hope you and Sheryl are well.” I push myself out of the booth and hold out my hand.

  Perplexed, he takes it in his and gives it a limp shake.

  “Goodbye,” I say and hurry out of the pub, already stretching out my arm to hail a cab. Alan was not a bad man. Our marriage was conventional, proper, something both our parents and all of our friends and colleagues could approve of. It was passionate for about five minutes. And for the longest time, I believed it was all I wanted in life. When I lost it, I was shattered by the loss of something I was taught to desire. But the main reason why I never had much interest in investing myself fully in another affair with a man my age—someone deemed appropriate for me—is because I, honestly, couldn’t be bothered. If that was it, then what was the point? I never wanted another Alan. And other Alans were all I saw, until Joy got out of that yellow Mini in the Algarve and made my world spin on its axis.

  Besides, if my husband can leave me for a younger woman, why can’t I, a free, single woman, be with one? But this is hardly a feminist, or even a fairness issue. Not because I know that life isn’t always fair, but because it’s so much more than that. It’s the new zest for life I’ve felt coursing through my veins. It’s watching Joy sleep peacefully on her back, obliviously, and thinking: I will always be here for you. I will never hurt you. I want you to reach the maximum potential of happiness in your life. I love you. I want you.