A Perfect Life: A Novel

by Danielle Steel

  Blaise looked somber as she put some research about the British prime minister in her briefcase and got ready to leave for the day.

  “Salima called,” Mark told her as Blaise stood up and grabbed her coat. Salima was Blaise’s nineteen-year-old daughter. She had been away at school since she was eight. Blaise felt guilty about it at times, but they had a good relationship anyway. Salima was a kind, gentle girl, who was proud of her mother and respected the determined way she worked. Blaise couldn’t be any other way. She loved her daughter, but she could never have been a full-time hands-on mother, and had never pretended to be, nor tried. Her assistant talked to her more often than Blaise. Mark loved her honesty about it. Blaise never tried to pretend she was something she wasn’t. And her maternal instincts had never been as acute as her work ethic.

  “How is she?” Blaise asked, with a worried look, referring to her daughter.

  “She was very upset about the shooting at UCLA.”

  “Who isn’t?” Blaise knew that her daughter shared her own concerns about violence on campuses and gun control. And Blaise was suddenly grateful that Salima attended a small community college in Massachusetts, and wasn’t likely to be caught in a tragedy like the one at UCLA. “I’ll try to call her tonight,” but they both knew that she would only place the call after she finished her research for the segment the next day. It was how she operated, and Salima knew it about her too. Work always came first.

  Blaise left her office then, and got into the town car waiting for her outside, provided by the network. It was in her contract, and she had had the same driver for years, a kind-hearted Jamaican man with a warm smile. He drove her to the office, and back, every day.

  “Good evening, Tully,” she said easily, as he turned to smile at her. He liked working for her, she was always reasonable and polite, never made crazy demands on him, and never acted like the star she was. She could have been a real monster, but she wasn’t. She was thoughtful, hard-working, and modest. She was an avid sports fan, and they talked baseball scores in spring and summer, football in winter, basketball, or hockey. She was a rabid Rangers fan, and so was he.

  “Evening, Miss McCarthy, I see you’re going to London tomorrow. Going to interview the queen?” he teased her.

  “No, just the prime minister.” She smiled at him in the rearview mirror.

  “I figured it was something like that.” He loved driving her, and watching her on TV. They talked about the shooting at UCLA then. He was an intelligent man, and she was always interested in his point of view. And like everyone else, he had a lot to say about violence in the country today. He had two kids in college himself.

  He dropped her off at her Fifth Avenue apartment twenty minutes later, and the doorman touched his hat as she walked in. She rode up to the penthouse, let herself into her apartment, and glanced into the refrigerator at the salad and sliced chicken the housekeeper had left for her. Blaise led a quiet life, and with the exception of important benefits, political or network events, she rarely went out and had few friends. She had no time to maintain friendships, and whenever she was home and not traveling, she worked. Friends didn’t understand that, and eventually fell by the wayside. She had a few old friends left over from the early days but never saw them, and there hadn’t been a man in her life in four years.

  Her first big love had been her only one, when she was still in Seattle, where she had grown up. Her mother had been a schoolteacher, and her father a butcher. She had gone to City College, and they had led a simple life, and she had no siblings. There hadn’t been much money growing up, and she never thought about it. She hadn’t dreamed of success then, fame or riches, and had only thought of following her father’s advice to work at something she loved. And she found that, once she started reporting the news. She was twenty-three years old then, and Bill was a cameraman, who spent most of his time on location, sent by the network. She was still doing weather then, her first job on TV. They fell madly in love, and she married him three months after she met him. He was the kindest man she’d ever known, they were crazy about each other, and he spent most of his time reporting from war zones. Six months later he was dead, shot by a sniper, and a part of her had died with him. From then on, all she had cared about was work. She took refuge in it, it grounded her, and gave her something to live for when Bill was gone. She had never loved any man that way again, and in time she realized that their relationship probably wouldn’t have survived her career either. Her meteoric rise to success in the twenty-three years since then had pretty much precluded all else.

  She met Harry Stern when she was working in San Francisco, two years after Bill’s death. She interviewed him when he bought the local baseball team. He was twenty-two years older than she was, had already had four wives, and was one of the most important venture capitalists in Silicon Valley, and he had done everything possible to woo her, and was fascinated by how aloof she was. She told him she was too busy working to date. And she knew that her heart still belonged to Bill. Harry didn’t care. He thought she was the smartest, most beautiful girl he’d ever met. It took him a year to convince her, wining, dining, and spoiling her every chance he got. There was no man more charming than Harry, and even now, at sixty-nine, he was just as handsome, and he and Blaise were good friends. He had had two wives since her, and had a fatal attraction to young girls.

  Six months after they married, Blaise got her big break with the network in New York. It hadn’t even been a debate for her, or a struggle to make the decision. She had told Harry from the beginning that her career came first. She had always been honest with him. She loved him, but she was never going to sacrifice an important opportunity for a man, and she hadn’t. She had accepted the offer from the network while Harry was on a trip, and he came home to the news that Blaise was moving to New York. They were bicoastal from then on, and it worked for a time. She came home to his palatial house in Hillsborough on weekends, when she could get away. Or he flew to New York. She got pregnant with Salima three months after moving to New York, and didn’t slow down for a minute. She worked until the day Salima was born, left for the hospital from her office, and was back on air in three weeks. Harry flew in on his plane for the delivery, and just made it. But he already had five children from his previous wives, and never pretended to be an attentive father, and still wasn’t. He saw Salima once or twice a year now and had had two more children since. He had eight in all, and he regarded it as the price he paid for marrying young women. They all wanted kids. He was happy to oblige them, and support them handsomely, but he was an absentee father at best. Salima had been disappointed by it when she was younger, but Blaise explained that it was just the way he was. And Blaise loved her daughter, but there were always a dozen projects and people vying for her time. Salima understood, it was how she had grown up, and she worshipped her mother.

  The marriage to Harry had lasted five years after they became bicoastal, and then they both gave up. The relationship had dwindled to nothing by then, except for a warm friendship and occasional late-night calls between California and New York. There had been no hostility, no arguments, and they waited five more years to get divorced, when Harry wanted to get married again. Until then, he claimed that still being married to Blaise kept him out of trouble. Until he found a supermodel, who convinced him to get divorced and marry her. Blaise had gone to their wedding, and over the years she had wanted nothing from him, except child support for their daughter. They had been legally married for eleven years, but really only lived together full time as man and wife for less than one. And Blaise was thirty-eight when they got divorced.

  Her relationships had been inconsistent from then on, as she flew around the world doing specials, and her career continued to climb. There had been a brief affair with a baseball star, which had been silly, they had nothing in common. A romance with a politician, which elicited considerable interest in the press. An important businessman, a famous actor. There was no one she cared about, and she never had ti
me. The affairs would end, and they would move on to someone else before she even noticed. And she didn’t care. They were window dressing in her life, and a distraction, and nothing more.

  Her last affair, at forty-one, had been different. When Andrew Weyland took over as their news anchor, he was movie-star handsome and had every woman in the building going weak at the knees. As far as anyone knew, he was married, and Blaise had been the first one he told he was getting divorced. He asked her to keep it quiet, so it didn’t wind up in the tabloids, and literally days after he shared that with her, he asked her out. She hesitated only for a minute, and although she wasn’t immune to his looks either, what she loved best about him was how smart he was. Andrew was brilliant, funny, witty, he had a light touch about everything except love. And their relationship had rapidly grown intense. He was the most seductive, appealing, breathtaking man she had ever met. She fell head over heels in love with him, and when he proposed to her a year after they started dating, she said yes, without hesitation or regret. Even Salima loved him, he had a wonderful way with everyone, even kids. And with both of them in the same business, and dedicated to their careers, it seemed like the perfect match. He was kind and understanding, and even funny, about everything she did. Where other men had been annoyed by her intensity about her work, Andrew admired it, never complained about how busy she was, and gave her great advice.

  Blaise knew, during the year she went out with him, that he still shared a house in Greenwich with his wife and children. He often went there on weekends to see his kids, and had reasonably explained that until the house sold, they were living separate lives under one roof. He had taken an apartment in the city, and most of the time, he stayed with her. And she was away a lot of the time anyway, so the weekends he spent in Greenwich with his children didn’t bother her. She understood. And only once, when they started talking marriage, and she questioned him about the details of the divorce, and how advanced they were toward the final settlement, did she see a shadow cross his eyes. It was the first clue she had that something was amiss. The first of many. From there the truth unraveled slowly, a lie here, a small discovery there, like a surprise ball one gives to children, where the prizes fall out one by one. But in this case, they weren’t prizes, they were lies.

  Almost everyone at the network had long since figured out that Andrew wasn’t getting a divorce, he was still very much married to his wife, who had no idea what he was up to with Blaise. In fact, she knew as little as Blaise, who had been so busy with work, and traveling so much, that it had never occurred to her to doubt him, or look beyond what he said. His explanation for not having seen a lawyer yet, when she discovered that no papers had been filed, was that they were only “inconsequential administrative details” he was planning to take care of but hadn’t yet. There was no divorce. He was simply cheating on his wife and having an affair with Blaise. And while Blaise remained discreet about their relationship for over a year, so as not to jeopardize his “settlement,” he was telling his wife that he was staying in town to work. He had the best of both worlds. The services of a detective told Blaise all she needed to know. Andrew was spending his weekends with his wife and children, and his weeks with her. His friends in Greenwich considered them a happy couple, and his wife had thought that he and Blaise were only friends at work.

  “And how were you going to pull off getting married?” Blaise asked him when she learned the truth. “Tell her that you were going away for a weekend? Commit bigamy?” Blaise was heartbroken. Eventually someone talked, and it wound up in the tabloids, with photographs of his wife and children. Blaise got labeled a home-wrecker and spent three months dodging the press while they stalked her outside her apartment and as soon as she left work. Andrew was a liar and a cheater. The relationship she had believed in and relied on was a total fraud. The man she loved and trusted didn’t exist. She had opened up her heart and fallen hard, but Andrew had never planned to get divorced. He had conned her all along, and she had bought it hook, line, and sinker. She had believed him completely. It never dawned on her that he was lying, because she wouldn’t have. And when Harry read about it, he called her to tell her how sorry he was. He knew she was a decent person, and it wasn’t like her to go out with married men. When she ended the affair, she cried for months. She was devastated.

  The whole affair had lasted sixteen months, and she had been so shaken by it that there had been no one since. She liked to say now that she was single by choice. She had no desire to risk her heart again. And worst of all, he still called. He had never apologized for the lies he told her, but he sent her e-mails and texts telling her how much he loved her, how much he missed her, but never how sorry he was. And he spent a good two years after she left him, trying to get her back into bed, knowing it would make her vulnerable to him again. She was smart enough not to fall for it. She still missed him, and what he had appeared to be, but she never believed his lies again. He still claimed that he and Mary Beth were about to get divorced, which was clearly a lie. And after her, she knew that he had cheated with several other women. Apparently, his wife was willing to forgive him anything. Blaise wasn’t, and she only had one near slip when they wound up staying at the same hotel in London, and she agreed to have a drink with him. She had too much to drink on an empty stomach, and almost fell for the irresistible charm again. And at the last minute, she remembered who he really was and ran. She would never have admitted it to him, but she was lonely, and often thought of the good times they’d had, and something still stirred in her when she heard from him, wanting to believe that some part of it had been real. But in her more lucid moments, she knew that nothing was. Andrew Weyland was a liar to the core. It had been a relief when he had switched to another network and moved to L.A. And of course his wife and kids went with him. He claimed that after Blaise ended it with him, he no longer had the heart or the motivation to pursue a divorce. He made it sound as though his not getting divorced was her fault, which wasn’t true either. Andrew lied as he breathed.

  She still heard from him from time to time, and in the absence of anyone else in her life, sometimes she talked to him. He was familiar if nothing else, and she could always talk to him about the network. He was smart and funny, and she was at no risk of falling for him again. It was just nice to hear his voice no matter what he said. And foolish as she felt about it at times, he filled a void that no one else had since they broke up. And invariably she was depressed after they spoke. She felt like a fool and a loser for falling for his lies during their affair. She’d been good enough to sleep with and cheat on his wife with, but nothing more. He had used her, just as he did everyone in his life. And it had been just bad enough, and painful enough, to make her shy away from getting involved with anyone again. Once again, as she always had before, she found refuge and solace in her work.

  Blaise walked into her office at home and turned on the lights. She left her briefcase next to her desk, went to grab the salad in the kitchen, and brought it back to her desk to go over her research for the next day. It was exactly what she had asked for, and she was engrossed in it, as she planned her editorial for the morning segment. And by the time she glanced at her watch, it was ten o’clock. Too late to call Salima, since she always went to bed early, in her peaceful country life. Blaise felt guilty, as she walked into the kitchen to put her plate in the sink. She knew she should have called her and promised herself to call the next day before she left for London. Somehow there was just never enough time, except for work.

  She stood thinking of her daughter, as she looked out at the view of Central Park. It was a beautiful apartment that she had bought nine years before, when she and Harry had finally gotten divorced, and given up their brownstone on East Seventy-fourth. The penthouse on Fifth Avenue suited her to perfection, a big spacious living room with a handsome view, her comfortable bedroom done in pale pink silk, the home office she spent most of her time in, a huge bathroom in white marble with an enormous tub, and a dressing room. There
was a second bedroom down the hall from her suite, which was Salima’s room, whenever she was home from school. There was a state-of-the-art black granite kitchen, with a dining room big enough to give dinner parties in, which she never did and never used, and behind the kitchen two maids’ rooms, which had been unoccupied since she’d moved in. All she needed was a housekeeper to come daily—Blaise didn’t want anyone living there with her. She was used to her solitude and privacy. She had been willing to give that up when she was planning to marry Andrew, and all of that seemed light-years away now. He had been out of her life, except for his random phone calls, for four years.

  The apartment had been photographed by every major decorating magazine when she did it. And nine years later it looked just as perfect and pristine. She was hardly ever there. Blaise lived in a seemingly perfect world, in comfort and luxury, far from the simple life that had begun in Seattle. She was famous, celebrated, successful in a competitive milieu, where few people lasted, and careers usually ended early. But by sheer grit and talent and perseverance, Blaise had risen to the summit and stayed on top. It was an enviable life, one that others longed for and dreamed of, and would have snatched from her if they could.

  What they didn’t see was the solitude, the loneliness, the private moments devoid of people to love and support her. They had never felt the betrayals she had lived, at the hands of men like Andrew Weyland, or the false friends who had fallen by the wayside, the people who had wanted to ride on her coattails or use her in some way. It was in fact a lonely life, and she smiled when she went back to her desk, and glanced at a magazine Mark had marked for her and slipped into her briefcase. It was a brief profile of her in some magazine that had done a puff piece on her. Above a photograph of her they had gotten from the network was the heading in bold letters: A Perfect Life. And that’s what it appeared to be. Only Blaise herself knew different. It was no more perfect than anyone else’s life, and in many ways it was harder. Every day was a constant fight so as not to lose what she had, or the ground she had fought so hard to gain. She was alone on the mountaintop, and had been in hotel rooms all over the planet, sick in places no one would want to go even if they were well. And she spent her life getting on and off planes. No one really knew what went with the life they envied, or the price she’d paid. It was far from a perfect life, as Blaise knew only too well, but no matter how hard or how solitary, Blaise wouldn’t have traded her life for anything in the world.