Heartstopper

by Joy Fielding

  “Oh, God. Oh, God.”

  No, don’t be silly. Calm down. You see what you’re doing? You’re getting yourself all worked up. This isn’t about porn. This isn’t about being sold into slavery. This is about a bunch of stupid kids being even more stupid than usual. This is about knocking you down a peg or two. It’s about being jealous and small-minded and angry because you wouldn’t come across. It’s about seeing what you’re made of, a rite of passage, a hazing you have to go through to get accepted into the club.

  Not that she wanted anything to do with any of them anymore. As soon as she got out of here, as soon as she got home, she was going to tell her mother she was ready to move back to Rochester. In fact, if this was a dream—and she still had hopes that’s what it was—then obviously this was exactly the message it was trying to impart: that it was time to leave Torrance, that they’d overstayed their welcome, that it was time to cut their losses and run.

  “Please let me wake up,” she whispered under her breath.

  She returned to the cot. Once more she closed her eyes, although she didn’t lie down. Think pleasant thoughts, she told herself. Think about that bikini you saw in that little shop in South Beach, the black one with the tiny blue bows, the one your mother said was too expensive, except that you heard her telling the salesgirl to put it aside, that she’d come back for it later. So she was probably saving it as a surprise for her birthday, which was on July the first, July the first being a big deal in Canada, sort of like the Fourth of July in America.

  She liked Canada, Megan decided, going with the random flow of her thoughts. Not that she’d seen very much of it. Only Toronto, which she loved because it was so beautiful and there was so much to do there—the CN Tower and the Science Centre and the theater district—and all of it right across the lake from Rochester. Just last year, they’d taken the ferry there one Saturday morning, toured the dinosaur exhibit at the Royal Ontario Museum that afternoon, had a wonderful meal at a celebrity-frequented restaurant called Sotto Sotto, where they’d actually seen Kiefer Sutherland dining with Ethan Hawke—Kiefer was much cuter than Ethan, who was way too thin and looked like he could use a good bath—then taken in the latest touring production of Les Misérables, before returning by ferry to Rochester the following day. They’d had such a good time, she remembered. Of course that was before her father met Kerri Franklin in an Internet chat room, before he’d talked Sandy into moving the family down to Florida. If only she could hop on that ferry now, Megan thought. If only she could get the hell away from here.

  Where was she?

  Her stomach rumbled, and she wondered how long it had been since she’d last eaten. “I’m getting hungry, guys,” she called out. “I think the joke’s gone on long enough, don’t you?”

  But nobody answered.

  Despite her best intentions and stubborn resolve, Megan lowered her head to the cot and cried.

  THIRTY-THREE

  For God’s sake, stop crying,” John pleaded angrily, trying to keep what remained of his temper in check. After all, he was the aggrieved party, not his wife. He wasn’t the one who’d drunk herself into a—he wished he could say stupor—state of hysteria. He wasn’t the one who’d embarrassed them both publicly, airing their dirty little secret—all right, his dirty little secret, and was it really a secret if everybody already knew it?—in the middle of the most popular restaurant/bar in town. He wasn’t the one who’d been sick in the car on the way home, then sick again as soon as she’d walked through the door. Hadn’t he cleaned it up, for God’s sake? Hadn’t he bitten his tongue and refused to take the bait when she’d called him a bastard, an adulterer, a fat pig? Hadn’t he refrained from putting his foot through the television when she’d stumbled into the bedroom and turned it on full blast? He was the very model of restraint, for God’s sake, he thought, pacing back and forth in front of the bed. “What the hell are you crying about?” he shouted over the noise of the TV.

  “I’m crying because of the way you treat me,” she shouted back. She was sitting on the bed, her back against the headboard, one leg stretched across the bedspread, the other foot reaching for the floor, the front of her blouse open and disheveled, her normally lush auburn hair hanging limply, her mascara outlining the flow of her tears in black.

  “The way I treat you?”

  “Everybody knows about your affair with Kerri Franklin.”

  “Well, if they didn’t, they certainly do now.” John unbuttoned his navy sports jacket, the jacket he kept for special occasions. And tonight had started out very special indeed. The spontaneous burst of applause that had greeted him at the school auditorium, his daughter’s terrific performance in the play, the impromptu celebration at Chester’s that followed. Everything had been going along great, until Pauline had ordered one drink too many, and the little barbs she’d been tossing his way all evening became more pointed, the veiled references less hidden. Both Avery Peterson and Lenny Fromm had sensed disaster lurking and exited the premises as quickly and graciously as they could. Rita had tried to deflect the escalating animosity with a barrage of inane banter. Eventually Pauline had settled into a morose stillness. And then Sandy Crosbie had wandered in and given him the excuse he’d been looking for to leave the table. He’d even picked up a game of pool and was busy congratulating himself on his self-control, when whammo! The pièce de résistance, as Pauline would say: the entrance of Kerri and the good doctor, and the eruption that followed. Would he ever live it down? “Look. I don’t know why we’re talking about this now. It’s old news. The affair with Kerri happened a long time ago.”

  “It shouldn’t have happened at all,” Pauline snapped.

  John nodded. What else could he do?

  “And don’t insult my intelligence by telling me it won’t happen again. As soon as the doctor dumps her, she’ll come crying on your shoulder—”

  “He’s not going to dump her. She’s not going to come crying.”

  “—and you’ll go running.”

  “In case you haven’t noticed, I don’t run so fast these days.” John was exhausted. All he wanted was to climb into bed and fall into unconsciousness.

  “What? Is that a joke? Is that supposed to be funny? You’re a pig, you know that?”

  “I believe you may have mentioned it earlier.”

  “Yeah? Well, guess what? I’m mentioning it again.” Pauline began pulling at the sheets beneath the bedspread, trying to gather them around her shoulders.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  “I’m cold.”

  “You need to take a shower.”

  “You need to take a hike.”

  John threw his hands up in disgust. “Is this how you want your daughter to see you?”

  Pauline waved away his concern with a flick of her wrist. “Amber’s not home. She’s at the cast party. In case you’ve forgotten.”

  John checked his watch. He hadn’t forgotten. It was after midnight. “She’ll be home in less than an hour.”

  “I think she likes that boy,” Pauline observed, as if they hadn’t been screaming at each other only seconds ago.

  “What boy?”

  “Sandy’s son. What’s his name? Tom? Tim? Timber?”

  “You’re imagining things. As usual.”

  “And you’re oblivious. As usual.” She laughed. “It’s really quite ironic, when you think about it. I think ironic is the right word. Have to ask Sandy next time I see her.”

  “What are you nattering about?”

  “Our daughter and Sandy’s son. It’s kind of poetic, don’t you think? Almost like it’s meant to be. I mean, here we have Sandy, wife of Ian, and Ian, lover of Kerri, and Kerri, former paramour of John, and John, cheating, no-good husband of Pauline. What did you say? Did you say I was nattering?”

  “I said I think you need to clean up and pull yourself together before Amber gets home.”

  “She won’t come in here. She never does.”

  “You’re drunk.”
<
br />   “I am? No! Why didn’t somebody tell me?”

  “Get in the shower.”

  “Get lost.”

  “Look,” John began. “You’re going to take a shower whether you like it or not.”

  “Really? Who’s going to make me? You?”

  “If I have to.”

  “And how are you going to do that exactly?” Pauline goaded. “Are you going to pick me up and throw me over your shoulder à la Kiss Me, Kate?”

  “I think I’d rather drag you by the hair.” John lunged toward her. He had no intention of resorting to violence, although the à la almost did it. But he’d seen enough of innocuous family squabbles gone bad, and he had no desire to join the ranks of men who physically abused their wives. Wasn’t cheating on her abuse enough? “Come on, Pauline. Don’t give me a hard time.” He grabbed at her hand, and she slapped his arm, but ultimately he got a grip on her elbow and pulled her from the bed.

  “I was watching that show,” she yelled as he dragged her down the hall to the bathroom.

  “You can finish watching it after your shower.”

  “I’ll miss the best part.”

  “You won’t miss anything.” John stopped. Were they really arguing about some dumb late-night TV show she’d probably seen a hundred times already? “Just get in the damn shower.” Holding tightly to her arm, he managed to open the shower door and turn on both taps full blast. “Get undressed.”

  “Get stuffed.”

  “Fine. Don’t get undressed.” He picked his wife up by the waist and deposited her in the middle of the stall, the torrent of tepid water soaking her hair and tumbling from her forehead into her open mouth. It quickly saturated her silk shirt and linen pants.

  “My shoes!” she shrieked, tearing the beige leather pumps from her feet and hurling them at John’s head.

  He ducked the shoes, but was unable to avoid her fingers, which somehow managed to latch onto the silver buckle of his gray pants. She yanked, and he tumbled forward into the shower, his knees slamming into the butterscotch-colored tiles, as he wrestled with Pauline under the water’s steady downpour. He grabbed for the wall, found Pauline’s breast instead, and pulled his hand away, as if he’d been burned. The last thing he needed was for her to accuse him of assaulting her.

  “What’s the matter?” she chided. “Did I scare you? Did you forget what a real breast feels like? God knows it’s been a long time since you’ve been interested in mine.” She began pulling at her blouse and eventually succeeded in peeling the clinging, wet fabric from her arms, although it took slightly longer to undo the buttons at her wrists. In the next seconds, she managed to remove the rest of her clothes—her bra, her slacks, her panties—until she was standing in front of him fully naked. “Look at me!” she cried. “This is what a real woman’s body looks like.”

  John’s eyes traveled reluctantly across his wife’s naked torso. He saw the large, pendulous breasts, the slight rounding of her stomach, the dimpled thighs, the thatch of dark brown pubic hair, the still shapely legs. And he realized, with no small measure of alarm, that he was aroused. Jesus, what was wrong with him?

  Pauline saw it too, and in the next minute she was pulling his pants down around his ankles and taking him in her mouth, the water from the shower cascading over them both. And then he was lifting her up, using his left hand for balance as his right hand guided his penis inside her, and soon they were crashing against the spigots and bouncing between the tile and the glass, and the water was pouring into his eyes and nose and mouth, so that he couldn’t see, he couldn’t hear, he could barely breathe. The rest of the night fell away—the accusations, the embarrassment, the fatigue. All he could feel was his body slamming into hers, and it felt good. God, he’d forgotten how good it felt. Hell, it felt great. Until his hand lost contact with the wall, and his feet got tangled in the puddle of his pants around his ankles, and he lost his balance, and they both crashed to the floor. Even then they kept at it, and he was reminded of the story of the two copulating dogs whose owners finally threw a bucket of water over them to pry them apart, and he laughed because not even a shower full of water was enough to stop him and Pauline.

  “Come here often?” she asked after the water had finally been turned off, and the two of them sat gasping on the shower floor.

  He took her in his arms and kissed her, and she looked surprised, but pleased.

  John thought of saying, I’m sorry, but he wasn’t sure what he’d be apologizing for. For being a lousy husband? For his multiple affairs with Kerri Franklin? For not loving his wife the way she needed to be loved? And would saying he was sorry change any of those things?

  “I’m sorry,” he heard Pauline say at that moment. “I haven’t been a very good wife to you, have I?”

  “I haven’t given you much of a chance.”

  A slight pause, a shake of the head, a sigh.

  “So what now?” Pauline asked.

  “We get dry, get into bed, get some sleep.”

  “There are things we still need to talk about.”

  “Agreed. But not tonight.”

  “Maybe we could go on Dr. Phil,” she said.

  “Who the hell is Dr. Phil?”

  In the distance a door slammed. “Mom? Dad? Are you up?”

  John checked his watch, the only thing he still had on. Thank God it was waterproof, he thought as he pushed himself to his feet, stepped out of the shower stall, and wrapped a towel around his hips just before Amber came bursting through the bathroom door.

  “Dad, are you—” Amber’s eyes shot from her father to her mother and back again. “Whoops.”

  “Hi, sweetheart,” Pauline said, as if she weren’t sitting naked on the shower floor, surrounded by two sets of sopping-wet clothes. “Did you have a nice time tonight?”

  Amber’s mouth opened, but no words emerged.

  “Is something wrong?” John asked. Could this night get any stranger?

  Amber’s eyes traveled between the ceiling and the floor, afraid to touch down. “We can’t find Megan.”

  “Megan Crosbie?” Pauline stepped from the shower and wrapped herself in a white terry-cloth robe.

  “Yes. Tim’s sister.”

  “What do you mean, you can’t find her?” John asked.

  “She disappeared from the party a couple of hours ago. Nobody’s seen her since.”

  “She probably went home. Have you checked with her mother?”

  “Tim called her half an hour ago. He didn’t want to worry her so he just asked if he and Megan could stay out a little later, and she said okay. So obviously, Megan’s not at home.”

  “Is there any chance she’s with a boy?” Pauline broached.

  “That’s what everybody thought at first,” Amber agreed. “She and Greg have been pretty tight lately.”

  “Greg Watt?” John asked, and Amber nodded.

  “My, my,” said Pauline.

  “But apparently they had a fight, and that’s when she left.”

  “Anybody see her leave?”

  “Delilah said Megan ran right past her, and she yelled after her, but Megan just ignored her. And then Greg took off a few minutes after that.”

  “Well, there you go. He probably caught up with her, and they’re somewhere making up as we speak.” Case closed, John thought, every muscle in his body aching to climb into bed. Which is where he was sure Greg and Megan were right now—if not in bed, then in the closest thing to a bed they could find, most likely the backseat of Greg’s van.

  Amber was shaking her head furiously back and forth. “No. We just came from Greg’s house. He was there, and Megan definitely wasn’t with him. He got real upset when we told him we didn’t know where she was. He said he was gonna go out looking for her.”

  Just what I need, John thought. “Okay, okay. Just because she wasn’t with Greg doesn’t mean anything’s happened to her.” Alarm bells were beginning to ring in the back of John’s head. He pretended he didn’t hear them. “Did anybody
else leave the party early?”

  “Victor Drummond’s the only one I can think of. It was so crowded, and people were going in and out all night. I only know about Victor because I saw him sneak out just before the fight started.”

  “What fight?” John asked.

  “There was a fight?” Pauline echoed. “Are you all right? You’re not hurt, are you?”

  “I’m fine. Everybody’s fine. Except Joey.”

  “Joey Balfour?”

  “Yeah. Brian clocked him pretty good.”

  “Brian?” Pauline asked. “You don’t mean Brian Hensen, do you?”

  “You should have seen him. He was like a madman. It was amazing.” Amber’s eyes grew wide with admiration.

  “Okay. You’re losing me,” John interrupted. “Let’s start again. You’re at the cast party …”

  “At Lonny Reynolds’s house,” Amber elaborated.

  “Aren’t his parents out of town?” Pauline asked.

  John gave his wife a look that said, Please, let me handle this, and she fell silent. “Okay, so you’re at the party and a fight breaks out …”

  “Not right away,” Amber qualified. “At first everything was fine. Everybody was dancing, having a good time. Everything was great.”

  “Anybody there you didn’t know?”

  “Maybe a few kids. It was very crowded. People were all over the place—the living room, the kitchen, the bed—” Amber stopped. “You couldn’t keep track. That’s why nobody realized Megan was missing until later.”

  “Okay, so you’re dancing and having a good time …”

  “Yeah. And Joey’s being his regular, obnoxious self, calling everyone ‘faggots’ and stuff like that, and suddenly Brian just took off on him. And then Perry Falco took a swing at him, and before you knew it, everybody was getting in on the act. Turns out Joey’s not nearly as popular as he thought.”

  “Is he all right?” Pauline asked.