by Corine Gantz
Mark shut down his laptop, ordered a scotch from the flight attendant, and removed the godamned suffocating cashmere turtleneck he and Lola had picked up at Fred Segal’s just a few weeks before, when everything was fine, when there was not the slightest sign of her being miffed, no hints, no nothing.
The woman across the aisle eyed his bare arms and his Diesel T-shirt more or less discreetly but he wasn’t in the mood. Had he been in a better mood, he might have flirted but nothing more. Truth was, he had absolutely nothing to blame himself for.
Lola was a scatterbrain. That drove him crazy. And she always had an excuse to not do this or that. But when had she become such a professional victim? So he had a temper. She would too if she was carrying his load. But she was the one he loved, always had been, always would be.
Mark put the laptop away in his briefcase and tightened his grip. Nothing to blame himself for. Lola’s move was so transparent. Clearly, she wanted him to find her, sending those postcards from Manhattan, of all places, where her friend Alyssa lived. The equivalent to scattering white pebbles to help him track her down. Manhattan was where he was headed now. For business. If this had been serious she would not have sent the damn postcards, right?
How long did Lola expect whatever money she had brought with her to last, with the lifestyle she was accustomed to? She had used none of her credit cards. He was almost impressed she hadn’t cracked yet. He had given her space to think things through, had let her do her charade of postcards and had not budged.
Now the joke was on her. Her manipulation backfired, of course, and now she was at the point where she didn’t know how to make the first move to come back. He was going to New York City on business, and he’d go get her and the kids. He’d forgive her about that stunt, and she’d come back home. She was very lucky that he would take her back, no questions asked.
The living room whirled, and no sound came out of her mouth. Lola sat down on the couch, the receiver sticking to her burning cheek as she listened to Alyssa’s beautiful Jamaican accent trail on the phone. If only Annie had not picked up the phone and saw her turn livid and her tears begin to flow. Now Annie was standing there, arms crossed over her chest, her oven mitts still on. Soon she would know the truth.
“Mark totally expected to find you and the kids here in SoHo, honey,” Alyssa was saying. “He was sure you were staying with me. Of course he put two and two together, with me mailing the postcards you sent me. I thought he was going to trash my loft. It was horrible. I mean, I had friends over. I was dying inside. It was embarrassing for everyone, especially Mark. You should have seen his face.”
Alyssa was younger than Lola and still worked as a model. She didn’t have children, had never wanted to. Lola didn’t expect her to understand. And the pressure of Annie standing there, waiting to find out why a friend of hers had called and asked to speak with her urgently, that was all too much “On the other hand it was kind of cute,” Alyssa added, “romantic you know, him flying across the country looking for you.”
“Did you tell him where I was?”
“He said he’d talk to the police.” The shrill tone of Alyssa’s voice showed she wasn’t worried, only exasperated. “I told him I didn’t know, honey. I really tried to cover your ass. But I just don’t want to be part of this. I mean, he talked about abduction, and subpoenas and witnesses.”
Lola looked apologetically at Annie. “Alyssa, please don’t tell him,” she whispered.
“I see his point,” Alyssa said coldly.
“Please wait.”
“Look,” Alyssa said, her tone sharp, “you better call him. He’s at the Four Seasons or on his cell. You tell him where you are yourself. If you don’t do it, I’m sorry, sweetie, but I will.”
Lucas let himself into Annie’s house and found Lola doubled over on the living room couch. Annie was at her side looking like she was having the time of her life. To his silent puzzled expression, Annie raised her eyebrows as if to say “I told you so.”
“Mark’s on the horizon,” she said. “He found her. Or thinks he did, that dope!”
Lola, whom Lucas had never seen looking anything other than serene, sat curled up on the couch in a semi-fetal embrace, arms wrapped around her body and shaking slightly.
“Is he here?”
“Worse. He’s in New York looking for her. He thought he was going to find her there.” Annie rolled her eyes dramatically. “And now he’s really mad.”
“What should we do?” Lola said in a small voice.
“We?” said Annie.
“Just stay put and call the police. Tell them your story and they will protect you,” Lucas said, all of a sudden noticing Annie’s inexplicably smug smile.
“There are no laws that can protect me,” Lola said weakly.
“I understand that this is precisely what restraining orders do,” he assured her.
“That’s the thing,” Lola sighed and put her head in her hands.
“That’s the thing,” Annie echoed, looking thrilled.
“There isn’t really a restraining order,” Lola said in a very small voice.
“Not really?” he asked.
“Not at all,” Annie said.
He looked at Annie disapprovingly. She shook her head to explain this was news to her too. He tried to wrap his mind around this revelation. “But you said--”
“It wasn’t really true,” Lola admitted.
“I knew it!” he exclaimed.
“But you have every right to protect yourself and the children,” Annie said. “You only left him for self-protection, self-preservation.”
“He isn’t violent,” Lola sighed between tears. “Not physically.”
“You lied?” Lucas said, sounding utterly shocked.
“Would you have taken my fear of him seriously unless I said he was violent?” She pointed at Annie. “You made me say it.”
Annie’s eyes widened in indignation. “So it’s my fault?”
Lucas scratched his head. “But isn’t taking the children to another country without telling him somewhat illegal?”
“I’m going to jail,” Lola wailed. “They will take the children away!”
Annie shook her head. “I just wish you had thought about these small details before you abducted your kids!”
At this, Lola burst into sobs. “It wasn’t an abduction. Gee, of course not! I... I sent postcards.”
“Do you realize what position you’re putting me in?” Annie asked.
Lucas listened as he reorganized his next day mentally, moving appointments so he could drive Lola and her children back to the airport in the morning. With a little luck, the travel agency would find them a plane leaving that night.
“You did talk about it, gave him an ultimatum, something?” Annie was asking. “You told him you were leaving, just not where you were going, right?”
“No, I just picked up my kids and left while he was on a business trip. He came back to an empty house.”
Annie held her face. “Merde!”
“Merde,” Lucas echoed.
“Did you write to him? To explain, since?”
“I tried... I swear, many times I tried... But, I couldn’t...put it into words. I didn’t want to make him mad. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings so I just sent postcards. I sent them in an envelope to Alyssa, and she removed the envelope and mailed them from Manhattan as soon as she received them.”
“A red herring.” Lucas stated.
“I didn’t want him to worry. And I wanted him to know how well the children were doing. Simon sleeping through the night, and Lia making new friends in... New York. You know... I kept in touch.”
Lucas turned from Annie to Lola as though watching a slow-motion ping-pong match and said finally. “So she just disappeared?”
“You’re quick!” Annie said, laughing now.
But Lucas found none of this amusing, and he certainly wasn’t feeling a shred of pity for Lola. Behind that beautiful façade was... what? He c
ould now see why Annie might feel vindicated. He gave her a significant look.
“Everyone thinks I’ve got it so good, so easy,” Lola cried. “People, even you two, think that you can just talk things out, and they get solved, but you don’t know Mark. You don’t know me. He has this...power over me. I can’t talk to him. Whatever I say to him doesn’t make a dent.”
“But how in the world did you expect things to turn out?” Annie asked. Lucas was surprised to hear a shift in Annie’s tone. She sounded suddenly empathetic. Lola didn’t respond, she was mumbling almost to herself.
“Even when I really plan what I’m going to say, even if I know I have a point, he doesn’t listen. He just puts me down, he crushes me, I mean, mentally. He doesn’t need to hit to hurt me. You don’t understand.”
Everyone was silent for a moment. There was just the sound of Lola sniffling. Finally, Annie said, “Maybe it’s not him. You’re terrified of conflicts in general. That’s what I’m talking about when I say that you need to be in touch with your anger. And you poo-poohed it!”
Lucas could stand it no longer. He turned to Lola and pointed his finger at her. “You say you didn’t want to hurt his feelings? Well I think you wanted to hurt him and you chose the cruelest way to do it! And the most cowardly.” Lola buried her face in her arms and began sobbing quietly as he continued. “I can’t believe you women. You think men are just big idiots with no feelings, no emotions.”
He was interrupted by Annie grabbing his arm and dragging him out of the room and into the hallway out of Lola’s earshot. She leaned against the wall and looked at him smiling. “Of course we know you guys have emotions,” she whispered. “Only not as important as our own.” Annie was actually having fun with this. No, he would never understand this woman.
“I’m disgusted. It’s not cooking lessons you need to give her,” he said. “Maybe you need to teach her how to ... I don’t know... grow a backbone.”
“Nah, who needs a backbone when you have her cheekbones.” Annie laughed.
“Well, personally, I find a lack of backbone particularly unattractive.”
Annie looked at him as if for the first time. “So it’s not style over substance for you?”
In the darkness of the hallway, Lucas stopped pacing and put a hand on the wall, coming close to Annie in a sudden move that surprised even him. “Very few women come with the full package,” he whispered, looking her in the eyes. Annie searched his face for signs of irony. He waited for a repartee. It did not come. Instead she continued looking at him.
“You want me to look into plane tickets?” he asked to break the awkward silence.
“Tickets? What for?”
“For a honeymoon in the Bahamas bien sûr”
“You think I’m going to just send her back? Let her be eaten alive by that jerk?”
“Yes.”
Annie opened the door and led him out of the house. “Never. Lola is my friend, Lucas.”
If Annie was clear on one thing, it was that Mark and Lola needed to speak, and not about the weather. Silence in a marriage, Annie knew now, was the real killer. The assumptions one makes, the secrets one lets the other get away with, the slow creeping into one’s own role, the impossibility to change within the confines of non-communication were all part of that silence. How easy it was to play one role and one role only for an entire marriage, even when there was love. Especially when there was love. In her marriage to Johnny she had painted herself into a corner. Because she loved him so, she had not wanted him to see sides of her that he had not chosen her for. He had chosen her as a spouse, the mother of his children. He had chosen her for her independence, her lack of neediness. Indeed she had been the most independent, the least needy of wives. But only in appearance.
After she and Lola put the children to bed and cleaned the kitchen in silence, they went into the salon. It was after ten at night. Annie moved the logs around in the fireplace waiting for Lola to dial Mark’s number. But Lola wasn’t dialing. She was sitting stiffly on the couch’s armrest. The piece of paper with Mark’s hotel number was at the tip of her shaky fingers, and she was staring at the telephone as if it might any moment uncoil and jump at her throat.
“Aren’t you going to dial?”
“I don’t know if I can,” Lola said. She looked so white Annie wondered if she might throw up.
“Seriously, how bad can it be?”
“Bad,” Lola whimpered.
There was a master plan. Lola would not mention Paris since Mark assumed she was in New York and there was no advantage in telling him otherwise. Annie was to listen in on the conversation on the cordless phone for moral support. She’d help Lola be strong, level headed and firm. This was an excellent plan.
“You want me to dial for you?”
“Okay, you dial.”
Annie dialed, handed Lola the receiver, and picked up the cordless feeling perfectly confident about the plan. She began to feel some sense of alarm when she heard Lola give the Four Season’s receptionist Mark’s name and room number in the voice of a six year old. After an interminable silence and the sound of musak, a man’s voice on the line said: “Yes?”
“Mark?” Lola said in a minuscule voice. She looked like she might faint.
Annie was walking towards the living room with the phone against her ear when Mark uttered his first sentence to his wife in weeks. “Lola, where the FUCK are you?” This somehow was not what Annie expected. What had she expected? She realized in an instant she had no experience dealing with an abusive, yelling spouse. She had been the yeller in her marriage. Johnny was the quiet, calm one. She promptly came back to the couch, sat right next to Lola, and squeezed her free hand with her own. Lola’s eyes widened, filled with tears and she shook her head as if to say she wasn’t up to this. Annie sent her a look that said, “you’ll be all right.”
“Hi honey,” Lola said still in the smallest of voices.
“Give me your goddamn address,” Mark said coldly. “I’ll take a cab.”
Lola’s voice had turned plaintive. She sounded like a scared little girl. “I’m not--”
“Give me the address.”
Annie recognized from the adrenaline that suddenly pushed though her veins a sudden and unequivocal hatred for the guy. She wished she could soothe the stricken expression on Lola’s face, but how could she when she felt overwhelmed herself. Lola might have been right. It could be that bad.
Lola tried to speak: “I just wanted to say that--”
Mark’s voice came, cold, matter of fact. “You have nothing to say. You’re in no position. You listen to me Lola. I’ve run out of patience for your bullshit. Give me your address. I’m getting really pissed. Believe me, you don’t want to see me really pissed off.”
“I wanted to say,” Lola continued, “that I’m not...in New York.”
What about the plan! Lola wasn’t sticking to the plan! Annie wiped her sticky palms on her jeans. But as long as she said nothing about France...
“Then where the fuck are you?” Mark roared.
“I’m...in France, honey,” Lola sing-sang.
There was a silence, and Mark said and Annie mouthed in unison: “What?”
“Lia really likes her new school,” Lola chirped. On the line, there was a long silence. Annie could almost hear Mark’s brain gears making painful rotations. Lola timidly added, “she’s learning French so rapidly. And you should hear Simon!”
“Listen,” Mark said, his voice no longer containing his rage. “You can’t take the kids out of the country. That’s kidnapping. Is there another guy? That’s it? There’s another guy? Some sissy French guy with a fucking beret?” Annie found herself chuckling. This was playing out like a bad soap opera.
“No, of course, not,” Lola said.
“Bull—Shit!”
“Really, Mark, it’s just that...I had to...I needed to take some time off.”
“Some fucking time off what? Your life is loaded with time off. That’s all you fuck
ing do, take time off, flee your fucking responsibilities.”
Obviously the guy had Tourette’s syndrome, and Annie wasn’t the most verbally scrupulous person. Lola swallowed and looked at her with despair. By now, Annie’s bloodstream was laced with adrenaline. She scribbled furiously and handed Lola a piece of paper, which Lola looked at, frowned at, but nonetheless read to Mark verbatim.
“Time off from your tyranny,” Lola read flatly.
“My motherfucking what?”
“Tyranny,” she repeated, rolling the word in her mouth like a piece of chocolate. She smiled at Annie. It must have felt good.
Annie smiled back, and they braced themselves with heads sunk in shoulders. But Mark stopped yelling.
“What are you talking about?” he asked. His voice was calm again. In fact, he sounded surprised.
“Well,” Lola stuttered, “It’s hard to say...” She looked up at Annie apologetically, and Annie sensed Lola was about to say something horrible in the vein of “you don’t buy me flowers,” if she didn’t get involved. There was no time, so Annie, figuring that her one advantage over Mark was that she was in the room and that Lola seemed to respond well to intimidation, looked at her with lightning in her eyes.
It worked. Lola swallowed and spoke fast. “You, you...put me down, you abuse me emotionally, you treat me like I’m an...idiot. You...scream.”
Another long silence, then Mark said, “Who’s coaching you right now?”
Lola and Annie had an identical silent nervous laugh. The guy was no dummy. Or else he knew his wife well. Annie had an unfitting jolt of appreciation for him.
