Missing Pieces

by Joy Fielding

  “Monday’s too late.”

  “Too late? What are you talking about?”

  This time, she was the one to hang up.

  “Figures,” I said out loud, although nothing did. I checked my watch, realizing that if I didn’t leave for work now, I’d be late for Mrs. Black, a new client I’d scheduled for one o’clock. I’d canceled my morning appointments so that I could drive Larry to the airport, but he’d said there was no need, he’d already arranged for a limo. I headed for the front door, the set of golf clubs I’d bought him for Christmas leaning against the wall of the foyer, like a silent rebuke. He’d taken his old set with him to Carolina. “I’ll have better luck with these,” he’d said, without kissing me goodbye.

  Could I blame him? I’d been, dreadful to him for months, closing myself off, freezing him out.

  “You should have gone with him,” I told myself, unlocking my office door, trying to block out unwanted images of Colin Friendly by imagining how Mrs. Black might look, what her problem would be. So many problems, I thought. So few solutions.

  Moments later, I heard the door to my outer office open and close. I rose to my feet, went out to meet Mrs. Black.

  She was standing in the middle of the waiting room, and it took a moment for my brain to register who she was, despite the fact that I recognized her immediately. You know how it is when you meet someone in one set of circumstances, and don’t expect to see them in another. Such was the case with the woman who stood before me now, smiling at me from behind layers of blue eye shadow, her too black hair falling into a stiff flip at her shoulders. She was wearing a peach-colored suit with matching peach-colored stockings and pumps. The effect was somewhat startling, like an overripe piece of fruit. “Hello, Kate,” she said.

  “Brandi,” I acknowledged, watching the encounter from somewhere inside my head, struggling to keep my voice its normal timbre. What on earth was she doing here? “How are you?”

  “Not so great.”

  “Oh—I’m sorry to hear that.” Actually, I was sorry to hear anything. Brandi Crowe was the last person I wanted to see. Wasn’t I planning to sleep with her husband the day after tomorrow?

  She smiled, clasped her hands together nervously, then dropped them to her sides. What did she want? Had Robert told her of our plans? Had a reservation clerk from the Breakers phoned her, tipped her off?

  “Is there a reason you’re here?” I asked reluctantly.

  “I need to talk to you.”

  “To me?”

  “Professionally,” she said.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said quickly. “I’m completely booked this afternoon.” Had I ever felt so grateful to be so busy?

  “I have an appointment.”

  “You do?” I scanned my memory for mention of her name. Surely, I wasn’t so out of it that I wouldn’t have noticed the name of my prospective lover’s wife in my appointment calendar.

  “Mrs. Black,” she said, and smiled apologetically. “Not very original, I’m afraid.”

  Of course. My new client. “Good enough to fool me,” I heard myself say.

  “I was afraid you wouldn’t see me if I gave you my real name. And I didn’t want Robert to know I was coming.”

  I held my breath.

  “I apologize for the charade.”

  “No need.” The words slid out as I was forced to exhale. I ushered her inside my inner office, trying to collect the thoughts that were madly scrambling around inside my brain, realizing that she must have called my office weeks ago for this appointment, long before I’d arranged my upcoming Saturday tryst with her husband. There was no way she could know anything about our plans for the weekend. I almost laughed with relief. “Have a seat.”

  She arranged herself neatly in one of the chairs across from my own, crossed, then uncrossed her peach-tinted legs. “I feel a little self-conscious.”

  “Are you sure I’m the person you should be seeing?”

  “Yes,” she said quickly. “You strike me as a good listener. And Robert speaks very highly of you.”

  Silently, I debated the ethics of counseling my lover’s wife. Of course, he wasn’t my lover yet, nor had I decided to take his wife on as a client. Brandi’s visit would hopefully prove to be only a one-time thing. “It’s just that you might feel more comfortable talking to someone you don’t know,” I ventured, understanding it was I who would feel more comfortable.

  “No, really, I’m sure I’ll be quite comfortable talking to you.”

  “Good.” I forced a reassuring smile onto my lips, picked up my notebook, readied my pen. “What can I do for you?” It appeared I had no choice but to listen to what she had to say. I could always recommend another therapist later, I rationalized.

  Brandi Crowe looked around the room. “I don’t know where to start.”

  “Why don’t you begin with whatever it was that brought you here.”

  She laughed, though her eyes were already filling with tears. There was a long pause, during which she swallowed several times. “God, I’m so embarrassed. It’s such a cliche.”

  “Somebody once said that a cliche is something that’s been true too many times. There’s no need to be embarrassed.”

  “Thank you,” she said, and smiled, swallowed again. “I don’t know who I am anymore.” She shrugged helplessly, tears falling toward the collar of her peach jacket.

  I grabbed a tissue and handed it to her. She took it gratefully, dabbed at her eyes, careful not to disturb her makeup. “Why don’t you start by telling me a little bit about who you were,” I said.

  “You mean my childhood?”

  “I know your father owns a string of radio stations,” I prompted.

  She nodded her head up and down in confirmation. “Fourteen.”

  “And your mother?”

  “She died when I was twenty-one. She committed suicide.”

  “My God, how awful.”

  “We weren’t very close, but yes, I guess it was pretty awful.”

  “Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

  “Two sisters. Both older. One lives in Maui, the other in New Zealand.”

  “They couldn’t get much farther away.”

  She laughed. “I guess that’s right.”

  “So, you don’t see them very often.”

  “Almost never.”

  “How do you feel about that?”

  “All right, I guess. We don’t have a lot in common.”

  “How did your mother kill herself?” I asked, genuinely curious. Brandi Crowe was a much more interesting woman than I’d originally imagined.

  “She hanged herself in my father’s office.” Her voice was distant, dispassionate, as if she were talking about a stranger, and not her mother. “I think she was trying to get his attention.” She shook her head. “It didn’t work. He decided not to go into the office that day. One of the cleaning staff found her.”

  “Their marriage was obviously not a happy one,” I commented.

  “My father was happy enough. He had his radio stations, his family, his women.”

  “His women?” The pen in my hand began to wobble. I laid it down across my notepad.

  “My father is one of those larger-than-life characters you see in the movies. Big, brash, demanding. He’s not easily satisfied. Oh, he’s slowed down a bit now. He’s older, can’t run around quite as much anymore. Not that he doesn’t try.”

  “And your mother knew he was unfaithful?”

  “We all knew. He didn’t go out of his way to keep his affairs a secret.”

  “How did that make you feel?”

  Brandi Crowe tilted her head, stared toward the window. “Diminished,” she said finally.

  An interesting choice of words, I thought. “In what way?”

  “I don’t know if I can explain it. I guess I took his cheating personally, as if he wasn’t just cheating on my mother, but on me too. It made me feel as if I wasn’t very important.”

  “Have you ever talked
to him about this?”

  She laughed bitterly. “My father’s a very busy man. Besides, he’s not interested in anything I have to say. He never has been.”

  “Did he remarry?”

  “Several times. Right now, he likes to say he’s between ex-wives.”

  “Sounds like a very selfish man.”

  “Oh, he is. That’s part of his charm.” She shook her head, dislodged several fresh tears. “It’s funny.”

  “What is?”

  “I swore I’d never get involved with anyone remotely like him, and look what I did.”

  “What did you do?” I asked, despite my intense desire not to.

  “I married Robert,” she said simply.

  “You think Robert is like your father?”

  “He’s exactly like my father.”

  My turn to swallow, tilt my head, look toward the window. “In what way?”

  “He’s handsome, smart, charming, selfish, self-absorbed, arrogant. Arrogance is a very sexy quality in a man, don’t you find?”

  “There’s a difference between arrogance and confidence,” I said, flinching at the reference to sex.

  “Robert is both confident and arrogant, wouldn’t you agree?”

  “I don’t know him well enough,” I hedged.

  “But you knew him in high school,” Brandi said quickly. “What was he like then?”

  “Handsome, smart, charming, selfish, self-absorbed,” I said, parroting her words. “Arrogant,” I added truthfully.

  She smiled. “And very sexy, right?”

  “And very sexy,” I admitted, sensing it was pointless to lie.

  “I saw him coming a mile away,” Brandi continued. “I told myself, whatever you do, stay clear of this one. He’s dangerous. But of course, that was part of his appeal. I knew his reputation. Hell, I knew his history with women the minute I laid eyes on him. It was my father all over again. But even though I knew rationally that I’d never change him, something deep inside me must have thought I could. Something inside me obviously was trying to prove that I was not my mother, that I could give the story a happy ending.” She laughed. “You see, I’ve read all the self-help books. I have a pretty clear understanding of my own motivations.”

  “You’re saying that you think Robert is cheating on you?”

  “I know he’s cheating on me.”

  “How do you know?” I bit down hard on my tongue.

  “He’s been cheating on me for almost twenty years,” she said.

  My pen rolled off my lap and onto the floor. I reached down awkwardly to pick it up.

  “It started within a year of our wedding. His receptionist, I think it was. It went on for about six months, then it ended.”

  “He told you about her?”

  “Oh no. I said he was arrogant, not stupid.”

  “How did you find out?”

  “I’m not stupid either,” she said simply.

  “Did you confront him?”

  She shook her head. “When you confront something, you have to deal with it. I wasn’t ready to do that.”

  “And now?”

  “I love my husband, Kate. I don’t want to lose him.”

  “How do you think I can help you?” I asked finally.

  “Tell me what to do,” she said.

  “I can’t do that.”

  “I knew that’s what you were going to say.” She tried to laugh, but the sound that emerged was brittle, shattering upon contact with the air. “It’s just that I’m running out of ideas. God knows, I’ve tried everything, turned myself inside out to please him.” She pulled at the stiff flip in her hair. “I wear my hair this way because Robert likes long hair. He hates gray, so I have touch-ups every three weeks. I own every anti-wrinkle cream on the market, and I go to exercise class three times a week. But, you know, there’s only so much you can do. I’m forty-six years old; I’ve had four children. My muscle tone is never going to be what it was.” She reached up with her right hand, pulled her hair away from her ear. “Four years ago, I had a face-lift. I don’t know if you can see the scars.”

  “No,” I said, reluctant to look until it became obvious that she wasn’t going to release her hair until I did. “It’s a very good job,” I muttered.

  “It hurt like hell, let me tell you. I felt as if I’d been hit by a truck. My face and neck were covered with bruises for months. They don’t tell you that beforehand. They tell you to expect a little discomfort, a little swelling. You might have bruises for a week or two. Hah! I was a mess for months. Although, that was nothing compared to the tummy tuck I had last spring.”

  “You had a tummy tuck?”

  “You name it, I’ve had it. The face-lift, the tummy tuck, the liposuction, the boob job.”

  “You had your breasts enlarged?”

  “After four children, my breasts weren’t quite what they were, and Robert, well, you’ve seen him, he looks as good as he did thirty years ago. He has that slim, athletic body that never seems to put on a pound, and I looked, well, I looked like a middle-aged woman who’d had four children. I couldn’t blame him for looking elsewhere.”

  “Was it easier to blame yourself?”

  “I guess it was. That way, I felt more in control, as if there was something I could do that would make Robert look at me the way he used to. But you know what I’ve realized?” she asked, then waited.

  “What’s that?”

  “That my husband doesn’t want what he’s used to. That’s precisely the point. It’s not a question of my looking younger, or even better. Some of the women Robert’s been involved with over the years were older than me. A few weren’t even very attractive. What makes them so appealing to him is that they’re new, they’re something he’s never had. They don’t have to be young, as long as that’s how they make him feel.”

  I lowered my eyes, counted to ten. “What about your sex life?”

  My wife and I haven’t made love in three years, I heard Robert say.

  “It’s fine.”

  “Fine? What does that mean?”

  “It means it’s good. It’s always been good.”

  I pulled at the top button of my blouse. “So, you still make love.”

  “Oh yes, that’s never been our problem. You look surprised.”

  “No.” I struggled to make my face a blank. “No,” I said again, realizing this was true. “I’m not surprised.”

  “The frustrating thing is that I honestly thought we’d turned a corner. The kids are getting older. They’re more independent. We’ve been getting along better than we have in a long time. His last affair was almost a year and a half ago. And now this.”

  “This?”

  “It’s starting again. He’s having an affair. Or he’s about to.”

  “How do you know?”

  “All the signs are there. Trust me, I know.”

  “Do you know with whom?” I held my breath.

  “It doesn’t matter with whom,” she said dismissively.

  “What does matter?” I asked.

  “What matters is that I don’t think I can go through it all again. The lies, the deceit, the casual disregard of my feelings. I don’t know that I can just sit back and pretend it isn’t happening, and that scares me because I’ve been Mrs. Robert Crowe for so long, I’m not sure I exist on my own anymore. I’ve done everything I can to make my husband happy. I’ve turned myself inside out to please him. I’ve pumped stuff into my body and sucked stuff out so many times that there are days when I look in the mirror and I barely recognize myself. It’s like there’s nothing left of me anymore.” She stood up, walked slowly to the window, stared at the street below. “What does it say about me, that I’ve tolerated his infidelities for all these years?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “You want to know what’s really scary?”

  “What’s that?”

  “I’m just like my mother.”

  Her answer caught me off guard. “What makes you say that?”

  “My moth
er committed suicide,” she said, her eyes focused and dry. “In my own way, so have I. It’s just taken me a little longer to die.”

  Chapter 28

  Bastard!” I was screaming, punching the steering wheel as I drove home along 1-95. “Lying bastard. My wife and I haven’t made love in three years! And you believed him.” I slapped at the rearview mirror, watched my image tilt, then disappear. “Idiot!”

  How could I be so stupid? Was I still as hopelessly naive as I’d been thirty years ago, at least where Robert was concerned? Except that thirty years ago I’d known I wasn’t the only one. I’d known all about his visits to Sandra Lyons. And I’d pretended I didn’t. Just as his wife had been doing all these years. Pretending that things didn’t exist, losing ourselves in the process.

  At least she doesn’t know it’s you, I thought, straightening the rearview mirror, watching my eyes jump into view, widen with alarm. “Or does she?” Perhaps her visit to my office had been calculated well in advance, then executed with the subtle precision one might expect from someone with so much experience in these matters.

  “I’m not stupid,” I heard Brandi say, sad gray eyes reflecting through mine in the rearview mirror.

  Objects in the rearview mirror are closer than they may appear, I knew, feeling Brandi’s breath mingling with my own, reexperiencing the touch of her hand in mine as we shook hands goodbye. “I don’t think that I need to come back,” she’d said as she was leaving my office.

  “Beware of women whose names are potable,” Robert said. Of course, he’d said a lot of things. Were any of them true?

  My wife and I haven’t made love in three years.

  Well, maybe they hadn’t. Maybe it was Brandi, and not Robert, who was the liar in this equation. Maybe Robert had been a good and faithful husband all these years, despite a cold and unloving wife.

  “Do you really believe that?” I asked myself out loud.

  I glanced at the woman in the car next to mine, also talking to herself. Probably on a speaker phone, I decided, realizing she was likely thinking the same thing about me. All these crazy women driving along America’s highways talking to themselves. I laughed. So did she.