The Ranch

by Danielle Steel

  “You know what, Bennett,” she answered him. “It's not consolation enough for this kind of shit. This is my life these people are playing with. This is me they're telling lies about. I've become a thing, a cash register, an object.” Anyone who wanted an extra dime, a cool half mil, and was willing to either lie, cheat, or blackmail her, could have anything they wanted. For the first time, listening to her words, Bennett was silent. And he hated to press her, but he knew he had to.

  “What do I say to Leo's lawyer, Tan? Give me a break here.”

  There was a long, unhappy pause, and then finally she nodded. She knew when she was beaten. “All right,” she said hoarsely, depressed by all of it. “Tell him well pay him… the bastard…” And then, trying to push the horror from her mind, and the fact that she had just paid a man half a million dollars to tell vicious lies about her to the press, she asked Bennett another question. “What about Wyoming? Can you do something about that?”

  “Like what? Buy it for you?” He was trying to tease her out of her gloom, but he knew he was not succeeding, and he didn't blame her. It was a difficult business being a celebrity, in spite of what people thought. From the out’ side, it looked great, from the inside, it was filled with heartbreak. And it was impossible not to take it personally. They were human, they all did.

  “Can you get her to agree to let me take the kids with me? I'll cut it down to a week if that makes a difference,” although she had the reservations for two weeks.

  “I'll try if you want, but I think it's pretty hopeless. And I think it's a fair bet that it'll hit the papers that you were turned down, which doesn't exactly make you look like a very moral person. And since we're pressing Leo on the confidentiality issue here, I'd rather not have all this crap dragged back into the papers.”

  “Great. Thanks,” she said, trying to sound unaffected by all of it, but it was obvious that she was distraught over the entire conversation.

  “I'm sorry, Tan,” he said somberly.

  “Sure, thanks. I'll talk to you tomorrow.” She was crying as she said it.

  “I'll call you. We have to go over the contracts on the concert tour. I'll call you in the morning.”

  Her heart sank as she hung up. Her life had turned to shit over the years, and it was only at times like these that she really saw it. For all the adulation, and the thrill they talked about, the applause, the concerts, the awards, the money, this was what it really boiled down to. People making you look like a two-bit tramp, a husband who walked out without looking back, and stepchildren you never saw again. It was a wonder anyone in Hollywood could still hold their head up, or bothered to put one foot after the other.

  She sat alone in her house in Bel Air that night, thinking about it, and wishing she were dead, but too unhappy and too scared to do anything about it. She thought of Ellie for the first time in years, and Mary Stuart's son, Todd. It seemed such an easy way out, and yet it wasn't. It was so totally the wrong thing to do, and yet it required a peculiar mix of cowardice and courage, and she found that she had neither.

  She sat in her living room until the sun came up, thinking about all of it, wanting to hate Tony for as much as she could, and she found she couldn't do that either. She couldn't do anything except sit there and cry all night, and there was no one to hear her. And at last, she got up and went to bed. She had no idea what she was going to do about Wyoming, and she didn't even care now. She'd let Jean go and take friends, or her hairdresser, or Tony with a girlfriend. And then she remembered he was going to Europe with his girlfriend. Everyone had friends and children, and a life, and even a decent reputation. And all she had were a bunch of gold and platinum records, hanging on a wall, and a row of awards sitting on a shelf below them. But there was not much more beyond that. She couldn't imagine trusting anyone again, or even having a man willing to put up with all the garbage. It was laughable. She had made it all the way to the top, in order to find that there was nothing there that anybody wanted. She lay down on her bed, still thinking of it, and the children she would probably never see again, or not for more than a few minutes. It was as though she and Tony and his kids and their life had vanished into thin air, none of it had ever existed. Gone. In a puff of smoke… in a giant blaze… a whole life up in flames… with tabloids used as kindling.

  Chapter 7

  When Tanya woke up later that day, she felt as though she had been beaten. She had hardly slept at all, and something about the settlement, the news about the kids, the fact of coming home and seeing that Tony had taken all his things, left her feeling bullied and broken. She got out of bed, and felt as though she had a hangover as she grimaced and looked in the mirror. She hadn't even had a drink the day before, but she felt rotten, and she had a dismal headache.

  “God, I'm going to need another trip to the plastic surgeon after all this,” she said to her reflection once she walked into the bathroom. She ran a hot bath, and slipped slowly into it, and she felt a little better. She had a benefit to do that night, and it was a cause she really cared about, and she wanted to deliver for them. She had a short rehearsal that afternoon, and by noon she had to be on the merry-go-round again, chasing all her myriad obligations, She walked into the kitchen in her dressing gown, made herself a cup of coffee, and reached for the morning paper. For once, she hadn't made the front page, and neither had her soon-to-be ex-husband, or any of her employees, past or present. That at least was something. She turned each page gingerly, as though waiting to find a tarantula between the pages. But the only thing that caught her eye was a story about a doctor in San Francisco called Zoe Phillips. Tanya read it avidly, and when she finished it she was smiling. Zoe was one of her old college roommates. She sounded as though she was doing remarkably, not surprisingly. She had started the most important AIDS clinic in the city, and apparently ran it with an absolute genius for obtaining funds, and turning loaves into fishes. She was feeding homeless people with AIDS, housing them, treating them, and also large segments of the more affluent AIDS-infected population. The article made her sound like the Mother Teresa of San Francisco. And Tanya was so touched after what she read, that she reached for her telephone book, looked up the number, and called her. She hadn't talked to her in two years, but they always exchanged cards at Christmas. Tanya knew she was the only one still in touch with her. Mary Stuart had lost contact with her years before. They had never patched up the rift between them that occurred when Ellie died, and Mary Stuart didn't even like to hear about her. But Tanya was fond of both of them, and when a nurse answered the phone, she asked for Dr. Phillips.

  At first, the nurse said the doctor was administering a treatment, and she asked if she could take a message.

  “Sure,” Tanya said agreeably, without hesitation.

  “May I ask who's calling?”

  “Tanya Thomas.”

  There was a long pause. Normally, the nurse would have thought it was a coincidence, but the doctor had an odd knack for getting in touch with famous people to participate in benefits for them, or just outright donate money.

  “The Tanya Thomas?” She felt stupid asking.

  “I guess so,” Tanya laughed. “I went to college with Dr. Phillips,” she explained. It was interesting that Zoe never bragged about it. Her only interest in Tanya was their history together.

  The nurse listening to her was clearly impressed that Tanya and the doctor were friends, and she said she was going to see if Dr. Phillips had finished her procedure. There was another wait, and a moment later, Tanya heard a familiar voice on the line. She had a soft smoky voice, and a seriousness which she conveyed even over the telephone lines, when she dealt with a serious subject.

  “Tan?” she asked, with a small, slow voice. “Is that you? My nurses almost went crazy.”

  “It's me. You sound like Dr. Salk from what I'm reading in the paper. You've been pretty busy, and you forgot to send me a Christmas card last year.” It always felt like being kids again when she talked to her. It brought back old times, ju
st as it did when Tanya saw Mary Stuart.

  “I didn't send any. I was too busy. I had a baby.” She said it with the same gentle smile, and Tanya could just see her as she listened.

  “You did what? Are you married?” But she doubted it. Zoe had never wanted to get married. She was satisfied with her career and long-term monogamous relationships, but she was more interested in issues and changing the course of medical history than in getting married, and she always had been. “What are you telling me? Have you joined the rest of the bourgeois population? What happened?”

  “Don't get too worked up. I adopted. And no, I'm not married. I haven't changed that much. I've just been really busy.”

  “How old is the baby?” It was so sweet just thinking about it, and in some ways, so unlike Zoe. She had never struck Tanya as terribly maternal. And judging from the age she knew so well, Zoe had done it when she was forty-three. She must have decided to give motherhood a try before it was too late, but it was interesting that she hadn't decided to get pregnant.

  “She's nearly two now. She just kind of happened into my life. Her mother was a patient, and fortunately, she did not have AIDS, but she was homeless. She didn't want to keep Jade, so I did. She's half Korean. And it's been perfect. I would never have been able to take the time out of my practice to get pregnant.” And she had never been involved with anyone she wanted that permanent a tie to. Not in recent years at least. Her heart was in her work, and she would have done anything in life for her patients.

  “When am I going to see her?” Tanya asked wistfully, thinking about her old friend and the little Korean girl she had adopted. Jade. She loved the name. And it was so like Zoe.

  “I'll send you a picture,” Zoe said apologetically, as she signaled to a nurse waiting for her in the doorway. She pointed to her watch and held up five fingers to her. She wanted five more minutes to talk to Tanya. But there were over forty patients waiting for her in the waiting room, some of them too ill to be there. It was a familiar story to Zoe. But she could take at least five minutes out for old times’ sake.

  “How about doing better than a snapshot? How about coming to Wyoming?” Tanya had just decided to ask her on the spur of the moment. What if Zoe came, and Jade, and Mary Stuart… but she knew that was silly. Mary Stuart was going to Europe with her daughter. “It's just a thought. I've rented a cabin at a fancy dude ranch for two weeks in July and I have no one to go with.” She sounded tired and forlorn, and Zoe knew her well enough to sense that things weren't going well, and if it were true, she was sorry to hear it.

  “What about your husband?”

  “That proves what I always suspected about you. You don't buy groceries, and you don't read tabloids.” Zoe had been much too thin all her life, and was the envy of every woman who knew her, but she laughed at Tanya's comment.

  “You're right on both counts. I never have time to eat, and I wouldn't read that junk if you paid me.”

  “That's comforting. Anyway, to answer your question, he's gone. He moved out this week, as a matter of fact. And now his ex-wife won't let me see his kids, because I'm being sued by a bodyguard who claims that I tried to seduce him. Actually, it's all so sick it's not worth trying to explain to a rational human being. Don't bother to figure it out. I can't, and I live here.” But what Zoe heard more than the words was the distress in her friend's voice. She sounded genuinely distraught over the state of her life at the moment.

  “It doesn't sound like much fun. Wyoming sounds like a great idea. I wish I could go with you.” The nurse was standing in the doorway flailing again, but Zoe didn't want to cut Tanya off. It sounded like she needed someone to talk to. So Zoe signaled for another five minutes, and the nurse disappeared again with a look of desperation.

  “Don't you think you could come, Zoe? Maybe just for a weekend?”

  “I wish I could. I don't have anyone working with me right now. I'd have to leave a call group covering me, and my patients really hate it. Most of them are so sick they want to know I'm going to be here.”

  “Don't you ever take time off?” Tanya said in amazement, not that she took much time off either. But what she did was a lot less rigorous than caring for dying patients.

  “Not very often,” Zoe confessed. “In fact,” she said apologetically, “I'd better get back to work now, or they're going to break my office door down and lynch me. I'll call you sometime. Don't let the assholes get you down, Tan. They're all lesser beings, and it's just not worth it.”

  “I try to remember that most of the time, but they get you anyway. Somehow they always win, in this town anyway, or at least in this business,”

  “You don't deserve that,” Zoe said in her gentle voice, and Tanya smiled broadly for the first time that morning.

  “Thanks. Oh, I saw Mary Stuart the other day, by the way.”

  “How is she?” Zoe sounded tense when she asked, but it was still the same old thing, and Tanya never paid any attention to it. She had continued to give each of them news of the other over the years, and she still had fantasies about getting them back together, like the old days.

  “She's all right, more or less. Her son died last year, I don't think any of them have recovered. I think right now everything is still a little shaky.”

  “Tell her I'm sorry,” Zoe said softly, and she was. “What did he die of? An accident?”

  “I think so,” Tanya said vaguely, she didn't want to tell her it was a suicide. She knew how private and pained Mary Stuart felt about it. “He was at Princeton. He was twenty.”

  “That's a shame.” She dealt with death so constantly, but she had never grown blasé about it. It was a defeat she still hated, and knew she would never accept with grace. Every time she lost a patient, she felt cheated.

  “I know, you have to go… but think about Wyoming, if you can. It would be fun, wouldn't it?” It was a crazy dream, but it appealed to Tanya, and Zoe smiled at the thought. For her, it wasn't even a dream. She hadn't had a vacation in eleven years now. “Call me sometime.” She sounded wistful and lonely, and Zoe wished that she could reach out to her and hold her. It was odd to think that someone with so much could be so vulnerable and unhappy. For those who didn't know her life, they would never have believed the beatings Tanya and people like her had taken, and the price Tanya's fame had cost her.

  “I'll send pictures of Jade, I promise!” she said before she hung up, and as soon as she did, three nurses descended on her, complaining about the crowds in the waiting room, but the one who had taken the call looked at her with amazement.

  “I couldn't believe that was really her. What's she like?” Everyone always asked, but it was such a dumb question.

  “She's one of the nicest women I know, the most decent. She works like a dog, and she's so talented she doesn't even realize it. She deserves a much better shake than she's had in life. Maybe one day she'll get it,” Zoe said wisely, as she followed them out of her office, but the nurse who had taken the call couldn't understand what Zoe was saying.

  “She's won Grammys, Academy awards, platinum records, they say she makes ten million dollars when she does a concert tour, and a million bucks a concert when she doesn't. What else is there?”

  “A whole lot, Annalee, believe me. You and I have more in our lives than she does.” It was heartbreaking to think that she had to call a friend from college to find someone to go on vacation with. At least Zoe had her baby.

  “I don't get it,” the nurse said, shaking her head, as Zoe disappeared into a treatment room. And in Los Angeles, Tanya sat staring at the photograph of Zoe in the paper. And then, just for the hell of it, she decided to call Mary Stuart.

  “Hi there, guess who I just talked to five minutes ago?”

  “The president,” Mary Stuart teased, happy to hear her voice again. Ever since she'd come through New York, she'd missed her.

  “No. Zoe. She's running an AIDS clinic in San Francisco. There was a big article about it in this morning's L.A. Times, and she adopted a baby
. She's almost two, her name is Jade, and she's half Korean.”

  “That's sweet,” Mary Stuart said, trying to feel generous about her old friend, but even after more than twenty years, some of the old wounds still smarted. “I'm happy for her,” she said, and meant it. “It's so typical of her, isn't it? Adopting, I mean, and an Asian child. She really turned out to be just who she started out to be. And the AIDS clinic doesn't surprise me either. Is she married?”

  “Nope. I guess she's smarter than we are. Has Bill left for London yet?”

  “Yesterday.” She was suddenly silent then, as she thought about what she'd done the night before, and she knew Tanya would think she had done the right thing, although it had been very painful. “I put Todd's things away last night. I guess it was long overdue, but I just wasn't ready before this.”

  “No one's keeping score,” Tanya said gently. “You do what you have to do to survive around here.” And then she told Mary Stuart about Nancy not letting her take the kids to Wyoming. She was bitterly disappointed about it, and Mary Stuart could hear it. She knew how much those children meant to her. In some ways, they had been the best part of her marriage.

  “That's rotten,” she said with feeling.

  “What isn't? I just agreed to pay half a million dollars to that blackmailer who sold his ass and mine to the tabloids.”

  “God, that's awful. Why so much?”

  “Because everyone's scared. My lawyers are terrified of juries. They figure they could never win a jury trial. The other side would make me look like a monster rolling in money. There's no way to portray anything good or wholesome to them. Celebrity equals slut, or at the very least a person who deserves to cough up large sums of money to those either less fortunate, less honest, or extremely lazy. They ought to put that definition in the dictionary,” she said, munching on a piece of toast, and Mary Stuart smiled. Tanya sounded upset, but not as devastated as she could have, considering everything that was happening to her. She could have been in bed with the covers over her head, and she wasn't. Tanya always had a lot of guts. Mary Stuart admired that about her. Whatever life did to her, she picked herself up, and went on her way again, dented, scratched, with broken corners here and there, but she was back on her feet, with a big smile, singing her heart out. “Have you heard from Bill since he left?” Tanya asked, thinking about what Mary Stuart had told her. She still found it remarkable that he didn't want his wife with him in London. And from what Mary Stuart said, she didn't even think he was cheating on her. He just didn't want her with him.