by M. O’Keefe
The last time he’d taken my phone away and didn’t let me leave the house for a month. I’d been bored, yes. Lonely. Terrified. But the real repercussion of it all was that all those people who called and texted me, who offered lunch dates and tickets to galas, who asked if I wanted to be on boards or fundraising committees – they all vanished. And when the month was over I was even more alone than I’d been before.
As punishment it had been wildly effective.
“Please come visit me, Pops. Pops—” her voice broke, and so did I. My nickname in my sister’s voice was one of my favorite sounds in the world, and I was so scared for my sister and by my sister.
But she was all I had left, and I loved her so much. And it would be worth the punishment. It always was.
“Of course,” I said. “I love you, Zilla.”
The phone clicked twice, which was the end of the amount of allotted time I had to talk to my sister who was locked up in what was an insane asylum with a fancy name.
I listened to the echoing silence for a few seconds before hanging up, sitting limp in the chair. Relief and guilt and anger tossing bombs at each other in my stomach. And my heart.
My love for my sister was so complicated. And I wished that it could be easier. And then felt guilty for that wish.
A deep breath and the last of the adrenaline rippled out of my system and I sat, wrung-out in the chair I’d collapsed in.
God, it was an uncomfortable chair. It was uncomfortable, and I’d picked it out. I’d picked it out and had it reupholstered to match the couch and the area rug. All varying shades of blue and grey. Bits of pink and turquoise to match the vases on the coffee table. I’d just finished this room. Because I’d spent a year on the kitchen. And another two months on all the bathrooms. In another three months I would have redone this whole house.
I was good at it. That was a surprise. I liked it. A little. Enough to let it fill my days, to soothe the relative frustration at somehow not being able to do what I really wanted. I thought if I put enough of myself into this house it would start to feel like a home.
But I knew the truth: I was just redecorating my very gilded cage.
The front doorbell rang, and the sound was so surprising I started like I’d done something wrong. The senator was in his study on the other side of the house, so it wasn’t him coming home. There wasn’t an event, so it couldn’t be hair and makeup. And no one ever visited me.
Anne the housekeeper came down the hallway, glancing at me, and we shared a quick look of surprise. Which was frankly more than we’d shared in the six months she’d been working here.
Look at us, bonding.
I kept myself in the chair, trying not to get my hopes up. Because I would love to have someone visit. To take my mind off Zilla, to alleviate just a little of my crushing boredom.
But it was probably some guy selling vacuums. People still do that, don’t they?
Though probably not in Bishop’s Landing.
I heard a familiar voice and jumped up out of my chair, rushing out into the hallway to see Caroline Constantine standing in the open doorway. She wore cream. Cream pants, heels, a blush shell, and a cashmere wrap. The trees were all changing colors, and she was lit up by a bright red maple behind her in my front yard. She was so beautiful she took my breath away.
Anne walked past me back towards the kitchen, leaving me alone with Caroline.
“Caroline?” It was shocking. A delight. And also so strange it felt like a dream. “Did I miss a lunch date?”
“You didn’t miss anything, darling,” Caroline said and then wrapped me in her arms, and I don’t want to sound melodramatic, but I just folded right into that hug. I just collapsed into it. Caroline smelled like lavender body powder and Chanel No 5. She’d been my mother’s best friend growing up, and hugging her felt like getting hugged by my mother.
“Then what are you doing here?” I asked, suddenly aware of what I looked like. I didn’t wear makeup unless I was leaving the house, and my blonde hair was going red at the roots because I’d cancelled the last trip to the salon. I was in yoga pants and a long-sleeved sweatshirt that was damp down the back from trying to build a shower outside by the pool.
My latest project.
“I was supposed to be meeting Jim, but I realized one of my employees could handle it so I thought I would visit you instead,” Caroline said. “Unless you’re busy?”
“No. Not at all.” I laughed. “Have a seat, and Anna can get us some tea.”
Caroline, whose hair was that perfect three-step process blonde/silver/grey that made her look young and chic and somehow like she just rolled out of bed and off the beach at the same time, shook her head. “Darling, let’s just go to the kitchen and have tea there. Don’t bother Anna.”
I remembered all those afternoons at Caroline’s after Mom died when Zilla was just starting to fall apart. Barrels of strong tea with sugar and milk as she helped me figure out my life. As she saved me, really.
“Absolutely,” I said, and I tucked my arm in hers, about to lead her to the kitchen when I realized there was a man still standing in the doorway. A dark suit against that blood-red tree. It took a second for him to register but when he did, I couldn’t swallow my gasp.
The stranger. From my engagement party.
Right there in my doorway. His face had healed, and he looked . . . breathtaking.
I was suddenly lightheaded.
“Hi!” I said so inanely.
“This is Ronan,” Caroline said, gesturing back to Ronan who was still in the doorway.
I opened my mouth to say we met, but Ronan was looking at me blankly, like he’d never seen me before.
“Nice to meet you,” I said, shoving down my inappropriate delight.
“And you,” he said. His accent rolled down my hallway and right through my body.
“I can show you where my husband’s office is,” I volunteered thinking of the few minutes it would take to walk down that wood-paneled hallway to his office.
“Don’t be silly, Poppy,” Caroline said. “Let Anna do it.”
“Of course,” I said. It was outrageous to be jealous of my housekeeper.
But I was.
Outside of our driver, Theo, Ronan was literally the last man I was ever alone with. All of my doctors’ appointments, Jim was right there at my side. The doting husband, making sure our stories matched up.
The senator had been having meetings in his office at home more and more lately. Guests usually came in through the side entrance. His secretary signing people in and out.
It was nice that Caroline came through the front door to say hello.
“Follow me,” Anna said to Ronan, having arrived as if summoned. Anna spent a lot of time waiting just around corners, always within earshot. Jim had said it was the sign of an excellent servant. I thought perhaps it was the sign of an excellent spy.
Of course, I did not say that out loud.
Ronan walked past us in the hallway, and I did not imagine the smell of smoke that wafted off him, and without thinking about it, I practically pasted myself to the wainscoting so there was no chance that his body might touch mine. Things were very precarious in my life, and I had the stupid sense that if he touched me, accidentally brushed his hand across mine, parts of my life would just crumble.
At the doorway, he turned and looked at us over his shoulder. I expected a smile. That man I met at my engagement party, he’d been the type to look over his shoulder and smile at a girl.
But there was no smile, and beside me Caroline gave him a sharp nod and he left.
Maybe he didn’t remember me. That was possible. I was forgettable. My husband had forgotten me plenty over the last two years. I’d forgotten myself.
There was no reason that it should hurt that the stranger had forgotten me.
Ronan.
“Come, darling,” Caroline said, putting her arm through mine. “Show me this big kitchen reno you’ve been working on.”
; I led my old friend through the hallway to the back of the house where the kitchen looked out over the pool and the pool house that I’d converted to a gym and yoga studio that I didn’t use. But wanted to. The kitchen was filled with bright light and trying to look at it critically through Caroline’s eyes, it was still a beautiful room. Marble countertops and gold fixtures. Built in dishwashers and two ovens. Beautiful old chandeliers over the long island with the gold stools. It was pretty. It felt like a room a person would want to spend time in. A room that could make a home. So, why didn’t it? I wondered. Why didn’t it feel like my home?
That thought crept into my head far too often. Filled me with a kind of panic that didn’t do me any good. Feeling nothing was the only thing that made my life bearable.
I put the kettle on and pulled out the tea service Caroline had given me as a wedding gift.
“The house looks amazing, darling,” she said, taking off her wrap and putting it over the edge of the island and pulling up a stool. She was a beautiful woman. Ageless and elegant. Inspiring really. The head of the Constantine family and the Chairwoman of the Board.
An absolute queen.
“Thank you. It’s been a labor of love.”
“How is Jim?” she asked.
Different, I wanted to say. He doesn’t sleep. Rarely eats with me anymore. His temper – always mercurial – was completely unpredictable. The other night after waking up alone just after midnight, I actually went looking for him. Not something I ever did before. Only to find him talking to himself in the kitchen. Muttering and swearing. I left without saying a word, but lay in bed staring at the ceiling, a sick dread in my stomach.
“Fine,” I said, because I didn’t know how to talk about Jim. Not with Caroline, not with anyone.
“How are things at the foundation?”
I took a deep breath. “On hold for the moment.” My job at the foundation had been a sham, though it took me a while to realize it. I’d thought, stupidly, Jim was giving me a chance to actually do some good. But he’d taken it away as quickly as he’d given it to me.
Embarrassed, I hadn’t told Caroline that. I’d lied, pretending I still worked there.
Pride and all.
“Really?” she asked. “You had such plans.”
“After the miscarriage, we thought it best if I did less.”
“Of course,” Caroline said quickly. She didn’t like talking about my miscarriages. And she had made it clear that she was not a shoulder for me to lean on when it came to my marriage. The first time I’d gone to her house, crying and bloody, in shock from Jim’s violence, Caroline cleaned me up and told me it was my job to make it work. That I needed to make it work. For my own sake. For Zilla’s sake.
And she sent me back to Jim.
Zilla would have told her to fuck off and taken a match to Jim’s house. But, again, I was not Zilla, and I had dried my eyes and did what Caroline told me.
Somehow, making it work, meant me becoming smaller and smaller inside my body and life. I was unnoticeable and forgettable and passive and meek, all so I could survive. So my sister could survive.
“And Zilla? How is she?” Caroline asked.
“Belhaven.”
“She checked herself back in?”
I nodded and didn’t tell her about the seven days my sister had been gone. Caroline had already done so much for us, and there was nothing she could do that would change Zilla’s circumstances.
And maybe I was embarrassed. Or maybe I was just exhausted.
“Good.”
I lied and she smiled like all was well, and that too was a comfort. Pretending everything was fine was simply a way of making things fine.
I poured the boiling water into the teapot and tossed in three scoops of my special English Breakfast blend, got out some milk for the small milk pitcher, and sugar cubes. “Lemon?”
“No, thank you. Sit down.” She pulled me down onto the stool next to her.
“You’re very thin,” she said, eyeing me up and down.
“The miscarriage—”
“Was months ago. Have you seen your doctor?”
“Of course.”
“And you’re okay?”
“Who is that man?” I asked. Blurted, really. “Ronan?”
“Are you changing the subject?” Caroline asked with a smile.
“I am,” I said. “I don’t want to talk about the miscarriage.”
“Well, he’s a man I hired a few years ago. He works on sensitive issues for the family.”
“Why is he talking to Jim?”
“Just clarifying his position on the trade deal with China before the Senate vote.”
“But what—”
“Darling,” she said and began to pour us tea, “this conversation is why I hired Ronan. So I wouldn’t have to have it.”
“Of course,” I said.
Caroline’s smile was very pretty. I mean, she was a beautiful woman, who paid a lot of money to look twenty years younger than she was. I had seen her smile with her teeth and the recipients of those smiles shirked away, wondering what they’d done wrong.
But the smiles she gave me always seemed different. Softer. Kinder.
“I have something for you.” She reached into her purse and pulled out an envelope. When Dad first died there’d been lots of these envelopes filled with cash to help with Zilla, to get me an apartment after the banks took what was left of the house. To buy me clothes when the bank took my clothes. But when it was clear what Dad had really done, the envelopes stopped, and Jim was mentioned.
“I don’t need that,” I said. Though I thought a little of the envelope of my own in my underwear drawer where I’d been squirreling away cash. Not a lot. I didn’t get a lot of cash in my life. But some of the trades wanted cash, and I told Jim they asked for a couple hundred dollars more, and I pocketed the rest.
Every time I put money in that envelope my mind was blank. Like I had no real idea what I was doing or why I was doing it. But at night, when I couldn’t sleep, I sometimes counted the money and wondered how much I needed to get free when Jim went too far.
And then I wondered what was too far?
Certainly, the night of the miscarriage . . . that had been too far. And yet, I was still here.
“Look inside,” Caroline said, smiling. “You’re going to be happy.”
I slid the envelope across the granite and opened it up, only to find old photographs.
“Oh my,” I gasped. Tears sharp and hot and sudden in my eyes. “It’s Mom.”
“Her sixteenth birthday and then,” she reached forward and pulled out one from the back, “a random Halloween and our high school graduation.”
“Look at you,” I sighed. They were both so beautiful and young. Mom wore a lace mini-dress at her birthday with long belled sleeves. Her long hair was parted down the middle, and her eyeliner was thick and black. Beside her, Caroline was wearing a black and white sequined mini dress with white boots. The 1970’s in full glorious effect.
“I’d give my leg for that dress back. And those legs,” Caroline said. “That night your mother stole a bottle of champagne and snuck on the roof and took off her dress. She drank that champagne in her underwear on the roof, and I thought her father was going to kill her.”
“He sent her away,” I said. “After that, didn’t he?”
“Boarding school in Connecticut. She stole a car at Thanksgiving and came down and snuck in my room.” Caroline’s smile was nearly heartbreaking with its tenderness. “She was . . .”
Troubled. A problem. Reckless. All those words could have applied. And I’d heard them plenty over the years. But all of that recklessness and danger had another side. And I knew all this all too well after the years with my sister. The light that came off my sister was worth some of the darkness. My mom was the same way, and only Caroline, my sister, and I understood the beauty of that kind of light.
It was part of why I forgave her for sending me back to Jim that night. It was
part of why I always welcomed her into my home with open arms. We’d been through fire together.
“Amazing,” I said. Looking down at my gorgeous young mother burning far too bright.
“She really was.”
There was the click of the door shutting down the hallway, and suddenly Ronan was in my kitchen. Tall and thin, tugging the sleeves of his shirt down beneath the cuff of his jacket.
“You’re done then?” Caroline said.
“I am,” he said, and then he glanced at me, and I was frozen in his cold blue gaze.
“Would you like some tea?” I asked, remembering how I’d thought that night that I could sense warmth in him. There was no part of this man that was warm. He was ice, through and through.
What happened to that charming man in the shadows who’d made me laugh? He’d also pressed my lip into my teeth until I bled, but honestly, I’d pushed that memory away. That thought. Unable to hold it in my head with the same memories of the way the senator hurt me. Both made me bleed.
Why was one somehow exciting to me? The other abhorrent? I didn’t know how to hold both things in my hands at once.
Though, he was probably wondering the same kind of thing about me. That shy girl, cracking jokes and drinking out of a flask. That girl with her red hair and her ridiculousness, she was nowhere to be found.
Two years had happened. Two very long years, perhaps for both of us.
“We have to go,” Caroline said, her voice cooler than it had been with me, which was how Caroline talked to all her employees. Nothing personal. Ever.
Caroline kissed my cheek. “Don’t bother seeing us out. I know the way.”
She left me in a cloud of her perfume, and Ronan stepped out of her way, letting Caroline breeze by him, and in her absence, our eyes met again.
And I smiled, I smiled like we were old friends. Like we shared a secret. Like I . . . I don’t know, it was weird. It was stupid, but I smiled at him like I missed him. Because he’d been the last person I’d talked to who had no idea who I was. Or who I was married to. He was the last person who’d offered me whiskey and a piece of cheese and to beat someone up for me – just because.
