“You are Johanna’s husband? Yes?”
“Yes,” I said, waiting for her to take a seat. “Caleb.”
“Caleb,” she repeated. “I saw you on television. During the trial.” Then-”How did you know I was here?” Her accent was thick, but she spoke English well. She was sitting ramrod straight, her back not touching the chair. She looked more like Russian military than former Russian prostitute.
“Why are you here?” I asked.
She smiled. “We are going to have to answer each other’s questions if we want to get anywhere, no?”
“Her attorney’s office called me,” I said, leaning back in my chair.
“Ah, yes. Ms. Olivia Kaspen.”
God. Her name even sounded good with a Russian accent.
I didn’t acknowledge or deny.
“Should we go to the bar? Order a drink,” she said.
I nodded, tight lipped. I followed her into the hotel bar, where she sat at a table near the front. Only after the bartender brought her vodka and my scotch, did she answer my question.
“I’ve come to meet my daughter.”
“She doesn’t want to meet you,” I said.
She narrowed her eyes and I saw Leah.
“Why not?”
“You gave her up a long time ago. She has a family.”
Anfisa scoffed. “Those people? I didn’t like them when they took her. The man didn’t even like children, I could tell right away.”
“That doesn’t speak very highly of you, giving your baby to people you didn’t even like.”
“I was sixteen years old and I slept with men to survive. I didn’t have much choice.”
“You had a choice to give her to people you liked.”
She looked away. “They offered me the most money.”
I sat my glass down harder than I intended. “She doesn’t want to see you,” I said firmly.
My statement seemed to jar her a little. She slouched some and her eyes darted around the empty bar like she couldn’t hold it together anymore. I wondered if this whole stiff-backed thing was an act.
“I need money. Just enough to write my next book. And I want to write it here.”
That’s what I thought. I took out my checkbook.
“You never come to Florida,” I said. “And you never try to contact her.”
She downed the rest of her vodka like a true Russian.
“I want a hundred thousand dollars.”
“How long will it take you to write the book?” I scrawled her name onto the check and paused to look up at her. She stared at that check with hunger in her eyes.
“A year,” she said, without looking at me. I held my pen above the amount line.
“I’ll divide it by twelve then. I’ll put money in an account every month. You contact her or leave New York, you don’t get your deposit.”
She eyed me with something I didn’t recognize. It could have been contempt. Hate for a situation that left her dependent on me. Annoyance that her blackmail wasn’t working as well as she wanted it to.
“What if I say no?”
I saw Leah in her defiance too.
“She won’t give you money. She will slam the door in your face. Then you’ll get nothing.”
“Well then, son-in-law. Sign my check and be done with it.”
And so I got done with it.
I changed my flight. Went home early. I didn’t ever hear much from Anfisa. I sent her money even after Leah and I separated and got divorced. I didn’t want her presence to hurt Estella, even if she wasn’t mine. When her year was up, she went back to Russia. I ran an Internet search for her once and saw that her book was a huge seller. Leah might hear from her eventually, but I was done with her.
I go straight to her condo. If she’s not home already, I’ll be waiting there when she arrives.
She is home. When she opens the door, it’s as if she was expecting me. Her eyes and her lips are swollen. When Olivia cries, her lips double in size and turn bright red. It’s the most beautifully fragile and feminine thing about her.
She stands to the side to let me in, and I walk past her into the living room. She closes the door softly and follows me.
She wraps her arms around her body and stares out at the ocean.
“When you left and went to Texas, after we…” I break to let her catch up to what I’m saying. “I came after you. It took me a few months to get past my initial wounded pride, and to find you, of course. Cammie didn’t want to tell me you were there, so I just showed up on her doorstep.”
I tell her about how I waited at the side of the house when I saw the car coming, and how I heard the exchange between her and Cammie. About how I knocked on the door when she went upstairs to shower. I tell her all of it and I can’t tell if she can hear me, because her face is unmoving, her eyes unblinking. Her chest doesn’t even rise and fall with breath.
“I was on my way up the stairs, Duchess, when Cammie stopped me. She told me that you got pregnant after our night together. She told me about the abortion.”
Finally, the statue springs to life. Her fierce eyes turn on me. Blue fire — the hottest kind.
“Abortion?” The word tumbles out of her mouth. “She told you that I got an abortion?”
Now … now, her chest is rising and falling. Her breasts straining against the fabric of her shirt.
“She inferred it. Why didn’t you tell me?”
She opens her mouth, runs her tongue along her bottom lip. I don’t know why I’m doing this to her now. Maybe I think that if I remind her of how much history we have, it’ll stir her to choose me.
“I didn’t have an abortion, Caleb,” she says. “I had a miscarriage. A goddamn miscarriage!”
She swims in and out of focus as I grasp her words.
“Why wouldn’t Cammie tell me?”
“I don’t know! To keep you away from me? She was right to! We are bad for each other!”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because it hurt! I tried to pretend it never happened.”
I don’t know what to do with myself. It’s like the whole world is determined to keep us apart. Even fucking Cammie who’d had a front row seat to our relationship for all these years. How could she? Olivia is struggling not to cry. Her lips move as she tries to form words.
“Look at me, Duchess.”
She can’t.
“What are you going to tell me?”
“You know…” she says softly.
“Don’t do this,” I say. “This is our last chance. You and I were made for each other.”
“I choose him, Caleb.”
Her words ignite anger — so much anger. I can barely look at her. I breathe through my nose, her announcement reverberating across my brain, burning my tear ducts and landing somewhere in my chest, causing such incredible heartache, I can’t see straight.
Through my crash, I lift my head to look at her. She’s pale; her eyes wide and panicked.
I nod … slowly. I’m still nodding ten seconds later. I’m calculating the rest of my life without her. I am contemplating strangling her. I am wondering if I did everything I could … if I could have tried harder.
There is one last thing I have to say. Something I said before and was so terribly wrong about.
“Olivia, I once told you that I would love again, and that you would hurt forever. Do you remember?”
She nods. It’s a painful memory for both of us.
“It was a lie. I knew it was a lie, even as I said it. I’ve never loved anyone after you. I never will.”
I walk out.
Walk away.
No more fighting — not for her, or with her, or with myself.
I am so sad.
How many times can a heart be broken before it is beyond mend? How many times can I wish to not be alive? How can one human being cause such a crack in my existence? I alternate between periods of numbness and inconceivable pain all in the span of — an hour? An hour feels like
a day, a day feels like a week. I want to live, and then I want to die. I want to cry, and then I want to scream.
I want, I want, I want…
Olivia.
But, I don’t. I want her to suffer. I want her to be happy. I want to stop thinking altogether and be locked in a room without thoughts. Possibly for a year.
I run. I run so much that if the zombie apocalypse were to happen, they’d never be able to catch me. When I run I don’t feel anything but the burning in my lungs. I like the burn; it lets me know I can still feel when I’m having a numb day. When I am having a day of pain, I drink.
There is no cure.
One Month Gone
Two Months Gone
Three Months
Four
Estella isn’t mine. The paternity test comes back. Moira makes me come into her office to deliver the news. I stare at her blankly for five minutes while she explains the results — there is no way, no chance, no possibility that I am her biological father. I get up and leave without saying anything. I drive and don’t know where I am going. I land up at my house in Naples — our house in Naples. I haven’t been here since the issue with Dobson. I leave all the lights off and make some calls. First to London, then to my mother, then to a realtor. I fall asleep on the couch. When I wake up the next morning, I lock up the house, leaving a set of spare keys in the mailbox and drive back to my condo. I pack. I book a ticket. I fly. As I sit on my flight, I laugh to myself. I’ve become Olivia. I’m running away, and I just don’t give a fuck anymore. I trace the rim of my plastic cup with my fingertip. No. I’m starting over. I need it. If I can help it, I’m never going back there. I’m selling our house. After all these years. The house where we were supposed to have children and grow old together. It will sell fast. I’ve received offers for it over the years and there are always realtors leaving their cards with me in case I decide to sell. In the divorce I gave everything to Leah so long as she left the Naples house alone. She hadn’t put up much of a fight, and now I can see why. She had something much crueler planned for me. She wanted to give me back my daughter and then take her away again. I close my eyes. I just want to sleep forever.
Birthday parties made me uncomfortable. Who the hell even invented them? Balloons, presents you didn’t want … cake with all that fluffy, processed frosting. I was an ice cream kind of girl. Cherry Garcia. Cammie bought me a pint of that and handed it to me as soon as I blew out my candles.
“I know what you like,” she said, winking at me.
Thank God for best friends who make you feel known.
I ate my ice cream perched on a barstool in Cammie’s kitchen while everyone else ate my cake. There were people everywhere, but I felt alone. And every time I felt alone, I blamed it on him. I set my ice cream on the counter and wandered outside. The DJ was playing Keane — sad music! Why the hell was there sad music at my birthday party? I slumped in a lawn chair and listened, watching the balloons bob. Balloons were the worst part of parties. They were unpredictable; one minute they were happy little balls of emotion, the next they were exploding in your face. I had a love/hate relationship with unpredictability. He who must not be named was unpredictable. Unpredictable like a boss.
When I dutifully started opening presents, my husband standing to my left, my best friend jiggling her breasts at the cute DJ — I was not expecting the blue packaged delivery.
I’d already opened twenty presents. Gift cards mostly — thank God! I loved gift cards. Don’t give me shit about gift cards not being personal. There’s nothing more personal than buying your own gift. I’d just put the last gift card I’d opened on the chair next to me, when Cammie took a break from flirting with the DJ to hand me the last of my presents. There was no card. Just a simply wrapped electric blue box. To tell you the truth, my mind didn’t even go there. If you work really hard at it, you can train your brain to ignore things. That shade of blue was one of them. I sliced the tape with my fingernail and pulled away the wrapping, balled it up and dropped it in the paper pile at my feet. People had started to drift away and talk, getting bored with the present unwrapping show, so when I opened the lid and stopped breathing, no one really noticed.
“Oh fuck. Ohfuckohfuckohfuck.”
No one heard me. I saw a flash. Cammie took another picture and moved away from the DJ to see what was making my face contort like I’d sucked on a lemon.
“Oh fuck,” she said, looking into the box. “Is that?”
I slammed the lid shut and shoved the box at her. “Don’t let him see,” I said, glancing at Noah. He was holding a beer in one hand, his face turned away from me and talking to someone — it might have been Bernie. Cammie nodded. I stood up and bolted for the house. I had to walk around people who were still eating cake around the island in Cammie’s kitchen. I made a right and darted up the stairs, choosing the bathroom in Cammie’s bedroom, rather than the one downstairs that everyone was using. I kicked off my shoes, closed the door, and stood bent over the sink, breathing hard. Cammie came in a few minutes later, shutting the door behind her.
“I told Noah you felt sick. He’s waiting in the car. Can you do this, or do you need me to send him home and tell him you’re staying the night?”
“I want to go home,” I said. “Just give me a minute.”
Cammie slid down the door until she was sitting on the floor. I sat on the edge of her tub and traced the lines of the floor tile with my toe.
“That was uncalled for,” she said. “What’s with you two sending each other anonymous packages?”
“That was different,” I said. “I sent him a fucking baby blanket, not … that.” I eyed the box that was sitting next to Cammie on the floor. “What’s he trying to do?”
“Umm, he’s sending you a pretty clear message.”
I tugged at the collar of my dress. Why is it so damn hot in here?
Cammie pushed the box across the bathroom tile until it nudged my toe.
“Look again.”
“Why?”
“Because you didn’t see what was underneath the divorce papers.”
I flinched at the word divorce. Bending down, I retrieved the box from the floor and lifted out the stack of papers. Divorce was heavy. It wasn’t official, but he’d obviously filed. Why did he need to tell me this? Like it made a difference anymore. I put the papers next to me on the lip of the tub and stared down at the contents underneath.
“Holy hell.”
Cammie tucked her lips in and raised her eyebrows, nodding.
The Pink Floyd CD from the record store — the case cracked diagonally across, the kissing penny — green from age and flattened, and one deflated basketball. I reached out a finger and touched its bumpy skin, and then I dropped everything on the floor and stood up. Cammie quickly scooted out of the way, and I opened the door and stepped into her bedroom. I needed to go home and sleep forever.
“What about your fucked up birthday present?” Cammie called after me.
“I don’t want it,” I said. I stopped when I reached her doorway, something eating at me. Turning back, I strode into the bathroom and crouched down in front of her.
“If he thinks this is okay, he’s wrong,” I snapped. She nodded, her eyes wide. “He can’t do this to me,” I reiterated.
She shook her head in agreement.
“To hell with him,” I said. She gave me a thumbs-up.
While our eyes were still locked, I reached out a hand and felt along the floor until my fingers found the penny.
“You didn’t see me do this,” I said, tucking it into my bra. “Because I don’t give a fuck about him anymore.”
“Do what?” she replied, dutifully.
“Good girl.” I leaned over and kissed her on the forehead. “Thank you for my party.”
Then I walked to my car, walked to my husband, walked back to my life.
I was in bed an hour later, turned toward the ocean, even though it was too dark to see it. I could hear the waves rushing against the surf. The
ocean was choppy tonight. Fitting. Noah was watching television in the living room; I could hear CNN through the walls. CNN was a lullaby to me at this point. He never came to bed when I did, and every night I fell asleep listening to the drone of the news. Tonight, I was grateful to be alone. If Noah looked too carefully — which he often did — he would see through my hollow smiles and pretend illness. He’d ask me what was wrong and I wouldn’t lie to him. I didn’t do that anymore. I was betraying him with my rogue emotions. I had the penny clutched in my fist, it was burning a hole through me, but I couldn’t put it down. First Leah had come to me, throwing those deed papers in my face. Papers that, until that moment, I knew nothing about. Now, him. Why couldn’t they just leave me alone? Ten years was a long time to grieve a relationship. I’d paid for my stupid decisions with a decade. When I met Noah, I finally felt ready to put my broken love to rest. But, you couldn’t put something to rest when it kept coming back to haunt you.
I stood up and walked to the sliding glass doors that led to my balcony. Stepping out, I walked lightly to the edge of the railing.
I could do this. I kind of had to. Right? Exercise the ghosts. Take a stand. This was my life, damn it! The penny wasn’t my life. It had to go. I lifted my fisted hand and felt the wind wrap around it. All I had to do was open my fist. That was it. So easy and so hard. I wasn’t the type of girl to back away from a challenge. I closed my eyes and opened my fist.
For a second my heart seized. I heard my voice, but the wind quickly took it away. There. It was gone.
I stepped back and away from the railing, suddenly cold. Backwards I walked to my bedroom, one step, two steps … then I lurched forward, throwing myself against the railing to peer over into the space between me and the ground.
Oh my god. Had I really done that?
I had, and my heart was aching for a goddamn penny. You’re an idiot, I told myself. Until tonight you didn’t even know he still had the penny. But, that wasn’t really true. I’d seen inside his Trojan horse when I’d broken into his house. He’d kept it all those years. But, he had a baby, and babies had a way of making people throw out the past and start new. I walked back to my bedroom and shut the door. I walked back into my bedroom and shut the door, and climbed into bed, and climbed into my life, and cried, cried, cried. Like a baby.