Killing Monica

  So she continued to tell herself that somehow, it would all be okay.

  * * *

  And for the next year, it was. On the surface, anyway. They still did the same things and saw the same people, but they seemed to see each other less and less. She didn’t wait up for him to come home anymore, and there would be days when they only saw each other for half an hour in the morning.

  Jonny began spending more time in Vegas.

  He came back for the holidays, though, and for some reason, he was in a terrific mood. He was convinced that the restaurant would be open soon. Pandy didn’t dare ask too many questions, not wanting to destroy what had now become a tenuous happiness that, like the old mirrored skating pond under her childhood Christmas tree, felt like it could fracture at any moment.

  New Year’s passed. Pandy’s accountant called, mystified by how she’d been running through her money. She wasn’t exactly broke—after all, she still had her apartment—but she certainly didn’t have enough to take a chance on writing a literary book that might not sell.

  She finished the edits on her third Monica book, and agreed to write a fourth. In a daze, she even agreed that Monica would get married in it.

  “Well? Aren’t you happy?” Jonny demanded. “You’ve got another contract. And for even more money this time.” When she could only shrug sadly, he began scolding her: “You were certainly happy the last time. What is wrong with you?” And then he suggested she give him a blow job, reminding her that they hadn’t had sex for a while.

  This was true. She discovered that now when he touched her, she froze. She could feel her vagina shut up tight, like the door of a safe slamming closed.

  Jonny had finally managed to render her impotent over her own life. And being involved with Jonny meant that she had no control over her future.

  * * *

  The restaurant still hadn’t opened four months later, when Jonny began to be gone for two weeks at a time. To Vegas, he said. When Pandy found a plane ticket that showed he’d actually gone to LA instead, he laughed it off. “What’s the difference? I go to LA for meetings, and then I take a private plane to Vegas.”

  “Whose plane?” Pandy asked, unable to believe that while he was jetting back and forth, she was stuck in the loft, trying to crank out a book in which she had absolutely no belief. To her, Monica’s getting married was a lie—just like her own marriage was a lie. And one to which she couldn’t seem to admit. When friends asked how things were going with Jonny, Pandy still told them they were going “great.”

  Jonny asked for another hundred thousand dollars to finish construction.

  Pandy told him that she couldn’t even think about it until she finished the fourth Monica book.

  And then they had a terrible fight that ended with Jonny shouting, “The difference between you and me, babe, is that I’m a man. I don’t need anyone to hold my hand!” He stormed out to stay with another one of his seemingly endless string of “buddies”—who Pandy now suspected were other women.

  It wasn’t until the week before Pandy’s birthday, when Jonny carelessly informed her that he’d be in Vegas, that she finally broke down and called Suzette.

  Suzette told Pandy to get Jonny to a marriage counselor ASAP, and gave her a number.

  * * *

  Pandy agreed to give the shrink a try, but she had to admit she was terrified. She hated confrontation, especially when it meant she might be told a truth she wasn’t going to like. She was pretty sure if she asked Jonny to go to a counselor, he would ask for a divorce.

  The thought made her feel sick. It was like the mirror under the Christmas tree had finally broken. And now it was in her stomach, the shards stabbing her insides like tiny butcher knives.

  Jonny came home two days later from another trip to Vegas. Pandy tried to pretend that everything was the same: greeting him with enthusiasm, opening a bottle of wine and pouring out glasses. She tried not to react when, as usual, Jonny kissed her absentmindedly on the forehead. Mumbling something about work, he sat down in front of the TV with his laptop on his thighs. It wasn’t long before he got the inevitable phone call, the one that he always took in the bathroom because it was “business.”

  Pandy realized Suzette was right: She couldn’t go on like this. “Jonny?” she asked, knocking on the bathroom door, and then angrily trying the knob when she heard him laughing inside. The door was locked; she pounded on it until he blithely opened it, still wearing a smile for whoever it was on the other end of the phone. Then his eyes focused on her, and his face twisted into that old puppy-dog expression that now made her sick. As he closed the door again, Pandy heard him hiss, “I don’t have much time.”

  She stood there for a second, feeling too insulted to knock again.

  Instead, she went into the kitchen and opened one of Jonny’s most expensive bottles of white wine. She tipped the bottle and poured herself a big, tall glass. She planned to sip in style while she girded herself for the inevitable confrontation. For surely it was coming. Just like that big fat pink cupcake of a storm that had brought them together in the first place.

  That was only four years ago. And it was all so perfect at the beginning. Why had Jonny ruined it?

  She took a gulp of wine, and hearing Jonny’s footsteps in the hall, braced herself.

  He came around the corner and gave her what was now his usual look, the one she hated—a tight grimace of annoyance and incomprehension. Pandy had a nearly uncontrollable urge to throw her glass of wine in his face. Only some ancient code of propriety prevented her.

  “I’ve had it!” she shouted. Taking a threatening step toward him, she spat, “Listen, buddy. I’m giving you one last chance. You agree to go to a marriage counselor, or else.”

  Jonny was so arrogant, he actually hadn’t been expecting this. It was as if he had no idea she’d ever been unhappy. This was the only way she could explain his stunned expression. Which went on for several seconds, as if he were seeing his life pass before his eyes. He was such a narcissist, Pandy thought.

  And picking up her purse and slinging it over her shoulder, she realized she couldn’t even be bothered to hear his answer. Yanking open the door, she shouted angrily that she was going to go stay with one of her “buddies” while he thought about it.

  She hadn’t gotten more than two blocks before Jonny called. And trying to laugh it all off, he convinced her to come home.

  Where, sipping the wine she had poured him earlier, he contritely agreed to see a therapist. Pandy was so floored, she barely registered Jonny going back into the bathroom to make another call. Then she realized that she needed to make a call as well. Grateful that Jonny was in the bathroom, she went into the bedroom and, in hushed tones, explained every detail to Suzette.

  “This is amazing,” Suzette shrieked. “Your marriage can still be saved.”

  And once again, because there was still some stubborn piece of that stupid fairy tale hidden away inside her—like a gold crown secreted inside a piece of Mardi Gras king cake—Pandy convinced herself it was going to be all right.

  And then the dam broke and relief flooded in when she realized that the fact that she and Jonny were seeing a marriage counselor gave her an excuse to tell her friends the truth about her marriage: It wasn’t perfect after all.

  In fact, at times it wasn’t even that great. But the good news was that while she and Jonny had grown apart, they’d realized it just in time and were going to fix things. Once again, all her friends were thrilled for her. All except Henry.

  “I don’t like it,” he’d said warningly.

  “Well, everyone else does,” Pandy said, not having the patience for a naysayer at the moment.

  “My guess is that he’s placating you.”

  “Men hate shrinks. And if there’s anything Jonny is, it’s a man. I promise you, he really wants to make this marriage work.”

  “I’m sure he does. After all, it’s worked very well for him so far, hasn’t it?” Henry drawled ominously. ?
??He has everything he wants. Technically, he’s married, and yet he conducts his affairs like a single man.”

  “That isn’t true,” Pandy snapped. Angered by Henry’s unhelpful perspective, she recalled what Jonny had said about Henry being like a character in an old black-and-white movie.

  * * *

  The shrink asked: “Why did you fall in love with Jonny?”

  The question reminded Pandy of all those meetings with editors and studio executives when they talked about male characters. The biggest question in the room was always: “Why did she fall in love with him if he turns out to be so awful in the end?”

  And despite hours spent debating the topic, there was only one answer: He wasn’t like that when she fell in love with him.

  Or was he, and she just didn’t know it yet?

  But she was there to save her marriage, not ruin it. So she told the truth: “I thought he was the love of my life.”

  “And why was that?” the shrink asked.

  “We seemed to understand each other. I mean, it was like all I had to do was think about him and he’d be there. Like one time, there was this snowstorm, and Jonny showed up. With a prosciutto—”

  “So it was the prosciutto that did the trick?” the shrink asked, in an attempt at levity.

  “It’s always the prosciutto, Doc,” Jonny quipped.

  And right on cue, the shrink laughed.

  And then Pandy laughed. And since Jonny was already laughing, for the first time in a very long time, they were laughing together.

  They talked a little more, and then the shrink put forth his theory. Here were two people who were used to admiration and respect. They were used to being known. Neither one of them considered themselves ordinary, but this was nothing exceptional because every person considers himself extraordinary. They believed in the fate of their own good luck, and that they deserved good fortune.

  But then, real life intervened. After a while, the excitement about the marriage calmed down. It no longer caused so much attention, and then she and Jonny went back to doing what they did best: their careers.

  And this was the problem. For a lot of couples, ambition and love didn’t go together.

  The shrink told them to go home and talk about it.

  Unfortunately, that conversation never happened, because Jonny had squeezed in the shrink appointment right before his flight back to Vegas. Pandy told him she didn’t mind, and gave him a long kiss goodbye. As she went into the loft, she looked around at the beautiful furnishings, at the kitchen, at all the things they’d managed to create together. She was suddenly convinced that she wanted her marriage to work. She would do anything to make it happen.

  And then, after she and Jonny had a couple of long chats on the phone, she felt that there was really nothing wrong with their relationship that a little communication couldn’t fix. Perhaps they didn’t even need the shrink after all.

  When Jonny returned home, it was he who insisted they go back. In their new spirit of communication, he said, “See? This is the problem I have with you. You say you’re going to do something for our marriage, and then you don’t.”

  Pandy looked at him with tempered surprise, determined to make an effort to keep her excessive emotions in check, as the shrink had also suggested. “Everything I do is for our marriage,” she said quietly. While Jonny’s comment naturally reminded her of all the money she’d given him, she managed to stay calm.

  Jonny did too. “I don’t care either way.” He shrugged and gave her a deliberate smile. “I’m only going along to support you. I know you want to fix yourself, and you need me there.”

  Pandy was startled by his incomprehension. During their second shrink appointment, she brought up the fact that Jonny thought she was the one who needed “fixing.”

  The shrink turned to Jonny. “Do you agree that this is the essence of your problem?”

  “Well,” Jonny said, sitting back on the couch and jokingly stroking his chin. “I do think I was cheated. I thought I was marrying Monica. But I got her instead.”

  Once again, they laughed. And once again, Jonny went back to Vegas.

  But this time, Pandy was crying on the inside. What she wanted to say was, You thought you were marrying Monica. But instead, you married someone who ended up supporting your dream while losing her own.

  Once again, she kept these thoughts to herself. She even reminded herself that if she wanted her marriage to survive, she was going to have to stop thinking about herself all the time.

  * * *

  Jonny returned to New York for a third session. This time, because they were doing so much better, the shrink gave them an exercise. They were to get to know each other better by exploring each other’s pasts. “You will go to each other’s hometowns. Like on The Bachelor,” the shrink explained.

  Pandy and Jonny looked at each other. “New York City is his hometown,” she said.

  “But what about Pandy’s hometown?” the shrink asked.

  And suddenly, Pandy realized this was real.

  And then she felt anxious.

  Jonny would hate where she grew up. The house was filled with antiques. But that wasn’t the worst of it. Jonny would take one look at the place and assume she was rich. And then he’d ask for more money for his restaurant.

  Which may have secretly been one of the reasons she’d avoided taking him there in the first place. In fact, during their marriage, she’d barely mentioned Wallis. It had come up a couple of times, but Pandy mentioned that there was no Wi-Fi or cell service. What Jonny didn’t know couldn’t hurt him, she’d thought.

  “Well?” the shrink asked, looking at her expectantly.

  “Sounds like a great idea, Doc,” Jonny said. He grabbed Pandy’s hand and gave it a good, hard squeeze, like the two of them were teammates.

  And that was how they ended up in Wallis, on the trip that Henry would later dub “Helter-Skelter.” As in, “That Helter-Skelter weekend when you tried to kill Jonny.”

  “I did not try to kill Jonny!” Pandy exploded.

  But oh, how she would come to wish she had.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  THE NIGHT before the trip to Wallis, Jonny returned from Vegas in a bad mood.

  He was still in a bad mood the next morning, complaining that his back hurt. During the two-hour drive, he kept shifting in his seat. When Pandy asked if he wanted her to drive instead, he snapped, “Do you want to take that over, too?”

  She kept her mouth shut and prayed the weekend wouldn’t be a disaster. And it wasn’t just because of Jonny. It was nerve-racking for her to bring anyone to Wallis. As Henry always pointed out, “Wallis House makes people act strange.” Henry was her only frequent guest.

  Wallis House was “complicated.”

  Indeed, it wasn’t a house at all, but a mansion. A rare, once-famous Italianate Victorian built on the top of a two-hundred-acre mountain. It featured a clay tennis court, a stream-fed marble pool, a carriage house big enough to hold a basketball court, and—because Old Jay, the ancestor who had built the house, had also been eccentric—an actual Victorian theater where he and his New York friends had staged plays.

  According to the photos, from 1882, when the mansion was completed, to 1929, when the stock market crashed, the house had been a real showplace. Unfortunately, it had gone steadily downhill from there. Passed from one generation to another, with each descendant wanting it less and less. It was what was known as a white elephant: too costly to maintain, too expensive to renovate; located in an area too remote and inconvenient to entice a buyer. When she and Hellenor were growing up, it had been an embarrassing wreck, with peeling paint, doors that barely opened, and missing floorboards. The plumbing clogged on a regular basis, the electricity was unreliable at best, and the house was filled with a million dusty family heirlooms.

  When Pandy was living there people insisted the place was haunted, and the family who lived there was suspect. The two Wallis girls were teased and bullied mercilessly, pa
rtly due to the house and partly due to the fact that they were weird kids who didn’t fit in. Someone once took Hellenor’s clothes from her gym locker and tried to flush them down the toilet because they were “ugly.” Pandy’s moniker was “Devil Spawn.” Together, the two Wallis girls were known as “the Cootie Kids.” Unlike some of the other taunts, this was usually said to their faces.

  “‘Cootie. A slang word of indeterminate origin believed to have originated with soldiers. Also, referring to lice,’” Hellenor had read from the dictionary.

  When their parents had died, Pandy and Hellenor had inherited the house. Like generations of Wallises before her, Hellenor hadn’t wanted it, and she had run off to Amsterdam.

  The mansion had continued to languish and decay, until Monica came along. And then, with Henry’s guidance—Henry having a deep love for storied historic homes—Pandy had begun to fix up the place. The result was a perfect rendition of what the house had been more than a hundred years ago—replete with the same lousy plumbing and electricity, and a million other inconveniences unimaginable to guests of today. Such as the fact that there was only enough hot water to fill one bathtub. Per day. And yet, from the outside, it appeared cosmetically perfect.

  Sort of like Monica, Pandy now thought. People looked at the house and assumed she was amazingly rich, when the reality was that when she had actually lived there, she’d been pathetically poor.

  And so, while she remained the same, when people saw the house now, they reacted a heck of a lot differently than they had when she and Hellenor were kids.

  It was just this sort of reaction that she was worried about with Jonny.

  * * *

  “You’re kidding me, right?” he asked, annoyed, when they finally reached the “town” of Wallis, Connecticut—consisting of a gas station, a general store, and three churches.