But Alan didn’t seem to hear. Instead, he looked at his watch. Even though it was only seven A.M., he said, “Gotta go.”
“Are you sure you wouldn’t like a pancake or two?” Leslie asked, knowing that she sounded whiny. What she wanted to say was, “You can damned well spend an hour with your family before rushing off to your bimbo.”
But Leslie didn’t say that. Instead, she tried to smile invitingly.
“Sounds good, but I’m meeting some clients this afternoon and we have lots of paperwork to go over before the big meeting.”
Even though the name was hardly ever said, all of them knew that “we” was Alan and Bambi.
Alan walked over to Leslie and gave her a kiss on the cheek. “I hope you have a good time,” he said. “And, about your birthday . . .” He gave her a little-boy look that years ago she’d found irresistible.
“I know,” she said with a forced smile. “You’ll get me something later. It’s all right. My birthday isn’t for three days anyway.”
“Thanks, hon,” he said, kissing her cheek again. “You’re a brick.” Grabbing his jacket off the back of a chair, he left the house.
“‘You’re a brick,’” Rebecca mimicked as she ate a spoonful of some cereal that looked like extruded sawdust. “You’re a chump.”
“I won’t have you talk about your father like that,” Leslie said, glaring down at her daughter. “Or me.”
“Nice!” Rebecca said, coming out of her chair. She was as tall as her mother, so they were eye to eye across the breakfast table. “All you care about is nice! Nice words, nice manners, nice thoughts. But the world isn’t nice, and what Dad is doing with that leech isn’t nice.”
Suddenly, there were tears in Rebecca’s eyes. “Don’t you know what’s going to happen? That woman is going to break us up. She wants what we have, not the family, but the money. She wants the silver tea set and the . . . and the fifty-thousand-dollar kitchen that you hate but were too cowardly to tell Dad that you didn’t want. We’re going to lose everything because you’re so damned nice.” With that, Rebecca ran out of the kitchen and up the stairs.
And in the next moment, a car horn blew outside and Leslie knew that the shuttle bus that would take her to the airport was there. For a moment, she hesitated. She should go to her daughter. Her daughter was upset and needed her, and a mother always gave, didn’t she? A good mother was always there for her children, wasn’t she? A good mother—And a good wife, Leslie thought. That’s what she was: a mother and a wife.
Suddenly, Leslie didn’t want to be anyone’s wife or anyone’s mother. She wanted to get on a plane and go see two women she hadn’t seen since she was very young, since before she was anyone’s wife or mother.
Leslie practically ran out of the kitchen, grabbed her handbag off the hall table and her two suitcases from the floor, then opened the front door. She yelled, “Good-bye. See you on Tuesday,” up the stairs to her two children, but she didn’t wait for an answer. A minute later and she was in the van, the driver was pulling away, and it was then that Leslie realized that she hadn’t brushed her teeth. She doubted if she’d missed an after-meal brushing of her teeth since she was three years old, and she almost told the driver to stop and go back.
But then Leslie leaned back against the seat and smiled. Not brushing her teeth seemed to be a sign that she was about to start on an adventure. In front of her were three whole days that were hers and no one else’s. Freedom. She hadn’t been on a trip by herself since she’d gone to New York nineteen years ago. What was it going to be like to not have people asking, “Where’s my tie?” “Where’s my other shoe?” “Hon, could you call down and order me something to eat?” “Mom! What do you mean that you didn’t bring my red shorts? How can I have any fun without those shorts.”
For a moment Leslie closed her eyes and thought of three days of freedom; then a laugh escaped her. Startled, she opened her eyes to see the driver looking at her in the mirror, and he was smiling.
“Glad to get away?” he asked. They were the only people in the van.
“You can’t imagine,” Leslie said with feeling.
“Whoever takes care of you better not leave you alone too long,” the man said, still looking at her, his eyes flirting.
Leslie knew that she should give him her best “Mrs. Church-Lady look,” as Rebecca called it, after the comedian on TV. But right now Leslie didn’t feel like giving that look. The driver was a good-looking young man and he’d just paid her a compliment. She smiled at him, then leaned her head back against the seat and closed her eyes, feeling the best she’d felt in a long, long time.
Two
Ellie Abbott leaned back against the seat of the airplane, closed her eyes, and thought, What the hell have I done?
Leaning forward again, she picked up the plastic cup of club soda from the fold-down tray, but when she tried to bring it to her lips, she saw that her hand was shaking. Putting the cup down, she tried to calm her nerves by looking out the window.
She was on a propeller plane flying into Bangor, and she was glad that the plane wasn’t divided into classes because no longer did she travel in first class. In Ellie’s mind she didn’t deserve such perks as first class because she was no longer Alexandria Farrell, the writer who had caused such a storm when her books first came out, five of them, one after another. Boom. Boom. Boom.
No, it had been three years now since Ellie had written a word. It had been three years since the stories inside her head had stopped. Three years since her divorce and what had been done to her by the courts, by the American “justice” system.
Again Ellie tried to drink from her cup, but her hand was trembling too much to keep from spilling the drink. Nervously, she glanced at the man sitting across the aisle from her, but he hadn’t seemed to notice anything. And, thankfully, he hadn’t given any sign that he knew “who” she was.
Or used to be, Ellie thought. Like those old movie stars who were stopped on the street and asked, “Didn’t you used to be so and so?”
Well, Ellie was still Ellie, Abbott again, back to her maiden name, no longer using her married name, but she didn’t feel that she was still Alexandria Farrell the writer.
“You can’t go through this birthday alone,” her therapist had said. Jeanne was now the only person Ellie saw on a regular basis. For three years now Ellie had retreated from the world, telling people that she needed time to “recover.” But about eight months ago, after her second attempt at obtaining justice had failed, Ellie had sought professional help.