Heartbroken (15 page)

“Emily, honey? What’s wrong?”

She opened the door, looking behind Emily. Would she see them? Would she know they were lying in wait to rob her? Emily stepped inside, and Carol closed and locked the door. They’d been robbed before, Emily knew. Not here in New Jersey, but in a place they used to own in New York City. They were cautious. There were security cameras outside. She wasn’t sure whether Dean knew that. Had she ever mentioned it? Probably not; she would have had no reason to do so.

“I’m sorry,” said Emily. Her voice caught and broke. “I didn’t have anyplace else to go.”

Carol led her over to the booth by the window. “What’s happened? What’s wrong?”

This was the moment, right here, before anything bad had happened. She’d dwelled in this moment before. Here she could make a choice. She could say, “Carol, you need to call the police. My boyfriend and some other addict ex-con are waiting outside to rob this place. I had no choice except to follow them this far. But they want me to open the back door and let them in so they can take your money. I’m not going to do that. You need to call the police.”

That was the right thing to do. It was perfectly clear. But she didn’t do it. Dean would get arrested and go to jail. Or they’d hear the sirens and get away. What would they do to her then? Dean would know that she’d betrayed him, and he’d hate her forever. Would he hurt her? Maybe not, but Dean couldn’t stop Brad from hurting her. If she helped them, they’d get their money. Brad would disappear. Emily could convince Dean to clean up, get a job. Things would work out okay. After all, Paul and Carol
were
insured; a couple thousand dollars didn’t mean that much to them.

She found herself sliding onto the vinyl booth. She made up a story for Carol, a fight with Dean that had gotten violent. In tears, Emily told Carol that she and her mother weren’t talking. And she
was so sorry to impose, but she
really
needed to talk to someone. Did Carol and Paul ever fight like that?

“I’ve never fought with Paul like that, no,” said Carol gently. “But I’ve been in a violent relationship—when I was about your age. I will tell you that it rarely gets better. Once someone hurts you, chances are he’ll do it again and again. And it will only get worse.”

Emily knew Carol was right. She found herself nodding, the tears still falling. “He wasn’t like this at first,” she said. “At first he seemed like such a great guy.”

“Honey, they all seem great at first,” said Carol. “That’s how they get you hooked.”

“I don’t want to give up on him. I love him,” said Emily. “But I feel like I have to betray myself to be with him.”

She hadn’t meant to say that. She was sorry when the words were out in the air—they were too honest. She hadn’t even realized she felt that way. But she did; she had for a while. Being with Dean made her do bad things. She was someone—even in this moment—who she didn’t want to be.

“That’s not a good feeling,” said Carol. Emily could tell that Carol knew all about it. “And it’s not love, either.”

Emily felt a little rush of anger. She did love Dean. No one could tell her differently. Otherwise, why would she do all of these things for him? She wouldn’t, not if she didn’t know that deep inside, he was a better man. If they could just get back to that good place and forget all this other stuff, they’d be okay. She felt a renewed sense of purpose, of hope. In a few minutes, this would all be over. She’d get them back on track after that.

“Can I use the bathroom?” she asked.

“Of course,” said Carol. “I’ll get you some cocoa.”

Emily walked down the narrow hallway where she’d dropped all those glasses earlier. It seemed like weeks ago, so much had changed between then and now. In the bathroom, she splashed water on her
face and looked in the mirror. She dabbed at the black smudges of makeup under her eyes. She always hated the sight of her own reflection. Her face looked pasty and thin in the harsh fluorescent light. Her eyes were an uninspiring brown. Her mousy roots betrayed the fact that her blond tresses were store-bought.

Leaving the water running so that Carol would think she was still in there, Emily slipped from the bathroom and moved quickly down the hall and into the kitchen. Only the lights over the sink and stove were lit; the overheads were all off. It was dim and orange, quiet in stark contrast to the usual bright bustle when the restaurant was open. There was something nice, something intimate, about being there after hours.

Emily went to the metal back door.
Last chance
, she thought, looking at the dead bolt. It was new, still shiny and gold. She thought,
This is your last chance to do the right thing
. She’d stolen for Dean before—pills, jewelry, and cash from the houses she used to clean. She’d given him alarm codes—a family she babysat for who were away at Disney; a dress shop where she’d worked for a month. None of that was like this. It was all distant and theoretical. It had never felt like a personal betrayal, even though it was. All of those people had entrusted her with something, and for Dean, she’d betrayed them all. Why? Why would she do that, if not for love? She turned the lock on the knob and threw open the dead bolt and moved away from the door quickly. She didn’t want to think about how awful this was.

When she pushed out into the hallway, Angelo was standing there. He had his headphones on and was mopping the floor slowly, almost lovingly. He raised his eyes to Emily, startled, and then smiled broadly when he recognized her. He reached up and pulled one of the headphones from his right ear. “Hey,” he said. “What are you doing here?”

He wasn’t supposed to be here. But it made sense. Paul would never leave Carol alone in the restaurant, not unless there was someone
here to help her close up. Emily couldn’t bring herself to answer or smile back. He looked confused for a second, his smile fading. Then his gaze drifted to the kitchen behind her. His eyes went wide. She didn’t have to turn around to know he was watching Brad and Dean come in through the back door.

chapter eleven

B
rendan was asleep. The girls were watching a movie in Chelsea’s room, cuddled together on her bed like puppies. Kate remembered that physical closeness you had with your teenage girlfriends and experienced again with your small children. The unself-conscious melding of bodies, an acknowledgment that we were designed to wrap around each other for love and comfort more than anything else. She loved it when one of the kids got into bed with her and Sean, and they still did sometimes. Even Chelsea, who was too cool for school, sometimes slept with Kate when Sean was away.

Kate sensed that there was something going on in Chelsea’s universe; she’d heard some excited chirping, some conspiratorial whispering. Something to do with boys, she was certain. She tried not to stick her nose in. She didn’t try to act like one of the girls. She wasn’t that kind of mom.

Sean had taken a call and was in his office. She could hear the low tones of his professional voice, as opposed to the “buddy” voice reserved for his pals, loud and mischievous, or his “dad” voice, soothing but firm, or the voice, sweet and strong, that he reserved for her. Kate loved this time of night, when everyone was safe at home. In this place, she felt as though she could release a breath she’d been holding all day. She might read or watch television with Sean. Or, like tonight, she might sit outside by the pool with a glass of wine and be still for the first time all day.

She’d tried to call her mother to see if there was anything she
could bring, to assure her that whatever menu Birdie had planned would be just fine. But there was no answer. This was not unusual. Sometimes her mother didn’t answer the phone, even turned the machine off so that no one could leave a message. As a mother herself, Kate couldn’t understand. Why would you choose to be unavailable to your family, even if your children were grown?

It was a streak that ran through her mother’s side, a fierce desire to isolate, the preference for solitude. There was a cold meanness to it. This violent assertion of their separateness from the people who wanted to love them had caused terrible, bitter estrangements among her mother’s siblings, to the degree that Kate didn’t have relationships with her uncle or any of her cousins.

Most of those relationships had crashed upon the rocks of Heart Island. Her uncle Gene and Birdie had fought a bitter court battle over Grandpa Jack’s will, and they hadn’t spoken again since terms were settled. Toward the end of her life, Aunt Caroline abandoned the place she’d always loved.
I’m sorry, Kate. But Birdie makes everything so ugly. It’s not the same place it was, not for me
. Kate would learn that these estrangements were the least of it.

The August night was humid and thick. But after a day of darting between air-conditioned spaces, the real air felt good.
I am breathing in. I am breathing out
. She was aware suddenly of a leaden fatigue.

You’re tired?
her mother would say.
What did you do all day?
Birdie, who had never really worked and yet hadn’t been a stay-at-home mother, either, seemed to have nothing but disdain for people who did “less” than she did.
Being a mother is not a job, exactly, is it?

Birdie’s day was and always had been a busy flutter of vigorous workouts with her personal trainer, various meetings for the charitable committees to which she devoted most of her time, expensive “business” lunches, and appointments to maintain her impeccable grooming … manicure, pedicure, facial, waxing, God knew what else. Theo and Kate had been more or less raised by nannies, a long
anonymous string of them, since Birdie had trouble keeping staff. There was hardly time to attach to one before she fled. This was a fact that Birdie vehemently denied.
I had help, of course. Lord knows your father was never around. But I raised you children all by myself
. Maybe her mother believed that, but it was not true. And yet Kate had no harsher judge of her lack of professional achievement than her own mother.

At a certain point, people—including her parents—had stopped asking Kate what she was going to do with her life. By the time you reached forty, if you hadn’t done anything to speak of, people figured you probably wouldn’t ever do much of anything. Early on, the questions were always excited and hopeful.
What’s your major? What are your plans after graduation?
Expectations ran high for the offspring of Joe and Birdie. The beautiful daughter of the wealthy, philanthropic New York City Burkes could do anything, couldn’t she? That’s what Mother always said, as if Kate’s parentage were some ticket to ride.

Then, as the years went on and her college graduation was a distant point in everyone’s past, the inquiries become more cautious.
Have you thought about what you might like to do? You were always such a good writer. Your parents always thought you’d go into publishing
. And, of course, there was the early and unplanned pregnancy. After that, her vicious public divorce from Sebastian. (
Se-bastard
, as she often thought of him; with a name like that, how could you
not
turn out to be a self-indulgent jerk?) Then she moved to the New Jersey suburbs and married a real estate broker.

She stopped attending her parents’ dinner parties. In fact, they’d stopped mentioning the parties. By her early thirties, Kate knew she was no longer much of a showpiece, nothing to point to with pride. She was
justamom
. That’s what she said when people asked what she did now. “Oh,” she’d say with a self-deprecating smile, “I’m just a mom.”

People knew all the right things to say about that.
Oh, well
,
that’s the most important job in the world
. After Maria Shriver went on
Oprah
and said that mothers were on the front lines of humanity, people were
dripping
with respect.

Then there was some magazine article that said the job of stay-at-home mom was worth $110,000 a year. People seemed happy to trot out that statistic (she’d heard it at least three times, even though she’d never actually read the article), as if it meant anything at all.

The truth was that she’d meant to do so many things. She had fancied herself a writer, wrote prolifically at NYU—short stories, plays, poetry. She’d had some compliments, some encouragement from professors. But after college, there was Sebastian. She’d met him at one of her parents’ parties. Her parents always insisted that it wasn’t a setup, but they’d been thrilled when Kate started a relationship with him.

He was already famous; his first novel was the rare bird that critics laud and that also races up the best-seller lists. He’d made a fortune and was agonizing over his second novel, for which the expectations were so very high. She found his angst endearing; it never occurred to her at first that he had a problem with alcohol. Having just graduated from college, where drinking was the number one social activity, she didn’t find it odd that he drank every night at dinner (someplace fabulous), then went on to the bars (dark ones, preferably belowground), then the giggling stumble through quiet city streets back to his apartment on Second Avenue, sometimes as the first light of dawn broke the sky. In his thrall, she lost herself completely. His success, his ambition, was a red giant, already bloated and dangerously unstable. The stars trembling in his galaxy hardly had a chance.

He’d read a bit of her work.
It’s lovely, Kate. You have a delicate voice
. But what else would he say to the young woman ten years (twelve, actually) his junior as she lay naked in bed beside him, watching his face as he read? Anyway, what did that even mean? She took it to mean that he didn’t think much of it, since she’d heard him
describe other authors he admired as
muscular
or
powerful, masterful
or
mesmerizing
. Didn’t she already know on some subliminal level that she wasn’t allowed to have any ambition, any talent of her own, while she was with him? If she sought to be anything but his greatest and most intimate admirer, the delicate balance of their relationship would start to tip toward destruction. Chronic pleaser that she was, she couldn’t have that.