Kiss Mommy Goodbye (28 page)

“Why can’t we talk in the living room?” she asked from the doorway.

Mel, who now stood in the middle of the room, turned in her direction, locking his eyes into hers for the first time since they had left the party. “Because I don’t want to chance waking either Annie or Mrs. Harrison.”

“You planning on doing some yelling?” she asked, almost playfully, hoping not to have to play the scene she knew she had been almost totally responsible for creating. It had been months in the making, she recognized, wishing simultaneously to back away from it and to rush headlong into its core.

“I’m not sure what I’m planning.” No time for games. Too late for games.

“I don’t want to come in this room.”

“Figures.” He stopped. “Why not?”

She hesitated. “You know what I always planned for this room.” She held the hook of guilt in his direction.

He wouldn’t bite. “Let’s not get silly about this, Donna. Come inside and close the door. You can’t have memories for something that never was.”

“My children were!”

“Your children still are! If there are ghosts anywhere in this room, Donna, they’re standing in your shoes!”

Donna felt her anger beginning to grow. It pushed her inside and closed the door behind her. She looked around
the large, book-lined room which contained two matching green sofa-beds and a long, low coffee table. “Do you want to start talking in English, Doctor?”

“Do I really have to spell it out for you, Donna?”

“You really do.”

“You have no idea what I’m trying to say?”

“Stop speaking in riddles, dammit, you’re the one who wants to talk!”

Mel began angrily pacing back and forth.

“I still can’t figure out why you’re so angry,” Donna continued, not waiting for him to speak, afraid now of letting him speak. “I went to your stupid party, didn’t I? Only to watch you disappear after the first hour, so that you could spend the next hour flirting with every girl in the room before spending your final hour—your finest hour—all over that redhead with the tits. I didn’t throw myself over any of the available males. I didn’t embarrass you.”

“No, you didn’t do anything wrong! You went to the party with me. You said hello to Rod and Bessie. You may have even smiled once. I’m not sure about that last bit—it may just be wishful thinking on my part. And that’s all you did—except check your watch every three minutes.”

“This is beginning to sound very familiar,” Donna interrupted. “In a minute I know it’s going to be all my fault that you acted the way you did—”

“No!” Mel’s voice dropped like a hammer into the space between them. “I told you before that I am the only one responsible for my behavior. And you want to know something? I’m really sick about the way I acted tonight. I used people. It’s been a long time since I used people that shamelessly.”

“High school,” Donna said curtly. “You told me.”

“I realize now why it was so important to me that we go to the party tonight. Oh sure, I thought we needed to get out, but that wasn’t the main reason. My main reason was to avoid the scene we’re having now, to put off the next few minutes for a couple more hours. But it didn’t work out the way I hoped it would, because I’ve been holding it back for so long that if my anger didn’t express itself one way, it was certainly going to come out another. So, Dr. Mel Segal suddenly turned into the highly eligible Dr. Mel Segal. There wasn’t a woman at that party tonight who didn’t feel my arm around her. And a few of them actually responded to me. You know that redhead had something else going for her besides a pair of nice boobs, and it’s a very simple thing—” He stopped talking, swallowing, moving in a slow circle around the coffee table. Donna watched him. She said nothing. “You used to have it,” he continued. “I remember.” He paused for effect. “A sense of humour,” he said simply. “A sense of fun, even when everything around you was falling apart.” He raised his hands in the air as if he had just been advised that a gun was pointing at the back of his head. “That’s it. Just a little … life.” He stopped, then continued. “I talked to her, and she talked to me, and for the first time in months, I realized that I wasn’t apologizing for anything. I listened to her and wonder of wonders, she actually listened to me. She thought I had something to say that might be interesting. She even laughed at a few of my jokes. I mentioned I had a daughter and this redhead actually smiled at me. What’s more, she even expressed an interest in her. Of course, I knew that her interest in my daughter was part and parcel of her interest in me, and I knew that I
didn’t return that interest because I still happen to be in love with you—” Donna could see that Mel was starting to cry. He made no attempt to either hide the tears or stop them. “And I realized what a louse I was being—to you, to the redhead, whose name is Caroline incidentally, and to myself.” He paused, finished one full circle around the coffee table and then started another. “Tinka Segal, you remember her, I’ve told you about her, well, she was a lovely lady, full of motherly clichés, of course, but that’s part of what mothers are for. One of Tinka’s favourite sayings was from Shakespeare, that glorious font of so many of today’s better clichés. ‘This above all,’ she used to say, ‘to thine own self be true!’” Donna caught her breath. It was an expression she remembered her own mother using. “Well,” he went on, “I realized that I was obviously getting to a point in our relationship where I was no longer being true to myself. Or at least a point where I can no longer continue being true to myself and be a part of this relationship.”

Donna felt her body go cold. None of this was happening. She felt her throat begin to constrict.

“I love you, Donna. I really love you. I know, believe me, I know all you’ve been through and all you’re going through now. I understand. Maybe if it were just me, I could stick it out a little longer. I’m not sure. I really don’t know. It’s a moot point because it isn’t just me. There’s an eight-year-old girl up there who’s going to celebrate her fortieth birthday soon, if I’m not careful. Six months ago, she was the happiest kid on the block. Now she’s afraid to move. She spilled her milk the other night, you took after her like she’d deliberately engineered the whole occasion just to get on your nerves. She’s afraid to say anything around you because it’s
always the wrong thing to say. She’s afraid to do anything around you because it’s always the wrong thing to do! Donna, listen to me, isn’t this ringing any bells?! Doesn’t any of this sound achingly familiar to you?”

Donna tried to speak but couldn’t.

“Think, Donna,” Mel continued, “Stop and think for a minute what you’re doing to my kid!” He looked helplessly around the room. “And to me! Yeah,” he bellowed, widening his circle, “we might as well get it all out while we’re at it. I feel like I’m always walking in a mine field—one wrong move and whammo!—we all go up in flames. I have to censor every bloody thing I tell you—if an interesting case at the clinic has anything to do with children, well, then, I can’t tell you about it because talking about children upsets you, which makes it doubly hard on me because I happen to enjoy talking about children. I happen to enjoy my child, for God’s sake. I guess I’ve been operating these last few months under the misapprehension that the Donna I fell in love with was going to come back to her senses in just a short while. I remember
that
Donna, you see. I remember the first time I saw her; I remember the first time I kissed her, the first time we made love, when she looked like a boy scout; I remember what she was like those first months after her divorce; I even remember her with fondness when she was a desperately unhappy married lady, because at least then, she was a fighter. Not an alley-fighter like she’s become, but someone who was fighting for her survival. Now you just fight to destroy.” His voice was suddenly very tired. “Victor did just what he said he was going to do, Donna—he obliterated you. You’re nowhere to be seen.” He stopped, then
abruptly started again, his voice picking up greater speed, greater urgency as he went on. “What I can’t understand is why you’ve let him. You ran away from him when you were married rather than let yourself be destroyed. Now, it’s like you can’t run fast enough the other way.” He shook his head. “You know, my mother once said something else—it was when I had to tell her that Kate and I were splitting up, just about four months, I guess, before she died. I was trying to explain it to her, about Kate’s need to find herself, that sort of thing, and you know what she said to me? She said that all this modern business about finding yourself is a lot of crap. She said that you are what you do, you are the way you behave.” He paused. “She was right.” He ran a tired hand through his hair. “You were married to Victor for six years, Donna. I figure that’s enough for both of us.”

Donna stood numbly in the center of the room. For several minutes, there was absolute silence. “You’re telling me you don’t want me around anymore?” Her voice was like a child’s.

“I’m telling you that I love Donna Cressy. But I can’t live with who she’s letting herself become.”

Donna began frantically moving her head from side to side. “So, you just desert me too? I mean, my children are gone, why not finish me right off? Is that the idea? Let’s all get Donna.”

“This isn’t the way I want it.”

“You are what you do, Doctor!” she snapped. Mel lowered his gaze to the floor. “You said you’d never leave me! You promised me you’d never leave me!”

Slowly, he raised his face to hers, but no words came.
Only pain. Anguish.

“You promised me you’d help me find my children!”

“We tried, Donna. We did everything that was humanly possible. But how long can you live your life waiting for the phone to ring? How many times can you stop little children on the street because they’re the same height as your son? How many strollers can you run after because it might be Sharon inside? I’m not saying you have to give up hope—”

“No!” She was starting to scream, no longer listening to him.

He continued speaking. “I’m just trying to tell you that regardless of whether or not you find your children, you, Donna Cressy, have a life of your own.”

She was hysterical, beyond calming down. “You lied to me,” she cried. “You lied!”

“Donna—” He moved toward her.

“Liar! Liar!”

“Donna—” He raised his arms to try and comfort her.

“No!” she shouted.

“Try and calm down.” He started to move toward the door. “Let’s just cool off for a few minutes. I’ll get you a drink of something—”

“I don’t want anything from you! I just want to get out of here.” She moved in his direction.

“You’re not going anywhere tonight.”

“The hell I’m not!”

“Donna, you’re not going
anywhere
now. Let’s try and get some sleep—we’ll talk in the morning—”

She tried to push past him to the door. “I am not sleeping here! You can’t make me stay here!”

She began shoving her body against his.

“Donna—”

“Get out of my way. I don’t need you. You’re just a liar! Let me out of here or I’ll wake up the whole bloody house. I promise you!”

Mel again tried to raise his arms toward her, but she slapped them down with her hands. “Get out of my way! Don’t touch me!” Then the words gave way to sounds, pure sounds, gutteral howls that seemed to shoot straight from her heart. She was screaming as if he were killing her, an already wounded animal, her foot helplessly caught in a steel strap, the hunter approaching with his knife.

Mel’s hand shot to her mouth, trying to stifle her screams. The action terrified Donna, stopping her breath, suffocating her. She bit down hard on his hand. He cried out with the sudden pain, trying to surround her body with his larger bulk. She was everywhere, all over him, scratching, kicking, pounding at him. “Get out of my way!”

He stood firm, not bending to her blows. “I hate you, goddamn it,” she bellowed. Then she slapped him full and hard against his cheek.

Instinctively, his right hand rose up and slapped her back with equal force. Then each recoiled with the sudden horror of what they were doing.

He was the first to speak. “Donna, I’m so sorry—”

“No,” she cut in. “I don’t want to hear any more.” She looked into his worn brown eyes. “You’re worse than Victor,” she said quietly. “Victor was many things, but he never hit me.”

Mel moved out of Donna’s way as she walked to the
door. His voice was soft behind her. “Sometimes, it’s easier to kill someone without ever having to lay a hand on them.”

Donna opened the door and walked out without looking back.

S
he had been coming to this playground every day now for four weeks. She wasn’t sure just how the whole thing had started, at what point a chance occasion had turned into a well-worn ritual, but every afternoon from the hours of three to five, Donna found herself sitting on the same low green bench on the same side of the small narrow playground off Flagler Boulevard watching the children play.

It seemed a fitting way to end each day, days that were spent filling time with empty thoughts until it grew dark enough to get into bed again and go to sleep. She woke up between seven and eight each morning, took an endless amount of time washing, brushing her teeth, doing whatever else was required before getting dressed, wearing whatever was closest to the bed until it was too dirty to wear anymore, then going for a walk, sometimes by the ocean, sometimes all the way over to Worth Avenue, avoiding the looks of the well-dressed tourists who poured in and out of Gucci and Van Cleef and Arpels as if they were
the local five-and-dimes. Sometimes she walked up toward the Palm Beach Mall or over toward Southern Boulevard. Sometimes she stopped for lunch; more often she skipped it altogether. Always, she ended up here, in this narrow playground. No matter what direction she started off in, all roads led to here.

It had been one of Adam’s favourite places, perhaps because of the numerous animal-shaped swings and slides that galloped, jumped and generally cavorted about in place. Not that she really thought he would be here, she told herself. Still, there was the remote possibility that Victor had never taken the children out of Palm Beach at all, or that he had returned after a brief absence. She shook the thought out of her head. No, Palm Beach was too small a county. There were too many people who might spot them, too many chances they might be discovered. Besides, the detective had combed the entire state, checking real estate offices, nurseries, housekeeping agencies. Victor was definitely not in Florida. Or hadn’t been, her mind persisted. He might have come back—