Now or Never (31 page)

Junie was definitely unfriendly. She had her own group, and they did everything together. Mary was not invited. Junie bitched to her friends about having to room with such a geek and ignored her as much as possible.

Looking in the mirror, Mary knew why. She was seventeen in age, but in life experience she was almost zero. She was plain, mousy, and crippled with insecurities, and she was so poor, she couldn’t even afford a cup of coffee. So she just stuck her nose in her books and got on with learning, never missing a lecture, never failing to turn in an assignment. The college found her a job in the cafeteria, and after a few weeks she got herself another job in a nearby café, working the dinner shift.

Somehow she got through the terrible lonely weeks. At first she hoped to make friends—she made a point of smiling and saying hello to her classmates. But they all had busy lives and hung out in a crowd that definitely did not include her. There were other outsiders like herself, but she avoided them because she couldn’t bear to admit that kind of defeat. Instead, she bolstered up her courage, thought of the future when she would have her degree, and concentrated hard on her studies.

She decided she wanted to be a journalist. Writing words was so much easier than speaking them, and because of her deprived childhood, she had an inexhaustible curiosity about how the other half lived. Besides, journalists didn’t have to answer questions—they asked them. She could keep her silence and her privacy.

She crept around campus like a slight gray ghost, keeping
to herself, speaking only when she was spoken to, in class or in the cafeteria. But it was never about anything personal.

The first college year passed slowly. At the end of it she had still not made any friends, but she had excellent grades, and with her two jobs she was making ends meet—just. She went back home to work all summer at the Lido Café, only now that she was older, she was promoted to waitressing.

The proprietor, Dolores Power, a plump round-faced woman with hard eyes whose husband was president of the local Chamber of Commerce and the Elks Club, commented that she was surprised at Mary’s professionalism.

“I work nights at a café near college,” she explained. And that was the only exchange between them, except for issuing instructions and handing over the paycheck on Saturday nights.

Mary couldn’t tell if her mother was glad to see her, but she seemed relieved not to have to collect the food stamps and do the shopping for a while. She was even thinner than before, and Mary suspected she wasn’t eating. So she spent a lot of her pay on good food, trying to entice her with roast chicken for Sunday dinner with apple pie for dessert, and she bought lots of fresh fruit and granola and whole milk. But her mother only picked at it, and her eyes told her she was tasting it only to pacify her.

It was a relief to get back to the university, and for a while everything continued just as before. Then suddenly it all went wrong.

That was when she went home at Thanksgiving and saw her mother walk into the ocean.

Sighing, Mal stepped away from the window with the glamorous Manhattan view. She had not thought consciously about her mother for years, not since she had left: Golden. There had been no memorial service for her; after
all, no one had even known her while she was living, so who would come to pay their respects now that she was dead?

There had been no final moment for Mal either—no good-bye scene, no purging of the guilt. She had not even had a time to grieve. Instead, she had been forced to cut her mother out of her mind as finally as her mother had removed herself from life.

It was something she had had to do in order to survive. She was just eighteen years old and alone in the world, a college student, and still the invisible woman. She had no money and no friends because she had never learned the art of making them.

It had been a long hard haul from that nonperson to the woman she was now—harder than anyone knew. And that was the reason Mal never allowed herself to think about it. Except when the nightmares happened.

They had come often at first, sneaking unbidden into her sleep, little black demons of memories, tripping on spike-tipped toes through her subconscious. Then gradually she had left them behind, and they happened only rarely now.

Mal paced through the darkened apartment, her arms clutched over her chest, thinking about Harry. She wasn’t afraid tonight—there was no need to rush around switching on lights to keep the black memories at bay. And she knew she could thank Harry for that.

She went out onto the terrace and stood gazing out over the city, feeling the cool breeze on her bare arms and legs, ruffling her hair.

She could picture her mother perfectly, as though she had seen her just yesterday: thin, fragile, her cheeks sucked in as she drew on the eternal cigarette, her hair faded into an indeterminable mixture of gray and sand. She remembered the letter lying on the kitchen table, telling her she was coming home for the weekend.

She remembered the endless journey on three different buses. “It’s all right,” she had told herself as they lurched through the night, “you’ll be home soon.”

But there had been no home and no mother and no comfort for her. There had been nothing—except her own determination.

Later, she had gone back to the university and to the jobs at the cafeteria and the downtown café, while living in a bare little room in an old house she rented from another student.

Somehow she completed her courses and was given her degree. Then she got herself a job at a local radio station as a back-room typist, collating accounts. With a little money in her pocket, she smartened up a bit and bought herself a couple of decent-looking work outfits. Then she found a new position at a small local TV station.

Her official tide was researcher, but she was really a gofer. She typed letters, delivered Mall, answered the phones, and fetched coffee and doughnuts. She was drab, mousy, and unassuming, with no sense of herself because she had still not discovered what that was. But somewhere inside lurked ambition. She dreamed of being a TV news reporter, out on location reporting local events.

Then a new girl was hired, fresh from college, smart as paint, blond hair flowing around her shoulders, her lipstick and eyes sparkling. Within weeks the new girl was on camera doing location shots for the news, on a foggy car pileup, or a bank robbery, or a bridge swept away in a flood.

Mary felt demeaned, less than nothing. She had worked hard, and she had learned. She had hoped so badly that any new girl on camera would be her.

Then she looked in the mirror. She saw her straggling blond hair and her ugly glasses. She saw that she was still drab and mousy, she was still inhibited and shabby, with a
shy whispery voice. And she had asked herself, despondently, why anybody would want to look at her, anyway.

Now, sitting on the garden terrace of her beautiful Manhattan penthouse, Mal remembered the awful truth of that moment. She had been faced with the terrible reality that this was who she was and this was the way her life would always be. No one was going to wave a magic wand and change it for her. Her fate was in her own hands.

A sort of rage had swept over her: anger at her parents, who had left her without love and without identity; anger at the pretty, sparkling girl who had got the job she’d wanted; anger at her own helplessness. She was at a crossroads.

At that moment she had decided to change her life. She would drag herself up from this. By sheer force of will, she would succeed. It was now or never.

She withdrew her small savings from the bank and made herself over. She had her hair cut neatly and tinted a more golden blond, invested in some contact lenses, bought a few simple, unfussy clothes in clear colors. She asked the TV makeup woman what cosmetics to use and how to apply them. She studied the techniques of the interviewers, not just at her local station but on the networks. She watched Barbara Walters and the morning show presenters like a hawk until she knew every expression on their faces, every inflection in their voices, every inch of their craft.

When she was ready, Mal asked the station manager to give her a chance at becoming a reporter. She burned with resentment, even now, remembering the contemptuous way he had looked at her and the smirk on his face, and the you-must-be-joking tone of voice as he turned her down. She gave her notice on the spot, and that week she left the small town for a bigger one.

With her carefully prepared résumé and her new appearance, she got a job at another television station as a
production assistant. The pay was better, and she was treated like one of the team. Her co-workers smiled at her and acted friendly, and she reveled in the surprise of it. She smiled back cautiously at first, afraid of being rebuffed when she made a friendly overture, never quite sure of herself. But she was accepted. They assumed she was just like they were. She went out with them after work, for a drink or a meal.

She joined a gym, worked out, got herself into shape. She even began to date, though nothing more serious than dinner or a ballgame or a movie. And she was always cautious, always holding herself back. The “mystery woman,” they called her jokingly. But to her astonishment she was enjoying herself.

When the weather girl took a vacation, she got the job temporarily. Now she knew exactly what to do: how to look, how to smile and act vivacious. Now she, too, looked as smart as paint, her blond hair flowing, her blue eyes sparkling, a ready smile on her generous mouth. Brimming with newly found vitality and eagerness, she had learned how to be entertaining.

Then the call came from the network news producer: she had caught his eye. He asked her to come to New York for an interview.

Sitting on her terrace, Mal remembered how giddy with excitement she had been, and how sick with nerves. She had pushed away the old sneaking insecurities, told herself this was who she was now, and who the network wanted. And then she went out and invented Mallory Malone.

She splurged on a little black Donna Karan suit that fitted her svelte body like a glove. She went to a well-known hair stylist at an expensive salon and had her hair cut in that now-famous chrysanthemum bob, then had it lightened until it looked naturally streaked by the sun. A top makeup artist did her face, and when she looked at
the result in the mirror, she barely recognized the glamorous young woman looking back at her with surprised blue eyes.

It had cost her every cent she had, and as she set off for the interview and the camera tests, she hoped nervously it would be worth it.

When the cab dropped her outside the studio, she gazed at the imposing building and the guarded doors and the people hurrying in and out on important business. She knew it was all hers for the taking—if she had what it took. Sticking her chin in the air, she walked, tall and purposeful, through the doors. It was now or never. Again.

It was that reinvented Mallory who had married a successful Wall Street broker a couple of years later.

Matt Clements was older, handsome, graying at the temples, and the perfect social animal. She had liked him immediately because he was a sort of father-figure and also a self-made man. Using his own street-smartness and astute financial brain, he had dragged himself from a lowly Brooklyn tenement to where he was today. On top of the world in one of Manhattan’s grandest skyscraper triplex apartments, loaded with classy antiques and style.

“Money can buy you anything in this city,” he told her when he invited her to dinner and she wandered through the rooms, amazed at the sheer, staggering luxury of it all. “Including style. And don’t forget that in a city like New York, style gives you your credentials. Money plus style equals class, and that means you’ve got it all.”

They laughed, and she admired him for his honesty—and she envied him because he brought no baggage from his past. He made no secret of his lowly beginnings. He wasn’t proud of them, but they were just a fact.

At that time she was a network newsreader, and the prospect of moving to the morning show at some future
date was being dangled under her nose. She was torn between her career and the heady excitement of being with him.

He looked after her, cared about her, made her feel beautiful and wanted. For the first time, with a man, she felt able to let her guard down a little. He understood her ambition and applauded her for it. She never had to explain herself to him.

When he asked her to marry him a month later, she said yes instantly. She told herself it was love, and she did love him in a way. And she was certainly physically attracted to him. But what she really wanted was to be part of his busy life.

That turned out to be the problem. He was a busy man, and she was a busy woman. Something had to break, and it turned out to be their marriage.

“Give it up for me, Mal,” he had said.

He was sitting opposite her on a big gold brocade sofa in the smaller of the sitting rooms in their grand apartment. He was in a dark green silk robe, and she was wearing a white terry one. They were both naked underneath, and they had just made love. It had been fine, good; when she was with him, everything was okay. But he was away too often, and without her job, without what she did, she felt that she was nothing.

“You would hate me in two months if I did,” she said sadly.

“We could buy a house in the country, have a baby.”

She had looked at him, anguished. She told herself she couldn’t have a baby. She had never really been a child herself. She was afraid she would not know how to love it—after all, she had no role model. “I don’t think I could do that,” she said soberly.

“The offer is still open,” he said. And then he kissed her and went to get dressed. Half an hour later he left for Zurich. He would not be back for a couple of weeks.

A few months after that, she realized it was not going to work. She needed her career, and he lived for his. She hadn’t really minded when he blamed her publicly for the breakup. After all, he had offered her what most women wanted. She was different, that was all.

Mal walked to the edge of the terrace and leaned her elbows along the rail, gazing down at the streets of the tough, glamorous city that had taken her to its heart. She had never looked back since that day. And she had never looked back to the past, until Harry had forced her into it.