Picture Perfect (44 page)

Cassie's hand froze on Alex's hip. “You don't mean that,” she whispered.

Alex glanced at her over his shoulder. “If you won't accept a nanny, then you'd better find a night nurse. I'm not putting up with this. Either you hire someone or I move across the hall.” He pulled a pillow over his head.

Cassie thought of something Dr. Pooley had mentioned during her group session the previous night, something about the personality traits of the abuser. Husbands don't want their wives to have close friends, she had said. They don't like the thought of someone else making demands on the person whom they see as belonging entirely to them.

At the time, Ophelia had come to mind, and Alex's inability to forgive her for the one and only mistake she'd ever made in connection with him. But now Cassie was starting to see Dr. Pooley's statement in a different light. She glanced at Alex's hands, clutching the pillow to his head. He couldn't stand to see someone who needed Cassie as much as he did. Not even his own son.

“Alex,” Cassie whispered. “I know you're not asleep yet.” She tapped his shoulder and tugged the pillow away from his ear. Alex groaned and rolled onto his stomach. “I'll hire someone. I'll start looking tomorrow.”

Alex opened his eyes and propped himself up on his elbows. He smiled hugely at her, and with his hair all mussed he looked like a child. “You mean that?” Cassie nodded, and swallowed past the lump in her throat. She listened to the background noise of Connor's breathing over the monitor. “Good,” Alex said, gathering her into his embrace. “I was beginning to feel neglected.”

His mouth came over hers hungrily, stealing her breath and her reason. “No,” she whispered, ignorant of the tears balanced at the corners of her eyes. “Never.”

Alex hung up the telephone and glanced at his watch. He had just made an appointment to meet Phil Kaplan in an hour to finalize a verbal commitment to produce the movie Alex planned to do next. He'd found the script by accident in a slush pile; it was priceless but had serious flaws that he now had an Academy Award–winning screenwriter working on. He was already daydreaming about the scenes, directing them over and over in his mind. He'd scribbled down his first choices for the primary roles, stuffed the list into his pocket to discuss with Phil.

Of course, if he had dinner with Phil, he was going to miss that therapy group for the second week in a row.

Cassie had taken Connor to the beach with Ophelia and a carload of sun-shading umbrellas; she wouldn't have to know right away.

Alex picked up the phone to call Dr. Pooley, then put the receiver back in its cradle.

He had promised Cassie.

He could reschedule Phil.

Who, no doubt, would commit himself to somebody else by tomorrow morning.

He told himself he wouldn't even be considering skipping the group meeting if he didn't feel in his gut that this film could be even more successful than
The Story of His Life
. And all the elements had unfortunately happened to fall into place on a Sunday afternoon. He told himself that a year from now, when he swept the Academy Awards again, Cassie wouldn't even remember this.

He picked up the phone again. There was another session next week, and Cassie would understand.

She always did.

 

T
HE FOLLOWING
W
EDNESDAY
D
R
. P
OOLEY PULLED
C
ASSIE ASIDE AF
ter the women's group session. “You should consider asking Alex,” she said carefully, “if he's really serious about getting some kind of help.”

Cassie stared at the therapist. “Of course he is,” she hedged, trying to imagine what kind of things Alex could have said at his own group session that would bring a censorious remark from Dr. Pooley. When she had asked him about it, he'd said it went fine.

“I know
you
are,” Dr. Pooley said. “But that's not the same thing. I understand missing one session for a business commitment, but two in a row seems a little extreme. If he's going to try to save your marriage with therapy,” she pointed out, “he ought to start by showing up.”

“He wasn't there last Sunday,” Cassie said slowly, suddenly understanding. She turned the words over in her mind, wondering where Alex had been, why he had lied. Lifting her eyes, she smiled apologetically at Dr. Pooley. “He just closed a very important deal,” she said. “I'm sure things will be different now.”

“Cassie,” the doctor said gently, “you don't have to make excuses for his behavior anymore.”

During the long ride home, she didn't bother to make conversation with John like she usually did. She stormed into the house, calling Alex's name so loudly her anger filled the corners of the front parlor.

“In here,” Alex said.

Cassie opened the door to the den, where Alex was sitting on the couch with a newspaper opened over his lap. A bottle of whiskey was wedged between the cushions to his right. “You're drinking,” she said, snatching the bottle away from him and setting it on the bar across the room. She stood with her arms crossed over her chest, beside the playpen where Connor was gurgling.

Alex smiled lazily. “Connor had his bottle,” he said. “I figured I deserved one too.”

“You didn't go to the group session last Sunday,” Cassie said flatly.

“No,” Alex admitted, the word long and drawn. “I was busy resurrecting my career. My reputation. You know, the one you keep knocking down so easily.” He stood up and thrust the newspaper into her hands. “Tomorrow's
Informer, pichouette
. Came on the front doorstep in a plain brown envelope. And don't just stop at the headlines. The story's on page three, and it's real good.”

Cassie folded the paper in half, scanning the front page.
ALEX RIVERS FOOLED BY WIFE
'
S HALF-BREED LOVE CHILD
. There was a picture taken at the airport of Alex with his arm around her; and another of Cassie with Will, walking into the police station months ago, the day Alex had come to claim her.

“This is ridiculous,” Cassie said, starting to laugh. “You can't possibly believe this.”

Alex rounded on her so quickly she dropped the paper. “It doesn't matter what I believe,” he said. “It matters that everyone's going to see it.”

“It's not like this is
Time
magazine,” Cassie said. “Anyone who reads this rag knows the stories are trash.” She paused. “We'll sue them. And we'll put the money into Connor's trust fund.”

Alex took a step closer, grabbing her arm. “They quoted the letter he wrote you that's upstairs. Said you're going to meet him in Washington.”

For a moment her mind considered the mechanics of how Will's note, carefully tucked into her lingerie drawer, had become public knowledge. Cassie was disappointed that someone on the household staff had sold her secrets, but she was absolutely shocked that Alex had been upset enough to go through her mail. “You don't really think I'm leaving, do you?”

“No,” he said simply, “since I'd kill you first.”

Cassie felt the air grow heavy in the room, pressing down on her temples and making her limbs swing slowly. She backed herself against a wall. “Alex,” she said softly, “listen to yourself. Look at Connor.” She reached out to touch his arm. “I love you,” she said. “I came back with you.”

“Goddammit,” Alex exploded, his eyes darkening. “This shit is going to follow me forever! I could win every fucking award in the world and they'll still be dragging up dirt from our private lives. Someone is always going to be out there looking more closely at that baby than they ought to. Someone is always going to be calling you a whore behind my back.” He grabbed Cassie by the shoulders and threw her heavily to the floor, then ran his fingers through his hair. “This never would have happened if you hadn't left,” he said, and even as Cassie rolled away from him she could feel his shoes kicking at her sides and her back, his fists swinging at her shoulders and striking her across the side of the head.

When it stopped and Cassie opened her eyes, she was staring into the mesh of Connor's playpen. The baby was screaming the way every inch of her body was, a red, hollow sound. His face was turned toward Cassie's; toward his father, who was bent over Cassie's side, crying.

When Alex touched her, Cassie pulled herself upright. Blood was running from her right ear and she realized she could not hear out of it. She lifted Connor from his playpen, soothing him, whispering to him the assurances she used to whisper to Alex. She stared at the form of her husband, drunk and keening on the floor, and she began to understand. That for the first time, Alex's anger had not simply been displaced and rerouted toward Cassie—it had been
caused
by her. That the rest of her life would simply be strung loosely between hard knots of fear. That her son would watch Alex hurt her over and over, and without any choice in the matter, might grow up to be just like his father.

That Alex, through no fault of his own, could not keep his promises.

She walked across the room and opened the door of the den, glancing at John, who stared a moment too long at the blood running down the side of her face. She turned Connor's face to her chest so that he would not have to see, but she looked once more at Alex, bent over by his own misery. And in the way the most ordinary things have of rearranging themselves into the unfamiliar, Alex no longer seemed to be suffering. He only seemed pathetic.

 

S
HE NEVER REALIZED THAT HE KNEW SHE WAS CRYING
. I
N THE PAST
when it had happened, she waited until she assumed Alex was asleep, and then she'd let the tears slide down her cheeks in silence. She never made any noise, but Alex could hear it all the same.

He wanted to touch her, but every time he started to reach across the endless three inches between them he couldn't make himself do it. He was the one who had hurt her in the first place. And if she shrank away from him, because after all, there was always a first time, he thought he would break down.

“Cassie,” he whispered. Shadows crowded the bedroom, listening. “Say you aren't going to go away again.”

She didn't answer.

Alex swallowed. “I'll go to Dr. Pooley's tomorrow morning. I'll postpone the film. God, you know I'd do anything.”

“I know.”

He turned his head toward her voice, clutching at the two syllables like a lifeline, unable to see Cassie except for the silver map of tears on her skin. “I can't let you go,” he said, his voice breaking.

Cassie faced him, her eyes glowing like a ghost's. “No,” she said calmly, “you can't.”

She slipped her hand into his, linking them together. And only then did Alex let his own tears come again, just as quietly as Cassie's. He told himself that there was solace in knowing he hated himself even more than Cassie could. As penance, he counted his way off to sleep, imagining in flashing succession the ravaged faces of his father, his mother, his wife, and his son—all of the people he'd failed.

 

T
HIS TIME SHE DID NOT HOLD HERSELF BACK
. E
VEN THOUGH SHE
knew Alex was awake beside her, she was crying. It was not just a matter of leaving, as Alex thought. It was a matter of freedom. She could leave Alex and never be free; look at what had happened when she went to South Dakota to have Connor. To truly make a break, she was going to have to make Alex suffer as much as she did. He couldn't let her go—he
wouldn't
—unless she did something to make him hate her. So she would have to do what she had scrupulously avoided doing for four years now—become one of the people who had hurt him.

She tried to convince herself that if she really did care about Alex, she'd force the break, since having her as a crutch for his rage was only worse for him in the long run. It wouldn't mean that she didn't need him anymore. And it certainly wouldn't mean she didn't love him. Alex was right when he said they had been made for each other. It just wasn't in a healthy, wholesome way.

She remembered Alex standing on the porch at Pine Ridge, telling her she was a part of him. She remembered him holding his hands over her own as they fished without poles in a frigid Colorado stream. She remembered sitting beside him, watching the pair of lions in the Serengeti. She remembered his taste and his touch and the heaviness of his skin against hers.

She did not understand how she had ever reached this point, where she loved Alex so very much that, literally, it was killing her.

Cassie watched the night take on different and somber shades of black as she ran her options through her mind. She closed her eyes, and to her surprise, saw not Alex but Will, tied to a sacred pole during the Sun Dance. She felt the heat rising from the plain, heard the running of the drums and the eagle-bone whistles. She pictured the moment Will tore himself loose, the rawhide ripping through his skin. It had driven him to his knees, but it had been the only way to break free.