Skipping a Beat (20 page)

Making love with Michael forced me to realize what I’d be giving up if I left him. We could be good together, like we were before. And yet I still didn’t know if I could live with him, or ever trust him again.

I looked up as a pair of young mothers walked past me, pushing babies in prams and chatting animatedly, and suddenly I discovered kids surrounding me. Two toddlers chased the pigeons, and another floated a little yellow plastic boat in the outdoor fountain. Still more were heading into a school across the street that looked more like a museum, swinging their book bags and calling to one another in their high, young voices.

If I stayed with Michael—if we found a way to work out all of our issues—would we have kids? I wondered. What kind of father would he be? If he took on a consultancy job, and worked less, and we somehow managed to reconcile everything that had happened in the past, reveal all of our secrets and not let them destroy us …

If
I stayed with him, I thought, burying my head in my hands. If I could forgive him for giving all our money away, and for everything that had happened before that.

I knocked on the door to our room and heard Michael’s footsteps a moment before the door swung open.

“Hi,” he said. He studied my face but didn’t ask any questions about where I’d been. “I got you something.” He handed me a little paper bag. I peeked inside and saw a green beret and felt my throat tighten. I’d admired one yesterday at a kiosk, but I hadn’t thought he’d noticed.

“Thanks,” I said, clearing my throat. “I guess it’s time to go?”

“I already packed both of our bags,” he said, gesturing. “But I left out your toiletries.”

I nodded. “I just need to use the restroom.”

I pulled my hair up into a ponytail and quickly rinsed off in the shower, then brushed my teeth and smoothed moisturizer on my face, my fingers carrying out the familiar rituals while my mind tried to sort out what to do next. I wasn’t ready to talk to Michael; I needed space. I put on my clothes again and covered my eyes with oversize sunglasses.

We stood in the elevator like strangers, with enough room between us to comfortably fit two other people. The bellman had already called a taxi, and it was idling outside the hotel. I climbed in and stared out the window as we began to move, looking at the wide Seine, the gorgeous bridges, the narrow streets and the woman running through them in utterly impractical pink high heels. I instinctively reached for Michael’s arm to point out the woman, then let my hand drop back into my lap.

I knew Michael had hoped this trip would bring us together, yet right now, I could barely stand to be near him.

Twenty-seven

I TURNED OFF MY cell phone as I settled into my airplane seat, and I didn’t turn it on again for nine long hours—until after we’d landed and caught a taxi back home. Later I’d wonder what might have happened if I’d been able to answer when Isabelle called. Maybe I could’ve figured out a way to convince her to come home. To
help
her.

But I’d been floating high over the Atlantic Ocean, still feeling the red burn of Michael’s whiskers on my cheeks and pretending to doze against the back of my seat so I wouldn’t have to meet my husband’s eyes.

“Remember how I thought Beth wanted to talk to me about a boyfriend?” Isabelle’s message began. I dropped my suitcase onto the floor of my bedroom at the jagged sound of her voice.

“I couldn’t have gotten that one more wrong. She asked me to go. She wants me to leave, Julia. She was totally polite about it—she said she’s happy I came out and that we got to talk, but now she needs space. God, I thought … Well, you probably know what I thought. I had this whole crazy fantasy of coming out every month, and taking her to lunch, and talking to her on the phone every week…. I was even thinking she might end up going to college on the East Coast, and I could see her all the time. Dumb, huh?”

I closed my eyes against the pain mingling through her words.

“I mean, I didn’t get in touch with her for sixteen years, so it’s not like all of a sudden we can have this spontaneous relationship. She was kind enough not to say it, but I could tell that’s what she meant. I was a ‘surprise,’ Julia. That’s what she called me, which is sort of ironic because that’s exactly what she was for me, sixteen years ago. And now she’s got this whole life, this whole perfect, happy life, which is exactly what I wanted for her, but the thing is … what I hadn’t thought about was … Julia, she didn’t miss me at all.”

A tear rolled down my cheek as I listened to her.

“I held it together, and when she dropped me off at the hotel after dinner, I just told her to call anytime she wanted. And she looked at me with those clear eyes and then she hugged me and didn’t say anything. God, I just need to go somewhere.” Her voice broke on kind of a half laugh, half sob. “I’m going to take a cab to the airport and see where the next plane is heading. Maybe I’ll go to Spain and learn to flamenco dance. Maybe I’ll go to the South of France and just lie on a beach for a month—”

The message cut off, but I held the phone to my ear for another beat, as if by doing so, I could keep clinging to Isabelle.

“Julia?”

Michael was reaching out for me, and for the second time in as many days, I let myself feel his arms around me. But this time it was different; there wasn’t any passion in his embrace. He just held me, while I cried for my best friend and her broken heart.

“I can’t believe her daughter wouldn’t want to have a relationship with her,” I said later, blowing my nose into the tissue Michael had handed me. “Maybe if she were difficult or crazy … but it’s
Isabelle
. Who wouldn’t want Isabelle around?”

Michael nodded slowly. “I don’t think their story’s over, though. Look at it from Beth’s point of view: Isabelle’s been building up to this for years, but Beth didn’t know about that. She needs time to adjust.”

“So you think Beth will call her?” I asked.

Michael leaned back against the headboard of our bed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Either that, or maybe send a note. I have this feeling she’ll get back in touch once she sorts out her feelings. It was probably really intense to get the letter and then have Isabelle there a few days later. I can’t imagine how emotional that would be. Maybe Beth feels like she needs to be loyal to her parents. Maybe she does just want a little space. But I think she’ll write again. They can start over again, and maybe take it more slowly next time.”

“I hope so,” I said. “If you could’ve heard her voice, Michael …”

“I was wondering …” He paused and cleared his throat. “If Isabelle feels even more alone because you were with me when it all happened.”

I looked up at him in surprise; I hadn’t expected him to be so perceptive. I’d had only half of Michael’s attention for so long that I’d forgotten how it felt to have his focus on me—how he saw all the dimensions and nuances that other people usually missed.

“I thought that, too,” I said. “I feel so guilty. I was off with you in Paris while she was dealing with all of this.”

“She’s lonely, isn’t she?” Michael asked.

I nodded. “She doesn’t let a lot of people see it. But yes.”

He looked at me for a moment. “Loneliness was what drew you two together, wasn’t it?” he finally said. “I had my company, but you didn’t have anyone or anything.”

I shrugged. “She’s the best friend I’ve ever had,” I said simply.

“She’ll come back,” Michael said. “I promise you she’ll be back.”

As Michael was loading the dishwasher later that night and I was losing a staring contest with a pint of Häagen-Dazs, he turned to me. “There’s something I’ve always regretted.”

Somehow I knew exactly what he was going to say next. The entire evening had been tinged with melancholy, ever since Isabelle’s call, as if setting the stage for this moment.

“I never went with you to visit your mother.”

This was what Michael and I had been heading toward ever since he’d fallen to that conference room floor, I realized. For a brief moment I wanted to follow in Isabelle’s footsteps—to run away, as far and as fast as I could. But instead, I lifted my chin. “Let’s go.”

“Right now?” he asked.

I looked at the clock, did a quick calculation in my head. “We can get there by ten. It won’t be too late.”

“I’ll get the car keys,” he said, quietly shutting the door of the dishwasher and turning off the kitchen light.

Twenty-eight

WELCOME TO WEST VIRGINIA
read the sign on the side of the road, but it was the only thing welcoming us. Our old town was so quiet that the lone noises on Main Street were the hum of our engine and the sound of our wheels spinning against the pavement. I rolled down my window, not caring that the night wind instantly made my eyes water, and stared as memories passed by: There was Covey’s Diner, where my family sometimes ate blueberry pancakes with warm maple syrup on Sunday mornings. And just off that side street was our little brick library, where Donna Milson always greeted me with smiling eyes behind her thick oval glasses, showing me the stack of books she’d set aside for me. There was the pharmacy where I’d slunk in at the age of thirteen, my eyes downcast and my face hot, to buy maxi pads. “You might find these more comfortable,” Christy the cashier had said, casually putting back my jumbo pack of pads and picking up a thinner brand. She’d slipped a Hershey’s bar into my bag, too, without charging me.

West Virginia was often a punch line for jokes, but some of the finest people I’d ever met lived here. It wasn’t my hometown I’d been desperate to escape from; it was the pain of my final year here. People had tried to reach out to me during that time: Donna had dropped off a few books at my house after I avoided the library, but I’d stuck them, unread, in the return slot one night after the library was closed. Two of our neighbors, a retired couple who shoveled the whole sidewalk on their block whenever it snowed, had approached me one afternoon with a tin of banana bread and an invitation to talk, but I’d brushed them off with a mumbled excuse about homework. The only person I allowed in was Michael.

“Are you okay?” Michael asked, and I nodded and adjusted the delicate bundle in my arms.

He made a few quick turns before driving down a road that ran adjacent to a small cemetery dotted with simple white headstones. “Let’s park here,” I said, gesturing. Michael extracted the keys, and I slid out the passenger-side door and waited for him to walk down the little stone path with me.

The moon overhead illuminated the graveyard, and even though I’d been here only once before, I found my way quickly as I wove through the rows of headstones. I stopped by a weeping willow tree and knelt down. I reached out with a fingertip and traced the carved letters on her headstone.
BELOVED WIFE AND MOTHER
read the inscription, followed by the dates of her birth and death.

I closed my eyes and remembered what had happened on the night that she died:

A shrill ring cut through my sleep. My hand reached out in the darkness, fumbling across the nightstand and knocking a half-full glass of water to the floor before I snatched up the phone. I squinted at the clock in the darkness: 2:00
A.M.
My chest squeezed around my heart, as though trying to cushion it from the coming news.

“Julia?”

My father. But it didn’t sound like him.

“It’s Mom,” he said.

“What happened? Is she okay?”

But I already knew, even before he said the words, “Mom’s gone.”

It was a stroke, my father told me in a choked voice. But Mom was barely in her sixties; didn’t older people have them? I leapt out of bed and paced the bedroom, clinging to the phone with both hands. I felt too numb to cry, too frantic to sit still, too dazed to ask anything other than “Why?” over and over again.

Later, I pieced together what happened: Mom had gone to a friend’s house for a walk after dinner. “Do you have your ice cream?” Mom had asked as they’d stepped out the front door. The friend had looked at my mom, thinking she’d misheard. “Did you ask if I had my car keys?” the friend had asked, wondering why she would need keys when they were just going out for a walk. Mom hadn’t answered. She’d stumbled twice in the first block of their walk. Her friend had suggested they sit and rest for a while, then they’d walked back to Mom’s house—her friend just
walked
her home, so slowly, too slowly, while Mom’s brain cells were dying—and Dad was there. He’d taken one look at Mom’s lopsided smile and rushed her to the car and driven straight to the hospital. But it was too late.

“Can I see her?” I asked my father, clutching the phone in my still-dark bedroom. It had been almost two years since I’d visited my mother. How had it been that long? I should have made her come stay with me more often. I should have gone to her.

I’d tried to think of the last thing I’d said to her. Did I tell her I loved her, or had I just hung up the phone with an absentminded “Bye”?

“I can be there in a few hours. Just don’t let them … take her anywhere,” I begged. I hung up and reached for my cell phone on the bureau, as one clear word fought its way through the fog in my mind.
Michael
. He’d know what to do. He’d help me get to my mother quickly.

First I dialed his cell phone. I had to redial twice because my fingers were shaking so much. No one answered, but it was possible Michael had turned it off because he’d gone to bed. I managed to choke out a message, begging him to call me right away.

Where was he staying tonight? I closed my eyes and tried to focus; I couldn’t even remember which city he was in. Had he told me the name of the hotel?

I stumbled to my computer and turned it on, and the screen filled the room with a weak blue light. I scrolled through my e-mails, trying to find the latest one Kate had sent with Michael’s schedule for the week. Usually I ignored those e-mails, but I didn’t delete them until the week was through.

L.A. He was in L.A.

I found Kate’s notation of the hotel and the phone number and dialed blindly, asking the front desk to put me through to his room. The phone rang once, twice, then three times. I almost dropped the receiver when a woman answered.

“Michael?” My voice was almost a plea.

“He’s in the shower,” Roxanne purred, a victorious laugh in her voice. She paused a moment to let that sink in. “Can I, ah …
help
you with something, Mrs. Dunhill?”

I still have no memory of what I did during those next moments. I must’ve put the phone back in its cradle at some point, and I know I blindly grabbed handfuls of clothing to throw into a suitcase. All the wrong things, it turned out later. I didn’t need exercise pants and high-heeled boots and wispy spring scarves to say good-bye to my mother.

I sped to the hospital still in my nightgown with my winter coat thrown over it, depending on my GPS to guide me. A nurse in a white uniform let me in and directed me to my mother’s room. I hurried to her bedside and dropped to my knees, holding her cold hand and kissing it over and over again. I lay my head next to hers while my tears soaked the pillow and mingled with her hair.

After a while—maybe a half hour, maybe much longer—I stood up. There was a blanket on the foot of the bed, and I pulled it up and tucked it around my mother, as gently as she’d done to me on so many nights when I was a child. I’d been a restless sleeper, and my mom always woke up in the middle of the night, creeping into my room to pull the covers up from the foot of my bed, half-awakening me as I burrowed into the warmth that felt like her love.

Someone put a hand on my shoulder and whispered that it was time to go.

“Where?” I wanted to cry. Both of my homes had been destroyed: the one in West Virginia, and now the one in D.C., too. I didn’t have anywhere
to
go.

Then I realized the hand on my shoulder belonged to my father, and I jerked away.

“Julie, honey,” he began.

I looked at him and felt the ugly words rise in my throat, threatening to choke me. I felt dizzy with grief and anger. It was my father’s fault; everything was his fault. His gambling had ruined her life, and now the stress of it had killed her. But I somehow kept the words back as I stumbled out of the room, realizing that, on some level, my father probably knew it, too. Speaking the words aloud would be pointlessly cruel.

He stood in the doorway, watching me go, his hands outstretched. “I love you,” he called.

Funny, Michael had said the exact same thing to me before he’d left for his trip with Roxanne.

I ran to my car and drove to the outskirts of town and sat there, staring at the horizon as the sky changed from black to gray to purple to blue, all the colors of a bruise. I thought about the letters Mom had sent me every month—letters, when everyone else in the world relied on e-mail and impersonal texts—always handwritten on pale yellow stationery. Those notes never hinted that this was coming; her writing was never shaky or unclear. They were relentlessly cheerful, with chatty updates about what was going on around town. “I’ve planted some daffodils this spring, and they look so pretty in the front yard,” or “Do you remember Sadie Robinson? She has three little girls now and they’re the cutest things, walking down the street all in a row together like little ducks.”

I’d always written her back, and called, and even invited her to come with me to New York, cajoling her with promises of a nice hotel and shopping on Fifth Avenue, but she wouldn’t. She didn’t want to leave my father, and she knew things were too awkward between us for him to come. My mother’s loyalty was her downfall, I realized. She could have had such a different life.

Just then my cell phone rang. I looked down and saw Michael’s number flashing. It was almost 9:00
A.M.
So it had taken him this long to get back to me, I thought, feeling my mouth twist in bitterness. Was Roxanne still beside him in bed?

I picked up the phone and weighed it in my hand. I’d unwittingly followed in my mother’s footsteps, despite my vow that I’d have a very different kind of life, I realized. I, too, was bound to a man who’d keep hurting me.

The phone rang again, and I hurled it out of my car window as hard as I could, watching it shatter against the pavement. I tried to imagine starting over without Michael, but I felt paralyzed. I could see myself yelling at him, confronting him with the evidence I’d gathered, but then what? It was like watching a movie that suddenly went dark, midscene. I had no idea what I’d do—how my life would play out—without Michael.

I sat there for hours. In the end, I finally drove home, and when Michael walked in the door that night, I turned away as he tried to comfort me. He misunderstood, assuming I was angry because he’d stayed for his morning meeting instead of rushing home right away. “I’m sorry,” he whispered over and over, but I wouldn’t talk to him. I ran into the bathroom and locked the door and stayed there, curled on the floor, for the entire night. I felt as though the outer layer of my skin had been scraped off, and the slightest touch or sound would send arrows of unbearable pain shooting through me. I knew I couldn’t handle confronting him, not now, not while I was mourning my mother. I couldn’t bear to hear what was between Michael and Roxanne. What if it wasn’t just a fling? If he truly cared about her, then maybe he’d leave me. Just like my mother had left me, and before her, my father. I’d have no one.

A day later, Michael asked when the funeral would be held, and then I did scream at him. I watched him recoil from the gritty, horrible sound of my voice: How could he think I’d go to the funeral and see my father, who’d probably try to borrow money from the priest who performed the service?

“Go back to L.A.,” I hissed at Michael as my mind filled with images of his body wrapped around Roxanne’s slim, lithe one. “Why’d you even bother to come home?”

He lifted up his hands, as though he was surrendering, and walked out of the room. “Whenever you want to talk,” he started to say, but I slammed the door behind him …

Now I laid the bouquet of yellow tulips I’d been carrying on my mother’s grave. They were her favorite flowers, but she never bought them for herself. “Too expensive,” she’d say, reaching instead for a more practical potted mum, something that would last for months.

Every week since she’d died, I’d had a dozen tulips sent to her grave. But this was the first time I’d brought them here myself; I hadn’t been back to my hometown since that night. And other than cursory phone calls on holidays, I hadn’t reached out to my father. I still hadn’t forgiven him. Something had twisted inside of me that night, turning me into a person I didn’t recognize. The little girl who rode around on her dad’s shoulders, giggling uncontrollably while he pawed his feet at the ground and neighed like a horse, had died that night, too.

I looked up from the simple words on her headstone to face Michael.

“When my mom died …,” I began. I couldn’t continue; it felt like something sharp was lodged in the center of my chest.

“I wasn’t here for you,” Michael said. He knelt down next to me. “I should have flown back first thing. I can’t believe I went to that damn meeting. Julia, I’m so sorry.”

It was time to finally deal with this, too.

“It wasn’t the meeting so much as the fact that Roxanne answered your phone in the middle of the night,” I said abruptly. “In your hotel room in L.A.”

I raised my eyes to look at him. Honesty, he’d promised me. If he dared lie to me, here by my mother’s grave …

“She answered my phone?” he said, confusion and then something else, something darker, flitting across his face.

“You had an affair with her,” I said. Anger bubbled just beneath my skin, making it feel hot and tight, and I crossed my arms over my chest.

He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment.

Here it comes
, I thought.

“Oh, God, I have to tell you this. I did lie to you … about some things, before … But you didn’t say anything about her answering my phone. Julia, why didn’t you tell me?”

I sidestepped that question; I had a very good reason, but not one I was prepared to reveal now. “Don’t you dare lie to me again.”

“There was this one night,” he began. “It wasn’t in L.A., though. It was a month or so before your mother passed away. We were all in New York, a big group of us from the company. I’d had a couple drinks at dinner, and then we went to the bar for some cognacs. Afterward we went back to the hotel and she and I ended up alone in the elevator. She started kissing me. We stopped when the doors opened and there were people in the hallway so we ended up going into our own rooms.”