Stolen Grace (6 page)

“I think he was asserting himself. I mean, I’m thirty-six, four years older than him. I was the one who pushed for Grace’s adoption, and I seemed to have been the one to have held the reins in our marriage in many ways and . . . well . . . anyway, he got a real shock when I asked him to leave. I mean, he was only gone for a couple of weeks but I think he realized how much he had to lose. I think things will be much better from now on.”

Ruth tilted her head again as if considering everything Sylvia had just said. “I mean Tommy is very cute and everything but—”

“How do you know he’s cute?”

“Don’t you remember? You e-mailed me that photo of you two together.”

“Really? No, I don’t remember that. But lately I’ve been a bit forgetful. Living here has turned my brain to mush. My life seems so mundane these days. So humdrum.”

“No, it’s just country living, that’s all. People envy you, I bet.”

“Well, we came here mostly for Grace’s sake. Fresh air, low crime, a great place for a child to grow up.”

“True. Anyway,” said Ruth, “I guess I’m not one to give advice about other people’s love lives. I’ve been engaged four times.” She chuckled.

And Sylvia laughed too. She hadn’t even
kissed
four guys—in a sexual way—let alone dated that many. “Four times?”

“Yeah, but none of my beaux were right. None of them marriage material in the end.”

“
Four?
”

Ruth threw up her hands like an Italian throwing pizza dough. “I know—it’s kinda crazy. But I think I learned a lot from each one of them. I got a lot out of each relationship, yet they were all very different from one another. I got in touch with one of them recently—I needed advice about shotguns for my novel—the Belgian guy, the rich one, you remember my mentioning him? He was a big game hunter so I thought I could pick his brains.”

“A big game hunter?” Sylvia winced. “Oh Lord, what did he shoot?”

“Probably everything. He once shot a tiger. But it was in the ‘90’s—a while ago.”

“Oh my God. How horrific! No wonder you split with him.”

“I left him because he was so possessive. And I ended it with the other three because they just couldn’t meet my needs. We’re still great friends, though, the Belgian and I.”

Sylvia opened her mouth to say something but took a breath instead. How many tigers were even
left
in the world? She knew that some people paid a fortune bribing gamekeepers, and that many protected animals were being decimated for Chinese medicines, but she had never imagined she could know someone who
knew
someone who could do such a thing. The idea of anybody “educated” (and with money) shooting such a magnificent creature—an endangered species, to boot—was an enigma to her.

“So what happened to Jeff?” she asked Ruth, trying to wipe away the image of the murdered tiger. “I mean, it was just a few weeks ago that you and he broke up, wasn’t it? Why did you finally end it?”

“He had an alcohol problem. He was a kind of manic-depressive. I mean, not clinically so, but I could read the writing on the wall.”

Sylvia got up and walked over to the fridge and took out the lasagna she’d made earlier that day. “But you were planning to have his
baby
.” Sylvia remembered the frozen eggs story. She popped the dish into the microwave.

Ruth laughed. “I know, I know. It took me a while to wise up to the fact it wasn’t going to work out. And the vasectomy thing was making things really complicated.”

“Didn’t you know he’d had a vasectomy from the start?” Sylvia thought back to all the e-mails Ruth had written to her over the past year and a half about her boyfriend, Jeff, and the IVF saga, and the endless Skype calls they’d had. A veritable soap opera. Ruth had had seven eggs frozen but had put the transfers on hold until she sorted out her love life. She’d often begged Sylvia to join her at the clinic in Mexico, to have her eggs frozen, too. But Sylvia wasn’t interested. She had done plenty of research before she’d adopted Grace. Even a healthy woman in her twenties had only a fifteen percent chance, but she, in her mid thirties wasn’t going to put her body through the turmoil. Not to mention the expense. Besides, she had Grace, and the fact that Grace wasn’t biologically hers made no difference at all to the bond they shared or the strength of their love. But for Ruth to be freezing her own eggs at the age of forty-six seemed extraordinary. There was a freak possibility of success, yet it would take a miracle for it to work. Especially as her boyfriend had had his tubes tied. Sylvia wondered if the doctor who had agreed to do it was just taking Ruth’s money or was using her as some sort of medical breakthrough experiment.

Sylvia set some forks and napkins on the table. “Didn’t you
know
that Jeff had had a vasectomy from the start of your relationship?”

“Yes I did, but I thought they had ways of reversing it.” Ruth drained the wine in her glass and topped it up again. “More Chardonnay?”

Sylvia shook her head. “No thanks. Having a hangover when you have a five-year-old just isn’t an option.”

“I shouldn’t have more but, you know, it keeps my eating disorder in check.”

“That’s right, I completely forgot. You told me once about your eating disorder.”

“I used to have a problem.” Ruth’s lips twitched. “But it’s under control now.”

“Not like
Bridget Jones
then?” Sylvia joked.

“No way! I hated that novel. So boring! Such bad writing! All that weighing out calories every day. I never do that.”

“You didn’t find the book funny?”

“So British that type of humor. I guess because you’re married to a Brit you found it amusing. I didn’t get it. I read your movie script, by the way, Sylvia. It’s great. You’ve got to have the confidence to
finish
it! Did you read the new chapters I sent you of my novel?”

“I certainly did and I wrote down lots of suggestions. I think you need to decide exactly
whom
you’re writing for. For whom you are writing? God I hate that whom and who stuff—I get so confused. What I’m trying to say is you need to decide exactly who your reader is.”

Ruth took a swig of wine. “I told you. Housewives.”

Sylvia realized that she, herself, wasn’t much more than a housewife right now. “Well in the first chapter you describe your hero taking a pee. In graphic detail. I think you can cut that out. Or at least save it till we know him better, till we’ve established the fact that he’s a great guy.”

“Oh. Ok. You don’t like it, huh? It’s just that one of my exes told me how he urinated, always trying to make the perfect arc and I thought it was really interesting.”

“I don’t know if your typical housewife would like that sort of thing. Hey, maybe I’m wrong. Take anything I say with a grain of salt. Maybe people would be fascinated. I mean look at all that erotica that’s so popular right now—you never know. Oh yes, and another thing. Just a detail. You said something like, “there’s a new iPhone that has a baby alarm on it,” or something like that. It’s not the phone
itself,
it’s the app.”

“I’m a bit behind on all that app stuff.”

Sylvia grinned. “I’m so glad I’m not the only one around here who isn’t a cyber-techie.”

“Which reminds me, I wanted to talk to you about all that stuff. One of my ex-Harvard friends has told me that if I’m to be a successful writer I must have an online
presence.
That I have to have a Twitter account and a Facebook page.”

“You. Are. Kidding? You don’t
have
all that? I thought the entire world did nothing but Tweet and do Facebook all day long.”

Ruth pulled a face. “No! I am completely illiterate. I know nothing. All I can do is send e-mails and Skype, only because my ex set it up for me. He also did something to hide my whereabouts on my computer so I could watch American TV when I was in Europe—otherwise they block you if they know you’re not in the States. I wanted to watch ABC and things.’

“He hid your IP address?”

Ruth waved her arms again. “I have no idea what he did. Like I said, I’m
clueless
when it comes to all that. But will you help me do a Facebook page, sweetie? Set up a Twitter account?”

“Sure.”

“Great. Agents want to see you have mass readership potential before they sign you. Sweetie, if I can show I have a big following on Facebook then I’m more likely to get an agent. I’m giving myself six months to get signed to one and, if I don’t manage, I’m going to self-publish and sell through Amazon.”

“You have it all worked out. Good for you, Ruth. My only goal right now is to get my script finished. Period.”

“Oh, I’ll be done very soon. Maybe even while I’m here. And thanks for the feedback, Sylvia honey—your points are always so useful. It’s so great being friends with you, you’re so direct. Also, I never seem to have women friends that are as attractive as I am. Women can get so jealous. You know, at college, they called me a ‘man magnet’ but not in a nice way. In a nasty, mocking way.”

“But surely being a man magnet is good?” Sylvia joked. “Especially, if you’re single. I was never a man-magnet. I was too tall and gangly as a teenager, and had train-tracks on my teeth.”

Ruth went on, “Well, maybe you were an ugly duckling once, but now you’re so pretty. You have a kind of poise in the way you carry yourself. I mean look at you, even when you just walk across the room to get something out of the icebox, you do it with a sort of
natural
elegance. Such grace. Spine straight, shoulders back. You’re just as attractive as I am, maybe even more so. I know you’d never feel competitive with me in that way. How tall
are
you exactly? Aren’t we about the same height?”

Sylvia answered, “I’m five nine. I was way taller than all my classmates but when I hit about sixteen I kind of stopped growing and other girls caught up with me.”

“I’m . . . ” Ruth considered . . . “quite a bit shorter, although I feel tall, you know? I’ve always felt tall. I’m five foot six.”

Sylvia perused the face and body of this uber-confident woman. Ruth was attractive, yes. Slim. Ish. Could lose a few pounds. She was aware that she’d had a breast enlargement. Not because her breasts were big, but they were neat globes. Sylvia noticed them, for the first time, in fact, in their rock-hard, uniform spheres, nestled beneath Ruth’s tight-fitting T-shirt. Ruth had a long nose, not big, but she had to admit little Gracie had had a point—there was something vaguely weasel-ish about her, in the nicest possible way; although Sylvia felt cruel to think it. Her eyes the color of poop? They were a sort of sludgy-green. But she had almost black hair; beautiful, flawless olive skin; perfect teeth, and Sylvia could see that her overall look might really attract a man. Ruth looked so much younger than her years, too, and Sylvia had no doubt that her flirting skills were honed sharp and that she could play the sex appeal card with aplomb. She’d obviously had plenty of practice with her four engagements.

“Anyway,” Ruth said, “I’m not going to get involved with anybody right now. I need to concentrate on my
writing
. And when I make millions from my novel, I’m sure the perfect man will fall into my life just when I need him.”

THE NEXT MORNING, after Sylvia had set her friend up with Twitter and Facebook accounts, Ruth gave Grace a big bag of gifts.

“Mommy, Mommy! Look!” her daughter shouted, skipping about. “A pair of
Wizard of Oz
shoes like Dorothy’s with red sparklies!” She pulled more goodies out of the bag. “And chocolate!”

“Ruth, really, you shouldn’t have—it’s not her birthday or Christmas.”

“And even more chocolate! And candy, too!” Grace squealed, her skinny brown arm buried deep in the bag.

“By the way, how did you know Grace’s shoe size?” Sylvia asked. She glanced over at her daughter whose teeth were already stuck together in a green, chewy mess.

“I guessed. Look further into the bag, Grace baby, there’s a red sparkly bag to match.” Ruth turned to Sylvia. “I just couldn’t resist. When I saw her cute little face when we Skyped the other day, I fell in love with her. She’s a little dream.” She swept her hand over her dark hair. “By the way, Sylvia, honey, do you have another shower I could use? Your plumbing is a little funky in my bathroom.”

“Sure. Upstairs. First door on the right.”

Ruth sashayed upstairs, her see-through negligee trailing behind her like mist. There was something very sexy about her and Sylvia felt relieved that Tommy wasn’t around.

Grace strut about in her shoes, which were a tad too big, clicking her heels together saying, “There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home.” Grace knew all about
The Wizard of Oz
because Tommy was keen to educate his daughter with classic films. Some of them not suitable for a child her age, at all.
Men,
Sylvia mused
—they can be so clueless sometimes when it comes to child rearing.

Sylvia gave Grace a kiss and held her close, but Grace, like a jiggling, excited puppy struggled free.

“Remember,” Sylvia said, “to say a very big thank you to Ruth. Maybe you could draw her a lovely card.”

“She’s so nice to me. I really,
really
like her.”

Sylvia felt a pang in her stomach which took her by surprise. Jealousy? Surely not.

Tommy

T
ommy sat by the ocean in Malibu, watching the surfers, clad in wet suits like black seals waiting for the right wave. It was almost dark. He mulled over the day’s events. He really hadn’t meant anything to happen. He had just gotten off the plane when his cell phone rang. It was Marie—the Bel Ange, as Sylvia called her. Marie suggested they have lunch again—she’d seen from his Facebook post that he was in LA. Just to talk about her headshots, she said. A little chitchat about music, acting—have a nice time out.

She was pushy, Tommy thought. A pretty girl used to getting men to do her favors.

Still, he found himself saying “yes.”

He had no idea that Marie would be so flirtatious. So predatory. Her skin was silky and pearlish, smooth and taut. Her dark hair hung over her shining eyes like a wild mare’s mane. She was wearing a short (oh so short!) black skirt and he could see a flash of knickers when she sat down. Wow, she looked young. So fresh. Innocent. So bloody . . .