Traps (11 page)

She takes out her phone and opens a text template. She enters Ian’s name and types:

She looks at it a few seconds, the cursor blinking. She looks to her left, not out her window but at it—at the way it curves and the way it
meets the door frame. Most people cannot tell, but the glass on the cars their company issues is thicker than normal window glass: bulletproof. She looks back down at her BlackBerry, at her start of a message to Ian. She adds:

She backs up and tries again:

She backs all the way up again and looks at what she has. Just a last-minute regret for the wedding, and an apology for the smaller disappointment she knows this will be.

She presses Send.

She sets her BlackBerry in the cup holder then, and with her remaining time, she makes some preparations. She eats a saltine and takes a sip of water. She lays an empty ziplock bag and a soft-pack of wet wipes on the passenger seat. She takes a small white trash bag from her backpack and sets it up, pinning the long top edge behind the glove-box door. She takes the folders she prepared the night before—“Insurance Claim Denial Appeals” and “Planned Parenthood Clinic Forms”—and moves them to a rear exterior pocket in her backpack to make room for the folders that her shift manager has given her in the front. In the cup holder her phone lights up suddenly. A reply from Ian. Above an excerpt from her own message, “I know this is really bad for you,” he has typed this:

Dana breathes a little puff of surprise through her nose. She sits staring at it for so long that when she checks the clock again she sees that it is time to leave. She sets her BlackBerry back in the cup holder. She puts the key in the ignition and turns. She backs up in the armored Suburban, past her white car with the dress for the wedding still waiting in the backseat, and turns around, pulling forward finally, up to a closed garage door and stops just shy of it so that she is not blocking the threshold.

Jessica stands in the center of a big walk-in closet stuffed full of the things she wears and the things she wants to hide. On the shelves jeans and T-shirts sit stacked among clear plastic bins of sunglasses and baseball caps, and in the corners, on either side of a big mirror she avoids looking in this morning, skirts of evening gowns spill out from behind baskets heaped high with dirty laundry, a big gilt-framed collage Akhil made of her film reviews, and the life-sized cardboard cutout of her in a flight suit that her daughters would not let her throw away. The skylight is dark above her, and she is already dressed in her big sweatshirt and jeans. Her running sneakers are on and tied. She is bending to place an extra baseball cap into an open duffel bag when Akhil appears in the doorway in his T-shirt and striped pajama bottoms, his hair wild with sleep, rubbing his eyes.

“I let the dogs out to pee; they were scratching. Wait—what are you doing?”

“I’m going.” She slides open a drawer.

“I thought we talked about this last night. I thought you agreed with me.”

She sifts through her socks. “Please don’t try to talk me out of it.”

She puts a pair of socks in her duffel, and Akhil disappears and appears again quickly with a laptop and a serious, purposeful look on his face. He opens it on top of her dresser. He begins tapping.

She tries to keep packing as he reads. He is not the type to exaggerate his delivery, but his raised eyebrows and his pattern of emphasis
betray his disdain. “ ‘I’m so worried about you, Sweetheart. I care about you so deeply, and I know you well enough to know that you will never love yourself if you let yourself be lured by the spoils of fame into turning your back on your family. You are not the type to be ashamed of your humble beginnings. Perhaps one of the members of your entourage could redo the seating charts and find a little space in the back for me, behind all the stars?’ ”

Jessica’s lip trembles. She bites it and looks at the ceiling in front of her open drawers. “It’s such poisonous crap. Such evil manipulative garbage. I don’t know why I still let it bother me.”

“Because it’s poisonous evil manipulative garbage from your own dad,” he says.

“I wasn’t keeping him away because I was ashamed of him! And there were no stars at our wedding! There was no entourage!”

“Baby, it’s me.” He smiles sadly and tries to catch her eyes with his own. “I was there, remember?”

She turns back to her drawers. “It doesn’t matter. I still want to go.” She opens another drawer.

Akhil keeps reading: “ ‘Because I love you so very deeply and I worry over the moral anguish I know you feel in your heart about having let your fame separate you from your family, I need to share with you the tragic story of my great-aunt Peg, who might have died without bitter regrets if she had only forgiven her father their past misunderstandings and allowed him just once to meet his grandchildren.’ ”

Jessica grabs a fistful of underwear and stuffs it in the bag at her feet. “You’re not changing my mind.”

He says, “Or this: ‘I’m so confused by your anger, Dearheart. I tried to call and ask your permission but your handlers wouldn’t let me speak to you, and it honestly never occurred to me you would say no because it’s such common practice among the more compassionate stars. Didn’t Angelina sell family photos to
People
to benefit UNICEF? Didn’t you say you cared about the plight of children in India?’ ”

She leans over and zips the bag shut.

He says, “It’s a setup, Jessica. You’re doing exactly what he wants you to do.”

“We can’t know that for sure. It wasn’t even him calling.”

“Who cares? For all we know that woman on the phone was one of the paparazzi friends he splits commissions with. He’s a pretty creative guy, remember?” He flips the laptop around: a scanned screen shot from TMZ with a headline that reads, “Father’s Day in Beverly Hills: No Dads Allowed” next to a picture of a sparkly-eyed older man smiling for the camera outside the gate in front of their house with a sign that says,
JESSICA PLEASE FORGIVE ME!

Akhil says, “They actually have that one posted as a sample on one of the celebrity photo brokering websites with dollar signs stamped across it.”

She picks up the duffel by the strap and slings it over her shoulder.

“You were right last night, Akhil.”

“About what?”

“I have to stop hiding in here. Growing up with a mother who’s afraid to go outside or answer the phone is way worse than growing up knowing your grandfather is an asshole.”

Akhil’s hands shoot up in the air. His eyes are wide with surprise and excitement. “Good! Great! Hallelujah! That’s my girl!” Then he lowers them and grabs her gently by the shoulders. “But that means go back to work. That means go outside. That doesn’t mean run headlong into one of your dad’s ambushes.”

“I have to.”

“Why?”

“Because.” She puts her hands on her hips. “Because I want my dog.”

He shakes his head briskly, as if someone slapped him. “Wait, what?”

“I want the dog, Akhil.” She folds her arms across her chest. “That’s my dog. Grace Kelly. That’s one of the dogs he bought for me.”

He narrows his brows skeptically. “When you tracked him down at seventeen … After he abandoned you as a baby …”

“See! I knew you would say that. That’s why I didn’t tell you last night.” She reaches into a basket of sunglasses on top of her dresser and grabs a pair.

He says, “One of the litter of eight puppies he got on impulse for his tenement studio—”

“Yes.”

“For you to rush home and feed between your high school classes while he was out sprinkling bits of broken glass into his food at Denny’s or slamming on his brakes in front of teenage drivers.”

“Yes.”

“There is probably no dog at all, Jessica; she should have died years ago; she’d have to be ancient by now—”

“I thought of that! It’s possible! I looked it up, even!”

“Or there might be a different dog he paid that woman to call Grace Kelly to lure you out there for a photo ambush. ‘Jessica Finally Forgives!’ ‘Dog and Threat of Deathbed Trump Five-Year Star Grudge!’ ”

She puts on her cap and glasses. “Maybe.” Then she muscles past him into the dark hall with her bag, past the two closed doors and down the narrow stairs into the kitchen. She fills the coffee carafe with water and pours it into the coffeemaker. She scoops coffee into a filter, making a sloppy job of it, while Akhil stands behind her blinking, watching her. Finally she opens the refrigerator and takes out a little ziplock snack bag of leftover bacon.

“Let me make you an egg,” he says.

“It’s not for me, it’s for Grace,” she says, and she bends over her duffel bag to stuff it inside. When she stands again, he is closer, and he takes her head gently in his hands. He kisses her on her hair. “All the more reason to make you an egg, then.”

Jessica sits down on a stool at the counter, and watches him take a carton of eggs from the refrigerator. He pours a little oil in a pan and turns on the flame beneath it. In the wake of her struggle against them, his bald truths make her feel cared for, every bit as much as the egg. Her father’s false comforts had been flawless. Perfect fits. Measured with
some bloodless micrometer against the opening of her sorrow and then jiffy-milled—quick-crafted behind his shining eyes, as if turned on a lathe. The egg sputters and pops on the stove, and Akhil watches it while beside him the carafe clouds with steam and finally releases a trickling stream of dark coffee, and then he slides the egg onto a plate, the same kind of flowered dish she had used for the girls the night before. The whole time they were dating, he never once flattered her or sent her too many flowers or told her anything she loved hearing that later turned out to be untrue. Instead he sent an envelope of vitamins to her trailer. He told her he liked the smell of her breath after she ate grapes. Now he takes a fork from the drawer and hands it to her and watches as she cuts into the egg with the side of her fork and takes an enormous bite. A little ghost of red glitter spangles the floor beneath her. The skin around her eyes is puffed and splotched pink from crying.

He says, “At least let me come with you.”

She shakes her head.

He says, “I can be dressed in two minutes. It’s perfect. I’m not on duty until Wednesday.”

“I might not be back by then.”

“I’ll catch a flight if that happens.”

“What about your class for the residents?”

“Not until Thursday.”

“But you have all those articles to read! And a recertification exam on Friday!”

“I can prep in the car while you drive.”

She opens her mouth to raise another objection, and before she can speak he adds, “And the girls will be fine; my mother is probably already awake in her bed reading John Grisham and munching a bag of Kashmiri mix.”

“Okay, you’re right.” She blinks, looking baffled, or caught, or both. “I guess I just don’t want you to come.”

“Why on earth not?”

“I want to face him on my own. All these layers of protection!—”

When Akhil opens his mouth to object, she waves her fork impatiently; “I don’t mean Security. I’ve already talked to Larry. He’s assigning two people to come with me.”

“Then what
do
you mean?”

“You were right about the unread scripts. You were right about me hiding in here for the last four years. But it’s not just the house. It’s you and the girls I’m hiding behind. You
know
me. I like the version of me you see. It feels so safe. All the lousy distorted things people say—even nice people! Even people who think it’s a compliment!—none of it confuses or depresses me when you’re with me. I need to learn to do that for myself.”

He watches her stand and take a silver travel mug from the cupboard and fill it with coffee. As much as he’d like to go with her, he will not try to argue her on this. She had once laid out a collection of her red-carpet photos from the days before she met him, and although she looked stunning, right away he knew what she was trying to show him. There was a sad, tense look in her shoulders and mouth that was absent in the pictures with him at her side. In the manic strobe-lighting of camera flashes, under the cacophony of pleas (“Over here, Jessica!” “Give us those eyes, Jessica!” “Jessica, tell us who you’re wearing!”) he’d taken to whispering his own in her ear (“Mommy, cut my crusts!” “Jessica, who did your epic bedhead!”). It’s true it would be good for her not to need him.

“You get how bad it could be, though, right? A whole team of photographers with telephoto lenses in his neighbor’s yard to watch you with the dog. If there is a dog. His hospital room bugged so he can sell the conversation to
Hard Copy
. If he’s in the hospital. Have you called the hospital?”

“No. I don’t want to draw a bigger crowd by tipping anyone off that he’s getting a visitor. But I do get it. Paparazzi. Unfair headlines. Heartbreaking betrayal. I get it, Akhil, and I want to go anyway.” She clips the lid on the cup with a hard snap.

He studies her face. The wet lashes and the pinked skin and the set jaw.

“Okay, but why, though?”

“Why what?”

“Why do you want that dog? If there is a dog.”

“I don’t know.” She shakes her head, looking first at the tree of photos on the wall and then all around the room. The dirty socks and the struggling Chia pet and the bin of broken toys. “Because it’s someone from my family I can take care of? Because it’s someone from my childhood I can share with the girls? Because it’s something he took from me that I can take back from him?”

Akhil reaches out and tucks a lock of hair behind her ear. He smiles. They have been married ten years, and still it fills her with relief to see how he accepts this about her—her fathomless depths of uncertainty. He is the only mirror she can stand to look in. “Okay,” he says.