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She told me to take my time, so I did.
I shut my office door, placed my purse and briefcase on a shelf in the small closet. I closed the bifold door carefully so it wouldn’t jump the track, adjusted the clip taming my long auburn curls, smoothed the back of my black skirt before I sat down at my desk and picked a piece of lint off my stocking before I started my computer.
The Windows logo had emblazoned the screen, and I had just lifted my mug to take a sip of tea when I spied Blake’s face smirking at me from the five-by-seven gilded frame perched on the left corner of my desk. A vision of the mug shot that ran in the paper flashed in my mind. My heart ached as the hole in it tore open a little bit wider.
I pressed my hand to my chest for a few seconds before smacking the photo facedown and sweeping it—like a dead bug—off my desktop into a drawer.
Tears stung my eyes. I dabbed them away and gave myself a pep talk: I was not going to cry. He was not worth it. I closed my eyes for a good minute, until the burning subsided, then I took a deep breath, donned my emotional armor and prepared to march into battle.
“Annabelle, come in. Close the door. Sit.”
Jackie’s lips curved down, even when she smiled. She looked at me, radiating a forced creepy-warmth that made me think of the funeral director who helped me make arrangements for my mother’s burial last year. An I-can-be-as-empathetic-as-you-want-while-you’re-giving-me-your-money kind of look, but it wasn’t money Jackie wanted.
Oh, no, no, no. It was details. I sensed it the minute I walked into her office.
She folded her hands on her desk, cocked her head to one side and looked at me. “I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”
Liar. She didn’t give a damn about me. She wanted the inside scoop—big fat play-by-play juicy details of Blake’s arrest—and she was willing to make nice to get me to spill my guts.
“I’m fine.”
“I wanted you to know I’m here for you.”
Right. How about a pay raise and a transfer to another department? She’d never been there for me one day in the entire time I’d worked with her. And she’d be there for me now for as long as it took to get the goods and have a titillating oh-my-God-can-you-believe-that lunch with Lolly, because Jackie King was that kind of person.
It took me years to understand what this woman was made of—because there was a time in the beginning when I allowed myself to be taken in by her—and I’d rather ask Blake to move back and bring his lovers home than confide in the Jackal.
“Is there anything else?” My words were icy, yet I managed to curve my lips upward; not into a smile of gratitude, but one that closed this too-personal vein of conversation.
Her funeral-director smile faded to a nearly expressionless mask of comprehension. She unfolded her hands and crossed her arms.
“There is something else,” she said as I started to stand. “I don’t like the direction you’re taking with the new marketing campaign.”
She opened the file on top of her desk and pulled out my preliminary design for the new brochure—the design I hadn’t shown to anyone yet. Where did she—
“Home is where the heart is…Heartfield Retirement Communities…?” She scrunched up her nose. “That’s a little clichеd, don’t you think? Come up with something else by this afternoon. We’re way behind.”
I glared at her in disbelief, trying to think of something to put her in her place, but as usual, my mind went blank with rage.
“Where did you get that?”
She wouldn’t look me in the eye. “I peeked at your files while you were gone. After all, some of us had to work these past two weeks.”
Some of us had to work? What the— Ohh, that martyr bitch. I was not out on a pleasure cruise and she knew it. She was just mad because I wouldn’t talk to her about it. Even worse, she’d snooped through my office and taken one of my files.
“I need that back.” I held out my hand and made a mental note to lock my desk from now on.
She closed the file and handed it to me, then started straightening the stacks of paper on her desk to avoid looking at me.
Coward.
Before I turned to leave, I stood there for a moment, towering over her, waiting to see how long it would take her to look at me. But she spun her chair around so that her back was to me and started typing on the computer perched on the credenza behind her desk.
She was a coward.
It dawned on me that the hardest parts of this crisis—telling Ben and going back to work—were over.
“You can leave now,” she said without turning around.
Yes. Yes, I could. Perhaps it was time.
I smelled the scent of gardenias before I saw the movement in my peripheral vision. My gaze snapped from my easel to the doorway and there stood Rita in the threshold of my studio. I nearly jumped out of my skin.
Yanking off my MP3 earphones, I said, “For God’s sake, you scared me to death.”
She smiled and waved a stack of transparency sleeves at me. “Sorry about that. I knocked, but you didn’t answer. Your car’s out front so I figured you were here—wait till you see what I have.” She sang the words as she shut the door and dangled a plastic sheet between two fingers. “I think you’ll forgive me when you see these.”
“The slides of my work?”
She nodded. “They look fabulous.”
I set down my brush, tossed the MP3 player on the table and met her halfway. She pulled a small slide viewer from her bag and popped in the first image. “Here, take a look.”
The boxy magnifier lay cool and light in my palm. As I pressed the button and the light engaged, the oddest sensation enveloped me that my future sat in my hand.
It was crazy—merely wishful thinking that I could make a living doing what I love, especially now that life was so messed up with Blake and I was ensconced in the new marketing campaign at work. All the ideas I came up with after Jackie vetoed “Home is where the heart is…” seemed trite and hackneyed.
I breathed in the heady scent of oil paint—I was experimenting with a new medium. It comingled with the gardenia essence that had marked my sister’s entrance. I peered into the light box and saw the lavender foxgloves I’d painted last week. The delicate purple blossoms dangled from the stems like glorious pieces of amethyst standing out bold against the rich emerald background.
My breath hitched. I loved foxgloves and these looked good, if I did say so myself. There was a whole planter full of them across the courtyard from my studio. The slide reminded me of how soothing it was to lose myself in the painting process.
If nothing else, at least I had my art. Something to call my own, something constant in this world of madness.
Rita handed me another slide, and then another until we established a silent rhythm of viewing and changing. My discard pile grew. Her handoff pile waned. We sank into the comfortable silence that sisters weren’t compelled to fill.
When I’d viewed the last slide, Rita said, “They look good, huh?”
“Yeah, they do. Thanks for photographing them, Ri.”
She nodded, chewing her bottom lip as if she had something else to say.
“What?” I asked, putting the slides back into their sleeves.
“Don’t kill me, okay?”
“Why would I do that? You’re not going to tell me you’ve slept with Blake, too, are you?”
She scrunched up her nose. “Ew. No.”
“Oh, I forgot, you’re not his type. You don’t have a penis.”
My sister didn’t laugh.
I held up the transparency of the foxgloves to the light and looked at it again, and when I looked over at her she shot me a weird sort-of smirk.
“You know it would be really good for you to get away from here. Go somewhere fresh where the word penis doesn’t automatically evoke nightmares.”
“What are you talking about?”
I nudged the last slide into place, skimmed the sleeve to the center of the table and turned my attention to Rita.
“You know I shot two sets of slides, right?”
“No, I didn’t know that. Is it a problem?”
“Only if you hate me for sending them to Paris…with the artist-in-residency application.”
I crossed my arms in front of me. “You did what?”
“I sent your work—”
“I heard you the first time. I just— Rita, I can’t go to Paris. I told you that. That’s why I didn’t send them myself.”
She pulled out a stool and perched on the edge of it. “I know you did. Your mind is kind of on automatic pilot.”
I threw up my hands. “Well, I’m kind of preoccupied trying to figure out how I’ll take care of myself after I’m divorced. As of right now, that plan does not include moving to Paris for three months.”
She looked disappointed and lowered her voice the way our mother used to when she tried to win us over to her way of thinking. “Why can’t you see that would be the very best way for you to take care of yourself? A change of scenery, a change of career.”
I hated this logical side of my sister. I walked over to my easel and picked up my brush. “Okay. Okay. Fine. I’m not going to fight with you over this. Thank you for thinking enough of my work…for thinking enough of me—”
The words burned the back of my throat, and made my eyes water. I swallowed hard.
“Thank you for doing that for me. But you know, you have to stop—”
I shook my head and stabbed my brush in the gob of cadmium yellow on my palette so hard the bristles flared.
“What were you going to say?”
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Rita stand.
“That I have to stop interfering with your cocoon-building? Well, I’m not going to, Anna.”
I swiped a slash of yellow across the canvas. “This is not worth fighting over. Tell me where I can find a telephone number and I’ll call and withdraw.”
“Withdraw?” She laughed and stood behind me, but I didn’t turn around. “If you feel the need to withdraw, then you think you might win a spot.”
I shrugged, and dipped my brush into the black paint. “I don’t. I don’t know what I think. Just stop.”
“Why would you not go for this?”
A funnel of fear rose and whirled around my stomach, but I ignored it, focusing instead on how I should’ve been mad at my sister for putting me in this position; for going against my wishes and entering my work in that contest. And I would’ve been mad at her if I hadn’t been so numb. But despite the numbness, deep inside in the very center of my soul, down in the tiny little speck of heart that hadn’t frozen solid, I knew she was right. Only, there was a wide cavern between what I should do and what I was capable of doing just then.
“Well, Ri, I’ll add painting in Paris to my to-do list right behind finding a decent divorce attorney and securing another place to live because Blake is barking about putting the house on the market.”
She clucked her tongue and sighed. Loudly. As if she’d just learned I’d pierced my nipples and planned to shave my hair into a Mohawk.
“Look, it’s easy to judge when your ass isn’t on the line,” I said over my shoulder.
“Yeah, I guess so. And I guess it’s easy to use Blake as an excuse for not living your life. As big a bastard as he is, he’s not the one keeping you from Paris. You’re doing this to yourself.”
I whirled to face her. “That is so unfair.”
“I know it is. The entire scenario that’s brought you to this juncture sucks. But Anna, what would really be unfair is if you used this crap as an excuse to curl up into a little ball and fade away.”
I turned back to my canvas before the first tears broke free and meandered down my cheek. I wiped them away with my sleeve.
“You blame Blake for taking away your life. Don’t give him your soul.”
I heard Rita’s sandals clicking on the concrete floor, walking away from me. I wanted to shout at her, If I’d wanted to go to Paris I would have sent in the damn application myself. Well, okay, I wanted to go to Paris. Someday. Just not right now.
Arrgh. Too much. Too much. Too much was coming at me too fast.
“I have a challenge for you.” My sister’s voice was softer. I glanced over to see her hitching her purse up on her shoulder.
“Don’t withdraw. Just let the application ride. Toss it up to fate and see what happens. Okay?”
CHAPTER 4
After six weeks of having the bed to myself, I decided I liked sleeping alone. I woke up at six-thirty that particular morning smack-dab in the middle of the king-size bed. No one poked me in the back and told me to keep to my own side of the bed. No one elbowed me for inadvertently kicking him when I stretched out.
It was kind of nice, this newfound personal space. If I wanted to I could take my half out of the middle. It was a good thing, sleeping alone. I lay there and waited for reality to jolt my sleep-befuddled mind and expose the big dark hole that had taken up residence where my heart used to live.
I waited, but the familiar pain didn’t stir.
A good sign.
Never mind that waking up was the easy part. Going to bed alone was still a challenge. After eighteen years of sleeping with the same person, I’d found comfort and reassurance in being able to reach out and touch Blake whenever I wanted—even though we rarely touched.
There was something in just knowing he was there, something comforting in the occasional brush of his foot against mine, no matter how unintentional; something in the rhythmic ebb and flow of his breathing; even something in his snoring, although until I discovered earplugs it used to drive me nuts.
I guess my newfound personal space—room to stretch—was one fringe benefit of living alone.
I spread my arms and legs to the four corners of the bed, just because I could, and moved them back and forth like a child making a snow angel. I reveled in the softness of the sheets under my body, and then lay spread-eagle for a moment, and listened to the quiet until the shrill ring of the telephone interrupted my calm.
“Annabelle, I didn’t wake you, did I?”
Blake. My heart skipped a beat. “No, I’m up.”
