“MERRY CHRISTMAS.” BARLOW’S VOICE was sullen, his mood sulky in a childish way as Jacks rushed about the room, gathering her clothing.
“It’s still two weeks away,” she said, though they both knew they would not see each other until after the holidays. Still, she could not pretend to join him in his displeasure. For her it was a relief, and there had been enough pretending for one afternoon.
“Come over here.” He was reaching out for her with a bare arm, the rest of him snuggled beneath the plush bed coverings.
Jacks looked over with a playful smile, though it was close to painful. She could feel Barlow’s need for her, his unrelenting desire to love and be loved, which she could not provide. He felt it. He must. And yet he kept trying to squeeze it out of the twisted, corrupt thing that their affair had become.
When she was in his arms again, he pecked her lips with a passionless kiss. “I’ll miss you. Will you be all right?”
“I’ll be fine. And I’ll miss you. But the time will fly by. You’ll see. It always does.” She felt him against her with a strange intensity—the coarse hair of his legs, the sticky sweat that was still on his chest. She was suddenly aware of every inch of him, and it was unbearable. “I really need to go,” she said, smiling again as she pulled away.
He didn’t stop her. “I guess I should get going, too.” Pulling back the covers, he sighed loudly. Then he swung his legs around the side of the bed and plopped his feet on the floor. Another sigh.
Jacks finished buttoning her blouse, which had been strewn across a chair. Then she walked to the bed and stood before him. “You’ll be all right. I promise.”
He nodded and looked up at her, and it was then that she saw it. Whatever she had made him feel that night in the wine cellar was fading, and it was fading fast. It was inevitable that the truth would appear, she knew. Deception carried a strong odor that even the best practitioners could not mask indefinitely. And she was hardly the best, perhaps not good at all. Maybe there was some comfort in that—in knowing that she still had a soul. But David was in trouble, serious trouble, and the man standing before her in this hotel room was the only way out she could see.
A sick feeling rushed through her. She leaned down and kissed Barlow hard on the mouth. “Will I see you first thing—after Florida?”
Surprised, Barlow smiled at her and stroked the side of her face. “Sure. First thing.”
She met his eyes and held them, hoping he would see beyond the disgust she held for both of them. “Okay.”
She pulled away, grabbing her coat and purse, then headed for the door. She did not look back again, but instead rushed to her car. Tears streamed down her face as she drove. It was nearly three. The girls would all be home—two on the bus, Beth with the nanny who’d taken her to a friend’s house to play. How carefully she had orchestrated this day, thinking through their schedules and plans. And now it was done and she was returning to them, her sweet girls, her house, her life. The insurgent resurfacing from the bottom of a rancid cesspool. How could she see those beautiful faces, the bright blue eyes, the shining hair and chubby cheeks, and not feel totally and completely vile in their presence?
She pulled into the driveway, then stopped abruptly when she saw his car. Parked in the garage with the door left open was David’s black BMW. Thoughts flew in and out. He knows, he’s waiting inside to confront me. She wiped the tears from her face, but her face was still flushed. There was nothing she could do. She’d gone through the gate. It was too late to turn back.
She constructed her response. Surprise would be appropriate. Worry, perhaps, as well, given the phone calls that had started coming again. Once, twice, sometimes three times a night, and each time David had either taken them behind the closed doors of his study or ignored them, stepping outside for a cigar and a glass of whiskey. She had not asked questions, and he had not offered explanations. She had, instead, become acutely aware of her surroundings. Doors were locked when they were home. She followed the school bus in the mornings and turned down playdates for her girls. When they were not at school, they were under her supervision, or that of their trusted nanny. When they were gone, so was Jacks, using the season as an excuse not to ever be home alone.
And now here they were, in the middle of the afternoon, David home from his work and Jacks home from hers.
She walked in the house through the garage, set her purse and coat down in the mudroom. “David?” she called into the kitchen, but there was no answer.
She saw his briefcase open on the counter, its contents strewn about as though he’d been in a hurry. Whatever worry she had that this was somehow about her and Barlow was erased in that instant, and she knew in her gut that this was far worse.
“David!” she called as she bounded up the stairs.
The door to their bedroom was open.
“David!”
The room was empty. The sound of running water seeped beneath the closed bathroom door. Jacks moved cautiously toward it. “David?” she said again, softer this time.
She knocked but there was no answer.
“Honey?” she whispered as she turned the knob and pushed the door open. “Oh, God!”
He was there, though it took a moment for Jacks to see him. He was more like a small child in a man’s body, curled up in the bath, hugging his legs, and rocking back and forth. A faucet was running at the sink.
Stepping cautiously, Jacks walked to the sink and wet a cloth under the running water. Then she turned off the open faucet, all the while talking slowly. “It’s okay now. You’re going to be okay.” Returning to his side, she pressed the cold cloth to his forehead and watched him respond, pulling back from the state of shock. His eyes broke their stare and turned to meet hers, briefly and with confusion. “Shhh,” she whispered.
She was in another place now, a place so familiar, it had returned without the slightest conscious effort. The transformation was seamless. The fear was gone. She had been here before, in the presence of human unraveling, in the face of total breakdown, and she knew what had to be done.
“You’re okay, David. You’re safe,” Jacks said, running the cloth over his forehead then the side of his face.
He met her eyes again, and this time she saw it. It was exactly the way she remembered it, exactly the same as it had appeared on her father so many years before. Like a medical disease that could be photographed and documented for future students to identify, he had the look of mental departure, the distinct external appearance that was in the eyes—the way they widened softly into hollow holes. The rest of the face was blank, like the face of the dead, lacking the urgency of fear, the uplifting of joy. The message was sent through the eyes alone, a plea for help that screamed silently from the hollow spaces.
She finished wiping his face, helping the blood to flow to arouse his senses. Then she placed the cloth on the side of the tub and climbed inside behind him, wrapping her arms and legs around his body. She rested her chin on his shoulder so he could feel her face against his, so he could hear her whisper over and over, “You’re okay.”
There was a time when she had been on the other side of this porcelain wall, watching and learning. Kelly had been the one inside, holding their father like she was his mother, or his wife perhaps, but certainly not his daughter. It was far too intimate a procedure to be appropriate for a daughter, and yet boundaries such as those had concerned them little when their father was the one with the hollow holes. Thinking back now as a wife holding her husband this way, Jacks imagined that Kelly had learned this from their mother before she left and, as a little girl then, had absorbed it the same way she had absorbed other information—like putting ice on a bumped head, or a Band-Aid on a scraped knee. There were things that happened and the things that needed to be done to fix them.
From their mother to Kelly, from Kelly to Jacks, the procedures for managing a disturbed mind had been passed along like a pie recipe. And now, here she was again. Only this was not their father.
She felt him start to break, and she squeezed harder. He would cry now, releasing the energy that his body had manufactured to hold him so still, so silent in this place. He would cry for a long time and come back slowly to reality and the reasons that had started all of this. He would see them again and know that they were not the immediate threat his mind had woven them into, sending him into the state of mental shutdown. He would think about them again in a rational way, attempt to solve them and, undoubtedly, convince himself there was a way out that he could actually live with. And then he would return to normal. He would say things like I don’t know what got into me! And they might even laugh about it as they enjoyed a meal together with the girls.
That was what was coming, and it was the only part about any of this that had Jacks terrified. Putting away the memories of her father, she was now remembering her own husband over the past two decades. There had never been anything like this. But there had been moments, small disconnects from the world that had sent him into milder forms of shutdown. Always following some event at work—a market downturn, a shake-up of management that threatened his job—these short-lived spells had altered him. He would withdraw from the family. His temper would flare, and this was so unlike him. He would decline social engagements, refuse calls from his parents, his sister. Jacks would say he was ill, some virus. The flu. A pulled muscle from a brutal squash match.
What did it matter? There was always a reason, and this was what had fooled her. She could see that now. It was the ability to identify a trigger that had made her blind to the truth. Her father’s breakdowns had always seemed random. But then again, what did they know? As little children, they were not privy to the details of his life.
She felt David’s tears on her arms, his body shaking with the release of the cry that was so intense it was silent but for the gasps of air that came and went. This was the worst he had ever been. This was the only time it had been this clear, and yet she could see now all those other spells and the pattern they formed. It was then she felt her own tears return. For all the convincing she had done over the years, all the efforts she made to stop history in its tracks, in the end, Kelly had been right. People do seek out their past. She must have felt it radiating from deep within him, because the attraction to David Halstead had been instantaneous and powerful. And though nothing about him had given it away, the truth was here now in the broken man she held in her arms.
After all the steps she had taken to prevent this, she could not deny it for one second more. She had married her father.