Manhattan
When she finally grasped that she no longer owned her business, Allison barely reacted. Even the news that some of the manufacturing was being outsourced, that the heart of her concept, the stay-at-home moms, was being phased out, didn’t penetrate. She spent most days in a haze of regret and grief kept at bay by an increasing supply of alcohol.
The idea that if she hadn’t been so afraid of pain and loss, Mike would be alive, would not leave her. He had asked her to wear a ring, the most exquisite ring she’d ever seen, promising it would keep him safe, but her fear had made her refuse. Because of her, he had died in the desert.
A psychiatrist most likely would have diagnosed Allison with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. She could have been helped if she’d agreed to see someone. But she wouldn’t. And Peter Collins, the only one at that point who held influence over her, certainly didn’t encourage it.
In the past, the Jones family didn’t believe in psychiatry; navel gazing, they called it. Both Riley and Jimmy Jones had believed there was no problem so great that it couldn’t be solved by a gathering of friends, a half-dozen drafts of Guinness, a lighted candle and a good cry. But that was before the light went out in their Allison’s eyes.
Both had seen the police psychiatrist separately to discuss Allison. Both had received the same answer: most likely PTSD. She was self-medicating with alcohol to keep from dealing with what had happened.
However, a diagnosis did no good if she would not allow herself to be treated. They did everything they could to get her home. They even got a warrant to search Peter Collins’ apartment on a trumped-up charge. But she refused to leave. And since he was not holding her against her will, there was nothing to be done but wait for her to come to her senses.
Mike was not dead. But Allison had no way of knowing that. Or that he thought of her every day as he went through the gruelling regimen of rehabilitation at Walter Reed Hospital in Washington, DC. And loved her still, the way he had loved her the night she had broken into his apartment.
Things might have been different if she had listened to Mike about what a snake Peter Collins was. But she wouldn’t. Or couldn’t.
Peter had decided it was best that he delete the email from Kevin Dennison telling Allison that the initial report had been wrong. Mike was alive, albeit gravely wounded. He was at Walter Reed, and asking for her, although he apparently did not expect her to come.
Mike had told Kevin about the trouble between them, about how the loss of her mother had affected Allison. He told his brother that, if she chose not to come, to let it alone. He loved her enough to let her go.
The game was over. Peter had won.
Three months after Mike Dennison’s supposed death, Peter asked Allison to leave his apartment within forty-eight hours. He said she was no longer beautiful. Or coherent. She was a drunk and her weakness disgusted him. He did not want her anywhere near Lydia’s Closet, the company he now controlled. She was a detriment to the business she had created as a tribute to her mother.
Allison had nowhere to go. She refused to move back home and face the judgment of her family. She really didn’t care where she lived, as long as she was left alone. She settled for a studio on West Nineteenth Street. It was in the back of the building and had little natural light. That suited her.
She also liked the studio because it was close to Gramercy Park. Sometimes, if she felt up to it, she would walk over to look at the building where Mike once lived. She enjoyed being near the place where her heart had once been filled with love and possibilities.
She stayed in that dark studio with her memories, her regrets, and her bottles until the year was over, her money gone, her life seemingly ended.
And sometimes, when she could no longer stand the solitude, she would fix herself up as best she could and head over to O’Lunney’s. She didn’t really understand why it was the only place she ever thought of going.
Maybe it was because her history had been written there. Or maybe, because she’d had poetry bred into her, some part of her remembered Emily Dickinson’s words: ‘Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul.’