Don't Cry Now (21 page)

It'll take two years for this to grow back, she realized, leaning against the counter for support, watching as the security guard hung up the phone.

“They're sending someone right up for you,” he told her.

“Thank you.” Bonnie looked around the black marble foyer of the downtown high rise, just blocks from fashionable Newbury Street. Maybe after she was finished here, she'd go shopping, buy a new outfit to go with her
new haircut. Maybe she'd even ask Diana to join her. Diana's office was somewhere close by. They could go shopping, have coffee, gossip, all the things that girls were traditionally supposed to do.
Sugar and spice and everything nice. That's what little girls are made of
.

What was she doing here? Why had she decided to interrupt her husband in the middle of the afternoon when he was frantically trying to prepare for Miami? If she were smart, she'd leave now, just turn on her heels and exit the premises, tell the guard she'd made a mistake, that she was sorry she'd bothered anyone, my best to the wife and kids….

“Bonnie, Bonnie, is that you?” Marla's voice cut through the black marble, like an electric saw through glass, splinters everywhere. She strode toward Bonnie, her svelte body encased in a bright purple dress, her corn-blond hair a series of cascading ripples falling to her shoulders.

Bonnie's hand was instantly at her hair, self-consciously pulling at a few wisps around her ear. “You didn't have to come out….” she began.

“I heard you were here, and we're on a break in the taping….”

“My God, you're taping. I'd forgotten.”

“That's all right.” Marla's hand was on her elbow, pulling Bonnie toward the corridor to the right. “It's always a pleasure to see you. Did you do something new to your hair?”

“I felt like a change,” Bonnie said.

“You got it,” Marla told her, pulling open the door marked
STUDIO
. They continued down the narrow, dimly lit corridor.

“I'm really sorry to be bothering you….”

“Nonsense. You're no bother. I don't think you've been down since we changed the set.”

“No, it's been a while.”

Several attractive young women in short skirts passed them in the hall, half bowing in Marla's direction. “The
new set is such an improvement,” Marla was saying. “Rod's idea, of course. He got rid of all those grays and greens and replaced them with peach and blush, which, of course, is much more flattering, and much more feminine, don't you think?”

Bonnie said nothing, understanding that no response was required.

“I can't tell you what a pleasure it is working with your husband. I've had directors before, let me tell you, and there are directors and directors, let me tell you. Anyone can point a camera in the right direction and tell people where to sit, but it takes a good director to understand what makes people tick, and how to make sure everything runs smoothly. And your husband is the best. Just the best,” she said, almost wistfully, leading Bonnie past a door marked
MAKEUP
and another one labeled
GREEN ROOM
, although the walls were pink. “Our guests wait in there,” Marla confided, her voice low. “It's really cute how nervous they get. Don't you have school today?” she continued in one breath.

“We finished early,” Bonnie told her, thinking this was true. She
had
finished early.
Very
early.

“The studio's in here.” Marla guided Bonnie through yet another heavy gray door. And suddenly they were in a darkened world of cameras and monitors, where thick cable lines ran like creeping vines along the floor and hung from the ceiling like exotic plants. The audience, some three hundred people, most of them women, sat in tiers of comfortable chairs, eyes glued to the peach-colored sofa and blush-tinted swivel chair on the lit podium at one end of the studio. There were silk potted palms and vases filled with fresh-cut flowers at strategic intervals around the ersatz living room. On the back wall hung a large modern tapestry in shades of pink, mauve, and beige. Marla was right—it was a vast improvement over the old set. Rod had always had a good eye. “Why don't you sit over there?” Marla said, acknowledging an adoring woman fan in the front row with a wide smile.
“That way, if you have any questions you want to ask one of our guests, I can get to you easily.”

“I don't want to ask any questions,” Bonnie said.

“You never know,” Marla told her. “You might relate. We have a very interesting show today.”

“I'm sure you do, but I just wanted to see Rod for a few minutes. I really don't have time to watch the whole taping.”

“There's only half an hour left. Besides, he can't see you till after the taping anyway. He's in the control room.” Marla pointed to a glass-enclosed room high above their heads at the back of the studio. “So, why don't you just sit down and make yourself at home, and sit back and enjoy the show.” She all but pushed Bonnie into the empty seat in the second row. “I'll tell the cameraman to make sure he gets a shot of you.”

“Please don't do that.” Immediately, Bonnie's hand shot to her hair.

“Don't be silly, and don't be shy.” Marla was already moving away from her. “And remember to speak up if you want to challenge any of our guests.”

“I don't even know what the show's about,” Bonnie protested, weakly, grateful to be sitting down.

“Oh, didn't I tell you? It's all about extramarital affairs.” She smiled, displaying all her perfectly capped teeth. “We're calling it ‘Wives Who Hang On Too Long.' See you later. Enjoy.”

 

“She's having an affair with my husband,” Bonnie was saying, pacing back and forth in front of Diana's desk, like a lion in a cage.

“Bonnie, calm down.”

“Don't try to tell me I'm imagining this.”

“I'm not trying to tell you anything,” Diana said. “I'm just trying to understand what happened.”

Bonnie walked to the floor-to-ceiling window of the modern office tower and looked down at the street some twenty floors below. It made her feel dizzy, and she im
mediately pulled back, bumping into the sharp corner of Diana's green marble desk top.

“Why don't you sit down?” Diana offered, indicating the two green-striped wing chairs across from her desk.

“I don't want to sit down,” Bonnie snapped. “I'm tired of sitting down. I've been sitting down all day.” She pictured first her car seat, then the barber chair at Rosie's salon, then the soft wine-colored armchair in the darkened studio. “‘Wives Who Hang On Too Long,' she called it,” Bonnie spat into the air. “Can you imagine? She actually had the gall to say that to me.”

“Bonnie,” Diana reminded her, “that was the name of the show. What else could she say it was called? She didn't make it up for your benefit. She had no way of knowing you were going to drop by.”

“It was the
way
she said it,” Bonnie told her. “The insinuation was too blatant to miss. She was implying that I'm one of those wives. You weren't there. You didn't hear her.”

Diana pushed herself out of her high-backed black leather chair and walked around, leaning against the front of her desk. “Okay, so let me see if I have this straight,” she began in proper lawyerly fashion, tugging at the jacket of her wheat-colored suit. “You had a run-in with one of your students so you decided to skip school and get your hair done….”

“I know it's awful….”

“It's not the most flattering cut you could have selected,” Diana agreed, “but that's not the point.”

“I'm not sure I know what the point is,” Bonnie said.

“Which is exactly the point,” Diana said, pouncing on Bonnie's words. “You
always
know what the point is. You never do anything without thinking it through well-out in advance. Suddenly, you're skipping school and cutting your hair off and dropping in unannounced to the studio. Why? What's going on?”

“My husband is having an affair,” Bonnie insisted. “That's what's going on.”

“With Marla Brenzelle? I can't believe it. Even Rod has more sense than that.”

“I know it sounds ridiculous at first, but it all makes sense.”

“What makes sense?”

“Rod's been working very long hours lately. He leaves early in the morning and doesn't come home till late at night. Sometimes, he even goes out after he's come home.” She thought of last night.

“He's preparing for an important convention in Miami. Doesn't he leave in a few days?”

“With Marla,” Bonnie reminded her.

“She's his boss.”

“She has big tits.”

“Excuse me?”

“Remember that sexy lingerie I found in Rod's drawer, the stuff I assumed was for me, except that the bra was too big?”

“Bonnie, that hardly means—”

“It was for Marla, that's why. Not for me. Diana, I'm not imagining this. Remember I told you that Caroline Gossett said Rod always used to cheat on Joan.”

“You're not Joan.”

“I'm his wife. Same difference.”

“Not quite. Joan happens to be rather dead.”

There was an abrupt silence.

“Well, that was hardly the smartest thing I've ever said,” Diana said, shaking her head in disbelief. “Are you going to confront him?”

“So, you believe me?”

Diana shrugged. “I don't know,” she said. “The evidence is very flimsy.”

“Stop being a lawyer for a few minutes and just be my friend.”

“Would a friend tell you she thinks your husband might be having an affair?”

Bonnie sank into one of the wing chairs, felt it scratchy against her bare neck. “I don't know. I don't know what
to think anymore. I'm so tired. I feel so lousy all the time.”

“Okay, here's my advice,” Diana told her, kneeling beside Bonnie, placing her hands on top of her friend's. “Don't do anything for now. Wait until Rod gets back from Miami. Hopefully, by then you'll be feeling better, you'll be thinking more clearly, your hair will be longer….”

Bonnie tried to laugh, found herself crying instead. “I'm sorry.”

“For what?”

“For acting like such an idiot, for bursting into your office in the middle of the afternoon….”

“You don't have to apologize.”

“I just don't know what to do.”

“Go home and get into bed,” Diana told her. “You really don't look well, and it's not just your hair. Maybe you should see a doctor.”

“I'm fine,” Bonnie insisted, getting out of the chair.

“Are you going to be all right to drive home?”

Bonnie nodded. “I'll call you later,” she said.

O
n Saturday, Rod was packing to leave for Miami.

“I don't see how I can leave you when you're feeling this way,” he was saying, even as he crammed his toiletry case inside his suitcase.

“I'll be fine,” Bonnie told him, balancing precariously on the side of the bed, watching him, trying to look as healthy as she could.

“You don't look fine.”

“It's my hair.”

“What hair?” he joked. “
She's
got more hair than you do.” His gaze traveled to the Dalí lithograph on the wall. The faceless bald woman outlined in blue stared blankly back at Bonnie.

“I was thinking of buying a wig,” Bonnie told him.

“Do me a favor, Bonnie. Don't do anything.” He stopped his packing, sat down beside her. “Look, this is crazy, my going away now. You're in no shape to take care of three kids by yourself. What if Lauren gets sick again? Or Amanda?”

“They'll be fine. We'll all be fine,” Bonnie insisted.

“Why don't I call Marla and tell her I won't be there till Monday? The meetings don't start till then anyway. I won't miss anything.”

“You said you had to leave early to get things ready….”

“They'll manage without me.”

“They can't.” Bonnie stood up, folded the last of Rod's shirts and put it in the suitcase, as if this effectively ended the discussion. “Come on, Rod, you'll only make me feel guilty if you don't go.”

He opened his mouth to protest, then thought better of it. “All right, but you have the number of the hotel. If anything happens and you want me back here, you call right away.”

“Nothing's going to happen.”

“And if you don't feel any better by Monday, I want you to see a doctor.”

“I've already made an appointment,” Bonnie told him, thinking that Dr. Walter Greenspoon probably wasn't the kind of doctor Rod had in mind.

“Good. Now, you're starting to make some sense.” He looked around the room. “Have I got everything?”

“Your bathing suit?”

“I won't have time to swim,” he told her, kissing the tip of her nose.

“What time is the limo getting here?”

Rod checked his watch. “Ten minutes. You're sure you're going to be all right?”

“I'm sure.”

He closed his suitcase, zipped it up, lifted it off the bed. “Where are the kids?”

“Lauren's reading Amanda a story in her room. Sam's at Diana's.”

Rod looked startled. “What's he doing there?”

“Apparently, Diana found a whole slew of odd jobs for him to do. She's paying him ten dollars an hour.”

“The woman has more money than brains,” Rod said dismissively, carrying his suitcase to the doorway. “Amanda,” he called out, “Lauren. Where are my girls? Come, say good-bye to Daddy.”

Don't go, Bonnie wanted to say, watching him as he hugged his daughters to his side. Stay here and look after us. Let someone else go to Florida. Let someone else keep Marla company. Stay here with us where you belong.
Sleep beside me in our bed. Don't crawl into bed with a woman I despise. Don't forget how good we are together.

Bonnie sighed, but said nothing. How could he remember how good they were together when the last time they'd made love had been that awful evening when Lauren first got sick? Since then, he'd either come home too late from work, or she was feeling too sick. Last night, she'd hoped she could muster up the necessary energy, but in the end, nausea had proved more powerful than desire. The idea of making love had been about as appealing as running the Boston Marathon.

And now Rod was leaving for one whole week amid the palm trees of Florida, in the company of a woman with whom he was probably having an affair, and she was not only not telling him to stay, she was urging him to go, telling him she'd feel guilty if he didn't.

You're a good girl, she heard her mother say.

No, not good, Bonnie thought, as Rod beckoned her inside his arms beside his other two girls. Stupid. She was stupid to allow her husband to go off to Miami with Marla. And yet, realistically, what choice did she have? How could she keep him if he really wanted to go? At best, she would only be postponing the inevitable.

“Are you going to take good care of your mother?” Rod asked Amanda.

“Mommy doesn't feel well,” Amanda said, her face serious.

“No, she doesn't. So you're going to have to be a very good girl and do exactly what she tells you.”

“I will.”

“I'll help,” Lauren said. “I can take Amanda to the park later, if she'd like.”

“The park?” Amanda started jumping up and down.

“Later,” Lauren qualified, straining to sound very grown up. “If you're a very good girl.”

“I'm a good girl,” Amanda said, and Bonnie shuddered.

“You don't have to be a good girl,” she whispered.

“What? Did you say something, honey?” Rod asked.

The phone rang.

“I'll get it,” Lauren offered, running into Bonnie's bedroom and answering the phone in the middle of the third ring. “Hello.” A slight pause. “I'm afraid she can't come to the phone right now. Can I take a message?”

There was another pause, this one longer, more ominous. Bonnie could feel Lauren holding her breath.

“When?” she heard Lauren ask in her smallest little-girl voice, an audible catch in her throat. Then, “How?” Another long pause. “Yes, thank you for calling. I'll give her the message.”

“Who was that?” Bonnie asked as Lauren walked slowly out of the bedroom, her face drained of color, her eyes void of sparkle. “Lauren, who was that? What did they say?”

“What is it, honey?” Rod asked.

“That was one of the nurses from the Melrose Mental Health Center,” Lauren answered, her voice seeming to emanate from somewhere across the room. “My grandmother passed away last night.”

“What?” Bonnie couldn't believe her ears. “How?”

“The nurse said that she slipped into a coma a few days ago, and that she died last night. I don't believe it,” Lauren continued, her voice an echo of Bonnie's thoughts. “How can this be? We were just there last week.”

“She was an old woman,” Rod said. “And she was suffering. It's better this way.”

“But we were just there,” Lauren repeated numbly.

“Which was very fortunate, when you think about it,” Rod told her. “You got to see your grandmother again before she died. And she got to see you. I'm sure that made her very happy.”

“She knew who I was,” Lauren said, a tiny smile appearing on her lips, before disappearing under a spray of tears.

Rod drew his older daughter into his arms. “I'm sorry about your grandma, honey.”

“Grandma Sally died?” Amanda asked her mother, her mouth agape, her eyes giant blue circles, as if she had colored them in herself.

“No, honey,” Bonnie told her. “Grandma Sally is fine. This was Lauren and Sam's grandma.”

“Not my grandma?” Amanda repeated.

“No, not your grandma.”

“Your mommy?” she asked.

“No, honey,” Bonnie answered, not really up for this conversation at this particular time. “My mommy died a few years ago.”

“How old was she when she died?”

“Sixty,” Bonnie answered absently, picturing her mother sitting up in bed, her face hidden in the shadows.

“How old are you?” the child asked nervously.

“A long way from sixty,” Rod told her, cutting in, taking charge. “Don't worry. Your mommy's going to be around for a long, long time.”

“But you're sick. Are you going to die?” Amanda persisted, grief washing across her face, sliding her sweet features one into the next, like wax melting.

You're in danger
, she heard Joan cry out suddenly.
You and Amanda
.

A shiver traveled through Bonnie's body, like an electric current. “I'm not going to die. I'm going to be fine.”

You're in danger
, Joan cried again.
You and Amanda
.

“Nobody's going to die here,” Rod said forcefully. “Have we got that? Nobody dies while Daddy's away.”

There was a loud knocking on the front door, followed by the bell.

“That'll be my limo,” Rod said, checking his watch.

“He's early.”

“I'll tell him to wait.”

“No, you're ready,” Bonnie told her husband. “Go. There's no reason to stay.”

“I see three reasons standing right in front of me,” Rod said.

Maybe she was wrong, Bonnie thought hopefully.
Maybe Rod wasn't having an affair with Marla. Maybe she'd gotten herself all upset for nothing.

“Three reasons to come back safely,” Bonnie told him.

Rod leaned forward and kissed her gently on the lips. “I'll call every night.”

“You don't have to do that.”

“Try and stop me,” he said.

I wish I could, Bonnie thought, watching him as he disappeared down the stairs and into the waiting limousine.

 

Bonnie was asleep when she heard the doorbell ring. At first she thought it was part of her dream—she was wandering the halls of the Melrose Mental Health Center and fire alarms were going off—but then she realized that it was the doorbell. She opened her eyes, looked over at the clock. It was a quarter past two. The bright sun shining through the bedroom window told her it was still afternoon. At least she hadn't slept the entire day away, she thought, waiting for someone to answer the door, wondering who it could be. But no one answered the persistent ring, and Bonnie was forced to drag herself out of bed.

Lauren must have taken Amanda to the park, she remembered, slipping a robe over her nightshirt and gliding down the stairs. Sam was probably still at Diana's. Rod's plane would be just touching down in Miami. She wondered whether Marla was a white-knuckle flier, and whether Rod's steady hand was clamped reassuringly over hers.

The doorbell rang again. “Coming,” Bonnie called out, reaching for the door and pulling it open.

Joan was standing on the other side. “Love your hair,” she said, pushing past Bonnie and walking toward the living room at the back of the house.

Bonnie stared at Joan's back, the woman's titian tresses cascading down her back. So, this is a dream after all, she thought, relaxing as she followed Joan into her living room, and sat across from her on the avocado green sofa.
“You look well,” Bonnie told her husband's ex-wife, checking the woman's more-than-ample bosom for signs of bullet holes. There were none. Joan looked immaculate in an all-white linen pantsuit, as striking in death as she had been in life.

“More than I can say for you,” Joan shot back. “Got anything to drink?”

“How about some tea?” Bonnie asked.

“Tea? Are you kidding? I never touch the stuff. Tea's not good for you. Didn't you know that?”

“No, I didn't know that.”

“Got any brandy?”

“I think so.”

“Get one for yourself too,” Joan called after her as Bonnie went into the dining room, located the bottle of brandy in the cabinet, and returned with two small glasses, already poured. “Cheers,” Joan said, raising her glass to Bonnie's in a toast, downing the contents of her glass in one gulp.

Bonnie sipped gingerly at her drink. “What are you doing here?”

“You don't have much time left,” Joan told her matter-of-factly, depositing her now-empty glass on the coffee table. “Can't you feel it? Don't you know time's almost up?”

“You have to help me,” Bonnie urged, rising from her seat, moving imploringly toward Joan.

“You have to help yourself,” Joan told her, picking Bonnie's brandy glass off the coffee table and raising it to her lips. Bonnie watched Joan guide it toward her open mouth. But just as it reached her mouth, Joan tilted the glass down toward her throat, spilling the brandy across the front of her jacket, the white linen growing deep red, like acid burning a large hole in her chest.

“Joan!” Bonnie screamed, watching the woman fade into the air, until all that was left was a large burgundy stain in the middle of the living room rug.

And then the dream ended, and everything faded to black.

 

“Bonnie,” a voice was calling. “Bonnie, are you okay? What are you doing down here?”

“Mommy!” Amanda shouted happily, jumping into Bonnie's lap just as Bonnie was struggling to open her eyes. “Are you all better now?”

Bonnie glanced quickly around the room, trying to understand what was happening. Was this another dream? Was this real? It was getting increasingly difficult to differentiate between the two.

She was sitting on the sofa in her living room, Amanda on her lap, her pudgy fingers playing with what was left of her hair. Lauren was standing in the doorway, a look of surprise on her face. There were two small brandy glasses on the coffee table in front of her, one empty, the other almost full. There was a large red stain on the carpet in front of her.

“Was someone here?” Lauren asked.

“We went to the playground,” Amanda said. “Lauren pushed me on the swings. Sooooo high,” she said, and laughed.

Bonnie looked from Lauren to the empty glass, to the floor, then back to Lauren. “I must have been walking in my sleep,” she said after several seconds.

“Wow,” Lauren said. “Did you have something to drink when you were asleep?”

Bonnie summoned up some saliva, tried to determine if it tasted of brandy. “I think I may have had a sip of something.”

“Looks like most of it ended up on the floor,” Lauren said. “I'll clean it up.”

“You don't have to do that.”

Lauren was already on her way to the kitchen. “It's okay. I don't mind. Would you like me to make you some tea?”