What is Love? (7 page)

“But it is your
fault. It’s always been your fault. You’re selfish to the core.”

His face tightened.
He took a step closer.

“No!” Ellen cried
and held her hand up to block him. “Now I know how cruel you are. You are
incapable of any kindness. I shouldn’t love you so much. Why do I? It’s stupid,
believing in something, trusting in someone. Do you enjoy hurting me? Is that
it?”

“There’s just no
easy way to end a marriage.”

“I’m not asking for
easy. I’m just asking for a chance to work together and try. Why is that so
wrong? After forty years, can’t we at least try?”

Jonathan shook his
head. “I am trying.”

“No, damn you!”
Ellen grabbed a water bottle from the side table and threw it across the room,
knocking the lamp off the front entrance table with a loud crash. “No!” she
cried. “You’re not! You aren’t trying at all. You’ve been sneaking around,
plotting and scheming this whole time. This trip has been a sham. I’ve been
trying, and you—you haven’t put in any effort at all.”

Jonathan reached to
pick up the damaged lamp. “What do you want from me, I can’t—”

“Counseling—leave
that stupid lamp—Jonathan, we need counseling.”

“Honest to God,
Ellen, you don’t really think it would make any difference.”

“Yes,” she cried
out. “Yes, I need it. I need someone to explain to you how I feel.”

Jonathan looked
away. “I know how you feel, and I am sorry.”

“You can’t
possibly.” She looked at him, waiting for him to turn around. “You don’t even
know how you feel. You think you’re in love.” She plumped the pillow beside
her. “Well, if it’s love, it can wait. If it is real love, it will still be
there after counseling. What do you have to lose by trying?” Ellen leaned back
onto the cushion and crossed her arms. “My God, Jonathan, people give more
notice before quitting a job than you’ve given me after forty years of
devotion.”

Jonathan turned to
her and raised his hands in surrender. “I’m tired of fighting you.”

“Then stop fighting
and try harder to be kind. Give us a chance.”

He shook his head.
“I’ll try counseling, but I don’t see how it can change anything.”

“At least promise
you’ll try. You owe me that much. Forty years should count for something. I’ve
done whatever you wanted; all I ask is for you to try. Can’t you do that?”

Jonathan paused and
cast his eyes away from her. “Yes
 …
I’ll
try,” he said quietly.

“And stop seeing her
while we’re in counseling.”

“I can’t. I—”

“You can. How can
you honestly promise to try and focus on us when you focus on her? For heaven’s
sake, Jonathan, you’re a grown man. Surely to God, you can hold back on sex for
a few months. What are you so afraid of? That she’ll leave? That she only wants
you for your money and will find someone else if you’re not around? Well, if
she loves you, she’ll wait. If she loves you, she’ll understand you have an
obligation to your wife of forty years and your family. And if she doesn’t,
wouldn’t it be better to find out now?”

Jonathan stood
motionless, staring out the window, his jaw tight.

“Have you just
forgotten everything you stood for all these years, blinded by puppy love and
hardened with this new cruelty? Do you enjoy being this cruel?”

He turned, staring
at her for a moment. “You wear me out, honest to God, woman, you exhaust me.”
He stood silent for several minutes. “Okay
 …
I’ll give you one month.”

“Three. I deserve at
least three months. I should actually be asking for six.”

He looked away,
clenching his teeth. She saw his neck and face redden as he tried to control
his anger. He smashed his racquet against the back of the chair. “All right,
you win—you always win, damn you. Three months.” He grabbed the room key off the
desk. “I need some air.”

The entrance door
slammed with a loud shock. She stood, picked up the washcloths and went up the
staircase and into the master bathroom. Five-star hotel! She reached for some
cleanser and wiped the makeup stains off her cheeks. She studied her reflection
and for the first time felt not only old, but withered. She smoothed her
youth-in-a-thousand-dollar-jar cream on her cheeks and thought about his words,
his feeble attempt to be kind.

Three months. She
had three months to convince him of his idiocy.
It’s not over. I am not
destroyed. I won’t let this hurt me. This means nothing.
Ellen wanted to
believe this, but couldn’t. Somehow, those fateful words he’d spoken on the
phone tore through her hopes and left them shredded.

She walked out of
the bathroom and reached for the phone. She knew exactly who to call. Patty
would know where to find the best counselor money could buy, and Ellen not only
needed the best, she needed a miracle. Like everything else in life, with
enough money, anything could be bought, including a first-rate miracle.

Sam raced past store
windows on her way to meet Jonathan for lunch. The fresh scent of spring filled
the air and as she wrapped her coat tighter, cool gusts of wind whipped at her
skirt like a sail. Two weeks had passed since she had seen him. She’d heard
from him every day at the beginning of his trip, then nothing until he phoned
her yesterday.

She stopped as the
fragrant scent of fresh-baked bread filled the air. The Sorbonne Bakery had been
her favorite place to buy treats for Jonathan in the early days. It was her
excuse to see him. She pushed her hands deeper into her pockets and continued
on. He certainly didn’t need any treats now. She smiled, recalling their phone
conversation yesterday and the details of his trip.

“I knew when we
landed and her luggage wasn’t there, we were in for a rocky time,” Jonathan had
said with a laugh. “Ellen packed everything for the perfect getaway—then, to
have to wear the same outfit or worse, buy clothes that didn’t fit her
properly—she needs special alterations, you see—and to not have her creams and
jars of God knows what.”

Sam smiled,
relishing in the images of his wife panicked, all over nothing.

“If that wasn’t bad
enough, we arrive at the resort and Ellen is arguing with the check-in guy.
Seems they messed up and because of our delay waiting for Ellen’s nonexistent
luggage, they gave our room away.”

“No!”

“It would have been
fine, it’s a fantastic hotel with many other good rooms, except Ellen wanted
everything to be just right, planned it all so
perfectly
, and this was
going to ruin everything, so she demanded they move the other couple out of our
villa.

“They would do
that?”

“As luck would have
it, the other couple turned out to be Mr. and Mrs. Z.”

“Who?”

“Laurence and
Mildred Zeigler—the most important couple in New York, at least according to
Ellen and all her shallow friends. So Mrs. Zeigler stood beside her at the
desk, right at the very moment Ellen was having her fit, insisting that they
move the other couple to another villa. Then Mrs. Z spoke and it became
apparent just who this other couple was. Poor Ellen almost fainted.”

“So you didn’t get
the room?”

“Rooms. The damn
thing is seven thousand square feet and sleeps fourteen. Why we needed that
much space, I’ll never understand. No, we ended up in a much smaller two-story
penthouse, only four bedrooms instead of seven, one servant instead of four. We
spent the next nine days trying to be near the Zeiglers. At least, she tried. I
was busy having fun while she was running around, all uptight, worrying what to
wear, where to be and what to say to impress that ridiculous lady.”

“She left you
alone—on your romantic getaway?”

“Yes, much of the
time. Frankly, it was a relief. The time spent around her is always irritating.
She’s never happy, no matter what we are doing. The ever-ready critic is always
turned on. ‘This food is well below five star. The bed is too firm; the water
is too cold; the beach is too windy; the mosquitoes are horrendous; the service
is too slow’—shall I go on?”

Sam couldn’t hold
back her laughter. “Oh my God. So what did you do the whole time? She sounds
like a total bag.”

“No, not like that.
She means well. She just wants everything to be perfect, the way she has
imagined it. But it never is. Life never is. It never could be. I swear, life
is a constant source of disappointment. Even her children are big
disappointments.”

Sam had had enough
of hearing about the bitch. She had hung up, savoring the hilarious moments of
his wife’s pathetic attempt to seduce her husband. Some kind of trip. Nothing
she would’ve done. No, she would’ve had him eating out of her hand and begging
for more.

Sam arrived at the
door to the restaurant and snapped back to reality. Their trip had sounded like
the disaster she had hoped for, even better in fact. Perhaps he’s closer to
leaving her now. Sam smiled. She thought about all the things that she could do
to make him feel better.

As she opened the
door, she felt a growing eagerness. Her future was about to improve. Now if
only Jonathan would prove it to her by committing, she could relax and start
planning their future—a money-filled, status-filled, worry-free future.

***

Ellen sat in the
waiting room of her expensive marriage counselor, waiting for Jonathan to
arrive. Their plan was to meet for lunch first and then go to their first
counseling session, but instead, he called to say he couldn’t make the lunch
and would meet her here, at Dr. Morris’s office.
Typical,
she thought,
as she flipped through the magazine on her lap with speed and indifference,
he’s
always on time for work and everything else he does, but never for me.

Her mind raced
through the events of the past week. Her wonderful second honeymoon had ended
in heartache. Everything she had planned on had failed, and miserably.

At least he is
willing to come to counseling,
she assured herself.
This will straighten
him out. A good dose of reality from Dr. Morris and he’ll come around. He is,
after all, paid a small fortune to fix these men.
It had worked for
Charlene. And Jonathan was much easier to deal with than Jim, Charlene’s
obnoxious husband. Jonathan had always been malleable and soft, easily controlled.
She would insist that this doctor do everything he could to straighten Jonathan
out and to cure him. Like an intensive-care surgeon in an emergency, Ellen
needed his expertise to keep her marriage alive and pull it back on track.

***

Sam looked up from
her plate. “What do you mean, counseling?”

“It’s just for a few
months,” Jonathan said, touching her arm.

“A few months! What
am I supposed to do?” Sam pulled back, avoiding his touch.

“Be patient.”

“Patient? I’ve been
patient. You told me you wanted this, you needed to be with me, every
day—remember?” Sam sat back and stared at the crowd of noisy lunchtime diners.
She always loved this restaurant, with its trendiness and faux glamour, but
today it looked tacky and cheap, all shine and glitter. Everyone around her
looked phony. Big hair. Big jewelry. Big show.

“Now baby, come on,
be reasonable.”

“Reasonable? What’s
reasonable? You tell me you want to leave your wife, then you take a honeymoon
together. I don’t hear from you for over a week, and now you tell me you are
going to counseling?” Samantha stirred her margarita aggressively, pink ice
slopping onto the white tablecloth. “Doesn’t sound like you’re trying to end it
 …
more like you’re trying to fix it.”

“That’s what I need
her think, I need to do this—”

“To be nice?”

“To be fair.”

Sam cut her chicken
with clumsy aggression. “There is nothing fair about divorce. You leave, she
loses
 …”
She took a bite.
“Where’s the fairness?”

“She needs to feel
like I’m at least making the effort, and giving her the opportunity to try and
fix it.”

“She’s had forty
years of trying!” Sam dropped her cutlery onto her plate.

Jonathan reached for
her hand. “Sam—”

“She has. She’s done
nothing for you for forty years and now that you find happiness somewhere else
 …
with someone you love
 …
now she wants to try? Come on!” Sam
pushed her plate forward and looked away. Her head felt like a valve under
pressure.
This was really her fault, that wicked woman, not his.
She
turned to face him. “That’s not fair
 …
for
you,” she said trying to soften her tone but it came out as sarcasm instead.

“Well, fair or not,
she does deserve a chance,” Jonathan said, reaching for his glass.

“A chance? My God,
you actually think it can be fixed, don’t you?” Sam folded her arms across her
chest and looked away.

“No!” Jonathan
slammed his glass down. “No, Sam I don’t. I just need it to appear that way for
her sake. My kids, they won’t speak to me, you know—”

“They’ve been
poisoned by her, Johnny. One day they’ll see—”

“No. They want to
believe their father has some compassion, that I’m not a heartless bastard.” He
reached for her hand. “Come on, it’s just a few more months.”

“Sure, and what if
 …”
Sam’s voice trailed.

“What if what? Are
you worried?” He leaned forward. “Baby, there is nothing to be worried about.
The more I am with her, the more I realize how special you are, how lucky I
am.” Jonathan reached his hand across to touch Sam’s cheek. She abruptly leaned
back, causing his hand to brush the air.

Sam’s eyes narrowed.
“Then prove it. Leave her now!”

“I can’t. It’s
impossible.”

“Impossible? She
really has a hold on you, doesn’t she?” She took a sip of her drink.

“Actually, she does
 …
”

Sam choked on her
drink. “You admit it then.” Sam fought the sting of tears forming. “Oh God you
do
 …
”

“Now, come here.”
Jonathan slid closer and held her, stroking her hair. The booth seemed
claustrophobic. Sam usually felt safe in his arms, but right now, she felt
vulnerable. Raw. A dark cloud moved over her.

“Darling, I want you
no matter what,” he said softly, then tried his reassuring smile. “I am more
concerned that you will not want me.”

“That’s impossible,”
she said looking at his stupid grin.
I need you much more than you realize,
you fool. A hell of a lot more, in fact.
“You know how much I love you,”
she said in her baby voice as she rubbed his leg, working her way closer.

“Well, that’s what
I’m trying to make sure of. You wouldn’t want me if I were penniless, would
you?”

Sam dropped her
hand.
What the hell is he talking about?
She sat back and studied his face.
Of course she wouldn’t want him if he were broke, why else was she with him?
She could be with Rory if she wanted a man who was broke.
Idiot.

“But you’re not
penniless, right?” Sam asked, praying to hear ‘yes.’

“Of course not, but
if I don’t do this properly, I could end up with less than I have now.”

“But you
 …
you’re—”

“Yes. I’m Jonathan
Horvath II, but I got my start with Ellen’s uncle’s money.”

A chill ran down her
back. “But I thought—but your dad, the big company, all that family history
stuff
 …”
Sam felt her stomach
churn with nausea.

“No. Dad lost
everything except the good name. In fact, I owe everything to Ellen’s Uncle.
Back in ’46, I had just returned from the war, poor and unsophisticated.”

“So what does it
mean?”

“It means, my dear,
that for now I need to do as Ellen wishes—including not seeing you for a while.
I also need her to agree to a divorce and this counseling will give me more
time—”

Sam stroked his
thigh again, pressing closer to him. Then, in her most innocent voice, “But I
thought divorces were fifty-fifty.”

“Not always. That’s
why I need to be a good boy for now. I need to do some
 …
well, manipulating, moving some files.” He rubbed his
chin, showing discomfort. “Just some loose ends to tie up, that’s all. I need a
little more time, sweetie
 …
time
to take care of things, for us.” His hand swept a strand of her hair off her
shoulder. “Don’t you worry your pretty head about this.”

Sam sat back in
disgust, the nausea increasing. All of her plans, her dreams, destroyed by this
selfish woman.

“It’s okay. I have a
good plan and it will all work out.” He reached over and patted her hand.
“There is no need to worry. I just won’t be able to see you for a while. You
can wait for me, can’t you?” he said, letting go of her hand and touching her
cheek. “For us?”

Sam looked away from
him, concealing her escalating rage. This was not going to be easy. Ellen could
ruin everything. She watched as a waiter ignited a pan of shrimp beside them,
the flames reaching high above and heat searing her skin. She felt the sting of
tears and wished Ellen was dead.

***

The paneled door
opened and a doctor in a well-tailored suit appeared, his hand searching
through a file. “Mr. and Mrs. Horvath,” the doctor called out.

Ellen smiled and
stood. She smoothed her hair and walked toward him, conscious of his gaze. He
was tall and good-looking, although a bit too young, considering his level of
expertise.

“Dr. Morris, hello.
I’m Mrs. Horvath,” Ellen said, while extending her hand.

Dr. Morris shook it
firmly, placing his hand reassuringly over hers. “Pleasure to meet you.” He
smiled, displaying a mouth with perfect white teeth. “Will Mr. Horvath be
attending?”

“Oh yes,” Ellen
said, with overstated enthusiasm. “He will be here, unfortunately he has been
detained, but he will be here—of course, he wants to be here.” Ellen wondered
who she was trying to convince more, Dr. Morris or herself.

He nodded and led
her down a hall and into the office. His office was extremely stark and modern,
a mixture of metal and glass. No color anywhere, except the art on the white
walls, if you could call the hideous paintings art. The room had a sterile
feel, more like a research clinic than a place to heal relationships. Certainly
nothing like the elegant wood-paneled office of Dr. Sutton, the psychologist
she had tried to get Brianna to see. The one she had hoped could
cure
her
of her
confusion
.

“Please, take a
seat,” Dr. Morris said, gesturing toward the white patent leather couch.

Ellen sat and tried
to find a graceful position as she adjusted her skirt. The couch was low and
deep and she couldn’t keep her skirt from riding up, revealing her upper
thighs. Dr. Morris sat across from her in a hideous, plastic molded chair.
Retro sixties junk. “Lovely office, Dr. Morris,” Ellen said, forcing a nervous
smile. “Quite
 …
charming.”