Facets. Part 40

He tugged his shirt into place. "It does not. I just find it a waste of energy."

But she had hit on something worth pursuing. "It scares you, scares you s.h.i.tless. Love implies a commitment to another person-not a business, or a stone, or a marketing strategy, but a person. More than that, it involves expectations, and that's what you can't take. You don't want to be let down. Don't want to be hurt. So you keep people at a distance. You order them around. You maintain full control, because then when you don't get what you want, you have someone to blame. You have someone to punish."

Draping his tie round his neck, he s.n.a.t.c.hed up his jacket and started for the door. "You've been reading too much of the wrong stuff. Self-help books are a menace. You're getting a.n.a.lytical, and that's very boring." At the door, he turned and pointed a finger at her. "Don't write about me, Hillary. I'm warning you. Don't do it. Keep your nose in your own affairs, or you'll find yourself in over your head."

"Do you love him?" Pam asked.

Four days had pa.s.sed since John stalked out of Hillary's apartment. Naturally, she hadn't heard from him. When Pam had come to town on business and called to meet for lunch, she had jumped at the chance. She needed to talk. Now, as they picked through their salades Nicoise at La Caravelle, she knew it was time.

"I suppose." She held her breath while the admission registered, then asked in an unsure tone, "Do you hate me for it?"

"No. I wish I could understand, though. How can you love a man who has treated you so horribly all these years?"

Hillary twisted her fork against a sliver of tuna. "I don't know. I just can't remember not loving him. From the first time I saw him, something was there." She looked up. "Wasn't it the same for you with Cutter? Right from the beginning, he was forbidden, still you felt something. Is there an explanation for that?"

"But Cutter is a giver. He's sensitive and gentle. He's as different from John-"

"I know." Hillary didn't want to go into that. "Don't ask me to tell you what I love about him. It's irrational. When we were young, I worshipped him. I saw his potential. I rooted for his success. I look at him now, and he has that success, but he's not happy. There's no personal peace. He won't let anyone get close enough to touch him where it really counts. I look at him, and I hurt. I wish he would let me help, but he won't. And I hate him for that."

She put a piece of lettuce in her mouth, simply to have something to do. She chewed it, swallowed, ate another piece. "I'm filling the emptiness," she said with a wry half-smile. "This is why people gain weight. When there's a hole in their lives, they stuff something in. Food is the natural stuffer."

"So why do you look like you've lost five pounds?"

"I've been working too hard." She took a long drink of Perrier, then watched Pam sift through the remnants of her salad. "Speaking of which, aren't you going to ask?"

Pam pushed an olive through several revolutions before setting down her fork and sitting back in her chair. "I figured you'd tell me when you're ready." After a minute, she said with quiet resignation. "You're writing it, aren't you."

Hillary nodded. "It's mostly about John. But there's some about the rest of you, too." When Pam looked pained, she said, "You're my friend. My closest friend. You know I wouldn't do anything to harm you." Still Pam said nothing, so she added, "I thought it was a dynamite idea at first. I'm not so sure now."

"Why?"

"I wanted to tell the truth about John. Give the other side of the story. I thought I knew almost everything, but I was wrong. I've learned some things I wished I hadn't."

"Like the beating."

"And the will. For G.o.d's sake, I don't want to destroy John."

Again Pam was quiet. She frowned at her water gla.s.s, ran her thumb over its rim.

"Say something, Pam."

"Like what?"

"Like he deserves it."

"He does."

"Then you should want me to write this book."

Pam looked torn. Her response was a while in coming. "My goal isn't to hurt John so much as to be free of him. I want him out of my way. And he will be. But it has to be done right."

Once again, Hillary felt a premonition. "You have something in the works, you and Cutter. What is it?"

Pam eyed her sadly and shook her head.

"You can tell me. I won't say a word. h.e.l.l, John walked out on me. I won't hear from him again in months."

"I can't tell you, Hillary. I wish I could, but I can't."

"Because you don't trust me?"

"No. Because I love you. It's enough that you know something might happen. If I tell you anything more, I'll be putting an awesome weight on your shoulders. You love John; you hate John. The less you know, the less torn you'll be."

"You're taking over the company, aren't you?"

Pam didn't say a word.

"You've been courting the shareholders, and you're going to oust John as president."

Still Pam didn't speak.

"Is Patricia in on this?"

"You can ask all you want, but I'm not free to say. And anyway, I don't know much. I'm just an artist."

"Just an artist," Hillary echoed. "Hah. You're the backbone of the family."

Pam rolled her eyes. "I don't know about that. At this point I'm spread so thin I feel like I could break apart with the slightest provocation."

"Brendan?"

Pam shrugged, then let out a breath. "Not great. I shouldn't have come down today, but I've been putting off this trip for too long."

"Is there anything I can do?"

"Just be here if I need a friend. You always have been. I count on that."

"I'm here." Hillary paused. "Pam, about the book . . ."

"Do what you have to. I can't tell you to stop."

"Will you hate me?"

"I could never hate you. I'll worry, though."

"About what?"

"You. Writing about John. If there was ever any hope for you two, it'll be gone. He'll hate you, and I'd hate to see that. You're the man's only hope of salvation."

"Yeah. Well, he doesn't see it quite that way."

"He might. The day may come when he'll need a friend, too. Not that he deserves one. Not that he deserves you. And it may be that come that time, you won't want him. But if you do, I want you to have him. I'd hate to see you burn that bridge now." She tipped her head. "Which means that you'll be deferring to him again, putting your career second to whatever it is you have or may someday have with him, which is pretty much what you've been doing all your life. It's not right, Hillary."

"I know. So what do I do?"

Pam considered that, finally saying, "You wait. Take things slowly. See what happens over the next few months."

There it was again, that warning. "Will you tell me as soon as there's something to tell?"

Pam nodded. "Will you let me see what you've written before you turn it in?"

Hillary nodded with a sad smile. "We reach agreements so easily, you and I. If only the rest of life were so simple."

Chapter 23.

Boston, 1979 PAM SPENT A WEEK TRYING TO grapple with what John had told her, before finally succ.u.mbing and going to see Bob Grossman. He had become a friend over the years, but he was still first and foremost her mother's therapist. Pam had never paid him for therapy time. So, with no more than the briefest of preliminaries, she got to the point of her visit.

"John said that he and my mother had an affair. Is it true?"

Bob's expression showed that he hadn't been expecting that particular bomb. She suspected that he would have made a quip about her pointedness-Bob had that light way about him-if she hadn't looked so sober. Quietly and predictably, he returned the question. "Do you think it is?"

She hesitated for a minute. Saying things out loud somehow gave them legitimacy. But then, that was why she'd come. "It would make sense out of certain things."

"Like?"

"Like how close they were. Like John's possessiveness. Like the way he used to come from her bedroom sometimes. I could never understand what she saw in him. I resented their closeness, but I never gave it a s.e.xual meaning. Then John opened his mouth the other day, and I wanted to believe he was lying." She still did. "But it fits. If Daddy found them in bed together, he would have been furious enough to storm out of the house. Mom would have been frightened enough of losing him to jump in the car, and he might well have driven recklessly." There was an even stronger argument, though. "If it's true, it helps explain why she retreated into herself after the accident. I used to think it had something to do with me."

"It did, in some respects," Bob said, but gently. "The guilt Patricia felt was compounded when she looked at you. You reminded her of Eugene and of all that could have been if the accident hadn't occurred."

His confirmation was indirect, but there. Pam felt a rush of anger she'd been trying to quash all week. "Why did she have to sleep with him? If she'd wanted to be with a man that badly, she could have gone up to Maine. Daddy was always there. He had the house. It was big and beautiful and comfortable, and we had help. It wasn't like she had to hike up to a rustic cabin somewhere and rough it."

Bob smiled kindly. "Different people see things different ways. You loved Timiny Cove from the first. Patricia never felt quite that way about it."

"But she loved my father. At least, she said she did."

"She did. She still does. It's one of the things she and I have been working on."

Pam wasn't sure she understood. "Working on?"

He turned to more comfortably face her. "After the accident, Patricia put your dad on a pedestal. She idealized everything about him. Correspondingly, she became the fall guy. She took full blame for what had gone wrong with their marriage. In her mind, she was the villain."

"She was. She cheated on him."

"She had reasons for doing what she did. It wasn't a malicious thing, and it wasn't like she did it with lots of men. John was the only one. Your mother was fragile-he took advantage of that. And as for Eugene, he wanted strength in a woman. When he didn't find it in Patricia, he more or less cast her aside."

Pam rushed to her father's defense. "He was faithful."

"Maybe s.e.xually. But emotionally he wasn't there for her."

"He was there for me."

"Because you're basically a strong person. He could accept the downs because there were plenty of ups. With your mother, the downs were predominant. He let her know that, which fed into her insecurities. It became a cyclical thing." He draped an elbow over the sofa back and laced his fingers together. "What I'm trying to do-what I've been trying to do-is to help her see things as they really were. I'm not saying that she was a saint, any more than I'm saying your dad was a sinner. I'm trying to create a balance in Patricia's mind. She has to accept herself. She has to respect herself. She has to put her feelings for Eugene into perspective. She has to learn to love his memory and let go of the man himself if she's ever going to move on in life."

"Will she?"

"Move on? Eventually. She's still a long way from it. This hospital represents security to her. She doesn't feel capable of surviving away from it."

"Maybe she isn't," Pam said, feeling angry again.

Bob was quiet, a sure sign, she knew, that he was waiting for her to go on. She had enough resentment in her-and was comfortable enough with him-to do just that.

"She made a mess of things, having an affair with John. It's bad enough that she cheated on her husband, but John is her stepson. He also happens to be the dregs of the earth."

"Your opinion," Bob said with a raised finger.

"Do you think he's not?"

"I don't know the man well enough to say. He rarely comes here."

Pam snorted. "Rarely?"

"Almost never."

"When was the last time he came? Three, four years ago?"

"Two. But that's fine. Patricia won't see him anyway."

Pam grinned. "Won't see him at all?"

Bob shook his head.

"Good for her."

"Not really," Bob said. "She'll have to come to terms with him at some point, but she avoids it. Doesn't want to talk about him. Doesn't want to think about him."

Pam found a kind of justice in that. Not that John would be bothered. Patricia was nothing to him. She couldn't help his career.

"He said that if the truth came out, it would destroy her. Do you think it would?"

"Not where she is now. It can't touch her here. Someday, after she leaves, it could hurt her." He thought for a minute. "Destroy? That depends on how strong she is by then."

"What will she feel if she knows I know?"