Hide and Seek (21 page)
Bad thoughts. Constantly. Morning, noon, and especially at night.
Like the one about Allie having an accident while they were out riding horses.
Or pretty Jennie—lots to fantasize about there. Jennie was sweet on him anyway. She was like all the others, wasn't she? They wanted him, desperately, until they discovered who he really was.
Palmer was as bad as the others, maybe worse. His own brother was taking money from him to keep a few harmless secrets. Well, at least Palmer had always been up front about being a worthless bastard.
Maggie was the real problem, and he didn't know what to do about her.
Lots of bad thoughts though.
Lots of possibilities. None of them very nice.
Like?
What if I killed myself, as my father did?
What if I took it one step further?
What if, what if, what if. …
W
ATCH CLOSELY NOW.
Please
. Try to listen to each word, to every nuance. This is where the ride starts to get real tricky, where I began to seriously question my sanity. Just thinking about it made me feel tense and uncertain and sick to my stomach.
Am I guilty? Am I the murderer they say I am? Or am I the victim here?
“I'm going to San Francisco. I have to go, Will,” I told him a few weeks after his “incident” in New York. He was still acting strange, but he was good around Jennie and Allie, so I didn't complain too much.
“What?” Will barely glanced up from the TV. He seemed to get lost in whatever he was doing lately. Sometimes he looked a thousand miles away, spaced out, when I tried to talk to him. I didn't understand what was happening. How could I? There was an invisible wall between us.
“They've asked me to do a benefit concert at Candlestick Park, and I've accepted. I need to sing again, Will. It's been too long.”
He clicked off the TV and turned to face me. He'd been watching the game in a T-shirt and shorts, which always made me think that he was waiting to be called in from the bench. He was still amazingly fit, and looked ready to play. “Without asking if I wanted to come along?” he said.
“It's probably best if I go alone. Barry'll be there—”
“That asshole.”
“—and we'll be releasing the record as soon as we can after the performance.” I had no inclination either to sugarcoat my plans, or to say what I really felt, which was “at least I
tell
you when I'll be gone.”
“So you
decided
to go to California, just casual-like.” His face was turning red. His eyes protruded, wild.
One of these times, he's going to go off, isn't he?
I said to myself.
He turned on me in a fury. “What am I anyway? Some bloody footman in this house? Is that it, Maggie?”
“Who said you were? I don't feel that way. God. What's happening to you? Can you please explain that to me?”
“I say where you go, and don't go! Got that?”
Suddenly, I could hear Phillip. Almost the exact same tone of voice
.
But I managed to stay calm, at least on the outside. “No you don't, Will. You can decide about your life, not mine.”
He rose from his chair and walked toward me. I held my ground. He stood motionless and glared at me with dark, suspicious eyes.
I didn't like this. Not the look, not the threatening body language. I had never seen him like this, and suddenly I was afraid.
His hand flashed out!
There was no way I could avoid it.
With a roar, he struck my cheek, strafing across the left side of my face. His backhand caught me a second time and sent me reeling backwards.
It was as though two explosions had gone off inside my head.
I couldn't believe it!
He'd never hit me before. Never raised a hand, never threatened.
“You're
not
going to San Francisco!” he screamed. “
You're not leaving me, you bitch!”
He drew back his hand for another blow, but then he stopped and let both hands fall to his sides.
It was as though he'd had second thoughts, or come to his senses, almost as though he were another person.
“Okay,” he said. “Go to San Francisco. I don't care what you do, Maggie.”
I began to shake all over. I wouldn't let myself cry. Then, I began to tremble, badly. My legs felt useless. My arms too.
“I'm taking Allie and Jennie,” I told him. I could barely speak, or even look at Will. “You can't stop us. Don't try.”
B
ATTERY.
He hit me
.
This can't be me
.
The lyrics to my own song played in my head. I was staring vacantly through the jet's oblong window, my eyes climbing a mountain range of snow-white clouds. Beside me, Allie lay asleep, his furry head nudging my lap. Across the aisle, Jennie was listening to something with her airplane earphones.
Both of them were happy to be going with me. They had no idea about my trouble with Will. The concert coincided with Jennie's vacation. Allie
always
wanted to be at my side, and usually was. The three of us were so close that we'd come up with the acronym
JAM. Jennie, Allie, Maggie
. We'd never changed it to include Will.
Coming off the plane, I was aware of the usual stares and hellos from total strangers. Some tried to get my autograph, nearly trampling us with their efforts; others reached out to touch me, as though the contact would somehow grant celebrity status to them as well.
Celebrity!
If only they knew what it really meant to be famous … to have so many eyes always watching
.
There was a fax from Will waiting for me at the Four Seasons Hotel in town:
GOOD LUCK, MY SONGBIRD
FORGIVE YOUR WILL HIS TRESPASSES
PLEASE FORGIVE ME
HURRY HOME WITH THE CHILDREN
I LOVE YOU—
ALWAYS HAVE, ALWAYS WILL
.
I crumpled the paper.
Always Will
, indeed.
B
ARRY, JENNIE, ALLIE, and I were cuddled inside a big red-and-silver Bell helicopter. Beneath us were the bright lights of Candlestick Park, the dark waters of the bay. I was dressed in my usual outfit: a loose white peasant's blouse, long skirt, flat shoes, so I wouldn't be a millimeter taller than I was.
But was I really ready for this?
I wasn't sure, but I had to try it, really wanted to.
In less than an hour I would be making my first major concert appearance in almost three years. The networks had sent film crews. This was
news
, right?—
hard copy
. A live album was being recorded tonight. There had been over five hundred thousand requests for tickets; there were fewer than eighty thousand seats.
Yet we were sealed off in the helicopter, a private family: my children, my best friend. This was better than being down there. I was thinking.
“Let's not land,” I said.
Barry raised an eyebrow and made a face. He put his hand over his mouth as though he were speaking into a mike. “Uh, Earth to Maggie, Earth to Peter Pan.”
“I mean it. Can't we just stay up here till tomorrow?” I was feeling a little giddy.
“What'll we use for fuel?” Jennie asked.
“They can refuel us in midair. Like long-range bombers. It'll be cool.”
“We'd be hungry,” Allie said, always thinking of eats.
“They can pass in sandwiches with the fuel. No problem.”
Jennie laughed. She liked it when I talked nonsense.
“I'm hungry
now
,” Allie announced. He was always the most practical member of JAM.
“We're about to land,” Barry told him, “no matter what your mother says. I'll get you some food at the Park. All-beef franks, mmm-mmm good.”
I suddenly felt a wave of sadness, and also unbelievable fear. Stage fright. “I don't know if I can go on,” I said. “Really, Barry. No joke.”
He took my hand. “Preconcert jitters. Go with the fear. Use it.”
“More than that. It seems so safe here, so
right
. Down there is danger. First the fans, and then—”
“Will,” he said. I had told Barry nothing about the fight, but he'd guessed something was wrong. He knew me too well.
“Life,” I said.
Okay, so I'd sold close to twenty million albums; I'd won eleven Grammy Awards.
But I could still get scared, couldn't I?
My singing style was the personal confessional mode, right? I could do that now. Just go out there in front of all those people and be myself. Be very up front and personal.
The trouble was—I was starting to feel like
my old self
. I remembered the Maggie who had existed in West Point. I even remembered the little girl who broke into tears because she couldn't stop stuttering when she had to answer questions in school.
I knew exactly what my performance was supposed to be—edgy, but also heartfelt. My songs were supposed to be succinct and catchy on the surface—infected with all kinds of influences: rock, Broadway, classical, French art song—but under the surface, complex and psychologically true.
I knew all this as I walked out on that big stage in San Francisco, as I looked down on all those expectant faces.
So why was I afraid? No, absolutely petrified? Why was I scared that I wouldn't be able to sing at all?
I sat down at the piano, and I started to mouth lyrics against the stiff, chilly breeze off the bay.
I almost got through the first song—
Then I went to pieces.
With all those strangers watching—but also my children, with Jennie and Allie right there in the stage wings.
BATTERY, I sang.
HE HIT ME
THIS CAN'T BE ME
I started to stammer, then to stutter again—something I hadn't done in so many years, something I'd fought so hard to overcome.
I couldn't sing anymore. I couldn't go on
.
I finally turned and
talked
to the huge crowd—”I'm having a little trouble up here.
Whew
. I'm sorry. I'm in trouble.”
I was beginning to have heart palpitations. I felt faint and thought I might fall off the piano bench.
Then Jennie and Barry and Allie were there for me. So were a couple of the musicians. They helped me offstage. I could barely walk.
“Poor Mommy,” Allie kept saying. “Poor Mommy. Mommy got sick.”
W
ILL HAD ALWAYS been a night creature. Now, more than ever he needed to get out and around.
The werewolf of Bedford
.
He whipped his black BMW coupe approximately five hundred yards down Greenbriar Road. He turned from one tree-lined, shadowy driveway—his own—into the next.
The main entrance to the Lake Club was marked by ten-foot-high fieldstone pillars. An uneven fence of like stone ran the length of the property, and Will drove past the entrance to a designated spot near the fence.
He parked and got out. The fence swung open; a path led to the rear of the clubhouse and a service door that would be virtually invisible to anyone who wasn't looking for it.
Inside the club, there was a tangible stillness in the air that signified privacy and privilege. It reminded Will of the silence of cathedrals and European banks. He maneuvered his way past deserted billiard and smoking rooms to yet another door, on which he knocked, paused, and knocked again.
The door was opened from inside. Will blinked at the sudden bright light assailing his eyes. Then he took in the mahogany paneling, the long oak bar, the Tiffany lamps, and the Renaissance paintings that hung on the walls of the room.
The group of men clustered at the bar had watched his entrance. They said hello once they saw it was he, and that Will belonged there.
Peter O’Malley was one of them. Strangely, he and Will had become friendly at the club. They had Maggie in common, didn’t they? Maggie had brought them together, and they frequently talked about her. Peter dreamed of bringing Maggie down.
That evening, they were both attending a late-night get-together at the country club. The meeting was strictly unofficial.
Once, or sometimes twice a month, after the club closed, a few members brought in special entertainment. It was a way for the high-powered men to let off steam and have some social, and certainly politically unacceptable, fun. God knows, they couldn’t seem to get it at home with “the wives.”
The room was lit by the gold and red flames from an ample fieldstone fireplace.
The fires of Hell
, Will called it.
A sample of what’s to come for the lot of us
.
Standing in front of the fireplace in a more or less orderly row, stood six girls. They were all young beauties. Their bare skin and long hair gleamed in the burnishing firelight.
The eldest looked twenty at the most, the youngest might have been sixteen. Each was wearing a black sleeping mask. The girls were never permitted to see the members, or even the location of the club.
The exclusive Lake Club of Bedford Hills
, Will thought to himself.
It was a facade, like everything else
.
Later that night, Will picked out one of the young girls. She was tall and blond and reminded him of Jennie.
I
THINK I knew in my heart, for some time, that the marriage was over between Will and me. It was a matter of timing now. What would be best for the children, then for me, and finally for Will. I didn’t want to hurt him, just leave him.
Will was there to greet us when we got home. He was also his old self. Our arrival revived him. He became almost giddy with joy. He seemed genuinely concerned about what had happened to me in San Francisco, my minibreakdown. He said he understood “the jitters” very well, and I believed Will did.
He promised me there would be no more anger, no more fights, no more disappearances. His fear of desertion had made him desperate. He was in touch with his feelings once again.
I listened to Will and everything he had to say. I heard the words. I had already made my decision though. Will had shown me, however briefly, a side of him that I couldn’t possible be around, or deal with.