Possessions (38 page)

“Damn you,” she spat. “That's what you do every time. You treat me like a teenager—a baby—you make me feel
little.
”

Instinctively Ross put out a hand. “I know. Melanie, I'm sorry; I know I—”

“I don't want your fucking apologies; it's too late for that! Don't you understand? I'm sick and tired of feeling like I'm not smart enough or grown up enough for you. I'm as grown up as you are, and I want somebody who'll treat me like that, somebody who knows how grown up I am—”

“Who is he?”

“Somebody special.”

“God damn it,
who the hell is he?”

“You can swear at me all you want; I'm not afraid of you. It's somebody wonderful who's going to take care of me and buy me presents and bring me breakfast in bed—”

“Melanie. I asked you who he is.”

At the low steel of his voice, she took a quick look at his face. “Guy Walker.”

“Guy Walker?”

“He's a very famous champion tennis player. He gives lessons at the club, but when he's on tour he wins trophies. He's going to marry me.”

The words struck an odd chord. “What about you?” he asked. “Are you going to marry him?”

“Don't try to make me look silly. Of course I'm going to marry him.”

It registered then. Ross sucked in his breath, feeling as if he had been punched in the stomach. He'd known how far apart they had moved; even Carrie and Jon knew it, watching, listening, moving through the house with delicate footsteps, as if afraid of making a noise that would bring the whole structure tumbling down. Already tumbled, Ross thought; the evidence had been there for a long time—the spaces, the quarrels that came up like thunderstorms and were as quickly spent, their silences, the way their eyes never quite met.

But he'd willfully ignored the signs, assuming that however bad it was, they would work it out; assuming that because it
was familiar and predictable, it would be easier to repair than to destroy.

Wrong. All the assumptions: wrong. Panic welled up, and he turned from Melanie, staring out the window. He remembered the day he'd moved here and first looked at this view. He was beginning BayBridge and was boundlessly confident: sure of his wife, his home, his profession. Idiot, he thought. Secure, satisfied—blind.

I miss knowing the boundaries of my days.
Where had he heard that? In a moment it came to him: Katherine, at The Compass Rose.
I miss being sure of what will happen tomorrow and the day after. I miss knowing the boundaries of my days. None of it was true, nothing was certain, but it was so comforting to think it was . . .”

I knew as little as she did, Ross thought.

“Are
you listening?” Melanie demanded.

Frowning, he turned back to her. “I was thinking of something else.”

“Something else! Something more important than your children?”

“What about the children?”

“I'm keeping them. How many times do I have to repeat it? They'll stay with me and you'll move out. I'm keeping the house. I don't want Carrie and Jon changing schools and doing all those upsetting things that make children hate divorce. We'll stay in our own house and everything will be the same for them.”

“Except that their father will be gone.”

“Well, yes. But the really important things won't change—their house and school and friends. And me of course. And they'll have Guy. Don't worry about them Ross; they'll be fine.”

She said it with such earnestness, mixed with defiance, that Ross felt a flash of pity. But then he thought: what if she's right? What if they would be fine without him? His panic grew; spreading through him, cold and heavy.

Melanie was still talking. “—and visitation rights, because I suppose they'll want to see you, once in a while. Our lawyers can settle that—”

Visitation rights?
A schedule for telling your kids you love
them? How do lawyers work that out? He felt sick—and then the coldness inside him froze all feeling. Facing Melanie, he felt nothing. “We'll settle it now, between us. I'll want them every weekend, one night a week for dinner, and at school holidays. Thanksgiving, Christmas, spring vacation, long weekends, and of course all summer—”

“Are you crazy? They can't always be running off to stay with you! How can we make a new family if we're not together at Thanksgiving and Christmas? You can have them—my lawyer said if you made a fuss you could have them every other weekend—if you really want them that often—and a week in the summer . . . well, maybe two weeks, but no more because of camp. And you'll pay for camp; that's on a list—my lawyer has it—things you'll take care of, alimony and child support and the dentist and all those things. Ask my lawyer; he'll show it to you; here's his card. See him tomorrow, Ross, or get your own lawyer to call him; don't wait, because Guy's impatient—”

“To get his little family started.”

She shot him a look. “Don't use that tone of voice with me.”

“You've forfeited the right to tell me what tone to use.” What emotions had broken through that cold barrier to make his hands tremble? Anger? Pain? He stood and walked to his desk, his back to Melanie. “You'd better leave.”

“Well, I guess I've said what I had to say.” There was a pause. “Did you think you'd come home tonight?”

“I hadn't thought about it.”

“Well, you'd better not try. I've had the locks changed.”

He whipped around. “Change them back. Or give me a new key. That is my house and I haven't moved out.”

“I'll do what I want! It's in both our names!”

“Until I move out, I have the right to enter that house and use it and I advise you not to try to stop me. Give me the key.” She wavered. “I won't rape you,” he said, his voice grating.

She flushed. “I didn't think you would. I just don't want you around! But if you'll call first—”

“I'll be damned if I will;
that is my house.
Give me the key!” When she still hesitated, he said evenly, “I don't think you'd want your friends to hear that your husband called the Tiburon police to witness him breaking into his own house.”

“God damn you to hell,” she said, and held out a key.

He crossed the room to take it, clenching it to hide the trembling of his hands. “I'll pack when Carrie and Jon aren't home. Probably tomorrow while they're at school.”
To go where?
He held open the door. “One more thing. I'm not leaving them. I intend to be with them far more often than you and your lawyer think.”
Where? Doing what?
“You'll have to organize your new family around my schedule. Remember that. I'II make you spend the next five years in court if you try to keep those children from me.”

“You bastard. You just want to ruin my marriage to Guy the way you ruined ours.” She ducked, as if expecting a blow, and scurried out.

Ross watched her stumble and catch herself. Tripped, he thought, by the wreck of our marriage. He wondered if she was right: that he could have prevented the destruction if he'd been different—better, kinder, more patient . . .

“—the meeting?” his secretary was asking.

He rubbed the back of his neck. “I had a reason for scheduling it today. Do you remember what it was?”

“We couldn't get everyone together for at least another two weeks.”

He nodded, prodding his thoughts like a shepherd herding reluctant sheep. “We'd better have it then. But give me half an hour. I have to pick up some pieces, and put myself together.”

*  *  *

Across the bay from San Francisco, the houses in the Berkeley Hills climb so steeply they look over the roofs of those below, offering a vista stretching as far south as San Jose. The house Ross rented stepped down from the front entrance hall, past two airy bedrooms to a long living-dining room and a square cedar deck screened by trees and bushes but still giving a clear view of the Golden Gate and San Francisco-Oakland Bay bridges, the San Francisco skyline, and the softly rounded hills of Tiburon where, only five miles away, his wife entertained her tennis-playing lover.

Carrie and Jon sniffed suspiciously the first time they explored his new home. “It doesn't look
anything
like our house,” Carrie declared. “Was this the best you could find?”

“What's wrong with it?” Ross asked mildly, hiding the panic
that still gripped him when he let down his guard
—What if they refuse to come here? Lawyers can forge agreements but who can make my children want to be with me?
“I thought it felt like a home.”

Slowly, Carrie turned in place, her head tilted, considering the heavy, worn furniture in half a dozen different fabrics and colors, with soft cushions that retained the shape of the last person to sit in them. No interior decorator had ever set foot in these rooms; the professor's family had simply collected furniture over the years, never throwing anything out; and Ross knew, seeing it through Carrie's critical gaze—exactly like Melanie's—that no place was more unlike the perfectly modulated velvet and silk rooms of his Tiburon home.

But, unlike Melanie, who would have scornfully dismissed it, Carrie began to smile. “It's not bad,” she conceded, “It's kind of friendly. Of course,” she added hastily, not wanting to betray her mother, “it's not as beautiful as home. But it's . . .
comfortable.
Like you could jump on the furniture.”

“Dad!” shouted Jon from the deck. “They've got a Jacuzzi!”

“We've
got a Jacuzzi,” Ross said as he and Carrie joined him. “Thanks to the professor.”

“But it's his, isn't it? You didn't buy it.”

“Until he gets back, a year from now, it's ours.”

“Yours,” muttered Jon, becoming very busy with the controls. “We're only visitors.”

“Jon.” Ross sat on the edge of the round tub and turned his son to face him. “This is your house as much as mine. You'll be spending a lot of time here; we'll all be here, together.”

“But we don't
live
here.” Jon turned red, then blurted, “Dad, we were wondering if maybe you'd come back.”

A deep ache filled Ross's lungs. “I can't do that, Jon. When a marriage dies, there's no way to bring it back to life.”

“Why did it have to die?” Carrie demanded. “It used to be fine. Didn't it?”

“We thought so. But then something made us go in different directions. We started having separate ideas and thoughts, even separate feelings and dreams about the future. As if—” He paused. “If each of you tied the end of a cord around your waist, and began to walk away from each other, the cord would stretch tighter and tighter, and if you kept on walking it couldn't
take the stress. It would fray and then snap. That's what happened to our marriage.”

Carrie chewed the end of a blond curl. “You could tie a knot in the cord.”

“Some people try.” Ross put an arm around her shoulders. “And sometimes it works. But you have to move closer together to do it. And if you've been too far apart, with too many different thoughts, the chances are you'd start straining against the cord again and the knot wouldn't hold.”

“You shouldn't pull apart in the first place,” Jon muttered.

“You're right.” Ross drew his son to him and he and his children leaned against each other. “I don't know why we did. When we were married, and the two of you were born, I thought my life had a shape, like a house I'd designed, with rooms for the people I loved and the work I loved, and places for friends and holidays and sailing . . . I was so excited with my imaginary house, because everyone and everything that was dear to me was in it. And I think your mother felt the same way.”

“You're not sure?” Carrie asked.

“I'm pretty sure she was at first. Later—I don't know exactly when—she began worrying about all the things she might be missing. But I think for the first few years she was happy. I know I was.” The three of them were silent, holding each other. “But then we went in different directions and the cord between us snapped. And we've gone too far to mend it; you mustn't wait for that to happen. The only good thing left from our marriage is you, and how much we love you.”

“Love,” snorted Jon.

Ross tightened his arms around them. “That's what we've got. We're held together by cords, too, the strongest I've ever seen. And if we spend lots of time together, they'll never get frayed; they'll never come close to snapping. I promise that.”

Carrie turned and flung both arms around his neck. Ross tried to keep his voice firm. “That's why this is your home, too,” he said. “You'll have a key for when you're staying here, and you can be here whenever you want.”

Jon shook his head. “Mother said—” He stopped.

“What did she say?”

“Never mind.”

“You started to tell me.”

“Never mind.”

“I'd like to know, Jon.”

“It's not important.”

“It might be.”

Stubbornly, Jon shook his head and Ross sighed, seeing his son begin to build a wall between two houses, two families, two loyalties. “Maybe someday you'll tell me. In the meantime,
I'm
going to call this our home, and I hope one of these days you will, too.” He looked over Jon's head, past the pines in his yard, at the distant silhouette of Mount Tamalpais rising above the misty Tiburon hills. The air was fragrant with roses and narcissus; the flamboyant beauty of cymbidiums and flowering plum covered the bushes beside the deck. A stairway led to a lower garden where a neglected hedge of thorny raspberry bushes grew. Deep foghorns blasted through the Saturday morning quiet; a dog barked; someone was practicing piano scales. Our home, Ross thought. And tears filled his eyes.