The House on Olive Street (15 page)

“It’s a place to start. It’s something to build on. People can change, you know.”

“People can also become bigger assholes, given the opportunity. There,” she said proudly, braid finished. “That’s stunning. Now, take off those glasses and let’s do your eyes.”

Sable’s dual tragedies—the horrors of her life as Helen and the subsequent public dissemination of it all—were having the most unexpected effect. First, Barbara Ann found Sable walking around the house barefoot. The perfectly put-together, chic and sophisticated Sable, barefoot. Barbara Ann didn’t even know she
had
feet! She thought Sable’s legs ended with Italian leather pumps—scuffless, new, shiny pumps.

Then, Sable had gone through Gabby’s closet and found a couple of old sweat suits that were too short on her long legs, but she wore them anyway. Recently, she had graduated to some of Gabby’s summer smocks—lightweight, gauzy, busily printed, flowing, midi-length dresses. And just yesterday, like a kid who lost her first tooth, Sable announced ecstatically, “Look! My roots are growing out!” She’d picked off her fake nails, quit drawing on her eyebrows and took to napping on the chaise lounge on the redwood deck.

Sable’s luggage, filled with her expensive, tailor-made outfits, stayed packed and stacked up in the guest room while Sable wore whatever old thing she could dig out of the back of a closet. She no longer maintained fussy perfection in her appearance, either. The one thing Barbara thought would bring her pleasure caused only disdain as Sable ignored a salsa stain on the front of her sundress, stating that it blended in with the print. Barbara feared Sable was going through some sort of nervous breakdown over this whole thing.

And now she was playing makeup with Beth. Barbara
Ann handed the baby back to Sarah. “I’m going to get out of here before Sable starts giving her a pedicure.”

“Are you still working mainly in the kitchen?” Sable asked Barbara Ann.

“Yes, why?”

“We’re going to take a break here and make some cookies. Want to help?”

“You’re going to take a break from
what
to make cookies? Sable, we
do
have to get through Gabby’s things,” Barbara Ann impatiently reminded her.

“Oh, there’s no hurry,” Sarah said, repositioning the baby onto her shoulder. “I dread the day you’re finally done. I don’t know what I’d do without you all here.”

Barbara Ann ran her hand over the baby’s feathery hair. “I know, sweetheart, but we all have other commitments. I can’t do this all summer.”

“I know,” Sarah said thickly, the sound of tears creeping into her voice. “But it’s been such a help.”

“I’m afraid that what it’s helping us do is avoid confronting the other ugly things we have to do—like going home and facing the music.” Barbara looked at Sable. “Don’t you think there are some people who are worried about you?”

She shrugged, putting a finishing swish of blusher on Beth’s cheeks. “No. But I think there are a few who are planning my death. There! Why do you hide all this beauty behind those big specs? Why don’t you get contacts? Put on a little makeup?”

“Jack really likes my skin natural,” Beth said.

“But what do you like?” Sable pressed.

There was a slight hesitation. “I like what Jack likes,” she said.

“Jesus, Beth, why don’t you just give the guy a kidney! It would be simpler.”

“Oh, stop…. There’s nothing wrong with trying to please your husband.”

“Beth, did it ever occur to you that it’s a big mistake to—”

Barbara Ann went back into the kitchen. She couldn’t take it anymore. She wasn’t going to listen to the rest of Sable’s lecture. She’d had enough for one day. She left the box of manuscripts on the kitchen table, picked up her purse and the list of items Sable had made for her to pick up before coming back the next time. She stuck her head out the back door. “Listen, I have things to do at home. Is there anything else you need on this list?”

“No, hon,” Sable said pleasantly.
Hon?
God, what had happened to her? “Let me give you some money….”

“You gave me enough money on Monday to last me for the next two weeks. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Is everything all right?” Sable wanted to know.

“I’m just busy, Sable. I have a lot to do. I’ll see you later.”

“Hey, wait a minute,” Sable said, following Barbara Ann back inside. “What’s the matter? Is something wrong?”

She sighed. “I’m not used to you like this. All the time I’ve known you, you’ve never been this… this…
nice.
”

Sable laughed. “Stripped of my pretensions?”

“Yeah, well, some of your pretensions were admirable.” She poked a finger at Sable’s chest. “Like keeping food off your clothes. You’re getting real weird.”

“I know,” she said. She pulled out the sides of the thin, gauzy dress and twirled around. “I never thought of wearing anything like this before. Imagine, I worked in a profession I could do in private, at home, and I still got up every morning and primped, like I was going out to sell real estate or something. Like who was I going to
impress?” She pulled the sides of the dress away. “I’m not wearing underwear. I feel like a nudist.”

“Lord. It’s bad enough watching your roots grow out. Have you thought about…counseling?”

“I’m going to try that later, when things settle down out there,” she said, tilting her head to one side, indicating the mean old world at large. Sable had not left the house in almost two weeks. She refused to be told the latest tabloid gossip about her. There had been two more television exposés but she and Elly had not tuned in. “Look, Barb, you don’t have to come over here every day. You don’t have to devote yourself to this. The rest of us have more time.”

“I want to do this,” she said. It was something to take her mind off impending news. Ordinarily, she would unload about the stress of her present situation. It seemed that she, of all of them, had the most chronic of pressures and disappointments in this publishing life. She was always losing an editor she had just gotten used to. Or having someone mess around with her work until it hardly resembled the book they’d asked for in the first place. Or having deadlines moved up. Or waiting for weeks longer than she should have to for word on whether her latest effort was acceptable. Late checks. Disastrous copyediting. Unbelievable covers…the kind you want to hide behind a brown paper bag. But it had never been as frightening as this. Her charge cards were maxed out, she was going to have to borrow money for Bobby’s trade-school tuition, and although she did have a book due in three months, she was afraid to sit at the computer. Everything she wrote turned to dreck right before the editor’s eyes.

But she couldn’t say anything. Gabby was dead. Eleanor had virtually closed herself into the master bed
room with thousands of pages, pictures and notes, compiling some original text Gabby had left behind. Beth’s husband was fucking around on her. Sable’s life was coming apart in the press and Sable was coming unhinged before their eyes. Sarah, so lonely for her mother, so unhappy with her insensitive husband, had dropped in on them several times in the last couple of weeks, looking for love and support. And Barbara Ann was supposed to complain about a couple of rejections?

For once in her life, she told herself, she was going to be strong. No one was going to know how terrified she was.

“I’m just going to head out for today,” she told Sable. “I’ll see you tomorrow. If I leave now, I can stop at the store on my way home.”

“I hope they at least give you your own parking space at that store. Hey, don’t come tomorrow if there’s something else you should be doing. We’re slow, but sincere. We’ll get it all done eventually.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll be here,” Barbara Ann said.

She found her house deserted—everyone at work or play. She hauled in four cases of pop, six bags of groceries, and then went to the mailbox. On her way back to the front door, she shut off the hose that had flooded the front yard because someone had left it running. There was a shoe on the breakfast bar and four pop cans—all half-full—in the family room. The sofa cushions were askew; she straightened them fifty times a day. Her sons were out of school and had one full-and three part-time jobs between them; you’d think they could pitch in a little. But no. They just created squalor as they moved through the house. She sorted through the mail. Bill. Bill. Bill. Bingo.

She stared at it. Letter? Her editor normally called or
e-mailed. She’d been at Gabby’s, of course, but no message had been left on the machine at home; she hadn’t been hunted down on her cell phone. She pulled a new box of Ding-Dongs out of the grocery bag and took it, with the letter, to her bedroom. She closed the bedroom door, ripped open the box of pastry, bit into one for courage and ripped open the envelope.

She read in disbelief. The book idea wasn’t strong enough, the characters not believable. Barbara Ann skimmed the sentences that talked about the good writing and the potential for a similar story that might work better with different characters. And she barely saw the sentence that suggested she consider this only a minor inconvenience, that a writer of her experience and flair—and speed—would have no trouble creating just the right romance.

She stared at the letter through tear-filled eyes. She ate a second Ding-Dong and a third, thoroughly devastated. That was two rejections and one canceled book in a row. Three wallops. Not only did she not know what to
do
differently, she didn’t know what she’d
done
differently. She’d love to sit at her word processor and pound out an angry letter about how her work was consistently competent, but she wasn’t sure of that. She had never been able to discuss in the same type of academic,
intellectual way that Sable, Gabby, Beth and Elly could, what made a book work and what made it fail. When she gave an opinion in one of those discussions, only she knew she was faking it. She knew what she liked; she wrote what she liked. It had worked fine once. And now it didn’t.

It had been such a long time since she’d enjoyed her work. When she began this career, the writing had been fun. She believed in the happily-ever-after stories, silly as that sounded for an adult woman in a world where love fails more than it succeeds. But it just wasn’t that simple anymore.

She ate twelve Ding-Dongs, carefully stuffing the cellophane into the box so she could take it sneakily to the outside trash can later. She was lying there on her bed, the letter on top of her aching belly, trying to decide what to do with the rest of her life, when she heard a couple of the boys come home. The door from the garage to the kitchen slammed, there was some scuffling and joking around downstairs, and then she heard someone yell, “Mommmm!” Well, no matter how old they got, no matter how many times she asked them, they would never learn to walk through the house to find her if they wished to speak to her. No. They would shout from the farthest corner of the house, garage or yard and expect her to shout back. She could be on the phone with her editor, on the toilet or hanging herself in the pantry. They never thought of her business being more important than running to them. Fat chance. She was done running. Struggling. Striving. Yearning to please. Fuck ’em. “Mommmm!” She heard his feet on the stairs.

There was a light tapping on her bedroom door. “Mom?”

“What?”

“Hey, there’s groceries down in the kitchen. The ice cream melted all over the place. It’s even on the floor.”

“So?” she answered.

“Well jeez, what am
I
supposed to do? I didn’t put it there!”

“Use your imagination, Joe! Wipe it up, maybe. Or finger-paint with it. Or, if you’re hungry, start licking!”

J
une grew old, the summer turned hot and humid, and Sable’s luggage remained closed and stacked in the room that had become hers. She had taken to wearing mostly Gabby’s old clothes until Barbara Ann, complaining that it gave her a very eerie feeling, stopped by Marshall’s and bought Sable a few things—a couple of those lightweight gauzy dresses, some loose-knit shorts and tops, some flip-flops and two terry-cloth beach cover-ups that were all-purpose. “I can’t take it anymore,” Barbara Ann had said. “I don’t know what emotional stage you’re going through, but it gives me the creeps to see you in Gabby’s clothes every day.”

“You should have said something sooner,” Sable replied. “I just wanted to feel comfortable. I don’t feel like wearing dress-up, fussy clothes and I don’t have casual clothes. I don’t even own a pair of jeans.”

“These are comfy,” Barbara Ann said, handing her the Marshall’s bag. “And now they’re yours.”

“Oh, my gosh!” Sable said, opening the bag and making a big deal out of the inexpensive items inside. “This is wonderful! Oh, look at this. This is
perfect!
Oh,
these shorts…. I don’t even have a pair of knit shorts! Barbara Ann, this is wonderful!”

Barbara Ann watched this reaction calmly. When Sable was done oohing and aahing and holding each item up to herself, Barbara slowly shook her head. She looked at Elly. “She’s lost it. We’ve got to get her to a doctor.”

“It’s a bit like living with Alice in Wonderland, this creature who is seeing the world for the very first time,” Elly replied cynically.

But for the first time in Sable’s life, she felt she didn’t need psychological help. She slept. She had an appetite. She laughed. She had no schedule. She hadn’t done any exercises since her story broke and she was eating all the fattening, junky food she wanted. She fell asleep in the afternoon, reading. On some evenings she took a couple of sodas to her bedroom and made herself invisible while Elly and Ben spent time together. She believed that her mere presence under the same roof had intimidated them into celibacy, even though she had privately promised Elly she would not open her guest-room door until morning. Just the sound of their faint, distant, indiscernible conversation going on in the family room gave her an odd sense of satisfaction, knowing that Elly had a man to love.

Of course, so did Sable, though she was moving very cautiously, being admittedly crippled in the relationship arena. Her behavior would confuse the dickens out of a man with any expectations, but Jeff continued to seem able to roll along without any confusion in his mind. She called him daily on the pretense of asking about her property, but it was really the calming sound of his voice that she craved. After she’d been at Gabby’s for about a
week, Jeff showed up one morning. He was wearing shorts and a polo shirt. He had a cooler, picnic basket and a blanket in the trunk and he invited her to drive into the mountains. She instantly hugged herself, afraid to go out there.

“Take a chance,” he said to her. “No one will bother you. Except maybe me.”

“What if someone
sees
me?” she had gasped.

“No one would recognize you,” Elly stated flatly. “In fact, I hardly do. You look like a bag lady.”

She had nothing to fear from Jeff, she realized. In fact, she didn’t
know
any of the people she was afraid of! Suddenly she realized that all the people she feared were faceless strangers! She dug around Gabby’s closet for an old, faded, wide-brimmed hat and off she went for a day of lying under the trees on a blanket, where someone cared for her for no apparent reason.

“Are you going to call your agent soon?” Elly had asked.

“I don’t know,” Sable said, pressing a hand to her once-flat abdomen. “My diverticulitis hasn’t been feeling much better.”

“This can’t go on forever, Sable. Eventually we have to get back to our real lives.”

“I know,” she said. But she wasn’t sure yet what her real life was going to be.

It was a Thursday evening at nine o’clock when things changed again. Eleanor was reading on the family-room sofa and Sable in the chair. The thing Sable had come to most appreciate was being quiet with someone. If Elly hobbled off to the kitchen for ice cream, she’d offer to bring Sable a dish. If Sable read something interesting, she’d mention it to Elly. But not too often. Sable liked to read the newspaper in the morning, Elly
in the evening, so every morning Sable carefully folded the paper together for Elly’s later use. Sable had never been happier. And then the doorbell rang.

Sable hung back until Elly could see who was there. With a gasp she said, “Beth!” and threw open the door. It was not the sudden arrival of the young woman that shocked her, but the condition of her face. Her right eye was swollen nearly shut and a large bruise covered her cheek. She held a suitcase in her hand. “My God,” both women exclaimed.

“Can we put my car out of sight in Gabby’s garage, do you think?” she asked.

Sable met Barbara Ann at the door the next morning. She relieved her of one of the grocery sacks and pulled her in the house. “You aren’t going to believe this. You’ll have to see it with your own eyes.”

“Oh, what now?” Barbara Ann wearily asked.

“Beth’s been here since last night. We’re at another crossroads.”

“I can’t take any more crossroads,” Barbara Ann began to whine. And then she saw Beth sitting at the kitchen table, still dressed in her nightclothes. Barbara Ann gasped and almost dropped the grocery sack. “Dear God,” Barbara Ann said in a breath. “Jack?”

Beth nodded, looking down into her teacup. Elly sat at the end of the table, trying unsuccessfully to blow her cigarette smoke out the open window. “I’ll put away the groceries while Beth tells you what happened,” Sable said. Elly merely lifted her eyebrows. She wore a look of unhappy resignation.

“Really, he’s never hit me like this. I mean, this much. I think I finally pushed him too far,” Beth said.

“Spoken like a true victim,” Elly groused.

“People don’t push people into hitting them,” Sable said from the kitchen.

“What do you mean, ‘like this’?” Barbara Ann wanted to know.

“If he lost his temper about something, you know, he sometimes lashed out at me. He could be rough, but it’s not like he regularly beats me.”

“When he ‘lashed out,’ Beth, did he ever leave any bruises?” Beth looked down at her hands. “Dear God,” Barbara breathed again.

“It’s too late for prayer, Barbara Ann,” Sable announced.

“Be quiet a second,” Barbara demanded. “What was it that caused him to lose his temper this time?”

She didn’t raise her eyes. Large tears collected. “We had an agreement about having a family. I didn’t keep my part.”

“What? You’ve been trying to get pregnant for years,” Barbara Ann said, confused. Actually, she thought the bastard had beat his wife because she’d failed to get pregnant as instructed.

“No,” Beth said, shaking her head. “I wanted a baby so much, I lied about that. We weren’t trying. I was on the Pill. I’ve been on it since we got married. Jack doesn’t want any more children. He already has two children, from his first marriage.”

“He was married before,” Elly put in.

“Twice,” Beth explained. “He has two teenagers from his first marriage, living in Texas.”

“Jesus Christ, does any of us tell the truth about anything around here?” Barbara asked, dumbfounded.

“I just couldn’t stand it. I wanted a baby. I didn’t see how it mattered that much whether Jack did or not. Why should it? It’s not as though he was going to take care of
it. Besides, I knew what Sable said about him was true. I know he hasn’t been faithful. He hasn’t been around much and he’s been in a nasty mood since Christmas, so I decided I was just going to go off the Pill and when I got pregnant, I was going to go home. Back to Kansas City.”

“Beth! You were going to get a baby out of him, then leave him?”

She shrugged. “I couldn’t see any other way to have a baby. I’m thirty-two and I’m not going to get married again. I don’t think I
want
to ever get married again! I come from a huge family where everyone has lots of kids. I have twenty-one nieces and nephews alone and it seems like there’s a new one every year. I love kids and I was aching for a baby.”

“There’s always artificial insemination, if you’re that determined,” Sable said.

“There’s only one way you get a baby in my family,” Beth said quietly. “I wouldn’t want to embarrass them. My brother’s a priest.”

Barbara Ann covered Beth’s hand with hers. “But Beth, do you really want a baby from this man who beats you? Even if you’re only going to leave him…?”

“That was my first plan,” she said. “But things started getting so much better with us. I don’t know what happened, really, but Jack was acting so sweet. I know you’ll never believe this, but Jack can be so wonderful when he’s in a good mood, when things aren’t going wrong for him. It’s only when he gets stressed out—with work, with his family. His father’s a big problem. Now
there’s
a mean man! But that’s always been the hard part. When he’s sweet, he’s the most wonderful man in the world and I love him so much. I decided it was worth one more try. I’d tell him about the baby and—”

“You’re
pregnant?
” they exclaimed in unison.

She smiled and nodded. It was a small, satisfied smile that even the bruise and her swollen eye couldn’t diminish. But the smile faded quickly. “I told him about the baby and he got furious. I should have lied, but when he asked me if I’d done it on purpose, I just blurted out the truth. I thought maybe, just
maybe,
he’d understand how much I really need to have a child of my own! But he didn’t.”

“Obviously,” Elly muttered.

“Does he know you’re here?” Barbara Ann asked.

“Oh no! I didn’t tell him I was leaving! I told him about the baby at dinner last night and he left at about eight o’clock for a midnight departure out of San Francisco. He’s flying to London. He won’t be back until Sunday night. I guess I could have just stayed at home.”

“No, you need to be here. With us,” Sable, the new housemother, proclaimed.

“What did he say? Or did he just coldcock you?”

“Oh, he said a lot. He screamed a lot, about betrayal and ungratefulness and sneakiness and jealousy and spite and— He had a lot to say. My mistake was yelling back at him. I just couldn’t take it anymore,” she said, beginning to cry. “If I’d just kept my mouth shut…”

“Beth, for God’s sake, if he can yell, you should be able to yell back without living in fear of a beating! How did this happen to you?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know. I can’t believe how I’ve failed! I’ve made a mess of everything! If I’d just thought of a better way to handle this, maybe we could have worked it out somehow!”

“Beth, my God,” Barb attempted. “Honey, it’s not up to you to
handle—
”

“I called him a cheap, lying, cheating cocksucker. I
told him I didn’t need him, and if he didn’t want our child, that was fine with me. He could go fuck himself.”

There was a moment of shocked silence in the kitchen. “Let me get this right,” Barbara finally said, pausing to rub her temples. “When you decide to yell back at this Neanderthal wife-beater, you call him a cocksucker and tell him to fuck himself?” Barb turned around and looked at Sable. Sable simply lifted her thin, washed-out brows, a contrite look on her face. “Did he hit you anywhere else? Could he have hurt the baby?”

“No, I’m all right. This one knocked me off my feet, but I had a soft cushion to land on. I really didn’t have to panic. I could have taken my time packing. I could have followed through on my original plan. I was going to load my computer and some of my favorite things—
my
things that I bought or got from my family—into a rented truck and drive back to Kansas City. I have a lot of brothers and brothers-in-law there who wouldn’t let anything happen to me. But I can’t let them see my face. It would kill them to think I let myself be treated like this. And even though he’s going to be gone for a few days, I just had to get out of there as fast as I could. He was so threatening.”

“Did he say he was going to hurt you again?” Barbara asked her.

“Not in so many words. He said that he would expect me to arrange for an abortion and hopefully have that taken care of before he got back. Or else, he said. So,” she said, her voice rising in what was sure to be a whimper, “I guess that’s that. It’s over.” And then she laid her head down on her folded arms and wept.

Barbara Ann rubbed her back. “You go ahead and cry, sweetheart, it’s going to be all right. We’re all done with that cocksucker.”

“But I love him so much,” she wailed, not lifting her head.

“Aren’t women amazing,” Elly said, leaving the table to get a fresh cup of coffee.

“Beth, the man is unfaithful, physically and emotionally abusive, and he ordered you to abort the baby you’re carrying. It is impossible for you to love him,” Barbara Ann said.

“I know,” she cried. “But I do.”

Barbara Ann glanced over her shoulder at Sable, who responded by taking a deep, frustrated breath. Barbara turned back to her weeping friend.

“Beth, dear, I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re so fucked up, you’re starting to make Sable look stable.” She giggled suddenly. “Stable Sable,” she said again. “Beth, how long has this been going on?”

“Since the beginning,” Sable answered for her. She brought her own coffee to the table and sat down, gently stroking Beth’s shoulder, speaking for her. “Seven years. Since this twenty-five-year old girl met and married Mr. Smoothie. This sort of thing usually runs in families, but she’s a genetic throwback. There’s no abuse in her family. The worst she ever got growing up was a swat on the rear with her mother’s wooden spoon. And that, according to Beth, hardly ever happened.”

“What about your father, Beth?”

“Daddy never laid a hand on any of us. Not that he didn’t want to, he said, but Mama would have had the priest at our house every evening for the rest of his natural life. My whole family is in love. They’re all happily married…even John, whose bride is the Church. I’m the only one who hasn’t been able to make it…work.”