WORTHY, Part 2 (5 page)

“He doesn’t give up,” I said. “He’ll get through this.”

“He hasn’t always been like this,” Collier began, then stopped and smiled. “But I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that.”

“I’ve heard lots of things about the way he used to be,” I said, then frowned. “You mentioned that you’ve been advising him some. How often would you say you get to talk to him?”

“Oh, every day,” Collier said. “Sometimes twice, if he has a pressing question. I suppose our phone bills are going to be astronomical this month, but I’ll let the accountants worry about that.”

This was news to me. My husband was speaking to his father sometimes twice a day? I knew that it was business, that Jonathan was just trying to pump Collier’s brain for all of the knowledge and wisdom that it held, but it still hurt. We went whole weeks without speaking, only a handful of text messages letting each other know we were even still alive.

“Is he doing all right?” I asked. “I think you get to talk to him a little more often than I do.”

Collier patted my hand in a way that I was sure he meant to be reassuring, but it did very little to quell my angst. In fact, it was downright condescending.

“Let him do this the right way, Michelle,” he said. “He’s doing all he can to try to be the person he thinks he can be. Let’s throw all of our support behind him.”

“I definitely support him,” I said quickly. “I just want to know if he’s all right. Sometimes I don’t hear from him at all, and I worry.”

“He’s probably drinking a little more caffeine than is healthy, but that’s just due to the constant state of jet lag,” Collier said, chuckling. “I wish it were me sometimes. I wish I were just a little bit younger. What an adventure — a new country every few days, places to see, people to meet.”

It sounded amazing — if you were Jonathan or Collier. Unfortunately, I was just Michelle, the wife who had been left behind while her husband traversed the world on this wondrous adventure.

“This time will pass before you know it,” Collier said. “You’ll see. Soon, he’ll be back, and this will all be in the past. He’s been to most of these places before, but now he’ll really know them. I don’t doubt that he’ll want to take you to some of the cities he’s visited. So you have that to look forward to.”

I didn’t give a damn about Paris or Greece or any of it. I just wanted my husband back in my arms. I wanted to hold him and let him hold me.

But I forced myself to smile and nod.

“I think I’m finally tired,” I lied. “I should probably go in and let you smoke in peace.”

“Good night, then,” Collier said.

“Good night.”

Collier had only meant to comfort me with his speeches and explanations, but I still felt lost and morose. I wished that Jonathan could find the time to call me every day, even if it was a selfish notion. Knowing that I would hear from him and talk to him every day that he was gone would be an enormous comfort.

Instead, I was faced with an empty bed, the knowledge that I had no idea where exactly in the world he was, and the understanding that Collier knew more about my husband than I did.

I checked my phone as soon as I flopped into bed, but there was nothing. No missed attempts at Skype, no new text messages, no missed calls or saved voicemails.

I needed something more to occupy my time, and fast, or I was afraid that Jonathan would come home to a wife who’d gone insane with loneliness.

I wasn’t sure exactly how Jane had convinced me to go out with her and Brock. Maybe there was something to Collier wanting her to become a lawyer after all.

I’d tried to talk her out of it again, lying that I was expecting Jonathan on Skype again, trying to convince her to go out to dinner with me instead, but she wasn’t having it.

“We can’t eat before we go out,” she said. “Food keeps the drinks from hitting you as hard. I want to get wasted, don’t you?”

I didn’t know what to say to that. I’d certainly been tipsy before, and had found it a little bit pleasant to have all my thoughts encased in cotton balls. But wasted sounded a lot more dire than that, and I really couldn’t talk Jane out of the plan she’d already devised.

Jane had even insisted on getting ready together, saying that pre-gaming while applying our makeup and wriggling into our dresses was all part of the fun.

“You really didn’t know that?” Jane asked, her reflection locking eyes with mine in her huge mirror. We had set up shop in her bathroom. Jane’s level of the house was completely different from the other levels I was familiar with. Jonathan’s level was clean and modern, and the level Amelia and Collier shared was classic and elegant.

Jane’s level was something else entirely, a manic cross between a Barbie dream house and a wild club. Jonathan had a home office on his floor, but Jane seemed to have opted for a magnificent closet and vanity space. The place she kept all of her clothes and shoes and purses and makeup and hair products was probably bigger than my entire cottage had been. The flooring throughout her living space was black and white checkered, giving it something of a funhouse feel. But everything else was decorated in varying shades of pink — pink chandeliers dripping pink crystals down so low that you had to walk around them, pink, faintly sparkling walls, and a fluffy pink fur throw rug beside her four-poster bed swathed in pink mosquito netting.

Jane had a full-service bar in her sitting room, for heaven’s sake, and on nights like this, she appropriated one of the family’s staff members to act as bartender and errand runner and phone answerer.

As awkward as it was, tonight she’d snagged Lucy.

“Didn’t know what?” I asked, smiling at Lucy as she set a couple of martini glasses on the bathroom countertop brimming with a shimmering liquid I couldn’t identify. Lucy didn’t make eye contact, slipping back out until she was called again.

“Didn’t you ever get ready to go anywhere with your girlfriends?” Jane asked. She painstakingly applied mascara along her lower lashes wearing nothing but a thong and a strapless bra. I had tried to put on my dress first thing, but she had fussed at me. Dresses were apparently the last thing to happen before we left for the club. There were too many things that could happen to our expensive scraps of cloth, like spilled makeup or cocktails. I had, however, been allowed to don a slinky little robe of Jane’s to wear over my own underwear. I didn’t think I’d be comfortable enough to stand around in only my underwear around her.

“Not like this,” I said. “I didn’t really hang out with anyone after… well…”

“How thoughtless of me,” Jane said, tossing the tube of mascara down onto the countertop with a clatter. “You went straight to the woods after your parents died. I’m sorry, Michelle.”

“That’s all right,” I said, smiling to ease her discomfort. I looked at my reflection in the mirror and remembered that I was supposed to be sweeping a shimmery gold eye shadow over my eyelids. It matched the dress that Jane had picked out for me.

“Well, cheers,” Jane said, hoisting one of the martinis. I quickly grabbed the stem of my glass, wincing as the cocktail slopped over the sides and onto my hand. “Cheers to better times.”

“To better times,” I said, clinking my glass with hers.

The martini had cucumber in it, making it fresh and delicious. The first martini Jane had tried to ply me with was so strong that I hadn’t been able to finish it. Almost begrudgingly, Jane had been forced to instruct Lucy to make them a little less vigorous for the rest of the evening.

“Like tonight, for one,” Jane said, downing her cocktail in one swig. I didn’t know how she did it. She was already several drinks ahead of me. “I can’t believe you’ve been here all this time and no one’s taken you out on the town.”

“I’ve never really gone clubbing,” I admitted, carefully brushing on the gold powder. Even though I promised Jane I’d get ready with her, I’d applied the foundation and concealer that helped camouflage my scarring before I came down to her floor. Nobody needed to witness me hiding that part of myself.

“Tonight’s the night, then,” Jane said. “Still, though, why didn’t Jonathan ever take you?”

I shrugged. “He’s been so busy with the company —”

“Oh, fuck the company,” Jane snapped impatiently. “Company this, company that. We’re more than the Wharton Group, you know.”

“I know,” I said quickly. “But he really wanted to do a good job. He wanted them to know that he hadn’t changed.”

“But that’s the funniest thing of all,” Jane said, waving her hand. She was well on her way to getting drunk, but no surprise there. I’d witnessed all the alcohol she’d poured down her throat. “The funniest thing of all is that he has changed. Majorly.”

“In a good way or a bad way?” I said after a short pause. Maybe I shouldn’t be asking this. I’d hesitated to ask anyone close to my husband about how he used to be when his memories were intact. It almost seemed like a violation of his privacy. And it was probably even more wrong to ask Jane. She was so loosened up by the alcohol that one of her breasts had very nearly worked its way out of her strapless bra, and she hadn’t even noticed. I wondered if there was a delicate way to let her know.

“That depends on who you ask,” Jane said, reaching for her martini glass before she remembered she’d drained it. “Lucy! Another round!”

“Oh, I haven’t finished mine yet.”

“Then chug!” Jane hollered, her eyes glittering. “Chug that drink!”

I bit my lip and hoisted the glass to my lips, but this wasn’t something I could just chug. I wasn’t Jane. However, when I tried to lower my hand after taking a sizable but painful gulp, she seized my wrist and continued to tip the glass up. I did the best I could, but spluttered at the very end, coughing cucumber martini on the both of us.

“That’s why we’re not in our dresses yet!” Jane whooped, cheering and applauding as I set the now-empty glass back on the countertop. I felt a little woozy and hoped my stomach would settle.

Lucy came into the room with a fresh couple of cucumber martinis, and I gagged a little.

“I don’t think I can drink another one of those,” I admitted, my vision swimming a bit.

“We’ll switch it up after this one, then,” Jane agreed, nodding at Lucy. “You can go ahead and mix a couple of gin and tonics.”

I let out a long breath of air and struggled to apply my eyeliner in an effort to not think about more alcohol. It was difficult to tell whether the line was straight or not. Glancing up, I noticed Jane studying me over the rim of the martini glass.

“My brother used to go clubbing all the time,” she said finally, when I met her eyes in the mirror.

“That’s all right,” I said quickly, putting my stick of eyeliner down and straightening. “I don’t want to know. I shouldn’t have asked. I know he was a different person then, and I know he’s changed.”

“Here, let me finish that up for you,” Jane said, retrieving the pencil I’d dropped and standing very close to me. “I have more practice at it than you. I can’t really expect there to be a good reason to wear eyeliner in the woods, am I right?”

“You’re right,” I said, trying not to flinch as she brought the pencil precariously close to my eye.

“Look up,” Jane said softly, drawing the pencil along my lower lash line. “Jonathan has changed. Even you acknowledge it. You’re his wife now. Aren’t you at least curious about how he used to be? I could tell you everything you want to know.”

I had to hold my breath to keep still as Jane moved on to attend to my other eye with the pencil. Something about this felt wrong.

“I don’t feel good about it,” I said. “The person Jonathan was before is a stranger to me. That person was in love with Violet. He was going to marry her.”

“And so you don’t want to know that person,” Jane surmised. “Close your eyes.”

“It’s not that,” I protested, my eyes fluttering shut. Now, I couldn’t halt my flinching, especially when I couldn’t anticipate when Jane was going to jab me with the sharp end of the pencil. “It’s just strange to think about. Your brother and I — the person he is today — fell in love. The person Jonathan is today is the man I love — and the man who loves me. The person he used to be is a stranger to us both.”

“What do you think will happen once his memories return?” Jane asked, running the pencil over my eyelids again and again. “Do you think he’ll still love you, or do you think he’ll go back to Violet?”

“There’s no guarantee that his memories will come back,” I said, trying to clamp down on the old fear that was rising within me. I’d often expressed the same idea to Jonathan, but he told me nothing would ever change between us. “That’s what the doctor said.”

“But there’s no guarantee they’ll stay gone forever, either,” Jane said lightly. “You should have a contingency plan, you know. My brother was a pretty big womanizer.”

I winced and backed away from Jane’s onslaught with the eyeliner. “I really don’t want to know,” I said. “Really. I regret asking. It was silly.”

“Are you satisfied with being with a damaged man?” she asked, raising her eyebrows at me. “Are you willing to ignore the fact that he’s not all of himself?”

“What do you mean?” I asked shakily, reaching for the martini glass.

“The Jonathan I know now is an incomplete person,” Jane said. “Until he gets in touch with the memories he lost, he’ll never be whole. He’ll always be missing that vital part of himself that made him Jonathan Wharton. You’re okay with that? You’re okay with him never understanding what he lost?”

“Of course I’m not okay with that,” I said, taking a small sip of the martini. It didn’t turn my stomach now like it had before. It offered me a strange comfort and courage. “And I’m also not okay with the idea that the person he was before the accident is always there, haunting us. It bothers us both. But all we can do is love each other and support each other.”

“Then cheers to that,” Jane said, beaming as she clinked glasses with me. I finished the cocktail in a few gulps. “Love is a strange thing, Michelle. I’m sort of glad I don’t love any of my boyfriends.”

“Boyfriends?” I asked, shocked. “As in, more than one?”

“I’m Jane Wharton,” she said grandly, wrapping a stray tendril of hair around a hot curling iron. “I don’t date anyone exclusively.”

“I kind of thought that you and Brock…”

“Of course not!” Jane shrieked, laughing. “Oh, he wishes. He wishes so hard sometimes. And of course, sometimes I have to give him a little taste. That’s what keeps him coming back. Keeps him in line, too.”

It was an odd picture in my head to imagine Jane stringing Brock along. He was the one who seemed like the womanizer.

“So, you date a few guys —”

“Tons.”

“You date tons of guys,” I corrected, trying to keep my face blank, “but you would never settle down with one? Never love one?”

“Love is so complicated and demanding,” Jane said dismissively, grabbing one of the highballs of gin and tonic that Lucy had delivered at some point. It must’ve been while Jane was doing my eyeliner. “I don’t understand why anyone would want to tie themselves down to just one person. What if something would go wrong? It’s too risky.”

It was too risky to sleep with a bunch of guys, I thought, but I didn’t express it. I didn’t know for sure, anyways. Jonathan had been my first and only, and I was more than content with keeping it that way.