Anne strides down the cavernous hallway of the Central Park West apartment in her bra, panties, and the new Manolo Blahnik heels she paid six hundred dollars for at Bergdorf’s. She hates heels, they’re uncomfortable and send the wrong message. But today is a heels day-some days just are. Anne has spent the last week in a state of low-level panic. She called Judith Arnold back and swore her to secrecy about the pregnancy. She also asked for some pills to quell her anxiety, but was told they all carried too many risks. Anne reminds herself constantly how important it is to keep going. The next couple of weeks are going to be about Charles and the book. After that, she’ll have time to think. To decide.
She and Charles have been moving through the house as if in parallel universes. He began to slip down that black hole of his, but then, to his credit, he started work on a short story to take his mind off things. He’s also running compulsively, for hours at a time, and then polishing off two bottles of wine during their tense, desultory dinners. Anne knows that the less she says the better-they just have to wait and see how the release of Capitol Offense plays out. She yearns for the connection and release of lovemaking, but Charles loses all interest in sex when he’s depressed or resentful and right now he’s both.
In the kitchen-the kitchen that recently graced the pages of Metropolitan Home — Anne digs into the perfectly ripe papaya half Magdalena has left, as per instructions, on the bare white vastness of the room’s center island. Anne adores papaya-fat free, good for the digestion, and when perfectly ripe it literally melts on the tongue. Fifty percent of eating is texture, the other fifty percent is guilt. She looks around the gleaming room with its glass-front cabinets. None of that au courant clutter for her, thank you very much. The mania for baskets-woven grease-magnets she calls them-sets her teeth on edge. Anne is glad they bought the apartment, in spite of the squeeze it has put them in. She loves the space, the light, the views. In the past year their dinner parties have become coveted invitations, in no small part because people want to see what Anne Turner has done in her own home.
Anne listens. Beyond the door-the door that leads to Charles’s domain, the chaotic domain of Charles Davis-she hears nothing. She never does, although that never stops her from listening.
The kitchen phone rings.
“Yes.”
“Good morning, darling.”
Anne runs her fingers through her hair-this is the last person she wants to talk to today.
“Hello, Mother.”
“You didn’t answer my E-mail.”
“I’ve been swamped. Where are you?”
“Palm Beach. Did you forget? Tory Clarke’s wedding is this weekend. You were invited.”
“I’d rather book a root canal than go to Tory Clarke’s wedding. She’s as narrow-minded and right wing as the rest of her family.”
Damn! Ten seconds into the call and she’s already regressed from successful thirty-six-year-old to hostile teenager. Her earliest memory is of her mother dragging her to riding lessons, telling her she was going to win a gold medal in the Olympics. Then there were the French lessons, the dancing class, the B-minus in math that cost her the class trip to Catalina.
“Is everything all right, Anne?”
Anne can imagine Frances-who’s on her second face-lift and third husband-flushed from her morning workout, perched on the edge of a chaise in the guest suite of some friend’s mansion, sipping tea off the tray the maid delivered, looking out at the ocean, and patting on $100-an-ounce under-eye cream.
“I sent Tory a present. Give her my best. How are you and Dwight?” Anne’s current stepfather is a real estate developer who rode the southern California population boom straight to the Forbes 400. Her real father, an aeronautical engineer whom Anne adored, died of cancer when she was eight years old. His death bewildered and terrified her and left her with a haunting fear that the worst always happens, a fear she denies, even to herself.
“We’re wonderful, although Palm Beach is awfully humid. Why does anyone live on the East Coast? Listen, darling, I just wanted to check in and see how Charles’s new book is doing. We’re all breathless with anticipation.”
Frances Allen has never really approved of Charles, and Anne is sure she’d like nothing better than for the new book to fail. She groomed her daughter to marry a titan of industry, someone with serious money, places in Bel Air and Pebble Beach, private planes and entree into the highest levels of government. Not some novelist who’s part of the condescending East Coast cultural elite.
“The book is doing well,” Anne says.
“Have any reviews come out?”
“No,” Anne lies.
“Then how do you know it’s doing well?”
Anne takes a deep breath.
“I’ve got a big day, Mom.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
“Give my best to Dwight.”
“Listen, darling, we’re going to be in New York next month. Or at least I am. You know how your stepfather feels about that city. I’ll be at the Plaza Athenee.”
“Let me know the dates. Good-bye, Mother.”
Anne hangs up and immediately scoops out the rest of the papaya. The call was par for the course-not one question about Home, about how Anne is doing. Frances is a raging narcissist who sees her own life in color and everyone else’s in black-and-white. She hates her daughter for being younger and prettier than she is, for forging a career that eclipses Frances, for-Stop it! Anne has no time for those old tapes. Not today. Not ever.
Suddenly the door to Charles’s office flies open. Anne gasps.
“Jesus, Charles, you scared me.”
Charles storms through the kitchen. Anne puts down the papaya and counts to fifteen. Then she heads toward the back of the apartment. In spite of everything, she’s excited by Charles-what woman wouldn’t be?
She stands in the bathroom doorway watching as he splashes cold water on his face over and over again.
“I take it your work didn’t go well this morning?”
“No need to ‘take it.’ Why don’t you just ask me?”
Uh-oh, impossible mood.
Anne crosses the bedroom, past the bank of windows that look out over the park, walks into her closet, and grabs two dresses, two short (but not too short), sexy dresses-what’s the point of chiseling down her thighs if she doesn’t show them off-one deep red, one this marvelous metallic shade of burnt gold.
“Charles, which one should I wear tonight? I want to look like a trophy wife.”
That gets a smile out of him. He looks from the dresses to her body.
“The gold.”
He’s right, of course-the dress’s tawny gleam sets off her red hair and pale, freckle-splashed skin to high advantage. Anne hooks the dress on the back of the door. She quietly slips into her slacks and blouse. Charles sits brooding on the edge of the mahogany sleigh bed.
Anne sits beside him and rubs his neck.
“You know how much I believe in you, darling. We’ll get through all this.”
He turns to her, looking so vulnerable, so vulnerable and so gorgeous, with that full mouth, those hazel eyes cradled in their comforting web of wrinkles, that tousled chestnut hair, that jaw covered with stubble, bristly stubble that brings an exciting hint of pain when it moves across her flesh.
“Oh, Anne, I didn’t marry an optimist for nothing.”
And he kisses her, lightly, on the lips. Anne knows that in many ways she’s stronger than Charles. He’s an artist-certain critics have even called him a genius-prey to unspeakable demons, crippling doubts. His work is so important. Sometimes, late at night when she can’t sleep, Anne will tiptoe into the library, pick up one of his books, and reread a favorite passage. What compelling characters he creates, how beautifully he puts words together, capturing all the pain and frailty and radiance of life. And this man loves her. She wants so much to help him right now, for his sake, of course, but also, she admits to herself, to assuage her guilt over her success-and her transgression.
“Thanks for putting up with me, tea biscuit,” he whispers in her ear.
“Hey, no problem.”
“You be the best.”
“I had a silly idea,” Anne says tentatively.
“We should take off for Bangkok?”
“I wish we could. If you hate the idea just say so, but do you think maybe it would help if you got your office organized? Just a little.”
He refuses to let the housekeeper enter the rooms where he works, the former maids’ quarters down that long hallway off the kitchen. Anne, organized to a fault, is secretly appalled by the unanswered mail, unreturned phone calls, unfiled papers. She’s sure a clean sweep would help Charles stay focused on the future, on his new work.
“I relent. Magdalena can haul in the Dirt Devil and work her magic.”
“But what about cleaning out some of the deadwood? I had this fantastic temp last week while Trent was on vacation. Completely unobtrusive. Why don’t I call the agency and have them send her over? If you don’t like having her around, we’ll send her right back.”
Charles walks into the bathroom and turns on the sauna. Anne follows.
“Will you at least consider it?” she asks.
“I will.”
“HG-TV is coming up to the office this afternoon to shoot a piece on Home, so I won’t see you till the party. What time is your Book Talk taping?”
“They’re sending a car at four-thirty,” Charles says, taking off his shirt and slipping out of his pants. There he is in those striped boxers, with that boxer build-a boxer gone slightly, sexily to seed.
“Nina’s expecting a mob scene,” Anne says, her gaze running down his body.
“Free food’ll do it every time.” Charles steps out of his shorts. Anne catches her breath. She looks at the two of them in the mirror. Their eyes meet. He looks wounded, wary. She wants him so badly but is afraid of being rebuffed, of adding to the distance between them. She crosses to him and kisses him, putting a hand on his chest. He accepts her kiss passively.
“I’ll see you this evening,” she says. “And do think about the girl. I think she might be a help.”