I drop by without calling. My mistake, since no one except the housekeeper is home. I leave the basket with a note for Marin to call me, knowing she won’t. If it wasn’t for Mama, I never would have known what happened.
As I’m settling back into my car, my phone buzzes. I’m expecting Mama, and my heart rate accelerates when I see it’s Eric.
Do you have time to talk?
Yes, I do. Absolutely. Like a schoolgirl, I text back in seconds.
With our lawyers.
The phone drops onto the leather seat. Sweat lines my hand, dampening it. He wants to make the separation permanent, no going back. Unable to text back, I drive. Aimlessly at first, then to run irrelevant errands. I pick up dry cleaning and then groceries for one. Arriving home, I see a forgotten embossed invitation to a charity luncheon on the counter. Glancing down at my outfit, I decide my slacks and summer blouse will do. Leaving the milk and eggs on the counter, I head out, anxious to make it on time.
“Trisha,” they exclaim on my arrival, “we weren’t expecting you!”
No, I imagine they weren’t. Bad news spreads faster than good as a rule. Everyone knew that Eric had left the house, but no one knew why. They would have made guesses, finding proof in their own minds to support their theories. No one could have imagined the truth. “I wouldn’t have missed it,” I say, faking a smile.
I sit with my friends around a table, laughing at whatever they say. We talk about mundane things, the weather, local fashion, and Hollywood gossip, as if those lives affected ours. A few catty comments about locals, but nothing too abrasive for fear it may be repeated and credit given. Checks are made out for a local charity, the flavor of the month. I take out my checkbook, ready to donate as I always do, and ask the name of the charity.
“It’s the shelter in San Francisco for women and children victims of domestic violence,” a friend from years past tells me, signing her own check with a flourish, her manicured nails perfectly done. “God, I can’t imagine what those people go through. Can you?”
No, I want to say, keeping up the illusion I have created, but I can’t. Instead, I start to write but my hand begins to shake. My father is lying in a coma. Eric wants me gone from his life forever. My niece—our future, beaten. No straw breaks the camel’s back. Instead it is an avalanche. I stare at the wine goblet and wonder what it would feel like to throw it against the wall. Disturb the perfect setting I have lost myself in. Glass doesn’t break cleanly. It shatters into a million pieces, making it impossible to put back together. Leaving the glass untouched, I stand, the check unwritten.
“Yes, I can imagine,” I say to the group, shocking them into silence. My friends for years, but not one of them knows as I was sure there wasn’t anything to tell. “I know what they go through because I watched it my entire childhood.” A tree that falls in a forest doesn’t make a sound because no one is there to hear it. Believing that, I hid my past, sure it didn’t exist if I didn’t speak of it.
“Trisha, what are you talking about?” another friend asks, staring at me like I’m a stranger. “That’s impossible.”
I had tried so hard to make it seem as if it were, but I was fatigued by the act. The fa?ade was harder to maintain than I realized. I had convinced myself that if I mastered the part, if I was queen of the stage, then I would become the person I was playing. But the mask has started to slip and no matter how hard I try, I can’t seem to keep it in place. Accepting the past that belongs to me I murmur, “I wish it were.” Meeting their shocked gazes, I stare at the friends I called my own. “My father beat my sisters and mom our entire childhood.” Sure I can feel their disgust, I turn away, wondering if this is how Sonya and Marin feel every day of their lives.
“I’m sorry,” a friend whispers, covering my hand with her own. “We never knew.”
Caught off guard by her sympathy, I lower my head in shame for where I come from, where I’m standing, and for not knowing where I’m going. With nothing left to lose, I return to my empty car and continue to drive aimlessly.