Bittersweet

CHAPTER 19

INDIA TURNED down the story in Montana after all, and instead she and Doug told the children they were separating. It was the worst day in her life, and one she hated herself for. This was something she had never wanted to do to them, just as she had never wanted to lose her father. She knew it would change their lives, as it would hers, and yet at the same time, she knew that, because she loved them, they would survive it.
“You mean you and Dad are divorcing}” Sam asked with a look of horror, and she wanted to rip her heart out. But Doug had done it for her.
“Yeah, stupid, what do you think they've just been saying?', Aimee said, choking on a sob, looking daggers at her parents. She hated them both for destroying the perfect life she'd had. They had destroyed all her illusions in a single instant.
Jason said nothing at all, but ran to his room and slammed the door, and when they saw him again, with red, swollen eyes, he pretended nothing had happened.
But at the end of their explanations to them, Jessica turned on her mother. “I hate you,” she said viciously. “This is all your fault, with your stupid magazines and stupid pictures. I heard you fighting with Daddy about it. Why did you have to do that?” She was sobbing and childlike, and had lost all her grown-up airs in an instant.
“Because it's important to me, it's part of who I am, Jess, and I need to do it,” India tried to explain. “It's not as important to me as you are, or Dad, but it meant a lot to me and I hoped that Daddy would understand it.”
“I think you're stupid, both of you!” she shouted, and then ran upstairs to her own room, to lie on her bed and sob, while India wished she could explain it to her. But how did you tell a fourteen-year-old that you no longer loved her father? That he had broken your heart, and destroyed something inside you? She wasn't sure she even understood it.
And then Sam came to sit in her lap and sobbed. He cried for hours, shaking piteously as she held him.
“Will we still see Dad?” he asked, sounding heartbroken.
“Of course you will,” she said, the tears on her own cheeks flowing like rivers. She would have liked to take it all back, to tell them it wasn't true, to make it never have happened. But it had. There was no turning back. Now they all had to face it.
No one wanted to eat after that, but she made them all chicken soup for dinner. And while she was cleaning up, Sam wandered back into the kitchen, looking stricken.
“Dad says you have a boyfriend. Is that true?” India looked horrified as she turned to face him.
“Of course not.”
“He said it was Paul. Is that true, Mom?” He needed to know, and she understood that. It had been a vicious thing for Doug to do. But nothing surprised her.
“No, it's not true, sweetheart.”
“Then why did Daddy say that?” He wanted to believe her.
“Because he's angry, and hurt. We both are. Grownups say stupid things. Sometimes when they're upset. I haven't seen Paul since you did last summer.” She didn't tell him she had talked to him. He didn't need to know that. And in any case, he wasn't her boyfriend. He was never going to be an issue in Sam's life, except as a friend, and fellow sailor. “I'm sorry Daddy said that to you. Don't worry about it.”
But what she said to Doug that night was a great deal stronger. She accused him of using their children to hurt her, and told him that if he ever did it again, he'd regret it.
“It's the truth, isn't it?”
“No, it's not, and you know it. It's too easy to blame this on someone else. This is our doing, we screwed this up, no one helped us. You can't blame a man I talked to on the phone, no matter how often I talked to him, or didn't. If you want to know who's responsible for this, go look in the mirror.”
Doug left the house with his bags packed the next morning. He said he was going to find an apartment in the city. And he told her that once he got settled, he wanted to see the kids on the weekends. And suddenly she realized how many things they'd have to work out, how often he saw the kids, and when and where, if she got to keep the house, what he was going to pay her for child support. Suddenly she realized how totally all their lives would be affected.
She stayed home and cried for five days after he left, mourning what she had had with him, and what she had lost. And sensing the distress she was in, Paul kept a discreet distance, and didn't call her.
She finally called him a week after Doug had left, and talked to him for a long time about the children. They were still upset, and Jessica was still furious with her, but the others seemed to be adjusting. Sam was sad, but Doug had come out to visit them, and took them out for lunch and a movie on Sunday. She had asked him if he wanted to come in when he dropped them off, just to talk, but he had looked at her as though she were a stranger.
“I have nothing to say to you, India. Do you have a lawyer yet?” She had told him she hadn't. She hadn't felt ready to face that. But from everything Doug said to her, she knew it was over. Part of her wanted it to be, wanted to get away from the constant agony of it, and part of her still mourned the good years they had had together. She knew it would take her a long time to get over it, just as it was taking Paul time to get over Serena. And he understood that.
He was back in the south of France by then, in Cap d'Antibes, and he started calling every day again. And little by little through the weeks of January, she started to feel better. And Gail gave her the name of a divorce attorney. She still couldn't believe what had happened to them.
“What do you think did it?” Gail asked her one morning in early February over cappuccino.
“Everything,” India said honestly. “Time. Doug wanting me not to go back to work. His refusing to hear what I was feeling. My refusing to do what he wanted. Looking back at it now, I'm surprised we lasted this long.”
“I always figured you two were a sure thing forever.”
“So did I,” India said, smiling wistfully at her. “But those are the ones you have to watch out for. The perfect marriages we all believe in just aren't. It only worked as long as I played by his rules. As soon as I rocked the boat a little bit, and tried to add some of mine, it was all over.”
“Are you sorry? Sorry that you rocked the boat, I mean?”
“Sometimes. It would have been easier not to do it, but after a while, I couldn't. I needed more than he was willing to give me. I see that now. And this is pretty scary.” The kids were her responsibility now. There was no one to be there for her, to come home to her at night, to care if she got sick, or broke a leg, or died. She had no parents, no siblings, no family, other than her children. But listening to her put Gail's own marriage into question. It hadn't been good for years, but she had never seriously thought about leaving her husband, even if she liked complaining about him. The weird part was that for India, everything had seemed fine, and then all of a sudden it wasn't. And it was over.
“What are you going to do now? Will you sell the house?” Gail looked worried for her.
“Doug says I don't have to. He can afford to let me stay here. I can stay in it until the kids grow up, or go to college, and then we can sell it. Or before that, if I get married,” she grinned at Gail ruefully. “I don't think that's likely, unless Dan Lewison asks me out.” There wasn't a soul in Westport she wanted to go out with. And all of the men Gail was seeing on the sly were married.
“You've got a lot of courage,” Gail said with admiration. “I've bitched about Jeff for years, and I'm not even sure I like him. But I don't think I could do this.”
“Yes, you could, if you had to. If you knew you had more to lose if you didn't. That's what happened to me. You probably love Jeff more than you think, you just don't want to admit it.”
“Listening to you talk about the kids, the house, alimony, vacations, I may go home tonight and kiss him,” Gail said, with a look of terror. And India smiled at her.
“Maybe you should.” But she no longer regretted what had happened. She knew it was for the best now. As scary as it was for her, and it had been, in a funny way, she knew it was what she wanted. And if nothing else, she had freedom. She had all the responsibility of the children, but she knew she could organize it so she could take some local assignments.
Raoul sent her on one in Washington in February. It was an interview with the First Lady. It wasn't as exciting as a war zone, but it was close to home, and it kept her hand in. And then she did another story about a coal mine in Kentucky. She had no time for any social life but by then, Doug had an apartment, and according to Gail, who had heard it on the grapevine, a girlfriend. He hadn't wasted much time, and had started seeing her a month after he left home. She was divorced and had two kids, and lived in Greenwich. She had never worked, talked too much, had great legs, and was very pretty. Three of Gail's friends knew her and made a point to tell her everything so it would get back to India. They thought she should have the information.
Paul still called her every day, and he was finally beginning to sound better. He still had bad dreams, but he had regained his sense of humor, and he was starting to talk about business. And although he wouldn't admit it, India suspected that he missed it. Serena had been gone for six months by then, and although India knew he still missed her desperately, he was starting to tell some of the funnier stories about her, about the outrageous things she'd done, the people she had insulted brilliantly, and the vendettas she had engaged in. They painted her in a less saintly light than the things he had said about her before that. And it indicated he hadn't entirely lost his perspective about her. But what also showed, each time they spoke, was how much he still loved her.
He had been a huge support to India once Doug was gone, and he always said she was better off, and when she was down, he had trouble seeing why she missed him. The fact that she had been married to Doug for longer than he had known his wife, somehow escaped him. He thought Doug was a bastard and India was well rid of him, and he was hard put to see why she was sometimes sad about it. It was hard for him to under-stand that she had not only lost a husband, but a life, and all the trappings that went with it, just as he had.
In early March he was still on the Sea Star, but she was beginning to think he sounded restless. She knew his moods by then, his quirks, his needs, his terrors, and his pet peeves. In an odd way sometimes it almost felt as though they were married. They knew so much about each other. And he knew all the same things about her. But he still insisted, when they talked about it, that he was never going to be the light at the end of the tunnel for her. He would always be there for her, he claimed, as a friend, but he kept telling her she had to find someone to go out with.
“Okay, start leaving my phone number on bathroom walls in the south of France. I haven't seen anyone in Westport.”
“You're not trying,” he scolded.
“You're right. They're all ugly, stupid, or married. Or alcoholics. There are a lot of those here. And I don't need one.”
“Too bad. I was about to suggest AA meetings. That might be a good place to find a date,” he teased.
“Be nice, or I'll start shipping divorcees to the boat for you, and believe me, that would be pretty scary.” They had an easy relationship that allowed for both solace and humor, and they had been talking to each other daily for so long that neither of them could imagine living without it, though it wrought havoc on her phone bill. And the strangest part of it was that she had no idea when she would see him again, if ever. This seemed to be all they wanted. The romantic overtone between them had begun to die down, and after Doug left in January, India seemed to be less concerned about it. Paul had made himself clear to her before that, about his intentions with her, or lack of them, and whatever electricity they had once felt, seemed to have gone underground for a long time now. They were more like brother and sister.
So she felt quite comfortable telling him about a man she had met at Sam's soccer game, who was so repulsive she had actually taken a picture of him. He was fat, bald, rude, chewed gum, picked his nose, had belched in her face, and then asked her for a date on Tuesday.
“And what did you say to him?” Paul asked, sounding amused. He loved listening to her stories. In spite of all her troubles, she still had a mischievous sense of humor.
“I told him I'd meet him at the Village Grille, of course. Hell, do you think I want to be an old maid forever?” But the truth was, she did now. She really didn't want to find anyone, she was still smarting from the last one. And she got what she needed from their phone calls. In some ways, it was keeping her from getting her feet wet. And she was still trying hard not to.
“I'm sorry to hear that,” Paul said, feigning disappointment.
“Why?” she teased him. “Are you jealous?”
“Obviously. But aside from that, I'm flying in to New York next week, and I thought maybe we could have lunch or something … or even dinner …but now that you're busy …”
“You're what}” She couldn't believe what he was saying. She had begun to think he would be on the Sea Star forever, and was merely a figment of her imagination. “Do you mean that?”
“There's a board meeting my partners say I have to attend, so I thought I'd see how New York looks after all this time, and …well, you know …even the Sea Star gets a little boring.”
“I never thought I'd hear you say that,” she said, beaming.
“Neither did I. Thank God Serena can't hear me.” But he didn't sound as sad now when he talked about her.
“When are you coming?”
“Sunday night.” He'd been wrestling with the idea for weeks, and hadn't said anything to her. He didn't want to get her hopes up. And he was still a little nervous about seeing her. For all his brave words, there was something about her that touched him deeply. “Any chance you want to meet me?” He felt like a kid asking for a date as he said it.
“At the airport?”
“Well, yes, that's usual. I'm not arriving by boat this time. Would that be a nuisance, coming in from Westport?”
“I think it could be arranged.” And then she wondered. “When did you decide this?” She wondered if he had decided on the spur of the moment, or if he'd planned it.
“About a week ago. I didn't say anything, because I wanted to be sure I meant it. But I bought my ticket this morning, so I guess I'm coming. It'll be good to see you, India.” There was something odd about the way he said it, but she decided it was just emotional for him coming back to New York, and staying at his apartment. He had left the day after the funeral and hadn't been back since then. And she still remembered all too clearly how devastated he had looked at Saint Ignatius. But at least he'd had some time to heal in the meantime.
“I can't wait to see you,” she said simply, wondering how long he was staying, but not wanting to ask him. She didn't know if he was coming home for good, or just trying it on for size. She suspected he didn't know either, and didn't want to press him. “I guess I'll have to cancel my date then. The sacrifices we make for our friends …”
“Keep his number. You still might need it.” They chatted for a few minutes, and then hung up. He promised to give her the details of his arrival later. And in Westport, India sat looking out the window for a long time, looking for a sign of spring. But there was none. The trees were still bare, the ground was bleak. But knowing he was coming back made her feel as though something ought to be in bloom again. They had both survived such a long, lonely winter. They deserved some small reward for what they'd gone through. But life didn't always give rewards, she knew by then. There were no prizes for despair, or tragedy, or loss, or courage. There was just more of the same. And now and then, some small flower peeking through the snow, to spur you on, and give you hope, and remind you of better days. To remind you that one day, after the winter, there would be spring, and eventually summer.
But for the moment, there was still no sign of it for her. There were long, lonely days, and nothing more to hang on to but his phone calls. And now he was coming home. But as she walked slowly upstairs with a smile, she told herself it meant nothing. But in spite of that, it would be good to see him.