Entry-Level Mistress

chapter 18



“So Gabe’s bringing the truck by at ten tomorrow.”

I didn’t look up from the box I was taping shut. Box number 15. Storage. I had no idea how I had accumulated so much stuff in the two years I’d lived in the apartment. I had known it was cluttered but there were little papers and things stuffed here and there that I had completely forgotten about.

Leanna stepped further into my room, her tan legs coming into view, as well as the fringe on her cutoff jean shorts. “Let’s take a break, have some cold water, sit by the fan.”

The reminder made it even worse. The air conditioner was set to its highest setting but it wasn’t enough to counteract the wet heat of August in Boston. I stood, twisted my hair up and held it on top of my head as I followed her into the living room.

Which was filled with Leanna’s boxes. This was it. The real end of college, of my life in Boston. The end of my childhood. My friend was going off to grad school in Manhattan, and I was going to upstate New York.

“Sit down. I’ll get us water.”

I stood for a moment, taking in the cool breeze from the fan.

“I should really keep packing.”

“No, what you should do is take the damn test.” Leanna handed me the cold glass, punctuating her statement with a pointed look.

“I’m not pregnant.”

Leanna brightened for a second and then her eyes narrowed. She sat down on the papasan, pressing her own glass to her forehead.

“Ignoring the situation won’t make it disappear, Em,” she said. “You can’t will yourself to not be. And if you are, you need to take care of yourself. Or deal with it.”

Deal with it. I wasn’t pregnant. I didn’t have to deal with anything. But my shoulders were tight with unspoken tension. I wasn’t. Life could not be that cruel. Except, there had been that time on the beach, when wrapped up in love and the magic of the night, I hadn’t given a single thought to protection. I let out a deep breath and finally crawled onto the futon. I couldn’t lie to Leanna. She wouldn’t let me anyway.

“Listen, I’m taking the vitamins, just in case. But I don’t want to know right now. I don’t want to make decisions based on something like that. I’m about to start my life and if I am … ” I looked up helplessly. “Then—” I stopped. I couldn’t say it. A baby would tie me to Daniel in a way no memories, nothing else could.

“He’s rich, Em,” Leanna reminded me needlessly. “If you are pregnant, and you keep it, he should be responsible. You wouldn’t have to be some reality TV episode, 21 and Pregnant.”

If I were pregnant then it was yet another pattern. Single woman walks away from wealthy businessman. My mother had done it. Made her own life until my dad had come back in and stomped all over it.

I wouldn’t let anyone stomp on me.

And I wasn’t pregnant.

I placed my glass on the coffee table, drew my knees up to my chest. I didn’t want to talk about it or hear about it. It wasn’t as if I didn’t have my own incessant thoughts. I still needed to get over the stupidity of letting myself fall in love with a man I knew could only hurt me.

Between my fingers, I played with strands of my long hair. I’d stopped dying it and the black was slowly washing out. The strands that had once been purple were now a funny orangey-yellow from the bleach.

“It’s been three weeks since I last saw him. That’s half the time we were actually together. A whole lifetime really. So … it’s over, and I don’t want to talk to him or speak of him ever again.”

“And when your kid asks who his daddy is?”

“I’m not pregnant, damn it!” I exploded. I stared at Leanna, shocked at my own outburst, shocked at the angry energy that still coursed through me.

“All right,” Leanna said, in a tone far too complacent, “we won’t talk about it. But calm down. What you need right now, Em, is Zen.”

“For the baby, right?” I asked sarcastically. I couldn’t stop the hot sting of tears, as if all the anger were turning into weakness. I hated it. I hated everything about my life right then, even the fellowship at the colony. What should have been a triumphant next step felt like a detour.

But sadness was not the way I was going to leave Boston, to say goodbye to four years of fun. That night, after another argument in which I agreed I wouldn’t drink, we went to a club.

Paladin was the sort of swanky dance venue that boasted a long line, a young professional crowd and a ridiculous cover charge, but Leanna knew the bouncer on duty and we were waved past the ubiquitous red velvet rope with a few kisses on the cheek.

In my short white shorts, silver sequin halter top and heels, I stepped into the fray of the dance floor, reveling in the pounding of the music and the crowd of humanity. I moved my feet, swiveled my hips, designed patterns in the air with my hands and arms. The night was hot, sweaty, and energizing, and I grabbed it with a fierceness I hadn’t felt in weeks.

Tossing my hair back, I smiled at Leanna, who seemed equally infected with the need to feel alive, to feel young and sexy.

An hour later, sweaty and hot, I zigzagged through the crowd to one of the bars. I leaned on the edge as I waited for the bartender to make his way down to my end.

“Can I buy you a drink?” I heard the words behind me faintly over the pulsing music, turned my head to see who was talking.

And stared.

Julian grinned back at me.

I smiled even though everything inside of me was freaked out by the sight of him.

“Haven’t seen you around much.”

“Yeah, I’m sure you’ve heard … ”

“That you broke up, yep. It’s too bad. I actually liked you.”

“Thanks. You kind of grew on me,” I teased.

“He misses you.”

“Whatever. Are you here alone?”

He laughed. “No, actually I’m here with Tatiana.”

“I guess Boston’s a small town.”

“She’s a very attractive lady.”

“And she knows it.”

“That’s attractive too.”

I laughed at that.

The bartender came over, pointed at Julian and then me with his eyebrows raised. Julian ordered a scotch and soda and a lemon drop martini. Then he looked questioningly at me.

“Just a bottle of water, thanks.”

“I’m buying.”

“I know. Just water.” I watched him place the order, but my thoughts were full of Daniel and my emotions were far from the joyous reveling of dancing. Julian turned back to me.

“I mean it, Emily. Daniel cares about you. I know he’s hurt.”

“Hurt? He’s hurt?” I stared at him, mouth open.

The bartender placed a glass in front of us, the wet bottom sliding on the wooden bar. Julian pulled his wallet out of his pocket, extracted two twenties from the leather folds.

“He isn’t a bad guy.”

“Right. He’s one of the good ones,” I mimicked. “Listen, I’m not an idiot. I get it. I do. Kid abandoned by parents. One by suicide, the other via pharmaceuticals, and that may as well have been suicide. Revenge is easier than grief.”

Julian looked surprised.

“What, I’m wrong?” I demanded.

“No. I think you’re right.”

The fact that Julian didn’t deny that Daniel had sought revenge pulled at me painfully. I’d thought I was numb already. I set my jaw against the unwanted emotion.

“Yeah, so I get it. But that doesn’t mean he can go around hurting people for the rest of his life. It doesn’t mean he can hurt me.”

“No. It doesn’t. But revenge is also easier than love.”

What was this? Armchair psychology day? As much as once I’d wanted to believe that Daniel loved me, now it was the last thing I needed to hear. He’d had his chance when I came to the office.

Another glass in front of Julian, this time the martini-shaped one with its sugared rim. The bartender slammed a cold bottle of water down as well.

“Love has nothing to do with this,” I said, lifting the wet bottle, propelling myself away from the bar. “Thanks for the water. Now I’m going to go dance.”

I didn’t know if Julian would tell Daniel that he’d seen me, but if he did, I wanted the story to be that Emily was doing just fine on her own.


• • •



Two days later, with nearly everything I owned in storage, I accompanied Leanna to Manhattan and helped her settle into her new apartment. In those few days I also rekindled my friendship with Lila, who commandeered our nights in such a way that, except for brief moments in line for the restroom or seconds before falling asleep, I didn’t have time to think.

At the train station, when I said goodbye to Leanna, the tension was thick with everything we would not talk about. Everything I refused to consider.

“I’m excited,” I said, thinking about the art colony. “It’s going to be like having the type of resources I had at school but without having to share. Can you imagine?”

Leanna smiled, agreed, but the expression in her eyes was less than enthusiastic. Which I ignored with forced cheer.

Three hours later, Agatha Newman, the fellowship coordinator, was driving me and Don, another Barrows fellow, out to the farm. Don was a screenwriter who talked about his MFA and the film he’d written that had placed at the Sundance Film Festival. As he spoke, he flirted, and when he heard I was a sculptor he discussed how wonderfully sexual the pottery scene in Ghost had been. Agatha kept her eyes on the road but she seemed amused.

In some ways the moment felt like Real World: Artist Colony and I wondered if Gordon Fillmore’s joking about orgies and decadence would turn out to be the truth. Not that I had any desire to know first-hand.

The two-lane road wound through rolling green hills that made my heart rise into my throat at the beauty of it.

Then we arrived.

Barrows Farm was half working farm, half woodland and altogether gorgeous. I spent the first day stunned and excited about my new situation. My bedroom, a room in the main residence hall, was nothing to speak of. However my work studio was a huge cabin a quarter mile down a winding leaf-strewn path. My supplies had arrived already and someone had deposited the packages just inside the door.

I met the other residents, learned about the communal dinner and the biweekly open studios during which the public could visit. Every day I had a choice of coming back to the main residence hall for lunch or having a basket delivered. It was half camp and half spa, and while the days were filled with creating art, the evenings were filled with ping-pong, singing, drinking, and games.

I loved it.

I hated it.

Surprisingly it was easier during the day. I immersed myself in work, taking a deep satisfaction in being back in the thick of it. Though I’d taken two months off, I’d learned so much about life, had gained so much perspective, that it affected my mythology project in a good way. I could see that this series would be altogether more mature than anything I had done so far.

At night, however, the conversation ventured into places I didn’t want to go. Especially when a new resident arrived, one who read the gossip pages.

“So,” the woman, a short story writer, asked, drawing out the vowels slowly. “Daniel Hartmann?”

That caught everyone’s attention at dinner. Especially the screenwriter, Don, who had apparently decided I was the perfect person on which to practice his flirting skills.

I needed to say something that satisfied their curiosity yet brooked no other questions. I tried to imagine what Daniel would have said if he were there.

“He’s a very attractive man,” I finally said, making it sound like an intimate confession. Then I flashed my “actress” smile, with what I hoped was a side of “Don’t you wish you were me?”

Unfortunately, my confession seemed to make Don even more interested.

I was tempted. Or rather, I might have been tempted to do something completely stupid just to finally get Daniel out of my head, except I knew it wouldn’t work.

I’d come to terms with the fact that Daniel would haunt my dreams no matter how wrong, in the best of circumstances, a continued relationship with be. I simply hoped that one day I’d wake up and realize that, like a bad cold, those thoughts were gone.

If people would let me.

Leanna consistently reminded me of the chance Daniel would be a more permanent presence in my life. But I refused to believe it, refused to know, even as one week turned into three. I was stressed, depressed and my life had been full of changes. There were any number of reasons my period could be late.

My mother as well seemed to have gotten the memo that Daniel Hartmann should be mentioned at all costs. Every telephone conversation devolved, with my mom digging for more information as if she needed desperately to hear the intimate details of my sex life just to feel close to me. At the same time, she didn’t hide that she felt I was making all the same mistakes she had made. My father, however, didn’t mention Daniel and perhaps that was only because there was just so much one could say in emails and voice mail messages. I still couldn’t forgive him. For lying to me, for doing something he had to lie about in the first place. There was really only one person responsible for the mess that had been my early teens and that was my father.

And yet, I still felt guilty about how my affair had affected him. I couldn’t even gather the energy to be angry with Daniel anymore, because none of this could have happened if I hadn’t been an immature, irresponsible idiot.

Who might be pregnant.

Finally, one day I went into town with some of the other residents and came back with a two-pack of pregnancy tests.

I stood there with the box, still in its cellophane wrapping, clutched in one hand and the telephone in the other. Because there was one other person whose actions had deeply affected my childhood.

“Mom, why didn’t you tell dad when you found out you were pregnant?”

It was a conversation we’d had before but I was no longer listening as a child blaming my mother. Now I simply wanted to understand. I wanted advice, in case I tore those wrappers open and my world fell apart.

“Sweetheart, I told you. He’d broken my heart. It was one thing to be devastated but another to find out I was pregnant. I didn’t want him to think it was some ploy to get him back, to get him to marry me. And worse, I didn’t know what I’d do if he told me to … get rid of it. Of you. And then … then he was dating someone else, and that was that.”

“Would you do it again, knowing how upset dad was?”

Silence answered my question. I almost hung up the phone, terrified that my mother was reading between the lines.

“Is there something you want to tell me, Emily?”

No. There wasn’t anything I wanted to tell her and there wasn’t anything that I wanted to tell myself. I continued on as if everything were normal, as if this were simply the conversation of a daughter wanting to know more about her origins.

“Would you?”

“I don’t know. Who knows what your father’s reaction would have been if he’d known five years earlier. We can’t change the past anyway.”

“Right.”

“I hate to hear you so sad, baby.” And I equally hated to hear my mom worry about me.

“I’ll get over it,” I said dismissively, quickly moving the conversation away from emotions that I did not want to share with my mother. I’d learned years ago that anything I shared from deep in my heart could and would be used against me in some future conversation. I loved my mom, but I knew the limits of our relationship.

When I finally flipped the cell phone shut, I started unwrapping the box. No matter what happened, not knowing wouldn’t change anything.