To Have and to Hold Page 28

  Joe buys Alice a weekly present. A voucher to a spa; a pair of Prada shoes; the latest Vuitton bag that everyone in the city is dying for. He presents them to Alice hoping she will use them, hoping these beautiful things will encourage her to dress up again, to look beautiful, to make an effort for him, but she merely thanks him, lies about how much she’s always wanted whatever it is, and then puts it away in a closet in the bedroom.

  Alice comes to the city because she has to, not because she enjoys it. She tries not even to stay overnight anymore. She takes the train up to Grand Central in the morning and is usually back in Highfield by five. He knows she’s beginning to hate it more and more, she only comes in because she thinks it keeps him happy, but he’s beginning to resent having to make the effort.

  After all, he has a more than adequate companion in Josie.

  As for Alice, she knows how things have changed. She can sense that Joe is distracted again, distant, but it doesn’t upset her now. There are times, like last night, when Alice lies in bed panicking about her marriage. She lies there knowing she’s married to the wrong man, knowing they’re not making each other happy, knowing they want completely different things in life, and she feels sick and scared, and tries to push the thoughts away.

  The nights she has these fears seem to go on forever, but at some point she always manages to fall asleep, and always, when she wakes up and the sun is streaming through the window, she feels better; knows that those night fears were just that—fears, and not a reality.

  And meanwhile she has been busier and busier. HomeFront has become one of the most popular classes in the Newcomers’ Club, and Alice and Sandy are now running something almost weekly.

  Just this month they are organizing a trip to the White Flower Farm in Litchfield, a visit to a pottery kiln, and a class on the secrets of aging new terra-cotta pots for the patio.

  She and Sandy meet up regularly, classes aside—walks with the dogs, coffee in town, popping in to one another’s houses to finalize plans for the next HomeFront meeting—and she has discovered a new friend in her neighbor Sally.

  Suddenly Alice finds that she’s not lonely anymore. There are always people dropping in, Sally brings Madison to play almost daily, and now when Alice goes into town to do some shopping or run some errands, she invariably bumps into at least two people she knows.

  James has become accustomed to seeing her at Sunup nursery. He’s even stopped flirting with her and has become, if not a friend, then certainly someone she enjoys spending time with.

  He has helped her plant a small vegetable garden, teaching her how to fence it in with eight-foot fences to keep the deer out, and has helped her discover what will and won’t do well in Zone Six.

  And now that spring has finally sprung, Alice’s garden is a mass of color. The forsythia bushes splash a bright yellow just past the terrace, and the hundreds of narcissus and tulip bulbs she planted in the autumn are in full bloom.

  The bed in the front, the bed that Alice has ignored, presuming the groundcover was weeds, is now covered in tiny purple flowers of vinca, with the yellow flowers of lamium just starting to push through the pachysandra.

  Bleeding hearts are weeping small pink flowers everywhere she looks, and Alice is finally getting to know her garden, finally learning about the plants, the soil, which plants will grow and which won’t.

  And it is a learning curve. Unlike England, with its mild temperatures and steady rainfall, Connecticut has freezing winters, often with thick snow, and boiling summers. Alice has learned the hard way that the plants she grew so well on the terrace in her London house—olive trees, French lavender, potted citrus plants, and dwarf herbs—didn’t have a chance out here.

  Instead she has had to learn to love rhododendrons, azaleas, hydrangeas. After the disaster with the lavender that died a horrible death over the cold winter, she has edged her borders with Six Hills Giant catmint instead, has planted busy lizzies under the canopy of blue spruce at the back of the garden, has learned to appreciate plants like bayberry and juniper in place of her beloved bays and cypresses.

  Alice has become a woman obsessed with her garden, much to the amusement of Sally, who planted a few yew hedges, a couple of rhododendrons, and that was it.

  “I guess it’s because you’re English.” Sally smiled, sitting on the terrace one day drinking coffee with Alice. “You’re all obsessed with gardening, aren’t you?”

  “Not all. My best friend Emily—you remember Emily, don’t you? She doesn’t know the first thing about gardening and doesn’t want to. We always used to joke that we ended up with the wrong lives. There I was living this fast glamorous life in London and dreaming about living in the country, and she was the one who bought the house in the Cotswolds when she should really have been married to someone like Joe.”

  “She’s not married, is she? That man, what was his name? Harry? He was just her boyfriend, wasn’t he?”

  Alice nods. Even the mention of his name brings the guilt flooding back. That night, the night of Sally and Chris’s party when Harry kissed her, is something she tries very hard not to think about.

  She tries hard not to think about how much she hurt her best friend, and she tries even harder not to think about how she felt, lying on the ground, wrapped in Harry’s arms. She doesn’t think about it because when she does she can remember it so clearly, it was as if it happened yesterday. She can feel every blade of grass, every millimeter of stubble on Harry’s face, smell his warm skin as if he is right in front of her.

  And it’s too painful. It fills her with a longing she’s not used to, a longing she doesn’t know what to do with.

  Alice jumps up. “Come on, Madison,” she says to the little girl. “Why don’t you throw the ball for Snoop?” And all three of them run down the steps to the lawn, laughing as Snoop leaps up and down on his hind legs.

  Valium always makes Alice feel slightly groggy when she wakes up, and for a split second she forgets why she took the pills in the first place. Then she remembers.

  But as always, now that the sun is shining she feels better. Not perfect, but better. She goes downstairs and as she passes the office, a thought occurs to her. If he were up to no good—although today she’s sure there is a perfectly reasonable explanation for his mobile phone last night—but if he were up to no good, surely there’d be some evidence somewhere?

  She pauses outside the office door. No, she couldn’t possibly turn into one of those snooping wives in the films. Isn’t the first rule of snooping that if you snoop, you’re inevitably going to find something you don’t want to find? But there is a force pulling her into the office, a force out of her control, and on autopilot Alice gently pushes open the door and looks around.

  Receipts. There are his receipts. Alice sits down behind the desk and starts going through the receipts. Nothing unusual. She examines each and every one, fascinated at this hidden life her husband leads, all these restaurants where he entertains clients. She doesn’t even know what she’s looking for. Nothing, hopefully. She finds restaurant bills, and dry-cleaning receipts, and gas receipts. Nothing suspicious in the least.

  She starts to relax, but then notices the computer. After turning it on, she clicks until she’s online, then looks at the last few sites that have been visited. Gardenweb.com. She smiles to herself. That’s hers. Google.com. Hotmail.com. All hers.

  She goes to Hotmail to check her e-mail, and it occurs to her that she could check Joe’s e-mail. His password is the same for everything: champ. She types in his name, then his password, and goes to his inbox. Part of her feels terrible for doing this, but she can’t stop. She’s come this far and she can’t stop.

  She clicks on the messages and scans the names of the incoming e-mails, looking to see if there’s anything that might be suspicious, but no. Everything looks fine. Her heart is pounding but she’s relieved, and she turns the computer off, shaking her head at her stupidity as she goes to make a pot of coffee.

  That evening,
as usual, Joe phones to say he won’t be coming down. Alice doesn’t have the strength to be angry. She just nods and puts the phone down, and sits numbly on the sofa staring into space for most of the evening.

  On her way up to bed, she remembers the office, his e-mail, and knows there must have been something she was missing, and she finds herself walking back into the office, her head emptied of all thought.

  Alice sits down feeling numb and switches on the computer, knowing where she’s going, knowing what she’s looking for, but no longer caring. Fed up with the pretense, fed up with being taken for an idiot.

  Into his Hotmail account she goes. Into a folder she had ignored earlier. A folder marked Private. And there they are. Three new e-mails from JosieJo. And she knows instinctively that JosieJo is far too playful a name to be business. Her heart beats painfully, but even as she clicks on the messages she knows she can’t stop. She knows what she’s going to find, and this time she needs to know.

  Slowly she reads all three messages. Short, perfunctory, but clearly not work e-mails. Still. Not quite enough evidence. She moves back up to the Sent box, where she finds what she both is, and isn’t, looking for.

  Sent. To JosieJo. This morning at 9:23 A.M. Subject: Tonight. She reads the e-mail five times, each time feeling sicker and sicker. Her hand starts to shake as she reads the explicit language, realizes that this is someone her husband is sleeping with, realizes this e-mail isn’t just graphic, it also contains an intimacy that implies this is someone he’s known for a long time. Someone who isn’t just a quick fuck, not something she, Alice, could pretend isn’t happening. Not small and unimportant enough to brush under the carpet knowing that it doesn’t pose a real threat to her marriage, that it doesn’t really mean anything, that she should pretend it doesn’t exist.

  She knows, and she needs to know. Right now, as sick and scared and horrified as she feels, she wants to know. For the first time ever, she has to know.

  When Joe calls her later that night Alice doesn’t pick up the phone. She sits where she has been sitting for hours, in the armchair, cradling a vodka, too numb to speak.

  The only thing that keeps running through her head is “What am I going to do? What am I going to do?” Over and over and over.

  And still it doesn’t feel real. Still she thinks that perhaps it was a bad dream, perhaps this is like the night fears, she will fall asleep here, sitting in this armchair, and when she wakes up she will discover it isn’t real.

  It’s only when she hears his voice on the machine that she finally breaks down, finally gives in to the tears, because she knows that this is it. She knows how different they are, how far apart they’ve grown, and now she can’t pretend any longer.

  She knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that this is the end of their marriage. She’d never considered the prospect of being on her own at thirty-six, had never thought that her life as she knew it would so suddenly and so finally be over.

  “Bastard!” she screams at Joe’s voice as he smoothly tells the machine he loves her and says he’s going to bed.

  She waits until he hangs up then goes straight over to the phone, picks it up, and dials the apartment in Manhattan. No one is less surprised than she when the phone rings six times before the machine picks up.

  “Bastard!” she whispers, putting the phone down and sinking to the floor in tears. Snoop runs over and puts his front paws on her shoulders, trying to lick her tears away, trying to make it better, and Alice puts her arms around the little dog and sobs for hours.

  When Joe phones on Saturday morning, Alice is prepared. She cried last night until there were no tears left, and then made herself a cup of tea, pulled a jacket on, and went outside to the terrace to lie on a lounger, looking up at the stars to think about what to do.

  Alice was shivering, even though the night was warm, but the vastness of the sky and the brightness of the stars were soothing, and as she lay there, her mind a jumble of thoughts, she began to realize that their marriage had probably ended a long time ago.

  She thought back to their life in London, a life that seemed a million years away, and remembered how very unhappy she had been. Her life’s mission had been to make Joe happy, but in doing so she had suppressed her own desires so much she had forgotten who she was.

  She runs their life together through her mind almost as if watching a videotape. From the wedding that wasn’t what she wanted, to the clothes he insisted she wear, to the Christmas tree he patronized and laughed at.

  And she knows that this woman, this JosieJo, isn’t the first. Lying here remembering, she’s forced to admit she has always turned a blind eye, hasn’t believed it because she hasn’t wanted to believe it.

  But of course she knew. All the late nights, the unexplained absences, the business trips staying in hotels and refusing to give her the number. The couple of times the phone had rung at home and been immediately put down. Alice, whatever Joe might have thought, isn’t stupid, has never been stupid.

  She just didn’t want to know.

  At five o’clock in the morning she calls Emily. It would be ten A.M. in England, and on a Saturday Alice knows Emily will most likely be in bed having a lie-in. They still haven’t spoken properly, but Alice still writes, and now that Alice needs her, she knows that Emily will be there for her, that however much Emily professes to hate her, this is too big to ignore.

  The answering machine picks up.

  “Em? It’s me. Alice. I need to talk to you. I . . . Joe’s having an affair. . . .” She blurts it out, and as she says the words out loud a sob escapes her throat, closely followed by more. “Oh God,” she hiccups into the machine. “I thought I was all cried out. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

  “Alice?” A shocked Emily picks up. “Alice? What’s the matter? I heard you on the machine. I was in bed. What is it? What’s wrong?”

  “He’s having an affair.”

  “Oh God.” Emily is immediately sympathetic, immediately Alice’s best friend again, there to support her and help her through. “Oh, Ali. I’m so sorry. When? I mean, how? How do you know? Are you sure?”

  “I found e-mails. Oh God, Em. I just feel sick.”

  “Start at the beginning,” Emily croons. “Tell me what happened.”

  And so Alice tells her about the unanswered phone calls. Tells her about growing apart. And finally about the e-mails.

  “It’s over,” Alice says eventually. “We’ve just grown farther and farther apart. He looks at me sometimes and I think he hates me.”

  “Don’t be silly, of course he doesn’t hate you.”

  “I swear to you, Em, I think he does. I know he loved the me he tried to turn me into, the blond glamorous Alice who looked so good on his arm, but I swear he hates the real me. I catch him looking at me sometimes and there’s such disdain in his eyes.”

  “You mean you’re not blond and glamorous anymore?” Emily’s intrigued.

  “I have almost three-inch roots of natural glamorous mouse color, I can’t be bothered to go to the hairdresser and have my hair straightened so it’s curly again, and I’m spending my life in the garden so I basically wear filthy old jeans and boots.”

  Emily can’t help herself. She starts laughing. “Alice, I don’t want to say anything, but the picture you’re painting isn’t exactly the kind of woman I can see Joe going for.”

  “But that’s the point. Em, I’m so happy living here. I just love it so much, and I love not having to dress up and play the stupid part of some stupid society trophy wife. I love being in the garden and not wearing makeup and not caring about what I look like. And I’ve been up all night thinking about things, and I can’t see how this could work. Even if I could forgive him, even if we could put things behind us, I can’t see how our marriage could survive.”

  Emily doesn’t say anything. Just waits for Alice to continue.

  Alice sighs. “Em, I can’t do it anymore. I can’t pretend to be something I’m not, and Joe can’t pretend to love t
he real me when it’s not what he wants.”

  “Have you spoken to him?”

  “No. He phoned last night and left a message saying he was at home and going to bed, but I called back immediately and I knew he wouldn’t be home.”

  “And he wasn’t?”

  “Of course not.”

  “So now what?”

  “He’ll call this morning and pretend he’s had a great night’s sleep, and I’m going to tell him I know.”

  “On the phone?”

  “Yes. And I’m going to ask him to come down here and get his things.” Alice hadn’t planned to say that, hadn’t even thought about that, but the words came out, and now she knows it’s the right thing.

  “Jesus, Ali. Are you sure?”

  “Yes,” Alice says slowly. “This is it. He has to go and I need to be on my own.”

  28

  The rocking motion of the train somehow seems to help calm Joe’s racing mind, still the panic in his heart.

  He still can’t believe he was so stupid as to leave e-mails on his machine that Alice could find, and more to the point he still can’t believe Alice went looking.

  He phoned her this morning, on his way back to Josie’s from the deli, armed with bagels, lox, and fresh coffee, mobile phone cradled under his shoulder as he made his regular Saturday morning call to Alice.

  “Hi, darling,” he started. “I tried to call last night but you didn’t pick up. Did you have an early night?” There was a silence from Alice, and he knew, instantly, that something was wrong.

  “Alice? Darling? Are you all right? Are you there?”

  He heard her sigh.

  “What is the matter, Alice?”

  “Joe, we need to talk.”

  His heart started pounding. “What about?”

  “You need to come here. I’m not going to do this over the phone. I want you to get on a train and come to Highfield this morning.”