“You have a husband who loves you.”
“Do I? Do I have a husband who loves me?”
“What do you think?”
“Office hours are from eight to four,” she said, throwing his words back at him. “Don’t ask me what I think. Save that for your patients. Tell me that you love me. Tell me that you think I’m the most beautiful thing on earth.”
“I love you. I think you’re the most beautiful thing on earth.”
“Why don’t I believe you?”
“Because even though you’re a bright, capable woman and a very successful attorney, you also happen to be a hysterical female, and if I don’t get some sleep soon, I’m going to be a hysterical psychiatrist, which tends to make the patients nervous.”
He was about to turn over again when her voice stopped him. “Do you want to make love?”
“Now? It’s one o’clock in the morning.”
“I didn’t ask you what time it was. God knows, I know what time it is. You’ve told me enough times. I asked you if you wanted to make love.”
“You are the most infuriating woman,” he began, but
he was already pulling her toward him, edging one knee across her ample thigh.
There was a knock on their bedroom door. “Daddy?” the voice called tentatively.
Renee withdrew her arms, which had been about to encircle her husband’s still slender waistline. They fell back against her pillow as if there were heavy weights attached to her wrists. She felt Philip immediately pull away, felt him sitting up and straining through the darkness as the pajama-clad figure of Debbie, his teenage daughter, inched toward them.
“Baby?” he asked, his voice so gentle that Renee felt momentarily displaced, as if she’d somehow wandered into the wrong bed. “Is something the matter, darling? Why aren’t you asleep?”
“I had a bad dream,” the voice quivered, and for an instant Renee was tempted to draw the frightened girl in beside her and hold her and comfort her and tell her that everything would be all right. Until she saw the little half-smirk that the girl was still too much of a child to completely hide, and she froze. Even in the darkness, Renee could make out the fierce determination in her husband’s daughter’s eyes.
“Do you want to tell me about it?” asked the man who only minutes ago had told Renee that office hours were from eight till four.
“It was a terrible dream,” the girl, who was sixteen and looked fourteen, told her father, allowing her shivering frame to be surrounded by his bare arms. “I dreamt that you were in a car accident, you and Renée.”
As she always did, Debbie pronounced the double e of Renee’s name as if it were French. (“It’s Renee, rhymes
with beanie,” Renee corrected her every year when the girl arrived from Boston to spend the summer with them, as she had reminded her when Debbie arrived two weeks before. “Renee, rhymes with beanie—
not
Renée, rhymes with day.”)
“You were driving very fast, very recklessly …” Debbie continued, unaware of Renee’s inner dialogue. “Actually,” she continued, “you weren’t the one driving. It was Renée.”
“Figures,” Renee said, almost unheard.
“There were signs all over the road, warnings about dangerous curves,” Debbie went on.
“I always ignore signs about dangerous curves,” Renee said. “Something about that squiggly design I never liked.”
Debbie brought her lips together so that they all but disappeared. “I’m glad that you think this is so amusing,” she said stoically, her back stiffening. “I’m sorry if I disturbed you, Renée. I’ll go back to my room.”
“Nonsense,” Philip said immediately, his arm reaching out again and securing his daughter to him, his eyes fixing Renee with their most withering stare. Even in the darkness, its power was dazzling. “You could never be disturbing us. This is your home.”
And this is my nightmare, thought Renee, listening as her husband persuaded his daughter to continue with her description.
“Well,” the young girl said, allowing herself to be cajoled, “I saw the danger you were in. I knew that if she didn’t slow down”—“she” now, Renee thought, the woman with no name— “she’d drive you both off a cliff and into the ocean …”
“And did she?” Renee asked.
“Renee,” her husband cautioned.
“I tried to warn you. I called out, ‘Renée, Renée’ …”
“I probably thought you were talking to someone else.”
“I guess you couldn’t hear me,” the child continued, as if Renee hadn’t spoken. “The car kept going faster. Finally, it went off the cliff. I watched helplessly as it crashed against the rocks. I screamed.”
“My poor baby,” her father soothed.
“I got there as fast as I could and pulled you to safety.” Renee marveled that there were actually tears in Debbie’s eyes. “Renée died,” Debbie added, almost as an afterthought.
“Well then, it wasn’t such a nightmare, after all,” Renee told her cheerfully.
“Really, Renée, I don’t know why you’re so hostile.”
“I’m always hostile after I plunge from a cliff to my death.”
“It was just a dream,” the girl told her.
“Yes,” Renee responded, seeing the young girl as clearly as if she’d just turned on all the lights. “I’m afraid that’s all it was.”
“Feel better now?” her father asked.
Debbie shrugged and buried her face against her father’s hairy chest. “I was so scared for you. There was nothing I could do. I felt so helpless. I tried to warn you. She wouldn’t listen.” The child was actually crying now.
“Why don’t I make us some hot chocolate?” Philip asked energetically, as if it were the middle of the day, and Debbie brightened immediately, lifting her head and smiling just past her father’s shoulder to where her
wicked stepmother sat motionless and openmouthed. “Remember how when you were a little girl and you’d have a bad dream, we’d go into the kitchen and make some hot chocolate …”
“And you’d sit with me while I drank it, till I finished every drop. I remember. I didn’t think you did.”
“Hey, I remember everything about your childhood. Every bad dream, every sneeze. You’ll be all right after you’ve had a cup of Daddy’s special hot chocolate. Now, who’s the doctor here? Renee, will you get my robe?”
Renee said nothing, recognizing a no-win situation when she saw one, and moved swiftly to the closet to retrieve her husband’s navy-blue silk dressing gown.
“You don’t want any hot chocolate, do you?” Debbie asked Renee after Philip had departed for the kitchen, and the two women—one, thirty-four, who knew better than to get involved in this type of power struggle, and the other, sixteen, who knew it all—were left to confront each other. “I mean, you’re on a diet, aren’t you?”
“Not at the moment. But I’m not thirsty, thank you.”
“You look really tired, Renée,” Debbie said sweetly. “Have you been feeling well?”
“I’m feeling just fine, thank you. And the name is Renee, rhymes with beanie. Not Renée.”
“I prefer Renée,” the girl said stubbornly. “Renee sounds like, I don’t know, the fat kid in grade school that nobody ever wanted to play with.”
Debbie was gone before Renee had the chance to leap out of bed and hurl her from the bedroom window of the sixth-floor oceanfront condominium she had moved into when she married Philip. Not that the child would come to any serious harm, Renee thought, her
head falling back against her pillow. The girl was indestructible.
From the kitchen, she heard the sounds of Philip’s soothing voice and Debbie’s innocent, girlish giggle. How, she wondered, was it possible for the girl to present two such different faces to the world? And how was it possible for a man of Philip’s sophistication and intelligence, not to mention his professional training, to be so blind when it came to dealing with his own daughter? How could he allow himself to be so manipulated?
It happened every summer. Debbie would step off the Eastern Airlines flight from Boston and proceed to walk all over the stepmother who initially had been only too willing to be her friend. Renee laughed now when she thought of how eagerly she had awaited the arrival of her husband’s only child, how thrilled she had felt when she caught her initial glimpse of the girl who was only ten at the time of their first encounter. Though she was small for her age, Debbie had, even then, carried herself in the controlled manner of someone much older. She had long light-brown hair pulled back from her slim oval face into a high ponytail, and her legs were disproportionately long for her height, and very bony, which made her seem all the more fragile. Like a pretty pink flamingo, Renee had thought then. More like a vulture, she had learned, as the girl skillfully avoided her every overture while making it look as though it was always Renee who somehow came up short. “She doesn’t like me,” Renee had tearfully confided to Philip, who had assured her that the child was only shy, and the victim of conflicting loyalties. It was only natural for his daughter to resent someone else taking her mother’s place,
especially since their divorce had been far from amicable, he told her, and she had bowed to his superior knowledge in such matters, although instinctively she had known he was wrong. “What can I do to make her love me?” she had asked, and he had told her to be herself. When that hadn’t worked—and it soon became obvious even to Philip that it wasn’t working—he told her to grin and bear it, that it was only for two months of the year, and surely she could indulge him that much. At first she thought she could. And yet the two months felt longer every year, as the child advanced past adolescence and the subtle maneuvers grew increasingly sophisticated, the barbs better aimed and more skillfully executed.
Philip was no help at all. His guilt at having abandoned his only child to a woman he renounced as unstable made him the easy target of his daughter’s manipulations. If he saw through them, and Renee was sure that he did—Christ, even a total idiot could see through them—he was powerless to do anything but respond in the most obvious way. He gave in to all of Debbie’s outrageous demands on his time, his money, his psyche. He took her side in every dispute; he understood her position, her fears, her pain. Debbie was afraid of losing him, he told Renee, and didn’t seem to understand that she was afraid of exactly the same thing.
“You were very rough on her,” he said when he came back into the room, the smell of hot chocolate on his breath. “She’s just a kid, you have to remember. She thinks you hate her.”
“That’s ridiculous, Philip. You know I’ve tried everything.”
“Try harder. Please. For my sake. She was crying just now. She said that maybe she shouldn’t spend her summers with us anymore because she can see that you don’t like her, and she doesn’t want to cause any trouble between us.”
“Oh God, Philip,” Renee said, feeling totally defeated. “Short of changing my name or driving off a cliff, I really don’t know what I can do that will make her happy.”
She hoped he would laugh, but he didn’t. “You’re the adult. She’s the child. You have to lead the way. Now, I’ve got to get some sleep.”
“I guess making love is out of the question?” she asked as the phone rang.
“It is now,” he said, and she heard the relief in his voice though he tried to disguise it as annoyance.
Renee reached for the phone beside the bed. “It could be for you, you know.”
“It isn’t,” he said, and was right, as he usually was.
“Yes, this is Renee Bower,” Renee confirmed to the unfamiliar voice on the other end of the line, feeling a sudden queasiness in the pit of her stomach. “Yes, Kathryn Wright is my sister. Who is this? … What? What are you talking about? Who is this?” She felt Philip sit up in bed beside her, his interest piqued despite his annoyance. Renee listened to the frantic outpouring of words from the woman on the other end, whose name she had already forgotten, at first unable to respond. She rubbed a shaking hand across her forehead. “Oh my God!” she said, and then again “Oh my God!”
“T
his going to have to be a short meeting, I’m afraid,” Renee Bower was saying as Lynn Schuster walked into her office and sat down in the chair across from her desk. “I have to drive into Lauderdale. My sister’s arriving on the two o’clock flight from New York.” Renee nervously checked her watch. Lynn automatically did the same.
“How is she?” Lynn asked.
Renee looked startled by the question. “Oh, that’s right, I keep forgetting you went to school together. She’s not so good,” Renee said without further elaboration. “Now, what can I do for you? You said it was important.”
“I don’t know if it’s important,” Lynn immediately qualified, and Renee looked confused. “I had a visitor last night. Marc Cameron, Suzette Cameron’s husband.”
“Interesting,” Renee said, though Lynn could read nothing from her expression. “And?”
“And?” Lynn thought quickly back over the events of the previous night, lowering her head to her lap and chipping away at whatever remained of the white polish on her nails. “And … he wants to see me again.”
“I seem to be missing something,” Renee Bower said evenly. “Is there something you’re leaving out?”
“Not really,” Lynn told her. “He called, said he wanted to come over, that there were some things he felt I should know.”
“Such as?”
“Well, I don’t think he actually got around to mentioning them.”
“I see. What exactly
did
he get around to mentioning?”
Lynn shook her head. “It’s all very confusing.”
“I can see that. Lynn, what exactly did the man say?”
“He said that he was curious about me, that he wanted to see what I looked like. He said that I’m prettier than Suzette. He said that he was having a hard time dealing with what had happened. He said that he thought we had a lot in common. He said that he’d like to see me again.”
“And what did you say?”
“I said no.”
“Good.”
“Why ‘good’? Why do you say that?”
“What do you mean, ‘why do I say that?’ What else would I say? Why would you
want
to see him again?”
“I don’t know.”
Renee folded her hands on top of her desk. “Lynn, what’s going on here?”
“I don’t know,” Lynn confessed, feeling infinitely foolish. Why was she here? This whole scene was beginning to assume a dreamlike—almost nightmarish—quality. She was becoming disoriented.