Dream Lover (16 page)
Jack was larger than life. Life is so empty without him. As soon as he got married, I started dating again. But in all of these years, I couldn’t make a commitment to anyone else because he still came around. We saw each other as often as he would need me. I mean, we had coffee all the time; he would go up to Columbus Circle and have breakfast at that little dive so he could see Maryanne, then he would come across town to the East Side and we would spend at least half an hour catching up. He called me every day just to say hi. “You need to get out more,” he always said, but no one could compare to Jack. He ruined it for me. I’m fifty-six and alone. Of course, now I’m free. He’s gone and I fully intend on trying to allow someone else to have a chance at me.
Alyssa
I
hardly got any sleep last night because Eric has an earache and he kept me up all night. He is such a sweet boy most of the time! It’s not his fault that his ears hurt. The only thing that soothes him is being carried around, which is not easy. He weighs at least twenty-five pounds now. I walk him up and down the hallway, which is the only place in the apartment that doesn’t have anyone living below. I know it would be annoying to having a continuous squeaking above for hours in the middle of the night.
Being a parent is so lonely. I had no idea. This little guy is such a sweetie pie, I can’t imagine not having him. But it doesn’t change the fact that caring for him is so much harder than I thought it would be. The nighttime when he was a fussy baby and there was no one to talk to and nothing to watch on television was the worst. That’s when I start wondering and thinking that things could have been so different if I hadn’t slept with that monster, Jack. I have a plan now, devised in the night hours when I am here alone with a toddler. I am going to find out if my contract with him is still in force with him dead. I want badly to confront his wife; oh my God, I want her to know what a real motherfucker her husband was. His mother already knows; I went to her right away, trying to get at Jack. It didn’t work, of course, but I did get money out of it. His friends think that he got screwed giving me a million dollars, but I actually got more. Almost a million and a half. I am frugal to the extreme with the money, so I should never have to work again. I mean, I am miserly. I only go into that office to have something to do and so I can continue getting the gossip about Sandra. My parents can provide for us, but I have to be independent, so it’s nice having my own money.
Jack told everyone he made me have an abortion. Ha ha ha! Guess what? In the first place, my parents are Dutch Reformed. Do you think ever in a thousand years that one of their children would have an abortion? It was bad enough having to go to them for protection when he was threatening me, threatening to kill me if I told his wife! Screw you, Jack Smith! Don’t believe him for a second. He enjoyed every second he spent with me, trust me. He told someone I work with—went right to my office—that I came on to him and he was upset about his father dying so he succumbed and that it wasn’t worth a million dollars. Yeah, right! You’ve got to be kidding me! I did come on to him because he is ravishing; you know that about Jack, right? He is so handsome; the word “hunk” was made to describe him. It didn’t make any difference that he was ten years older than my own father.
I remember the first time I saw him. Not the first time I spoke with him, but the first time I laid on eyes on him. I’ll never forget it. He was in his office, talking on the phone. He was pacing. I was leaning on the desk of one of his associates, waiting for her to sign a receipt for the document I had brought, when I looked up, and there he was. Back and forth, back and forth he walked. He was talking loudly, laughing, pointing to the air, gesturing like he was conducting an orchestra. I later found out that that was Jack, through and through. He was animated to the extreme. He was in such good shape for his age—early fifties, I think, when we met. He was fifty-five when he died. By the way, I don’t have AIDS or HIV or whichever the hell it is. One of his contacts told the health department about me and they got in touch. I almost fainted. But thank God, the test was negative. I don’t know if he ever used a condom. Obviously, he didn’t use one at least once. I certainly didn’t touch him and couldn’t feel the difference if I had. We did it several times a week for a couple of months.
He got away with murder with me. I mean, he never took me for a meal or got a hotel. We did it right in his office. I got completely grossed out because all I could think of was how smooth he was and I probably wasn’t the first one he had screwed there. I imagined the DNA on his desk or carpet.
We almost got caught once; it was the last time we did it. A girl who looked like she was a model knocked on his door and called his name out. He pushed me off him so quickly that I almost fell over. In seconds, he zipped up and walked to the door. He touched the top of an air-purifier thing he kept on his desk. I was too naïve to know the meaning of that until later. Any sex smell would be eradicated. He opened the door to the girl he called Sandra, but I was in the bathroom by then, cowering. Although now I feel differently, at the time I didn’t want him to get into trouble. He must have been in some kind of relationship with Sandra because she said right off, “What’s going on in here?” He didn’t get defensive at all and I thought I heard her giggle. He closed the door when their conversation ended and he rushed me out of there like the wind. Of course, when my period didn’t come and I took the test, it never occurred to me to go to Sandra. I bet they were involved. Maybe I need to confront her, rather than the wife?
My apartment is in Chelsea. I love this part of the city. When I was at Barnard, I lived with my parents on the Upper East Side. Although I need my parents to be involved with Eric, living in the same neighborhood as they do would be too confining. It took them months to forgive me for having pre-marital sex, not to mention sex with a married man. I had to tell them because, like I said, I was afraid Jack would kill me. I needed someone on my side.
Here’s the whole story. When I found out I was pregnant, I went back to his office. I had tried calling and he would never accept my calls. I didn’t have his cell phone number, and I didn’t even know where he lived. He wouldn’t see me at his office, and I have too much pride to make a scene where I had to do business occasionally. To say I was frantic is an understatement. I was stupid enough to think he would sweep me off my feet, divorce his wife, and marry me. He didn’t care about me. As a matter of fact, he didn’t even like me. He didn’t think of me at all. So I was a childish schoolgirl who lost her virginity to a creepy, older man, dying of AIDS. Now I have to make up some story about Eric’s dad that the kid can be proud of. I guess I’ll just leave out the truth.
Anyway, he wouldn’t see me and I figured out by going online and searching that his mother lived uptown on the Upper West Side. After work one Friday night, I took the subway uptown and walked ten blocks to her house. It was hotter than hell that night, and the streets were packed. Every restaurant had a line of people waiting to get in. It’s not like that on the East Side. At least not in the neighborhood I grew up in. People call ahead for reservations so you don’t have all of this human congestion. I got to Jack’s mother’s house at about eight p.m. and to say I was shocked is an understatement. My parents are well off, I should explain. My great-great-great-grandparents came to Manhattan from the Netherlands and were among the early Dutch settlers. I grew up with a nanny who I realize now was a personal maid. Our house is a lovely single-family home with about seven thousand square feet of living space. Jack’s mother’s place is twice that size. And the yard! We have a back yard on the East Side, but this place sat on at least an acre of park land and had a six-car carriage house in the back. It was a true New York mansion. I tried to open the front gate without making it squeak but it was impossible. It was a gigantic, black, wrought-iron thing at least six feet tall or higher, so it took all my strength to push it open. I saw lights, so I knew someone was there.
Jack’s over-protective little brother was there and he was even more fanatical about the family name than Jack was. He twisted my arm so hard I thought he would break it, and pulled me into the house when I started yelling on the porch that I was pregnant and I needed to see Jack right away. He threw me in a chair in the biggest family room I have ever seen, and told me to shut the hell up, he would call Jack but only if I didn’t make a sound. He left the room, closing the doors behind him. I could hear murmuring out in the hallway. Jack was there within the hour. He gave me about two hundred in cash and said there would be more but that I had to promise to have an abortion. Then he pulled out his phone and showed me pictures that I didn’t realize he had taken while we were screwing away in his office—really obscene crotch shots. He threatened to publish them on the Internet and send copies to my mom and dad. I didn’t say anything about telling his wife. I thought I would save that for when my family was behind me and I had some protection. As it turned out, I never had to threaten him with that because my parents got our lawyers involved right away. Part of the deal they made was that I was never, ever to get into touch with any member of his family, or his associates, or anyone who was remotely involved with him; nor was I to tell any of my friends the baby’s paternity. He could do whatever he wanted because Jack was loaded. It seemed so simple for them; they may have had a lot of experience buying off his sexual conquests. I’ll never know because I can’t investigate. That’s why I need to find out if there is a death clause that would make everything null and void. I am chomping at the bit to tell someone in his family about little Eric. He looks exactly like Jack, by the way. There is no mistake who his father is. I could take him to the wife’s house and she would know by looking at him, right away.
I wonder who has those pictures?
A
fter having coffee with Maryanne at the mansion, Pam thought about trying to see Sandra before she went back to Long Island. Nelda and Bernice were settled in for the evening and didn’t seem to notice that she was there. The way things had worked out with the two of them was reason for rejoicing. Nelda’s memory seemed better since she had someone to talk to every day and Bernice was definitely on the mend. It meant that Pam was free to grieve, free to contemplate everything she was learning about Jack.
The surprise visit to the beach house from Maryanne was probably the most difficult of Jack’s secrets revealed yet. With Sandra, and even Melissa, she could blame midlife crisis for his lapse of character. With Marie, it was the act of a sick mind. But with Maryanne, there was simply no explanation that Pam could come up with that exonerated her husband. Why did he need that affirmation? The child was almost the same age as his own two children. Was he doing it all for charity? She had wracked her brain for days, trying to form a picture of who her husband was that would explain everything. She just couldn’t do it.
The face of the Jack she knew was not that of a real person, it couldn’t be. It was a fake that he had created that would satisfy her need to know who her husband was. Because she was so shallow, it didn’t take much effort on his part. She still couldn’t believe that there wasn’t one instance that she could think of that shed any suspicion on him. The impulse to start crying was strong; she felt like such a jerk. Gathering up what little strength she had left, Pam pulled herself together and went in to say good-bye to her mother and Bernice. When she got to her car, she called Sandra, who answered on the first ring.
“Hi! I just got in from work. What are you doing in town?” Sandra asked. Pam decided to keep Maryanne private.
“I stopped in to check up on the elders. Can you spare a cup of tea? I thought I’d see you before I head back to the beach,” Pam answered.
Sandra didn’t want to upset the apple cart; she and Tom were fixing dinner together and recently had had the conversation about how she was going to slowly cut her ties with the Smith family. She thought of all the weekends that summer that the wife of her late lover had entertained her at the beach, treating her like royalty. She couldn’t turn Pam away this one time, no matter what Tom wanted.
“I’d love to see you, too. Come on over,” she replied. When she hung up, she told Tom that Pam was on her way.
“Okay, do you want me to go downstairs?” He was sincerely trying to stay out of the way so that Sandra and Pam could have some down time.
“Not at all! She would feel like an intruder if I sent you away! Let’s get the coffee things out, okay? Besides, you need to keep making my dinner,” she teased. In a few moments, the buzzer went off and Pam was at the door. She came in and they embraced. Then Tom yelled out, “Hello!”
“Oh you should have said something! Now I feel terrible about interrupting you two.” She winked at Sandra. Tom came out of the kitchen with a towel wrapped around his waist for an apron and embraced Pam.
“Stay for dinner. I’m cooking for Sandra and there is plenty.”
“He cooks, too? Wow, you are a keeper!” Pam exclaimed. “Thank you, but no. I don’t like driving in the dark and if I time it just right, I will be on the road by seven and home by eight-thirty. I have just enough time to drink my tea and leave.”
“Well, I have a surprise for you. I have real coffee now; Tom is a coffee fanatic, so I had to get rid of the instant stuff and buy a pot,” she said, holding it up for Pam to see.
Pam had noticed a change the minute she walked into the apartment; it was so subtle as to be almost imperceptible. Sandra was happy. To bring up Jack’s name or any of the garbage about AIDS or other women would be to diminish her peace. Pam felt as though even her presence, the knowledge that her husband had fathered the baby, would no longer bring comfort to Sandra. Instead, it would be a reminder of something shameful. However, Sandra wasn’t ready to call it quits.
She brought the coffee in and was bending over to place it on the table next to Pam. “I really need to talk,” Sandra whispered. “I found out about another woman, maybe even two, that he was sleeping with while we were together.” She straightened up and with raised eyebrows, nodded her head at Pam. The gesture said,
See, it’s not over yet.