Part 20 (1/2)
”Don't,” Marilyn whispered.
”You know what? I think I'll take that time alone now. I think I'll go for a walk.”
”Yes. But Barbara, call me later. Promise.”
I hung up. After flinging the tape onto the coffee table, I stomped the pins and needles out of my sleeping legs, and ran down to the beach.
The glorious weather mocked me: warm breeze, blue sky. I took off my shoes and walked the length of Wrightsville Beach, more than three miles, all the way to the southern end. By the time I reached the bottom tip of the island, my head was clear. I turned and started back, the whoosh of rolling surf and the strain of exercise momentarily wiping my mind free of Jon's infidelity, Essie's dramatics, Marilyn's complicity. When another subject entirely popped into my head-the subject of Barry Levin-it seemed so unrelated that I didn't make the connection, until it was too late.
Even after Jon and I had become an official couple our freshman year in college, Barry and I had stayed friends. We could talk on the phone as easily as Marilyn and I did, and sometimes we'd go to movies that Jon didn't want to see, often with some of Barry's new friends from American University. It was after one of those films, while driving a boy named Neil home to the other side of town, that Barry had to stop to fix a flat tire on a winding road in Rock Creek Park. As he bent over the trunk trying to retrieve the jack, another car came around the bend and, before the sleepy driver thought to swerve away, rear-ended Barry's car. The impact shoved Barry into the open trunk and nearly severed both his legs. He bled to death in the ambulance on his way to the hospital, surrounded by medics, with Neil holding his shattered, bloodied body in his arms.
At the funeral, even Neil's inconsolable grief did not give Barry away. Anyone who'd lived through such a night with a friend would react like this. n.o.body suspected love between the two boys, and certainly not s.e.x. On the way home, Penny smoothed the lap of her black dress and said, ”It's better Barry died this way. It would have been worse if he'd lived for people to find out. You should never tell anyone, Barbara. I won't, either. Some people, you have to protect them even after they're gone.”
And except for confiding to Marilyn, I had heeded this advice. In a cruel, ironic way, Barry had been spared what to him would have been the supreme disgrace of revelation. Even now, when coming out of the closet was perfectly acceptable, I wouldn't have told. And as I paced the beach I'd hoped would offer me comfort, Penny's words seemed especially loaded: Some people, you have to protect them even after they're gone.
As now, it seemed, Essie was asking me to do for Penny.
Without realizing it, I had reached the other end of the beach again. The sun had disappeared into a cloud bank beyond the marsh; the air was chilly. I knew now what I would do. Tomorrow when Jon returned, I would take the tape to him. This was Jon's business, not mine. Let him deal with it. Let it be over. Anything was better than this.
I limped toward the house, so distracted that at first I didn't notice the car in my driveway-and then didn't register that it was a car I'd never seen before. Upstairs, the drapes I had drawn were open, and in the living room someone had turned on a light. What the h.e.l.l-?
A fair-haired woman appeared on the porch and waved to me.
”Mom!”
”Robin!” I took the steps two at a time. I hugged my daughter as if clinging to a life raft.
”Mom, are you all right? Aunt Marilyn said I needed to come-this wasn't optional. You won't believe how I got here. Uncle Steve rented a private jet. What's going on?”
I didn't mean to, but I laughed. ”Marilyn arranged this? Steve rented you a plane?”
Robin flung an arm around my waist as we walked into the house. ”They told me you weren't sick, but I didn't believe it.”
”Heartsick is all.”
She looked around. ”Where's Jon? Is this about Jon?”
”As you film people well know,” I said, ”a picture is worth a thousand words.” I put the tape back in the VCR.
Robin watched attentively, polite but puzzled. ”I expected something more shocking,” she said when it was over. ”The woman looks a little like Jon. One of his relatives?”
”His daughter.”
”He has a daughter?”
”I found this out a month ago. He had a baby with a woman who was my best friend except for Marilyn.”
Her mouth actually dropped open.
”Maybe you better sit in a more comfortable chair,” I said. I explained everything but the part about Murray Wishner, which I couldn't bring myself to repeat.
”You mean all these years and you didn't know?”
I shook my head.
”What are you going to do?”
”I feel like such a fool. Buying this house with him. Making it all so complicated. He's been staying in a motel. Giving me 'time to think.' Making me feel-Anyway, when the tape got here this morning, I guess that clinched it.”
”Clinched it how?”
”Essie thinks I can just forgive everything. Just like that!” I snapped my fingers. ”And Jon! He's been so nice about everything. Making all the right gestures. Being so understanding.”
”Is it really that bad?”
”What am I supposed to do, Robin? Condone this-this pattern of deception? Just because he turns on the charm?”
”You know what you should do when something like this happens?” Robin said. ”Get drunk. Then you'll feel better. I know.”
”The only person I get drunk with is Marilyn. Now that I'm older, I don't even enjoy that. I have two drinks and suffer for it all the next day.”
”Then at least let's go out to dinner. I'll treat.”
We ate at The Oceanic, on the windowed second floor that overlooked Crystal Pier and the beach. For all my distress, I was famished. I'd eaten nothing since morning and had done more exercise than I usually did in a month. After growing tipsy from my first gla.s.s of wine, I switched from alcohol to bread as Robin sipped her second Cosmopolitan.
”So Vera's a sports reporter,” Robin mused. ”Seems kind of eerie, doesn't it? Like father, like daughter.”
”When I was young we all wanted to be doctors and lawyers and professors. In your generation everyone wants to be in the entertainment business.”
”Thanks, Mom.”
”I didn't mean it as an insult.”
”None taken.” Robin reached across and squeezed my hand. ”Let me tell you a happier story. Even if I weren't in Wilmington now, I'd be coming in a couple of weeks. I'm coming back for this independent feature a bunch of us have been developing for two years.”
”Two years?”
”I didn't want to say anything because it was so iffy. Getting financing for something like this-Usually it just doesn't happen.”
The arrival of our meal gave me time to tame my dueling emotions: pleasure at seeing Robin so happy, irritation that n.o.body ever told me anything until after the fact-not Jon, not Essie, not even my own daughter.
”We've even got a distribution deal,” Robin said as she lobbed b.u.t.ter on a baked potato. ”Distribution is so critical.”
”And you sound like your old self again.”
”Oh, I am.” Robin winked. ”If this thing goes, I'll be financially independent. Well, not exactly. But I'll be in a position to get money for other projects.”
”Good. Put on your list of projects supporting your mother in her old age.” I lifted a forkful of grouper to my mouth. I was amazed at my own appet.i.te.
All through dinner, Robin chattered about her movie-a coming-of-age story for the twenty-first century, she called it. She sounded so carefree that her divorce might never have happened. She even looked different. Her hair had been layered into a short, geometric cut-a shelf of hair above her ears, a triangle of sideburns. Robin's hair was too wiry to lie flat, so it puffed up all around her face, creating an unintentional and original effect that made Robin look exactly as she should.