take a pretty decent vacation for ten thousand dollars each, don’t you? The travel agent said it was more than enough. I’m working on the shore house and boat. Did I forget anything, Emily?”
“I don’t think so,” Emily said, her mouth a grim, tight line.
“You’re trying to fool me, Emily,” Ian said jovially. “In the living room are your furs. You should keep them in a vault. There’s a place in Metuchen named Oscar Lowrey. You can store them there, but if you’d rather go someplace else, it’s okay. What do you think?”
What did she think? Dr. Mendenares pretty much said Ian had a screw loose, but then he’d pretty much said she had one loose, too. “I’ll think about it.”
“Aren’t you going to say thank you? I know you, Emily, you thought I wasn’t going to keep my end of the bargain we made. See, you should have trusted me. I always come through. You need to trust me more. What do you see as our problem in keeping a housekeeper?”
“Those white shirts, Ian. No one wants to iron them. Including me.”
“Are you going to sit there and tell me, after all I’ve given you, you aren’t going to iron my shirts?”
“I’m not going to do it. If you want to take back all these lovely things, go ahead. Dinner was…okay. I have to get back to my books now.” She walked away, into the kitchen and down the basement stairs. Only here, in this underground cavern, did she feel safe, reasonably content and free of anxiety. She left the jewelry on the wrought iron table and didn’t bother to check out the furs. She also left Ian with the dishes. The rule had always been: You cook, you clean.
Mendenares, if she was still going to him, would probably applaud her actions. But then, maybe he wouldn’t. He’d told her she had to stand up for herself, take charge of her life and not be a doormat. That’s when she stopped going to the sessions. At the beginning she’d made a pact with herself to take twelve sessions, and if she couldn’t see the light after three months, she would need more than one forty-five-minute session once a week. How disgusted Mendenares looked when she told him she wouldn’t be returning. “I have to work this out myself. I still love Ian. I will probably always love him. If that’s my weakness, then that’s what I have to work at. I want to try and save my marriage.”
She hadn’t done anything, though. She returned home and burrowed into the basement with her seedlings, her books, and her memories.
And now this strange dinner and gift-giving session. What did it mean? Everything Ian did was suspect. He was giving her everything he promised, everything she said she wanted. She hadn’t been able to work up any excitement when the cars arrived. The furs would probably stay in their boxes until Ian hung them up. Mendenares said she had to force herself to look at things squarely and to be honest with herself. And she was trying to do that. Ian was not a kind, generous person. In her heart she believed Ian was paying her off, and as soon as his debt was paid, he was going to leave her.
She smelled his shaving lotion before she saw him. It was the first time, to her knowledge, that Ian knew she was living in the basement, the first time he’d actually come down the stairs. She looked up from the pile of books on the card table she was sitting at. He was angry but trying to control it.
“Emily, I think we need to talk.” He looked around uncertainly. “Let’s go upstairs where we’ll be more comfortable.”
She’d learned a thing or two from Mendenares. She couldn’t give Ian any kind of an edge, because as soon as she did, she was lost to her emotions. “I’m comfortable right here. In case you haven’t noticed, I live down here.”
“I’m not blind, Emily. If you want to do something stupid like live in a cellar, that’s your business. It’s the same stupid principle that made you sign away your rights to the clinics. This is a magnificent house, a comfortable house. If you want to live like a mole, feel free.”
“I am and I will. What do you want to talk about? If you want to really talk, then let’s discuss that scene where you left me at Jacques’ Restaurant and then let’s talk about the clinics. In my opinion we do not have a marriage. If we did, you would never have left me and gone to the Cayman Islands by yourself. That was one of the cruelest things you’ve ever done to me and you’ve done quite a few. The list is long. I let you do it to me, though, so I’m as much to blame. You know it too. Giving me all those things is your way of trying to make yourself feel good. I thought it was a joke, a game we were playing when I made out that ridiculous list. I don’t want things, Ian. I want a husband and a family. That’s what I signed up for and you said you did too. I know you’re a doctor, I know you have weird hours, but if I was important to you, you’d find a way to at least call me once a day, have dinner with me, bring me a flower once in a while, something to show me you care. You don’t do any of those things.”
“Are you saying this house is to make me feel good?”
Emily stared at her husband, pleased that her heart was beating normally, pleased that she saw his eye twitch, a sign that he was upset.
“Oh, you bet. You have the biggest, the best bedroom. You don’t want me in it, but you were gracious enough to assign me one across the hall. When was the last time we slept together, made love? I remember the day, the hour, and what went on before and afterward. Women remember things like that. I don’t like the yellow room and I resent that you would think I would. Take away the surprise element, Ian, and what do you have? I would rather have known about the house, done the decorating myself. And how do you know I couldn’t do a good job? You don’t know a goddamn thing about me and that’s really sad. You broke my heart. You really did and I cannot forgive you for that. I’m still angry about those clinics.”
“Those clinics netted a hundred and forty thousand dollars last month,” Ian said coldly.
“How many babies did you kill for that, Ian? How many men jerked off in a bottle to store in your freezers? Give me a number, Ian.”
“Don’t go noble on me, Emily. Women have a right to choose. I’ve always believed that. Jesus Christ, you don’t even go to church, so don’t start that morality crap. You believe they have a right to choose, too.”
“If you truly believed that, Ian, I would know it in my heart and then I could live with the clinics, but you don’t believe it. I know you better than you know yourself. You’re in this for the money, and nothing you can say will ever convince me otherwise. You kill babies for money and then you buy me presents to try and ease your conscience.”
“That’s not true,” Ian bellowed.
It was true, she could see it in his face, read it in his eyes. She felt no satisfaction, only a deep sadness. Suddenly she wanted to wipe the look off his face, kiss away the look in his eyes. He still had a hold over her. “Take back all those presents and go outside in the garden and bring me one of the tulips, pick me a dandelion, a green weed. I don’t care what it is as long as you pick it because you want to give me something from your heart. Did you know dandelions are herbs?”
“No, I’m not taking back the gifts. I promised them to you and I never knowingly break a promise. The tulips are too pretty to pick and I think you know that. I didn’t see any dandelions in the lawn when I came home. And why in the hell would I give you a weed. And no, I didn’t know dandelions are herbs. I guess I wasn’t in class the day they discussed dandelions.”
“What else do you want to talk about?” Emily asked as she tapped her pencil on the table.
“Us.”
