Chapter 5 #3
“You look so much like her that it shocked me when I first saw you.” But Andy had already noticed that Charlotte was livelier and bolder than Felicia, and she wasn’t shy.
She had a dry sense of humor and told funny stories about herself that made him laugh.
They talked about his books and the films he had written, including a hit series, and he asked her all about the company she had started, which he said he had used himself and thought was fantastic.
“I’m trying to come up with a new idea, and I haven’t thought of anything yet. A lot has been happening. It’s been kind of mind-boggling for the last month, the farm, my mom’s books, finding out about your father. She had a whole other persona, and a whole different life than the woman we knew.”
“That must have been a hell of a shock,” he agreed.
“It was, but it was all good. Her dark secrets were all good ones—wonderful books, a beautiful home, and a good man she loved and who loved her. It doesn’t get better than that.”
“No, it doesn’t, and now I have five women who could have been my sisters, and I like everyone I’ve met. I wish Felicia and my father had gotten married.”
“So do I,” Charlotte said simply. “She deserved so much happiness. Her parents weren’t particularly nice to her when she was young.
I think they were cold and nothing she did was ever good enough for them, and it turns out that our father wasn’t the prince she made him out to be.
We only just found that out too. She never got the recognition she deserved for the books, not even from us, since she never told us, and we didn’t read them. ”
“But my father adored her. They were madly in love, and maybe that was enough for both of them. Some people never find what they had. I never have,” Andy admitted.
He seemed like an honest guy to Charlotte and she could see why her sisters liked him.
He seemed outspoken and honest. And in spite of his good looks, he didn’t seem like a narcissist. He was very modest about his books.
“What are your kids like?” he asked her, and seemed genuinely interested.
“Monsters some of the time, angels at others. My son’s at Stanford, my daughter is a junior in high school.
She’s more interested in makeup and hair and boys than homework.
We just spent Christmas in Paris together, and we had a fantastic time.
I couldn’t face Christmas at home, without my mother, so we went to Paris.
It was an amazing trip,” she said, still glowing.
“We got back yesterday. They’re with friends tonight, and for the weekend, so I got to be with my sisters. ”
“You’re lucky to have each other. I grew up alone with my dad. My mother died when I was nine. And I was a huge pain in the ass in my teens. But somehow we stuck it out, and now we’re best friends. I wish I could do something for him now. He’s in acute pain over your mother.”
“It’ll take time, for all of us. She was a lot to lose,” Charlotte said softly.
“I didn’t know her that well, but I agree. And she was always nice to me. For my father to love her as he did for fifteen years, she was probably even more remarkable than we all think. They had something very special between them,” Andy said, almost wistfully.
“Do you believe in that kind of love?” Charlotte asked him candidly, and the question surprised him. “I mean that kind of tidal wave that almost drowns you, it’s so powerful. The kind of love that lights up your world.” He smiled at what she said.
“Honestly? No, I don’t. I think it happens, but very rarely, and when it does, it’s kind of a freak event, like a meteor or an eclipse or a rainbow, or a whole mountain range shifting, or a volcano. It’s never happened to me,” he said.
“Me neither. I think it would scare the hell out of me if it did. I’m used to things going along great for a while, and then falling apart and going to shit in some nice, ordinary, predictable way, like the guy sleeps with your best friend, or runs over your dog, or hates your kids.
I can handle that. But true love like our parents had?
Who does that happen to? And what do you do when it does, other than run like hell?
” He was laughing when she said it sincerely and she looked so serious, as though she meant it, and she did.
“I take it you’re divorced?” he said. He and Charlotte were speaking in low voices, and the others weren’t listening at the end of dinner. They were having some very existential conversation that neither of them cared about, and he liked talking to her.
“Actually, I did time in prison. I killed him.”
“Seriously?” His eyes grew wide and she laughed.
“No, but I probably should have. It was all very mundane. He slept with almost everyone we knew, so we got divorced. He didn’t want to deal with the kids, so he moved to Spain and was killed in a motorcycle accident five years later, with his eighteen-year-old girlfriend on the back of the bike.
She survived. He didn’t. The kids hadn’t seen him since the divorce.
It’s okay, they’re fine. They won’t grow up to be axe murderers.
It just worked out that way. My mother warned me that he was a disaster, and she had a really annoying habit of being right about the men in my life. ”
“What are you two talking about?” Quinne leaned over and asked them. They hadn’t stopped talking all night. Charlotte’s vow to stay away from Andy didn’t seem to be holding. And Andy was clearly mesmerized by her.
“I just told him about Adam,” Charlotte said blithely.
“Already? You just met him. The poor guy is going to think we’re all crazy.”
“He’s practically my brother. I can tell him anything, can’t I?”
“No!” Quinne objected. She’d already had a fair amount of champagne by then, but Charlotte was relatively sober, and so was Andy.
“It’s fine, really,” Andy said to Quinne.
“At last count, I had twenty-one girlfriends who went to rehab, and I paid for it every time. In one case, I paid for her mother to go too, and a set of twin brothers, but they didn’t make it through rehab and went to jail for grand larceny.
She was a little off too. It’s hard to meet serious women in L.A. I finally gave up on actresses.”
“You’re divorced?” Quinne asked him, feeling totally at ease with him.
“I’m a virgin, and a coward. And probably a cynic. I’m actually happy the way things are, especially now that I have five nearly sisters. I wish your mother had introduced us all sooner.”
“So do I. I’ve always wanted a brother. There were way too many women at our house growing up.
A massive overdose of estrogen, but I love them all now.
They’re very cool, and so was our mom,” Charlotte said, looking sad for a minute, and he gently touched her hand, like a whisper.
He was painfully handsome in his jacket, and sexy in the jeans and black velvet loafers. He looked very stylish.
They joined the others to play games after dinner, charades and liar’s dice and fast card games, until midnight, and then they all went around the room kissing each other and wishing each other a happy New Year.
Quinne heard Veronica’s phone ring, and she could guess it was Anson.
Veronica swept it off the table where she had left it and slipped into the next room to talk to him, so he couldn’t hear the noise around her.
They sounded like way more than six people, more like a party, laughing and talking, with music in the background.
It was five minutes after midnight and Anson sounded rushed. “I just wanted to wish you a happy New Year and tell you I love you.” But she could tell he was in a hurry to get off the phone before he got caught.
“I love you too,” she said. She had been thinking of him all night, with his family. She was with hers. She’d been having a nice time. They were a congenial group.
“Are you alone?” he asked, and she hesitated. She didn’t want to lie to him and never had before. She didn’t want to start now, after ten years.
“I’m with three of my sisters,” she said.
“At the apartment?” He sounded confused, and put her to the test again.
“No, at a farm we just inherited from our mother that we didn’t know she had. I didn’t want to be alone, especially not this Christmas.”
“Where is the farm?”
“In Connecticut,” she said quietly.
“I told you that I wanted you at the apartment in the city in case I got free.” He sounded livid, but he was controlling his voice so no one would hear him talking to her. She knew the drill.
“Anson, you were never going to leave your family at midnight and drive to New York to see me. And I can be home any time you want me tomorrow. I didn’t want to spend New Year’s Eve alone. You’re with your family. So am I. That’s fair.” But he had never promised her fair.
“We’ll discuss it when I see you,” he said, and hung up without saying goodbye.
Usually when he lost his temper, it frightened her.
He liked to have his way in all things. He called the shots and made the rules, reasonable or not.
But this time, she wasn’t afraid. She felt tired, like a wave washing over her.
Years before, she would have rushed back to the city, to be there for him even though she knew he wouldn’t come.
But not this time. She went back to the others sitting by the fire and talking, and tried to look calmer than she felt. Andy caught her eye, as she sat down.
“Everything okay?” he asked her. Veronica looked sad to him.
“Pretty much,” she answered, but she seemed tired, and deflated suddenly.
And she was. She was tired of Anson telling her what to do, and not do, what to think, what to wear, who to be, who to see.
She lived in a cage that anyone would have envied, but it came at a high price.
She was the creature he had fashioned out of who she used to be, and could have been.
He had thrown away the parts he didn’t like and weren’t of use to him, and reshaped the parts he liked, and everything he had made of her was for him.
She felt as though there were no original parts of her left.
She would have to answer to him now for not being at home on New Year’s Eve as she’d been told.
Andy didn’t know what was happening to her or who had called, but he felt sorry for her.
She was like a beautiful bird, and he couldn’t tell where or why, but he could sense that there were chains holding her tight.
She was a prisoner and had lost the key to her life.