Chapter 7
Clara
I avoided my parents after that night at Martha and Will’s in Queens. I worked at the studio, went to the gym, just basically kept my head down, and got on with things. The storm in the tabloids about the auction died down. I spent every night at Jack’s until he had to go out of town.
He had been gone for a week, by the time my mother showed up at my door.
“So, you are alive?” she demanded, as she swept inside, and looked around as though she thought Jack might be hiding naked somewhere in the place.
“Yes, I am. What’s wrong?” I asked her, sensing a new tension to her.
“It’s your father, he’s had a heart attack,” she delivered with customary Emily coolness. The breath left my lungs in a whoosh. “If it’s not too much to ask, will you come home with me?” she sniffed.
“Of course,” I muttered, as I started to gather my things.
To my mother’s credit, she didn’t say anything more about how difficult I’d been to reach for the week. She didn’t remind me of the missed calls that I’d neglected to return. I suppose that was as much mercy as I could hope for from Emily.
We traveled to Boston in the evening. My mother spoke to the hospital on my phone, and I was able to speak to my father for a few minutes. I knew she was stressed, as she sat tapping away at the screen, frowning, for an hour during our journey. We got into my childhood house, just as it was getting dark. The house felt as cold and oppressive as always.
I put my bags in my room and then went to find my father. After a fruitless search, I found my mother in the kitchen, drinking red wine alone. A very unlike Emily thing to do.
“Where’s dad?” I asked her. She was staring out the window at the darkness beyond and didn’t blink even when I spoke to her.
“He’s still in the hospital, of course. I can’t take care of him here,” she muttered.
“You could hire nurses,” I pointed out, taking a wine glass out a cupboard, and pouring myself a glass. The liquid looked thick, like blood. I changed my mind and set it down, my stomach rolling.
“Yes, I could do a lot of things. But the hospital has the highest concentration of medical professionals in one place, and therefore it is best,” Emily said vacantly. I checked my phone. I’d tried to call Jack earlier but it had gone to voicemail. He was in Tokyo and the time difference was brutal. I hadn’t properly heard his voice in days.
“Calling your boyfriend?” she asked in a hard tone. I put my phone down.
“Yes, actually,”
“Let me guess, he got what he wanted from you and now – silence,” she said. I crossed my arms defensively over my chest.
“I don’t want to talk about Jack with you,” I told her firmly.
“Have I ever told you how I ended up marrying your father? I was engaged to another man, until right before our wedding, you know,” Emily said, shocking me.
“You’ve never told me that. I thought you and dad had always been together,”
“No, your father was my family’s choice of husband. I had very different ideas. His name was Lucian, and he was a painter. He was French and finishing up a degree in fine arts. He was… he was everything, and he certainly turned my head.” I didn’t want to listen to this, but there was something so compelling about the glimpse inside my mother’s closed heart. She took a long drink of wine.
“What happened?”
“What else? We were engaged, and I was prepared to go against everyone for him. Out of love for him. I was prepared to live off his art, and be a struggling, starving artist’s wife, because I loved him so very dearly.”
“And?”
“Lucien didn’t feel the same way. I wasn’t quite the catch, without my family fortune behind my name. He went home to France and I never saw him again. He never did get famous, so I suppose I would have spent my life in poverty for nothing. I wouldn’t even have had a man who loved me as compensation.”
“Jack loves me, it’s different. Jack isn’t a struggling artist either. He’s richer than us,” I pointed out, as though it made a difference at all to me. My mother shrugged.
“He’s from a different world, and that is what is similar. Worlds can pass each other by, even linger for a moment, but you cannot live between two of them. Your brother will find that out the hard way. I don’t want that for you,” she said, turning to me with a look I had trouble meeting. Was my mother actually worried about me for once? Did her need to control me come from a place of fear after all?
“Money troubles aside, you’ll wind up alone, looking after his children, tied to a man who doesn’t understand you… it’s a lonely place to be. Men like Jack Dawson are driven, ambitious. He’ll do anything to succeed. He’s a workaholic,” Emily said. “Take tonight. Your father is in the hospital. Where is Jack Dawson?”
“That’s not fair.”
“What is not fair is my daughter’s dreams, sacrificed on the altar of a man’s ambition, and being an afterthought. A footnote in the story of his life’s achievements. Whatever you say about your father and me, we are equals. We have lived an equally important life. That’s all I want for you, Clara, though you might not see it. I don’t expect you to. Being a mother of a daughter, one day you might find out… is a war between your head and heart every day.”
With those thoughts storming about my head, I went to bed and lay there in the dark staring at the same shadows moving across my ceiling as I had my entire childhood. Sure, it was a sad story, but Emily Winter had done nothing in my life to make me think there was a deeper, self-sacrificing reason for her strictness and coldness. Her frigid parenting style didn’t seem like a mother battling her heart to do the best for her daughter.
I had texted Jack and told him via message that my dad was in the hospital, as soon as my mother had told me. Now, I lay there in the dark for hours, wondering what he was doing in Japan, and why he hadn’t responded. Of course, I knew Jack’s work was important to him but it stung.
By the morning, he still hadn’t called.
* * *
Jack
Tokyo was as mad as it usually was. I was packed with back-to-back meetings, but with Clara’s quick message about her father, I knew I would have to leave, business unfinished or not. I tried to call, and irritatingly, was sent straight to voicemail. That had been happening the last few days, and it was driving me crazy not to hear her voice.
I had a last meeting in Osaka in a few days, that I had to attend, and then planned to fly home. I sat in first class on the Japanese bullet train and stared out at the lush countryside beyond the window. I wanted to bring Clara here. She’d love the contrasting culture, and we could go to Kyoto and tour the temples. Her jewelry line might get a Japanese touch since she already favored stunning minimalism.
I had messaged her immediately, following her text about her father, but was yet to hear back. It didn’t feel like Clara to fail to respond. I texted her again on that journey, but once I got to Osaka, and met the clients, I got swept up with work. I would call her that night, and make sure she was ok and that he was keeping well.
It wasn’t until much later at my hotel, as I took out my phone, and realized she still hadn’t called me back, nor replied. Alarm prickled through me at the realization. If she was visiting her father, she would be distracted, busy. That was understandable, however, she would also be with her mother. The poisonous viper who hated me, whispering venom in her ear. After all that had passed between Clara and me, she couldn’t be easily swayed anymore. I had told her how I loved her, adored her. I had introduced her to my parents, a first for me, and a last. I had told her I wanted to have a family with her. Those things were stronger than any high society shade her mother could throw at me. I truly believed that. Clara and I were stronger than Emily Winter.
If I left immediately, I would undo all the good my trip had done in the first place. My company provided jobs for so many, and I was the one that needed to ensure we continued to prosper, so I could keep offering them the best medical insurance, sick leave, maternity cover, and pension I could. Regardless, after Osaka, I had to get home, and soon.