Cassie was breathless by the time she reached the phone. “Mommy, you know what?” she asked.
“What?” Eden could picture Cassie in her ruffled pink bathing suit, clutching the phone, dripping on Pam's clean kitchen floor.
“I can hold my breath for twenty whole seconds under water! It's the longest of anybody.”
“You're turning into a real fish this summer, aren't you?”
“What kind of fish?”
“Well, I don't know.” She usually had an easy rapport with Cassie. Now she was struggling for words. Why couldn't she get her tone right? Why couldn't she sound a little more upbeat? “What kind would you like to be?” she asked.
“Mommy, you're not making any sense.”
“Isn't it getting too dark to swim up there?” She looked out the window. The forest was black.
“We've got lights right in the pool, Mom. They make your skin look all white and fat. And the water's real warm. Can you come over and swim with us?”
“I'm too far away, Cassie, you know that.” Hadn't Cassie gotten this straight yet? “You'll be coming down here to Virginia before you know it, though, and then we'll have lots of time together.”
There was a short silence. She could hear Cassie's teeth chattering. “But April and Lindy won't be there.”
“No. But I’ll be here and we can canoe together and”—what else?—”we'll have fun and then we'll go back to Santa Monica and you can start nursery school and make lots of new friends.”
“Daddy says I have to go there.”
“Go where, honey? Santa Monica?”
“He says I have to go to Virginia.”
Eden waited for the fierce little arrow of pain to leave her heart before she spoke again. “Don't you want to come here, Cassie?”
“I want to stay here 'cause of the pool and April and Lindy.”
God. When would Cassie be old enough to at least make an attempt at sparing her feelings? “But I really miss you. I want to have some time with you this summer too.”
“Then come here.” There was an about-to-cry quality to Cassie's voice that Eden recognized all too well.
“Sweetheart, that's just not possible.”
“But I have a kitten here. Mommy let me get it and I can't—”
“Mommy?” Eden shut her eyes as the arrow struck home again. “Do you mean Pam?”
“Yes, Pam. She let me—”
“Do you call Pam Mommy?”
“Sometimes.” Cassie's voice was still a little rough, but the answer was matter-of-fact. She had no concept at all of how her words cut.
“Cassie, I can hear your teeth chattering. You'd better warm up and I'll call you tomorrow, okay?”
“Okay. 'Bye.”
“I love—” The phone clicked in Eden's ear. She sat still for a moment, then picked up the small leather address book from the end table and opened it to Alexander. She started dialing without stopping to think.
“Hello?” Ben's voice was anticipatory.
“Can I come over?” She didn't bother to identify herself.
“I wish you would,” he said.
She didn't take the time to change out of her shorts and T-shirt, or to fix her hair where it was pulling loose from her clip. She glanced in the dimly lit rearview mirror as she drove up the winding road to his cabin and wrinkled her nose at her reflection.
He opened the door before she knocked. “You're upset,” he said.
“I just spoke to Cassie.” She looked at him as she walked into the cabin and knew instantly why she had come here: he would understand. “I feel as though I've lost her.”
He motioned toward the sofa and she sat down. “Wine?” he asked. “Beer?”
“Wine,” she said. “And a lot of it. I want to feel numb.”
He poured them each a glass of wine and sat down on the arm of the upholstered chair. He was wearing his mauvey T-shirt again. “What makes you think you've lost her?” he asked.
She took a few sips of her wine and set the glass on the coffee table. “She's so happy up there with Wayne and Pam and Pam's daughters. She doesn't want to come down here. She actually said that. She's adjusted so easily, as though I'm expendable, you know? I don't think she misses me at all. She calls Pam Mommy.”
He winced. Oh, yes, he understood.
She curled her legs under her on the sofa. “Then I think, if she's happier with them—they can give her a mother and a father plus two siblings and stability and a normal life—then what right do I have wanting her to live with me? I have to admit she might be better off with them. Where I live…” She shook her head, not certain if Ben could possibly comprehend what her life was like. “Wayne says it's all plastic. Fake. The people are fake, and he's right. I'm fake.”
Ben scowled. “Bullshit.”
“No, he's right. You're not seeing it here. I'm different here. In Hollywood I'm nothing but a caricature of myself. And I'm raising Cassie in that unreal world. The only good reason I have for making her live with me is a purely selfish one: I want her.” Her voice cracked. “I can't give her up. It would be like starting over and—” She stopped herself as a look of quiet resolve came into Ben's eyes.
“I'm sorry,” she said. “That's what you're doing, isn't it? Starting over?”
“Yes. And you're right to be scared of it. It's hell. But I think you're worried about nothing. You've forgotten the relationship you and Cassie have. She still loves you. Little kids—they just say what's on their minds. They don't mean to hurt anyone. Right this second she might think she wants to live with her dad forever, but…What was she doing when you called?”
“Swimming. Wayne got her out of the pool to talk to me.”
“There you have it. She's having a great time and you start talking about leaving.”
She took another swallow of wine. “Maybe,” she conceded. “I really am glad she's happy up there. She's adapted so well.”
“You raised a resilient daughter.” He swirled the wine in his glass and then leaned forward. “Why do you think you're fake in California and not here?”
Eden sighed. “I'm a good actress, Ben. I can fool people. I can make them think I'm confident and strong and…untouched by events in my life. You learn to wear the mask. After you've done that for a while, you get stuck behind it. But I can't fool Lou and Kyle. You can't fool the people you grew up with, the ones who know the real you, warts and all.” She looked at him squarely. She could be honest with him. “And I don't want to fool you. It's a relief to feel real around someone for a change. No offense, but part of the reason I feel so safe around you is that I think you're as screwed up as I am.” She took a deep breath. “May I have some more wine, please?”
He was smiling, nearly laughing. He shook his head. “No, you may not. I have no interest in making you numb.” He stood up then, shoving the coffee table out of the way with his leg, and held his hand out to her. “Come here,” he said.
He led her to the bed and sat her down on the blue-and-white quilt. She felt the layers of fabric, the knots and seams, beneath her palms. He sat next to her and unfastened the clip at the back of her head, and her hair fell softly to her shoulders. He lifted it in slow motion to kiss the nape of her neck, and she felt her blood rushing there to meet his lips.
“You have a beautiful neck,” he said. “But when your hair is up it makes you look very, very vulnerable.”
“I thought it made me look matronly.”
“Nothing could make you look matronly.” He cupped his hand under her calf and lifted her leg across his lap. He began untying her tennis shoe and she watched silently as his fingers deftly worked the laces. He motioned her to raise her other leg. “You okay?” he asked as he tugged at one end of the shoelace.
She knew he was asking if he should proceed. “Fine.” She leaned back on her hands, remembering the elaborate explanation her mother had given Matt to keep him from getting any closer. “In the journal, my poor father is in love with my mother and he's trying to
get close to her. They're still just kids. Well, eighteen or so. My mother got spooked. She wants it and she doesn't want it. So she stops him with this long lecture on how sex and friendship don't mix. I feel sorry for her. It's obvious she cares about him and wants to make love to him—she's immensely aware of her own sexuality—but she turned what could have been a warm and passionate moment into a cerebral exercise.”
Ben set her shoe on the floor. “Like you're doing now, you mean.
She gave him a defensive stare. “I'm making conversation.”
“And you're not going to get spooked?” He reached across her to turn out the lamp and his arm brushed her breasts, deliberately, she thought.
The room dimmed. Only the lamp near the sofa lit Ben's face, and the angle of light altered his features, made him a stranger.
“I might,” she said. Her heart was pounding. She had a sudden fear that if they made love it would indeed change things.
He leaned toward her and she set her fist against his chest. “Wait.”
She saw the question in his eyes as he pulled away from her.
“Could we talk a little longer?” she asked.
He smiled. “A few more cerebral calisthenics, huh?” He moved up on the bed, pulling her along with him until they were lying face to face, close together on the narrow bed, sharing one long pillow. “You're not alone in being uptight about this,” he said. His hand rested on her hip, fingers splayed, his thumb tracing the line of her hipbone. “I felt sexually dead after my divorce. It was like that part of me had died. But the first night you and I were together at Sugar Hill, I discovered it was alive after all.” He grinned at her. “That's why I was such a jerk that night. I felt like a thirteen-year-old kid with his first public erection. It took me completely by surprise. I didn't know what to do with it.”
Never would Wayne have shared something that intimate with her. Wayne would not even share that sort of thinking with himself. And Michael would have made up some excuse for acting like a fool, something to protect his carefully inflated ego.
“I admire your openness,” she said. “You're not at all afraid to be yourself.”
“Thanks, but that's not completely true.”
“I'd like to tell you why I'm with Michael.”
“Now? I'd rather not have him here in bed with us.”
“I need to tell you, though, because I don't want you to think I do this easily.”
He brushed a strand of her hair back from her face and let his fingers rest for a moment on her throat before returning them to the arc of her hipbone. “Okay,” he said. “Tell me."
“I was nervous about seeing anyone after Wayne and I separated. I finally got up the courage to go out with this guy. We kissed good night, that was it, but he spread it all over town that we slept together. I was holding my breath, waiting for one of the tabloids to pick it up. I could just see the headline, I FUCKED EDEN RILEY, across the front page.”
Ben frowned. “Do you think I would do something like that?”
“No, no. I didn't mean that. I'm just trying to explain why I'm with Michael. You see, I would lose so much if that sort of thing happened, if my public image deteriorated. If I'm linked first with one guy, then another. I'd definitely lose the Children's Fund. Maybe even Cassie. Wayne would be back in court so fast I wouldn't know what hit me. He'd make me look loose and less fit to have Cassie than he already has. That's where Michael comes in. He cares about me, to the extent that Michael's capable of caring about anyone other than himself, and I can call all the shots. I don't have to worry about dating, being linked with other people, rumors. Michael is very safe for me.”
“My God, you really can't live your own life, can you? You can't be yourself.”
“It's difficult.”
“But you said you and Michael aren't lovers. Don't you need that? Sex?”
“Not this last year I haven't. And even with Wayne, I would never say I needed it. He said I lacked desire.” She made a face, lowered her eyes to the quilt. Was there nothing she wouldn't tell him?
Ben laughed. “Well, that's certainly bullshit.”
“How would you know?”
“Well, I don't want to embarrass you.” He tugged her T-shirt from her shorts as he spoke and slipped one warm hand inside on her back. “But every once in a while I catch you staring at me with a look that says 'l want your body, Ben Alexander.' It hasn't been my imagination, has it? Not just wishful thinking?”
“No, it's not your imagination.” She slid the tips of her fingers tentatively beneath the snap of his jeans and heard his quick intake of breath. “I think I'm going to explode if we don't make love right now. Does that qualify as desire?”
She could see his smile in the dim light. “Close enough,” he said. He raised himself up on one elbow and kissed her, then lowered his head to her breast. She tugged him closer by the waistband of his jeans and he nibbled her breast through her shirt. She wanted her shirt off, wanted to feel his lips against her skin. She reached for the hem, but he caught her hands.
“Birth control?” he asked.
“Oh.” The color rose in her cheeks. She had not given it a thought. She would remember later, no doubt. But that would be a little late. “I stopped taking the Pill when I was divorced. I completely forgot I needed to worry.”
He groaned and buried his head against her stomach. Then he grabbed her hands and pulled her off the bed. “C'mon.”
“Where are we going?” She scooped up her shoes.
“Drugstore.”
“But Ben.” It was ten winding miles to the nearest drugstore.
“Do you have another suggestion? I doubt a pregnancy would do much for your image.” He grabbed his keys and was pulling her toward the door. She saw he was not angry, not even upset. He seemed to be enjoying this. “I could leave you here while I go but ,I'm afraid you might take a page from your mother's book and make love to yourself—as you so sweetly worded it—and there'd be nothing left for me by the time I got back with the goods.”
She climbed into the passenger seat of his truck, laughing. There was something about his sudden rush of joy, about the caution he would take with her body when she hadn't thought of it herself, that made her want him even more. She sat close to him, resting her cheek on his shoulder, and slowly stroked his chest through the soft cotton of his T-shirt. She felt the springiness of the hair beneath the fabric, the small rigid knots of his nipples, the hard edge of his rib cage. The only sound in the truck was his breathing. He kept his hands on the steering wheel but she felt his chin against her temple.
“Ten fucking miles,” he said at about the halfway point. “I knew there was a good reason I should have found a place closer to town.”
Thunder sounded in the distance as they climbed out of the truck in the small parking lot of the drugstore. The light inside the store was glaringly offensive and it took them a minute to find the condom display.
“Look at this.” Ben shook his head at the rows of condoms. “The last time I used one of these things, there were about two brands to choose from. Do you want something fancy?”
“Just utilitarian, Ben.” She turned her face into his shoulder and he smiled at her discomfort.
“Wait in the truck,” he said.
She could see him at the cash register from her perch inside the truck. She tried looking at him with objective eyes. He was startlingly handsome. In a rugged way, not like Michael. The young female cashier had to be jealous of whoever inspired his purchase. Ben said a few words to the young woman, and they both laughed. He was buying condoms. What could they possibly be saying to each other? She was glad she'd chosen to wait outside.
Condoms. God. The last time she'd even seen one had been in high school. The drama crowd. The actors, Lou called them. The impostors, Kyle would rejoin, infuriating Eden. She could remember several occasions when she'd sat outside a drugstore waiting for one of them—Tex, or Will, or Bo—to buy cigarettes, Hershey bars, and rubbers. She'd be sitt
ing in a VW Bug then, or a Chevy. Or on Tex's motorcycle, the inside of her thighs building in anticipation as she straddled the leather seat. She shuddered now to remember those days and the constant lies she told Lou and Kyle. She tested their love over and over again, while she ran off with people whose rejection couldn't hurt her because it was so predictable.
She watched Ben push through the drugstore doors. He threw the package up in the air with his left hand and caught it behind his back with his right. She smiled, let the memories fade.
This time when she set her hand on his chest, Ben stopped the truck in the middle of the road and pulled his T-shirt over his head. He dropped it into the space behind his seat and began driving again. He steered with his left hand and reached for her with his right. She turned to face him and his hand traced the shape of her breasts, his fingers light as feathers. A few scattered raindrops dotted the windshield and the thunder sounded again, this time closer and deeper. The roads began to twist so sharply that every once in a while Ben had to take his hand from her to steer. He finally stopped the truck square in the road again and slid both hands beneath the back of her T-shirt, hunting for the hook on her bra.
“It's in front,” she said. She reached up and unhooked it for him and he kissed her, cupping her breasts gently in his hands before he began driving again.
The inside of the truck felt like a sauna. Ben's chest was damp beneath her fingers, and when he stroked her breast her skin burned as it had that first day she met him, when he touched her knee.
“Windows are steaming up,” he said.
Her own breathing was as coarse and loud as his now, and when he softly tugged at her nipple she dropped her hand to the crotch of his jeans and cupped her fingers possessively around his erection.
Ben suddenly turned the truck into the woods and brought it to a jolting stop.
“What are you doing?” She withdrew her hand as he turned to pull a blanket from behind his seat.
“It's seven more miles to the cabin,” he said. “I don't know about you, but I'm not going to make it.”