Rushing Waters (19 page)

An hour later they left the apartment, after Grace made a few notes and took some pictures. And she said she liked the roof garden too.

“I'll ask them to cancel the other showings,” the agent assured them, and they left her outside the building, while Grace thanked her daughter again for doing such a good job. It was a major victory after the miseries of the past week. Grace admitted that she wouldn't want to live there forever, it wasn't her style. She knew she would miss Tribeca and couldn't wait to go back. But certainly for six months, it would be perfect, and even convenient for work. Ellen was relieved to know that she could leave for London, assured that her mother had a place to stay, and she could handle the move-in herself. She could leave her own things in storage and just bring her clothes. The apartment even had walk-in closets. And having accomplished the task at hand, Ellen had two days to shop for clients, and she could go back to London on Saturday, two weeks after she had left. She felt as though she had moved mountains since she'd been gone, but things in New York were on the upswing now, only ten days after the hurricane had decimated her mother's apartment and lower New York.

Grace took a cab back to her office, and Ellen went back to Jim Aldrich's on Central Park West. It was four in the afternoon by then, nine o'clock at night in London, and she wanted to tell George she was coming home. She called him as soon as she got to her bedroom in Jim's apartment, and she was smiling. She was so pleased with the apartment she had found for her mother. It was really perfect for her in every way, certainly for six months.

And this time, when she called George, he answered almost at once. He sounded tired and distracted when he did. But Ellen was so happy over their victory that she paid no attention to it, and thought he'd probably just had a long day at the office.

“I'm coming home,” she said happily, excited to see him after the time apart that had seemed endless, and after all she and her mother had been through.

“When?” He didn't sound nearly as enthused as she did.

“I think Saturday makes the most sense. I need to work for a couple of days. I've dealt with nothing but the hurricane till now. I just found a terrific furnished apartment for my mother. She can move in next week, once she gets board approval, so I'm done, and she has a place to live for six months, until she gets her apartment restored.”

“She's insane to move back there,” he said, sounding annoyed.

“I agree. Even her neighbor is moving uptown, and he's selling. I'm going to work on her, but she's not ready to give up yet. I'm hoping she'll come around.” There was a long silence after she said it, and she wondered what he was doing. He sounded like he was thinking of something else, or maybe reading at his desk. There was a pause, and then he finally spoke again.

“We need to talk when you get back,” he said seriously.

“About what?” She couldn't imagine and didn't want to guess.

“A lot of things,” he sighed. “Four years of futile baby-making have really done me in. I can't do that anymore.” She was quiet for a moment, and decided to be honest with him. He had said that before, but he seemed as though he meant it this time.

“I saw a doctor here last week. He wasn't encouraging. He agreed with what they told us in London last time. My eggs are too old. He said we would need a donor egg,” which she knew neither of them wanted to do.

“I can't do it anymore,” he said bluntly, and for a moment it seemed unfair to her. She was the one taking the hormone shots, going through treatments, having her eggs painfully harvested, and going through IVF, not George. But he had lived through each test, disappointment, and miscarriage with her, which had been hard on him too.

“I'm sorry it hasn't worked.” She wanted to ask him if he still felt as strongly negative about adoption and surrogacy, but she didn't dare—he seemed upset, and he had obviously been thinking about it while she was gone. He sounded very definite, which made her sad. The whole process had been sad for both of them for too long.

“So am I,” he said, clearly unhappy. “It's taken a terrible toll on us.” She didn't agree with him, and thought they had survived it surprisingly well. She'd heard worse stories from others. “Ellen, I'm sorry to say this to you now, but I'm done. I wanted to wait till you came back to tell you, but I don't want to mislead you. I've been thinking about it for months.”

“I understand,” she said quietly, with tears in her eyes. But he had a right to make that decision, not to pursue infertility treatments anymore. They both had to want to do it, for it to be tolerable and a good plan.

“I don't think you do understand,” he said soberly. “I mean really done. With the marriage. It killed it for me. The last year or two were just too much. We should have stopped long before. There's no romance left between us, no excitement, no hope. We've been making love on a military command schedule for nearly half our marriage. I can't bear it anymore. And I'm sure you feel that way too.”

“No, I don't,” she said, panic rising in her throat, as her heart started to beat faster at what he said. “I still love making love to you, even if it hasn't been spontaneous.” Her voice drifted off, thinking back to what it had been like. Maybe worse than she wanted to admit. She had been so goal-oriented that she hadn't thought what it was doing to him.

“I hated giving you shots and hurting you, and going through it every time, your being depressed, crying at every sign, the miscarriages, all the business about your eggs. I feel like I went to medical school. And I never wanted children as much as you do. I would have been fine not having any, but having them like this is just unbearable. It's a wonder it didn't make me impotent. I've been making love to a test tube with a copy of
Playboy
in my hand for four years. I've hated every minute of it.” And it sounded like he had come to hate her too. It was the first time he had been that honest with her, and she was suddenly sorry she had pushed him to breaking point. It had obviously been a huge mistake. She had destroyed their marriage without meaning to. And she wasn't sure what to do to win him back.

“We can stop now,” she said in a thin voice, sad to give up hope of the baby she wanted so desperately, but she didn't want to lose him either, that was even more important to her.

“I have stopped,” he confirmed to her. “I meant what I said. I'm done. There's nothing left in this for me. I want a divorce. It's not fair to you to hang on to something that died for me years ago. We both need to get on with our lives. And I realize now it was never the right match. I know how hard you tried to be everything I wanted and adjust to British life for me, but it's not real. It's all foreign to you, and it always will be. I know that now.” The way he said it told her something else, and she felt like her heart stopped beating at his words.

“Is there someone else?” She blurted out the words without meaning to, and there was an interminable pause before he answered. He hadn't wanted to do it on the phone, but he couldn't stand the lies anymore and the pretense that they still had a marriage. He still cared about her, and was concerned about her, like a sister, but he knew now that he wasn't in love with her anymore. The life-and-death pursuit of a baby had killed it for him.

“Yes,” he finally answered her. “There is.”

“Oh my God, since when?” She nearly choked on the words.

“A while. A year,” he said, finally honest with her, which was a relief for him. “I thought it would blow over, and it was just a bit of fun. But it's not, it's serious.” He hesitated again for a long moment, and told her the rest. “I love her, and I want to marry her.” Ellen thought she was going to faint when he said the words. She felt like a bomb had just gone off in her heart and blown it to smithereens.

“And you haven't told me for a year? She's British, I assume.” She sounded bitter when she said it, instead of devastated, which was what she really felt.

“Yes. She's the cousin of an old friend. I've known her all my life. She just got divorced, and I ran into her last year. You were away seeing clients somewhere, Spain or the South of France, I think.”

“How nice for you.” And then she thought of something else. “Has she been at the house parties with you for the past two weekends?”

He hesitated, but not for long—the truth was easier now that he had started the process with Ellen. “Yes, she was.”

“And all our friends thought that was fine? They don't mind? Do they all know her too?”

“Many of them. She's Freddy Harper's cousin.”

“How perfect. She's one of you. And none of them felt any loyalty to me, watching you cheat on me and bring your mistress to the parties we go to? I'm sorry, but that's a little too European for me. I would have never done that to you, out of respect for you.”

“She's not my mistress. I'm going to marry her.”

“She is now. You're still married to me.” It also meant that her friend Mireille had known and said nothing to her. She was loyal to the rest of them, not to Ellen. George had played her for a fool. “Just exactly what would you have done if I'd gotten pregnant one of those times in the last year, while you were sleeping with her?”

“It would have been a serious problem,” he admitted. “It's been very uncomfortable.”

“And incredibly dishonest of you,” she said angrily. “You've been lying to me for a year.” She felt like an idiot for never suspecting what he was up to, and like her heart had just broken in a million pieces, and she had tried so hard to be everything he wanted, and do it all his way, but she just wasn't “one of them.”

“Ellen, it's been pretty obvious for the last year or two that it wasn't going to work. You're the only one who refused to see it. If I thought there was a real chance you'd get pregnant, I wouldn't have let things develop with Annabelle. Our marriage was dead before she came into the picture, for me anyway.”

“That didn't make you a free man. And of course I'm the last to know,” Ellen said, sounding tragic and feeling like she'd been an idiot not to realize what was going on.

“Maybe you weren't paying attention. You wanted a baby more than you wanted me.” She wasn't sure if it was true or not, but recognized that it might be a possibility.

“And will you have children with her?” If he did, it would surely be easier than it had been with Ellen, trying to do everything she could with medical assistance and artificially.

“I have no idea,” he said honestly. “We haven't discussed it. She's not as obsessed on the subject as you are, or at all. And she has two children. I'm not sure if she wants more, or if I want any of my own, after what we went through. I would have been perfectly content to have a childless marriage, and a wife who loved me for myself, not just as a sperm donor.”

“That's not fair,” Ellen said, as tears spilled down her cheeks and dripped off her chin. “I wanted a baby because I love you.”

“It got out of hand. It became a medical contest to beat the odds.”

“Is there any hope for us?” Ellen asked, desperate, and wanting to know.

He gave her the answer quickly, without an ounce of doubt in his voice. “None. I could never revive what I felt for you ten years ago. It's over. When you come back, I want to put the house on the market. It was absurd to buy it—it's too big for either of us—unless you want to keep it, but it's much too big and always was.” She nodded. She was beyond thinking about houses at the moment. All she knew was that she had lost her husband, he was in love with another woman, and her marriage was over. There would be no baby and no George from now on. She couldn't even begin to absorb it. “When are you coming back?” he asked in a businesslike tone.

“I don't have a reservation yet. I just found the apartment for my mother today. But I was planning on Saturday.”

“Your mother is lucky to have you there. I'll move out before you get back. We can work out the details when you're home.” He hesitated and asked her a question then that hadn't even crossed her mind in the shock of what he had just said to her. “Will you stay in London or go back to New York?” Ellen got the feeling that he wanted her to leave. She had never heard him be as icy before. It was over for him, and he wanted her to disappear. She felt like a business deal that had gone wrong, and not a woman he had loved.

“I have no idea. Why?” She had a decorating business in London, although she could work from anywhere with a computer, as long as she flew in to see her clients in Europe, but she hadn't lived in New York in eleven years. It was all too much to think of right now.

“I just wondered. You might be happier there.” It was his way of saying that she had never really fit into his world, and without him, she didn't belong. He had just delivered that message loud and clear, with Annabelle. “I'm sorry, Ellen. I know it's all bad news right now, but it will be better for both of us in the end.” For him anyway. She didn't know what was better for her anymore. She couldn't tell. She felt like a hurricane had just hit her with the same devastating effects. In its own way, Hurricane Ophelia had destroyed her life too. Or was it Hurricane Annabelle?

After they hung up, she lay down on her bed in the guest room and sobbed for hours. When her mother came home, she told her she had a migraine and stayed in bed. She didn't tell her about the conversation with George. She couldn't. It was too painful to talk about and too shocking to say. She lay in the dark and cried all night, wanting to hate him, but she didn't. And maybe he was right. Maybe she had wanted a baby more than she wanted him. But whatever it had or hadn't been, it was over now. Ten years of her life had just vanished without a trace. No baby, no husband. She would have to start all over again, making a life for herself, and she wondered if she'd have the strength, or even want to. She felt like she was going to die, or already had. George had killed part of her with his words that afternoon. And she had no idea what was left.