Kiss Mommy Goodbye Read online

  Donna heard Victor repeating the same phrase during their first incredible dinner together in New York, undoubtedly borrowing an expression of his ex-wife’s, making it sound so charming because it was so incongruous.

  “I really can’t help you any,” Janine Gauntley Cressy McCloud continued. “I mean, the only thing you can predict about Victor is that he’ll never do what you predict.” She sat down. “Wow. I’m beat. Talking about him is almost as bad as living with him.” She ran a hand through her shoulder-length hair. “I can’t believe how much anger I still have inside me, after all these years.”

  I can, Donna thought, and stood up to leave. There was no further point in staying.

  Donna sat silently for a long minute before she found her voice.

  “He won’t come here,” she said. “It was a dumb idea.”

  Mel looked around the dimly lit interior of the small, crowded New York restaurant. “Good food, though,” he said, trying to joke her out of her increasing gloom. “You should eat something.”

  “I’m not hungry. Please don’t patronize me.”

  Mel was instantly apologetic. “I’m sorry. I really didn’t mean to be patronizing.”

  Donna shrugged her shoulders, reluctant to look at him.

  “We’ll find them,” Mel assured her. “I promise you.”

  “How? When?” Please, someone, give me some definite answers.

  “Someone’s bound to see him. A week from now. A month from now—”

  “A year from now—”

  “Possibly. Possibly more.”

  “Oh, God, Mel.” Donna felt needles of panic pricking at her sides.

  “The important thing is for you to stay well. To stay healthy and on top of things. You can’t let this destroy you. You have to keep going on, trying to live a normal life—”

  Donna looked at him angrily, knocking over a spoon from her side of the table, hearing it fall noisily onto the floor. What was the matter with Mel all of a sudden? What was he talking about? Living a normal life?! Her children were gone! “What kind of normal life—”

  He cut her off. “You’re reacting exactly the way he wants you to, Donna. And I understand it. Believe me, I understand it. But you have to stay strong because, don’t kid yourself for a minute, this is going to be a long struggle. You have to keep hoping; you have to keep looking. But most of all, you have to keep living!”

  “What are you talking about?” she hissed. Several heads turned in their direction. “My ex-husband kidnaps my babies! The police won’t help. Nobody can help. We fly up to Connecticut and waste a day talking to two women Victor hasn’t seen in at least eight years, hoping they’ll be able to tell us something—anything—”

  “Did you really think they’d know anything?”

  “Yes!” Donna blurted, admitting the truth to herself for the first time. “Yes, I really did! Every time we go anywhere, like coming here, I think we’ll see him; every time we ask anyone anything, I always think they’re going to tell me exactly what I want to know!”

  Mel reached across the table and covered both her hands with his own. “Oh, baby—”

  “I can’t help it, Mel. I just can’t believe any of this is happening.”

  A waiter walked over and replaced her spoon. Donna glared at him. “Look, Donna,” she heard Mel’s voice continue. Why didn’t he just keep quiet? She didn’t want to hear any more words of encouragement, of discouragement, of hope, of despair. Words, words, words. “We’re doing everything we can. We have detectives out, ads in the newspapers—”

  “I know what we’re doing,” she said curtly.

  Again he was apologetic. “I’m sorry. Of course you do.”

  “I don’t need you tell me what’s being done.” She stopped abruptly. “Oh, Mel, I’m sorry. Listen to me, for heaven’s sake! The one person who never lets me down, who’s always there when I need you—”

  “You don’t have to apologize.”

  “You take off work, you leave Annie with the housekeeper, you rearrange your whole life to come with me to Connecticut, to drive me into New York because I still haven’t got enough guts to get behind the wheel of a car myself—”

  “Donna—”

  “You come with me to some dumb restaurant Victor probably hasn’t set foot in since he brought me here years ago, so that I can sit here and yell at you!”

  “It wasn’t such a dumb idea coming here, Donna. One of these days, Victor may very well come back for a meal. We’ll leave a picture of him with the maitre d’. Something may turn up.”

  Donna closed her eyes, seeing Mel before her. “I can’t picture my life without you,” she said.

  “You won’t ever have to.”

  “You promise you’ll never leave me?”

  “I promise.” There were several seconds of stillness between them. Then he spoke. “Marry me, Donna.”

  Donna stared at him in stunned disbelief. He was proposing? Now? Now, of all times, when her children were the only things that really concerned her. What was the matter with him?”

  “Marry—?”

  “I know it probably sounds like a hell of a time—”

  “A hell of a time,” she repeated, growing increasingly angry, instinctively feeling that any mention of the future would carry her farther away from her past—from her children.

  “I love you, Donna, you know that.”

  “Why are you proposing to me now?” she asked, almost desperately.

  “Because I think that now is a good time to make a commitment. To me. To yourself. To a life together. To life—period.”

  “A life without my children?” Her voice was becoming shrill.

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “What are you trying to say?” An accusation, not a statement.

  “Just that life goes on—”

  She was beginning to panic. “I really don’t want to talk anymore, Mel. Can we please get out of here?”

  Mel signaled for the waiter. A few minutes later, he paid the bill and walked over to where Donna was already standing by the door. “Regardless of whether you marry me or not,” Mel was saying as they left the restaurant, “I think that when we get back to Palm Beach, you should move in with me. You shouldn’t be alone.”

  Donna said nothing, was, in fact, grateful for the offer. She needed Mel, especially now. No, she thought, not just now. Always.

  “You’ll never leave me?” she asked again plaintively, as she got inside the rented gray Thunderbird.

  “I’ll never leave you,” he said. “That’s a promise.”

  SEVENTEEN

  “She’ll be down in a minute,” Donna said to the very attractive woman dressed in casual summer whites. “She’s just packing a few of her favorite toys.”

  Donna watched the woman settle herself comfortably into one of the beige overstuffed living room chairs. She probably picked out these chairs, Donna realized suddenly, remembering that Mel had told her he hadn’t bothered changing anything when she left.

  “Can I get you a drink of anything?” Donna offered, wondering what was taking Annie so long, thinking how two ex-wives in as many months was really too much to expect anyone to cope with, no matter how nice or attractive the ex-wives in question were.

  “No, thank you.”

  “I guess Mel got delayed with a patient. He said he’d be here when you arrived.”

  “That’s not unusual,” the ex-wife named Kate replied with uncomfortable familiarity. “Besides, it gives us a chance to talk,” she continued, and then neither woman said a word.

  “Annie’s a lovely little girl,” Donna said, at length, looking through the hallway in the direction of the stairs. Lovely, but slow. Where was she?

  “Thank you. I think Mel’s really done a terrific job with her.”

  Donna smiled, why she wasn’t sure. The compliment had nothing to do with her. “It’s hard,” Kate went on reflectively, “seeing her only summers and holidays, and sometimes when I’m pounding the law bo
oks I think about how nice it would be to have her with me all the time—” Donna caught her breath. “Oh, I’m so sorry,” Kate said sincerely. “That was a very stupid thing for me to have said. I obviously wasn’t thinking.” She looked anxiously toward the hallway. Annie was still nowhere in sight. “Mel told me about what happened,” she said, reluctantly continuing the conversation. “There’s been no new developments—?”

  “No,” Donna said sharply, putting an end to this topic of conversation.

  Donna got up and moved out into the hall. She walked to the foot of the circular stairway and yelled up. “Annie, hurry up, honey.”

  “I’m coming,” the child shouted down, but remained upstairs. Why was she hurrying the little girl? Donna asked herself. They weren’t going anywhere until Mel got home. Where was Mel anyway? She walked back into the living room and over to the white-and-gold French phone.

  “I’ll phone and see if he’s left yet,” Donna explained.

  She did and he had, so the two women sat in similar chairs facing each other and waited for the other to break the silence.

  “I hadn’t realized you were actually living with Mel,” Kate said, after several seconds, sounding interested rather than upset. “He told me, of course, that he was seeing someone very seriously and that he hoped you’d eventually marry—”

  “I moved in a few months ago.” She hesitated, not sure what to say. “Things have been very hectic here lately. It must have slipped Mel’s mind.” Why should she have to speak for Mel? Where was he? Why should she have to be the one who had to explain anything to this woman who was no relation to herself, ex or otherwise? Of course, the woman was entitled to some explanations. Anything that affected her daughter concerned her in some way. At least you know where your daughter is, Donna thought bitterly, feeling an increasingly familiar resentment rising inside her.

  Kate stared hard at Donna. Donna felt momentarily that she was back in court on the witness stand. When Kate spoke, however, her voice was soft. “You do like Annie, don’t you?”

  “Oh, I love her,” Donna answered quickly, hoping her words carried more conviction than she actually felt. She did indeed like the precocious little girl, had actually started to love her until, irrationally perhaps, she had become convinced that any commitment to Annie meant she was abandoning her own children. That if she allowed herself to love this little girl, she would lose forever the son and daughter she had created. Her feelings towards Mel’s child were an increasing mass of contradictions; she loved having Annie around because it gave her someone to care for, to busy herself with, but she also resented the child because of that very presence. Every time she looked into Annie’s eyes, she felt the eyes of the daughter she might never see again. Every time Annie pleaded for a few minutes of her time, she heard her son’s pleas for yet another story. “Tell me a story about a little boy named Roger and a little girl named Bethanny …” She felt weighed down by an ever-increasing load of guilt every time she tried to be a part of her new family, to proceed with her life, to make anything of her life. How could she just ignore what had happened to her? Her children were not teeth to be nurtured, extracted and then forgotten, the numbness gradually overtaking the pain. She felt her body ache.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you,” Donna said, realizing Kate had spoken.

  “I asked if you worked … outside the home, that is.”

  “Oh. Oh, no. I don’t.”

  “Oh.”

  It was one of those awkward moments when Donna always wished she smoked so she could ask for a cigarette. That, at least, would give her something to do. Something to do. If she really wanted something to do, she should go upstairs and help Annie. No, she couldn’t do that. Annie didn’t want her upstairs. She’d made that quite clear. Her mother—her real mother, she had emphasized—was coming over today to take her for the summer. There was no room for two mothers. Especially Donna.

  She couldn’t blame the child. Donna had been increasingly short-tempered with her of late, distracted when she was with her, irritable and uncommunicative. At first, Annie had tried hard to be understanding, but ultimately, she couldn’t help but produce a resentment of her own.

  “Do you think you’ll enjoy being a lawyer?” Donna asked, trying to escape her thoughts, then immediately wished she hadn’t. What a stupid thing to ask. I sound like I’m interviewing her for the high school yearbook. Why don’t I also ask her what her favorite color is, what her choices are for this year’s Oscars, and whether or not she sleeps in the nude?

  “Will you specialize?” she continued, not sure if Kate had, in fact, answered her first question. Was there no end to the number of stupefying questions she could ask this woman? Still, just what did one talk to an ex-wife about? The government really should provide a list of topics for conversation between ex-spouses, she decided, hearing Kate mutter something about family law. With divorce assuming epidemic proportions across the country and the percentage of stepparents drastically on the rise, it was really the least the government could do. It wouldn’t require a whole lot of effort, she concluded, to throw in a handy little guidebook for dealing with future ex’s along with the final divorce papers.

  There was a general silence again as Kate and Donna continued to look each other over. Donna felt suddenly over-exposed in her bright pink halter top and white shorts which, in the last several weeks, had begun to stretch ludicrously out of shape. Or perhaps, and more likely, it was Donna, herelf, who was responsible for their recent ill-fit. She hadn’t eaten very much lately—she had no appetite—and the weight she had put on since her divorce seemed to be disappearing again. Where did it go? she wondered. Kate, with her fine bosom and efficient body, must think I’m some sort of anorexic, Donna thought, realizing how much medical terminology had lately crept into her vocabulary. Kate, on the other hand, looked very cool and healthy, her dark hair pulled back sharply into a ponytail, making her look a little like Ali McGraw in Love Story. She probably thinks that I look like Don Knotts, Donna decided. The ex-wife named Kate looked as if she was about to start talking again. Donna turned her attention to the woman’s mouth.

  “Mommy!” came the shriek from the hallway. Thank God, Donna said silently. Kate immediately rose to her feet and held out her arms for the little girl, her dark pigtails flying behind her, her ever-present white and pink blanket clutched tightly in her right hand.

  “Oh, it’s so good to see you,” Kate said, kissing the child loudly. Donna stood up. She wished she could be anywhere but here. Annie clung to her mother’s neck. It was several very long minutes before the two extracted themselves from each other’s arms. “You look wonderful.”

  Annie beamed. “You look beautiful,” she said, instinctively returning the compliment.

  “Still have your blanket, I see.”

  Donna interjected. “She never goes anywhere without it.”

  “I don’t take it to school,” Annie informed her coolly, abruptly putting Donna in her place.

  “Be polite, Annie,” her mother said.

  “Well, I don’t take it to school,” the child insisted.

  Kate looked over at Donna. “A friend of mine gave Annie that blanket when she was born.”

  “Yes, I know. Mel told me.”

  “It’s amazing what good shape it’s stayed in,” Kate continued.

  “Yes.” Where was Mel?

  Annie looked from Kate to Donna and then back again.

  “Donna’s ex-husband took her children away,” she said suddenly.

  Kate’s eyes shot quickly to Donna’s. “Yes. I know that, honey.”

  Donna turned away, trying to control the anger she was suddenly feeling toward the youngster.

  “Daddy says they’re going to find that fucking bastard if it’s the last thing they do.”

  Where was Mel? Did she really have to go through this now?

  “Daddy says he’s a no-good prick—”

  “That’s enough, Annie,” her mother said abruptly. �
�You know I don’t approve of language like that.”

  “Like what?”

  Kate smiled at Donna. “They’re always testing.”

  “Yes.” I wish Mel were here.

  He was. As soon as the wish was out of Donna’s head, the front door opened and Mel walked quickly inside, full of apologies. “Sorry,” he said, kissing Donna first and then moving over to his ex-wife. A definite pecking order. “I was out of this cream,” he said, producing a small brown paper bag from his pocket and opening it. “So I had to stop at the drugstore and pick some up.” He handed it to Donna. “For your rash.”