The Ghost Read online

  You make it sound like you're leaving me. Charlie had cried just looking at her, and then he'd put his arms around her and they both cried. How could this happen to us? he asked her again and again. It seemed impossible, unthinkable, how could she do that? And yet she had, and something about the way she looked at him told him that she was not ready to let go of Simon. He tried to be reasonable about it, but he had to ask her to stop seeing him. He wanted to go to a marriage counselor with her. He wanted to do anything they had to do to fix it.

  Carole tried everything she could to make it work with him. She agreed to go to counseling and even stopped seeing Simon. For all of two weeks. But at the end of it, she was crazed, and she knew she couldn't give him up completely. Whatever had been wrong between Charlie and Carole seemed much worse suddenly, and they were both constantly angry at each other. The fights they'd never had before blossomed like trees in spring, and they fought every time they were together. Charlie was furious at what she'd done, he wanted to kill someone, preferably Simon. And she admitted to how unhappy she was to have been left alone so much, she felt as though they were nothing more than good friends and compatible roommates. Charlie didn't take care of her the way Simon did. She said he was immature, and accused him of being selfish. She complained that when he came home from a trip, he was too tired to even think about her, or talk sometimes, until they went to bed and he wanted to make love to her. But that was his way of establishing contact, he explained, it said more about his feelings than words ever could. But it actually said more about the difference between men and women. Their complaints were suddenly deep and ingrained, and Carole stunned him by telling their marriage counselor that she thought their whole marriage was centered on Charlie, and Simon was the first man she'd ever known who cared about her feelings. Charlie couldh't believe what he was hearing.

  She was sleeping with Simon again by then, but she was lying to Charlie about it, and within weeks it all became an impossible tangle of deceit and fights and recriminations. In March, when Charlie flew to Berlin for three days, she packed her things and moved in with Simon. She told Charlie on the phone, and he sat in his hotel room and cried. But she told him she wasn't willing to go on living this way. It was agony for all of them, and just too stressful.

  I don't want us to turn into this, she said when she called, crying at her end. I hate what I've become with you. I hate everything I am and do and say. And I'm starting to hate you ' Charlie ' we have to give it up. I just can't do it. Not to mention the fact that she couldn't practice law coherently while trying to juggle this insane situation.

  Why not? he had blazed back at her. Honest rage was beginning to take hold of him, and even she knew he had a right to be as angry as he was now. Other marriages survive when one partner has an affair, why can't we? It was a plea for mercy.

  There was a long, long silence at her end. Charlie, I don't want to do this anymore, she said finally, and he could hear that she meant it. And that was the end of them. For whatever reason, it was over for her. She had fallen in love with another man, and out of love with him. Maybe there was no reason after all, maybe there was no blame. They were only human after all, with unpredictable, erratic emotions. There was no saying why it had happened. It just had, and whether Charlie liked it or not, Carole had left him for Simon.

  In the ensuing months, he ricocheted between despair and rage. He could hardly keep his mind on his work. He stopped seeing his friends. He sat alone in his house sometimes, just thinking of her. He sat in the dark, hungry, tired, still unable to believe what had happened. He kept hoping that the affair with Simon would end, that she would tire of him, that she would decide he was too old for her, too smooth, or maybe even that he was a pompous windbag. He prayed for all of it, but none of it ever happened. She and Simon seemed very happy. He saw photographs of them in newspapers and magazines from time to time, and he hated seeing them. At times he thought the agony of missing her would crush him. The loneliness he felt now was overwhelming. And when he couldn't stand it anymore, he called her. The worst of it was that she always sounded the same. She always sounded so warm and so sensual and so sexy. Sometimes he pretended to himself that she was coming home to him, that she was on a trip, or away for a weekend. But she wasn't. She was gone. Possibly forever.

  The house looked uncared for now, and unloved. She had taken all her things. And nothing looked quite the same. Nothing was the same. He felt as though everything he'd ever wanted or been or dreamed had been broken. There was nothing left but shards at his feet, and he had nothing left to care about or believe in.

  People in his office noticed it, he looked gray and tired and thin. He was irritable, and argued about everything. He no longer even called their friends, and he declined every invitation they sent him. He was sure that by now everyone was completely swept off their feet by Simon. And besides, he didn't want to hear about them, didn't want to know every little detail about what they did, or have to answer well-meaning questions. And yet, he could never stop himself from reading about diem in the papers. The parties they attended and the weekends they spent in the country. Simon St. James was extremely social. Carole had always liked going to parties, but never as much as they did now. It was an important part of her life with Simon. Charlie tried not to think about it all the time, but it seemed impossible to think about much else.

  The summer was torture for him. He knew Simon had a villa in the south of France, because they'd visited him there, between Beaulieu and St.-Jean-Cap-Ferrat. He kept a good-size yacht in the harbor, and Charlie kept thinking of her on it. He had nightmares about it sometimes, terrified that she would drown, and then feeling guilty because he wondered if the nightmares meant that he wished she would drown. He went back to the marriage counselor to talk about it. But there was nothing left to say. By September, Charlie Waterston looked sadly battered, and felt even worse.

  Carole had called to say she was fifing for divorce by then, and Charlie hated himself when he asked if she was still living with Simon. Before he even asked the question, he knew the answer, and could too easily envision her face and the tilt of her head as she answered.

  You know I am, Charlie, she said sadly. She hated hurting him. She had never wanted to do this to him. It had just happened. That was all. She couldn't help it. But she was happier with Simon than she had ever been. It was a life she had never aspired to, but that she found she loved. They had spent the month pf August at his villa in France, and she was surprised to find that she liked all his friends. And Simon himself was doing absolutely everything he could to please her. He called her the love of his life, and the woman of his dreams, and there was suddenly a vulnerable quality about him, and a gentleness she had never seen. She was deeply in love with him, but she didn't say any of that to Charlie. It only made her realize again how empty their relationship had been. They had been two self-centered people moving along side by side, barely touching, and never meeting. And neither of them had ever realized it. She did now, but she knew that Charlie still didn't see it. All she wanted for him was a happy life, she hoped he would find someone, but it didn't sound as though he was even trying.

  Are you going to many him? He always felt as though all the air had been squeezed out of him when he asked her these kinds of questions, and yet, much as he hated himself for doing it, he found he had to.

  I don't know, Charlie. We don't talk about it. It was a lie, Simon was desperate to marry her, but that was none of Charlie's business for the moment. It's not important now. We need to sort things out between us first. She had finally forced him to hire a lawyer, but he almost never called him. We need to divide up our things, when you have time. He actually felt nauseous when she said it.

  Why don't you just give it another try? he asked, hating himself for the weakness he heard in his own voice, but he loved her so much, the thought of losing her forever nearly killed him. And why did they have to divide up their things ? What did he care about the china and the couch and the line
ns? He waited her. He wanted everything they'd shared. He wanted their life back, just as it had been. He still hadn't understood any of the things she was saying. What if we had a baby? Somehow he assumed that Simon was too old to even think of it. At sixty-one, having had three wives, and a number of children, he couldn't possibly want to have a baby with her. It was the one thing Charlie could offer her that Simon couldn't.

  There was a long silence from her end again, and she closed her eyes as she tried to get up the courage to answer. She didn't want a baby with him. She didn't want a baby with anyone. She never really had. She had her career. And now she had Simon. A baby was the last thing on her mind. She just wanted a divorce so they could get on with their respective lives, and stop hurting each other. It didn't seem like too much to ask of him.

  Charlie, it's too late. Don't talk about that now. Neither of us ever wanted a baby.

  Maybe we were wrong. Maybe things would have been different now if we had. Maybe that was the cement between us we were lacking.

  It would only complicate things. Kids don't keep people together, they just make it harder.

  Are you going to have a baby with him? He sounded desperate again. Even he hated the way he sounded when he talked to her. He always wound up as the supplicant, the poor slob begging the beautiful princess to come back to him, and he loathed himself for it. But he didn't know what else to say to her, and he would have done anything if she would just agree to give up Simon and come back.

  But she sounded exasperated when she answered. No, I am not having a baby with him. I'm trying to have a life, of my own, and with him. And I don't want to screw up your life any more than I have to. Charlie, why don't you just let go of it? Something happened to us. I'm not even sure I understand what. Things just work out that way sometimes. It's like if someone dies. You can't argue with it. You can't change it. You can't turn the clock back or bring them back to life. We died. Or at least I did. Now you have to go on living without me.

  I can't. He nearly choked on the words and she knew just how much he meant it. She had run into him the week before, and he looked terrible. He looked tired and pale and exhausted, but oddly enough, she realized that she still thought he was incredibly attractive. He was a very handsome man, and even in misery, he was very appealing. I can't live without you, Carole. The worst thing was that she knew he believed that.

  Yes, you can, Charlie, you have to.

  Why? He couldn't think of a single reason these days to go on living. The woman he loved was gone. He was bored with his job. He wanted to be alone all the time. Even the house he had once loved seemed to have lost its spirit. But in spite of that, he didn't want to sell it. He had too many memories with her there. There was too much Carole woven into every fiber of his life. He couldn't imagine ever being free of her, or wanting to be. All he wanted was what he couldn't have, what he had once had with her, all of which now belonged to Simon. The bastard.

  Charlie, you're too young to act like this. You're forty-two years old. You have a whole life ahead of you. You have a great career, an enormous talent. You'll meet someone else, maybe you'll have kids. It was a strange conversation and she knew it, but she didn't know how to let go of him, although she knew that her talking to Charlie like this seriously annoyed Simon. He thought they ought to divide up the spoils, get divorced, and get on with it, as he put it. They were both young enough to have jolly good lives with other people. He thought Charlie was being an incredibly bad sport and putting a lot of unnecessary pressure on Carole, and he was very outspoken about the fact that he didn't like it.

  These things happen to all of us at some point in time, or most of us anyway. My first two wives left me. I didn't lie on the floor having tantrums for a year, I can tell you that. He's quite spoilt, if you ask me, he said irritably. She tried not to talk to Simon at all about Charlie. She had her own guilt and conflicts to contend with. She didn't want to go back to him, but she didn't want to leave him bleeding by the side of the road either. She knew she had run over him. But she had no idea how to fix it for him, how to make it better than it was, or release him gently. She had tried, and she wanted to make it easier for him, but Charlie absolutely refused to let go of her, and every time she talked to him, she had the feeling he was drowning, and if she let him, in his desperate thrashing he would drown her. She needed to get away from him somehow, just for the sake of her own survival.

  At the end of September, they finally divided up their things. Simon had family business to attend to in the north of England, and Carole spent an agonizing weekend going through their old house with Charlie. He wanted to discuss each and every item, not because he was trying to keep anything from her, but because he used every moment with her as an opportunity to try and talk her into leaving Simon. It was a nightmare for both of them, and Carole hated hearing it as much as Charlie hated himself for what he was saying. He almost couldn't believe it. But he just refused to let her slip away from him without making piteous screams and hideous noises in the hope that she would change her mind. But she was far from that.

  On Sunday night he apologized to her before she left. He smiled ruefully at her, as he stood in the doorway. He looked just awful. And Carole looked almost as bad as he did.

  I'm sorry I've been such a horse's ass all weekend. I don't know what happens to me. Every time I see you, or talk to you, I go crazy. It was the most normal he'd seemed since they'd started inventorying everything on Saturday morning.

  It's okay, Charlie. ' I know this isn't easy for you. But it wasn't easy for her either. She wasn't sure if he understood that. And he didn't. As far as he was concerned, she had left him. It had been her choice. And she had Simon. She had walked into another man's arms, and she was never alone for a moment, never without company and comfort. Charlie had nothing. He had lost everything he had ever wanted.

  It's a rotten deal, he said, looking into her eyes again. For everyone. I just hope you don't regret what you're doing.

  So do I, she said, and then she kissed him on the cheek and told him to take care, and a moment later she drove off in Simon's Jaguar. Charlie stood staring after her, trying to make himself believe that it was all over, that she was never coming back again. And as he walked back into the house and saw the piles of her things everywhere, and their china stacked high on the dining room table, there was no escaping what had happened. He closed the door and just stood there and stared, and then he sat down in a chair and cried. He couldn't believe how much he missed her. Even spending the weekend with her, dividing up their things, seemed better than nothing at all.

  And when he stopped crying finally, it was dark outside, and in an odd way, he felt better. There was no denying it anymore. No running away from it. She was gone. And he was letting her take almost everything with her. It was all he had left to give her.

  But by the first of October, for Charlie, everything was worse instead of better. The man in charge of the New York office of his architectural firm had a heart attack, the partner who could have taken his place announced that he was leaving to open a new firm of his own in Los Angeles, and the two senior partners of the firm, Bill Jones and Arthur Whittaker, flew to London to ask Charlie to come back to New York and take over. It was everything Charlie had never wanted. From the moment he had moved to London ten years before, he had known he never wanted to work in New York again, and he had spent a decade thrilled to be working in Europe. Charlie thought design was far more exciting abroad, particularly in Italy and France, he enjoyed his Asian forays as well, and he had every intention of remaining in Europe.

  I can't, he said with an intractable look when they proposed the idea to him. But both of his senior partners were prepared to be tenacious. They needed him in New York to run the office.

  Why not? they asked with candor. He didn't want to tell them he just didn't want to, but he didn't. Even if you want to come back here eventually, there's no reason why you can't come to New York for a year or two. There are a lot of interesting de
velopments in the States right now. You might find that you actually prefer it. He didn't want to explain to them that there was no chance of it, nor did they want to point out to him that, now that his wife had left, he had no reason not to take the job. Unlike the other men they'd thought of, he wasn't tied to anyone, and was free to go anywhere. He had no wife and no children, no family ties anywhere. There was no reason whatsoever why he couldn't rent his house for a year or two, and go to the New York office to keep it on an even keel, or at least until they could find someone else to run it for them. But Charlie was in no way intrigued by the idea, or inclined to do what they asked him.

  It's very, very important to us. Charlie, there's no one else to turn to. He knew that that was true. They were in an awkward spot. The man in the Chicago office couldn't move, his wife had been very sick for the past year. She had breast cancer and was undergoing chemo, and this was no time to ask them to relocate. And no one else in the hierarchy of the New York office was really capable of taking over. Charlie was the obvious choice, and he knew that it would probably alter his professional situation permanently if he categorically refused to go. We'd really like you to think it over, they insisted, and Charlie was appalled at the realities it entailed. He felt as though an express train were heading for him and were about to hit him. He couldn't believe what was happening, and he just didn't know what to say. He wished he could call Carole to discuss it with her, but he knew that Was out of the question.