“You’re an anthropologist,” Barbara said to me, swiftly turning the conversation. I nodded. “What attracted you to a celebrity as ‘big’ as Alex Rivers?”
“I wasn’t attracted to him,” I said flatly. “The first time I met him I intentionally poured a drink in his lap.” I told the story of my arrival on the movie set in Tanzania, and while Alex squirmed uncomfortably in his seat, most of the crew Barbara had brought with her started laughing. When filming picked up again, I leaned imperceptibly closer toward Alex, a show of support. “I suppose I don’t see him as a lot of other women do,” I said carefully. “He’s not a celebrity to me; he never really has been. It wouldn’t have mattered if he sold used cars or worked in a coal mine. He’s someone I happen to love.”
Barbara turned to Alex. “Why Cassie? Out of all the women in the world, why her and only her?”
Alex pulled me closer, and my eyes glazed a little as my sore side touched him. “She was made for me,” he said simply. “That’s the only way I can explain it.”
Outside, there was a roll of thunder. “One last question,” Barbara said, “and it’s for Cassie. Tell us what America doesn’t know about Alex Rivers that you think they ought to know.”
Shocked, I stared at her, my mouth slightly ajar. The air in the room became heavier, and the rain hit like a fall of stones against the French doors. I could feel Alex’s fingers digging into my shoulder, and with every breath there was a quick ache under my ribs.Well, Barbara, I could say,for one thing, he hits me. And his father was terribly abusive. And he’s going to have a baby, but he doesn’t even know that yet because I’m too afraid of his reaction to tell him the truth. I forced myself to relax in Alex’s grasp. “Nothing,” I said, my voice just over a whisper. “Nothing you would ever believe.”
CHAPTERNINETEEN
I used to think my suicide note would have read,You won. Not that it had been a game—but at the very worst times, I knew that Alex could always act better than I could; that when I cracked under the pressure and told someone the truth he would still be able to save face.
And in Los Angeles, a city he commanded, who would people believe?
But the real reason I could never tell anyone the truth about our marriage had less to do with my fear of not being believed than with Alex himself. I just didn’t want to hurt him. When I pictured him, it wasn’t standing with his fists above me. I saw him slow-dancing with me on the veranda, latching the clasp on an emerald necklace he’d just brought me, moving inside me with a striking sense of wonder. This, to me, was Alex. This was the man I still wanted to spend my life with.
I never would have left him if there weren’t somebody else involved.
But I forced myself to set an ultimatum in my mind.One more time, I thought,one more threat to this life inside me, and I will go. I tried not to think of it as leaving Alex; I imagined it instead as saving my child. I didn’t let myself think about it any more than that, because so much of me was hoping that it wouldn’t happen.
But then Alex had heard, the day he left for Scotland, about being placed second on the Barbara Walters broadcast, instead of third. And he was superstitiously sure that it was a forecast of what was to come at the Academy Awards in March. He wouldn’t win his Oscars; he would be a failure. He had told me these things, and then he had lashed out.
Well, you know the rest. I must have passed out from the head wound sometime after I left the house, because I knew enough to leave.
I met you purely by accident at St. Sebastian’s cemetery and you took care of me until Alex came charging in from Scotland and took me home.
So I had come full circle: in late February, several days after you’d turned me over to Alex at the police station, I was standing in my bedroom closet getting ready to pack so I could return to Scotland with Alex. Then I found the box with the extra pregnancy test. And I tried to make myself believe that I would be taking a piece of Alex with me when I ran away again.
AN HOUR AFTER I’D LEFT THE HOUSE I WAS WELL OUT OF BEL-AIR, but I had nowhere to go. The banks were closed and I had less than twenty dollars in my wallet. I didn’t think of you, not right away. Again I considered running to Ophelia; and again I couldn’t, because it was where Alex would expect me to go.
I didn’t feel comfortable enough to turn to a colleague fromUCLA, and I couldn’t hide in my office, since that would be the second place Alex would check. And then I remembered what you said to me Wednesday morning, and the way you looked at me after Alex’s fight at Le Doˆ me. I knew you would take me in; I knew it maybe even before I left the house, so I waited at the corner for a bus that would take me toward Reseda.
Your home could fit into a corner of ours, and the trees on your front lawn are all in varying stages of death, but I have never seen any place so inviting. A warm yellow light floods the front porch, and when I step under its glow I feel protected, not on display.
You open the door before I have a chance to knock. You don’t seem surprised to see me; it is as if you have been waiting all along. You pull me into the tiny entry hall and close the door behind me. It seems perfectly natural that you haven’t spoken a word when you begin to run your hands gently over my back, my ribs, my hips, hesitating at the spots where I have been bruised. You sense the places through the cotton of my shirt, as if you are feeling for the change of temperature that comes with pain.
And Will, when you are finished, you look at me. Your eyes are as dark as Alex’s during a rage. I stare back at you, not knowing how or where I am supposed to begin.
I don’t have to. You put your arms around me, giving me the simple beat of your heart to measure time. I keep my hands balled at my sides, stiff in another man’s embrace. “Cassie,” you whisper into my hair, “I believe you.” Outside, an owl sobs. I close my eyes, lean into your faith, and I let myself go.
1993
Along time ago, when the world had just begun, six young women lived in a village set beside a huge boulder. As was their custom, one day while their husbands were out hunting, they went out to dig for herbs. Some time passed, each of the women rooting with her digging stick, and then one of the wives found something new to eat. “Come and try this,” she told her friends. “This plant tastes delicious!”
Within minutes, the six women were all eating sweet onions. They were so tasty that they ate until the sun set. One of the wives looked at the dark sky.
“We’d better get home to cook dinner for our husbands,” she pointed out, and they all left. When the husbands came home that night they were exhausted but happy, since they had each killed a cougar. “What smells so awful?” one man asked as he stood in the doorway of his lodge.
“Maybe it is some food that has spoiled,” another husband suggested. But when they leaned over to kiss their wives hello, they realized where the odor was coming from. “We found something new to eat,” the wives said, bubbling with excitement. They held out the onions. “Here, try them.”
“They smell terrible,” the husbands said. “We won’t eat them. And you’re not going to stay in the same lodge as us, not smelling like that. You’ll have to sleep outside tonight.” So the wives gathered their things and slept beneath the stars. When the husbands left to go hunting the next day, the wives returned to the spot where they had dug up the wild onions. They knew their husbands didn’t like the smell, but the onions were so delicious that the wives could not help but eat them. They filled their bellies and stretched out on the soft red earth.
The husbands came home that night, gruff and irritable. They had not caught any cougars. “We smelled like your onions,” they accused, “so the animals ran away. It is all your fault.”
The wives didn’t believe them. They slept outside a second night, and a third, until a week had passed. The wives kept eating the onions that were so delicious, and the men could not catch any cougars. Frustrated, the men yelled at their wives, “Get away from us! We can’t stand your onion smell.”
