Danielle Steel: The Apartment

And Morgan shared the same fear with Claire. Both of them had watched their mothers diminish their lives for the men they married, although Morgan’s more dramatically than Claire’s. Her parents’ marriage had been a disaster. Her mother had walked away from a promising career with the Boston Ballet when she got pregnant with Morgan’s brother, Oliver, and then with Morgan soon after. She had regretted giving up dancing all her life, developed a serious drinking problem, and basically drank herself to death when Morgan and her brother were in college, and their father had died in an accident soon after.

Morgan had put herself through college and business school, and had only recently finished paying off her student loans. And she was convinced that sacrificing her career as a dancer, to get married and have kids, had ruined her mother’s life. She had no intention of letting that happen to her. Her parents’ violent fights and her mother drinking until she passed out, or being drunk when they got home from school, were all Morgan remembered of her childhood.

Morgan’s brother, Oliver, was two years older, and had moved to New York from Boston after college too, and worked in PR. The firm he worked for specialized in sports teams, and his partner was Greg Trudeau, the famed ice hockey goalie from Montreal who was the star of the New York Rangers. Morgan loved going to games with Oliver to cheer for Greg. She’d taken her roommates a few times, and they’d all enjoyed it, and the two men were frequent visitors to the apartment, and were beloved by all.

Sasha’s family situation was more complicated. Her parents had had a bitter divorce, from which their mother had never recovered, after Sasha graduated from college and Valentina was already working as a model in New York. Their father had fallen in love with a young model in one of the department stores he owned, and married her a year later, and had two daughters by his new wife, which enraged the twins’ mother even more, proving that hell hath no fury like a woman whose husband leaves her and marries a twenty-three-year-old model. But he seemed happy whenever the twins saw him, and he loved his three- and five-year-old daughters. Valentina had no interest in them and thought their father was ridiculous, but Sasha thought their half-sisters were sweet and had remained close to her father after the divorce.

Their mother was a divorce lawyer in Atlanta, and was known to be a shark in the courtroom, particularly since her own divorce. Sasha went back to Atlanta as seldom as possible, and dreaded speaking to her mother on the phone, who still made vicious comments about Sasha’s father years after he remarried. Talking to her was exhausting.

Abby’s parents were still married and got along, and their busy careers in television had kept them from being attentive to their daughter, but they were always supportive of Abby and her writing.

The four women’s careers had gone forward at a steady pace in the five years they’d lived together, Claire at both shoe companies she’d worked for. She dreamed of working for a high-end shoe company one day, but she was making a decent salary, even if she wasn’t proud of the shoes she was designing.

Morgan worked for George Lewis, one of the whizzes of Wall Street. At thirty-nine, George had built an empire for himself, in private investment management, and Morgan loved her work with him, consulting with clients on their investments and flying to exciting meetings in other cities on his plane. She admired her boss immensely and at thirty-three, she was meeting her goals.

Sasha was doing her residency in obstetrics, and wanted to pursue a double specialty of high-risk pregnancies and infertility, so she had years ahead of her at the same frenetic pace. And she loved coming home to her roommates for conversation and comfort when she finally got off duty and came back to the apartment to sleep and unwind.

The only one whose path had altered considerably was Abby, who had abandoned her novel halfway through it three years before, when she met and fell in love with Ivan Jones, an Off Off Broadway producer who had convinced her to write experimental plays for his theater. Her roommates, and parents, had preferred her fiction and prose to what she was writing for Ivan. He had assured her that what she was writing now was far more important, avant-garde, and likely to make a name for her than the “commercial drivel” she had written before, and she believed him. He had promised to produce her plays, but hadn’t done so yet after three years, and only produced his own. Her roommates suspected he was a fraud, but Abby was convinced he was talented, sincere, and a genius. Ivan was forty-six years old, and Abby was working as his assistant, vacuuming the theater, painting scenery, and working the box office for him. For the past three years she had been his full-time slave. He had never been married, but had three children by two different women. He never saw his children, because he said the situations with their mothers were just too complicated and interfered with his artistic flow. And through all his weak excuses about why he never produced her plays, Abby was still convinced he would, and believed him to be a man of his word, despite evidence to the contrary. She was blind to his sins and faults, among them the promises he constantly broke. And much to her roommates’ dismay, Abby was always willing to believe him and give him another chance. Ivan was like playing a slot machine that never paid off. The others had lost patience with him long since. They didn’t find him charming, but Abby did. She was trusting and loving and hung on his every word. Her roommates no longer discussed it with her, because it upset them all. She was totally under Ivan’s spell, and sacrificing her life, time, and writing to him, and getting nothing in return.

Her parents had asked her to come back to L.A., to work on her novel again, or to let them help her find work in feature films or TV. Ivan told her to do so would be to become a commercial sellout just like them, and he insisted that she was better and more talented than that, so she stayed with him, waiting for him to put on one of her plays. She wasn’t stupid, but she was loyal, needy, and naïve, and he took full advantage of it at every turn. None of her roommates liked him, and hated what he did to her. But they no longer said it to Abby—there was no point. She believed everything he told her. And they knew he had borrowed money from her several times, and never paid her back. She was certain that he would when things were better for him. He didn’t support his children either. Their mothers were both actresses who had become successful after their affairs with him, and he said they were far better able to provide for the children than he. He was a man who shirked responsibility at every turn. He had bewitched Abby, and they all hoped she would wake up soon. She hadn’t in three years. There was no sign of her awakening from the nightmare of Ivan yet. Her roommates, however, were wide awake, and hated him for the way he used and lied to her.

And it wasn’t the first inadequate relationship Abby had had. She was their resident collector of wounded birds. In the five years they’d all lived together, there had been an actor who was dead broke and could never get a job, even as a waiter, and had spent a month on their couch until the others complained. Abby had been in love with him, and he had been in love with a girl who was in rehab for six months. There had been writers, and other actors, and a down-on-his-luck though brilliant British aristocrat who had constantly borrowed money from her, and a series of losers, aspiring artists, and men who had disappointed her constantly until she gave up. And unfortunately she wasn’t ready to give up on Ivan yet.