Danielle Steel: The House

There was no one to say anything to, no one to tell. No one to share the overwhelming feeling of emptiness with her. What she felt was impossible to explain. She felt bereft, just as she had when her father died, only this was worse. There was none of the shock she'd had then, and none of the relief. There was no real loss when her father died, except the loss of an idea. The idea of the father he'd never been. He had been the phantom father her mother had created for her. The fantasy her mother had propagated for him. At the time her father died, although they lived in the same house, Sarah hadn't really talked to him in years. She couldn't. He was always too drunk to talk or think, or go anywhere with her. He just came home from work and drank himself into a stupor, and eventually didn't even bother to go to work. He just sat in the room he and her mother shared, drinking, while her mother attempted to cover for him, and worked to support all three of them, selling real estate, and coming home during the day to check on him. He died at forty-six, of liver disease, and had been a total stranger to her. Stanley had been her friend. And in some strange way this was worse. With Stanley gone, there was actually someone to miss.

She sat in her office and cried, finally, as she thought about it, and then she picked up her briefcase and left. She took a cab home and let herself into her apartment in Pacific Heights, a dozen blocks from Stanley's house on Scott Street, and walked straight to her desk. She checked her messages. Her mother had left her one earlier. At sixty-one, she was still working, but had shifted from real estate to interior design. She was always busy, with friends, at book clubs, with clients, or at the twelve-step groups she still attended after all these years. She had been going to Al-Anon for nearly thirty years, even all these years after her alcoholic husband died. Sarah said she was addicted to twelve-step groups. Her mother was always busy and spinning her wheels, but she seemed happy doing it. She had called Sarah to check in, and said she was on her way out for the evening. As she listened to the message, Sarah sat down on the couch, staring straight ahead. She hadn't eaten dinner and didn't care. There was two-day-old pizza in the fridge, and she knew she could have made a salad if she wanted one, but she didn't. She didn't want anything tonight except the comfort of her bed. She needed time to grieve, before doing everything she had to do for Stanley. She knew the next day she'd be fine, or thought she would, but right now she needed to let go.

She stretched out on the couch and hit the remote for the TV. All she needed was sound, voices, something to fill the silence and the void she felt welling up in her. Her apartment was as empty as she was tonight. The apartment itself was in as much disarray as she felt. She never noticed it and didn't now. Her mother nagged her constantly about it, and Sarah always fobbed her off, and said she liked it that way. She liked to say her apartment looked studious and intelligent. She didn't want fluffy curtains, or a bedspread with ruffles. She didn't need cute little cushions on the couch, or plates that matched. She had a battered old brown couch she had had since college, a coffee table she'd bought at Goodwill in law school. Her desk was an old door she'd found somewhere and put on two sawhorses. She had rolling file cabinets stashed underneath it. Her bookcases took up one wall, full of law books that were crammed into the shelves, with the overflow stacked up in piles on the floor. There were two very handsome brown leather chairs that had been a gift from her mother, along with a big mirror that hung over the couch. There were two dead plants, and a fake silk ficus tree her mother had found somewhere, a tired-looking beanbag seat Sarah had brought back from Harvard, and a small battered dining table with four unmatched chairs. She had venetian blinds instead of curtains, but they worked fine for her.

Her bedroom looked no better. She made the bed on the weekends before Phil came over, if he did. Half the dresser drawers no longer closed. There was an old rocking chair in the corner, with a handmade quilt thrown over it that she'd found in an antique store. She had a full-length mirror with a small crack in it. Another dead plant sat on the windowsill, and the bedside table had another stack of law books on it, her favorite bedtime reading. And in the corner, a teddy bear she had salvaged from her childhood. It wasn't likely to be a spread in House & Garden or Architectural Digest , but it worked for her. It was livable, serviceable, she had enough plates to eat dinner on, enough glasses to have a dozen friends in for drinks, when she felt like it and had time, which wasn't often, enough towels for her and Phil, and enough pots and pans to make a decent meal, which she did about twice a year. The rest of the time she brought home takeout, ate a sandwich at the office, or made salad. She just didn't need more than she had, no matter how much it upset her mother, who kept her own apartment looking as though it were going to be photographed any minute. As she put it, it was her own calling card for her interior design business.

Sarah's apartment looked no different than any of hers had since she had been in college and law school. It was functional, if not beautiful, and it served her needs. She had a stereo system she liked, and Phil had bought her the TV, since she didn't have one, and he liked watching it when he was at her place, mostly for sports. And she had to admit, now and then she enjoyed it, like tonight. She liked hearing the droning of the voices on some innocuous sitcom, and then her cell phone rang. She debated answering it, and then realized it might be Phil, returning her call. She picked it up, glanced at the caller ID, and saw that it was. She saw his number with a mixture of dread and relief. She knew if he said the wrong thing, it would upset her, but she had to take the chance. She needed some form of human contact tonight, to make up for Stanley's absence from now on. She turned down the volume on the TV with the remote in one hand, flipped open her cell phone with the other, and put it to her ear.

“Hi,” she said, feeling her mind go blank.

“What's up? I missed a call, and saw that it was you. I'm just leaving the gym.” He was one of those people who insisted he needed to go to the gym every night to ward off stress, except when he saw his kids. He stayed at the gym for two or three hours after work, which made dinner with him during the week impossible, since he never left his office till at least eight. One of the things that appealed to her about him was that he had a sexy voice. It sounded good to her tonight, whatever the words. She missed him and would have loved him to come over. She wasn't sure what he'd say if she asked. Their long-standing agreement, mostly unspoken, though occasionally put into words, was that they saw each other only on weekends, and alternated between her place and his, depending on whose was the bigger mess. Usually it was his. So they stayed at hers, although he complained that her bed was too soft and hurt his back. He put up with it to be with her. It was only for two days a week, if that.

“I had kind of a shit day,” she said in a monotone, trying not to feel all she did, and have it make sense to him. “My favorite client died.”

“That old guy who was about two hundred years old?” he asked, sounding as though he were struggling with something, like getting into his car, or picking up a heavy bag.

“He was ninety-nine. Yeah, him.” They spoke with a shorthand they had developed over four years. Like their relationship, there wasn't a lot of romance to it, but it seemed to work for them. Their alliance wasn't a perfect match by any means, but she accepted it. Even if not totally satisfying, it was familiar and easy. They both lived in the here and now, and never worried about the future. “I'm really sad. I haven't felt this bad over something like this in years.”