Danielle Steel - Changes

“Why?” She looked shocked.

“Because I haven't seen Peter all day, and we want to talk.”

“I haven't seen you either.” She was clearly hurt.

“I know. But we can talk in the morning, Jess. Peter will be at the hospital by then.” He left the room to take a shower and Mel kissed her cheek but Jess drew away.

“Never mind.”

“Jess, come on … it's hard cutting myself into pieces for everyone. Give me a chance.”

“Yeah, sure.”

“How's Val?”

“How do I know? Ask her. She doesn't talk to me anymore, and you don't have time to talk to us.”

“That's not fair.”

“Isn't it? It's true though. I take it he comes first.” She nodded toward the bathroom door.

“Jess, I'm married now. If I'd been married all these years, it would have been different than it was.”

“So I gather. Personally, I preferred it before.” “Jessie …” Mel felt agonized as she looked at her oldest child. “What's the matter with you?”

“Nothing.” But tears filled her eyes, and she sat down on her mother's bed, trying not to cry. “It's just … I don't know …” She shook her head in despair and looked up at Mel. “It's everything … a new school, a new room … I'll never see any of my friends again … I have to share a room with Val and she's such a pig. She takes all my stuff and she never gives it back.” They were big problems to her and Mel's heart went out to her. “And she cries all the time.”

“She does?” And just saying it made Mel think. She realized that Val had been crying a lot in the last few weeks. Maybe Peter had been right, and Val was sick. “Is she all right, Jess?”

“I don't know. She acts weird. And she's always with Mark.” Mel made a mental note to say something again about that.

“I'll talk to them again.”

“It won't change anything. She's in his room all the time.”

Mel frowned.” I specifically told her not to do that.” But there were other things that Mel had also specifically told her not to do, and Jess knew perfectly well that she did, but she would never have told her mother that. Mel put her arms around Jessica then and kissed her cheek and Jessie looked at her with a sad smile.

“I'm sorry if I was a bitch.”

“It's hard on all of us at first, but we'll get used to it. I'm sure it's hard on Pam and Mark and Matt to have us in the house too. Let's give everyone a little time to settle down.”

“What's all this?” Peter came out of the shower with a towel wrapped around his waist and smiled at Jess. “Hi, Jess. Everything okay?”

“Sure.” She smiled and stood up. She knew she should leave them alone. She turned to Mel. “Good night, Mom.” And as she left the room, it tore at Mel's heart to see her so sad. She didn't say anything to Peter about their exchange but it was one more burden on her heart as she went back to work the next day, and had to deal with Paul Stevens again, and that night when she came home, Peter called. There was an emergency he had to take care of himself, he'd be home in a “while,” and a while turned out to be eleven o'clock.

They never seemed to get off the merry-go-round anymore, and for the next three weeks she was constantly out doing interviews, fighting with Paul Stevens before or after the show, or listening to Jessie and Val's complaints when she got home. Mrs. Hahn wouldn't let them in the kitchen for a snack. Pam was taking their clothes, Jess said that Val and Mark were locked in his room all the time, and to top it off at the end of January, Mel got a call from Matt's school. He had fallen out of a swing in the playground and broken his arm. Peter met them in the emergency room with an orthopedist friend, and Mel joked tiredly that it was the first time they'd seen each other in weeks. He had had emergencies almost every night, endless bypasses to do, and two potential transplant patients had died for lack of donors' hearts.

“Do you think we'll survive, Mel?”

She collapsed on their bed in exhaustion one night. “Some days I'm not sure. I've never done so many goddamn interviews in my life.” And she still felt as though she were living in someone else's home, which didn't help, but she hadn't had time to do anything about it yet. And she hadn't even had time to tackle the frozen Mrs. Hahn. “I wish you'd get rid of her,” Mel finally admitted to Peter one afternoon.

“Mrs. Hahn?” He looked shocked. “She's been with us for years.”

“Well, she's making life very tough for Val and Jess, and she certainly isn't pleasant to me. This might be a good time for a change.” There were a lot of changes she wanted to make around the house, but she didn't have time.

“That's an insane idea, Mel.” He looked angry at the mere thought. “She's part of this family.”

“So was Raquel part of ours, and I had to leave her in New York.”

“And you resent me for that?” He was wondering if in transplanting Mel, he had asked too much. She was testy with him now all the time, and he knew that she wasn't crazy about her job. The money was fabulous, there was no denying that, but the conditions weren't as good as those she had known before, there was the endless problem with Paul Stevens, she said. “You blame everything on me, don't you?” He was looking for a fight. For no reason he could explain, that morning a perfectly decent bypass patient had died.

“I'm not blaming anything on you.” She looked desperately tired as they talked. “But the fact is that we both have enormous jobs that make tremendous demands on us, five kids, and a very demanding life. I want to make things easier in every possible way. And Mrs. Hahn is complicating things.”

“Maybe for you, but not for the rest of us.” He looked stubbornly at Mel and she wanted to scream.

“And don't I live here too? Christ, between you and Pam …”

“Now what?” The remark didn't miss its mark.

“Nothing. She just resents our being here. I expected that.”

“And you don't think your daughters resent me? You're crazy if you think they don't. They're used to having a hundred percent of your time, and every time we close our bedroom door now, they get pissed off.”

“I can't help that, any more than you can change Pam. They all need time to adjust, but Jess and Val have had the biggest change in their lives.”

“The hell they did. Pam lost her mom.”

“I' m sorry.” There was no talking about it with him, or touching the sacred subject of Anne. Mel had noticed that a few of Anne's pictures had gone back up, but she hadn't brought up the subject again, and her portrait was still in the hall.

“So am I.”

“No, you're not.” Mel wouldn't let the argument die, which was not wise. “You expect us to make all the adjustments around here.”

“Is that right? Well, just exactly what do you think I ought to do? Move to New York?”

“No.” She looked him straight in the eye. “Move to a new house.”

“That's absurd.”

“No, it's not, but changes scare you to death. When I came along, you were still sitting around with everything the same, waiting for Anne to come home. And now you've moved me into her house. It's okay for me to turn my whole life upside down, but you want everything just the way it was. And guess what? That doesn't work.”

“Maybe it's the marriage you want to move out of, Mel, and not the house.”

She stood staring at him from across the room, in total frustration and despair. “Are you ready to quit?”

He sat down heavily in his favorite chair. “Sometimes I am.” He looked up at her honestly. “Why do you want to change everything, Mel? Mrs. Hahn, the house, why can't you leave things as they are?”

“Because everything here is changed, whether you want to admit that or not. I'm not Anne, I'm me, Mel, and I want a life that's ours, not borrowed from someone else.”