Mollie edgewater, p.19
Mollie Edgewater, page 19
“No, Mollie, you don’t get to do this!” Rich says, his tone reflecting his aggravation.
“Get to do what, Rich. I don’t get you. You think I’m having an affair, but I’m here with you. I don’t know what you want me to confess to,” Mollie says.
She leaves the living area to go to the bedroom to shower and Rich leaves the small apartment. She says nothing else of the spat and spends the rest of the time being Rich’s wife. Rich immediately feels regret for accusing his wife of being unfaithful.
The rest of their vacation Mollie finds herself consciously in and out of conversations with herself and others. She watches her husband interact with his colleagues, and thoughts about their lives together creep in. All of the memories with these people seem to have been dwarfed. Her friends are kind people, but she is still dissatisfied with life, even in their presence.
She does not really think she can leave Rich, but the thought does occur to her. Leaving does not become a consideration until after she and Rich return home from Israel. In previous summers when the girls are at camp, Mollie fills the house with flowers from the garden, which creates a bright warm space for Rich to come home to after a hard day’s work. However, this summer there are no flowers, and the coldness of their home sends echoes of silence in the air. Mollie sets her handbag on the stand by the door and goes into her office to check the messages.
“Molls, we just had a peek at the manuscript, only a couple of changes. Oh, we’ve got the conference coming up in August. Mark your calendar, and of course the release party,” Bee says.
Beep.
“Hey, Mollie. It’s Patricia. We should have lunch. Talk. Call me when you get a chance.”
Beep.
Mollie half listens to Rich and half listens to the messages being played back. In the corner of the office, Eric stands in the small corner between the French doors and the nook. He watches Mollie scribble the phone numbers on the pad. He wants to talk to her, but instead he just watches. Eric allows her to do one more thing for her family before she leaves them for good.
After checking the messages, Mollie steps out of the office and into the kitchen. Eric places a white chrysanthemum on her desk on top of the keyboard and slips out the slightly opened French doors. Mollie picks up the flower and briefly muses for a minute over whether or not Eric leaves it. She assumes Rich must have been trying to make up for the working vacation, and she continues about her day.
The next day, Mollie goes out to her little patch of flowers and notices all have bloomed perfectly, except for one thing. They are not the bright multicolored flowers she plants. They are all white. Mollie runs her fingers over the flowers and bends down to smell them. She goes back to her spot on the porch and drinks her coffee in silence. After her Eric experience, nothing fazes her. After coffee, she goes back into her office to call her agent.
“Molls, we’ve got great news,” Bee says.
Mollie waits on the other line for her editor to finish.
“They want you to speak at a conference in New York. We also just got feedback, the book’s going to sell this time!” Bee exclaims.
Mollie really dislikes conferences as well, and this one is a weeklong extravaganza of women writers, a gynofest of sorts. The reason it is important to her career has to do with the type of fiction written, serious fiction, not the stuff of romance novels.
“And get this Molls, there is a movie option,” Bee added.
“Great,” Mollie says.
“That rarely happens when a novel just debuts,” Bee says trying to draw some enthusiasm from Mollie.
Mollie hangs up with her editor and prepares for the conference that her editor says, “Would change her status from cult romance writer to celebrity novelist.”
Chapter 44 Eric
Eric makes sure his affairs are in order before he picks up his bride. He sells all of the accoutrements of his playboy lifestyle. The penthouse he manages to sell while working for his father. The suits he wears while wining and dining he gives to the Waterfront Mission. He sells the sports cars, including the Alfa Romeo. The sale of Alfa Romeo is quite painful for him, though, as he has built and owned this car the longest. With the cash from the vehicles and the clothes, he purchases a respectable engagement ring. He sells his wine collection to a local winery and buys a small cottage that sits in the middle of a small, lush forest.
When he is finished trading his old life in for a new one, he goes about making his home, their home, comfortable. He has the place tastefully decorated with furniture and wall hangings common in most homes owned by conventional families. Just as the interior decorator leaves the home, Eric leaves to shop for the fixings for a sumptuous meal to seal the deal. Deciding on a vegetable seafood medley over pasta and a Chardonnay, Eric leaves the grocer, but not before stopping by the local flower shop.
Eric is predisposed to the rose because the flower, by nature, is a romantic one, and so is he. However, the rose is not, he does not feel, quite appropriate for this occasion. He is in the shop about twenty-five minutes when a woman walks up to the counter with a small pot of daisies. The bloom is still on the flowers, and their scent wafts through the air catching Eric’s attention. He finds the flower in the small greenhouse abutting the shop and picks up a vase and a bunch of the flowers.
“We can arrange these if you’d like,” the shop owner says.
Eric thinks for a moment and then says, “Okay, why not? Eric takes the flowers home and places them in a vase on the dining room table. With his house is in order, Eric is on his way out the door when his mother calls.
“I called because your father asked me to check on you, to see if everything is okay,” she explains.
“I’m fine. Why would you ask?” Eric answers.
“Well, Eric your father tells me your selling off your things, the Alfa Romeo. You’ve sold your car, dear,” she says.
“Mother, I’m fine, really. I’m about to seal the engagement,” Eric says.
“So, you have decided to marry. When do we get the pleasure of meeting her?” his mother asks.
“If you must know, I’m going to ask her tonight. You will meet her in a few weeks when we fly to the continent later this month,” Eric says.
“Who did you pick?” his mother asks.
“Oh mother, that’s so irrelevant. It’s that I have chosen wisely. I’ll say this. She won my heart without ever uttering a word about money,” Eric says.
“I hope you have chosen wisely. Marriage is nothing to be cavalier about,” she says.
“I have,” Eric says.
He is on the phone a few minutes more and then he hangs up with his mother. Soon after, he is in the modest SUV he purchases with the money sold from his property, and he is on his way to her.
Chapter 45 Pat
“No judgment,” Mollie says.
“No judgment,” Pat says.
Mollie waits for a minute because she is nervous.
“Come on, Mollie, it sounds important,” Pat says. Mollie does not have the time to go to shopping or to the spa today, so she invites Pat over to the house for lunch. The kids are on the slip and slide and the two women are under the shaded patio.
“I’m going to leave—I’m going to leave Rich,” Mollie says.
Pat says, “Mollie, are you sure—are you sure you know what you’re doing?”
Pat looks at her own children playing with Mollie’s, and a sudden nostalgia overcomes her. She is not so sure she wants to let Mollie go.
“No, I don’t know what I’m doing, but my life is suffocating me, and
I have to get out before I go crazy. This life, this life—” Mollie says.
“Is a good one, Mollie. You should remember that,” Pat says.
“You said you wouldn’t judge me, but you are,” Mollie says.
“No, I’m sorry Mollie. I didn’t meant that,” Pat says.
She and Mollie let a few minutes pass before Pat asks, “You know why I stopped seeing the neighbor?”
Mollie turns her head and says, “You never told me. Why did you stay?”
“Chadwick was on a trip for a week, and we—me and the neighbor—
had been playing around all week,” Pat says.
“And no one noticed?” Mollie asks.
“They probably did, but we didn’t care,” Pat says. “Anyway, my husband came home and told me a story about one of his bosses. The man was getting ready to retire and was miserable because he found himself in the situation where he had to keep working.”
Pat laughs and continues, “Apparently, the man’s wife racked up over $85,000 in debt over on one of those gambling boats. This person was relaying this to my husband. Chadwick told me his boss never considered leaving his wife.”
“You think he was trying to tell you something—that he suspected,”
Mollie says.
“I don’t know. I guess I wasn’t paying attention, but something about the story touched my heart. That her husband loved her so much that he’d never consider leaving her after making such a dreadful financial mistake,”
Pat says.
“So that made you end it?” Mollie asks.
“Yeah, I looked at Chadwick and thought and knew this man loved me. Even with my affairs, I don’t think he’d ever leave. I hoped that Chadwick loved me in the same way,” Pat says.
“I couldn’t be faithless to Rich like that. There has been too much between us, and even in this funk, I love him too much—but I’d rather leave,” Mollie says.
“I’m going to miss you, miss the married Mollie,” Pat says. “So who is he?”
“He. He is of no import right now. I just need to work up the nerve to leave,” Mollie says.
She gets up to help the girls fix something on the lawn and Pat watches. Pat does not know what to make of Mollie. She does not know if her friend has made a fearless attempt at independence or a foolish mistake in the effort of being free from her life. Mollie returns to the table giggling, as one of the girls splashes Mollie with water. She sits in her chair and picks up the lemonade.
Pat raises her glass and says, “To fearless females.”
Chapter 46 Mollie Edgewater
The last thing she says to Rich is, “Have a good day sweetheart.”
Mollie does not intend to come back, but she watches him, with the girls, walk out of her life. She gathers her packed suitcases and heads for the airport where she would fly to New York City. She has been to the city and likes it. Some might view the imposing skyscrapers as claustrophobic, but Mollie feels a sense of confidence and freedom surrounded by them.
This conference is a change of scenery for Mollie. Her first evening at the hotel, she meets up with other novelists. She has never met any of these writers, even though she has known their works. These authors do not talk of husbands, day schools, or even readership, but of serious scholarship. The last time she hears the names Flaubert, Dada, or Jung was in graduate school. Like riding a bike again, she hops on and peddles faster and faster and faster. Talking shop places Mollie in that 23-year-old body of hers. When it is her turn to present, she gives her presentation in front of a crowded auditorium of old fans, new fans and just the plain curious.
Fans bombard her with questions about her life, writing as a fulltime mother and wife, and romance writing in general. She is in the middle of her pace when she catches sight of him. Eric is standing at the back of the auditorium. His hair has grown shoulder length. He holds it back with a rubber band. She almost does not recognize him, as he is not over dressed. He wears a simple pair of jeans and a t-shirt. His gaze is magnetic, and she, for an instance, almost loses herself. She keeps looking toward the back of the auditorium to see if he is still there. He does not move an inch.
Eric never betrays Mollie’s commitment to her husband and family. Eric watches as Mollie places the envelope on her monitor that morning before she leaves for the conference. She empties the garbage, and then she closes the door. Eric hears the front door latch catch, and Mollie’s engine start. He looks out the door to see her driving the small late model VW Bug, a car reminiscent of her youth, out of the driveway. He closes the blinds and looks at the television monitor. Excitement fills his head at the prospect that she might actually be leaving her husband.
Eric sits on the futon for about an hour when he hears footsteps by the door of Mollie’s office. Quickly, he gathers himself and hides inside the nook by the French doors. He watches as Rich opens the envelope. He searches Rich’s face for a clue, and then finally, Rich puts his hand on his forehead. He is not crying, but his face is filled with anguish. He places the letter down and then goes outside. Eric hears him hustling the girls out of the house for dinner.
Eric waits until everyone leaves. Then, he sits on the futon and reads the letter. He has seen countless like this letter. This affair is not the first time he has stolen another’s affection. He is not sure whether Mollie has been stolen, though. Phrases such as “needing more” and “reaching my full potential” pepper the letter, and the letter does not speak of love for Eric per se, but Eric knows that part of Mollie leaving is about him, is for him. It has to be.
When the question and answer session of the conference comes to a conclusion, Mollie looks up to see Eric a couple of inches from her. She returns his gaze staring fiercely into his eyes. Her heart races, and she is filled with elation because this would be the night they make passionate love, finally.
Then, a curious thing happens. The ring on her ring finger begins to itch, so much so that she takes it off. As she walks off the stage, she gives Eric a perfunctory glance. All of the passion and love and hurt and anguish she feels for him is apparent in the look that passes between them. As much as she wants to be the one that gallops away with him, she would feel as though she betrayed herself had she allowed herself to love him, to love at all. In a moment, she sails right past him dumping her wedding ring in the dumpster on her way out the door. She does not look back as to not regret her decision.
Mollie leaves for many reasons. She leaves because she is tired of the responsibility of being responsible. She leaves because she decides to advance her career. She leaves because she wants to be taken seriously. She leaves because she wants to explore other relationships. She leaves
Eric, her husband, and her life for so many reasons, but really for one. Ultimately, Mollie leaves for herself.
Her bobbed hair catching the wind, she vanishes into New York City, just another city dweller at the end of her shift. She ultimately decides to close the book on Eric as well. At the auditorium at NYU, Eric watches Mollie walk out of the large theater. Poor Eric, with his compartmentalized life, Molls loves him but not in a way he understands. Mollie never sees
Eric again after that day. The end.
© 2015, 2017
Dawne Hendrix, Mollie Edgewater
