All She Ever Wanted (2 page)

“I’m very, very angry with her right now,” Kathleen said in a tight voice. She had finally summoned the energy to push her chair away from the table and start heating up leftovers in the microwave for their supper—although the last thing she felt like doing was eating. She hadn’t taken off her suit coat or her shoes and panty hose, as if still toying with the idea of leaving home.

“We’ve given her everything she could ever want, Mike, yet she’s so ungrateful. I longed for a life like hers when I was her age. I can’t believe she’d toss it all away for a stupid tube of lipstick. Why would she do such a dumb thing? We give her an enormous allowance. She could buy a dozen lipsticks.”

“Maybe she’s trying to get your attention.”

His words felt like a slap in the face. “How dare you say that to me? You’re away from home for weeks at a time! I’m the one who has always been here for her!” She yanked her purse off the table, fishing out her car keys as she headed for the back door.

“Don’t walk out, Kathleen. This is one problem that you’d better not run away from.”

She whirled to face him. “I’m not running away—although I’ll admit I’m tempted! I’m just going outside for some air!”

He snatched the keys from her hands. “Don’t get behind the wheel. You’re in no condition to drive.”

“Fine!”

She stalked down to the end of the block, then back again, her high heels too painful to take her any farther. The upscale neighborhood was quiet, not at all the sort of place where children rode their bikes or played stickball in the street on a warm summer night. She didn’t have to worry about nosy neighbors overhearing her screaming match with Joelle or wondering why she was stomping up and down the street in her business suit. The houses sat isolated from each other on their half-acre lots, shielded behind bushes and trees, all outside noises muffled by the whir of airconditioners and the hum of swimming-pool filters.

Kathleen stopped at her mailbox on the way back to the house and pulled out a wad of catalogues, flyers, and junk mail. Finding a handwritten letter among the junk was such a rare occurrence these days that the lone envelope seemed to jump out at her. She looked at the return address and saw her sister’s name and an address in Riverside, New York, where they had grown up. Why was Annie writing? Kathleen tore open the envelope.

Inside she found a gaudy invitation decorated with balloons and party hats. It looked as though it had come from a dollar store. She scanned the details, then read them again to make sure she hadn’t misunderstood: Her sister was throwing a party for their father.
Please try to come, Kathy,
she had printed across the bottom.
It would mean so much to Daddy
.

“This is the last straw,” Kathleen muttered. She strode up the driveway and into the house, trying not to picture her father’s infectious grin, trying not to remember the happiness she felt every time he scooped her up in his freckled arms and called her “my Kathy.” Happy-go-lucky Daddy with his cinnamon-colored hair. For all she knew, he could be bald by now. After all, it had been thirty-five years since she’d seen him.

But she couldn’t go home—not now, not ever. Just the thought of returning to Riverside made her want to cover her head in shame. She would have to drive past her old high school, where she’d spent four years walking around with her head down, hoping no one would notice her, hoping no one would call her “Cootie Kathy” or, worse, “Kathy the Commie.” No, she’d run away once before and would never go back… least of all for her father.

Kathleen threw the invitation into the trash can beneath the sink and tossed the rest of the mail onto the table in front of Mike. He was digging into a plate of leftover Chinese takeout and reading the
Washington Post
. “I’m going to bed,” she told him. “I want to forget that today ever happened.”

“Hey, hey, wait a minute, Kath. Don’t you want to eat something, first?”

“I’m not hungry.” She walked as far as the kitchen door, then turned around to add, “By the way, I had a fight with my boss this afternoon— before the incident with Joelle. I walked out on him. I think I might be unemployed.”

She didn’t wait for Mike’s response but continued upstairs to their master suite and took a long hot shower. This was much worse than just a bad day. Kathleen’s carefully constructed life was falling apart all around her, and she didn’t know how to fix it. She thought of the Bible character, Job, who’d lamented that the thing he’d feared the most had come upon him. Kathleen’s greatest fear was much the same as his: that everything she’d worked for, everyone she loved, would be snatched away from her.

She let her tears fall freely as she showered. When she came out, Mike was sitting on their bed. “I found this in the garbage,” he said, waving the balloon-covered invitation. “Did you mean to throw it away?”

She exhaled. “I would have run it through a paper shredder if we had one.”

Chapter
2

K
athleen sank into the driver’s seat of her car the following day and leaned her head against the steering wheel, allowing her tears to fall. She had worked for the Impost Corporation for more than twenty years, clawing her way up from accountant to comptroller to CFO—and now her career with them was over. Grief overwhelmed her as she slowly comprehended all that she had just lost. As she relived this morning’s meeting with her boss, searching for some way that it might have had a different outcome, Kathleen remained convinced that she had done the right thing. There were moral issues at stake, but being right didn’t ease the pain.

At last she sat up, worried that someone in the parking lot might see her, and wiped her eyes with her fingertips, careful not to smudge her mascara. She drew a deep breath as if air could suffocate her grief, then released it with a sigh. When she felt in control again, she pulled her cell phone out of her purse and speed-dialed Mike. She knew he had been waiting for her call when he answered on the first ring.

“Hi, it’s me,” she said, swallowing a knot of sorrow. “Well, I’m officially unemployed.”

He was silent for a long moment. Kathleen could tell from the background noise that he was at a work site, not his office. She pictured him wearing a yellow hard hat, closing his eyes and lowering his head in grief as she had done. “I’m so sorry, Kath,” he finally murmured. “Are you okay?

Where are you?”

“In the parking lot at work. I should go back inside and pack all my stuff, but…”

“Leave it for now,” he said when her voice broke. “You can get it another day. Tell me what happened.”

She leaned her head against the headrest and switched the cell phone to her other ear while she removed her earrings. She and Mike had talked about her dilemma at length last night, and they had agreed that standing up to her young boss was the right thing to do. If only she’d been able to convince her boss to see the situation the same way they did.

“Well, I explained to him that things have changed since the new corporate accounting laws were put into practice, and that I couldn’t, in good conscience, sign off on the Danbury project. He forced me to admit that, yes, technically speaking, he wasn’t breaking any laws—so in the end, it came down to my Christian convictions. We reached an impasse. He told me he would accept my resignation.”

“You did the right thing,” Mike said quietly.

“Yeah—well, it sure doesn’t feel like it. This never would have happened if his father was still the CEO… but…” Kathleen stared through the windshield, her tears blurring the pink and red impatiens that lined the median strip. She drew another shaky breath, knowing that she had to stop crying long enough to drive home. “I guess I’d better call that corporate headhunting firm your friend used last year. It looks like I’ll be needing another job.”

“I think you should wait, Kath. Take some time off. Impost will give you a severance package, and you have some vacation time coming, don’t you? Maybe it’s better if Joelle isn’t home alone all summer.”

Kathleen had managed to push aside her problems with Joelle as she’d focused on her problems at work. But the pain of what her daughter had done suddenly sprang from hiding, like an intruder waiting behind a closed door, and hit Kathleen squarely in the gut.

“So, I get to be Joelle’s prison warden from now on? Great. What are we supposed to do together all day? Shopping at the mall is out.”

Mike didn’t react to her sarcasm. “They were asking for volunteers at church last Sunday for vacation Bible school. Why don’t you and Joelle—”

“Right. We’re wonderful role models. I’m sure the other mothers would love to have me teaching their children when I can’t even control my own.”

Mike’s long silence made her regret her bitter words. She was sorry for using him as an outlet for her anger and grief, but so very grateful that he was willing to listen. She heard him sigh.

“I know you’re hurting, Kathleen, but don’t take it out on Joelle.”

“I’m sorry… but I’m just so scared for her! I’m afraid of what she’ll become. …” The tears that she thought were under control started falling again.

“Hey, hey, listen to me. I’m worried, too, but she’s hardly a career criminal.”

Yet
. Kathleen barely stopped herself from voicing the thought out loud.

“I talked to Al Lyons from my men’s prayer group about Joelle this morning,” Mike continued. “He works at the Christian Counseling Center and—”

“You didn’t! I don’t want everyone at church to know our business!” Kathleen was appalled. She knew that the body of Christ was supposed to offer help and consolation in times of trial and loss, but she would sooner die than share her needs and fears with her fellow church members. She was known as a mature believer, a woman who was strong and in control, a woman of unquestioning faith. It horrified her to think that people might learn what Joelle had done.

“Al is a professional,” Mike said calmly. “He knows all about patient confidentiality. He thinks a few sessions with a therapist might help her, and I agree. He said they’d assign someone who isn’t a family acquaintance.

I already set up an appointment for her.”

“Fine. If you think it will help.”

“I’m sure it will.” Mike sighed. “It’ll be okay, Kathleen. Drive safely.

I’ll see you when I get home.”

When Kathleen hung up, she felt as if she’d worked a full day of hard labor on a chain gang. She drove the familiar route home in a daze, wondering how Joelle would react to the news that Kathleen had lost her job at Impost—and that Joelle had an appointment with a shrink. What on earth would they do together all day? Joelle had long outgrown craft projects and trips to the children’s museum.

Kathleen arrived home to find her daughter still in bed. In fact, she discovered over the next few days that she needn’t have worried at all about what they would do together. Joelle rarely awoke before one-thirty in the afternoon, and after eating a bowl of cereal, she spent most of the day watching soap operas or sitting by the pool slathered in oil, talking to her friends on her cell phone. Kathleen began to wonder if Joelle had shoplifted out of sheer boredom. The thought was somehow comforting.

Maybe her daughter wasn’t a sociopath or a kleptomaniac after all.

Kathleen certainly wasn’t going to stay in bed until one-thirty every day, but she had no idea what to do with all her free time, either. She returned to Impost and cleared out her office, read a novel she’d been wanting to finish, and then spent a few hours on her home computer doing a halfhearted job search on the Internet. The prospect of facing a job interview made her quickly decide that Mike was right: she should take some time off. She was much too depressed to act perky for a bunch of Donald Trump wannabes in a grueling series of job interviews.

It was almost a relief when Joelle’s twice-weekly therapy sessions began, giving both of them a reason to get up and get dressed. Joelle’s therapist, Dr. Marie Russo, was short and round with graying brown hair that she wore pulled back in an untidy bun. She wore sensible shoes and drab brown suits that looked as though they’d been purchased at a garage sale in some eastern European country. After Joelle’s fourth visit, Dr.

Russo called Kathleen into her office.

“I would like to spend part of our next session with you, Mrs. Seymour, instead of Joelle.”

Kathleen stared. “Me! Why?”

“I think it would help if I got a sense of your family dynamics. Your daughter’s behavior didn’t occur in a vacuum.”

“Right. The mother’s always to blame,” Kathleen said, only half-joking. “And here I was hoping it would turn out to be something simple, like peer pressure.”

Dr. Russo didn’t smile. She poked at her sagging hair to no effect. “I’ll see you on Thursday, Mrs. Seymour.”

When Kathleen woke up on Thursday morning, she immediately understood why Joelle had cried and argued and pleaded with Mike when he’d told her she would be going to a therapist. It was very disconcerting to think that a stranger might try to pry open doors that had been carefully locked and secured all these years—like a computer hacker cracking your secret codes and gaining access to your private files. She sat stiffly in the chair across from Dr. Russo, her feet flat on the floor, her palms sweating as she gripped the armrests. It wouldn’t take an expert psychologist to interpret Kathleen’s body language. Dr. Russo didn’t waste any time coming to the point. She was the type of woman, Kathleen decided, who rips off bandages in a single jerk.

“Joelle tells me that the two of you never talk,” the doctor began. “She says she finds it very hard to communicate with you.”

“Isn’t that typical of teenagers?” Kathleen asked with a nervous laugh. The doctor didn’t smile.

“When I asked her to describe you—to give me her perception of you as a person—she couldn’t do it. She doesn’t know who you really are when you aren’t wearing the obvious hats of wife or successful businesswoman.”

Kathleen couldn’t reply. She had worked very hard to make sure that no one knew the real her. And the last thing she ever wanted to do was look too closely at herself.

“I can tell from your expression that Joelle’s comments have upset you,” Dr. Russo said, leaning forward slightly. “I think it would be helpful if you shared what you’re thinking.” When Kathleen still didn’t reply, the doctor said, “I know this is your first session with me, but you can trust me, Mrs.