Eyes of a Child Read online

  ‘His machine is off,’ she said.

  Chris’s eyes narrowed. ‘Perhaps they’re out.’

  ‘No way. It’s eight in the morning, California time. Richie picked Elena up from my mother’s last night for her week at school.’ Her voice quickened. ‘We’ve been gone two days, and now I can’t reach her. It’s part of the mind games Richie plays with her – “Your mommy doesn’t love you like I do.” Richie’s far too smart to ever hold her incommunicado. But as long as he doesn’t answer, Elena will never know I called.’

  Chris studied her face. ‘It’s hard,’ he said at last. ‘But somehow, at least for a few days, we have to leave him behind.’ He smiled a little. ‘After all, we’re two people in love, who’ve never been away together, alone in a beautiful place. We ought to be able to do something with that.’

  His tone, as so often, combined irony with seriousness. Terri knew by now that this was another way he protected them both: to say how deeply he felt made him too vulnerable, and Chris did not want others to feel responsible for him. But buying these few days of freedom had been the only thing that Chris could do for her.

  He kissed her forehead. ‘Until we get to Portofino,’ he said in the same quiet voice, ‘I’d like to talk about this mess we’re in – Richie and our children – as little as we can. It’s quiet there, and we’ll have time enough. Even to decide our future.’

  Silent, Terri took his hands in hers.

  His right hand, she saw, was still swollen and discolored. Just as it had been two mornings ago, when he picked her up to drive them to the airport.

  ‘Terri?’ His voice was tentative, an inquiry.

  Looking up at him, Terri met his searching gaze. And then slowly she backed away from him, letting her towel drop to the floor.

  ‘Make love with me, Chris. Please.’

  His eyes changed.

  Terri led him to the bed and, lying skin to skin, looked into his face. His hand, slowly tracing the bone of her back, made her shiver.

  Her eyes closed. In the last instant before becoming lost in Chris entirely, Terri thought of the day eight months before when her life – and Elena’s – had changed forever.

  It began, quite unexpectedly, when Terri had taken her five-year-old daughter to the beach at the end of the Carelli hearing. As they walked along the sand, hands entwined, the late-afternoon sun glistened at the water’s edge, and the sound of the waves was deep and lulling. She was only Chris’s associate then, not his lover; her sole thoughts were of Elena.

  They found a small cove carved into the cliffside, sheltered from the wind. As Terri gazed out toward the Golden Gate Bridge, Elena played at her feet: with a child’s solemn concentration, she arranged toy people around pieces of plastic furniture. There seemed, Terri realized, to be a mother, a father, and a little girl. She wished that she could see into Elena’s mind.

  Elena began talking to her plastic people. ‘You sit here,’ she insisted, ‘and Daddy sits there.’

  ‘Who are you talking to?’ Terri asked.

  ‘You. You’re sitting next to Daddy.’

  ‘And where do you sit?’

  ‘Right there,’ Elena said triumphantly, and placed a little girl between its plastic parents.

  A child, Terri thought sadly, ordering the world of adults. Terri had been certain that she had given Elena no sign of the marital problems she felt like a weight inside her – the fights over money and Richie’s failure to get a job; the fantasy businesses he had used her money to finance; the ways he chose to isolate the three of them from others; the subtle manipulations, always denied, intended to erode her sense of self. But Elena must have some intuition; she had spent an hour at this game of family. Terri had seldom seen her so intent.

  ‘Do you like playing that?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes.’ Elena stopped, gazing at her imagined family, and then looked up at Terri. ‘Why are you so mean to Daddy?’

  Her daughter’s voice was part inquiry and part accusation; there was an eerie certainty in it, as though Elena were speaking an indubitable truth.

  Terri was momentarily speechless.

  Keep it neutral, she told herself, as if you’re merely seeking information.

  ‘How am I mean to Daddy?’ she asked.

  Elena did not answer. But her voice held deep conviction. ‘Daddy cries, you know.’

  ‘Have you seen him?’

  Elena shook her head. ‘No. He doesn’t want to cry in front of me. He does it when he’s alone, after you hurt his feelings.’

  Terri felt herself stiffen. Quite calmly, she asked, ‘Then how do you know?’

  ‘Because he tells me.’ Elena’s voice held a kind of pride. ‘When we’re alone, and he tucks me in at night, we talk about our feelings.’

  Terri recognized the note in Elena’s voice now: the false wisdom of a child, flattered by the contrived confidences of a manipulative adult. When she spoke again, it was without thinking. ‘Daddy shouldn’t say those things to you.’

  ‘He should,’ Elena said most angrily. ‘Daddy says I’m old enough to know things.’

  She had been foolish, Terri realized. This could not – should not – be resolved between Elena and herself. But it would not do, she realized, to confront Richie with this conversation fresh in Elena’s mind: the child might see the cause and effect.

  ‘Can I play with you?’ Terri asked.

  Elena’s mood changed. ‘Okay,’ she said, and smiled up at her mother.

  For a half hour, Terri forced herself to remember that she had come to play with her daughter. They did that, talking about everything and nothing, until the breeze grew cold.

  As they drove home, Terri only half listened to Elena. Her mind felt as cold as the breeze had been.

  Richie was in the kitchen. At the sight of Elena, he flashed an incandescent smile, bending his dark curled head to hers. ‘How’s my sweetheart?’

  His voice was almost crooning. Perhaps it was her mood, Terri thought, but something about it made her more edgy. ‘Can you put away your toys?’ she asked Elena abruptly, and watched the little girl scamper down the hallway. She was unusually cooperative, Terri thought; she found herself wondering if, subconsciously, Elena had begun trying to keep her parents happy.

  ‘How was your day?’ Richie asked. ‘Court all right?’

  ‘Fine.’ Tern’s voice was cool. ‘And yours? Or did you spend it crying?’

  Richie looked startled and then tried a puzzled half smile. As he looked at Terri, it died there.

  ‘The funny thing,’ she said, ‘is that you never cry. Sometimes I’d feel better if you did. But the deepest feeling you can dredge up is self-pity, and that’s only to manipulate me. Of course, Elena, doesn’t see that yet.’

  Failing sun came through the window. It was dusk: facing Richie, Terri felt darkness closing around them. ‘Quit being abusive,’ he finally said. ‘People express their emotions in different ways, you know.’

  ‘What have you been telling Elena?’

  Richie’s wiry body straightened; Terri saw the faintest glint of satisfaction in his bright black eyes. ‘I’m just being a parent,’ he said coolly. ‘I want Lainie to know the difference between real love and infatuation.’

  There was something frightening, Terri thought, in the way Richie appropriated a five-year-old to justify his needs. ‘Oh, and what is real love? I’m not sure I’d recognize it.’

  ‘Then let me explain it to you.’ Pausing, Richie spoke with exaggerated patience. ‘Real love is when people make a commitment to family and carry it out, even through the bad times. It’s the opposite of this stage you’re in with Christopher Paget, an infatuation with surface instead of substance . . .’

  ‘Then maybe I’m too shallow to deserve you.’ Terri stopped there; what she felt was too deep for sarcasm. ‘Don’t you understand? I like working with Chris. Period. He has nothing to do with this and never has. And I never cared if you were the world’s greatest promoter. That was your dream. I just wan
ted us to live a real life.’

  He shook his head. ‘Nothing makes you happy. It’s like right now. You want me to parent Lainie, and then you complain when I do. I can never win.’

  Terri replied softly. ‘You always win, Richie. But this time I won’t let you.’ Her throat felt dry. ‘I won’t let the rest of Elena’s life be about her father.’

  Richie placed his hands flat on the kitchen counter. ‘Lainie’s not like you, and she’ll never see me like you do. She’s imaginative, like me. We communicate on levels you don’t understand.’ His voice filled with authority. ‘You should rise above your jealousy and learn to see how good I am for our daughter.’

  Terri could not answer. All that she could do was let the truth sink in – his deep certitude, his irreparable self-involvement. He would always see Elena in terms of his own desires, and if one of his needs was to use her to control Terri, he would do that without hesitation, certain it was best for Elena. Perhaps, Terri realized, that was the most frightening perception of all. Richie was not merely calculating: some unfathomable part of him could make himself believe that Elena’s happiness derived from his own.

  ‘I’m leaving you,’ Terri said.

  Richie stiffened. They watched each other in the semidark.

  ‘You can’t do that,’ Richie said at last. He made his voice calm. ‘Not without counseling. I’ll set up an appointment. Six months down the road, we’ll see where we are.’

  It took her a moment to accept what she had said, another to tell him what she believed most of all. ‘You have an uncounselable problem, Richie. And so do I.’

  Richie looked wounded. ‘What’s so wrong that we can’t fix it?’

  His voice was suddenly plaintive; for an instant it made Terri want to comfort him. But it was too late. ‘You can’t see other people as separate from you,’ she told him quietly. ‘Elena most of all. I can’t change it, and I won’t fight it.’

  ‘You can help me, Ter. That’s what marriage is about.’

  His shoulders slumped. He looked so alone, Terri thought, and then she remembered Elena. ‘No,’ she answered. ‘Only you can help you. It’s too late for us, and I have Elena to think of.’

  His voice rose. ‘If you were thinking of Elena, you’d give her an intact family.’

  Terri’d chest felt tight. ‘It’s all I ever wanted, Richie – a family. But there’s a difference between “intact” and “healthy.” We’re no good for Elena.’

  The room was dark now. Richie moved closer. ‘It’s not up to you to say what’s good. It’s up to a judge, and he’ll listen to me.’

  Terri realized that Richie was prepared for this moment, perhaps had been prepared for months. ‘And what will you tell “him”?’ she managed.

  ‘That I’ve been the caretaking parent while you’ve worked long hours with a man who just may be your lover. That I want Elena.’ He paused; the smile that followed seemed a reward for his own cleverness. ‘That I can’t provide care for her without sixty percent of your income.’

  ‘That’s crazy.’

  His voice filled with triumph. ‘It’s the law, Ter. I’ve checked it out. And even if you get custody, you think it’s easy to find a man who wants to raise someone else’s kid? You’ll be all alone.’ His tone became insinuating. ‘You should know by now how much you need me, Terri.’

  Terri tried to keep her own voice steady. ‘I don’t love you,’ she said. ‘I don’t think you’re a good father for Elena. I don’t think our “family” is good for Elena. So if I have to be alone, I will. And if I have to fight you for Elena, I’ll do that too.’

  ‘You’ll lose.’ His next words were softer yet. ‘But don’t worry, Ter. Every other weekend, I’ll let you see my daughter.’

  It was near the surface now: her fear of Richie, which connected them more deeply than love. Richie could not let Terri go and so would not let Elena go with her. Instead some stranger Terri did not know would decide whether she could raise Elena and, in deciding, would set the course of Elena’s life. Richie would be smooth and plausible; how could Terri explain to a judge how things really were? Even the thought made her tired.

  She forced herself to speak slowly and evenly. ‘I’m taking Elena and going to my mother’s. We need to decide what to tell her.’

  Richie moved closer, biting off his words. ‘We’re not telling her anything.’

  ‘We should. And we should do it together.’

  He was standing over her now. In the dark, she could barely see his face. ‘We’re not telling her anything,’ he repeated. ‘And you’re not going anywhere.’

  His voice trembled with an anger she had never heard in him before. When she tried to step past him, he moved with her, blocking her way. Terri felt her own voice quaver. ‘Please, don’t make this worse.’

  ‘You don’t understand, Ter. I’m not letting you do this.’

  Terri’s heart was racing. She put her hand on his shoulder, trying to move past him.

  ‘You bitch,’ he spat out.

  She flinched at his hand jerked upward in the darkness. ‘Don’t . . . ,’ she managed.

  ‘Do you still want to leave, Ter?’ Unless she shook her head, his upraised hand might strike. ‘Or are you ready to talk?’

  As his hand rose higher, Terri flinched. Turning, she fumbled for the light switch, flicked it on.

  Richie stood blinking at the light, his hand still raised, two feet from her. Terri was breathing hard. ‘Do it, Richie. Do it twice. That way the family court won’t miss it.’

  Crimson spread across his face. But his hand did not move.

  Terri looked into his eyes. ‘At least you weren’t abusive, I used to tell myself. Not like my father with my mother.’ She stopped herself, catching her breath. ‘Now I know why. Before I ever met you, I was trained to give in.’

  Richie was silent, flushed, staring. Terri did not know where her words had come from. ‘But not anymore,’ she heard herself say. ‘Whether you hit me or not, I’m leaving. And if you do hit me, I’ll make sure it’s the last time you’ll ever hit anyone.’

  He stared at her, and then anger became another expression – embarrassment, exposure. His hand dropped to his side.

  Don’t let him see your fear, Terri told herself. She knew that this was not over; with Richie, things were never over until he won. Right now her only goal was to take Elena with her.

  Terri made herself stand straighter. ‘I’ll think of something to tell Elena,’ she said. And then she walked past him, going to get their daughter, not looking back.

  Chapter 2

  Two days after leaving Richie, sleepless and afraid for herself and for Elena, Terri found herself on Chris’s doorstep.

  He knew nothing about what she had done. For what she had said to Richie – that Chris had nothing to do with their marriage – was what Terri believed.

  Chris and she were too different for it to be otherwise; even his home, a sprawling three-story Edwardian in the Pacific Heights section of San Francisco, reminded her of all the ways in which their lives were not the same. Chris had become famous sixteen years earlier, at age twenty-nine, for his part in exposing the Lasko scandal, the corruption of a President; Terri was barely twenty-nine now, and her career had hardly begun. Chris’s forebears had founded a railroad; Chris himself had been raised with wealth and a sense of entitlement Terri could never imagine; his only marriage had been to a well-known ballerina, graceful and elegant. Terri was from a family of Hispanic immigrants, a scholarship student who had worked her way through college and law school and still never felt quite secure; the daughter of an auto mechanic who had drunk too much and abused her mother, Rosa – the one person, Terri had sometimes felt, to whom she truly mattered.

  Standing at Chris’s door, Terri wondered how it was that Christopher Paget, and not Rosa Peralta, had become the person she would turn to.

  The first six months she had worked for Chris, she would not have guessed this. Something at the core of him had seemed unkno
wn and unknowable: Terri did not even know then that, as Elena was to her, the center of Chris’s life was his fifteen-year-old son, Carlo. And then the television journalist Mary Carelli, Carlo’s mother and Chris’s onetime lover, was charged with the murder of America’s most celebrated writer.

  Chris and Terri had defended her. The fact that Carelli was certainly a liar, and quite possibly a murderer, would have been hard on Chris even had it not been for the strain it caused between Chris and Carlo, who needed to believe things about his mother that Chris knew could not be true. But for Terri, the curcible of People v. Carelli, made her see Chris as he was. As Chris came to trust her with the Carelli defense, and then with parts of his life no one else knew, Terri saw that the man he showed to others – ironic and aloof – concealed such feeling that she sensed it frightened him.

  But this discovery, Terri realized, made her feel safe with him. She told Chris things so painful to her that she had never told them to anyone. He listened without judging, asking questions until the shape of her own feelings became clearer to her. In some deep way, intuitive and never spoken, Teresa Peralta knew that Christopher Paget was helping her become truer to herself. For that, and for being who Chris was, Ricardo Arias hated him.

  This was not fair, Terri told herself; surely she was entitled to a friend. Especially now.

  Standing straighter, she knocked on Chris’s door.

  When he opened it, Chris looked startled. It was so uncharacteristic that Terri felt disconcerted.

  He smiled then, as if to cover his surprise. ‘The Carelli case is over now,’ he said lightly. ‘You can go home. Sleep, even.’

  Terri hesitated, suddenly abashed. ‘I’m a little at loose ends, I guess.’

  ‘Sometimes that happens after a trial.’ Chris paused and then looked at her more carefully. ‘I was just out on the deck. Care to join me?’

  Please, Terri thought. But all she said was, ‘Maybe for a while.’