“Of course I am. I didn't quit my job, I just got married,” she said. It had only taken her forty-two years to do it. It was utterly amazing.
But they barely had time to celebrate it. Fiona said that they had taken the honeymoon before the wedding, when they went to the Caribbean. She left for Paris ten days later for the spring/summer couture shows. And right after she got back, they had the ready-to-wear shows during fashion week. Hell week, as she called it. She was working constantly, and scarcely saw John at all for the first month they were married. They didn't even have time to plan a party. And now when his daughters came home, he told them that they could either stay with him at Fiona's, or he and Fiona would both come home, but he was no longer willing to come home alone to see them.
And much to Fiona's horror, the girls reluctantly accepted the idea that she would come with him, and John actually begged her to stay at his apartment for the weekend. She knew how important it was to him. It was one of those hideous sacrifices Adrian had spoken of, which made all the difference, so she agreed to do it. And it was almost as unpleasant as she had expected.
The girls hardly spoke to her, and when they did, they were supercilious and bitchy, but at least they tolerated her being there, which was an improvement. Mrs. Westerman damn near poisoned her with a curry so spicy it nearly killed her, and much to John's horror and disbelief, she “accidentally” let Fifi out of the kitchen, and the dog made a beeline straight to Fiona's left leg this time, and took a chunk out of her left ankle, instead of the right one. This time she only needed four stitches. Adrian looked at her in total astonishment when he saw her on Monday morning.
“Again? Are you insane? When are they going to put that dog down?”
“I thought John was going to kill the housekeeper. He screamed so loud that both girls were crying, and she threatened to quit. I may have to get a stun gun the next time the girls come to visit.”
“I hope they don't come often. Did he fire the housekeeper?”
“He can't. The girls love her.”
“Fiona, she's trying to kill you.”
“I know. Death by fatal curry. I still have heartburn from it. Thank God the dog is too short to go for my throat, otherwise she would. I just have to make the best of it. I love him.”
“You don't have to love the dog, his housekeeper, and his children.”
“That's a much bigger challenge,” she confessed, and John was once again mortally embarrassed. It had been a pretty ghastly weekend, and he had been having a lot of stress at the office. Fiona had been busier than she'd been in months. The whole magazine seemed to be going crazy. People had quit, the format had changed, the new ad campaign was causing problems and had to be redesigned, which was yet another of John's problems, as well as hers. A photographer had sued the magazine. A supermodel had OD'd on a shoot and damn near died, and attracted a huge amount of negative publicity. Fiona was coming home at ten o'clock every night, and traveling more than she ever had. She made three trips to Paris in one month, and the following month she got stuck in Berlin for two weeks, and then had to fly right back out to Rome for an important meeting with Valentino. John complained that he never saw her, and he was right.
“I know, sweetheart, I'm so sorry. I don't know what's happened. I can't seem to get things calmed down. Every time I solve one problem, I get hit with another.” But his office was no calmer than hers was. The agency was changing hands again, and it was causing him huge problems. And in April, one of his daughters told him she was pregnant, and had an abortion. She blamed him, and said that if he hadn't married Fiona, she wouldn't have been so freaked out, and wouldn't have been careless with the boy she slept with. It was ridiculous to blame him, but John somehow felt guilty and blamed himself, and indirectly, when he had too much to drink one night, he blamed Fiona, which shocked her.
“Do you really believe that? That Hilary's abortion is my fault, and the pregnancy?” Fiona stared at him in disbelief.
“I don't know what to believe. We upset the hell out of them. And dammit, Fiona, I never see you.” He was most unhappy about that.
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“I feel like I'm living with a flight attendant. You come here to change clothes and pack another suitcase. And take off again. And I'm stuck here with your fucking dog and that half-naked lunatic who runs around in a gold lamé Speedo when I come home from the office. I need a little more sanity around here than I'm getting. I need to come home to a normal house, with all the stresses I have at the office.”
“Then you should have married a normal person,” she snapped back at him. The things he had said to her had been hurtful.
“I thought I did. I can't live with all this chaos.”
“What chaos?” She hardly entertained anymore. Her salons had dwindled down to nothing, because she didn't want to upset him. And she promised to tell Jamal to keep his clothes on. She had told him that before, but whenever she wasn't around, he did what he wanted. But there was no harm in it, and he was a sweet man.
Adrian noticed how furious she looked when she came to work one morning, and she told him about it. She and John had just had yet another argument about Jamal.
“I told you you'd need to compromise. Buy Jamal a uniform, and tell him he has to wear it.”
“What difference does it make? Who cares what he wears when he vacuums?”
“John does,” Adrian said sternly. “And what did you do about the closets?”
“I haven't had time to do anything. I've been on airplanes for three months. I haven't had a break, Adrian, and you know it.”
“Well, you'd better do something. You don't want to lose him.”
“I'm not going to lose him,” she said confidently. “We're married.”
“Since when did that give anyone a guarantee?”
“Well, it's supposed to,” she said, looking stubborn. “That's what the vows are supposed to mean, isn't it?”
“Sure, if you marry a saint. With humans, the warranty may run out. Fiona, people get impatient.” He tried to warn her.
“Okay, okay, I'll give him a closet. What does he need a closet for anyway? He left most of his clothes at the apartment. Along with his wife's, and that portrait of her I hate. We had an argument about it the other day. He wants to bring it to my house, so the girls feel at home there. For chrissake, why in God's name would I want to live with his wife's portrait?”
“Compromise, compromise, compromise!” Adrian wagged a finger at her. “He has a point. It might make his kids like you better. You can put it in their bedroom. You don't have to see it.”
“I'm not turning my house into a shrine to his late wife. I can't live like that either.”
“The first year is always the hardest,” Adrian said calmly, but that was because he wasn't the one compromising. But neither was Fiona. She wanted to keep everything as it had been, and every time John moved something, or changed something, she had a fit when she came home from the office. And she told Jamal not to let John change anything. So they had a huge fight when she was in L.A., supervising a shoot of Madonna. John had been putting some of his books in the library, and Jamal wouldn't let him. John had called her in L.A. and threatened to move out if she didn't call Jamal off. It was the first time he had done that, and she was frightened and told Jamal to let him do whatever he wanted. Jamal had argued with her on the phone, that she had told him not to let John change anything, and she nearly got hysterical screaming at him, and told him to just do what she told him and not make more problems. Jamal called her in tears that night and threatened to quit, and she begged him not to. She wanted familiar people, places, and things around her. And suddenly everything was changing. She had two stepdaughters she couldn't stand, and a man who wanted to make his mark in her life, and had a right to. But after a lifetime of doing things her way, and controlling her environment, she felt every change he wanted to make like an assault on her person. Even seeing his books in her library unnerved her slightly. He had put some of hers on a top shelf, to make room for his own.