“Jesus, the natives are aggressive today, aren't they?” Tanya said, watching the crowd outside. They still frightened her at times. It was scary to be so pursued, so devoured, so compulsively hunted. And as Mary Stuart watched her face, she was overwhelmed with pity.
“I don't know how you stand it,” Mary Stuart said softly, and then they both sat down, as the bus began rolling.
“Neither do I,” Tanya said as she put her Coke can down on a white marble table, “but you just do, I guess. It goes with the territory. It's just that no one really explains it to you when you grab that mike for the first time and sing your heart out. At first you think it's all about you and the music. But it isn't. After a while, it has nothing to do with that. You can have that anytime, all by yourself, out in a field, in the bathtub, anywhere you are… but it's all about the rest that comes with it. They eat you up, if you let them. They give you everything, their hearts, their minds, their souls, their bodies if you want them, and then they take yours, everything you got, and you never get it back again if you're not careful.” She knew whereof she spoke. She had fought long and hard to get where she was, and she had paid a high price for it, and given up parts of herself she knew she would never get back now. She had given trust and caring and love, and worked harder than anyone Mary Stuart had ever known, and in the end, she stood alone at the top of the mountain. It wasn't an easy place to be. Mary Stuart could only guess at it. But Tanya knew it.
“So how's it going?… How was the flight?… How's Alyssa?” Tanya asked, settling back in one of the big club chairs for the long drive to Winnemucca, Nevada, where they were sleeping.
“Alyssa's fine. She's in Holland, and she's in love. She sounds so happy it almost hurts to hear her. And Bill's fine too,” she volunteered, but her face saddened instantly as she said it. “He sounds very busy,” and he didn't want her with him, she thought. That said it all as far as she was concerned. She didn't say any more, but it was obvious that she was unhappy.
“How's that going, or should I ask?”
“I'm not sure.” She hesitated for a long moment, looking out the window. “I've been doing a lot of thinking.” And then she looked into her friend's eyes and remembered the endless confessions in Berkeley, the hours they spent talking about their lives and their dreams, and what they really wanted. All Tanya had wanted was to marry Bobby Joe. Mary Stuart had wanted a job and a great husband, and good children. She had married Bill two months after graduation, and for a while seemed to have everything she wanted. But she wasn't as sure now. “I'm not sure I want to go back after the summer,” she said softly, and Tanya looked startled.
“To New York?” She couldn't imagine her living in California. Tanya was her only friend there, and everything about her was so Eastern. It would have been a brave decision, but Mary Stuart shook her head at the question. Her answer shocked Tanya still further.
“No, to Bill. I don't know. Something happened when he left. It's as though he thinks he can do whatever he likes now. He has the option to do what he wants, to go to London for two months alone, even though I could have been there. The firm would even have paid for it, but he didn't want me. And yet I'm expected to be there for him, to run his home, to take his messages, to cook his dinner. But he no longer has to speak to me, or care for me, or take me anywhere. He's silently blaming me for killing Todd, or at least not stopping him from what he did. But Bill no longer acts married to me now. That's my punishment. I'm married, and he's not. Like a sentence in purgatory, and I've been letting him punish me because I felt so guilty. But a funny thing happened when I put Todd's things away, it freed me. I feel sad, I feel loss, I still feel terrible grief sometimes.” She had cried for him again the night before she left, and for her marriage as well. She had sensed before she left that she might never come back in quite the same way to their apartment. “But I don't feel as guilty. It wasn't my fault. It was terrible. But it was something Todd did. And no matter how terrible it was, or how foolish, even though I'm his mother, I couldn't have stopped him.”
“Do you really believe that?” Tanya asked, looking relieved. It was exactly what she had tried to tell her, but Mary Stuart hadn't been ready to hear it. Or maybe Tanya had started the process for her. She hoped so, as she listened.
“I believe it now,” Mary Stuart said quietly. “But I don't think Bill does. I think he's going to go on punishing me forever.” And then she looked out the window as they drove out of Los Angeles County, thinking of her husband. “We're not married to each other anymore, Tan. It's all over. I don't think he'd admit it if I asked him. But there's nothing left, and I think he knows it too. If there were, I'd be in London with him.”
“Maybe he just can't face you yet,” Tanya tried to say fairly, but she suspected Mary Stuart was right. What she had told her in New York had been a nightmare. The silence, the loneliness, the agony of his rejection. And even to Tanya the fact that he didn't want her in London with him told its own story.
“I don't think there's anything to go back to. It took me a long time to face that. I think it was especially hard for me because I used to think we had such a great marriage. More than twenty years isn't bad. And it was so good when it was good,” Mary Stuart said sadly. “I always thought we were so close and so happy. It seems amazing that a blow like that could end it all. You would think it would bring us closer.”
“I don't think it works like that,” Tanya said honestly. “Most marriages don't survive the death of children. People blame each other, or they just wither up inside. I don't know, but I've read a lot about it. I don't think what happened is surprising.”
“It's as if all those years before don't count at all. I thought it was like money in the bank, you store it up so that when you really need it you have it, and then when the roof fell in I found out our piggy bank was empty.” She smiled wistfully, but she had begun to make her peace with it, oddly enough only in the past few weeks. And she'd had a lot of time to think once he left for London. “I just don't think I could go back to what it was like last year, and I don't think we could ever fix it.”
“Would you try if he asked you to?” Tanya was curious. Like Mary Stuart, she had always thought they had a great marriage.
“I'm not sure,” Mary Stuart said cautiously. “I just don't know now. What we went through was so painful that I don't want to go back, I just want to go forward.” Tanya and she sat silently for a few minutes as they headed into the San Bernardino Mountains, and then Mary Stuart asked her a question. They were both stretched out on the couches by then, and Tanya had taken her hat and boots off. It was a great way to travel. “What's happening with Tony?”
“Not much. He called an attorney. Mine is taking care of it for me. It's all pretty predictable and relatively nasty. He wants the house in Malibu, and I won't give it to him. I bought it and put most of the money into it, and in the end I'll have to give him a bunch of money to keep it. And some other stuff. He took the Rolls, and he wants alimony and a settlement, and he'll probably get it. He says that my lifestyle caused him pain and suffering and he wants to get paid for it.” She shrugged, but it made Mary Stuart livid.
“You'd think he'd be embarrassed,” Mary Stuart said with a disapproving frown. She had always hated the things people did to Tanya. It was as though they thought it was all right because of who she was. Even Tony had given in to it finally. It was hard for anyone to remember she was a person, and harder still for people to resist just grabbing for what they wanted.
Tanya hated it too, but it was something she had long since understood and made her peace with. It was just what happened when you became that famous.