44 Charles Street

Chapter 12

THE RESIDENTS OF 44 Charles Street were less sympathetic to Eileen this time. Marya gave her a motherly lecture, after bringing her soup and soft foods for five days. This time Brad had not only blackened her eyes, and made mincemeat of her face, he had loosened her teeth. She had to see the dentist twice in three days. Marya told her that she couldn’t allow herself to see him again. Francesca was being firm with her and begging her to get help. And Chris wanted nothing to do with her.

“I’m tired of lunatics and addicts and self-destructive people,” he said harshly to Francesca. “She’s addicted to the guy, and even if you chain her to the wall in her room, she’ll sneak out to see him, and he’ll beat her up again. She’s too sick. I went through the same thing with Kim and drugs. You can’t fight people’s addictions, and I’ve gotten smart enough not to try. She’ll do anything to protect her addiction. It’s no different than drugs. You can’t fix them, or stop them, and you’ll break your heart trying.”

“I can’t just sit there and not say anything to her about it,” Francesca insisted. She thought Chris sounded very cold.

“You’re wasting your time. She has to want to get help, and until she does, nothing you do or say will have any effect on her.”

It was heartbreaking to watch, and Francesca hated to see the condition she was in. She was such a sweet girl, with no self-esteem whatsoever. That was clear now. Her father had pummeled it out of her. Abuse was what she expected and thought she deserved.

Her employers were equally fed up with her. She had to take a week off, until she could cover the bruises with makeup. And when she went back to work, they fired her. She came back to the house in shock that afternoon. She was out of a job. Brad was no longer speaking to her and had told her he wanted nothing more to do with her. He had shut her out, and she kept asking Francesca if she thought he would ever call again. It was sick.

“I hope not” was all Francesca would say to her, but she was beginning to realize that Chris was right, and the abuse was an addiction. She was having withdrawal from not seeing Brad even if he abused her. And she refused to get help. Francesca just hoped he would stay away long enough for Eileen to come to her senses and to detox from him.

And Ian’s mother was demanding to see her son in jail. Chris flatly refused, and claimed it would destroy him. Two psychiatrists who spoke to Ian agreed. He was happy with his father and leading a normal life with him. He and Chris were doing healthy, normal things.

Charles-Edouard was spending a lot of time at the house these days to see Marya, and do the preliminary work on their book together, and Ian was his shadow whenever he was there. He was teaching him French and to cook simple things. He loved the boy, and was wonderful with children, although he had never wanted any of his own. But he felt sorry for Ian and all he’d been through. Ian particularly loved it when Charles-Edouard pretended to pull an egg out of his ear, and sometimes two, and begged him to do it again, and the flamboyant chef did.

“He’s around quite a bit these days, isn’t he?” Francesca mentioned casually one day when she was alone in the kitchen with Marya.

“We’re working on the book,” she said innocently.

“Are you sure he’s so devoted to his wife?” Francesca asked, hoping he wasn’t. They were so cute together. She would have loved to see Marya with him, who always insisted that would never happen and believed it. And she had no intention of having an affair with a married man, and Charles-Edouard knew it, although he still tried to convince her, as he had for thirty years. Marya just laughed at him, and reminded him regularly of his marriage and wife at home.

He was leaving for Paris shortly, at the end of the month, and to the South after that. Marya was planning to meet him in July to work on their book there. And then she was going to Spain on her own, and Italy after that, all to visit chefs she knew and restaurants she wanted to explore. And she wanted to spend August in Vermont, before she came back to New York in September. She was going to be away for more than two months, and Francesca knew she would miss her. Francesca was trying to figure out her own summer plans. Marya invited her to Europe with her, as did her mother, but Francesca wanted to go sailing in Maine with friends as she did every summer, and had for four years with Todd. They were friends of his, but she loved them dearly and they had become her friends as well. Todd was planning to visit them too with his fiancée, but at a different time.

“That’s not healthy,” her mother pointed out to her. “You’re doing the same things you did with him. You need to do something new.” Her mother was going to St. Tropez and Sardinia, as she did every year. She was a creature of habit too. But Chris commented on it to Francesca as well.

“Are you sure you want to go to the same place he is, even if you go on different weeks? That sounds a little dicey to me.” They both knew Todd was going with his fiancée.

“I love sailing in Maine,” she said stubbornly.

“You can come and visit me and Ian in Martha’s Vineyard. We’d love to have you.” Chris would be in Martha’s Vineyard with Ian for all of July and most of August. He was planning to do work while he was at the Vineyard. His family had an enormous compound there, but she felt odd doing that. She and Chris were just friends, and now that she knew who his family was, she thought they were too high-powered for her. She would have been scared to death. She had thought about going to a ranch in Montana or Wyoming to see the Grand Tetons, but she didn’t want to go alone. Her father and Avery were going to Aspen, but she didn’t want to go there either, nor to Europe with her mother or Marya. She didn’t know where to go, and she couldn’t afford an expensive vacation. It was easier to go sailing in Maine again, on her friends’ boat. She resisted the idea that she was running the gallery she had started with Todd, living in the house they had bought together, and spending the same summer vacation she had shared with him for years.

“Maybe you need to let go of some of that,” Chris suggested gently. She was stuck in a rut. She couldn’t seem to think of anything to do that she hadn’t done with Todd. But she didn’t want to admit it, even to herself. At least sailing in Maine would be a change of scenery, relaxing, and fresh air. She had always had fun there. She was going for the first three weeks of August.

The only one who had no summer plans was Eileen, and she couldn’t afford to go anywhere now, since she was out of a job. She had enough money put aside to keep her afloat for two months, and she figured she’d have a job by then. Francesca suggested she go home to San Diego to see her family, but she didn’t want to. And after her stories about her father, Francesca didn’t insist. She felt sorry for her, she had nowhere to go. But every day was a vacation for Eileen now that she wasn’t working. She had started to send her résumé around to various special ed schools, but no one had offered her anything so far. Her references from her previous job were not good, from taking too much time off work, thanks to Brad. It wasn’t helping her find a new one. Brad had not only injured her, he had cost her her livelihood. She still hadn’t heard from him, and Francesca was relieved. Maybe he was gone for good. Chris knew better and doubted it.

“An abuser never loses sight of his prey. He’ll be back.”

“Maybe he’s found someone else to beat up,” Francesca said cynically.

“He’ll be back anyway,” Chris said. He was barely speaking to Eileen now. Her addiction reminded him too much of his wife, and he had suffered too much from it, to want another addict in his life, even as a friend. As far as he was concerned, their pathology was all the same, and he thought that Eileen’s addiction to abuse was pathological, which made it so hard for her to give up. And with no job, she spent most of her time now in bed, crying and missing Brad, and not looking for a job as she should. Francesca could see that she was spiraling down and had no way to stop it.

Charles-Edouard was the first of the group to leave, when he went back to France, and it created a real void. It had been a lot more exciting when the flamboyant Frenchman was around, and Marya admitted she missed him too, but she was meeting him in Provence in a few weeks, to work with him on the book.

“Maybe he’ll leave his wife this summer,” Francesca said hopefully, and Marya just laughed. She wasn’t expecting him to and said she wouldn’t know what to do with him if he did.

“There’s no room in my life for a man,” she said to Francesca practically. “I like my life the way it is. I’m comfortable like this. Besides, I’m too old to find a man, and I don’t want one.” Francesca couldn’t help thinking again how different she was from her mother. Thalia’s only hope was that she was going to meet a man in St. Tropez or Porto Cervo. She was meeting friends everywhere, and planned to be away for two months, as she did every year. She was even meeting friends in Venice for an enormous party. Her summer was always much more glamorous than her daughter’s, or anyone else’s that Francesca knew.

Chris and Ian left for Martha’s Vineyard for the Fourth of July weekend. Chris’s family were planning picnics and barbecues, and family football games, and Ian would be spending the summer with his cousins, far from the agonies he’d been through with his mother. It was going to be good for him, and for Chris. And there were always lots of parties at the Vineyard and all of his old friends. It was a life that Chris assiduously avoided all year, but always gave in to in the summer. His parents would be there, although he wasn’t close to them, and they wanted to see Ian. Ian was going to visit his mother’s family too, in Newport, on the way home. Chris hated it there, it was too social, but he had promised to take Ian to see them for a long weekend. It was all he was willing to do. They were still staunchly defending their daughter, blamed Chris for leaving her, and had denial about her problems, although that was harder to do now, with manslaughter charges pending. She was still in jail, and despite all of her father’s manipulations, the judge had refused to set bail. She was detoxing in jail.

Marya left for France on the tenth of July, so she could spend Bastille Day there. She was stopping in Paris for a few days before Provence, to visit her cooking buddies, some of whom ran the best restaurants in Paris. She had trained there in her youth, and still had friends she loved there. And then she was planning to wend her way to Provence and get to work with Charles-Edouard.

The house was deathly quiet after the others had left. Francesca used the time to get some repairs done, and unwind. She closed early every day-the gallery was dead in the summer. They never sold anything in July, and she closed for most of August. She used the time to clean out her files, and go through slides of new artists. And it was tomblike when she went back to the house. She made the mistake of going out with one of her artists out of pure boredom. They got blind drunk together, and he wound up crying over the girlfriend he’d just broken up with. And all the evening did was depress Francesca. He called her to apologize the next day. The evening had been a total bust and reminded her not to go out with her artists. It was always a bad idea.

Eileen was seeming a little more cheerful, although she didn’t have a job. She was still mourning Brad, which Francesca refused to discuss with her. She didn’t want to feed her sickness. They had a few quiet dinners, before Francesca left. They always seemed to connect at a deep level, and Eileen’s innate innocence and sweetness always tore at her heart. She was so trusting and loving and open. She seemed to have none of the defenses she needed to protect herself in the world. Francesca wished she would harden herself a little and be less vulnerable, but that just wasn’t Eileen. Francesca was feeling guilty about leaving her alone for three weeks, and even offered to take her to Maine with her, but Eileen insisted she’d be fine. She was making friends on the Internet again, which made Francesca uneasy, but she didn’t feel it was her place to say so. The Internet was the epicenter of Eileen’s life and how she made all her friends. Meeting men was just part of that. She was part of a generation that was linked to their computers by an umbilical cord. She was either online or sending texts, something Francesca rarely did. She’d rather pick up the phone and call people, and hear their voice. But Eileen’s generation communicated by e-mails and texts. For most it worked, as did the Internet. For Eileen, it seemed to make her a magnet to the wrong guys.

Francesca took her out to dinner on her last night in New York. They went to the Waverly Inn, and it was fun. There were still plenty of people in New York. And Eileen’s mood seemed lighter and brighter than it had for a while. Francesca commented to her that their house felt like a boarding school where everyone went home for the summer. It reminded her that only Eileen had nowhere to go. The others all had family, friends, or other homes. Eileen said she was planning to go to the beach when she wasn’t job hunting and she’d be fine. She was looking forward to some time alone. And Francesca felt a tug at her heart again when she left her the next day. Eileen looked like a little kid as she stood on the top step and waved with a big smile as the cab drove away to take Francesca to the airport to fly to Bangor to meet her friends. Eileen was wearing pigtails and shorts, and after Francesca left, Eileen walked back inside. Her cell phone was ringing, and she answered it. It was Brad.