Fractured from the Fall

Richard

The phone continued to vibrate and she knew he would continue calling until she answered. A million thoughts were racing through her head and the crashing of the waves seemed to be the only thing that could quiet them. So instead of answering, she took the phone and tossed it as far as she could into the sea. The ocean swallowed her cell in one quick motion. It was rash, she knew, but it felt good. And besides, with the settlement she was getting, she could afford another. At least her lawyer was good for one thing, she thought.

The sun was making its decent in the sky and she figured she should get home before it got too dark, especially since she no longer had a phone and couldn't call for help should she run into problems along the drive. Lily hopped in her silver Porshe and peeled out of the dirt parking lot. The car had been a "just because" gift from Richard. It was part of his carefully crafted façade of looking like he was a loving and generous husband. Lily had accepted the gift graciously, but she knew then, on some level, that it was his guilt over the affair that drove him to purchase the car for her. Shiny toys and jewelry had a way of keeping OC housewives quiet and content with the status quo. Lily was ashamed to admit that it had worked, at least for a little while. She could add that to the list of clichés she was quickly becoming. There was a time in her life when she would have mocked a woman like her. She tried to remember the feisty bull-headed young girl she used to be; the one who had left everything behind and moved to California when she was just 18. Her teenage self would laugh at how pitiful and complacent she had become.

She wound up the canyon road watching the sun set in her rearview mirror. Blue turned to orange until finally a bright pink filled the sky. She sped through the turns, putting her car to work. "What's the fun of having a fast car if you don't drive it that way?" Richard would always say. Perhaps he was hoping she would crash and he could wash his hands of their marriage without having to go through a messy and costly divorce. Unfortunately for him, he had no such luck.

The Porsche turned on a dime and in no time at all, she had reached the top of the winding hill upon which sat the massive contemporary home she had shared with her husband. She had always loved the property from the first time Richard brought her there and showed her where they were going to build their dream home. The view seemed to go on forever that day. It wasn't always that way, what with the marine layer and being so close to the beach, but on a clear day you could see all the way west to Catalina Island and north to the lights of the shipping yard in Long Beach. They had purchased the lots in front, behind and on either sides of the property so that no one could build around them. Richard was big on privacy, or maybe that had just been an excuse to be secluded so that the neighbors couldn't see him sneaking woman in and out of the house. But it seemed to Lily that privacy was the least of his concerns, considering he felt no shame in parading his new girlfriend around town before they had even officially divorced. It was humiliating, which was why she was happy for the secluded lot now. It provided shelter and solitude from the shame that seemed to follow her everywhere she went in town.

She parked her car sideways in the driveway, blocking the front door. There was no need to use the garage these days. It was just her after all. She unlocked the heavy steel door. It was over nine feet tall and was just one of the many extravagances she insisted they needed when they built the home. The house was quiet as usual. A single light shone from the kitchen. Lily had taken to leaving it on so the house wouldn't feel so lonely when she arrived home alone at night. She dropped the keys in the bowl by the entryway and looked at the blinking red light on her answering machine. She was one of the only people left in the OC, other than old ladies, with an actual answering machine; a point Richard always teased her about, back when they used to playfully tease one another. She hit play but stopped the machine immediately as soon as she heard the voice. It was her lawyer, yet again, asking her when she was going to sign the papers. She hit delete and made her way to the kitchen. For a moment, she stood and admired its beauty. This was the room she had voiced the most input on when they were building, which was odd because Lily could hardly cook. That is, unless you count making a box of macaroni and cheese, cooking. Her mother always told her that the kitchen was the heart of the home and so she put her time and her husband's money into making it the room that everyone would want to hang out in. Lily figured there'd be plenty of time to learn how to cook, but when all was said and done she hired a chef to prepare most of their meals. Like everything else in the house, the kitchen was immaculate. They had spared no expense. The island had Italian Calcutta white marble countertops with gray veining and a waterfall edge, while the rest of the kitchen had steel counters with sleek white cupboards and cabinets. She ran her freshly manicured fingernails along the pristine countertops but what had once seemed modern, now felt cold, which only amplified her loneliness.

She pulled a corkscrew from the drawer and opened a bottle of pinot noir. It was a vintage Domaine Du Comte Liger-Belair La Romanee Grand Cru which she never could correctly pronounce, nearly $3000 per bottle, only the best. She took a swig and sloshed it around in her mouth. Whatever the difference was between this and a box of Franzia's finest, she couldn't tell. Pretending she had an understanding and love of fine wine was just one of the many things she had faked during her marriage. She would have much preferred a cold beer, something light and cheap. But she wasn't that girl anymore; she would never be that girl again, so help her God.

It was dark now and the moon was out. The night air was warm so she unlocked the large glass sliders that ran from floor to ceiling and pushed them open until it looked as if the inside and outside were one. The moonlight reflected on the surface of the infinity pool, giving off a blue-green glow. She looked out over the city and it's twinkling lights. The mist was starting to make its way up from the ocean, covering the city in a blanket of fog. It all looked so romantic, so magical, from this height. It was the main reason Lily agreed to the location when they were deciding where to build. Thanks to her husband's lucrative career, she had built her dream home, in her dream location, but her life was far from a dream. In fact, these days, it was more like a nightmare. Money could buy a lot of things, but it couldn't fix her broken marriage. For the third time that day she felt like a cliché; the sad little rich girl who had finally learned that money couldn't buy happiness. She rolled her eyes and threw back the last sip of wine in her glass, which she then gently set down on the glass table in the outdoor seating area, if that's what you could call it. It was larger than the size of most people's living rooms and it was filled with furniture that cost more than some people's mortgages. She slipped off her Christian Louboutins and stepped into the shallow end of the pool. The water was always set at the perfect temperature; cold enough to wake you up but not so cold that you couldn't go for a dip in the evening. Late night skinny-dipping was a tradition that she and her husband used to enjoy after one too many cocktails. That was back when she was careless and carefree. She hardly remembered that girl now. Her shell looked the same, thanks in part to her husband's talents with a knife and some injectables, but her insides were beaten and tired from too many years spent in an emotionally abusive, loveless marriage. She had become the perfect pretty little package her husband had always desired, but she was empty inside, and as it turned out, her pretty little package wasn't enough to satisfy him.

She waded further into the water, fully clothed, until she was submerged to her waist. She leaned back, letting the water swallow her long blonde strands, and floated on her back. This was one of the only places she could clear her head, weightless and worry free, at least for the moment. There was only one other place that had this kind of affect on her and it was nearly a thousand miles away. It was a place she hadn't been back to in many years. It was the place she had been running from for nearly all of her adult life and now she was going back. She had too, she reasoned. That's what you do when your brother-in-law dies. She knew she needed to be there for her sister, at least that's what she told herself, but hidden behind this façade were her own selfish reasons for returning. This was nothing new. There were selfish reasons for everything she did, at least that's what her sister would say. Growing up, they couldn't have been more different. When they were together it was like oil and vinegar, one rejecting the other, refusing to mix, to get along. They were like magnets resisting one another. They merely coexisted, living parallel lives, one on top of the other, never intersecting, acting as if the other didn't exist.

She floated on the surface drifting in and out of thoughts of the past and present. The wine was starting to cloud her brain in the best way possible, filling it with distorted thoughts and images of what her adolescence had been like for her versus her sister. How could two people raised in the same home be so dissimilar? It was a question she often thought about even though she already knew the answer. Her therapist had helped her to understand. Sometimes there are events in life that trigger a series of actions, diverting one down a path the other would never take, nor follow. Lily did not understand her sister's path anymore than her sister understood hers, but she would set aside their differences and for once in her life, she would do the right thing. She would book her ticket tonight and by week's end she would be back in the place she had dreaded returning to for so many years. She would be there for her sister, even if it meant going home.