Now that my head is clearer, I should get legal advice. I flinch when I imagine a version of myself scraping by in an apartment with cheap carpet, laminated countertops, and a small storage room on the balcony. It’s not an image I plan to entertain. I didn’t go to medical school but I had just as much to do with Edward’s success and anyone who wants to say otherwise, I challenge. We did good things and good things came to us.
If Shadow Garden is my consolation prize, what’s Edward’s? I’ve fretted endlessly about it, have weighed the options, teetered from guilt to he would never to how much do we really know another person? Is keeping Penelope from me his final revenge? I’m not insinuating Edward is capable of hurting Penelope—that’s not at all what I’m saying—but maybe Edward wants Penelope all to himself? Some sort of psychological manipulation when parents separate, which happens every day in so many families. The fact that both have cut off contact with me makes me suspicious of Edward.
He was the kind of man who went to work every morning, face cleanly shaven, shirt starched, tie knotted, forever cheerful and personable with his employees and patients, just to come home and take critical glances at renovations and new furniture. Money was one thing—there was lots of it—but Penelope was another, an only child getting caught in the crosshairs of our squabbles. He complained how I monopolized her and he blamed his trouble connecting with her on my taking up so much of her time. We clashed about everything pertaining to Penelope’s future. It all came to a head when I had my mind set on having her attend the International Debutante Ball.
“What’s wrong with a grand ballroom where young women from all over the country are introduced to society?”
“This is clearly out of our league,” he replied.
Attending etiquette classes and preparing for the ball would take years and Edward visibly cringed at the thought of it all. I had envisioned the gown—Spanish guipure lace and three-dimensional flowers—but participants had to excel in something. Hadn’t one of the girls been an award-winning math scholar a couple of years back?
“What a parade of clowns,” Edward said and put his foot down. “For one, it’s an archaic notion,” he said, but I understood his issues to run much deeper; it was just another activity that he’d feel left out of. Like the playhouse, which had drawn harsh words from him, especially because it wasn’t something we could afford then. “I know I spend a lot of time at work but I’d like to . . .” He couldn’t find the right words. “You two have this connection,” he said, “and I feel I’m on the outside looking in.”
But Edward was all talk and no action. He hadn’t had the patience to practice division and subtraction with Penelope nor had he witnessed how difficult she could be. I had never explained to him how unsettled I was by some of her behavior, never mentioned when Penelope regressed to wetting the bed at eight.
I don’t know what it all means. Was I given a task to complete as a parent and I failed? Was I tested? Is that what this was all about? I am always searching for answers in the dark, always wandering aimlessly to understand.
Outside my window I see a couple, a man and a woman. The man does the gentlemanly thing and lets her rest her arm in the crook of his. I find it romantic, so much more so than holding hands. I’m oddly moved by them. My mind retreats into memories of my marriage. There’s the happy part, and then there’s reality. Stark and relentless: I have no clue what will become of me if Edward decides to cut me off financially.
The gibberish rush in my mind cumulates into one single thought: no sense in kidding myself, I’m at the mercy of Edward Pryor.
5
EDWARD
The cast-iron gate closed behind Edward. With one final shudder, the wheels rolled across the tracks, the chain quieted. Shadow Garden sat like a barbican, all that was missing was a drawbridge and a moat. As he drove off, the road dipped down and the building disappeared in his rearview mirror.
He was in a state. As if the gate’s final tremor had kindled his brain’s neurons, a dozen things were knocking on his door waiting to be acknowledged. Edward took stock: this was it. Donna was gone. Not gone gone, but gone from his life.
He had never taken the time to reflect. It wasn’t for a lack of want or need but for a lack of time. His parents, though they had the financial means to put him through college, had insisted on him working and grinding away and had turned him into a workhorse. He didn’t harbor any resentment regarding the money part, but they had all but expected him to practice family medicine, not that his parents knew what was best for him or what his dreams were, they wanted a son who was a local doctor in the town they’d lived all their lives.
What do parents really know about their children anyway, right?
Penelope was his only child so there were no feelings or money or time to be divvied up, it was all her all the time, yet he knew nothing about her. He was now convinced all he had ever seen of his daughter were versions of her, adaptations. Renderings, at best.
He’d always wanted a family. The thought of children had manifested long before the marriage part. The woman who would be the mother of his children remained elusive. There were girlfriends, of course, quite a few, but it wasn’t until he was halfway through medical school that he began to think about the kind of wife he wanted, though he had always been clear about the qualities he wanted to instill in his children. Five kids sounded about right to him. One would become a physician like him, one would turn into something lofty like a writer or painter—which was bound to happen with a gaggle of children—two of his daughters would marry well, among them there might be one or even both tying the knot due to an unplanned pregnancy, nothing to be embarrassed about. He imagined a dark horse somewhere in there, one child that would emerge within the competition that was inevitably going to ensue among so many siblings, one who seemed unlikely to succeed yet would prove everyone wrong, would live out his or her dreams, whatever living out one’s dream meant.
His father had had a vision for his family. Edward’s brother, George, ran a gas station and a car wash, his sister Victoria was a teacher, and Denise, the youngest of the siblings, had four foster children. As soon as one aged out of the system, she took in another. He used to be closest to George though they hadn’t spoken in years. Four siblings, one to heal, one to educate, and one to care for others, an entire family seeing to the success and health of humanity, and George, well, George was George and he liked to spend his money on trips to Atlantic City, had a couple of failed marriages and children from them, though that part wasn’t talked about. He was that one loose brick, yet the family foundation didn’t crumble. You are your choices, Edward’s father used to quote some philosopher, then add some gems of his own making—a path of your own design, and every choice you make makes you in turn—and Edward had by all accounts done the right things and had imagined his life to take shape accordingly, the way puzzle pieces automatically click into place.