...And Never Let HerGo

Saturday afternoon is making me crazy. And you know how much I love you and need you. I’ll wait for your call. Te Amo.
    The moment she got his answer, Anne Marie realized she had gone too far in her apology. Tom had taken her message to be the exact opposite of what she had intended.
    “Hey,” she wrote back,
    I am leaving early to meet jointly w/ Johnson and Sullivan @ 4:00 p.m. [Gary Johnson, her therapist, didn’t usually work with anorexia and bulimia and had recommended that she meet Dr. Michelle Sullivan, who did.] I then have to pick up the boys and take care of them for the evening. Cass [Kathleen] will not be home until 10:00 tonight. I tell ya, this is hard work. I now have even more appreciation for single Moms. I will try and call before I leave today—I am dealing w/ a difficult Governor today. Annie
    She did not want to see Tom. Anne Marie was trying to bind up what she perceived to be his emotional wounds with phone calls and E-mails. Her subsequent messages were filled with excuses about why she could not see him. When he pressed for a Saturday night date, she suggested lunch instead.
    But he was so much better at this game than she could ever know. Tom was far from alone, and hardly grief stricken. He and Debby were together often, and there was Susan Louth and a number of other women. And he still walked into Kay’s house as if he owned it—which, of course, he did. He was a sultan who wanted his harem to be available to him at all times. Even the women who had managed to elude him occupied his mind. That snowy January, Linda Marandola had received a phone call from Tom, “out of the blue. He said he was just looking through the phone book and he saw my number listed.”
    Linda had neither seen nor heard from Tom for
nine years
—notsince the night in Atlantic City when he had given her the gold watch and then flown into a rage because she admitted she had been seeing other men. Once again, Tom acted as if nothing had ever gone wrong between them. He told Linda that he was separated from his wife, and spoke of how difficult Christmas had been for him because he wasn’t with his family. He sounded, in fact, like a whole different person from the jealous, crazy man she remembered.
    Things had been difficult for Linda, too; she had not remarried, was laden down with debt, and she was in her mid-forties now, not the ripe Italian beauty she had been in the seventies. Even so, she declined Tom’s invitations. Undeterred, he would call her continually from January until Valentine’s Day, asking her to have dinner with him. She turned him down, still cautious when she remembered how their meetings had always disintegrated into something frightening.
    Tom’s E-mail to Anne Marie continued unabated, with one excuse or another for why he needed to consult her. His daughter Katie’s friends were throwing a surprise birthday party for her at his house—what should he serve? Would she have dinner with him on Saturday, Sunday? Where had she been when he called at ten P.M. ? Could they watch their favorite show—
NYPD Blue
—together, or even over the phone together? Wasn’t she tired of doing her laundry at Kathleen’s? She could do it at
his
house.
    During the first part of February, Anne Marie answered his E-mail very carefully: “I’m not sure what I am doing tonight. I may go out with some friends. If I have to babysit all day tomorrow, I think I will stay clear of Kathleen’s house this evening. AMF.”
    Or: “Sorry I did not call you back last night. I ended up talking to Nigel [an old friend] until 10:30, then wanted to see the last part of NYPD Blue, and of course I fell asleep and woke up at 1:30. Typical Annie . . . and I am supposed to have nachos and beer with my running partners at the gym this Thursday night after we work out.”
    Tom called in his daughter Katie to warm Anne Marie’s heart, and had her send an E-mail. He explained she was learning how to use the computer. Anne Marie responded—but to Katie’s message only. She had seen Katie but she didn’t know her.
    On February 7, Anne Marie ended her E-mail to Tom with what for her would have been agonizing frankness: “Tommy, I meant what I said on Sunday night about right now only being able to offer you my friendship, and if you cannot deal with that then Iunderstand. I’m still very much confused, and I am trying to work out a lot of personal things on my own. . . . Annie.”
    Their words filled their computer