[Okay, from the way things have been going for me lately I've decided it's time for me to go back on medication. My OCD has officially gotten to the point where it's literally impossible to manage without behaving like a total crazy person. My mind is continuously plagued by unpleasant thoughts, and Sunday night I completely freaked out and started crying. I thought it was due to my period, but that's come and I still don't feel any better.
This has actually been going on for several months and I thought I could handle the thoughts and keep the rituals under control, but that does not appear to be the case. I'm terrified to go to sleep at night because I'll have nightmares, and the only time my mind isn't racing is when I'm writing, which is how I got an entire chapter completed within a day. Writing is actually the only time I feel even halfway normal, and it would be great if I could feel that way
all the time. Like when I'm trying to sleep!
Oh, and here is something my best friend showed me last night of this couple from the show
Pushing Daisies who remind me so much of Esmé and Jerome (I personally have never watched the show, but trust me when I say this is a must-see):
www.youtube.com/watch?v=VP5FXmgxzdU&feature=relatedI apologize for my ridiculous rant. Seriously, that is the kind of thing I save for my LJ and AIM, but you guys are really cool and make me feel at ease about stuff like that. I just hope it isn't too annoying.
Anyway, here is chapter 5. Enjoy.
]
Chapter 5
“Are you feeling alright, Emma?” Jerome asked the next morning as Esmé spooned two more pancakes onto his plate. “You haven’t said a word all morning.”
“Fine,” Emma replied in the same flat tone she had spoken in the night before without bothering to look up from her bowl of Cheerios.
“Didn’t you sleep well, darling?” Esmé inquired, sliding into a chair beside her husband.
“Yes.”
“You know, Emma. I received a phone call the other day from one of my associates down at the bank who was considerate enough to inform me that speaking in single-worded sentences isn’t supposed to be back in for at least another six months.”
Of course, this was all an excuse for Esmé to get her daughter to stop being so rude to her parents— in particular to Jerome, whom Esmé had caught Emma glaring at from beneath her long bangs more than once since they had all sat down at the table together. Esmé could not make hide or hair of the reason, but she was determined to find out.
“Sorry,” Emma said.
Esmé sighed in frustration before picking up her spoon and dipping it into her bowl of shredded wheat. There was no way she was going to begin the day with an argument between herself and her (difficult) teenaged daughter, let alone at the breakfast table. She had already been forced to deal with a distraught husband the night before, and she was in no mood to put up with one of Emma’s tantrums. Jerome was usually the one to take care of things like that, but Esmé couldn’t see putting him in that sort of position when he was clearly still a little sensitive over last night’s issue.
“Did something happen at Veblen Hall the other night?” Jerome asked, if somewhat a little timidly.
“No,” replied Emma.
“Your mother and I saw you talking to Gabby Morris and when we looked back you had disappeared.”
“Where did you run off to?” asked Esmé.
Emma thought quickly in order to come up with a believable story. She knew neither of her parents would be very happy to learn that she had sneaked out of Veblen Hall, in the dark, to speak with a man she had never met before… especially when they learned of his identity. Still, this whole thing was
their fault to begin with (her mother’s and Jerome’s), and so if Emma chose to lie to them, would it really matter? Didn’t they deserve to be hurt as much as Olaf had? There was not a doubt in Emma’s mind that Esmé’s actions had wounded him deeply, which had been apparent in his tone as he had spoken of her the other night.
Why did Jerome have to come along and ruin everything anyway? Why couldn’t he have just found some other woman and left Esmé alone?
Emma hated him.
“Emma,” Jerome said. “Your mother just asked you a question. Aren’t you going to answer her?”
Emma just sat there in her seat, staring down at her Cheerios, ignoring him.
“Emma, you’re being very rude,” Esmé said as she felt her patience beginning to dissipate. “Your father is speaking to you, and all you do is sit there and ignore him.”
With that, Emma’s head jerked up. Her eyes burning with rage, she fixed them on her mother’s face and shouted boldly:
“Jerome is not my father!”Emma shoved her chair back from the table with such force that it hit the wall behind her. Too shocked by her sudden attitude in order to respond immediately, her parents watched with shocked faces as she marched out of the dining room and down the hallway.
They sat there in proclaimed silence for a few minutes until they heard a door slam, followed by a loud sniffle. Esmé turned to her left to see her husband, his hand covering his face in a feeble attempt to hide his tears.
“Oh, Jerome,” she said, reaching over and wrapping her arm around his shoulder. “Honey, come on. Don’t cry. She… she didn’t mean it.”
Jerome threw his other hand over his face and began to sob. “I knew it,” he wailed. “I knew there was something wrong last night when she didn’t so much as cast a glance at me when we returned to the penthouse. Up until ten years ago maybe I could have passed as her real father, but not anymore. Not when I look like this.”
“Oh, sweetheart…” Picking up her unused napkin, Esmé gently drew her husband’s hands away from his face and dabbed away the tears from his eyes. “Why this sudden obsession with how you look, hmm?” Kissing him on the cheek, she laid her hand on his stomach and then rested her head against his shoulder.
“Your husband is horribly fat, you know.”
The fact that Jerome was pouting like a child only made him appear all the more adorable, and Esmé nuzzled his cheek. “I think you look very handsome this way,” she said, “to tell you the truth.”
“Is that why you insist on feeding me so many pancakes?” he asked.
“I had always just assumed you liked them. After all, you were eating pancakes when I first met you. The possibility that they’re responsible for this”—she pressed her hand against his stomach, just to show him what she meant —“is just an
added benefit.”
Jerome took the napkin from Esmé and blew his nose before crumpling the napkin up in his hand. Her head was still resting on his shoulder while her hand pressed lightly down on the curve of his stomach, and he wrapped his arm around her, kissing her on the forehead.
“Emma is a teenager,” Esmé went on. “There are going to be days where she is unbearably unpleasant, and others where she is so sweet we won’t even remember there were days like this. So we might as well get used to it. Just be glad she hasn’t stolen the car yet.”
“Carmelita never stole the car,” Jerome pointed out.
“That’s because she knew we would pull her out of Prufrock Preparatory School if we even
suspected she was planning something like that.”
“Then I suppose we ought to be thankful that Emma hasn’t fallen for any of the administrative staff.”
“Considering that the only male teacher at Prufrock Prep is Mr. Remora,” Esmé said, “I sincerely hope you’re right.”
Jerome just laughed and shook his head. It had taken Esmé a few years to warm up to the idea of their eldest daughter’s involvement with a man who was exactly twenty-five years and three months older than she. However, Esmé had grown more accepting after Carmelita and Nero’s wedding— and especially after the twins had been born. The fact that he loved and cared for his family every bit as much as Jerome loved and cared for his had convinced Esmé that Nero was for real, and that his relationship with Carmelita was for real and not some fling as she and Jerome had suspected in the beginning.
“I’ll go have a talk with Emma,” Esmé said, running her long nails over her husband’s stomach once more before getting up. “By the time I get to her room, I’m sure she’ll have calmed down enough to tell me what the problem is.”
“That’s very kind of you, darling,” Jerome said, and stopped her from going anywhere by pressing her hand a little more firmly against his stomach. “But are you sure you don’t want me to—”
Esmé slid slowly into Jerome’s lap, facing him as she wrapped her feet around the legs of his chair. “Positive. You’ve been through enough this weekend. I just want to save you from any further upset.”
Jerome lifted her hand, which he was still holding, and kissed it. “You’re such a noble person, Esmé. I always knew you could be again, in spite of what everyone else said.”
Smiling, Esmé began to trail one of her long, red nails slowly down the bridge of his nose to his lips, along his chest and stopping at the most obvious spot of all where she pressed her finger against his belly button. Jerome made a sound like a cricket chirping, and Esmé leaned forward to kiss him on the mouth.
***
Esmé was cautious as she opened the door to her daughter’s room slowly, remembering the time Carmelita had become so upset by the proposition of therapy after she had started sleepwalking that she had thrown a book at Jerome. Emma didn’t throw temper tantrums often, but when she did the Squalors usually had to replace something such as a door hinge and— on one occasion —a bathroom mirror.
“Darling,” Esmé said, poking her head through the small opening in the door and scanning her eyes around the room for the first sign of her daughter. “Are you in here?”
When there came no answer, Esmé took it upon herself to step (cautiously) into the room. As far as she could tell, the only things that seemed to be out of place were a pillow and a jar of pencils, which had apparently been flung across the room in a fit of rage and landed against the wall on the other side of the room. Shaking her head, Esmé walked over and stooped down to pick up the pencils. After returning them to the jar, she set everything back on the desk and then picked up the pillow. She carried it back over to the bed and propped it up against the headboard. Sitting down on the edge of the bed, she called out softly, “Emma, come out here, please. I’d like to have a word with you.”
No answer.
“Emma, I’m not kidding. If you don’t come out from wherever you’re hiding, there will
be no trip to the In Boutique next weekend.”
Still, nothing.
“Last week while you were at school, I received a phone call to inform me that hiding is very, very
out.”Immediately, the closet doors burst open and Emma tumbled out, her face horrified as she rushed over to the bed. “Okay, okay,” she said, her voice desperate as she fell to her knees at her mother’s feet. “I’m out, I’m out— I mean I’m
in! Just don’t tell anyone I was hiding in the closet, Mother. Please!” She literally looked ready to cry at the very thought of being out, and her mother nearly burst into giggles of just how much Emma resembled her at that very moment.
“Relax, darling,” Esmé said as she brushed the hair back from her daughter’s single eyebrow. “I was only trying to get you to come out and talk to me.”
“Well, it sure worked,” Emma said as she climbed up onto the bed and sat beside Esmé.
“Emma, the way you spoke to Jerome before really hurt his feelings.”
“I wasn’t speaking to
him. I was speaking to
you.”“Yes,” Esmé said. “Be that as it may, it was a very inconsiderate thing to say and I want you to apologize.”
Emma stared in bold defiance at her mother, eyes burning as they had been when Emma had spoken the words that had cut her stepfather so deeply. “No,” she said.
“Emma, what is the meaning of this? You and Jerome have always been so close— what happened?”
“Why don’t you ask Jerome?”
“Well, if you insist on being unreasonable—”
“I’m
not being unreasonable,” Emma replied unreasonably.
Esmé sighed. She had never had patience for children— even for her own daughter, who had inherited every one of her mother’s personality traits, including her hot temper. “Emma,” Esmé said finally. “You’re just… you’re being very
mean. I want you to stop behaving so irrationally and go out there right now and apologize to your father.”
“I will
not apologize. And Jerome is
not my father!”
“Emma!” Esmé could have slapped her hard across the face for that remark (especially since she was apparently insisting on repeating the one thing that had caused this mess in the first place), but she didn’t. “What on Earth has gotten into you?”
Flopping back against the wall, Emma folded her arms over her chest and glared down at her black and white-stockinged feet. She absolutely refused to state the obvious.
“Emma Esmélita Salinger Squalor, you are
unbelievable!” Esmé shouted right before she marched out of the room and slammed the door just as loudly as Emma had earlier.
***
“That child is absolutely incorrigible, Jerome,” Esmé vented as soon as she walked into the kitchen where she found her husband washing up the breakfast dishes. “When I tried to force her to apologize to you, she just—”
“You
forced her?” Jerome asked as he set a plate inside the dishwasher.
“Well, yes,” Esmé replied, hoisting herself up onto the countertop. “Isn’t that what I was
supposed to do?”
“Darling, I appreciate your effort in all this, but if Emma is going to apologize to me then I want it to be because
she is sorry and not because you forced her to be. If the apology comes from her heart, then it will mean all the more to me.”
“But what she did was
wrong, Jerome. Not only that, but it was
cruel. She had no right to just—”
“We don’t know that, Esmé,” he said, finishing up a coffee mug and setting it inside the dishwasher and closing it. “We have no idea what was going through her mind at the time she uttered those words.”
After Jerome had switched off the tap of the sink, he dried his hands on a dish rag and then walked over to his wife. Wrapping his arms around her waist, he leaned his head against her chest and breathed in the sweet, comforting scent of lavender and cream, a scent that had been all her own for as far back as he could remember.
“Thank you for being there for me last night,” Jerome said. “You fell asleep before I could tell you that.”
“You’re welcome,” Esmé said. “You were just so desperately sweet and sad I— Jerome, what are you doing?”
She could feel his hand pressing against her stomach, which had never lost its post-baby softness. Jerome had always loved it, along with his fetish for her high-pitched squeaks. Smiling, Esmé wrapped one arm around him and touched the hand resting on her stomach.
“You’re so weird,” she said, and kissed him on the neck.
“And you, my dear, are no less so,” he said, kissing her on the cheek. “Grabbing me the way you do from behind whenever you think I’m not looking.” Leaning down, he kissed her on the belly. “I’m simply paying you back.”
“Did I ever say I minded?”
“No. Did I?”
“No.”
Sliding his hands down along Esmé’s small shoulders, Jerome continued down around each side of her waist and slowly slid his hands up her dress until they were resting on her hips. Without warning, he snatched her off the counter and swung her around, her hair and the corners of her dress flailing in the process. Esmé threw her arms around him, giggling and screaming until at last they halted. Leaning against the counter, Jerome kissed her passionately on her full lips, listening to the sound of her happy murmurs. Soon enough he could feel her tongue inside his mouth, a gesture that had caused him to burst into tears the first time she’d done it to him. But rather than cower like the petrified virgin he’d once been, he offered her
his tongue, rather amused when she bit it just a little.
That was the thing about his wife that Jerome liked so much. Aside from her kinder, gentler nature, she was still the same woman he had married more than thirteen years earlier. She was still easy to anger and would never pass up an argument with her husband or anyone else when it was offered. Her criminal side, however, had completely vanished the moment Olaf had. Jerome would never be able to admit to Esmé his relief for that despicable man’s demise.
The Squalors, Carmelita, and Nero all suspected that Olaf had perished in the fire that had consumed the Hotel Denouement. They also suspected that the same fate had befallen Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire, although it had never been proven since their remains had never been found, and the memory of how Esmé, Carmelita, and Nero had treated the three orphans was just too painful for them to express.
As for Jerome, the only thing he had been guilty of was in abandoning the Baudelaires on the steps of Veblen Hall the morning of the In Auction. Even though he had apologized to them profusely the day before the fire, the guilt he felt for what he had done had never completely left him. Sometimes when his wife was being particularly quiet, he would look upon her despondent face and know immediately what she was thinking.
“I love you, Jerome,” Esmé whispered into his hair right before sliding out of his embrace, the sound of her stilettos clicking quietly against the tiles of the kitchen floor. “And I promise that I’ll always be here for you.”
Jerome sighed, content with just the feeling of his beautiful wife in his arms. Aside from the fact that their youngest daughter had entered her teen years, their lives could not have been more perfect. He chuckled as he thought of the time Carmelita had doused him with parsley soda simply because she hadn’t wanted to eat her pork chops.
Jerome knew Emma would apologize when she was ready. It just had to come from her heart in order for him to deem it acceptable.
“I have a confession to make,” she said. “I don’t think I was as patient with Emma as I should have been.”
“Why do you say that, darling?” he asked.
“She’s… it’s just that… she’s so incredibly
stubborn, Jerome! I honestly don’t know where she gets it from.”
Jerome laughed. “I do.”
“Oh? Where?”
Grinning, he pressed his finger gently against the tip of his wife’s nose. “You,” he replied.
Esmé glowered at him. The fact that his finger was pressing against her nose made her appearance even cuter, which made her husband laugh even more. “Jerome, this is serious!” she snapped, shoving his hand away from her face. “Why are you laughing?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” he asked, wiping his eyes with one finger. “You’re
adorable, Esmé— especially when you’re angry.”
“Alright, so I’m adorable. Thank you very much for the compliment, but that still doesn’t solve our current problem, does it?”
“Whatever are you talking about? I just told you where Emma gets her stubbornness from.”
“Well, you were wrong about that,” Esmé said.
“Was I?”
Her face had suddenly taken on a pale shade of pink, which Jerome took as the first sign that she was getting angry. His intention hadn’t been to make her upset, but rather answer her question. He couldn’t really afford to give her anymore rooms in the apartment to destroy. Both Esmé and Emma had already destroyed ten in the last five years, which Jerome had been forced to barricade because the reasons behind why the venetian blinds were bent and the holes in the walls were just too humiliating to explain to their guests.
Jerome couldn’t help but chuckle at the way Esmé’s lower lip stuck out and how she was deliberately avoiding his eyes. He absolutely adored the way she looked when she pouted… it was childish, yes, but at the same time strangely appealing. It was almost as if he
wanted her to stay angry at him just so he could wallow in the presence of that sweet expression she took on.
“You know, Esmé,” Jerome said as he reached hesitantly for his wife’s left hand. “You’re very pretty, even when you pout.”
“Shut up,” Esmé said.
“Oh, darling.”
Lifting her hand to his lips, he kissed her wedding ring. Within the year since the renewal of their wedding vows, he didn’t believe he had ever seen her take it off. As long as he knew she loved him, he really didn’t mind her pouting or occasional temper tantrums. Reaching over, he cupped the side of her face in his hand and slowly turned it around so that she was forced to look at him.
“Both you and Emma are awfully petulant today,” Jerome said. “Aren’t you?”
“If you want me to argue with you—”
Jerome held up both hands in the air and took two steps back. “I don’t,” he said. “Please, Esmé, I just—”
“Mother?”
Jerome lifted his head and Esmé glanced over her shoulder to see Emma standing in the entranceway of the kitchen. Jerome was relieved to see that his stepdaughter did not appear to look as though she’d been crying, but the expression with which she met his eyes for one brief instant was no different than it had been earlier at the breakfast table. He had no idea what the reason behind it could be, but he could tell right off the bat that he had no reason to hope for an apology.
“What is it, Emma?” Esmé asked.
“Will you help me study for Mr. Remora’s test tomorrow?” Emma said.
“But isn’t that something Jerome usually helps you with?”
“Yes, but I want
you to help me this time.”
“Well, if you’re sure—”
“I am.”
Esmé turned back to her husband, smiling apologetically. There was no way she could possibly stay angry with him when his face so clearly betrayed his feelings. He looked incredibly hurt and ready to cry. How could she possibly leave him here alone?
“Go wait for me in your room, Emma,” Esmé said, “and sort out your notes. I’ll be there in a minute to help you.”
“Okay,” Emma replied, and scampered off.
“Did you see that?” Jerome asked, his voice quivering. “Did you
see that, Esmé? She… she wouldn’t even look at me. What is that I’ve done that’s caused her to behave so indignantly towards me?”
“I don’t know, honey,” Esmé said, wrapping her arms around him as he fell against her, sobbing. “But I swear that I’ll find out, even if it means putting my V.F.D. skills to noble use and trailing her every move.”