The Tao of Pam: Pam of Babylon Book # 6 Read online

  The Tao of Pam

  Suzanne Jenkins

  The Tao of Pam

  by Suzanne Jenkins

  The Tao of Pam Copyright 2013 by

  Suzanne Jenkins. All rights reserved.

  Created in digital format in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations in blog posts and articles and in reviews.

  The Tao of Pam is a complete and total work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  For more information about the Pam of Babylon Series and author Suzanne Jenkins’ other books, please refer to the ‘Also by…’ section at the end of this novel.

  Tao (Pronounced dou)- the path that is to be followed for a life of harmony. In Taoism, the basic, eternal principle of the universe that transcends reality.

  Contents

  Prelude

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Also by Suzanne Jenkins

  Prelude

  The first days of summer were fast approaching. Before tourists swamped the beaches and while school was still in session, the people who lived in Babylon could enjoy the final days of freedom in late May. It was a time of year Pam Smith enjoyed the most. The windows of her beautiful beach house were open wide, the sounds of gulls calling and waves hitting the sand echoing throughout the rooms. There was a hint of the sea indoors; there’d be dew on the kitchen counter in the morning if she forgot to close the mist-covered windows. It was the price paid for living on the water.

  She was alone in the house, a reminder of her old life when the children were away at college and her husband, Jack, went back to work in the city. The players had moved on or changed altogether; son Brent was in California working, and daughter Lisa had moved to Smithtown with Ed and infant daughter, Megan. And of course, Jack was dead.

  Her life wasn’t as regimented as it had been when Jack was alive. She’d needed that compulsive order to fill the void left by being married to a preoccupied man. Now that she had Dan’s companionship, she was more relaxed about the way she spent her days. Dan Chua was Pam’s boyfriend, although she avoided calling him that, referring to him in her thoughts as the man I date, and as her attorney to others.

  She still did certain things on certain days: visited Lisa on Monday, met her friend Sandra Benson in the city for lunch on Wednesday, after spending the morning with her mother and mother-in-law at their retirement home on Central Park East.

  As she did when Jack was alive, Pam went to the gym every day and had hair and beauty appointments several times a week. Her appearance was a top priority.

  Dinner was still a big production when Pam had guests. She’d taken a class in French cuisine from Jeff Babcock, a friend who lived down the beach and was a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America. They were best friends, sharing secrets as they worked together in her beautiful kitchen, and the loyalty and bonds grew between them. Jeff had introduced Pam to Dan and eagerly awaited every tidbit of gossip. When she was alone, Pam rarely gave a thought to eating. The routine that gave her comfort and stability over the years hadn’t changed much. Making a nice home was still a priority, but not to the exclusion of her wellbeing as it had been with Jack.

  Jack. He rarely entered her thoughts, but when she allowed, it knocked the breath out of her. A secret indulgence, if her family and friends knew she still fantasized about Jack, they’d be mortified. She would pretend that he was still alive, in love with her and their life together. All the horror that she’d uncovered about him she left out of this fantasy. The truth was she’d lived an enviable life, with gorgeous Jack’s homecoming to look forward to every Friday when he returned from the city, and she concentrated on that. Closing her eyes, she remembered going out in public with him, the admiration they generated from strangers. People looked at her and Dan too, but she knew they were probably thinking of her as a cougar. His family and friends and younger women they encountered wondered why he was with Pam, but she didn’t know about that. With Jack, she was simply admired. And envied. If they only knew the truth.

  She wasn’t angry any longer, at least not at Jack, but the memory of the heartbreak he caused seared. She had AIDS, such a contradiction to the perfect exterior. The stress of discovering Jack’s secret life had taken an irreversible toll on her face.

  No longer able to hide the damage the pain had caused with makeup, she was certain her face told the world her secrets. She couldn’t be involved with a man fifteen years younger and have jowls. It just wasn’t right. Lying to Dan, telling him she was visiting her sister in Connecticut for a few weeks, Pam checked in to a clinic for extensive plastic surgery instead. She had a full facelift, a breast lift and augmentation (34 D), a tummy tuck and a thigh lift. The need for a thigh lift and tummy tuck made her angry; she’d been a gym rat for as long as she could remember and those leg-lifts and crunches had been a waste of time. Gravity did its work on the body no matter what. Taking control, life was moving on at an unbelievable pace, and she couldn’t allow her face to keep up with it.

  The day following her surgery, a bruised face stared back at her in the mirror. Looking down at her body wrapped in bloody elastic bandages, she hoped it was going to be worth it. Six weeks later, she nodded at her reflection in the mirror, satisfied that she’d done the right thing. Dan looked at her intently the first time they saw each other after the surgery, and she could see the realization pass over his face, but he wisely kept his mouth shut. She later told Sandra that although the results were worth it, the pain was so awful post-op her ass felt like a boxer had used it for a punching bag.

  She chose not to share the complete truth about her marriage with Dan. The disloyalty she felt when talking about Jack was too painful. And it outweighed any satisfaction outing him might give her. Jack was dead; nothing she did could hurt him. Pam would never forget Jack or their life together, or how important it had been to her.

  She tried having Dan move in with her, preparing for it with the detail most women put into planning their wedding. The few remaining items that belonged to Jack or to their marriage were unearthed as though she was doing an archeological dig. Stray pieces of jewelry Jack had given her, a forgotten sweatshirt in the back of the closet, a leather billfold he never used were added to other finds, boxed up, and stashed away in the garage rafters. A treasured button from an old shirt found in the back of his closet she hid in the velvet under a jewelry box drawer. It wasn’t until she was sure all traces of Jack were gone that she allowed Dan to move in.

  Regardless of her effort, old furniture replaced with new and generic decorating, it didn’t work out. Pam was nervous watching Dan put his belongings in the dresser drawer next to hers, and when he left his toiletries out on the bathroom counter, she had to leave the room, narrowly avoiding a
panic attack episode. He’d keep his own place after all. Welcome to spend the weekends at the beach, on Monday, he went back to his own life. Jack’s ghost or Pam’s memories weren’t going to allow any other man to occupy the house. Late that night, Dan took his clothes and moved out, and when she was sure he wasn’t coming back, she went out to the garage for the box, bringing back those few bits of memory, returning them to their original spaces. Even the button went back to the dark corner of the closet.

  In spite of her effort to keep Jack alive, or maybe because of it, a sense of well-being continued to elude her. It was just out of reach, no matter how hard she tried to attain it. Worse, she could no longer hide a bitter pessimism that was slowly replacing her usual upbeat, positive nature exhibited in the face of any catastrophe. Pam was losing the harmony for which she’d worked so hard.

  It was almost time for the Smiths’ annual Memorial Day picnic. Friends and family looked forward to the lavish party every year, watching the mailbox for a personal invitation. Now, key members were either dead or in jail, and new people filled the void. Dan came from a large family, and his politically active brothers and sisters loved coming to the beach to see what they could stir up among the conservatives, while behind her back, they poked fun at Pam, calling her a diva.

  A week before the party, Pam stood in front of the bathroom mirror, painstakingly outlining her lips with a special substance that kept the color from creeping into the lines around her mouth, still evident even after the facelift. Thinking about Dan’s family, she put on lipstick. His sisters were working women who didn’t appear to place much value on their appearance, not that she was judging them. They were her age, yet looked like Dan’s grandmother, who was still alive and in her nineties. Even though Pam was on her way to the gym, she made sure every hair was in place and her makeup was perfect. She was wearing the latest in athletic wear that made the most of her new figure. Turning from side to side in the mirror, her critical eye looked for the smallest flaw.

  The cleaning people were due to arrive soon, and then she was going to spend an hour meeting with an event planner, who’d make sure everything was ready for the picnic. It was a day full of the trivia Pam thrived on, without which her world would collapse.

  ***

  Lisa Ford stayed in bed long after Ed left for school. Baby Megan was still asleep. Thank God. Who knew taking care of a baby could be so exhausting? When she was living at home with her mother, she’d pretend she didn’t hear the baby in the morning, and eventually Pam would get her from the crib. Lisa would sleep in and later find Pam giving Megan a bottle or rocking her and singing to her.

  Lisa would’ve happily stayed at the beach living with Pam for the rest of her life, but her mother said the wise thing to do was to buy a house while the market was down. They bought in Smithtown, where Ed was going to start a new job in the fall. During the summer, he was going to work in Dan’s law office instead of teaching summer school. Disappointed he wasn’t going to be free to play with her all summer, Lisa was trying not to pout. Living at the beach while pregnant, she and Pam had fun together everyday. It was so enjoyable; she’d forgotten how wonderful it was to live at home. Oh well, time to grow up. Trying to stay positive, she decided she and the baby could go into Babylon with Ed in the morning and stay at the beach while he worked with Dan if she got lonely.

  In addition to being tired and bored with motherhood, she was disillusioned with marriage. The first weeks after the wedding were so fabulous, reminding her of the week they played house on a friend’s boat in Barnegat Bay. They explored each other’s bodies, slept late and ate junk food. It was so romantically erotic. They were both virgins; although Ed was older than she was, he’d joined the priesthood right out of college. He’d recently left when they’d met. Now she felt like he was always too tired to have sex. Worse, he seemed to have lost interest in her, too. Home all day with the baby for company, she’d cook up romantic ideas to entice him. Then when he got home, he’d collapse in the recliner, exhausted from a day with a classroom full of ten-year-olds. He seemed hardly capable of carrying on a conversation with her. She complained to her mother, and Pam had advice.

  “Why not pretend that he’s gone all week? Take care of him, cook his meals, keep house, and show him his recliner after dinner. Don’t make any demands on him, but tell him the trade off has to be more interaction on the weekends.”

  “Is that what you did with Dad?” she asked.

  “Well, not exactly, but it was the way things worked out because he stayed in the city during the week. At least you know Ed will be home every night,” Pam said.

  “So what you’re telling me is to leave him alone? That might be difficult. I wait for him to get home every night because I’ve been cooped up in the house with an infant all day.”

  “Why subject yourself to that, Lisa? Get out of the house! Just because you have a baby doesn’t mean you should be a slave to her. Sorry I can’t be more sympathetic, but don’t expect your husband to entertain you every night. You have a college education; do something with your days.” Pam remembered being so lonely during the week when she was a young mother. But no one advised her to be proactive like she was telling her daughter to be.

  “Really, Mother, I’m not expecting him to entertain me. But if he’s too tired for sex and doesn’t seem interested in even talking to me after only being married a year, what does that say?”

  Pam didn’t have an answer for her. Jack was always ready, in spite of screwing his way across Manhattan for thirty years or more. Needing Ed’s attention wasn’t too much for Lisa to expect.

  “Maybe the reasons behind him leaving the priesthood need to be investigated further. Do you think his faith could be causing trouble?” Pam asked.

  “In what way? You mean guilt? Now that I’m his wife, it’s impure to have sex? Yes, I’ve read the books. I don’t know if it’s his faith, but I’m at my wits’ end.”

  “Well, what does he say when you talk to him about it?”

  “Talk to him! That’s what I mean, Mother. It’s like he doesn’t understand what I’m saying to him. He can’t relate intimately with me even in conversation,” Lisa admitted. “It’s like he’s withdrawn from me.”

  “Ah, you better find a way to talk to him, Lisa. Sexual problems are the number one reason marriages break up. Haha! Like I should be giving you advice.”

  Lisa went right to Pam and embraced her. “Mother, I don’t care what happened with Dad. Please don’t stop advising me.”

  Pam put a tissue to her eye, turning her back. They were still play-acting, pretending life with Jack was wonderful. Pam remembered a confrontation she’d had with her daughter at Thanksgiving the year after Jack died, in which Lisa admitted she was furious with Pam because of what Jack had done behind her back. Lisa couldn’t believe that any woman could be so stupid not to suspect infidelity when he was practically doing it under her nose. Now, living with a man and seeing how easy it would be to sweep problems under the rug rather than confronting them head on, Lisa had stopped judging Pam.

  Chapter 1

  Margaret Hsu made a fourth lap around the arrival section at JFK. Her cell phone died during the trip from White Plains, and now she was concerned her daughter Julie wouldn’t know where to look for her. But she was a smart girl and soon figured out where her mother was. Margaret saw her waving frantically, six large suitcases piled up on a dolly and a Red Cap standing to the side. Margaret pulled over and popped the trunk of her Jaguar. Not all of the baggage was going to fit, so she rolled down the window.

  “Julie,” she yelled above the din of the airport, “tell him to put the rest in the backseat.” She was sorry she hadn’t thought of bringing a sheet to place over the leather seats as he tossed the filthy canvas bags into the car. Julie dug through her purse and handed over a wad of bills to the Red Cap, who touched his visor and pushed the emptied dolly away after slamming the doors. Margaret moaned with each crash. Julie opened the passenger side and slid i
n, keeping her face averted from her mother. Margaret pulled away from the curb without looking in the side-view mirror, just as a New York Transit bus came close to hitting her brand-new car.

  They drove in silence, and it wasn’t until she was out of the congestion of the airport traffic that she looked over at Julie. She’d heard a sniff, but didn’t inquire. Something was very wrong. They’d spent a small fortune shipping her daughter’s life to California to live with Brent Smith, and by early May, a hysterical Julie called to say she was on the next plane east. Evidently, it was something bad, but it wasn’t like Margaret to dig into her children’s personal business. Her husband, on the other hand, was like a lunatic, shouting, trying to grab the phone out of Margaret’s hand when Julie was on the other line.

  Charles Hsu knew Jack Smith, Brent’s father, since college days, and when Julie and Brent started to date, he was thrilled. All he could think of was the advantages there would be to having Brent Smith in the family. Surely, he’d take over his father’s business some day. When Jack died and a young, beautiful researcher came on board to take his place, it didn’t take long for the rumor mills to start generating gossip. Still, Brent was a go-getter, named Someone You Should Watch by Internet Business Weekly. Julie now knew the title meant more than just success in business. Brent was a reprobate, not even attempting to hide his debauchery from her.

  “Honey, don’t you want to tell me what happened? Daddy will pester you unless you have some explanation. What could have been so bad that you would leave your new home? I just don’t understand. Was it a lover’s quarrel? What?”

  “Mom, trust me, you don’t want to know, so don’t ask,” Julie answered, crying again. She was so angry, so humiliated. Brent Smith had lived a lie and then tried to convince her to live it with him. She was in denial about her role in it, begging for an engagement ring, giving him an ultimatum. He’d dropped everything to fly east and ask for her hand in marriage. What a mistake that would have been.