He looked at me as if I’d confessed to an adulterous liaison with Pee-wee Herman.
“I don’t mean your graduation,” I said hurriedly. “I mean Mother. She just made a mistake. She didn’t mean anything by it. You know how she is.”
“I know how she is, Becky. That’s precisely what I’m talking about. I am sick to fucking death…” He never finished the sentence, but he punctuated it by throwing an ashtray (people still smoked then, even, or especially, doctors) against the wall. It broke into ocher ceramic smithereens. It had been a wedding present.
I was so surprised I fell back in my chair. It wasn’t the comfortable one either. I probably should have laughed, but instead I started to smooth things over. “Richard…”
Richard bent and picked up the scattered shards. “Don’t say anything,” he said. “Just…don’t say anything.”
And sometime after that, he stopped talking to me too.
Okay, we were married for another decade and we managed to conceive Alicia, so of course I don’t mean that he really never talked to me again. Or that a fit of pique over my mother’s overbearing ways was sufficiently venomous to poison our relationship. But for whatever reason, some cork had been pulled in our marriage, letting out the air. The sense of cooperation, of being in the business of life together, had altered.
Years later, when I finally realized that the marriage was really over, mutual outrage brought Richard and my mother together at last.
Richard was livid. “You want me to leave? Have you lost your mind? How are you going to support yourself? Christ, if you think I’m going to let you take me to the cleaners, you’re mistaken, I promise you.”
My mother was in perfect accord, albeit at a different end of the equation. “Are you crazy, Becky? Do you know what you’re giving up?” Her voice shook a little on the phone. “What about the children? How can you be so selfish?”
Good question. In my own defense, in defense of everyone at the outset of the divorce rather than in its aftermath, I knew it would be hard for them, but I really thought they’d be better off in the long run. It came to me that, while I had led a perfectly satisfactory traditionally female existence—clothes, children, a beautiful house, Buccellati silver, lunches at La Valencia Hotel—I hadn’t really sampled a masculine life. What this consisted of was fairly obvious, I thought. A career, certainly; not just a job. Strong opinions, expressed without equivocation. Map-reading. Football. Sexual adventures.
With the exception of map-reading (hopeless) and sexual adventures (ha), I thought it might be good for me and for the children if I crossed over into the other camp. I had to admit that thus far in my life I’d been something of an underachiever, less than a stellar example to my daughter in particular. Besides, I reasoned, a marriage where one of the partners is holding back isn’t a healthy environment for children. Did I want them to watch it wilt on the vine and just hang there?
Now, after years of battling rebellion, resistance to any intact strange male over the age of eight who might conceivably develop an interest in me, and out-and-out war with their stepmother, my certainty had vanished along with my optimism. If I had it to do over, I wasn’t sure I’d have the courage or the stamina to go through with the divorce. I wasn’t sure it wasn’t selfish either, because it was hard to demonstrate that any of us were all that much better off.
Not only that, but Richard found the perfect way to get back at me.
He died.
Not, of course, before he had married his office assistant (trite), fathered a baby boy (cute but spoiled), and changed the beneficiaries on his life insurance policy (expectable but devastating). And not before devising the most vengeful postmortem property arrangement imaginable either. But death is, not to put too fine a point upon it, the end of the discussion, and Richard had had the last word. There weren’t going to be any more chances to renegotiate the past, to arrive at some kind of peaceful acceptance. Plus, when Richard keeled over from a heart attack right in the middle of an operation to remove an ovarian cyst (“the size of a grapefruit,” the OR nurse told me in hushed tones at the funeral), everybody said it was my fault. Richard’s mother, whose affection for me had never been profound even at the best of times, broadcast to all who would listen that my unreasonable demands (child support, visitation, the usual) had placed an unbearable strain on her son, that he couldn’t bear to see his children abandoned by their own mother—I was working at RTA and going to school—but was powerless to stop me because of the ruling of the unfeeling courts. Richard’s widow, Carole Cushman Pratt, by then retired from the working world I had entered, seconded every motion with unrestrained enthusiasm.
Never mind that he still smoked, that he’d married a woman half his age with a 38D chest and an array of excitements I couldn’t even begin to guess at, and that he had a new baby who sabotaged his sleep. Or that he was, and always had been, a workaholic, a heart-attack-in-waiting. It was all my fault. You might have been pardoned for thinking I’d taken a gun and shot him right in the middle of Prospect, in front of half of La Jolla, God, and La Valencia Hotel.
My children, who had been mad as hell ever since the divorce, got even angrier because, as Allie told me, if I hadn’t made Dad move out, he never would have married that woman and died. Richard was instantly reborn as a fairy-tale father who had fallen into the clutches of an evil witch, like Snow White or Hansel and Gretel, and I had sent him there. I’d tried to encourage David and Alicia to treat Carole civilly despite her all-too-apparent reluctance to be saddled with inconvenient stepchildren, but they were jealous of the marriage and of the new baby, Andrew. It didn’t help matters that Richard put the money for their support and their education in trust and made Carole the trustee after his death, which gave her very broadly defined powers to wreak havoc in all our lives. Since she and Andrew were beneficiaries of the trust as well, the potential for conflict was almost unlimited. I will never believe that Richard set it up that way for any other reason than knowing how incredibly tense and awkward such an arrangement would be, and on my worst, most mean-spirited days, I indulged the sneaking fantasy that he’d died on purpose, just to get even.
Plus his dying hurt so much. I wasn’t prepared for that.
My mother said, “I never liked him, but it’s a shame. Wear black to the funeral, and do something about your hair. You look like an unmade bed.”
Chapter Six
On the Sunday after the Jason Krill meeting, Taylor Anderson called me at home. This was a first, an event portending, I feared, nothing good. It was always possible that he had come to the belated recognition that I was the woman of his dreams after all, but barring that, I couldn’t think of anything positive Taylor would want to talk to me about that couldn’t wait till Monday morning.
Unfortunately, or fortunately perhaps, I wasn’t home to get the message.
“Mom, that guy called,” Allie said as I dumped the fresh produce I’d picked up at the Farmer’s Market in Hillcrest on the kitchen counter. She picked up a head of cauliflower as if it were roadkill, wrinkling her nose. Like most of her generation, she had little enthusiasm for vegetables.
“What guy?” I asked. Usually if I didn’t press her too hard, the relevant information would eventually emerge.
“That guy from your firm.” Usually but not always. My heart started thudding.
“Which one?” I prompted her.
“Ummm…” She shoved her hand into her jeans pocket. “Oh, yeah. I wrote it down.” She handed me a crumpled sheet from a notepad.
I read: Taylor Anderson. Pls. come to work early tomorrow.
“Thanks,” I told her, despite my immediate misgivings. “Did he leave a number? Was he at the office?”
“I don’t know, Mom,” she said in an exasperated tone, something like the one I sometimes found myself using with my mother, despite my best efforts. “He didn’t say. He just said, ‘Come in early tomorrow.’ That’s all I know.”
“How early?” I could see the sh
rug beginning, so I added quickly, “If there’s anything else, Allie, please try to remember. It might be important.”
She looked chagrined. “He might have said ‘eight.’ Yeah, I’m sure he said ‘Come in at eight.’” She looked at me, picking up on my anxiety. “That’s really it, Mom, honest.”
I would definitely have to look into voice mail.
“Thanks,” I said again.
“What are you worried about?” My best friend, Isabel Kingsley, was staring down at the business end of a taco, holding it aloft gingerly to keep the sauce from sliding down her fingers. We were sitting under an umbrella in the outdoor restaurant of the Bazaar del Mundo, enjoying the sunshine. Our monthly lunch date was the one tradition I had been faithful to despite work, law school, or minor emergencies.
“I really need not to have screwed this up,” I told her. “So far, I haven’t had a chance to make a great impression. Things keep coming up. I might as well be wearing a sign saying ‘Middle-Aged Woman with Baggage.’”
She stuffed some more guacamole into the top of her taco with a spoon. I watched her with envy. I myself had been at war with food ever since I’d started rolling excess flesh upward whenever I pulled on my pants. The food always won, though; if I didn’t eat it, I wanted it, and if I did, I was sorry. I took a spoonful of my tortilla soup suspiciously; the menu touted it as low-cal and “heart-safe,” but it was far too rich-tasting to be healthful.
“Everybody has baggage,” she said with authority. She should know; in addition to her day job as a math teacher, she ran a very profitable business out of her house as a private investigator for potential partners, checking to see if Mr. Right is really Mr. Wrong.
“Not Missy,” I said grumpily.
“With a name like that, she has baggage, I promise you.” She laughed. “Anyway, you’re being totally paranoid. Do you think some partner in your firm is going to call you at home to come in early so he can fire you? I don’t think so!” She chewed her taco thoughtfully. “Besides, is it your professional image you’re thinking about, or is it Taylor Anderson?”
Isabel was the only one to whom I’d confided my Taylor fantasies, and sometimes I regretted it. She was singularly unsympathetic, despite knowing more about bad dates and doomed relationships than almost anyone I’d ever met. Isabel was one of those rare people with the confidence and substance not to care whether she found anyone or not, which of course acted on the opposite sex like catnip. It didn’t hurt that she was also quite beautiful, with black hair pulled back from her face, and carried herself like a dancer or an equestrienne. She’d been married, once, to a man whose business success, she belatedly discovered, was the result of numerous surreptitious trips to Colombia, a bombshell that ultimately inspired her sleuthing service. “I don’t want anyone else to have to go through the mess I did,” she’d told me. But she’d laughed when she said it. Isabel had no dark edges.
“Probably both,” I admitted reluctantly. I began to wish I’d ordered a margarita.
She looked at me. “Is it time for the pep talk again?”
“No,” I said. “And you have some guacamole on your lip.”
“I do not. You’re trying to distract me.” Nevertheless, she blotted her mouth with her napkin and then checked the napkin for spots. Nothing smears like avocado. “So tell me again, what is it you get out of this thing you have for Taylor Anderson? And stop glaring at me.”
“I’m glaring at you because you already know the answer,” I told her. “Is this friendly badinage or a serious discussion?”
“Both,” she said calmly. “You’re only relaxed when we talk about my life. The minute we talk about yours you tense up. Besides, I’m worried about you.”
“Don’t be. I’m fine, as least as long as I don’t get fired.” I looked at the chip basket longingly. Maybe if I limited myself to just one…
“Then answer the question. What do you get out of this—I won’t say relationship.”
“I don’t get anything out of it,” I admitted. Well, I did get a face to put with the vibrator, but I wasn’t about to confess that.
“And this whole time you’ve known him, you haven’t talked about books or music or a play or Strom Thurmond’s sex life or anything like that?”
“Strom Thurmond doesn’t have a sex life, so what could we talk about? And we did discuss movies once. He went to see The First Wives Club with his wife. He didn’t get why women liked it so much.”
“How insightful.” She wrinkled her nose. “Becky, hasn’t it occurred to you that this guy is incredibly dull?”
“You haven’t seen him,” I pointed out.
“I don’t for one minute believe that’s enough for you.”
“He’s very wrapped up in his work,” I offered. “They’re—we’re, I mean—trying to build up the practice.”
She looked at me. “Like Richard.”
I smiled. “Thank you, Dr. Freud.”
“I’m serious,” she said.
“So am I. Look, Isabel, I went through this when I was seeing Dr. Lawrence. Not only that, but I took psych in college. I can see for myself that I’m using Taylor to excuse not having a real relationship with someone else. But so what? It makes me happy…”
She raised an eyebrow. “Does it?”
I reached for the basket of chips and scooped out a few into my hand. “Well, to be perfectly honest, not entirely. But I don’t have room in my life for a relationship right now, even if I could find one that was more appropriate than having the hots for my boss, which even I know is a really dumb idea. I have all I can do just keeping my little ship afloat.” I sighed. “I want the sixties back.”
She sat back and looked at me, amused. “What for? You want to get stoned and forget about the whole thing?”
I laughed. “That’s not the part I want back. I want the Peace Corps. I want the civil rights movement. I want…”
“Becky, you weren’t old enough for those things in the sixties.”
“I want that sense that what you did could make a difference,” I persisted. “I want to have everything ahead of me again. I want possibilities.”
“Oh, I get it,” she said. “You want to be young again.”
“That too,” I admitted.
“Why don’t you just settle for having some fun?” she asked.
“Pass the chips,” I told her.
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
She passed me the basket.
“Anyway, I do have fun,” I told her. “I go to galleries. I go to the opera when I can afford it. I read when I have the time. I like doing all those things.”
“You’re on a permanent quest for self-improvement, ever since you divorced Richard,” she observed.
“Don’t go there,” I warned her.
She made a face. “Okay. But I mean fun.”
“You mean men.”
“Of course I mean men.” She leaned forward confidentially. “Don’t you get the urge?” she said.
“Sure, but I’ve forgotten what it’s for.”
She sat back in her chair. “You’re hopeless.”
“Nope. I just remember that there’s nothing lonelier than a bad marriage. Anyway, I have other priorities now.”
“I know. Your work.”
It was my turn to be serious. “Well, of course. My children and my mother have paid a big price these last few years while I was never home. If I don’t make a go of it now, it will all be for nothing. I want to be a success. I want everyone to see I’m a better lawyer than Missy.” I scooped up a few more chips. Maybe just a little guacamole. “Besides, it’s not as if I haven’t had any dates,” I told her. “Remember the guy who kept referring to his ex-wife as ‘the late, great Mrs. Mifflin,’ only she wasn’t dead? Or the one who kept dissecting the flowers on the restaurant table while he talked about ‘respecting the carbon’ of the knife? And what about the guy who changed the spelling of his name to Gym because he thought it sounded distinguished?
What about—”
She waved her hand helplessly. “Okay. I get your point.”
“My point is that there isn’t any point. It’s just setting yourself up with fresh opportunities for disappointment, and I don’t have the time for that.”
“You have a bad attitude,” she said. “That’s why you attract all these losers. You shouldn’t take such a hangdog view of your own appeal. Be more open to what comes along.”
“How can you say that? Your whole job is exposing how people are trying to dupe each other into believing they’re something better than they are.”
“My job is finding out if they’ve got prison records, or a wife in another state, or larcenous tendencies. I don’t do spell checks.”
“Maybe you should.”
She stuck out her tongue, a gesture she managed to make look insouciant and charming rather than dumb. “Didn’t you say you wanted possibilities? Think about it—there’s nothing more possible than a new relationship, before all the neuroses and guilt set in.”
I laughed. “The baggage?”
“Exactly. Becky, let me set you up with somebody. I’ll check him out very carefully, I promise. If he so much as dots an i funny I’ll eliminate him immediately.”
“I can’t right now. I’m supposed to be piling on the billable hours even as we speak.”
“Becky—”
“I have responsibilities,” I said, picking up the check. She tried to grab it away from me, but I held on tight.
“You have excuses,” she said. “Think it over.”
Exit Strategies Page 4