From the corner of her eye, Terri saw Richie repress a smile. She rose from her chair without thinking.
Flaherty’s voice sounded parched. ‘All that I’m doing, Your Honor, is addressing the facts –’
‘As you see them,’ Scatena snapped. ‘They’re not so apparent to me. Anything else?’
‘Yes, Your Honor.’ The words were out before Terri heard the desperation in her voice, and then she forced herself to sound calm. ‘It is simply not possible for this court, or any court, to make an informed decision in so short a time, with so little information. I ask the court to defer any ruling until there’s been some chance for Mr Keene to see Elena –’
‘Sit down.’
Terri froze, and then slowly sat. She was, by reflex, still a lawyer.
Scatena glowered from behind the bench. ‘Ms Flaherty speaks for you. Which, as an attorney, you know very well. I’ll find you in contempt if you ever speak out again.’ He leaned back, wincing as he wrung his hands. ‘You know, Ms Peralta, professional couples are the bane of this court, and lawyers are the worst. The child might as well be a football.’ He paused. ‘I advise you to remember that if you can’t work things out with Mr Arias.’
The courtroom was still. Scatena wheeled on Flaherty. ‘You can sit down too, Ms Flaherty. Seeing how your client doesn’t seem to need you.’
Flaherty walked back, mouth a grim line. Scatena did not wait for her to sit. ‘Here’s my order,’ he snapped. ‘Interim custody to petitioner, Mr Arias. Interim spousal support to Mr Arias: one thousand two hundred and fifty dollars until the final hearing. Interim child support to Mr Arias: a thousand dollars.’ The judge looked back at Terri, his face glowering with the residue of ill temper. ‘Visitation to Ms Peralta: alternate weekends. Friday evening to Sunday evening. Work out the details with your husband – this court doesn’t have time for that.’ He turned to his deputy. ‘Next case.’
Terri sat there.
Flaherty touched her shoulder. ‘Come on,’ she said gently. ‘Let’s go.’
Scatena cracked his gavel. Terri started, rising from her chair like an automaton. She did not see the courtroom as she left it. She felt numb.
Outside, Terri found herself leaning against a wall. Flaherty was next to her, she realized. ‘I’m sorry,’ Flaherty said in a chastened voice. ‘He’s like that.’
‘It’s okay. You did everything you could.’
Flaherty squeezed her hand. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Fine. I’ll call you later.’
The lawyer hesitated. ‘Go ahead,’ Terri told her. ‘You’ve got other cases. Please.’
Flaherty nodded. Terri listened to the tap of her heels as she left.
Less than a month, and Elena was gone.
Terri felt a hand on her shoulder. She turned ready to face Richie. It was Alec Keene. ‘Things like that should never happen,’ he said.
‘Shouldn’t they?’
‘No, they shouldn’t.’ He began fidgeting. ‘And I shouldn’t tell you this, either. But that wasn’t what I recommended. Half the time, the man doesn’t listen to us.’
Terri stared at him. ‘“The man,” ‘ she said tersely, ‘doesn’t know anything about my daughter.’
‘He doesn’t need to.’ Keene’s tone mingled weariness and disgust. ‘He’s had a lifetime of experience – just ask him. He can tell more about the parties from their decorum in his courtroom, he told me once, than by reading our reports.’
It made Terri feel sick. ‘Then Richie won that one. He’s a con man. I’m just a fool.’
Keene watched her a moment. ‘Try this for three, four months,’ he said. ‘Then come see me.’
He left.
Terri took a deep breath. Put one foot in front of the other, she told herself. Get out of here and think about it later.
She left the way she had come, down the elevator and out the glass door, alone.
Terri huried to her car.
She made it to the passenger side, cracking open the door. Then she bent forward over the pavement and vomited.
Chapter 8
The look in Elena’s eyes, frightened and inconsolable, made Terri fight back tears.
They stood in Rosa’s living room. ‘I don’t want to just live with Daddy,’ Elena said. ‘I want to live with both of you.’
Terri hugged Elena before the child could look at her. When Terri glanced up at her mother, standing beside them, Rosa’s face was stone. Rosa turned and left the room.
‘It’s just for a while,’ Terri said to Elena. ‘Only for a while.’ Said it almost like a mantra, to herself.
‘But why?’ The little girl pulled away. ‘Why don’t you want to be with me?’
Elena’s defensiveness of Richie had vanished: she was a child who needed her mother. But all that Terri could do for her was not to cry. ‘I do want to be with you,’ she said, and then spoke the lines she had rehearsed. ‘But Daddy’s at home right now, and I have to work. So we decided he should take care of you. Just for now.’
‘But who’s going to take care of Daddy?’
In her bitterness, Terri wished she could take the child to Scatena, demand that he answer her himself. But the custody trial would not be for at least nine months, and after yesterday Terri could not imagine winning. ‘I’ll still help him,’ Terri said quietly. ‘Daddy will be fine, and some weekends you’ll come live with me. Next weekend, if you want, we can go to the zoo.’
It did not seem to reassure Elena, and Terri wished she had not said it: the image that came to her was of driving Elena and Richie to Tilden Park and thinking that – whatever their own problems – she did not envy the weekend parents she saw there, could not imagine accepting a few hours of pushing a swing in exchange for the constant presence that, without any schedule or sense of moment, would make Elena who she was.
There was a knock at the door.
‘It’s your daddy.’ Terri mustered a smile. ‘It’s time now.’
‘How’s my princess,’ Richie exclaimed, and swooped to pick up Elena. Then he turned and asked Terri in a businesslike voice, ‘Got her stuff?’
Silent, Terri handed him the suitcase.
‘I’ll need my check,’ he told her. ‘The whole amount.’
Terri stared at him. ‘It’s not the first yet.’
‘Well, I need it, and that’s just how it is.’ He kissed Elena on the cheek. ‘I promised Lainie we’d go to the movies, and there’s not enough food.’
Terri saw Elena’s eyes fearful and confused. In silence, she hoped that there was a special place in hell for men who made their daughters worry about them.
She went to her purse and wrote him a check.
‘Okay, Lainie,’ Richie said in a cheerful voice. ‘We’re off.’
He walked briskly away, Elena looking over his shoulder.
Terri made herself watch them go. It was not until the car disappeared that Terri climbed the stairs to her old bedroom and closed the door behind her.
The next night, after Carlo was in bed, Terri came to Chris.
For a time, they stood in his darkened living room, Chris holding her in silence. And then Terri took his hand and they walked upstairs to his bedroom.
They stood facing each other a few feet apart, as they undressed. The sheets felt cool on Terri’s skin. Only their fingers touched.
Until he reached for her.
He seemed to know her. There was no fear, no haste or overeagerness: in the last moment before she became part of him, Terri thought with a shade of ruefulness that Christopher Paget had made love far too often, to too many women, for him to feel these things as she did.
And then nothing else mattered.
Terri felt his mouth and hands moving across her face and nipples and body, stopping where they would as she became caught up in their discovery, his partner, doing as he did until she told him, in every way but speech, the one thing that was left for him to do.
She felt him with an intensity that shook her.
‘Stay inside me, Chris,’ she whispered. ‘Lose yourself.’ And then Terri realized that he had.
Silent, he held her.
Terri let her mind go free, feeling the breeze through Chris’s windows, listening to the rustle of trees outside, The city sounds drifting from below. A foghorn sounded. All at once she felt disoriented: her child was gone, the life she had lived was over, she was lying in the darkened bedroom of a strange house. It seemed that Teresa the mother had vanished, and the woman she had left behind did not know who or where she was.
‘I know you feel lost,’ Chris murmured.
It was as if he had read her thoughts. ‘I do,’ she said simply.
Chris brought her closer. Near dawn, she fell asleep in his arms.
In the days and weeks that followed, Chris tried his best to give her a life she could cling to without Elena.
They found Terri a place she could afford, a bright five-room apartment in a sunny part of the city, Noe Valley. Terri enjoyed the outdoors; on a weekend without Elena, they drove across the Golden Gate Bridge to Marin County in Chris’s convertible, with the top down and the stereo blasting – he liked the Gin Blossoms, REM, and the Spin Doctors, Terri found to her surprise – to hike to the beach. They both enjoyed modern art, so the next day they went to galleries along Hayes Street. As a child, Terri had imagined herself as a dancer; Chris got them tickets to the ballet. Most of all he gave her his time, without demands or even plans beyond the moment.
As for Carlo, he was far too secure to resent Terri’s presence. And he was good to Elena. At moments, Terri felt so close to Chris that it scared her, but then, as always, Elena pulled her back. Terri devoted her weekends with Elena to the child alone; they would visit Chris and Carlo only for a few hours, and only when Carlo would be there. Chris and Terri did not touch in her presence. But as gentle and nonassertive as Chris was, Elena would say little to him; angry that the loss of Elena had not detroyed Terri’s relationship to Chris, Richie had made it clear to their daughter that Chris was his enemy, a source of hurt. Carlo was different: to his seeming embarrassment, the little girl worshiped him.
‘Carlo,’ she would shriek, and run through the house to find him. The boy reacted with amusement and chagrin; his charm, he remarked to Terri, was sure to end at kindergarten.
‘I’m not so sure.’ Terri smiled. ‘As far as Elena’s concerned, you’ve got it all – no wrinkles, money to buy ice cream, and plenty of time to play.’
‘Rrright . . .’
But Carlo was indulgent with her. He carried Elena on his shoulders; let her win at Blockhead; introduced her to the friends who kept dropping by to shoot pool. Once, Carlo and his red-haired girlfriend, Katie, had read Elena stories; Elena had cast a proprietary eye at Katie and positioned herself in Carlo’s lap.
‘I’m going to marry Carlo,’ Elena announced to Katie. ‘When I’m twelve.’
Carlo checked his watch. ‘In exactly five hundred seven thousand, one hundred thirteen hours and eighteen minutes,’ he told Katie, ‘your time is up.’
That was enough for Elena. And the next weekend, on an afternoon when Carlo seemed particularly tolerant, he walked her to the park near Chris’s house. Terri watched them go, a tall, handsome boy in a baseball cap with a raven-haired child who came to his waist but insisted on holding his hand. Unlike Terri, and perhaps Chris, Carlo seemed to make her forget how angry she was.
Closing the door, Terri decided that this was a blessing. For Elena – when she wasn’t listless – was so angry that she seemed out of Terri’s reach.
At first, this anger seemed sporadic, the fruits of a bitter separation. There were times when the child seemed wholly engaged in her favorite activities: pounding on the electric keyboard; painting with watercolors at Terri’s apartment; climbing playground structures so fearlessly that only the joy in her face stopped Terri from coaxing the child down to safety. Terri had quick reflexes and unusually fast hands: Elena shared these gifts, delighted in playing jacks with her mother, snatching the metal pieces before the rubber ball bounced twice. But at other times, the normally spirited little girl would become recalcitrant, ignoring her mother or throwing toys; telling Terri that she hated her apartment; demanding to call her father so that he would not be lonely. Whether spoken or silent, the message was the same – the divorce was Terri’s fault.
‘You hug and kiss Chris now,’ Elena said flatly.
They were tye-dyeing T-shirts at the kitchen sink; Terri had thought it a happy day. She searched her memory of the time since the separation for some slip in Elena’s presence, found none. ‘How do you know that?’
‘Daddy told me.’ The child’s voice was accusatory. ‘He’s all alone.’
For a moment, Terri found herself so angry that she wanted to scream, What about me – the one who loves you and pays his bills and works until I can’t see straight. ‘Chris is my friend, Elena. He’s nice to me.’ She paused and then asked, ‘Don’t you think I deserve someone to be nice to me?’
Elena frowned. ‘I’m nice to Daddy,’ she said, and put down her T-shirt. ‘I’m bored with this.’
That night, when Elena had gone, Terri called Richie. ‘What are you telling her about Chris?’ she asked.
‘Why is everything always “about Chris”?’ His voice was mock innocent. ‘What makes you think I even care?’
‘Whether or not you care, we need to get this straight.’
‘We already did,’ he said. ‘In court. Anyway, can’t talk now – we’re playing Blockhead.’ His voice grew silken. ‘You know, the game that Carlo likes so much.’
He hung up.
Terri waited until ten and drove to Richie’s.
Elena answered the door. Surprised, Terri bent to hug her. ‘It’s your bedtime, sweetheart.’
The little girl pushed her away. ‘It’s not. Daddy said there was no bedtime tonight.’
Walking past Elena, Terri saw Richie in the living room, an empty bottle of wine in front of him, candles on the coffee table. Instinctively, Terri looked for a second adult, then perceived from Richie’s flush that he had drunk the bottle alone. For an instant he looked cornered, and then his eyes took on a strange glitter. ‘We’ve stayed up playing games,’ he said. ‘Just like you, Terri. Coming here.’
The words had a sibilant hiss; their overprecision reminded Terri of Ramon Peralta.
Without answering, she picked up Elena and tucked her in bed, read her stories until it seemed the little girl was asleep. But as Terri left, Elena whispered, ‘Can you stay, Mommy? I like it when you’re here.’
When Terri at last went to find Richie, the living room lights were off. That and the smell of wine gave Terri the trapped, eerie feeling of her childhood: a man sitting alone in the darkness, ready to explode.
‘Miss me, Ter?’ Richie’s voice from the darkness was slurred and insinuating. ‘We’re all alone now, and Christopher Paget’s nowhere in sight. Just the way it should be.’
She forced herself to face him. ‘If you ever do this around Elena,’ she said softly, ‘I’ll kill you myself.’
Terri turned and walked out. She did not know whether she had only imagined Richie laughing as the door shut.
Chapter 9
‘He doesn’t drink,’ she told Chris the next day. ‘At least not much.’
They sat in his office. ‘Maybe he’s beginning to unravel,’ Chris answered. ‘I’d start keeping a journal. Everything Richie does.’
‘Assuming anyone will believe me.’ She paused. ‘Elena’s not right, Chris. I may go back to Alec Keene.’
Chris nodded. ‘I think you should.’
As Terri stood to leave, he raised a hand to stop her. ‘Have
another minute?’ he asked. ‘There’s something I need to talk to you about.’
His tone was somehow different. Slowly, Terri sat again, watching his face.
Chris folded his hands. ‘I’ve been asked to consider running for the Senate, Terri. In the Democratic primary, two years from now.’
It startled her. ‘As in United States Senate?’
Chris nodded. ‘Amazing, isn’t it. “The Decline of the West.”’
‘That’s not what I meant, Chris. I’m just surprised, that’s all.’
‘So was I.’ Chris was trying to make this sound like a mere curiosity. ‘When Wally Mathews called, I thought he wanted money again. Instead he wanted me, for whatever reason.’
She was quiet for a time. ‘You might be good, Chris.’
‘So Wally claims,’ he said dryly. ‘According to him, I’m famous twice over – for the Lasko case and for the Carelli hearing. He also pointed out that winning the primary would cost at least seven million dollars and that I happen to have it. Wonderful system, isn’t it.’ His voice became a shade less casual. ‘Part of it is that some people want a senatorial candidate who hasn’t been handpicked by James Colt, Junior. Our inevitable next govenor.’
Once more, Terri felt surprise and a little unease. James Colt was a prominent Democrat of about Chris’s age: besides his vast wealth and ambition, one reason for his power was public veneration for his father, a charismatic senator from southern California who had died before he could run for President. Most local politicians, including the ambitious district attorney, McKinley Brooks, were already allied with Colt; it would not be easy for Chris to build support.
‘What reason,’ Terri asked, ‘does Wally give for wanting someone independent of Colt?’
Chris shrugged. ‘The same reason a lot of party people give, under their breath. That beneath his public charm, James Colt is as mean as a snake and utterly devoid of principle. Wally thinks that I could be a counterweight.’
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