“Quit staring at me. I don’t belong to you, Jay. Not anymore.”
I step closer to Hamilton, shielding myself from Jay’s view, before realizing Hamilton is no friend of mine. I’m on my own, and I’m deep inside enemy territory.
“Do you see how moody she is, Hamilton? Yet she wants all my money.” There’s not an ounce of shame on Jay’s face. If anything, he blames me. He actually blames me for not being what he wanted every minute, of every day, over the years. He blames me that he has to add divorce to his résumé because I couldn’t cut it. I know he does. The only difference now is that he blames me as his ex instead of his current wife, and I don’t have to stand up to the daily scrutiny.
“Funny how us wives cop an attitude when our husbands move new women into the house before we’re divorced.”
“Our marriage was over a long time ago, Haley.” He says this with the calm of a newsman’s delivery. “Cut the drama. What do you care?”
“According to you our marriage was over. If you knew that, I do wish you had shared it with me, because I was in this ’til death do us part. That’s what I learned marriage meant. Not until you didn’t feel like it anymore, or you might have to pay out more money, or until someone younger comes along. Until death, Jay.”
“And that’s exactly how you would have liked it, isn’t it, Haley?” Jay smirks at me as though I’ve been caught. “You would have liked to watch me keel over from a heart attack while you ran off with a younger man and my money.” He shakes his hands out in front of him. “I can’t take this! I’ll talk with you when you’re reasonable.”
“Have we met?” I ask him. “Jay, how can you—” But I’m talking to a wall. I recognize the expression as he ceases to hear what I have to say. Not another word will permeate this invisible barrier I’ve come to know so well. Stonewall Cutler.
“You won’t get another cent! Our divorce is almost final.”
It’s at this moment that I realize Jay is not playing with a full deck. Maybe if I hadn’t walked into one too many walls, I would have figured it out years ago. It’s an amazingly weightless sensation, like I have helium in my shoes. As I look over to Hamilton, it’s clear he’s realized the very same thing about Jay, but his shocked expression immediately goes back to the lawyer’s poker face he’s perfected, and he gives away nothing more. If only I’d known there was something within Jay that prevents him from seeing reality; it never dawned on me it wasn’t all my fault.
I have a feeling Jay came to read Hamilton the riot act about my coming into the house, and now that I’m here, he doesn’t have the guts to mention it for fear it might hurt his case. I try to steel myself from his words, but it’s like a new sun has dawned. All these years, and it never occurred to me that perhaps it wasn’t all me with my head in the clouds and my face in windows. Maybe my best defense is letting Jay dig his own grave.
The image of Jay on Rachel’s arm keeps flashing before me, and I still feel it as a loss. I want to be smarter than that, but every self-esteem issue I ever had comes out to dance, as Jay looks at me with disdain. I only ever wanted you to love me, Jay. Can’t you see that?
“So did she sign it?” Jay asks Hamilton.
Hamilton coughs, and I turn to find him shaking his head at Jay.
“Did I sign what?” I ask.
“Mr. Cutler has asked that you sign one more paper to finalize all this.”
I look at Jay. “What else could you possibly take from me?”
“Give her the contract, Hamilton. I’ve got an appointment in ten.”
“Hamilton?” I search his eyes, but once again he looks away.
“I’ll be back.” Hamilton jogs into his office.
Meanwhile, Jay and I stare at the tiles individually. He’s as cold as this floor. How on earth did I miss that? What happened to me? Hamilton comes back, trying to look as dignified as possible with a single sheet of legal paper. “Haley.”
“Just give it to me!” I grab it from his hand.
Permission to reverse—” The blood drains out of my face, and I read the heading again, trying to comprehend. “Jay, you had a vasectomy?” I finally sputter. “When?”
Hamilton, bless his heart, he tries, but I can tell he feels like something at the bottom of my shoe. I’m shamed to have him look at me, and I can see he’s trying to say it gently, but he knows. He knows my ugly truth that my husband not only has said he doesn’t want me. Now he must make sure I know exactly how much.
“I had it done when I was twenty,” Jay says dismissively. “I didn’t want kids. I told you that, Haley.”
“When? When did you tell me that, Jay? Because it’s definitely something I would have remembered!”
“I’m sure I told you, and you won’t get another cent just because you didn’t know. Can you sign that, and I’ll be on my way?”
Hamilton puts his hand on my shoulder, but I can only count tiles on the floor. “Jay wants to reverse the procedure he had before you were married. He needs permission from you for his doctor. This urologist doesn’t perform them without consent when the patient is married, and he’s apparently the best in the business.”
I thrust the document, unsigned, back at him. “There’s no way Jay could be paying you enough to do this for him, Hamilton. Not a chance. Take my advice. Get out while you still can and be sure and let him know I’m not signing that thing.” I look right at the man who I wanted to father my children. “You can wait until the divorce is final. It’s the least you can do in fact! May you pine for ages, like I did.” I pull away from Hamilton’s hand.
“Haley, enough of the drama,” Jay deadpans, rolling his eyes. “Just sign the thing.”
“I wanted a baby, you know? I wanted—” I blink back tears. “I wanted a baby, and there was never a chance, was there?”
Hamilton grabs my fingers, “I’m sorry, Haley.”
I look into his eyes, which are tinged with liquid. “There’s only a month left until the divorce is final. This is just cruel. No wonder you have no faith in humanity. How could you?”
I step onto the elevator, thankful for its solace, even if I do have to hear Nickelback as Muzak. Hamilton gazes at me as the doors close. I feel soiled, as if there isn’t enough soap on earth.
Chapter 9
It’s been almost a month since those words cut deeply into my soul. It was like Jay tore something open, and my hopes and ambition drained out around me. Sure, I knew now what kind of person he truly was, but something about that moment when I realized how I truly was living a lie, it was like I’d been set free from prison and couldn’t get my bearings. Before I knew about the lie of the operation, I had the desire for revenge. Now even that motivation was gone.
“Haley, where have you been?” Finally, my mother appears on the doorstep of the motel where I’m staying. Yes, I checked back in. Even with money, I couldn’t bring myself to spend it, for fear I wouldn’t be able to find work. “You can’t be serious,” Mom says, as she barges into the room. “How long have you been staying in this rathole? Rent an apartment, Haley. For goodness’ sakes. What a dump. Here I brought you this—” She thrusts a teddy bear in neon pink flower fabric toward me.
“I have to find a job before I can afford…”
“Well, as I’ve told your brother Mike, you have to look for a job to get one. They don’t come looking for you.”
“I think I want to produce,” I say weakly.
“You’re producing a lot of nothing. Haley, it’s been months since Jay kicked you out, it’s time to start your life again. You’re just going to sit here in this motel room and watch daytime TV and blame Jay for everything, aren’t you?”
“I’m going to get a job, Mom. I just don’t want to make a mistake.”
“You have to make a mistake. Making mistakes is how we learn. You’ll learn you don’t like a particular job if you get one. You got married and learned someone else can’t fix things, right? That’s a productive mistake.”
“Albeit a costly one.”
> She opens the curtains in my room and starts to pick up the chocolate wrappers on the nightstand.
“Mom, the maid will be in this afternoon.”
“Get your things together. You’re leaving. You’ve had more than enough time to wallow. If you don’t find an apartment by tonight, you’re coming home with me.”
No, not the teddy bears! “I don’t want to leave here. I’ve grown accustomed to it, and I have enough money to think about what it is I’m going to do next.”
“Look around you and see what you’ve grown accustomed to. Mushrooms grow accustomed to the dark and having fertilizer thrown on them, do you see what I’m saying?”
“Mom, I haven’t thought things through yet. I just don’t know what to do next.”
“Of course you don’t, and neither does Mike. And all this chocolate is probably fogging your brain.” My mom straightens the chair. “I did too much for you kids; that’s the problem.”
“Sort of like you’re doing now?” I ask.
She purses her lips. “I never let anything hurt you or get in your way, and look what happened…neither one of you can handle your lives! I’m a failure as a mother.”
My mother finds a way to induce guilt every single time. “Because I failed? Didn’t you say that’s how I’m supposed to learn?”
“One of you not working, not married, not walking with the Lord, I could say it was a fluke, a personality flaw. Two of you, and that’s batting a thousand. I’m going to tell you this once, and it’s not pleasant, but you have to hear it because Grandma told me I had to say it.”
“It’s not about Daddy being virile, is it?”
“Get dressed,” she says as she throws my jeans, which were lying on the chair, at me. “Haley, look at this room. It’s like you’re sixteen years old all over again!”
“It doesn’t matter.”
She sits down on the bed beside me. “You were always the good child. You always did what you were told, never gave me a day’s worry. You came home with excellent grades, you were the teacher’s pet, and the kids loved you, too, voted you Homecoming Queen, remember?”
“This isn’t a pitch for Gavin as a husband, is it?”
She pinches her lips together. “This isn’t a pitch for anyone as a husband. I used to brag about how perfect and compliant you were as a child, do you remember?”
I nod.
“It’s only after seeing you in that marriage to that self-absorbed man who never cared a whit about you that I realized I hadn’t prepared you for the world at all. You learned to please everyone on the planet, except yourself. You used to like sparkles, remember?”
“How could I forget? It led up to one of the worst nights of my life.”
“If there was an outfit with outlandish colors, maybe a little garish sequin at the hem, you were all over it. It made you happy to wear it, and you didn’t care what anyone thought. You used to tell me they were just jealous because they didn’t have the guts to wear those clothes. Where did that girl go?”
“I grew up, Mom, and I saw pictures of myself. I was…I was tacky.”
“You were happy.” My mom shrugs. “More people should be tacky and happy. Look at Dolly Parton, she’s happy.”
“More people should decorate with teddy bears and 1960s-style TV trays, right?”
“Exactly!”
She’s got me there. I personally had way more fun with the TV trays and Full House than I ever did at an Oscar after-party. “All right, Mom. I hear you.” I lay back against the headboard.
“If I could have given your brother half the drive, and you half Mike’s ability to have fun, I would have been the perfect mother.”
“You’re not blaming yourself?” Because what a coincidence, I’ve been blaming yourself!
“I am blaming myself.” She pounds the pillows like she’s going to find much more life in these cheap motel pillows. “You’re not handling this, Haley. I didn’t teach you to handle upsets. Everything came so easily to you. You were always beautiful.” She shakes her head. “I think that was to your detriment. Your personality was always like morning sunshine. Boys flocked to you like ants to a picnic.”
“Your point?”
“Life isn’t like that. You never learned about mean people, or bills that don’t get paid, or what happens when your sewer line is stopped up by a tree.”
“Do I need to know about sewage?”
“Sometimes life is hard and you still have to pick yourself back up and walk.” She is trekking around the room, nervously folding things and putting them into my suitcase. Even when my mother is taking responsibility for her lack of parenting, she makes me feel guilty.
It’s disconcerting to hear my mother offering advice. Firstly, because she never has before, and secondly, because she’s married to my dad, and they hardly have anything I want to emulate. At least I thought so nine years ago. They have about as much marital advice to offer as anyone in Hollywood. Two people who live their different lives under the same roof, but the fact is, each of them is their own person. I can’t fault them for that. Neither of them tried to change the other. Oh, I could argue they probably should have, but they didn’t waste their time on pointless activity.
“I never thought I’d be divorced. It feels like the ultimate failure.”
“Why? Because you believe Jay was the perfect husband, and you let him down?”
“No, of course not.” But when I have time to think it over. “Well, maybe.”
“See, that’s my point about sewage. If you can’t discern sewage, you’re always going to think you were the only problem. Because you believe you should be the one person alive without sin, save Jesus.”
“I made my mistakes. I see that now. When someone doesn’t care how you think, it’s not enough to let him have his way until you forget what you’d want, is it?”
“No, it’s not. His job was not to necessarily agree with you, but he had to listen at least.” She comes toward me and wraps me into a hug. I feel myself stiffen at the touch, not realizing how long it’s been since anyone showed me affection. It makes me bristle, and I can’t relax, but my mom doesn’t leave me, she just clings tighter. She stays there until my body finally crumples into hers, and I feel the tears start to flow again.
“You wanted children.”
I nod against her shoulder. “I did. I don’t see how that can happen now.”
“You say you want to produce.”
Again, I bob my head up and down.
“If you want something, you have to go out and take it. No one is going to bring it to you anymore. Not me. Not Jay. Not even Jay’s money. It’s up to you now, Haley. God is in control. Take the life He offers you and run with it.”
“Mom, I don’t believe in all that.”
“Shh! Don’t say that.” She cowers under the ceiling. “He hears everything, you know.”
“I asked Him, Mom. I asked Him to fix things.”
“Maybe He did, did you ever think of that?”
“He fixed things all right. Rachel Barlin is in my house, living my life, and I’m in a cheap motel made to grovel at the feet of the only tall man left in Hollywood.”
“See, that’s exactly what I’m talking about. You’re going to play this up for all it’s worth, aren’t you? He was a callous jerk, Haley. He was always a jerk; you just chose to overlook it. Do you remember what he said about the dishes you had picked out since high school?”
“He didn’t like them.”
“What kind of man picks the china, Haley?”
“I just thought he had a strong preference.”
“You had a strong preference way back in high school. What happened to that?”
“It was just china. What did it matter?”
“It mattered because that first time you gave in, you told Jay exactly how things would be. Now he’s done something you can’t overlook, so it’s time to take some action for yourself.”
“You should have seen her sitting in my family roo
m and knitting, like everything belonged to her. They even have my cat, Mom.”
“So go get the cat, Haley. No one is bringing you the cat.”
“How did you find me, anyway?” For a seedy motel, people sure seem to find me easily enough.
“Someone named Lindsay called the house to tell us you hadn’t been out of the motel in a long time. She’s been inviting you to something at church, she said. You even missed a pedicure appointment, and that’s when I knew I had to step in. It’s not one of those weird California churches is it? Where they talk to rocks or wear strings?”
“No, Mom. In fact, I don’t think they have one famous member. You’d approve.”
“Well, that’s something, I suppose. When we found out where you were, your dad got me an airline ticket, and I flew down.”
“Daddy did that?”
“He’s worried about you.” She rests her hand on my head.
Truthfully, it’s hard to believe my dad even knows I’ve gone missing. He’s not exactly one to pay attention. To me, or to life in general, unless it involves the 49ers or the Giants.
“It’s time to wake up, Haley. I’ll make you a new sparkle dress.”
I laugh out loud. “That’s all right, Mom. I think I’ve been laughed at enough times for my taste in sequins. My interest has sort of waned. Are you going to make me go home?’
“Have you been listening to me at all? I’m not going to make you do anything. It’s time you did it for yourself. Go buy yourself a car today. The broker called the house; he’s had that mini you wanted for two weeks now! Rent an apartment and get some furniture. Apply for credit in your own name and find yourself a job or start producing something. I bought you some Suze Orman and David Bach books on money. I saw them on Oprah with that debt diet of hers. Very good stuff. I have money in my name now. If anything happens to your father, I’m ready.”
“You make it sound like you’re too ready.”
“Don’t worry, he’s safe for now.” She laughs.
“You read a Suze Orman book?”
The Trophy Wives Club Page 12