This Was Not the Plan

by Cristina Alger

  “What can I get you to drink? Scotch? Glass of wine?”

  “I’m okay.”

  “Oh, come on.” He checks his watch. “It’s five o’clock somewhere in the world, right? Anyway, we have to celebrate. Welles dropped off this bottle of Johnnie Walker—it’s Blue Label, fancy stuff. Ann won’t touch it and I’d feel too badly opening it on my own.”

  “All right, sounds good.”

  Fred ushers me into his library, an imposing room that smells like leather and antique books. I take a seat in an armchair while Fred pours us drinks at the bar. The walls are studded with framed newspaper articles about Fred. I remember sitting in this same seat during my last visit. I’d just been staffed on my first case with him; he asked me inside for a drink so that we could “get to know each other.” We talked about nothing—NYU Law School, the Mets. My hands shook so much that the ice in my drink rattled; I drained it quickly so that I could set it down.

  There were articles on the wall then, too, but not nearly so many. It strikes me how much Fred has accomplished since then, thanks, in large part, to me.

  “Cheers,” Fred says. He sits down and clinks his glass to mine. “We have a bright future ahead of us, my friend.”

  “I sure hope so.”

  He takes a long, slow sip of his Scotch. “Perfection,” he says. “You like?”

  I nod into my glass, trying to summon the right words.

  “We achieved so much together, didn’t we, Charlie? A nearly perfect winning record.”

  I nod dumbly.

  “I felt horribly about the way things ended at Hardwick,” he continues. “It all happened so fast and it really should have been handled differently. I wanted to intervene, but you see, I’d already cut this deal to leave. So it didn’t seem appropriate for me to force Welles and Steve to keep you on when we all knew I wouldn’t be staying myself.”

  “It didn’t seem appropriate?” I repeat. “I was the best guy you had, but you didn’t think it was appropriate for me to keep my job?”

  “No, that’s not what I said,” he says, frowning. The buoyancy in his voice is gone. “I said it wasn’t appropriate for me to tell Welles and Steve what to do about you. It’s their firm now, not mine. Anyway, anyway.” He waves his hand as though I’m missing the point. “It’s all for the best, you see. You are free to come work for me now. To be frank, it’s the best thing that could have happened.”

  “Perhaps it was for the best,” I say, and take a deep breath, steeling my nerves. “It allowed me to take a step back and really think about what I want going forward.”

  “That’s good, Charlie.”

  “I’m not going to work for you, Fred.”

  He doesn’t respond. He just takes another slow sip of his Scotch.

  “Is this about money?” he says after a second.

  “No.” I shake my head. “Not at all. It’s about quality of life.”

  He closes his eyes like he can’t quite believe what he’s hearing.

  “I have a son, Fred. I’m his only parent. He needs me. And, to be honest, I need him. I can’t work a hundred hours a week anymore. It doesn’t make sense for us as a family.”

  “So you’re going to be a stay-at-home dad now?” he says, his voice dripping with condescension. “Or find yourself some nine-to-five gig where you’re just punching a clock? Come on, Charlie. Be realistic. That’s not you. I know you. You’d be bored stiff in two weeks.”

  “Maybe so. But I owe it to myself to find out.”

  “You’re making a mistake. If it’s about the money, I’m willing to be flexible.”

  “It’s not about the money.”

  “Is this about Todd? He talked to you, didn’t he?” Fred shakes his head. “That little bastard. I knew I couldn’t trust him.”

  “What?” I say, confused.

  Suddenly it clicks.

  My father’s words come flooding back. What convenient timing . . . Fred got lucky. His best guy gets fired just as he’s starting his own firm? He couldn’t have planned it better himself.

  “Oh my God,” I say quietly. “You did this to me. You got me fired. Didn’t you?”

  Fred doesn’t answer. His eyes, shining with guilt, say it all. He looks away from me, staring instead into the bottom of his crystal-cut tumbler.

  “It was your idea to leak the video online. Todd was game because that meant he’d make partner. Am I right?”

  Fred looks up, a deer caught in headlights. “No, no,” he says, “you’ve got this all wrong.”

  “No.” I shake my head. “I think I have this exactly right.”

  “Charlie, don’t be ridiculous. You got fired because you acted like an asshole. You know that.”

  “I acted like an asshole, that’s true. But you know what I think happened then, Fred? I think you saw an opportunity. An opportunity to get me fired. Once that happened, I’d be a free agent. A free agent who, I might add, could be picked up for pennies on the dollar because no other firm in their right mind would touch me.”

  Fred bites his lip. I’ve got his number. I know it, and he knows I know it. He’ll never admit to it, though. He’s too smart. Too smart and too proud to admit to stooping so low.

  “I’m prepared to be very generous, Charlie,” he says instead. “Hell, I want to be very generous. I want you to be my partner in this thing, damn it. I need you.”

  “Aren’t you worried about my reputation?” I say, my voice shaking with anger. “Because I am. Everyone who saw that video—and the last time I checked, that means hundreds of thousands of people—thinks I’m a moron.”

  Fred waves me off. “Oh, please. You’ll come work for me. Everyone will move on. In a few weeks, no one will remember how it all happened.”

  I place my Scotch on the table and stand up.

  “Maybe I will move on, Fred,” I say. “I can promise you this, though: I will never forget how it all happened.”

  “You’re making a mistake, Charlie. I’m giving you a second chance here.”

  I look him straight in the eye. He seems so pathetic, sitting there alone on his giant leather couch, his walls studded with articles about himself. For one fleeting second I almost pity the guy.

  “You’re right,” I say, and he looks relieved. “This is my second chance. So I’m doing what I should have done a long time ago. I’m out, Fred.”

  And with that, I walk out of the door, out of the house, and out of Fred Kellerman’s life forever.

  Just the Two of Us

  I pull away from Fred’s house and just drive. I have no destination in mind. After turning slowly down a series of small, winding country roads, I pull onto the highway. As I rev the engine, my shoulders begin to descend from around my ears.

  I haven’t done this since high school. Whenever I was sad or angry or upset, I’d hop in my car and just go. It didn’t matter where I went or how far. Just thirty minutes in the car was enough to soothe my nerves.

  I turn the radio on and up, blasting some hip-hop song that I neither like nor recognize. The thumping bass echoes the wildly accelerated pace of my heart. The traffic heading in the opposite direction is heavy; throngs of city dwellers have decided to brave the rain in order to spend the weekend in the Hamptons. I, however, am headed west, back towards the city. The highway opens up before me, allowing me to just drive. While I’m mostly jittery and terrified, a small part of me feels indescribably liberated.

  I turn the radio up. The familiar sound of Will Smith’s voice floods the car. He’s changed Bill Withers’s classic ballad, “Just the Two of Us,” into an ode to his son. My heart seizes up as I think about Caleb. I crank the radio to full blast and hit the accelerator. As I try and fail to sing along, I can’t help but laugh. I sound like an idiot, but I don’t care. It’s not like there’s anyone around to hear me. When the song finishes, I pull off at the nearest exit and turn the car back around towards the town of East Hampton. I have just one thing left to do before I head home.

  • • •r />
  When I pull up, Caleb is outside, wearing an oversized pink raincoat that I suspect belongs to Zadie. His shins are covered in mud. When he sees me, his face breaks into a smile.

  “Hi, Daddy!” he screams when I hop out of the car. He waves me over. “Come see what we did!”

  Huge puddles have formed on the lawn. The rain is coming down so hard that it’s difficult to see more than a few feet ahead. I hunch down and sprint over to him. Caleb takes my hand and ushers me into the tent.

  “Oh, wow.” I look up, wiping the rain from my brow. A thousand tiny tea lights have been strung overhead, shimmering like fireflies. Buck stands atop a ladder, adjusting one of the bulbs. He holds a screwdriver in his mouth and his face is red from exertion.

  “This looks amazing,” I call up to him. “Seriously, I can’t believe you did all this.”

  At the back of the tent, two guys are setting up a bar. Workmen are placing large white floral arrangements on each of the small cocktail tables. All around, candles glow. The effect is magical, the setting for a fairy-tale wedding.

  “You’re back so soon,” Buck says, descending from the ladder. “Meeting go okay?”

  Caleb looks up expectantly at me.

  “Yeah,” I say. “It went great, actually.”

  “Cool,” Buck says. “I’m happy for you. You really think this looks good?”

  “I think you’ve outdone yourself.”

  Buck grins. “Well, it’s definitely been a team effort. And there’s a lot left to do before the guests arrive.”

  “Don’t I know it. I still have a toast to write.”

  “Daddy, you can help me put out the candles on the tables,” Caleb declares. “I’m almost done.”

  “You ready to help out?” Buck asks, raising one eyebrow.

  “Ready and willing,” I say, pushing up my sleeves. “But first I gotta show Caleb something. Picked these bad boys up in town this afternoon. Thought we could wear them to the wedding.”

  From a wet plastic bag, I pull out two pairs of bright purple Converse sneakers: one in his size, one in mine.

  “What do you think?”

  Caleb looks at the shoes, then up at me, then back at the shoes. His eyes widen in disbelief. “For real?” he says, like this might be a trick.

  “For real,” I say. “I heard somewhere that Converses look cool with everything.”

  The Deal with Me and Weddings

  I have always hated weddings.

  I blame this entirely on Cheryl Shipman, my mother’s best friend. When Zadie and I were six, Cheryl moved in next door. Cheryl and my mother had almost nothing in common except for the fact that they were two single women in a town of young families. Cheryl’s entire mission in life was to find herself a man. She was forever retouching her makeup, because, as she put it, “you never know who you’re going to run into.” She exercised like a fiend. Every Saturday morning Cheryl forced Mom into a tracksuit and off they went, weights in hand, for a power walk around the neighborhood. Cheryl, I imagine, talked the entire time. She was usually dating multiple men simultaneously, resulting in complex strategizing about which Mom offered counsel. Being friends with Cheryl, Mom always said, was the reason she didn’t watch daytime television.

  Cheryl was divorced when she moved in next door, and would marry twice more before Zadie and I went off to college. The first time was to Hector Marquez, the owner of Hector’s, the local Mexican joint in town. Hector was handsome from fifteen feet away; if you got too close, you couldn’t help but notice his dramatically sculpted eyebrows and the orangey undertone of his sprayed-on tan. He spoke with an accent that Cheryl would later claim was fake, an affectation that he thought lent authenticity to his restaurant. He was, according to Cheryl, from Long Island City and not even fully Mexican, but rather half Mexican, half Polish. Whatever the back story, Hector fully embraced his Latin roots. He and Cheryl were married on the back patio of Hector’s on a sweltering day in August, a day so smoggy and hot that it did, in fact, feel vaguely like Mexico City. The wedding was fully Mexico themed. Don Julio was served in abundance. Cheryl considered renting a burro for the occasion, but settled instead for Hector’s dog, Pancho, sauntering around in a tiny sombrero. And then, of course, there was Zadie and me. Zadie, the flower girl, got off relatively easily in a folksy embroidered number and sandals. When she walked down the aisle, tossing petals from her wooden basket, whispers of “How adorable!” and “What a little doll!” could be heard all around.

  And then it was my turn. Even at seven, I knew I looked ridiculous in a three-piece charro suit replete with matching hat and red bow tie. I looked like the Fourth Amigo. The snickers started when I appeared at the end of the aisle; by the time I’d made it up to the front, the crowd had dissolved into full-blown laughter. “¡Olé!” someone called out as I tossed the ring at Hector and fled. It was the first and last time I would ever willingly participate in a wedding that wasn’t my own.

  Cheryl’s second wedding was less humiliating, but only because she didn’t ask me to be in it. I was fifteen at the time, far too old to be a ring bearer and still too young to be a groomsman. This time I hung out at a back table with Zadie, sneaking sips from glasses of wine that other guests had abandoned in favor of the dance floor. To my chagrin, Cheryl insisted that I dance with her. Being too drunk to argue, I ended up twirling and swaying to “Tainted Love,” the glittering disco ball overhead mesmerizing me with its ever-changing colors.

  I was, as it turned out, also too drunk to dance. Two minutes in, I felt nausea rolling up through my body like a tidal wave. I don’t really remember throwing up on Cheryl, just the look on her face seconds after I did so. It wasn’t pretty. Years later, Cheryl Shipman-Marquez-Heines’s screams remain the soundtrack to my nightmares.

  • • •

  “What’s the deal with you and weddings?” Mira asked me, three years after our own. For weeks she had been campaigning for us to attend the union of Heidi and Jacob, two people I’d never met and who Mira hadn’t seen since college. Despite the fact that we had already had one very public fight about this wedding on the corner of Seventy-Third and Lexington Avenue, Mira refused to let the issue drop. “You always act like they’re this huge inconvenience.”

  “They are a huge inconvenience. You have to fly somewhere, pay for a hotel, pay for a present, get all dressed up, find a sitter . . .”

  “Some people might argue that all of that is fun.”

  “Some people might. Those people are obviously not lawyers.”

  “So lawyers are fundamentally incapable of having fun?”

  “That’s not what I said. I meant that people who think weddings are fun typically do not have really stressful jobs that make it incredibly difficult to get away for a full weekend. Especially to Big Sur, which requires about twelve hours of travel time on either side.”

  “So the problem is your job. Not the wedding itself.”

  I sighed. “We’ve been through this. I really, really don’t want to go, Mira.”

  “I really, really do.”

  “Why don’t you, then?” I said, feeling aggressive. It was an easy thing to say because I thought there was no way that Mira would ever consider going to a wedding without me. For one thing, traveling solo with a toddler was enough to deter any sane person. And Mira was barely comfortable leaving me alone with Caleb for two hours, much less two days. “There’s no rule that says couples have to attend weddings together.”

  “What about Caleb?”

  “What about him?”

  “It’s a long trip for a kid his age, especially for so short a time.”

  “So leave him with me. We’ll be fine.”

  “You sure? Because, to be honest, Charlie, I could really use a weekend away right now.”

  I looked up, startled. Mira was staring at the rug, her lips pursed in a thin, straight line.

  “You could?”

  “Yeah, I could.” Her voice was flat. “You’ve not exactly been fun to be arou
nd lately. I understand how stressed-out you are at work. Really, I do. But you’re barely home, and when you are, you’re snappish and sometimes just downright rude. You never ask me about my day. And Caleb, well, you hardly even look at him.”

  Her words tumbled out, one after another, as though she’d been holding them in for quite some time. When I reached for her, she pulled back, crossing her arms across her chest.

  “I had no idea you felt that way,” I said, feeling blindsided. “Why didn’t you say anything before?”

  “I’ve tried. But you’re always too tired or too busy or too distracted to hear me.”

  “I’m literally in the middle of the biggest case of my career.”

  “I understand that.”

  “Do you? Because it sort of feels like you’re giving me a hard time about something I can’t control. Yes, I work all the time. Yes, I’m occasionally irritable. But anyone would be in my position. I barely have time to shower. Flying to Big Sur is not what I need right now.”

  “What if it’s what I need right now?” Mira said, fighting back tears. “Did that ever cross your mind? After being trapped inside all winter, two days of new scenery sound amazing to me. This may come as a surprise to you, Charlie, but you’re not the only one in this house who has a tough job. I love being a mom, I really do. But it is exhausting. It’s stressful. It’s lonely. There are days when I drag out my order at Starbucks just so I can have an extra thirty seconds of adult interaction. I never see my friends. I never sleep in. I have never once spent a night away from Caleb. Hell, I bring him into the bathroom with me when I pee! So, yes, when I get an invitation to go to Big Sur for the weekend, where I can breathe fresh air and hike outdoors and catch up with old friends, of course I’m dying to go. I don’t ask for much, Charlie. I really don’t. But this . . . this is something I’d like you to give me.”

  “So would you rather go without me?” I asked slowly, still trying to absorb what she’d just said.