Sidney tapped on the door to inquire how everything was going, and Gail informed her they were just about finished and asked if she would she ring up her items and take her order from the trunk show. Claire excused herself while the damage was being assessed. As she approached the Ladies Lounge she noticed a young man outside the business office, small in stature, with a mop and bucket in one hand. His other arm dangled just above his waist and ended in a rounded stump with only a thumb and two tiny fingers. The warm, open expression on his face moved Claire. She smiled at him, a larger, more determined smile than she normally would have given a stranger, and said hello, averting her eyes from his disfigurement. She heard him humming as she turned into the ladies room, and it dawned on her that this might be the way people would look at Nicholas now: uncertain what to do except to force a smile and pretend nothing was wrong with him. But then she thought again of the man’s demeanor, and something about his dignity encouraged her.
When she returned to the dressing room, she found Jackie putting on her jeans and staring at the pieces that remained.
“You got the bug, didn’t you?” Claire said with a grin.
“I had a ball. It’s never a bad idea to walk for a while in someone else’s shoes—designer or otherwise,” she kidded. “Gail’s a hoot, and I can see how much she adores you.”
At that moment the door flew open and Gail walked in with Carolyn. “All right, ladies, hand over the chocolate, and no one gets hurt.” Gail grabbed two truffles from the tray and passed one to Carolyn, who declined it. “Look who I found in the handbag boutique.”
“Double points today,” Carolyn replied, indicating her bulging shopping bag. “But it’s like high school out there, with money and fake boobs. I swear to God, that Shelly Garrison and her platinum helmet pals are a bunch of all hat and no cattle.”
“Couldn’t sell them a table at the Heart Ball?” Claire asked, recalling Carolyn’s single-mindedness when it came to charity benefits.
“Table? Not even a seat. All they had time for was Fendi and Roger Vivier and who’s the latest cougar to have slept with some Broncos player, and whose husband’s been running around with some hot redheaded lawyer.”
“That woman sucks up gossip like a vacuum cleaner. You know that.” Gail patted Carolyn on the shoulder.
“I’m sure we can get her husband to buy a table. His firm is pretty good about underwriting,” Claire said, feeling suddenly useful. “I could make a call and—” She stopped, feeling just as suddenly foolish for thinking she had any remaining cachet at said law firm, which Michael often used, and was possibly consulting with on standard custody stuff.
“God, I’m sorry for the tirade, sweetie. How are you? Hello, Jackie.” Carolyn dropped her bags and kissed both Claire’s and Jackie’s cheeks and poured herself a glass of champagne. “Looks like you ladies have been having a grand time in here. Are you all finished?”
“I’d like to pick up a few things for Nicholas.”
“Some welcome-home items—perfect idea,” Carolyn said. “I’ll help.”
Downstairs they chose polo shirts and a hoodie. Nicholas had worn the same few pieces of clothing during his rehab, and Claire hoped a small change in his wardrobe would somehow symbolize the beginning of a new chapter for him. The purchases also made her feel like a regular mother again.
Claire handed her Neiman’s card to Trevor, their sales associate, and waited for him to ring them up while they all contemplated an espresso stop.
“Pardon me, Mrs. Montgomery, but there seems to be a problem with your card.”
“Really? Could you run it again? I haven’t used it in ages, so it might just be a little dusty,” Claire replied with a puzzled laugh.
“I’m sorry, but it’s no longer . . . valid.”
She looked from Gail to Jackie to Carolyn, once again reproaching herself for her naïveté about her husband’s intentions. He may have been acting friendly and in no rush to formalize a divorce, but Gail had obviously been right about cigars. Gradually, and without her even noticing, had he been shifting her to the margins of their life? “Unbelievable,” she whispered under her breath, just as Carolyn pushed her own card across the counter to Trevor.
“Oh, no, Carolyn, please. I’ll just use a different card.” She pulled out her American Express. When the transaction went through she started to breathe again.
CHAPTER 33
The four women made a hasty departure from the store and headed to an old coffeehouse haunt of Jackie’s where hipsters in ironic T-shirts read Kierkegaard and Ray Bradbury through dark-rimmed glasses. In short, the sort of place they’d have no chance of bumping into anyone they knew. Over lattes, they caught Carolyn up on the recent Michael developments. Claire contributed with vague detachment, concentrating instead on what she was going to say to her husband later that evening, and how she was going to say it.
But after a round of strategizing about the launch of her new life as shrewd guardian of her future and Nicky’s, she felt a sense of calm wash over her. As if in the tales of Gail’s savvy financial detective work and relentless quest to emerge intact from her divorces, and Jackie’s insistence that it would be easier to push through the emotional and nostalgic traps while Michael was behaving like a jerk, and Carolyn’s (surprising) assertion that some marriages were like velvet prisons—comfortable enough until you’re sprung, and better off terminated—Claire found added permission to be the staunch warrior she needed to be. She also felt a glimmer of hope.
“How are you all so smart about this?” she asked, taking a decadent bite into a brownie.
“It’s easy to see other people’s lives clearly,” Jackie reminded her. “Except, of course, for our mother, who, by the way, has never met a scab she hasn’t picked off. So please don’t let her dig at your plans anymore. Just move forward with determination. In fact, the sooner you’re able to resolve all this, the better off Nicholas will be.”
“And it’s crucial to show that you have the strength to deal with the situation moving forward. Don’t let this just happen to you, Claire,” Carolyn said, knocking over her coffee with the strength of her own convictions. The mug clattered to the floor and shattered. “Damn it!” She threw napkins on the spill, then dabbed at the corners of her eyes, looking less than her usual soignée. “Sorry.”
“Um, what am I missing, Carolyn? Are you okay?” Claire asked. She thought she saw Carolyn flash Gail a loaded ix-nay glance just as the tattooed barista appeared with a towel and cleaned up the mess.
“This isn’t about me, sweetie. I just want you to get prepared, and then you can move on with your life again,” she said in the upbeat but firm voice of someone trying to believe her own advice.
“Seriously, what’s going on here?” Claire asked.
“Let’s just say that Carolyn and Robert hit a rough patch a while back, but they’ve put things back together again,” Gail answered, ignoring Carolyn’s now obvious attempts to shut her up with her eyes.
“God, I’m so sorry, Carolyn. I’m rambling on like—”
Carolyn pushed up the sleeves of her creamy sweater and held her hand up. “Look, I didn’t want to get into to it because it’s over and you’ve got more important things to focus on. But since Gail can’t seem to help herself . . .”
“Hon, holding things in makes the moving-on part that much harder. Remember our little confab with your yoga instructor?”
“Fine. I’ll give you the abridged version as long as we all can promise not to dwell on it.” And with the succinct eloquence of a tabloid reporter, Carolyn proceeded to explain how on the night of the museum benefit, she took home the exquisite bronze sculpture of two lovers from the live auction, while Robert, not one week later, took home the luvully blond assistant who had processed the transaction. Carolyn had discovered the affair two months after via an untimely text message while Robert was standing naked in the bathroom brushing his teeth. But she had chosen to forgive him and stay for the sake of their privacy and
their businesses and their nearly grown kids. And because he had reasoned with her, and retitled their entire art collection in her name. And because when you play you pay. “I didn’t have it in me to start a legal battle and then start my life all over, so I just sucked it up and tried to put it behind us. And I apologize for being a little prickly when we were at Gail’s. The scar tissue’s still forming.”
Claire cringed, imagining the raw nerve her breach of the marriage contract had clearly struck with Carolyn. And she thought about the multitude of disappointments and poor choices that had piled up over the last months like so much black snow, wishing they could somehow shovel it into the sun and let it all melt away. “I’m so sorry.”
“Well, just don’t be paralyzed by inertia and fear like I was, Claire. Get out there and dust off your ‘take-no-prisoners hat,’ and turn this into something good for yourself and for Nicholas.”
“She will,” Gail said, leaning in and squeezing Claire’s knee.
The strong fragrance of Gail’s perfume fanned out around her. Claire closed her eyes and breathed in the night in Carolyn’s powder room and, going farther back, the heady days with Jules, her mentor at Sotheby’s. It was the scent of bold women in high heels who knew where they were going. And for an instant Claire reveled in the exquisite solidarity of these smart women who had her back. “I just hope I can be as resolute as you think I can.”
“Sweetie, hope is not a strategy,” Carolyn said, fishing through the various pockets of her purse. “At least, not in my experience. You need to establish control of the situation, like I’ve seen you do so beautifully on all the projects we’ve worked on.”
Claire sat up straight, threw her shoulders back, and saluted Carolyn, who was now trying to whiten her eyes with Visine.
“And another little piece of advice about the Neiman’s account?” Carolyn asked, as if gauging Claire’s mood for more.
“Yes?”
“Keep your words sweet just in case you have to eat them. It’s possible that was not directed at you. And you don’t want to give Michael any ammunition in the ‘she’s being irrational’ department. Trust me.”
“Sara Lee on the front lines and Hillary Clinton behind the scenes. Got it.” Claire paused, pondering the other item that had been tugging at her. There was no point in holding anything back now. “Can any of you think of someone named Taylor, who Nicholas might have known?” She gave the girls a brief background.
“Taylor Swift? Taylor Momsen? Taylor Lautner? The teen celebrity options are endless,” Jackie said, clarifying the Gossip Girl and Twilight references, with which she expressed embarrassing familiarity thanks to her daughters.
“Or,” Carolyn said pointedly, “Taylor could be an adult woman. A ‘friend’ of Michael’s?”
Claire laughed nervously at the idea, which she had, up to that point, refused to contemplate. “I had thought it was someone Nicky went to school with. But Michael might have seemed uneasy—just for a second—when Nicky asked him who Taylor was. And then he was himself again. And I had jumped to other stupid conclusions—”
“You can’t afford to think any of your conclusions are stupid, hon,” Gail said, pushing away her biscotti and discreetly releasing the top button of her skinny jeans. “If something isn’t sitting well with you, you need to listen to your gut. Keep your eyes and ears wide open under that sweet smile. All Hillary and Sara Lee, all the time.”
Claire took a long sip of her cappuccino, finally allowing herself to consider the possibility that Taylor might be a woman with whom Michael had more than a passing acquaintance, and what that would say about the way he’d dealt with her own indiscretion—all of which became too much to swallow after the day’s already full menu. She checked her watch, anxious that she would be late for her appointment with Nick’s behavioral therapist.
“And may I also suggest,” Gail said, eyeing Claire as they walked to the parking lot, “that we wear black tomorrow to officially mourn the death of your self-reproach?”
On the way back to the apartment with her head feeling as if it was on the verge of exploding, Claire noticed a small item tucked away in separate tissue paper among Nicky’s new clothes. She pulled it out of the Neiman’s bag to inspect it, and discovered the Etro scarf.
“Happy birthday, hon,” Gail said without missing a beat.
“My birthday’s not until May.”
“Consider it early. The colors were just too perfect on you to pass up.”
“Is that Cavalli dress hiding in there, too?” Jackie asked from the backseat.
“No. But you might have a little delivery later this afternoon.”
Claire kissed her friend’s cheek just as Gail pulled up to the building’s entrance. “You’re too much. Thank you,” she said. “More than you know.”
“I wasn’t there when I should have been, but I am now. And I plan to share all the fruits and nuts of my hard-won decoupling labors with you.”
“Speaking of food, what’s with all the desserts? You hardly ever eat like this.”
Gail pulled her Gucci sunglasses down her nose and peered up at her. “I must be premenopausal. That, or pregnant.”
CHAPTER 34
Ray greeted Jackie and Claire at the house later that afternoon. For a hulking man of six three, two hundred sixty or so, he had a gentle demeanor and warm smile that reminded Claire of Michael Clarke Duncan. And despite Nicky’s insistence that he didn’t need any help showering or getting dressed, it was clear from the fluidity of their communication and Nick’s relaxed body language that they had already established a good rapport.
They had been making sandwiches when Claire and Jackie had arrived, and after the requisite reacquainting with his aunt, and sizing-up of his new clothes for fit and cool factor—all of which won thumbs-up—Nick led them back into the kitchen.
“I wanted to make grilled cheese, but Berna said no . . .” He paused, his face concentrating on his search for words.
“No?” Claire bristled.
“No cheese,” he finally managed. “She had to go to the store. But, I rolled with it.” The hint of a grin spread across his clean-shaven face, and in that rare smile, Claire saw the spark of life and the boy she remembered. His eyes looked vibrant, and while his skin remained pale, the weariness had begun to vanish. Nick pointed to the butcher block. There were six peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, some cut into triangles and some into rectangles, some with lined-up edges, some less artfully constructed. He handed them each a half from the group with matching edges. Ray grabbed one of the “misfits” from the other cluster before Nicholas threw its cubist mates into the sink.
“I told you I like the Picassos,” Ray said, rescuing one from the water.
“This is perfect, Nicky. I’m starving,” Jackie said with enthusiasm.
Claire kissed Nick on his forehead and wiped a splotch of peanut butter from his chin. “Well done.”
They ate their sandwiches while Ray gave Claire a brief run-down on his work with patients in Nick’s situation. He loved the highly motivated patients, kids mostly, who worked hard to be normal again. The hardest part was choosing to recover from injury, and Nick, he emphasized, had the fight and the desire.
After they finished, Claire watched Nick pick up the lid to the jelly jar and try to screw it back on. He had difficulty getting it into the grooves, and she could see his aggravation mounting until finally the lid slid into place and he was able to twist it shut with a grunt. His expression shifted to a sort of sad resignation, and she questioned whether he would ever believe in the enoughness of his small triumphs.
“How about a walk outside, man?”
Ray took Claire aside in the front yard as Jackie held Nick’s arm and walked with him to the car near the end of the drive. “Nick was pretty restless when he got back from lunch with his grandfather, so we did some stretching and then played checkers, which calmed him.” Ray paused, seeming to deliberate his words. “Does he generally get agitated around certain
family members?”
“No,” Claire responded, somewhat puzzled. “He hasn’t seen his grandfather since June, right before he came home from Andover. They live in Boston. Maybe the shift in routine threw him off?”
“I’m sure it’s nothing to be concerned about,” Ray promised her. “Patients in Nick’s stage often get anxious, as you well know. Might’ve just been seeing him after so long. Are there any other diversionary activities he likes? Mr. Montgomery mentioned the weight room, but that just amped Nick’s arousal even more.”
“He’s a beautiful artist. I just got a call that one of the charcoal drawings he did in his art therapy class at Rancho won a spot in their ‘Art of Rancho’ showcase book. But he hasn’t wanted to draw since that last week I was there with him. Maybe if you worked with him on his dexterity, we might be able to get him to pick up his pencils again. I can get out some of his sketching supplies.”
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