From somewhere in the recesses of her consciousness, she remembered the conversation among the wives at Larry’s tenth Princeton mini-reunion in New York City. Most of his Cottage Club fraternity brothers lived and worked in New York. Several of their wives worked in the city. At the time, Mallie had been very disturbed by the women’s loud talk of bra burning, political activism, and male-bashing—it was against everything she had ever been taught by her mother or in school. None of her friends in Memphis talked about things like that. She had put the whole business completely out of her mind. Still, she had been haunted by the words of one of the brightest of the wives who worked as an editor at The Atlantic Monthly.
“Come on,” the woman had said, accusing Mallie of living in the boondocks, “come out of the woodwork, Mallie. What do you mean you’ve never heard of Betty Freidan? You didn’t read The Feminine Mystique? Good grief, when are you going to grow up and live in the twentieth century? This is the most important issue of our time. This is about becoming a person in your own right—about considering yourself to be someone of value.”
Mallie sat on the couch, hearing the echo of those words as if for the first time. Once, her sense of self-worth had depended entirely on the approval of her parents and her friends. After she married Larry, her sense of self-worth depended on his approval of her as a woman and a wife. Because of Larry’s other women, she had seen herself as inadequate, a failure. It had never occurred to her to envision who she was as a person in her own right, a person of value beyond her role as a wife and a mother. Tom had begun to change all that. By the time Larry walked out with a suitcase and a duffle bag, she had built up such a steam that she was ready to explode.
“Well,” he said, calmly, “I guess we’ll talk later.”
“I guess we will,” she said, her arms crossed tightly in front of her chest.
“Well, goodbye,” he said. He came toward her as if he were going to kiss her goodbye.
“You’re full of bullshit, Larry,” she said and turned away.
Chapter Fourteen
Mallie could hardly wait for her Tuesday afternoon appointment with Tom Matthews. Throughout the weekend she mentally replayed the Friday afternoon scene with Larry and the boys in preparation for seeing him. She imagined telling him about Larry’s farewell, his attempt to kiss her and her audacious reply. Surely the priest would be amused. Maybe he would praise her.
She marveled at herself. She had really told Larry he was “full of bullshit.” Using the word bullshit was not her normal language. Since childhood her father had cautioned her about “the language of ladies”—how important it was not to use vulgar words, never mind the fact that she would not have known any vulgar words but for her father. He said “Goddammit” if the newspaper came late in the morning, or “Jesus Christ” if Muffin, her mother’s beloved cocker spaniel, happened to walk in front of him, causing him to trip. “Fucking” was his descriptive adjective for anything seriously distasteful. “Crap” took care of most of his little daily annoyances. She had heard him many times behind closed doors in one of his temper fits calling her mother a “bitch.” Growing up, there had been a great divide, creating much confusion in Mallie’s mind, between her father’s lessons of language and behavior and the example he set with his own.
She was right about Tom’s response. He grinned at her when she regaled him with the story. “You really told Larry he was full of bullshit?”
She nodded, blinking her eyes with delight. “Then I just turned away, not saying another word, and he left.”
“Good for you,” Tom said, then earnestly asked, “How were the boys? How did they respond to your telling them about the separation?”
“Sammy still doesn’t know,” Mallie said. “Larry promised me he would call him, but so far he hasn’t done it. Troy was stoic—as usual. It was hard to tell about him. David was heartbreaking. He had tears in his eyes. It killed me to look at him.”
Tom shook his head. “Divorce is toughest on kids,” he said. “Initially there’s no way for them to understand what’s happening. You’ve been the center of their world—the two of you together. Most kids see their parents as one entity—as their protective authority, their compass in life.”
“Is there anything I can do to help them?” Mallie asked.
“Several things. Try to keep their lives as routinely normal as possible,” Tom said. “Kids hate change of any kind. But they do adjust fast. The most important thing to remember is not to try to influence them by telling stories about Larry and your life together. Answer any questions they ask as honestly as you can, but don’t offer answers to questions they’re not asking.”
“But if I don’t tell them the truth, how will they ever understand why this happened?”
“They’ll each understand in his own time, in his own way,” Tom said. “Children know certain things instinctively. Other things they’ll sort out as they grow up—as they spend time separately with you and with Larry. The truth of your marriage in their minds won’t be your truth or Larry’s truth—it’ll be their truth.”
Mallie saw the sense in what he was saying, but it felt frustrating. She was angry with Larry and one part of her wanted the boys to be angry too. They didn’t know about Julie and all the years of their father’s affairs—and Tom was telling her that she wasn’t supposed to tell them.
“And what about your parents?” Tom asked.
Mallie sank back into her chair remembering the phone conversation with her mother and father. She had called them in Vero Beach, Florida, where they spent several months every winter. She would rather have told them in person, but she knew she couldn’t wait. The gossip around Memphis would reach them right away. As soon as a certain group of her friends knew about their separation—none of them did yet—the news would be all over town.
“My mother didn’t say much really,” Mallie told Tom. “I felt as if she went into shock. I was prepared for her to be furious at Larry. She’s been angry with him since the first time he refused to go to her house for dinner on Wednesday nights. She used to go to her in-laws’ house for dinner once a week, when they were still alive, and she expected us to do the same. Larry put his foot down one Wednesday about a year ago and refused to go.”
“Why do you think he did that?” Tom asked.
“I didn’t understand it at the time. I wasn’t very sympathetic. I thought he was being selfish. Now I wonder if it was all part of his difficulty of working for my father. In the end my mother said she’d have to think about what I told her—about the separation—that she’d call me back or write to me.”
“How about your father?” Tom said.
Mallie said she had not expected the despair in her father’s voice. “‘Oh my God,’ he said. That was all he said at first. Then, as if I had told him I was terminally ill, he said, ‘I don’t believe it. I never thought something like this would happen to you. I feel like the shit’s hit the fan.’” She shook her head. “It made me so sad, Tom. His voice sounded as if he were going to cry.”
“What do you think your father was really feeling?” Tom asked.
Mallie had been pondering that question herself. Was he so upset by the idea of a divorce in the family? Or perhaps he was sympathetic to her humiliation over Larry leaving her. Maybe he was concerned about all the problems a divorce would cause because Larry worked at Malcolm Brothers. Or maybe it was something deeper, something personal. Maybe he felt responsible since he had been the one who had offered Larry a job and made it possible for him to move to Memphis.
“I’m not sure what my father was feeling,” she said. “He was so anxious for Larry to come to work for him when we got married. For a long time it seemed to be mostly a happy situation—at least, I thought it was. They went duck hunting together and even played golf occasionally. In the beginning my father was complimentary of the job Larry was doing—he actually said he thought Larry was a master salesman. Then, something changed. I don’t remember exactly when it happene
d, or any particular incident that caused it.” Mallie took a deep breath, struggling with the recall. “I began to feel tension between them. It was horrible, Tom. When I sat in the living room with them, I felt as if I could hear the voices in their heads. I could hear Larry say, You’re too old. You drink too much. Why don’t you retire and let me run the company? Then I would hear my father say, You’re not the person I thought you were. You’re not capable of running the company.”
“Did you ever talk to Larry about that—about his true feelings for your father and his future with the company?”
“Not really—except for that time when I discovered the letters.” She shook her head. “What could I say? I know my father’s faults—his drinking and his temper tantrums—his ego. But I love him. And I admire him. The company’s been very successful—all due to him. Since my grandfather’s time, my father has tripled the size of the company, opened territories far beyond the southern states. He was a summa cum laude at Vanderbilt—did I tell you that?—then he went to the Wharton School of Business. Business people, all my father’s friends, respect him, think he’s brilliant.” She stopped for a moment, considering what she was saying, what it all meant. “I guess I have to say that when I listen to Larry complain about the company, complain about my father and the employees—about how he doesn’t fit in—doesn’t have any friends there—I’ve sometimes wondered how competent he’d be if he were running the company himself.”
“So you’ve had your own questions about Larry succeeding your father?”
She nodded. In spite of all that had happened, it still hurt her to think that she had ever doubted Larry’s capabilities. She knew that her mother had always had reservations about Larry’s intellect. The night before their wedding, Joan Malcolm had asked Mallie if she realized that she was smarter than Larry. Mallie had been shocked. She had not known what to say. She adored Larry and was excited about her wedding. She had not given any thought to whether she was more intelligent. Still, the question had planted a seed of doubt in her mind.
“When Larry first started working for Malcolm Brothers and he was sent all over the country to meet the salesforce, he was a big success. He won some sort of sales award his second year on the road. But it was tough for me. I hardly saw him during the week.”
“I remember you telling me about those years,” Tom said. “The constant travel and his low salary.”
“I got used to it. I said something about it to my father once and he told me that he and my mother had lived that way for years. He said he made seventy dollars a week and learned the business by making sales calls out of town, all week long, every week. If he could do it, Larry could do it. I tried to keep my eye on how their life had turned out—all of us going to private schools and colleges, their trips to Europe, their beautiful houses in Memphis and Vero Beach—all those things I hoped Larry and I would have someday—and I figured we’d just have to endure the hard years to get there.”
“And how are you feeling now, Mallie—about your own life—your future as a single woman?” It was a direct question that Tom had not raised before. She recognized that it was the same question her New York friends had been trying to get her to answer so many years ago. Did she believe in herself as a person?
She lowered her eyes, trying to hide her tears. They were not just tears for the loss of Larry. They were tears of confusion and loss of purpose. She had once had dreams of being an artist and she had abandoned them. Now her dreams of being a good wife, her dreams for her family were gone. She had little idea of who she was and no idea what it really meant to be “a person of value.”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know how I feel.”
Tom reached over and took her hands in his. She thrust herself forward into his lap and tucked her head under his chin. He closed his arms around her. Within seconds, she felt transported, completely safe and loved. Once they began kissing, Mallie lost all interest in everything but Tom. As long as she was in his arms and felt his love for her, it didn’t matter that her old dreams were gone—or that she had played her part in abandoning them. She no longer questioned who she was or how she planned to live in the future. In that moment, being with Tom was her only dream.
Chapter Fifteen
With the exception of Jenny Bolton, Mallie’s and Larry’s friends were shocked at the announcement of their separation. Cindy Morgan called Mallie when she heard the fast spreading news. “Ben and I just don’t believe it,” she said. “Mallie, tell me this isn’t true.”
Whenever a friend asked a direct question about what went wrong or if she thought the separation would end in divorce, Mallie chose not to elaborate. She said simply that it was Larry’s decision to separate and she had no idea what would happen. Each time she said it, she felt torn. Her pride wanted her to publicly accuse Larry of years of infidelity and broken promises, but she could not bear to sound like a victim or be seen as a rejected woman in anyone’s eyes. She wanted to hold her head up and say that yes, divorce was possible, even probable—and it was okay with her. Yet even as she acknowledged those thoughts, a deeper voice whimpered beneath the surface, a voice that begged for help—help to understand what was going on in her life, help to believe that she and her boys would really be okay.
Jenny, the one friend who had been in Mallie’s confidence all along, was the only person she trusted to share her real feelings. Jenny had been through a divorce herself two years before. After nearly twenty-one years of marriage and five teenage children, Jenny was alert to the reality that a marriage could appear on the outside to end abruptly when the split was not so abrupt from the inside. In one of her discussions with Mallie, Jenny admitted that she had seen troubles brewing with Larry for years.
“I couldn’t bring myself to tell you,” she said. “Last summer when you drove the boys to Rhode Island to visit Larry’s parents, I saw him several times out for dinner with some woman I didn’t know. One night at Paulette’s I spotted him in a back corner. He saw me. I know he did, but he looked right through me as if he didn’t know me—as if I weren’t there.”
“My God, Jenny, why didn’t you tell me?” Mallie said. She felt immediately resentful. Jenny had been keeping secrets from her.
“What would have been the point?” Jenny said. “I figured you’d seen Larry carry on for years—the way he danced at parties—his little trips ‘outside’ with women. You didn’t seem to pay attention to all that. Also, I know how much it means to you to take the boys to Watch Hill.”
Mallie was dismayed, hurt, that Jenny had known something about Larry’s escapades when she was away and had not told her. The worst was Jenny’s accusation that she had not paid attention to Larry’s behavior through the years, as if she did not care that Larry was betraying her. That was so untrue. But she couldn’t be angry with Jenny. She had watched the pain that Jenny had suffered over her own divorce.
Mallie had known Jenny’s husband Webster all her life—his real name was Stuart, but he was so smart—a walking dictionary—that everyone had always called him Webster. He came home one day after work and told Jenny he wanted a divorce. Just like that. Five children in five years and a twenty-one-year marriage. Jenny told Mallie at the time that she felt like a tornado had hit her marriage and nothing was left standing.
As a result, Jenny had become involved with a Bible study group that reached out and took her in. In that moment, according to Jenny, those women had been a life-support system. Mallie did not understand anything about it, but she accepted the fact that somehow the group and the religion had helped Jenny to survive.
Mallie recalled attending one of the Bible study meetings at Jenny’s house. She went out of mild curiosity but mostly in support of her friend. Within minutes of the presentation, Mallie was completely turned off by their leader. The perfectly coiffed, well-dressed woman stood in front of the assembled group and very piously said, “God knows every hair on your head and He has a plan for every aspect of your life.” The idea made
Mallie feel creepy and spied on—God as a truant officer or someone sneaky peering in her windows. She tried not to let the woman’s heavy eye makeup and her bright red lipstick bother her. What really irritated her was what she considered the woman’s narrow and condescending biblical definition of a “woman’s place.” It sounded so patronizing. At one point, Mallie thought she was going to suffocate or break out in a cold sweat. She left the Bible study meeting that day without saying goodbye to anyone or even a thank you to Jenny. The remembrance of that day gave her the shudders.
“Mallie,” Jenny said, interrupting her friend’s thoughts of the Bible study group, “you need to move on from this situation with Larry. In two weeks I’m going to the Callaway Gardens Resort outside of Atlanta for a ‘Creative Living Conference.’ It’s a weekend retreat put on by the Junior League of Atlanta and Faith at Work. I want you to go with me. I know it’ll be helpful for you.”
Mallie froze. The Junior League? She had resigned from the Junior League of Memphis several years before. Even though her mother had insisted she join the socially prominent women’s organization when she was twenty, and she had learned a lot of skills from her volunteer work experience, she couldn’t stand all the chatter at the meetings and the snobbishness of the members. The group had turned down membership to one of her friends who had a Jewish husband. It had infuriated her. And what was Faith at Work? The title sounded like a Holy Roller group.
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