by Leah McLaren
“Surely there must be a way to bring these numbers down a bit? Take the support payments—why on earth are they so high? And … and this”—he picks up the paper, stretches it tight and flicks it with his index finger so it makes a sound like a snare drum—”this allocation of the value of the house seems completely disproportionate. She hasn’t even contributed to the household expenses since the twins were born, so why should she get more of the equity than I do? It makes no sense.”
“That, my friend, is precisely where you’re wrong.” Gray shakes his head at Nick’s mental midgetry. “It’s precisely because she hasn’t been bringing home the majority of the bacon—or even the bacon bits—that the court will furnish her so handsomely. I’m assuming you’re not planning to seek joint custody of the kids? Given their young age and with Maya being at home, it’s highly unlikely you’d get it.”
Nick is dumbstruck. With a pang of shame, he realizes he’s barely thought about the kids since the idea of separation occurred to him. “I guess ideally I’d aim for a flexible arrangement that works for both of us. Not one of these every-other-weekend deals—I want my kids to know that their father isn’t just some guy who buys them a Happy Meal twice a month.”
“Well, you should consider the fact that your wife—once she becomes your ex-wife—may not feel inclined to be ‘flexible,’ as you so diplomatically put it. Once you’ve left a woman high and dry with two little kids, you can’t expect her to be sympathetic to your needs. The same goes for the court, I’m afraid.”
All at once Nick sees how high the stakes are—how in seeking to gain one thing he could potentially lose everything else. He sees this and yet he knows one thing with absolute certainty: he has to leave. He has to, because he’s already gone.
“I can’t stay,” he says. “I have to move forward.”
Gray makes a palms-up, no-judgment-here gesture. “Then what you’re going to be dealing with is an angry, rejected stay-at-home mom with no means to support herself and a whole lot of reasons to hate your guts.”
A sick feeling rises in Nick’s chest. “That’s not true. I’ve taken care of her and the twins these past few years. Doesn’t that count for something?”
“Of course it does—it counts in her financial favour! This is what I’ve been trying to tell you. Maya is now your dependant, just as much as the kids are. She may be a qualified lawyer and perfectly capable of supporting herself, but in the eyes of the court she’s nothing but a poor, unskilled, unemployed, soon-to-be-single mother—a single mother accustomed to quite a cushy lifestyle. Add to that the fact that she’s unlikely to go easy on you considering your recent behaviour—”
“What behaviour?”
“Oh, come on, man! We both know you haven’t exactly been Super Dad these past couple of years. Don’t forget, I’m your wingman—I’ve seen the way you look at other women. Don’t bullshit a bullshitter.”
“No way around it?”
“Nope.” Gray is very still.
Something in his posture tells Nick there’s more. An addendum to the memo. Gray puts his head in his hands and rubs his eyelids until they turn pink.
“Well, there is one thing. I wouldn’t even call it a thing. More of a strategy, really. A long-term plan that requires a great deal of self-control, not to mention …” he tails off. “Frankly, I don’t think you’re up to it.”
Nick spreads his fingers, places both hands palms down on his desk and stares at his friend. “Try me.”
Gray seems bothered—or like he’s pretending to be bothered. Nick would find this interesting if it weren’t so strange.
“It’s not something I recommend to my clients officially, you understand, but it is something I like to think of as a ‘strategic option’ in extreme cases like yours.”
“And what sort of case is that?”
“The kind where you’re about to be taken to the cleaners and hung out to dry.” Nick starts to object, but Gray lifts a finger to silence him. “In a way you’re lucky, because your situation has what I like to think of as ‘room for improvement.’”
Nick straightens in his chair. “Really?”
Gray’s heavy shoulders hitch up around his ears. There is an almost imperceptible rip in the silk lining of his coat. Then he begins, “If you want a better divorce settlement, you’re going to have to become a better husband first. And by ‘better,’ I don’t mean picking up some tulips and takeout on the way home from the bar on Friday night. I’m talking about a sustained period of commitment and support, resulting in a marked and—this is key—quantifiable improvement in conjugal relations.”
Nick looks unsure. “But I’ve already tried to improve things—the point is I can’t. I’ve failed. That’s why I want to leave and move on.”
Gray shrugs. “That’s what I figured. Never mind, then. I should get back to the salt mine.”
He starts to button his coat, but Nick keeps talking.
“Wait, just … first tell me a bit more. What would I have to do?”
Gray takes a deep hit off his e-butt and exhales through his nose like a dragon. “You need to be a better man.”
Nick blinks. Laughs uncertainly. “Don’t I know it! But what does that have to do with this?”
“Everything. Don’t you see? You need to transform yourself into a better husband, you selfish cocksucker. Do right by her for a while.”
“Look, if I wanted a lecture—”
Gray gives a single exasperated snort. “I’m not giving you one—though you certainly deserve it. You asked me for an alternative strategy and I’m offering one, so if I were you I’d listen carefully.”
Nick nods. The back of his neck tingles. “Go on.”
Gray begins to speak in a practised monotone that tells Nick he’s made this speech many times before. “Tell her you love her. Boost her confidence. Encourage her to go back to the law. Make sure she follows through. Support her pursuit of outside interests—and I don’t just mean the gym. Take her away on holiday. Entertain the kids when she’s busy. Take a break from your Saturday morning cycling races and actually spend time with your family. Offer to paint her toenails—whatever it takes. Just make sure that when you finally drop the bomb, she can no longer reasonably accuse you of being a bad husband. Not only will this weaken her case financially, but she’ll feel subconsciously indebted. The settlement will be tipped in your favour. I’ve seen it many, many times.”
“What sort of a time frame are we talking about here? I want to get on with my life.”
“I’ve never seen it work in less than six months.”
Nick leans back, raking his nails through his hair, and exhales. April seems like a lifetime away.
“The main thing is to keep up the act until you see tangible results,” Gray explains. “I’m happy to check in every couple of weeks or so to monitor the situation.”
Nick rubs his face. “But Maya’s a family lawyer. Hasn’t she seen this trick before? And even if she does buy it, won’t she feel like the rug’s been pulled out from under her when I do deliver the bad news?”
A look of satisfaction crosses Gray’s face. Nick sees that this is the side of his job he loves most: the military strategy of the human heart.
“You see, that’s just where you’re wrong, my friend. Believe it or not, most people are genetically predisposed to believe good news even when it’s patently ludicrous. Even if they are trained—as in the case of your wife—to sniff out a rat when others can’t. It’s called the confirmation bias, and it’s what keeps us getting out of bed in the morning in spite of climate change, collapsing economies and the fact that the party’s over once the crude oil’s gone. Maya may question Nick 2.0 a little at first, but if you’re persistent, she’ll quickly become accustomed to her new and improved husband. More crucially, when you finally do announce that you want out—for reasons of self-actualization, in the most non-acrimonious way possible—her reserves of anger and resentment, which I suspect runneth over at the moment, will
be sufficiently depleted to allow a much more civilized dissolution of the marriage—that is, one in which she does not end up taking you to the cleaners. You’ll still need to do some divvying up, of course, but the final amount will be significantly reduced. Who knows? You might even be able to settle out of court. Especially if you’re successful in encouraging her to go back to work.”
Nick’s closes his eyes and presses a finger to each temple. He thinks of a question. “How much do you figure I can save myself by doing this?”
Gray, who has clearly been anticipating this question, makes a couple of scratches on the calculation sheet and slides it across the smooth desk. Nick barely needs to look down to glimpse the new number.
“I’m in,” he says.
Without needing to, the two men shake.
When Gray gets up to leave, Nick hands him back the “Wakefield Family Assets” file.
“I think it’s safer for you to keep this—for now.”
Gray nods and shoves the file into his overflowing briefcase. And then he is gone.
CHAPTER 6
Maya’s been seeing Antonio at Drama Salon since the late 1990s, when she was a law student posing as a saucer-eyed party girl on the weekends. The salon sits on one of the city’s skeeziest corners—she secretly relishes the incongruity of having to weave through a small crowd of crackheads hawking ancient hubcaps to get a headful of premium lowlights and a high-gloss rinse. The salon has no sign and the windows are taped over with tissue paper, giving the place a disused look. Inside, however, the Drams (as it’s known among regulars) is a balm for the bourgeois soul—all retro barber chairs, antique gilt mirrors and church pews in the waiting area.
Antonio’s three black cockapoos tear out of the back to greet Maya in a spittle-misted chorus of yelps, ears flying behind them like protest banners. She can never remember their names—a faux pas she tries (and fails) to remedy by sending a magnum of champagne every year on the Saturday before Christmas.
Antonio stands behind her, hands resting firmly on her smock-covered shoulders.
“What can we do for you today, my darling girl?”
He rubs his elegant tapered finger along the base of her skull and lifts up the hair from her neck, making her shiver with delight. Plucking a small tendril away from the nape of her neck, he inspects the ends in a way that makes the roots twirl and sends electric shocks from the crown of her head to the tip of her pinkie toes. She knows he’s only checking for damage, but part of her wants to beg him not to stop. Instead she shrugs.
“I dunno … the usual? I was toying with the idea of bangs, but I’m still not sure.”
Antonio nods solemnly, then closes his eyes and presses his fingers into her scalp as if intuiting the right course of action from her inner hair spirit. After half a minute, he says, “Maybe just a root touch-up and a trim for today. What do we think?”
Maya exhales, relief flooding her body. “Perfect.”
Despite Maya’s marriage, the birth of her twins and the subsequent derailing of her career, Antonio still tends to her like she’s an unspoiled ingenue on the cusp of a great adventure, her whole life waiting to unfold in series of dazzling events, each of which promises to be more glamorous and fascinating than the next, if only—and this is the crucial bit—she can get her hair exactly right. For the past several years, Antonio has been working toward an ashy-yet-lustrous shade for Maya’s highlights that he calls gin-and-tonic blonde. Every six weeks, her standing appointment brings them both a little closer to the pinnacle of hair colour nirvana. There is nowhere in the world she is quite so at home.
He beetles off to mix the colour, leaving Maya alone with a two-month-old copy of Us Weekly. She is halfway through a story on why Pippa Middleton can’t seem to find a husband (apparently she’s “too sexy” to be “wife material”) when she hears someone air-kissing her way through the salon with loud, smacking “mwahs!” Before Maya can arrange herself more inconspicuously behind her magazine, Rachel Katz is descending upon her with flinging arms and juicy air kisses.
“Oh, my God! THIS IS UNBELIEVABLE!” she cries.
Maya’s not sure if she means their running into each other or the fact that it happened the last time they were here too. She makes a mental note to change her standing appointment.
Rachel is married to Glen, one of Nick’s many entertainment lawyers, which has the effect of throwing them together in various social situations throughout the year. Rachel is also one of those people Maya finds she bumps into with random consistency, making them feel more connected than they actually are. In Maya’s view, they are not so much friends as co-wives, watching from the sidelines of real life. Nevertheless, in a grand show of intimacy, Rachel tells Maya how gorgeous she looks, and how amaaaazing her perfectly ordinary shoes are. Maya smiles wanly and allows herself to be complimented, then in return tells Rachel how lovely her earrings are (for this, she well knows, is the Girl Code). After they are done making the obligatory fuss over each other, Maya sits there feeling weirdly limbless in her polyester poncho.
“God, it’s been a while, hasn’t it? I still can’t believe you have twins—honestly you’d never know it. So funny how we always end up here at the same time, isn’t it?”
Maya smiley-nods and looks down longingly at her unread stack of crappy fashion magazines, but Rachel is having none of it.
She tosses a leather handbag the size of a bowling-ball carrier down on the floor and plunks herself on the next chair over. A shampoo girl hops to it and begins hosing Rachel down in a portable sink, but Rachel doesn’t bother to acknowledge her, just continues chatting to Maya with her head thrown back under the suds.
“So what’s up with you?” Her eyes widen in what Maya recognizes as an unvarnished yearning for scandal and misery. If I told her Nick was leaving me for a lingerie model, she might actually die of excitement and happiness.
“Not much. You?”
Thankfully that’s all it takes to set Rachel off on a ten-minute monologue about two-year-old Verity’s new “boyfriend” at playgroup—a story that is ostensibly about the adorable mating rituals of toddlers but is actually intended to underline the remarkably precocious intelligence and charisma of her genetic issue.
Despite the nature of their non-friendship, Maya’s actually known Rachel since her nightclub days, when she was a three-seabreezes-and-a-pack-of-chips-for-dinner kind of girl. Back then, Rachel was a publicist on the hunt for a rich husband, whom she eventually found in the form of Gormless Glen, the most un-entertaining entertainment lawyer in his field. Glen lets Rachel do whatever she wants whenever she wants, and for this she will never forgive him. By the time Antonio returns with his colour cart and begins the fussy work of painting and foiling Maya’s roots, Rachel is in full flow.
“I’m telling you, he is so bad at gifts that this Christmas I’m actually just taking his credit card, buying my own gifts and putting them under the tree. All the lazy bastard has to do is sign the card, and I’ll probably have to nag him for days to do that. Anyway, the upside is I’ve already got this gorgeous tennis bracelet picked out at the Christie’s auction. It’s not romantic, but you have to make things easy for men, you know? Like I told Glen, he should consider himself lucky—all he has to do now is press Spend.” She cackles at her own unfunny joke.
Maya offers a smile. “But maybe if you gave him a chance …?”
Rachel bats her hands like she’s pushing Maya backwards off a cliff. “Bah! No way. I’ve tried that. If I didn’t do it for him, nothing would get done—trust me. It’s like everything: marriage, kids, buying a house, renovating, vacations, shopping for friggin’ groceries. If I didn’t do it, it would never get done. Honestly, sometimes I think if I hadn’t showed up in his life and stamped my little foot, he’d still be living in his roachy law school apartment, watching pay-per-view in his tighty-whities. And for this, what do I get? The privilege of buying my own Christmas presents.” Rachel shakes her head to convey how utterly convincing she finds
herself. “Sometimes I honestly feel like Glen was sent here to help me cultivate patience. Like some kind of test of character from God, do you know what I mean? Surely you must feel the same way about Nick sometimes. How are things going with his company? Is he still crazy busy?”
Maya leans back and one of Antonio’s tinfoil flaps falls forward, mercifully concealing her eyes. She knows that in passive-aggressive Rachelspeak, “crazy busy” is code for “workaholic bastard who neglects your every need.” Frustrated as she is, Maya has never been able to master the art of venting about her marriage to others. She prefers to keep her unhappiness to herself—not because she’s especially private but because co-rumination seems to trivialize things. She likes to think of her marriage as being in a special kind of trouble, rather than the garden-variety type.
“Mmm … yeah, most of the time,” she mutters. “How’s Glen’s new practice going?” She knows she should ask about Rachel’s work, but she can’t recall the exact nature of her pretend job. Something about importing kaftans from Morocco?
“Oh God, you know, the same. Terribly important. Takes precedence over everything. Honestly, you’d think negotiating contracts for TV producers was morally equivalent to cancer research. He’s so caught up in work most of the time, I feel completely invisible. He never notices if I change my hair or get a new outfit. I feel like I could go on one of those Venezuelan cruises and come back with Eva Longoria’s tits and he wouldn’t even notice.”
“I’m sure that’s not true.”
“Oh, it is! This summer I was doing that daily fitness boot camp in the park—you know, the one that runs five days a week for six weeks—and every morning I put on the same stretchy yoga pants and top while I was getting my daughter out the door for day camp. Every day for weeks on end, he saw me have breakfast in the same outfit. Then one morning about halfway through the summer, I got up and said, ‘Time to put on the uniform.’ And he said, ‘What uniform?’ And I said, ‘You seriously haven’t noticed that I’ve been wearing exactly the same outfit every day for the past three weeks?’ He just gave me that blank look—the one where they’ve just done something shitty, but if you make a big deal about it, they’re going to call you crazy. God, I hate that look. It’s so invalidating. Anyway, I completely dropped it. A test of patience. But that doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten.”