A Better Man

by Leah McLaren

  “Talk to me, Gray.”

  “Hello.” Nick is instantly aware from the depth of the gravel in Gray’s voice—a certain throaty barely-awakeness—that he is in a foul mood.

  “What can I do for you, my friend?”

  “You’ve been ignoring me,” Gray says evenly.

  Nick fights a powerful urge to pretend that the call’s breaking up and switch off his phone for the rest of the day—something he’s done with Maya in the past. He’s about to start the crackly voice (“Hel—? Are y—? Can hea—? Hel—? You’re bre—” click, dial tone) when he remembers there’s always text. And email. And the landline.

  “Not so. Not ignoring you at all, dude. I’ve just been insanely busy. This CurvePhone job is eating up all my time.”

  There is a pause in which Nick can hear Gray’s ragged inhalation. He’s smoking again. Not a great sign.

  “That’s not what Maya says. She tells me you’ve changed. She says you’ve become the perfect husband.”

  “Does she now?” Nick tries to affect a jocular manner. A sort of “Heh, heh, who can figure women?” tone. He is suddenly desperate to keep the conversation light, the dialogue upbeat.

  “So your plan is working out,” says Gray. “Well played.”

  Nick flinches. “Hey, it wasn’t my plan. It was your plan. And in fact, I thank you for it, because it’s changed my life. I’m not just acting different—I actually feel different.”

  “I’m happy for you,” Gray says in the same robotic tone that sends a murmur through Nick’s intestines. “But you can’t run from the truth, Nick. You still are who you are.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means when are you planning to leave her?” Gray’s voice strains slightly at the seams.

  Nick ducks into his office and closes the door. He wants to shush Gray even though there’s no one there to hear him. He is grimacing and his free hand is flapping at the air like a wounded water bird. He catches a glimpse of himself in the frosted glass wall and is not surprised to see that he looks like a doofus.

  “Look, Gray, I don’t know. The truth is, I’m really confused right now. Everything we talked about in September … I don’t know. It’s not that anything’s changed, materially speaking, but maybe I’ve changed. I feel different—about everything.”

  “So you’re not going to leave her, then?”

  “No. I mean, yes. I mean … I don’t know what I mean. I need some time. What does it matter to you, anyway?” Nick feels a thrust of indignation under his sternum.

  “Well, as your friend and sometime legal adviser, I just thought you should probably break the news to her sooner than later. I feel—in my professional opinion—it’s gone far enough.”

  There is a beat. Then Nick says quietly, “But you said six months. Why now?”

  “It just seems cruel.”

  “So this is your professional opinion?”

  “Well …” Gray clears his throat, searching. “I guess it’s more of a personal one, now that you mention it.”

  “I’ll take that under advisement.”

  “All right, then.”

  “All right.”

  And they hang up without saying goodbye, just like busy men in the movies.

  Nick doesn’t go straight back to the editing suite. He is surprised to find that he has been sweating. There is hot dampness on the back of his neck and in his underarms. He unbuttons his shirt and dabs himself with the cloth napkin he keeps in the top drawer for the rare occasions he has lunch at his desk. As he is doing so, his assistant walks in.

  “Oh, sorry!” Ben says, wincing at his boss’s state of undress. He starts backing out of the office, but Nick waves him back in.

  “What is it?”

  “I just wanted to remind you that you have your wife’s office Christmas party tomorrow night, and as you know there’s a Secret Santa and you’re in charge of getting the gift.”

  “Did I actually tell you that?”

  “You forwarded me an email from her. You said it was part of your attempt to ‘pick up the slack’ now that she’s back at work.”

  Ben looks to the ceiling as Nick finishes buttoning up his shirt.

  “The price limit was twenty dollars, but I know you always like to go a little over—just to be on the safe side—so I’ve purchased three items for you to choose from: a black faux suede iPad mini case, a silver-plated picture frame and one of those giant jasmine-scented candles with three wicks. Everyone loves all those things, right? Anyway, you can pick one and the other two can be returned. Do you have time to look at them right now?”

  Nick shakes his head and tells Ben to wrap up the silver-plated picture frame. Then he returns to the edit suite for the rest of the day.

  By the time Maya walks in the door that night, it’s nearly ten-thirty. Nick is half-asleep on the sofa in front of a reality show about house flipping. The twins are in bed, bellies full of pesto pasta, bottoms pink from bathwater and heads full of dreams cinematically enhanced (Nick hopes) by his bedtime reading of The Paper Bag Princess and Walter the Farting Dog. He is amazed at how exhausting he finds those two hours—5:30 to 7:30 p.m., the time of day he once thought of as playtime. The flirting-over-a-cocktail hours. No longer. In the past few weeks, he has learned to approach this daily transition with military precision. When it comes to small children, the trick, he has discovered, is to be present and in the moment, while also keeping a hawk-like eye on the clock—to indulge in an all-consuming game of fairy-princess-and-Spiderman-having-a-picnic, while simultaneously wiping down a high chair and filling a bath. It’s imperative not to rush—if the twins detect hurry, they assume an automatic passive resistance, slowing down the schedule to a treacly pace. If prompted, a toddler can transform the simplest daily act into an epic drama. Getting into and out of the bath becomes a suspense thriller complete with inciting incident, agonizing build, denouement and dramatic twist ending.

  This is why, when his wife walks through the door, Nick is curled on the sofa under a quilt with his shoes still on, numbing himself with bad television. He can hear Maya clattering around in the kitchen, popping a cork, pouring herself a glass of Chianti.

  “There’s half a cheese omelette in the pan,” he says by way of greeting. Now she is sitting beside him, drinking her wine, eating the omelette with a children’s spork. She is wearing the navy skirt suit today with a crisp white shirt and a silk scarf he brought her back from a job in Paris. She looks a bit like a sexy airline stewardess from the 1970s, he thinks. The sight of her in tailored office clothes should not be a surprise—he saw her off at breakfast, after all—but he finds it still gives him a nostalgic pang for the early days of their marriage. He considers slipping a hand up her skirt.

  “How was your day?” she says, leaning over and giving him a kiss on the head, eyes on the TV screen, where a heavily pregnant blonde woman is crying because something has gone wrong with her kitchen renovation.

  “Fine, fine. Good.” He wants to elaborate but fails to think of how.

  “Thanks for putting the twins to bed.”

  “My pleasure. They still get a bit weepy and ask for you, especially at storytime.”

  Maya winces. “Still?”

  “It’s only been a couple of weeks—I’m sure they’ll be used to it by Christmas.”

  Maya’s eyes glitter with emotion and he sees he’s said the wrong thing.

  “But what if I don’t want them to ‘get used to it’?” she says. “What if I—oh God, what have I done?”

  She covers her face with both hands and Nick strokes her hair, careful to give her space and permission to have a good sob. He sees now that it’s okay when she cries, that it’s not an accusation.

  When Maya’s breaths grow even again, he says, “You made the right decision to go back. I know it doesn’t feel like it now, but your having a career is as important for them as it is for you. And me. Let me do bedtimes for the next while.”

  “Really?
Velma can always—I mean, thanks. That would be really nice.” For a moment, she looks as though she might start crying all over again.

  “Of course.”

  Maya nods, wiping her nose childishly on her French cuff. Then she says, “Are you doing the voices?”

  “Yes. I’m doing the voices.”

  “Even the sad ostrich voice?” She lengthens her neck and pinches her features together in a surprisingly successful imitation of an ostrich.

  “Yes. I mean, I try. I can’t promise an Oscar-calibre performance. Maybe I have a shot at a Golden Globe or a SAG Award. But I’m trying.”

  “I know you are. And I appreciate it. I really do. And you’re right: they’ll get used to it soon.”

  They stare at the television for a moment. Not really watching but not talking either. Then Nick puts his hand on Maya’s knee and clears his throat.

  “Babe, I need to talk to you about something.”

  “Mmm?” Maya continues to stare at the TV with pink, unfocused eyes.

  “It’s serious. I have a confession to make.”

  She hears the change in his voice and turns to look at him. “What is it?”

  He leans over and strokes her hair, feeling the bump of her ear under a curtain of corn silk.

  Her face takes on the old worried expression. “Seriously, you can tell me,” she says. “Whatever it is, we’ll get through it.”

  Nick pauses. “The wipes,” he says finally. “I forgot to get unscented ones. The twins’ asses smell like bubblegum.”

  Maya gives him a troubled look. “Is that all?” she says. “I have an extra case in the linen closet.”

  “Oh.” Nick gives a hollow little laugh. “Thank Christ.”

  If Maya is unconvinced, she doesn’t show it. She puts her plate on the coffee table, then lies down beside him, her head nuzzling his neck, two pairs of knees nestled into each other. They lie like this for a while, two tired people contentedly not talking, until it’s time to go to bed, together.

  CHAPTER 16

  Of all the kit required for the competent and efficient practice of family law—access to credible reference materials, a closet full of suits, a degree from a reputable law school, a labyrinthine filing system and a very thick skin—a box of tissues is probably the most easily overlooked. Ideally a jumbo box, hypoallergenic and aloe-infused.

  Now here she is, at two in the afternoon on the day of the office Christmas party, in a court-ordered mediation with a major client, watching her client’s ex-wife weep. The other lawyer, David Whatshisface, is a small, sweaty man with rat-like features whom Maya vaguely remembers from the debating society at law school. He pats his pockets, looking for a tissue, and when he doesn’t find one, he looks at her pointedly as if to say, It’s your house. And it is. They’ve gathered in her office boardroom, at her behest, in the hope of settling out of court. She fishes a crumpled handkerchief from the bottom of her bag and pushes it across the table.

  “No, no, I’m fine,” says the ex-wife, sniffling and daubing at the corners of her eyes.

  Maya’s client, Jacob Brooks, offers no response to his ex-wife’s theatrics. He sits staring at the back of his smooth, pale hands as if in a meditative trance. A slim, elegant man with a whisper of a voice and intelligent eyes, he rarely speaks, but when he does everyone leans in to listen.

  The ex-wife’s name is Victoria, but Maya thinks of her privately as Uptown Girl, for the way her story so closely resembles that of the 1980s Billy Joel song. Insect-thin and manicured, she is in her late thirties, has a bottomless supply of family cash and has spent the past three years burning through a prodigious amount of it in a bitter and protracted divorce with Brooks, her third husband, a moderately famous novelist with a background as humble as hers is grand. Their court case has lasted nearly the entire duration of their three-year-old son’s life.

  “Take as long as you want,” says David Whatshisface, laying a soothing hand on his client’s arm. “We all understand how difficult these things can be.”

  Uptown Girl nods and flicks at her face with her fingertips, the whites of her eyes floating up toward the ceiling and back down again. A pair of very expensive false eyelashes give her the look of a psychedelic-crazed, 1960s beatnik model. Maya wonders vaguely if she has a personality disorder—undiagnosed psychological illness being one of the key reasons seemingly functional people end up in court, trapped in intractable battles of will. She glances over at Jacob but he is still deep in his trance—a state Maya recognizes as a common refuge for the unwilling victims of ongoing civil litigation. Between the original settlement and his legal bills, he is almost broke; he hired Maya on his line of credit in a last-ditch attempt to maintain joint custody of his son. It’s the only thing he ever asked for when they split, and the one thing his ex is determined to wrest from him.

  Uptown Girl is wearing a chaotically printed fluorescent-yellow dress and matching shoes that Maya registers as designer-something. A woman like this would never buy anything so hysterically loud without the safeguard of great expense. “It’s just, you know, he hates me and my family,” she is saying of Brooks, as though he were not in the room. “He always resented my father’s success as a banker, and he used to make fun of my wealthy friends—he thought he was better than them because he’d gone to college on a scholarship and, you know, made his own way in the world.” She says this last bit with a tiny sneer, as if she’s pointing out some eccentric piousness on his part. “But in reality he’s just bitter. And all the more so because I was awarded the house and support payments. But as you know, that’s for the simple reason that I don’t actually have an income—I gave up my party-planning business to take care of Baxter, and my family pays my rent and legal fees. I’m literally a broke, unemployed stay-at-home mother. Not full time, obviously, since Baxter still has his nanny, whom he loves—another thing he resents paying for. The point is, the loathing and resentment he has for me, I can see that hate in Baxter’s eyes when he comes back to me after spending time with his father. And the things he says—” She starts to choke up again.

  Her lawyer, who’s taking notes on his laptop, pauses. “Just take a breath,” he says. “And when you can, I want you to tell me what it is in your son’s behaviour that’s led you to believe that Jacob is engaging in a campaign of denigration.”

  Uptown Girl composes herself and takes a breath. “Well, for instance, last week when I was trying to take away his iPad before bed, Baxter said, ‘Mommy’s stupid. I’m going to poo on Mommy’s head.’ And then he said he wanted his daddy.”

  Maya interrupts. “And … sorry, what exactly did you take from that?”

  The client huffs slightly, to indicate that Maya isn’t getting it. “My ex obviously told my son to defecate on my head. Can’t you see? It’s a clear-cut case of psychological and emotional abuse. We have to get him out of that house. He doesn’t belong with his father; he belongs with me. I’m his mother.”

  At this, Jacob Brooks springs up and slams both palms down on the table inches from his ex-wife. She gives a little shriek, but on her face Maya can see a flicker of pleasure mingled with fear—the adrenaline shot of finally getting the desired reaction. She sees how it must have been between them: the spoiled, beautiful rich girl and the up-from-the-bootstraps boy with his cleverly concealed temper. A hot, toxic and volatile combination that was doomed before it began.

  “How,” Jacob Brooks begins slowly, looking not at his ex but at some fixed point in the middle distance, “do you live with yourself? Or is that the whole problem? That you can’t? So you invent conflicts to distort and deflect your own feelings of self-hatred? Or …?” He seems to lose his train of thought and falls back into his chair, limp and silent again.

  Maya clears her throat and commences with a speech she’s made many times before—about how sometimes it’s necessary to take a step back from the situation and weigh the emotional cost of legal conflict against the tangible gains, but before she can begin, Uptown Girl leans in
and hisses, “I want you to know that my family and I are willing to throw any amount of money at this. We are committed to getting Baxter back.”

  She looks at her lawyer, who opens a new file and slides it across the table. “In light of this, my client is willing to offer her ex-husband a very generous deal: she will forgo the support payments and reimburse him for his share of the marital home in exchange for full custody of Baxter, including all major holidays with the exception of a week in the summer and over Christmas, but excluding Christmas Day itself.”

  Maya watches Jacob Brooks contemplate the woodgrain in the boardroom table. Finally he says, “If you’re offering to buy out my portion of our son—and it seems that you are—the answer is a categorical no.”

  He nods at Maya and she pushes out her chair with a definitive creak.

  “Well, then,” she says. “I guess that settles it. Or not, so to speak. We’ll be seeing you in court.”

  Back in the office she checks her work email, scanning a long stream of messages flagged “Urgent,” most of which are anything but. It is, she reflects, almost as though urgency has become the regular state of being at the firm, a cruising speed well over the limit. She feels the old feeling—the gut-clench of panic, followed by the fizz-pop of stress hormones in her blood—and recognizes it almost fondly. For the first time in years, she feels genuinely under the gun. It’s not such a bad thing.

  Amid all the work emails is a note from Nick asking what time he should meet her at the Christmas party in the atrium of the natural history museum. The party is the first “with spouses” event she’s been invited to since returning to work. Back in the old days of their marriage, before the twins, she and Nick had a “no social drag” policy, which meant they didn’t bring each other to work events, since it was a drag for everyone involved—the date (who felt uncomfortable and out of place), the invitee (who would rather just hang out and talk shop with colleagues), and the other guests (none of whom really wanted to make small talk with a co-worker’s spouse).