A Better Man

by Leah McLaren

  She’d assumed the same rule would apply now that she was back at work, but apparently not. When she’d mentioned the party in passing, Nick jumped on it. He’d filed it and dialled it before she was able to dissuade him from coming. Not only that, he’d booked Velma for the night and had insisted on buying the Secret Santa gift when she grumbled about being too busy to do it herself. So it was a good thing, right? A good and perfectly normal thing to attend one’s own office Christmas party with the husband to whom one is very happily married. Except now that the night is upon her, Maya finds herself inwardly backpedalling for reasons that are a mystery even to her.

  She looks around the office anxiously, eyes scanning stacks of bursting folders, copies of depositions and affidavits waiting to be filed. She is tempted to claim that she has to work, or that she feels the old strep infection coming back. But instead she forces herself to reply to Nick’s note.

  “See you at eight.” And that is that.

  Two hours later, Maya is struggling to zip up the strappy silk cocktail dress she’s changed into when Gray materializes in her office doorway in a dinner jacket, looking like a handsome vampire waiting to be invited in.

  “May I?” he says, with a dapper flourish of his winter gloves.

  “Of course.”

  She turns her back and he zips up the dress as nimbly as a tailor. When she turns back to look at him, she is relieved to see that the strange tension from their drink her first day back seems to have evaporated. She considers saying something along this line, then thinks better of it.

  They get on the elevator together, whooshing down twenty-three floors to the cool marble echo chamber of the lobby, trading notes on the cases they’re working on. Maya tells Gray about Uptown Girl—her half-cocked case against Brooks and her callous offer. Gray laughs at her impressions but cautions her to handle her client with care.

  “Divorce makes people crazy,” he says, “as you’ll soon be reminded.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Maya stops in her tracks so that people around them have to swerve to get by. Gray looks surprised.

  “Because you’re working in the family law division?” he says slowly.

  Maya bridles slightly and drops it.

  Gray gives her a slap on the shoulder. “Take it easy, kid,” he says.

  She chews her lip.

  The party is held a few blocks away, in the museum’s sprawling new atrium—a thousand tiny candles twinkling under the brontosaurus bones. Fresh versions of familiar colleagues fill the room. Maya looks for Nick but doesn’t see him.

  She is overwhelmed by a powerful thirst just as a waitress with a brassy red bob slides a tray brimming with champagne glasses under her nose. She smiles, feeling almost as if she conjured this young woman and her tray of chilled, fizzing glasses. “Thank you so much,” she says to the girl, who smiles at her beguilingly. Seconds later the glass has half vanished.

  She looks around for Gray but finds he’s evaporated into the crowd. One of the junior associates, a twenty-something named Mike Nash who was hired at the same time as her, strikes up a conversation. He’s telling her about his “all-consuming addiction” to the eucalyptus steam room at their corporate gym, which Maya hasn’t yet bothered to visit. (“It’s effing amazing. Way better than sleep, which I don’t really bother with anymore. Who’s got the effing time?”) All at once, a familiar voice whispers in her ear, “Is this your work husband? I really hope not, because he’s not worthy of you.” Maya spins around and kisses Nick, then gratefully introduces the two men. Nick and Mike immediately fall into an easy man-patter about the city’s new soccer club, in that way that only men who are strangers can.

  Maya touches Nick’s arm and motions to indicate she’s heading to the bar. Once in line she finds herself immediately behind Roger Goldblatt, who, to her mild horror, puts an arm around her and slaps her on the shoulder in a “Hey, old buddy” kind of way. She judges him to be at least three or four Scotches to the wind. “Maya Wakefield, our newest oldest associate”—he pauses to chuckle at his own unfunny joke—”have you met Peter and David here? They’re on the board, so we’re forced to invite them to the Christmas party.”

  Two bulging white-haired men in identical navy suits offer their hands to Maya and make disingenuous jokes about how unimportant they are. Roger hands her a glass of champagne that he seems to have pulled from his pocket.

  “So how is our loveliest new associate getting on? Have you had the taste of blood yet?”

  Maya coughs. She’s terrible at accepting compliments, especially creepy ones.

  “Not yet,” she says. “But I have my first hearing next week, so I’m sharpening my teeth.” She mimes filing her incisors, but no one seems to get the joke.

  Roger peers at her through a pair of greasy tortoiseshell glasses. A single wiry hair has sprouted from the bridge of his nose. Maya racks her brains for his wife’s name, then decides to take a flyer.

  “Is Michelle here? I’d love to see her again.” Even Roger looks impressed.

  “‘Fraid not,” he says. “She’s exhausted. You know she has one of those mystery diseases, the ones that make you sleepy all the time. So she never comes out to parties. Either that or she just hates me!” He pauses. “Speaking of marriage, I heard you’re working on the Jacob Brooks divorce. Awful business, isn’t it?”

  Maya thinks of Uptown Girl with her Day-Glo silks and her ocean of self-pity and feels a crumbling sensation deep in her gut. “Oh, yes,” she says but declines to elaborate.

  Roger puts a clammy hand on her shoulder. “And extra important you win, of course, after that business with her father.”

  “What, uh, business?” Maya knows she should conceal her ignorance but doesn’t.

  “You know her father’s a very powerful merchant banker.

  Owns the second biggest in the city. He pulled all his corporate business with the firm when he heard we’d taken on his former son-in-law as a client. I tried to explain there would be no conflict, but he was enraged and not in the mood to be damage-controlled. The Heathfields are used to getting their own way—you might have noticed. I hope you make sure they don’t in this case.”

  Maya nods. Swallows. “I’ll do my best.”

  “Do better,” Roger says. “It really is an unfortunate falling-out. Her father and I have known each other since school days. We were both on the rugby team.”

  “Rugby, really?” As Maya says this, she realizes she sounds more surprised than she should. Roger probably weighs less than she does.

  “It was a small school,” he says. “Anyway, the point is we’ll be watching that case with interest.”

  Maya nods, her body edging toward the other end of the room. “Message received. Loud and clear.”

  She is about to bolt when Gray appears and gives Maya a knowing look that says, Tread carefully. She shoots him one back that says, Please fuck off and get me a drink. Roger is oblivious to all this suggestive flickering, as he tries and fails to pluck a half-melted ice cube from the bottom of his whisky.

  Gray puts a hand on Maya’s elbow and turns to his boss. “Do you mind if I steal away our protégée to meet some of her new colleagues?”

  Roger waves his hand in dismissal, and Maya and Gray are released into the crowd. She finds herself following him as he pushes through the sea of half-drunk lawyers to the food table, where he fills a plate with tiny beef burgers and begins eating them, one per bite. For a while Maya just stands there like a spectator in a pie-eating contest. Finally she grabs one off his plate and pops it in her mouth. She feels instantly better, as if all her wandering brain cells had suddenly congregated back where they should be. Grease. Salt. Fat. So that’s what she’s been missing all these years.

  “I need to talk to you about something important.” Gray says this very quickly, as if he has to get it out before he thinks better of it.

  “I’m all ears,” she says, plucking up another beef burger in a brioche and giving
it an appreciative sniff. This one, she’s pretty sure, has melted Gruyère on top.

  Gray waits for her to swallow. The champagne envelops her like warm gauze. It occurs to her that she hasn’t seen her husband in quite a while.

  “Spit it out, then,” she says.

  Gray exhales and runs a hand through his hair. A bit of litigator’s theatre. “Nick is planning to leave you,” he says finally. “He’s been planning it for a while now. That’s why he’s changed. He’s hoping to get a better deal.”

  Maya has that sensation she used to get at parties when she was in her early twenties—she thinks of it as “the Bell Jar feeling,” as if she is looking at her life from the wrong side of the telescope and things that were far away are suddenly dramatically closer. Her eyes drift woozily across the room, the sound going in and out like a radio feedback loop in her head. She sees all the people, but she doesn’t actually register anyone until her viewfinder comes to rest on Nick. He is standing at the bar, half-obscured by the crowd, speaking urgently to the catering girl with the brassy red bob. The waitress says something Nick doesn’t like and he backs away, the old blank expression like a blind pulled tight across his features. Maya has no idea what’s happening between them, but it’s clear they have met before this evening. She decides then and there that she will never ask him how.

  “I don’t believe you,” she says to Gray, keeping her eyes on Nick. Her voice is a cold, dead thing. “Why should I?”

  “Because I’m your friend. And because it’s true.”

  “Prove it. You know if I ask Nick about this, he’ll just deny it and I’ll be inclined to believe him—he’s my husband and the father of my children—so if you’re going to drop a bombshell like this, for God’s sake I hope you’re fucking well able to prove it.”

  Gray heaves in obvious discomfort. “All right, then,” he says, closing his eyes. When he opens them, he is staring deep into the crowd. “Your house has an estimated market value of $1.8 million; the cottage is worth about a quarter of that. The cars are worth somewhere between thirty and forty thousand each, factoring in depreciation. You pay the nanny just under forty, cash, though that was Nick’s idea and you’re not comfortable with it. Last year Nick earned in the region of half a million. This year he stands to earn about one hundred grand less, mainly because he’s taking fewer jobs in order to spend time with you and the kids. Now that you’ve gone back to work, the income and domestic labour imbalance is beginning to correct itself. You’ve been away on holiday and your sex life is coming back. Nick listens and is attentive to you—more than he has been in years—and the same goes for the kids. Everything feels different because it is different. You are married to a different man. A better man. A man who has made you into a better, more independent woman. But your life is not what it seems, Maya. In fact, it’s the opposite of that. The problem is, when he petitions you, the court won’t recognize that. The family court looks only at surfaces, not at deeper motives. It isn’t fair, but you know it’s true.”

  She reaches out and finds herself putting a hand on Gray’s forearm for support.

  “Careful now,” he says, looking around for a chair and not seeing one. “Are you okay?”

  Maya nods. She feels as if a physical trauma has been done to her. In one minute-long monologue, Gray has just unravelled her entire world like a cheap ball of string. She looks down at the floor and imagines it lying there, the limp remnants of her formerly enviable life.

  “Why are you telling me this?” she asks, and as she does so, she feels the familiar anger welling up. The rage, she knows, is a way of displacing the sadness that is the thing that will take her under, never to resurface. The anger, however misdirected, can at least be used to power her through this party, the rest of the night and tomorrow. And the next day. There is energy in the rage.

  “Because I was the one who talked to Nick in the first place. It’s the advice I give all my clients.”

  “I get that. But why are you telling me?”

  Gray takes a thoughtful sip of his cocktail. “Because I couldn’t live with myself otherwise. I couldn’t be an accessory to your betrayal.”

  “But you betrayed Nick by telling me. He’s not a client—he’s your friend. Just like me. We’re your oldest friends.” She says this with a kind of bereft wonderment. When she looks up she notices Gray is actually trembling. Not just his hands but his whole person. This enormous man, who has argued his case in a hundred courts and won, is fluttering like a sheet of paper.

  “I know,” says Gray. “And it was wholly inappropriate. But I think in this case I was somewhat subconsciously motivated.”

  Maya stares at him. She is gripping her champagne flute and wonders if she has the strength to break it. She clenches it as hard as she can, craving the pop of glass and the puncture of flesh. Hard as she tries, it doesn’t give.

  “What are you talking about?” She spits out her words with distaste. “What do you mean, subconsciously motivated? Why would you encourage my husband to leave me?”

  Gray pries Maya’s glass out of her hand and sets it down. He keeps her fingers pressed in between his own.

  “Because I’m in love with you, Maya,” he says. “And I always have been.”

  CHAPTER 17

  Nick sits alone at the kitchen counter watching Mr. and Mrs. Fish floating in a slow spiral on the surface of their marital bowl. It’s all his fault. The night before, after one too many vodkas, he’d decided they looked lonely. Forgetting the carny’s warning about Vietnamese fighting fish, he’d scooped out Mrs. Fish and plunked her in with her feather-finned mate. Then he’d passed out on the couch with Letterman blaring, feeling slightly better for this good deed. Now they are both dead. Dead because of him.

  It’s been six weeks since Maya left with the twins and he is going to miss his fish friends, however unstimulating their company might be. The events of that night have played through his mind so many times that he can fast-forward them now: Him at the law firm Christmas party, sharing a bad joke with Shelley while lifting a glass off her tray. His wife across the room, sharing an intense exchange with Gray. Then suddenly Maya is there beside him, looking the opposite of flustered. She is very still. Very sure. Her lipstick is perfect. She gives Shelley a smile that could flash-freeze the living. “I have to go,” she says. The twins have come down with something. Apparently they are inconsolable and need her. She feels guilty for working so much. “But you stay,” she adds—emphatically, not passive-aggressively. He looks at her face and can see that she means it. It’s the only thing that will make her happy. “Stay and enjoy yourself. Please?” He protests weakly—offers to take her home. He almost insists. But in the end, he stays. And when he gets home, his family is gone.

  He’s made some futile attempts at seeking comfort. Left a couple of messages for Gray, only to receive apologetic texts about being “utterly swamped” by a “life-sucking mega-case.” Apparently his oldest friend is too busy for one of their epic nights out. And in truth, Gray’s scarcity provides Nick with a glimmer of hope. According to the optimism bias, it can mean only one thing: Maya hasn’t mentioned their separation at the office. She isn’t telling people yet. If she were, Gray would have called him. And since he hasn’t, perhaps she’s not entirely sure.

  So it’s just been Nick and the fish. Round and round they’d go in their separate bowls, looping past the decorative underwater ornaments nestled in the artificial blue pebbles at the bottom of the tank. Sometimes they’d stop to nibble the flakes he crumbled like a dusty, unappetizing snowfall on the surface of the water, but mostly it was just the same loop in their parallel glass bubbles. Swim, swim, swim—hey look, a castle. A world on endless repeat. Nick has spent a great deal of time getting inside the heads of Mr. and Mrs. Fish, and even in death, he feels a strange pang of envy. They may be dead, after an excruciatingly boring life, but at least they’re together.

  He looks around the house and experiences the familiar undertow—a kind of dull,
self-loathing enervation that has, to his vague surprise, turned him into a complete slob. Maya didn’t take much when she moved to a corporate hotel suite—that’s all she will reveal, despite his repeated inquiries into her whereabouts. Apart from some clothes, books, toys and the organic, fair-trade contents of the fridge, she left the place untouched. But the house has rapidly devolved without her. It is as if, unbeknownst to Nick, her presence was beating back the creep of primordial filth, and now that she has gone the native bacteria, empty beer bottles, crumpled newspapers, sticky marks and sink stubble sense their occupying enemy has withdrawn. At first they crawled out slowly, sniffing the air, blinking and timid in the light—a coffee ring here, a toilet-seat dribble there. But now that they know the coast is clear, the agents of filth are laying waste to the place, shouting at each other, getting drunk and rioting in plain view.

  The mess is a mockery of his authority. He knows he should hire a cleaner now that Velma’s gone, but somehow he can’t bring himself to do so. Hiring a cleaner would mean having a stranger in the house, and having a stranger in the house would mean showing someone around, and showing someone around would mean explaining why none of the people who should be here—who clearly resided in this large four-bedroom family home until very recently—are here any longer. He could make up a story about a death in the family, a cross-country trip for a wedding or a funeral, an event that he, as the man and the breadwinner, was unable to attend, but that wouldn’t entirely solve the problem. What if—he could barely bring himself to contemplate the thought without his stomach constricting into a rotted walnut—they never came back? What if he has to put the house on the market and move to a miserable downtown loft like Gray’s, with concrete floors, exposed ductwork and icy industrial lake views? No, he can’t get a cleaner. A cleaner would make the situation real. And it goes without saying that he can’t clean.