A Better Man

by Leah McLaren

  As Gray’s favourite associate, Allison has been giving Maya’s case extra-special treatment. Officially she knows nothing of the relationship between her client/colleague and her boss—they have never spoken of anything romantic at the office—but Maya realizes that people must be talking. Especially after the assault. A few of her colleagues said they were sorry, but most looked at her with wary eyes, as though she were the one who’d thrown the punch, not Nick.

  Allison stands up and takes Maya’s hand, half shaking and half squeezing it. “How are you?” she says, looking at Maya deeply and directly in a way that makes her want to cover her face in shame. Allison is twenty-six and wears her glossy brown hair in a long serpent-like side braid. Maya finds this somehow unsettling, though she can’t put her finger on why.

  “Fine,” she says, a little more coolly than she intends. “Now, what do we need to go over before court?”

  Allison takes out the statement of claim and reads it to Maya point by point. At this stage, Maya feels she could recite the document verbatim. When they finish, Allison leans back into the bench and scratches her neck thoughtfully, eyes still fixed on the open file.

  “I don’t think we’re going to have a problem with the custody demands,” she says. “It’s just whether he wants to be fair about the money.”

  “Has his lawyer given you any indication of his position?” asks Maya, not for the first time.

  Allison shakes her head bleakly. “No, it’s really strange. In fact, I’m not even one hundred percent sure he has a lawyer. He didn’t submit a statement of counter-claim to court in advance either, which is odd. I think you should brace yourself.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, who knows what he’s planning to spring on us.”

  An icy finger runs down Maya’s spine. She blinks and shakes her head, as if to startle away a fly. Focus. “Let’s hope he’s just disorganized,” she says. Though somehow, knowing Nick, she doubts it.

  Two hours later, their case is announced over the PA and Maya and Allison enter the courtroom. They take their seats on the wooden benches at the front on the left side. The windowless room has a low-tiled ceiling and a carpet that matches the mood—a dull and soul-sucking beige. Several clerks and security guards mill about. On the other side of the room, sitting alone, eyes firmly fixed on his smartphone, is a middle-aged bald man in a navy suit. Maya recognizes him as a senior partner from a competing firm. A stone-cold killer famed for being the divorce lawyer of one of the country’s most powerful media barons. This must be Nick’s man. But where is Nick?

  Maya switches off her phone and sits on her hands. Everyone stands as the Honourable Mr. Justice Juan Hernandez enters, blinking around the courtroom through a pair of bifocals. He looks about sixty, short and portly. Maya has never been before him, but she has heard he is divorced himself. Never a good sign, since he may harbour lingering bitterness toward ex-wives. Allison looks up from her files and gives her client a pointed, if not terribly convincing, look that says, It’ll all be fine. She grips the bench and feels the carpet sway beneath her.

  The judge flips through the papers in front of him, then pushes them aside with undisguised impatience. He takes off his bifocals and looks at Nick’s lawyer.

  “I have read the statement from the claimant but have nothing from the respondent. Is your client planning to grace us with his presence today?”

  “He’s otherwise engaged,” says the lawyer. “But he has read Ms. Wakefield’s claim and drafted his response to be presented to the court by me.”

  The judge coughs, clearly annoyed. “So he was too busy to attend his own divorce hearing?”

  The lawyer stands and buttons his suit jacket. In his right hand is a sheet of paper. “I think you’ll understand his position once you read this. May I approach the bench?”

  Judge Hernandez nods his assent and replaces his spectacles, shoving the frame back up his nose with a short sausage finger. The court is silent as he reads the proffered document. Finally, he turns the paper over and, finding nothing on the opposite side, sighs heavily. He takes a sip from the steaming mug on his desk and then directs his gaze at Maya.

  “Mrs. Wakefield,” he says, “I think you will be very surprised at the nature of your husband’s response to your statement of claim. Are you happy for me to read it out before the court, or would you like a moment to look at it privately?”

  Allison turns to Maya and whispers in her ear. “Do you want a minute?” she says.

  Maya realizes she must look dazed. When she stands up to address the judge, her legs feel boneless. “I’m fine. Please go ahead.” Somehow this seems better than reading it silently while the entire courtroom watches.

  “All right, then,” says the judge. He clears his throat in an almost theatrical way before reading out the note in a colourless monotone.

  “‘In response to my wife’s statement of claim, I would like to grant Maya all our family assets both hard and soft, including all jointly owned real estate, art and furniture. Now that our marriage is over, I have no further use for them. With her permission, I will retain my portion of my commercial production business, my car and twenty-five thousand dollars cash so I can put down a deposit on and furnish a small apartment. I’m also happy to meet her demands for ongoing support. I would, however, ask to retain shared custody of our children, Isla and Foster. I am not proposing that they live with me half the time, but I would like to make myself available for regular child care (in addition to their nanny, Velma) during the week when Maya is busy with work. Additionally, I would like to have them for sleepovers every other weekend and some holidays, once I have set up a new home.

  “‘I would also like to apologize to Maya, while she is still my wife, for my deceptive, erratic and at times confounding behaviour over the past year and longer. I am aware of my failings as a husband and father. I know that I have behaved badly, and for that I am now paying a heavy price. I want, more than anything I can think of, to ensure that things are as equitable as they can be between us. I may not be able to keep my family physically and emotionally intact, but at the very least I can keep them financially whole. I would ask the court—and Maya—to accept my wishes for a financial settlement in her favour without question. The time for fighting is over. Yours very sincerely, Nicholas Wakefield.’”

  There is silence in the courtroom after the judge finishes. Maya stares straight ahead, her face numb and immobile, as if she’s just seen the dentist.

  “Mrs. Wakefield?” the judge is saying. “You do understand what this means? Your husband is giving you everything, without question. Do you have any response to this extraordinary request? Any response at all?”

  Allison nudges Maya, her eyes wide with astonishment and the beginning of delight. Maya recognizes the expression: it’s the face of a divorce lawyer who’s just watched her opponent give in without a fight.

  Maya opens her mouth but finds she can’t speak. The connection between her brain and her mouth has been severed.

  Allison jumps in. “Your Honour, my client is in a state of shock. Do you mind if we allow her to absorb the news before responding?”

  The judge shakes his head. “I’m afraid we’re on a tight schedule here. Does your client have anything to say?”

  Maya looks up and nods. “Yes,” she says.

  “Yes, what, Mrs. Wakefield?”

  “Yes, it’s fine. I won’t fight.”

  The judge doesn’t smile. He takes out his gavel and thwacks the desk in front of him. “All right, then. The settlement will be drawn up according to Mr. Wakefield’s stated request. Consider your divorce decree granted. All you and Mr. Wakefield need to do is sign the final papers. Court dismissed.”

  She finds him at the bar. Not quite slumped but hulking. Just another heartbroken middle-aged male hunched over a double Manhattan in a heavy-bottomed glass. He hasn’t bothered to take off his trench coat and it rides up his broad back, straining and creased under the arms. Eventually he ord
ers another with a swirl of his fingers. She looks at the bartender’s concerned face and can see it’s far from his first.

  “Make that two,” she says. Gray jumps at her voice.

  By the time he swivels around to look at her, he’s smiling. Even now, that beneficent, basset-hound grin. A smile that will forgive her anything.

  “Are we celebrating your freedom?” he says as she takes her place on the stool next to him, suddenly aware of a new elasticity in her movements—the energy of the coiled spring unsprung.

  “Of a sort,” she says, popping the whole cherry in her mouth.

  He laughs as she plucks the stem from her lips, perfectly knotted, and hands it to him as a gift. “Your old party trick.”

  “You can take the girl out of the kegger, but you can’t … oh, never mind.”

  They sip their drinks in silence until Maya feels the caramel whisky burn the back of her throat.

  “Think you’ll keep the house?” she says finally.

  Gray wipes his nose on a cocktail napkin and shoves it in his pocket. “Might as well,” he says. “I can always rent it out.”

  “Real estate’s never a bad investment in this town.”

  “You betcha.”

  He swivels his head toward her and she notices his jaw wobbling for a moment on his neck before coming to a quavery stop. The bobblehead-doll effect of day drinking. “You know, you may not want to hear this right now, but you really were it for me,” he says. “You were the Big Thing. The prize. You probably don’t want to believe that, but it’s true.”

  Maya wrinkles her nose and shakes her head.

  Gray smacks his hand down on the bar so hard it makes both their cocktails jump. She sees the smile clip off the bartender’s face. He starts to walk over but sees her smiling and retreats.

  “What’s so wrong with that?” Gray says, a little more challengingly than she’d like.

  “Nothing. It just makes me feel weird. Sort of thingy.”

  “Thingy?” His lids are heavy. He keeps having to remember to pull them open so he can see.

  “What I mean is that it makes me feel a bit like a possession instead of a person. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. I’m glad I found you here, because I wanted to say thanks for everything. You’ve been incredibly kind to me and the twins. We’ll never forget that. No matter what.”

  “So you’re moving out.” He does not pose this as a question.

  “I’m going to take a bit of time off. Take the twins to visit my parents’ farm for a while.”

  “They’re back from the Solomon Islands?”

  “Yeah, but they ship out again to ride horses through the Andes next month. It was our only window of opportunity.”

  Gray snorts, nose half in his glass, as if he’s trying to inhale the dregs. When he speaks there is a new flatness in his voice. “So you think I’ve been ‘incredibly kind’? That’s funny.” His laugh is dead. “I’ve been a prick of the highest order.”

  Maya stares at the floor and waits for him to continue.

  “I could’ve just let Nick stay with you—a ‘changed man.’ That’s what he thought he was. Kept saying how different he felt about everything. How it was all new and good. But I couldn’t let that happen.” He shakes his head heavily. Maya has the distinct feeling he’s speaking to an imaginary audience that may or may not include her. “Nope, I couldn’t. And you know why?” He nods his head lazily in her direction.

  “Why?”

  “Because I was sick of him beating me. Better marks, better athlete, cooler job. Then he gets the girl too. It wasn’t fucking fair. And just when I saw an opportunity to get in there and win something back, just when I could taste it, the fucker takes my plan—a plan that was designed to backfire on his jaded, cynical ass, by the way—and turns it into some kind of spiritual epiphany. He actually changes. He gets better at the very moment in the story when he should be getting worse. He should be bottoming out and getting his kneecaps broken in a ditch, and instead he goes out and claims the fucking jackpot.” Gray’s eyes are burning. His lips are wet and bitten.

  “But how?” she says, not understanding. “Wasn’t he just going to continue on with his life? With our life?”

  “Don’t you see?” Gray is exasperated now, determined to lay it out for her. “He was supposed to lose everything because of his callousness, but instead I accidentally gave him the ultimate gift. I inadvertently showed him a way to want what he already had.”

  There is silence as Maya absorbs what Gray has said. She is perfectly still.

  “So this is all just about you and him?” she says as the narrative finally becomes clear in her head. “Some kind of exaggerated collegiate pissing match?”

  Gray shakes his head. “Nah, I really was in love with you. I just … I guess I also had a point to prove.”

  “Which was what, exactly?”

  He smiles at her again, but not in the old way. A new smile. He looks amused, like a parent chortling at the innocence of a child. “I wanted to win,” he says. “I just wanted to beat him once and for all.”

  CHAPTER 26

  The road is flat now. The Kalahari stretches west into Namibia and across the South African border, stretching out over the bottom of Botswana, a country of endless skies and angry-sounding plants: camel thorn, blackthorn, devil’s claw and prickly pear. Nick is unprepared for this place. The beauty is almost brain-crushing, like a magnificent drug that is sometimes amplified, sometimes receding to the background, but always there at the fringes of his consciousness. He has heard people speak about the “energy of the desert” before and dismissed them as New Age fruitcakes—Burning Man acidheads or Joshua Tree stoners—but he gets it now. There is something in the sameness, the unnerving horizon, the sun’s relentless glare that rises to a magical crescendo. The landscape hums—this is the only way he can describe it. The desert is like a vibration that becomes a sound, and the thrum of it fuels him in a way he cannot understand but is grateful for. He knows better than to question it. Each day he packs up his tent, throws it onto the truck, and cycles fast and flat along the dead-straight roads across this country—past its undulating red dunes, spiny trees and ancient dried lakebeds where life used to be. The animals here are survival geniuses—jackals, springboks, snakes and spotted hyenas. They get their moisture from food, not water, and stare at the tour riders and their sloshing bottles with unvarnished contempt.

  Nick’s body has changed. He has lost so much weight, he barely recognizes himself in the dusty windows of the occasional passing bus. A week ago he took a selfie on his phone and it startled him: a dark, craggy stranger in a dusty bandana leaning his bike on a cactus tree. He does not take another.

  He rides and he sleeps and he eats and then he rides some more.

  This morning he takes it easy, spinning his legs out in high gear, his toe clips like gerbils dashing in their wheels. He stops at the lunch truck—a dusty canteen bus by the side of the road with folding tables swaying under the weight of enormous plastic coolers of water and fluorescent sports drinks. He drinks the orange stuff now because he’s learned his body needs it. The sugars keep his glucose levels stable and the salt prevents his calves from cramping in the night. Nick has learned how his body works, because for the first time in his life, he’s actually using it.

  He nods hello to James the cook, a bearded vegan from Portland, Oregon, and sets about making himself six peanut butter sandwiches. He eats them fast and silently, staring out at the dunes, feeling the blistering wind, which he knows (but almost can’t believe) is changing the shape of the landscape grain by grain by grain.

  James the cook doesn’t talk much, so Nick is surprised when he hops off the truck and saunters over to where he sits, on a campstool in the shade. “You’ve got a visitor,” he says.

  Nick raises his head, half a crust still hanging from his beard. “A what?”

  “A visitor.”

  “Impossible.”

  “Apparently not. Just spoke to the b
oys at camp.” He holds up a walkie-talkie.

  Nick pulls out his phone. No bars. He’ll have to sweet-talk one of the guides into letting him use the satellite phone to call Velma and check in with the kids again. He hasn’t had decent reception for two weeks. Not since Tanzania. He’s not even sure why he’s still carrying his phone around. The illusion of connection. He gets up and wipes down his bike with a spare rag. Checks the chain and brake pads, squeezes the tires.

  He gets back on the bike and he rides.

  His body is a rocket with legs, impervious to strain or heat, an object in motion that will stay in motion, travelling in a straight line until something intercepts it. He is a man on a mission to nowhere. A still point in a fast-moving body.

  It’s fifty kilometres to camp, the longest leg of the day, but Nick does it faster than the previous thirty. The bike drives itself. It is as if he is being sucked forward by an enormous cartoon magnet—a blur of flesh on a desert straightaway.

  All at once, camp materializes out of the sand, two buses rising like mammoths on the horizon. They quaver in the heat and threaten to disappear. Nick goes flat out, knees pumping, fleeing mirages and black magic. Sweat gathers under his arms and legs, drying in the wind before it can drip. He can make out the rest of camp now—the small tent city in the field behind the buses, the tarp for shade, the crew mechanic sitting at his post. It all looks the same, but it can’t be.

  He gets off his bike and walks. Stumbles over a tumbleweed and catches his breath. He waves at the mechanic, who points behind the gear truck. Nick drops his bike where he stands and trips forward, choking on the hot wind in his throat. Then he pauses, a hand on each knee, and breathes deep.

  Here she is. Sitting under the shade tarp on a folding chair, staring out at the red sand field, a paperback on her lap. A straw-blonde ponytail hanging down from a cotton sunhat. A T-shirt. That familiar galaxy of freckles.