“That’s not true. I mean, I have some idea. And I appreciate it.”
“Good. So now we’ve gotten that out of the way, tell me what we’re asking for.”
“I can’t do it now,” Deuce said, sounding a little sulky. “I mean it don’t even feel right. Not after you …”
“Your window of opportunity is about to close in three minutes. And once I leave for this meeting, the last thing on my mind will be your hoopty Beemer and the indignity you’ll suffer having to come home on, gasp! Amtrak!”
“Dang, Robyn, that’s just cold.”
“I’m standing up from my desk now. About to head over to my meeting,” she warned, trying to keep the laugh out of her voice.
“That’s cool. Because I don’t even want you to think that I’m all about what I can get from you all the time.”
“Fine,” Robyn said cheerfully, standing up and grabbing her pen and pad for the meeting. “Well, you make sure and call us and let us know when you have your holiday plans, okay?”
“Okay,” Deuce said morosely. “Love you.”
“Love you, too,” Robyn said hanging up.
She wasn’t even halfway down the hall to the conference room when her phone chimed. She looked down, and there was a text message from Deuce. There were no words, just a single picture. Of a Range Rover SUV.
Laughing, Robyn shook her head and shoved open the door to the conference room, where Jamal, Kendrick Cruise and his counsel were waiting.
“Were you even ready to have this meeting, Robyn?” Jamal asked, his voice tight.
“Of course. I reviewed all the comparable contracts, and …”
“There are no comparables,” Jamal said between his teeth. “Did you read my notes?”
Kendrick Cruise and his attorney had just left the room and were probably not even a dozen steps away from the now shut conference room door, but Jamal hadn’t spared a second.
“What not…”
“In the body of the email that I sent telling you about this meeting.”
“I skimmed it, but …”
“You skimmed it.”
“Yes. I mean, I worked on Kendrick’s original contract back when he first signed, so I knew …”
“What did you know?” Jamal leaned back, folding his arms.
“That his demands for this new one were far out of line with what we’ve ever done for anyone who was re-upping on …”
“Yes. That’s true,” Jamal said. “You know why that is?”
“Because he’s getting greedy,” Robyn said matter-of-factly. “I mean, to ask for what amounts to a four-hundred percent increase in …”
“No, Robyn, he’s asking for that because he has a lawyer who understands what Kendrick is worth. The question is, do I? Because what you did in here doesn’t suggest to me that you know what it would mean to SE if Kendrick Cruise walked.
“That little Latin kid, whatshisname is one thing, but Kendrick Cruise, Robyn? You think we could afford to lose Kendrick Cruise?”
He had raised his voice. Loud enough to have people walking by outside look in through the glass to see who was getting reamed and for what.
“But I thought …”
“Did you see his numbers?”
Robyn swallowed. “I didn’t think …”
“You thought? Or you didn’t think? Which is it? Because the last I heard you were devising some grand scheme to have some new attorneys in here who would be responsible for bailing rappers out of jail and shit.
“D’you have anyone who reads all the sales numbers and draws up contracts that are commensurate with the actual value of the artists we’re contracting with? Because that would be great right about now. To have someone who understands what the hell it is that we do around here!”
“Jamal. You don’t have to …yell. I’m sorry. I …”
“Don’t be sorry, Robyn. Do your job! Until that happens, hells yeah I’ma yell.” Jamal pushed back his chair and gave her one last hard look before turning and shoving out of the room.
Robyn sat at the conference room table for a few minutes longer, too embarrassed to leave and face the stares of the associates—her associates, who worked under her—and too shaky in her knees to walk steadily. She had never heard Jamal shout at anyone before, let alone imagined that the someone would be her. If she had her iPad, she would remain in the conference room for the rest of the day or at least until the floor cleared out a little and there would be fewer of the witnesses to her humiliation still around.
As it was, she might want to hang out her until dark just to avoid meeting the mortified gazes of her staff. Staying all night even, might not be a bad idea, except that she had a family, and …
Shit!
Robyn sprang up from her chair, grabbing her things and hurrying back to her office. Checking her calendar, she saw that she was right. Today was the day.
She had forty minutes to get back to Jersey, so she and Chris could tour the preschool they would be sending Caity to in the spring.
Even with the benefit of a driver, there were some things out of Robyn’s control. Like New York City traffic. By the time she got to Short Hills— what was under the best of circumstances a thirty-minute drive—had taken three times as along and the appointment and tour were over.
She arrived just in time to see Chris and Caity exiting the school, holding her father’s hand as he walked her to his car. Wearing a blue-and-white pinafore dress, with white socks pulled up to her knees and black Mary Janes, Caity looked like a school-aged kid, and not the baby Robyn was used to thinking of her as. It almost seemed like she was walking differently too, more confidently, as though she understood the import of this new phase of her life and was trying hard to be a Big Girl.
Chris opened the back and helped Caity in, saying something to her as he did. Robyn couldn’t hear him but could tell from his face that he was probably praising Caity, congratulating her for doing so well. That kind of praise was crucial for their daughter because as a rule, she didn’t do well with strangers or strange new places, and this visit had been long-discussed as a test of her readiness.
They hadn’t ever sent her to a nursery like Riley and even Tracy did on occasion with Layla. Caity had been exclusively raised by them, by Robyn’s mom and in-home nannies. And now, Chris and Robyn had come to realize that it might have stunted her social development. She needed to be around other kids, and this preschool was going to be her ‘coming out’ so to speak. Touring it with her and seeing how she did was to be the final determinant about whether Caity was ready.
Watching for a moment from the backseat of the chauffeured car, Robyn took a breath and opened the door. Chris looked up and spotted her but didn’t acknowledge she was there. Face impassive, he continued the task of getting Caity strapped in. Robyn started toward him then changed her mind, getting back into her car and asking the driver to instead take her home.
She arrived before Chris and Caity pulled in, and rather than go inside, sat on the wide steps up to the front door, indifferent to the damage the rough-hewn stone would likely do to the seat of her pants. In her head, she prepared her apology to Chris, and to her daughter. And then she spent another few minutes rationalizing to herself.
The appointment had been set up weeks ago. She hadn’t been thinking about it because she and Chris had long ago prepared Caity and didn’t want to keep talking about it because they didn’t want her to be anxious. And she had been thrown out of whack by all the longer hours at work. She didn’t stay later, so she had taken to going in earlier, and she still hadn’t grown accustomed to keeping Chris Scaife hours, which meant being in the office no later than seven.
But in the final analysis, there were a million excuses, but no good reason she should have missed this milestone.
At the sound of a car, Robyn looked up, and her shoulders sagged when she saw a white Honda pull in, the gates automatically opening to admit the strange vehicle. Standing to see who it might be, Robyn was startled by
a sound behind her, and Felicity came bounding out of the house.
“Oh, hi, Mrs. Scaife,” she said. “I didn’t even know you were here. Mr. Scaife thought you’d meet him at the school.”
“I went over there, yes,” Robyn said, not wanting to admit she’d been too late.
Her eyes were still fixed on the white Honda when it came to a stop and Elaine Richards exited. Feeling a bolt of annoyance, Robyn took a breath and fixed her face in a smile.
Elaine Richards came toward her, poised to speak when the gates swung open again and this time, Chris’ car entered. All three women stopped and waited until the car came to a stop, and watched as Chris got out, then went to get Caity out of the back.
Stepping forward, Robyn held out her arms when her daughter climbed out of the car.
“Mommy,” she said, running toward her. “I went to my new school!”
“You did?” Lifting her, Robyn kissed her soft, brown cheek and nuzzled her.
Caity’s hair had been combed into two neat French braids, the ends pinned up primly. Mrs. Lawson’s work, no doubt.
“I’m so sorry I missed it,” she said pulling back a little and looking Caity in the eye. But she was also talking to Chris and wishing that Felicity and her mother weren’t witnesses to what should have been solely a family conversation.
“Felicity went to La Petite Ecole as well,” Elaine Richards said. “I loved it. You did too, didn’t you, Felicity?”
“Mom, I can’t remember that far back,” Felicity said, sounding exasperated.
“What did you think of it, Chris?” Elaine asked.
Robyn looked away from Caity, irritated that the woman was still even there, and that she was preempting the questions that Robyn as his wife and Caity’s mother had a right to ask.
“It was good,” he said. “Caity liked it. Very … colorful.”
Elaine laughed. “Right? A little over-stimulating for us adults, I think. But they say it’s good for young developing brains and all that.”
Robyn looked at her directly for the first time and noticed that her curly dark hair was brushed, and she seemed to have recently gotten a haircut. And there was a little bit of a lip-stain on her full lips.
“Well, I think I’ll get this big girl inside,” Robyn said, looking at Caity again. “So she can tell me all about her adventure.”
Just then, a ringtone sounded, and everyone looked around, trying to decide whose phone among them had rung. It rang twice more before Robyn realized it was hers and put Caity down to get her phone from her purse on the steps.
It was Jamal.
She looked at it as it rang twice more, and everyone looked at her looking at it.
“Excuse me,” she said finally, grabbing her purse and heading inside, deep into the foyer so she could speak without being overheard. She had already been yelled at with an audience once today.
“Jamal?” She answered, but it was too late, the call had gone to voicemail.
Turning to go back outside, she paused a few feet from the open front door and watched as Chris and Elaine Richards conversed, their voices too low for her to hear them. Caity had gone to her father’s side and was leaning against his leg while Chris held her hand. Felicity was already in her mother’s car, and was looking down at something, probably her phone. Chris and Elaine Richards were, for all intents and purposes, alone.
The conversation only went on a few more seconds, then Chris nodded at her, Elaine Richards smiled at him and gave Caity a quick smile and wave and headed for her car. Chris turned and caught Robyn watching, but his expression didn’t change as he made his way toward the house, still holding Caity’s hand.
“Chris, I am so …”
“Forget it,” he said, cutting her off. “The whole tour only took about a half hour anyway. And Caity liked it so I think we’re all good. You liked it, right baby?” He looked down at their daughter.
“Uh huh,” Caity nodded.
“Good,” Robyn said looking from one of them to the other. “Let’s go change out of these fancy clothes and go see what baby brother is doing.” She extended her hand for Caity to take.
She did, but with a slight hesitation, as though she sensed that something more charged, more momentous was happening between her parents than she understood; and that the transfer of her hand from her father to mother might mean something more than it appeared.
“Can we … talk after I get her all squared away?” Robyn asked.
“About what?” Chris asked.
Robyn looked at him and opened her eyes slightly wider, signaling that she didn’t want to get into anything in front of Caity.
“A few things. Deuce called. Needs a new car. Then there was something at work I wanted to bounce off you. And then I wondered if we could talk about Elaine Richards and why she seems to be such a fixture around here lately.”
“Well, this’ll be a short conversation,” Chris said. “Because one, no way is Deuce getting a new car. Two, your work is something you should talk about with people at work; and three, I’m not up for listening to anymore bullshit about the ‘something’ you think you see in Elaine Richard’s eyes.”
“Christopher!”
Robyn glanced down at Caity, stunned not only that he would curse in front of their daughter, but that he would speak to her in that cold, dismissive way at all. She messed up, she missed the preschool appointment, but this felt disproportionate to her offense. Something else was definitely going on.
Chris gave her one last look and then instead of going inside, headed back out to his car, got in, and left.
10
Robyn was not the kind of woman who made it easy for you to fight with her. And if he did, she had a way of looking at him that made Chris feel like he was being inherently unreasonable. The worst part was, he wasn’t even sure; maybe he was being inherently unreasonable. She worked. And the work she did was demanding, and it sometimes didn’t coincide with family events, or helping him through his burgeoning existential crisis. So what? That had been the nature of his work as well, and Robyn had rarely if ever given him grief about it, except when she thought it compromised his health.
She had never been the ‘you-don’t-spend-enough-time-with-me-and-the-kids’ type of woman. She had rolled with the punches and rearranged and accommodated and just gotten on with it. So maybe it wasn’t fair to expect that she do those things for him. Maybe he was the one who needed to get his shit together.
He left the house with no clear intention about where he was headed, but he drove into town and parked near Main. And once parked there, he walked the stores, this time confident that even without Tiny, no one would bother him. He didn’t look for it but came upon the storefront with the word ‘Chakra’ written on the door. And underneath that, ‘Yoga and Meditation Center’. Elaine’s place.
He paused, pushed the door and went in. A young woman was sitting behind a desk, and smiled when he came in, her face not betraying any recognition, which immediately set Chris at ease.
“Hi!” she said brightly. “Can I help you?”
“Just looking around,” Chris said.
“Sure. You interested in meditation practice, yoga, or …”
“Neither,” Chris said.
The young woman laughed but looked a little uneasy. “Oh. Well, it’s not for everybody …”
“I’m a friend of Elaine’s,” Chris added.
The young woman heaved a clearly relieved sigh. “Elaine, of course. Yes. She’s not here now, but I can tell her … oh!”
She looked over Chris’ shoulder and he turned, just as Elaine came through the door. Seeing him, her face opened into a smile.
“Chris,” she said. “I never …” She put a hand to her chest. “I guess I thought you were being polite when you said you might stop by.”
She smiled again. This time it was wider, warmer, prettier.
“I don’t get how you thought it would be cool to just leave, after the conversation we had about Kendrick’s co
ntract,” Jamal was saying.
Robyn held the phone away from her ear for a moment and sighed, keeping an eye on where Caity and Landyn were a few yards away from her on the lawn, sitting on a blanket and playing with colored blocks.
It was a little chilly for playing outside, but she had put layers on them both and come out nevertheless because after Chris left, inside the house felt strangely stifling.
“I can revise it from here at home. And that’s what I intend to do. I wouldn’t just leave you high-and-dry. I get that this is important, and …”
“Well, that’s what I called to let you know. I lobbed it over to Rebecca.”
“What?”
“Robyn, you were out of contact for over an hour after we talked. I didn’t have time to try to figure out if you were somewhere pouting. I need to get this done and get another offer over to his people as soon as possible.”
“Pouting?”
“Yes, pouting. You’ve been doing a lot of that lately. And to be honest, the only reason I haven’t made an issue of it is because of Chris, and because your track record tells me you can straighten yourself out if you want to. So, that’s the question: do you want to?”
“Jamal, I think you’re being incredibly unfair. I’ve consistently produced high-quality work for SE. And the transition from Frank’s leadership has been seamless, and …”
“Seamless? Are you kidding me?”
Caity was holding both Landyn’s hands and pulling him to his feet. He was looking up at his big sister with a mixture of excitement and apprehension.
“Caity. Caity, don’t tug his arms, sweetheart. Let him sit down,” Robyn called.
Caity abruptly released her brother’s hands and Landyn fell suddenly onto his bum and then toppled backward with a thud. Robyn grimaced, waiting for the cry she was sure would come. But thankfully, Landyn just turned over onto his stomach, got on all fours and righted himself again.
Robyn exhaled in relief.
“Do you not have time to have this conversation?” Jamal asked. “Because we can postpone it for when you come in to the office tomorrow. And maybe talk about whether we should make some changes.”
Four: Stories of Marriage Page 45