A Woman's Place

by Barbara Delinsky

  I leveled my shoulders. “I’m proud of me, too.”

  “Is Dennis?”

  My shoulders didn’t stay quite as level. “Hard to tell. He doesn’t say so in as many words.”

  “How’s his own work?”

  “I wish I knew, but he doesn’t say much about that, either.” I hesitated. It seemed wrong to be complaining, what with Connie so sick. But she had always been my sounding board, and, damn it, she wasn’t gone yet. “I don’t understand it sometimes. You’d think he would want to toss ideas around. I may not have a business degree like he does, but I do have some sense of what works and what doesn’t. But he keeps everything to himself. Like it’s a power play. Like he won’t risk my shooting him down. Fat chance of that. For years and years I’ve held my tongue when I doubted something he did.”

  “You should have spoken up.”

  “He would have hated it when I was right and blamed me when I was wrong, no winning for me, nothing for him but wounded male pride.” I smiled. “Anyway, Brody thinks well of the group he met with last week. With any luck, Dennis will convince them he’s the man who can gather the backers to keep them afloat.”

  Connie didn’t argue with my reference to luck that time. Nor did she remind me that, while she wished ever more for me, I was already successful enough in my own right not to need a penny of what Dennis earned. We both took the kind of comfort from that that only people who had once been over-board without a lifejacket could feel.

  “I do want to see Dennis succeed,” she said.

  “So do I.”

  “I’m not ready to die.”

  “I’m not ready to let you go.”

  She gave me another one of those woman-to-woman looks then, and, bound to her as I would never be to another living soul, I felt such a surge of love and grief that my eyes filled and my throat went tight. Beyond love and grief was admiration. Connie Grant was mulish. Hard as life had been, she had always pushed on. Often, now, she was so weak she could barely lift an arm, so nauseated she could barely eat, so riddled with pain she could barely think. Still she refused to die.

  “You’re a stubborn woman,” I said when I could speak.

  “Well, what choice do I have?” she countered. “The alternative is—what—defeatism? But then you end up worse. You don’t put dinner on the table by walking away from the kitchen. Your sister never learned that. She could have made something of herself, if she hadn’t been so bent on finding the quickest solution. Want a tan? Stand in a booth. Want money? Marry rich. I thought she would have seen me working hard and learned by example. Not Rona. She wants it bigger and better and faster. Well, sometimes that isn’t possible. Sometimes the best you can do is the best you can do.”

  She sank back, momentarily spent. Her eyes were closed, her breathing shallow. While I watched, fearful at first, then calmer, she rested and regrouped. When she opened her eyes, she was mellow. “Claire, Claire, you’re like my own mother Kate. She was resourceful. Determined.” Her eyes took on a faraway cast, her mouth a fond quirk. “There was a story. I’d nearly forgotten. Sweet Kate and her pearls.”

  I had never heard about any pearls. “Grandmother Kate was dirt poor.”

  “Poor in things, not thoughts. Her pearls were moments—one beautiful one and another and another, strung together on a fine, strong thread. Bits of sand, well, she just brushed them aside and forgot them. Some people, she said, couldn’t see the pearls through the sand, or only had the strength of character to push away sand from a few pearls and ended up with chokers. Your grandmother Kate’s strand was quite long. Yours will be, too. Rona, well, Rona won’t apply herself long enough to one thing to create a pearl. Me,” she sighed, “I’m still working at it. Seeing the children, seeing you—they’re good times, Claire. Better than morphine, you know? You’ll come see me again soon, won’t you, baby?”

  The story of Grandmother Kate’s pearls was one of the more philosophical ones my mother had shared. I thought about it through the flight home Thursday, thought of my own pearls—wonderful family moments, so many I couldn’t count, moments of pleasure and pride at work—and suddenly the dislocation I had been feeling all week intensified. I couldn’t get home fast enough.

  My plane landed on time. The driver was there to meet me on time. Incredibly, my impatience grew. I had been away too long and needed to be home, needed to touch the children, needed to talk with Dennis. I needed to do all those hated things like washing dishes, folding laundry, vacuuming carpets, making beds. Home was my anchor. I needed to be moored.

  When I arrived at the house, it was five-thirty, just when I had told the children to expect me. I was surprised that they weren’t waiting outside—two beautiful little pearls of my own, Johnny hanging off the front porch rail, Kikit playing hopscotch along the gently curved walk. It was warm out and still light. Dennis should have had them picked up and home half an hour before.

  Sure enough, his car was parked by the garage at the side of the house. I went to the front door with my luggage, and had to use my key, another surprise. Whoever arrived home first usually unlocked both doors for the children, who were then in and out until dusk.

  “Hello?” I called.

  I waited for the answering shrieks that usually hailed my arrival from the kitchen straight ahead, or the upstairs, but got none, and the silence was the least of what unsettled me. Aside from my own bags at the very bottom, the stairs leading to the second floor were clean. There were none of the sneakers, backpacks, sweaters, and other miscellaneous items that usually gathered while I was gone.

  “Hey, you guys, I’m home.”

  “I hear,” Dennis said, materializing in the doorway of the study on my right. He was holding a bourbon on-the-rocks. It looked to be his first, his eyes were that clear and focused.

  Maternal instinct—personal instinct—no matter, I felt a fast unease. “What’s wrong?” I asked into the silence, knowing that something was and fearing, fearing—Kikit sick, Johnny injured, Connie gone. “What’s wrong?” I repeated, whispering this time.

  Dennis put his shoulder to the door frame and studied his drink. When he looked back at me, his expression was odd.

  “Is it my mother?”

  He shook his head.

  “Then the kids.”

  “They’re fine.”

  “Where are they?”

  “At my parents’ house.”

  My in-laws lived just over the New Hampshire line, an easy thirty minutes away. I could understand their helping Dennis with the children while I was gone, though not at the very time I was coming home. Johnny and Kikit were as anxious to see me as I was to see them. “Should I go pick them up?”

  “No.” His voice was as odd as his expression, colder than usual, firmer than usual. I had a sudden flash to another discussion, one we’d had several months ago. That one had started with spit and fire before reaching the colder than usual, firmer than usual stage in which Dennis had suggested we separate.

  “Why not?” I asked now, but cautiously.

  He took a drink.

  “Dennis?” I didn’t like the things I was thinking or feeling. I had argued against a separation that last time, just as I had other times before that, but he looked more self-assured now.

  The doorbell rang.

  My eyes flew behind me to the door, then back to Dennis. “Who is it?” I asked when he showed no surprise.

  He gestured with the glass for me to open the door, which I quickly did. A pleasant-looking, casually dressed, middle-aged man stood there.

  “Claire Raphael?”

  “Yes.”

  He handed me an ordinary business envelope. No sooner had I taken it when he turned and started back down the walk.

  The envelope had my name on the front. The return address read the Office of the Constable of Essex County.

  I closed the door. With an uneasy glance at Dennis, I opened the envelope.

  two

  The heading proclaimed the paper a Temporary Ord
er issued by the Probate and Family Court Department of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Essex Division. Dennis’s name was typed in as the plaintiff, my name as the defendant.

  Bewildered, I glanced up at him. He looked totally placid. I read on.

  Pending a hearing on the merits or until further order of the court, it is ordered that:

  The plaintiff/father is to have the temporary custody of John and Clara Kate Raphael, the minor children of the parties.

  The wife is to vacate the marital premises for the weekend beginning forthwith and up until noon on Monday, October 28, at which time all parties are to appear to show cause why the order for temporary custody and vacate should or should not continue.

  At said time a hearing will be held to determine temporary child custody and support payment in advance of a final divorce settlement.

  The form was dated that day, Thursday, October 24, and signed by E. Warren Selwey, Justice of the Probate and Family Court.

  I stared at the paper for the longest time. All I could think was that Dennis was playing a sick joke to drive home the fact that he hated my traveling. But the paper looked real—embossed letterhead, blanks filled by an honest-to-goodness typewriter that, I checked, left marks on the back—and Dennis wasn’t laughing.

  “What is this?” I asked.

  “It should be clear.”

  “It looks like a court order.”

  “Smart girl.”

  “A court order?”

  “Right in one.”

  “Dennis,” I protested and held out the paper. “What is it?”

  Dennis was a showman. What he lacked in business sense, he made up for in good looks and charm and the kind of confident smiles people gravitated toward. As his wife, I knew there was a certain unsureness behind the facade.

  At least, there usually was. This time the confidence seemed real. It gave me a chill.

  “I’ve filed for divorce,” he said. “The court has given me temporary custody of the kids and ordered you out of this house.”

  Definitely a joke. “You’re kidding.”

  “No. That paper makes it official.”

  I shook my head. It made no sense. “Why are the children at your parents’ house? It’s a school night.”

  “My parents live close enough. Having supper with them is a novelty for the kids, and it gives you time to be served and clear out. I don’t want them upset.”

  “If you don’t want them upset,” I said with a hard swallow and held up the paper, “what is this all about?”

  He pushed away from the doorjamb, less patient now. “For Christ’s sake, Claire, it’s right there. I’m suing you for divorce. I repeat. Suing you for divorce. Why won’t that register?”

  My voice rose. I was getting scared. “Because it isn’t the way two rational people who have been married for fifteen good years behave. People like that approach each other and talk.”

  “I tried. You wouldn’t listen. Three times I mentioned divorce. I’ll tell you the exact dates if you want. The last time was in August. I said we should separate when the kids got back to school.”

  He had been upset. A deal he’d been working on had just fallen through. At the same time, compounding his humiliation, the second quarter figures for WickerWise had come through looking better than ever. So he had threatened to move out. He did that when he was upset, or humiliated, or frustrated. It was part of the pattern.

  “I didn’t think you were serious.”

  “I was. Very.”

  “Dennis.”

  “Claire,” he mocked me and settled against the doorjamb, calm again. It was the calm that got to me, I think. It suggested that Dennis truly had the upper hand here. It put a distance between us, made his voice cold. “I want a divorce. Since you haven’t been willing to hear me, I had to resort to this.”

  My thoughts were flying every which way—questions, fears, long-term meanings hitting each other. I struggled to slow them, to separate them, to think sentence by sentence, one step at a time. Even then I was breathless. “Okay. If you’re serious about separating, we can talk about a trial something, but what is this about custody of Johnny and Kikit? And an order to vacate?”

  “I want the house. I want alimony. I want sole custody of the kids.”

  “What?”

  “You aren’t a responsible mother.”

  “What?”

  “Good God, Claire, do you want me to spell it out?”

  “Yes, I want you to spell it out.” I was getting angry. Enough was enough. “I’m a perfectly responsible mother. What in the world could you say to a judge to convince him I’m not?”

  “Between your mother and your work, you’re in a state of personal crisis. The children are suffering.”

  “Suffering how?”

  “You’re never here, for one thing. For another, when you are here, you’re so preoccupied with your work you forget the kids.”

  “Kikit’s ballet class. We’ve been over that a dozen times. The store lost electricity. The clocks stopped.”

  “What about the parent-teacher conference you missed?”

  It was a minute before I realized what he meant. “The meeting with Mrs. Stanetti? I didn’t miss it. We had to reschedule twice, and then we got our signals crossed.”

  He held up a hand. “She was waiting. You didn’t show. And then there’s the accident you had last month. The car was totaled. It was a miracle the kids weren’t killed.”

  “Dennis, that accident wasn’t my fault. I was hit by a man who was having a heart attack. The police agree. The insurance company agrees.”

  “The judge doesn’t. He agrees with me that if you’d been more alert you could have swerved out of the way and not risked your kids’ lives, speaking of which, Kikit had a whopper of an allergy attack while you were gone.”

  My insides lurched. “When? To what?”

  “Tuesday night. To the frozen casserole you left. What did you put in it, Claire? If anyone is supposed to know what Kikit can and cannot eat, it’s you—and that’s not the worst of it. There was no Epi-pen. You must have left it in Cleveland.”

  “I didn’t. I packed it. It was right in her bag.”

  “No, it wasn’t. I looked. There was nothing there and nothing here. I had to rush her to the hospital. She was wheezing and swelling up the whole way. By the time we got there she was nearly blue.”

  I pressed my chest. More than anything else, this took my breath. Medicine or no medicine, any attack Kikit had was serious. “There was antihistamine and a spare Epi-pen. I always keep extras.”

  He shook his head. “We looked everywhere.”

  “It’s in the basement refrigerator. I’ve told you that. Is she all right?”

  “They stabilized her, but it took a while. She was crying for you, only you weren’t there.”

  I felt a swift fury. “I was only as far away as the phone. Why wasn’t I called?”

  “I tried to call. You had the cell phone turned off, and your sister’s line was busy.”

  “Then later. Or the next day. I used my phone. It was on. And Rona’s line couldn’t have been busy that whole time. The operator would have cut in if you’d said it was an emergency—or you could have called Connie’s hospital room—or the nurses’ station. I left all those numbers on the board. You could have reached me if you’d wanted to. I’d have flown home right away.”

  “Would you have? You’ve been gone thirty-four days of the last ninety. You love being on the road. Face it, you do.”

  “I don’t. Especially not when one of the kids is sick. You actually counted how many days I’ve been gone? How many of those were spent visiting my mother?” I would have counted myself, if I hadn’t been so upset. Poor Kikit. I knew how her attacks went. There would have been several hours of panic, followed by a swift physical recovery. The emotional one wouldn’t be nearly so swift. Until we identified what had triggered the attack, she would be afraid to eat.

  And I hadn’t been there. Sh
e must have thought I had deserted her.

  Furious at Dennis for keeping me in the dark, I ran into the kitchen and lifted the phone to call her at my in-laws. Dennis pressed the disconnect button before the call could go through.

  “Don’t.” I tried to remove his hand. “I need to talk to Kikit.”

  “You need,” he said with deadly slowness and fingers like lead, “to take your things and leave. That’s a court order, Claire. If you resist it, I’ll call the cops.”

  “You wouldn’t.”

  “I would,” he said, and what I saw in his face as I stood there, so close, made me believe him. He was my husband. He knew me more intimately than any other man. But his face held no warmth, no fondness, nothing to suggest I was special to him in any way. I could have been a stranger to whom he had taken an instant dislike, or someone who had offended him and against whom he was taking revenge.

  Just then, he was a stranger to me, too. “You’re scaring me, Dennis.”

  “Just leave.”

  “This is my home. Where am I supposed to go?”

  “You’ll figure something out,” he said with an odd expectancy.

  I waited for him to go on. When he didn’t, I asked, “Like what?” It was like he knew something I didn’t, like he really wanted to tell me what it was.

  He raised an arm to the wall over the phone and gave me a slanted smile. “Kikit told me about your run-in with the window washer.”

  “Run-in?”

  “When you came prancing in here in your prettiest Victoria’s Secret bra and panties while he was doing that huge picture window over there.”

  I didn’t know what that had to do with anything, still I said, “I turned around and ran back out the minute I saw him. I was mortified.”

  “You looked good and you knew it.”

  “You think I did it on purpose? Dennis, please. That boy is twenty years old.”

  “Young flesh. Hot flesh.”

  “He’s the big brother of Johnny’s best friend, which is why I hired him in the first place. He needed the money.”

  “And got a nice little thrill for a tip. Kikit thought it was funny as anything. Me, I think it’s a lousy example to be setting for an impressionable little girl.” He slid his arm down the wall. “I don’t think it’s funny about you and Brody, either.”