A Woman's Place

by Barbara Delinsky

  She flashed me a dry smile. “I was a bartender then. Served drinks to lots of lawyers. They tipped well. I only had to sleep with two of them to get the information I needed. My sisters got off. I headed for law school.” Her smile slanted. “Haven’t slept with a lawyer since. Haven’t had to. I know the ropes now myself. Right after I file the Motion for Reconsideration, I’ll call Jenovitz and get him going. The sooner we start, the sooner we end.”

  My step faltered when Dennis’s car pulled away from a metered spot across the street. It was a white BMW that he had had no business buying, given his own dwindling income. I couldn’t see if he was watching me, or if anyone was in the car with him. He idled at a stop sign, then disappeared around the corner.

  I breathed a little easier. Seeing him was hard, what with the jumble of emotions he sparked. So I suppose there was a small benefit to living elsewhere. I wouldn’t have to see him while I sorted out the jumble.

  Carmen and I went down the block in the opposite direction from where Dennis had gone. “Tell me what to expect from Jenovitz,” I said, because I felt at a disadvantage, thrown into a situation for which I was ill-prepared.

  “Lots of questions. He’ll interview you and Dennis and the kids. He’ll ask about your marriage and your home life. You’ll give him the names of people who have dealings with the kids and he’ll check them out, but mostly it’ll be talks with the four of you. You and Dennis will go to Dean’s office. When the children are involved, Dean will go to your home.”

  “My home.” From which I was now banished. Being away for a weekend was one thing. Same with a business trip. But even with Carmen’s motions and appeals, this would go beyond. “I don’t have my clothes. Don’t have my checkbook. I don’t have a place to sleep tonight.”

  “The hotel?”

  I gave a sharp shake of my head. I had checked out of the Royal Sonesta after two sleepless nights and would rather die than return.

  “No other family here?”

  “No.” Only in Cleveland, which raised a whole other issue. I had no idea what to tell my mother. I was her bright star. After all she had wanted for me, all she had thought I had achieved, this would destroy her.

  Dennis hadn’t given her a thought.

  Carmen steered me toward the parking lot. “Take a short-term rental.”

  I didn’t want a short-term rental. I didn’t want a strange place, with strange sounds and smells. I needed history, needed roots. That was what the last fifteen years had been about.

  “You know,” I said, “I spent months looking for that house. I spent months decorating it. When Dennis’s business failed, we took out a second mortgage. I was the one who paid it off so that our monthly bill was workable. The house is mine, far more than Dennis’s. So why am I the one kicked out?”

  “Because you’re the stronger one,” Carmen said.

  My bark of laughter held a bitter taste. I started shaking again.

  Carmen tightened her grip on my arm. “As much of a temptation as it is, Claire, don’t stay with Brody. Dennis will be looking for that.”

  I thought of the picture he had produced and was livid. “He must have followed me to Brody’s on Thursday. If he’d been half as clever in business, we’d never be standing here now. This has to do with his ego. He’s jealous of WickerWise, jealous of my relationship with the kids, jealous of my friendship with Brody”—I looked at her—“but I swear, nothing is going on between Brody and me. Nothing ever has. He could have been my brother in that picture, it was such an innocent hug.”

  “I believe you. The judge may have, too, but he’d already made up his mind. He was using the picture to defend his position. And it was legally wrong. He had no right to consider that piece of evidence without allowing us to offer others. That’ll be one of the things I’ll argue in the Motion for Reconsideration.”

  “If we don’t win on that, these different steps you’re talking about—different motions and appeals—they’ll take time. What about the kids? Dennis can’t cook.”

  “He’ll order in.”

  “He hasn’t ever helped the kids with their homework.”

  “He’ll learn.”

  “He hates keeping the afternoon activities straight. He hates doing the driving. That’s why he harps on hiring a nanny.”

  Carmen’s smile was sly. “If he hires a nanny now, we’ll take him back to court and make the argument that the children shouldn’t be cared for by a stranger when their mother is ready, willing, and able.”

  “And if Dennis’s parents fill in the gaps? Oh, Carmen,” I said with a tired sigh and came to a stop beside my car. The injustice of it was too much.

  “I’ll keep busy on my end,” Carmen said. “Meanwhile, you keep busy on yours. Find a place to stay. Get back to work. Be available for the times when Dennis calls on the phone in a panic because he doesn’t know what to do for the kids. Think about the terms of a divorce so that I can approach Art.” She held my arm with reassuring strength. “We will win, Claire. It may take longer than you want, but the facts are with us. We will win.”

  I wanted to believe that so badly. But the facts had been with us today, too, and I had lost. My faith in justice had taken a hike.

  Still, I couldn’t sit around and do nothing. That wasn’t my way. So I would find a place to stay, and I would buy the car that the insurance company had sent a check for, and I would get back to work. I would do anything and everything I could to advance my legal case.

  But there was something more immediate, more pressing, more challenging. Thrusting my hands deep into the pockets of my coat, I braced myself for the hard part. “So, what do I tell the kids?”

  seven

  I hadn’t expected Carmen to answer the question. Without knowing my children, she couldn’t know for sure what approach to take. Still she thought for a minute, then made suggestions that reflected her experience with other clients. They might even have reflected her experience with me, because, in our hours together on Saturday, I had shared many a personal thing that she needed to know to represent me well. That, in itself, was interesting. Having grown up thinking of my family as different from others, I was used to guarding my personal life. But I trusted Carmen. She had struck me from the start as being sensible and sensitive. Besides, Brody trusted her, too. So when she gave advice on how to deal with the kids, I listened.

  Be honest, she said. Indulge them the inevitable confusion and fear. Admit to sadness, even frustration, but blame the situation rather than Dennis. Leave the children out of your argument with him. You want your options open and your bridges intact.

  Monday afternoon, when I put the same question to Dennis shortly before the children came home from school, he looked perplexed.

  “We have to tell them something,” I said and waited for his inspiration. As I saw it, since he had made the mess, he owed me a hand in cleaning it up.

  But he was silent.

  I rummaged through the front hall closet. Wood hangers clacked against each other as I shoved them aside to remove my trenchcoat, then clacked again when I reached for my wool overcoat. Still waiting for his answer, I grabbed a scarf and a pair of gloves from the overhead shelf.

  “Why can’t we just say you’re traveling?” he finally asked.

  I stared at him in amazement. Apparently, the only part of this he had thought through was the one painting me as the villain. “Traveling? For a month on top of what I’ve just done? With twice-weekly visits and not even one overnight here at home?”

  I scooped the coats off the floor and set them on a bench by the door. “They aren’t babies. They’ll see through that in a minute. Besides, I’m done lying to them. It bothered me having to do it last weekend. I won’t do it again.” I took off up the stairs.

  He came right along. “So what will you tell them?”

  “The truth. They’ll have to know it sometime.”

  “You’ll tell them you were ordered to leave?”

  I rounded the top of the bani
ster and strode down the hall. “I’ll tell them we’ve decided to separate. That may not be the whole truth, but it’s the bottom line. If I tell them about the court order, they’ll ask why, and if I tell them why”—I shot him a look as I turned into the bedroom—“they’ll hate you for it. That wouldn’t be in their best interests. I don’t want them hating you. You’re their father. They have to live with you, for a little while, at least.”

  “Ahhh, Claire. You’re so noble.”

  I turned on him fast, my anger so strong that it approached rage, which was something new to me, something foreign and frightening. I struggled to keep my tone civil. “I have more to be proud of than you do, Dennis. What’s happening here is a travesty of justice. You got the jump on me. You set things up so that I didn’t have a chance. But it won’t last forever. Reason is on my side. And parenting experience. You’re in for an awakening. Fulltime parenting is something else. Just wait. You’ll see. You never wanted to hang around with the kids before.”

  “That’s not true. You were just always there first. I was superfluous.”

  “Never,” I cried. Good God, I had worked so hard to make him feel important. “Whenever you were finally there with us, I made the biggest deal of it with the kids. They loved it when you were around, and I loved seeing them happy. That’s all I’ve ever wanted for them, Dennis. That’s all I’ve worked for. And now you’re going to mess it all up.” I wanted to be calm. I had spent the time since leaving the courthouse numbing myself against seeing him, being here, doing this. Anger was an analgesic of sorts, but I was losing it anyway. Rage hovered close. “Was it something I did? Something you did? Something that happened at work? Something someone else said?” I touched my chest. “I am having so much trouble understanding all this. Has our life together been so awful? Have I been such a terrible wife that you have to punish me this way? That you have to punish the kids this way?”

  His handsome face turned bored. “Don’t get melodramatic. Marriages fall apart all the time.”

  “Not mine!” I cried. Those two words said so much. Oh yes, I had seen those marriages fall apart. They were all around us, hard to miss. But I had wanted us to be different. Needed us to be different. “You’ll just throw it away, good times and all?”

  “What good times?”

  “Christmases. We always had great Christmases. And vacations. Remember when we took the kids to Arizona? When we hiked through the hills there with them strapped on our backs? I dare you to say that wasn’t fun.”

  “Maybe it was. But those were family times. What about between you and me?”

  By way of answer, I glanced at the bedroom wall. It was covered with photographs of me, photographs that Dennis had taken, developed, printed, framed, and hung himself. They captured the ten years between when he and I had become engaged and when his interest in photography had waned. They were beautiful pictures; I had felt beautiful in them. One captured excitement, another pensiveness, another softness, another love—on my face, through Dennis’s eye and hand.

  Still, he said, “It’s over, Claire. I’ve made up my mind. There’s no going back.”

  “Is there someone else?”

  He made a face. “Why do you have to ask that?”

  I held my ground. “Because I’m trying to make sense out of this. There was someone else once.”

  “Way before you.”

  “You were with her, knowing she was married to someone else. That’s not much different from your cheating on me.”

  “Look who’s pointing a finger.”

  “Brody and I aren’t involved that way.”

  “Sure.”

  “It’s true. You know it, Dennis. You know it’s true.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Our marriage wasn’t perfect, but it wasn’t awful, either.”

  He settled in against the wall.

  I stared at him for a minute, then pulled a suitcase from the closet, opened it on the bed, and went to the dresser.

  “It’s done,” he said. “I’m not changing my mind.”

  I filled my arms with underthings, dropped them in the suitcase, and went back for more.

  “You talked me out of it one too many times,” he said. “I want my freedom.”

  That stopped me. I choked out an incredulous laugh. “You want your freedom, with sole custody of two young children? That shows how much you know, Dennis. You haven’t the faintest idea what it means to be a full-time caretaker. Fault me all you will for having a career, but at the same time that I worked, I’ve been doing things for the kids that you can’t begin to count, let alone know about. Telling Kikit what not to eat is one thing, making sure she doesn’t eat it is something else. I don’t know about you, but it terrifies me to think she had an attack and we don’t know its cause. She’ll have to be watched closer than ever. And Johnny is intense anyway. Think of the extra care he’ll need, dealing with a divorce. Freedom? Good Lord, if that weren’t so pathetic, it would be funny.”

  He had the gall to grin. “So why are you sore? The judge was right. You should be pleased to have a little time off.”

  The grin did it, made everything roiling inside me roil harder and faster. I felt a powerful, primitive urge to hit him, and though I had the good sense not to do it, I hated him for reducing me to that.

  With a conscious effort, I relaxed my jaw. I returned to the dresser for sweaters this time. “I’m sore,” I said carefully, “because neither that judge nor you have the foggiest notion what parental love is about.” I dropped the sweaters into the suitcase, pushing them to fit. “I love my kids. I’ve done well by them. You two say I haven’t. Well, let me tell you”—I straightened and faced him head-on—“this is just the beginning. You want a divorce, I’ll give you a divorce, but if you’re thinking to use the kids as a bargaining chip to get more money, think again. Drop all this now, before the kids know the worst, before the world knows the worst, and we can reach a comfortable agreement. Keep it up and I’ll fight. My lawyer knows what I want. We’ll go from court to court, if need be. You can’t win, Dennis. Not in the long run. I’ve been too good a mother, damn it.”

  “You overrate yourself,” he said and turned toward the door. “Johnny has practice at five. Be gone by four.”

  “What?”

  “I want him settled down and ready to play.”

  “Right after we tell him his world’s coming apart? He won’t be able to play.”

  “His world isn’t coming apart. It’s just changing some. Going to practice will be the best thing for him. The most normal thing.”

  “Then I’ll drop him off.”

  “No. I will.”

  “Let me talk with him a little more.”

  “Do your talking by four. If there’s a problem after that, I’ll call Mulroy.” With a last, long, warning look, he left the room.

  It was a miracle that my body held together, my inner turmoil was so great. But I had lots to do in a very short time. So I went on automatic.

  Not wanting the children to suspect anything amiss before I could explain, I put the suitcases I had lived out of for the past two weeks in the backseat of the car. They would know what those were. I filled the trunk with everything I didn’t want them to see—older suitcases holding the rest of my clothes, dress bags, and coats. I took the CD player from the bedroom and a box of CDs, because I couldn’t be without music. I took as many pictures of the children as I could without leaving gaping holes on dressers and bookshelves. I took a box containing our checkbook, bank records, and the financial information that I hadn’t been able to access on the computer.

  With fifteen minutes to spare before the school bus passed through, I headed for the kitchen. Within seconds the oven was on, and cookie-makings covered the counter. The children loved hot, fresh-from-the-oven cookies, and I loved making them. It was such a mommy thing to do, such a little way of saying I love you in a day and age when gourmet cookies could be bought at every stop. Totally aside from making Kikit-friendly
food, I baked whenever I could, particularly before and after trips, when I was feeling guilty about being away.

  Yes, guilty. I never left home without qualms.

  I wasn’t feeling guilty now, but desolate. I wanted the closeness that came with sitting at the table mixing mouthfuls of hot cookie and cold milk. We had been doing that forever, Johnny and I alone in the days before Kikit, then the three of us together. I had been doing it even longer, though those very, very first times seemed so far away. I hadn’t thought of them in ages—and didn’t know what brought them to mind now. They weren’t really the same at all. I had been a child then. Couldn’t have been more than ten or eleven. My mother was out working all day and didn’t have time to bake, but I knew mothers who did. I had been in their houses. Those houses had been warmer and more inviting than mine. So as soon as the Girl Scout leader showed us how, I made cookies myself. Rona grabbed them and ran, often returning for seconds with friends. By the time my mother came home from work, the cookies were usually gone. I didn’t do it often. But I do remember, so clearly, sitting alone in that kitchen, mixing the melty warmth of those things with a glass of cold milk and pretending our lives were safe and secure.

  I had the first batch in the oven now, had the second on sheets at the ready, and was scrubbing out the mixing bowl when I heard the kids charge through the garage. It was panic time. I pressed the back of my hand to my upper lip, wondering how I was going to keep from crying when I saw them, knowing what had happened in court.

  Then the door to the mudroom swung back, and I didn’t have time to think about tears or court or the future. I barely had time to wipe my hands and open my arms when Kikit launched herself into them. Exuberant at seeing her, I swooped her up and around. She smelled of little-girl warmth, dried leaves, and chalk.