A Woman's Place

by Barbara Delinsky

  I had loved Dennis because he was my husband. I loved Brody because he was my friend. I had loved Dennis because of what he was, loved Brody because of who he was.

  I respected Brody, craved his company, relied on his opinion. Was my love for him deeper than my love for Dennis? Was I more attracted to him than I was to Dennis?

  Why hadn’t I seen it before?

  “I need time, Brody. If I do something that even hints of wrongdoing, I’ll lose my kids.”

  “There’s a double standard here, you know that, don’t you?”

  I threw a hand in the air. “What else is new? Every woman knows there’s a double standard.” I left the end of the worktable where we had eaten and went to stand at the end with my rocker. I studied the folded paper, the picture of my husband with his paramour—his alleged paramour. I wasn’t ready to say it was fact, wasn’t ready to think that Dennis had cast me off so fast, much less for someone younger, for someone blond. It was just a picture. Like Brody and me hugging was just a picture.

  Double standard. Not fair.

  “When a woman competes in a man’s world under a man’s standards,” I said, “she has to be twice as smart, twice as good. Oh, sure, there’s affirmative action. That may get her in the door, but once she’s in, she hits a walkway of glue. I offer franchises to women. I favor female franchisees. So they’re in the door, but to get a loan to make it happen? You’ve seen the grief they get sometimes. They can’t get the loan because they have no track record, and they can’t get a track record without a loan. Are you going to get pregnant and default the bank officer asks. Or leave town with your husband and default? Or decide after six months that you don’t like owning a franchise after all, and default? Men would never be asked those things.”

  I pushed the picture of Dennis and Phoebe into my pocket. Out of sight, it was less hurtful. “So what do we do? If we want to succeed within the system, we have to work within it. I’m trying to do that, Brody. I’m trying.”

  He rose and came toward me. “Maybe more than you have to.”

  I wasn’t sure I knew what he meant, I only knew that my insides stirred the closer he came.

  He stopped within an arm’s length, and hooked his fingers in the back of his jeans. “Don’t sacrifice our friendship. Don’t give Dennis the satisfaction of that. Okay, so we don’t need to be together, to be together, but we can still spend time together, can’t we? I don’t like feeling guilty when I look at you or call you on the phone. I don’t like having to think twice before I give you a hug. I don’t like having to measure every word I say.”

  “You? Measure every word?” I tried to laugh, but it came out sounding choked.

  He touched my cheek then, hand warm from the heat of his body. His thumb traced my jaw, fingers outlined my cheekbone and slid into my hair, all light and tempting, almost make-believe. When I couldn’t stand it anymore, I tipped my head into his palm, though whether to stop him or make it real, I didn’t know.

  “Did you ever wonder what it’d be like if we kissed?” he asked in a voice that was hoarse.

  “No.”

  “Or slept together? Made love?”

  “No. I can’t, Brody. I can’t now.”

  “Someday?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know. Up until two weeks ago I assumed Dennis would be the only man I’d ever sleep with.”

  “You were gone for two weeks before that, which makes a month. How much longer than that since you made love?”

  I pressed my lips together and shook my head to warn him off. I wasn’t ready to tell him that.

  “Okay,” he said as though he’d heard, “but will you start thinking about me that way?”

  I tried another laugh. This one was slightly hysterical. “How can I help it?”

  He grinned, then wrapped his arms around me and drew me close before I could protest. Once there, I didn’t want to. Being held by Brody was being in the safest place that I had ever been in in my life. I just might have stayed there forever, if he hadn’t kissed me on the forehead and released me first.

  He was grinning as he backed away, one step after another, holding a hand up as though to slow me down, like I was the one rushing things. Then, as quietly as he had come, he was gone.

  I cursed him as I cleaned up the remains of our brunch, but halfheartedly. It had been a long time since I’d felt sexy, but Brody made me feel that way. As distractions from reality went, it wasn’t bad.

  Carmen had it right. Dean Jenovitz was definitely stodgy. I guessed that he had spent the last thirty-five years in the same office, behind the same desk. Once settled in the chair there, he blended right in with the rest of the decor—a little old, a little musty, a little ingrown.

  He reached for a pipe, rapped it against an ashtray, filled it with tobacco, tamped it down. It wasn’t until he had a match lit and poised mid-air that he paused. “You aren’t allergic, are you?”

  “No, no. Go ahead.” Pipe smoke—any kind of smoke—bothered me. But I could live with it more easily than I could live without my kids. I wasn’t about to risk getting on Dean Jenovitz’s bad side, not with so much at stake.

  He lit the pipe, took a long drag, blew out a thick white stream of smoke, and sat back in his chair. “So. How are you?”

  Not quite knowing what or how much to say, I dared a quiet, “I’m all right. A little shaky, I guess. This all has taken me by surprise.”

  “Court orders can be upsetting. But you must have had some inkling of a problem beforehand.”

  “No. My husband sent me off on a trip without giving me a clue.”

  “Sent you off? It’s my understanding that you were the one who instigated this trip. Wasn’t it for your business?”

  “What I meant,” I said with an apologetic smile, “was that he was there all the time I was getting ready to leave, kissed the children, kissed me, stood on the porch and waved good-bye. He was totally pleasant. I had no idea what he was planning.”

  “It’s my understanding that he wasn’t planning anything. Not then. He gave you slack, what with your mother sick. Then came the mix-ups with the children’s flight and your daughter’s medicine. What with things that had happened before, he saw a pattern emerging and felt compelled to act.”

  So he had read Dennis’s affidavit. I wondered if he had read mine as well.

  “I think he had this planned earlier,” I said quietly.

  “Do you have evidence of it?”

  “Phone bills. Dennis has been calling his lawyer since last January.”

  Jenovitz frowned, stuck the pipe in his mouth, and pushed some papers around. “There’s nothing about that in your affidavit.”

  “No. I only went through the bills last night. It’s been bothering me how Dennis has been so calm through everything that’s happened. I had no idea a separation was coming, but he took it completely in stride. The only thing that made sense was that he had time to get used to the idea. I guess he has.”

  “It’s my understanding that he’s been mentioning divorce to you for months.”

  “Not divorce. Separation, and we always decided against it.”

  “You decided, says your husband. He raised it, you argued against it, he went along.”

  That was one way of putting it, I supposed.

  Jenovitz asked, “Why did you argue against it if he seemed so unhappy?”

  “He didn’t. At least, not with our marriage. He was unhappy with work. That spilled over into other things. He would say that I didn’t understand him, or that he didn’t have enough freedom. He never once said that he didn’t love me, or that he loved someone else, or that he was going to file for divorce whether I liked it or not.”

  “So you were taken by surprise. Are you acclimated now to divorce?”

  “I guess so. Yes.”

  He studied me for a minute, before saying, “That’s a fast turnaround. How long has it been since the court order was issued?”

  The discussion wasn’t going the way I wanted it t
o. Quiet and humble, in an attempt to appease, I said, “Ten days, and I didn’t want to accept it. I did everything I could to get it reversed, but Dennis wouldn’t budge. I suggested we talk. I suggested we stay in the house, both of us, and try to work things out. Dennis wouldn’t hear of it, and the court went along. The judge wouldn’t even give us a hearing on the Motion for Reconsideration. Now you’re involved in the case.” I frowned. “I’m confused. Are you suggesting we should reconcile?”

  “No. My job is to make a recommendation with regard to custody. The assumption is that this case will end up in divorce.”

  “Whose assumption?”

  “The court’s. Certainly your husband’s, since he initiated the suit.”

  “That’s right.” I made my point. “He did, not me, and the court is standing behind him. Divorce isn’t my choice, but every other door has been shut to me. I don’t see any option. My husband doesn’t want me. He’s made that clear. So what am I supposed to do?”

  “Most women would be mourning.”

  “I am. I lie in bed at night and feel empty. I wake up in the morning and feel hurt. I think of what was good in my marriage. It had potential. That doesn’t seem true anymore. I feel sadness. And regret.” I didn’t know what else to say, so I didn’t say a thing. But neither did he, just sat there studying me, and I couldn’t take it after a while. So, with a tight laugh and a hand through my hair, I said, “I’m sorry, Dr. Jenovitz. I think I’m flunking this test. I’m trying to be up front, but clearly you aren’t impressed. I don’t know what it is that you want to hear.”

  Still he didn’t speak.

  So I said, “Maybe I should be falling apart. Some women would be, I guess. I know.”

  His brows went up. He didn’t ask how I knew, but the question was there, along with that painful silence.

  I ended it by explaining, “My mother fell apart. My father died suddenly, no warning at all, not a day of ill health before that. I was eight, my sister was six. Mom panicked. Didn’t know what to. Didn’t do anything. For weeks.”

  “That must have been hard on you.”

  “I did what I could.”

  “You were only eight. What could you do?”

  “Help with my sister. Keep her busy. Help around the house.”

  “What kept you from panicking yourself?”

  “Ignorance, probably.” I smiled ruefully, recalling the extent of it. “I didn’t understand what it meant to have him gone. Oh, I missed him. But I was too young to see the broad picture.”

  “Do you see the broad picture now?”

  “Of his death?”

  “Of divorce. Isn’t that what we’re dealing with here?”

  He didn’t like me. I had known he wouldn’t, and he didn’t. Did I see the broad picture? Oh, God, more and more by the second, and it was scaring me to death. “Yes, we’re dealing with divorce. And yes, I see the broad picture.”

  “Describe it to me.”

  I touched my mouth, wanting to protest. He was asking me to voice thoughts and fears that were still so new as to be raw. Either he wanted to see how insightful I was, or he was, plain and simple, a sadist. I hated him a little just then, but didn’t dare refuse.

  “The broad picture of divorce?” I asked, placing my hand in my lap with care. “It means that the intact family I always wanted is no more. That one of us will miss some of the children’s special times. Holidays and family celebrations will be split up. Birthdays. Graduations. The kids will be torn. Pulled in two directions at once.”

  “That didn’t happen on Halloween.”

  “No. They did okay on Halloween, but maybe that’s just because this is still so new. Like when my father died. My ignorance. Maybe they’re experiencing the same thing right now. What’ll happen when they’re older and they understand more?”

  “They may do just fine.”

  “I hope so.”

  “Do you?” he asked.

  For an instant I couldn’t respond. Then, sharply, I asked, “Why wouldn’t I?”

  “Well, you are the one who is against this divorce. Some mothers in your situation would make everyone involved miserable.”

  “I love my children,” I protested. “No one, not even my husband, can deny that. Hurting them has been my single greatest fear. I’d have done most anything to have spared them the confusion, the upset, the pain of divorce, but now that it seems inevitable, I’ll do most anything I can to ease them through it.”

  “The question,” Jenovitz said before I had taken another breath, “is whether you’re of a sound mind to do that. That’s what I’m trying to find out, Mrs. Raphael. You may not like my questions, but the court expects me to ask them. I’m doing my job as best I can.”

  I held my tongue, didn’t say a thing, let him wallow in the silence this time.

  But he didn’t seem to mind it as much as I did. Barely a minute had passed before I said, albeit calmly, even agreeably, “I’m sorry. Ask whatever you want. I promise to answer as best I can.”

  He drew on his pipe, exhaled a thick stream of smoke. “You do fly off the handle.”

  “Not normally. Really, I don’t. I’ve always been the calm one in the house. I’ve had to be to counter Dennis’s moods.”

  I was hoping he would pick up on that and ask more, but he didn’t. “Your husband says you’re under a great deal of strain.”

  “Only because of the divorce. I wasn’t before. I was handling things just fine.”

  “Your mother’s condition has to be stressful.”

  “Well, it’s another thing to think about. To worry about. The stress I’m feeling comes from wanting to fly out to see her but fearing that it’ll be held against me, that someone will think that because I’m absent, I’m negligent. The thing is, it’s normal for a husband or wife to leave the children with the other to spend time with a dying parent.”

  Jenovitz shrugged. “You’re free to go.”

  “Last time someone said that to me, I came home to chaos.”

  “But was the chaos of your own doing? You’ve taken on a great deal, Mrs. Raphael. The question is whether you’re up to it. Your husband says no.”

  “The chaos had nothing to do with my visiting my mother.” I pointed at his file. “Those examples my husband uses to show I’m not in control are the kinds of things that happen to people all the time. Good Lord, I could have been the one going to court to show that my husband messed up the kids’ arrival times and lost my daughter’s medicine, or, worse, let her eat something she shouldn’t have eaten. Would the court have taken the kids away from him for that?”

  Jenovitz gave a smoky sigh. “You know that’s simplifying the situation. There were additional elements in the complaint. Besides, your husband’s life is simpler. You’re the one running every which way trying to do everything.”

  My stomach was starting to twist. The office wasn’t large, and the air was thick. I was feeling more discouraged by the minute.

  He regarded me speculatively.

  Quietly, I said, “I’m not running every which way. I have my sister to help with my mother, my husband to help with the children, and my CEO to help with the business.”

  He nodded. His eyes moved down the paper before him and stopped. His tongue ticked around the stem of his pipe. “Tell me about the CEO.”

  “His name is Brody Parth,” I said. “He was my husband’s business partner before he became mine. He is godfather to both of our children.”

  “Are you sexually involved with him?”

  “No.”

  The pipe left his mouth. “That’s an unequivocal no?”

  “An unequivocal no.”

  The pipe went back in. “Why does your husband say you are?”

  “You’d have to ask him that.”

  “I did. He showed me pictures.”

  “That picture was taken from outside Brody’s kitchen window the night Dennis had me evicted. I was upset. Brody hugged me. He was a friend offering comfort. That’s it.”<
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  “There are telephone records. There are hotel records. They’re pretty suggestive.”

  “So are the ones between Dennis and his lawyer. He works with Phoebe Lowe far more than with Art Heuber.”

  “Are you changing the subject?”

  “No. I’m making a point.”

  “Making a point, or trying to justify your relationship with Brody Parth?”

  “Making a point. There’s no more proof that I’m having an affair with Brody than there is that Dennis is having an affair with Phoebe. I don’t see why I’m being accused, and he isn’t.”

  Jenovitz sat like a rock, staring at me.

  “Look,” I said, frustrated, “Brody is my CEO. That explains telephone and hotel records. He’s also a long-time friend, which explains the hug he gave me, and the amount of time he always spent at our house. Brody was like a member of the family. Having an affair with him would have been like committing incest.” But Jenovitz claimed to have seen pictures, plural. To my knowledge, only one had been presented in court. “Have you already met with Dennis?”

  “I saw him last Friday.”

  Ahhh. In the slot I might have had myself. I wondered how that had happened, wondered when I would get first dibs for a change.

  “Does that bother you?” the psychologist asked.

  “No.” I looked at the bright side. “I’m glad he came in. I was worried he’d try to hold things up. Thanksgiving is less than a month away. I’m hoping this will be resolved by then.”

  Jenovitz sat back in his chair, sucked in on his pipe, and studied the ceiling.

  “Will it?” I asked nervously. I had to believe there was a limit to what the court was making me endure. Totally aside from the motions that Carmen swore she would file until we won, she said the GAL had thirty days. I was counting.

  “Is there anything I can do to make it happen faster?” I asked when he didn’t speak. Then, with an anxious laugh, “This is very painful for me.”