A Woman's Place

by Barbara Delinsky

  “Still, Dennis with custody? Whew. That’s quite a blow to the old image.”

  “The old image,” I said with a level look, “was a figment of your imagination.”

  “A figment of Mom’s imagination.”

  “Maybe. Okay. Probably. And she was wrong if she held you to a cooked-up standard, but maybe she held me to it, too, you know?” It hadn’t occurred to me before, but it made sense. “Maybe I felt pressure, too.”

  Rona didn’t respond to that, simply stood there looking gorgeous—more gorgeous than I ever could, though Mother had picked on her for that, too—leaning against the wall within arm’s reach of me. Sad, we didn’t touch. At a time in our lives when physical contact might have offered solace, we couldn’t give it. Our relationship wasn’t defined that way. I wasn’t sure why.

  But, boy, was I sorry. The need to hold and be held was great just then, because no matter that Connie wasn’t as sick as I’d feared, the prognosis was poor.

  Brody came to mind for holding. Not Dennis. Brody. I wouldn’t have minded being held by him just then.

  “Is this a trial separation?” Rona asked.

  I reined in my fantasy life.

  A trial separation? I tried to think of reconciling with Dennis but couldn’t.

  Again Brody came to mind.

  It struck me then that my marriage had been a break-up waiting to happen. How else to explain the feelings that had burst into existence—no, not into existence, into awareness—in two short weeks? Feelings against Dennis. Feelings for Brody. Had he been an affair waiting to happen all this time?

  “No,” I told Rona. “No trial separation. This is the real thing.”

  “That bad, huh?” She smiled. “I’m amazed.”

  I pushed away from the wall. “For the record, it’s been a painful experience. I would have thought you’d understand, having gone through it yourself.” I might have said more, might have shared thoughts and fears, had Rona and I been able to communicate. But we couldn’t. I had always blamed that on Rona’s competitiveness. It struck me now that maybe I was competitive, too. I was embarrassed to confess that my marriage had failed. I had wanted to be better than that.

  So now I was humbled, as Rona had been all those times. Again I thought to reach out to her. Again something held me back.

  Not wanting to argue, and unable to do anything else, I started down the hall. “I’ll go sit with Mom for a while.”

  She looked old, more like eighty than sixty-three. It was as though illness had compressed the passage of time, taking the twenty more years she should have had and, with each week that passed, shrinking them to ten, five, two. I tried to recall the face with the warm smile, smooth skin, and healthy glow, but this other one was overpowering. Nor could I look away. That would have been desertion. This was still my mother, needing love in the last days of her life.

  Though she slept most of the weekend, she knew I was there. From time to time, she opened her eyes and focused on me, squeezed my hand, whispered my name. Unlike the last time, I didn’t ramble on and on. For one thing, my throat was tight much of the time. For another, what could I talk about? Not the situation at home. Not my relationship with Rona. I might have liked to tell her about Brody. But what?

  So we were quiet together, Mom and I, and it was surprisingly peaceful. She seemed comforted enough by my presence that I didn’t feel the need to perform. Her heart behaved. There were neither cardiac aftershocks nor new traumas. By Saturday afternoon, she left the ICU and returned to her room.

  Rona brought fresh flowers. She brought Mom’s favorite cologne, brought a cassette recorder and more audio books than Mom would be able to listen to in a month. She brought a matching nightgown and robe that were just as beautiful as the matching nightgown and robe she had given Mom last time I was there. She brought crème caramel from Mom’s favorite restaurant.

  Was Mom grateful? Hard to tell. There were smiles, nods, and the same sad look I knew well. Even in her dimming view of the world, she thought Rona was hopelessly ditzy.

  Did I? No. But I didn’t know how to tell Rona that without confirming that Mom felt it, which would have done even more harm. So I praised her for the presents she brought, and thanked her for being there for Mom, and the part of me that hated being competitive and took my humbling as just punishment, didn’t mind at all that she knew about the demise of my marriage. I suspected she found satisfaction in precious little else.

  I’ve always had trouble with partings. Having lost a parent, I knew about mortality. Having lost a parent young and with no warning at all, I knew about untimely loss. As optimistic as I was in other regards, I was no innocent when it came to matters of life and death. Back then, Connie could have been healthy as a horse. Still I felt a twinge of fear each time I left her, fearing she wouldn’t be there when I returned.

  I got a handle on those emotions after I married Dennis, probably because there was such a to-do at the time of the parting, especially once the children were born, that I didn’t have time for morbid thoughts. Leaving a sick mother brought them all back. The sicker Mom got, the worse they were. This time was truly the pits. I promised to call her that night and be back to see her in another week or two, but I saw that look in her eyes again, that sad, knowing, sweetly chiding look. We both knew that my words could well prove empty if by the time I returned she was gone.

  Walking out of that hospital room on Sunday morning was so hard, that had things been different, I would have said to hell with this, the children will understand and stayed. But Dennis wouldn’t understand. Nor would his lawyer, or the judge, or the GAL, with whom I had a Monday appointment. If I had chosen my mother over my children, I would have been called a lousy mother. So I was a lousy daughter instead.

  Life was a shopping list of compromises, Connie had once bemoaned. I only wished I could have explained to her why I made this particular compromise. It would have helped to know she agreed.

  Once airborne, my thoughts turned to all that I had put on hold that now needed addressing. The first was the children. Having missed my Saturday with them, I had asked Dennis if I might pick them up on my way home from the airport. He hadn’t been eager to accommodate me at first. Then he had given in with surprising speed.

  I wanted to think that he sympathized with my mother’s condition and saw the reasonableness of my request. The cynic in me—something new, barely two weeks old—wondered if he had simply come up with a good alternative for Sunday. And that was fine, too, I decided. He had been doing his own thing on weekends for years, working us in where and when we fit. This way was more honest—and a damned sight easier than having to make excuses to the kids for his absence.

  Besides, part of me didn’t care if he was planning to make love to Phoebe Lowe on the balcony at City Hall Plaza for all the world to see, as long as I had that time with Johnny and Kikit. I needed to see that they were being well-cared for. Given what I had come from, with Mom so ill and Rona and I unable to connect, I needed their warmth and vibrancy.

  I needed someone else’s warmth and vibrancy, not to mention business advice, but he had stopped on his way back from the West Coast to visit with his daughter in New York and wasn’t due back until that night—and he was a fantasy, anyway, a bug put in my ear by my husband, irony of ironies. Only a fantasy. Dream stuff when I needed it. No more.

  The plane landed right on time. Gathering my carry-ons, I went through the jetport into the terminal, then down the concourse, past the security point to the spot where my driver usually met me. In his place, standing apart from whoever else waited for passengers, not in New York at all and impossible to miss, was the fantasy himself.

  I came to a stop and stood there, unable to move for a minute. In the next, I looked around, half-expecting everyone else in the area to be staring at him too, he stood out so. Deep bespectacled eyes, long denim legs, T-shirt, unbuttoned flannel shirt, fleece vest—the sight of him made me warm all over, and when he smiled, a small, skewed smile t
hat was a little helpless, even shy, I felt it deep inside.

  He was leaning against a wall, his fingers flat in the pockets of his jeans, one knee bent, the sole of his boot flat to the wall. I had the feeling he didn’t know if he should have come, what with Carmen’s warnings and all, but that he hadn’t been able to resist. Then again, that might have been my own wishful thinking.

  But he was there, right or wrong. And, right or wrong, I was thrilled to see him.

  My feet moved, taking me right up to where he lounged with such nonchalant grace. His eyes didn’t leave me for a second, and his smile stayed. Eyes and smile, mine matched his. I might have known Brody would be there for me.

  I sighed in relief, nodded in pleasure. Then my chest grew tight. I pressed my lips together tightly against a sudden urge to cry. He must have sensed it, because his smile faltered. He took my bags from me and set them down, then, before I could worry about who might be watching, wrapped me up in his arms.

  I sighed again, more a moan this time, high and shaky. Fleeting thoughts—why he was here instead of in New York, how he had known which flight I was on—came and went, unimportant in the overall scheme of things, certainly irrelevant to the moment. The shakiness hit me all over, the aftershock of an emotional weekend, and while I didn’t cry, I slipped my arms under his flannel shirt and held on tight. He was solid at a time when everything around me was changing. Frightening, how much I needed him.

  His hands moved, stealthy but sure, on my back. Likewise, his lips against my hair, then my forehead. And it was safe, as safe as his presence. What I had come from made it so, as did where we were, because airports were unique. They were places of transience, the crossroads of a modern age. They were a hothouse of emotional extremes, one minute witness to the indifference of the seasoned traveler, another to the joy of reunion or the sorrow of parting. People kissed in airports all the time, not only lovers, but friends, family, even colleagues.

  So I didn’t protest when Brody kissed me. Didn’t protest? Raised my head for it, if the truth were told, because I felt it coming, felt his mouth touch my right eye, my cheekbone, the hollow beneath. Suddenly it seemed the most natural, most urgent thing in the world that we kiss, and as for having a cover, the airport was it. No one had to know this was a real kiss, that those initial tentative touches were breaching a threshold. No one had to know when our lips grew more sure, then opened, or when the hunger grew and our tongues met.

  I knew all those things. I knew Brody knew them too, could feel it in the thrum of his body and the shortness of his breath. Not that I was any better. I was shaking badly by the time he tore his mouth from mine and, with a large hand cradling my head, pressed my face to his throat.

  Did he ever smell good. Clean and soapy over just a hint of musk.

  “Let’s move it,” he said in a hoarse voice, and at first I thought he was angry. That lasted until he bent to pick up my bags and I got a look at him. It wasn’t anger that put that burnt color on his cheeks, or anger that had him carrying one of my bags against his fly.

  Ah, the pleasure I took in that, the sense of power I felt. Pleasure, power—nearly as heady as his smell.

  Illicit? True. We weren’t supposed to do anything to validate Dennis’s charge. But the charge was already made and believed, Dennis and I were separated now, and Lord knew what he was doing with Phoebe or some other young thing. Besides, I had spent my life calculating my risks, carefully weighing one side against the other before making decisions, and look where it had gotten me. On the other hand, I had bought my lighthouse on impulse, and I loved it. So if I kissed Brody and loved that too, what was the harm?

  “Live dangerously, Claire,” I urged without realizing that I’d spoken aloud until I heard Brody snicker beside me. My eyes flew to his, surprised, then defiant.

  He shot me a whoa-there expression that said he wasn’t disagreeing, and his actions followed suit. No sooner had he guided me to the Range Rover and tossed my bags in the back, then he took my face in both hands and kissed me again.

  There were no tentative touches this time, just a full, wide-open, no-holds-barred kiss right off the bat. Yes, I had imagined what kissing Brody would be like, but this was something else. It was the kind of thing that cleared my head of any other thought that might have been there. I didn’t mourn Connie, didn’t pine for the kids or simmer over Dennis or worry about WickerWise. I didn’t think about anyone’s disapproval, not Carmen’s or the court’s or Dennis’s. Nor did I worry about whether someone would see us and tell. What Brody was doing to me with his hands, his mouth, his body, right there, pressed tight to the Range Rover’s side, was worth the risk. He smelled good, tasted good, felt good. He had me coiling my arms around his neck and kissing him back, teasing his tongue, nipping his lips, sharing my breath with him and wanting more still.

  I hadn’t known I was so hungry. I hadn’t known this kind of hunger even existed.

  Where it would have ended, had it been up to me, I didn’t know. I was out of control and entranced. Brody was the one who had to draw back, though he did it slowly and with reluctance, if the way his lips clung after his body had left and even then kept coming back for one-last-times.

  He dragged in a long, ragged breath and dropped his head back for a minute. When it came forward, he looked naughty.

  “There,” he said. “Was that so bad?”

  It was my turn to snicker, which I did loudly. I put my forehead to his chest. It picked up the beat of his heart. Hard not to, it was so loud and fast.

  “Just think what it would be like to neck,” he said.

  “What did we just do?”

  “Kiss. Period.”

  “It felt like more.”

  “Soon, baby. Soon.”

  I thought to say that he shouldn’t be so smug, or assume certain things, or call a nineties woman baby, for heaven’s sake. But, so help me, his smugness was earned after a kiss like that, his assumption had a fifty-fifty chance of being right, and as for the baby part, nineties woman or no, it had felt pretty good.

  Dennis had never called me baby. He had sung to me and taken pictures of me, and I had felt special each time, but he had never coddled me or treated me like I needed protection, and maybe I didn’t. But, boy, was it nice to lean on someone for a change. Boy, was it nice to be taken care of. Even competent women needed that, every once in a while.

  Soon after the start of our meeting, Dean Jenovitz outlined a game. I couldn’t very well refuse to play.

  “Consistent,” he said.

  I considered his scale. If I rated myself low for the sake of modesty, he might buy into that rating. Modesty had a limited role when it came to salesmanship, and salesmanship, it seemed, was what this study was about. Not justice. Salesmanship.

  I gave myself a nine.

  “Resourceful.”

  “Nine.”

  “Competent.”

  “Eight.”

  “Why not a nine again?”

  “Because competence is relative. What I do, I do well, but there are other things that I don’t do well at all. I farm those things out. I know how to delegate. That’s half of why I’m good at what I do.”

  Jenovitz sat staring at me. I thought to say more. But I didn’t want to say more. I had said what I felt. So I just sat there staring back.

  Finally he said, “Are you angry?”

  I blinked. “No. Why do you ask?”

  “When you were here last time, you were nervous. You’re different today.”

  Nervous last time? Hell, yes. My future pivoted on this man’s opinion. Different today? After the past twenty-four hours? After the past ninety-six?

  “Maybe,” I said.

  “Maybe what?”

  “Different.” I looked down, frowned, studied the black beads on the tail of my belt and said more quietly, “Angry.”

  “Care to say why?”

  My head came up. “Because I’m in the middle of a situation that I didn’t want and don’t like. I s
pent the afternoon with my children yesterday. Every other word out of the little one’s mouth has to do with when I’m coming home, and the big one is subdued, and they both get edgy—hell, I do, too—when the end of our time together nears. I don’t know what they’re feeling after I drop them back with their father, but I know what I am, and it isn’t warm and fuzzy. It’s lonely. It’s afraid. It’s worried. I keep thinking that it didn’t have to be like this, that it could have been gentler, but thanks to my husband and the court, it isn’t. This is very, very hard for me, Dr. Jenovitz. I’m a mother. I love my kids. Every ounce of maternal instinct I possess is telling me they’ll be hurt. So, yes, I’m angry. I have a right to be, don’t I?”

  “Not if the charges against you are true.”

  “They aren’t,” I insisted and sank into the chair. There were times when the bid to prove my innocence seemed futile. Okay. I had only had a single hour with Jenovitz so far. But, God, it felt like more.

  “That’s what I’m trying to determine,” he said. “Anger gets in the way.”

  “Last time you said I should be mourning. Isn’t anger just like it, kind of a natural step in the process?”

  “Yes. Though not as productive.”

  “It vents feelings. I do have lots of those, even though the judge would like to think I’m a cold-hearted businesswoman.”

  “Speaking of which,” he said and paused to lean sideways, open a drawer, and fish inside. I heard the rustle of plastic wrap. When he straightened, he was fumbling a sourball from its wrapper. Seconds later, he pushed it into his mouth. “Speaking of which,” he talked around the candy, “we were discussing competence. And delegating. Would you say that delegating is necessary for a working mother?”

  “No,” I answered more calmly. The venting had helped. “I’d say it’s necessary for any successful executive.”

  “But a working mother can’t do without it?”

  I often discussed that with the women I worked with—my office assistant, the manager of my local store, franchisees around the country. Most were mothers. We shared war stories all the time. “A working mother needs help. We’re holding down one too many jobs to do everything ourselves.”