Once More with Feeling

by Cynthia Baxter

  “Excuse me,” she said. “Do you think instead of reading that book, you could read one that has Barney in it?”

  * * * *

  By the time Laura put her autographing pen away, she’d decided that the winner of the contest for tonight’s reward would have to be Haagen-Dazs. After this ordeal, only something with nuts, chips, and a three-digit fat-gram count would do.

  As she zipped up her purse she became aware that someone was standing in front of her. She glanced up, expecting Jennifer.

  “Ms. Briggs?” a woman about Laura’s age asked shyly.

  “Yes?”

  “I wasn’t sure if it was really you. I mean, the sign said you’d be here tonight, and, of course, I recognized your book on that poster over there. . . . But I could hardly believe I’d actually have the chance to meet you in person.”

  Laura just blinked.

  “You see, all three of my children are big fans of yours. Of course, the two older girls are reading chapter books now. But David still can’t get enough of Gertrude and Carol. In fact, promising to read your books is the only way I can get him into bed.”

  Tentatively the woman handed over a well-worn copy of Laura’s first book, along with spanking-new copies of the two latest ones. “If you’d be kind enough to sign these for my children, I know they’d be absolutely thrilled.”

  Laura reached for the books. “I’d love to.”

  Maybe I’m not a wife anymore, she thought as she opened the book on top. But at least I’m still a writer.

  Chapter Four

  “Today, Laura Briggs Walsh, well-known author of more than a dozen children’s books, was charged with first-degree murder at her home in Clover Hollow, an upscale suburb on Long Island’s north shore. The victim: her husband, forty-five-year-old Roger Walsh.”

  The newscaster is speaking earnestly into a video camera, trying her best to look dignified as she stands in the middle of Laura’s front lawn, strewn with roller skates, Roller Blades, a bicycle, and half a dozen other artifacts of an eight-year-old boy’s life.

  Laura takes a moment to wish she’d gotten on Evan’s case about picking up after himself as she’s led out the back door by a police officer. The video cameras are still whirring. She tries, unsuccessfully, to shield her face with the collar of her raincoat, the one she’s been meaning to bring to the dry cleaner for weeks. Photographers from all the Long Island and New York papers are there. The New York Times. Newsday. Even the local edition of The Pennysaver. Flashbulbs explode in her face.

  “She’s an animal!” cries one of the dozens of onlookers, a man in an undershirt and drooping jeans who’s brandishing his beer can.

  “She’s not an animal,” counters a woman clutching a bag of groceries. “She’s a woman who needs a good lawyer! “

  “She was merciless!” someone else cries.

  “All she wanted was her just revenge,” claims the woman.

  Laura can remain silent no longer. “I didn’t mean to kill him!” she cries. “It just happened! One minute I was arranging the steak knives in the drawer, and the next thing I knew—

  * * * *

  “Mo-o-o-om!” Evan’s whiny voice pulled her out of her nightmarish reverie. ‘Today’s gym, and I can’t find any clean sweatpants.”

  For once, Laura was actually glad for the excuse to drag herself out of bed. Not that the fantasy she’d been spinning as she lay in bed was entirely rooted in fiction. Today she was making her initial foray into the world of the legal jungle. The day before, she’d made an appointment with a lawyer. A divorce lawyer. She’d dialed three times before she was able to keep herself from hanging up. It was such a monumental step. Such a definitive step. Above all, such a final step.

  The fact that Irwin Hart had been Claire’s lawyer bothered her, too. Laura’s instincts told her that following Claire’s recommendation for anything would be like borrowing one of her Lycra miniskirts: it would turn out to be much too much for Laura. Still, with no other ideas about whom to try, she’d decided to check him out.

  She felt as if she were about to sneak off on a secret mission as she slapped peanut butter and jelly on white bread for Evan’s school lunch and tried to carry on a meaningful discussion about why the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles no longer held the same cachet they once had. Through it all, Roger remained silent. He sat at the kitchen table, drinking coffee and looking sullen. Laura tried to quell her irritation—with him, of course, and with the fact that despite her decision to get out of her marriage, she was still living with the same husband in the same house, with the same anger gnawing away at the half-chewed bagel sitting in her stomach—by reminding herself that things weren’t that different from what they’d been all along. On the upside, she realized that her days of breakfasting with a hostile, brooding husband were numbered.

  She was standing in front of the mirror in Irwin Hart’s reception area, looking with dismay at the sad, tired face staring back at her, when she remembered that this wasn’t just any day. Today was her fifteenth wedding anniversary.

  She was supposed to be buying champagne. Wrapping either a cappuccino maker or a bathrobe in colorful gift paper. Maybe even plotting a few surprises for the bedroom: reintroducing candles, perhaps, or even throwing caution to the wind and removing her socks. Instead, she was taking a mental inventory of their possessions, struggling to remember who’d originally owned the collection of Byrds albums, agonizing over who was entitled to the margarita glasses.

  Looking at her reflection in the mirror, Laura watched her face crumple. “Oh, my God,” she cried. “This is really happening!”

  Even in her despair, she found herself thinking back, appreciating the tragedy of her marriage’s end but not for a minute glossing over the realities that had brought her to this point. Today, on her wedding anniversary, she couldn’t help but remember where she’d been fifteen years earlier.

  Maybe planning and executing the wedding hadn’t been enough to tip her off. But from where she now stood, Laura realized that the honeymoon should have opened her eyes to the fact that marrying Roger Walsh had been a bad choice in me cosmic game of Let’s Make a Deal.

  * * * *

  “If this is what it feels like to be married, I’m going to love being a wife.” Reaching across the front seat of the car, Laura placed her hand on Roger’s thigh. When he rewarded her with a contented purr, she settled back in her seat, taking care not to spill the glass of lukewarm champagne she’d been nursing ever since they’d crossed the border into Canada.

  This, she was certain, was sheer bliss: the two of them trundling down a country road in the vintage Volkswagen bug they’d borrowed from Dirk, the silhouettes of peace signs and oversized daisies still visible in bright sunlight. The late-afternoon sun beamed down approvingly, and while the champagne could easily have passed for a Woollite wash, the idea of drinking something French in broad daylight was even more intoxicating than the alcohol. Then there was the scenery. Here a barn, there a cow ... Their surroundings were so pastoral it was difficult to believe they were less than an hour from Toronto, their destination for an intensive five-day training program for the marriage business.

  A Canadian honeymoon had been her idea. A trip up north contained the exotic elements of a foreign vacation without such annoyances as passports, phrase books, and astronomical Visa bills. She was looking forward to tackling a new city armed with comfortable shoes, a good guidebook, and unwavering enthusiasm. Even more, she was filled with anticipation over the prospect of trying on the mantle of wife in neutral territory. It would take time to get used to the idea of traveling with a partner, not only through another country, but more important, through her own life.

  When she and Roger had climbed into the car at dawn, they’d both been excited. The icing on the cake was finding the bon voyage present Claire had left on the backseat: a huge wicker basket containing crackers, cheeses, chocolates, and a modest-sized bottle of icy champagne. Also tucked into the tissue paper was a pair of tulip
glasses. One sported a tiny black bow tie, the other a white satin ribbon.

  “I hope the hotel’s nice.” Laura slid her fingers across Roger’s leg. ‘Then again, as long as our room has a big, comfortable bed, I guess the rest doesn’t matter much.”

  Suddenly the Volkswagen lurched. The car shuddered and the engine lost power. Laura automatically assumed that the provocative dip her stroking fingers had just taken was responsible. But then the car veered off to the side of the road. Anxiously she glanced over at Roger. His expression was dark.

  “Damn!” he barked, slapping the steering wheel with the palm of his hand. “I told Dirk to have this stupid car checked out before we took it on such a long trip.”

  Laura dropped her hand primly into her own lap. “Why didn’t he?”

  Roger grimaced. “He probably didn’t have the cash.”

  “Gee, and he gave us such a generous wedding present,” Laura commented dryly. The Ziploc bag containing three ounces of marijuana had been left at home, along with the hand-crocheted coasters and the silver ice bucket engraved with a monogram that ignored Laura’s decision to keep her own name. “Now what?”

  Roger sat slumped behind the wheel, his arms folded across his chest. “We sit back and hope the Canadian people are friendly.”

  While Laura couldn’t vouch for the entire population, the aging farmer who pulled his dusty pickup truck alongside and asked if they could use a hand was certainly helpful. The driver of the tow truck was downright palsy-walsy. As for the proprietor of Cyril’s Auto Repair, he was grinning like a jack-o’-lantern as they said good-bye, leaving him their disabled vehicle.

  “Look at it this way,” Roger said with uncharacteristic cheerfulness as they stood on the corner in front of a scone shop, waiting for a bus. “We’ve already gotten to see a part of Toronto most tourists never get to see.”

  The Royal York Hotel was not only nice; it embodied the kind of old-world elegance and charm that Laura had only experienced in Edith Wharton novels. She was almost able to forget about the Great Auto Disaster that evening as she lay back in an oversized bathtub beneath a mound of scented bubbles. She hoped that while she was untying knots in muscles she hadn’t even known she possessed, Roger was turning back the bedspread, spraying on deodorant, and carrying out all the other preparations a groom on his honeymoon would be apt to make. So when she heard him speaking through the closed bathroom door, she sat up and listened.

  “Hello? This is room seven-eighteen. I’d like to order movie number three.... Uh, I believe it’s called The Harder They Come....”

  Dripping bubbles all over the floor, Laura went to the bathroom doorway, a towel concealing as much of her body as possible.

  “Roger?” she demanded, incredulous. “What are you doing?”

  He glanced up at her, his hand covering the receiver of the telephone. “Just ordering up some entertainment. I figured—Yes, I’m here. Eight o’clock sounds fine. Go ahead and bill it to the room.”

  “Roger, I don’t think—”

  Before she could manage to say more, the telephone rang. She hoped it was the front desk, informing them that due to technical difficulties, the wayward cheerleaders or stewardesses or whomever room seven-eighteen had ordered would be unavailable. Instead, it was Cyril.

  “Whoooo,” Roger breathed into the phone, his back turned to Laura. “That much, huh?”

  “What did he say?” she demanded, perching on the edge of the bed. By then, she’d abandoned the idea of a long, hot soak in the tub. Instead, she was pulling clothes over her still damp limbs.

  “The car needs a new engine. Cyril says the old one—’

  “How much is ‘that much’?”

  Roger swallowed hard. “Five hundred bucks.”

  She stared at the carpeting, waiting for the rising panic to subside. “Whose five hundred bucks?” she finally asked.

  “We’d better call Dirk.”

  So it was that the first night of Laura and Roger’s honeymoon was spent in the company of romping cheerleaders ... and the second night with Dirk and his pal Igor stretched out in sleeping bags on the floor of their honeymoon hideaway. Dirk, after all, was the rightful owner of the ailing VW. If he chose to tow it all the way back to Pennsylvania behind Igor’s truck so he could personally fiddle with the recalcitrant engine, that was his business. Of course, where they spent the night was also Laura’s business. Still, she was a new bride, on her very best behavior, and she couldn’t bring herself to exile her brother-in-law of two days to the Y when she was enjoying such luxurious accommodations.

  That escapade, it turned out, was merely a precursor of the even more symbolic event that was to follow. On day three, over breakfast, Roger had a suspicious glint in his eyes, unlike anything Laura’d seen since he’d watched the cheerleaders video.

  “I had a great idea,” he told her. “How about renting a sailboat and taking it out on Lake Ontario? You and I haven’t had a chance to go sailing together yet. So far,” he added with a wink, “you’ve only heard about my prowess at sea. I’m anxious to show off.”

  Lounging on the back of the fourteen-foot sailboat that was theirs for the day, Laura couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt so relaxed. Even though it was October, the day was unseasonably warm. She had no duties but to be appreciative. Roger, meanwhile, bustled around, trying to impress his new bride with his knowledge of peculiar knots and sails with names that sounded like acronyms.

  “Mmm, that sun feels good,” she commented, pulling off her sunglasses and squinting in the bright light. “I think I’ll take a dip in the lake.”

  “Good idea,” Roger said, flashing her a smile.

  Standing perched on the edge of the boat, about to dive in, Laura noticed her wedding ring. Feeling a rush of protectiveness toward both her new status and her new jewelry, she pulled it off her finger.

  “Here.” She handed it to Roger, saying, “Hold this for me,” as she jumped into the lake.

  She never did fully understand the sequence of events that followed. It had to do with changing sails, fiddling with those knots Roger prided himself on knowing so much about. All she knew was that as she shivered in the icy water, wondering what on earth she’d been thinking, she noticed something gold glinting in the sunlight. With a tiny splash, it dropped into the water.

  It only took her a few seconds to figure out what had happened. The look on Roger’s face, the fact that there were only so many substances capable of catching the light in just that way ... As she treaded water Laura’s stomach cramped.

  Her wedding ring. Gone.

  “I hope what happened today isn’t a bad sign,” Roger said later that evening, chuckling. The two of them sat at a small table in a dark corner of a Basque restaurant, the plump couple who owned it watching anxiously to see if they were duly appreciative of the excellent cuisine. The tiny restaurant seemed to have been designed with honeymooners in mind. Candles dripped wax over wine bottles. The large china plates looked hand painted, the occasional chip only adding more to the ambience. As for the food, it couldn’t have been tastier even if its ingredients had been identifiable.

  Laura’s smile was the cheeriest one she could manage. The last thing she wanted to do was cast a shadow over what was supposed to be a romantic evening.

  “Don’t worry about the ring,” she insisted. “It’s just a piece of metal, forty dollars worth of gold. I can replace it easily enough once we get home.”

  She reached for her glass of champagne, much drier than Claire’s choice and served icy cold. Somehow, it didn’t taste nearly as wonderful as the tepid stuff she’d sipped in the front seat of the car only days earlier.

  Laura never did admit to Roger how much her feelings had been hurt by his carelessness with her ring, the first important thing he’d ever given to her, a symbol of a union that was meant to last. She’d never even admitted it to herself. Yet while the event was something she hadn’t thought about for years, as she stood outside a divorce lawyer’s o
ffice, it suddenly seemed of monumental importance.

  * * * *

  Laura tried to concentrate on the present as she sat down in a hard wooden chair opposite Irwin Hart, folding her hands in her lap anxiously. Her focus, she reminded herself, should be not on herself, but on the man on the other side of the desk.

  What struck her most were his small, dark eyes. She immediately thought of the word beady, and found herself considering adding a vulture to the cast of characters in her jungle books.

  Irwin Hart had an odd way of looking at people, staring not into their eyes but just a bit higher. Laura found it disconcerting. Self-consciously she smoothed the top of her hair.

  “So you want out of a marriage,” he said, in a low monotone.

  “Uh, yes.” Laura squirmed in her chair. “I don’t really know what steps I have to take—’

  “Leave all that to me. That is, if you decide to avail yourself of my services.” He leaned forward, forming an inverted V with his hands. He wore a big ring on each pinky. One was a solid band of gold, so thick it reminded her of a Life Saver. The other had a diamond as big as a Ritz cracker.

  Clearing her throat, Laura continued. “There are a few questions I’d like to ask before I decide—”

  “Of course, of course.” Irwin Hart spoke so quickly that she wondered if he had someone waiting in the next room.

  “First of all,” she said, her pen poised over the pad she’d taken out of her purse, “I’d like to know what percentage of your law practice is devoted to, uh, divorce.”

  “All of it.” Irwin Hart reached into the center drawer of his desk and took out two shiny silver balls, smaller and smoother than golf balls. He held them both in his right hand, moving them back and forth, back and forth, tapping and grinding them against each other.

  “I see. Well, that’s good. Uh, I guess I’ll need to know what you require as a retainer—” She stopped, suddenly aware of another noise in the room, less grating but distracting nevertheless. “Do you hear tapping?”