‘I wasn’t going to tell you this, Clea, but all of us are a little worried about you. Lately, you have seemed different, more withdrawn. Is everything all right with your marriage? You know I’m only asking because I’m very fond of you, fonder than I am of any of the others.’
‘Well, I’m sure that’s the only reason you’d ask. I’m as happy with my marriage as the rest of you are with yours,’ I replied. She didn’t get the sarcasm.
‘All I can say is think twice before you commit to something that might diminish you.’
How utterly stupid or ironic, I thought. She thinks going to work would diminish one of us.
‘I appreciate the advice. I’ll call you,’ I said. ‘Bye, bye, Blackbird,’ which was what I called her. She did have beautiful ebony hair and a Middle Eastern complexion, with rich olive skin and naturally perfect full lips. Lately, she had gained a little too much weight, but she was confident her personal trainer would get her back in shape for her Caribbean cruise. How relieved I was when Ronnie refused to go. He hated being confined on a ship, despite what it had to offer.
She laughed, said goodbye and hung up.
I started to work on my list. As long as I keep moving, I thought, I’ll be all right. Everything will be all right. I had a lot more energy in my step as I made me way out and got into the car. This time I was sure to get the garage door up fast. I backed out, paused to close it and then backed on to the road. For a moment, I just sat there, not shifting into drive.
The car I had seen last night from my bedroom window was parked on the other side of the street.
But there was no one in it.
I looked at our front entrance and over our grounds. I saw no one. Why would he leave his car out here? Where was he? I debated turning off the engine and getting out to look around. I was sure I would feel silly doing it. If he wants to see me, he has to show himself, I thought. Why was he doing this anyway? Had he been spying on me through a window? I waited a few more moments and then I drove off. I kept looking in the rearview mirror, anticipating him following me, but I didn’t see him.
I did run down my list of chores, but at about midday I was close to what had been Sebastian Pullman’s offices. I paused, thought about Ronnie’s suggestion and went in. I had met the attorney who had bought out Sebastian’s practice. His name was Carlton Saunders. He was in his early forties and had built a good reputation for his trial work. To service Sebastian’s clients and continue to build his practice, Carlton had taken on two junior partners, Gerald Wilson and Bob Sayer. Brondi Spector’s husband was Carlton’s CPA, so I got the updates at our regular Thursday lunch. It always began with ‘I thought you’d be interested, having worked there.’ I was confident that Brondi’s husband Garson would not like her talking about one of his clients. I never showed any real interest in knowing about the firm, but that didn’t dissuade her.
I was curious as to how Carlton had refurbished the offices. Sebastian was quite conservative in his politics and his style. The furniture when I had worked there was the same furniture he had when he had begun the practice. Leather chairs were well worn, curtains somewhat faded, and the prints framed on the walls were country scenes remarkable only in their mediocrity and dullness. My office space had been furnished with an IKEA discounted desk, tables and chairs. The only thing Sebastian modernized was his computer technology. He often commented that all new law graduates needed now was a desk, a chair and a PC or Apple iPad, but he didn’t make it sound like progress. He made it sound like giant backward steps, stripping the practice of law of all of its style, etiquette and morality, if there was ever any.
Actually, I had a great deal of respect for Sebastian. I thought he was the last of a class of men who really cared about the values of their profession more than the money they could earn. Maybe it was naive to think it, but surely there was a time when someone would want to be a doctor or a lawyer because he or she really wanted to help people, make the world safer.
On the other hand, Carlton Saunders was one of those aggressive, hungry men who went after clients and cases to build his net worth. Although he was good at what he did, image was still more important than substance. I could see that immediately when I entered the lobby, richly decorated with expensive-looking new leather sofas and chairs, rich mahogany tables, real oil paintings of dramatic seascapes and landscapes on new dark-cherry paneled walls. There was a chandelier where Sebastian only had a simple light fixture at the center of the ceiling, but there were also fancy, modern standing lamps at the sides of the sofas and chairs. One wall had shelves of law books, obviously there to impress would-be clients that they were in an upscale, well-educated, hard-working firm.
Sebastian Pullman’s receptionist, Marion Godletter, had been with him for more than twenty-five years. She was a mother and grandmother with seven grandchildren. She never attempted to look younger, never touched up her ash-gray hair or improved on her makeup, which was really just some lipstick and a smidgen of rouge. She was more like a mother to me than another employee, never failing to ask how Ronnie and Kelly were doing and commenting on my hair and clothes. She was the sort who stored a virtual drugstore in her desk so she could offer cold and headache medicine the way a mother might.
By contrast, Carlton’s receptionist looked as if she had just graduated from high school. She was a striking redhead with Kelly-green eyes and an obviously Miss America figure broadcast in a tight-fitting light blue knit dress. She flashed a well-practiced smile at me the moment I entered. I felt as if I had wandered on to a movie set of an attorney’s office. Any moment someone would shout, ‘Cut. Print that.’
‘May I help you?’ she asked. I was impressed that she used may and not can.
‘I’m Clea Howard. I was wondering if Mr Saunders might have a moment.’
‘Regarding?’
‘My past employment here when it was Sebastian Pullman’s law offices.’
She stared a moment.
‘He knows who I am,’ I added.
‘Oh. One moment, please.’
Instead of calling Carlton on some intercom, she turned and typed my name and request on a computer. I was sure it appeared instantly on a screen at Carlton’s desk.
‘You may take a seat,’ she told me.
‘Thank you,’ I said and sat on the sofa. I sorted through some of the magazines, but before I could get into any, Carlton Saunders stepped out.
Carlton was just under six feet tall, with firm, full shoulders molded by hours in some gym either at his own home or at a private club. His gray pinstripe suit was obviously tailored. He had a tanning-bed perfect complexion that emphasized his intelligent blue eyes, heightened sharply by his light brown hair. When I had first met him, I immediately imagined he came out of central casting when an actor to play a successful trial attorney was sought, which was why I had that movie-set feeling right now. Some people are born for the parts they will play in life, I thought. Carlton was one of them.
‘Clea, how nice to see you.’ He flashed a look at his receptionist and then turned back to me. ‘Come on in.’
I followed him into what had been Sebastian’s office. It looked larger and there were bigger, more expensive works of art, trophies for golf victories and framed letters signed by important political figures and clients. I noted the plush caramel-colored rug and the light blue curtains. Sebastian had dull coffee-white curtains that looked as if they might crumble in your fingers.
‘Did you expand this somehow?’ I asked.
He laughed.
‘Yes. I carved out that walk-in closet and punched through the wall between this office and what had been yours. We’ve taken the office space on the second floor for my junior partners. There’s a stairway just outside this door,’ he added, nodding at a door at the rear, ‘but you can approach it also from the lobby. I wasn’t going to keep this building, but I decided to have some fun with it instead of selling. It’s practically an historical site anyway. So? Have a seat,’ he said quickly, noddi
ng at the soft black leather chair in front of his desk. ‘What’s up?’
He sat behind his much larger and less organized-looking dark-walnut desk, and I sat, too.
‘I was thinking of going back to work and thought first of you.’
‘Really?’ He nodded as the concept settled in like a piece of chocolate into boiling milk.
‘Yes. I find I have too much time on my hands now that our daughter is teenage self-destructive, and my husband is more of a workaholic than ever. There’s just so much you can occupy yourself with, and little of it is any sort of intellectual challenge.’
He laughed.
‘My grandmother used to tell me that idle hands are the devil’s workshop.’
I held my smile and he quickly lost his.
‘You’re not making friends with the devil now, are you?’
‘Not since I left working in a law office,’ I countered.
He laughed, but not like someone who enjoyed being satirized.
‘Sebastian claimed you were the spine of his successful practice. He thought you’d make a good lawyer yourself and was disappointed that you didn’t go on.’
‘As am I,’ I said.
‘It’s not too late. These days, many people pick up new professions late in life. Well, how can I help you?’
‘I just thought I’d leave my name with you just in case you have a need for a paralegal.’
‘I appreciate that; appreciate your thinking of me first.’ He nodded again, thoughtful. ‘Maybe I can get you going part-time here and see what develops.’
‘I’d like that,’ I said. ‘Actually, I think I might prefer part-time.’
‘I have a new case coming up. It’s a bit complicated because it involves three different business entities. Lots of footwork needed.’
‘I’m your man,’ I said.
He smiled. ‘One thing I’ll never accuse you of, Clea, is being a man.’
I shrugged. ‘It’s still a man’s world. All of us women make little compromises so that our men can feel more significant. It’s practically become the American way.’
He stared at me a moment, his eyes narrowing with suspicion.
‘Anything in particular motivating you to get out of the house these days?’
‘You’re really a lawyer’s lawyer, Carlton,’ I replied, and he laughed.
‘OK,’ he said, holding up his hands. ‘I have your number. I’ll call you in a day or so and outline what I think you can do and when.’
‘Thank you.’
‘However, I think it’s a fair guess to say you must be desperate to get work,’ he said.
‘Oh? How do you know that?’
‘You didn’t even ask me about salary.’
‘I just assumed—’
‘Not a rule you break in court,’ he said, coming around his desk. ‘No assumptions. I know what Sebastian paid you. I’ll add ten percent since I reduced the office space you’d be using by at least that.’
‘I never needed much space.’
‘If you become full-time, we’ll talk about it again,’ he added and held out his hand.
I took it, but we didn’t shake. We simply made some contact. It seemed to be enough for him as well. He walked me to the door. His receptionist looked up, surprised, when I stepped out. I was sure she was wondering what could have transpired in so short a time. I smiled back at her.
When I stepped back out on the street, I paused. Normally, I wouldn’t make a decision like this without first discussing it with Ronnie, even though he had suggested it. Half the suggestions he made were half-hearted, stuffing to fill a gap or get a problem out of his face, I thought. I envisioned them being put in stockings on a fireplace on Christmas Eve, little notes full of little suggestions.
Come to think of it, though, what decisions did most of the wives I knew make on their own? Clothes? Hair and nails? Maybe what was for dinner? None of them made any dramatic changes in their homes without first consulting their husbands. It didn’t sound as if it offered them any true self-respect, but the women I knew who led very independent lives had marriages that reminded me of the line ‘We shared coffee,’ as an answer to the question ‘What was your married life like?’ They resembled the German Confederation, the Deutsche Bund, a loose association of Central European states, more than they resembled the United States. Eventually, they broke completely loose.
Was that where I was heading?
As soon as I stepped into the house, the phone began to ring. It jerked me out of my deep thoughts. I don’t know why, but I felt violated. More and more, the phone was turning into something annoying. At night, we still received those damn calls from fundraising agencies, political and others, appeals for firemen and policemen. No one wanted them not to be protected, but I wondered how much of a percentage the fundraisers took.
I almost didn’t answer it. This was my time to be alone with my thoughts. I had a lot to decide, but then I thought it might be Kelly or something might be wrong with Ronnie. I wondered why I didn’t think of anything else first. I wasn’t a Chicken Little. I never cried, ‘The sky is falling,’ but disasters always did flash first in my mind. Maybe it was that damn Breaking News they flashed on television at the smallest opportunity. We were being trained to expect another attack on another World Trade Center.
I lifted the receiver after the fourth ring, just before it would go to message.
‘Hey,’ Ronnie said. ‘You’re home.’
‘That’s where the phone is.’
‘I tried your cell, but it went right to answering service.’
‘I just walked in. I had errands today. I forgot my cell phone,’ I added, seeing it on the counter.
‘Yeah, well, guess what? Management gave me a celebratory gift. They’re paying for a group of us to have box seats at the Staple Center for the Lakers game tonight. You mind if I go out with the boys?’
‘I haven’t before when it wasn’t a special gift, Ronnie. Why would I now?’
‘Just checking. We’re actually on our way, grabbing something to eat first in downtown LA,’ he confessed in the tone of an errant schoolboy who had been taught that George Washington didn’t lie.
‘Really? That’s like someone calling from the way down after he had already jumped off the ledge of a twenty-story building to ask if he could,’ I said.
‘What?’
‘Just a joke. Enjoy yourself,’ I said.
‘You’re the greatest, Clea,’ he said, going into his best Jackie Gleason imitation from The Honeymooners, a show so historic it was relegated to something like TV Land or Shopping Network DVD sales.
I thought about telling him I had followed his suggestion and decided to go back to work and was actually going to do so, at least part-time, but I sensed that he was talking to me with his buddies in the car and wanted to get off quickly. I was sure he was already taking quite a bit of teasing for calling me at all and making it sound as if he needed my approval or permission. That was just the way it was, even though the other married men in the car probably had made the same sort of phone call, just privately.
‘Bye,’ I said. ‘Have a good time.’
I hung up and began to put away everything I had bought. Then I went to hang up the clothes I had retrieved from the drycleaners, but the sound of my cell phone ringing and vibrating on the kitchen counter brought me back. Holding the clothes in my right hand, I answered.
‘Clea,’ I said.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked.
‘Yes. Why wouldn’t I be?’
‘What brought you to a lawyer’s office?’
‘Are you stalking me?’
‘Of course,’ he replied.
I laughed. ‘Not to worry. I’m not starting a divorce because of you. Not yet. Right now, I’m thinking of returning to work.’
‘Really? Was that your idea?’
‘Actually, my husband suggested it.’
‘He’s worried you’re bored or he likes the idea of more income?’
‘A little of both.’
‘Any chance I might see you tonight?’
‘Actually, a good chance. What did you have in mind?’
‘There’s an Italian restaurant just outside of Fullerton. You know it,’ he said. ‘Gianni’s.’
‘Yes, I know it, although I haven’t been there in some time.’
‘I’ll be at the bar at seven thirty,’ he said.
‘OK.’
It was as if he had tapped into our house phone and heard that Ronnie was going to be occupied tonight, and knew just when to call me.
But I was glad he had.
I started for the stairway again. Looking out the bedroom window after hanging up the dry-cleaned clothes, I saw that the sky was quite overcast, but somehow, for me, the sun was shining.
‘Gianni’s, seven thirty,’ I whispered.
I was beginning to feel as if I was riding a rollercoaster, and every time I went down, I started up to a higher peak.
Hold on, I thought. This is going to be a very fast and thrilling ride.
FOUR
In probably ninety-nine percent of American households where there is at least one teenager, the teenager at least occasionally lies to the parents about where he or she is going and whom he or she is meeting. It has almost become a rite of passage. The first time they do it successfully, they feel a sense of accomplishment, not guilt. On the surface, it surely looks as though the lies don’t harm anyone. In fact, in their way of thinking they are doing their parents a big favor. They are alleviating their worry and concern. Later on, if the parents discover the untruth, they are reminded about their own fabrications when they were that age. They are told that lies wouldn’t have been necessary if they had only been more reasonable. Often the blame is successfully shifted to them.
Lying to Kelly, as strange as it might sound, made me feel younger. I was trying to get away with something and, of course, there was no doubt as to whether or not she would approve of what I was about to do if she knew the truth, so that same twisted logic could be employed. If I didn’t lie to her, she would be emotionally wounded, very seriously disturbed. The impact could easily affect her for the rest of her life and not only change her personality but have a detrimental influence on her own relationships. If her mother could do something like this, she would never trust her husband or even herself. She would hold her breath before she uttered a single commitment. In the end, she would age cynically, and all this just because I didn’t lie. There was no way I was going to let that happen. I was doing this all for her. How’s that for rationalization?
Lost in His Eyes Page 6