A House Divided

by Robert Whitlow

  Ray moved over. In a few moments the door opened, and a woman in blue surgical scrubs appeared.

  “Mr. Gage?” she asked. “Come with me.”

  “How is she?” Ray demanded.

  “She’s with the doctor.”

  It wasn’t an answer, but Ray suspected it was all he would get. They turned a corner, and the nurse opened a door.

  “They’re in here.”

  Ray stepped inside. Covered by a white sheet, Cindy was propped up in bed with her doctor beside her. Dr. Valance saw Ray and moved toward the door.

  “I’ll leave you alone,” he said.

  Ray went over and grabbed Cindy’s hand. Her eyes were red and teary, but she gave him a weak smile.

  “It’s a girl,” she said. “I started bleeding at home and came right in. Dr. Valance doesn’t think I’m in imminent danger of a miscarriage, but she wants me to keep off my feet for a few days.”

  “A girl?”

  Cindy smiled. “The tech caught her in a position that left no doubt. Dr. Valance was in the room too. She confirmed it.”

  “Why didn’t you call me to come home and drive you?”

  “Because it would have taken twice as long.”

  Ray sat on the end of the bed. “How do you feel now?” he asked.

  “Happy, relieved, excited, scared, thankful, worried—how many emotions can a woman simultaneously experience?”

  “My brain would explode.”

  Cindy touched her abdomen. “All I want is for our daughter to keep getting bigger and bigger.”

  Ray stayed with Cindy for another thirty minutes before the nurse told them it was fine to leave.

  “I can drive,” Cindy said when they reached the parking lot.

  “No!” Ray shot back.

  “How are we going to get my car home?”

  “I think I can find someone to help.”

  Cindy got in the passenger seat and leaned back. “While you’re chauffeuring me around, I’d like you to take a detour. It’s not too far out of the way.”

  “Are you sure that’s a good—”

  “Arguing with me causes so much stress,” Cindy replied, closing her eyes for a moment.

  “Okay, okay. You win.”

  Cindy smiled. “Just hearing those words from your lips makes me feel better.”

  Ray followed Cindy’s directions across town and into an older residential neighborhood of larger homes. When she told him to turn onto Willow Oak Lane, he pulled into the short cul-de-sac and stopped.

  “If we’re on a secret house hunt, there aren’t any For Sale signs on this street.”

  Cindy reached over and touched his hand. “Last week I asked the Realtor to contact the bank about your mother’s house.”

  “Even as a foreclosure it would be way over our price range.” Ray paused. “And I’m not sure I’d want to live there even if we could.”

  “Why not? It has a nice floor plan and a great yard for Billy and the new baby. And the possibility of bringing the flower beds back to life makes me want to get my hands dirty. Think about how thrilled your mother would be.”

  Instead of answering, Ray drove slowly forward until they were directly in front of the house. Cindy told him the price range the real estate agent thought might be acceptable to the bank.

  “That’s way less than I would have thought,” Ray admitted, “but it’s still above our range.”

  “I could sell my hair,” Cindy said, running her fingers through her closely cut blond locks.

  Ray smiled. “I love your hair, but you’re no Rapunzel.”

  “Then how about this. I floated the idea of a lease purchase to the Realtor and told her how much we could pay in rent with part of it going to the purchase price if we could close within two years. She thinks the bank might go for it.”

  “What were the figures?”

  When Cindy told him, Ray’s eyes widened. “If the bank would consider that—”

  “You’d agree?”

  “Maybe. Let’s get you home before I need to go to the doctor and be treated for shock.”

  “I’ve learned a lot from you,” Roxy said to Mr. Caldweller as she signed the severance agreement.

  “There is more than one way to interpret that.”

  “Yes, and I’ll leave it to you to decide which one to choose.”

  Caldweller shook his head. “I didn’t want to lose you,” he said. “You’re as tough and smart as any associate, male or female, I’ve worked with. It takes much more than brains to be a successful litigator, and you have the intangibles to succeed no matter where you go.”

  Roxy was surprised that she didn’t feel any emotion as her boss spoke honestly and without a manipulative agenda.

  “Would you give me a good professional reference in the future?” she asked.

  Caldweller hesitated and Roxy knew it was due to concern that he might get into trouble for saying something nice about her. The older lawyer’s fear was his own burden, but it had a profound impact on Roxy. If a senior partner at the firm couldn’t feel secure, why would Roxy want to voluntarily choose to live in the same gilded cage?

  “That’s okay,” she said before he responded. “I don’t want to put you in an awkward position. If I’m as good as you say, I should be all right.”

  Caldweller stood. “You know the drill,” he said.

  “I’ll log off my computer, pack up my personal belongings, and leave immediately.”

  “I’m not going to send the office manager back to watch you.”

  When an employee left abruptly, someone normally made sure they didn’t engage in an act of vengeful sabotage on the way out the door.

  “Can I make a copy of the severance agreement before my copier key is canceled?” Roxy asked.

  “I’ll do it for you,” Caldweller said, holding out his hand.

  “My key is already revoked?”

  “Yes.”

  Roxy handed him the document. When Caldweller left he seemed a little bit older, his shoulders slightly more stooped. It was a sad sight.

  Roxy got a couple of empty boxes from the supply room. When she returned to her office, a copy of the severance agreement lay on her desk. She loaded up the boxes with her diplomas, a few photos, random personal items, and a half-empty bag of caramels. There wasn’t much physical evidence from her stay; the main takeaway was the invaluable knowledge and experience gained from surviving in a merciless legal boot camp.

  Roxy held her head high and looked straight ahead as she carried the boxes from the office. She didn’t encounter anyone on the way to the elevators. Her former coworkers had their noses firmly planted on the Frank and Donaldson grindstone. The receptionist was on the phone and didn’t pay any attention to her departure. As far as she knew, Roxy was simply tidying up her office. Roxy stood alone in the middle of the elevator and watched the doors close on what had been the center of her life.

  Corbin got off the phone with Ray, leaned back in his chair, and thought about Billy having a little sister. It was hard to imagine a female version of Billy with his strong, solid build. Then a memory of Roxy as a skinny, rambunctious three-year-old popped into his head. Maybe a female prototype for Ray and Cindy’s baby already existed; however, the world wasn’t ready for a duplicate Roxy. Hopefully the melding of Ray and Cindy would yield a mellower version.

  Thinking about Roxy, Corbin knew he owed his daughter an apology. Before he could talk himself out of making the call, he dialed her number. Not surprisingly, given her demanding schedule at work, she didn’t answer, and he left a brief voice mail simply asking her to call him back. He then phoned Ray.

  “Hey, I had another thought,” he said. “Since Cindy should be taking it easy, why don’t I pick up Billy as soon as he gets home from school and take him fishing for a few hours?”

  Ray checked with Cindy and then gave Corbin the okay.

  “Tell him we’ll pick out the worms together,” Corbin said.

  Roxy waited for Peter to arri
ve at the restaurant. He was a few minutes late, and she assured him in a text message there was no need to hurry. She watched the restaurant workers scurrying about. There was now a big difference between them and her. They had a job; she didn’t.

  Roxy had never been fired from a job and wasn’t sure how she ought to feel. The tears that had been lurking in vast secret reservoirs behind her eyelids stayed safely contained. She wasn’t sure what would happen when Peter arrived. He walked rapidly through the door, saw her, and a huge smile creased his face.

  And the tears sloshed over the brink of the dam.

  Roxy took out a tissue and dabbed her eyes. Peter came over and gave her a hug and quick kiss.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “It’s a mix of wrong and right,” Roxy replied. “Sit down. I need a sip of water.”

  An anxious look in his eye, Peter settled in across from her at a table for two. “Drink up and talk,” he said.

  Roxy sipped the water and felt more composed. “What do you want first? The wrong or the right?”

  Peter hesitated. “The right.”

  “Good. That’s shorter.” Roxy smiled. “When you walked through the door and saw me, the look of love on your face made me tear up for a second.”

  “So the good made you sad?”

  Roxy rolled her eyes.

  “Okay,” Peter said. “That probably ruined the mood, which goes to show that I’m an ordinary guy discovering what it’s like to hang out with a beautiful, sensitive woman.”

  “Your mood meter is fine,” Roxy replied. “Do you want to know what’s wrong?”

  “Does it have to do with me?”

  “Mostly me, but it affects us.”

  “All right,” Peter said. “I’m listening.”

  Roxy told him about losing her job. She remained surprisingly dispassionate. No tears appeared.

  Peter listened until she finished. “Is that all?” he asked.

  “Yes, although I’m sure I left out a few details.”

  Peter nodded his head. “So where’s the bad news?”

  “Even though they called it a severance agreement, I was fired,” Roxy replied patiently.

  “Based on everything I know about you and the job at the law firm, I think this is not only good news, it’s great news. With all the changes taking place in your personal life, it was only a matter of time before your basic incompatibility with the firm’s culture made it impossible for you to keep working there. Better to leave now than try to extricate yourself after you’ve been locked into partnership status.”

  Roxy’s mouth dropped open. “How long have you believed this?”

  “Uh, I’m not sure. It took a ton of willpower not to warn you about considering an equity offer when it first came up, but I was worried you’d think I was jealous of your success or trying to control you.”

  Roxy started to disagree, then realized he was right. “Thanks,” she said. “If you’d said something then I wouldn’t have listened.”

  “I’d rather provide confirmation than direction.”

  The waitress brought their entrées, a pair of salads featuring grilled salmon.

  “Do you think it’s time you started being more open with me about what you think?” she asked.

  Peter swallowed his first bite. “I can do that.”

  He took another bite. Roxy waited, her salad untouched.

  “Go ahead,” she said.

  “I am.” Peter pointed at the salad with his fork. “They cook this salmon on a charred wooden plank. It’s delicious.”

  “I mean talk to me about my life.”

  “Okay. I think that your being between jobs will be a great chance to settle things as much as you can with your family. It’s weird, but sometimes I feel your father is hanging around us even though I know he’s eighty miles away.”

  Roxy bristled but immediately reminded herself she’d asked him to be honest with her. “What do you think I should do?”

  “First, eat your salad. Then we’ll talk. For once you don’t have to rush back to work, and I’d rather be here with you than anyplace else on earth.”

  FORTY-NINE

  Corbin and Billy pushed away from the shore of Hackburn’s Lake. The cooler at their feet contained a Styrofoam container of fresh worms for the bream to bite and bottled waters for the two fishermen to drink.

  “Before I go after any bream, I want to see if any bass are biting,” Billy said.

  “Sure,” Corbin said as he fiddled with the boat motor. “But if you want big bass, Braswell’s Pond is the place to go.”

  Corbin pulled the cord, and the motor sputtered to life. He quickly steered the boat to a weedy part of the lake where bass occasionally hung out and let the boat drift quietly into position.

  “What lure do you want to use?” he asked Billy.

  “A plastic worm.”

  Corbin glanced up at the sky. It was cloudy, and the water was murky. “We’d better use a darker color, maybe the purple one. I’ll put it on a hook so—”

  “Can I try?” Billy asked.

  Correctly rigging a plastic worm on a hook so that it performed properly in the water wasn’t easy. It wasn’t just a matter of piercing the artificial body and tossing it overboard. It required a special hook that enabled the fake worm to duplicate a real worm’s underwater movements.

  But Corbin didn’t argue. He handed Billy a worm and a hook, then watched. The boy held the hook correctly, maneuvered the worm onto it, then held the finished product up in the air.

  “What do you think?” he asked.

  “That if I were a bass, I wouldn’t look any further for an early supper.”

  Billy knew two different knots to attach a lure to his monofilament fishing line. Corbin silently approved the boy’s choice.

  “Where should I cast it?” Billy asked him.

  Corbin pointed to a spot past the reedy area. “See if you can get it in there, let it sink, then work it across in front of the brush.”

  On his first cast Billy sent it too long and started to quickly reel it in for another.

  “No, give that one a chance,” Corbin said. “Use it to practice your retrieve.”

  Bass fishing wasn’t passive. The lures had to be continually cast out and brought back to the boat.

  “Try to picture what the worm is doing underneath the water,” Corbin said. “And then imagine a big bass pouncing on it like a lion on its prey.”

  No bass pounced on Billy’s first cast and retrieve. Nor the second, third, or several others. Corbin was pleased that Billy didn’t complain.

  “Ready to move to another spot?” he asked.

  “No, I want to try to the right. I thought I saw a swirl over there a minute ago.”

  Corbin moved so he wouldn’t be in the way. Even so, Billy’s line shot close to his left ear.

  “Careful,” Corbin said.

  “Sorry, Pops,” Billy replied with a grin. “I don’t want to catch you.”

  The line hit the water, and Billy let it sink before beginning his retrieve. Suddenly a fish hit so hard that the force jerked the rod out of Billy’s hand. Corbin tried to grab it as it skidded across the bottom of the boat past his feet. His hand ended up caught in the space between the reel and the line, causing the rig to dangle on his wrist. Billy jumped up, and the boat tipped precariously to one side.

  “Sit down!” Corbin roared.

  Wide-eyed, Billy plopped into the bottom of the boat. Corbin dislodged his wrist from the rod, which was bent double by the pressure from the fish. As soon as his wrist was free, the line skimmed out as the fish dominated the drag on the reel. Corbin tightened the drag slightly, but it kept going out.

  “Get beside me,” he said to Billy.

  The boy carefully moved onto the seat right next to Corbin, who handed him the rod.

  “It’s all yours. You’ve hooked him good or we’d have lost him already.”

  As Billy fought the fish, Corbin tried to remember the weight lim
it of the line on the reel. It would be a shame if the line snapped because it wasn’t strong enough.

  “Who do you think it is?” Billy asked, pulling back on the rod and managing to turn the reel a few times as the fish rested.

  “I don’t know,” Corbin replied. “It fights like General Lee.”

  General Lee was a legendary bass Corbin caught several times in Braswell’s Pond before Billy was born. Long since dead, the fish was the standard by which he evaluated all big-time bass. After fifteen minutes passed, the fight settled into a stalemate.

  Corbin kept a close eye on Billy’s hands and arms to see if he showed any signs of tiring. “How are you doing?” he asked.

  “If you’re asking me to give you the rod, I don’t want to,” Billy replied.

  Corbin laughed. “All right. I’ll keep my mouth shut.”

  Finally the fish began to weaken. Billy cranked on the reel, slowly pulling the fish toward the side of the boat. Corbin reached for the landing net and held it over the spot where he guessed the fish would surface. When it did he leaned over and scooped it up in the net, which sagged from the size and weight of the bass. It was a monster fish. Corbin was about to swear but caught himself. The hook had pierced the corner of the fish’s mouth. The plastic worm was gone.

  “Hand me the tape measure,” he said to Billy, who’d already opened the tackle box.

  “Here’s the tape and the scale.”

  “Hold the net.”

  Billy put his hands around the pole for the landing net. Corbin could tell it took all the boy’s strength to keep it steady. Corbin held up the fish so he could measure and weigh it. Multiple scars received from a long life were visible on its body.

  “Ten pounds, seven ounces,” Corbin announced. “And he’s fifteen and a half inches around the middle.”

  The fish had a gaping maw of a mouth. It was so large Billy could put his fist inside it. He then gently touched the torn place where he hooked the fish.

  “That will heal up in no time,” Corbin said. “And he’ll be mad and hungry for a week.”

  “What’s his name?” Billy asked.