The Social Climber of Davenport Heights

by Pamela Morsi

  My intrapersonal conversation was interrupted by a discreet tapping on my door.

  “Come in,” I called out eagerly.

  I expected Brynn. Amazingly, it was David who opened the door.

  He must have witnessed the surprise on my face.

  “I saw the light,” he explained.

  “I didn’t know you’d come home,” I told him.

  “I just got back,” he admitted.

  He walked in a little uncomfortably and closed the door behind him. There was a strangeness about his presence. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t been in my room. He just hadn’t been in it lately, or when I was lying down.

  When he reached the bedside he seemed awkward, as if not sure what to do or where to put his hands. He stuffed them in his pockets first and then pulled them out to wrap uneasily around his own waist.

  I scooted over a bit.

  “Sit down,” I offered.

  He visibly relaxed as he did.

  “Is Brynn still up?” I asked him.

  “I just said good-night to her in the hall.”

  That pleased me. I wanted her to see her father visiting my room. It made us seem more normal.

  “I just wanted to talk to you…” David began and then sort of faded off.

  “I wanted to talk to you, too,” I admitted. “Brynn was lovely today. She seems very grown-up since summer.”

  He nodded. “Yes, she is. Did you two have words this morning?”

  “Not much,” I assured him. “I’m surprised you noticed.”

  “It’s hard to miss. When you two are unhappy, I get to do all the talking.”

  “So I guess it’s not all bad,” I teased.

  David chuckled. He was looking at me very intently. There was an earnestness about his expression that was a little bit intimidating.

  “What is it?” I asked. “Do I have toothpaste on my nose?”

  With a long index finger, he tapped the end of my nose, teasing.

  “No, I guess not,” he said. “I was thinking how very young you look when you laugh. It reminds me so much of when we were just kids.”

  “What a sweet thing to say.”

  “It’s true, Jane. Absolutely true.”

  “Thank you.”

  He nodded. “I wanted to come in here and tell you that I had a really nice Christmas.”

  “Good,” I told him.

  “And I know that I have you to thank for that,” he continued. “I know how much planning and effort you put into making this a very special holiday for Brynn and for me.”

  I was touched.

  “You’re welcome,” I said. “And the earrings you got me were fabulous.”

  He shrugged. “Actually, Mom picked them out,” he confessed.

  “Oh, that was sweet of her,” I said. I wasn’t surprised. It was exactly the kind of thing that Edith liked. Me, I’d throw them in the back of the jewelry safe with the hope of never seeing them again.

  A silence settled upon us. Not a comfortable silence that would be unexceptional between two people who’d been married twenty years, but an edgy, expectant silence. Both of us wondering what would happen next.

  David continued to look at me in that strange, searching manner. It made me nervous. It made me curious. What was he feeling? What was he thinking?

  He took my left hand in his own. At first, he just held it, lightly running his thumb over the bright cluster of diamonds on the third finger.

  Then tentatively, hesitantly, he brought it up to his face. He pressed it a moment against his cheek and then kissed my palm.

  The tenderness of the gesture sent a shiver of anticipation through me. It had been a very long time since David and I had touched.

  I missed that. I missed him. If his infidelity made me hesitate, it was only for a minute.

  “Oh, David.” I breathed his name like a prayer.

  I slid my arm around his neck and edged him closer to me. I raised my mouth up to his own.

  “Stay with me tonight,” I whispered one instant before our lips met.

  Instantaneously it was foreplay. These were not the gentle, friendly pecks shared between Brynn’s mother and daddy. This was open-mouth sensual exploration, deep, eager and greedy.

  “Oh, baby,” David started murmuring. “Oh, baby.” It was his sex-act liturgy. I remembered it very well.

  Beneath my palms, his shoulders and back were strong and muscular, more so now than in his youth. His kisses were better, too. And his touch more confident, more skillful, more seductive.

  “This feels good,” I told him.

  He threw the covers back, scattering slick glossy magazines all over the room. With nimble fingers he began undoing the buttons on my flannel pj’s.

  I had never attempted to repress my sexual desire. But for the last several years, I had mainly ignored it. I tried to channel that energy into my work, my social life. And I was not too prudish to ease my own frustrations, but there is nothing in the world quite as captivating and gratifying as another human body pressed up against your own.

  I slid my hands underneath his shirt and lightly raked my nails against the softness of his skin.

  “Oh, baby,” he murmured as he bared my breasts. “You look good, you smell good.”

  “I am good,” I assured him as I clicked off the bedside lamp, allowing the silvery shimmer through the skylight to illuminate us.

  He chuckled lightly as he nuzzled against my bosom.

  I threaded my fingers through his hair. My breath caught in my throat at the touch of his tongue.

  “You always were good,” he told me.

  That was the truth. In bed, I had always been good. And he had been, too. That night was no different. We knew all the ways to caress each other, tease each other, tempt each other. And neither of us hesitated to make full use of that knowledge.

  Fired up, laughing, kinky, we romped on the mattress like newlyweds. David stuffed a pillow behind the headboard to keep it from banging against the wall. I dragged off his briefs with my teeth.

  We giggled. We panted. We moaned.

  It took a while for me to get to the edge. I wrapped my legs around him tightly, urging him on. He stayed with me until my climax and then he came a half minute later.

  We lay there in each other’s arms, catching our breath as the sweat on our bodies gleamed in the moonlight. I felt wonderful. Totally exhausted, yet somehow brimming with energy, as well.

  I wanted to giggle, to kiss him, to hug him. I wanted to relive the moments just past. To marvel together about how wonderful it felt and how well we understood each other, how intuitively we satisfied each other’s need. I resisted the desire.

  David was quiet, thoughtful, as he sometimes was after sex. I decided to let him slip into that place in his heart where he went without me.

  I did plant one more kiss on his cheek.

  “That was fantastic, darling,” I told him. “I’m wrung out like a dishrag and never enjoyed it more. Let’s not wait so long before we do it next time, okay?”

  I don’t know what he replied, if anything. The moment I lay my head against the pillow, I was asleep. I awakened late in the morning and he was already gone. He probably had an early tee-time.

  Two days later we got Brynn on her plane to Colorado with hugs and kisses and admonitions to be careful. The holiday hadn’t been a complete disappointment, but I was a little down anyway. I had tried so hard to make her time with us fun and special and pleasant. Not just because I wanted her to visit us more often, but because that was the kind of relationship I wanted to have with my daughter. I wanted to be a good mother. I wanted Brynn to have a good family life. I wanted our home to be a source of strength for her.

  The simple things can sometimes be the hardest to attain.

  David appeared as thoughtful as I was myself. We walked the long concourse and took the train to short-term parking without much discussion at all. When we reached the Volvo, I spoke for the first time.

  “Just dro
p me off at home, I think I’m just going to hang around the house this afternoon.”

  That wasn’t really such a good idea. I’d already taken off all four days that Brynn was home. Since the accident my sales had gone way down. I really needed to get something closed before the year was out. Somehow my heart wasn’t in it.

  “Home is where I’m headed,” David answered. “I think I’ll play hooky this afternoon, as well.”

  “You don’t have a golf game?”

  “No,” he said. “I canceled.”

  His words surprised me. And worried me a bit, as well. It was a cool crisp afternoon with sunshine and blue skies. David played golf almost every day and certainly every pretty day.

  “Are you not feeling well?” I asked him.

  “Oh no, I’m fine,” he assured me.

  He certainly looked fine. He seemed a lot happier than usual. It was the kind of inner cheerfulness and optimism that had attracted me to the man in the first place. Amazingly, I’d forgotten that. I’d forgotten how his upbeat, positive attitude had so intrigued me.

  I’d thought that it was an outward manifestation of status and money. Over the years, however, I’d discovered that most of the wealthy and privileged, at least the ones I’d met in this city, were not nearly so pleased with life.

  It was just David being David. Deliberately choosing to see the world at its best.

  I attributed today’s inner glow as residual joy at having Brynn at home.

  “She really looks so grown-up in those new clothes,” I said.

  “Who?”

  “Brynn.”

  “Oh, yeah,” he agreed. “Can you believe that she’s finally dating. She’s been such a wallflower for so long. I was beginning to think she never would.”

  “It’s pretty scary,” I admitted.

  “Scary? No, it’s great,” David assured me.

  “It’s usually the father who worries that his daughter will fall for the wrong guy,” I pointed out.

  “Not me,” he answered. “I’m sure anybody Brynn chooses will be fine.”

  I shook my head. “How can you know that?” I asked him. “What if she gets involved with some terrible jerk.”

  “That’s not going to happen.”

  “David, there are men out there who are absolutely vicious, cruel,” I said.

  “Of course there are,” he agreed. “And there are zealots who pray to maharishi mud wrestlers, and weirdos who get healthy by eating pond slime on their granola. But I don’t think we should automatically assume our Brynn would be attracted to them.”

  “But she might be,” I told him.

  He shook his head. “Brynn’s a smart girl,” he said.

  “But she’s emotionally fragile.”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “She’s sure been standing up to you pretty well for the last ten years.”

  He was right, of course. Brynn’s problems had never been that she wouldn’t stand up for herself, it was that she always locked horns with me when she did so.

  “All right,” I said. “She probably wouldn’t let somebody just walk all over her. But even if the man she loves is just irresponsible and selfish, he could make her life a hell on earth.”

  David looked at me and actually chuckled.

  “Brynn would never fall for somebody like that,” he said with a certainty that I envied.

  “People do, David,” I explained. “Every day people make bad choices about who to love. I just don’t want her to do that.”

  “It’s worth the risk,” he answered.

  “What?”

  “It is absolutely worth the risk,” he said. “We want her to be happy. The key to that is finding someone to share your life.”

  His words surprised me, but pleased me, as well. And his absolute conviction about them gave me hope.

  As we drove home, I thought about us. Daddy and Mommy and Brynn. Our little family unit. I had always assumed that the Mommy and Brynn part of that was somehow the biggest portion. It was certainly the part that had always required the most upkeep and maintenance. I hadn’t really given much consideration to what David’s role had been in our daughter’s life. Maybe because there was no father figure in my own upbringing, I hadn’t thought much about his input, his influence.

  I’d always assumed Brynn was like me. That premise had obviously caused a good deal of conflict between my daughter and myself. Maybe Brynn was like her father.

  That idea brought my whole thought process to a startling, grinding halt. I glanced over at David beside me. She had his coloring. She had his eyes. Sometimes I saw his smile on her lips. Was it possible that she had his disposition, as well?

  I considered that seriously for the first time.

  No, she wasn’t like him entirely, or she would have just let me run things and been content to devote herself to golf. But perhaps there was more of her father’s nature in her than I’d considered.

  Not being driven to succeed, not being socially ambitious, not particularly enjoying the privileges of her status in the world, I’d thought those behaviors were some kind of rebellion against me. And perhaps they were, but they could also have been a reflection of her father, who had never gone after any achievement greater than putting an eagle and didn’t give a rat’s ass about powerful people, important parties and sumptuous things.

  When we arrived home I turned on the lights on the Christmas tree. The holiday was over, but the sight of those unlit decorations was depressing somehow.

  I went into my office and checked my messages. There were several from work, including a personal one from Millie. She asked me to call her immediately. I chose to ignore it and instead called Loretta at the battered women’s safe house to find out how their Christmas had been.

  She was too busy to talk. The place was overrun with new clients, they were having to double up in some of the rooms.

  “It’s like this every year,” Loretta told me. “It’s as if all the talk about joy and peace just brings out the worst in some men.”

  I hung up feeling worse instead of better. I went online to get my e-mail and promised myself that if I got everything taken care of, I’d go see Chester in the afternoon. There wasn’t quite enough incentive to get me digging into work immediately.

  From my doorway I could see a sliver of the kitchen. David was on his knees. Beside him was his red plastic toolbox, neat, clean and nearly new from nonuse. To my complete amazement I watched him tightening the loose handle on the flatware drawer.

  Incredulous, I got up and went into the kitchen.

  “What are you doing?” I asked him.

  “I noticed this handle was loose, it just takes a second to fix,” he said.

  I laughed and shook my head. “David, that handle has been loose for more than two years. What made you come in here to fix it today?”

  I was still smiling when he looked up at me. There was an intensity in his gaze that was sobering. He looked oddly familiar kneeling there at my feet. He had knelt that way the day he’d proposed. It had been so old-fashioned and earnestly romantic. And so long ago.

  His expression now was equally as sincere.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  He carefully placed the screwdriver back into the toolbox and closed the lid. He looked up at me. Nervously, he wiped his hands on his thighs.

  “I’m leaving you, Jane,” he said simply.

  “What?”

  “I’m leaving,” he repeated. “I want a divorce.”

  I just stood there staring at him.

  “I’m in love,” he explained. “Real love. Maybe for the first time in my life. You and I have had a good marriage, I guess. But it’s over. Now I want to be with her. I have to be with her.”

  “Her?”

  “Mikki,” he answered. “Mikki Conyers. I figured you knew.”

  I nodded.

  “I never meant for this to happen, honestly,” David said. “And she didn’t either. But we fell in love, the everlasting, ever-faithf
ul, eternal kind of love.”

  His voice was soft, almost soothing as he said the words.

  “We want to be married, Jane,” he said. “We want to build a life together.”

  Strangely relaxed, I just stood there, listening to him. I suppose he thought my silence was a signal that more explanation was necessary—that if he just presented everything honestly and openly, I’d say, Yes, that sounds wonderful, David. Of course you should dump me and go off with her. Be happy. Congratulations!

  He continued to talk until he finally ran out of words. The stillness between us grew long. I was almost too stunned by this unexpected development to even speak. It wasn’t like my thoughts were racing. It was more like I couldn’t get my brain to function at all. I had no idea what I was going to say. David waited. The quiet lingered. Then, suddenly, the words came to me.

  “Forget it.”

  My tone was not sharp, but it was adamant.

  His expression immediately changed.

  “What?”

  “I said, forget it, David,” I clarified. “I’m going to. I’m going to forget this conversation ever took place.”

  He rose to his feet. He was surprisingly puzzled at my reaction, but clearly determined to have his way.

  “Jane. I want out.”

  I shook my head.

  “David, that is not going to happen,” I said. “I have always let you have somebody on the side. I’ve never stopped you, never even tried to slow you down. I won’t be repaid for that by being thrown over for a slutty blond hairdresser with a high-school education.”

  “There is nothing slutty about Mikki,” he defended. “She’s a wonderful girl. I love her.”

  “A wonderful girl,” I shot back with emphasis on the last word. “Does she make you feel like a boy, David? News flash! You’re forty, you’ve got a daughter almost her age and your hair’s thinning.”

  He had enough vanity to look stricken. He immediately rubbed the crown of his head to verify what I’d said.

  “Look, I’m not saying you have to give her up,” I told him. “Keep seeing her, take her on a vacation with you. Enjoy her. Get it out of your system, but don’t throw away our marriage for nothing.”

  “Mikki is everything,” he said. “It’s our marriage that is nothing.”