by Joy Fielding
And now here she sat in the starkness of the courtroom and heard herself described, accurately she had to admit, at least superficially, as some maniac for cleanliness who woke herself up in the middle of the night in order to wash the dishes her automatic dishwasher was perfectly able to handle. Did she sound like a woman in control of her life? Did a woman whose hair coloring traveled from Gloria Steinem to Lana Turner to Lucille Ball to Dorothy Lamour to Mia Farrow—anybody but herself—in the space of a few months have any right to supervise the development of two young children with perfectly healthy heads of hair?
Not according to what she had just heard. And there was more much more to come, she knew. They hadn’t begun to talk about Mel, about her immorality. They had thus far avoided any detailed mention of the children themselves. Victor was only the first witness to be called. There was doubtless a long string of witnesses to follow, all to condemn her in tones varying from outrage to pity. She had only herself. Once again she found herself smiling ruefully—why should their divorce be any different from their marriage? Then she noticed the judge was staring at her, silently questioning her smile, so incongruous under the circumstances. He thinks I’m crazy, she said to herself, as the judge banged his gavel and adjourned the session for lunch.
Victor was standing beside her before she could even think of rising from her chair, his face full of gentle concern.
“Can I talk to you for a few minutes?” he asked.
“No,” she said, standing up and pushing her chair back. Her lawyer had already moved to the back of the courtroom where he was talking to Mel.
“Donna, please, don’t be unreasonable.”
She looked genuinely surprised. “How can you expect me to be anything else? You expect the lady I just heard described by your very own sincere mouth to act with reason? As usual, Victor, you expect too much.” She began to scratch at the top of her left hand above the thumb.
“Rash back?” he asked.
She stopped scratching. “Something you forgot to mention this morning. Oh, well, the day is still young. I’m sure you’ll get around to it.” She wanted to stop but couldn’t. “Oh, and you forgot to tell him I have hemorrhoids from reading on the toilet despite all the times you warned me against it.” She slapped her hand. “Bad little girl.”
He grabbed her hand. “Donna, please. Look what this is doing to you.”
“Please let go of me.”
He let go reluctantly. “I just want to spare you any further pain and humiliation this whole mess is going to cause you.”
“Are you going to drop the custody action?”
He looked genuinely distraught. “You know I can’t do that.”
“You don’t seriously believe I’m not fit to raise my children?” she almost shouted. Mel and Mr. Stamler looked in her direction, Mel instantly moving toward her.
“They’re my children too,” he reminded her, “and I’m only doing what I feel is right.” Mel was at Donna’s side.
“You won’t win, you know,” Donna said with more conviction than she felt. “The judge will hear my side of the story. He won’t let you take my children away from me.”
Victor looked from Donna to Mel with undisguised hatred. When he looked back at Donna, any concern his face had once held had vanished. His voice had lost any trace of Southern gentility, was unabashedly Northern and cold like a biting Chicago wind. “I promise you,” he said, spitting the words into the air between them, “that even if you win, you’ll lose.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Donna asked, but his back was already to her, and seconds later he was gone from the courtroom.
TWO
She had let the phone ring three times before it became obvious that no one else in the office was going to answer it. “McFaddon Advertising,” she said clearly, picking it up. “Donna Edmunds speaking. Just a minute please. I’ll see if he’s here.” She leaned across her desk to the one directly beside hers. “For you, Scott,” she said, placing the caller on hold. “Are you here?”
“Male or female?”
“Definitely female,” she said, smiling.
“Sound sexy?”
“Definitely sexy.”
“Then I’m definitely here.” He pressed the correct button on his desk phone and Donna replaced her receiver as Scott Raxlen uttered his first breathy hello. “Oh, yes, of course, Mrs. Camping. Could you hold on just one minute please,” he said, quickly pressing another button and turning angrily in Donna’s direction. “Thanks a lot. You didn’t tell me it was a client!”
“You didn’t ask.”
“Nice person! You know I have a headache.”
“A hangover.”
He smiled. “Hell of a party,” he said, turning back to his desk and resuming his conversation with Mrs. Delores Camping.
“How late did you stay?” Irv Warrack asked, coming up behind Donna. “What’s that you’re working on, anyway?”
“I left before you did,” she reminded him, showing him a sketch she was preparing for a design layout. “For the Petersen account.”
“That’s good. McFaddon’s going to like that.” He waved a mock cigar between his fingers. “You got a great future here, kid.” She grimaced. “You’re not happy?” he asked, obviously surprised.
Donna put down the pen she’d been sketching with. “I’m happy enough, I guess. I don’t know. I’m not sure this is really what I want to do with the rest of my life—” She looked into the kind eyes of her co-worker. “Guess I’m going through a sort of—transitional phase at the moment. Sound pompous?”
He smiled. “Just a bit. Honey,” Irv Warrack continued, conspiratorially leaning against her desk, “anyone who can write copy like ‘The Mayflower Condominiums—An Original Concept—For Original Americans’ has found what she should be doing for the rest of her life. Understand?” She laughed. “Gotta go,” he said, straightening up.
“Where are you going?”
“Home. I’m beat. Aren’t you beat?”
“It’s not even lunch time!”
“That late?” He walked toward the door. “Gotta rest. I’m taking out your friend tonight.”
“Susan?”
“That’s the one. Great girl. Cover for me, okay.” He opened the front door. “Did your friend ever show up again, by the way?”
“What friend?”
“Last night. The guy you kept looking at.”
Donna was momentarily startled. Had she been that obvious? “I left before you did, remember?”
“Oh, yeah. Well, have a nice weekend.” He walked through the door and was gone.
“Warrack take off?” Scott Raxlen asked, finished with his phone call. Donna nodded “That’s a good idea.” He stood up and stretched. “Think I’ll go home too. Take care of my headache.”
Donna looked around the fast-emptying office. “What’s with everybody? We have one little party to celebrate the end of a successful campaign—”
“Mayflower Condominiums—An Original Concept—For Original Americans—”
“And the whole place falls apart the next morning. Rhonda doesn’t even bother to show up; Irv takes off five hours early; you’re about to do the same—”
“Who was the guy?”
“What guy?”
“The one Warrack was asking you about?”
Donna shook her head. “I don’t know how you do it. You have two sets of ears?”
“Who is he?”
“I don’t know. We were introduced, then he disappeared.”
“The best kind. Take my word for it, Donna, it’s better that way.”
“Go home, Scott.”
He walked to the door. “He was that good-looking, huh?”
“Go home, Scott.”
“Cover for me?”
Donna waved him out the door. She returned to her design layout, but her pen remained poised without moving. Maybe she should just get up and go home like everybody else. No, she couldn’t do that. “Why do I have to be s
uch a Goody Two-Shoes?” she asked herself out loud. Always have to stay to the bitter end. Except at parties. Then she usually left early. Her mind drifted back to last night’s festivities, sponsored by the satisfied client. Immediately, she saw the stranger’s face. What a face, she thought, picking up the phone, feeling a sudden need to confide in someone. “Susan Reid, please. Thank you.” She waited several seconds. “Oh, all right. I’ll hold.” Why not? It was becoming obvious to her that she would get nothing much else accomplished today. She looked around. “Great,” she said into the receiver. “I’m the only one here. What? Oh, sorry. No, I wasn’t speaking to you. Will she be much longer? Thank you.” Almost five minutes later, Susan Reid finally came onto the other end. “Boy, you’re a hard lady to get to talk to. I’ve been holding on for ten minutes. I’m a busy person, you know.” She stopped. Her eyes stared straight ahead at the large picture window which looked out onto picturesque Royal Palm Road in the fashionable heart of fashionable Palm Beach. “What? Oh, sorry. Look, Susan, I have to go. I can’t talk to you now. No. What? No. Listen, I have to go. He’s here. He! Him! This gorgeous guy I met last night. He’s standing outside the front window with what looks like a bottle of champagne, my God, it’s champagne, and two glasses. I don’t believe this. My heart is pounding like a drum. I have to go. He’s coming inside. I really don’t believe this. I’ll talk to you later. Goodbye.”
She hung up the phone at the precise moment Victor Cressy walked in the front door.
“Hi,” he said casually, placing the glasses on her desk and promptly uncorking the champagne.
“Oh,” she said loudly as the cork shot across the room, and then tried to sound as casual as she could. “Good shot.” He smiled, his crystal-clear blue eyes fastening on hers, themselves blue though several shades darker. He poured the champagne, which Donna couldn’t help but notice was Dom Perignon, and then slowly put one glass in her hand before picking up his own. They clicked glasses together while Donna fought the sudden fear her stomach might start to rumble. It was almost lunch time and she hadn’t eaten breakfast.
“To us,” he said, his eyes laughing. Is he making fun of me? she wondered.
Donna felt the desperate need to go to the bathroom.
“I’m Victor Cressy,” he said, still smiling, this time with his whole face.
“I remember,” she said.
“I’m flattered.” He took a long sip of his champagne. Donna followed his lead.
He should only know how well I remember, she thought, thinking back quickly to their brief introduction of the night before.
“Donna, this is Victor Cressy, probably the best insurance salesman in the northern hemisphere—” And then he was gone. Dangled before her eyes like so much bait to a starving fish and then quickly pulled away again, led back into the chaos of Florida pinks, greens and baby blues—lost in the maelstrom of elderly bodies, drinks in one hand, newly signed documents of ownership (Mayflower Condominiums—An Original Concept—For Original Americans) in the other.
That was it, she realized with a start. An entire night of fantasies carved from a few brief words. Though she had tried as hard—and as subtly—as she could, to position herself as close to him as possible at various times throughout the evening, they had never exchanged another word. He never approached her, never tried to enhance his position with regard to hers and after several furtive glances at what she decided was an exquisite profile on an extraordinary face, she had lost sight of him altogether. When she had finally worked up enough courage to question someone as to his whereabouts, she was told he had left the party.
And now here he was. Just the way her past evening’s fantasies had promised.
She watched his mouth as he spoke, his tongue now and then appearing with almost snakelike precision to remove any excess of champagne from his decidedly sensual lips, the upper lip being somewhat fuller than its bottom counterpart, giving him the pouty look of a spoiled rich graduate of an all-boys prep school. It was a look she found almost painfully attractive though she couldn’t discern why—arrogance and insolence had never been high on her list of commendable attributes. His voice was forceful but not forbidding—a man who obviously was in good command of his own life, who seemed to know what he wanted. He had an easy control of his words, made commendable small talk, steering the conversation effortlessly to the party, his immediately positive impression of her when he spotted her amid the fuchsia prints and blue hair, her own naturally brown hair resting just above the understated lilac of her dress. Understated lilac, his term.
“Always this busy?” he asked. She smiled, realizing she had barely said two words since his arrival, preferring to watch him while he talked instead. “Can you take the rest of the day off?” he asked suddenly. She looked around the office, and promptly rose to her feet. That’s right, Donna, she heard a voice say. Play hard to get.
Immediately, he stood up beside her. “We better hurry then.”
She followed his fast pace to the door. “Why are we hurrying?” My God, she speaks!
“I thought we’d go somewhere special for dinner.”
“It’s not even noon,” she said, fumbling with the keys to lock the office up for the weekend. She hadn’t left a note or anything, what if someone came by? There was nobody left to cover.
“We’ll have lunch on the plane.”
“Plane?”
“The restaurant I’m taking you to for dinner”—he paused, not without a touch of smugness, opening the door of his light blue Cadillac Seville, and waiting while she maneuvered herself inside—“is in New York.”
“Is this what you call being swept off your feet?” she asked as they clicked yet two more glasses of champagne together and continued to stare into each other’s blue eyes.
“I’m just sorry dinner has to be so early. I’d forgotten that return flights like to land well before midnight.”
“Oh, this is wonderful,” she assured him quickly. “Something very civilized about eating before six P.M.” They laughed. “I don’t really believe I’m here.” She laughed again. Why was she so nervous? He obviously had made no hotel reservations; they weren’t planning on spending the night. She had nothing to worry about except possibly the fact that he had made no hotel reservations and they obviously weren’t planning on spending the night. Why weren’t they? Had he decided on the drive to the airport that he really didn’t find her as attractive as he had originally? No, that was impossible. He wouldn’t have ordered another bottle of Dom Perignon if he didn’t find her attractive.
“So, you don’t make a habit of this sort of thing?” she ventured, moving her hand around in a vague sort of semicircle, hoping he would understand what she meant by “this sort of thing.”
“Only for special people,” he said, telling her in four short words that she was special, but then so had others been. Just enough of a tease.
“Kind of an expensive way to make an impression, isn’t it?”
He laughed. “Well, I guess that depends on your philosophy.” He paused, then continued. “You see, some people want to leave a million dollars behind when they die. I want to die owing a million dollars.”
She laughed. “I like your philosophy the best.” She lowered her eyes.
“What are you staring at?” he asked suddenly.
“Your hands,” she said, surprised at her answer.
“Why?” There was just a hint of a laugh in his voice.
“Because my mother always told me to look at a man’s hands.”
“Why?” he repeated.
“Because she always said that that’s what a man makes love with.” Goddamn, she thought. Why had she said that?
His face broke into a grin. “Your mother sounds like an interesting woman. I’d like to meet her.”
Donna smiled at the sudden image of her mother’s beautiful face in front of her. “She’s dead,” she said quietly. “Cancer.”
He reached across the table and took hold of both her hands. �
��Tell me about her.”
She shook her head. “No.”
“Why not?”
She shrugged. “Just seems like kind of heavy stuff for a first date. That’s all.”
“I think I’ve just been insulted,” he said, though he made no move to withdraw his hands and his face was still smiling.
“Oh no, no. Really. I didn’t mean—it’s just that I usually end up in tears when I talk about her, even though it’s almost ten years ago. I know it’s silly—”
“I don’t think it’s silly. I won’t mind if you cry.”
Donna paused. Her mother was smiling at her.
You’d like this man, Mom, she thought.
“She was so lovely,” she began. “She really was this incredible woman. I could talk to her about anything. I can’t tell you how much I miss her.” She stared hard into his eyes, trying to block out the new image that had suddenly interfered with the old, pushed the smiling healthy lady aside and replaced her with a figure less than half her former size, her skin translucent and crawling with minute malignant monsters, changing the smile in her eyes to eyes that saw only pain. “I’d give anything to be able to talk to her again.”
“What would you say to her?”
She looked up at the ceiling, trying to keep the tears she felt forming from falling. “I don’t know.” She laughed suddenly, feeling the tears recede, seeing only Victor in front of her again. “I’d probably just ask her what to do.”
“About what?”
“About everything.” They both laughed. “I don’t know, I just always felt that if I couldn’t decide something for myself, if I didn’t know what was the right thing to do, or even what I should wear one day, silly things like that, that she’d always be around to tell me what I needed to hear. Sometimes it’s just really nice having someone make your decisions for you. Am I making any sense?”