by Tess Stimson
I push my hair behind my ears, my hands shaking with anger. What can she know of seeing ten years of your life wiped out in a few short hours? Of watching the man you’ve loved, whose children you’ve borne, walk away from you to another woman?
“My marriage was very much alive until he met you,” I hiss. “But you didn’t care. You saw someone you wanted, and you took him. You took him.”
“I didn’t make him,” she protests. “He had a choice. He wanted me.”
“What man wouldn’t?” I laugh shortly. “You’re beautiful. You’re young. You’re not his wife. Of course he wanted you. But did he make the first move, or did you?”
She looks away.
“You won’t always be twenty-six,” I say bitterly, “with your smooth unlined face and firm body. You think you’ll be young forever at your age. Forty seems as far away as a hundred. But it sneaks up on you when you’re not looking. Nothing happens for years and years—and then suddenly, wham!, you wake up one day and your hips have got bigger and your lips have got smaller and your breasts are halfway down to your stretch marks and what the hell happened? But he,” I add, “he just gets distinguished wings of gray at his temples and character in his face and secretaries’ eyes following him as he walks past their desks.”
I wrap my arms around myself, barely seeing her anymore. “You marry a man and give him children and tell yourself it doesn’t matter that you’re not so young now, that your body isn’t as taut, your face as clear, because he loves you anyway. You let your guard down: You let him see you sniveling with a cold or with your hair in rat’s tails because you haven’t had time to wash it, and you think it doesn’t matter.” I pace the length of the kitchen, frightening the rabbit under the table. “At work you get out of the fast lane to make way for the bright young things without families, reminding yourself that giving him somewhere he wants to come home to is far more important than a corner office or a promotion, that he’ll still find you interesting. You know that there are younger women than you, prettier women, more exciting women; but you’re the one he chose to marry, you’re the one he promised to love forever.” I shiver. “You put him at the center of your life, at the center of your heart, where he should be; and then overnight, it’s all gone. Gone.”
“I’m—I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for this to happen,” she whispers.
I jump; I’d forgotten she was there.
“You could have had anyone you wanted,” I say helplessly. “Someone free to love you, without a wife and family. Why did you have to take my husband?”
“Because I fell in love with him,” she says simply.
For the first time, I notice the shadows beneath her eyes, the fatigue and weariness in her face. I recognize in her expression the fear and uncertainty that walk hand in hand with love. I can’t bring myself to forgive what she’s done. But with a sudden rush, I begin—just begin—to understand it.
“It’s not just about love.” I sigh. “Marriage.”
“No.” She folds her hands in her lap. “No. I see that now.”
My nose starts to run. Using the sleeve of my dressing gown, like a child, I wipe my face.
“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” she pleads. “I know that’s no consolation. But I didn’t mean this. I’m not a bad person. I didn’t mean for any of this to happen. I kept thinking I could stop it, that no one would ever need to know—”
“Enough. Please.” Exhausted, I collapse into a chair. “Why are you here, Sara? Does Nicholas know?”
“No.” She shoves herself back from the table and stands up. “I told myself you were happy without him. Convinced myself he wouldn’t have come to me if his marriage had been a good one. But that’s not true, is it?”
I shake my head.
And then, “He loves you, not me,” she says clearly.
I can’t breathe.
“He’s never loved me. Not enough, anyway.” She rubs the heels of her hands against her eyes, and I’m reminded of Evie. Somewhere, deep inside, I feel a dim tug of pity. “He wasn’t free to love me. I thought it didn’t matter, that I could love enough for the both of us, but it doesn’t work like that, does it? And it turns out,” she attempts a smile, “that I have a conscience after all.”
She hitches her bag on her shoulder. Her hand shakes, and I realize how much this confrontation has taken out of her, too.
“What are you doing here?” I ask again.
She shrugs, then gives me a sad half-smile. “I’ve been trying to work that one out myself.”
A fragile tendril of intimacy unfurls between us. We are linked, after all, by love: for the same man.
“May I use the loo,” she says, “before I go?”
I point her in the direction of the downstairs lavatory. She’s come all the way here to offer me a choice: Take him, or give him back to me. Free and clear.
But it’s not up to me. I can’t go to him. He has to come to me. He’s the one who made the choice to leave: He is the one who has to make the choice to come back. Otherwise I’ll never know; it will undermine everything we try to build. I have to hear that he loves me not from her, but from Nicholas himself.
She opens the lavatory door, and dips her head around it. Her expression is a strange mixture of pain, embarrassment—and an extraordinary, fierce relief.
“Do you have any Tampax you could give me?” she says. “I wasn’t expecting it, but my period just started.”
16
Nicholas
Divorce is a difficult business. Never more so, may I suggest, than when your lawyer looks at you with an expression that suggests in no uncertain terms that all men are bastards, and you’re left shifting uncomfortably in your seat.
Janis Schultz does not have a single photograph or personal memento anywhere in her spartan office. A thick slab of polished glass separates us, atop which rests her computer and one slim manila folder: mine. Its contents currently number a single appointment slip and two sheets of foolscap upon which she has written her notes during this meeting in a uniform, precise hand. I know that once this process gets fully underway, that solitary folder will spawn letters, faxes, forms to be completed, affidavits to be sworn, until the paperwork fills a box eighteen inches deep. We will each, Malinche and I, be required to provide copies of bank and credit card statements, insurance policies and share certificates, details of our income and our outgoings—not just those you would expect, the standard, ubiquitous expenses like school fees and mortgages, but the intimate, private details of our lives, the window cleaner and the osteopath, gym membership and private proctology examinations: all of it laid bare for consideration and dry judgment.
The carpet is clearly new: The room smells pungently of rubber. It tastes acrid in my mouth. I pinch the bridge of my nose, my head aching.
Ms. Schultz is known for her cool, detached professionalism and tempered approach. I haven’t met her before—one reason I chose her—but by reputation she chases neither headlines nor precedent, and while naturally seeking congenial rulings for her clients, makes it plain from the outset that confrontational terms such as “victory” do not belong in her chambers.
She is perceived as a wife’s lawyer. Her legal obligation will be to me; but her hand may be stayed from the usual gladiatorial excesses by a modicum of sympathy for my wife. It will, perhaps, go some way toward ameliorating my natural advantage in being so familiar with this eviscerating process. I want, above all else, for this to be fair.
“And your wife can’t be persuaded to file a petition herself?” Janis Schultz asks.
“I haven’t asked her,” I say.
She taps her pen against the pad. “You do not wish to wait for two years.”
It is no longer a matter of what I wish, but what is right. Sara is pregnant with my child; I cannot leave her to twist in the wind. My marriage to Mal is over, that much is clear. The only honorable thing now is to extract myself from it and attempt to do the right thing by Sara, whose only fault has been to love me
.
“Very well. The grounds for our petition, Mr. Lyon?”
I hesitate. Even though Malinche has found solace in the arms of another man, I cannot bring myself to sue her for divorce on the grounds of her adultery: It would be monstrously hypocritical. My options, however, as I am only too well aware, are limited.
“I find in instances such as this,” Ms. Schultz says carefully, “a charge of unreasonable behavior is often cross-petitioned, where there is cause.”
I sigh heavily.
“There is cause,” I say.
We will provoke Malinche by charging her with unreasonable behavior—“On the fourth of this month, the Respondent rinsed out the milk bottles with tepid water instead of hot, as had previously been agreed with the Petitioner from the outset of the marriage”—and her lawyers will no doubt advise her to throw the book at me, to insist that she cross-petitions on the grounds of my adultery. At which point I will concede the issue of blame, and secure the divorce.
Ms. Schultz recrosses her legs. Beneath the glass slab, her crisp gray wool skirt rides up a little, exposing an inch or two of thigh. She is close to sixty; my interest is academic.
I glance up, to find her steely gaze upon me.
“Mr. Lyon. I think that’s all,” she says knowingly.
Her handshake is firm, masculine. She ushers me briskly from her office.
I pause at the door. Atop a low bookcase is a small cream cardboard box, of the kind in which handmade chocolates are presented. A gold label affixing a ribbon in place suggests these originated in Belgium.
A memory ambushes me: Malinche, waiting for me in my office, perhaps a month or two after we first met. It was late; everyone else had already gone home. She had persuaded the cleaner to let her in, and then sat in the darkness until I returned from Court, whither Fisher had dispatched me with a vexatious case with which he did not wish to be troubled.
I walked into my office and smelled it instantly.
“Don’t put on the light,” she said, as I reached for the switch.
I jumped as she stood up and took the briefcase from my hand. Streetlights gilded her skin as she unbuttoned her coat. Beneath it, she was naked, save for a coffee-colored suspender belt and a pair of dark seamed stockings.
“Close your eyes,” she said, her voice curving. “Now: Open your mouth.”
It took a moment to discern the mix of orange and bitter chocolate. As it melted to a creamy puddle on my tongue, Mal sank to her knees and unzipped my trousers. She took my cock in her mouth, reaching up and feeding me another chocolate. Dark chocolate, this time with a cognac center.
When I pulled away from her, fearing I would come too soon, and pushed her back onto my desk, kissing her hard on the mouth, I tasted white chocolate and mint on her lips. My cock throbbed as I moved lower. She had painted chocolate on her nipples; cocoa powder dusted her pubic hair. It seemed to me, when I bent my head between her thighs and plunged my tongue inside her, that she had become chocolate herself, her center a rich, creamy liquid that made me long for more with every taste.
I can never smell chocolate without remembering that night.
I leave Ms. Schultz’s office and hail a taxi. Without giving myself a chance to think, I tell the driver to take me immediately to Waterloo.
Salisbury station is deserted when I arrive; I have to wait more than forty minutes for a cab to collect me and drive me to Stapleford. Forty impatient minutes in which the certainty which impelled me here evaporates, replaced by a knell of doubt and fear thudding in my stomach. This is madness. Madness. Mal would be quite within her rights not to permit me through the front door. May well do precisely that, in fact.
“Stop here,” I tell the driver suddenly, as we reach the village.
He pulls sharply onto the side of the road and I get out. “Thirteen quid, mate.”
I hand him a twenty-pound note through the window. As he fumbles for change, I glance up the hill. The house appears to be in darkness; for all I know, she isn’t even here.
I realize dispiritedly how ridiculous this enterprise is. Mal isn’t going to want to see me. She’s made it quite clear that she doesn’t need me in her life anymore—for which I have only myself to blame. I can’t expect her to suddenly trade back, as if we are children in the playground negotiating an exchange of Yu-Gi-Oh! cards. And there’s Sara to consider. She’s sitting in London even now, wondering where the hell I’ve got to, pregnant with our child. What does my presence here say about my future with her?
I lean in to the cab to tell the driver to take me back to the station, just as he puts his foot on the accelerator and roars away into the darkness.
A horse nickers softly in a nearby field. Shifting my briefcase to the other hand, I step onto the grass verge to avoid another car, headlights bucking and swaying as it picks its way down the country lane. A wash of ditchwater puddles over my socks and shoes.
In two days’ time, my wife will be served with papers informing her that due to her unreasonable behavior, I require a divorce. I know from experience that once that happens, there is no turning back. Our legal mercenaries will enter the ring on our behalf to do battle, and our positions will become entrenched. Such tentative cordiality as we have now will disappear under a storm of disclosures and Form E’s and our client believes and Without Prejudice. However much I give her, it will be less than she needs or deserves. Whatever access I am permitted with my children, it cannot be enough.
If there is a window, one chance to turn back the clock, it is now.
Grasping my case more firmly, I strike out up the hill. I love Mal. I have to convince her of that. Throw myself at her feet and beg her forgiveness, whatever it takes. I’ll sleep in the scullery with the bloody rabbit if she’ll just agree to give me another chance. Counseling, therapy, church, castration, whatever she wants. I made one mistake: a huge mistake, of course, the worst; but I’ve learned from it. Surely she can understand that? Errare humanum est, after all. Of course it’s going to take time to rebuild trust, I can’t expect her to forgive me overnight, but if we both work at it, if we both really want it to work—
The front of the house is still in darkness when I reach it, but light spills from the back, by the kitchen.
I make my way around the outbuildngs, my shoes crunching on the gravel. God, my feet are cold. I brush past a bank of lavender; the silky leaves stroke the back of my hand, tickling. I have trodden this familiar path every night for nearly ten years, but I have never truly appreciated it until now. A balloon of nervous excitement rises. She must understand, she must, she must. I turn the corner and the back door opens; Mal steps into the rectangle of light cast from the warm glow of the kitchen. My steps quicken with hope. Perhaps she heard me outside; perhaps she is coming to meet me halfway—
And then Trace follows her out, pulls her into his arms for a lingering embrace, and I hear my wife laugh as she playfully ducks another man’s kisses.
A cold wind blows through my heart. It didn’t take her long to find a replacement. What was I thinking, coming here ready to prostrate myself like a repentant sinner? Heaping myself with sackcloth and ashes? When all the time—
I back away, trembling with bitter fury. I have known she is with him, but to see him, in my own home, with my wife. This man has been waiting in the wings since the day I married Malinche, ready to pounce, no doubt, the moment he had the chance. Or perhaps he hasn’t waited in the wings at all; perhaps he’s been center stage with my wife all along. I always thought the candle she held for him—and I’ve always known about Trace Pitt, known exactly how much he meant to her—was just the nostalgic regret of a happily married woman for her first, lost love. Perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps he wasn’t lost at all.
Fine.
Fine.
As of now, he’s welcome to her.
The anger abates before I even reach London, leaving me empty and bereft. On the morning the papers from Ms. Schultz are due to thump onto the rabbit-chewed doormat in Stap
leford, I feel an overpowering sense of loss, as if someone has died. In a sense, someone has. Everything I thought I was, everything I had planned to be, with Malinche at my side, is gone.
Sara is out of the office all day; no one seems interested in where she has gone when I ask, but that isn’t unusual. Since word of our affair leaked out, she has been cold-shouldered like a Nazi collaborator in Vichy France.
I shut myself in my office and work, secretly glad of the respite.
When I get back to the flat a little after seven, I find Sara sitting in darkness, a glass in her hand and a bottle of wine, three-quarters empty, on the table in front of her.
I loosen my tie and throw my jacket over the back of a chair. “Should you really be drinking?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“I suppose so. God knows how many babies are conceived when their mothers have had one too many, after all.” I reach for a glass. “Go easy, though. The first twelve weeks are—”
“I saw Malinche today.”
The glass shatters on the marble counter.
“Christ! Where’s the dustpan?”
“Your wife, Malinche.”
“Yes, I gathered that much!” I brush shards of glass into a newspaper. “Where, for God’s sake? Was she here? Did she come round?”
“No. I went to see her.”
Sara hasn’t moved. Her head is bowed, so I cannot see the expression on her face.
I dispose of the broken glass in the plastic bag hanging from one of the cupboards and sink heavily onto the sofa next to her. “What’s going on, Sara?”
She runs a finger around the wet rim of the glass. It sings sharply.
“I told her you loved her, not me. I told her she should take you back—well, not in so many words. But she knew what I meant.”
I gape.
“You told her what?”
“Come on, Nick,” she says impatiently. “I’m only saying what we both already know. It’s not like this is news.”