by Tess Stimson
I open my mouth to deny it, to plug the gap between us with another lie, another carefully crafted piece of wishful thinking: and discover I can’t. Sara has found the courage that has so far eluded me and dared to acknowledge the pink elephant in the room. Useless now for me to keep on stepping round it.
I get up, find another tumbler, and pour myself a hefty measure of Scotch. The liquid burns a hot path to my stomach, its warmth spiraling out through my body. On the far side of the street, a teenager is panhandling, a filthy blanket wrapped, squawlike, around her bony shoulders. Her shoes don’t match: She’s wearing one thick-soled trainer and one navy snaffle shoe, trodden down at the back. The imbalance gives her a curious gait as she shuffles down the street.
I close the blind.
“You went all that way to tell her that?”
“No. Yes. I don’t know.” She slugs back some wine. “I don’t know what I planned to tell her, Nick. I didn’t really think it through, if you want the freakin’ truth. I just needed to know, one way or the other.”
“Know what, for Chrissake?”
Sara stares at me as if I’m being deliberately obtuse. “Whether she still loved you.”
The room is suddenly very still. My heart pounds in my ears. I only realize how tightly I am holding the glass when my wedding ring bites into my palm.
“What did she say?”
She reaches for the bottle again. “I’m not pregnant, Nick.”
I can’t breathe. A kaleidoscope of possibility explodes behind my eyes.
“I don’t know if I ever was. I never actually did the test—yes, I know,” she says tightly, “I missed two periods, Nick, I was sick every bloody day; I’m sorry, I just assumed—”
“You assumed?” I slam my drink onto the table. “You assumed? Jesus Christ, Sara, this isn’t a bloody game, people’s lives are at stake here—”
“I realize that!”
“I asked you to marry me!”
“Well, now you don’t have to, so that’s all right then, isn’t it!”
I push my face into hers, dropping my voice to a cold hiss: The words fall like hot stones into an icy lake.
“What was it, some kind of trick to keep me hooked? Like the bloody lipstick?”
She jerks, as if I’ve slapped her.
“I gave you the benefit of the doubt that time. But this. The oldest trick in the book,” I snarl, “and I bloody fell for it! When were you going to tell me, Sara? As I walked you up the aisle with a fucking cushion under your dress? Jesus Christ!”
“I didn’t make it up! I swear, Nick, I wouldn’t do that, I’m not like that! I just made a mistake—”
“Why should I believe you?”
She leaps up to face me, eyes glittering with anger and tears. “Go back to her, Nick! Go back to her!” She shoves me in the chest with the heel of her hand. “I don’t know why you’ve waited this long! You’ve had your fun, you’ve got your leg over and reminded your dick what it was all about, so now you can go back and play house with your wife and your psychotic children and forget all about me. It’s what you’ve wanted to do ever since you moved in, isn’t it?” Her chest heaves. “Well? Isn’t it?”
Suddenly, she seems no older than Evie. Guilt thuds into me. My behavior has been unforgivable: to my wife, to my children, and to Sara. None of them deserve this. And now I have lost them all. Mal has Trace, and Sara and I have nothing to offer each other but recrimination and regret. My daughters will despise me before they are very much older; if they don’t hate me, the best I can expect from them is pity. And I am left to gnaw at wounds of my own making. Christ, what a mess.
I reach out to Sara, but she brushes me angrily away.
“Go on! What are you waiting for?”
“I didn’t mean for any of this to happen, Sara. I didn’t want you to get hurt. Someday you’ll—”
“For fuck’s sake, spare me the pep talk!”
“Yes. Sorry.”
Her chin comes up. “Aren’t you going to ask me what she said?”
I pick up my jacket. I don’t need to hear Sara tell me what I already know. If Mal had one shred of feeling left for me, she’d have picked up the phone after she heard my answerphone message last weekend. She wouldn’t have been nestling in Trace’s arms two nights ago.
“I’ll be at the Dorchester,” I say wearily, “for tonight, at least.”
She doesn’t move.
“I’ll see you at work on Monday. We can talk then—”
“I quit,” Sara says defiantly. “Fisher accepted my resignation over the phone about an hour ago—”
“Fisher!”
Her eyes sparkle with malice. “He said he’ll pick up the slack for a while, until you find someone to replace me. He did mention something about coming out of retirement, actually. To keep an eye on things. Given the—how did he put it?—’ruddy pig’s ear’ you’ve made of things since he’s been gone.”
I digest this for a moment. “And you?”
“I don’t think that’s any of your business, do you?” she challenges. “Don’t worry. I’ll be fine. I have an interview with the BBC next week—a second interview, actually—they’re looking for another entertainment lawyer. It’s a growing field, apparently. Very well paid; and rather more riveting than who gets which saucepan, don’t you think? And if that doesn’t work out”—she shrugs—“I never did take a gap year. I’ve always wanted to go white-water rafting down the Grand Canyon.”
I hesitate at the door.
“Sara. If I hadn’t been married—if we’d met before—”
“No,” Sara says fiercely. “No.”
Outside, the homeless teenager holds out a dirty hand, palm upward, for money. I reach into my pocket, and hand her the small turquoise box I had been planning to give Sara this evening.
I have already crossed the road and hailed a taxi by the time the runaway opens it and discovers the two-carat diamond ring nestling inside it.
Tug-of-love cases are always the worst; the ones every divorce lawyer dreads. Hard not to feed off a mother’s desperation as she sits across from you, twisting a handkerchief in her hands and begging you to find a way to bring back her children. Children who are, even as you unscrew your fountain pen and note the details—“two boys, four and seven, born in Chepstow, eldest child allergic to peanuts, husband’s family of significant means”—being spirited to a dusty, cramped apartment in Tehran or Rabat, told their mother is dead, given new names and new lives. Children you know she will, in all probability, never see again unless her husband takes pity and returns them to her himself.
I open the file in front of me. There is something about Leila Sabra that moved me. Perhaps it was the loss of my own daughters sitting heavy on my heart—my plight incomparable to hers, of course, but grief is not quantifiable; one does not feel misery any the less because one has company.
My sympathy for Mrs. Sabra, however, is not the reason I am closeted in my office at three o’clock on a Sunday afternoon, wiring large sums of American dollars around the globe—Beirut, this time—to grease the palm of a facilitator we have used, with a modest measure of success, in such cases before. I am here because, quite simply, I don’t know where else to go.
My mother is wrapped up in her own grief; I cannot add to it. My wife is in love with her childhood beau, with whom she is currently enjoying a bucolic existence—in my home, at my expense, with my children—and clearly has no further need of me. My mistress, who has thrown me out, is in love with me: for all the good it does either of us, since I am, inconveniently for all concerned, still in love with my wife.
I rub my temples. The sorry mess I have made of my life is beyond parody.
I slot my iPod—for the discovery of this revolutionary piece of technology, at least, I may thank Sara—into my computer docking system and start to compose a brief for Counsel as the soothing strains of Pat Metheny fill the room. One of the advantages of working on a Sunday: no telephones, no interruptions, and th
e freedom to deafen oneself with “Sueño Con Mexico”—from New Chautauqua, arguably his best album—if one so chooses.
My gaze snags briefly on a picture of my youngest daughter. In the words of my wife: our last-chance baby, indulgently named for the jazz guitarist I love so much. She still isn’t yet two. What happened to us? How did it all go so wrong, so fast?
It would be comforting to think there were undetected fractures in our relationship, fissures that took only a little pressure to widen suddenly into unbridgeable gulfs. But I am done with lying, even to myself. The unpalatable, unvarnished truth is that I made one mistake, and wrecked everything.
I force my attention back to the computer screen. The knot of misery in my stomach eases a little as I lose myself in the labyrinthine complexities of the Sabra finances. It’s always so much easier, of course, to bring order to the domestic chaos of other people’s lives than to my own. No doubt Freud would have a great deal to say about my choice of career, given the tragedy that scarred my early childhood. And right now, I would not gainsay him.
I wonder idly if there is a Minotaur waiting for me as I follow the thread from one bank account to the next in Beirut, Switzerland, the Cayman Islands, and Cyprus. My attention is caught by a shady cash deposit in Guernsey. A little close to home, Guernsey, not quite the launderer’s haven it once was, there’s a chance we may be able to—
“I have always preferred,” Mal says from the doorway, “the Still Life (Talking) album myself.”
I startle, spilling my cold coffee. My wife looks pale, but otherwise composed. She’s wearing a clingy dress I haven’t seen before: the color of burnt coffee beans, it’s sharper, sexier than anything I’ve seen her wear for years. There’s something that reminds me uncannily of Sara; for a moment I think it must be the short, boyish haircut, and then I realize it’s more in the defiant tilt of her head. It is impossible to tell, from her shuttered expression, what she is thinking.
Heels, too, I notice. And lipstick.
“Did you know he used his baby daughter’s voice on that album?” I say hoarsely. “He washed it through his computer, and then hooked it up to his guitar. Every time he played a note, it was his daughter’s voice.”
“Such a Latin American sound, for a boy from Missouri,” Mal says.
Once more I understand how much I love her; how much I have lost.
“How did you know I was here?” I ask, after a moment of silence.
“You weren’t with Sara, or Daisy. You hadn’t asked to see the girls. And,” she adds, “it’s always been easier for you to sort out other people’s problems than your own, hasn’t it?”
She moves into my office and picks up the photograph of Metheny, touching our daughter’s face with her fingertip.
“When I discovered you were having an affair,” she says slowly, “I thought I would never get over it. I thought I would drown in the pain.”
“Malinche, I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry. I can’t begin to tell you—”
She puts down the photograph and whirls toward me.
“No,” she says fiercely, “this isn’t about you. Shut up, Nicholas. Shut up and listen.”
I close my mouth, awed by the force of her anger.
She turns her back on me, as if I no longer matter. I wait for her to speak again, but instead she moves to my cluttered bookshelves, examining the childish artifacts I have collected over the years, the proud proof of my fatherhood: macaroni Father’s Day cards, cotton-wool snowmen, a folded tea towel covered with painted hand prints, bits of pottery. Propped in front of the heavy, unread leather law books are photographs spanning our decade together: on Brighton Pier, the summer after we first met; our wedding day; cradling each of our daughters moments after they were born. Family holidays in Crete and France, my fortieth birthday, my father’s eightieth. Framed certificates attesting to my qualifications as a steward of family affairs—or at least of their sundering; a small wooden box we bought on our honeymoon, smelling still of the sweet, heavy church incense once stored in it.
The high heels define her calves, give a sexy lift to her buttocks. As my cock stiffens, it hits me: She no longer looks like my wife.
But then she isn’t my wife now, is she? In any sense that matters.
“You broke my heart,” she says, without turning round. “But I discovered something, Nicholas. Hearts are remarkably resilient. They heal.”
Not mine.
“Trace,” I say tightly.
“Trace is part of my past, Nicholas. He always was. I just didn’t realize it.” Finally she turns and looks me in the eye. “I’m not going to make this easy for you. I’m not going to let you say that I didn’t pay attention to you, wasn’t giving you something you needed, and that’s why you looked elsewhere. That might all be true, though forgive me if my attention wandered while I brought up your three daughters and made a home for you; but even so it’s no excuse. No excuse at all for what you did to me.”
She’s shaking: from grief or anger—or perhaps both; I have no idea.
“We all get bored, Nicholas! We all feel neglected, that we aren’t getting enough attention! Did you think ironing your shirts and throwing together a quick lasagne in between checking in with your mother and organizing the school run was fulfilling for me? Do you really think it was enough for me?”
“Of course not—”
“I had dreams too, Nicholas! I’m not just somebody’s wife or somebody’s mother! But you know what? Being a wife, a mother, mattered more to me than anything else. And so I made it enough.”
She grips the edge of the bookcase for support. The pulse at the hollow of her throat beats fast; she takes a deep, steadying breath.
“I wanted to kill myself when you left. And then I wanted to kill you. I was so angry with you, Nicholas. So hurt. It wasn’t just my life you’d smashed to pieces, but Sophie’s, Evie’s, and Metheny’s, too. Did you never stop to think about them?”
Her gaze lacerates. I have no answer; she knows it.
“You wrecked everything, and for what? A roll in the hay that didn’t last five minutes once real life got in the way. Oh, God, Nicholas, how could you be so stupid?” With a visible effort, she collects herself, swallows hard. “But after a while, I realized I didn’t want to spend my life angry and hating. And I’d spent years loving Trace. It was such an easy habit to fall back into.”
“Is he here?” I ask jealously. “Downstairs, waiting for you?”
“She came to see me last week,” Mal says, ignoring my question. “Sara.”
My throat closes.
“Yes. She said.”
“She asked me if I still loved you.”
I wonder if it is like this, the moment before you die. If every sense is sharpened, the world you are about to quit suddenly a thousand times more vivid. I smell her shampoo: oranges, mangos, pineapples, and lemons, mingling with the warm, fresh-sheet scent of her skin. My scratchy wool trousers chafe where they have ridden up around my groin. A faint hiss from the computer speakers—the album is old; even the wonders of iPod technology cannot work miracles—is overlaid by the thud of my heart in my chest. The smudge of mascara beneath her cinnamon eyes tells me she has cried before coming here.
“What did you tell her?”
“I told her to go home,” Mal says sharply. “She has no place in our marriage. No right to know what I think or feel. I wasn’t even going to talk to you again, Nicholas. I certainly had no intention of making the first move. But then,” her voice changes, “Kit gave me this.”
She holds out her hand. A small cassette sits in her small palm. The kind of cassette you find in a telephone answering machine.
“He came to feed Don Juan and the bloody hamsters when I was in France. He saw I had a message and played it back in case it was something urgent—”
“Jesus Christ, he took it!” I exclaim. “The bastard!”
“He was just trying to protect me, Nicholas. You left it at three in the morning, for heaven’s sa
ke; you could have been drunk and changed your mind the next day, who knows. But when I told him it was over with Trace and explained what Sara had said—”
An explosion of fireworks occurs somewhere in the vicinity of my heart.
“It’s over with Trace?”
“Nicholas, you never listen,” she says crossly.
The chocolate jersey of her dress clings to her slender frame, delineating her girlish silhouette. She isn’t wearing a bra; her nipples jut against the delicate fabric. My cock throbs, and I force myself not to leap up and take her in my arms, to stay instead in my chair.
“You should know: I slept with Trace,” she says, eyes on mine. “Not just once.”
The surge of rage is so strong that if he were here, I would reach down the man’s throat and pull his balls out through his mouth.
“Yes,” I say, white-lipped.
“Can you deal with it?”
I swallow hard. “I’m not in a position to—”
“It’s different for a man. Pride is involved. Territory. There’s a reason that men are cuckolded, that there’s a special word for it. There isn’t one for women who are betrayed, of course. This is why I’m asking you, Nicholas. I need to know if you can get past it.”
Suddenly I hear what she is saying.
“Be sure, Nicholas,” she warns. “Before you answer, be sure.”
I remember watching her fold naturally into his arms the other night, her body slotting neatly into his. I picture her in bed with Trace, her small breasts pressed against his chest, his hands moving possessively over her skin, his cock buried inside her. Inside my wife. I feel sick at the thought.
And then I consider a life without Mal in it, and suddenly it’s so simple, I don’t have to think at all.
“Trace is the past,” I say.
“Yes.”
I take a deep breath, force myself to let it go.
“The past is the past. It doesn’t really matter if that is a week ago, or ten years, then, does it?”
She takes a step toward me. I stand up, but make no move toward her. Her face turns up to mine, a flower to the light, and I marvel again at the luminous beauty of the woman I fell in love with more than a decade ago. Extraordinary, that such ethereal fragility should conceal such tensile strength.