The Idea of Him

by Holly Peterson

  I yanked open the curtains to let the early morning light shine in, while I forced myself to start working on my screenplay. I thought about something Helen Gurley Brown, the founder of Cosmopolitan, who looked fabulous into her eighties, once said: The greatest love in your life should be your work, not your man.

  I decided I would do exactly that: strive for intellectual passions to feel good about myself rather than obsess over men who hurt me or who I’d let get away.

  It was Saturday morning, and Wade as usual had the kids on this day for pancakes and special daddy time. I was going to work in bed and let him handle kid duties. I liked this plan: my brain passions would save me! At that point in the turmoil, I grasped at anything to act as elusive savior, whether it be a man or a work concept.

  I pulled the laptop off my side table and started making notes in my script. I mapped out up to page 115, thinking about how the problem would be set up in the first act, how the reckoning would have to begin happening in the third act. My own reckoning was moving like a locomotive, but I sensed speed bumps ahead with no surefire man to hold me tight as I flew over them.

  Two hours later, I was deep into writing a successful scene where the new love interest dumps the heroine, making her hit rock bottom before they even started—writing what I knew, in other words—when Wade opened the door. The kids appeared with a wobbly breakfast tray they’d all put together in the kitchen—his first of many peace offerings that weekend to atone for his other women sins.

  “You kids!” I said with a scratchy morning voice. “Thank you so much!”

  Blake carried the tray, Lucy held a small bouquet of tulips bought from the corner Korean market, and Wade walked carefully alongside them, his hand supporting the heavy tray carrying orange juice and eggs that was swaying precariously to and fro in my son’s arms. “You slept so late, Mommy,” Lucy said. “Daddy took us to get you these.” She placed the flowers next to my bed.

  “I’m going to take the kids out all day so you can relax,” Wade said, edging toward the door. “We left you some gifts outside. You’re the best mom in the world and we wanted you to know.”

  “Thank you, guys, this means the world to me,” I answered, getting out of bed to hug my children. Having Wade say that only brought me down; he knew how good I was to him, so how did he let this all happen?

  Blake whispered in my ear, “Thanks for giving me the best advice ever on Jeremy. I wanted to write you a card like Dad said I should, but I didn’t have time.”

  “Well, what would you have said, honey?”

  “What I said to Dad. That you are a good mom because you told me if I ignored him and played with William, Jeremy would stop being mean.”

  “You can make all the right decisions on your own; I just wanted to remind you not to let a bully see you react. That’s all they want. Why don’t you each pick out something yummy from the candy bag in my closet?” They cheered and ran out of the room. I paced between the bed and the door, slipping on jeans and trying on three different shirts before settling on one I liked, all the while waiting for Wade to talk. I did yoga breaths to try to summon some deep strength I wasn’t sure I possessed at all. Wade stood by his dresser, frozen like a child.

  I finally stepped in front of him. “Do you have something to say?”

  “I do,” he answered in a low and humble voice. “I’m sorry about everything. Really I am. You’re the most caring woman in the world. You deserve better.”

  I turned to the man I married. “I know you fall hard when you fall for someone. Did that happen?”

  Silence.

  I went on. “Let me put it to you this way: Has that happened several times in the past two years?”

  He just put his head down like a little boy.

  “So you still want to maintain that each of these instances—some major, some minor—are just some fucking slide show that you, as a male, have lived? Not a narrative movie? Not connected in any way to each other? I don’t know, call me crazy but I think I see a pattern here: lots of women behind my back, some you fall for. I don’t think there are just isolated instances anymore. You can’t lie to yourself or to me and maintain that.”

  He tried to answer, “They were individual, separate . . . I don’t know, Allie. It’s hard to explain. I care about you. I don’t know why I did it when I knew it would hurt. And I don’t want to have to go through . . .”

  “You know what?” I said, trying to control my voice. “I don’t need details; the big narrative picture has come through loud and clear.”

  “You deserve better, Allie,” was all that he could muster.

  “Well, you’re not the only one who thinks that. I’m considering my options.”

  I had to choose my words carefully or risk Wade covering his tracks. “Is there anything about your business or our finances I should know about before I speak to a lawyer?”

  “I can’t tell you about business right now, and I’d really appreciate it if you would wait a bit before making any rash decisions,” Wade pleaded. “Besides, it was only this one time.”

  My pulse skipped a beat. We were clearly entering divorce waters, and I was pretty sure that neither of us had a paddle, much less a boat. “You’re already lying. There was the photo assistant when Lucy was three months old! But I don’t care about the girls, Wade; I care about our kids.”

  “So do I. Which is why you have to believe me when I tell you that there is nothing you need to worry about.”

  “I am worried, Wade. Desperately worried,” I answered, tears in my eyes. “How did we get here? How did you get us here?”

  “I’ve got it under control,” he replied, wiping under my eyes and then pulling me toward him.

  I rested my head on his shoulder, and he put his arms around me. “Well, it certainly doesn’t feel that way. On any front.”

  “I can’t make you feel better, but know I’m trying, Allie.”

  Just as quickly as he’d barged into the bedroom, he turned around and left. I could hear him getting the children all excited about their big day with magic Daddy. By the time I followed him out of our bedroom, good-bye hugs were already being offered up.

  Wade hurriedly gave me a peck on the forehead. “We’re on the same team, Allie. Remember that.”

  32

  Fear of the Unknown

  A few nights later, I’d come home early from work and played board games with the children for a few hours. Then I started to get ready for screenwriting class and the first post-WE R DONE Tommy sighting. Playing with Blake and Lucy felt curative. Maybe we were a unit that could survive happily on our own. I felt better, stronger. But when I got into the shower to get ready for my screenwriting class, I crashed.

  I thought about facing Tommy that night in class, my only cute, fun hope for a lifeboat if I left my marriage, and I slithered back into the sad and lonely box. Jackie would chastise me for caring so much about Tommy’s breakup text, for wanting to replace one man with another right away.

  I couldn’t help it.

  Once the kids were settled into watching a television show, I figured that showering might help my decline: maybe I could physically scrub away my tears and fears. I let my head drop and the water pound on the back of my neck. Watching the soapy water gather around my toes, I went into a Tommy trance. Everything that popped into my head sounded ridiculously sophomoric:

  I want you back.

  I need you.

  Wade is gone to me.

  I can’t write without you pushing me along with good advice.

  And what if I just lied to him?

  I’m fine without you.

  I don’t need it.

  We can just be friends.

  AT 8:05 P.M., I walked into class with damp hair. I could tell my shoulders were slumped.

  I didn’t even need to look up to see if Tommy was aware of my arrival; I felt him watching me. There were about fifteen chairs around the circle in the brightly lit classroom. I moved to the side farthest from t
he door, right next to the professor. Usually Tommy and I sat near the door, the cool kids who needed a quick getaway plan—but not tonight. Tonight I’d be sitting like a chaste little kiss-ass next to the professor to glean all the insights I could for my future as a screenwriter, a future I now had to bank on.

  I think I felt better about myself when Nicky Chace broke up with me four months after my dad died and I had to walk past him and his Goth friends in the cafeteria. As I studiously avoided Tommy, I kept telling myself: You’re a grown woman, you have a flourishing career, a great screenplay in the works; you have beautiful, healthy children. Tommy is a blip on the radar. Hold your head high, woman. Nice try, but none of that worked that night. I was in a newfound low.

  As I sat down and stared at my bag, I spied Tommy’s muscular legs and worn Nike sneakers about fifteen feet across the floor. I also saw that the seat next to his was empty. I could not look up; instead, I turned in the direction of the professor, placed my elbow on the little desk attached to my chair, and my hand across my forehead as if blocking sunlight from my eyes.

  “Have you read Mr. O’Malley’s scene, Ms. Braden?” How could I have forgotten that this was his big night? I could have sworn I’d never gotten a class e-mail with an attachment from Tommy. I glanced at Tommy, who met my look with one of real disappointment before he looked away. I desperately wanted to tell him that if I’d known it was his turn, I’d have devoured his screenplay. Not only had I been a cock tease, I’d been a really bad friend. No wonder he wasn’t texting or sexting me.

  “A lot is going on in Mr. O’Malley’s scene, Ms. Braden, wouldn’t you agree?”

  “Oh, yes,” I lied.

  Heller went on, “It’s an interesting piece of social satire that I found amusing, if a bit far-fetched. Of course the protagonist needs a bit more rounding out.” He walked to the whiteboard and wrote out the following: “Is it the girl he wants? Or is he after the guy? Maybe you don’t know. You know why? You’ve got to be present in your life!” Heller started slamming on desktops, on one of his rolls again. He positioned his face three inches from mine and I yanked my neck back. “Allie! How do you brush your teeth? Top or bottom row? Do you brush in little circles like you’re supposed to?”

  “I, uh, I’m not sure.”

  “Well, that’s a bullshit way to live, Allie!” Excuse me? This guy was nuts. “Pay attention to every detail! Be a reporter. See what you can dig up!” Heller was now acting out his words, brushing his teeth, arms in the air and beating his chest. “If you’re writing the worst, most villainous baby-seal-killer of a character, find something of yourself in him. There’s a beating heart somewhere in that chest, blood running through those veins. If you can’t find the humanity in your characters, they’re nothing but statues in a museum!”

  While I struggled to understand what brushing my teeth had to do with the murdering of fuzzy, white seals, Tommy raised his hand and spoke to the class.

  “Well, I’ve been working on the scene for the last forty-eight hours pretty much night and day.” He looked at me as if that provided an explanation for his radio silence, and I took it as a tiny olive branch. “It’s a departure from my young crew script, just a scene that popped into my head, and I wanted to do exactly what you said, find myself in it, and write it down for practice. I was having trouble, but then I just decided to inject some truth into the situation.” He looked at me hard.

  “Why wouldn’t you inject truth into every line, Thomas?” asked the professor. “That’s when you’ll have your audience by the balls and have them captive: when they recognize what they know to be true. A play within a play. Is it just me, or is it kind of funny that Hamlet stages a play about regicide to catch his father’s killer? Feed them the truth, Tommy.”

  “I wasn’t thinking about the actors; I was protecting people I know in real life, I guess,” Tommy told the class. “Just for fun, I took a break from the slog of my script to write about this restaurant I consult for. I wanted to write something that had just happened to me to get the juices churning. There’s some pretty unbelievable stuff that goes on in this place, and at first I didn’t want to ‘out’ people, but then the scene went limp on me. So I took some time to tell it like it is, and write what I know. I broke through somehow.”

  “You don’t have to ‘out’ people to get to the truth in fiction,” Heller interjected. “That’s not what I’m talking about. But you do have to tell it as you think it really is. It’s a subtle distinction, but I hope you understand the difference.”

  “In this case, I had to tell it the way it went down. Out people or not, I don’t give a shit.” Tommy stared me down. Other class members looked my way, and my face started to burn.

  By now a sharp pain was pounding inside my head. What the hell was he saying? That he was writing about us in his screenplay? That one of the things that happened was based on our own dustup? I was starting to understand why Tommy hadn’t sent me the script before the class: he didn’t want me reading it.

  Tommy went on, “Writers write what they know and that’s the only way I could tell it. You know that line, ‘you can’t make this stuff up.’ ” Tommy’s voice was getting higher; the way men’s voices do when angry. “The real stuff was better than my sugarcoating it and protecting people.”

  Tommy got up and slammed his scene down on my school desk.

  INT. Restaurant—Lunchtime

  WAYNE CRAWLEY, the editor of a society magazine called The Grid, sits at a side table designated to midlevel power players in the hot new Tudor Room. (Other tables go to men and women at the helm of more major corporations or investment banks.) He nods discreetly to a few “associates” around the room. He knows everyone in New York City, of course, but chooses to acknowledge only those who would be of use to him that week before he is served an expensive glass of red wine. He shakes his longish hair out of his face as he first sniffs and swirls the bouquet, then sips from his favorite wine, a 1996 Domaine Armand Rousseau Chambertin. As he smacks his lips with a sense of loving familiarity, he reaches into his pocket and winks at the MAÎTRE D’.

  CRAWLEY pulls a $2,500 casino chip out of his pocket and slides it into the hand of the MAÎTRE D’ as if he were passing him a gram of coke.

  MAÎTRE D’

  [placing chip discreetly in his pocket]

  “The usual? Is that your preference today, sir?”

  CRAWLEY

  “Yes. Always. Genevieve. 4 P.M. The Willingham Hotel. Room 1602.”

  THE JUNIOR EDITOR at a nearby table

  sees what is happening and tries to interrupt his boss, Mr. Crawley.

  JUNIOR EDITOR

  (whispering)

  “Don’t you see? She’ll get your money and make it look as though it was your idea.”

  CRAWLEY

  “Nonsense, Tom. I know what I’m doing. She’s safe.”

  MAÎTRE D’

  (ignoring the young associate’s admonitions)

  “You gave me an expensive chip; you looking for a real workout, sir?”

  CRAWLEY

  “Yeah, I want to fall in love,

  if you know what I mean.”

  MAÎTRE D’

  “I shall make sure the lady

  receives the message.”

  They both look over to the bar, where GENEVIEVE McGREGOR, a stunning blond-streaked beauty dressed to the nines in the latest, sexiest fashion, peruses an econ textbook.

  Suddenly the whole picture came into focus so fast that my entire neck hurt from whiplash. All the anguish on Tommy’s face across the room suddenly made perfect sense. He was writing what he knew in every sense, and in the process he’d outed my husband and the game playing he’d seen at the Tudor Room. Not only were some of the guys breaking the law on the investing front, but Jackie Malone was in cahoots with them. And she was a goddamn whore.

  33

  Percolating Problems

  The manager of the Moonstruck Diner on Eighteenth Street and Tenth Avenue barked “Scrambled,
whiskey down, side a bacon!” at the short-order cooks. Metal spatulas slid against the griddle, and coffee brewed in giant silver urns. I walked past a sea of impatient New Yorkers, all anxious to get to work, waiting for their take-out bags, and found a quiet table in the back.

  Four hours earlier, I’d rolled over to see 5:07 A.M. illuminated on the bedside table and noticed this text from Wade:

  I’m working so late on closing this issue, I’ll be pushing straight through and sleeping at the office, if I’m lucky. Kiss the kids.

  No way to know if he was telling the truth or not. 5:09 A.M. Two full hours before a show of composure was required to prepare the little ones for their day. Two full hours of slumber might allow me to make it through my own day, wake up in the strong, happy box without a pounding headache. Two full hours before I’d have to ask Jackie what the hell was going on. I closed my eyes.

  Then I opened them wide. One single line in Tommy’s script echoed through my mind at this early hour: Don’t you see? She’ll get your money and make it look as though it was your idea. It was that raw time of the early morning when my anxieties tend to explode with possibility. Had I fallen for the oldest con in the world: empathize with the wife, then gaslight her into giving you all the banking information, so you can grab the spoils? I scrambled out of bed and into the den, grateful that I’d at least had the sense not to give her the flash drive. Jackie had enough information from the files she’d yanked from me in Murray’s Southampton driveway to figure out who owned what anyway.

  Then another harsh predawn reality hit me: I’d never paid too much attention to our larger investment accounts. I paid the bills online and carefully made sure we had enough going in and out properly, and Wade put money into checking at the first of the month to cover our expenses. He and Danny Jenson, a smart, slick money guy, would meet every quarter to go over our expenses, taxes, and investments. There wasn’t much money to play around with, especially toward the end of the year, but we had some savings that we had both worked hard to accumulate. This was our kids’ college fund, our nest egg, the untouchable money that we treated as sacrosanct. It wasn’t something I would check often.