Father of Two

by Judith Arnold

  “My client left town!” Gail shouted, her frustration boiling over.

  “Well, then, I guess you’ll have to pay the costs out of your own pocket. As his lawyer, you should have recognized that his suit was frivolous.”

  “Is that your opinion or Murphy’s?” Gail asked, glancing at her free hand where it rested on her blotter. Her fingers were clenched into a fist.

  “It’s Mr. Murphy’s position,” the secretary informed her. “He expects reimbursement on receipt of invoice, so I would advise you to advance the payment yourself and then collect from your client. It wouldn’t be fair for Mr. Murphy to be left hanging while you wait for your client to return to town.”

  No, Gail thought bitterly. It would be much fairer for Mr. Murphy to be left hanging from the nearest tree branch. “Tell your boss he’ll get his damned money,” she spat out, then slammed down the phone. Her hand refused to unclench from its fist, so she pounded the desk until one teetering stack of files tumbled onto the floor, spilling random papers at her feet. She stared at the mess and recalled the last time her files scattered across the floor—when Murphy had knocked them over.

  Murphy was responsible for this mess, too. This mess wasn’t going to culminate in a kiss, though. It was going to culminate in a sob. As Gail dropped to her knees and gathered up the loose pages, she swore to herself that Murphy wasn’t worth crying over.

  But that didn’t stop the angry tears from coming.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “DADDY? Is my Barbie in here?”

  Dennis glanced up from his desk to see his daughter hovering in the doorway, clad in her current sleep-wear of choice—a New England Patriots football jersey which hung down to her ankles. Her hair was still wet from her bath.

  It took Dennis a minute for his eyes to come into focus. He’d been staring for God knew how long at the check and the note on his desk. They’d arrived at his office that day.

  He’d come home early, changed out of his suit, and wandered around the apartment in a stupor for most of the evening. The kids had devoured double-size portions of macaroni and cheese, guzzled chocolate milk, picked a shrub-sized branch of grapes clean, and yammered at him about the school’s spring concert, their upcoming soccer games, Becky Lapidus’s new charm bracelet and Alex Miner’s sneakers that had red lights that flashed along the soles whenever he took a step. Dennis had spent most of the meal picking at his food and nodding, thinking about what the mail had brought him that morning and sinking deeper and deeper into a funk.

  “I left her in here to keep you company,” Erin explained, entering the study and circling the couch. “You seemed so lonely, Daddy. There she is!” She reached the shelf behind his desk and pulled down her doll, dressed in a cheerleading outfit, with one leg kicking high. “Are you working?”

  “Not really.” He quickly slid the note and the check into the top drawer of his desk struggled to stay focused on his daughter.

  Erin scrambled into his lap and sat Barbie on the edge of his desk. “Is this the shirt with the Blood Of Sean on it?” she asked, plucking at his gray T-shirt.

  “No.” He’d tossed the blood-stained shirt back onto the top shelf of his closet once Erin had started wearing the Patriots jersey to sleep in. One of these days when the kids weren’t looking, he was going to chuck that damned shirt in the Dumpster outside his building.

  “Daddy?” Erin adopted her wheedling sing-song voice. “Sean and I were talking, and we decided we don’t want to go to Seattle this summer.”

  That snared his attention. “What? You don’t want to go see your mother?”

  “No. We wanna stay here with you.”

  “Erin!” Flattered as he was, he still believed they should see their mother. “She really wants you to come. She wants to show you her new home. You haven’t seen her and Mr. Potato-Head since April.”

  “I know, Daddy. But you seem so sad. We don’t want to leave you.”

  “I’m not sad,” he insisted, wondering if that was a lie.

  “And also, we wanna do soccer camp, and if we go to Seattle we can’t.”

  “Sure you can,” he told her. “You can go to Seattle in July, and I can sign you up for a camp session in August.”

  Erin twisted in his lap and eyed him skeptically. “You want us to go away, don’t you.”

  “God, no.” He pulled her tighter into his arms and smiled against her cool, damp hair. Amazing to think that in two months’ time he’d gone from being a happy weekend father to depending on the clamor and clutter of his children under his roof, bugging him at work, leaping on him as he walked through the front door every night. The prospect of losing them for a few weeks this summer filled him with dread. Erin was right: he would be very lonely in their absence. Especially since he wouldn’t have Gail to fill his home.

  The enclosed check closes out my account with you, she had written. I expect to hear nothing further from you on this or any other matter.

  She might as well have written, Drop dead—and rot in hell.

  Okay, so he’d been angry with her for having placed her faith in Kopoluski. And he honestly believed Kopoluski ought to pay the legal costs Bob Hammond had incurred. Everyone had known going in that Kopoluski’s suit was garbage—at least, everyone had known but Gail.

  Damn it, she had known. She wasn’t an idiot. For whatever reason, she’d wanted to push the case, so she’d pushed it. She’d even negotiated a remarkable settlement for the prick. But having the Gazette demand reimbursement for its legal costs once her client had dropped his suit shouldn’t have come as a surprise to her.

  Actually, Dennis hadn’t known that Bob Hammond had forwarded the bill until Velda told him today, after he’d opened his mail and found Gail’s check and her letter. Dennis had always left billing matters to Velda.

  He’d telephoned Gail’s office right away, but the receptionist had told him Gail was in court, and he hadn’t wanted to leave a message. He’d spent the rest of the afternoon contemplating her brief note. Unable to concentrate on anything else, he’d finally acknowledged that he was getting no useful work done and come home at four-thirty. And contemplated her note some more.

  She didn’t want to hear from him. She couldn’t have stated it any more plainly.

  “So we have to go to Seattle?” Erin asked querulously.

  “I think you’ll have fun,” he told her, stroking his fingers through her hair. “You and Sean will fly on a plane, all by yourselves. You can eat all the cocktail peanuts you want.”

  “Can we get cocktails?”

  “No.”

  “Can we make fun of Mr. Potato-Head?”

  “I don’t think that would be nice. He’s your mother’s husband.”

  “I read Cinderella, Daddy. I know all about step-parents.”

  “But he’s a potato-head,” Dennis pointed out, descending to her level of logic. “He’ll be different. He’ll teach you more Alanis Morissette songs.”

  “I don’t wanna be Alanis Morissette anymore,” Erin announced. “I wanna be Eleanor Roosevelt.”

  “Good choice.”

  “I also wanna be Lisa Simpson. Sean says he wants to be Shaquille O’Neil and Howard Stern.”

  “That’s an interesting combination.”

  “Who do you wanna be, Daddy?”

  He wanted to be Gail Saunders’ lover—but he’d obviously fouled up his chances for that. I expect to hear nothing further from you, she’d written. Drop dead, rot in hell.

  “I want to be Sean and Erin’s daddy.”

  “You already are that.” Erin clicked her tongue at his foolishness. “You have to wanna be somebody else.”

  “Okay. How about...Bruce Springsteen?”

  She shook her head. “He’s too old.”

  “How about Aristotle? I know, he’s also old—well, actually, he’s dead. But he was very smart. I wish I were smarter.”

  “You’re the smartest lawyer in the universe,” Erin chided. “You gotta think of someone else.”


  “I just want to be who I am,” he insisted, adding silently, and I want Gail by my side, but she’s washed her hands of me.

  “How about Ken?” Erin suggested.

  “Ken who?”

  “Barbie’s Ken.” She adjusted the pleated cheerleader skirt on her doll. “That way you could have a girlfriend.”

  “You think I need a girlfriend?”

  Erin gazed solemnly at him. “Sean and I thought you were going to have Gail. It would have been perfect, Daddy. She was very smart, and she made a nice sand castle with me, and you could talk to her about anything and she never said it was stupid. And she promised she’d braid my hair for me. Daddy—” Erin swallowed and her eyes grew round “—I should probably tell you this. I was gonna ask her to take me to get my ears pierced.”

  “You want your ears pierced?”

  Erin nodded. “But I was figuring I should have a lady with me, so we could pick out earrings together. Because I was figuring, what do you know about earrings? You’re a guy.”

  “I could still help you buy earrings,” he told her. “Or maybe you could pick out earrings with your mother in July.”

  “I wanted to do it with Gail,” Erin murmured, tucking her head against Dennis’s shoulder. “I don’t know why. I just thought, Mommy would pick out little girl earrings for me. Gail is cooler, kind of.”

  “Kind of,” Dennis agreed. The thoughts that had refused to crystallize earlier came clear now. “Sweetie, Daddy has to make a phone call. Can I have some privacy?”

  “You want me to take Barbie?” Erin asked, climbing down from his lap.

  “I think you’d better.” He handed Erin her doll, kissed the top of his daughter’s head, and watched her leave the room. Closing his eyes, he visualized the angry letter in his drawer, and the check he had no intention of ever cashing. The hell with whether she expected not to hear from him. He didn’t have to live up to her expectations. Only his own.

  He dialed her number and listened to the phone ring four times. Then her answering machine clicked on and he heard her voice, mechanically instructing him to leave a message after the beep.

  He drew in a deep breath and began. “Gail, it’s me. I got your check today. I don’t want your money. I want that bastard Kopoluski’s money, but that’s beside the point. The point is...” He scrambled to remember the point before the tape cut him off. “The point is, Erin wants you to help her pick out earrings.” No, that didn’t sound right. “What this is really about is, your guy’s criminal enterprise put my kids at risk. And when it comes to my kids, I take no prisoners and I make no apologies. It’s just the way I am. So if we can get past this, great.” He considered for a moment, then added, “I hope we can.”

  The beep of her answering machine overlapped his words, cutting him off.

  He lowered the phone into the cradle and tried to remember exactly what he’d said. Had he chosen the right words? Offered an olive branch? He could be so articulate in legal settings, quick on his feet in court and eloquent in negotiations. He could couch ideas in just the right words to tilt decisions in his clients’ favor.

  But now—he’d been arguing on his own behalf, not a client’s. He’d been trying to explain himself instead of making his case. But if Gail truly meant what she’d said about closing out her account with him, it probably didn’t matter what he’d said. Like the most biased jury, the most stubborn judge, she had already found Dennis guilty.

  ***

  IF WE CAN get past what? Gail thought churlishly.

  She’d played her answering machine tape a hundred times over the past few days, and every time she listened to it she came up with the same conclusion—he wasn’t apologizing—and the same question—if we can get past what?

  Get past the concept that Murphy was a man who couldn’t apologize? Get past his ability to twist the facts around until his nanny’s transgression became Gail’s fault? Get past his request to take Erin shopping for earrings?

  It was bizarre, the idea of Gail shopping for jewelry with a second grader. She didn’t like children. Why on earth would she want to go shopping with Murphy’s daughter?

  But she did. She wanted it more than just about anything—except to see Murphy. She wanted that even more.

  He was too proud, though. Too egocentric. The best lawyer in the universe, charging six hundred dollars an hour, a drop in the bucket to an outfit like the Arlington Gazette but a huge enough sum that seven and a half hours of his time had required Gail to perform financial acrobatics so her check wouldn’t bounce. It didn’t matter that he was the sexiest, most liberating lover she’d ever known, that he was funny and intelligent and dynamic, that he treated her as his intellectual equal, that he’d caulked her windows for her.

  He had insulted her, implied things about her, lost his temper with her—and he refused to apologize. She didn’t need a road map to know this was not a safe route to travel.

  Five days after he’d left his message on her machine, she erased it. Then she wept.

  She tried to keep busy. She put in ludicrously long hours at her office and actually made a visible dent in the mountain of files.

  One evening she drove with Allison and Molly to the salon where they’d bought their wedding and maid-of-honor gowns, and reviewed their final fittings. They both looked radiant. Finding the perfect man for yourself and knowing that he loved you as much as you loved him could do that.

  Gail would bet that both her brother-in-law and the man who would be marrying Allison on Sunday knew how to apologize. They wouldn’t have their secretaries send Allison and Molly bills for services rendered. They wouldn’t lay a trip on Allison and Molly about taking their children shopping, and then in the next breath say, “That’s the way I am. Take it or leave it.”

  Well, Gail had left it. And eventually...maybe in a year, or two, or ten...she wouldn’t hurt quite so much.

  “What do you think?” Molly asked, rotating one last time in the forest-green gown. The silk rustled as the skirt swirled around her ankles. “Allison and I talked about pastels, but I look lousy in pastels. You don’t think it looks too wintery, do you?”

  “I think it’s a great color on you,” Gail assured her sister. “You’ll match all those pine trees in the woods surrounding the back yard.”

  Molly laughed. “Allison’s Grammy is going to be wearing a silk suit, peach with this color green lapels and trim. And she bought a dress for the baby that’s to die for. It’s white with peach colored flowers and leaves this color green.”

  “Samantha isn’t going to be in the wedding party, is she?” Gail asked. “She’s barely a year old.”

  “She has no formal role,” Molly explained. “But you know her. She’ll be toddling around, stealing the show.”

  Allison stepped out of the dressing room then, resplendent in a long, glorious confection of ivory satin and lace. “How do I look?” she asked the Saunders sisters anxiously.

  “Oh, Allison—it’s perfect!” Molly squealed, racing to hug her friend and then hesitating, afraid to rumple either of their dresses. Molly had been content to waltz through her Town-Hall wedding in an elegant wool suit of winter white, yet she seemed transfixed by the sight of Allison in a gown of classic beauty, with a lace-edged neck, a snug bodice, and acres of silk-taffeta skirt that emphasized Allison’s slim, statuesque build. With her long, curly mane of auburn hair spilling around her shoulders, she looked like a fairy-tale princess.

  Gail’s eyes stung with tears—mostly tears of joy at the vision Allison presented, but also a few tears of regret that she herself would never be a bride. Until a few months ago, she’d been quite accustomed to that truth. She’d never had any desire to get married.

  But then she’d met Murphy.

  “You look beautiful,” she murmured in response to Allison’s questioning look. “Breathtaking.”

  “You two are so good for my ego,” Allison said. She studied her multiple reflections in the three-way mirror outside the dressing rooms
and shrugged. “I guess I can’t back out of this marriage now.”

  “Any nerves?” Molly asked. “Are you getting cold feet?”

  Allison’s laughter bubbled like champagne. “None whatsoever. If I’ve ever been sure of anything, it’s that marrying Jamie is right.”

  Oh, to be that sure of her own decision, Gail thought wistfully. How could anyone be so sure in matters of the heart? How could anyone know that loving a man, or closing one’s heart to him, was the right thing to do?

  ***

  THE TWINS WERE WAITING on her front porch Saturday morning when she arrived home from the supermarket with a trunk full of groceries that she probably wouldn’t have the appetite to eat. She pulled into her driveway and gaped at them, Sean straddling the teal bike that she’d seen parked in his father’s living room, and Erin perched on the purple bike. Gail could scarcely make out the children’s faces beneath their helmets, but she knew who they were.

  She turned off the engine, checked her rear-view mirror, and peered through the passenger side windows. No sign of Murphy.

  Still, she climbed out of her car warily, as if she feared he was hiding in the bushes and was going to spring out at her. She recalled the time, a few weeks ago, when she’d found him on her porch. They’d wound up kissing.

  The memory was like an open sore. Merely brushing against it caused a sharp, wincing pain.

  She didn’t want the kids to realize how much their father had hurt her, though. Unlike Murphy, who blamed her for things that weren’t her fault, she wasn’t going to blame Murphy’s children for his cold-hearted obstinacy.

  Their helmets made them look like insects. Under the sleek fiberglass domes, their eyes were round and sharp, following her as she crossed the lawn to the porch. They seemed to be waiting for her to speak, so she said, “Hi.”

  That one word seemed to release them. They both started babbling at once. “Gail, we need your help!”

  “It’s been awful, Gail!