Sincerely,
Henry J. Eastman, Managing Partner
Boy, was I getting depressed reading all this stuff. It didn’t seem criminal, just terribly sad, and scarcely reassuring to someone about to enter the “Valley of the Shadow” herself. Even Henry’s compassionate note had been, in the end, a refusal to help. No wonder Eleanor had been goaded into the kind of obsession I had witnessed during our makeover. It made me feel so bad I seriously wondered whether it would be healthy to go on reading any more. It also awakened me to the dangers of excess, even in the face of justifiable anger. In any case, before I could dive in again, the phone rang.
“You didn’t call me back,” said Susan.
“Sorry. There’s been a lot going on,” I told her.
“You sound annoyed.”
I caught myself up. I had been annoyed, a little, but not at her. You could hardly immerse yourself in an afternoon of Eleanoriana without some of it rubbing off. “Sorry,” I said again. “Just preoccupied.”
“With what?” she asked kindly.
I told her about the investment class, Steve’s visit, and Eleanor’s files.
“My, you have been busy,” she breathed into the receiver. “Ummm…”
She had not been my friend for years for nothing. “What?” I asked her.
“I know you have this fascination with Eleanor Hampton,” she began.
“I don’t,” I protested, bristling a little. “I didn’t ask her to send me all this stuff.”
“Whatever you say, Caroline. Relax.”
“I am relaxed. What’s the ‘but’?”
“What?”
“I heard a ‘but’ in your voice.”
She sighed. “Okay. I just wanted to say that this might not be a very good time to bring up Eleanor Hampton and all her problems, particularly with the firm.”
I waited. She didn’t go on. “Talk to me, Susan,” I prompted her, after a minute.
“I shouldn’t be telling you this. I would lose my job.”
At least she didn’t say, “Promise you won’t tell anyone.” We knew each other too well for that. I held my breath.
“Steve’s contacted Jay Thompson,” she said at last.
“Who’s that?” I asked her. I had heard the name recently, but I couldn’t quite place it.
Susan’s tone was neutral. “He’s a big-time divorce attorney.”
I had it. “Oh, that’s right. Eleanor asked him to represent her. Didn’t he become a judge?”
“No, Caroline. He represented Barclay.”
I finally understood what she was saying. “Oh.” It was all I could think of to say. I had known this moment would come, of course, but until it had, I hadn’t realized how weak my defenses were. It was like the difference between a rehearsal and a play, between imagining someone’s death and actually feeling the loss. It took my breath away.
“Caroline?”
“He’s found someone.” My mouth was so dry I could scarcely frame the words. After all our recent conversations, I realized that Steve probably had finances on his mind more than flings, but it was the first thing that popped into my head anyway.
I had read an article by a woman who said that whenever she was really angry with her husband, she pictured meeting him with his new wife and baby. She would run into him in some public place—a park or a museum—and she would be unmade-up, carelessly dressed, vulnerable. The new wife would have slim hips and tight jeans, in spite of the baby who bestrode the world like a colossus from a carrier on the husband’s back. The husband and new wife would be polite in their inquiries after her well-being, but their intimacy, their little gestures and looks, were like physical blows. She would excuse herself quickly and run off, while they looked after her with pitying glances.
It never failed to make her want to keep him, she said. She swallowed her anger before her scenario became reality, before she pushed him into the seas where all those potential second wives were trolling, their high, firm breasts and tight buns like bait upon the hook. No matter if the fish had prior, inconvenient attachments.
“We don’t know that,” Susan insisted. “I haven’t seen him with anyone or heard anything to suggest he’s seeing anybody seriously. And you know how the office talks.”
“Would you really tell me if you knew? Well, not knew, but suspected?” Christ, this was so undignified, but I couldn’t stop myself.
“Of course I would,” she said quietly.
There is more than one school of thought on this issue, of course, and some contend that it takes two to do the hurting: the one who cheats and the one who tells. Telling may have more complicated motives than simple friendship, I admit. Still, I put those who would rather not know in the same category as those who would want their doctors to lie to them about their terminal diseases. I say call the cancer a cancer and skip the paternalistic bullshit.
“I know that,” I told her. “I’m sorry. It’s just sort of a shock.”
“It might not be anything to worry about. Maybe he wanted to talk to him about something entirely unrelated to the two of you. But if it isn’t…” She paused. “I just didn’t want you to be unprepared.”
“I am unprepared. I don’t even have a lawyer yet.”
“That’s what I mean.”
“But if I get one, and he hasn’t really done anything yet, then I’ll be forcing his hand, won’t I? I might be rushing into something.”
Her silence, which was tactful, nevertheless told me what she was thinking.
“It’s hopeless, isn’t it, Susan? He’s never coming back, is he?”
“I can’t answer that, Caroline,” she said firmly. Her tone, which was matter-of-fact and not at all pitying, was exactly right. “Do you want him to?”
“Probably not,” I confessed. “Not after all this. I’m not sure we could put it all back together again. But he is the children’s father. And besides, I’d like it to be my choice, not his.”
She laughed. “Well, that’s honest, at least.”
“So what do you think I should do?”
“Do I really have to say it?”
“You think I should call a lawyer.”
“I think you should call a lawyer,” she agreed.
“Maybe I’ll call the person who represented Eleanor,” I said, “as long as Jay Thompson might be representing Steve.”
Silence again.
“I was kidding,” I told her. “I have someone else’s name.”
“I hope so.” She took a breath. “You want to stay miles away from any association with her.
I thought this was carrying it a bit far. “Susan, she’s dead.”
“So is Hitler.”
I laughed.
“I’m not kidding. They were furious with her around here. You can’t imagine. You don’t want anyone to put you in the same category. I know it seems ridiculous, but you don’t want this to become a revenge thing.” She sighed. “That’s why I was warning you about the box.”
“Susan, Steve knows I’m not after his balls, or whatever it was they accused Eleanor of. He knows me better than that. As long as he doesn’t try anything unreasonable…” I tried to sound confident, but when I reviewed some of our recent conversations, I wasn’t so sure.
“Maybe,” she agreed, “but if he’s retained Jay Thompson, it won’t be Steve who’s calling the shots. Besides…” She hesitated.
“Besides?” I prompted her.
“Well, in the end Eleanor really did get screwed, didn’t she?”
Five minutes later, the phone rang again. It took me a while to answer it because I was in the throes of a digestive upset I don’t particularly want to describe. Stress always went directly to my midsection. The body that could process a slice of Brie or a chocolate eclair, sending it uncircuitously to my outer thighs with maximum efficiency, completely lost it when it came to handling pressure.
“I almost forgot,” said Susan. “I assume you don’t want to go to the play, but I didn’t ask you.�
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“The play?” I asked blankly, and then I remembered. The firm outing. Dinner under the stars. “Oh, yes…why not?”
“Well, everyone will be there,” she said bluntly. “I thought you might—”
“Susan, it’s Much Ado About Nothing!” I cried. “It’s my favorite Shakespeare.”
“Have you thought of just renting the movie instead?”
“Why don’t you think I should go? I don’t have to sit with Steve.”
“No, but what if he shows up with a date?”
“He wouldn’t do that to me. Not at a firm event. Not when we’re not even divorced.”
“Caroline, the world is full of women whose very last thought before the bastard pulled some egregious shit on them was ‘He wouldn’t do that to me.’”
I remembered her fiancé and the canceled wedding party, and I wondered if she had told me the whole story. At the moment, I didn’t much feel like asking her.
“I don’t care,” I told her. “I can’t be hiding from him for the rest of my life. The people in the firm are—or at least used to be—my friends.” Besides, I thought, what better way to prove that I was rational, in control, and not reduced to a quivering wreck by such a small thing as an impending divorce?
Everyone knows that after a woman has crossed the Great Divide—suffered the “Big D” as they say in La Jolla—she gets ostracized by the still-to-all-apparent-intents-and-purposes-blissfully-married sector of her acquaintance. The higher her ascendance on the social ladder, the more precipitous the fall. This appears to have not much to do with the state of her bank account, wardrobe, or store of wit. It’s as if all those “just girls” lunches at the La Valencia Hotel suddenly become inappropriate and threatening if one of the girls doesn’t have a husband to go home to. And the women’s organizations—the upper tiers of social groups with Spanish names who organize the charity fund-raising events where everyone wears dresses that make them look like popped soufflés—are pretty much sisterhoods of one half of a couple.
Still, I didn’t move in those circles or even aspire to them, and while I did expect some diminishment of attention from our married friends, I couldn’t believe I would actually be unwelcome at group events. And it was Much Ado. I didn’t see why I should give up my life just because Steve was, as he so euphemistically put it, moving on.
“I’m going,” I told her firmly, inspired by the notion of feisty Beatrice. “I don’t care if Steve brings Madonna to it; I’m not going to stay home and mourn my marriage while everybody else is enjoying Shakespeare.”
“Bravo,” said Susan. “Or is it ‘brava’? Anyway, if that’s what you want, go for it.”
“You sound like a self-help book. ‘Be all you can be.’ ‘Get in touch with your inner elf.’”
She shuddered. “God forbid. I haven’t been in California that long.” She paused. “Elf?”
“I think it’s like your inner child, only more quixotic.”
“Caroline, tell me you haven’t been reading that shit.”
I laughed. “No, I just read the titles in the book review.”
“Well, if you feel the urge, promise me you’ll see a good shrink instead. It costs more, but at least you won’t end up sounding like a recruiting poster for psychobabble summer camp. Anyway, what about the dinner?”
“Sign me up,” I told her, feeling reckless. “After all, how much worse could things possibly get?”
8
For the record, I am not one of those people who believe in Fate, so, theoretically at least, there can be no such thing as tempting it. The expression “knock on wood” is almost as repulsive as the act itself. It smacks of Santería or sacrificing chickens or some such thing, all of which doubtless have their place in certain cultures but are only marginally relevant, if that, to twentieth-century La Jolla.
Still, I have to say it. Asking “How much worse can things possibly get?” was a dumb move.
On the morning after I talked to Susan, I called up the lawyer whose name Gene had given me and made an appointment for a preliminary consultation. I made cookies for a bake sale that Megan’s choral group was having. Then I put Melmoth out, locked up the house, dropped off the cookies at the school, and went shopping for something to wear to the play. You might think that such a trite and trivial activity would be the last thing on my mind in the midst of so much domestic chaos, but the image of myself in some devastatingly chic and colorful outfit, disporting insouciantly among the lawyers, was the only tonic I could think of for the depression and fear that made me want to pull the covers over my head and sleep till it all blew over. If you’re thinking that was shallow and silly, you might be right, but I have to say it worked for a while. And anyway, in the end I got punished for it.
I parked the car in the driveway and unloaded my packages. The door was still locked; I remember that. I turned off the alarm and put the packages down at the foot of the stairs, crossing into the kitchen.
The card, gilt-edged and slick, was lying on the kitchen table. It read “Sunlight Realty” over an agent’s name I didn’t recognize. I knew it hadn’t been there when I went out because I’d cleared and wiped the table after breakfast. Maria, the house-cleaner, was coming in the afternoon, and I always picked up before she got there. I stared at it stupidly, thinking of how the door had been relocked, the alarm reset. It could only mean that Steve had given someone a key and permission to show the house.
I started hyperventilating. I picked up the phone and dialed the number on the card. The agent, chirpy and unsuspecting, took my call.
“Oh, Mrs. James,” she gushed before I could say anything more than my name, “my client adored your house. Such a lovely neighborhood, and so beautifully kept. I’m sure we can get a good price for it. The only thing is—”
Despite myself, I couldn’t help asking. “What’s that?”
“Well, frankly, dear, my client was very interested in seeing your garage, but it was such a mess I couldn’t show it.”
“My garage is not a mess,” I said defensively.
“Whatever you say, dear. But if you are really serious about selling the house, I suggest you clean it up.”
I drew in a breath. “That’s just the thing. I’m not.”
“Not what?” she inquired, her tone a shade less friendly.
“Not serious about selling the house. In fact, for the moment I have no intention of selling it at all.”
“I see.”
“And furthermore, if you come into my house again without my permission, I will inform the police.”
“Mrs. James, there appears to have been a misunderstanding. We obtained the key from Maxine Dorfman. I understand that your husband has given her the listing,” she said patiently. Her tone said she understood very well what was up.
Stay calm, I told myself. “Well, there has been a mistake. I am half owner of the house, and I’m telling you it is not for sale.” I said the words very slowly and carefully. Mentally I was running through the cost of rekeying all the locks and changing the master code on the alarm system.
“Certainly, dear,” said the agent in a placating voice. “I understand how it is. But when the time comes, I hope you’ll consider using—”
I hung up on her.
When the time comes. I could turn the house into a fortress, but how long could I hold out? Steve had promised that he would wait and not push me. The inevitability of losing the house, which I had refused to concede, suddenly became a lot more real. And if I could lose the house, maybe I could lose the children, too. Things were moving too fast. I had never felt more powerless in my entire life.
Still, I wasn’t completely brain-dead. I called Maxine and explained the situation to her candidly, pointing out that I could still end up with the house as part of my settlement, and it would scarcely be good for business to alienate me by showing it against my will. She sounded genuinely shocked and apologetic, which may or may not have been an act but made me feel better. She promised to hold
off showing the house until she heard something “definitive.” I decided to leave it at that.
Then I started thinking about my garage, which was a definite improvement over thinking about my divorce. The last time I had seen it, which was when I pulled the car out in the morning, it had probably not qualified as a mess. Sure, there were a few too many boxes of old Connoisseurs and Gourmets stacked up underneath the workbench and turning into spider condos (thank God Steve had taken three years of back issues of Photography when he left), but it wasn’t that bad. Now and then I would get visions of my old age in which, like one of my octogenarian neighbors, I lived out my days surrounded by stacks and stacks of unread reading material, making my way to the bathroom and kitchen down paper corridors. Following these epiphanies, I always threw out the past few years’ accumulations, and I was pretty sure I’d gone on such a binge within the last year. So how bad could it be? I pushed the button of the door opener inside the house and looked out.
My garage was a real mess.
The boxes were tumbled out of their careful stacks, their contents spilling all over the floor and blocking the entrance from the driveway. The storage cabinet doors stood open despite their earthquake latches. I ran to the side entry. The chain was dangling from the frame where the door had been forced open. It wouldn’t have taken much—one good shove could do it. We’d always meant to install a dead bolt and hadn’t gotten around to it. I looked around, wondering what the burglar had taken. The kids’ mountain bikes were still leaning against the far wall, apparently untouched. The tools, the sports equipment, even the wine storage unit had not been disturbed. What, then? I shifted some boxes gingerly, mindful of lizards and arachnids, neither of which tops my list of desirable companions. Some of my old college term papers and books, things I hadn’t seen in years, were at the bottom of the pile. I tried to envision a bibliomaniacal burglar, obsessed with other people’s reading material. It didn’t make sense.
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