Making Waves

by Catherine Todd

  “So what did you do, Mom?”

  “The best I could, Megan. That’s just about all you can do.”

  There was a moment of silence in the kitchen. It was the right moment for the phone to ring, or a clock to strike, but nothing happened.

  “Mom?”

  My antennae went up. Sixteen years of parenting made you acutely sensitive to a change in tone. “Yes?”

  “You might be hearing from one of my teachers.”

  Dropped so casually, the statement was unlikely to be good news. The school’s teachers, a dedicated and overworked lot, did not have time for phone calls in order to discuss the weather or the prospects for success of a referendum on the voucher system. “Oh?” I replied, with, I thought, admirable restraint. “Which one?”

  “Mrs. Fletcher.”

  Christine Fletcher taught career and family studies, a sort of life skills course that covered everything from birth control to reading the stock pages. I couldn’t believe Megan would be having trouble in the class; she showed so much enthusiasm for virtually every lecture and paper topic. “Are you going to tell me why I might be hearing from her, or do you want me to be surprised?” I asked her.

  She managed a sheepish grin and then turned suddenly serious.

  “I had to write this essay on my family,” she said, not meeting my eyes. “And I wrote about, you know, the separation.” She sighed gustily. “Mrs. Fletcher got pretty upset about it.”

  I gripped the countertop hard with my left hand while trying not to rattle my coffee mug with the other. Only those who have experienced firsthand a typical teenager’s reckless disregard for scrupulous fidelity to the facts in favor of the temptations of dramatic exaggeration will entirely understand the frisson of dread I felt at that moment. I wondered if a visit from Child Protective Services was just around the corner. I tried not to think of the probable outcome of Steve’s custody suit if that happened.

  “Why?” I asked her. “What did you say?”

  She shrugged, a little too nonchalantly. “I don’t really remember. I guess I was…uh…pretty unhappy that day, and I might have come on pretty strong about how bad I was feeling.”

  “I see. And what did Mrs. Fletcher say to you about it?”

  She looked away, embarrassed. “Well, usually Mrs. Fletcher’s pretty cool. But she was like…crying.”

  “Oh Megan,” I said, dismayed.

  “I’m sorry, Mom.”

  What could I say to her? That I was angry (which was the truth) that she had aired the family linen at school? I felt too guilty at having been the cause of her pain, at having driven her to seek sympathy from her teachers. “It must have been some essay,” I told her.

  “Would you like to see it?” she asked, brightening.

  “Sure,” I said, as casually as I could manage. “Why not?”

  “Okay. I’ll get it back from Mrs. Fletcher.”

  I felt a little better. I didn’t think she would have offered to let me see it if I’d come off a close second to Joan Crawford in the “Mommy Dearest” competition. Still, she had felt compelled to write something. “Megan, would you like to see someone, someone you could talk to about your problems?” I asked her.

  She looked horrified. “You mean a shrink? Do you think I’m crazy?”

  “Of course not. I was thinking more of a kind of counselor. Maybe we could all go.”

  She regarded me with disbelief. “Daddy, too?”

  “He might be willing. He doesn’t want you to be unhappy, either.”

  “I don’t think I want to, Mom. But thanks anyway.”

  “We’ll let it rest a while, then. But why don’t you keep a diary, put your thoughts down on paper? It might make you feel better.”

  She smiled at me. “Thanks for the suggestion, Mom, but I already do.”

  I was a mother before I started investigating crimes, and it was clear that I needed to keep my priorities straight. Instead of calling David Sanchez, I picked up the phone to call Christine Fletcher. I might have been a shrinking violet about detective work, but I guess I could be a Venus flytrap where my kids were concerned.

  “Thanks for your time,” I told her when I had navigated all the obstacles involved in getting hold of a teacher in a public school. “Megan told me there might be a problem with an essay she wrote for your class, and I wanted to clear things up if there was anything you wanted to discuss.”

  There was a silence on the other end of the line while she mentally sifted through the 180-odd papers she had no doubt corrected in the last couple of weeks and retrieved the information on Megan’s Career and Family Studies confessional.

  I could almost hear her click in. “Oh, yes.” Silence again. Finally: “Have you read it?”

  “No. She said you still have it.”

  “Oh, right, of course. That’s true.”

  “Should I read it?”

  She sighed. “Well, you know that teenagers can be very emotional. They think everything in the world is about them. Basically Megan just wrote a very affecting essay about how your domestic situation is impacting her. It will probably make you unhappy to read it, but I guess I would anyway as long as you remember it’s undoubtedly an exaggeration. Does she seem to be adjusting well at home?”

  “I think so. But sometimes it’s hard to tell what’s normal teenage dreadful behavior and what’s a reaction to the separation. She’s a pretty good kid, though, most of the time. I just don’t want to see her suffer in school or get anorexia or anything like that.”

  “I’ll try to keep a closer eye on her than usual and let you know if I see any danger signs,” she said quietly. “It’s better to catch things before they go too far.” She paused. “I’m divorced, too, so I know how hard it is. You can wear yourself out trying to meet everybody’s needs.”

  She’d certainly put her finger on it there. I noticed that I had twisted the telephone cord round and round my finger so tightly that it had almost cut off the circulation. I let it go. “Do you think anybody ever has a good divorce?” I asked her.

  She laughed. “I heard of one once. But the same person who told me about it assured me that Charles and Di would never split up for the sake of the monarchy, so who knows?”

  “My husband and I haven’t even begun the legal proceedings yet, and we’re scarcely speaking. I hope things don’t get a lot worse, especially for the children’s sake.”

  “Well…”

  “That’s naive, isn’t it?” I asked her.

  “Yes.”

  “I was afraid it might be,” I conceded.

  “Look, Mrs. James, getting a divorce is a little like being pregnant—as soon as people get wind of your condition, they can’t wait to tell you their horror stories.”

  I remembered that. When I was carrying Jason, perfect strangers would clutch my arm in the checkout line at the supermarket and tell me about their sister/niece/granddaughter/cousin who had labored thirty-six hours without anesthesia to produce Siamese twins joined at the head. It was enough to make me want to stay indoors for the duration of my pregnancy with Megan, particularly since by then I realized that however optimistic one’s frame of mind, labor was not a prospect one could easily contemplate with good cheer.

  “I know what you mean,” I told her.

  “You probably don’t yet, but you will,” she assured me. “But one thing I’d like to tell you—to warn you about, really—is that even when you think it’s settled, it isn’t. It’s never really over for you as long as you have any financial dealings with your ex-husband.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She gave a self-deprecating little laugh. “This is what I meant about everybody wanting to tell you their stories.”

  “Please. I’d like to hear what you have to say, if you want to tell me.”

  “Well, I guess what I want to warn you about is that there’s no such thing as a done deal, even if you’ve agreed on your settlement, your custody arrangements, and everything else.” She cleared
her throat. “I had a friend, a handyman, rent out my garage apartment after my husband left. I was lonely, and it helped with the rent, but it was really dumb because we had a brief romantic relationship that my ex-husband found out about. The next thing I knew, my husband was taking me to court, suing to eliminate my alimony because I had a ‘de facto’ marriage with this man who he claimed was in effect supporting me. It was completely specious because my friend moved out as soon as we ended our little fling, and my lawyer told me my husband didn’t have any kind of a case. My lawyer also told me it would run about two thousand in legal bills,” she said bitterly.

  “And then there were depositions from my children, delayed hearings, and all kinds of expenses my counsel hadn’t predicted, even though he still kept assuring me that Jack—my ex-husband—didn’t have a legal leg to stand on. He told me he was very sorry, but he thought his original estimate for his fees would be too low.”

  I could hear her sighing into the phone. “You know, Mrs. James, I sat in his offices with his expensive paneling and his walnut desk and some oversized leather chair crafted for minor royalty, and all I could think of was ‘I’m paying for all this.’ I was, too. By the time the judge had concluded that Jack had no basis for his claims, my bill had reached about fifteen thousand. My lawyer asked that the plaintiff bear the cost of the proceedings, but the motion was denied. So the money had to come out of my savings for the kids’ college fund, and I didn’t get one damn thing out of it.” There was a catch in her voice. “Sorry,” she added.

  “That’s horrible!” I told her, full of indignation.

  “You think so and I think so, but it’s how the system works,” she said more briskly. “If your ex-husband stops paying you or arbitrarily cuts your support in half, it will cost you three, four, maybe five hundred dollars just to talk it over with your lawyer and decide what to do about it.” She sighed again. “This year Jack left his company to open his own business, and now he wants to reduce my child-support payments because his income has gone down as a result. He’s put me on notice, he says, and he’ll take it to court again if I don’t agree to a voluntary reduction. Depending on how much less he wants to give me, I think I have to go along with it because I can’t afford to pay another lawyer to battle it out in court. I just can’t stand to lose any more.”

  “I don’t know what to say,” I told her. “I’m overwhelmed.” I paused. “At least it’s good to know that I’m not paranoid to be worried.”

  “No,” she said firmly. “Definitely not paranoid. You might look into a support group while you’re going through the process, and afterward. It helped me a lot. I guess I’d also suggest that you get as much as possible in real property and stocks, things you can sell if you have to. Don’t trade them for the promise of high support payments.”

  “I really appreciate your candor,” I told her. “You’ve given me a lot to think about.”

  “I’m glad if I can be of help,” she said. “Anyway,” she added, very much the teacher again, “Megan’s a very nice girl, and for the most part she’s happy and well-adjusted. I’d like to see her stay that way.”

  I called David Sanchez’s Newport Beach office while the brave mood was still upon me. I was not destined, however, to ride the wave on to victory.

  “Mr. Sanchez is out of town at the moment,” his secretary told me.

  “I’d like to schedule an appointment, then,” I told her.

  This was clearly unusual. “Are you a prospective investor?” she asked. “We have prepared background information on our fund and its performance over the last ten years, and we’d be happy to send you—”

  I cut her off. “I have some information that might be of interest to Mr. Sanchez, and we require his assistance in evaluating it,” I said starchily. I hoped it sounded as if I had somehow gotten the goods on GM. I thought the “we” sounded more authentic. Steve had once had someone schedule an appointment with him because she was sure her enemies were pursuing her with lasers through the open windows. He had almost fired his secretary for letting her sneak by. I had pointed out that anyone who had seen Three Days of the Condor four times should not have been so cavalier in dismissing the possibility, but at that point in our relationship, he no longer found my jokes a thrill.

  I had apparently succeeded in quelling the alarm of David Sanchez’s secretary, however, because she granted me access on a day and hour not too distant. I gave her my name, perfectly sure he would not recognize it in any case. I hardly wanted to identify myself as someone who had been rude to him at a prior meeting, particularly when I wanted him to do me a favor.

  Stasis was the enemy of progress. The phone was still hot and heavy in my hand. I stared at it for a minute before taking out my address book. Then I wiped my palm on my pants and dialed.

  “I was wondering how you’re getting along,” I said, a little breathlessly. “Actually, if you’re free, I was hoping you might like to get together for lunch one day this week.”

  Tricia Lindera Hampton sounded surprised, as well she might be, since our previous contacts, if you don’t count Eleanor’s funeral, were pretty much limited to a few seconds of pleasantries at firm social events. “I’m not sure…” she began, polite but hesitant.

  I took the offensive. “I know we don’t really know each other all that well, but you did seem as though you might need a friend when we talked at the play the other evening. And I thought you might like to get out of the house. I remember what it’s like to have young children around all the time,” I added shamelessly. Actually, if I had had parental responsibility for Randy and Barry Hampton, I not only would have gotten out of the house, I would have left the state altogether. In fact I was surprised that the phone lines were still functioning at Château Hampton, which was probably in ruins by now.

  “Well…” I could tell she was weakening.

  I played my trump card. “And of course I need to get out as well. Since the separation, I’ve lost touch with a lot of people in the firm, and I really don’t want to write off all the wonderful friendships I’ve enjoyed over the years. I’ve always been sorry I didn’t have more opportunities to get to know you better.”

  I felt more than a little guilty about appealing to her sympathy (all right, pity) this way, but I had to get her to talk to me somehow. I knew she’d been ostracized by the remaining first wives in the firm, for whom the sight of a partner’s wedding ring on a paralegal’s finger was far from reassuring, so I hoped that even an outcast’s acceptance might retain a little bit of allure. I didn’t think I’d get more than one chance at it.

  “Actually,” she said in a quiet voice, “I’m free today.”

  “Great,” I told her, hoping I sounded pathetically grateful. “Neiman Marcus?” I inquired. I really liked their lime and cilantro shrimp salad, though what I always lusted after, but never ordered, was the baked Brie.

  “Could we go to La Valencia instead? It’s closer.”

  “One o’clock,” I told her.

  The La Valencia Hotel is in the heart of the village, a beautiful old (by California standards, anyway) building painted a color somewhere between hot and salmon pink. The view from the tile and wood interior encompasses the sweep of the ocean and the terraced grounds descending to the shore; the patio, outfitted in wrought iron and potted plants, faces Prospect Street. It is a quintessentially California place, both elegant and casual. Celebrities (Greta Garbo) and wannabes (Marion Davies) have loved it ever since its opening in 1926.

  The patio, while enjoying the favor of discriminating tourists and a few lucky businessmen in suits, was also a favorite of the Ladies Who Lunch, those whose pictures appeared in the social pages of the newspaper wearing big hats and surgical smiles for the opening day at the Del Mar Racetrack (the West Coast answer to Royal Ascot). It was the perfect refuge for those with trust funds and sedate good taste.

  I had intended to arrive early and people-watch from the patio while I planned my interview, but I was too restless. Inst
ead I skipped the valet parking and found a spot a zillion miles away (it was never too late to start economizing) up a street whose residents were cursed in perpetuity by the perennial scarcity of parking spaces in the downtown area. I walked down Prospect, past the mélange of trendy shops, tourist traps, and art galleries. Next to the little boutiques with two-hundred-dollar beaded T-shirts were clothing stores whose windows offered skirts and sweaters, soft, rich, and comfortable. There was none of the frantic luxury of Rodeo Drive, and there hadn’t been even at the height of the eighties. Nobody honked a horn, imperiously summoning a salesperson to a car window; no one paced through the stores clutching a cellular phone. It was all quite relaxed and a rather good-humored acknowledgment that those who shopped there, like the residents, were improbably fortunate.

  I arrived at La Valencia’s patio approximately one and a half minutes before Tricia, who ran up breathlessly in a charming little black suit and heels, clutching a sheaf of papers. Every man in the place turned to look at her. She had the kind of body that would have them colliding with each other in over-populated places like airports, their heads swiveling one way and their legs continuing another. Even some of the women were openly admiring.

  “Sorry I’m late,” she said, though she wasn’t, much. “Barclay’s redecorating his office, and he wants me to pick out some artwork for the walls.” Eleanor had done his last decor in, if I recall correctly, a style that might best be described as Seventies Modern, right down to the Eames chair and the metal sculptures. It probably looked tired now, and I didn’t blame him for wanting to change it.

  “That’s great,” I assured her.

  “I’ve just been at the galleries,” she added, when the hostess had shown us to our seats. She handed me the pamphlets and papers she was still clutching. “What do you think of these?”

  I thought she was more interested in preventing an embarrassing lull in the conversation than in soliciting my opinion about paintings and lithographs for Barclay’s walls, but it did present me with an awkward dilemma. What should I say to her? The truth was that for real art you had to go to Los Angeles. Some artists made brave attempts in their spartan lofts in downtown San Diego, but there wasn’t enough big money in the city to support a thriving community of serious art independent of sales to tourists and decorators.