“Now what the hell is going on? What’s with that letter and you sneaking out of here?”
“I’m leaving, and nothing you can say will change that.”
He peers through the slats of the blinds then back at me.
“So you called up your little army of one to help you run away?”
His laughter infuriates me.
“I’m leaving, Vaughn! Today. This marriage is over.”
He scratches the tip of his nose and looks me over as if he’s trying to figure out what to do with me.
“Yeah? It’s over? That’s what you want?”
“Yes.”
“So, last night we celebrate my birthday, and today you want a divorce?” He laughs again. “Are you off your meds or something?”
“I stopped taking those.”
“Well, maybe you need to take some more.” He opens my nightstand drawer, alarmed to find it completely empty. Then he thrusts open my dresser drawers. They, too, are empty. “Oh, you’re serious, huh?”
I peek out of the window. Elle is standing outside of the car.
Vaughn sits in our armchair and props his left ankle up on his right knee. “So, indulge me, why are you leaving? Why is it you want this “divorce”?
“We aren’t good for each other anymore, Vaughn. We tried, but this is not a marriage. All of the lies and the bullshit. We should’ve went our separate ways a long time ago.”
There it is. The crux of our dysfunction in thirty-three words. The same thing that took me six pages and two hours to write.
He’s quiet so long that I think he’s about to tell me he agrees, that this relationship is, in fact, a mistake. One we both dragged out way too long.
Eventually he looks up and meets my eyes. “Tell Elle to leave. I’ll help you bring your bags back up, and we’ll act like this never happened, okay?” He stands and gestures towards the door.
“No, I’m serious. This is over. You can accept it or not, but I’m leaving.”
“You’re not going anywhere with my daughter.”
I speak the one truth I’ve been denying for the last two years. “She’s not your daughter.”
My words bounce off of him. “And I have a birth certificate and blood test that says she is.”
“Are we really going to go there? Is that how you want to play this, Vaughn? Because we both know the truth, and you’re only a phone call away from an indictment.”
“Is that a threat?”
“I don’t make threats. I’m leaving. Morgan and I are leaving. Today. Now either you step aside and let me go or we can go there. The choice is yours.”
“You don’t have the guts.”
“Watch me.”
For the second time I attempt a final exit from our bedroom. By the time I reach the steps, Elle is standing at the foot of the staircase.
“You okay?” she yells up to me.
Before I can say yes, Vaughn is on my heels.
“You’re not taking my daughter.” He reaches for me again, but this time I’m too fast. I bound down the steps, but in no time he’s back in my face. Only now he’s got me by both arms and has my back pressed against the wall.
“Let go of her!” Elle yells.
“Just go!” I tell her. “Take the baby and go.”
She looks from Vaughn to me to the door and back, confused. Vaughn lets go of me and bolts down the steps and out the front door. By the time she and I make it outside, he’s already removed Morgan from the car seat.
“Give me my child!” I yell as I pummel him with little fists.
Like an ape shooing away flies, he deflects them all. I take off my sneaker and wield it, striking his shoulders and back. In one fell swoop, he knocks me to the ground with his free arm.
Elle rushes to my side and is helping me up when we hear the front door slam shut. I rush to it and twist the knob.
“Open this door, you bastard!” I beat my palms against the solid oak until they hurt.
“Where are your keys?” Elle asks.
I dig into my pockets and realize I don’t have them. They’re inside my purse, which is inside the house, laying somewhere in the wake of our scuffle.
We circle around to the backyard, to the garage and all about the perimeter of the house to find all of the doors and windows locked.
Elle pulls out her cellphone. “I’m calling the police. He can’t lock you out of your own house.”
Like two latch-key kids, we sit on the front steps in the early-morning silence until a squad car careens up the driveway.
Only then does Vaughn open the door. After a quick mediation between us and the responding officers, I’m allowed inside to get my purse. And my daughter.
As Elle maneuvers my car down the curve of the driveway, I turn and take in one final view of the place I used to call home.
PART III
“The way to love anything is to realize it may be lost.”
-Gilbert Keith Chesterton
THIRTY
I hesitate in his doorway.
Only after Dylan’s asked me twice, do I step foot inside. This is our first visit following the court order. Our agreement calls for joint legal custody. I’ll maintain primary physical custody, and Dylan is granted unsupervised visitations. Because Morgan hasn’t seen him in nearly six months and has never been alone with him, we agreed that the first few visits should be chaperoned. Today, it’s my plan to spend a few hours with them so they can become reacquainted.
At first, she’s a bit hesitant. Fortunately for him, she’s growing into a social child, so it doesn’t take her long to warm up to new people. And fortunately for me, she’s still so young that I have time to figure out how to tell her who Dylan is and to explain why she no longer sees Vaughn. She asks for him from time to time, and I just tell her he’s away, working. The same thing I would tell her when he was away on business. Eventually she stopped asking.
*****
Two months ago I walked into Isaac Murphy’s office. I told him that I knew all about the collusion between Vaughn, Frank and him. I went on to advise that several of their conversations had been recorded, that I knew exactly how much money he’d accepted to falsify those paternity results and that should this information ever become public, he’ll be brought up on felony charges, and likely disbarred. He told me my accusations were unfounded then asked me to leave his place of business. On the surface he remained unruffled, but the subtle shifting in his seat and the slight darting of his eyes said otherwise. After I left I imagine he pictured himself sitting in a jail cell, alongside the criminals he’d put away during his stint as a Philadelphia district attorney. A position he held long before discovering that the private sector was more lucrative, and that accepting money for screwing over his own clients, was even more lucrative. A short forty-eight hours later I received a hushed phone call, in which he asked for my price to keep my mouth shut. I told him it wasn’t money I wanted.
A week later I received a phone call from my new attorney, Anna, advising that she’d heard from Isaac and he’d re-filed a motion for custody, pursuant to a subsequent paternity exam. (Lo and behold, there was a rash of false negatives at local DNA facilities.) The final exam indicated with medical certainty that Dylan was, in fact, Morgan’s father. The results were recorded with the courts, Vaughn’s name was removed from her birth certificate and Dylan’s took its place.
Vaughn did not handle the news well. He made quick work of enforcing our prenuptial agreement, which mandated that I leave the marriage with exactly what I came into it with. This accounted to a savings account of roughly twelve-hundred dollars. I’d acquired thousands in jewelry and clothing over the years, but I had no real property. Only my credit cards and car were in my name. I had to secure a police escort to retrieve the rest of my belongings. It’s all I left with.
Elle had warned me over the years to purchase some property of my own, maybe even launch a business, and I always told her I would. That I planned to or I would get around to
it, but I never did. Along with not telling me that ‘she told me so’ (although I’m sure she was thinking it), her support has been endless. Not only was she there to help me on that fateful morning, but she gave me the resources I needed to leave Vaughn. Morgan and I stayed with her in her hotel suite for the rest of that week. After which I moved into one of her parents’ apartments in Manhattan (she convinced them to let me sublet it at a deep discount). Then we worked together to sell some of my expensive jewelry—the pieces that had no sentimental value—as well as a load of clothing and shoes I’d never or barely worn. This all amounted to a respectable sum on which I could live while Anna battled Frank in court to contest the prenuptial.
*****
Gingerly, I step inside. Dylan takes my coat, shaking away the snow before placing it in the closet. I kneel and remove Morgan’s coat then hand it to him. He attempts to hang it before realizing it’s way too small for the hanger in his hand. He rests it on the arm of the couch instead. Without warning, she darts off in pursuit of a brown puppy, which sees her then runs under the kitchen table.
“When did you get a dog?” I ask. I never knew Dylan to be an animal lover.
“A couple of weeks ago. One of my students was giving them away. I thought Morgan might like one.”
“She’s really cute.”
“He. It’s a boy. Only twelve weeks old.”
As Morgan plays beneath the table with the tiny chocolate lab, Dylan and I stand in awkward silence. I hadn’t expected Morgan to be so uninhibited. I thought at first she’d be glued to my lap or stuck by my side. Without the distraction of her, we haven’t much to say to each other. Or maybe we just aren’t sure what’s appropriate to say.
He’s none the wiser about the paternity test scam. He believes the earlier tests were incorrect due to a laboratory error. Nor is he aware that I’ve left Vaughn. He never questioned why neither Frank nor Vaughn were at the custody hearing, nor did he mention his name when we coordinated this visit over the phone. And I’m hoping he doesn’t today because I don’t want to lie to him. But I can’t tell him the whole story. Not now at least.
Finally Morgan comes from beneath the table with the puppy in tow. Her playful mood soon extends to Dylan, who gets down onto the floor to play with her. It doesn’t take long before the three of them have taken to each other and I’m the odd man out. It’s fine though, because watching them together, rolling around on the floor, confirms that I made the right decision.
I wake to strange surroundings. As I rub my eyes it becomes clear where I am. Quickly, I sit up.
“Did you sleep well?” Dylan asks from his seat at the dining room table.
I smooth down my hair and adjust my shirt. “How long have I been sleeping?”
“About two hours.”
“Where’s Morgan?”
“Asleep. In her room.” He takes a sip from his Penn State mug. “Would you like something to drink?”
“No. No thank you, I’m fine.” I fluff the pillow I was resting on. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to fall asleep on your couch.”
“It’s okay.”
I smell the scent of peppermint tea. “Ya know, a cup of tea sounds good. Thank you.”
While he boils more water, I peek inside the bedroom and check on Morgan. She’s curled up into a fetal position and clutching the duvet in her tiny hands. She looks so peaceful. So at home. When I first discovered this room I was angry, but now as I watch her sleep in the canopy bed and see her toys strewn across the carpet, it’s as if she grew up right here, not in that fancy suite back in New Jersey.
The whistling of the teapot draws me back into the kitchen where Dylan is dipping a white tea bag into a brown mug. Before I can ask, he’s adding one-and-a-half teaspoons of honey, just the way I like it.
We fall into an easy, comfortable flow of conversation. About everything and about nothing. We discuss Morgan, his students, the upcoming election, we engage in a soft debate over gun control, then watch an episode of Downton Abbey. The rhythm is smooth, only punctuated by awkward moments like when we turn to TBS, and watch Diane Lane cheat on her husband in Unfaithful. But those moments pass and hours later, as I sit on the couch with my feet tucked beneath me, I almost feel at home.
The sun recedes and soon we’re on the cusp of nightfall but I’m not ready to leave. I don’t want to wake Morgan and carry her out into the cold winter air, nor do I want to sit in a frigid car waiting for it to warm up and I especially don’t want to turn the key in the door of that lonely one-bedroom apartment.
Dylan offers me more tea. I decline, because it’s not tea I want. I want to order dinner and eat it here at this table with both him and our daughter. But I’d never suggest such a thing. Not only because I don’t know if that’s what he wants, but because my feelings are still in disarray. I don’t want Vaughn, that I’m certain of. I don’t even miss him. It’s funny how the one thing you thought you couldn’t live without becomes so non-essential once you step away from it. I only wish I’d found this clarity years ago. If I had, nearly everything would be different.
“Are you hungry?” Dylan asks, having me wonder if I’ve been speaking my thoughts aloud. Or is this just another example of how in tune with each other we are?
I tell him no. But instantly I regret it. Blair, what’s wrong with you? He’s asking you to stay. Just say yes. Instead of minding my inner voice, I tell him that I should get going, hoping that he’ll stop me and tell me it’s too late to get on the road or that he heard it might snow again or that he just doesn’t want to see me leave.
He strokes his jaw. I can see him thinking. Just ask me. All you have to do is ask. But he doesn’t. Instead the doorbell rings. My expression reads surprise, but his doesn’t; he’s expecting someone. Please let it be one of his friends. One returning a tool or one who was “just in the neighborhood.” Someone who’ll quickly get the hint and be on his way.
But it’s not a friend.
My gut wrenches when he opens the door and invites Gayle inside. It twists a bit more when he hugs her and then … Oh God, no … kisses her—on the lips!
Awkward isn’t the word to describe this scene. Maybe it would’ve been awkward if I’d been on my way out, but seeing as how I was just trying to figure out a way to stay, this is somewhere in the territory of humiliating. Well, for me at least. Dylan doesn’t appear the least bit uncomfortable. Gayle, however, is surprised to see me. But her expression quickly becomes smug, and I know why. Because now the tables have turned. Now she’s looking at me up and down the same way I looked at her that day in the parking lot. The day when she was dismissed and Dylan left with me. Now, it is I who has to leave and suffer through a thousand thoughts of what’s going to happen between them after I do.
I must admit though, she does look better. There’s nothing like an encounter with your beau’s ex to have you step up your game. And that Gayle has. The glasses are gone. Those comfortable Nine West shoes have been replaced with leather riding boots, and she’s wearing skinny jeans. Who knew the biologist had a figure under there? Hell, even her nails are polished. I quickly take stock of my own appearance, which isn’t what it was when she last saw me. My hair is a bit unruly, I’m wearing barely any make-up and it’s obvious that today I’ve compromised style for comfort. Her eyes drop down to my bare feet, and her eyebrows rise. She doesn’t speak; nor do I.
Dylan offers a quick re-introduction. “You remember Gayle, right?” She and I both nod.
“I should get going,” I say and scramble to zip up my sweatshirt and put on my socks. He nods and brings me my boots while Gayle removes hers. The irony doesn’t escape me. Out with the old and in with the new.
Dylan follows me to Morgan’s room. As I’m dressing her in her sleep, he stands in the doorway and watches. “You know, she can stay the night. Doesn’t make sense to wake her. Plus, it’s freezing out.”
Is he crazy? Does he really think I’d leave my child here— alone with him and her? So, he has no problem kicki
ng me out in the cold, but Morgan can stay? The expression on my face must say it all, because he quickly recants.
“I guess that’s not a good idea, huh?”
I shake my head.
The following evening Elle and I are sitting on my couch, well, her couch. The one she’d put in storage when she moved down to Atlanta. My entire living room is filled with her old furniture. However, old is hardly the word to describe it. It still looks like it came straight from the showroom.
I tell her about my visit with Dylan.
“Well, why didn’t you tell him that you and Vaughn are through?”
“It makes no difference now. His only concern is Morgan.”
“That’s not true. Don’t say that.”
“It is true. And I just have to accept it.”
“But what about that letter he wrote you?”
“What about it?”
“Didn’t he say he still loves you?”
“He also said, I belong with Vaughn.”
“But you don’t. You never did and now, thank God, it’s over.”
I tell her about Gayle. I’d left that part out, not only because I didn’t want to revisit it, but because I’m embarrassed.
Her face says “damn”, but she goes on to say, “So what? She’s just the rebound girl, you know that. He doesn’t love her. He loves you.”
I want to believe her. How I wish I knew her words were true, but I don’t. A year ago I would have believed it. Hell, a few months ago I did believe it, but now I can’t. So much of what I once thought I knew was wrong.
“It’s too late. I’m just going to spend some time alone for a while. Try to reassemble my life. You know, I haven’t been single since I was nineteen. It’s about time I get to know Blair. Learn how to walk on my own two feet.”
A Delicate Truth Page 21
