Back In the Game

by Holly Chamberlin

  But that was my parents. Always doing nice things for their daughters.

  I guess about a year after our wedding the topic of kids came up again, this time when one of my colleagues was struggling through a messy divorce and battling her soon-to-be-ex for full custody of their little girl. Once again, Duncan and I agreed that we were still up in the air about the whole “kid thing.” That’s what we called it. The “kid thing.”

  I started to cross the broad street, from one side of Boylston to the other. I don’t like the word “kid” anymore. I like the word “child” better. It seems nicer and more mature, doesn’t it?

  Anyway, before you know it we were celebrating our fifth anniversary. And then the subject of children started to come up every month. I’d get my period and say, “Still just you and me, honey.” Duncan would wipe his brow with the back of his hand, say, “Whew!” and we’d laugh. See, we weren’t trying to get pregnant. We were trying to stay not pregnant.

  And then it was year six. Duncan and I still hadn’t come to any definite conclusion about the “kid thing.” We’d end every conversation by saying things like, “Let’s think about it some more” and “Let’s wait until after Christmas to decide.”

  We were both pretty happy.

  And then my parents, Mary and Lucas Keats, married over forty years, were killed instantly when a suddenly out-of-control tractor-trailer smashed into their small Honda. They were on their way to Florida for a week’s vacation at Disney World. They loved Disney World. They went there every year. I have a whole collection of pictures with my parents and Mickey Mouse.

  Not long after that terrible crash, I knew. I told Duncan that I wanted children. I told him that I needed to have children. He said, “Let’s think about it some more.” I said, “No more thinking.” And then he said, “I’m sorry, Laura. I can’t.”

  Well, it was a little more complicated than that, of course. There were a lot of big fights and I even begged him, but nothing would change his mind. He wouldn’t say yes to starting a family even though it meant losing me.

  I came to a dead stop in the middle of the street. My heart hurt. I felt all dizzy again. I wondered if I was having a panic attack.

  “Lady! Move it or lose it!”

  I don’t know why people have to be rude.

  The taxi driver’s shout got my feet moving and I reached the sidewalk safely. I thought about going into Marshall’s to browse the children’s section. I remembered all the cute outfits I’d bought for Nell’s children when they were little. I love being the adoring aunt.

  Nell is smart; she always has been. She had Colin and Clara in her early twenties. And now that a bad thing has happened, now that Richard, the love of her life, has left her for a man, the love of his life, Nell still has Colin and Clara. She isn’t alone, not really, the way I would be someday if I didn’t hurry up and have a baby.

  I turned left and hurried down the sidewalk to Marshall’s.

  Chapter 4

  Grace

  If love means always having to say you’re sorry, divorce means finally getting to say, “It’s all your fault, you idiot.”

  —Looking on the Bright Side: One Hundred Great Things About Divorce

  My mother used to tell me that I was a pushover.

  “Grace,” she’d scold, shaking her head, a look of keen disappointment on her face, “you’re a pushover. You’re just a ball of fluff being tossed around by the wind.”

  She was right. I was a spineless creature. I saw that about myself from the start.

  My mother, however, didn’t share my consciousness. As much as she hated my tendency to comply, she never saw the same tendency in herself. My mother, Eva Lynch Henley, was the classic pushover, the woman anyone, especially a man, could get around with nothing more than a smile, a caress, a puppy-dog look.

  I should note that I never took advantage of her the way other people did, probably because even as a child I was already professionally pleasant.

  But my mother, oh, she’d warn me that I would be hurt out there in the big bad world unless I toughened up. “Grace,” she’d say, “where has your self-esteem gotten to?”

  I never told her that my self-esteem hadn’t bothered to show up in the first place.

  And I never, even when I was in college and hating her, I never pointed out that my behavior was almost an exact copy of hers. I never pointed out that I had been her trainee.

  I hated my mother but I was too nice to act on that hate. It seemed rude to remind her that my father, her husband, treated her like a dim-witted cleaning lady rather than like a partner in life. It seemed rude to point out that she allowed his bad behavior, that she seemed to enjoy bending over backward when he brought over friends for dinner at the last minute. It seemed rude to point out that she didn’t yell and scream when he spent their vacation money on a touring bike. It seemed rude to point out that she hadn’t fought back when without consultation he installed his ailing mother in my mother’s sewing room, forcing my mother to make the custom shirts my father preferred in a cramped corner of the garage he had always promised to clean and never did.

  All those years I said nothing.

  I’m not blaming my mother for making me into anything I wasn’t already by accident of birth. Well, maybe I am blaming her, just a bit, but I keep my anger in this regard to myself. It’s too late, anyway. It would do no good to say, “Thanks a lot, Mom, you set a really fine example” to a grave.

  My mother died when I was twenty-one, just barely out of college, and since then I’ve mostly been doing her proud, first by falling in love with and then marrying a moody artist named Simon Trenouth, by putting up with his numerous affairs, by paying all of his bills. Yes, I did divorce charming Simon after too many years of his casual abuse, but true to my mother and to myself, I continued to “be there” for him, letting him sleep on the couch when his girlfriends threw him out, paying his rent when he forgot to, holding his hand when artistic inspiration just wasn’t there.

  But the credit card bill was the final straw.

  I looked down again at the blue sheet of paper. I felt the urge to scream but I didn’t. It might annoy the neighbors.

  There had been other surprises on other credit card bills—clothing from the Armani store (a suit he never wore), caviar from a mail-order company (food he never ate)—but nothing like this, nothing so enormous, nothing from Rothman Brothers, an exclusive jeweler. Simon was in big trouble.

  I didn’t even bother to question the purchase with the credit card company. Years of tending to a deeply immature man had given me a sixth sense, an ability to tell when he was at fault, and when I was going to have to pick up the pieces yet again.

  I dialed Simon’s cell phone, wondering if he’d run out of minutes, remembering how he could never seem to keep track of such details. Simon answered; his voice sounded hoarse and I noted it wasn’t yet noon, his usual waking hour.

  “What did you buy at Rothman Brothers?” I said.

  “Gracie?”

  “What did you buy?”

  Simon sighed the tortured sigh of the long-suffering artist. “Gift,” he said. “For Jane.”

  “Who the hell is Jane?”

  “Girlfriend. Nice kid. You’d like her, Gracie.”

  “Return it,” I said. “Because I’m not paying for your girlfriend’s baubles. And if you ever use my credit card again, I will report you to the police.”

  Simon made a gurgling sound of protest and I hung up.

  What did I expect, really? I’d trained Simon all the years of our marriage to be helpless and irresponsible. Sure, he’d come to me pretty much that way, but I’d helped mold an amateur slouch into a professional bum.

  I could be mad at Simon, but I could be madder at myself.

  I took a deep breath, straightened the stack of opened mail, and thought about treating myself to a croissant at the bakery on the corner. I decided against it. Too expensive. Until Simon returned that bauble and my credit card bill wa
s adjusted, I’d have to be very, very careful.

  There was two-day-old bread in the kitchen. I ate that.

  Chapter 5

  Jess

  So he left you for a younger, more beautiful woman. It’s a fact; accept it. No one respects a whiner.

  —What Now? How to Pick Up the Pieces and Save Your Pride

  “Hi,” I said, tossing my bag on an empty chair. “It’s been ages. Why are we all so busy?”

  Nell smirked. “Contemporary society tells us we have to be busy. If we’re busy, our lives must be important. Busyness, I am told, helps fill the emotional and spiritual void most of us find ourselves condemned to. Hello, Jess.”

  “Aren’t you in a chipper mood,” I commented.

  Nell just shrugged.

  She’d arrived at the restaurant before any of us; she’s always just a bit early. She says she was punctual even as a little girl, punctual and in charge.

  I met Nell a few years back at a charity event she was cohosting. We hit it off when a particularly rude woman at our table was told off by the waiter she’d been abusing. Nell and I spontaneously applauded and met for lunch later that week. Though our lives were playing out very differently—Nell was married and I wasn’t; Nell has kids and I don’t; I teach sociology at Northeastern while Nell has chosen a more traditional manner of career as a full-time mother and volunteer—we had enough of the important things in common to make a friendship grow.

  A love of reading, an interest in the arts, a sometimes wry approach to life, and a tendency to applaud when justice is served.

  I never really got to know Richard, Nell’s husband, the man she’d been with since college. I saw him rarely and my general impression was of a quiet, intelligent, well-mannered guy, a tiny bit hesitant or secretive, or maybe just private. It was clear to me from the start that Nell adored him; they were best friends, really, and for a brief time I was almost jealous of their union. I remember thinking: that is what marriage should be. Somehow, Nell and Richard got it right.

  Grace arrived at the restaurant just after I did and took the seat against the wall; she always does. She likes to people watch; she can hold an intense conversation with someone while at the same time noting minute details of passersby. I imagine this ability to focus on one thing and yet observe another is essential when you’re a teacher of nine- and ten-year-olds.

  Grace and I met almost eleven years ago when I was seeing a guy named Carl, a jazz saxophone player. One night Carl introduced me to his friend Simon, and to Simon’s wife, Grace. Simon was a painter, supposedly gifted—not that I would really know; I appreciate art but don’t really know what I’m looking at—and sexy in that charming, bohemian kind of way. While Simon was charismatic, prone to dramatic gestures and a roaring laugh, his wife was more guarded in her behavior, self-contained. For a while I wondered if Grace was intimidated by her show-stopping husband, but when I learned she taught art at a prestigious, private middle school, I figured the discipline her job required informed every aspect of her life.

  The long story short is that Grace and I became close and the guys didn’t last. Carl and I broke up—he was far too carefree for me—and Grace, finally tired of Simon’s infidelity and other costly antics, divorced him.

  Around the time Grace filed for divorce, Nell invited me to a cocktail party at her beautifully appointed apartment on Marlborough Street. Temporarily single, I brought Grace along. That night we both met Nell’s younger sister, Laura, and her husband, Duncan. Duncan seemed a nice enough guy and made a nice enough impression on me. Laura and Duncan seemed well suited, as did Nell and Richard.

  Well. It wasn’t the first time I was wrong and it won’t be the last.

  Laura finally arrived at Café Alice. Her tendency to be late or to slip in just under the gate is only one of the ways in which she’s different from her older sister.

  Nell is tall and slim, aristocratic in her bearing, though certainly not in her attitude. She has a delicate beauty, with fine features, sapphire blue eyes, and sleek blond hair. Laura also has blond hair but it’s thicker and darker than Nell’s. She’s medium height and slightly plump in a way that might be a problem later but which suits her perfectly now. Laura’s eyes are wide and blue green and somehow innocent.

  Grace is small and slim. Her hair is dark, almost black, and she wears it in a bob reminiscent of Louise Brooks. Her eyes are brown and doelike; her style, urban sleek.

  As for me, at five foot nine inches I tower over Grace. I’ve never been shy about my height; I like being tall, though it can be difficult finding pants that fit properly. The rest of me is unspectacular. Brown hair to my shoulders, brown eyes. End of story. Well, I have heard that I have a good smile.

  “Well,” Nell said when we had ordered a round of drinks, “I don’t know about you gals, but I’ve had quite a week.”

  “What happened?” Grace asked.

  Nell told us about the wedding invitation from the Smiths.

  “That’s awkward,” I said. “So, did you ask Richard to respond?”

  “I didn’t ask him; I told him to respond. And to explain to Mr. and Mrs. Smith that he now prefers the company of men. Rather, that he has always preferred the company of men but was too scared to admit it. So, what’s new with you, Jess?”

  I related the sad tale of my conversation with Matt.

  “So, it’s official,” I said. “We’re divorced and I’m single and Matt is miserable.”

  Nell, not terribly demonstrative, patted my hand. “I still think we should raise a glass to the whole nasty business being over.”

  It had been a nasty divorce, though it could have been worse. Much worse. My lawyer was very good and very expensive. The settlement was fair and equitable; my personal finances hadn’t taken too bad a blow, but my insides, my heart and soul and sense of myself as a decent person, felt crushed.

  We raised a glass. The toast was restrained.

  “Well, I’ve got some news,” Grace said then. “I’ve cut Simon off and before you say ‘again?’ let me assure you that this time it’s for good. No more taking him back, no more lending him money, no more help of any kind.”

  Laura frowned. “I’ll believe it when I see it,” she said. “Seriously, Grace, sometimes I think you’ll be dragging Simon around like a bad smell for the rest of your life.”

  If Grace was stung by this remark, she didn’t show it. “You’ll see,” she said. “This time he went too far.” And she told us about the outrageous charge on her credit card.

  “How did he get the card in the first place?” Nell asked.

  Grace blushed. “I let him use it. Once. Maybe twice. I suppose he assumed he was free to use it any time he liked. It’s my fault, really—”

  “No,” I said fiercely, “it’s not your fault! Simon is a bum!”

  “How did he get away with it, anyway?” Nell asked. “What happened to security measures like a picture ID? Who would believe his name was Grace?”

  “Simon is charming.” Grace smiled ruefully. “He always gets what he wants.”

  “Until now.”

  Grace nodded at me. “Right. You know what the worst part is? The bauble he bought was for his new girlfriend. I swear in all the years we were married he never spent even a fraction of that amount on me!”

  “Good riddance to bad rubbish,” Laura pronounced.

  “Well, I wouldn’t call him rubbish—”

  Laura cut Grace off with her own news update. “Duncan was served the divorce papers,” she said.

  The three of us just sat there; even Nell, quick-witted Nell, had nothing to say.

  “Well, aren’t you happy for me?” Laura demanded.

  Grace and I mumbled something incomprehensible; I certainly didn’t understand us.

  “Well, I’m happy.” Laura looked pointedly at her sister. “Not happy like I’m jumping up and down, but I’m glad the divorce is moving along. The sooner I’m free, the sooner I can start my new life.”

  I though
t for a moment that Nell would have to be restrained. It was no secret she thought her sister’s divorcing Duncan was a huge mistake. We all did.

  Nell’s continued silence was bothering Laura.

  “Do I have to explain it all again?” she said plaintively. “It’s just that I see myself as a mother. It’s what I want more than anything. Why should I give up my dream? What do I get in return?”

  Nell pretended to consider. “Well, let’s see. How about the love of a good man?”

  “If Duncan loved me, he’d make me pregnant. He’d give me my baby.”

  “Laura,” I said, finally finding my voice, “if you loved Duncan, you wouldn’t force him to do something he didn’t want to do.”

  “I didn’t force Duncan. I gave him an option. Either give me a baby or we’re through.”

  “That’s harsh.” Grace shrugged. “I’m sorry. It strikes me as harsh.”

  “Becoming a father isn’t like sitting through a chick flick,” I said. “The flick is over in two hours. The paternity lasts until the day he dies. Maybe Duncan just needed more time to think things through. Most people don’t respond well to ultimatums.”

  Laura frowned down at her Cosmo. She always orders sweet, colorful drinks.

  “I don’t know why you just didn’t get a dog,” Nell said.” You could have dressed him in little outfits and carried him around with you. Besides, dogs are a lot cheaper than kids. No college tuition, for one.”

  Laura looked up. “I don’t want to talk about Duncan and me anymore.”

  “Fine,” I said, eager to restore some peace.

  “So,” Nell said with false brightness, “here we are, four single women. Back in the game. Back on the market.”

  Grace frowned. “We’re commodities?”

  “Yes. Whether we like it or not, we’re commodities on the market and players in the game.”

  “What ever happened to romance?” Laura mused.

  I figured Duncan and Matt were probably thinking the very same thing.