by Joy Fielding
“Daddy?” she cried, staggering toward her father. “Can’t you say it? Is it really so hard for you to tell me that you love me?”
For the first time since Ian Metcalfe had walked into the living room and confronted his daughter, he looked directly into her eyes. Renee found herself holding her breath as he opened his mouth to speak.
“Of course we love you, Renee,” he said, and then looked down at the floor.
Renee stood absolutely still in the middle of the room. It hadn’t been the way she’d expected it at all. All these years waiting to hear her father say these words, and then when she finally forced him to read from her script, she discovered that the words had no meaning. There’d been no release, no great meeting of souls, nothing but the words themselves. “Of course we love you, Renee,” she heard him repeat in her mind, not the way she had been expecting the words to sound at all.
She looked from her father to her mother, who turned away, unable to meet her gaze. What had she accomplished? What had she hoped to achieve? She had forced two people into reluctantly confronting their emotions. She had finally gotten her father to speak the words she had been so desperate all these years to hear, and yet her victory was a hollow one, at best. “Of course we love you,” her father had said, speaking for himself and his wife in that way they both had of speaking for one another, thereby not individually admitting to anything at all.
What had she hoped to gain? A long-lost mother and father? The heartfelt embrace at the end of the story? The final, fade-out kiss? The happy ending?
What difference did it make to her life whether or not her father loved her? Or her mother? “Why is it so important?” her mother had asked. Why are words so important? she asked herself as she fled the house, then answered through her tears, “Because they just are.”
TWENTY-ONE
Lynn sat at her desk, trying to force her thoughts into words. She had been working on the same report for over an hour, trying to organize sentences that refused to take shape, to record observations she was no longer sure of, put forth recommendations that probably wouldn’t be of any help to anyone. What was the point? she thought, closing the file. She’d lived long enough to know that people, unlike the words that represented them on paper, could rarely be corralled into neat phrases.
She glanced nervously at the photographs of her two children. Goddamn you, Gary Schuster, she thought angrily. How can you put us through this? She looked at her watch. It was eleven o’clock. In three hours she and Renee would be meeting with Gary and his attorney to decide the future of her family. “How could you do this to me?” Lynn banged her fist on her desk, watching the photographs of her children jump in seeming surprise. “What about the flowers you sent me on our anniversary? What about that dumb card? All those wonderful years you alluded to, your desire to remain friends for many more? What was all that?” Just a bunch of words, Lynn thought angrily, reorganizing the papers her fist had disturbed. “You don’t want to be friends now, do you? You want something else. Isn’t that right? You want our house sold so you can claim your half of the profits. You want our children, or at least you say you do. Renee says you don’t really want them at all. She says it’s a common trick husbands use to get their wives to reduce their settlement demands. She says to let her handle it, to let the professionals do their jobs. The same thing I’m always telling everybody around here. Words, more words.”
The door to Lynn’s office opened. Arlene stood in the doorway, a worried look on her face. “Is everything all right in here? I thought I heard you yelling.” The young woman looked to either side, her ponytail bobbing along behind her.
“Everything’s fine. I was just rehearsing a speech.”
“A speech?”
Lynn said nothing. The problem with lying was that you always had to tell more lies to cover up for the first one. Lynn decided one was enough. Arlene lingered in the doorway for another few seconds and then retreated, closing the door behind her. “Get a grip,” Lynn whispered to herself. “Trust your lawyer.” Trust. Lynn winced. She had trusted her husband. Where had that gotten her? She was forty years old and facing life again as if she were twenty. Gary hadn’t even acknowledged her fortieth birthday. He’d relayed no messages through either his lawyer or his children. That she had turned forty was no longer any concern of his. She was of concern to him only so far as she was an inconvenience. She existed now as something to be gotten rid of, to be excised from his life. The ex-wife, she thought, feeling instantly diminished.
The phone rang, then stopped almost immediately. Arlene’s voice came over the intercom. “A man on line one. He wouldn’t give his name.”
Lynn picked up the phone. “Lynn Schuster,” she said clearly, glad for the diversion.
“Happy birthday,” Marc Cameron told her, without identifying himself. “I know I’m a few days late and I know you asked me not to call, but I wanted to wish you good luck this afternoon.”
“Thank you.” Lynn was afraid to say more. She felt her body tense and understood she was angry though she couldn’t say why. What had happened wasn’t Marc’s fault. It wasn’t fair for her to blame him for what Gary was doing. Still, she recognized it was easier, more comfortable, to blame Marc—to blame Gary—than to put the blame where it really belonged—on herself.
“Please call me later and let me know what happens.”
“If I can.” She was about to hang up.
“Lynn …?”
“Yes?”
“Would it upset you very much if I told you I think I’m falling in love with you?”
Lynn felt the breath catch in her lungs. “I’m not sure,” she said quietly. “Maybe you better not tell me now.”
“Call me later,” he said. “I’ll tell you then.”
Lynn sat in the waiting room of Renee’s office trying not to think about what Marc had said or what Gary would say. Everything will be all right, she repeated inside her head, like a mantra. Everything will be all right. Would it?
She thought of an earlier visit to Renee’s office. “Why would you want to see this man again?” Renee had asked her after learning of Marc’s initial visit. “Do you want to see how far you can go to really mess up your life?”
Well, she had certainly seen. Had she gone too far?
The door to Renee’s office opened and Renee emerged looking ready for action, if a little tired around the edges. “Sorry I kept you waiting. Come on in.”
Lynn followed Renee into the now familiar room, taking her usual seat on the wrong side of the hopelessly cluttered desk, watching as Renee walked over to the window to look down at the central courtyard. “Pretty day,” Renee said.
“I hadn’t noticed.”
“Nervous?”
“Why should I be nervous? It’s just my life that’s on the line.”
Renee laughed. “I have a story for you. It’s supposed to be true, but I have my doubts.”
Lynn fidgeted nervously in her chair. She really wasn’t in the mood for any stories.
“Supposedly this old couple, both around ninety-five years old, walked into their lawyer’s office and told him that they wanted a divorce after over seventy years of marriage. The lawyer looked at these two old coots and couldn’t believe his ears. He couldn’t help but ask why after all these years, and at their ages, they’d bother getting a divorce. They told him that they’d wanted a divorce for decades, but that they’d been waiting for their children to die.”
Lynn stared at Renee dumbfounded.
“It’s supposed to be funny. It’s a joke. It’s supposed to relax you and make you laugh.”
Lynn managed a weak smile. “I guess I’m too nervous to laugh.” She twisted her hands inside the folds of her beige skirt.
“Don’t worry. This is going to be like taking candy from a baby. And speaking of candy, are you hungry?” Lynn shook her head. “Coffee?” Lynn nodded. Renee pressed the button on her intercom. “Marilyn, can you bring us two cups of coffee. How do you take
it?”
“Black.”
“One black, one with double cream and sugar. Don’t be nervous, Lynn. It’ll all work out, I promise you.”
Marilyn arrived a few minutes later with the coffee. Lynn noticed a number of empty chocolate bar wrappers in the wastepaper basket beside Renee’s desk.
“I can’t say you didn’t warn me,” Lynn said, afraid to meet her attorney’s eyes.
“Thank God for that,” Renee joked, obviously hoping to elicit a smile. Lynn obliged her by lifting her mouth slightly at the edges.
“Everything that you predicted is happening.”
“Such as?”
“Such as I’ve screwed up a perfectly decent separation agreement, for one thing. For another, my boss knows, or thinks he knows, about my relationship with Marc Cameron. He questioned my professional judgment. A little girl’s life may have been jeopardized because I lost my credibility. Gary is threatening to take my children away from me because he thinks Marc and I are having an affair. He questions my competence as a parent. Apparently, the whole town is talking. Everyone is convinced I’m having an affair with Marc. And part of me is screaming, ‘Why didn’t you?’ I’m being blamed for it anyway. If I’m going to have to go to jail regardless, I might as well be guilty.”
“Nobody is going to take your children away. Trust me. I won’t let him.”
“I wish I had your self-confidence.”
“I wish I had your waistline.”
The buzzer sounded. Lynn jumped as Marilyn’s voice came over the speaker phone. “Mr. Emerson and Mr. Schuster are here. I sent them to the conference room.”
“Thank you,” Renee told her, looking over at Lynn. “Ready?”
“Ready or not.”
“You have to understand,” Renee Bower was saying as she circled the round conference table, forcing all eyes to follow her, “that this most recent offer of settlement is entirely unacceptable. In fact, this whole sudden turn of events strikes me as little more than a scare tactic to get Mrs. Schuster to accept less than her due.”
“My client has a right to half the matrimonial home.”
“May I remind you that your client is the one who walked out of that home when he left his wife and two children for another woman? I’d say he forfeited any rights he had in that department.” Renee looked at the copy of the original settlement offer in her hands. “Your client as much as admitted this and accepted his culpability when he made the original offer of settlement. We see no reason to alter the terms that were originally stipulated.”
“Circumstances have changed.”
“Have they? Perhaps you could tell me how.”
“My wife is aware of how,” Gary Schuster answered, instead of his lawyer, and Lynn winced.
“Perhaps you should tell me anyway,” Lynn heard Renee say, then watched her sit down in one of the large leather armchairs to wait for his response.
Lynn found her eyes drifting toward the face of the handsome man on the other side of the table, wondering if this was really the same man who had shared her life for so many years. He seemed the same physically, tall and blond, with a year-round tan and a pleasant speaking voice not generally given to anger. But his normally soft brown eyes were, if not quite hard and cold, then detached, indifferent to her pain. He was wearing a light blue suit, almost identical in cut and color to the one worn by his attorney, who was dark-haired and pale by comparison, and, judging by the thin line of black hairs struggling to life along his upper lip, trying to add years to his youthful appearance by growing a mustache.
Paul Emerson had the unfortunate affliction, at least for members of the legal profession, of looking scarcely older than a boy, although Renee had told her he was several years her senior. Renee had faced him before and told Lynn he was a good lawyer and a reasonable man. He had been married for close to eighteen years to his high school sweetheart and they had six children. Renee had told Lynn she felt he had been pressured to adopt this tough stance by his client.
Lynn coughed nervously into her hands and Renee smiled in her direction, telling her without the necessity of words to straighten her shoulders and stare her husband firmly in the eye. Refuse to be intimidated, she commanded silently, watching as Lynn subtly assumed control of her body, shifting her weight, turning her head back toward the man whose bed she had shared for fourteen years.
“At the time I made this offer, I wasn’t aware of my wife’s involvement with another man.”
“What man is that, Mr. Schuster?”
“She knows.” Gary Schuster looked accusingly at his wife. Lynn stared right back, her eyes growing angry.
“Suppose you tell us anyway.”
“Marc Cameron,” came the terse reply.
“Cameron … Cameron,” Renee muttered, her eyes scanning the high ceiling. “Sounds like a familiar name. I wonder where I’ve heard it …”
“All right, counselor,” Paul Emerson interrupted, as Renee had obviously known he would, “we concede the connection.”
“Marc Cameron is the husband of the woman your client ran off with?”
“I didn’t run anywhere,” Gary Schuster said adamantly. “I’m right here.”
“So you are.” Renee smiled, adjusting the collar of her navy suit. “And you’re still involved with Marc Cameron’s wife, is that correct?”
Gary Schuster nodded, and looked to his lawyer impatiently.
“My client’s circumstances have not altered,” Paul Emerson said.
“Neither have those of mine.”
“Are you saying that your client is not seeing Marc Cameron?”
“My client may have had meetings with Mr. Cameron to discuss their mutual interests in this complicated matter.”
“You’re saying that the relationship is not a romantic one?” Gary’s lawyer said.
“Suzette saw them together at his apartment, for God’s sake,” Gary interjected.
“And when was that?”
Gary sat back in his chair. “A couple of weeks ago.”
“Can you be more specific?”
“Saturday, August the third. Around one o’clock. Is that specific enough?”
“One o’clock in the afternoon?” Renee asked quickly, almost innocently. “She saw them together at one o’clock in the afternoon?” Gary said nothing. “Not in the evening? But one o’clock in the afternoon? I’m sorry. Is that what you said?”
“Yes, that’s what I said.” Gary’s voice rose, then lowered, his eyes darting back and forth between the two women. “Look, are you trying to tell me that there’s nothing going on?”
“I’m not trying to tell you anything, Mr. Schuster. I’m merely trying to point out to you that, owing to the fact that you ran off with his wife, Marc Cameron’s meeting with your wife is not altogether unheard of, and that if you insist on holding up the settlement agreement you yourself originally proposed because of it, or trying to intimidate your wife into signing something that is clearly not in her best interests, then you will have a well-earned fight on your hands.” She picked up Gary’s latest offer of settlement. “This offer is garbage, gentlemen, and you know it. Frankly, Paul, I’m surprised you’re not embarrassed to be involved with this. At any rate, we have no intention of giving in to what I consider little more than emotional blackmail.” She continued speaking over Paul Emerson’s loud objections. “If you want to go to court, well then, go right ahead. We’re quite prepared to go to court. But just what is it exactly that you hope to accomplish once we get there? What is a judge looking at this divorce action going to see? Will he see a bad wife and mother, one who willfully neglected her husband and children, who played around with other men, who gambled, cheated, or otherwise abused her marriage vows? No, he’ll see a woman whose husband walked out on her and their two children after fourteen relatively strife-free years of marriage.
“And what did the wife do then? Was she bitter? Was she spiteful? Did she try to take her husband for everything he had? No. She instructed
her lawyer that she wasn’t out for blood. She wanted only to be fair. She even consented to her husband’s desire to get their marriage over with as quickly as possible, despite the obvious pain it caused her. She was preparing to agree to the settlement he had offered. As far as she was concerned, there were only a few minor points that her lawyer felt needed ironing out. And then one evening, the husband of the woman her husband abandoned her for called and suggested they meet, that there were some things he felt they should discuss, and the husband found out about it and his nose got all out of joint, for reasons that are known only to him. He made threats. He decided he wanted what he suddenly thought of as his half of the house, though he’d been quite willing to leave it, and he wanted his children, though he’d walked out on them easily enough. He hadn’t even thought enough about their welfare to take care of their day camp expenses. He let his wife worry about things like that, the way she always had.”
Lynn watched the pained look that crossed Gary’s face, invaded the formerly neutral territory of his eyes. “I don’t think that even you, Mr. Schuster, would try to argue that your wife is a bad mother. In fact, she’s a pretty terrific mother. Isn’t that so? Her training as a social worker gives her a particular insight into the needs of her children, and she’s always there for them when they get home from school and from camp. Unlike their father, who often has to work late hours, and now finds himself busy with his new family.”
Renee paused just long enough for her words to sink in. “Suzette Cameron, I believe, is the mother of two boys.” Lynn found herself holding her breath, afraid of what might follow. “I wonder how she’d feel were her husband to make similar threats for custody of his children?” Both Gary and Lynn Schuster’s eyes shot to her attorney. “Probably as distraught as my client, if not more so, considering the evidence that could be used against her, the fact that she has committed adultery, not just with Gary Schuster, but, from what I understand, with several other gentlemen as well.”
