She made several phone calls as she passed through New Hampshire, stopped midday in Massachusetts for something to eat, then drove on through Connecticut and into New York, and all the while traffic flowed smoothly. Neither accidents nor construction slowed her down. Likewise, she was steady at the wheel. She took both as good omens.
Noah’s mood was as lousy as the weather. He had known he was playing with fire; Julia’s wedding band stared him in the face when he was with her, and she hadn’t talked of getting a divorce. Now she was gone, left on the morning ferry, information radioed by Leslie Crane. Noah felt he’d been stripped bare and flogged.
Gone for good? He didn’t know. And he did care—which made the not knowing hard.
Rain had begun midday and now fell steadily into four-foot waves that had the Leila Sue pitching and rolling. Add to that the forecast, which wasn’t good, and the paucity of lobsters in the traps he had hauled, and he had little to smile about. Things got even worse when he neared the traps he had set at the upper ledges north of Big Sawyer and saw a field filled with grape-lime-grape buoys.
“God damn it,” he muttered, holding the wheel steady against the yaw of the boat. “They just don’t learn.”
Ian came to stand beside him. “Are those the ones you cut?”
“No. The ones I cut will have been swept off there into the rocks. These are new ones.”
“What’re you going to do?”
Noah’s first thought was to check with his buddies. Then his second thought came, and he was feeling just raw enough to go with it. Throttling up, he pushed the Leila Sue ahead until he reached the first of Haber and Welk’s buoys.
“We’re haulin’,” he said through gritted teeth and threw the throttle into neutral. “Gaff the buoy.” As soon as Ian had done it, Noah hooked the line over the winch and started the hydraulic hauler. The first trap came up from the bottom with two good-sized bugs inside.
“We’re taking their catch?” Ian asked, sounding doubtful.
“Nope,” said Noah. He opened the trap, but instead of dumping its contents on the deck of the boat, he dumped it right back into the sea. He did the same with the second trap, then slid both traps over the transom. When the buoy was in the water again, he moved on to the next.
He might be lousy at reading women, but he was good at this.
By late afternoon, Julia entered Manhattan. A teariness returned then, though it was as much from apprehension as anything else. Leaving the car in a garage, she walked in the late-day sun, up along the park to the Metropolitan Museum, over to Madison Avenue, and down to Charlotte’s boutique. She spotted her friend inside—but walked on past. She couldn’t talk yet.
The workday was ending, and sidewalk traffic increased. That brought a greater sense of anonymity, which made it easier for Julia. In a crowd, she didn’t feel quite so conspicuous. She stopped for coffee, though she hardly needed the caffeine. She thumbed through the latest copy of Real Simple, sipping her coffee, checking her watch. When the time was right, she headed for the address she had jotted down during the drive south, and the next hour passed in a blur. When she hit the streets again, her stomach was in knots, but she was certainly more well informed.
Still she had time on her hands, so she stopped for dinner at a small restaurant far enough from her usual haunts that she wouldn’t bump into people she knew. Even then, she picked an out-of-the-way table and kept her head down, eyes on her magazine.
A man approached at one point. Nattily suited, he was close to her age, tall, and trim. “Excuse me,” he said, looking bemused, “aren’t you Susan Paine?”
She smiled. “No. Sorry.” She returned to her magazine.
“Do you know who she is?” he asked.
She looked up again. “I’m sorry, I don’t.”
“That makes two of us,” he said, sounding less bemused now than smug, and it hit her that he was making a pass.
She raised a warning hand, shook her head, and returned to the magazine, flattered but so disinterested that she actually felt sorry for the man.
He left. She had a refill of coffee. When she reached the point of having read the magazine twice through—the second time with her mind elsewhere—she gestured for the bill and left. And still she had time to spare. So she walked around as the evening lengthened, always with others on the sidewalk, cars nearby, horns honking, and she refused to think of the quiet on Big Sawyer.
She sat in front of the Plaza for a while, watching the comings and goings. She walked down to Rockefeller Center and did the same. These were things she had done during the first days of her life in New York, before the pattern of day-to-day living had inured her to the wonders of the city. She saw them now again, appreciating them as she hadn’t in so long a time.
Every few minutes she glanced at her watch. As the time drew near, she grew more committed. That terrified her.
Ten-thirty came and went, then eleven, and she grew edgy. At eleven-thirty, taking deep breaths and praying for calm, she headed uptown again. Shortly before midnight, she reached the address she had called home for fourteen of the last twenty years. The doorman stood watch out front, but she didn’t want to be seen. So, using her key, she slipped into the building through the service entrance and took the elevator to the top floor. She went down the hall and paused at the door, one hand pressed to her thudding heart, the other clutching her key, and all the while she told herself that her stealth would prove stupid if he wasn’t even home.
But she remained steadfast. Quietly, she fitted her key into the lock, opened the door, and slipped inside. There was Monte’s briefcase at the foot of the credenza where he dropped it when he walked in each night. A light came from the bedroom hall, and soft music from the bedroom itself. For a split second she had qualms.
Who am I? I’m an ungrateful, disloyal, conniving thief, she thought.
No. No. This is my home. I have a right to be here.
She walked down the Persian runner toward the bedroom, familiar enough with the wood floor under the rug to avoid creaky spots. Her heart was nowhere near as silent. It was beating loudly by the time she reached the bedroom door and looked inside.
Monte was asleep in a tangle of sheets, his arms around a dark-haired woman. Both were clearly naked under what little covered their loins.
Julia had known. Seeing it, though—actually seeing her husband in bed with another woman, the familiarity of him and all that other bare flesh—was like taking a blow to the belly. The reality of it hit her so hard that, for a minute, she feared she might throw up. She swallowed once, then again, and breathed in through her nose. On the tail of sickness, though, came anger, and anger made her bold.
The music played softly. Monte snored faintly. There were no clothes strewn about, as there would have been had this been a first passionate encounter. His things lay neatly on the loveseat, hers over the dressing table chair. Everything about the scene suggested that they had done this before.
Julia passed the dressing table on her way to the bed. On impulse, she took a high-heeled pump from the floor and slipped it into her bag—and, instantly, she hated herself for it, but she didn’t put the shoe back. It would be insurance, should Monte later try to deny what she had seen by arguing either that she had been delusional or—as he had said about Molly—“on” something.
Resenting him for making her think and feel and act this way, she went right up to the bed. Anger gave her distance; oddly disengaged, she stared at the twining of bodies. She hadn’t slept so close to Monte in… in… she didn’t remember when the last time was. He hadn’t asked; she hadn’t offered. Perhaps this was a need of his that hadn’t been met.
His low snoring faltered. His lids flickered, then rose. He focused on her without seeing at first, and she knew that myopic look. He had removed his contacts.
But he did figure it out. Eyes going wide, he bolted up, and it was almost comical, the passage of his thoughts, the way he realized she was there, then realized his mistress was t
here as well. He pulled at the sheet, as if to cover her up and pretend she wasn’t there, but that left him more exposed and, in his nakedness, truly condemned. In tugging the sheet back to himself, he woke up the woman, who took one look at Julia and burrowed under the sheet.
Pulling now at the blanket to cover himself while he climbed out of bed, he took the offensive. “You’ve been away for two and a half weeks with barely a call. You gave me no sign you wanted to return. What are you doing here, Julia?”
Julia had imagined this conversation many times, the last hundred or so during the drive down from Maine. She was angry but in control. “This is my home,” she said.
“How did you get here? Why didn’t you call? If I’d known—”
“If you’d known, you wouldn’t have had her here? That’s why I didn’t call.” Feeling a wave of disgust, she looked at the figure under the sheet. “This is a sleazy scene. I’ll wait for you in the living room.” She turned and walked out.
He was a minute in following, apparently believing he would have an edge if he was at least marginally dressed, because when he appeared he wore pants. He also wore dark, horn-rimmed glasses, which gave him gravity. “I never knew you to be a conniver, but this is under-handed,” he charged. “Were you deliberately trying to trip me up?”
“Monte,” Julia cried, “you were in bed with her. Naked.”
He held up a hand. “It’s not what it seems.”
“Oh, please,” she said with some force. “Don’t take me for a fool. I caught you. Molly caught you.”
His eyes narrowed. “What did Molly say?”
“That you were with an old friend who was going through a rough time, and while she may believe that, I certainly don’t. I want a divorce.”
In a heartbeat’s silence, the soft music played on. “A divorce,” he finally said, sounding stunned. “Where did this come from?”
“Years of affairs. Years of put-downs. I’m done, Monte.”
He pushed a hand through his hair and looked around, seeming confused. “Why didn’t John call to say you were on your way up?” John was the doorman.
“I came in the back way.”
“With what? I sent you car keys, not a house key.”
“Yes. I noticed that. But they recovered my purse from the ocean floor. My house keys were inside.”
“So you plotted to show up here unannounced and catch me by surprise?”
She was angry enough to smile. “I sure did. Caught you with your pants down, literally and figuratively.” The smile faded. She curbed the anger in an effort to sound cool and sure. She wanted Monte to know that she meant every word. “I’ve talked with an attorney.”
“An attorney.”
“About a divorce.”
“You aren’t serious about this, Julia.”
“I am. Totally.”
“On what grounds?”
“I have a choice. I can use irreconcilable differences. Or I can bring an alienation of affection suit against your paramour.”
“You’d never prove that.”
“I would. I have copies of credit card bills from the last few years.” She didn’t mention the shoe in her bag.
He went red in the face. “You had no business going through my files.”
“Our files, Monte. My name’s also on the credit card you used. I have a right to those records.”
He stared at her for a minute. “Julia, this is not you.” When she simply stared back, he shot a look around the room. “If you think you’re going to take all of this, think again. You deserted me—just packed up and moved to Maine. This is abandonment.”
“Not according to my lawyer.”
“Who is this lawyer?”
“Mark Tompkins.”
“Ahhh,” he said snidely, “the champion of every disgruntled wife in New York. Is he talking you into this? That’s his job, you know.”
“My mind was made up before I ever called his office,” Julia said, holding her ground. She was actually getting into the swing of it, answering him point by point.
“Is it Zoe?” he asked now. “Has she brainwashed you? She hates men.”
“A, she doesn’t hate men. B, I haven’t spent enough time with her to be brainwashed. C, she doesn’t know I’m doing this.”
He looked confused. “But—I don’t want a divorce.”
Monte didn’t want a divorce, Julia reflected and thought, What about me? Who am I? I’m a woman who is tired of being walked on. I’m a woman who has more to give than lip service to a marriage that ceased working years ago. Sensibly, she said, “Of course you don’t want a divorce. It’s very nice to have someone seeing to all your needs, so that you can spend time on the sly with women like the one in there. I know you don’t want a divorce. But I do.”
He stiffened. “I’ll fight you.”
“I have credit card bills and phone bills.” And that shoe. Caught in the act.
He drew himself up straighter. “You went through phone bills, too?”
“Yes. I knew you’d try to talk your way out of it if I didn’t have proof.”
“What about Molly? Have you thought about how this would affect her?”
“Have I thought about it?” Julia burst out, losing a bit of composure then. “I might have done this years ago if it hadn’t been for Molly. She’s a grown woman now. She knows what she saw that night, but you’re her father, so she’ll believe your tale. If you’re really concerned about Molly, you’ll keep this as civil as possible.”
He put his hands on his hips, raked his teeth over his lip, frowned. Quietly, seeming for the first time to actually care, he said, “What happened up there? Did you meet someone?”
“Yes. Me.”
He looked peeved. “I’m serious.”
So was she. She wasn’t telling him about Noah, because although Noah was pretty momentous, he wasn’t the most important part of what had happened to her. “I found out that what I think and feel matters. It’s something I’ve overlooked all these years.”
He lowered his voice to a whisper and hitched his chin toward the bedroom. “Give me five minutes, and she’s history. She doesn’t mean anything to me.”
“Well, then, I’m sorry for you. Maybe you’ll find someone who does.”
He looked at her, but it was a different look from what she had seen. He looked at her as though he saw a new person. More curious than accusatory, trying to figure things out, he said, “Is this why you went up there in the first place? You must have collected those bills before you left.”
“I didn’t know I’d use them.”
“It was the accident, then?”
“I think yes,” she said, reflecting his own quiet. In the same tone, she revised that. “I know yes. Accidents like that turn your world upside down.”
“Maybe all you need is therapy.”
She smiled, but not in anger. She was feeling relief. Of all the times over the years when she had imagined this confrontation, she had felt dread. But the worst was over now. She felt mellow, even sad. “Therapy won’t fix what’s wrong. You have needs, Monte, but I have them, too. Do you know what a woman feels when her husband has affairs? She feels hurt. She feels angry. She feels ugly. She feels used.”
“What if I promised—” He stopped short when she held up a hand. She shook her head and let her eyes say what she didn’t want to say aloud. His promises weren’t worth a thing. Trust was gone.
“I’ve felt unloved for too long,” she finally offered.
“I do love you.”
“In your way. But it isn’t enough.”
“You said that to him?” her friend Donna asked a short time later.
“I did,” she confirmed, sinking lower on the sofa, legs sprawled in an unladylike way that she didn’t have the strength to change. Walking the five blocks to Donna’s small place through streets that were emptier now, she had been hit by the shakes. She was grateful to arrive, grateful that Donna had waited up, grateful for warm arms, a generous hea
rt, and a place to sleep. She was terrified by what she had done. She was also suddenly, overwhelmingly exhausted.
Donna wore a robe, hair rollers, and a face shiny from soap. The successful real estate lawyer? Hard to believe. Just then, she was simply a friend whom Julia was blessed to have.
“Thank you for Mark,” Julia said. “He might not have taken me on if you hadn’t made a call.”
“Lawyers listen to lawyers. He’ll do right by you.”
“What is right? I’m not sure that I want a whole lot of what Monte has.”
“No,” Donna said, regarding her thoughtfully, “you never did.”
Julia yawned. She listened to the city night. She turned her head on the sofa. “So, did you all know?”
“About the affairs? We suspected.”
“Did you think I was a fool not to see?”
“Julia,” Donna chided, “no one of us has ever taken you for a fool. Women are pragmatists. We do what we have to at a given time. When times change, we have a window in which to act. Not all of us are brave enough to do it. You are. When the others hear, they’ll admire you as much as I do.”
Julia loved Donna. She loved Charlotte and Jane. What she most loved about them—impressive women, all three—was that they loved her, too.
She reached for her friend’s hand. “And if I leave New York?”
“Leave New York?” Donna cried lightly. “Leave New York? No one leaves New York. Not for good. You may live somewhere else, but you’ll be back. And do you think we won’t want to visit you wherever you are? Think again, sweetie.”
Under a blanket on the sofa, Julia slept soundly until Donna woke her at the agreed-upon time. She showered and dressed, then picked up her wedding band and turned it in her hand. Stones circled the front half; the back was pure platinum. The stones were shiny, the platinum scuffed—polished outside, bruised inside.
The Summer I Dared: A Novel Page 31
