Goodbye To All That

by Judith Arnold

  They’d been circling each other for the past hour. More accurately, Melissa had been circling O’Leary and he’d been subjecting her to a charm assault. “Let’s split the difference,” he’d suggested, although they hadn’t even established what difference they were supposed to split. “Then I’ll take you to lunch.”

  After a while, she’d realized she was starving. Forget about his taking her out, though. She’d told him to order her a chicken sandwich off a deli’s take-out menu they’d obtained from a court stenographer, and she’d ducked into the ladies’ room and called Jill. She could have phoned her office, could have phoned her client, but no. When her life was a mess, Jill was the person she called.

  “Hello?”

  “It’s me.” Melissa spoke quickly, softly, hoping with all her heart that no one would enter the ladies’ room for the next few minutes. “I can’t talk. I’m standing in an icky toilet stall in the courthouse downtown. My life is a mess.”

  “Is this about the phony purses?”

  “Yes. No. I mean, we were supposed to have a hearing but the judge told us to try to negotiate a settlement our clients could live with. I’m stuck dealing with Obnoxious O’Leary, the Irish-American Lawyer-God. But that’s not why I’m calling you. Last night I fell in love with an apartment. It’s in Murray Hill. I don’t know why anyone would want to live in Murray Hill. It’s right by the UN, so the next time the city gets attacked by terrorists this building would probably be in the line of fire. Tell me I’m crazy to love this apartment.”

  “What’s it like?”

  “It’s a two-bedroom.” Melissa closed her eyes and the entire floor plan appeared in her memory. The adorable kitchen. The rococo grillwork covering the radiators. The parquet floors that would require area rugs so her footsteps wouldn’t bother the people in the apartment below. Why would anyone build apartments with hardwood floors when you had to cover those floors with carpets to muffle the sound? “The second bedroom . . .” She sighed as that square, cozy room materialized in her mind. “It would make a perfect nursery. As soon as I walked into that room, I thought, ‘I want to have a baby and I want this to be the baby’s room.’ Tell me I’m crazy.”

  “You’re crazy.”

  “I can practically afford it. I just need a little extra for a down payment.”

  “I haven’t got any extra, Melissa, so—”

  “No, of course not, that’s not why I’m calling.”

  “You aren’t pregnant, are you?”

  “No!” Jesus, why did Jill have to be so fixated on reality? “I’m not pregnant. But I want a baby. My family is falling apart, I’m a child of divorce—”

  “Mom and Dad aren’t divorced,” Jill argued.

  “They’re separated, okay? I’m a child of separation. I want to make a family of my own, one I can count on. The way Mom and Dad count on you.”

  “Not the way they count on you,” Jill clarified.

  “Right. I want a child like you. A smart, well-behaved, reasonable child. A daughter, if I have any say in the matter.”

  “You don’t.”

  “And here’s the thing, Jill—when I picture this daughter? She doesn’t look anything like Luc.”

  In the silence that followed, Melissa heard the buzz of the restroom’s fluorescent ceiling lights. She wondered whether her sister wasn’t talking because she was busy Googling “mental illness” right now, searching for a diagnosis for someone who wanted to buy an apartment in Murray Hill, for God’s sake, a dowdy, WASP-y neighborhood near the freaking United Nations, because she wanted to have a daughter but not with the guy she was supposedly in love with.

  “I think Luc and I are breaking up,” she added, hoping to offer Jill some guidance.

  “Okay,” Jill said cautiously.

  “It’s all so weird. I don’t know. Ever since he did Brooke’s hair—”

  “What?”

  “Brooke came down to New York just so Luc could do her hair. I thought that was weird. He said she was very pleased and wants him to do her hair again. You didn’t know about this?”

  “I haven’t talked to her since the day Mom and Dad announced their separation.”

  “Right. The day she met Luc. Don’t you think that’s weird?”

  “He must have made quite an impression on her.”

  “Yeah. We were all in the dining room listening to Mom and Dad announce that they were destroying our family, and he was off in the rec room, impressing Brooke.” Melissa smothered a groan. A ribbon of toilet paper was dangling from the molded plastic case, distracting her. She tugged on it and several feet of toilet paper unspooled into her hand. She tore it off, tossed it into the toilet and leaned against the wall, which was gouged with graffiti. All those messages about Trina and Darren 4-eva and Anna sucks—only the S looked like a backward Z because digging curved lines into the wood was so much harder than digging straight lines, so maybe it said Anna zuckz. How did people carve these messages, anyway? How did they smuggle sharp objects past the metal detectors in the courthouse entry?

  “I know he spends his time with his hands in other women’s hair,” she said. “That’s his job, to do other women’s hair. But Brooke isn’t just some other woman. She’s our sister-in-law. I bet she looks fabulous.”

  “She always looks fabulous.”

  “If I have a baby,” Melissa said resolutely, “I’m not going to have it with someone who gives my sister-in-law scalp massages. That’s just too weird. You probably think I’m crazy.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  Melissa continued before Jill could elaborate on Melissa’s mental health. “I just need a small loan for a down payment on the apartment, but I don’t see how I can ask Doug for a loan when Luc is massaging his wife’s scalp. I know Doug can afford it, and I could pay him back as soon as I got my bonus check in December, but I can’t ask him for a loan when my boyfriend—who I guess is actually my ex-boyfriend now—is doing Brooke’s hair. I just can’t.”

  “All right.” To Melissa’s amazement, and relief, Jill sounded as if she understood. At least she wasn’t calling her crazy.

  “So I was thinking about asking Dad for a loan. But I don’t know what’s going on with him, with Mom gone. I don’t want to make things worse. How is he doing?”

  “Not good,” Jill said. “He tried to ask a dermatologist out and it made him sick.”

  “A dermatologist? That would make me sick, too.”

  “It wasn’t even a real date. Just a cup of coffee. He couldn’t do it. He wants to get back together with Mom.”

  “How’s she doing?”

  “She’s planning to do a pub crawl in Boston tomorrow night.”

  “You’re shitting me.”

  “I’m not. She’s going out with some new young friends of hers.”

  “Oh, God. Now I feel sick.”

  “I wish they would grow up,” Jill said wearily.

  “So I can’t ask Dad for a loan, either, can I.”

  “Do you really not have enough funds for a down payment? I thought the firm paid you a fortune.”

  “You don’t know what apartments cost in this town. And the economy sucks.” It zuckz, she wanted to say. “But rumor has it we’re getting bonuses this year, and my bonus check would cover it. I just don’t think this apartment is going to be around in two months. Murray Hill,” she muttered. “What am I thinking?”

  “You fell in love with it,” Jill said.

  “Yeah.” Melissa glanced at her watch. “Shit. O’Leary thinks I just came in here to pee. I’ve got to run.”

  “You’re really calling me from a public bathroom?”

  Melissa didn’t bother answering. “I’ll talk to you later. Maybe I’ll try Dad tonight. Thanks, Jill.” Snapping her phone shut, she unlatched the stall door and sprinted lightly to the exit, trying to minimize her shoes’ contact with the discolored tiles.

  The corridor was nearly as dreary as the bathroom, yet she felt better. Jill hadn’t thought her reacti
on to Brooke’s having Luc do her hair was nuts—or if she did think it was nuts, she was kind enough not to say so. She was also kind enough not to suggest that Melissa’s instant infatuation with an apartment in Murray Hill was nuts. And most of all, she hadn’t laughed when Melissa had said she wanted to have a baby.

  It wasn’t as if the idea had never occurred to her. She was a thirty-one year old woman; the idea occurred to her with each tick of her biological clock. She’d always assumed that, like Jill and Doug, she would have children someday. She’d assumed that her brilliant, beautiful, magnificently well-behaved children would play with their cousins at big, multigenerational family gatherings hosted by her parents.

  She’d always assumed her parents would remain alive and healthy and married, hosting these gatherings together.

  She felt the sting of tears in her eyes and batted them. God, it was embarrassing how she got all weepy every time she thought of them living apart, contemplating a divorce. Luc didn’t understand. His parents had been divorced for so many years. Maybe she’d thought that would make him more sympathetic, but it didn’t. To him it was just the way things were.

  She might have expected her parents’ dissolving marriage to make her less susceptible to mommy-lust. And really, she hadn’t felt such a visceral craving for a baby until she’d seen that second bedroom in the apartment for sale on East 38th between First and Second, and the plain white walls had suddenly seemed eager to embrace a crib, a mobile with painted butterflies dangling from it, a toy chest with a big stuffed teddy-bear perched atop it and wallpaper flocked with butterflies. Her nursery would have a butterfly motif.

  Jill hadn’t said it, but Melissa was thinking it: she was certifiably deranged.

  That thought vanquished her tears and prompted a faint smile. All she had to do, she resolved as she strode down the hall to the cramped conference room where Aidan O’Leary and—she hoped—a grilled chicken sandwich awaited her, was to convince him she was sane long enough to hammer out a settlement that left her satisfied.

  Whether or not he was satisfied was his own problem.

  FOUR HOURS LATER, she was as satisfied as she’d ever be. Which wasn’t very, but what the hell.

  “Okay.” O’Leary sighed, evidently as exhausted as she was. Or at least he faked exhaustion well. His tie was loosened, the jacket of his slate-gray suit draped over a chair and his shirt sleeves rolled up. His dark hair was mussed and his cheeks were just beginning to show stubble, which had the unfortunate effect of emphasizing his dimples. “You’ve got an apology—”

  “Some apology,” she complained. “Your guy says he’s sorry the purses he was selling bore a resemblance to my client’s purses. Big whoop.”

  “He’ll say he’s sorry and he’ll desist. And he’ll toss in some good-will money.”

  “Nowhere near enough money. Do you have any idea what good will costs? A hell of a lot more than this.” She waved at one of the papers in front of her. “Your guy’s paying for the cheapo generic good will, not the top-of-the-line good will.” She fell back in her chair and glowered at O’Leary. Her jacket was also off, but she hadn’t rolled up the sleeves of her blouse. It was a silk-linen blend, prone to wrinkling, plus the sleeves belled out and then were nipped at her wrists by elegant cuffs. They looked much prettier with their delicate pearly buttons fastened.

  She’d bet her hair was as tousled as O’Leary’s, though. Not that she cared. Luc had styled it so it looked great even if it was messy.

  If she broke up with him, she’d still have to use him to do her hair. He was fabulous in bed, but even more fabulous with a color, cut and blow-dry. She’d give up the former if she had to—surely there must be other men in the world as adept at finding her G-spot—but not the latter. Hair was too important.

  O’Leary jabbed his finger at one of the long sheets of lined yellow paper spread across the table between them. “As I’ve explained to you—”

  “—a million times,” she muttered.

  “—at least five times,” he corrected her, “your client lost no money due to my client’s business. Zero. Zilch. The ladies buying eighty-dollar bags on a street corner in Flatbush were never going to waltz into Saks Fifth Avenue and buy the eight-hundred-dollar version. My guy’s sales never put a dent in your guy’s sales.”

  “But there should be a bigger penalty,” she argued. “Your guy did something wrong.”

  “And he’ll say he’s sorry.” O’Leary groaned, tilted his head back until he was staring at the ceiling, then straightened and presented her with an overwhelmingly charming grin. “So. We’ll take this settlement back to our clients and convince them this is the way to go, and Judge Montoya will get her happy ending. Now, what do you say I buy you a drink?”

  “You will not buy me a drink,” Melissa retorted, although she could think of nothing she’d like more right now than a margarita. Sweet and tart and salty, heavy on the tequila.

  “Fine. Then you can buy me a drink.”

  “Not in this lifetime.”

  “Then we’ll pay for our own drinks. Come on. If nothing else, we’ve got to go somewhere and exchange gossip about Montoya.”

  He had a point. She would love to hear juicy gossip about the judge. Plus she could practically taste the first icy sip of a margarita.

  They packed up their notes, the compromises they’d wrestled over. They shut off their laptops and zipped them into their padded laptop bags. She donned her jacket without help from him—a good thing; if he added chivalry to that ridiculously sexy smile of his, she’d probably have to smack him—and he donned his. Then they left the room, she first, only because she’d been seated closer to the door, not because he’d held the door open and waved her through.

  The day had slipped away while they’d been shut up inside, and the skyscrapers lining the streets blocked the evening’s faded light from reaching the sidewalk. Melissa felt as if she were wading through a cool river of shadow.

  “Let’s head uptown,” O’Leary suggested. “The bars around here are all filled with lawyers.”

  “God forbid.” Melissa allowed herself a tiny grin.

  They started walking, Melissa once again grateful that her chic shoes were so comfortable. All around them, people filed out of the office towers and government buildings, the first wave of rush hour. Were all these weary workers heading for bars and cafes in search of liquid refreshment, too? Would she and O’Leary wind up in some noisy, crowded place filled with thumping music and twenty-year-olds dressed like hookers?

  She decided even that would be preferable to going home. She had no plans with Luc tonight. The last time they’d spoken—by phone—had been two days ago, and neither of them had mentioned getting together. It had been a friendly enough conversation, but Melissa hadn’t been able to ignore her mental image of Luc standing behind his chair at the salon, and Brooke sitting in that chair, and Luc digging his long, skilled fingers through her tresses while they watched each other in his mirror. Remembering that phone conversation and the icky vision Luc’s voice evoked in her mind chilled her in a way the late-October evening couldn’t.

  She knew she was being unreasonable. She knew nothing besides hair was going on between Luc and her sister-in-law. She knew jealousy was a petty, worthless emotion.

  But she was currently the child of a broken home, and she was allowed to indulge in petty, worthless emotions.

  The blocks they walked grew progressively more crowded as workers spilled from the office towers and joined the parade of pedestrians. The growing density of the throngs on the sidewalk spared her the need to talk to O’Leary. He was awfully tall, his strides so long she had to trot to keep up with him. Maybe instead of a margarita, she should order a Gatorade.

  Gatorade and tequila. It had possibilities.

  Eventually they reached TriBeCa, where the bars would be expensive but filled with artists and bohos instead of lawyers. They entered the first one they came to, a narrow, not-too-busy establishment with soothingly d
im lighting and some sort of atonal music playing—the singer sounded as if she was rhythmically hiccupping. At least it wasn’t so loud they’d have to shout to be heard. Spotting an empty table, O’Leary charged ahead of her to claim it.

  Pushing her aside and storming across the room was the antithesis of chivalrous. But racing to grab a table was chivalrous, kind of. She really wished he didn’t have that dazzling smile. She was not in the mood to be dazzled. Especially not by him, after he’d worn her out arguing about the amount of the good-will settlement money his client would have to pay her client.

  A terminally thin waiter with close-cropped green hair that molded to his skull like moss on a rock appeared almost as soon as they were seated. Melissa requested her margarita, O’Leary a Guinness draft.

  “Drinking in company is better than drinking alone,” he said once the waiter departed. “Either way, I’d be having a drink right now, but I appreciate your having one with me.”

  He appreciated her. She tried to recall the last time she’d been appreciated and came up empty. But she refused take his words as a genuine compliment. He was just saying nice things so she wouldn’t feel so bad about the crappy compensation she was supposed to convince her client to accept.

  The bar’s lighting had a blue cast to it, making O’Leary’s hair look unnaturally black. It was a little too long. Okay, not really too long, just not shaped very well. Luc preferred working with women—probably because men didn’t have G-spots—but she’d bet he could do wonders with O’Leary’s hair. It was thick and slightly wavy. A snip here, a snip there, and Luc could turn him model-handsome.

  As if he needed to look any better than he already did. “All that winking and smiling at Montoya,” she said. “What was that all about?”

  He chuckled. “This is your first time in her courtroom, huh.” At Melissa’s nod, he said, “Mine, too, but one of my partners told me she’s easy to play. So I played her.”

  “All I knew about her going in was that she’s partial to Prada bags.”

  “How do you know they aren’t fake Pradas?”

  “She’s a judge. Do you think she’d buy contraband?”