Daisy Dooley Does Divorce

by Anna Pasternak

I had to pull hard on my emotions to get a grip. Julius asking these deeply personal questions, his manner still protective—I wanted it to mean that he still cared. “It hurt me that he didn’t fight for me,” I said, then looked away. I couldn’t hold eye contact for fear that I would betray what I really meant. But he knew. He knew that by not coming after me all those years before, he had hurt me more than Jamie ever could.

  “And you?” I asked. “How are you?”

  “I’m getting married,” he said matter-of-factly.

  “Do you love her?”

  He paused, then leaned forward and whispered suggestively, “Come on, Daisy. What the hell do you think?”

  Lucy and Jess were waiting for me in an Italian restaurant near Julius’s office. When I walked through the door and Jess clocked my ecstatic glow, she slumped forward and groaned, “Wake me when this nightmare is over. I don’t know if I have the strength to go through another Julius saga.”

  Lucy eyed me eagerly. “So? How did it go?”

  “I had forgotten that being with Julius feels like having front-row seats on life,” I said.

  Jess put her hands to my throat, pretending to strangle me. “No, honestly,” I continued dreamily, “he’s so sharp and exciting. I feel like he’s sprinkled magic dust all over me.”

  “Well, after lunch you can have a cold shower, wash it off, and come back down to earth,” said Jess. Lucy threw her a censorious look. “What is with you?” Jess ignored her and snapped at me, “Julius is about to get married. Remember?”

  “Let’s order a bottle of wine,” I said, beckoning the waiter. When our glasses were filled, I proposed a toast: “To best friends and . . . soul mates.”

  Jess lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. “Daisy, please don’t do this. Don’t ricochet off into some fantasy state. I can’t bear to see you getting hurt again.”

  Irritated, I scanned the menu. Jess pulled it away from me and tilted my head to look at her. “Julius is engaged to a very rich, very beautiful, and frighteningly young woman. You can’t match her. Let’s face it, if Julius had wanted to marry you, he would have asked you a decade ago.”

  Ouch. That hurt. “He wasn’t ready,” I sniffed. “We’ve changed. We’ve both grown up.”

  Jess turned to Lucy, exasperated: “You talk some sense into her.”

  Lucy put down her glass. “Listen, Daisy, I know you’ve always dreamed that one day Julius might be The One, but I don’t think that even if he were available he would be right for you long term. You’re such a romantic, you don’t realize that successful, independent people like Julius don’t want love, they just want admiration.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She paused before saying, “The fact is that the really rich are afraid of love. They shy away from getting close to anyone because a part of them always questions whether you love them or what they’ve got.”

  Jess nodded. “Alice Randolph, Julius’s heiress, feels safe because he knows that she’s not after him for his money.”

  “Well, neither am I,” I said indignantly. “I love him. I always have.”

  Jess softened. “We know, and Julius knows that too. That’s the problem.”

  “What do you mean?” My voice was quivering with disappointment.

  Lucy gently patted my arm. “There’s a part of Julius that is untouchable, you know that. He’s learned to isolate himself.”

  “From what?”

  “From love. From real life.”

  “Why?” I whined.

  “Because he’s afraid.”

  “Afraid?”

  “Yes, of being found out.” Lucy let out a troubled sigh. “Rich, powerful men like Julius are afraid that we’ll discover that inside they are just like the rest of us.”

  “Exactly,” said Jess crisply. “Their biggest fear is that they will disappoint us.”

  “Oh God,” I said, rubbing my temples, knowing they were right. “It’s all so complicated. What do you do? Do you go for the ambitious, exciting, but blocked-off and selfish alpha male . . .”

  “Or the kind, considerate beta guy?” interrupted Jess.

  “Who’s boring because he doesn’t have the killer instinct,” I said combatively.

  “Eventually that killer instinct kills a part of you,” said Lucy.

  Jess and I stopped and stared at her. There was something unbearably hollow in the way she spoke.

  “How are things with Edward?” I asked.

  “Not great,” she said.

  “Are you still having sex?” trilled Jess in her unshockable let’s-lance-that-boil-on-your-bottom-now doctor’s voice.

  Lucy said nothing.

  “So you’re not?” Jess lit another cigarette.

  Lucy batted the smoke away. “Marriage, children, domesticity, familiarity, hormones . . . they all have a deadly effect on sexual expression. You should try it, Jess.”

  “No way. I prefer friends with benefits.” We looked at her. “Got a great guy, Phil, on the go at the mo. He’s an anesthetist from work. Knows exactly how much to administer and where.” Jess let out a raucous giggle.

  “Don’t tell me, it was so good you were swinging from the ceiling?” I said.

  “No, but it did hit the ceiling . . .”

  “What did?” asked Lucy.

  “Luce,” I said, “you don’t want to know.”

  “Actually,” Lucy said, smiling, “even I managed to eke out an orgasm the other day.”

  We laughed.

  “This is what I tell my patients about making marriage last,” lectured Jess. “Go home every night. Find things to cherish. Rituals. Shared humor. It’s the little things that grow into something big.”

  “You hypocrite,” screamed Lucy. “Do they know you’re a resolutely single slut, incapable of monogamy?”

  “Course not.”

  “I’ll be sure to give Julius your moving marriage monologue when I see him next week,” I said.

  Jess and Lucy turned on me. “No!” they chorused. “You can’t be seriously seeing him again?” said Lucy.

  “Julius is taking me out to dinner.”

  Obsession skewers our take on everything so that meaning can be derived from the most mundane detail. When Julius sent me an e-mail confirming dinner, the mere fact that he addressed me by my initial gave me an erotic charge. Suddenly “D.” seemed intimate and suggestive, as opposed to hurried, pared-down, e-mail speak. I read, reread, deleted, retrieved from the delete box, and savored Julius’s e-mail until I was dizzy with delusion and desire. “D. Why now? Everything in my life was easy . . . See you Thurs. J.”

  His missive was so laden with promise that there was no knowing what would happen. I played out every conceivable conversation in my mind, running a fairy-tale ending in my head. My fantasy script was rather like Brief Encounter but with a happily ever after finale. Julius would turn up at the restaurant and once the drinks were served, he would lean in toward me, his head bent low. “We both know what’s happened,” he would say.

  “Yes,” I would nod, adding, “Actually I’ve always loved you.”

  “So nothing has changed?”

  “Everything has changed. You’re engaged to be married.”

  He would reach across the table for my hand. “You’re different,” he would whisper.

  “No, I’m still me.”

  “I didn’t realize until I saw you the other day how much I need you.”

  “But Julius,” I would say, “what about your fiancée, Alice Randolph? It’s too late.”

  “It’s never too late for true love,” he would reply, kissing the back of my hand. “Alice is young. She’ll get over it. But I would never get over losing you again.”

  Cue lights, camera, kissing, action . . . eventually the aisle, the altar, the ante-natal delight . . .

  Mad, destructive, romantic love was injected like dye through my entire nervous system. It haunted my psyche, it was like an ache in my bones. I so wanted it to work out with Julius that the minut
e he started deviating from my prescribed script at dinner, I began to feel quite hostile.

  We were sitting in a chic French restaurant in Chelsea—all hushed tones, starched white linen, crystal goblets, and wafting garlic. Julius felt at home here because the male clientele were all power brokers obsessed with their bulging financial portfolios. Even the air smelled expensive. I couldn’t even hear what he was saying at first because I was so busy at war with my own better judgment—I knew I only had myself to blame for imagining and, worse, believing my sentimental scenario. So as he was speaking, I considered firing my inner voice on the grounds of misleading flights of fantasy. Eventually I managed to hone into the reality of what was happening.

  “I thought success would be so much easier,” he sighed after a gulp of vintage red. “I mean, I suppose I thought if I was successful in business, it would automatically translate to the rest of my life.” Unsure exactly what he was alluding to, I nodded.

  Suddenly he turned on me, a blaze of anger. “You’re so naïve, Daisy. Don’t you realize that if you want to be a success in life, you cannot afford to marry someone you love. It’s too dangerous.” Was he saying he loved me? I stared at him, speechless. “If you want power, you can’t afford to lose control.”

  He seemed so tortured and impassioned that I was reminded of something I had learned on my last go-round: to envy the mega rich is a mistake. We think that wealth gives people a glossy sheen that enables their troubles to slide off them when, in fact, vast amounts of money creates myriad potholes of its own. “Don’t you get it?” he said, his voice shaking with temper. “I can’t allow myself to get distracted by you.”

  I could feel tears welling up, so I looked away. “Daisy,” pleaded Julius in a voice that seared my heart, “your spirit frightens me. Your emotion always pushes to the surface, ready to be aired. You’re so honest and I don’t know how to deal with that.”

  I let a tear fall. Julius handed me his handkerchief. It was ironed into a perfect square, with JV monogrammed in tiny navy letters in the corner. “Can’t you be ambitious and intimate?” I asked him. He seemed relieved to have an intellectual hair to split, instead of watching me spiral off.

  “What do you mean by intimacy?”

  “Intimacy requires vulnerability even when we don’t feel safe. That’s what trust is. It’s like love. It’s a risk.”

  “I can’t afford to take that risk with you,” he said.

  I wanted to scream, “Why not?” but said instead, “And Alice?”

  “There’s no risk with Alice,” he said. “She’s young yet she’s more knowing than you. She understands the deal.”

  “The deal?” I repeated.

  “The deal is that we will get married and live this great big glamorous life . . .”

  “Glamorous lie, you mean?” When Julius laughed his eyes crinkled with delight.

  “Yes. It was all going according to plan,” he said, “until you showed up.”

  I knew that things had truly devolved between Edward and Lucy because Lucy wanted to stay with me again at Mum’s, even though the dusting of dog hair gave her an allergic reaction. Handkerchief glued to her runny and reddening nose, Luce sat for hours at the kitchen table openly dissecting her plight, even relishing Mum’s offbeat input.

  “Do you think a marriage can survive an affair, Mrs. Dooley?” asked Lucy.

  Mum stopped stirring her vat of damp dog biscuits and sighed. “When the chips are down, dear, you have to believe the person you are with is on your side. That becomes difficult when someone else is lying by their side.” She began thrashing the mixture again. “Some people survive infidelity but I’m afraid I couldn’t make do.”

  “Why? Do you think Edward is having an affair?” I asked Lucy, astonished.

  “No. His big passion is his bank account. Some guys sniff glue, Edward sniffs wads of crisp fifty-pound notes.”

  “An expensive way to get high,” I said as I pushed the plunger through the coffee, “but at least it’s clean.”

  “Actually,” said Lucy, twirling her fingers suggestively round a lock of hair, “it’s me that fantasizes about having an affair.”

  Stunned, I spilt the coffee. A few drops splashed on Dougie’s head and the deranged dachshund ran yelping from the room. Mum hurried after him. “Lucy, are you joking?”

  “Sort of,” she said, sneezing. “My biological clock may not tick anymore but my life clock is chiming loud and clear. I keep asking myself over and over, Is this all there is?”

  “But why do you want an affair?”

  “Oh, I don’t know if I do really. But I can’t stop thinking that there is no greater feeling in the world than when a man pursues you with complete conviction.”

  “Even a creepy stalker?” I laughed before adding, “Or a married man?”

  “You should know,” Lucy batted back. “Sorry, I forgot Julius is only engaged.”

  I let her comment slide. “Wouldn’t it be more honest to leave Edward?”

  Lucy looked at me with horror. “And go through everything you have gone through since leaving Jamie? I can’t think of anything worse than being single again. Worse: a single mother with two kids in tow. What man is going to look at me?”

  Mum bustled back with Dougie wrapped in her arms. “Love begins as a sonnet, but marriage turns it into a shopping list,” she said, apropos of nothing. “Don’t forget, Daisy, you need someone with whom you can go to the supermarket.”

  “I’ll remember to take my next wedding vows in Tesco,” I said, beckoning to Lucy to leave the room.

  Upstairs, lying on my bed, I turned to Lucy. “Are you really capable of an affair? The lies, the deceit?”

  “I don’t know, but Edward and I live a lie already,” she said. “Everyone thinks we are this golden couple but we live in an emotional coma. Have you noticed that Edward never touches me? He only ever rubs my back when he wants sex. Then he turns over afterwards and goes to sleep without even kissing me. I’m forty years old and I need to feel desired.”

  “All marriages go through dead zones,” I said, “but I don’t think that having an affair is the way to perk it up.”

  “You’re right. I’m just hankering after that electric moment before a man kisses you for the first time.”

  I frowned.

  “I hardly think you can take the moral high ground, Daisy,” said Lucy, poking me in the ribs.

  “True,” I said, then beamed. “Did I tell you that Julius is taking me away next weekend? To meet his grandmother.”

  Lucy sat up. “Has he called his wedding to Alice Randolph off then?”

  “No,” I sighed. “If only it were that simple.”

  I knew I should have felt guilty as I counted down the days before seeing Julius again but I didn’t. The morning that he came to collect me from Jess’s dragged interminably because I had been awake with excitement half the night. Jess was away filling in at another practice in Bristol, so I had her flat to myself. Just before eleven, after I had checked and rechecked my makeup and fluffed up my hair—again—I leaned against the front door and took some deep breaths. It was pathetic, I knew, but I felt like Cinderella. Part of me was fully aware that this was a day on loan before I returned to my drab, lonely, single life, but who in their right mind would turn down time with Prince Charming?

  When he rang the bell, I waited for a beat before answering. It gave me an erotic charge to sense him standing on the other side of the door. As he walked me to his car, a nippy green Mercedes, I thought that he may have been engaged to be married but I was the one slipping into the seat by his side, not Alice Randolph. I knew my triumph was hollow because there wasn’t a cracking carat on my ring finger—yet it felt so right to be with him that I couldn’t really see that I was doing anything wrong. That’s probably the excuse most people use to justify their behavior. If you know you’ve met your soul mate, don’t you owe it to yourself to follow your heart, regardless of whose you break in your wake? Obviously this was a ludicr
ously selfish and self-serving formula, but sod it, that day—with a liberal sprinkling of denial—it worked for me.

  Although Julius and I had not yet kissed after all these years apart, the atmosphere in the car was electric. He looked very European and gorgeous in a muted suede jacket and caramel-colored cords. I longed to be held by him, to feel his touch, but I knew that the key to success with him was to be intimate without being intrusive. We didn’t need to speak because the mere fact that Julius was driving me, and not Alice, to Somerset said it all.

  Ever since his mother had died, his grandmother, Grace, had been the most influential woman in his life. I’d heard him mention her many times before; he clearly loved her dearly and held her in high regard. I’d never been asked to meet her before, so this trip seemed spine-tinglingly significant. As he drove I thought of an article I had read on emotional contagion, whereby you pick up on each other’s feelings without speaking. Was Julius receiving my psychic e-mails? Was he fully aware that without opening my mouth, I was imploring him to ditch Alice, whom I knew he didn’t love, and declare himself to me? I couldn’t help fantasizing that by introducing me to Grace, he was seeking her tacit approval and that the writing was on the wall for Alice.

  Urgh, perfect, bloody Alice. Ever since Jess had pointed out a photograph of her in a society magazine, I had been consumed with fury, stung by how young my rival was. She was only in her early twenties, practically jailbait. Standing at a polo match, her whippet-thin legs looking infuriatingly endless in white jeans (whereas my stumps resemble those of a stocky Shetland pony in tight white), Alice had that unfeasibly translucent skin that comes with being well-bred. She looked like the sort of girl who was always cold: not frigid, just never warm. She had fine, flyaway blonde hair and glittering eyes. My only consolation was that she was the customary type of arm candy who wouldn’t age well. She didn’t have enough substance in her features. What drove me to distraction was the fact that intelligent men like Julius tend to shy away from bright girls, writing them off as manipulative, when it is girls like Alice, who cultivate fey, simple exteriors, who are the ruthless ones. Why couldn’t Julius see that behind the ready smiles, sweet with adulation, lie game plans of breathtaking complexity?