Daisy Dooley Does Divorce

by Anna Pasternak

  “The yearning to feel heard, needed, and important is so strong in all of us that we seek validation in whatever form we can get it,” lectured Chad, whom I swear was holding eye contact with me. “For a lot of people, having an affair is an affirmation that ‘really, I’m okay.’ However, an affair always conceals deeper pain. Most of us learn to live with that deep hurt by dismissing it, but the point is letting it be there. Not numbing it in someone else’s bed or obliterating it in a bottle of gin, but by embracing it. It is only when you are free from past pain that you can ignite the alchemy of authentic attraction.”

  “What a load of old guff,” huffed Lucy, grabbing a glass of wine when the talk was over. “What’s wrong with distraction anyway? I’d love to have an affair—in fact, finding a lover is at the top of my list right now—and so what?”

  “There’s nothing wrong with that but what Chad was saying is that you have to examine your motivation,” I explained. “If you’re having an affair to distract yourself from the uncomfortable fact that Edward has left you, then you’ll have to deal with the real issues later. Do you want an easy ride or a deferred crisis?”

  “I want to feel feminine again,” said Lucy.

  “But why do you have to have an affair to have that? Didn’t you listen to anything Chad said? He said that most people don’t have the courage to hold out for more than an affair, especially if they’ve been disappointed in love before. Why don’t you want to fall in love again?”

  For a moment Lucy looked so exasperated that I thought she was going to throw her glass of wine in my face. “Daisy, I’m glad your self-help addiction has given you a career, but sometimes I could throttle you. Not all of us live in Daisyland, some addled fantasy world where cupid, the great savior, is going to show up and sprinkle our messy, mundane lives with fairy dust. At forty with kids, the chances of true love showing up for me are about as high as suddenly discovering my boobs are back in the position they were before I breastfed.”

  Before I could reply that, actually, I’d read that with so many divorces and career women deferring marriage these days, a whole new cycle of late-life love was opening up among forty- and fifty-somethings, I felt a tap on my shoulder. I looked around to see Chad Peace beaming. “Are you Daisy Dooley?” I nodded enthusiastically. Meeting an author you revere is always unusually intimate because of the false sense of knowing the person just because you’ve been party—along with millions of other readers—to their innermost thoughts.

  “I hear you’re the girl to woo,” he said.

  “Why? Are you single?” cut in Lucy acidly. “Or is there a Mrs. Peace? Or even a missing piece to your agenda?” Such was Lucy’s combative stare that I felt a surge of excitement, since I was never one to shy from a scene. It was as if Edward’s leaving had unleashed her gall.

  Chad batted his thick, curly eyelashes at her. “Sure, there’s a Mrs. Peace,” he said slowly.

  “Is Peace your real name or is that fake too?” asked Lucy.

  “Real name, wrong original spelling,” he said. “It was Piece, as in ‘piece of the action,’ before.”

  “Why doesn’t that surprise me?” spat Lucy as she flounced off.

  “As I was saying”—Chad turned back to me, turning up the volume of his charm—“I’d really like to come and see you at your bookshop.”

  “Oh, that would be wonderful,” I said. “I’ll arrange a book signing.”

  It was the morning of Chad’s book signing and I was busy arranging copies of The Alchemy of Fate and Attraction. Suddenly Lucy burst through the door, her cheeks pink with temper. “You’re the last person I expected to see,” I said. “You do realize Chad Peace is coming in an hour or two?”

  “I’d forgotten about that fraud,” she said, wrapping her arms around me. “Oh, Daisy, I’m so apoplectic with this deep, burning rage, I can hardly function.”

  I sat Lucy down and handed her a stress ball to squeeze. “Edward turned up at the house last night to take the last of his stuff,” she began. “I was so relieved that I didn’t feel anything when I saw him. I just looked at his scared, wan face and felt totally flat. There was no longing or grief over our lost love, just astonishment really that I once felt anything at all. When he’d gone, I realized that he’d taken the toaster. Can you imagine? No regard for the girls and their breakfast the next morning. It was so petty and insulting that it has ignited this fury that I wasted so many years on this man who has turned out to have no moral values or anything that I can respect at all.” She threw the stress ball hard and it hit the pile of Chad’s books, which began to topple over. “Bull’s-eye,” she said.

  “Don’t you see?” I started to rearrange my Peace pyramid. “It’s so obvious that emotionally you’ve begun to let him go. He took the toaster because there was nothing else he could take.”

  Lucy let out a bloodcurdling gargle. “Urgh, you’re right. God, you realize that you don’t know someone until you marry them, then you divorce them and you find out that you never knew them at all.”

  “That’s exactly how I felt when I left Jamie,” I said. “It’s as if you marry the man you marry because you like their version of yourself more than you like your own. Then, you divorce them and suddenly you stare back at this cold, angry stranger whom you simply can’t stand anymore.”

  “At least you never had kids with Jamie, so you never had to see him again. I have to face Edward visiting the girls and all I feel when I talk to him is this uncontrollable dislike.”

  “I don’t think that lasts forever,” I said. “I used to lie in bed and obsess about how much I loathed Jamie and now I think that if I saw him, I’d feel nothing but genuine goodwill. In time I promise you’ll realize that what you had together wasn’t nothing, it was lots of things, and in your case, you’ve got two lovely girls.”

  “I feel quite sorry for Edward and I always have for Jamie,” boomed a male voice. We swung round to see Miles pop up behind the counter. “Poor pathetic sods.” Miles jumped down and went up to Lucy and kissed her straight on the lips. After a moment, she pulled away, astonished. “There!” He smiled. “You needed that. I find that newly separated women have this inner coil of tension. On the one hand they are wary and raw and on the other they have this urgent desire for destructive, physical passion to blow the cobwebs away.”

  “You’re not wrong there,” gasped Lucy.

  “So how come you never snogged me after I left Jamie?” I asked, put out.

  “Oh, because your wariness and rawness far exceeded your physical need for a shag. Far from soothing you, it would have screwed you up even further.”

  Later, after Lucy had left promising to return when the Chad coast was clear, I watched Chad signing copies of his book and flirting with every needy woman in the room—i.e., all the women who had come because they were intelligent and empty—and thought how full of heartbreak most people’s lives are. These women had been buffeted by disappointment and bruised by expectation, so their craving for pockets of peace and fulfillment was almost feral in its sense of urgency. I saw a face I thought I recognized and when she turned to me, I realized that it was Susie.

  “How are you?” I said, greeting her.

  “I’m doing okay. Obviously I’m a bit more cautious when it comes to men after the Edward fiasco,” she said.

  “Justifiably so.” I smiled.

  “I can’t believe I’ve never been to Miles’s bookshop before. I didn’t realize it was such a scene here.”

  “It isn’t usually. Normally it’s just me and Miles baiting each other on a daily basis.”

  “I’m sure it does him good.”

  Chad came up and I introduced them. Susie seemed to know a lot about Chad’s work and I thought how much Edward must have underestimated her. She was so much more than a cold, beautiful, trophy mistress. As I mingled, I overheard Chad say to Susie, “Conscience is the soul’s way of keeping you out of harm.” She caught me listening and winked at me—I wouldn’t waste much time worrying
about her conscience tonight.

  I was pouring nondescript wine into paper cups and filling up bowls with tortilla chips when Chad came up with a fiftyish, academic-looking woman with dark curly hair. “Daisy, meet my editor at Insight Publications,Jennie Skipwith.”

  “Hello,” she said, extending her arm. “You’ve done wonders with your list here. You seem to have an uncanny feel for what people want to read.”

  I felt myself blush. “Thanks,” I said. “It’s more luck than judgment.”

  “Oh, I doubt that very much.” She reached into her bag and handed me her card. I could feel myself swelling with pleasure as I was unaccustomed to professional praise. I took the card and she said, “You never know, you might want to write something yourself one day.” Even though I had toyed with that idea in my dreams, her mentioning it only made me feel like a complete fool, supremely mediocre and untalented. Unlike someone like Chad Peace, with his strong, knowing, original voice. Okay, so I could spot a few potential spiritual best sellers because they spoke to me, but that didn’t really mark me out in any way, did it?

  I looked up and saw Max Knightly walk through the door. “Daisy,” he said. “I’ve got to tell you something and I’m afraid you’re not going to like it.”

  My mind instantly flitted through various trifling scenarios but I wasn’t unduly alarmed. He had a lengthy architectural assignment abroad so our relationship would now move into long-distance territory? But that could be quite fun. All those Love Actually ecstatic airport meetings, all that urgent hotel room sex, and those teary departures followed by days spent pining, with giddy texting and saucy e-mailing. No, he was quite wrong about that. That wouldn’t faze me at all. In fact, it would dispel the bleak moments of domestic boredom that everyday relationships inevitably bring. If he was living in a hotel, there would be expense-account room service and laundry on tap, so no washing of grease-embedded pans after cooking roast potatoes and no seeing him throw his crumpled boxers in the washing machine. This could be a real blessing.

  Or was it something that might prove more of a trial? His mother had given him a hard time on the “how could you do this to me?” emotional blackmail front and was disappointed that he was dating an older divorcée, as it wasn’t sufficiently boast-worthy to her bridge group? These were the sort of safe, easily surmountable problems (after all, I didn’t even know if his mother played bridge or was that suburban-minded since I’d never met her) that I was sifting through while he pushed me toward the stockroom and closed the door. I sat on a box of books and looked up at him expectantly.

  “Daisy, there’s no easy way to say this,” he said, “but I’ve met someone else.”

  Initially I laughed inside. With my peculiar blend of arrogance and punchy charisma that belies rumbling low self-esteem, my first thoughts were, “Don’t be so silly. How could you have met anyone more unique and fun than me?”

  Max kneeled in front of me so that we were at eye level. “Listen, this is the last thing I ever expected to happen as I was really keen on you and I was looking forward to seeing how things panned out . . .”

  “Really keen?” My echo was less hollow and more caustic. “Really keen? What happened to ‘you’re the most original woman I’ve ever met but I can’t get a handle on you? Don’t shut me out. Let me in . . .’?”

  “Yes, absolutely,” he faltered. “I did say and feel all those things but I suppose if I’m really honest, you were the most incredible challenge I’d come across and I was fascinated.”

  I stood up, since bizarrely all I could feel was temper thudding through my thighs. Max jumped up too. “Oh, so I was quite the challenge but once conquered, the excitement wore off? Once we’d finally slept together—and let’s face it, it wasn’t me who said ‘I like you too much and that’s why I can’t perform’—you found yourself window shopping for another, racier model?”

  “There’s no need to sound so bitter,” said Max smugly, which made me want to stab him.

  “Bitter? Bitter! I feel like you spun me around and then threw a wet flannel in my face. I told you I was different. Damaged. But you wooed me. You convinced me that I could trust you and then the minute I let down my guard and showed you who I was, you told me I wasn’t good enough.”

  “I never said that,” said Max.

  “You didn’t need to. ‘I’ve met someone else’ is the same as saying ‘I’ve met someone better.’”

  Max leaned against the wall looking drained and I thought what an intolerably low threshold men have for the emotional crisis that they ignite. “It’s just easier with her,” he said wearily.

  “Because she’s younger?” I asked.

  “Partly, yes. There’s no expectation. I feel I can just have a good time because she’s too young to want to settle down and have kids.”

  “But I never said I wanted to settle down with you and have your kids.”

  “You didn’t have to but with a woman your age, it’s always there, isn’t it?” Max ploughed bravely—and brutally—on. “With an older woman there’s all this silent pressure on a man to be the man that the others weren’t. In the end, I felt I couldn’t live up to that.”

  “No,” I said, gutted. “I can quite see that.” I took a breath and stared at him in cold fury. “You’ve certainly changed your tune since you first asked me out. I thought it was the twenty-something women you couldn’t stomach because of their agendas?” Max opened his mouth but didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to. You could tell by the look on his face that he was thinking: All bloody women have agendas. And then, mercifully, he turned away and slunk—well maybe that’s wishful thinking; he more strode out of the store.

  When Max had disappeared from view, I flopped onto the stockroom floor. Although I was crying when Lucy and Miles found me, I was also acutely aware of the state of the carpet and how badly it needed to be hoovered. Maybe it’s a form of self-protection, the way the mind multitasks in a crisis like that. Your heart may be splintering but part of your brain is transfixed by the pattern the pencil sharpenings make fanning out across the floor. Lucy scooped me into her arms. “Don’t upset yourself like this,” she soothed. “No man is worth it.”

  “She’s right.” Miles winked. “We’re all flaky bastards pretending we want commitment when we want our end away with as little aggro as possible.”

  “I’ll remember that,” said Lucy, tossing her head.

  Two hours later, when Lucy had collected her girls from school and dropped them at their grandparents’ London flat, she whisked me up the motorway to see my mother.

  “But she’s with Archibald,” I said. “She doesn’t want a reminder of my miserable life to bring her down and make her feel that because I can’t hold on to a relationship, she’s failed as a mother.”

  “She loves you,” said Lucy. “Your pain is her pain. Anyway, I’ve already rung her and she’s expecting us. She’s got the sympathy in the oven and the TLC on ice.”

  I smiled. “So, how was the snog with Miles?”

  “I had forgotten that another man’s touch could be so electrifying. Just the feel of Miles pushing his fingers into the top of my jeans was heaven.”

  “Yeah, the way someone touches you communicates everything. Mind you, all Miles is saying as he’s running his fingers down your spine is, ‘How soon can I have you?’”

  Lucy laughed. “He kept whispering, begging me to come back to his flat, and I would have killed to have gone but I realized that I had to collect the kids from school. I was so depressed standing at the school gate as it hit me that dating as a single mother is anything but spontaneous.”

  “We need friends with benefits.” Lucy looked perplexed. “It’s all the rage in the States,” I explained. “It’s where you hook up with a best friend whom you sleep with. Ex-boyfriends are perfect as they are a known quantity. It’s not as slutty as a one-night stand and it’s not as complicated as an affair since there is no emotional agenda. It’s just about having someone whom you feel comfy with c
all you up and afterwards you amicably go your separate ways.”

  “What happens if one party gets serious?”

  “That’s the danger. You have to remain emotionally detached or it doesn’t work. Also, it’s about being able to keep the meetings on an ad hoc basis.”

  “So why don’t you hook up with Miles?” asked Lucy.

  “Same reason as you,” I said. “Because neither of us could guarantee that we wouldn’t fall for him. Miles is a devil but better the devil you know . . .”

  Later, at home, Mum made a sterling effort to cheer us up. She enveloped us with a warm maternal wisdom that made me feel safe again. Archibald was nowhere to be seen—which was convenient because, regardless of how grown-up you are, you want your mother to be in mother mode. You don’t want to think of her as some man’s lover. Mum had lit the fire and bundled us in front of it with tea, homemade plum jam, and crumpets. “You can’t change people,” she warned. “You girls have to respect that. These men are what they are and you are what you are. You dance or you don’t dance. Simple as that.”

  “So how do you find someone who makes a good match?” asked Lucy.

  “That man doesn’t need to be exactly like you. The two of you only need to be like a key in a lock. A fit that works.”

  “But how do you find him?” I wailed.

  “You believe in him, which means you must believe in yourself. Then you get really clear about what you do and don’t want.”

  “Oh yes, Chad Peace talks about this in his book,” I said, excited.

  Lucy threw her eyes to the ceiling. “No, listen, Luce. We’ve got to write him a letter.”

  “Before we’ve met him?” Lucy guffawed.

  “Yes. We’re inviting him to show up in our lives. The universe acts as the messenger. Come on, what’s to lose? Let’s try it.”

  “How specific do we have to be in these letters?” asked Lucy, mocking me. We were sitting in bed in our pajamas, pads and pens in hand. “Do we write things like, ‘Please don’t be disabled or a good-looking dwarf, but it would be fun if you had the odd A-list celebrity friend, and please, no hairy backs, graying goatees, or man bags and gold jewelry?’” I giggled. “I think we are supposed to focus on what we want, not what we don’t want to attract into our life.”