by Dee Ernst
Patricia nodded. “Yes, have some. We’re trying to talk Mona into seeing a lawyer. She says she’s not ready.”
MarshaMarsha managed to pour herself a cup of coffee and snag a piece of pastry while she continued to look adorable and concerned. “I can understand that. This is a big shock, and is totally unexpected.” She looked and sounded sincere even as she was stuffing her face with strudel. “Mona needs time to think and weigh her options. And there’s always a chance that Brian will see the error of his ways and come crawling back on his hands and knees begging forgiveness. Not that she could ever forgive him for being such a piece of shit husband, but still.” She smiled, showing dimples. “Right, Mona?”
“Right,” I said, not sure what I was agreeing to, but then God, with his usual sense of timing, not to mention humor, stepped in. My fax machine began to hum.
Anthony jumped up and raced over to the machine where he began diligently reading whatever was coming through.
“It’s from somebody named Herschel Fielding,” he announced.
Why was that name familiar? I looked at Patricia and frowned, trying to think.
“Apparently,” Anthony said as he read the fax, “he’s Brian’s lawyer. He’s faxing over a proposed separation and visitation agreement.”
“What?” My jaw dropped as I scrambled up and stood next to Anthony, staring at the fax machine. “A separation agreement? Already? Is he crazy?”
“No,” Patricia drawled, “just very insensitive.”
It took a few minutes, and we all watched in silence as the fax machine hummed and slid out one sheet of paper after another. Patricia made another pot of coffee. MarshaMarsha perched on the edge of the trunk and chewed strudel one tiny mouthful at a time. Finally, the machine fell silent and I grabbed the stack of paper and shoved it into Anthony’s hands.
“What do they say?” I asked.
Anthony shuffled everything together neatly and squinted in concentration. “He wants to see the girls one night a week and every other weekend. He’s being very generous about child support, two thousand a month. That’s way above the average, I believe.” He read on. “He doesn’t want to pay alimony, and instead will let you keep the Westfield house, which is in both your names. And you get the shore house.” Well, of course, I thought. I bought the shore house with my own money twelve years ago, and it was in my name only, and Brian, although he spent family time there, never gave a red cent toward renovation or upkeep.
“But he wants to keep the Hoboken condo,” Anthony went on in a very confused voice. “When did you buy a condo?” He looked at me. I would have looked back, but I was too busy seeing red.
“I never bought a condo,” I said finally. The room fell into a hush, not that anybody was actually talking, but I could feel, rather than see, everyone kind of shrink back in silence.
I cleared my throat. “Is there an address?”
Anthony nodded. “Yes. I can go onto the county tax page and see when it was purchased, if you want me to.”
“Yes.” I walked back to the couch and sat down hard. I didn’t look at MarshaMarsha or Patricia. I couldn’t.
It took Anthony about three minutes to find it. “He bought it last September,” he said at last. “Her name is on the deed as well. Dominique’s condo and his condo are one and the same.”
September. He bought it with her last September. What a total son-of-a-bitch. I went over to the phone and dialed the direct number to Brian’s office. He answered on the second ring.
“Hey, it’s me.” I kept my voice very even.
“What did you say to Dominique last night?” he asked, sounding angry.
I clenched my jaw. “I didn’t say anything to her.”
“Then what did Patricia say? And Lily?”
“I haven’t a clue,” I lied. “They were speaking in French.”
“Lily speaks French?”
“Apparently. I just assumed, by the way she bolted out of there, that they were letting her in on a few of your less attractive personal habits.”
He sighed. “That’s not funny, Mona.”
“No. Neither is this fax I just received from your lawyer.”
“Well, Mona.” He switched gears suddenly, sounding very calm and relaxed. “Hirsch and I happen to think that I’m being very fair and generous. The state has guidelines for child support, and I’m way above their monthly amounts. And I am giving you both houses.”
“I noticed that. Of course, the shore house was bought and paid for by me alone, but still. You’re being very generous. And thorough. In fact, you must have spoken to this Hirsch several days ago to have him draw up something so complete.”
Brian sounded cool. “As a matter of fact, yes.”
“So the divorce idea was something you remembered to talk about with other people. It was just me you had a problem telling.”
“Now, Mona, let’s not get bogged down on unimportant details.”
“Okay, I won’t. I just have one question. When you told Hirsch about the condo, didn’t you make it clear to him that I didn’t know anything about it, and that he shouldn’t have mentioned it in the proposal he just faxed over?”
There was a moment of silence. I glanced at Patricia, who winked and raised her coffee cup in salute.
“He put the condo in the agreement?” Brian asked, his voice sounding not so calm and relaxed. “The man is a fucking idiot.”
“No, Brian. You are a fucking idiot. Do you know what my lawyer is going to do with this?”
“I thought you didn’t have a lawyer.”
“Yeah, well I do. David West. The best divorce lawyer in the state. I’m seeing him next week, and I’m going to make sure he gets me every single thing I’m owed, and then some.” I slammed down the phone and closed my eyes, taking deep, slow breaths.
They had bought a place to live. Together. In September. Over six months ago. Which means they must have been seeing each other before that, unless they met each other, fell in love and decided to live in adultery in just a few short weeks. Why hadn’t I ever noticed anything different? What was wrong with me?
“What’s wrong with me?” I said softly. I heard a flurry of activity and opened my eyes.
MarshaMarsha grabbed the bag off the trunk, fished out another piece of strudel, and pushed it into my hand. Patricia hopped up and ran over to snag the coffee pot. Anthony waved a tissue box.
“What did he say?” he asked breathlessly.
“I need to see David West,” I growled, and sipped my coffee.
“Absolutely,” Anthony said. “What did Brian say?”
“He said that Hirsch was a fucking idiot. I need to see my lawyer.” I looked at Patricia. “Next week?”
She nodded as she refilled my cup. “Yes. One week from today. 10:30.”
I took a deep breath. “One week. God, what am I going to do for a whole week?” I moaned.
“Well,” Anthony said uncomfortably, “you might try working a little. Your first draft is due in about six weeks. Oprah sent an e-mail asking how things were going.”
Oprah didn’t really send me an e-mail. Anthony called my agent Oprah. My agent is Sylvia Snow, and Anthony calls her Oprah because Sylvia is a fifty-ish black woman with lots of smarts and brass balls the size of the QE2.
In the late sixties, Sylvia got into Radcliff through Affirmative Action, and got out with a degree Summa Cum Laude and a big attitude. After kicking around New York publishing houses for ten or so years, she decided to go it alone. I was her first client. She sold my first book. Over the past several years, we have made each other lots of money. She now has a very impressive client list, including celebrities, internationally- known psychologists, and one romance/mystery/chick lit author who has her very own section at your local Barnes & Noble. She calls me her favorite author. I am, if nothing else, her first author.
Sylvia does not get me free houses in the Hampton’s or front row seats to sold-out Broadway shows. We don’t exchange confidences or spen
d hours chatting away like good buddies. She tries like hell to sell my books for the most possible money, and I try to write stuff that’s good enough for all her efforts. We get along just fine. Usually. But now she wanted an update on the new book, which was supposed to be complete and on my editor’s desk by June first, and the news was not so good.
I stared at Anthony, stricken. “What can I tell her?”
Anthony shrugged. “Mona, I don’t know what to say. I’ve been trying to talk to you about this for weeks. You kept blowing me off.”
Patricia was frowning. “What’s going on?” she asked.
“I’m having a bit of a problem with the new book,” I said
Patricia looked indignant. “That’s ridiculous,” she declared. “Mona, you write the best creamy thigh stuff out there. What kind of problems could you be having?”
“Well, I’m trying to write something different this time,” I said
MarshaMarsha tilted her head. “A Scottish one? I love those men-in-kilt things.” MarshaMarsha had been a fan before she ever met me, and she not only has read all my books, she is a long-time member of a romance-only book group that’s carefully scrutinized some of my most interesting love scenes. MarshaMarsha always scores big with her group when she brings me along so I can give a first-hand account of the hows and whys.
I shook my head.
“One of those supernatural romances?” she asked hopefully.
Patricia frowned. “Supernatural?”
“Yes,” I explained. “They’re actually called paranormal romances. Sex with ghosts. Werewolves. Vampires. It’s very in right now.”
“That’s disgusting,” Patricia murmured.
“That’s what I thought,” I said. “I can’t write about ghosts, because I believe in ghosts and I’d creep myself out. Forget time-traveling, because I’d never be able to keep all those centuries straight. Shape-shifters are very hot, and so are vampires, and witches, but I personally know a witch, Rebecca, and I know for a fact she hasn’t had sex in years, which is not very inspiring.”
Anthony swiveled around in the desk chair. “I wanted her to write about Lizzie and Fitz.”
Both Patricia and MarshaMarsha stared at him blankly.
“You know.” Anthony waved his hands around. “Elizabeth Bennett and Fitzwilliam Darcy. Pride and Prejudice? The bookstores are full of sequels.”
Patricia raised an eyebrow. “And you actually thought Mona should write a book using somebody else’s characters? Like those people who write about Star Trek or Jessica Fletcher?”
Anthony looked a little hurt. “Well,” he muttered, “when you put it that way…”
Patricia had sat back down beside me on the couch. She patted my hand. “Our Mona is better than that.”
I smiled gratefully. “Actually, I started writing a contemporary romance.”
“Well, that’s very exciting,” MarshaMasha said brightly.
“It is. And I was doing really well. My character is a twenty-something who has her own graphic design firm in Manhattan, and her husband of just a year leaves her, and she becomes involved with two very different men, and then hubby comes back and wants to try again.”
“That sounds full of possibilities,” Patricia said. “You should be taking those ideas and running all over the place with them.”
“I know I should, but I’m stuck. I can’t decide who she should end up with. And I’m having a hard time getting into the head of a twenty-seven-year-old metro girl. Now I’ll never be able to finish. How can I write about a woman who lives happily ever after with some man when right now I think all men suck?” I looked over to Anthony. “Except you, of course.” Anthony smiled.
“Well,” MarshaMarsha said, “why don’t you write about a happy ending where she doesn’t end up with anyone. She’s just happy by herself.”
I frowned at her. “Happy by herself?”
“Sure. Have her be one of those women whose life changes so much for the better after she’s dumped. It happens all the time.”
I shook my head. “Whose lives are so much better?”
MarshaMarsha pursed her lips. “Well, there’s my cousin, Vicki, who fell apart after Dan left, but ended up getting a scholarship to law school and she’s a junior partner now, with a great place on the Upper West Side and a hunky boyfriend. Ellen Mitchell? Down the street? When she divorced her husband, she was forced to go into business for herself, and that’s how she ended up with her catering business. You know how well she’s doing.”
“There’s also a client of mine,” Anthony put in.” I just did a gorgeous Parrish in her bathroom, a take on ‘Dinkybird,’ you know, the one with the nude on the swing? When her husband left, all she could do was baby-sit kids, and now she owns six private daycare centers and is absolutely rolling in it.”
I looked at Patricia. She shrugged. “Darling, all the women I know see marriage as an investment. They always ended up better off than they were before.”
I shook my head. “I still can’t get into this girl’s head.”
Anthony shrugged. “So don’t make her a girl. Make her somebody more like you. Make her forty-something instead.”
I rolled my eyes. “Nobody wants to read about a middle-aged woman who gets dumped.”
Patricia looked thoughtful. “Maybe that’s because nobody’s ever written about a middle-aged woman who gets dumped, unless she’s a ridiculously rich middle-aged woman who ends up getting lots more money, revenge and some hot boy-toy. But really, how many real women can identify with that?”
MarshaMarsha was nodding in agreement. “She’s right. All you get right now in books are young single girls who spend half their paychecks on shoes. The women who are over forty are all in quilting clubs or knitting clubs or solving mysteries with their cats. Maybe it’s time for a real person to have a real crisis and get over it. And live happily ever after all on her own.”
I stared into my coffee cup. “So, she’s in her forties and ends up alone. But a better person? Let me think. This is not a romance. It could still be a love story. This might be a very good idea. She could still have a great life, and lots of sex. I mean, divorced isn’t the end of the world. At least I hope not.”
“Of course it’s not,” MarshaMarsha said stoutly. “And you’re going to be just like your character. You’re going to have a much better life alone, with lots of sex.”
That sounded good. That sounded great. Maybe if I wrote about it, I could make it true. I raised my coffee cup.
“I can write this,” I said.
“Of course, you can,” Anthony agreed.
“And even better, I can live it.”
“Hear, hear,” Patricia murmured.
“To a better life,” I said.
We all clinked cups. MarshaMarsha smiled. “Don’t forget lots of sex,” she said.
Chapter Five
The week after Brian left felt, strangely enough, just like the week after my mother died. There was an overwhelming sense of loss and sadness, but it felt oddly abstract. Both of my parents lived in Florida since the eighties, and I saw them only two or three times a year. After my father died, my mother spent a little more time with me, but her death left a gaping whole in my heart, rather than my actual life. On a day to day basis, I barely missed her. It was knowing that she was no longer a part of my physical universe that broke my heart.
With Brian leaving, it was the same kind of feeling. He worked long hours and took many business trips, so he wasn’t around the house much anyway. It’s not like I suddenly had to do things for myself, because I’d always done for myself and my daughters without much help from him at all. But knowing that he no longer loved me, that he had chosen another woman to spend his spare and precious time with, made me incredibly sad. So sad, I almost forgot how mad I was about the whole thing. Almost, but not quite, because he kept doing things to piss me off even more.
The Friday afternoon after he left, he called Miranda on her cell phone and invited her and h
er sisters to have dinner with him. And with Dominique. Miranda was in the kitchen when the call came, wolfing down the first of two peanut butter and banana sandwiches she made when she got home from school. Lauren was with her, drinking a Diet Coke. Jessica was upstairs slamming things because she was not sleeping over Billy’s house, when apparently everyone else in the world was.
When her phone rang, she looked at it, made a face, and looked at me.
“It’s Daddy,” she said in a tight voice.
I remained silent. I was slicing pepperoni for pizza. We were supposed to be having homemade pizza for dinner. I was in charge of making and baking. The girls would be doing the eating. Typical mealtime.
“Answer it,” I said calmly.
She flipped open the phone. “Yeah?”
She listened. I watched her out of the corner of my eye, almost chopping off my thumb in the process of trying to be cool.
“What?”
More listening.
“Why would I want to meet her? She broke up our home. And she’s French. They hate us.”
I was so proud.
“Okay, Dad. I’ll ask. But don’t hold your breath.” She hung up and started in on the other sandwich.
“Well?” asked Lauren. “What did he want?”
Miranda looked nonchalant. “He wanted to pick us up and take us all out to dinner so we can meet Dominique. Wanna go?”
Lauren shook her head. Miranda got up, left the kitchen and went upstairs, presumably to ask Jessica. The slamming above stopped for a few moments, then began again, followed by what can only be described as a loud but hollow laugh. I was guessing Jess said no. Miranda came back into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, and took out a Sprite. She sat next to Lauren at the breakfast bar and watched me slice.
“What did Jess say?” I asked casually.
Miranda was no fool. “Guess, Mom. Like you couldn’t hear her.” She made a rude noise.
“Are you going to call him back?” I asked, still cool.
