“Changes? What kind of changes?”
“Robyn. You and I know each other well. And we’re good friends …”
“Don’t soft-pedal it. What’re you saying?”
“This might not be the time for you to think about taking on additional responsibilities at SE.”
“Meaning what?” she pressed.
“Meaning … do you even really want this? You’re not acting like you do. And even if you do, maybe your current … your current capacity doesn’t match the demands of the job.”
“Are you firing me?” she asked, incredulous.
“No. Of course I’m not firing you, dummy. As long as you want, you have a job at SE. The question isn’t that. It’s whether you have the right job. Whether acting GC is where you need to be right now.”
“So, you are sort of firing me,” Robyn said. “You’re demoting me.”
“No. I respect you too much to do that. And I recognize how that might affect your … stature in the company. So I’m not firing you as acting GC. I’m asking you to take a couple weeks and consider whether it might not be better for you to resign from that post.”
“Were you interested in touring the studio?” Elaine asked, cupping her coffee mug between her hands.
She looked up at him across the table and Chris saw that something had shifted. Her demeanor was slightly different now in a way he couldn’t pinpoint.
“Not really,” he said, shaking his head.
Elaine laughed. “I thought so. But in a strange way, that’s actually kind of flattering.”
“Flattering. How so?”
“Because it means,” she said, speaking slowly, “that you came to see me.”
They were in Sabrina’s, the café she had suggested in that text message from a week earlier that he had ignored. It was small and quaint but had an impressively large menu. Elaine had ordered herself a coffee and the French toast, even though it was late in the afternoon, and Chris ordered the turkey burger special.
Ordering a meal, an actual meal, felt like a commitment to a course of action. It was a decision not to make this encounter brief. It felt a little dangerous, and now even more so after what Elaine just said.
“You’re good company,” he said simply.
“So …” her voice was bright. “Tell me about your wife. How did you meet?”
The frank, forwardness of the question took him off guard. But only for a few seconds. Chris was not in the habit of talking about Robyn, or his kids to anyone. And neither the prettiness of Elaine’s smile, nor the frankness of her question would make a damned bit of difference.
“Why don’t you tell me more about your situation?” he said.
“My situation?” she said. “What does that mean?”
Chris shrugged. “I don’t know. What do you think it means?”
“When people say that, they usually mean your … love-life. Are you asking me about my love-life, Mr. Scaife?” she smiled again.
“Only if you want to tell me.”
She seemed to consider it for a minute, then shrugged. “Well, why not? I already told you about my messy divorce, my kid dropping out of college … May as well air the rest of my dirty laundry.”
“Is it?” Chris asked.
“Is it what?”
“Dirty.”
Elaine looked at him evenly, a small smile playing about the corner of her lips.
“You were talking to him. At the party. The tall guy with the dark hair, dusky, Mediterranean complexion?”
“I think I remember him, yeah. What was his name? Mario?”
“Marco,” she corrected.
“Okay, so tell me about Marco,” Chris said, shrugging.
There was something about talking to a woman about her man. It was intimate; it was its own kind of come-on. It was an invitation to her to tell you how you could do better for her than what she already had. It was not neutral and safe territory for a married man.
“He’s what I call a Jersey Striver,” she said, taking a sip of her coffee. “You know the ones. They come from the quintessential New Jersey Italian working-class background. Dad and brothers work in construction, sisters with a bunch of babies. Vacation on the Shore … the usual.”
Chris smiled this time, because he knew precisely the kind of family she was referring to.
“And there’s usually one kid, usually the youngest, or close to the youngest, who wants to be different. He doesn’t want to be a mason, or roofer. He wants to be in business.” She made air-quotes at the words ‘in business.’. “So, he dabbles in all these … schemes, but never putting in quite the right work. Like, going to college? Nah.”
“Is that what Marco is?”
“Yup. He owns two gyms right now. Well, not gyms. They’re like boot-camp programs. He trains people intensively with a team of folks that he pays minimum wage. Low-cost to run, not lots of fancy equipment. He makes a good living.”
“So, his striving is paying off.”
“Yes, and no. He’ll never get rich from it. So, he likes to hang out in places like Short Hills, where he meets women like me. Slightly older than him, slightly desperate for male companionship, and … at least he thinks … much better off than him.”
At that, Chris said nothing. The story was beginning to take a sad turn, and he was beginning to feel a little sorry for Elaine. And pity was not an aphrodisiac. Which in this case was a very good thing.
“We’ve been together for a few months. I think he’s angling to move into my house, because he likes the zip code. I think he would even get me pregnant if I was into it. Just to you know, seal the deal.”
“Would you be into it?” Chris asked.
“I’m not interested in sealing any deals with Marco,” Elaine said, her tone definitive, just as their food was brought out. “What I get right now is all I’ll ever need. At least from him.”
Their conversation lulled while their plates were being arranged, and once the server was gone, Elaine picked it up again, first reaching over and stealing three of Chris’ French fries.
“What I want,” she said, her mouth chewing almost daintily, “is some of what I lost when I got divorced.”
“Wait. But you said your marriage was terrible. That he cheated on you, and that …”
“And all that’s true,” Elaine said. “But there were some good things.”
“Yeah, like what?”
“I … I had … I have, a beautiful home. I was able to have parties. Not like the pathetic one you came to …”
Chris noticed she didn’t say, ‘you and Robyn’. She said ‘you’. Effectively erasing his wife from the entire picture.
“I was able to shop. I had trips with my girlfriends. I had a full and fulfilling life. And even though I squawked at it at first, it wasn’t terrible, not having to work.”
“So that’s what you want,” Chris said. It wasn’t a question.
He looked at Elaine Richards, and it was like having the scales fall from his eyes. He smiled, which she no doubt interpreted differently than it was intended.
“There wasn’t anything wrong with being taken care of. There isn’t. Is there?”
Her eyes met his and held.
“Not at all,” he said. “Not when there’s men out there willing to do it.”
“And I happen to think there are,” Elaine said. She reached for another few of his fries and cocked her head to one side. “Don’t you?”
11
She wasn’t willing to wave the white flag just yet. In fact, it was humiliating that Jamal had even seen fit to offer her the chance to do so. So, Robyn redoubled her efforts, not only arriving early at the office, but leaving at seven each day. Twelve hours was more than anyone else at SE put in, except for Jamal himself. Chris was of course the record-holder, having put in a routine fourteen hours, and often sixteen when he was at the helm.
She wasn’t trying to do that, though. She had to see her kids and husband sometime. But she wasn’t going to let Reb
ecca walk off with the general counsel position either, just because she was single and had no family, and certainly not because Robyn Scaife would rather sleep. Hell no. On the days when it was impossible for her to get in as early as her preferred seven a.m. arrival time, Robyn used Chris’ office at home to respond to email around six or so, just so Jamal would know she was awake and thinking about work, even if not from her desk at SE.
When she arrived each morning, she never checked to see who else was there, but she couldn’t help but notice the glow of a banker’s lamp emanating from Rebecca’s office. They had never discussed it directly, but she knew that Rebecca was angling for consideration for the GC role. It was obvious from the way she had been particularly chatty in high-level meetings lately, making sure to weigh in with her own unique spin on every issue.
She was sharp, Robyn had to give her that. Rebecca was careful to always augment, but never contradict what Robyn herself had contributed in those meetings. She was politically-savvy, that was for sure, realizing that even if she were to get the general counsel position, it would not serve her to make an enemy out of Chris Scaife’s wife. It would not help her to alienate a woman who was—for better or worse—a very close friend and confidante of the CEO.
But, Robyn could not say the same of her own professionalism. At times, it was difficult to manufacture a smile at Rebecca, and to be as pleasant as she generally was. She found herself thinking vaguely uncharitable thoughts about the poor girl’s accent, and then spent the rest of the day ashamed of herself. And she constantly fought the urge to deprive Rebecca of assignments that would showcase her legal ability, and to ‘forget’ to invite her to meetings.
Thank goodness, she hadn’t sunk that low. At least not yet.
“How was Paris?” Robyn asked her mother, as she held the door for her to get into the back of the car.
She had commandeered Rick for the drive to JFK to pick her mother up from her latest month-long visit to her paramour, Oliver. Paramour. It sounded so … sexual, but Robyn wasn’t quite sure what else to call him. Boyfriend sounded juvenile, and lover sounded lurid.
But whatever they called it, her mother had been happily coupled up for a while now, with an American expat whom she had met when Robyn had her disastrous stint in France a few years back when Caity was a baby. Now, Carolyn and Oliver had a bi-continental relationship that had them both hopping across the Atlantic every two months or so, spending time in each other’s homes and melding lives in a fashion that seemed to work well for them.
“Paris was lovely as always, and Ollie sends his love.”
Her mother had a new serenity, Robyn had to admit, since she and Oliver had gotten together. Her contentment was quiet, but profound. She seemed … sensual, even. Robyn tried not to think about the all-too-apparent sexuality that pervaded her mother and Oliver’s relationship. He touched her a lot, held her hand, and even let his palm slide down to briefly cup a buttock when he thought no one was paying attention.
Robyn had talked about it to her brother Nate, who told her he thought it was natural, and a little bit of a relief to know their mother was still “gettin’ some.”
Jesus, Nate, Robyn had complained. You’re her son. Aren’t you the one who should be squirming about this?
Not at all, he said. Gives me hope, to tell you the truth.
Nate probably needed the hope since his relationships all seemed to be of the casual and temporary kind.
“Maybe one day I’ll give you a chance to convince me that Paris is lovely,” Robyn said dryly as they pulled away from the curb.
Carolyn laughed. “Maybe one day sooner than you think.”
“Don’t count on it.”
“You sound cranky and overworked. What’s been happening with you? What’s been happening with Chris, and my babies?”
“Landyn has even more teeth coming in, which he uses to try to chew off my nipples, so I’m finally going to put an end to the breastfeeding for comfort thing. And Caity liked the preschool we picked out for her for the spring and is excited to go though I missed the tour. And Chris and I … well, we’re in a patch. Because I have the temerity to want to advance in my career.”
Robyn almost, but did not quite miss her mother’s effort to not roll her eyes.
“What?”
“Robyn …” Carolyn sighed. “I’m tired from my flight. I’m not interested in having a conversation I’ve had with you a million times before.”
“Well I’m interested in having it.”
“And Lord knows, what Robyn wants, Robyn gets.”
“What’s that supposed to …?”
“You know precisely what it means. Everything you do, it’s like you’re in a race, except you’re your only competitor.”
A silence fell between them, and Robyn felt her throat tighten.
“How’s Chris doing?” her mother asked, breaking the silence.
“He’s fine,” Robyn said tersely.
“Okay, so … what’s he doing these days? I was thinking as I was watching one of those awards shows, that he probably doesn’t have anything to do with those this go-round, does he? This is usually his hectic season.”
Robyn thought about that. It was true. It was true, and it hadn’t occurred to her until her mother just said it.
In former years, the lead-up to awards season was a whirlwind. Chris went to dozens of parties and dinner and meet-and-greets. What the public didn’t realize—or maybe they did, since people often commented on how tone-deaf some of the nominations and wins were—was that members of the Recording Academy and other associations decided who won statuettes, not some white-haired three-judge panel of “experts.” And the only way to access the membership was to rub elbows with them. They were sound engineers, producers, performers, and were somewhere around twenty-thousand strong. So, exposure was everything. That meant parties—attending and hosting them—to get your artists out there. It meant shaking hands, making deals, and making friends.
Chris had been a master at it. He didn’t necessarily believe that an award meant the music was superior. But he knew that it could breathe life into a lackluster release or reinvigorate a flagging career. Because of that, he had worked like a demon to get his people noticed and nominated, even if they didn’t win.
“I … I don’t know what he’s been doing,” Robyn admitted.
He mentioned going to see his sister more often lately, so there was that. And, something he was helping Riley with, but Robyn wasn’t sure of the details.
“Hmm,” her mother said. “Well, I’m going to want to come to dinner. To see everyone. How’re the other kids? Jasmin and Kaden? And how’s Deuce doing?”
“Good. They’re all good. I got Chris to get Deuce a new car. Some stupid SUV. I could tell he didn’t want to do it but did it just to shut me up.”
“Chris has it right when it comes to not giving him everything, Robyn. You’re going to ruin that boy. Stop using your influence to buy his affection.”
“I’m not … You really have it in for me, don’t you?”
“Not at all. But I can see you’re in need of someone to give it to you straight. Maybe I’ve been away too long.”
“Or not long enough,” Robyn quipped.
At that, her mother laughed and then leaned in to hug her. Robyn leaned into it as well, hugging her back.
“I did miss you,” she admitted, resting her head on her mother’s shoulder. “The truth is, I feel like I’ve been messing up in just … a million different ways, and I needed you. I need you to be here.”
“You always have me, Robyn.” Carolyn pulled back a little, turned in her seat and touched the side of her face. “Why didn’t you Skype me or Facetime me, or something?”
“I didn’t want to interrupt you in your little … love-nest. And honestly, I don’t even know exactly what’s wrong, but things are off with me and Chris, and at work, it kind of sucks being in charge, and …”
Her mother laughed. “Did anyone say you had to
be in charge?”
“No, but …I asked to be acting GC. And Jamal gave it to me. And if I were to get the general counsel spot, it would be … it’s a great accomplishment.”
“It is.” Her mother nodded.
“There are no women of my age in this position among the big players. No women at all, as a matter of fact. All the other GCs are men.”
She heard herself talking and it sounded like she was trying not just to convince her mother, but herself.
Carolyn nodded. “So, you would be the first,” she said, her voice flat. “Robyn wins again.”
12
How are you, old man?”
Riley came from behind her desk, threw her arms around him and gave Chris one of her trademark warm, all-enveloping hugs.
“Quiet with all that ‘old man’ stuff,” Chris said, hugging her back.
“You’re probably right,” Riley said. “Because you look amazing. Like someone who’s had a yearlong nap. Even though I saw you just a few weeks ago at the beach, it’s you’re like reverse-aging or something.”
“Having nothing to do will do that to a man.”
“Aww, now you’re making me feel bad.” Riley made a mock sad-face.
She led him over to her sitting area and they both sat. She propped her feet up on her coffee table and looked him over appraisingly, a small smile playing about her lips.
“Why you lookin’ at me like that?” Chris asked. “I came all the way down here because you asked me to, so … what’s up?”
“I’ve been thinking about you,” Riley began, her head cocked to one side.
“Yeah?”
“And it occurred to me that you’re not the kind of man who can sit around for very long. And you’ve already done it a year, so I know you’re just dying for a new project.”
Chris felt the smile on his face fade a little. Riley knew that about him, but for some reason, his own wife did not.
“And when you were helping me think things through on setting up my foundation, you had all these great ideas for how to bring visibility for the juvenile life without parole thing. I mean apart from the magazine. And y’know what I thought?”
Four: Stories of Marriage Page 46
