Rona, too, talked with Jenovitz, long distance from I-wasn’t-sure-where. She said that she had raved about me, that Jenovitz had been receptive, and that—get this, she said—he went to high school with Harold.
When Jenovitz called to arrange a visit with the children for the following week, he advised us to simply say that his coming to the house was an ordinary part of the divorce process. I wasn’t sure the children would buy it. Johnny kept comparing his situation with a friend whose parents had just gone through a smoother, quieter, more conventional divorce, and as for Kikit, she questioned everything.
Jenovitz assured me that he had done this many times before and that the less said, the better. I went along with him, though I was apprehensive. I didn’t want the children worrying about what they were or were not supposed to say. I didn’t want them feeling the pull of conflicting loyalties. If Jenovitz upset the children, I would be furious. I would be doubly furious if he upset them and I wasn’t allowed near to patch them up.
I didn’t have to worry about Jenovitz upsetting Brody, with whom he arranged a meeting for the day after he met with the kids. Brody was tough. He could give as good as he got. What I did worry about was why, given my relationship with Brody and his importance to the kids, Jenovitz hadn’t wanted to see him sooner. A meeting at this late date seemed more an afterthought, which was in keeping with what I had felt during my own last meeting with Jenovitz. I couldn’t shake my fear that the study was perfunctory, that he wasn’t really into it, that the outcome was preordained.
Common sense dictated that I would get my children back. But I hadn’t seen much evidence of common sense lately. My single best hope rested on Justice Wheeler.
I waited for his decision. Tuesday came and went without, then Wednesday. I tried to apply myself to WickerWise, but working was easier said than done. Two hours at a time was as much as I got before restlessness set in. When Brody was around, the restlessness was easy to cure—a walk on the bluff, a drive to the store, kisses here, a little loving there. When he wasn’t around, I retreated to my workroom.
The dirty work was done on both the antique rocker and its side table. I had cleaned and smoothed every area where broken wickers had come out. Now I cut new reeds to the approximate lengths that would allow for comfortable overlap, soaked them to make them pliable, and started to weave them in, one by one.
Following the pattern was the most obvious requisite, a more subtle one being the tension used. A reed woven too loose or too tight would stand out forever, which was pretty much how I felt about my life just then. If my split with Dennis didn’t soften up and start blending with the rest of my life, it would indelibly mark everything to come.
The GAL could help by reinstating me as a parent of worth.
Justice Wheeler could help by countermanding Selwey’s orders.
By late Thursday, I was vacillating between hope and despair. Then Carmen called.
sixteen
My heart began to hammer at the sound of her voice. “What?” I asked.
She hesitated a second too long.
“Oh, no,” I said.
“I’m sorry, Claire. I just got the call. A written opinion will follow, but the gist of it is that since Dennis appears to be a capable father, Wheeler didn’t think Selwey’s decision was irrational.”
I let out a heartsick breath and sank into a chair. I had been counting on this, so sure we were in the right that this turn left me stunned. “What about me?” I cried. “Does he think I’m an incapable mother?”
“No. Simply that leaving the children with their father pending the guardian’s study was a reasonable move. Not necessarily the one he would make. But reasonable. That’s all the appeal was about.”
I closed my eyes and pressed a fist to my heart. What was wrong? I had admitted to making mistakes. Had they been that bad that the punishment should go on and on and on?
“Are you there?” Carmen asked cautiously.
“I’m here.” I sighed. “Then everything rests on Jenovitz?”
“For now. He’ll be our fastest source of relief.”
My heart dropped. “Assuming he rules in my favor.”
“Well, we’re working on that, too. If we can get figures to show that his findings are inordinately supportive of Selwey’s rulings, we’ll have a shot at another Motion for Reconsideration. It’d help if we could reach an agreement with Dennis on custody. Unfortunately,” another hesitation, one I liked even less, “there’s a problem. Heuber called right after the judge’s clerk did.”
I braced myself. “What?”
“Dennis has a buyer for WickerWise.”
“WickerWise isn’t for sale.”
“Heuber says,” Carmen mocked, “that Dennis had been weighing the Pittney option all along and now feels he wants that instead, so from you, by way of a settlement, he wants half the market value of WickerWise. Since you don’t have that kind of money lying around, he suggests selling WickerWise and paying him off. Your instincts were right.”
That was small solace. “I’m not selling. I’ll take this to trial before I do that.”
“Well, they’re ready.”
“To go to trial? Will they? Carmen, I can’t last that long.”
“No, no, sweetie. It won’t come to that. We have Dennis on Phoebe and Adrienne and whatever else Morgan is getting. Call this Heuber’s last stand. They’re posturing. Calling our bluff.”
Playing with me was what they were doing, and I was getting tired of it. “Hold out,” I ordered. My breath was coming from the place inside that had been messed with once too often. It was the same place that still heard my mother speak of regrets. I refused, absolutely refused to fall into that trap.
Brody had another solution. “Let Dennis find ten buyers for WickerWise. You don’t have to sell to any one of them. You can sell to me. That’ll give you the money to pay Dennis off, and you’ll still have WickerWise.”
Carefully, I said, “No, you’ll have WickerWise.”
“Same difference.”
“No. If you buy WickerWise, it’s yours.”
“What’s mine is yours.”
“You’re missing the point,” I insisted. “WickerWise isn’t for sale. I don’t want to sell to anyone.”
We were in the workroom. I had been working frantically since Carmen’s call, but my hands weren’t steady. The new reeds weren’t going in evenly. It was just as well that I stop.
“This is coming out wrong,” I tried. “It’s sounding like I don’t want you owning WickerWise, and that isn’t it.” I went to him, put my hands on his shoulders, and pleaded, “I’ll give WickerWise to you free and clear—but only if it’s of my own free will. I won’t have Dennis dictating something like this. He has a right to a say in what we do with the kids. I accept that. But WickerWise is mine.”
It sounded good. It sounded tough. Still, I knew I could lose it.
There was nothing I could do but wait. That was the worst. I waited for Carmen’s associates to find dirt on Jenovitz, waited for Morgan Houser to find dirt on Dennis, waited for Dennis to tire of fathering, waited for Jenovitz to reach his decision.
Seven weeks to the day after my children were removed from my care, Jenovitz spent an hour with them. One hour. Since neither Dennis nor I were allowed to listen, we didn’t know what was said. We waited in the kitchen, while they took the den.
Carmen had been right. Jenovitz was good with kids. Kikit liked him better than Johnny, who was naturally wary, but even he emerged from the meeting unscathed.
It was rather comical, those moments after, with Dennis and I hovering close, dying to ask what had been said in that room and not daring to. I don’t know how Jenovitz did it, whether he had sworn them to secrecy or what, but not even Kikit revealed much. She was more concerned with showing me the nest she had built for the purple alligator she had bought at the circus.
My heart nearly broke when Johnny asked, with unmasked hope, if I was staying for dinner.
&
nbsp; Of course, Jenovitz didn’t see that. He was long gone by then.
Brody’s meeting with Jenovitz was more upsetting.
It was held at six on the Thursday evening of that second week in December. I had taken refuge after hours in our Essex store and was sitting on the floor, in the light of a single lamp, surrounded by sketches of spring displays when Brody came in. Beyond my pool of light the store was dark, so I didn’t immediately see his expression, but his footfall on the carpet was emphatic.
My hands lay still on the pad. I held my breath.
He strode to the edge of the light. He had worn a dark suit for the meeting, but what with the knot of his tie loosened, his shirt collar undone, his hair spiked on his forehead, and my light flashing against his glasses, he looked stormy.
“Something stinks,” he said.
I didn’t have the breath to ask what.
“You’re right, Claire. He has his mind made up. He knew how he felt about me from the get-go. Talk about a stiff handshake. When he wasn’t being antagonistic, he was totally disinterested. He had a list of questions in front of him, but once he asked them, the answers might have been irrelevant for all the attention he paid them. What the fuck’s going on?”
“I wish I knew. It’s like someone has a personal vendetta against me. Either that, or I’m being made an example of.” I put my pencil aside. “What did he say?”
“‘Tell me about yourself,’ was what he said, and then he just sat there staring at me. I told him when and where I was born, where I grew up, how many siblings I had, where I went to school. I was just getting to the part about Dennis, when he started fiddling with the pipe.” He dragged his lapel to his nose, sniffed, tossed it away. “Let me tell you, if he’d asked me whether I minded, I’d have said yes. But he didn’t ask me that. He asked about my divorce. Didn’t want to know about my friendship with Dennis. Didn’t ask any of the pertinent questions, like what did I feel for the kids. Only wanted to know what had happened to my marriage. Assumed it broke up because of me. Assumed my wife got custody of Joy. Assumed I was the bad guy there.” He hissed out a breath and turned his head to the side. “Okay, so I was.” He faced me again. “But whenever I tried to jump ahead a few years and tell him the kind of father I’ve become, he asked some other insulting question. Like whether I ever had ‘my women’ in the house while Joy was visiting. Like whether I didn’t feel like a turncoat working first for Dennis and then for you. Like wasn’t I worried Dennis would name me in an alienation of affection suit. Like didn’t I feel like an impostor when I spent time with Kikit and Johnny.” He spat out a bark. “Boy, did I answer him quick when he hit me with that one.”
His indignance made me smile. He was such a laid-back, easygoing sort on the average, that explosions of passion were all the more meaningful. When those explosions were on my behalf, I loved him even more. Not only was he championing my cause, but he was validating every one of the feelings I’d been getting from Jenovitz myself.
“Then he asked what my intentions were,” Brody said.
I waited to hear his response, but he wandered off to the shadowed front of the store. His large frame bent when he set his fists on the sales desk.
“Brody?”
His voice was less distinct coming back to me. “So I told him. Maybe it was defiance, after the impostor crack, but it seemed to make sense. He knows your marriage is ending. He knows how close you and I are. I figured he’d be thrilled to know I wanted to marry you. I figured he’d be thrilled to know we’d be able to offer the kids a stable two-parent home.”
I rose and went to him. My hand found its way to the highest, broadest part of his back. It was stretched tight by his pose. “He wasn’t?”
“Nope. Said I had gall, wanting your business and you. Said I was complicating the custody issue. Said I was confusing the kids. Said I was distracting you at a time when you couldn’t afford it.” He turned his head, almost looking at me but not quite. “Said I’d be doing you more of a favor by leaving town.”
“No.”
He didn’t move his head. His eyes found mine past the inner rim of his glasses. “Maybe he’s right.”
“No.”
He pushed up from the desk, drew himself to his full height, and looked at me directly, and for the briefest moment I imagined what it would be like if he left. The sense of loss was devastating.
“No,” I said a third time. I grabbed his tie, high, and held on.
“I’d do it, Claire. I’ve loved you for years—”
Pulling on the tie, I raised up and silenced him with my mouth. The kiss was hard and willful. When it was done, I covered his mouth with my hand.
But Brody could be willful, too. Taking my wrist, he lifted the hand and said, “I lived most of those years thinking I’d never have you, and I could have survived that way. I was acclimated to it. It was better than nothing. But I know you, Claire. I know what your kids mean to you. If the choice comes down to me or them, I’ll give it all up and vanish.”
“Without asking me what I want?” I cried in a burst of anger. “Without giving me a say in the choice? You’re starting to sound like them!”
He hooked an elbow around my neck and dragged me close.
“In the first place,” I reasoned from that sheltered spot, “if it’s true that Jenovitz has already made up his mind, it won’t make one bit of difference whether you’re in the picture or not. In the second place, I’m not living without you.” My palms were under his jacket, moving over his shirt from waist to armpits. I knew just what was beneath that shirt, had nuzzled every inch.
It was mine. I wasn’t giving it up.
“They’ll make you pay.”
I drew my head back fast. “Who? Dennis? The judge? The GAL? Who in the hell are they to tell me how to live my life? Like they’re paragons of virtue,” I muttered, feeling a great swell of contempt. “Well, I’m tired of being put on the defensive. I’m tired of having to second-guess everything I do for the sake of meeting some standard that isn’t anywhere near as good as the standard I’ve always set for myself. I’m done doing it, Brody,” I warned. “If Jenovitz doesn’t give me my kids, I’ll take Dennis to trial, and I’ll go from one court to another, if I have to. I’m fighting. I’m fighting for the kids, and I’m fighting for you. I’ll even fight you for you if I have to.”
I stopped talking. There was only one person who could tell me if I would have to do that. I awaited his decision.
It came in slow increments—a movement at the corner of his mouth, a sibilant catch in his breath, a quiver in his biceps, the quickening of his pulse—until finally I saw it there in the dark, felt it in marrow and memory. We had discovered each other, Brody and I, making love anywhere and everywhere as though we had been abstinent for years. We had, in a sense. At least I had. I had never had sex like that, conscious sex, the kind that made you aware of each of its intricate elements. I had never known the pleasure of the process. With Brody, it could be slow and sweet, or hungry and hard. It could be dark or light, verbal or silent. He might not have been able to clap to a song, but the rhythm of his tongue was compelling and the beat of his hips was strong. He knew what to do when for the utmost sensation. In that, his timing was perfect.
In Brody’s arms, I rediscovered each of my body parts. Beneath his hands and his mouth, they became things of beauty, and the appreciation wasn’t one-sided. I had never before explored a man’s body, had never before had the desire. What I had with Brody went beyond desire to insatiable curiosity. I knew how soft the hair under his arms was after a shower, and how vulnerable the skin was at his groin. I knew how tight his nipples could get, and how the ridge on the underside of his penis curved ever so slightly when he was fully aroused. I knew how his hair varied in texture from one part of his body to another. I knew how the pattern of scars on his knee felt against my lips, and the way his crooked pinkie fit the curve of my breast. I knew the taste of his earlobe, his navel, his semen.
“Christ,
Claire,” he managed to rasp before he brought his open mouth down on mine. His hands were fierce holding my head, flexing here, shifting there to better angle me. He ate at my lips, used his teeth on my tongue, pulled the breath from me again and again.
We had made love in lots of places. After those first times in my chair-and-a-half and shower, there had been our beds, our kitchens, Brody’s laundry room, my workroom, even under a thermal blanket on the rocks outside my lighthouse. I’m sure there were lots of reasons for it—defiance, daring, curiosity, novelty—but the bottom line on each occasion was need. We needed each other, right then, right there, needed to make the ultimate connection that said we were something more than we had been before, that we weren’t alone, that we loved in the most intimate sense of the word.
So now we made love in the store. It was a challenge, what with Brody wearing a suit and the store so pristine, but accomplished with surprising ease—what wonderful things aren’t?—the freeing of one of my legs, Brody’s unzipping. There was added excitement to being fully clothed on top, to feeling the abrasion of fabric against breasts and nipples, so discreet there, so bare and naughty below.
We didn’t move much at first, and that, too, was exciting. I liked holding still with Brody rock-hard inside me, liked the feel of his slightest shift, liked the hoarse, whispered words that told me how tightly I sheathed him and how splendid it felt.
In time, we did move, of course. After a slow slide down the leg of the desk, we sprawled on the carpet and gave in to the need that had built. Brody had the ultimate control, coming close time and again, time and again holding back. Only when I reached my climax did he let go.
A Woman's Place Page 31
