Young Wives

by Olivia Goldsmith

  “Isn’t it very warm in here?” Michelle asked. “Do you mind if I take off my jacket?” He shook his head and she shrugged the jacket off her shoulders, knowing that the little silk T-shirt she was wearing beneath it clung just perfectly. Worth every penny. She took a deep breath and pushed her breasts in his direction.

  “To finish up my confession,” she said, “there’s something else I have to be candid about. I have slept with other women.” She actually watched the man keep his face still, but he swallowed. It was a big swallow that moved his Adam’s apple like a high-speed elevator, down and up. “I did it at first because he wanted me to. Then, about two years ago, I met a woman who … well, she was different. Charles had introduced her and set up the threesome the way he always did, but she was just …” Michelle stopped. She tried to show shame. Then she put her head down, counted to five, and lifted her head again, tossing her hair. “I’m not apologizing to you,” she said. “I’m not ashamed.” He nodded. “I’m just telling you this because that is what Charles is using as his leverage, as an example of my so-called adultery. But the fact is, I do love her.”

  She leaned across and touched Reid’s knee. She could feel it, hot, through the fabric of his Brooks Brothers trousers. What else was hot in there, she wondered. Michelle made her voice almost break. “I think a woman has to love somebody or a part of her dies.” Oops. That was really a Lana Turner line, Michelle thought. But it appeared that Mr. Wakefield had gotten over the shock. She wasn’t sure if it was lust and greed that she saw in his eyes, or a combination of the two. “I’m not greedy, Mr. Wakefield,” she told him. “I’d settle for a hundred million. It’s nothing to Charles. Do you think your firm could handle this?” she asked. “Do you think you could?”

  “Oh, I’m certain that we could.”

  She smiled and stood up. “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you so much. I don’t want to stay here too long. I never know when I’m being followed. That’s why I used a made-up name. But I’m really Katherine. Katherine Moyers.” She extended her hand and this time she held his with both of her own. “We’ll have to talk about fees,” she said. “I know that this won’t come cheap, but I need to feel that I can trust you completely. That would be worth any amount of money.”

  He nodded. “I know that you can,” he said. “I just have to make sure that you know that you can.”

  “Well, time will tell.” She took her hands away. There definitely was a current between them. Some men were so easy, it was ridiculous, Michelle thought. She picked up her jacket and then turned to him again. “May I ask you for a very big favor?” she murmured.

  “Of course.” He nodded.

  “I would like you to meet Jenette,” she told him. “I mean, eventually she would probably have to testify. And I would just like her opinion of you. I have no family. I have no one else to trust about a decision like this.”

  “It’s no problem,” he said.

  “Everything is a problem when you’re Mrs. Charles Henderson Moyers,” she said with a sigh. “I’m staying at the Four Seasons, but you can’t come there. Do you know a bar where we could meet you, just briefly, when you finish work? Someplace quiet where we won’t be seen by anyone from my crowd.”

  “Of course,” he said, and Michelle saw he didn’t have a moment of hesitation. He was excited by the idea! He gave her an address, and then he walked her all the way to the elevator, pressed the button for her, and helped her in it. “See you at six,” he said.

  And she nodded as the doors closed. When she got off the elevator, she went immediately to the pay phone near the restroom and left a message for Jada on Angie’s home answering machine.

  Angie sat quietly, trying not to show any nerves at all. She’d arrived early so she wouldn’t have to reveal all of herself to Lisa at one time. Her face looked plain, and her dress did, too. She didn’t need Lisa to see her weight and totally gloat.

  Angie had made reservations at a Commonwealth Avenue bistro for the same time that Jada should be meeting up with Samuel Dumfries. Timing was everything. When Lisa finally came in, late as usual, and as tall and thin and blond as ever, Angie watched her look around the room, and, at first, pass over her. Well, she didn’t look like the old Angie, and she didn’t feel like her, either. She raised her hand and Lisa made a smile—even across the room Angie could see she wasn’t genuinely smiling, she made one on her face—then came toward the corner table.

  While Lisa, usually graceful, fumbled with the chair and her hello, her purse, and her coat, Angie felt how very pleasant it was not to have anything to feel guilty about. She didn’t even feel stupid anymore. Anyone you trust, any friend or confidant, always has the option of betrayal. With the grace of detachment, Angie could observe the woman she considered so thoughtless. Lisa managed to finally settle herself, then glance at her, only to avert her eyes and pick up the menu. “It’s good to see you,” she said. “You look great.”

  Two lies in a single breath! Angie actually almost smiled. “I feel great,” she said honestly, and thought of her child, the secret she was carrying.

  “Really?” Lisa inquired, and for a moment sounded surprised. Then she recovered. “Well, that’s great,” she said. “You’ve found another job?” she asked.

  Angie wondered if her “friend” was really interested, thinking about alimony, or just being competitive. “Yeah,” Angie said. “I’m doing a different kind of work.”

  “That’s great,” Lisa said.

  How many “greats” had that been in less than three minutes? Angie wondered. It was grating on her, so she smiled and said, “And I got a dog. A Great Dane.”

  “Great!” Lisa said again, and Angie couldn’t help it—she laughed, but picked up her own menu to hide her face.

  “Should we order?” Lisa said. “I’m just starving.”

  Angie knew what that meant. Lisa would order a salad with no dressing, and a piece of fish broiled without butter or oil. That was as hungry as Lisa ever got—for food, at least.

  The waiter arrived and asked for their orders. They asked for a bottle of Pellegrino, along with the mango chicken and asparagus that Angie wanted, and—big surprise—the salad and fish for Lisa. Angie wondered what Lisa ate when she wasn’t starving. She also wondered how she could have made a best friend of this woman. How had her judgment and taste been so clouded? But wasn’t there a time when they had liked each other, or had Lisa been acting all the time? Did Lisa eat at home? Angie wondered if Lisa brought Ben & Jerry’s to bed after sex with Reid, the way she used to.

  “I told Reid that I’d be out late tonight,” Lisa said, as if the name had floated between them. “I mean, I don’t know what your schedule is, but I have plenty of time.”

  “Great,” Angie told her, using the word on purpose. As if she wanted to spend more time than necessary with this woman. But timing was important. There was work being done by her friends while she sat here with her enemy.

  “Anyway,” Lisa went on. “I brought all the things you asked for. I thought I could save you a trip out to Marblehead. You know, I figured it might be … well, awkward or too painful for you.”

  Oh shit, Angie thought. Awkward? This was absolutely wrong, catastrophic, even. Why did something always go wrong? She had to get to Marblehead, and with Lisa, and in two hours, max. “Well, and I’ve brought something for you,” she said in a voice she managed to keep calm. She’d have a whole mango chicken to think through. Lisa wouldn’t defeat all their careful plans.

  51

  Taking tea for two

  Jada felt weird walking across Boston Common. People looked at her. Was it because she was black? Or because of her get-up? She certainly wasn’t dressed like a Bostonian, she thought. Leather pants were definitely not what most women wore in Boston. Jada got across to the other side of the park—that was apparently all the Common was—and after all those years of hearing about it, Jada was a little disappointed. She’d never been to Boston, and she’d expected more.

 
; Now, though, she had to hurry to meet Samuel Dumfries, the son of the husband of her mother’s cousin. What a way to find help, she thought! Only Bajans would bother to go through that much trouble, and when they did, the help given was usually incompetent. Still, she was desperate, and he sounded competent over the phone. What did she have to lose?

  She walked out of the Common and by a corner that looked very familiar, but it couldn’t be, since she’d never been in Boston before. Still, it was a place she’d been. She stood there for a second until it registered with her—it was the place where Cheers had been filmed, the place where everybody knew your name. Fine, she thought. Now she was confusing old television with real life. Except here everybody didn’t know Jada’s name, and that was a good thing, since she was about to perform lewd and lascivious acts, or at least pretend to, as well as meet with an off-shore lawyer to talk about illegal immigration. Jada shook her head. All her life she’d been a good girl, following the rules, behaving the way her mama told her to. How had it all come to this?

  She crossed the wet street and walked into the impressive warmth, color, and gold-leaf grandeur of the Ritz Carlton. She expected nothing from this. She was only showing up because she had nothing to do until the caper with Michelle at six. When she heard Michelle’s voice on the recording, she sounded all excited and put together. Good old Cindy. But now she had to walk across the Common and meet Mr. Dumfries for tea.

  She smiled. When was the last time she’d been on her own, well-dressed and in a city where she knew no one? She couldn’t remember. It made her feel adventurous suddenly, as if she weren’t thirty-four but twenty-four. She strode through the foyer and hallway. She hoped she didn’t look like a hooker—her walk had already proved to her that the hair extensions, boots, and leather did not exactly scream “Beacon Hill Matron.” At the concierge desk, she asked where tea was being served and was relieved that she was given polite directions. No wonder they called classy things “ritzy.” This was it.

  It was easy to spot Dumfries. He was the only black man in the room, and he stood up when she came in. He was tall, but a little too thin for his frame—and he was very, very black. It couldn’t have been easy for him on the island, where each shade darker usually meant a rung down the social ladder. Jada crossed the room and realized closer up that his skin had the kind of darkness that seemed to absorb light. His face was arresting—he had gray eyes, a light gray, and the whites of his eyes were very, very white. It made his face almost, well, spooky. He wasn’t DDG, but he was a handsome man, and when he smiled at her, she relaxed a little bit.

  “You are Jada Jackson?” he said.

  She nodded. “You have got to be Samuel Dumfries.”

  He smiled again. His teeth were very white, too. “Sit down, please,” he said. He didn’t have an island accent. His voice was deep, but his enunciation was clipped, precise. It was actually quite British.

  “Tea?” he asked, and she was surprised to see that he was already sipping a cupful. “It’s India, not China, but at least it’s properly brewed,” he said.

  “Well, thank goodness for that,” she wisecracked. Samuel Dumfries didn’t seem to get it. Jada thought of her Lipton tea bags at home. She’d forgotten how seriously some islanders took their tea. The English influence.

  He shook his head. “It is amazing that there are only two or three places left in all of Boston where you can get a cup of brewed tea.”

  “That has always amazed me,” Jada said, joking once again.

  But this time he turned to her, paused, and said, “You’re having me on, aren’t you?”

  “If that means I’m teasing you, you’re absolutely right. But I’m not sure that I speak English.”

  He smiled again. “I think you’re doing just fine,” he said. “Sorry I was so thick. I wasn’t expecting humor. I mean, your mother explained your situation and I …”

  Jada wondered what the hell she was doing. Well, she knew what she was doing—she was flirting. But she hadn’t done it in fifteen years. Why now? It must have been the leather pants, she thought, or maybe it was the hair extensions. She noticed him looking at her hair. It did look good. If she had an extra hundred and eighty-five dollars to throw away every month, she might keep it this way. “Mr. Dumfries,” she said. “I know I have a serious problem.”

  “So I understand. Sugar?”

  She blinked. Wow. Was Samuel Dumfries flirting with her? For a moment she thought he had called her “sugar.” Then she realized he was offering her the bowl of sugar lumps. Well, she’d already taken her lumps from a man. “No. Thanks.”

  “Milk?” he asked.

  “No,” she said. She didn’t give a damn about the tea. She never drank the stuff unless she had cramps. “Anyway, Mr. Dumfries, I don’t know how much my mother told you. Knowing her, it was quite a lot.”

  Samuel Dumfries smiled. “Your mother has never had a reputation for being tongue-tied,” he agreed. “It was quite a sobering story.”

  And she wondered how they’d told it, and how much of it he believed. Suddenly, she wished she wasn’t wearing this ridiculous outfit and the hair. She wished the orange lipstick and the flirting had never happened. Because though she’d come to this table in Boston without hope, something about this man, some emanation, gave her the feeling that he knew how to get things done, that he was used to having power.

  “Well, anything my mother told you is actually not as bad as the reality.” So Jada launched into the facts and she went through an entire tea pot, a jug of hot water, four lumps of sugar, two Kleenexes, and a trip to the ladies’ room before she was done. Samuel Dumfries listened through it all, nodding, asking intelligent questions, and looking at her with his strange gray eyes.

  He handled the waiter smoothly, and though they were the only black couple in the place, and had stayed so long past tea time that they were the last ones there, he never let her feel rushed, nor beholden to the staff. There was a deep calmness to him.

  “So,” he said, when she was finally done, “what will you do next?”

  “I’m going to be honest with you,” she said. “I know you’re an attorney, but I feel that I have to move against the law, or perhaps I should say beyond it. When my parents came to visit, they suggested going to the island; I had already thought of the idea but resisted. I’ve never even gotten a traffic ticket in my life. But now I’m sure that for the sake of my children, I have to get them back And I can’t wait for the court to catch up with what’s right and what’s good for them.” She waited for his eyes to close with disapproval, or for him to actually tell her he wouldn’t, couldn’t, discuss it. But instead he nodded.

  “One way to look at all common law is simple, as a code to settle property claims,” he said. “The unfortunate thing about that is that while the law is a truly beautiful construction, human conception of what property is has changed significantly while the law carries remnants of the old patterns. Our ancestors were once regarded as property. Wives were. So were children. Instead of thinking solely of the children, the law here is based on precedents and property. That, and of course, fake and misleading evidence.”

  Did he actually believe her? All the wrong steps, all the slanted testimony, all the accidents of fate that made her sound at the worst an incompetent mother, and at the best, a poor judge of legal help, the victim of a clever man? “So, if I can get them on a plane to Barbados, what is likely to happen once I get there?”

  They talked it over for a little while longer, until Jada understood that the situation would be far from ideal. As the light faded outside the window, so did her hope.

  “But do you know the Cayman Islands?” Mr. Dumfries asked.

  Jada shook her head. “You see,” he said, “since you’re not a citizen of Barbados, it would be difficult to find a way to block your husband there. But as an American in the Cayman Islands, a place where I do a great deal of business, if you had … well, a certain amount of cash on deposit, you might do very well. There would
be the added benefit of no reason for your husband to seek you out there, and the economy is booming. Anyone with a banking background like yours could find work. I just thought that perhaps …”

  Jada could hardly believe it. What was this guy’s NUP? “You mean you might help? You don’t disapprove of what I’m trying to do?” she asked.

  “Protecting your children? Certainly not,” he said. “Of course, I can’t condone breaking the law, but I certainly know what it is to live with injustice. After all, I was educated in the UK.”

  Just then Jada noticed his watch, the thinnest, most elegant she’d ever seen. But she also noticed the time. “Oh my God,” she said. “I have an appointment. And I can’t be late.” She’d expected nothing from this man, but somehow she had spent nearly two hours with him! It had seemed like twenty minutes. And she had been given some good counsel, support, and encouragement. Now, though, she didn’t even have time to be gracious about it.

  “I’m going to be late if I don’t leave right now,” she said. She stood up and he did, too. Awkward for a moment, she extended her hand. “I’m so happy to have met you. I’m going to think about your advice.”

  “Oh, do more than think about it,” he said. “You will need some help.” He took out a card and handed it to her. Jada had to leave, but she didn’t want to break this comforting connection. “Why don’t you give me your phone number?” he said.

  She gave him Angie’s number and picked up her purse. She hoped there was a taxi waiting right outside, otherwise she’d never make it. “Thank you,” she told him. And, much as she disliked having to do it, she left.

  52

  During which Jenette and Katherine play hard to get, while Reid is merely hard