Leaving Sophie Dean

by Alexandra Whitaker

  Yes. Yes, Adam knew that. He worked there too. He, too, should have stayed for the “not obligatory, but you’d better be there if you value your job” cocktail party with the new clients. But someone had to be with the children; Milagros needed to get home by seven.

  With the tiniest flutter of a martyred sigh, Valerie set her work aside. Then she smiled bravely and asked with good cheer, “What’s for dinner?” Adam studied her face closely but found not a trace of irony there as she added heartily, in a way possibly meant to be flattering to him, “I’m starving!”

  * * *

  The greatest challenge is learning to separate the Lousy Husband from the Beloved Father, but it is essential to your children’s well-being and self-esteem that you do so. Remember, the fact that their father was a poor husband is no concern of theirs. Your ex-husband may very well be a jerk, but your children’s father is a precious person, and you owe it to them to treat him with respect.

  Sophie lowered her magazine (which had fallen open to an article on divorce, as all magazines seemed to these days), shut her eyes, and raised her face to the December sunshine filtering through the bare branches overhanging the bench where she was sitting in the park across the street from her house. Through her closed eyelids, she could see the shifts from light to dark as the branches stirred, and she felt lulled by the sounds of the wind and of children playing, her own two distinguishable among them. Moments like these are all that matter in life, she thought, and she was wondering dreamily why it’s so difficult to remember that when she was disturbed by a cool shadow falling across her face and a voice saying, “Hi.”

  She opened her eyes and saw a woman with short-cropped reddish hair backlit by the setting sun, standing with her hands in the pockets of her sweatshirt, her head tilted to one side. “Hi,” Sophie answered.

  “I’m not sure you’re aware of it,” the woman said, shifting her weight and her head to the other side, “but you enjoy something of a cult status in this playground.”

  Sophie shaded her eyes against the slanting sun to get a better look. “I do?”

  “You do. Mind if I sit down?”

  She sat, and Sophie was able to see her face at last: finely chiseled nose, small green eyes, thin mobile mouth. “Local legend has it that when your husband left you, you moved into a penthouse and hired his girlfriend to look after your children.”

  Sophie stared, then laughed. “What? But I don’t know a soul here!”

  The woman continued. “That doesn’t matter. You are the heroine of every divorced and single mother here, which is most of us. Please don’t tell me it’s not true—we would all be devastated.”

  Sophie smiled. “Then I’ll just say that, like most rumors, it has a grain of truth to it—”

  “Thank God!”

  “But my husband’s lover is not actually in my employ.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. Maybe I won’t tell the others—if that’s okay with you.”

  “Fine by me.” They smiled at each other, and then Sophie asked, “Do you know my name—or just my life story?”

  “Just your story, I’m afraid. I’m Florence. Flo.”

  “Sophie.”

  “I know your kids, from seeing you here. Matt and Hugo, right?”

  Sophie nodded. “You have kids, too?”

  “No. I just hang around playgrounds trying to pick up single mothers.” Florence burst out laughing. “Sure I do. Those are my two over there on the merry-go-round. The wild-looking kid with the blond hair, that’s my girl, Josie. And the little boy in the yellow overalls is Emerson.”

  Sophie smiled. “They’re beautiful.”

  “Thank you. So are yours.” Florence returned the smile, stretched her legs out, and leaned back on the bench. “Aren’t we lucky to have them?”

  Sophie’s heart twisted. “Oh, aren’t we?” She laughed, and tears sprang into her eyes.

  “Hey,” Florence said quietly. “It’s okay.”

  Florence also lived across from the park, perpendicular to Sophie’s, in a tall, ramshackle town house that she called the Life Boat, “because there are only women and children aboard, and it’s saved all our lives.” Three families lived there, each one headed by a woman on her own. Jean, the owner of the house, covered her mortgage with the rent paid to her by the other two, Mercy and Florence. They shared the kitchen and the living room on the ground floor. The second floor, with two large bedrooms and a bathroom, was Mercy’s; the third floor, with the same setup, was Florence’s; and Jean and her daughter had the top floor. There were five children in all, and the three working mothers juggled child care with jobs and social schedules, usually taking turns caring for the children but occasionally hiring someone jointly. It was a system that worked, and Jean was its inventor. She was a professional woman, neither rich nor poor, who on nearing forty still hadn’t met “the right man” but wanted to have a child. Raising one on her own seemed too lonely to her, for both mother and child, and too difficult logistically and financially. She didn’t want to put her baby in day care, and she couldn’t afford a nanny, and anyway the idea of having her child raised by someone paid to do it rankled. So on her thirty-ninth birthday, over a solitary bottle of wine, Jean dreamed up the Life Boat. And soon after, she bought a suitable house, got pregnant, and found two single mothers, Carmen and Sylvia—predecessors to Mercy and Florence—to share the new place with her. They both assisted at the birth of Jean’s daughter, Eliza. Carmen moved away when she fell in love (to be replaced by Mercy), and Sylvia eventually went back to New Zealand. That was when Florence moved in. “The key to the Life Boat’s success,” she explained to Sophie with the enthusiasm of the recent convert, “is the beautiful number three. Two women sharing a house wouldn’t work—it would be too intense, too much like a marriage, and logistically much tougher than three. With two people it’s either ‘my way or your way’—a power struggle. And what happens if one moves out? The other’s stuck, and her life falls apart. But with three there’s a team dynamic. Three is a stable number. A three-legged stool doesn’t wobble—Jean told me that. And if one woman moves out for any reason, the household can keep ticking while a replacement is found. On the other hand, more than three would be too chaotic and you’d lose that family feeling. Three is perfect. Three is the key. It’s a magic number, actually, if you think about it—the Trinity and all that.”

  No fathers made an appearance on the Life Boat. Mercy was divorced, and her two kids saw their father only once a year. Eliza had no contact with her father. And Florence? Sophie asked her about Emerson and Josie’s father.

  “Fathers,” Florence corrected.

  “Oh.”

  “Sperm donors.”

  “Oh!”

  “Except they delivered the sperm in person. Cheaper that way. And more fun—marginally.”

  “Oh, I see! And are they… involved in the children’s lives?”

  “No. And it couldn’t matter less. A child needs a father like a fish needs a hole in the head.”

  “You think so?”

  “Look, a child needs loving, caring adults, that’s for sure, but it doesn’t matter a damn who they are. They certainly don’t need to be attached to the sperm sac, that’s just biological supremacy. You know it’s only called a ‘nuclear family’ because it blows up. But that doesn’t happen in a Life Boat. Think about it—it’s the family model of the future! More stable than a couple, more fun than being alone, with more laughs, more free time, more money, and our children always in good hands. It’s ideal. Darwin himself would have approved.”

  “What if you met your perfect partner? Can partners move in?”

  “No. That’s a rule of ours. No couples. It ruins the dynamic. If we want to live with a lover, then we have to go. Life Boats are for single mothers and children only.”

  “Well, I must say, I’m intrigued.”

  “Great. Come over and visit whenever you like.”

  “Thanks very much. I’ll do that sometime.”
r />   * * *

  But as it turned out, their friendship was cemented the very next day. Sophie was once again reading a magazine, glancing up so often to keep an eye on the boys at the swings that she kept losing her place on the page. It wasn’t a very interesting article—entitled “Coping Alone,” wouldn’t you know—but it must have held her attention for longer than she thought, because when she looked up again, the swings were empty, and a quick scan of the playground revealed nothing either. Panic surged, and she was already on her feet when she spotted Hugo squatting next to a parked car and peering beneath it. She started toward him, feeling relief until she saw that he was speaking to someone under the car, someone who could only be Matthew and who, since no part of him was showing, must have crawled under from the other side—the street side, the dangerous traffic side. “Matthew!” she shouted, running toward them now, banging her thigh on a fender as she barged between two parked cars and out into the street. All she could see of him were his legs poking out from beneath the car, where he was lying on his stomach, apparently trying to reach something. Then she saw the car coming. A car was coming, and in its path lay Matthew’s little red-corduroy-clad legs. The driver had her head down, not looking at the road, fiddling with something, not looking. Sophie stood with her eyes locked on the driver as the car bore down on her son, her mind like molasses, thinking slowly, word by emphatic word: She doesn’t see him. But Sophie didn’t move. She stood stock-still.

  It was in a distant, dreamlike way that she registered a shout from somewhere, then someone hurling herself toward the car and smacking its hood in warning. There was a squeal of brakes, the driver was flung forward against her seat belt, the car rocked to a stop just before the little red legs, and the driver got out to help Florence—for it was Florence who had leaped into the street—pull Matthew out from under the parked car. He was clutching a clawing kitten. “I saved him! He was scared of that big dog, but I saved him!” Sophie observed the events as though at one remove. Numbly, she hugged Matthew and witnessed the driver’s departure. Dimly, she heard Florence say, “Hey, people freeze up. It can happen to anyone.” She submitted to Florence’s reassuring hug, gazing impassively ahead, seeing nothing there but her own inadequacy.

  * * *

  “So tell all!” Agatha said eagerly. “I’ve been dying to hear how you’re coping over there. You’ve been awfully cagey about it. Out in Milton, if memory serves?” She leaned toward Valerie, eyes shining with anticipation. “Come on, confess, it’s hell on earth, isn’t it?”

  “Not at all,” Valerie said airily. “It’s going quite well.” But she was fishing for a cigarette.

  “You can’t smoke in here,” Agatha reminded her. The two friends were sitting again at the window table in their favorite Newbury Street café, but today the cake trolley held no special appeal for Agatha, nor did the waiter, who was the petulant Mediterranean type she sometimes liked. So invigorating to desire neither chocolate nor Italians!

  “It’s going very well,” Valerie repeated, lifting her chin resolutely.

  Right, Agatha thought, so this is how she’s going to play it—the lofty princess. Fine. We’ll see who can wear who down. “But the kids are monsters, right?”

  “No, they’re not, surprisingly. They’re pretty sweet, really.”

  “Oh. Well, what’s the interior like?”

  “No kettles or potpourri, I’m afraid.” Agatha groaned with disappointment, so Valerie added generously, “But there’s plenty of crazy paving on the patio.”

  Agatha perked up a little. “What’s that?”

  “Nothing less than the emblem of suburbia, according to Adam. It’s when they lay out flagstones of different sizes—”

  “Oh, yeah, any old which way,” Agatha finished in a bored voice. “I know. Anything else?”

  “The walls are banana yellow and scribbled on,” Valerie offered, but Agatha was still looking glum, so she got to the point. “Look, the house is uninspiring, to say the least, and the kids are kids, but…” She smiled secretly, as if at an inner vision. “But Adam is won-der-ful. So tender and loving. It’s such a relief for him to have me there. He’s so grateful. You know, I think in the long run this experience—”

  “Hang on—is there a barbecue grill over there?”

  “A what? Yes.”

  Agatha chuckled knowingly; now they were getting somewhere. “Is it ‘themed’ in any way? I mean, is it shaped like anything special—the Leaning Tower of Pisa, maybe? A fairy grotto?”

  “It’s just a plain grill,” Valerie said in a hard voice, “and I don’t think it’s ever been used. Adam is not the kind of man you’ll find in the backyard wearing a chef’s hat and a funny apron, so you can just wipe that picture right out of your sick little mind.”

  But Agatha continued to smirk, making it a struggle for Valerie to regain her tone of gentle reverie. “I think this experience has served to bring us closer. Now I can really understand what he was going through when we met, and one day, when all this is over, when the mother is home again with the kids and we’re in our own place, I think we’ll look back on this as—”

  “Oh, that day! I know the day you mean. As part of the celebrations that day, pigs are scheduled to fly and hell to freeze over.”

  “What?”

  “Valerie, that wife is not coming back! Why the hell should she? She has her independence, her career, probably even a lover by now. She’s gone! And you’re stuck in her old life! That’s the ugly reality, so you’d better start coming to grips with it.”

  “But isn’t a mother supposed to miss her kids, for Christ’s sake?”

  “Not when she sees them every day. What could be better? Valerie, let’s face it. One, she is never coming back to that house. Two, she is not going to want those kids back—ever! She’s as free as the air, and you, Valerie, you—are screwed.”

  “You’re just trying to provoke me.”

  “You and Adam may in fact move out of that house sometime—I’m not saying you won’t—but you’d better look for a three-bedroom, because those kids are coming with you. Take it from me.”

  “Oh, right. But you’re also the one who said she would come screaming back home if I moved in. Remember that?”

  “That’s because you misled me into thinking she was a boring housewife who ate Danish, but she’s not like that at all. She’s Fannie Farmer meets Shiva the Destroyer. You never stood a chance against her.”

  “Oh, no? Well, I’ve got her husband.”

  “Hey, what’s the name of that order of monks that used to go release captive Christians from the Moors and offer themselves as hostages in their place?”

  “Piss off, Agatha.”

  “I think Pedro Nolasco was their founder. Thirteenth century? Ring a bell?”

  “I said go to hell!”

  “Okay, okay. We’ll talk about something else. Would you like to hear what’s going on in my life? Hey, that would make a change, wouldn’t it? Gosh, I wonder how people find out that kind of thing about one another.… Oh, I know! It’s, ‘Hi, Agatha! How are you?’ Would you like to try asking me that?”

  “No. But here’s something to cheer you up. Listen to this.” Valerie spoke in a suspenseful voice, enunciating carefully. “A couple of days ago, I received a telephone call from the very bowels of hell. It was a fiend in human form asking if I wanted to volunteer—wait for it, Agatha—at the local play group. Something involving the manufacture of puppets.” Valerie saw with satisfaction that her words had struck their target. “So there you are,” she said modestly, “and I hope that’s made your day.”

  * * *

  Sophie sat cross-legged on the ground, fretfully ripping up handfuls of dried grass. The sky hung lifelessly overhead, a uniform gray. It was chilly but windless, and her mood matched the dreary scene. Henry was lying on his back beside her, resting his head on her book bag and pulling withered leaves thoughtfully off a twig. He studied the bald stick for a moment, then tossed it away, picked up a new
twig, and began to pull off its leaves. “You never noticed your husband was unhappy?” he asked.

  “It’s not my job to read his mind. It’s up to him to put his thoughts and feelings into words.”

  “Some people aren’t good at that.”

  “I guess not!”

  He picked up another little branch and spun it between his fingers. “Do you still love him?” He rolled over, propped himself up on his elbows, and plucked off the dead leaves, one by one.

  She sighed and ripped up more grass.

  He plucked the last leaf and tossed away the stick with annoyance. “These twigs are starting to piss me off. They keep telling me you don’t love me, and I’m almost sure that’s not true. You don’t have a daisy on you, do you? We’ll get to the bottom of this.”

  She frowned, in no mood for jokes.

  “You know, he chose you to be his wife, but he does have the right to unchoose you.”

  “He does?”

  “Yes, he does. He can change his mind. That’s his right.”

  “Oh, I see. So actually you think like Jacob. With his beautiful, constantly changing, nothing’s-my-fault universe.”

  “We all have a right to change our mind. Your husband did it in a bad way, I agree. But try to separate what he did from how he did it.”

  “Oh, these pearls of truth!” she said angrily, hurling double handfuls of grass at him. “‘Separate what he did from how he did it.… Separate the bad husband from the good father.… Life is change.’ I am sick to death of these slogans, these smug nuggets of advice, these… these turds of wisdom! Why does nobody understand they do not help? They do not console!”

  “Get up,” Henry ordered, rising and pulling her to her feet.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m sick of it, too. I’m sick of dispensing truth like some guru to a self-obsessed, ill-tempered woman.” Sophie stared as he flung her jacket at her. “Put it on. We’re going.”

  “Where?”

  “Dancing. Hurry up.”