“Are you crazy?” Steve hissed at me as we made our way across the floor to where Barclay stood, a half-drunk cup of coffee in hand, the center of a solicitous crowd. “Why couldn’t you leave well enough alone? You could see that Henry already feels guilty enough as it is.”
“Really?” I hissed back. “He sounded more relieved than anything else. It seems to me that people are overly pleased to give Eleanor her celestial discharge and forget about her. She may have been a pain in the ass, but she did have a point.” He glared at me, which was usually the prologue to an epic of snide remarks, but he couldn’t find anything to say that would not make him—us—members of that ill-bred company of persons who quarreled in public.
“Besides,” I added for good measure, knowing I had a captive audience for a moment more, “if Henry feels so guilty about it, he should be pleased to think that not everyone assumes that she committed suicide. And if she did do it, Barclay’s the one who should be feeling bad.”
Barclay, as a matter of fact, looked as if he were afflicted with a stupendous hangover: watery eyes, green-tinged skin, and a squint indicating that the light might be too much for him. Still, since he had had his conversion on the road to Del Mar or wherever and become the husband of Tricia, he was notoriously abstemious, so maybe it was only the flu. I knew most of the people around him, but the man he was talking to—a fleshy, ineffectual towhead with pale, sad eyes—I didn’t recognize.
“Of course it doesn’t matter that we divorced,” Barclay was saying earnestly. “I’ve told you, the firm will take care of everything. Henry Eastman is sending someone to go through all the papers tomorrow.”
The flaccid man murmured something I didn’t catch, and Barclay gave a reassuring little laugh. “You know Eleanor was always disorganized, and God only knows where she put the stock certificates and important papers. She didn’t even make a will, for Christ’s sake, after we got the divorce. Naturally I won’t have anything to do with handling her affairs. The firm is doing it all on behalf of the children.”
His listener nodded morosely. “I don’t see any harm in that.” The voice was flat. Midwestern.
“Barclay, I’m so sorry,” said Steve, extending his hand to offer the sincere handshake that passes for condolences among men. Their eyes locked, and Steve patted Barclay on the arm with his other hand.
“Thanks, Steve.” He noticed me. “Caroline, how nice of you to come. Tricia’s with the children. They’re taking it very hard, naturally.”
I leaned forward to give him a formal kiss on the cheek. I had considered what I was going to say. “This must be very hard for all of you.”
I thought I sounded wonderfully sympathetic, but Steve gave the inside of my arm a little pinch.
“Well, yes, it is,” Barclay said, his eyes turning a little glassy and his lips whitening. “I’m sure you can appreciate that, in spite of everything, I still had feelings for her.” He looked as if he might want to throw up or faint.
“Would you like to sit down?” I asked him. Lying hypocrite, I thought.
He straightened. “No, I’m all right. Excuse me. Where are my manners? I’d like you to meet Eleanor’s brother, George Johnson. Caroline and Steven James.”
George extended a predictably clammy hand and regarded us dolefully. Susan had hinted that Eleanor was not on very good terms with her own family. I began to see why. I guessed that Eleanor had bullied poor George as a child. She had probably choked him when she was forced to baby-sit, and left him brain-damaged or just permanently sullen. He was no doubt overjoyed that she was gone but had some dim notion that he should struggle not to show it. Well, in that, he wasn’t too far different from anyone else in the room. “I’m happy to meet you,” I told him.
“Likewise.”
We took our leave just as one of the secretaries in the firm teetered up in a too-tight purple acetate dress and four-inch heels. “What can I say, Mr. Hampton?” she said, dabbing her mascara delicately with a tissue. “It’s so sad about your wife.”
Barclay looked embarrassed. “You mean my ex-wife. But thank you.”
“Oooh, sorry. But I just want to say—”
We left them to it, stopping only to greet Tricia, who clearly had her hands full with her new charges. She looked harassed, though quite lovely, in a navy blue suit. Her lustrous black hair and warm brown eyes would have complemented a grocery sack, and a recycled one at that. In spite of myself, I felt sorry for her. There is no easy way to be the new wife at the old wife’s funeral, and Tricia was a bit short on imagination. She looked puzzled and kept casting stricken glances at Barclay, who seemed not to notice.
“This is awful,” she said, disarmingly.
“Yes,” I agreed.
4
“Did you have lunch?” I asked Steve when he slid behind the wheel of the Porsche. The car was used, so the leather on the seats was supple and broken in. He bought it the week he moved out of our house. I would have liked to ask him if he didn’t regret doing something quite so trite, but civility was too precious a commodity to be squandered on a sports car. I didn’t even want to begin to guess what it cost for a tune-up.
“I didn’t have time,” he said shortly, fitting the key into the ignition, which was cocooned in a minor forest’s worth of expensive wood. The engine turned over and promptly died. “Shit.”
“Would you like to get something? We could talk.”
He glanced at me sidelong, apparently dismissing the possibility that I was about to throw myself weeping upon his shoulder and beg for his return. The car turned over once more, caught, and came to life. “Have you found a job yet?” he asked.
I crossed my legs, no mean feat in that front seat, and looked out the window. “No.”
“Oh. The kids all right?”
“Yes. They miss you.”
“Jesus, Caroline, I see them every other weekend.”
“Yes, if you don’t cancel.”
He sighed with exasperation. “That was only once.”
“Three times in as many months.”
“Are you counting?”
“Jason does.”
“Jason also wants a car and an expensive college education, courtesy of his father. Sometimes I just have to work; you know that.”
“I know.”
There was a silence, thick as the carpeting beneath my feet. Steve maneuvered the car down Prospect, dodging the crowds of shoppers and bon vivants out for a day on the town. An occasional diver, encumbered with gear, moved ponderously down the hill toward the cove. The gulls and pelicans swooped overhead, coming to rest on their favorite rock, an expensive piece of real estate fronting the ocean, from which emanated nonetheless the acrid and unmistakable odor of gull guano. It was one of the few messy spots in La Jolla, and no one had figured out a way to bring the birds up to code.
Steve cleared his throat. “Since when did you get to be such a buddy of Eleanor Hampton’s?” he asked, swerving to avoid a minivan with New Jersey plates that had backed out of a parking place directly into our path. His tone of voice told me that he had been going to say something else. I felt a prickle of uneasiness along my neck.
“What do you mean?” I asked him, temporizing.
“Jesus, Caroline, I thought you couldn’t stand her,” he said, giving me a sidelong glance. “I mean, it’s one thing to be a little charitable at her funeral, but the way you were defending her to Henry just now sounded like you were long-lost sorority sisters or something.”
“I wasn’t in a sorority,” I reminded him. Stanford didn’t have them when I went there. I knew what he was worried about, though. He was wondering if I had caught Eleanor’s virus, if he would have to start posting a security guard outside his office at Eastman, Bartels, and Steed.
He watched me in tight-lipped exasperation, an old trick. I could never outlast him, no matter how determined I was. I gave in now.
“I didn’t really like her,” I conceded with a sigh. “But you didn’t have to be her soul m
ate to feel sorry for her. And I’m sorry, but I don’t think Barclay is as guiltless as everyone at the firm would like to pretend. He took her whole life away from her, and then he expected her to thank him for every support check he sent.”
“Well, why the hell shouldn’t she thank him?” Steve sputtered. “It’s not as if she did a goddamn thing in her life to earn it. Just look at her—she got at least thirty pounds beyond pleasingly plump, and, let’s face it, the children are a disaster. What kind of life is that to come home to? And then she never even tried to get a job, to make something of herself after she and Barclay split up. She’s damned lucky she died before he could petition the court to reduce her support payments and really give her something to be pissed off about.”
“Was he going to do that?” I asked, shocked.
He shifted his gaze quickly back to the windy road and muttered something unintelligible, so I knew that he had instantly repented this revelation. It was probably part of the firm strategy Eleanor had mentioned, and I wondered how much else of what I had discounted as exaggeration might really be true. Right then I decided I wasn’t going to say anything definitive to Steve about Eleanor’s box until I figured out what to do with the information.
“I heard he might be quitting the practice to become a judge,” I said, testing the waters.
Steve downshifted, throwing the car into too low a gear for the rpm. The grinding was deafening. “Christ,” he said. “Where did you hear that?”
“I saw Eleanor a few weeks ago. We were talking about…the firm. She mentioned it then.”
“What did she say?” he asked sharply. “Is that what you started to tell me about last night? Something about some materials she sent you?”
“It was nothing much,” I told him. “She was thinking about writing a book and wanted me to look at the first chapter.” I shrugged. “You can imagine what it’s like. I haven’t had the heart to read beyond the first page.”
I knew I had hit on the perfect way to trivialize Eleanor’s information. His voice softened. “I don’t know about the judgeship thing. Barclay wants to spend more time with Tricia, maybe start a new family. It’s been mentioned, that’s all.” He reached over and put his hand on my arm. “Look, Caroline, I’m not Barclay, and you certainly aren’t Eleanor. I know you’re worried about the future, but you can trust me. I won’t do anything to harm you or the children. I hope you believe that.”
I wanted to believe him. I had wanted so many things from him. Wanted him to ask me out, wanted him to want to marry me, and later, wanted him not to be angry or bored. I hadn’t wanted him to leave, either. Now it had come down to just wanting to believe that he didn’t want to screw me. “Thank you,” I said.
“You’ll be happy with the settlement, I promise you,” he told me. “There is one thing, though.”
Marital ESP worked both ways. My sensors went on instant alert. I waited.
“Maxine thinks she has someone who might be interested in the house,” he said casually. Too casually.
I longed to scream “What?” and scratch his face with my fingernails, but after a lifetime with Steve I had learned that he thrived on confrontation and was rarely bested in it. Maxine was the real estate agent who had sold us our house. I forced myself to stay calm. “Our house?” I inquired, as if the notion were preposterous.
He had enough shame left to look away. “She thinks she can get a very good price for it,” he said. “The way the market is now, it might not be a good idea to wait to sell.”
I twisted my wedding ring around on my finger and clenched my fist, so that the diamonds bit into my palm. “I didn’t know,” I told him in a measured tone, “that it was necessary to sell it at all.”
“Come on, Caroline. The house is worth a lot of bucks. If we do get a divorce, how do you think you can pay me for my half of its value if we don’t sell?”
“Am I going to?” I asked him, appalled. Still, I noticed that he’d said “if we get a divorce.” Talk about clutching at straws.
He shrugged. “The courts usually see that as fair.”
“Even though you have all the earning capacity, and I haven’t a prayer of being able to afford another house in this school district on my half?”
“No one’s stopping you from getting a job, Caroline.”
“And no one’s going to give me one that pays enough to buy a house in La Jolla, either. What about Jason and Megan? They’re upset enough about the separation without being uprooted from their school and their normal routines.”
“I’ve been thinking about that,” he said.
Now we’re getting to it, I thought. But I didn’t say anything.
“I thought maybe the kids could live with me while you…relocate.”
He coughed. “Temporarily, of course.”
This time I did scream “What?” It had the usual effect.
“There is no need to get angry,” he said, the voice of reason. “It was merely a suggestion. I thought it might help you.”
“You thought it might help me to give up the kids, sell the house, and move somewhere else?”
“You’re purposely misunderstanding me, Caroline.” He sighed. “You are going to have to face this sooner or later, you know. I’m just trying to work it out the best way for all concerned. The courts have frequently agreed that the children can benefit from living with their father. It isn’t so automatic anymore.”
“The children stay with me, Steve,” I said through a haze of panic. “Don’t even think about suing for custody.”
He must have picked up on my mother-bear ferocity. He backed off. “Did I say anything about suing for custody? You’re being ridiculous.”
“Am I?” I demanded. “Didn’t you say something to Megan about spending more time with you?”
“Certainly I did,” he said in a superior tone. “I miss her. Of course I’d like to spend more time with her. And Jason, too.”
“Then I suggest you start keeping your scheduled visitation times,” I told him. It was dangerous, though, to try to get the last word.
“It is clear that you are in no mood to be rational on the subject,” he said loftily. “All I ask is that you at least consider what I’ve said. We have a number of issues that we have to work out, and it won’t make it easier if you go flying off the handle all the time.”
I looked out the window, counting to ten and plotting my response. I had it. “That reminds me,” I told him, watching the bases of the palm trees flash by. “Rob wants me to go to his investment class to hear some guy talk about selling short.”
I heard a strangled sound from the driver’s side. I turned to face him; he was pale as yogurt. “You can’t be serious,” he gasped.
“It’s just a class.”
“But short selling is risky. You don’t know anything about it. You would be just throwing our money away.”
“Steve, you’re always telling me I should find out more about these things. I’m not going to start commodity trading or investing in Bolivian gold mines. Rob thought it might be interesting for me to learn more about managing my own money.”
“Rob!” my husband said with contempt—and more than a whiff of homophobia. “Besides, I thought you’d want me to continue managing it for you.”
“I don’t know what I want,” I said truthfully. “It’s just a class,” I repeated.
“Do what you want,” he said, pulling up in front of the house and turning off the motor. “Just don’t expect me to bail you out.”
“I won’t,” I told him, fumbling with what appeared to be a highly intricate door handle.
He leaned across me to open it and hesitated. “Oh. Did you offer to fix me some lunch? I’m running a little late, and I don’t have time to grab something.”
“I haven’t got anything in the refrigerator,” I told him and pushed open the door.
I raced up the stairs to Jason’s bedroom, possessed of an irrational desire to make sure he was still there. He was sitting on th
e bed listening to music that spilled out of the headphones in an appalling screech. His eyes were shut in bliss. I patted his knee.
He opened his eyes and smiled. “Hi.” I had to will myself not to throw my arms around him, sobbing. “How was the funeral?” he asked.
“Sad,” I said truthfully. “Listen, would you like to go to a movie later? You can pick.”
He opened his eyes wide. “Anything?”
“Well, no,” I said, recovering momentarily. “Anything appropriate.” I had to laugh at his expression. “I’ll be tolerant, I promise.”
“Is Megan coming?” he asked suspiciously.
I shook my head. “She’s spending the night with Marcie. It’ll just be the two of us.”
He considered. “Okay, I guess.”
“Great. I’ll catch you later.”
My domestic tranquility temporarily secured, I raced downstairs again in search of outside reinforcements.
“Gene,” I breathed into the phone, trying not to reveal that I was trembling on the brink of a full-blown anxiety attack, “can you possibly do me a favor and come over for a few minutes?”
I heard static and the honking of horns. He was talking from his car phone. “Gee, Caroline, I was on my way to the office.”
Gene Stewart was one of our oldest friends together. He had gone to law school with Steve and, like my husband, had joined a corporate firm in San Diego. Unlike Eastman, Bartels, and Steed, Gene’s firm had not made it into the big leagues, but he was reasonably content and comfortable. We had had an easy friendship with him and his wife, Mary Ann, until she went away to med school and never came back. Gene didn’t seem very worried about it and courted an amiable string of casual girlfriends. He made sympathetic noises when Steve moved out on me, but he hadn’t exactly said, “Call me if you need anything.” I’m not even sure if he’d implied it. Still, I thought I could trust him, and I needed advice.
Making Waves Page 6
