Best Intentions (17 page)

“Did he tell you that?”

“Yes. It has nothing to do with me. It was over before this.”

“Deirdre, I want you to be happy, I want that more than anything, but don't you think this is all rather sudden? You can't totally transform your life because of a few nights together.”

“I told you, his marriage was over. He'd already decided to move to New York before this. I had nothing to do with it. And it's not like I've been overwhelmingly happy lately.”

“I didn't realize you were so miserable.”

“I didn't say I was miserable. But don't you see, Lisa? I have a chance, a real chance. I wasn't sure I was going to get that again. I'm almost forty. I want children. Desperately. Sometimes when I walk in the park and see little kids playing my womb aches. I tried for so long to tell myself I could sleep with Ben while I looked for something more but I don't seem to be capable of that. For the first time in my life I don't want to hedge my bets. I want to give this thing with Jack a shot. A real shot. That's all I promised Jack, that if he moved to New York I would give it a chance.”

“If?”

“When,” she corrects herself. “I'm sure he's going to get the job. They're down to dealing with the fine print.”

“What about Ben?”

“Ben is never going to change. I went to him the other night and told him I needed some kind of an answer from him about our future. I wasn't asking for any guarantees, but I wanted him to say he would at least try it my way. I've certainly spent enough time trying it his. At a certain point don't you just have to shut your eyes and jump in? For all of Ben's flouting of convention, it seems to me he's the one most scared of taking a risk.”

“What did he say?”

“Nothing. It was so frustrating. He couldn't say yes and he couldn't say no. I realize he might not have wanted to hurt my feelings by spelling it out but at one point I completely lost it with his stonewalling. I didn't care what he said anymore, I needed him to tell me something. You know what his reply was? That after all this time I should be able to understand him without words. Can you believe it? I don't even understand him
with
words.”

I do not point out that there is a difference between not understanding and not wanting to understand. “You have to hand it to him,” I remark. “He managed to distill a millennium of male wishful thinking into one line.”

“He actually asked me how long the ‘serial monogamy thing' would have to last.”

I can't help but laugh. “What did you answer?”

“That I didn't think he would be going into it with quite the right attitude.” She leans back and hugs her knees to her chest. “For years, I've been bouncing back and forth, trying to figure out a way to make it work, but he stays exactly the same. I never thought I'd still be doing it at this stage in my life. I assumed I'd be settled by now.” She looks at me. “Ben will never want children with me. Even if he did, the chances of him sticking around to raise them are minimal, to say the least. Jack is different. He'll be there in a way Ben can't be.”

“He will be your ICE person?”

“Exactly.”

“So that's it?”

“Yes. I told Ben it was over, but I'm not convinced he believes me. I've done it too many times before.” She smiles wryly. “You remember the first time I broke up with him? When he told me he was seeing other women?”

I nod.

“I think he respected me for saying that wasn't good enough for me. Of course, I pretty much blew that when I went running back to him. In some convoluted way, I've been trying to win back that respect ever since. If not from him, then from myself.”

“Did you tell him about Jack?”

“I didn't go into details. Hell, he'd probably be just as happy to go on seeing me anyway.”

Deirdre leans back and when she speaks again, it is almost as if she is talking to herself. “Don't you think I know that another woman would have been out the door ages ago? Don't you think I wish I was that other woman and wonder why I'm not? It's like desire for him is somehow imprinted on my DNA. Maybe I've stuck it out with Ben all this time because I'm the real commitment-phobe. But I can finally break that pattern now. With Jack. I can choose a different kind of life.” She picks up her necklace, a thin gold chain with a small heart paved in diamonds. “He gave me this,” she says, with an almost shy pleasure and pride.

I look at the heart resting in her hand. “It's gorgeous.”

She nods. “It is, isn't it?”

“You're sure about all this?” I ask.

“Yes.” She smiles. “I think. All I know is that I'm going to try not to screw it up this time. Lisa, I need you to be happy for me. I need you on my side.”

“Of course,” I reassure her.

“Maybe the next time Jack comes to town the four of us could have dinner again,” she suggests, hoping to re-create a past we never really had. “It would be so much fun.”

“All right. I'll talk to Sam.”

“Good.” She smiles, relieved. “Can I tell you a secret?”

“What was the rest of this, something you're posting on the Internet?”

She laughs, leaning closer, almost whispering. “The last time Jack was here? When we had sex?”

I groan. “Do I have to know this?”

“We didn't use birth control.”

I rear back. “Deirdre.”

“Relax. What are the chances of something happening so quickly? But it's a start. For both of us.”

“I don't know what to say.”

“Don't say anything, then. Please.”

We move on to debate whether there is really such a thing as flat-heeled boots that don't look hopelessly frumpy with skirts (a pipe dream Deirdre insists that at some point I simply must give up), the merits of Emergen-C versus Airborne and whether or not you can lose more weight if you stop exercising—of course you have to stop eating as well, a minor point, though still worthy of consideration. But it is all just background noise to Deirdre's news, reconfiguring the past, reimagining the future, changing the geometry of what it appears will once more be the four of us.

After Deirdre leaves, I look in on Claire, who is lying on her bed reading a bodice ripper cloaked as history that she got out of the school library.

“Everything okay?” I ask.

“Fine.” She looks up at me and almost smiles before remembering that she is thirteen and I am the enemy. “Oh, by the way,” she says, “I found your phone in the bottom of the coat closet when I was looking for my scarf before.” She gets some satisfaction from this, vindication no doubt for all the times I've scolded her for misplacing hers.

“Thanks. It must have fallen out of my coat pocket.”

“It's on my desk.”

I pick it up and leave her room.

As soon as I am safely out in the hallway I lean up against the
wall and look down at the foreign object in my hand.

It is, in fact, a disposable cell phone, the kind you pre-pay for so that there will be no record of calls made, no inconvenient bill sent home, no evidence.

And it isn't mine.

W
hen I was much younger, before marriage, children, there were days when I found it difficult to leave my bedroom, when my skin hurt if exposed to air, my eyes squinted painfully under the assault of daylight. They would descend, these days, and then vanish without warning, without apparent cause or cure. I kept them private.

And then they simply stopped. There was Sam, the girls, there was the rampant busyness of tending to young children with their overlapping demands and the exhaustion that could rock through your marrow at the end of the day and still leave room for happiness. Above all I was not, I was never, lonely. The memory of those bedroom days faded, like a sharp pain you once experienced but no longer feel and so don't quite believe ever truly existed.

Until now.

Everything is dim inside of me.

All Saturday night and Sunday I say little, do little, eat little. Talking is an effort. I tell Sam and the girls that I'm not feeling well and then grow angry at how easily they accept my explanation, how blind they can be. When she was younger, Phoebe would become agitated if I wasn't well, literally yank me up, force me to stand if I had the flu or a stomach bug. Now my withdrawal simply adds a low-level off-kilter air to the house. No one tries to make me rise.

I lie in the bedroom for most of the day, the lights off, and think about that phone.

I rack my brain but I cannot come up with any other explanation. It must be Sam's.

When Deirdre calls to tip me off about a sample sale I do not mention my resurrected suspicions. She would either deny them or assure me, with that great feminine faith in the omnipotence of communication, that Sam and I can work things out if we only talk, go to a marriage therapist, whatever. I thank her for the sale info, hang up and go back to staring at the ceiling.

By early evening it has become accepted wisdom that I have some sort of twenty-four-hour bug and I do nothing to enlighten my family. Rather, I admonish them to wash their hands frequently to keep from catching it. I listen to them arguing about whether to order in Chinese food or Thai or pizza for dinner and burrow deeper into the quilt. Sam checks on me every now and then and I assure him I need nothing, want nothing. I pretend to be asleep when he comes to bed. I'm not ready for confrontation.

I will stay here, lying in the dark, for as long as possible, forever if I can. Limbo is preferable to an alternative too painful to contemplate.

On Monday morning, I sit in my office paying little attention to the swirl outside my door. I have had Petra pull all the beauty accounts and am staring at them without absorbing a single word when Favata walks in without knocking.

He sits down, picks up a magazine from my desk, studies the celebrity post-baby weight-loss cover and then drops it. After glancing around and finding no other distraction he finally begins to speak.

“How are you making out with Tessa Caldwell?” he asks gruffly.

“All right. I think her writing is improving.”

“Do you?” There is a sideways glint in his eye. “Do you really? I find that surprising.” He leans forward on his stubby, chubby elbows. “Regardless, you've dragged your feet on this long enough.”

“I don't understand.”

“I thought I had made it clear that I expected you to fire her.”

“But…”

“I've covered for you with Robert, Lisa. But enough is enough. Call HR. Today.”

He leans over, picks up the magazine he had been glancing at and leaves my office with it tucked under his arm.

It is all I can do to keep from throwing my tape dispenser at the back of his head.

Instead I get up, shut the door and sit back down at my desk, burying my head in my hands, my eyes and throat burning.

Just what does he mean, he's covered for me?

I bite my lip in anger until a salty taste fills my mouth.

The setup is clear, even if a course of action isn't: I can throw Tessa under the bus, which may or may not save my job. Or I can fight Favata on it. In which case Tessa and I will both in all likelihood lose our jobs.

I dig my nails into my palms as my mind spirals in an ever-tightening knot of anxiety, fear and resentment: I can't quit, I need the job, If Sam leaves me, If I leave Sam, If my world falls apart, My world is falling apart, Sam is having an affair, I need the job, I can't quit.

There are times, I realize, when you simply cannot do the thing you most want to. But I seem incapable of movement, of action in any direction. Here. At home. Anywhere.

I don't know how long I sit at my desk, fighting back tears, ignoring the pinging of my e-mail.

Finally, resigned, I pick up the telephone and dial.

After two rings, a woman answers. “Hello?”

“Is David Forrester available?”

“I'll check. Who shall I say is calling?”

The assistant is just doing her job but I'm ready to kill her. I give her my name instead.

“Lisa, what a nice surprise,” David says when he picks up.

“Is this a good time to talk?”

“I'm heading into a meeting but I have a couple of minutes. Are you all right?”

“No. I'm about as far from all right as you can get.” I tell him about Favata's edict.

“He's obviously setting you up to look bad in front of Merdale,” David summarizes when I have finished. “If you balk, he'll claim it shows a lack of loyalty to the new order. And if you fire this woman he'll be able to get more of his own people in. Not bad.”

“I'm glad you're impressed by what an asshole he is. I thought you were on my side.”

“I am on your side.”

“Then tell me what I should do.”

“I have people waiting for me in the conference room. If you can meet for lunch, we can hash it out then.”

“Today?” It takes so much energy to remain upright, so much sheer will to go on pretending to be stronger than I am that I'm not sure I can withstand his scrutiny.

“Yes, today. The way you describe it, you don't have much time on this.”

“Of course.”

“Good. I'll have my assistant make a reservation and e-mail you with the details. Lisa?”

“Yes?”

“Sit tight. We'll work this out together.”

“Thank you.”

Despite everything, I feel a brief sliver of hope. It is too fragile, though, and vanishes before I can get to know it.

The gray-carpeted main dining room of the Japanese restaurant is suffused with the discreet hush of money, the tables set far apart to enable deals to be brokered with polite circumspection. I search the diners in their sober suits, their heads bent in concentration over menus and whispered negotiations, and finally spot David seated at a corner table in the rear almost hidden from view, scrolling down his BlackBerry.

He rises as I approach, his eyes steady while mine skitter nervously from his face to the room and back to his face. I offer my hand to shake but he leans over to kiss me hello, leaving my arm stranded in midair.

“I hope this was convenient,” he says as I sit down.

“Yes.” He must know it is only blocks from my office. “Thank you for doing this on such short notice. I didn't know where else to turn.”

“I take my job as rabbi very seriously.”

I smile, suddenly shy in his physical presence after the intimacy of our e-mail. Floundering in the uncharted space between the two, I reach for my glass of water and end up spilling icy liquid all over the table before David catches it.

“Oh God, I'm sorry.”

“Don't worry. I find a little bit of klutziness charming.” He hands me a napkin and we busy ourselves blotting the table. “Most of the women I run into these days are all so polished. I like it that you're not.”

I groan. “That's one of the most backhanded compliments I have ever received.”

“I didn't mean it to be. I really do like that about you.”

“All I ever wanted was to be one of those polished women,” I confess.

“Trust me, you don't.”

The waiter silently removes the mound of wet linen and gives us fresh napkins.

“Can we start all over again?” We unfold the napkins on our laps. I square my shoulders. “How was your weekend?” I ask with exaggerated formality. We need to back up, ease into each other. “You were at your country house? The Hamptons?”

He smiles, playing along. “No, it's too social for me there. I'm something of a recluse by nature.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

“Granted you'd have to define
recluse
as having a house in Columbia County rather than the South Fork.”

I laugh. “Try again.” Two and a half hours north of Manhattan, Columbia County has become the destination of choice for artists with money, moneymakers who prefer to be around artists and filmmakers who pride themselves on knowing the local farmers by name rather than waiting on endless lines at Citarella. Of course,
the price per acre for all this authenticity has tripled over the last few years, something the weekend residents can both bemoan and take to the bank. “We must have different definitions of
recluse,
” I tell him.

“You're right,” he agrees. “Every time I think I'm doing something original it turns out to be just another cliché. Of course, the only way to be truly original when it comes to real estate is to live in a place with no running water and rats the size of steer. I'll settle for the pretense of originality.”

When the waiter reappears, David pauses to speak to him in Japanese before turning back to me. “Can I order for you or would that be presumptuous?”

“I'd like that.”

The two men engage in an enthusiastic conversation that involves much deliberation and eventually nod their heads in mutual approval.

“I'm impressed,” I remark when the waiter leaves.

“Cheap trick,” he replies. “I used to travel to the Far East quite a bit. I ordered a selection of things not on the menu, by the way, along with the more standard yellowtail. I realize you are having the day from hell, but that's no reason not to eat well. Quite the opposite.”

“Day from hell is putting it kindly. I seem to be having the month from hell.”

“How about if we start with today's problem. Is she any good?”

“Is who any good?” I have completely forgotten why we are here.

“The copywriter Favata wants you to fire.”

“Tessa. No, not particularly,” I admit.

“I see.”

“That's not the point,” I protest.

“The female reticence to fire people has always baffled me. I understand that you feel bad, that's natural, no one likes this kind of thing, but your emotions should not be the guiding force. If someone is incapable of living up to expectations, making excuses for them will only hurt you in the long run. It always comes back to bite
you. Under normal circumstances, I'd tell you that, because you essentially agree with Favata, you should go ahead and fire her, no matter how difficult it is.”

“But?”

“In this case, stalling might be a better option. Favata wants to get more of his own people in there. It would be to your benefit to hold him off if you can. We just need a little more time.”

I am struck by his use of the word
we
. “Time for what?” I ask. “For them to come up with new ways to torture me?”

“I am getting close to something. About Favata,” he adds.

“What?”

“I can't go into details yet. I need to get some proof first. But if I'm right it goes a lot deeper than sexual harassment. And it will get him out of your way for good.”

“You're being very cryptic.”

“I'd like to be sure before I say too much more.”

“Is it filthy, will it totally destroy him?” I ask hopefully. “Was he caught having sex with a donkey in a dominatrix outfit?”

David laughs. “This is a new side of you. I think I like it. Sadly, there were no hooved animals or whips involved, at least as far as I can tell.”

“Damn. You know,” I add more seriously, “one of the things I don't get is if he was accused of sexual harassment, why did Merdale hire him?”

“I can name at least five male executives who have been charged with harassment, even abuse,” David answers. “They apologize, pay up, go to rehab or take a couple of anger management classes and get their old jobs back. If they were good. If not, all bets are off. I don't need to tell you it's still an old boys' network.”

“You have no idea how depressing that is.”

“I didn't say I like it. I hate it as much as you do.”

“I wonder if his wife knows anything about this.”

“Probably not.”

I play with my chopsticks, the pale wood smooth and slippery in my hands. “Can I ask you a question?” I say quietly.

“Of course.”

“Why do men cheat?”

“It's not that complicated. All they really want is for a woman to tell them how big and strong and brilliant they are. Wives have an unfortunate tendency to stop doing that.”

“There has to be more to it than that.”

“You'd be surprised. I'm not convinced women are any better. They want someone to remind them how beautiful and sexually attractive they are.”

“Has anyone ever told you that you have an overwhelmingly cynical view of relationships?”

“Biology is cynical.”

“What about free will, responsibility? Doesn't that play any part in the equation?”

“Of course. I didn't say I think any of it is inevitable. But you asked about motive. In most cases, motives are quite simple. It always comes down to money, sex, ego or addiction. All you have to do is figure out which.”

“Were you faithful?”

The corners of his mouth turn up. “Talk about getting right to the point.”

“Never mind. I didn't mean to pry.”

“It's all right. Let's just say my marriage broke up due to a series of unfortunate events.” He pauses. “No. I wasn't faithful. I'm sorry.”