A Woman's Place: A Novel (21 page)

I wanted to tell Brody that and more. But I didn't dare call. I didn't trust myself that far.

Sunday morning, he took things out of my hands. I had been up at dawn feeling lost, so I had driven to the office and set myself up in the workshop removing the rest of the broken weavers from the rocker I had started on the week before. I found the growing number of holes jarring, so I worked quickly. I wasn't more than an hour into it when Brody snowed up with brunch.

I gave him a short in, said something about having parked out of sight of the house where he wasn't supposed to have seen the car, and went on with my work. I tried to pretend he was there on his own business, even tried to drum up anger or indifference, but neither came, and then he had warm bagels and veggie cheese and lox arranged on paper plates on the empty end of the worktable, and it was too much. I told myself I was hungry.

Was I ever.

How could I resist warm bagels--they were whole grain, my favorite, smart, smart Brody--and hot black coffee, chicory blend, my favorite, Page 107

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too. When my best friend said, "It's been a shitty week for you, and you haven't told me a thing, so, come on, I want to hear," how could I not answer?

It spilled out, all the frustration and the heartache, and, yes, the excitement of seeing the children, but that was a given. It was the other that was new, that I needed help with, the business of visitation rights. "Was it as hard for you with Joy?" We were on stools at the worktable with a token corner between us. I had my thighs crossed. Brody's legs were sprawled. He was on his third bagel, though for the life of me I couldn't see where the first two had gone.

"Hard, yes," he answered, "but in a different way. When it happened to me, I'd only been married for four years and a father for two, nothing like the length of your marriage or how long you've been a parent. Marriage and parenthood is a way of life for you, so changing it hurts more." He paused to frown, then went on without pride. "Me, I was never into it that way. My marriage was shaky from the get-go. Joy was supposed to help." He snorted. "Brilliant, huh? Boy, were we dumb."

"Young."

"That, too. I took all the away assignments, because Mary Anne and I got along best when we weren't breathing down each other's necks. So when it came to a split, it wasn't like I was used to seeing Joy every day." I had met Mary Anne when she and Brody were dating, when she was studying law and he business. Dennis and I had been at their wedding and seen them several times a year during their marriage. We guessed early on that things weren't right, and had been neither surprised nor terribly disappointed when they split. Mary Anne prided herself on being an intellectual. She had been drawn to esoteric thinking and had surrounded herself with others of that mind. They had an air of superiority, off-putting for those of us not quite as gifted. I had always found her--them--boring. She went into teaching soon after Joy was born, and was still there. I hadn't talked with her in years. Nor had I talked about her. It had seemed an invasion of Brody's privacy during those early years, and later had been irrelevant. I had always assumed Brody felt the same way, either that, or that his loyalty to Mary Anne kept him quiet. Suddenly I wondered.

"Go on," I urged.

He took a long drink of coffee--mostly cream and sugar, I didn't know where those calories went, either--then smacked his lips, set down the cup, and said, "I was a lousy father."

"You're a great father."

"Now, maybe. Not then. The divorce agreement gave me certain times with Joy, so I saw her then. I'm not sure I would have otherwise. She scared the hell out of me."

{ smiled in disbelief. "Joy?"

"She was two" he said, embarrassed. "Diapers, bibs, braids--1 didn't know what to do with her. I'd never done any of it until Mary Anne and I split. Then it was like instant parenthood. I was nervous with her, which she sensed, so she clung to Mary Anne when I came for her and ran back to Mary Anne when I brought her back, which made me feel about as Page 108

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welcome as GO. She didn't want to come near me. So I said, that's okay, that's great, I'll spare her the pain. I canceled a visit here, a visit there, more than I care to recall."

I was trying to fit the Brody he was describing with the one I knew.

"When did it change?"

He didn't answer, just sat there chewing on the second half of that third bagel.

"Brody?"

"When Johnny was born."

I didn't make the connection. "Yes?"

He finished the bagel, wiped his hand on his jeans, looked me in the eye, and said, "I was jealous. You guys were so happy to have this little thing. I sulked for a while--"

"You didn't." "I did. I'd go home after holding Johnny and feel sorry for myself that I didn't have something like that. Then I realized I did."

"Joy would have been seven by then."

"Yup. Past diapers and bibs. She could take herself to the bathroom and braid her own hair. She didn't scare me so much." It occurred to me then. "That was when you took her to Disney World."

"Had to do something super to win her over. She barely knew me. Remember what I did? First came Disney World, then Hershey Park, then the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone. It was easier being together if we were busy. She was nine, Johnny's age now, before I had the guts to have her here with me for more than a day or two at a stretch."

"Who'd've guessed it," I said. "You were great with my kids right from the start. I recall your changing a diaper or two, even giving a few baths."

"It was different with your kids. No one expected me to do anything. No one even asked me to do anything. There was nothing of the power play that there always was between Mary Anne and me. With your kids, it was the kind of thing that if I didn't just jump in, I'd miss out." His voice lowered, eyes glinted. "I was tired of missing out. Having your kids was the next best thing to having you."

I choked on my coffee. It was a minute before I could catch my breath, another minute before I had my chin properly wiped. Then I wailed, "You aren't supposed to say things like that."

He shrugged, but the light in his eyes didn't dim. I lowered my own to my coffee, took one sip, then another. I brushed bagel crumbs into a pile with the side of my pinkie. I looked at the container of veggie cheese, the plastic spreader, the discarded coffee cup lids--anywhere but at Brody. "Think Dennis knew?" he asked.

"You never did anything improper."

"I keep thinking I caused this."

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My eyes flew up. "You didn't. Dennis has been dissatisfied with our marriage for a while."

"Have you?"

I didn't answer as quickly. I had only begun to soul-search on that score. Thinking aloud, I said, "Not consciously. I wanted my marriage to work, so I clung to the positives and glossed over the negatives. I should have been more honest, I guess. More realistic. But no marriage is perfect. So where's the cut-off point? At what point is there more bad than good? At what point do you say 'enough'? Dennis clearly reached it before me."

"Clearly," Brody said. He shifted on the stool, reached into a back pocket, pulled out a piece of newsprint, and handed it over. It was folded in half, then again.

I unfolded it and read the short caption beneath the picture. "Dennis Raphael and Phoebe Lowe, dancing at Friday night's Bar Association Gala," and having a wonderful time of it, to judge from their smiles. Dennis had a great smile. It made a woman feel like she was the light of his life. There had been a time when he had smiled at me just the way he was smiling at Phoebe.

I studied the clipping a little longer. "Why am I not surprised?" Not surprised, but hurt. Very hurt.

"That's from Hillary's column. It could mean anything." I refolded the paper. The pain was muted that way. "I think they're involved. I mean, seriously involved. When I threw it at him--I was being facetious --he didn't deny it."

"And he accuses you?" "He says the rules change once you separate."

"He's right, there," Brody said in a pointed way that put us right back where we started.

Looking at him then, I searched my conscience for germs of infidelity. His features were so very familiar--warm brown eyes behind those wire rimmed glasses of his, the ghost of freckles across his nose that were visible only at sky lit times like these, a jawline that was faintly squared and shadowed, full lower lip. I had never touched those features as a lover would, neither with my fingers nor my mouth. But there were different ways to love.

I had loved Dennis because he was my husband. I loved Brody because he was my friend. I had loved Dennis because of what he was, loved Brody because of who he was.

I respected Brody, craved his company, relied on his opinion. Was my love for him deeper than my love for Dennis? Was I more attracted to him than I was to Dennis?

Why hadn't I seen it before?

"I need time, Brody. If I do something that even hints of wrongdoing, I'll lose my kids."

"There's a double standard here, you know that, don't you?" I threw a hand in the air. "What else is new? Every woman knows there's Page 110

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a double standard." I left the end of the worktable where we had eaten and went to stand at the end with my rocker. I studied the folded paper, the picture of my husband with his paramour--his alleged paramour. I wasn't ready to say it was fact, wasn't ready to think that Dennis had cast me off so fast, much less for someone younger, for someone blond. It was just a picture. Like Brody and me hugging was just a picture. Double standard. Not fair.

"When a woman competes in a man's world under a man's standards," I said, "she has to be twice as smart, twice as good. Oh, sure, there's affirmative action. That may get her in the door, but once she's in, she hits a walkway of glue. I offer franchises to women. I favor female franchisees. So they're in the door, but to get a loan to make it happen? You've seen the grief they get sometimes. They can't get the loan because they have no track record, and they can't get a track record without a loan. Are you going to get pregnant and default the bank officer asks. Or leave town with your husband and default? Or decide after six months that you don't like owning a franchise after all, and default? Men would never be asked those things." I pushed the picture of Dennis and Phoebe into my pocket. Out of sight, it was less hurtful. "So what do we do? If we want to succeed within the system, we have to work within it. I'm trying to do that, Brody. I'm trying."

He rose and came toward me. "Maybe more than you have to." I wasn't sure I knew what he meant, I only knew that my insides stirred the closer he came.

He stopped within an arm's length, and hooked his fingers in the back of his jeans. "Don't sacrifice our friendship. Don't give Dennis the satisfaction of that. Okay, so we don't need to be together, to be together, but we can still spend time together, can't we? I don't like feeling guilty when I look at you or call you on the phone. I don't like having to think twice before I give you a hug. I don't like having to measure every word I say."

"You? Measure every word?" I tried to laugh, but it came out sounding choked.

He touched my cheek then, hand warm from the heat of his body. His thumb traced my jaw, fingers outlined my cheekbone and slid into my hair, all light and tempting, almost make-believe. When I couldn't stand it anymore, I tipped my head into his palm, though whether to stop him or make it real, I didn't know.

"Did you ever wonder what it'd be like if we kissed?" he asked in a voice that was hoarse.

"No."

"Or slept together? Made love?"

"No. I can't, Brody. I can't now."

"Someday?"

"Maybe. I don't know. Up until two weeks ago I assumed Dennis would be the only man I'd ever sleep with."

"You were gone for two weeks before that, which makes a month. How much Page 111

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longer than that since you made love?"

I pressed my lips together and shook my head to warn him off. I wasn't ready to tell him that.

"Okay," he said as though he'd heard, "but will you start thinking about me that way?"

I tried another laugh. This one was slightly hysterical. "How can I help it?"

He grinned, then wrapped his arms around me and drew me close before I could protest. Once there, I didn't want to. Being held by Brody was being in the safest place that I had ever been in in my life. I just might have stayed there forever, if he hadn't kissed me on the forehead and released me first.

He was grinning as he backed away, one step after another, holding a hand up as though to slow me down, like was the one rushing things. Then, as quietly as he had come, he was gone.

I cursed him as I cleaned up the remains of our brunch, but halfheartedly. It had been a long time since I'd felt sexy, but Brody made me feel that way. As distractions from reality went, it wasn't bad. Carmen had it right. Dean Jenovitz was definitely stodgy. I guessed that he had spent the last thirty five years in the same office, behind the same desk. Once settled in the chair there, he blended right in with the rest of the decor--a little old, a little musty, a little ingrown. He reached for a pipe, rapped it against an ashtray, filled it with tobacco, tamped it down. It wasn't until he had a match lit and poised mid-air that he paused. "You aren't allergic, are you?"

"No, no. Go ahead." Pipe smoke--any kind of smoke--bothered me. But I could live with it more easily than I could live without my kids. I wasn't about to risk getting on Dean Jenovitz's bad side, not with so much at stake.

He lit the pipe, took a long drag, blew out a thick white stream of smoke, and sat back in his chair. "So. How are you?" Not quite knowing what or how much to say, I dared a quiet, "I'm all right. A little shaky, I guess. This all has taken me by surprise."

"Court orders can be upsetting. But you must have had some inkling of a problem beforehand."

"No. My husband sent me off on a trip without giving me a clue."