A Woman's Place: A Novel (25 page)

Barbara Delinsky - A Woman's Place

doing the two weeks of on-site training we required. If anything could distract me from my personal woes, this was it.

Back at the office, I sorted through the latest orders submitted to our Pennsylvania plant. Brody had been the moving force behind the plant, which had opened three years before as a means of controlling product and price. He had found a small factory in the Philippines that worked with only the finest quality rattan from Indonesia and was willing to build frames to our specifications. I sent the specifications and approved the prototypes; they produced the product in the quantities we ordered. Once the frames arrived by the container in California and were shipped east, our refinishers and upholsterers in Pennsylvania completed the work.

Initially, we had concentrated on turning out high quality reproductions. In no time, we were producing original designs, and what a challenge they were. The most basic details could make or break an item-the pitch of the back, the height and depth of the seat, the width of the arm, the density of the cushions. I had to keep tabs on what was selling. What wasn't was discontinued and, once an analysis had been done as to the why of it lest we make the same mistake twice, was replaced by something fresh.

Brody called from our boutique in Palm Springs. The franchise had just changed owners, and while we knew the new one--she had trained here, too-this was our first on-site visit. I had already seen the first sales figures. Understandably, given the number of retirees there, the most successful pieces had higher, firmer seats. Now Brody told me about an eye-catching reconfiguration of the showroom, about the new sales help, about the owner's community contacts. The word was good. I took as much solace from the sound of Brody's voice as from what he said. I loved his enthusiasm, loved his optimism. I loved the way I could sit back and let him talk, loved the way I could sit back and let him work. I didn't have to watch everything he did. I trusted him to do things right. He was easy. So easy. And sexy. That voice. I kept him on the line as long as I could. He was the best distraction of all. Three o'clock arrived. Doubting I would be able to concentrate while Carmen's meeting was in progress, I took refuge in my workroom. I removed the last of the broken weavers from the antique rocker and considered just going right on to the cleaning and reweaving. I was eager to put in, rather than take out, eager to rebuild. But I didn't want to have to backtrack when that was done, so I put the matching table where the rocker had been and set about removing its bad weavers, too.

There were fewer broken pieces here. I had most of them picked out and discarded, when Angela poked her head in to say that she and Vicki were leaving for the day.

That was my sign. I was meeting Carmen in her office at six. I cleaned up, changed back into my suit, and drove to Boston. I hadn't been in her reception area long enough to do more than blindly skim the table of contents of Forbes, when Carmen strode down the hall. I searched her face for a hint, any hint, of what had gone on in that meeting, but saw none.

"What's the word?" I asked.

She hitched her chin toward her office and waited until we were in it. Then she sat on the edge of the desk and sighed. "He isn't making it Page 131

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easy."

"Tell me."

"He wants half of all assets."

"He can have half."

"Including the business."

"Give him all of the business. It's his. I don't want it." "Half of yours."

"Half of mine? My business? You mean, half of its worth?"

"No. He wants part ownership of Wicker Wise

"You're kidding." But I could see she wasn't. "What for?" I asked, then realized it didn't matter. I shook my head. "No. The answer is no."

"That's what I told Art."

"First my children, then my business." Another headshake. Wicker Wise is mine. He played no role in creating it. He played no role in making it grow. He has no claim to it." But once too often of late things had happened that I had thought impossible. Less surely, I asked, "Does he?"

"That depends on how strong an argument he can make."

"He has no argument."

"He does," Carmen cautioned. "He has the same argument that women traditionally made in divorce negotiations. He was there. He was married to you the whole time you were building the business. As the principal breadwinner in those early years, he was the one who made it possible for you to spend time on the business. You didn't have to worry about providing living expenses." She broke from the litany to ask, "Did he contribute any money to Wicker Wise

"No. None. Zero. I saved money from the other work I did and took out a loan for the rest. He didn't offer to help. Not with money. Not with time. He thought Wicker Wise was an indulgence that wouldn't amount to much. So now he wants a piece of it? No way" I was furious. "And there's more. That other work I did? The stuff that gave me the money to start Wicker Wise I did that on my own time, in between being the pretty little hostess, the efficient little homemaker, and the competent little mommy. Another woman might have been having lunch with a friend or getting a manicure. Not me. Any free time I had I spent restoring antique wicker."

Furious? That didn't begin to describe what I was feeling. "Dennis wants to be a partner in Wicker Wise What a joke! He doesn't know the first thing about Wicker Wise He never wanted anything to do with it--never asked questions or made suggestions other than that I should put it on the market and get what I could. He thought it was a losing proposition. Thought wicker was a passing fancy. He sneered at the thought of my tying myself up with it. Trust me. If he wants Wicker Wise it's only because it's mine. Like the kids, I swear, more mine than his. He's a little boy playing his sour grapes game. What in the devil would he ever do as part of Wicker Wise And working with Brody and me? After all he's accused us of doing? No, Carmen. It has to be the money he wants."

"He says it isn't. He says he wants the job. Apparently he's dissolving Page 132

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his own business. It isn't doing well."

"No surprise there," I scoffed, but the joke was on me if I didn't turn things around. "Is he dissolving DGR for the sake of these negotiations?

What about the money he'll take from it?"

The look on Carmen's face should have warned me. She turned, took a paper from her file, and handed it over.

I studied it. The figures were astonishing. "It's worth nothing! What about his other holdings? When he puts together an investment package, he often takes a small piece for himself. Those small pieces must amount to something."

Carmen handed me another sheet. There wasn't much to see.

"This is it?" I was appalled. "The sum total of his business worth? What about life insurance? A retirement account? Stocks. He owns stocks."

"Sold. And as for the others, he borrowed against them. They aren't worth much."

I was stunned. "He kept talking about a nest egg. Every time he made one of his little investments, he said it was for our future. I felt safe all those years, thinking there was something." The fury returned. "Not even for his children, the bastard." I shook the paper I held. "Some of these were supposed to provide for the kids' education. Now anything that was there is gone. And this is the man who wants to run my company?

I don't want him touching it. He'll run it right into the ground!" I sat back in my chair. In the next breath, dawning realization brought me forward again. "I know what he's up to. He wants a foothold in Wicker Wise so that he can find a buyer and make me sell. That sleaze. He's been tossing out that possibility for years, kept telling me to sell and cut my losses. He wasn't thinking about my losses, because there aren't a hell of a lot. He was thinking about his gains!" I grew cautious. "Can he do this, Carmen? Do I have to take him in?"

"We're negotiating a settlement. We don't have to agree to a thing. Will the court make you do it, if it comes down to that?" She didn't answer right away, seemed to be thinking, weighing and balancing. "If the court decides that everything built during the course of the marriage should be considered joint property and split, Dennis has a shot. If we can make a case for his lack of accountability--if we can argue that he shirked his financial responsibility during the marriage--the advantage is ours. Unfortunately, either way involves a trial. A trial could be six months or more down the road."

"I don't care. I can wait. He's the one in the rush, not me. As long as the issue of child custody is decided sooner." I was counting on it. I wanted my kids. "The custody issue is decided separately, isn't it?"

"Theoretically. Heuber didn't mention it today. I assume he'll try to use it for leverage when we balk at the offer they made today. As far as court activity goes, everything we're doing there at this point relates to the custody issue only. Jenovitz's study certainly does. But if we disagree with his finding, we have the right to appeal. In that case, we would go to trial on the custody issue concurrent with the divorce."

"Six months down the road?" I started to rise, sat back down. Panic was beating its wings right around the corner. "Jenovitz can't go against me. I'll die living apart from the kids for six months. Something else has to give. So, what's our next step? How do we answer Dennis?" Page 133

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"For starters, we stall. Let Dennis think that we're considering his demands. If he asks you about it, don't answer. Say that you aren't sure, or that you don't know what your lawyer's latest thought is. Give him a sense of security, and he'll speak about you more gently when he talks with the GAL. In the meantime, Morgan is working on documenting a romantic link between Dennis and Phoebe. That could give us leverage of our own."

"A little character assassination."

"Uh-huh. He did it to you. What's sauce for the goose." I hated Dennis a little more just then for making me stoop so low. Some said that love and hate were two extremes of the same emotion. I didn't know about that. I did know that what I felt for Dennis in my anger was stronger than most anything I had felt for him before. If that meant what I thought it did, the overall shape of my marriage had been pretty sad, and if that was true, what was sad was my blind adherence to it.

I might have spent hours brooding on that, if Rona hadn't called soon after I returned to the lighthouse to say that Connie had had a heart attack. eleven.

Rona's panic came over loud and clear-Connie's heart had given out, she was in intensive care, the next few hours were critical. I phoned Carmen, phoned Dennis, phoned Brody. Then I took the first plane to Cleveland.

The trip was excruciatingly slow. I had bought into Rona's fright hook, line, and sinker, and imagined finding Mom unconscious, kept alive by machines alone. I imagined the doctors shaking their heads in despair, imagined us having to make unimaginable decisions. I imagined utter stillness in that hospital room, imagined utter stillness in Mom's apartment. I imagined the final farewell of a funeral. In fact, Mom wasn't quite that far gone. As heart attacks went, hers had been mild, caught quickly, and treated effectively. Yes, the next few days were crucial, the doctor told me when I arrived, and yes, she was definitely weak enough to be at greater risk than the average mild-heart-attack sufferer, but she was conscious and alert, sleeping lightly as we spoke.

"Don't ever, ever do that to me again," I begged Rona in a hushed whisper as we stood in the 1CU corridor a short distance from where Connie lay. "I thought she was gone."

"So did I," Rona argued, sounding thoroughly aggrieved. "It's scary seeing her hooked up to a million monitors. The way the doctors were racing around, you'd have thought they had brought her back from the dead once and were expecting to do it again. Don't get mad at me, Claire. I'm the one who's here with her, trying to hold things together."

I took a deep breath, my first in too many hours. "I know. It's just that I suffered during that flight."

"I was suffering here. It's one thing, now that she's stabilized, to look back and say she was never that sick. It's another thing when you're going through it. I'm sorry if I dragged you all the way out here under false pretenses, but she's your mother, too. I thought you'd want to know what was happening. Was I wrong?"

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"No." I sighed. "You weren't wrong." I pushed a weary hand through my hair, put a shoulder to the wall. "Of course I wanted to know. I'd have come anyway. A heart attack is a heart attack, and even without it, she's sick enough. Believe me, Rona, I wish I could be here more. But things are tense at home."

"Tense how?" she asked, but it might as well have been, "What's the excuse this time?" for the doubt on her face. I supposed it was time. Given all that she was doing for me here, she had a right to know. "Dennis and I have separated." She was utterly still for a minute. Then came an elongated, "No." Her voice might have held disbelief, even upset, but her face told a different story. She was clearly intrigued. "When?"

"Two weeks ago. Right after my last time here."

"You and Dennis? You and Dennis?" I gave her a look, couldn't help it. Feeling beholden to my sister was one thing, protecting my own wounds was something else. "Yes, Rona. Me and Dennis." She moved in on my swath of wall, clearly eager for details. "What happened?"

"Long story. I can't go into it now. The bottom line is that I've bought a smaller place."

"You moved out? Ah, so that's what the new phone number was about. But why did you move out? You're the woman. You're the one with the kids. He's the one who's supposed to move out."

I rubbed the back of my neck. "Yes, well, that's how things usually happen, but this isn't the usual situation."

"Why not?" she asked, indignant now.

"Because I'm the one with the money, and he's the one with the kids."

"Dennis has the kids? Claire." She made my name a three-note protest.