Best Intentions (18 page)

“You don't need to apologize to me.”

“What I meant was, I'm sorry that it happened. For any number of reasons. One of which is that I realize it diminishes me in your eyes. I wouldn't make the same mistake again, by the way.”

“Good to know,” I say dryly.

“Lisa, what's this all about? I get the feeling we've moved way past Favata. Are you all right?”

I shrug.

“I can be a good friend. If you'll let me.”

I push a single grain of rice about the tablecloth with my thumbnail. “Everything's fine.”

He stills my hand with his fingertips. “I don't believe you,” he says gently.

I look down, feel the warmth of his touch seep in, and all the hurt I have been struggling to quell begins to rise up. I try to push it back but tears break through the thin membrane of propriety. Now, in this sedate expense-account restaurant with a man I barely know, I feel the onslaught and am powerless to stop it.

He gently brushes away the first tears from my cheek. “Lisa?”

“I'm sorry, I'm so sorry,” I manage to get out.

“What is it? Please, let me help you.”

I shake my head.

“No job is worth this,” he tells me.

“It's not the job.”

“What is it then?”

I look up into his eyes, open and kind and waiting, and I give in, give in to my need to tell someone, give in because I have no defenses left and he is holding out the promise, the temptation of comfort. “I think my husband is having an affair,” I say.

“Sam?”

I nod.

“I see.” David's face registers very little. “Are you sure?”

Sitting with our sushi untouched before us, I tell David everything. It streams out of me, from the late-night phone calls to the lies about Chicago ending with the disposable phone I found on Saturday. Maybe I need a little of his clear-sightedness. Or perhaps it is simply protection I crave. Deep down, there is still a part of me that believes men are able to do that, take care of things. All I know is that I don't want to think anymore, I'm not even sure that I can. I want someone else to do it for me.

While I speak, David leaves his hand on mine, steady, sure.

“What did you do with the phone?” he asks when I am done.

“I threw it out. It was like having something contaminated in the house. Besides, Sam can't very well ask where it is.” Tears well up in my eyes once more. “David, you have to understand something. I love Sam. I've spent virtually my entire adult life with him. We have children.”

“I know that. And I hope you can work this out.”

I take a deep breath, beginning to regain some composure.

“Have you checked his finances?” he asks carefully.

“No. Why?”

“Men often start moving things around to protect their assets if they are planning to make a move.”

“Sam's not like that. He's…” I am about to say “honorable,” it is what I have always believed. I don't finish the sentence.

“Don't do anything until you have consulted with a lawyer,” David tells me. “I can give you some names if you'd like.”

“Oh God.” It is suddenly so real.

“I'm not saying what I think the outcome will be. I'd just like you to be prepared.”

How do you prepare yourself for heartbreak, I wonder. Or betrayal.

“I can't be as coolheaded as you,” I reply, resentment creeping into my tone. Maybe I don't want his advice after all. “I can't plot out every step before I take it.”

“I'm sorry. I didn't mean to sound like such a hard-ass. Believe me, I'm not. I may be a great strategist when it comes to business or giving advice about other people's lives, but I crumble with the best of them when it comes to romance. Once your heart enters into the mix, it's all improvisation. I'm just trying to help. It's hard to see you like this.”

“I know that. I'm sorry.”

“Don't be. I'm glad you told me.”

“Are you?”

“Yes,” he says. “I am.”

He smiles and then he leans over, gently moving a loose strand of hair from my eyes, and presses his lips softly to mine.

I
glance at the clock. 6:07.

I shut my eyes and try to fall back to sleep for twenty minutes until the alarm goes off, but the noise from the kitchen is growing more purposeful. The papers hit the table with a dull thud, cabinet doors swing open and squeak shut again.

I pulled away. That is what I remind myself, what I have been reminding myself of all through the restless night. I pulled away from David's kiss.

But not before I felt the lingering imprint of his lips on mine, not right away.

This is how it happens, a touch, a kiss brushed off and then not, and suddenly you are there, in a foreign country you swore you would never end up in, it was for other people, not you, not your husband, not your marriage.

We weren't supposed to be that couple.

I shake my head. I moved my lips away from his, embarrassed, confused, but not unmoved. It was not David I pulled away from but myself.

Is that how it happened for Sam?

I have been conjuring images incessantly for days, nights now, visions of faces, of bodies, hers, his. Who would he desire, who would
he give in to or pursue? Men's tastes, even my own husband's, are often inexplicable.

All I know is that she is not me.

A drawer slams vehemently shut in the kitchen. I hear the silverware rattle.

There is no way I am going to fall back to sleep.

Though Sam has wandered the apartment at dawn with increasing frequency, ravaged by insomnia, he has always been careful not to wake us, tiptoeing around on bare feet. The clatter seems purposeful, intended to rile me.

I turn on my side, taken with the guilt-ridden notion that he somehow knows about David's kiss and that is what he is banging on about. But how could he?

I sink back into the memory once more, his lips, the way I parted with him on the street corner with barely a good-bye, sadly, reluctantly, but resolutely turning my back, walking away.

Which seems to be a whole lot more than I can say for Sam.

Furious, I give up on the prospect of sleep and head into the kitchen. Despite what David advised—do nothing, say nothing until you are fully prepared—I am hell-bent, finally, on confrontation.

Sam is standing with both hands pressed against the counter, his back to me, his shoulders, beneath a worn gray T-shirt, hunched over. “I don't fucking believe it,” he mutters, to himself or to me, I'm not quite sure. He turns around before I have a chance to say a word. “Look at this,” he demands, thrusting the front page of the
Times
business section into my hands.

Annoyed at being thrown off course, I take the newspaper from him, searching impatiently for whatever it is that has upset him so much. It's impossible to miss. Just below the fold there is a photograph of Eliot Wells with the headline:

 

LEXIMARK FOUNDER BEING INVESTIGATED

FOR PRE-DATING STOCK OPTIONS. SPECIAL

PROSECUTOR CALLED IN.

 

I glance at Sam before reading further.

“I knew it,” he says bitterly. “No one believed me, but I knew it.”

“No one,” of course, includes me.

I am slammed up against it, completely blocked. I realize that he couldn't have known my intention when I stormed into the kitchen, couldn't have planned this, but still.

Sam looks over my shoulder at the headline once again. “I'm fucked,” he proclaims.

At this particular moment, I don't give a rat's ass about Eliot Wells, but I have to say something. “At least it shows Simon your instincts were on target.”

“A lot of good that does me.”

“You gave it your best shot. There will be other stories,” I say feebly. Comforting Sam is not exactly high on my priority list.

“This is a goddamned disaster,” he reiterates.

“Don't you think that's a bit of an overreaction? You had no choice. You were told to drop the story. No one can hold this against you.”

“You just don't get it,” he says irately. “You have done nothing but second-guess me from the beginning. You never made the slightest effort to understand what I was trying to do.”

“That's not true.”

“Yes, as a matter of fact it is. All you cared about was how my going after that story might affect you.”

He slams his mug down, spilling coffee across the tile. I watch as brown liquid swims into the grouting. “I need to go in to work and make some calls.” He leaves the room before I can say anything further.

I pour myself some coffee and sit down, staring at the table.

The girls, needless to say, manage to sleep through all of this. When they finally realize Sam's absence halfway through breakfast, I tell them he had to go in to work early and they return to their cereal, unconcerned. It is hard for me to gauge how much of the turbulence they have picked up on, if it is sneaking into their psyches in ways yet to be discovered or if it has barely made an impression on their naturally self-involved thoughts.

Yesterday, when we were talking about the upcoming parent-teacher conferences (children are asked to be present at Weston, their voices must be heard), Phoebe blurted out how sorry she felt for poor Rebecca Klennan. “Her parents' divorce is so bad they refuse to go to the conference together so she has to sit through it twice,” she said.

“That sucks,” Claire agreed. They began to list the girls who would suffer a similar fate—the ranking of parental discord obviously a popular topic in the cafeteria these days.

I try not to cry in front of them.

I clear their breakfast dishes, hurry them along, get ready for work.

I put on makeup, leave the house, swipe my MetroCard, avoid all eye contact.

All through the sleepless night, between reliving David's kiss and Sam's lies, I thought of David's edict—ferret out the financial facts, arm myself. Be smart, be deliberate. When I get to work, I consider calling our financial adviser, the polite but stern man who helps us try to figure out whether we should be saving for college or retirement because clearly there is not enough money for both, but I cannot face him. It is ironic that just at the time you should be most sensible you are the least able to be.

I pull out the spreadsheets I was working on before I left last night and try to concentrate on them instead. Every minute or two I glance at my computer, at my phone. There has been no e-mail from David, no message since I turned and walked away.

The silence has taken on a physicality all its own, snowballing, pulling everything into it, dense, thick, pressing in on me. I should be relieved by it, or at the very least not surprised, but I am neither. I try to imagine what David is thinking, if he is embarrassed or feels rejected, if he assumes that my walking away meant good-bye. Which it did and it didn't.

The silence, the not-knowing eats at me. I briefly manage to convince myself that I owe him an explanation or apology, that he is being a gentleman and leaving it up to me to get in touch or not, my
choice, my move. This is, I realize, a convenient if specious excuse for reestablishing contact. But that doesn't mean it isn't true. Vacillating, I begin to type an e-mail but don't know what to say. I leave the e-mail open, blank.

At ten thirty, I look up to see Tessa Caldwell standing in my doorway. “Do you have a minute?” she asks hesitantly.

This is all I need. “Can it wait? I'm kind of busy right now.”

She takes a step closer. “It's important.”

I have no choice. “All right, come in.”

I have formulated a tentative plan to put Tessa on probation for a month to buy myself some time but I haven't had a chance to run it by HR. I have no idea what to say to her now.

“I brought you the rewrites on the Elan account,” she says, handing them to me as she takes a seat.

“Thank you.” I glance down at them, stymied about how to proceed.

“I know I've been a little slow on the uptake lately,” Tessa continues. “I appreciate your being patient with me. I owe you an explanation.” She breaks into a wide, self-satisfied grin. “I'm pregnant,” she announces.

Tessa is in her late thirties, single and of debatable sexual persuasion. This is not exactly what I expected. It is also an excellent piece of news. The surest route to a major lawsuit and a slew of damaging publicity is to fire a pregnant woman. Tessa has just bought me—and herself—nine months. I congratulate her heartily.

As soon as she is out my door I go into Favata's office.

“Can I help you?” he asks gruffly.

“I just spoke with Tessa Caldwell.”

He looks a bit surprised. “How did she take it?”

“I didn't fire her. I couldn't.”

“What does that mean?”

“She's pregnant.”

Favata puts down his pen and stares at me as if I have personally inseminated her just to spite him. Finally, he nods. “I see.” He turns to his computer and begins typing. I have been excused.

Back at my own desk, the person I most want to call to tell about the Tessa denouement is David. It seems crazy that I can't. I try to put it aside—it is for the best—and begin to rewrite three press releases myself, a task usually left to someone lower on the totem pole, but I am too distracted to concentrate on anything but what is missing.

There is no reason we can't be friends. I am blowing this all out of proportion. He is just waiting for a sign from me. Before I can talk myself out of it—or examine my motives too closely—I pick up the phone and dial David's number.

“Lisa.” I can hear the relief in his voice. “I'm glad you called. I wasn't sure you wanted to talk to me.”

“I'm sorry.”

“I'm the one who should apologize to you. I was out of line. I certainly didn't mean to upset you more than you already were.”

I don't know what to answer, I don't know what I want. To be asked so that I can say no and mean no but be asked again nonetheless. To keep my options open even as I deny them. To avoid finality, a closed door.

“You're not going to believe what happened with the copywriter,” I tell him, my voice too bright as I move purposefully, clumsily away from us.

We turn the details this way and that for far longer than they merit, trying to reassure ourselves that we are back on familiar ground, though of course we are not.

Eventually there is nothing left to say about Tessa Caldwell.

There is a long silence.

We listen to each other breathe. I play with the phone cord.

“David? The list of lawyers you mentioned,” I say quietly. “Can you send them to me?”

“Of course. If that's what you want.”

“I'm not sure what I want.”

Neither of us speaks.

“Lisa, I'd like to see you,” he says.

I take a long time before answering. “I need some time to figure things out.”

“I understand. Whatever you need. Will you call me when you are ready?”

“Yes.”

“Or if you need anything at all.”

“I will.”

There is nothing left to do but hang up.

For the rest of the morning I go through the endless stream of papers that Favata is sending my way, the mind-numbing P&L statements, the expense accounts returned with queries written on every item.

It is midafternoon when Petra tells me that Jack is on the line.

“Deirdre told me she saw you on Saturday,” he remarks after we exchange hellos.

He is mining for details, as avid as any sixteen-year-old girl to relive the minutiae of his courtship. It is natural, I remind myself, that he should want to speak to me of Deirdre. Romantic exhilaration, like confession, demands an outlet, and there is probably no one else he can open up to. One of the more annoying qualities of the newly in love is their conviction that happiness is contagious when so often, despite ourselves, the opposite is true.

“I don't know how to thank you,” he goes on. “For everything.”

“I really didn't do anything, Jack.”

“That's not completely true,” he says, as if he is paying me a compliment.

“Deirdre told me you almost have the job wrapped up.”

“Yes, that's one of the reasons I'm calling. I have to be in town next week for some final negotiations. I'd love to take you to lunch.”

“That's very nice, but you don't need to do that.”

“I'd like to. Plus,” he admits, “I have an ulterior motive.”

“Oh?”

“I was hoping you could help me.”

“With what?”

“Deirdre's birthday is coming up.”

“An event she would very much like to forget.”

“I was wondering if you could come with me to pick out a gift for her. Something special.”

“Do you have any ideas?”

“All I know is I want to show her how serious I am.”

“I think she realizes that.”

“I just don't want to blow it.”

I have been ignoring the blinking light while we talk but now Petra knocks and comes in despite my motioning for her to wait. “It's important,” she whispers.

“I've got to go,” I tell Jack. “I'll be happy to go with you. Just shoot me the details.”

“What is it?” I ask Petra impatiently as soon as I hang up.

“It's Claire. She says it's an emergency.”