Fairy Tale Blues (32 page)

“You can't leave the valley.” I thought for a minute. “We'll get you a lawyer from out of state, someone who owes Paul nothing—past or future. We'll get one from . . . Florida.”

Suddenly I recalled Annie telling me about meeting Daniel's fishing client, a lawyer who chose his cases based on a longtime grudge against wealthy, controlling men who abused their wives. Annie had reported that Daisy and Marcus knew this fellow by reputation; everyone in Florida did. He sounded like the Gerry Spence of East Coast Florida, though he didn't dress in leather fringe and cowboy boots like Gerry; instead he wore brightly flowered Hawaiian shirts and huaraches and maintained a deep tan. He'd told Annie that in the beginning he was fueled by revenge for a past experience of his mother's, but now he worked out of sympathy for women who had few resources, emotionally or financially. Maybe he'd have sympathy for Hadley.

I got up from the desk. I put my arms around Hadley.

“You can't stay with a bastard for financial reasons. And I can't do without you. When Annie comes back, she isn't going to work in here much—I can lay money on that.”

I hadn't actually thought that out before I said it, but I knew it was true. The days of Annie and me running the store on our own were over; the store was getting too big and Annie was losing interest. I patted Hadley, then picked up the phone and called Annie. She was out walking her dog, Bejewel or Bejesus or whatever the hell she named it. I put her on speaker phone.

The three of us talked for an hour. We sorted out problems, then assigned jobs. Annie's job was to track down the lawyer. Mine was to move Hadley out of her house and into a safe place immediately. Hadley's job was the hardest of all; she had to call the authorities.

 

The safe place turned out to be our house; I would sleep at the store. And Hadley learned from the authorities that two-day-old bruises or two-hour-old bruises all added up the same. Paul no longer held all the cards.

Hadley pressed charges against her husband of twenty years.

Paul learned from the police that Hadley had left him and was filing for divorce. He digested that news in the clinker while waiting for his lawyer to process him out. I was the only one on our team who took pleasure in that image. It saddened Annie and worried Hadley. I never liked the guy once he told me his “humorous” story about setting the house thermometer fifteen degrees higher than its reading, just to knock his wife off-kilter. I should have slugged that jerk right then.

The next day, when Hadley came into the store, I apologized to her.

“I'm sorry I didn't see the bruises before.”

“You weren't looking. You haven't been in the store much.”

“I don't deserve an excuse.”

“It wasn't an excuse, Jess. It was an accusation. You've been playing hooky like a tenth grader.”

That took me back. I had slept on the office sofa inside a sleeping bag last night just for her. Showered in a cold, concrete stall in our employee restroom that morning. And it looked like I'd be doing both again for who knew how long.

“I'm not covering up for Paul any longer, and as long as I'm at it, I'm not covering up for you any longer, either.” She looked severe. “I don't know how Annie manages, but I am about crazy dealing with you.”

Hadley walked around her desk, picked up a stack of papers and dropped them back on her desktop. “Your crap.” She kicked the waste-paper can, my footstool, out of her path. “Everywhere I turn: your crap.” With her toe she nudged my ski boots, my snow boots, two other pairs of boots. “Your crap.” She pointed to the heap of my coats on a chair. “You spread yourself and your crap all over everybody else's space. You seem to deliberately place your crap in another person's way, just so they have to bump up against it.” She walked over to the windowsill, pointed to a pile of catalogs and books. “Your crap.”

If she said those two words once more I was going to start yelling myself. But suddenly she deflated and dropped into her desk chair, the only place vacant for her to sit. Yesterday's clothes were flung over the back of my chair. Today I was wearing some of the store's inventory: fleece pants and a sweatshirt. I looked like I was going to yoga practice instead of work.

Hadley said, “This is a small town. This story is going to ruin Paul. His practice will flounder. I spent half the night struggling with that. The other half I spent struggling with my problems working with you.”

“Hey, I hardly compare to some guy who beats you up.”

“There are different ways to beat up someone, Jess. You've taken advantage of me. I'm here today because I care about you and because I believe Annie will return and I'll enjoy my work once again. If I didn't believe that, I'd have to—”

“Hold it. Don't even say it. Okay, I've been distracted. Annie
is
coming back. This has been tough for all of us. But . . . but—”

“You were ‘distracted'—if that's the word—before Annie left. Distracted by new gear to test and customers and reps to entertain. You were distracted by fresh snow, sunshine, ski slopes, backcountry trails. . . .” Hadley got up, moving restlessly around the desks again. “I'm sorry, Jess. I'm sorry.” She folded her arms and stood looking out the window, her back to me.

“A person starts to tell the truth and it's like a dam breaks; all the boundaries erected for love and money . . . crumble.” She turned toward me. “I don't blame you if you fire me now. You've given me your home and helped me with my trouble. I love you and Annie; I'd like to continue here at TFS. But I cannot nor could I ever count on you . . . if the powder was especially good.”

I guess she was thinking about yesterday when I left her and Annie to finish talking on the phone and I went out to ski.

“You have a good heart, but you do take care of yourself and your pleasures first.” Hadley looked exhausted from her outburst.

“Oh, my.” Hadley slumped into an extra desk chair, sitting on top of a couple jackets of mine. “Forgive me.”

What the hell was this? Paul was the bastard we were talking about. Now suddenly it was me, too? What next? Every male on the planet? I paced around the textured concrete floor of the office in a big circle like some frustrated tiger at the zoo. Once around, twice around. Hadley just slumped there, drained of emotion, expression and—I should have been thankful—further accusations. At least for the moment. Though my experience with women and their accusations suggested that if I gave them a chance, they'd come up with more.

The solution: don't give them a chance.

With Annie, I walked away, moved right out of reach. When she started following me, I stopped listening to her. With Lola, I stopped showing up for appointments. That hadn't worked last time, but I thought she'd keep her distance now. With Hadley . . . I wasn't sure what to do. The thing with Hadley was: she didn't need me as a mate, like Annie did. Or as a client, like Lola did. I was Hadley's employer, and we both knew with her excellent reputation she could replace me anytime. But I couldn't replace her. Hell, I'd had other business owners approach her right in front of me.

I looked at my watch. The lifts had opened twenty minutes ago. I'd missed it again. Just like yesterday. By now all the fresh snow was skier tracked.

If my life was going to go well—with or without Annie—I needed Hadley working at the store.

“Got a deal for you, girl.”

I didn't say one damn thing to Annie first. She left me in charge, so I took charge.

I offered Hadley part ownership of TFS.

Annie

 

 

L
ately getting sense out of my dad was like getting chewing gum out of a carpet. After a particularly irrational conversation on the phone with him, I decided to drive down and see him, instead of getting Daisy involved. She had enough going on with the twins and the store.

I set up Kia with extra seed and water in her cage, packed up the things Bijou and I would need for an overnight stay and hit the road. No Interstate 95 for me today, not in that big a hurry; I drove over to A1A so that I could catch glimpses of the ocean and dunes along the way.

It wasn't the phone call with Dad that captured my thoughts while driving though, but rather the last phone call with Jess—also confusing, but what was new there? Since I'd been away from home, I'd begun to realize that Jess typically spoke in ways that couldn't easily be tracked, as if he didn't want to be held responsible for anything he said. Reading between the lines of the conversation the other night offered far more information than Jess had meant for me to have. Just because he diminished Lola's words didn't mean I did. I found a wealth of support from Lola in the bare-bone pieces Jess set out for me, then quickly snatched away. And the fact that he was now soured on her just emphasized what she'd said. Wasn't it just like Jess to belittle her worth once she found the least fault with him? He was one of the most even-tempered people I knew, yet he could turn on a dime and expose a severely sharp, nasty edge. That was especially true when his defenses were challenged.

Clearly, Lola had challenged them.

Still an old two-lane, it was the A1A I remembered from years ago when I was a child and the family drove south from Ohio along this coast. I could remember the FREE ORANGE JUICE signs and the ALLIGATOR FARM signs. Not that Dad would pull over for anything. Daisy and I had to threaten to wet the backseat before he'd make a stop on those Cincinnati-to-Miami trips. Today, traffic was scarce and I returned to thoughts of my phone call with Jess.

His position of “I don't know, I forgot” had kept Jess safely out of the reach of responsibility, similar to the story Lucille had told about Shank and how he held to his old family patterns for his new relationship with her. In Jess' case his survival as a child depended on an innocence tightly gripped.

That dark-haired little boy at his mother's funeral, adults sobbing all around him, had maintained his staunch ignorance of what was taking place and his role in it. Perhaps this was the four-year-old boy's fear: that he would die of his own awareness.

I stopped at a deli near a public beach and picked up some lunch to eat while I drove. Before leaving, I let Bijou out and gave her water. While she drank, I leaned against the car and watched boys surf the whitecaps, balancing on their boards as gracefully as ballerinas on toe shoes. Then we got back into the car and continued on the road to Dad's.

While raising our sons, Jess had diminished the importance of near concussions, cuts and bruises. And I had accepted his view as the tough, fatherly position that balanced my own soft, feminine one. Today, I saw this was Jess' typical position of minimizing events as a form of survival. He was in constant danger of being overwhelmed, so like the surfers I'd been watching, he maintained vigilance against losing his balance and being dragged under.

Jess had two choices now: he could continue on the safe path of his childhood innocence or he could take further steps toward acknowledging and accepting his responsibilities in his mother's death as well as his life with me. He'd met with Lola, yet rejected her perspective. Was this a step forward or a step backward?

Either way, I faced our marital problems with clearer eyes and an acknowledgment that possibly I faced them alone. I must accept that and not expect more. The things I once expected from Jess—support of my choices, acknowledgment of my emotional responses—I was now learning to give myself. The good news was that this understanding offered me the independence that would allow to me have both my own life and a firmer relationship with my husband. And I wanted both. I loved Jess the way I loved my breath and blood, the way I loved the sky and water. Jess felt as integral to my heart as one of its chambers. He'd moved in long ago at my invitation, dragging his old baggage with him.

After I drove through dense wetlands for half an hour, the view opened and the coast lay exposed again. Pelicans flew low in formation over the shore. Gulls screamed at one another in competition for some scrap near the waterline. Since I was traveling the road alone, I slowed, set my arm on the open window and took in the air, soaked up the sounds of the birds, and marked the colors of the waves—white to palest green.

Then I couldn't stand it; I pulled the car over, got out and ran with Bijou through the beach grasses to the hard sand at the water's edge. Slipped off my sandals and waded in with my pup. I'd pay for this later with a wet and sandy dog in my car, but the pleasure of kicking up water and feeling my toes dig into the wet sand was worth it. We splashed and chased each other, me laughing, Bijou barking. I pretended to grab at her ears; she pretended to snap at my toes. Then we ran up the shore and back again, finally falling to the sand and breathing heavily. I stretched my legs out in front of me. I hadn't noticed before: my feet had become beautiful. During the weeks of walking the beach and wading, the sand and sea had smoothed them into silk and the sun had tanned my skin so that my toenails gleamed like pearls.

I lay back on the sand with my head on my arms to let the sun dry my legs and the hem of my skirt. I closed my eyes to the glare. A line from a lecture in psychology class earlier in the semester rose to mind. It had struck me as a piece to my puzzle and I had tucked it away. The instructor had said, “A facet of the innocent little boy was the scamp, the mischievous stinker who continued to slip out from beneath the consequences, and if caught had story after story to explain it all away.”

I knew where that puzzle piece belonged now and I snapped it into place.

I had wanted to save Jess; he had wanted to be saved. We were a pair. We were still a pair, but the space between us now must become roomy enough for each of us to move in our own orbit, arms flung wide.