Flight (25 page)

“Yes.”

Margaret is on her second lawyer. The first, someone recommended by a friend of Carol’s, dismissed Margaret out of hand when he heard she lived in Illinois. No jurisdiction, he’d explained. She’d have to get an Illinois lawyer.

She called Caitlin, her closest friend in Evanston. She told Caitlin she couldn’t talk about it right now—yes, she’d call her the minute she was back in Evanston—but she needed a divorce lawyer right away. Caitlin’s voice became soft and low in response to the urgency of the situation. Thankfully, she avoiding asking questions or expressing dismay and did as Margaret asked, hauling out her copy of the Chicago Yellow Pages to read Margaret some of the larger display ads. Together they selected a few, and Margaret wrote down the numbers. The first one was a single-lawyer firm, and Margaret was surprised when the receptionist put her through to the man himself. Richard Guattari. The text in his ad read:
Custody cases my specialty.

“Who is divorcing whom?”

Margaret is surprised by the question. “I don’t really know,” she says. “We’re divorcing each other, I guess.”

“But you’ve been living together until now?”

“Yes.”

Richard Guattari coughs, a short sound, like he’s squelching an impatient snort. “Illinois has no-fault divorce only for couples who have been living separate and apart for six months. And that’s if both parties agree in writing. If one party brings the case against the other, it requires two years. And custody changes everything. There really isn’t no-fault divorce if custody is going to be disputed.”

“So what does that mean?”

“One of you needs to file against the other, with grounds. Your best bet would be to beat him to the punch there.”

“You mean I need to accuse him of something?”

Richard rattles off the list. “Impotence, adultery, abandonment, drunkenness, gross habits, cruelty—look, lady, do you think he’s going to file against you?”

“Maybe. I don’t know.” Margaret tries to imagine David having this conversation.

“If he does file against you, does he have substantiated grounds?”

“You mean can he accuse me of any of those things?”

“More important, can he make it stick.”

Margaret cringes. Talking about this with a stranger is even more awful than she expected. There’s something so cold and factual about the man’s voice.
He’s just doing his job,
she tells herself.

“I guess only adultery,” she says.

“Right.” His voice gets marginally less friendly. “And if you were to file, it sounds as if you’ve got cruelty, based on the 911 call. That’s good. Anything else?”

“Um, adultery, too, I guess,” she says. Her voice, frustratingly, comes out small and hesitant.

Richard Guattari sighs in earnest. “Open marriage?” he asks.

Margaret stifles a sudden, nervous urge to laugh.
Open marriage.
It sounds so old-fashioned, so seventies. Flower children and free love. She can just see the scorn on David’s face if he heard the phrase.
Rational marriage
—that’s what he always called it.

“I guess so.”

“His idea?”

“Yes.” She clears her throat, trying to moderate her voice’s tendency to sound like a little girl in trouble with her father.

“Okay, look.” He talks fast, and she thinks she hears the sound of papers shuffling on his desk. “It doesn’t look great. He’s got adultery, you’ve got adultery. But in court, women always look worse for agreeing to these—situations than men do for proposing them. I’m not saying it’s right, that’s just how judges are. On the other
hand, you’ve got the kid. That’s good. Hang on to the kid. If your husband comes around, hide. Don’t let your parents tell him where you are. Or go away. Take a little vacation. Call him up every night, let him talk to the kid. Use a private line so he can’t trace the call. There’s a chance he’ll bring in the cops, since you went out of state. If you see cops coming, go out the back door. Have your parents say you’re gone. Otherwise, they could take the kid. It depends on Michigan law, but there’s a good chance. Meanwhile, your best bet is to file quickly, use the cruelty thing, draw attention away from the adultery. I can do that today. Serve him with papers tomorrow. That’s what I’d recommend.”

“Oh God.” Margaret’s head is spinning; her feet and hands feel icy. “Isn’t there any way I can, it can …”

“What?”

“Can’t it be some other way? Not so … hostile?”

There’s a short silence on the other end. Richard’s voice sounds more strained and, if possible, colder when he speaks again. “Look, Mrs., uh … It sounds like it’s hostile already. I’m just telling you how to protect yourself. You do what you want. This was your free consultation. If you want to talk to me again, I’ll need a retainer of one thousand dollars. Call my secretary, give her your fax number, and she’ll get you the paperwork. You can wire the money or FedEx it. Certified check.”

“Okay.” Margaret is relieved the conversation is drawing to an end. She wants to be off the phone with this guy.

“In the meantime, you’ve got to consider how you’d feel being a mother without custody of her child.”

“Okay.” Quickly, instinctively, Margaret hangs up the phone. For a moment it seems as if Richard Guattari is still there, a presence infecting the room. She crosses her arms and hugs them to her, trying to get warm.
Rewind,
she thinks.
I need to rewind.
But where to? Three days ago? Three weeks ago? Three years ago? Would it be enough to go back to the night Vasant invited her up to his place for a cup of tea, or would she need to go back further?

She closes her eyes and imagines Vasant. She longs more than
anything for him to be here now, to put his hands on her shoulders and pull her toward him. She could melt into him and everything else would disappear.

The thought gives her a new resolve. She can’t go backward. She can’t give him up. But the idea of ever speaking to Richard Guattari again, let alone meeting him in person, is unbearable. And the vision of a court case, the two of them fighting over Trevor, trying to prove each other unworthy, is even worse. It’s false. David’s a good father. In spite of everything, she knows his connection with his son is strong. Why would she want to ruin that?

Of course there have been moments when he was impatient with Trevor, even annoyed by his presence. Margaret has had those moments, too. There was one night when Trevor was a baby and the two of them were arguing over the graduate student. Trevor began crying, and Margaret felt a hard rage settle in. She sat on the couch, immobile.
Let him go pick up his son,
she thought.
It shouldn’t always be me.
She glared at David and he glared back, aware of her protest and settling into his own refusal. Trevor cried harder. Margaret heard every wail as an accusation of David, as if he himself were inflicting the pain. It went on that way for what seemed like hours, though it was probably only ten minutes. Trevor’s wails turned to howls, then shrieks. When they became gasping, rattling screams, as if he would scream his breath away, Margaret got up and ran to him. He was deep red with effort, his tiny body shaking with exhaustion and fury, his belly contracting and expanding as though it would pop. She picked him up and held him. But as she paced and quieted him, feeling his fragile, shaking chest, she didn’t feel moral satisfaction. She felt only a huge and immutable rage against the fact that David could hold out longer than she could. Her sympathy, her love—they were weaknesses, and he was not above using them against her.

And he will do so now. She doesn’t want this war. But she can’t go back. She started on this path, and there’s nothing to do but to keep going. If she’s going to do it, she has to do it right, and although he’s awful, Richard Guattari sounds like someone who
can do it right for her. Awfulness might be exactly the quality she needs.

Instinctively, she looks around for a piece of paper. She’ll make a list of all the things she needs to do. First she has to figure out how to receive a fax. There isn’t a Kinko’s or anything nearby, but downstairs in the study, her father has a relatively new computer that must have a fax modem in it. She’ll just have to load up the software.

The next problem, and it’s a substantial one, is how to get the thousand dollars. She and David, being academics, never have very much money in the bank, but even if they did, she can’t exactly demand money from David in order to divorce him. The most likely avenue would be to ask her father for it. But then she’ll have to tell him why she needs it. Perhaps she can get a cash advance on her credit card.

She should take some money from their joint checking account while she’s at it—exactly half, and open her own account, redirecting her direct deposit from Northwestern to it. Then she should call the credit cards to establish a separate line of credit. And she should tell Carol what the lawyer said about the police. It seems unlikely, but the thought of anyone coming and taking Trevor away makes her heart quicken all over again. Carol should know, just to be sure there are no tragic mistakes.

Margaret feels slightly ill. When she stands up from the bed, she feels dizzy. She steps to her parents’ dresser and leans on it, avoiding looking in the mirror. David always said she was aging nicely, but Margaret took it as a backhanded compliment. To her eyes, she looked exactly the same. That’s how it happens—the changes are so small you can’t notice them yourself. Sometimes when she sees herself in pictures, she realizes she used to look different. Nothing specific, just younger. Her grandmother’s skin slackened until two long jowls hung down at the sides of her face. Margaret puts a hand to her own cheek, wondering if that will happen to her.

At least now there’s something she can do. Her mother was right to make her call a lawyer. As awful as the conversation was, Richard
Guattari has laid out her path. There is action she can take to move forward. Margaret takes a deep breath. She’ll go down to the study. The first thing she’ll do is find a piece of paper to make her list. Then she’ll start with the first item and work her way down.

When Will gets home, Carol is acting strange. He brings the groceries in from the garage—it’s raining again—and she doesn’t paw through them right away, finding fault with the produce he chose or looking for the one thing he has forgotten. Instead, she just nods from the sink, where she’s scrubbing a large punch bowl, jerking her head toward the kitchen table to indicate that he should leave the bags there. He clumps over and sets them down, then turns to watch what she’s doing. She has a toothbrush and is going at the cut crystal.

“I don’t know how this punch bowl got so dirty,” she says, her back to him. “It was sitting on those shelves in the basement. I don’t know what you do down there to get everything so filthy.”

This line of conversation is a little more normal, but still, she’s hunched over the sink as if protecting something from him, not wanting to give anything away.

“Where is everybody?” he asks.

“Margaret’s upstairs. Kit and Leanne are watching CNN in the living room. Trevor’s in there with them.” She stops and half turns toward him. “I think he’s getting a little bored. Maybe you could take him downstairs and amuse him for a little while.”

There it is. A blatant attempt to get rid of him. Put out to pasture with the kiddies, just like the FAA is going to put him out to pasture on his sixtieth birthday. Something is going on, but he’s never going to get it out of Carol. Or anyone else, for that matter. Nobody tells him anything.

Ex-pilot,
he thinks.
Ex-patriarch.

“Yeah, all right,” he says.

Carol goes back to her punch bowl. Will wanders out of the kitchen into the living room. Kit and Leanne are on the couch.
Leanne is curled up on her side, clutching her knees to her chest just like she did when she was little. Carol used to hate seeing her lying there in her last years of high school.
Don’t you have anything better to do,
she would ask,
than turning your brain to jelly?
Leanne would shrug. Carol’s disapproval had been a new thing. When Leanne was younger, she and Carol would watch television together. Will would find the two of them together, curled up on opposite ends of the couch, mirror images of each other. Margaret didn’t watch much TV. She always had homework or somewhere to go.

Now it’s Kit slouched on the couch with Leanne, one arm draped behind her. The news is on, but they have the sound down so low Will can hardly hear it, especially with the water running in the kitchen.

“Hey,” Kit greets Will. Leanne looks up and doesn’t speak, but she smiles at him. A small, rather sad smile, he thinks. He looks around for Trevor.

“I hear there’s a bored five-year-old around here,” he says.

“I think he went down to the basement,” Kit says. Leanne has turned back to the news. Will stops and watches. They’re showing a satellite feed of military action. Small, dim lights are bobbing forward into darkness. The reporter, blurry and digitized, is leaning toward the camera, speaking urgently about their position. His description of the terrain—hills, rocks, roads, gullies—could be coming from anywhere, though it must be Afghanistan. The war has dropped from the headlines, but Will keeps up with it. It’s all happening on the ground now, U.S. troops sealing off caves along the Pakistan border. Earlier it was all about air power. With the GPSs and the laser-guided bombs, air superiority is finally the advantage the joint chiefs of staff insisted it would turn out to be in Vietnam. They were wrong then. Now they’re right. They looked smug when he saw them being interviewed on TV, showing satellite maps of targets or computer simulations of pilots dropping bombs. They were even using unmanned airplanes to deliver ordnance. That would have saved a few guys in 1967.

The segment ends and a report about hurricanes takes over. The National Weather Service is predicting six to eight this year. Will watches the computer simulations. Lately, whenever he watches the news, he has an odd sensation that he’s waiting for something. There’s a story in all that noise that belongs to him. The thing that will finally get him.