Four Wives (25 page)

M
ARIE GOT IN EARLY,
staking out her ground before he arrived. Occupying her mind with work at least gave the illusion that nothing had changed. At the very least, it had been productive. She’d uncovered the name of Farrell’s secretary the year Simone died and was now scouring the Internet, trying to track her down in Florida where she’d retired.

The night had been unbearable. Anthony had chosen to stay late at work, leaving Marie at home to walk the halls, flip the channels. And remember the kiss. She’d been trying like hell to fight it, working her cases, calling Love to bitch about the fundraiser that was creeping up on them, and to counsel her about the decision to see her father. But it was patient, and it knew how to wait for an opening, a crack in the armor. Then it pounced, like a two-ton tiger. The memory of the kiss would stop her in her tracks, consume her mind, and make her want more. She went to bed with it at night and woke up with it in the morning, when she would attack it with the chores and tasks of her ordinary life in the hope that it might retreat.

She heard the door open and close and took a breath. It was just after nine, just after the hour when Randy was expected.

“Good morning,” she called into the other room, keeping her eyes on a document as she used to do. Didn’t she? How could it be this hard to remember how she acted before the kiss?

No one answered. Now curious, Marie got up and walked to the edge of the conference room. Janie Kirk was standing just inside.

“Janie. I wasn’t expecting you,” she said, smiling as well as she could.

“I brought you a latte. Vanilla OK?” Janie placed two paper cups from Joe’s on the conference table as though their meeting had somehow, at sometime been planned.

Marie’s face grew more puzzled by the second. “Sure. Fine,” she lied. Janie was in black stretch pants and a spandex halter.

“Pilates?” Marie asked, taking a sip of the latte, burning her tongue.
Goddamned steamed milk!

“Eight o’clock class’same as every other day.”

Marie pulled out a chair. “Sit down,” she said. Then, “What’s up?”

Janie let out a sigh as she joined Marie at the table. She pulled off the lid to the coffee and blew gently against the white foam.

Mental note
’
must blow foam before drinking,
Marie thought, trying not to stare at the physical perfection that was seated across from her.

“I’m here for professional advice.”

Marie took a breath as she found Janie’s eyes. They were dry, but serious, and Marie suddenly felt like a complete shit.

“Janie … I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize you and Daniel were having problems.”

Janie smiled self-consciously, then looked into her latte. As her fingers toyed with the rim of the cup, she laid out the situation’how they’d been growing apart for years, how the kids had put a strain on their relationship.

“Does he know? Does he have a lawyer?”

Janie looked up now, and her face was suddenly alarmed. “No! And he can’t know that I was here. I just want advice’on how things might end up if he does leave me.”

Marie reached across the table and took Janie’s hand. It was an insincere gesture, grounded in the guilt of disliking the woman, and as a result was unbearably awkward. Marie quickly pulled away.

“So just to be clear’you don’t want to leave him, but you’re afraid he might leave you?”

Janie nodded, her focus having returned to the coffee.

“OK. I’d be glad to help you. Of course.”

“And this will stay between us?”

“Absolutely. Once you sat down here, I became bound by our relationship as lawyer and client. Besides, we’re friends.”

Janie smiled with relief. Then she listened as Marie laid out the workings of divorce, should that be necessary. It took just under half an hour and was interrupted in the end by the appearance of Randy Matthews.

“I’m sorry … ,” he started to say after bounding through the door, breakfast in one hand, briefcase in the other.

“We were just finishing,” Marie said, standing now. Janie followed her to the door.

“Good luck.”

“Thanks, Marie. I’ll see you Friday. Big day,” Janie said, smiling warmly.

“Or big disaster.”

“No. It’ll be great.”

Marie watched Janie’s blond ponytail swing as she bounded down the stairs. Then she turned to face Randy.

“Wow. Human or robot?”

“The jury’s still out, despite appearances.” Marie grabbed the latte from the conference table and carried it to the bathroom.

“What did she want?”

Dumping the latte in the sink, Marie was shaking her head. “Professional advice. Preemptive. She thinks her husband is on the way out.” Even as she said the words, they seemed impossible to believe. Daniel Kirk wasn’t exactly a deep man, and he was one lucky bastard to have such a compliant wife.

Randy was at his desk, settling in for the day. And getting ready for Marie to make one of her hasty exits. “You sound surprised.”

Marie emerged from the bathroom and tossed the empty cup on her way to her desk. “Very. I actually thought
she
was having an affair. But I guess he’s the one who’s unhappy.”

“Huh,” Randy said, now deep in thought.

“What?”

“I was just thinking …”

“What!”

“I was just thinking that maybe this was preemptive’but not in the way you thought. Maybe she was making sure you could never represent her husband.”

Marie threw herself into her chair and stared at the floor. It was true’ now that she had agreed to consult with Janie, she would be barred from representing Daniel under conflict of interest rules. And the scenario Janie had laid out had been textbook. It had been almost too perfect.

“Are you saying I’ve been duped?”

Randy shrugged and tried to think of a way to back out of what he’d said. Marie had strong feelings about Janie Kirk, unruly feelings that were only tempered by her belief that she was infinitely smarter than the woman. “Probably not. I don’t know why I said it.”

Marie was standing now and pacing as she tended to do when life became muddled. “No. You said it because it makes sense. She’s having an affair. She thinks Daniel might find out and file for divorce. She knows I would take his case’small kids, decent father.”

“Or not,” Randy interjected. But Marie was no longer having a two-way conversation.

“Shit!” she said. “I’ve been outsmarted by Mrs. Suburbia!”

“Well, she is damned

an older woman.”

Marie stopped in her tracks and pointed a finger at him. “Watch it,” she said, holding back a smile. Then she turned to look out the window to the parking lot. She could hear Randy watching her, his silence giving him away.

“Is it all right that I came in?” he asked.

Marie sighed, then turned to face him. “We should talk about it,” she said, not because she wanted to talk about it, but because she had to say something to break the mood. It was barely half past nine in the morning and the tiger had already returned.

“OK,” he answered, standing now, looking at her the way he had that night’the night of the kiss.

Marie found herself pleading. “I’m married. I have children. There are problems, I know. But that’s life. That’s part of it.”

The words were contrived, standard issue. And they did nothing to stop Randy from walking to where she stood. His arms were pinned safely at his side, for the moment, and his face held a submissive resolve, as though he had given in to the need to be with her even at the cost of his own integrity.

“I just want to kiss you again. I’ve tried to ignore it. I know you need me to. But I can’t.”

The room fell silent as he reached out for her. The feel of him defied reason. With her mind in a hazy white unreality, she felt her hands gripping his back, her body pressing into his. This could not be happening again. She’d promised herself, not only for her sake but for his. She couldn’t replace the mother who’d left over twenty years ago. He couldn’t fill the void in her marriage. Still, the knowledge of this, the promise, hadn’t changed a damned thing. Here they were, in the middle of the morning, locked together again.

This time she could not break away, and the kiss went on, reaching deeper inside of her’pulling at her with impossible strength. It was a different kiss than the first. No longer still, she could feel his body moving against hers, his hand on her waist, pressing her into him. Somehow the long, restless night had only intensified the attraction. The passion that had been absent before was not just sneaking in, it was there in full force, and for the first time in her life, Marie didn’t know what she was or wasn’t capable of doing.

It was the sound of the phone that brought them crashing back down. Seizing the moment of reality, Marie pulled away and rushed to her desk.

“Hello,” she said. Her voice was infused with an awkward, phony perkiness.

“It’s Love. What’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing. What’s up?”

“I can’t reach Gayle, and I need an answer on the table numbers before I leave.”

Marie took a deep breath and sat down, her eyes now on Randy’ standing there, his eyes still upon her, his face flushed with desire.

“Can you meet me in town?”

They made plans while Marie looked at Randy. For all the things she knew how to do, making herself not want him seemed an impossible task. Still, with everything inside her, with every ounce of love she had for her girls, and for Anthony if she could ever find it again, she knew she had to do just that.

L
OVE DROVE HERSELF TO
town despite Yvonne’s insistence that they would be late for their flight. They met at Joe’s for lack of a better spot, where she found Marie waiting for her in the back with the ladies from pi-lates.

“You look terrible. Is it that case with the baby?” Love asked as she sat down. With everything going on in her life, it was clear to her now that she had neglected her friend.

Marie shook her head, then blurted it out. “I kissed the young intern.
Iwice.

Love felt a wave of panic at her friend’s revelation. Of all the people she knew, or at least knew well, Marie was the last person she imagined would stray from her marriage. And the thought of it, the implied vulnerability for all marriages that it exposed, turned reason on its head. Still, she nodded calmly.

“How did it happen?”

Blow by blow, Marie let it out. The attraction that had been building, the trouble at home. Without stopping, she laid out her case, her careful analysis that explained the glitch in a carefully planned life. Golf, anger, Randy’s mother, the way he looked at her. Love listened intently, following her down the various roads with their sharp curves and deep, cavernous potholes. She waited for her friend to finish before speaking a word.

“What are you going to do?” she asked when Marie was finally silent.

“I don’t know. I want to stop wanting him. I want to stop being angry with my husband for five minutes so I can love him again. I want my old life back, the one that I bitch about incessantly but wouldn’t trade for all the Randy kisses in the world.”

“Just walk away, then. Find him another internship, push him off on Nancy, and avoid the office. Whatever it takes.”

Marie nodded. “I know’you’re right. I just can’t see him.”

“No, you can’t.”

“But what if it doesn’t work? What if I can’t turn it off’if I can’t fix things with Anthony?”

Taking her hand across the table, Love caught her eye. “You will.” Marie was still not convinced, but Love had to be. Marie was one of the lucky ones, knowing with such certainty who she was. That she had been tested by a handsome, admiring man, that she’d suffered a moment, or two moments, of weakness in the face of domestic discontentment, would in the end be irrelevant.

“What the hell do I do with this feeling?”

Love wondered if she’d ever really had that
feeling.
She’d gone from reckless one-nighters to marriage practically overnight. Still, she’d had a brief moment of adolescent normalcy, and she drew from that now.

“Remember high school? Those crushes that kept you from eating, or sleeping? The ones you were convinced would never leave you in peace?”

“Of course.”

“It always went away, right?”

“I know, Love,” Marie said, thinking back on days she would rather forget. Then, leaning in to avoid detection, she whispered, “But what if I don’t want it to?”

Marie leaned back again and nodded at the dismay on her friend’s face. “I know. That’s the problem.”

Shaking off the possibility, Love found the resolve yet again. “Close your eyes.”

“Why?”

“Just do it!”

Marie sighed, then did as requested.

“What do you see?”

“Randy.”

“OK. Now erase Randy and imagine instead a new man, a new made-to-order man. Not Anthony, not Randy.”

“What do I want this man for?”

“Love. You want this man for lifelong love, silver-anniversary, miss-him-when-he’s-gone, love-of-your-life love.”

“OK.” Marie sighed again, then fought to clear her mind. “He’s smart. Smarter in some ways, but less smart in other ways. Overall, equally smart.”

“Good,” Love said, smiling at Marie’s predictability.

“He knows me perfectly’when to hold me, when to leave me the hell alone. He doesn’t take advantage in a moment of weakness. I can cry one minute, then kick his ass at twenty questions the next. And none of this fazes him. He shares my political beliefs. He’s passionate about things going on in the world. He’s confident, but not cocky, and well-respected at work. He’s the first person I turn to for advice’unless the advice is about kissing another man, in which case I come to you. Though I suppose there would be no kissing other men if I had this perfect man.”

“Just keep going.”

“All right… he loves deeply, especially our children, and has enough emotional security to cry with me when they’re born. He’s funny. Witty. And, if I can have everything I want, he’s fucking awesome in bed.”

“Marie! That’s twice in one month.”

“Sorry’he’s awesome in bed.”

“Good.”

Marie opened her eyes and looked at Love. “Yeah, great. And the point of this?”

“The point of this is that you have just described your husband. Well … I can’t speak to the fucking-awesome-in-bed part … but the rest of it. It’s certainly
not
a twenty-five-year-old law student who hangs on your every word.”

Marie let out one last sigh. She thought about Anthony, the
old
Anthony. The pre’Hunting Ridge Anthony, and could see Love’s point’on an intellectual level. Still, she could not erase the image of her husband air-swinging in the backyard, mumbling “swing thoughts” to himself. If he could be that man, he could not possibly have ever been the man she thought he was. She could feel the defiance take her over. And for some reason she needed to let it come.

“OK. New subject. Where are you with this trip to L.A.?”

Love threw her hands up in a show of defeat. “I don’t know. This all started with the voodoo shrink, and it just snowballed.”

“Maybe voodoo shrink was right, then.”

“What? That I’m
holding
the issues of my past’dearest Daddy, his book, my childhood’in my body?”

“Could be,” Marie said, feigning serious consideration.

“My body is
feeling
my emotional pain?”

“I love it. It’s
sooo
Yvonne!”

“I know. So why am I going to L.A.?”

“Well, if all this with your back
is
somehow related to something …
emotional,
for the sake of argument, then it could help, I guess, to have some resolution with your dad. Have you read the book yet?”

Love shook her head.

“It’s that bad?”

“There’s a lot I’ve never told you. It goes way beyond my father not being around.”

Marie gave Love a soft smile, then reached for her hand. “It’s OK. Someday we’ll have a long chat. When you’re ready.”

Love smiled back, grateful not to be pressed on the issue. “Anyway, I don’t really buy the Dr. Luster stuff. But I don’t feel like I have some horrible virus waiting to kill me either. I don’t know what’s going on with my body, but this thing with my father is here and I can’t ignore it.”

Marie drew a long breath and leaned back in her chair. “Could you at least wait until he’s back in New York? Your back, the benefit …”

Love shook her head. “I might chicken out if I wait that long.” Love checked her watch. “I should go.”

They got up from the table and Marie walked Love to her car. Once inside, Love glanced up to the office window above Joe’s.

“Good luck with that,” she said.

“Right back at you, my friend.” Marie watched her drive away, fighting the remorse that was beginning to surge inside her. It wasn’t just for kissing Randy Matthews, but for the anger at Anthony that she knew would not be so easily dismantled. It would hold on, like a leech, sucking whatever traces of love were still running through her. Looking up at her office window, she felt the tears on her face, and could not hold them back’not even to save face with the good wives who were now glancing at her with a seemingly orchestrated intermittence as they paraded down the street. And having no leg to stand on in judging them today, Marie felt utterly lost.