Single in Suburbia (3 page)

Amanda fingered the crisp white business card as they made their way up to the parking lot, their voices echoing in the late night emptiness. Clutching her jacket around her, she repeated Anne Justiss’s tagline to herself. She didn’t actually know what Rob’s bottom line was; finances had never been her thing.

But she could definitely use someone who wasn’t afraid of anything. She only wished the same could be said for her.

chapter
3

A
nne Justiss didn’t look like a man-eater. In fact, with her short stylishly wispy blonde hair, cornflower blue eyes, and upturned nose, the attorney looked kind of like Cameron Diaz. Or the wholesome girl next door your mother would want you to hang out with.

“I understand Candace Sugarman referred you to me,” she said as she met Amanda in the doorway of her large corner office in the pricey midtown high rise and showed her to a seat opposite her desk.

“Yes.”

The attorney settled in her chair and folded her hands on the top of her glass and lacquer desk. “Candace is an unusual client. Completely proactive. We worked together a number of times.”

Amanda shifted uncomfortably in her seat. The idea of even one divorce made her palms sweat.

“Why don’t you fill me in on your situation.”

“It’s nothing particularly novel, I’m afraid,” Amanda said. “My husband moved out a couple of months ago in order to find himself.”

“And has he?”

“I don’t know, but he, um, seems to have found a girl named Tiffany. I got to meet her at our son’s baseball game the other night.”

The attorney’s eyes narrowed. “I hate that they think they can just run off and do whatever they like. How many children do you have?”

“Two.”

“How old are they?”

“My daughter’s fifteen, Wyatt’s twelve.”

“Do you work outside the home?”

Amanda shook her head. “No.”

“Is he still paying all the bills?”

“I, um, think so.”

One blonde eyebrow went up. “But you don’t
know
?”

Amanda swallowed and wiped her hands on the sides of her skirt. “Rob’s always deposited a certain amount in the household account each month and that hasn’t changed. I assume he’s still paying the mortgage and the car payments. He’s, uh, always written the checks for the bigger stuff.”

“And your savings? Stock portfolios? Other joint accounts and assets?”

“I don’t know.”

Anne Justiss held Amanda’s gaze with her own. “If your husband came home tomorrow and told you he was sorry, would that be enough for you?”

Amanda thought about that one. Her wounded pride shouted absolutely not, you can’t let him get away with this! But the frightened part of her, the scared, shaking part deep inside, wasn’t so sure. “I don’t know.”

“May I be brutally honest with you?”

Amanda swallowed. “Do you have to?” she joked, but Anne Justiss didn’t smile back.

“In my experience once a man moves out and starts another relationship, especially if he’s rubbed his wife’s nose in it as yours apparently has, the marriage is over.”

Amanda’s mouth was completely dry. She swallowed again but all the moisture seemed to have moved to her eyes.

“I’m not a marriage counselor. I’m not here to help you fix your relationship. I’m here to protect you.” She pulled two Kleenex from the black lacquer dispenser on her desk and handed them to Amanda.

“Normally, I advise my clients to file for divorce immediately because it freezes the joint assets and allows us to access financial information. It also gives you a psychological advantage, because when you take action you stop feeling like a victim.”

Amanda thought she nodded, but she wasn’t sure. She was concentrating all her energies on not allowing the tears to spill down her cheeks.

“You can’t bury your head in the sand, Amanda. The longer you wait the greater the opportunity he has to hide or shift assets. Even if you’re not ready to file, you want to start gathering financial documentation.”

Amanda dabbed at her cheeks. The tissue came away sopping wet.

“Has your husband retained an attorney?”

“He
is
an attorney. He’s a tax attorney with Powell Newman.”

Anne Justiss sighed. “The bad news is he can get the divorce guy in the firm to handle it and he won’t be worried about running up the hours.” She cocked her head. Amanda imagined she could see the mind racing inside. “The good news is he’s probably not going to want to look too bad in front of a judge; he’ll have his reputation to consider.”

The attorney considered her carefully. “I know this isn’t easy,” she said. “But I can promise you it’s better to take action than to live in a continued state of emotional limbo.”

Amanda nodded, but her heart wasn’t in it.

“Traditionally after a divorce, the man’s standard of living improves. The ex-wife and children’s standard of living drops dramatically. I do my best not to let that happen to my clients. Candace may have mentioned my belief in the Green Giant school of divorce.”

“Green Giant?” Amanda tried to blink away her tears even as she tried to follow the conversation. “As in the vegetables?”

Anne Justiss smiled a very tight smile. “There’s a very old joke that asks what do you have when you’ve got a large green ball in one hand and a second green ball in the other?”

Amanda shook her head, thrown by the insertion of veggies into the conversation.

“Complete control of the Jolly Green Giant.”

Anne Justiss’s blue eyes were now more like steel than cornflowers. Her delicate features had also hardened. “I can help you get your husband by the balls,” she said with complete certainty. “But the time to act is now. We want to sue for subpoena and get hold of all relevant financial information as quickly as possible.”

Amanda studied the woman in front of her. She’d wanted someone who wouldn’t be afraid and she’d found her. But she would have given all she owned to be able to turn the clock back to just before everything fell apart; would have given anything not to have to make this decision.

She’d spent the last months praying for a miracle that would somehow put their lives back the way they were. But Rob was airbrushed and he had a girlfriend named Tiffany. No amount of wishful thinking was going to alter that reality.

Amanda straightened slowly and met the attorney’s gaze straight on. She’d waffled long enough. She had nothing to gain from waiting and everything to lose. It was time to act. “It might take me a few days to put together the deposit,” Amanda said carefully. “But I’m ready for you to go ahead and start squeezing.”

The drive home from Anne Justiss’s office was an out-of-body experience. Like the near dead who claim to watch the efforts to resuscitate them from above, Amanda saw her minivan traveling north on Highway 400 toward the suburbs, saw it change lanes, merge, and exit the interstate, but the specifics of how it reached her home were hazy.

Leaving the van in the garage, she stepped into the kitchen. With the kids still at school, the house was pin-drop quiet. The only thing breaking the silence was the refrain “You’re getting a divorce, you’re getting a divorce” that echoed in her head.

Trying to elude those thoughts, she left the kitchen and moved through the house. In the dining room she paused behind a Chippendale-style chair and tried to see the room as a stranger might. But her mind moved right past the carefully designed mix of antiques and contemporary art to the Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners, the countless turkeys and hams she’d served to her family there.

Passing through the formal living room, she crossed the foyer and hesitated in the entrance to Rob’s former home office. The antique desk and leather wing chair were gone, the shelves emptied of books and mementos. Bright squares and rectangles dotted the chocolate brown walls where Rob’s gallery of fame—the carefully arranged shots of Rob glad-handing local politicians and the occasional sports figure—had once hung.

Turning her back on the empty office, she moved to the family room and breathed in its essence. The room was both chic and comfortable, just as she’d intended. The couch, covered in a cheery cranberry chenille was flanked by club chairs with ottomans in a bold cranberry and black pattern.

The remnants of a bowl of popcorn sat on the edge of the massive wrought-iron coffee table, which could, and had, hold an entire meal.

Stepping toward the big screen television, Amanda ran her gaze over the built-in bookcases that surrounded it. They were packed with books and magazines and small finds from arts and crafts shows. Framed photographs from family vacations and holidays dotted the shelves. Amanda lifted each photo in turn, studying the poses and faces like an anthropologist might, searching for what lay behind the entwined arms and happy faces of her family.

In the photos, Meghan and Wyatt’s gap-toothed smiles gave way to braces; their baby smooth skin to the marks of adolescence. Rob looked the same in every shot: tall and blond, his smile one of supreme confidence. She’d thought him straightforward and uncomplicated, even downright predictable, but she’d been wrong on all counts.

She reached for a photo of the two of them in Vail just over a year ago. Holding it up for closer examination, she looked for signs of his discontent. Had he already begun feeling trapped? Started plotting his escape?

And what of her?

She remembered handing the camera to a sulky fourteen-year-old Meghan, still angry that she hadn’t been allowed to bring a friend on their family vacation. She’d been trying to soothe her daughter’s ruffled feathers, bargaining for a smile, trying to manage her family’s reactions and feelings as she always did even as the picture was snapped.

As a result her brow appeared furrowed and her eyes telegraphed her concern. Dismayed, she noticed that none of the shots of her reflected enjoyment. In picture after picture she saw the careful, overly organized woman she’d prided herself on being; a woman preoccupied with the details of their lives.

Had she never been carefree? Unconcerned about what everyone else felt and wanted? What had she felt and wanted then? She couldn’t remember.

Opening a set of cabinet doors, she began to rifle through the stacked photo albums, searching for a shot that reflected her
real
self. But even the shots of their early married days, when she’d been all of twenty-one, showed the preoccupied smile and furrowed brow.

Worried now, she rooted through the cabinet, finally pulling out a battered imitation leather album whose binding was cracked from age and neglect. Clutching her prize to her chest, she plopped down onto the sofa and opened it.

The photographs were dated and dog-eared; the captions scrawled beneath them were written in the spidery cursive she’d affected in college.

The first one read,
Me and Jean-Claude in front of Eiffel Tower.
And sure enough there they were, too tiny in the foreground, the passerby Jean-Claude had gotten to snap the picture clearly more concerned with including all of the landmark than the expressions on their faces. But she could actually remember the feel of the smile that had split her face that day. Could still remember the way her jaw ached from smiling and laughing as he gave in to her mad insistence to see every site, every museum, every worthwhile café that Paris had to offer.

“Tu es enchanteur et électrifiant.”
You are enchanting and electrifying, he’d said as he’d stared down into her eyes on the steps of the Louvre.
“Tu es mon beau papillon.”
You are my beautiful butterfly.

Mon beau papillon
. He’d called her his beautiful butterfly so many times that she’d finally come to believe it.

For almost the entire year she’d studied in Paris, she’d flitted and flown like the butterfly he’d named her, embracing the freedom like a prisoner suddenly and unexpectedly set free from her cell.

In every picture her face declared her adoration of Jean-Claude and her fascination with all things French. For a moment, she heard his voice whispering intimately.
Mon beau papillon
.

Her gaze flew around the beautifully decorated family room and she saw it for what it was; a carefully designed cocoon into which she’d retreated and where she’d traded in her wings for a perpetually furrowed brow.

Stung, she slammed the photo album shut and shoved it under a pillow. Searching for a distraction, she strode into the kitchen and began opening cupboards, but she was too agitated to eat and too scattered to cook. Beneath the sink she spotted a bucket and a jug of vinegar and before she knew what she was doing, she’d filled the bucket with warm water, added a healthy dollop of vinegar and located the mop. Moments later she was mopping the wood floors, finding unexpected comfort in the repetitive rhythm of a chore she’d always paid others to do. She finished the kitchen floor quickly and then moved into the dining room, where she swabbed carefully around the Oriental rug on which the mahogany table sat.

As she worked, another, more private snapshot surfaced in her mind. She and Jean-Claude in the bare student apartment he’d maintained on the Left Bank, discovering what making love actually meant.

“Tu es incroyable.”
You are incredible, he’d breathed as his mouth moved over her naked breast. “I can’t get enough of you.”

She was dumping the dirty water down the laundry room drain when the phone rang.
“Oui?”
she said, unable to pull her mind from Jean-Claude, his lips, or the wonderful sense of abandon he’d stirred in her.

“Amanda?” Her mother’s voice brought her back to the good old U S of A more quickly than a speeding bullet.

“Oui,”
Amanda said. “Um, I mean, yes.” She set the still damp mop outside the kitchen door to dry and crossed to the bay window that overlooked the backyard.

“Are you all right?”

Amanda cleared her throat. “Yes, yes, of course. I’m fine.”

“And Rob and the kids?”

Amanda winced. Her parents had been married for forty-five apparently blissful years, a record she had hoped to meet and possibly even exceed.