The Social Climber of Davenport Heights (19 page)

“I don’t want any shares,” I reiterated. “David is my husband. I want my marriage. I’m not about to let you take it away from me.”

She shook her head. “Your marriage has been over for years,” she said. “There is not anything you or I or even David can do about that. I’m not taking anything away from you. David was gone before he ever even met me.”

Her calmness, her certainty, genuinely surprised me. She was just a kid, absolutely no match for me, but somehow she wasn’t the least bit afraid, or even intimidated.

“If you know so much about David,” I said, “then you must realize that he never left me for another woman. He left me for golf.”

She dodged the jab easily. “We play together,” she said a little too smugly. “I love the game.”

I smiled. “Good for you,” I said. “But David doesn’t love golf, he’s addicted to it.”

“That’s a pretty strong statement,” she said.

I shrugged. “It’s the truth,” I said. “David has had a very easy life. Everything he ever wanted was either handed to him outright, or the brass ring was pulled so close there was hardly a chance that he could miss it.”

Her back stiffened. Clearly she wanted to disagree with me, but she knew him well enough not to.

“Golf was really the first challenge he ever faced,” I told her. “It was just him, doing what he was doing.”

“And he plays very well,” Mikki pointed out.

I nodded. “On some days he does play well, on some days he’s great and sometimes he stinks,” I said. “That’s the deal with golf. It’s called random gratification. If he played every day and he was terrible, he’d give up. If he played every day and he was fabulous, he’d get bored. But because he never knows how the day is going to go, he can’t get enough of it.”

“I won’t let golf take him away from me,” she said with certainty. “Not golf, not other women, not anything. I love David and I intend to make him happy. Happier than he’s ever been in his life.”

“You seem very sure that you’re going to win,” I said.

“There is no winning or losing here,” she answered. “We’re just three people, you and me and David. And we’re all only trying to get on with our lives in the best way possible.”

“And what you think is best is for me to just step aside?”

“I know it is,” she said.

“Why would I do that?”

“Because it’s time for you to get a new life, too.”

We just sat there in my living room, two women looking at each other. Strangely I felt no anger, no animosity. David had said she reminded him of me. I now knew why. I would have done what she was doing. I would have done anything to marry him.

When she spoke, her tone was firm and sure. “David said that sooner or later you’d see that divorce is inevitable,” she said. Mikki let that sink in for a long moment then added. “I came to ask you to make it sooner.”

She rose to her feet. For an instant I thought she was going to leave. Instead, she shrugged off her coat. The casual slacks
outfit she had on looked like a Kenneth Cole, but there was something distinctly wrong with it. It fit very badly, the belt raised up above her natural waist.

My first thought was that if this woman wanted to hang on to David, she was either going to have to make more visits to the gym or get the number of that wonderful Dr. Plastic.

Mikki laid a hand upon her pooching tummy. Immediately, I knew.

“When are you due?” I asked.

“May fifth,” she said.

W
E GOT A
Dominican divorce. Very fashionable in some circles, I’ve heard. It certainly worked for us, anyway. I had to sign a power of attorney to a Dominican lawyer. David and Mikki went off with their beach clothes packed. Within two weeks, twenty years of marriage was over. I was divorced one day, they were married the next. It was easy. Everything was agreed. It’s always easy when everything is agreed.

I’d spent two hours in Dr. Feinstein’s office coming to that conclusion. Voicing all my doubts and hopes as he nodded benignly.

When I’d told Chester, he patted my hand and said he was proud.

Of course, there were people who thought I was wrong. Tookie, Teddy and Lexi were amazed that I just gave in without a fight. Even the women at the office were openly disapproving of my behavior.

“You don’t just let them out of the deal,” Kelli the receptionist told me. “It sets a bad precedent for every cheating son of a bitch in town.”

The two people who were most upset by my actions were
Edith and Brynn. The former was just going to have to get over it. But I felt very badly about the latter.

“Oh, this is great!” Brynn screeched at me facetiously. “Just throw my father out, tear up my home, don’t even give a thought to me and what I want.”

We were in the bar at the airport. We were perched atop high, uncomfortable bar stools on either side of a table the size of a large postage stamp. People came and went through the place in droves. The light was glaring and the noise level horrendous. Not exactly the perfect spot for an important family moment.

Brynn was en route, stopping in for two hours on the last leg of her Christmas vacation trip. She was in town, basically, to pick up the rest of her luggage, which I had dutifully carted out to the terminal for her. The other
baggage
I brought to her was definitely the emotional kind.

“I didn’t throw your father out,” I said. “He left me of his own accord.”

“Of course he did,” she said a little too loudly for a public discussion. “No wonder, after years of putting up with your pushing, your constant criticism, your inability to love him and accept him for who he was.”

I was more puzzled by her words than hurt. Pushing, criticizing and being unaccepting were sins of which I was undoubtedly guilty. But not with David, only with Brynn. If
she
had wanted to divorce me, I suppose she had grounds.

“I’m sorry that this happened, but…”

She gave me a hard look, unwilling to listen to my apologies as she fumbled around in her backpack.

“Where’s my cell?” she cried out in frustration.

Losing patience with her fruitless search, she dumped the contents of her pack onto the tiny table. Her stuff spilled out everywhere. Brynn spotted the phone and grabbed it up im
mediately. I picked up the less essential items, such as her wallet, passport and plane ticket.

She flipped open the silver metallic lid. I could hear the dial tone.

“Dr. Reiser at his office,” she said distinctly into the mouthpiece.

She looked up at me, her eyes were narrowed with anger but they were also swimming with tears.

“Mother, this is the worst thing you’ve ever done to me,” she told me. “It is totally unforgivable.”

I wanted to tell her that I hadn’t done anything. It was David who had hurt her. But it wasn’t true of course. Divorces always concern two people and nobody comes out completely innocent.

Brynn’s attention turned to her phone call.

“Is he in the office?” she asked. She bit down on her index fingernail. “I’ve got to talk to him right away.”

I couldn’t hear the other side of the conversation, but there was a long pause while my daughter was listening.

“How long will he be?”

She actually moaned as if the answer caused her physical pain.

“Okay, this is Brynn, tell him that my mother has thrown Dad out. He’s run off to the Dominican Republic to marry his trampy pregnant girlfriend, and I’m about to get on a plane to fly back to Boston.”

She snapped the phone closed and sat there, not looking at me.

I just wanted to finish my iced tea, shake hands and walk away. But I was her mother, lousy at the job as I had always been. I had no other choice but to sit and watch her suffer.

“Brynn, you have every right to be upset,” I told her. “But I know that somehow all of this is going to work out fine.”

“Why would you think that, Mother?” she asked, steely-
voiced. “Why would you think that anything, let alone
everything,
is going to ‘work out fine’?”

“Because I’m sure that what we’re doing is a good thing,” I told her. “Your father, Mikki and I, we’re all really trying to do what’s best for everybody.”

She rolled her eyes at that.

“What would have been best would have been for you and Dad to continue to do what you’re supposed to do,” she said. “To be my parents like you’re supposed to be. Not start changing the rules on me and making everything different.”

“Different can be better,” I pointed out. “Sometimes it can actually be the best.”

She really didn’t like that statement. Her eyes narrowed furiously.

“How can my parents’ divorce be best for me?” she asked.

It was a damn difficult question to answer, so I didn’t even try.

“Think of that little baby,” I said instead. “It’s going to be your little brother or sister. That little person should have a chance to come into the world with a mommy and a daddy.”

Her mouth came open. She stared a me incredulously.

“Think of the baby!” she said. “You want me to think of the baby?”

Brynn threw up a hand dismissingly. She was shaking her head.

“I can’t believe this. I can’t believe this, even of you, Mother,” she said. “I’m supposed to consider the feelings of an unborn fetus that was conceived in an adulterous affair by my dad. And you sound like you care more about that fucking baby than the emotional well-being of your own daughter!”

Brynn’s voice had slowly risen until the last was actually yelled. Everyone in the room was looking at us.

“Don’t use that kind of language, Brynn,” I said quietly. “It’s very offensive.”

“I fucking want to be offensive!” she screamed.

She grabbed up her backpack, her computer and her carry-on.

“Goodbye, Mother,” she said. “I am totally done with you. I don’t want to see you. I don’t want to hear from you. I don’t want to know anything about you ever. And I mean EVER!”

“Brynn, no, wait,” I said.

She brushed past.

“Don’t follow me!” she demanded.

I just stood there for a moment, not knowing what to do. In all honesty, I was tempted just to let it go. I couldn’t help Brynn with this. I could hardly help myself. I felt as betrayed, confused and rootless as she did. It was all I could do to simply drag myself out of bed in the mornings. I was in no position to offer comfort to anyone else.

The waitress came over with the check. I dug around in my purse for the right amount of cash. I didn’t want to wait for her to process my credit card so I gave her a twenty. I just wanted out of there.

“Keep the change,” I said.

It was a big tip, much better than she deserved, but she didn’t even offer thanks.

“Sure,” she said.

As I reached the exit, she called out to me.

“Hey, lady! Are these your keys?”

I kept mine in a special compartment in the side of my purse. I touched it and felt them still there, but I turned back anyway. They were Brynn’s. They provided a valid excuse, a good reason and a motherly necessity for me to go after my daughter.

“Thanks,” I said, clutching the collection of chinking metal in my hand. I headed down to the gate.

My daughter was furious with me. She blamed me. But that was to be expected. Even if we didn’t have our history, if she loved and trusted and respected me, bringing such news would still have evoked a reaction of anger. I knew that as well as if I were reading it from a text on parent-child relations.

It probably would have been better if David and I had talked to her together. If he had been there to reassure her that their relationship would not change. But he and Mikki had already gone to the Dominican Republic. And we certainly couldn’t wait until he came back to tell her. There was too much risk that she would have heard it from somebody else.

It was me or nobody. Of course, it wasn’t the first time that I was all that Brynn had. That was strange in itself. With a loving and involved father and two grandparents, she should have had tons of outside support. But so many times it had really been no different than me and my own mother. Life was just the two of us. A bilateral universe.

The airport was bustling and crowded with weekend travelers. But I spotted Brynn the moment I arrived at the gate. Next to the window, she was sitting elbows on knees, head in hands. Her expression was lost, forlorn. She was so young. Decked out all sexy in tight jeans, clunky heels and a blue clingy sweater, I was reminded of finding her in my closet playing dress-up in my glamorous after-fives.

I walked over to her.

The moment she saw me, she sat up, back ramrod straight, defenses fully engaged.

“I told you not to follow me,” she hissed between clenched teeth.

I held up the keys. “You left these,” I said.

At the sight she visibly deflated. Resuming her disillusioned-thinker position, she looked close to tears.

“I can’t do anything right,” she said in a sad, tiny voice. “I can’t even manage a dramatic exit.”

I sat down in the chair beside her. “I was never any good at them either,” I said.

She snorted, disbelieving.

“You’re good at everything,” she said. “You always know what to do and how to do it. You get along with everybody and don’t take crap from anyone. You even make getting dumped by your husband look like some sort of personal triumph.”

I listened and thought about what she was saying. After a minute or two the irony of the situation got to me and I gave a little chuckle.

“What’s so funny?” she asked unhappily.

“I guess it’s knowing how much you despise me,” I answered. “While still giving me a lot more credit than I deserve.”

“I don’t get it.”

“I’m not the woman that you think I am,” I told her. “I’d really like to be that woman. I’ve worked at it all my life. But when you get right down to it, I’m not her.”

Brynn didn’t bother to argue. She looked so pitiful, so deflated. I almost wished that she would growl at me again. I put my arm around her shoulders. She didn’t even shrug it off.

“When is it going to happen?” she asked.

“I don’t know for sure,” I told her. “The legal proceedings might already be over or it may be tomorrow. After the decree is granted they have to wait twenty-four hours before they can get married.”

“Not much time for Dad to play the field,” she said, attempting sarcasm.

“It’s all been so quick because of the baby,” I explained. “I’m trying to look at it like ripping off a bandage. Maybe it hurts more, but it’s over sooner.”

She nodded.

“I am truly sorry, sweetie,” I said.

“I just feel like I’m lost,” she said. “I was having such a great time with my friends. I met a guy and he seemed to really like me. I was so psyched up for going back to school. It’s like I looked away for a minute, and when I looked back…when I looked back, my life was just gone.”

Her words struck a surprisingly familiar note with me. Feelings that I hadn’t thought about in years suddenly weighed down on me. I knew what Brynn was feeling. I knew it exactly.

“I’ve talked to you about how my mother died.”

It was as much a question as a statement. Of course, I had told my daughter about her grandmother. Of course, she knew that I was alone in the world, but I honestly didn’t remember any in-depth discussion on the subject.

“She had, like, breast cancer or something,” Brynn answered.

“Yes,” I answered. “But I didn’t know it. I was away at school living with a roommate, working part-time, studying.” I hesitated a moment and then continued frankly, “I was hanging with my friends, partying, dating this really cute guy in a fraternity.”

“Eeeww, Mother, please, I don’t want to know.”

I nodded, but continued.

“My mom didn’t tell me she was sick. She had a mastectomy and radiation treatments and she never let me know. When she’d call, she’d talk about her work or ask me about school. She never said she was sick. The hospital called me when she was too unresponsive to make her own decisions. Even after I got there, seeing how awful she looked, I was sure she was going to be fine.”

“Did she explain why she didn’t tell you?” Brynn asked.

I shook my head. “She was getting so much pain medica
tion, I’m not sure if she even knew who I was,” I answered. “She died six days later.”

I glanced over at Brynn. She looked as though she might cry. There was an empathetic aspect of her that I was very aware of, but I rarely saw it focused in my direction.

“Oh, Mom, that’s so awful,” she said with genuine sincerity.

I felt as though I might cry, as well. Not just from the story of my loss, but from the sound of
Mom
on her lips. She so rarely called me that.

“Brynn,” I said, “I don’t know what you’re feeling, what you’re going through. But I do know the feeling that a familiar world has just disappeared without warning. I can’t make it be different, but I am sorry.”

She nodded.

We just sat there in the middle of the noisy hustle and bustle, the gray sky beyond the windows, unwelcoming, the smell of jet fuel and stale air around us. We were a mother and daughter. My arm around her shoulder, the warmth of her body close to mine. United for a precious moment by more than interactive history and shared genetic material. It was a sweet space of time that I treasure.

It ended abruptly with the sound of her cell phone beeping out the tune to “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.”

Brynn fished it out of her backpack and glanced quickly at the caller ID before answering.

“Thank God you called me back,” she said without prelude. “My parents are getting a divorce. Everything is just totally screwed.”