A Very Good Life (29 page)

At exactly seven o’clock, Brett arrived on the twelfth floor of 77 Park Avenue and opened the door, which was where the bedrooms and library were located. As usual, Wills barked and greeted his master enthusiastically.

“Dana? Are you home?”

There was no reply.

“Honey? Where are you? I’ve got some big news.”

He found her seated in the library, but she stood as soon as he entered the room.

“Are you going out of town?” he asked. “There’s luggage by the door.”

“I know,” Dana answered. “I put it there, but I’m not going out of town.”

Brett could tell something was wrong by his wife’s calm and measured cadence. She seemed very distant. “Then what’s going on?”

Dana didn’t hesitate. “I know about you and Janice, Brett.” The words hung in the air for several seconds before Dana received a reply.

Brett frowned as he searched for the proper response. “When did you become the suspicious wife? Do I have to go through this every time I go out of town?”

“We won’t be going through this ever again. Matthew saw you and Janice at a restaurant in the airport in San Francisco.”

“Is
that
what this is about? Yes, Janice was with me. Richard asked her to go at the last minute. He feels that it’s too big a case for a single attorney, even with the help of paralegals.” He laughed, as if the matter was cleared up. “I made an eight o’clock reservation at Cheshire Cheese, unless you’d like to go somewhere else,” he said nonchalantly as he went through mail piled on the desk.

Dana walked towards Brett and pulled the mail from his hands. “Look at me! Matthew took pictures of the two of you kissing repeatedly.”

“Okay. Janice got a little tipsy and started flirting a bit. For God’s sake, Matthew, of all people, should know the way she likes to tease. Too bad I didn’t have a camera when she was all over him at our party. Let me see those pictures.”

“The pictures are with my lawyer.”

For the first time since arriving home, Brett was taken aback. “You have a lawyer?”

“Yes. I have a divorce lawyer. There is no marriage without trust, and I can
never
trust you again. It’s really quite simple.”

“Now wait a minute, Dana. Let’s put the brakes on here. You’ve been plotting this while sweet-talking me every night, pretending everything’s okay. You’re blowing up our marriage without giving me a chance to explain. I don’t even recognize you.”

Dana’s eyes were cold and she didn’t respond.

“Janice is a silly and impetuous woman. I’ve admitted as much, haven’t I? We may have had a few too many drinks, but it’s not like there’s something between us. She doesn’t mean anything to me.”

Dana backed away, angry. Brett was indeed using all of the tired clichés that she expected to hear.

“Richard just told me that the firm is going to extend partnership to me, Dana! That’s why he wanted me to stop by the office this afternoon. I wanted to surprise you at dinner. Will you please burn those damn pictures so we can get on with our lives? Forget about Janice. Now that I’ll be a partner, I’ll find a way to get her dismissed from the firm.”

“I don’t want this life anymore, and this is not about Janice, Brett. Believe me. It’s about me. I don’t expect a perfect marriage, but I do deserve a kind and loving husband, and that will never be you. Your partnership status will not change the way that I feel. I found a charming carriage house and I’ll be moving before Christmas.”

“A carriage house! You have a lawyer
and
a carriage house?”

Brett could not believe what he was hearing. He hadn’t seen Matthew in San Francisco, although he was aware that his brother-in-law was a photography buff. Was it really possible that his calculated plans and deceptions had been uncovered by such an outrageous trick of fortune?

“Dana, let’s try to get through Christmas. I don’t have to be in San Francisco until January fifteenth. We have time to make things right. I’ll go to counseling if you like. I know I can make it up to you. I don’t like to see you this way. I’m sorry.”

Dana shook her head and folded her arms. “It’s over, Brett. I want you to leave tonight. You can stay at a hotel, which is why I packed some of your clothes. I’m not going to stand here for hours and listen to your pathetic excuses.”

Dana picked up Rudnick’s business card from the desk and handed it to Brett. “My lawyer is expecting your call tomorrow. I want papers for a legal separation signed before you leave for San Francisco in January.”

“You’re the one who’s ending this,” Brett said, pointing his finger at Dana. “This isn’t my decision.” He was now visibly shaken.

“Don’t try to turn the tables, Brett. You were caught, and now you’re just trying to win your case. You don’t even know what you’re saying. This is your fault, and you’ll have to live with the consequences.”

“No!” he said loudly. “We’re going to—” Brett stopped in mid-sentence. He slowly lowered his outstretched arm, defeated. He could see that Dana was deadly serious and that he wasn’t going to talk his way out of his indiscretion, not even with courtroom rhetoric.

“I’m going to stay in the guest bedroom tonight,” he said quietly. “I’ll be gone in the morning.”

Brett turned and shuffled out of the library while Dana went to the master bedroom and closed the door. She’d mourned the end of their marriage and was now composed. She knew there would be more tears in the weeks ahead, but tonight she was calm and resolute. It had been a difficult conversation, but now it was over, with Brett accepting her decision faster than anticipated. His predictable reactions had confirmed that Dana was right, not that she needed such validation any longer.

She expected to hear a knock on the door—Brett trying to plead his case one last time—but thankfully there was none. Dana fell asleep almost immediately.

• • •

The following morning, Brett saw Dana standing at the living room window. She turned as she heard him approach, and they embraced. “I do love you, Dana,” Brett said.

“I believe that, but you obviously need something more. And so do I.”

They both shed brief tears before Brett dropped his arms and turned around.

“I’ll call your attorney when I get to the office,” he said as he walked to the front door, not looking back.

“Thank you.”

And then he was gone.

Dana turned to the window. She would never sleep under the same roof with Brett again. The legal formalities still had to run their course, but the marriage was now dead, her life with Brett finished. Down on the street, people were rushing to work, taking their places in the world as they did every day.

Dana would join them momentarily. She would be alone, but that was acceptable for now. The alternative was intolerable.

T
wo days had passed since Brett had been informed his marriage was over. He called Jack Hartlen and told him that Patti would shortly be telling him of the divorce. Jack was, in no uncertain terms, not to mention the divorce to anyone. Jack understood the unspoken consequences if he did not comply. Richard would be told, of course, but Brett needed time to explain the separation in a manner that would reflect sympathy towards him rather than criticism or suspicion.

It was Saturday afternoon, and Brett sat on the living room couch in Janice’s Greenwich Village apartment. He sipped from a tumbler of scotch and stared ahead vacantly. Janice’s apartment was tastefully decorated, but it didn’t approach the standards to which he’d grown accustomed—Dana’s standards, if the truth be told. He was sorry that he’d hurt Dana—and just as sorry that he’d gotten caught. He was a methodical, well-organized man, and his steel-trap mind, which served him so well as a lawyer, had failed him in his personal life. Short of Dana’s hiring a private investigator to monitor his movements, which is something she would never have done, being on the West Coast with Janice had been a fortuitous turn of events that should have virtually ensured his affair would remain clandestine. And sooner or later the affair would have ended, as almost all do. He would have been able to claim no harm, no foul and return to his life, knowing inwardly that he was not growing old before his time, as Janice had claimed. His wild oats would have been sown and no one would have been the wiser.

Janice, of course, was delighted and felt no guilt or remorse. Her estimation of Dana and her upper-class lifestyle, with its wine journals and neighborhood meetings to remove prostitutes from her microcosmic world, had not changed. She detested Dana and everything she stood for. As for Brett, she had tempted him, but he was a grown man, responsible for his actions. As far as she was concerned, she had liberated him from the tyranny of a staid and proper life that he’d conducted at the cost of suppressing his visceral impulse to indulge his desires and throw caution to the wind. She could read people as accurately as Patti Hartlen, and she had always seen into Brett’s mind in a way that she doubted Dana could. Bumping into Patti at Saks might indeed have raised the suspicions of the astute Mrs. Hartlen, but Janice doubted that it would have brought Brett’s world to an end. Janice, however, had known how to exploit the situation to her advantage. Brett’s immediate fear of being caught and her ability to seduce him so quickly was, to her way of thinking, further evidence of how conflicted he was, of how much he wanted to give free rein to his restlessness.

“Is the proposition that we now have an opportunity to be together without so much secrecy so horrible?” Janice asked, sitting next to Brett. “You look positively glum.”

“No, of course not. It’s just that this isn’t the way things were supposed to play out. Nobody was supposed to get hurt.”

“Don’t be so naïve,” Janice said. “You’re a lawyer, for God’s sake. Our profession involves winning and losing every day, and when people lose, they get hurt. But when a case is decided, both parties move on. Unless there’s an appeal, that is, and you don’t have that option with Dana.”

Brett shrugged. “I suppose so.”

“Have you been truly happy with Dana?” Janice queried.

“Yes, I’ve always been comfortable with Dana.”

Janice shook her head and closed her eyes. “I asked if you’d been happy, not comfortable.”

“Sometimes.” He paused. “Well, most of the time, I guess.” In his heart, he knew he loved Dana but hadn’t done much to demonstrate it in the last three years. Their lives had been on cruise control. “It’s still hard to end a marriage and a part of my life,” Brett said in his own defense as he turned his head to face Janice.

Janice nodded. “I don’t deny that.
All
change is hard. Despite what people think of me, I’ve been around the block and know a thing or two about life and relationships. But the only question that’s important is whether you consider yourself a winner or a loser now that your case has been decided.”

Brett knit his eyebrows. “What do you mean?”

“You’ve been extended a partnership, and I’m your lover. We can go anywhere and do anything. We’re going to be in San Francisco together, and you can explore a new lifestyle if you have the courage to do so. You’re a young man with no children, and you’ve been offered a kind of freedom that most men would kill for. Yes, you’re getting divorced, but the sky’s the limit, Mr. McGarry. So did you win or lose this week?”

“I get it,” Brett said, smiling for the first time all day. “Is the glass half empty or half full?”

“Exactly. Now which is it?”

Brett leaned over and kissed Janice passionately on the lips. “Does that answer your question?”

“It’s a beginning, but I’m not convinced,” Janice replied as she put her arm around Brett’s neck and drew him close.

“Why don’t we finish the Q and A in your bedroom?” he said.

There was no more talk of divorce for the rest of the day.

D
ana sat at her desk on Tuesday morning, December 17th. The Teen Advisory Board had again modeled clothing lines the previous Saturday, and the girls had displayed great poise and maturity as ambassadors for B. Altman. Helen had not been able to stop talking about the youth market and the enormous sales potential that it held. At the luncheon she’d given the previous day for Dana and the contest winners, she’d been animated and enthusiastic and had taken time to get to know each of the girls.

It was a week before Christmas Eve, and the store was bustling with holiday activity. Bea had called Dana into her office half a dozen times in the past two hours, and Dana already knew by lunchtime that it was going to be a hectic afternoon. That was okay with Dana, who relished the opportunity to stay busy. Andrew had been checking with her several times a day over the past week to see how she was holding up, but Dana did not experience any holiday blues as predicted by Andrew, family, or friends. She felt free to pursue her life and realized that living with Brett had been constraining to a degree she hadn’t perceived until she had decided to end her marriage. There were brief moments when she reflected on her eight years with Brett and felt a note of sadness, but such times were brief and transient.

Alan Rudnick had notified Dana on Monday that Brett had signed the papers and had not requested a single change in the documents. He had stoically put his signature to the dozen papers granting Dana a legal separation and left Rudnick’s office.

Dana’s parents did not seem surprised at their daughter’s announcement. They arrived at the carriage house at Sniffen Court early Saturday morning, offering Dana minimal advice on how to proceed with her new life. In his usual comforting manner, Phil told Dana that they were always there for her and he was sure that everything would work out in the end. “You’re only twenty-nine, and your whole life is ahead of you. God will take care of things. Just wait and see. It will be a good life.” Virginia refrained from discussing Brett and only gave Dana a brief speech, the gist of which was a version of the “when life hands you lemons, make lemonade” philosophy of moving on. She and Dana worked quickly to get the house in order, and when Uncle John, Johnny, and Phoebe arrived at seven o’clock to take Dana and her parents to dinner, evergreen boughs draped the mantles and three fires were burning. Wills, adjusting to his new home, claimed a strategic spot in front of the wall of windows that had a clear view of a golden retriever’s front door across the courtyard.