A Woman's Place: A Novel (24 page)

Defiance carried me back up to Johnny's room, but was replaced by something softer the instant I stepped inside. His cheeks were flushed again, but he hadn't moved since I'd left. His breathing was even. If experience was any indication, he would sleep through the night. I sat with him for a while, mostly because I wasn't ready to go. Then I reached the point where his sleep was so sound that I knew he was fine, and the dread of leaving ruined the pleasure of staying. So I wrote a note and left it propped by his pillow. Then I went looking for Dennis. It was nearly two in the morning. Since I hadn't heard him, I guessed he had fallen asleep. He had a history of doing that when the going got rough.

Indeed, he did. And I had allowed it--worse, encouraged it. So I was as much at fault as he was.

Funny thing, a woman's guilt. We blame ourselves when things go wrong, far more than we praise ourselves when things go right, and when we do the latter, someone calls us arrogant, which discourages further praise and encourages further blame, which suits men just fine. It wasn't fair at all.

Determined to right that particular wrong by waking Dennis now, I started for the bedroom. Halfway there, I stopped. The door was ajar. I found myself staring at it, unable to move.

Militancy was fine. Women standing up for women was fine. But that was generic, and this was specific.

Specifically, I didn't want to go inside. I didn't want to see the bed, didn't want to see Dennis in it. I didn't want to remember our lying there together, much less playing there with the children, singing, laughing. I didn't want to think of another woman lying there. Mercifully, I was spared the pain. A quick search found Dennis asleep, all right, but stretched out on the sofa in the den. I called his name from the door, once, then more sharply. When he raised his head, I told him I was leaving. Then I slipped out into the cold November night. Odd. I should have been more upset. Oh, I wasn't pleased at having to leave the children behind, especially not with Johnny sick. But I wasn't sad to be leaving the house itself. Dennis was there, and the tension that went with him. I felt it start to drain away the instant I started my car.

Had it always been there? Possibly. Had I been aware of it? No. My lighthouse, on the other hand, was tension free. No one could make demands on me there--not Dennis, not the kids, not my mother or Rona. It was a first for me, not having to please someone else, a first being able to choose what I wanted to do, just me, when, where, and how. What I chose to do was to call Brody. It was midnight in Seattle, where he was, and he was asleep. But his groggy hello warmed me up, and when he heard my voice and smiled out a greeting, I was glad I had called. We had talked earlier in the evening. I had heard about his meeting with our Seattle franchisee and had told him about my meeting with Jenovitz. Now I told him about Johnny, but only the barest outline. I didn't tell him about my encounter with Dennis in the laundry room, didn't want Page 126

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Dennis intruding on our conversation. I just wanted to touch base with Brody.

I hung up the phone picturing him stretched out on his stomach in bed, wearing precious little under a sheet that barely, just barely, skimmed his hips. I fell asleep wondering if I had ever seen him that way, or if I was simply dreaming it all up.

The phone woke me less than four hours later. "You were here, Mommy, and you didn't even tell me!" She was as irate as irate got. "Why didn't you wake me up?" I fell back to the pillow and pulled up the puff. "Kikit, honey, you were sound asleep."

"But I wanted to see you. I could have shown you the spelling paper I did. Daddy and me spent a whole long time on it before dinner. Johnny says Daddy says he can stay home from school. Can he?"

"He should. He was pretty sick last night. How is he now?"

"Hogging the remote. Shouldn't I get to hold it now, since I have to leave soon? It isn't fair. He gets to do everything good." She whimpered, "I wanted to see you, Mommy."

"Didn't you?" I asked, cajoling now. I was fast learning to improvise in this new landscape of my life. "I stood there at your door for the longest time and talked with you in my thoughts. I'm sure you heard. You may have even seen me, but what happens is that when you're asleep like that, you forget. Think hard. Did you hear me talking my thoughts to you last night?"

There was a small silence, then a sweet, "Were you talking about taking me skiing? I think I heard that. You were saying I could go on the lift with you and Daddy this year. I don't want to be stuck in the ski school again."

"That wasn't what I was saying at all," I scolded, but in a playful way that ignored the fact that there might not be any ski trip this year, period, certainly not one with Dennis and me both. "What I was saying," I drawled, thinking fast for something that would please her, "was that you looked like a little angel lying there, but that something was missing."

"A halo?"

"Nail polish." If I had promised her a new jacket, doll, or Walkman, Dennis would have accused me of trying to buy her love. I wasn't. I just wanted to make her happy. "Angels don't wear nail polish," was her cautious response.

"Beautiful ones do. Want me to put some on for you tomorrow?" She drew in a breath. "Will you?" It wasn't often that I painted her nails, just once in a while, as a special treat. "I want Mellow Mellow." The color was Mellow Melon, but I got the point. "I can arrange that, but only if you pamper Johnny a little. He's sick."

"He can keep the remote. I gotta go to school anyway. Talk with you later, Mommy. Bye."

I called Johnny several times during the day to see how he was feeling. One of those times he was alone, and while he didn't seem to mind, I did. Dennis was at the supermarket, he said. I said, albeit silently, Page 127

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that if Dennis needed a break from the house--what mother didn't understand the feeling of being cooped up with a sick child?--he should have found someone to stay with Johnny. His parents would have done it. I would have done it.

Not that Dennis had been cooped up with a sick child for long. What had it been? Fifteen hours?

There were six people whose names and phone numbers I planned to give Dean Jenovitz as sources of information on the children's well-being--one teacher for each child, their pediatric nurse-practitioner, Johnny's two-time basketball coach, Kikit's allergy doctor, and our minister. Since I was more often with the children than Dennis, these six people knew me better than they knew him. I felt relatively confident that they liked me, but a reminder wouldn't hurt. So I spent the better part of Tuesday calling each on the phone, dropping by in person in the case of the nurse-practitioner, the allergy doctor, and our minister, to explain the situation and ask if I might give the GAL their names. They agreed, of course. Asking was a formality. But it gave me an opportunity to thank them ahead of time, to express my apprehension in some cases, and ask for their help. It also gave me an opportunity to follow up on past discussions. People loved talking about themselves. I was a good listener.

And if I played on my relationship with each? If our discussions touched on favors I had done for each in the past?

I had never, would never attach strings to things I did. But I was helpless with regard to so much else of the legal quagmire. Hard as it was to ask for help, it was a relief to finally be able to do something on my own behalf.

Kikit called at dinnertime to say that her stomach hurt. I was quickly alert, what with her allergy problems. There was still that last unsolved attack. But the symptoms now were different. She wasn't having trouble breathing, wasn't swelling up. I was thinking that she probably had Johnny's flu--until she broke away from telling me she just might throw up, to accuse Johnny of squirting more whipped cream on his Jell-O

than he had squirted on hers.

I asked to speak with Dennis.

"He's on the phone in the den. It's business. Are you coming over, Mommy?"

How could I not? Kikit didn't sound sick, but I wanted to make sure. I also wanted to see for myself that Johnny was better. Ten minutes later, I was reassured on both counts. Johnny still had a vaguely washed-out look, but his skin was cool and he was eating again. As for Kikit, she was so engrossed in an animated retelling of the story her teacher had read them in school that day, that she forgot she was supposed to be sick.

Dennis was still on the phone when I arrived. Incredibly, he didn't even know I had come--what if I'd been a stranger with mayhem in mind?--until he walked into the kitchen fifteen minutes later.

At least he was tactful. He had the children give me hugs and sent them upstairs to do their homework before asking why I had come. Clearly he thought I had initiated the visit.

"Kikit called," I set him straight, pulling on my coat. "She must have figured that if being sick had worked for Johnny, it would work for Page 128

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her."

"Work how?" he asked. "What did she want?"

"Me," I said on my way to the door.

"But she's seeing you tomorrow."

I sighed, turned. "You don't get it, do you? They're used to living with me. They're used to seeing me every day, not just on Wednesdays and Saturdays. You may have convinced a judge that I was too scattered to be with my kids, but you'd have a hard time convincing them of it. I'm their mother. No court order can change that. They miss me. They feel the loss."

"Don't try to tell me that Johnny deliberately got sick to get you here."

"Of course he didn't. We both know he was sick. That isn't to say that he wasn't relieved that I'd come, relieved to know that I'll come in the future when he needs me." I sighed, held up a hand in surrender. "Let's not argue. I just think we have to be aware of the things kids do in situations like these." "They'll get used to your living somewhere else."

"That's not the point. The point is that they're too young to understand some of what they feel and do."

"I have things under control here."

"I'm not saying you don't. Who was the business call to, by the way?" I wondered if it had been business at all.

"No one you know."

No one I knew. For a minute, I didn't speak. Then, because the court order had broken the tie between us, and that broken tie had loosened my tongue, I charged, "I've heard that a million times. "No one you know." You shut me out, Dennis. For years, you shut me out. And you say I wasn't approachable. You knew much more about my business than I ever knew about yours."

He looked bored. There was nothing new in that, either. It was his pet response when he knew I was right.

Then, as though looking bored wasn't enough, he said, "You won't win on the Motion to Recuse. Judges never grant them. My lawyer is meeting with yours on Thursday. We need the third quarter figures on Wicker Wise

"We need the third quarter figures on DGR." Dennis's initials. Short for the DGR Group, the formal name of his company. No matter that it wasn't a group at all, strictly a one-man operation, but it sounded good, group. Chic and successful.

"If you're thinking," he warned, "that the profits of one will cancel out the profits of the other, don't. I'm going for blood, Claire." If it was money he wanted, he could have it. I had made that clear to Carmen from the start. Me, I defined "blood" differently. Wondering if we would ever see eye to eye, or if it even mattered now that we were splitting, I said a quiet, "You already have," and let myself out. Dennis was right about the Motion to Recuse. Selwey made a show of Page 129

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listening to Carmen argue that he should remove himself from the case, then denied the motion.

Forewarned wasn't forearmed. I was frustrated beyond belief. "There you have one more reason why he should bow out of this case," I cried. "He dug in his heels on principle alone. That decision had nothing to do with anything you argued."

"It rarely does at this stage, but it's part of the process," Carmen remarked as she directed me through the clusters of lawyers gathered on the courthouse steps. "Now we go for an interlocutory appeal."

"How does that work?"

"I write up a petition setting forth the facts of the case and requesting relief from Selwey's ruling. I file it with the Appeals Court. A clerk there screens it to make sure that I've filed it on time and that it limits itself to what's been done in Selwey's court and nothing more. He'll write a synopsis of my petition for the judge, who will read that, then be interested enough to read the whole thing and grant us a hearing."

"When?" I asked.

"I'll have our petition filed by Monday and send a copy to Heuber. We should hear something later that week."

"About my getting the kids back?"

"No, about whether a judge will hear the case." So many steps. Agonizingly slow. "If he hears it, when will that be?" "A few days after that. Unless he gives Heuber time to write an opposing argument, in which case the hearing will be a few days after he receives that."

We had stopped at the curb. Shivering, I buttoned the collar of my coat and buried my hands in its pockets. "Will I get the kids then?"

"I hope so. Interlocutory appeals are hard to win, but at least we'll be dealing with a different judge. Anyone is more reasonable than Selwey." I hugged my arms to my sides and studied the road. The wind was plucking leaves from the gutter, sending them tumbling every which way off down the street. I hurt on their behalf.

"Meanwhile," Carmen said, "I'm meeting with Heuber this afternoon at three."

"What if his demands are easy? What if we have an agreement signed within the week?"

"If we do, we'll notify Selwey. He's just stubborn enough to insist that the divorce agreement has nothing to do with the custody issue, and that he wants to let Jenovitz finish his study."

"As things stand, that might be the quickest thing," I said with a discouraged sigh.

From the courthouse, I drove to the Essex store and spent a few hours working the floor. I did it often, both for the sake of staying in touch with the mood of the clientele and for the sheer pleasure of the work. It was particularly meaningful now. Our St. Louis franchisee was there, Page 130