A Woman's Place: A Novel (4 page)

Bewildered, I glanced up at him. He looked totally placid. I read on. Pending a hearing on the merits or until further order of the court, it is ordered that:

The plaintiff father is to have the temporary custody of John and Clara Kate Raphael, the minor children of the parties.

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The wife is to vacate the marital premises for the weekend beginning forthwith and up until noon on Monday, October 28, at which time all parties are to appear to show cause why the order for temporary custody and vacate should or should not continue.

At said time a hearing will be held to determine temporary child custody and support payment in advance of a final divorce settlement. The form was dated that day, Thursday, October 24, and signed by E. Warren Selwey, Justice of the Probate and Family Court. I stared at the paper for the longest time. All I could think was that Dennis was playing a sick joke to drive home the fact that he hated my traveling. But the paper looked real--embossed letterhead, blanks filled by an honest-to-goodness typewriter that, I checked, left marks on the back--and Dennis wasn't laughing.

"What is this?" I asked.

"It should be clear."

"It looks like a court order."

"Smart girl."

"A court order?"

"Right in one."

"Dennis," I protested and held out the paper. "What is it?" Dennis was a showman. What he lacked in business sense, he made up for in good looks and charm and the kind of confident smiles people gravitated toward. As his wife, I knew there was a certain unsureness behind the facade.

At least, there usually was. This time the confidence seemed real. It gave me a chill.

"I've filed for divorce," he said. "The court has given me temporary custody of the kids and ordered you out of this house." Definitely a joke. "You're kidding."

"No. That paper makes it official."

I shook my head. It made no sense. "Why are the children at your parents' house? It's a school night."

"My parents live close enough. Having supper with them is a novelty for the kids, and it gives you time to be served and clear out. I don't want them upset."

"If you don't want them upset," I said with a hard swallow and held up the paper, "what is this all about?"

He pushed away from the doorjamb, less patient now. "For Christ's sake, Claire, it's right there. I'm suing you for divorce. I repeat. Suing you for divorce. Why won't that register?"

My voice rose. I was getting scared. "Because it isn't the way two rational people who have been married for fifteen good years behave. People like that approach each other and talk." Page 18

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"I tried. You wouldn't listen. Three times I mentioned divorce. I'll tell you the exact dates if you want. The last time was in August. I said we should separate when the kids got back to school." He had been upset. A deal he'd been working on had just fallen through. At the same time, compounding his humiliation, the second quarter figures for Wicker Wise had come through looking better than ever. So he had threatened to move out. He did that when he was upset, or humiliated, or frustrated. It was part of the pattern.

"I didn't think you were serious."

"I was. Very."

"Dennis."

"Claire," he mocked me and settled against the doorjamb, calm again. It was the calm that got to me, I think. It suggested that Dennis truly had the upper hand here. It put a distance between us, made his voice cold.

"I want a divorce. Since you haven't been willing to hear me, I had to resort to this."

My thoughts were flying every which way-questions, fears, long-term meanings hitting each other. I struggled to slow them, to separate them, to think sentence by sentence, one step at a time. Even then I was breathless. "Okay. If you're serious about separating, we can talk about a trial something, but what is this about custody of Johnny and Kikit?

And an order to vacate?"

"I want the house. I want alimony. I want sole custody of the kids."

"What?"

"You aren't a responsible mother."

"What?"

"Good God, Claire, do you want me to spell it out?"

"Yes, I want you to spell it out." I was getting angry. Enough was enough. "I'm a perfectly responsible mother. What in the world could you say to a judge to convince him I'm not?"

"Between your mother and your work, you're in a state of personal crisis. The children are suffering."

"Suffering how?"

"You're never here, for one thing. For another, when you are here, you're so preoccupied with your work you forget the kids."

"Kikit's ballet class. We've been over that a dozen times. The store lost electricity. The clocks stopped."

"What about the parent-teacher conference you missed?" It was a minute before I realized what he meant. "The meeting with Mrs. Stanetti? I didn't miss it. We had to reschedule twice, and then we got our signals crossed."

He held up a hand. "She was waiting. You didn't show. And then there's the accident you had last month. The car was totaled. It was a miracle Page 19

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the kids weren't killed."

"Dennis, that accident wasn't my fault. I was hit by a man who was having a heart attack. The police agree. The insurance company agrees."

"The judge doesn't. He agrees with me that if you'd been more alert you could have swerved out of the way and not risked your kids' lives, speaking of which, Kikit had a whopper of an allergy attack while you were gone."

My insides lurched. "When? To what?"

"Tuesday night. To the frozen casserole you left. What did you put in it, Claire? If anyone is supposed to know what Kikit can and cannot eat, it's you-and that's not the worst of it. There was no Epi-pen. You must have left it in Cleveland."

"I didn't. I packed it. It was right in her bag."

"No, it wasn't. I looked. There was nothing there and nothing here. I had to rush her to the hospital. She was wheezing and swelling up the whole way. By the time we got there she was nearly blue." I pressed my chest. More than anything else, this took my breath. Medicine or no medicine, any attack Kikit had was serious. "There was antihistamine and a spare Epi-pen. I always keep extras." He shook his head. "We looked everywhere."

"It's in the basement refrigerator. I've told you that. Is she all right?"

"They stabilized her, but it took a while. She was crying for you, only you weren't there."

I felt a swift fury. "I was only as far away as the phone. Why wasn't I called?"

"I tried to call. You had the cell phone turned off, and your sister's line was busy."

"Then later. Or the next day. I used my phone. It was on. And Rona's line couldn't have been busy that whole time. The operator would have cut in if you'd said it was an emergency--or you could have called Connie's hospital room--or the nurses' station. I left all those numbers on the board. You could have reached me if you'd wanted to. I'd have flown home right away."

"Would you have? You've been gone thirty-four days of the last ninety. You love being on the road. Face it, you do."

"I don't. Especially not when one of the kids is sick. You actually counted how many days I've been gone? How many of those were spent visiting my mother?" I would have counted myself, if I hadn't been so upset. Poor Kikit. I knew how her attacks went. There would have been several hours of panic, followed by a swift physical recovery. The emotional one wouldn't be nearly so swift. Until we identified what had triggered the attack, she would be afraid to eat.

And I hadn't been there. She must have thought I had deserted her. Furious at Dennis for keeping me in the dark, I ran into the kitchen and lifted the phone to call her at my in-laws. Dennis pressed the Page 20

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disconnect button before the call could go through.

"Don't." I tried to remove his hand. "I need to talk to Kikit."

"You need," he said with deadly slowness and fingers like lead, "to take your things and leave. That's a court order, Claire. If you resist it, I'll call the cops."

"You wouldn't."

"I would," he said, and what I saw in his face as I stood there, so close, made me believe him. He was my husband. He knew me more intimately than any other man. But his face held no warmth, no fondness, nothing to suggest I was special to him in any way. I could have been a stranger to whom he had taken an instant dislike, or someone who had offended him and against whom he was taking revenge. Just then, he was a stranger to me, too. "You're scaring me, Dennis."

"Just leave."

"This is my home. Where am I supposed to go?"

"You'll figure something out," he said with an odd expectancy. I waited for him to go on. When he didn't, I asked, "Like what?" It was like he knew something I didn't, like he really wanted to tell me what it was.

He raised an arm to the wall over the phone and gave me a slanted smile.

"Kikit told me about your run-in with the window washer."

"Run-in?"

"When you came prancing in here in your prettiest Victoria's Secret bra and panties while he was doing that huge picture window over there." I didn't know what that had to do with anything, still I said, "I turned around and ran back out the minute I saw him. I was mortified."

"You looked good and you knew it."

"You think I did it on purpose? Dennis, please. That boy is twenty years old."

"Young flesh. Hot flesh."

"He's the big brother of Johnny's best friend, which is why I hired him in the first place. He needed the money."

"And got a nice little thrill for a tip. Kikit thought it was funny as anything. Me, I think it's a lousy example to be setting for an impressionable little girl." He slid his arm down the wall. "I don't think it's funny about you and Brody, either." I drew a blank. "Me and Brody what?"

"Screwing."

Screwing? Me and Brody?

It was a long minute before I could speak, and then it was in a level tone. I couldn't take the charge seriously, it was so absurd. "This is madness, Dennis. What's wrong with you?"

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"The two of you, eating at my craw for months and months. Did you think I wouldn't notice? You touch him all the time."

"Touch him?"

"A hand here, an arm there. And even aside from touching, there's the way you look at each other, the way you talk to each other. Hell, you all but finish each other's sentences. You spend more time with him than you do with me or the kids any day."

"I doubt that's true, but if you're into counting hours there, too, consider that Brody is my CEO."

"A convenient arrangement. Like the office at his house."

"The office is at his house," I argued, "because you didn't want the office here, I wanted it in the attic, could have had a perfect office in the attic, but you said no, you didn't want phones ringing and people coming and going."

"I told you to rent space."

"That was five years ago. The business was smaller. Renting seemed extravagant. I'd have stayed here in the den if I could have, only I needed more space. So we put the office in Brody's garage. Not his house. His garage."

"You're in his house all the time. I've seen you. You use the kitchen. You use the bathroom. I'll bet you know his bedroom soup to nuts." I nearly screamed, he made the picture so dark and dirty. "You're dead wrong. There is nothing going on between me and Brody that doesn't go on all the time with people who work together."

"And travel together. To wit, this week. Four nights in High Point."

"Working."

"Uh-huh. I have telephone records from other trips. For every call to us, there were three to him."

"He's my CEO," I repeated. "My business partner." "So why weren't those calls made during business hours?"

"Because I was busy with other people during business hours. Calling home had to come before or after."

"Brody's calls sure were after. Nine-forty-five at night. Ten-thirty. Eleven-fifteen."

"That's right. By the time I was done talking with you and the kids, by the time I had something to eat and turned on my laptop and evaluated what I'd done that day and listed what my second in command needed to know and what I needed to ask him, and taking time differences into account, it was that late." I knew I sounded defensive, but Dennis's charges were so unfair that I couldn't let them stand.

"Nice that Brody didn't mind."

"He's a night owl like me."

"And how do you know that?"

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"The same way you do. Because Brody is our closest friend!" I pushed a hand through my hair, like that would straighten everything out. My mind was jumbled up, not the least of it from the realization that Dennis had to have been planning all this, gathering arguments for a long time. Telephone records? Brody and me? "Brody was your college roommate. You've known him almost twenty-five years. He was your business partner long before he was mine. He was your best man. He's our kids' godfather, their favorite uncle, and, yes, okay, he's my best friend. If you're jealous of all that, I'm sorry--"

"Jealous? He can have you! Sex between you and me was mediocre at best!" I felt I'd been hit in the stomach, actually bent at the middle. "You never complained about sex with me. You couldn't get enough."

"Damn right. It was like pulling teeth. Either you were exhausted, or up late working, or listening for one of the kids to be sick--"

"Hold it! I rarely put you off, and you never had sex without coming, so what is your complaint? Don't throw stereotypes at me, Dennis. No matter how busy I was, I made time. We had sex plenty."

"Quantity. Not quality."

I prayed to the ceiling. "Good God, what's going on here?"

"This," Dennis said, slapping the paper that hung from my hand. When I took a step back, he swung in front of the phone. I was too stunned to react when he put the receiver to his ear and punched in a call, then befuddled when he gave our address and said, "Get someone here fast." It wasn't until he hung up the phone that I realized what he'd done. My husband, who had given me a hug and waved me off barely two weeks ago without a hint of his plans, had just called the police.