Escape (10 page)

Four wasn’t enough, but it was better than none. “I’ll take four. Thank you, Walter. You’ve been incredibly generous.”

“Will you keep in touch?” he asked with what sounded like actual concern. And funny, if I had ever heard that before in my dealings with Lane Lavash, I might have felt better about the culture of the place. Honestly? The idea of my being managing partner one day was pushing it a little—actually, pushing it a lot. Still, I appreciated his accommodation. Four weeks wasn’t anywhere near what I’d need, but at least I’d have a job at the end.

If I wanted it. Which I might not. But burning every bridge made no sense.

So I promised to keep in touch and ended the call feeling a brief satisfaction. Now came James.

Bracing myself on pillows against the headboard, I tucked my knees up and dug my cold feet into the comforter. Holding the BlackBerry close, I put through the call.

His phone rang once, twice, a third time. I was trying to decide whether to leave a message, when he finally clicked in, but he didn’t say a word.

“Are you there?” I asked timidly.

There was another silence before he said, “I’m here.”

“Are you okay?” His voice didn’t sound right. It wasn’t familiar.

“What the fuck kind of question is that?” he shot back, but he sounded tired, like we’d been arguing for hours. “My wife picks up and leaves without a word, and—and she wants to know if I’m okay? How would you be if I did that to you?”

“Devastated.”

“I am. And—and confused. If you want to leave me, the least you can do is to tell me why. Did I offend you? Is this about my ditching your firm dinner Friday night?”

I was silent. James knew me better than to think I’d done something so big for such a petty reason.

“Emily?” he asked cautiously, apparently afraid I’d hung up.

“I’m here. I just don’t know what to say. That isn’t why I left.”

“You were fine Thursday night.”

“You said that last time we talked, and maybe I was fine on the surface. But is what’s on the surface all that counts?”

“If it’s all I know, it is. Talk—talk to me, babe,” he begged.

“I’ve been talking for
months
about how much I hate my job and about how little time we have together.”

“Come on, Em.” He did sound familiar now, even the repeating of words that he did when he was too tired to be crisp. “We all—all say those things. It’s the nature of the beast.”

“What if I don’t like that beast?”

“Don’t like me?”

“Don’t like our
lives
,” I corrected. “It isn’t just one thing—it’s
everything
. I feel like a robot, clocking in, clocking out, rushing to yoga, rushing to book club, rushing to the dry cleaner before they close for the night. I can’t breathe. That’s what happened Friday morning. I was at work and I absolutely couldn’t breathe.”

“Where are you?”

I ignored the question. “We lead a life dominated by machines. Our careers were supposed to be about helping people, but we’ve become mid-level bureaucrats. We have no time for friends or for each other. I have never been so
lonely
. Don’t you feel it?”

“I’m too busy to feel it.”

“But aren’t you
hungry
to connect with another human being on a personal level?” I asked pleadingly, because I wasn’t getting through, and that hurt. The James I’d known in law school would have understood. That James would have felt the loneliness. So either he had changed, or I had misjudged him from the start.

“Speaking of friends,” he said, “Colleen Parker keeps calling here. You accuse
me
of not connecting, while you—you blow
her
off?”

“Colly’s a perfect example of what I’m saying. I have no business being in her wedding. We’re barely friends. And that’s supposed to be okay? It’s like the whole concept of friendship has been redefined. It’s shallow. I am
lonely.
”

There was silence, then a quiet “Is that your way of telling me you’re seeing someone else?”

I thought of Jude. I wasn’t seeing him, but I would if I stayed. Did I want that? No. Could I resist? No more than I’d been able to resist rushing to the window to hear the coyote last night. The two were related. On some level in me, there remained a fascination with both.

No way would James understand that, though, and he had given me the perfect opening. “Are you?” I asked back.

“Agh. Is this about Naida again? Emily, I am not having an affair, not with Naida or anyone else.” He was so straightforward, so
blunt
, with no words repeated, that I actually believed him. “I’m married to you, though it doesn’t feel it right now. You left me. Do you want a divorce?”

“I did not leave you. I left the life that was consuming us, and
no
, I don’t want a divorce. I want to work things out.”

“How can we, if we can’t talk face-to-face? Where are you? You’re not with your mom. I already called her.”

I pressed my fingertips to my brow. “Oh, James.”

“She said walking out would be the last thing you’d do unless you were desperate. So if she believes you were desperate—and she claims not to know where you are—why isn’t she worried?”

“Because she has faith in me,” I said. “She’s always believed I have common sense.”

“I used to, too, but—but this is insane.”

“Okay.” I tried a different tack, because this one clearly wasn’t working. “Suppose you’re on the road, driving somewhere. What do you do when you take a wrong turn?”

“Ahh, hell,” he brayed. “Here we go. Men are from Mars, yada yada. I keep going, you ask directions.”

“But I kept going, too, because I didn’t realize I’d taken a wrong turn—because I didn’t
want
to realize it until it got so bad I couldn’t ignore it anymore. Last Friday was horrendous from the minute I woke up, but it was only more of what our lives have been for months, for
years
. What do you do when you take a wrong turn?” I asked rhetorically this time. “Stop. Turn around. Go back.”

“You forgot the asking for directions part.”

“Who do I ask? I’ve been dropping hints to you for months, only you’re too busy to hear. I want a marriage, James. I want there to be a you and me, but we don’t have time. I want to be a lawyer, but the work I do isn’t practicing law. I want to have friends, but they’re running like zombies themselves. I thought having a baby would help.”

“Help?”

“Force a change in my life. Get me off the treadmill. I want to hold something small and warm,” I pleaded, “something that needs
me
and not just any woman, and I want to watch it grow without clocking in. I left my watch at home, did you see? I want to make time stop—well, not stop, but slow down.”

“And that’ll solve the baby problem? I hate to tell you this, but you can’t get pregnant unless we have sex, and if you’re there, and I’m here, we can’t have sex. Where the hell are you?”

I sighed. “It doesn’t matter.”

“It sure does. My life is here, Emily. If you’re not coming back, we have a problem.” He sounded worried. “Is that what you’re thinking?”

“I haven’t thought that far.”

“What about your job? You can’t just walk away from Lane Lavash and—and think they’ll hold it while you decide whether or not you want it.”

“Walter’s giving me four weeks. I talked with him a few minutes ago—and don’t get in a huff about that,” I hurried to add, so that I didn’t further bruise my husband’s ego. “I haven’t been in touch with him since I saw him at work Friday morning, and I only called him now so that I’d know where I stood before I called you. He doesn’t know anything, except that I have to be away.”

James was quiet.

“For what it’s worth,” I added, “he was very decent at the end.”

“How was he at the start?”

“Angry. Like you.”

“A major difference being that I’m your husband,” he said, but he was subdued.

I was thinking about these two men in my life. “That’s one of the problems, James. The way our lives work, I have more face time with Walter than with you. You have more face time with Naida than with me. We spend more time at work than anywhere else, including our home. Why are we carrying that huge mortgage, if we use the place only to sleep?”

“It’s an investment. That’s what all of it is, Em, an investment in our future. We discussed this. We knew what we were getting into when we took these jobs. We knew we’d be eaten alive in the short run.”

“For two years, maybe four, but it’s been seven, and it’s only getting worse. I don’t see a light at the end of the tunnel, I’m sorry, but I don’t.”

Neither of us spoke for a while.

Finally, sounding defeated, James said, “Where does that leave us?”

“I need time.”

“Time to decide if you want me?”

“Time to decide what happened to our dreams.”

He didn’t answer.

“Do you remember those dreams?” I asked. “We dreamed of being good lawyers and really helping people. Instead, I spend my days in a cubicle, wearing a headset, typing complaints into a form, and you spend yours plea-bargaining. I know it takes time to build a practice, but the kinds of cases we’re working on won’t get us where we want to be. They may bring in big fees, but is that what it’s all about? There has to be more. We were going to be the golden couple—outstanding at work, outstanding at home. Remember?”

“Maybe we were naïve.”

“Or took a wrong turn. Look at the whole picture—work, friends, food, weekends. Even when you factor in the reality of paying our dues, we’re not living out even a
shadow
of those dreams. Are
you
happy with the way we live?”

He seemed to consider that. “No. But I can bear it until it improves.”

“That’s all I’m asking now, James. Bear with me until I figure things out.”

“But what do I do in the meanwhile?”

I knew what he was about. James was goal-oriented, which was one of the things I had first loved. We had shared a goal in law school, shared a goal in taking the jobs that we had. Sitting idle would drive him crazy, not that there were many choices.

There was one, though. Vicki had cited a movie. I tweaked the concept. “We could talk on the phone—like, set aside a time, make a date.”

He said nothing at first. Then, “What kind of marriage is that?”

“A better one than we’ve had.” The idea was growing on me. “We could talk, maybe argue, possibly find common ground.”

“On the
phone
? Who was complaining that her life was dominated by machines?”

He’d been listening. That was good. “This is different,” I pushed.
“We’d be the ones in charge. I’m not averse to machines, James. I just think they’ve gotten the upper hand. We could reverse that.”

He grunted. “Wouldn’t it be a whole lot easier if you came back here so we could talk? Why won’t you tell me where you are? What’s the big secret?”

“No big secret. I just need to be alone.”

“I’m your
husband
,” he reasoned, setting off such silent fury in me—
my husband
,
where’ve you been
,
why do we never see each other
,
why the concern now?
—that I was mute. He must have felt the fury, though, because he said, “Okay, we could meet halfway between there and here.”

“James,” I replied seriously, “you could sell a GPS to a carrier pigeon. I can’t do face-to-face yet. In two seconds flat, you’d convince me that my life isn’t so bad.”

“It isn’t.”

“For me it is.” It was as simple as that.

After a bit, he said quietly, “Okay. I hear you. But I don’t know. Phone sex?”

“Not sex.”

“Just kidding.”

“I’m not. I’m dead serious about this, James. I will not meet you in person until I get a grip on myself. The phone works for me. If you’re talking with me, I know you’re focused on me and not work. And I do like hearing your voice,” I added quietly, because even through his frustration, the familiar was there. James’s voice is very male. Husky, it has depth and authority. And yes, sex appeal. All three would serve him well before a jury,
if
he ever got to court.

“I don’t know,” that deep voice said, but I could tell he was wavering. “It’s embarrassing that we can’t meet in person.”

“We will. Just not yet.”

“Nnnn, I don’t like it.”

I held my breath. This was the moment when he might say that if I didn’t return to New York, he would file for divorce. Like with the possibility of losing my job at Lane Lavash, I had thought this through, too. I didn’t want a divorce, but I wasn’t ready to return
to New York. Call me stubborn. Or selfish. But I could still feel the panic of being unable to breathe, and until I was past that, I needed space. This was non-negotiable.

James must have heard it in my silence, because he said a conciliatory “Will you leave your BlackBerry on so I can text in between?”

“If you were the only one texting, I could do that, but there’s all this other stuff that makes me gag. I’ll just turn it on for the phone. Today’s Tuesday. How about Friday night? Say, seven o’clock?”

“Come on, babe,” he complained. “Neither one of us is home by seven.”

“Maybe that needs to change.”

“Maybe I don’t want it to change.”

A stalemate? Possibly. Alternately, he might be simply wanting to save face. I could compromise. In the end, I might have to. But not yet.

“Then I guess you have as much to think about as I do,” I said quietly. “I’ll call Friday at seven. Bye, James.” I ended the call before the awkwardness of saying
I love you
could creep in, though, truth be told, we hadn’t said those words in months. I’m not saying we didn’t feel them, just that we didn’t say them.

But I wanted to say them. And I wanted to hear them.

So, with barely a breath, I made a final call.

Chapter 7