Ladies' Night (12 page)

“It’s
my
name,” Grace said, feeling unusually obstinate. “I was a Davenport for way longer than I was in Stanton.

“All right,” Paula said, pushing the door open. “Let’s hold that thought. For now, come on in and meet the other members of group.”

The inner office consisted of a large glass-topped desk and a swivel chair, in the corner of the room. It had the same brown carpet as the outer office and a pair of smallish windows that were covered with a set of shiny bronze drapes in a cheesy sheer fabric. Five folding chairs were arranged in a semicircle around a high-backed brown leather chair. A row of framed diplomas was stretched across the wall above the desk, and three women, all of them looking ill at ease, were clustered around a small wooden table that held a coffeepot and a stack of Styrofoam cups, talking in subdued voices.

“Ladies,” Paula said, her voice rising to let them know she had an important announcement. “Ladies!”

The women turned their attention to the newcomer. If Grace had any expectations about what her divorce recovery group would look like, this wasn’t it.

“Don’t I know you?” A tall, elegantly dressed black woman approached Grace, hands on her hips, studying the newcomer intently. She wore her hair in a sleek bobbed cut, and the first thing Grace noticed about her were her almond-shaped eyes and her luxuriously thick fringe of eyelashes. Fakes?

“I, I’m not sure,” Grace said, stuttering a little. Wasn’t group therapy supposed to be anonymous? Wasn’t Paula Talbott-Sinclair supposed to protect her identity?

“Wait, I’ve got it,” the woman snapped her fingers. “Gracenotes! Am I right? You’re the lifestyle blogger who drowned her husband’s 175,000-dollar ride. Damn! I covered that story, and it got picked up by all the networks.” She patted Grace’s shoulder. “Nice goin’, girlfriend.”

Grace felt her face flame with embarrassment. So much for anonymity.

“You! You’re that reporter! Camryn. Camryn … something. You snuck into our subdivision, trespassed, talked to all my neighbors.” She lowered her voice. “Did you follow me here today? Don’t you people have any sense of decency?” She looked around for the therapist, ready to chew her out.

“Relax,” Camryn said, chuckling. “Me, follow you here? Don’t flatter yourself. I’m here for the same reason you are.”

Grace narrowed her eyes. “You drove your husband’s car into a pool?”

“Not quite,” Camryn said. “Let’s just say what I did do didn’t set well with some parties.”

Another woman walked up to join them. She was younger than Camryn Nobles but older than Grace, petite and slender, with sun-streaked shoulder-length blond hair pushed back from her forehead by a pair of designer sunglasses. Her skin was flawless, and she was dressed casually, in white capris and a flowery pink and orange tunic top and gold sandals. She wore a fine gold chain around her neck, and dangling from it was a whopper of a diamond, three carats, at least, Grace estimated.

“Hey, y’all,” she said, in a honey-dipped drawl. She glanced over her shoulder at Paula Talbott-Sinclair, who had seated herself in the swivel chair and was looking expectantly at the door. “Are you thinkin’ what I’m thinkin’?”

“What’s that?” Camryn said.

“Well, I’m just wondering what kind of dog-and-pony show we’ve lucked into here. I mean, did you get a look at this shopping center? I’ve been living in Sarasota all my life, and I have never, and I mean ever, stepped foot in a place like this. What kind of a therapist has her offices between a tattoo artist and a diaper store?”

“The kind who charges three hundred dollars a session,” Camryn said. “Obviously she’s not spending what she makes on overhead.”

“For real,” the blonde said. “And the thing is, my lawyer says I probably can’t make my ex pay for these sessions. Even though I’m not the one who was fuckin’ around on the side. I’ll tell you, that damned Stackpole has my lawyer runnin’ scared.”

“Stackpole!” Camryn said with a snort. “He’s the judge hearing your divorce?”

“That’s the one,” the blonde said. “You too?”

“Unfortunately,” Camryn said. She looked at Grace. “How about you?”

“Afraid so,” Grace said. “My lawyer says he hates women. Especially women lawyers.”

“My lawyer’s a man, and I still got the shaft,” Camryn pointed out.

“Me too,” the blonde said. “Well, I guess we’re in this together, huh? By the way, I’m Ashleigh. Hartounian.”

“I don’t think we’re supposed to tell our last names,” Grace said.

“Why not?” Camryn shot. “I got nuthin’ to hide. Anyway, y’all both know my name, so why shouldn’t I know yours?”

Grace sighed. “Whatever. I’m Grace Davenport.”

“I thought your name was Stanton,” Camryn said.

“It was. I’m taking back my maiden name.”

Camryn rolled her eyes. “I’ll bet the judge is gonna love that.” She turned toward Ashleigh. “So, is your ex Boyce Hartounian? The plastic surgeon?”

“You know him?”

“Only his reputation,” Camryn said. “He did an eye lift for one of my girlfriends at the station. I swear, she looks ten years younger.”

“Boyce is good, all right,” Ashleigh admitted.

Camryn took a step closer and examined the younger woman’s face. “How ’bout you? Did he do some work on you?”

“Some,” Ashleigh admitted. She lifted her shoulders. “He gave me these boobs, not long after we started dating. And for our first anniversary, he gave me Reese Witherspoon’s nose.”

“Damn,” Camryn said. “Those boobs are fine.”

The fourth woman in the room wandered up, looking distinctly uneasy. She was older than all of them, in her early fifties. Her dark brown hair was streaked with gray, and a thin network of crow’s-feet radiated out from her eyes. She was neatly dressed in a pale gray linen blouse and gray slacks.

“Hello,” she said quietly. “I guess I should introduce myself? I’m Suzanne.”

“Ashleigh.”

“Grace.”

“I’m Camryn. Look here, is the judge hearing your divorce named Stackpole?”

Suzanne looked startled. “As a matter of fact, yes.”

“Uh-huh,” Camryn said, nudging Grace. “And did you do something ugly to your ex? Maybe act out a little bit, something like that?”

Suzanne’s face paled. “I can’t … I don’t … I won’t…”

“Never mind,” Grace said. “Whatever you did, I’m sure your husband deserved it.”

Suzanne bit her lip. “I still can’t believe I went through with it. And I can’t believe I’m here, tonight. It all seems so surreal.”

“What’s surreal is the fact that this group is all women,” Camryn said. “This isn’t group therapy. It’s ladies’ night.”

“A really, really, expensive ladies night,” Grace put in.

“Ladies…” Paula called from her seat at the front of the room. “Let’s get started, shall we? I’m expecting one more member to join us, but I think we’ll go ahead and get started. So take a seat, if you will.”

Grace sat down on one of the folding chairs and crossed her legs. The other three women did the same.

“Well,” Paula said, giving them a bright smile. “I take it you’ve all introduced yourselves to each other. Ashleigh, Grace, Camryn, and Suzanne. Tonight is an important night for all of you. Right? It’s the night you all start the healing. And the forgiving.”

“No way,” Camryn muttered under her breath.

“Excuse me?” Paula said sharply.

“I said, no way,” Camryn said defiantly. “That judge can order me to come to these bullshit counseling sessions. And he can order me to pay through the nose for the privilege of coming here. But he cannot make me forgive what Dexter Nobles did to me.”

She crossed her arms over her chest. “And neither can you.”

“I see,” Paula said. She nodded at Ashleigh. “What about you, Ashleigh? Did you come here with an open mind tonight?”

“I came with an open checkbook,” Ashleigh said. “That’s the best I can do right now.”

Camryn guffawed and Grace managed to stifle her own laugh.

“Grace?” Paula’s look was expectant.

“My husband has locked me out of my own home,” Grace said, feeling her throat constrict. “He’s frozen my bank accounts. Canceled my credit cards. I have no way to support myself. I’m living with my mother, tending bar to pay for gas money. He’s living in a two-million-dollar home, shacking up with my twenty-six-year-old former assistant. So no, right now, I’m really not ready for what you call a healing.”

Paula frowned. “All this negativity. I find it very sad. Very disappointing.”

Too damn bad
, Grace thought. She glanced over at Camryn Nobles, and then at Ashleigh Hartounian. Their faces were impassive. Suzanne’s face was scrunched in concentration.

“We’ve got a lot of work ahead of us,” Paula said after a moment. She went over to her desk, picked up a stack of old-fashioned black-and-white-spattered composition books, and handed one to each of the women.

“This,” she said. “Is your divorce journal. I want all of you to get in the habit of writing in it, at least once a day, although several times a day would be most helpful.”

“Write what?” Ashleigh demanded.

“Everything. Anything. We’re going to be doing some visualization exercises that I think will be helpful. And I’d like you to search, really search your souls, for the truthful answers to some questions I’m going to pose to all of you. Because, in here, honesty is everything.”

Paula waved toward the windows. “Out there, with your family and friends, you can hide your pain. You can cover it up, sanitize it, deny it. But in here—with group—I expect nothing less than absolute honesty.”

She opened the bottom drawer of her desk and brought out a boxy Polaroid camera. She walked briskly to the semicircle of chairs and snapped a photo of Grace, before Grace had time to object. When the photo ejected from the camera, the therapist handed it to Grace and moved on, pictures of Camryn and Suzanne, then Ashleigh, handing each woman her photo.

Grace stared down at the Polaroid, watching as the pale gray of the film disappeared and a grainy image of herself came into focus. She was shocked at what she saw. Her formerly full, round face looked gaunt. Her hair hung limply from a center part that emphasized her dark roots. She hadn’t bothered with makeup that day, hadn’t actually bothered with it at all since the day she’d been turned away from the security gate at Gulf Vista. There were dark circles under her eyes and deeply etched grooves at the corners of her mouth. It struck Grace that she couldn’t remember smiling, not in days. She looked sad. Sad and old, and defeated.

She glanced at the other women. Camryn and Ashleigh didn’t look any more pleased with their photos. In fact, Ashleigh had pulled a compact from her Louis Vuitton satchel and was busily applying more lipstick. Suzanne stared at her photograph as though she’d never seen a picture of herself before.

Now Paula handed Grace a stapler. “I want you to staple the Polaroid to page one of your divorce journal. This is your before picture. Now, turn the page and describe what you see in yourself in this photo. Tell me where you are, today. What you’re feeling about the place you’re in, right now, emotionally. If you like, you can write about this experience you’re having, your first night in group. Be honest. I know you all resent me, resent being here. I expect that.” She looked down at her watch. “I’m going to give you fifteen minutes to write. And when I come back, I want you all to be ready to share what you wrote with the rest of the group.”

“What if I don’t feel like sharing?” Ashleigh asked, tossing her hair behind her shoulder. “What if I don’t feel like writing anything?”

Paula’s smile was tight. “Oh, Ashleigh. You know Judge Stackpole made your attendance at group mandatory as a condition for granting your divorce, right?”

“How could I forget?” Ashleigh asked.

“It’s not as simple as just showing up,” Paula said. “Judge Stackpole knows some people will just go through the motions, simply so they can get that divorce decree. Despite what you all think, I must tell you, Cedric Stackpole is really a very wise man. So he’s asked me to be very clear about his expectations for all of you.” She smiled.

“Each week, I’ll be reporting in to Judge Stackpole about your progress in group. And if I feel that you’re only coasting, just giving group therapy lip service, I won’t be able to sign off on your attendance report.”

“Attendance report?” Ashleigh asked. “Like in kindergarten? Are you serious?”

“Very serious,” Paula said. “You have fifteen minutes to write. Starting now.”

She walked out into the reception area, closing the door firmly behind.

*   *   *

Grace began scribbling on the second page of the journal.

I can’t believe I have been “sentenced” to group therapy. I have nothing in common with these other women. I don’t see how hearing their pathetic stories is going to help me get over what was done to me. I don’t need therapy. I need a divorce. I was betrayed by my lying, cheating, dirtbag husband. You want to know how I feel? I feel different ways, different days. Most nights, I can’t sleep. I don’t know what’s happening with my life. How will I make a living for myself? Where will I live? I can’t keep living with my mother, but right now I don’t have a choice. I have no choices at all. That’s what I think I resent the most about all this. The feeling of powerlessness, of being helpless. It’s so damned unfair. And I’m supposed to get over all of this? I’m supposed to reach a point where I don’t feel this rage, bubbling up inside me, threatening to boil over at any moment? Most of the time, I am CONSUMED with anger. And when I’m not, I’m just sad. So damned sad. And lonely. Everything I had is gone. I’m thirty-eight. And alone.

“This is bullshit,” Camryn Nobles was saying, as she made bold, looping lines of script on the open page of her journal. “My lawyer didn’t tell me anything about having to write in a journal, or having to report to therapy, like a high school kid to study hall. I’m calling him tonight, just as soon as I get out of here. That bullshit judge can’t make us do this shit.”

“Shh,” Ashleigh whispered, jerking her head in the direction of the door. “She’ll hear you and tell the judge what you called him.”

“I don’t care what she tells that damned judge,” Camryn said fiercely. “I’m not in his courtroom now. This is America. Not some damned banana republic, where he gets to lay down the law and make us salute every time he farts.”