Once More with Feeling (4 page)

“You saw the show?”

“Yes.”

“You’re mad, right?” Both his tone and his posture was defiant. Laura was struck by the fact that he was actually daring her to react.

“I’m too tired to be mad.” She sat down on the arm of the couch, her eyes downcast. “To tell you the truth, I’ve already spent too much emotional energy being angry at you, Roger.” She took a deep breath. “I think I’ve had enough.”

He didn’t seem to have heard her. He sank into a chair, his eyes fixed on the ceiling.

“I just know being on that show is going to turn out to be a good thing. It’s a great way of breaking in.”

“Breaking in?”

‘Television. The way I figure it, a few million people saw me on TV today. All I need is for one of them to have been the right person. A producer, or maybe an advertising executive—”

“What are you talking about?”

“TV commercials.” He looked at her as if she were the one not making sense. “That’s what I’ve decided to do. I’ve always been interested in acting. Hell, I was in half a dozen plays when I was in college. Then there was that summer I spent at the Downington Theater Festival when I was sixteen. Anyway, there’s a lot of money to be made doing commercials. I just need my first big break—”

“You didn’t hear what I said.”

Roger looked puzzled. “You said you weren’t mad.”

“No. I said
mad
wasn’t the right word. I said what I am is tired.”

“Well, sure. It must be almost eleven.”

“It’s past eleven.”

“So go to bed. What are you waiting for?”

What are you waiting for?
Laura would have laughed if she hadn’t been so close to tears.

“I want out, Roger.”

“Out of . . .” he prompted.

“Out of this marriage.” Correcting herself, she said, “Out of this poor excuse for a marriage. I —I can’t do it anymore.”

Roger stared at her, a look of incredulity on his face. “All this because I went on some stupid television show?”

She struggled to find something to say, but there were no words. She felt as if something were lodged in her throat—something that had been stuffed deep inside her for a very long time, but was finally coming to the surface.

Her husband continued staring at her, his eyes wide. “You mean it, don’t you?”

She nodded. The tears she’d been fighting to hold back began sliding down her cheeks. Laura covered her face with her hands, unable to look at him. When his response was nothing but silence, she peered at him through parted fingers.

She saw that he was angry. Not penitent, not distressed, not even shocked. Just angry.

“Fine,” he said coldly, already heading toward the stairs. “Do what you have to do.”

Laura watched him walk away. This was her husband, the man with whom she’d lived for fifteen years. Roger Walsh, with whom she’d bought a house, created a child, established a credit rating, filed joint tax returns, experienced nearly every variety of foreplay imaginable . . . and envisioned a future that by definition would include each other. A decade and a half together, and this is what it came down to: “Do what you have to do.”

To Laura, left alone in the living room, the air suddenly felt so cold that she retrieved the afghan from the floor and wrapped it around herself. As she curled up on the couch, she knew sleep wouldn’t come for a very long time.

Chapter Three

The words on the menu
of the Sassafras Café were difficult to decipher under the best of circumstances, given the loopy calligraphic style the management used as one more way of justifying its inflated prices. Today they were just a blur to Laura as she sat at a corner table waiting for her two closest friends. Even with half a Valium in her system, she couldn’t keep the tears from her eyes.

Don’t you dare cry, she scolded herself. You can’t. You demolished your last tissue fifteen minutes ago.

Desperately she tried every trick she could remember. Biting her lip. Taking deep breaths. Counting to a hundred. Thinking happy thoughts . . .

The last one was her downfall. There
were
no happy thoughts. Reminding herself of that painful reality sent two fat tears running down her cheeks.

“Something to drink?” the waitress chirped, pouring ice water into a glass. When she glanced at Laura, her expression changed to one of sympathy. “I’ll get the wine list.”

Laura shook her head. Even though the Valium was doing little besides making her feel as if she no longer had feet, she’d heard too many coma stories on the six-o’clock news to take a chance.

“Just ginger ale, thanks.”

Glad to be left alone again, Laura looked around the restaurant. The Sassafras Café was a good choice, the perfect setting for ladies who lunched. The interior was all soft pinks and yellows, with tea roses on each table and such a profusion of ferns it was a wonder tick warnings weren’t posted. The menu included all the current food fads: sun-dried tomatoes, goat cheese, arugula at every turn. The other patrons certainly seemed to be enjoying themselves. Everywhere Laura saw happy faces, bright eyes, animated gestures, lively conversations. The scene depressed her immeasurably.

She turned her eyes to the window, seeking the comfort of the outside world. In the parking lot, people got in and out of their cars, making their way to and from the restaurant and the other stores in the shopping plaza. She spotted a few solo flyers, but mostly there were couples. Men and women strolled along, talking and laughing together, paired off like passengers on the ark.

Laura shut her eyes. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t block out the bad feelings. For the past two days she’d felt as if she’d stepped onto a roller coaster. The car was moving slowly but already picking up speed, embarking on a ride she knew would raise her up to exhilarating highs only to plunge down to valleys far below. Yet she had no choice but to hang on, clinging to the thought that, in time, it would all be over.

She cast a grateful smile at the waitress who placed an icy glass of ginger ale in front of her. All the tears she’d shed had left her feeling drained and dehydrated. The surge of sugar, she discovered, was even more comforting than the Valium.

Telling the people closest to her was apparently the first gut-wrenching drop on the roller-coaster ride. She’d put off calling her two best friends, Claire and Julie. She hadn’t been ready to speak the words, but she wasn’t able to lie, either, to act as if everything were the same as it had been a mere forty-eight hours earlier. And so she’d avoided them, wincing at the cheerful sound of their voices on her answering machine, dreading the moment she’d have to tell them.

Saying it out loud, she knew, would make it real.

The idea of ending her marriage, discarding what had been her life for well over a third of her nearly forty years, was something she wanted to keep inside a little longer. Until she went public, she could still turn back. Change her mind. Tell Roger she had simply been angry, neatly putting everything back the way it had been before.

Then, suddenly, she found she could no longer put it off. She’d told Julie first, suspecting that Claire would be miffed but feeling it safer to try it out first on her softer, less judgmental friend.

Julie Cavanaugh, with her cascades of long, wavy red hair, pale skin, and soulful green eyes, looked as if she’d just stepped out of a Pre-Raphaelite painting. Her manner complemented her waiflike appearance. Her voice was soft and breathy, her movements graceful. She had a reassuring way of focusing on people as she elicited every detail of their problems, listening intently, sighing with indignation, then spooning out solid, commonsense advice.

People who didn’t know her well were surprised at the competence with which she performed the duties of her rigorous job as a massage therapist. Giving expert massages was only the beginning. Her devoted clientele contended that she not only worked the knots out of their muscles, but out of their minds as well. That had certainly been Laura’s conclusion three years ago, when too much time hunching over a word processor had brought her to Julie’s massage table.

“Laura, where have you been?” Julie’s voice had been filled with concern the day before when she discovered who was on the phone. “Didn’t you get the message I left yesterday?”

“Yes, I—”

“Oh, that’s right. Weren’t you signing autographs at a new bookstore?”

‘The signing’s tomorrow night. Julie, listen to me.” Laura took a deep breath. “I’m getting divorced.” She’d promptly burst into tears, her resolve about staying calm forgotten.

“Oh, Laura! Are you all right? What do you need me to do? Have you told Evan? How’s Roger taking it?” Julie paused to catch her breath. “You must be a bundle of nerves. Would you like me to come over and walk on your back?”

Telling Claire had been more difficult. On the one hand, Laura mused, hesitating before dialing, Claire was bound to be better at empathizing, since she herself belonged to the sisterhood of divorced women. On the other hand, while Claire Nielsen meant well, her sledgehammer style was sometimes hard to take.

“Well, it’s about time!” she’d exclaimed over the phone in response to Laura’s announcement. “I never could figure out what you were waiting for.”

Despite Laura’s impulse to hold the phone away from her ear, she knew Claire was right. This bit of news was long overdue. For years Claire had been hearing about Laura’s unhappiness. She’d provided a well-padded shoulder for her to cry on, as well as a steady stream of no-nonsense advice.

The two of them had been friends since college. During their senior year, Claire dropped out right after second-semester midterms. While Laura was scrawling an essay on the three most notable characteristics of Byzantine architecture, Claire was eloping with a student from the business school.

From the start she worked alongside her new husband, channeling the energy that was a by-product of her type A personality into making his computer consulting business a success. She was the unofficial “silent partner.” The firm had exploded like a sky full of fireworks in the techno-explosion of the 1970s and early eighties. Yet during their entire marriage, she required nothing more than an occasional pat on the head and a “Thanks, honey.”

When, after six years, Claire discovered that her husband’s frequent dinners out weren’t always spent entertaining clients, her response had been immediate. First she took off with the Mercedes, the Sony Trinitron, and the Rolodex containing his list of clients. Then she cut her hair to a length somewhere between Kevin Costner’s and Sinead O’Connor’s, bleaching the brown stubble a blinding shade of platinum blond. Along with her new look came a new identity. She switched back to her maiden name and became Claire Nielsen once again.

As for the client list, that proved more useful than either the television or the car. Claire set up her own computer consulting firm and managed to lure away enough clients to become dangerous to her ex—or at least to his bottom line.

Along with her success as a solo act came a harder edge. Even so, Laura knew her well enough to see through her defenses. Underneath her crisp facade, Claire was a loyal, concerned friend. She was also protective, anxious to spare the people she cared about some of the despair she’d experienced.

Laura was tense as she sat with her napkin neatly spread across her lap, wailing for her friends. Telling them her news on the phone had been difficult enough. Confronting them face-to-face, bearing both their pity and the anger they were bound to feel on her behalf, was going to be even harder. Her heartbeat quickened as Julie and Claire burst into the restaurant, zeroed in on her, and made a beeline for her table.

“There
she is,” Claire cried, zigzagging through the café, arms outstretched.

“We’re here, Laura,” cooed Julie, a few paces behind.

For the occasion, Claire had decked herself out in black. On the surface, anyway; underneath the dark, loose-fitting jacket was a swirl of purples and blues. Beneath her mid-thigh hemline were long, purple legs and a pair of spike heels precisely the same shade as the stockings. Blue enameled earrings contrasted sharply with her white-blond crew cut.

Every element of Claire’s outfit was matched, coordinated, or otherwise carefully thought out; Julie, on the other hand, looked as if she’d gotten dressed in the dark. With her long, flowered rayon skirt, a throwback to the Age of Aquarius, she wore a denim jacket, a man’s undershirt, and four different strands of beads. Her wild red hair cascaded around her like an aura. Still, on Julie, it somehow all worked.

“That beast!” cried Claire, pulling out a chair and dropping into it. “I want you to tell us every detail. Every single, solitary detail of what that—that
cretin
did to you.”

“Hello, Claire. Hi, Julie.” Blinking, Laura put down her menu.

“The first thing we have to do is get you a good lawyer,” Claire insisted.

“The first thing we have to do,” Julie said softly, “is ask Laura how she’s handling this.”

“Actually, not too badly,” Laura said in an even voice. “I feel kind of calm. Accepting. A little dazed ... Of course, it could be the Valium.”

“Poor Laura.” Julie reached over and patted her hand. “I knew I should’ve come over last night and walked on your back.”

Laura shook her head slowly, unable to look her friends in the eye. “I’ve known for years it would come to this,” she told them. “I didn’t want to admit it, but deep down, I never doubted it. Not when Roger and I haven’t been able to talk to each other since ... since ... ever.”

“I know.” Claire was nodding enthusiastically. “Men really are like creatures from another planet, aren’t they? They think differently, they talk differently ... and they certainly have a different standard for table manners.”

“Not all of them,” Julie said quietly. “Not George.”

Julie had been living with George Stanton—a man Laura invariably thought of as “sweet, gentle George”-for close to five years. From what Laura could see, they were the ideal couple, often held up as an example of how a man and a woman really could sustain a loving relationship.