The Deep End (25 page)

She pictures Robin and Lulu several years from now, over eighteen, old enough legally to pose for such pictures without written parental consent. Would they? Would they consider it a debasement or a privilege to be asked? Once, Joanne thinks, studying her reflection, we were allowed to grow old. Now there is no excuse for age. There is no room for it.

“What the hell is that?” she asks suddenly, her nose pressing against the glass of the mirror. “A pimple?” She backs away from the reality of what she sees. “It can’t be a pimple!” She stares at the center of her cheek in a kind of awe.
“Now
you have to come out?” she demands aloud, wondering if there is anything in all her makeup tubes that will disguise the unsightly blemish. Now she knows how Robin feels when pimples appear just minutes before a scheduled date, how empty her words of assurance—don’t worry, darling, he won’t notice—really are. Of course he’ll notice! How could he help but notice?! “I can’t believe I have a pimple,” she mutters, and is still muttering the same thing when she hears the doorbell ring a half hour later and realizes that she is still in her underwear and has yet to do anything with her hair.

“I
like your hair.”

“You’re kidding!”

They are sitting by the window of a lovely, even romantic, restaurant in Long Beach, overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. The room is dimly lit, the ocean crashes rhythmically against the rocks below them—just like in the movies, she thinks—a flickering candle separates their nervous hands. The evening has been a quiet one. Joanne has taken great pains to let her husband initiate all conversation, to speak only when spoken to, to steer clear of any topics that might produce in him even vague feelings of anxiety. Show him you’re interested in what he has to say, she remembers her mother advising her as a young girl, as she has advised her own daughters. Is it really such bad advice? she wonders. I
am
interested in what he has to say. He’s saying he likes my hair, she realizes as he says it again.

“No, really, I think it’s great. I meant to tell you that this morning when I picked up the girls.” Joanne’s hand moves automatically to smooth her hair down. “No, don’t do that.” Joanne immediately drops her hand to her
lap. “It has a kind of … I don’t know … carefree abandon … to it like that.”

Joanne laughs. “That’s me … carefree and abandoned.” There is silence as the full weight of what she has just said hits her. “I honestly didn’t mean to say that.” Her voice disappears into a whisper, all her cautious dialogue destroyed by one careless phrase.

“That’s okay,” he is saying, and Joanne realizes he is on the verge of laughing. “Actually, it was a pretty funny remark.” His voice is suddenly serious. “One I deserve, at any rate.”

Joanne says nothing. What is he leading up to? I’m sorry? Forgive me? If you let me come home, I’ll spend the rest of my life making things up to you?

“I’m not ready to come home yet,” he says instead. “I had to say that now because I don’t want to mislead you …”

“I understand.”

“I want to be honest.”

“I appreciate that.”

“I love you, Joanne.”

“I love you, too.” Please don’t cry, she tells herself. The man is telling you he loves you. Don’t spoil it by crying.

“Please don’t cry,” he tells her.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to.” Stop this damn crying.

“I know this is hard on you.” She shakes her head, dislodging several tears. “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about us, about our situation …”

The waiter approaches and inquires whether or not they would like to order dessert now. Joanne shakes her head, and stares resolutely into her lap. There is no way she can eat anything without risking the decidedly unromantic gesture of throwing up.

“Two coffees,” Paul tells him as Joanne surreptitiously wipes her eyes with her napkin. “Did I tell you that I like your dress?” Paul asks suddenly, and Joanne has to look down to remind herself what she is wearing. “Is it new?”

“No,” Joanne says, fidgeting with one of the front buttons. “I bought it last summer. I just never wore it because it’s linen and it creases so easily.”

“It’s supposed to crease.”

“Yes, that’s what the saleslady told me.”

“White’s a good color for you. It shows off your tan.”

Joanne’s hand moves from the button to her face. “It’s makeup,” she tells him, feeling self-conscious. Should she have told him that? Paul is not a fan of makeup. There is another awkward silence. The waiter returns with two cups of coffee, placing them on the table and then discreetly disappearing.

“I need more time,” he continues as if there had been no interruptions. “There’s so much on my plate right now …”

“You mean at work?”

He nods. “I can’t seem to get out from under.”

“In what way?”

“I’m not sure I can explain it. It’s not just the work load. I can handle the work load. I mean, I’m busy. I’m too damn busy. But then I’ve always been too damn busy. It’s just that I’m so
tired
all the time. No matter how much sleep I get, it doesn’t seem to make any difference.”

Just how much sleep has little Judy been letting you get? Joanne wonders but doesn’t ask. Instead she says, “Have you seen a doctor?”

“I had Phillips do a complete check, even took a stress test. Basically, I’m in pretty good shape for a man my age. My heart rate is good, my blood pressure is fine. I
should exercise more, he told me, so I’ve started working out a bit.”

“I noticed.”

He checks his arms, now hidden under the light blue jacket he is wearing. “What do you think?” he asks shyly, a hint of pride in the edges of his voice.

Joanne shrugs and giggles, feeling like a silly schoolgirl. “You once told me that you could never develop muscles,” she tells him, watching his smile grow.

“What? What are you talking about?”

“You once told me that the reason your arms were so thin was because when you were a boy, you fell and broke them a few times, and as a result, they never developed the way most boys’ arms did.”

“I didn’t tell you that,” he protests, the smile in his eyes betraying his words.

“Yes, you did.”

“Well, I did break my arms a couple of times, that part’s true, but that doesn’t have anything to do with muscles.” He takes a sip of his coffee. “I told you that, did I?”

“That’s one of the things that made me fall in love with you,” Joanne says quietly, not sure whether she has been too bold, gone too far. He regards her quizzically. “It was the one chink in the armor,” she explains, deciding she might as well go all the way. He seems interested, even flattered by the unexpected admission. “You were always so sure of everything you did, everything you wanted to do. And you were so handsome …
are,”
she corrects, then returns immediately to the more comfortable past, “but you had no muscles, and I thought that was kind of strange. Most boys your age had
some
kind of muscles, and one day, I guess we must have been talking
about it, because that’s when you told me about your falling and breaking your arms several times when you were a youngster. And you suddenly seemed so vulnerable that I started to fall in love with you.” She smiles widely. “And now you’re telling me that it wasn’t true!” Their eyes fasten on each other, each seeing a reflection of their youth in the other’s eyes. Joanne quickly looks down into her coffee.

“So, I was always so sure of myself, was I?” he asks, not wanting to let go of their former selves.

“Always.”

“Pretty obnoxious, I guess.”

“I liked it. I was always the opposite.”

“You never gave yourself enough credit. You still don’t.”

“That’s what Eve’s always telling me.”

Paul finishes the coffee in his cup and signals to the waiter for a refill.

“What are you thinking about?” Joanne ventures, catching a look of fleeting bewilderment in his eyes.

“That I used to think I’d be the new Clarence Darrow,” he admits with a laugh.

“And you’ve discovered you’re not?”

He shakes his head. “Not even close.”

“Is that such a bad thing?” He leans back in his chair, looking out at the ocean. “Do you remember what my mother always used to tell me?” Joanne asks, suddenly remembering. “She used to quote that phrase from
Hamlet
—‘this above all, to thine own self be true.’” Joanne sinks back in her seat, wondering why, of all her mother’s favorite sayings, this is the one phrase she has lost sight of. “What’s wrong with being Paul Hunter? You’re a good lawyer, Paul.”

“I’m an excellent lawyer,” he corrects her, managing not to sound boastful.

“Then what’s the problem? A shortage of wrongs to right?”

He smiles. “Maybe that’s it, I don’t know.” He seems to be searching the room for the right words, then returns his gaze to Joanne when he thinks he has found them. “They tell you in law school that not everyone you’ll represent will be innocent. They also tell you that it isn’t part of your job to determine innocence or guilt. A judge and jury do that. The lawyer’s sole responsibility is to provide his or her client with the best possible defense. What they don’t tell you, or maybe they do, maybe you just don’t hear it with all that youthful idealism ringing in your ears, is that the practice you build up ultimately reflects your own personality, that you tend to attract clients who, in perhaps more ways than you care to admit, are very much like yourself. I’m not explaining this very well …”

“I think you are.”

“A lot of the people that come into my office … I don’t know,” he stumbles, then starts again, “Sometimes you’re really proud of the things you do, I mean, there are things I’ve done in my career that I’m proud of because I know that no one could have done them better, but there are also times when you’ll get a client who you know is lying through his teeth, and you’re supposed to get up there and defend this jerk …”

“Even when you know he’s lying.”

“Well, yes and no,” Paul backtracks. “If you’re convinced he’s lying, then the answer is no, because there’s no way you could be providing him with the best possible
defense he’s entitled to under the law. But it’s easy enough to tell yourself that you could be wrong, that you’re not the judge and jury, that hell, the jerk
might
be telling the truth, especially if there’s a nice fat fee attached.”

“Is that what you’ve been doing?”

“I don’t know.” He finishes his second cup of coffee. “That’s one of the things I’ve been trying to sort out.”

“Maybe you could switch to some other area.”

“Like what? Real estate? Divorce? Joanne, I’m a first-class litigation lawyer. I come to court better prepared than three-quarters of the guys out there, which is why I usually win, and one of the reasons I’m so busy. When I was a kid I actually thought that the greatest thing in the world would be defending the American way in a court of law.”

“And it isn’t?”

“It is. I just didn’t realize how much other shit would be involved.”

“What other … shit?” Joanne asks, taking a quick sip of her coffee.

He shakes his head. “Let’s talk about something else.”

“Why?”

“Why?” he repeats. “Because this can’t be very interesting for you.”

“But it is,” Joanne tells him truthfully. “It’s something we never talked about before, and I think it’s important.”

“I never liked bringing my work home with me.”

“Your work, no, but how you felt about it is important for me to know. Please tell me. What … shit?”

Paul releases a deep breath of air. “We’re having problems with a couple of the partners … they don’t like the way the firm is being run, they want to get rid of McNamara.”

“Why?”

“They say he’s being too easy on some of the less successful partners.”

“Is he?”

“Maybe. Look, we’re talking about a major Wall Street legal firm, not some little law office in the middle of nowhere. This is the big leagues. You want to be successful, you have to produce. Of course it’s high pressure. What else could it be?”

“Are you starting to feel that pressure?”

“I
thrive
on that pressure. At least, I used to.” He laughs. “I guess this is what they refer to as a typical mid-life crisis. How come our parents never had mid-life crises?”

“They didn’t know they were supposed to,” Joanne says and they laugh. Joanne is aware that she has said two things tonight that have made him laugh. She also realizes that it is the first time that they have laughed together in a long while. “Do you remember the first time you took me to a Broadway play?” she asks, not sure what has put this thought into her head. “I’d always wanted to go on one of those horse and buggy rides through Central Park and I was going on about it after the play until you finally picked up the hint and offered to take me on one.” He starts to laugh, obviously remembering. “I will never forget looking over at you halfway into that ride,” she recalls, “and seeing the tears in your eyes, and thinking, my God, he’s so sensitive, so romantic …”

“So allergic …” he interjects.

“And you ended up spending the rest of the weekend in bed. Why didn’t you tell me you were allergic to horses?”

“I didn’t want to spoil it for you.”

“And then your mother bawled me out, told me I should take better care of you.”

“She should have told you to run away as fast as you could.”

“Too late. I was already in love.”

“With my allergies and skinny arms,” he says, and Joanne nods agreement. “And I always assumed it was my fine mind and good looks that did the trick.”

“Funny the things we fall in love with,” Joanne states, as Paul signals for the waiter that they are ready to leave.

“I don’t think I should come in,” he says at the doorway to their house. Joanne nods, though she has been just about to ask otherwise. “Not that I don’t want to,” he adds quickly. “It’s just that I don’t think it would be a good idea.”

“I agree,” Joanne whispers softly.

“First night alone,” he comments, as she fumbles in her purse for her keys.

“I have to get used to it sometime, I guess. I’m a big girl now.” She triumphantly produces her set of keys.