The Real Liddy James (16 page)

Liddy patted Rose's legs under the bedclothes reassuringly,
but Rose did not feel cared for, she felt patronized. She imagined how, later, Liddy would congratulate herself for raising an issue that others less plain-speaking would avoid.

“If you're nervous, let me talk to him,” continued Liddy, oblivious.

“I'm not
nervous
!” spluttered Rose, looking extremely nervous. “How dare you say these things!”

“I loved Peter very much. He's the father of my child. But I'd say this if he was standing in front of me. I do know him. That's the truth.”

“What? He's got some dark side that you're warning me about?” Rose rolled her eyes at the absurdity of this suggestion.

Liddy did not answer. She had seen plenty of people demonize their partner's ex-spouse, calling them everything from “unreasonable” to “lunatic” rather than acknowledge any deficiency in said partner's behavior. One thing was clear about Rose. She might teach a course in the micro-examination of a text, but she was useless at reading between the lines.

The two women looked at each other, both daring the other to be more honest. Rose backed down first. She had had quite enough of the “truth” for one evening.

“Okay. I'll read it,” she said.

“Good,” said Liddy. She put her glasses back on and opened the document to page one.

“Not now!”
hissed Rose.

“Sure,” said Liddy. Rose watched as she put the papers into a brown envelope and put it in the drawer on Rose's side of the bed, carefully hiding it underneath the hot-water bottle.

“How are you, anyway?” said Rose coldly. “You've got a lot on your plate at the moment.”

Liddy looked confused by such a suggestion. “I'm
fine
,” she said firmly and exited the room, leaving Rose to fume.

Rose picked up her book of baby names, but without Peter to discuss whether something like Shayna sounded like a made-up name, she put it down. She switched on an episode of
The Affair.
Through the floorboards she heard a cork popping out of a bottle of wine and Liddy laughing. She stabbed at the remote to turn up the volume. She could not settle.

Rose rued the times she had lamented Peter's refusal to forgive Liddy. Now she realized she had been threatened by his burning hatred; she was not enough to make him forget Liddy. This, not the unselfish motives others attributed, had always been a leading factor in her insistence on rapprochement. But now Rose found herself wishing fervently for the previous hostility between them. She thought of
Wuthering Heights
and imagined Peter and Liddy as the Heathcliff and Cathy of Carroll Gardens, capable of extraordinary acts of emotional violence, unable to live with or without each other, and herself as poor Isabella Linton, a watery substitute for her husband's true love.

She heaved out of bed and locked herself in the bathroom to practice ordering Liddy out of her home (whether it was legally her home or not), which was a temporary release.

But what if the problem with Liddy and Peter was not that they hated each other, but that they still loved each other?

Downstairs, Peter was playing Scrabble with Matty and Cal in the kitchen.

“LI!” said Cal triumphantly.

“That's not a word,” said Matty.

“It's a Chinese unit of measurement,” Cal replied. “Mom told me.”

“So it is,” said Peter, and he glanced over at Liddy. “And I told her.”

Liddy grinned and settled herself down on the couch. She opened her briefcase again and took out the net-worth statements of Chloe and Sebastian Stackallan. She picked up his and scanned it. He was forty-six years old, had graduated from Trinity College, Dublin, and Harvard Law, was a member of the English, Irish, and New York bars and a fellow of the International Academy of Trial Lawyers. In his midthirties he had spent five years working in Nicaragua and had received an honorary doctorate from Managua University (this explained why she had no recollection of him during the time when Matty was a small child). She was delighted to see that his salary and bonus package were marginally lower than hers, but irritated that his share portfolio was performing much better. (She flipped to the end to see the details of his financial advisors, which were listed in the package.) For religious affiliation he had typed in “Jedi,” which, though childish, she found rather amusing. He owned a first edition of
Ulysses
by James Joyce and a number of drawings by the artist William Orpen, whose work Liddy had heard of but never seen. She saw from the dates he had stopped collecting after his marriage. She suspected this was not for fear of any joint marital property, but because he had to spend all his spare cash on Chloe.

Under real estate was listed, first, his apartment on East
Eighty-fourth, and second, the gate lodge Chloe had described with such disdain. Liddy saw from the attached title deed that it had originally been part of something called Stackallan Demesne, County Wicklow, but even allowing for the inflated purchase price Sebastian had paid to secure it, with the vagaries of the Irish economy it was worth next to nothing.

She picked up her laptop and typed the address into the search engine. Within seconds she was looking at a photograph of two stone pillars on a narrow country road, and could just glimpse a slate roof and the edge of a silver lake in the distance. It had been taken on an overcast day and there wasn't much to see beyond the trees, tall grasses, and far fields of the rolling Irish countryside. She thought of the interminable drives she had taken as a child with her parents, in the drizzle, through places with names like the Sally Gap. She could only imagine what this property might be like, with the lack of upkeep and the endless rainy weather and the damp erupting from the walls—no wonder Chloe hadn't been able to think of any reasons she wanted to spend time there. Nevertheless, Liddy composed a creative e-mail to Sebastian explaining Chloe's need for a home of her own, and that, if denied the Eighty-fourth Street apartment, she would seek sole ownership of the property in Ireland, which was of incalculable sentimental, if not financial, value to her. Liddy pressed send.

Peter poured her a glass of wine and brought it over. Liddy smiled her thanks and returned to the photograph. She moved the cursor around and was about to zoom in on the lake, when suddenly she glimpsed an out-of-focus image of a tall man in black trousers and a slender woman in a green dress, holding hands just
outside the perimeter of the property. She paused and peered more closely, certain she was in the presence of Sebastian and Chloe, captured together forever in that place in a happier time.

Thunk!

“What the hell!”

Liddy sat up with a scream, laptop thudding to the ground, papers flying all over the rug, as a large square object hurtled past her face and hit the cushion next to her. Disorientated, but amazed that she had miraculously caught the glass of red wine, she suddenly saw Rose standing on the stairs.

Rose was shivering, barefoot in her capacious white nightgown and panting with exertion, her hand still raised from hurling the book.

“Get out of here!”
Rose shouted, eyes wild, then rather ruined the effect by yelping as her right foot went into a spasm.

“Rose! Stop it!”
shouted Liddy.

But Rose hobbled toward her in attack, flapping her two hands like the flippers of a performing sea lion. Liddy plunked her glass on the table and ducked behind the couch, wrapping her hands around her head for protection.

“What on earth is going on?” said Peter sternly, marching out of the kitchen.

“I don't want her around anymore,” Rose replied, waving an agitated finger in Liddy's direction.

At this point, Matty and Cal appeared, Cal frightened, Matty aggressive.

“What have you done, Mom?” Matty said, in exactly the same tone as his father. “Have you upset Rosey?”

“Obviously!”
hissed Liddy.

There was a moment as she stared in horror at the moonscape of dust, fluff, and dead flies that nestled on the rug at her eye level, and then she tentatively raised her head above the furniture, her eyes scanning side to side for any further missiles.

“Rose?” said Peter.

Liddy looked at Rose, who was grimacing and shaking her leg.

“I've got a cramp in my foot,” Rose said plaintively.

Now Liddy looked at Peter, who was staring at Rose in disbelief.

“Try walking on it,” Liddy said.

And Rose seemed to wilt in front of them, gathering her billowing nightgown around her with her arms. Then she bobbed slowly up and down, like a hot-air balloon deflating on a Stair-Master.

Liddy picked some lint off her skirt and glanced around at her jumbled papers. Cal ran over to her.

“Are you and Rosey not friends anymore?” he said.

Rose gasped and put her hand to her mouth.

“Rosey and I are always friends, baby. We had a silly argument. It's okay,” Liddy said firmly, and kissed him. She looked over at Peter. “We should go.”

“I have spent an hour cooking dinner,” said Peter, “and it will be eaten. Boys, get back into the kitchen.”

“Of course,” said Rose, lifting her hands and inflating again as the boys obediently sat down at the table and started to eat.

Liddy picked up her glass.

“I'll follow you in,” she said, and she patted Peter on the arm,
which meant “try not to make too much out of this in front of the boys,” something both women understood because of mindful parenting. He shook his head and she knew he was formulating some explanation for this madwoman-descending-from-the-attic performance, which would inevitably involve the overemotionalism of pregnant women. (Peter had always been reluctant to reinforce such gender stereotyping, but then, he had previously considered the idea of two women catfighting the sole preserve of daytime soap operas.)

“Oh, dear, Peter, I'm so sorry,” said Rose. Peter nodded, still bewildered, and closed the kitchen doors behind him.

Rose sat down and massaged her instep. Then she put her head in her hands and peered at Liddy through her fingers.

“Do you want Peter back?”

Liddy burst into incredulous laughter.

“No,” she said.
God no
, she thought.

Rose swallowed hard. “Clearly I'm going crazy stuck up there,” she said.

“No, you're not crazy. I have taken advantage of your kindness. And I should be in my own home, but . . . family is still family.”

Except when it isn't
, she thought.

“Is this really not my home?” said Rose.

Liddy shook her head. “Look,” she said, “I was only trying to help. If nothing's broke, I guess you don't have to fix it. I'm sorry if I was too . . . straightforward. I'm always in such a hurry, you see.”

This was true. Liddy was finding it harder and harder to
transition between the different areas of her existence, to remember that although her life was a marathon run as a sprint, few others had the stamina to keep up.

“I do want to get married. Peter doesn't,” whispered Rose.

“That's not a surprise. He wasn't convinced about marriage the first time around.”

“And I don't know if he even wants this baby.”

Rose's face crumpled like newspaper in the rain. Liddy moved toward her, put her arms around her, and held her as she sobbed.

“You have to talk to him,” said Liddy.

“I can't. I can't think straight about anything. I know you think I'm mad to stop working, but when I try and focus, the words fly around and around in my head. I can't explain it to Peter and I don't think he'd understand anyway. Did you ever feel like that?”

She pulled her sleeve to her face and wiped her eyes.

“No,” said Liddy.

Rose smiled despite herself.

“I don't know what to do. I'm scared, Liddy.”

I'm scared too
, thought Liddy. One of the difficult things about having a relationship with Peter was that, while he wanted to be top dog professionally, he also had a philosophical objection to being sole financial provider. Rose had so far managed this far more successfully than Liddy ever could, but she disregarded it at her peril. Liddy found herself hoping that, for all their sakes, Peter loved Rose far more than he had ever loved her.

She was aware that this could only be described as fucked up.

“Concentrate on the baby,” she said. “Everything will be fine.”

“I don't know how you had a baby on your own. I don't think I could do it.”

There was a pause. Liddy glanced at Rose's bare feet, which were bony and calloused and rather ugly.

“You'd be amazed what you can do if you have to,” Liddy said. “Not that you ever will have to, of course. Now you should get back into bed.” She rested a hand on Rose's shoulder.

“I'm worried about Matty,” said Rose. “One of the other mothers told me he was drinking two or three cans of soda every day. What about his skin? Is he eating enough salad?”

“I doubt it.”

“Is he practicing his keyboard? I used to sit with him and sing along. He's really good, Liddy. And I'm not just saying it.”

Liddy turned and clipped her briefcase shut. It was too much all of a sudden.

“I'm glad you didn't throw that necklace,” she said. “You could have taken my eye out.”

Rose smiled in relief.

“I'm sorry I was such a brat,” she said.

“Yeah. Who'd have thought?” said Liddy. (In fact she had often thought that extreme aggression lurked beneath the sunny smiles of many “nice” women.) But she smiled too.

Then she picked up the book Rose had hurled. Rose was glad in her frenzy she had grabbed a paperback and not a weighty hardback such as
Silenced Voices: Forgotten
Hungarian Plays
from Transylvania
, which was at the top of the pile on her bedside table.