Young Wives (21 page)

She stretched her shoulders back again and made fists with her hands. Anger moved like blood through her whole body. The trouble with most of the women that she’d seen at the clinic was that they weren’t mad. They were ashamed or frightened or both.

Angie would focus on the work at the clinic. Oddly, it would comfort her to feel the rage that many of the women clients she spoke to were afraid to express. Her rage was big enough for all of them.

The clinic, she decided, wasn’t just her temporary job. It was her mission. With Natalie’s help in getting licensed, she would take on these cases and she would win them. She knew she was smart, and more important, she knew how to work hard. This was not how she would have chosen to spend her life or her energy, but it had chosen her. There was nothing for it but to push ahead.

She might have had a life in a pleasant house in Marblehead, working at a respectable private law firm, and raising one and three-quarters children while her husband, a delightful, handsome, popular guy, discreetly cheated on her and she turned a blind eye. But that wasn’t the life she was going to live and there was nothing she could do about it now. And she had picked this new focus. She wasn’t stuck in it—she was selecting it. She might not have fun, but she was going to make a difference.

She had one more appointment, with a woman who worked two jobs and couldn’t come in until after nine. Sometime around half-past, Angie looked up to see the door open and her new client come into the office, shoulders hunched, head down, a woman used to being bested by everyone, an immigrant who didn’t know her rights and was afraid of all male authority. Poor Mrs. Huang.

The next morning Angie was ushering a client out the door, patting her shoulder in a pathetic attempt to comfort her, when her mother bounced down the corridor from behind her and tapped Angie on her tush. Mrs. Gottfried left and Angie turned to her mom. “You busy for lunch?” Natalie asked.

Angie raised her eyebrows. “Well,” she said, “I do have a date with Brad Pitt, but I hear he’s cheating on me with a Soprano, so I could blow him off.”

Natalie heaved a big sigh. “Honey, I didn’t want to tell you. It isn’t just a Soprano, it’s the entire Mormon Tabernacle Choir.”

“Why am I not surprised?”

The two of them put on their coats. “Maybe you want to comb your hair. Are you letting those streaks grow out or what? And take your car,” Natalie said. “I might want to linger.”

“Car?” Angie asked. “To go to the deli? I wasn’t even going to bring my purse. You’re buying, right?”

“Not exactly,” Natalie said. “Bring your bag and your car keys.” Angie nodded agreement, though she didn’t feel up to much more than a quick sandwich. She put on some lipstick, brushed her hair, and added some mascara. She still looked like shit, but now she looked like shit that tried.

They were out the lobby, almost to the parking lot, when she jerked her head and pointed across to the Blue Bird Coffee Shop. “We’re not flipping into the Bird?” she asked.

“No,” said Natalie. “This is a fancy-shmancy lunch. Just follow me.”

So Angie tried to, despite Natalie’s driving, which had to be the worst she’d ever seen—and she’d lived in Massachusetts. Since Angie still didn’t know the neighborhood, she followed blindly while her mother weaved across the busy streets until they were driving one right behind the other in a mostly residential area on a narrow lane. Natalie drove on the right shoulder, except for when she drove over the white line. As Angela watched, her mother made a left across the other lane without signaling first.

Now her mother put on her left blinker, but she didn’t make the next left-hand turn. Angie shook her head. Only a woman who had spent most of her life living in New York City without a car could drive this badly. But Angie lost the smile quickly. It suddenly hit her that she had no life, and living with her dad and driving this old clunker he’d lent her was no way to get a life.

She ought to think about some kind of a living arrangement—not that she was making a living. The clinic had been paying her only a tiny per diem that didn’t do much more than pay for her lunches and gas money. She wasn’t sure if they could or would pay more, and where would she live if she didn’t live with her father? The idea of a place of her own frightened her. Somehow it had been fun and easy to pick out sheets and a vacuum and a coffeemaker when it was for her home with Reid. But doing it for herself? It all seemed expensive, difficult, and maybe pointless. But it was pointless to do it for a man who was sleeping with your best girlfriend, too, she reminded herself. Maybe making a home was important. She sighed. She had too much to think about.

She looked around at azalea, mountain laurel, and privet that dominated the landscaping in the neighborhood they were driving through. This part of Westchester was beautiful and expensive. Like the plantings, it was mature as well. Somehow, Angie couldn’t see herself living there. Nor could she see herself in White Plains or the other larger towns in Westchester. She could only see herself in New York City, but she couldn’t afford an apartment there and had avoided the city because she knew how difficult it was to get a good legal job. The competition was fierce.

And now, against her will, she was kind of hooked on this do-gooding stuff. The stakes seemed so much higher than in the wills and estates she had done before. And she had so much autonomy—maybe too much. The clinic was so overwhelmed with potential clients that there wasn’t a lot of time for supervision from the senior people. And the senior people didn’t act particularly senior; everything was friendly. At her law firm there had been a strict hierarchy—like Victorian children, associates were regarded best if they didn’t speak to a partner unless they were spoken to.

Just as Angie began to wonder where in the world her mother was taking her, a restaurant on beautiful grounds appeared on the left. It was a huge old house that had been turned into an inn and Angie pulled up and parked just a car away from her mother’s. “Who are we meeting here?” she asked. “I think this is more than just a little lunch.”

Natalie laughed. “Oh, you’ll see. It’ll be fun.”

JoAnn Metzger looked great. She was a famous writer now, but Angie remembered her from years ago, when she had worked at JoAnn’s husband’s office for the summer.

“How are you?” JoAnn asked. “What a nice, nice surprise.”

JoAnn had been invited to Angie’s wedding, but had been away in Japan and couldn’t come. Instead she’d sent the most beautiful wedding gift of all that Angie had received: an antique kimono, incredibly embroidered and framed beautifully in a Lucite box. Angela had retrieved it from the condo, and now it was in storage. The thought of the kimono, its beautiful colors enclosed in cardboard and sitting in a warehouse, made her sad. Perhaps she did want her own wall, just so she could hang the kimono.

“I’m fine,” Angie said.

Her mother laughed. “Oh yeah. She’s just great,” Natalie said and leaned toward JoAnn on her right while she took Angie’s hand. Natalie told Angie’s story to JoAnn while Angie sat there. Oddly, instead of pain, she felt outraged as she heard it. She thought that might be a good thing—a sign of growth or healing. Either that, or it was the beginning of a complete mental breakdown.

JoAnn reached across the table and took Angie’s other hand. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am.”

“Been there. Had that done to her,” Natalie told Angie.

When the waiter arrived, the three of them looked as if they were about to perform a seance. All three of them ordered Cobb salad.

“But with the dressing on the side,” Natalie commanded. Angie had to smile. She knew her mother would use up all her dressing and probably finish off skinny JoAnn’s, too. When their drinks arrived, they stopped talking about Angie and Reid and Natalie began talking about the clinic. Angie knew that JoAnn was on the board, but as Natalie spoke Angie realized that her mother had already told JoAnn quite a bit about Angie’s help.

“Here’s the thing,” she said. “The caseload is increasing, we’re paying Karen while she’s out, but we’ve got to have another attorney and we’re going to have to pay them. So I’m proposing Angie. Do you think that’s nepotism?”

JoAnn laughed. “Of course it is,” she said, “but that doesn’t make it wrong. I got my son his job in publishing.” Their salads arrived. JoAnn looked across the table at Angie. “But are you up to it?” she asked. “I don’t mean intellectually. I’m sure you’re a good lawyer. What I mean is, are you up to it emotionally right now? After Gerome left me I was, well…” She turned to Natalie. “How would you describe it?”

“Deluded,” Natalie said. She looked at Angie. “She kept thinking they’d get back together. Which Alaska and Siberia will do again someday, maybe if you wait long enough.”

JoAnn looked at Angie. “Are you waiting for him to call you? Are you obsessed? Do you think you will go back to him?”

Angie shook her head. “Never,” she said.

“I’m proud of her. She went up there, got her stuff, and came right back down.”

Angie took a deep breath. She hadn’t told about Lisa. She wasn’t sure she wanted to, but looking at the two older women, suspecting they had heard it all, she decided to become another statistic, another dumb woman. “I found out who he was sleeping with,” Angie said. “It was my best friend from work.”

JoAnn closed her eyes and shook her head. Natalie turned to her daughter. “Oh God,” she said. “The little witch. Don’t let it make you feel like a jerk, Angie.
She’s
the jerk not you.”

JoAnn opened her eyes. “I know it doesn’t help to hear this, but it really could be worse,” she said. “He could be sleeping with your sex therapist.”

Though Angie’s mouth was full of Cobb salad, she laughed, or something close to it. It was a relief to tell them about Lisa, and it was a relief to hear these sane reactions. “Yeah, but that doesn’t happen in real life.”

“Oh yes it does,” Natalie said as she raised her eyebrows and inclined her head toward JoAnn. “She was paying that broad two hundred dollars an hour to talk about her sex life with her husband while the therapist was boffing him.”

“Is that true?” Angie asked JoAnn.

“Well, I might not of put it exactly in those words,” JoAnn admitted. “It was a hundred and seventy-five an hour and I don’t think that boffing’ is what they were doing while I was seeing her. They were moving up to the actual boff.” JoAnn smiled. “I cared so much then. Now…I don’t consider myself a victim anymore,” she said. “I’ve moved on. It’s not that that wasn’t a bad part of my life, but I’m over it.” She smiled, and her smile was gorgeous. “I guess I’d consider myself a recovering first wife.”

There was a pause while they finished their lunch. Then Natalie began talking about the clinic and she and JoAnn discussed the budget for a little while until the waiter brought cappuccinos.

“I wonder if we could go back to Adrianne,” Natalie was saying when Angie paid attention again. She knew they were talking about Adrianne Lender, the famous actress and producer.

“Does she fund the clinic?”

“Does an ex-husband send his child support late?” Natalie asked archly. “Honey, she is the clinic.”

“How much additional funding do you think we need?” JoAnn asked. “Because my new book contract…”

Angie decided it was a good time to excuse herself. That was for two reasons: first, she didn’t want to hear them talk about her financial possibilities. Second, she suddenly felt dizzy and a little bit nauseated. Maybe she was the one who had had too much of the rich dressing on her salad.

By the time she had negotiated her way across the room and to the small hallway that led to the ladies’, there was desperation in her step. She walked into the bathroom, threw open a door to a stall, and threw up. The force of it was shocking—three spasms and her belly was empty, but she heaved a few more times. She leaned against the wall, her forehead and upper lip beaded with sweat.

She guessed that her confession to her mother and JoAnn had cost her more emotionally than she had thought. She averted her eyes from the toilet and flushed it. If it was Lisa and Reid that she was flushing away, she was glad to see them go.

Nothing like a good projectile vomit to set you up for the afternoon.

In which Michelle floats alone and Jada floats away

Michelle pulled the pink sweater over her head, then struggled into the gray flannel skirt. Well, actually, she didn’t have to struggle anymore. The terror of the last week had killed her appetite and probably jumped up her metabolism. Anyway, she’d obviously lost some weight, because she didn’t even have to pinch the zipper together to get the skirt to close. She looked in the mirror.

Her body, always long and vertical, looked as if it had stretched taller than its normal five feet ten inches. She supposed that she should consider the weight loss becoming, but when she looked at her face her reflection shattered that idea. Her face was bones and hollows, her nose more prominent. Somehow it looked as if her skull had gotten smaller, but the skin hadn’t. Her hair was so blond against her face that it drained it of all color. Michelle had always been fairly effortlessly pretty. But this face was going to take a lot of makeup before she could show it at the bank.

Michelle had talked with Jada and both agreed it was best to try to return to their work lives. “If you sit at home all day or keep grooming Pookie for hours you’ll wind up in County,” Jada had said, and Michelle knew she was speaking for herself, as well.

So last night Michelle had told Frank that today she would be going back to her job at the bank. Frank as always, had told Michelle it wasn’t necessary, but Michelle wanted—no, she needed—the regularity of her old work routine. She wanted to be out of this house that had been sullied in a way she couldn’t Windex or Pledge off the walls, windows, and furniture. And at the bank she had some coworkers who knew her. Not real friends like Jada, but a few other women that she’d worked with now pleasantly for years. They had birthday lunches together, and she liked them.

Besides housework she had her list to keep herself busy. She’d gotten a notebook found all her old receipts for her furniture and linens and stapled them to the new ones. But at the bank, Michelle had her loan work; that would keep her mind active in a more productive way than her growing fears over the legal swamp she and Frank had fallen into. Plus, defending themselves was going to be so costly that they might actually need the money, though she didn’t say that to Frank. Frank was worried, but he wouldn’t talk about the trouble with her.