Baby Please Don't Go: A Novel (6 page)

“Jesus,” Lock said. “Does he know that this one’s going to die as a result?”

“I told him, and the tree guys told him, but Witt didn’t care.”

“I wish you hadn’t told me that,” Lock said, shaking his head.

“Harder to imagine having a reasonable conversation with him now, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. A lot harder.” He took out his phone and walked around the tree, taking over a dozen pictures.

Lock started his car and pulled out onto the country road. On the way back to the office, Lock thought about Natalie, about the tree, and about a look she had given him that reminded him of an old girlfriend. It was a look of determination—a small frown followed by a forced smile, the conscious decision to make the best of things. It was exactly what Dominique did when faced with life’s larger difficulties.

When he was about thirty and still teaching elementary school in Philadelphia, Lock had been frantically in love with Dominique. It wasn’t that she and Natalie looked alike, but he was starting to see they had many of the same qualities. Dominique had been a ballerina, and Natalie was a yoga practitioner, and their bodies were very alike. And Dominique’s interest in him—what ballerina dated a teacher when she could be dating models?—gave him a similar feeling, too.
Natalie could have anyone, so why me? She tried the rich guy, and that didn’t work out
, he told himself.
And maybe it’ll just be a thing so she can forget Witt. Maybe afterwards she’ll find someone who can give her another big house.
Even so, he looked forward to seeing her again. He admitted he was hooked now. As long as she was interested in him, he’d keep looking for excuses to see her. It had been the same with Dominique when he’d met her.

Her divorce was almost settled then, and when it was finalized, they agreed that they would live together in his apartment. It was big enough for three, and they had big, beautiful plans for their lives together.

Lock had experienced lust at first sight, and he had to admit that might have been what was happening with Natalie. But with Dominique, it had been love and devotion at first sight.

Dominique’s ex, Timothy—who had walked out on her in her second trimester—had worked hard during the divorce to make her life miserable. He perjured himself repeatedly in custody hearings, claiming she was an unfit parent. He had staged photos of her medicine cabinet to give the appearance that she was a prescription pill addict. In reality, Timothy was the addict, and he couldn’t be trusted to care for little Hannah, who was eighteen months old by the time the hearings took place. Dominique forgave him, even while he continued to undermine her parental rights. Lock could never understand her unconditional compassion for Timothy, and everyone else for that matter, but that was one of the things he loved so much about her.

The family court judge wasn’t buying the contrived evidence and gave Timothy a hard time, punitively limiting his time with Hannah to supervised visitation for four hours once a week. The custody order was fantastic news to Lock. Timothy slouched in his chair and didn’t seem to give a shit either way.

As they had grown closer and more in love, it was Lock, not Timothy, who had taken Dominique to her OB/GYN appointments and who’d spent hours rubbing cocoa butter on her bulging belly to help reduce the severity of the inevitable stretch marks. The second or third word Hannah had learned to speak was “Dada,” and she used it in reference to Lock. Meanwhile, Timothy failed to show up for many of his visitation sessions. He didn’t know his daughter. Lock was pleased about that, but it didn’t really matter. Hannah regarded him as her father, and he loved her as his own child.

The three of them lived together happily for over a year when Dominique was struck and killed by a drunk delivery truck driver on Market Street in center city Philadelphia.

Each night during the week that followed, Lock rocked Hannah in his arms and sobbed them both to sleep.

Before Dominique was even buried, Timothy had found a new lawyer who obtained an emergency custody hearing. A different judge presided, and without paying much attention to expert witness testimony about Lock’s strong paternal relationship with Hannah and their profound emotional bond, the judge ordered that Timothy would, by law, become the infant’s sole custodian as Hannah’s only living biological parent. Upon hearing the ruling, Timothy looked across the courtroom, grinned, and gave Lock the finger.

He saw to it that Lock would never see Hannah again, and Lock never did.

Lock thought about Witt, a man who would cut down a tree to spite his wife. A man like that would do exactly what Timothy had done—or worse.

6

Natalie, Witt, Edwina, and Dahlia sat at the breakfast table. Dahlia flailed in a highchair. Edwina plucked pieces of alphabet cereal from her bowl and used them to spell words on her napkin.

Natalie served her husband his breakfast of eggs and whole wheat toast and tended to the kids. She forced herself to put her hand on Witt’s back in a cynical attempt to display affection. He didn’t acknowledge the caress, too absorbed in the morning newspaper to notice or care.

“Don’t count on me for dinner tonight,” he said. “I’ll be in Harrisburg. If my meeting runs too late, I may stay overnight. If I’m not home by ten o’clock, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“What about the people from the county? They’ll be here tomorrow morning.”

“Screw them. Reschedule it.” Witt folded the paper and set it on the table. He glanced at his watch. “Isn’t there something at the girls’ school this morning?” he asked. “What time does the driver pick them up?” His tone was more of a complaint than a question.

“Eight,” Natalie said. He wasn’t really interested in the girls. He just liked to find fault.

“He’s always in my way whenever I try to back out of the garage.”

“You could leave now,” she said.

“And I might have to fly to Sacramento this weekend. I don’t know yet.”

He pays so little attention to me that he doesn’t even notice when I’m being a bitch
, she thought.

Witt took a quick swipe at his face with a paper napkin, dropped it on the table, and then rose and left the room. He didn’t say goodbye. A minute later, Natalie heard the garage door clank open and Witt’s car drive off.

Lock had just sat down at his desk when Natalie called.

“Good morning, Lock,” she said. He could hear the smile in her voice. “It’s me.”

“Good morning, Mrs. Mannheim. What can’t wait until seven thirty?”

“It’s okay, I know you’re at work. I need to see you,” she said.

“That’s what you said yesterday.” Lock tapped the eraser end of a pencil against the phone.

“I meant it then, and I mean it now,” she said.

“I’m sorry. I have a busy morning.”

“Taking care of someone else’s kids.”

“That’s what I do,” he said, lowering his voice. No one was in the cubicles nearby, but he had to be careful. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t care about
your
kids.”

“What if I tell you I’m beating my children with a belt? Would you come over then?”

He could hear her smiling and he laughed. “I’ll see you tonight,” he said.

“Wait,” she said. “Witt’s going out of town, and he’s probably not going to be back tonight.”

“Did you—?”

“I told him it was important. He said, ‘Screw them.’”

“Charming,” Lock said. “He’s going out of town? Give me his cell phone number.”

Natalie recited the number. Lock wrote it down and said, “I’ll let you know what I find out.”

He called her back ten minutes later. “He let it go to voicemail,” he said. “I left a message saying that this is serious business and if he stands me up again, I’m going to get the police involved. I told him he has until the end of the day to return my call and make another appointment. I think I’ll hear from him.”

“Yes, probably,” she said. “You’re getting to see what a sweetheart he is.”

“Yeah, I think I have a pretty good sense of him now. I’ll call you when I hear.”

“Thanks, Lock.”

“Look for a lawyer, okay? For a case like this, I’m sure you can find someone who’ll take it without getting paid up front.”

“Yeah, I’ll do that. Otherwise I’m going to end up like that tree,” she said.

“I was thinking the same thing,” Lock said.

After lunch, Lock’s desk phone rang again.

“Lochlan Gilkenney.”

“Mr. Gilkenney. This is Wittley Mannheim. First, let me apologize for having to reschedule our meeting. Completely unavoidable. Business crisis that’s getting worse by the minute. Now, it appears that I’ll be out of town for an entire week, but I am anxious to meet with you and set the record straight. Any chance we can do this by phone? I could do it today by phone, or even right now, if possible.”

“It’s not possible,” Lock said. Mannheim sounded a little too slick, a little too ingratiating. So far, there was nothing to suggest he wasn’t exactly as Natalie had portrayed him. “We need to see you in person, in your home environment, together with your wife and daughters.”

“You came on a little strong with the police threat, Mr. Gilkenney. Let me assure you, I am taking this seriously. It’s just that I can’t be available for the interview.”

“According to Mrs. Mannheim, you’re not taking this seriously at all.”

“You’ll soon learn to take anything Natalie says with several tons of salt,” said Mannheim. “Here’s an example—I understand you suspect that I or my attorney submitted an anonymous report to your office. Is that correct?”

“Mr. Manheim, I can’t possibly form an opinion about what is going on with the information I have right now. That’s why this meeting is so important.”

“I’ll take that as a yes, and I’ll tell you what’s really going on—Natalie sent you that report. I can’t prove it, but it’s right up her alley. She does something wrong and then blames me. She cheated on me and broke my heart, but to hear her tell it, I practically forced her legs apart myself for that little bastard boyfriend of hers.”

“Okay, that’s enough, Mr. Mannheim.” Lock reached across the desk for his appointment book and opened it. “When is the absolute soonest you’ll be available to meet?”

“Let’s see. Today is Wednesday. I’ll be back late next Tuesday. I’ll be in Anaheim until then, but I’ll see you first thing next Wednesday morning, if that works for you.”

“Ten o’clock next Wednesday. Please keep your girls home from school for the morning.”

“I understand. That’s fine.”

“Just so we’re clear, this is a favor. I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt. If, for whatever reason, you’re not at the meeting next week, I will involve the police.”

“Thank you, Mr. Gilkenney,” Manheim said, and he hung up.

Lock felt he had kept his cool, but Manheim had made him angry, not just with his dismissive attitude, but because now Lock wouldn’t see Natalie for a full week. He believed Edwina and Dahlia were happy and well cared for, and the disappointment was all about Natalie, not about the case.

He couldn’t come up with a legitimate reason to see her, and for a moment he flirted with the idea of engineering an accidental meeting. Maybe if they lived in the same neighborhood it might fly, but arranging to bump into her at her local grocery store might seem like too much of a coincidence. He didn’t think she’d mind, but for himself, he needed to stay on the right side of being a stalker.

Lock sat up straight when he remembered that he’d promised Natalie he’d call her once he made a new appointment with her husband. If he were being professional, he would have picked up his phone and called her then and there, but he didn’t. He wanted to enjoy the anticipation of speaking with her, hearing her voice, looking into her twinkling eyes. He pictured her in the cut-offs and t-shirt, imagining her sprawled out on the lounge chair in her solarium. He wanted to be with her, and he couldn’t, so he’d have to enjoy the whole experience of Natalie Mannheim through the prism of one quick, routine phone call.

He couldn’t wait. He dialed her number.

Voicemail. Another disappointment. But he wasn’t going to miss speaking with her by leaving a message, so he hung up.

7

Almost a full week passed and Lock didn’t see Natalie, but in that week, he had crossed so far past the line of professionalism that he couldn’t see it any more. Natalie had called Lock back, and after he had described his conversation with Witt, it hadn’t taken much for her to get Lock’s cellphone number out of him. He rationalized that she might need it in case of some emergency that involved the children. But he knew he just wanted to be in touch with her.

She called him that night, and he was delighted to hear her voice. But when she suggested they meet, he said no. He didn’t want to lose his job, but mostly he didn’t want to prejudice her case in the event he did discover something actionable about her husband. Any lawyer would annihilate Natalie’s case if it were discovered she and Lock had had a personal relationship of any kind.

As soon as he explained that to her, he said, “I need you to do me a favor.”

“What do you want?” she said.

“We can’t do this on our phones. We need to end this call and get disposable, prepaid cellphones, and then only use those. If the worst happens, even this call could make it hard for you to get custody,” he said.

“Throwaway phones, like spies and criminals use, right?” she asked.

“Exactly.”

“I should have thought of that myself,” she said. “I’m sure Witt had my phone records checked before.”

“When you had a boyfriend,” Lock said.

“Awkward. He wasn’t a boyfriend, but yeah, that.”

He smiled. “So, go get a phone and then call me at work tomorrow with the number of the new phone. I’ll pick up one for me in the morning.”

“I can’t wait to talk to you. It’s stupid, like high school.” She laughed.

He laughed too and said, “I know. Tomorrow night, we’ll talk as long as you want.”

The next night, they talked for over three hours. They talked about when they were kids and the things they had dreamed of and the outlandish things they had believed and done. It was the same kind of talk all new lovers had, and it made Lock happy.

“So what about your family?” she asked.

He understood that she was going to let him answer that however he wanted—he could tell her more about his parents, or about Dominique and Hannah. He liked that she was so careful of him.

He said, “I was in love with a woman. Her name was Dominique, and she was a ballet dancer. She had a daughter, Hannah, and we were raising her together.” He told her the rest of the story and she listened without asking questions. He told her more than he had told anyone, even the people at AA, even Abby.

He talked about how much it disturbed him not having a family he could call his own, and how he felt love was the most potent force in the universe.

“I know,” Natalie said. “Before you have a family, you think you want certain things. But after, whatever those things are, they suddenly seem silly, because now there’s this other thing that’s bigger than anything you ever imagined.”

“And when you have a family,” he told her, “love is kind of just there, waiting.”

“How do you deal with that?” she asked.

“Holidays hurt the most. I’m always invited somewhere for Thanksgiving, but when I go, I sit there and wonder who all these people are and I wish they’d just be quiet. All it does is remind me of Dominique and Hannah.”

“I was going to say I can’t imagine it, but I can. I do. That’s what I’m afraid of with Witt. If he wins, maybe I’ll never see my girls again.”

“I’m not going to say don’t worry,” Lock said. “You’re worried, and that’s a good thing. We’ll be careful, and you’ll keep an eye out for anything Witt does that shows he’s not a good father.”

“Shit, I’m getting some kind of signal on my phone. Either the battery’s dying or I’m running out of minutes,” Natalie said. “Talk tomorrow night?”

“Tomorrow night.”

“I love our talks,” Natalie said one night, after returning home from an Orchid Society meeting and calling him immediately. “I never get bored talking to you. The more I talk with you, the more I want. I couldn’t help thinking about you during the presentation tonight. I can barely remember what they were discussing. And the things you and I talk about are all over the place, but I remember everything.”

“It’s the pink cloud effect,” he said. “We’re getting to know each other. We overlook the things we might not like about each other.”

“Maybe for you it’s a pink cloud.”

“Maybe for you, too,” said Lock.

“Here we are,” she said. “I’m in my bed, propped up on four pillows, and there you are on your sofa—”

“I’m in the recliner.”

“—and I bet you have a fire going in your wood-burning stove.”

He got up to stoke the embers with a stick he took from a pile of kindling.

“You must have a nanny-cam on me.”

“Maybe I should install one. Make sure you behave when I’m not monopolizing your time.”

“You’re not monopolizing anything. You’re my priority when I’m home.”

“But not enough of a priority to meet?”

“Not going to happen. Not until your case is closed and you take care of the other stuff.”

“Get divorced, you mean.”

“Yeah. I’m not giving you an ultimatum or anything, but even after CPS makes a determination about your case, if Witt’s lawyer finds out we’re spending time together before the divorce is final, how’s that going to look?”

“You’ll never be able to resist me that long. I can be persuasive.”

Lock smiled at that. “I don’t know what gives you the impression I can be easily convinced, but I think you’re going to find out you’re wrong.”

“We’ll see.”

Later on, she asked him about growing up in Philadelphia. There was a lot he didn’t care to say about it, so he cast about for a good memory. “I told you about my dad. He was a grumpy man, even in his late thirties, and for most of my waking hours as a kid, he was sleeping it off. That’s the bulk of my memories of my father—sleeping with his mouth open.”

“Could have been worse,” Natalie said softly.

“I guess so. Most of my happy childhood recollections are of my mom. Great memories. No siblings, so I got all her attention. A few times, on a Sunday when she’d be off work, she’d tell my father we were going shopping for school clothes or something, but we’d actually drive down to the ocean, at Avalon. That’s where all the super-rich families vacationed, and we’d pretend we had a chauffeur drive us there. I’d call her Jeeves and she’d call me sir, and she’d laugh and we’d drive the whole way with all four windows down. When we’d start smelling the salt air, we knew we were almost there.”

Natalie said, “I suppose this is the time to mention Witt and I own a home on the beach in Avalon. I didn’t get to it once this summer. I kept making plans to go as a family, and Witt would reschedule at the last minute, and then summer was over.”

“That’s sad, having the house but not using it. It’s almost worse than not having the house,” Lock said. “My mom barely had enough spare money for gas and tolls. Sometimes she let me pay the tolls. I’d feel like a million bucks when she’d let me do that. Another time, on the boardwalk, I surprised her by pulling a ten-dollar bill out of my pocket—I’d earned it weeding a neighbor’s backyard garden the day before—and I insisted I buy her lunch. She let me, without putting up a fight. She was great that way. I had a hot dog and a Coke—real health food—and she ordered a grilled tuna and cheese and a glass of water. I guess she asked for water to try to keep the bill down. She told me it was the best sandwich she’d ever eaten in her entire life.”

“I can guarantee she was telling you the truth,” Natalie said.

“Yes,” he said, “she always told me the truth, and that taught me to as well. I don’t like lying, not even white lies.”

“What about a white lie to spare someone’s feelings?”

“I used to think it was unavoidable, but now I think it’s just better to tell the truth, or say nothing. I just try to be gentle about it.”

“You’re a rare human being then.”

“My father knew how to lie. He was good at it. He’d lie for no reason at all. If you’d ask him what time it was, he’d look at his watch and see it was 5:05. Then he’d tell you it was 5:06. Just deceitful is all.”

Talking with Natalie triggered memories of things Lock had forgotten—like the time he was convinced he was going to flunk fifth grade. His father had persuaded him that he was such an underachiever that the teacher and principal had discussed it and they’d decided Lock would need to repeat the year.

It had been an artless falsehood designed to get Lock to work harder in school. When Lock tearfully approached his teacher and told him of his fears, the teacher assured him that whomever had told him that was a malicious liar.

And Natalie told Lock, in the midst of their midnight phone call, that something in their conversations reminded her of the time she kicked the neighborhood bully in the nuts when he snuck up behind her and snapped her bra strap against her back.

“I don’t know what made me think of that,” she told him. “But my mind goes to wild places when I talk to you.”

At times, their calls had the essence of phone sex—lots of lengthy silences, deep breaths, visions of what the other party was doing. The calls were innocent, though sometimes Lock would notice a long pause from Natalie’s side of the line, and then he’d hear a throaty sigh. That caused him to wonder exactly what she was doing. When he asked, she said she was just sleepy, but quickly added that she didn’t want to say goodnight.

The more he learned about her—her dedication to yoga, her love of reading books about personal growth, her juvenile sense of humor—she liked to pretend she didn’t recognize Lock’s voice and demand that whoever had answered his phone had better put him on the line immediately—the more he liked her. Her impoverished childhood wasn’t the cliché he’d feared it’d be. She didn’t realize she was poor at the time, and told Lock that she had been happy, with many friends and a good relationship with her parents. In her early childhood, they took her to Disney World three times before both her parents got laid off from their blue-collar jobs. When she turned seventeen a few years later, she moved out into an apartment with a girlfriend and worked three jobs to pay her rent and help her parents out.

The way Natalie talked about her girls impressed Lock.

She loved them so much, she said, and Witt’s distance from them saddened her. That was one of the things about her that was so attractive to Lock. It wasn’t hard for him to imagine them having children together. It wasn’t hard for him to picture her being a loving mom and wife. A family was what he wanted, and Natalie seemed to fit the image of the kind of woman he ached for. He understood he knew very little about her, and he hoped he’d learn more over time, but the conflict with his job kept nagging at him.

In another conversation one night, fatigue got the best of Lock and he caught himself falling asleep as he listened to Natalie talking about being physically abused by a former boyfriend. That was a subject that would definitely interest him, so nearly falling asleep was a clear signal that he should end the call and go to bed. He waited for an opening and told Natalie that he just couldn’t stay awake any longer. He looked at the clock displayed on the cable TV box.

“My God,” he said. “It’s almost four.”

“Yes,” Natalie said, “we’ve broken our record.”

Lock yanked the handle on the recliner and it folded down into its normal position. He stood up.

“I’ll let you go, then,” Natalie said. “Get some sleep and save some kids tomorrow.”

“It’s already tomorrow,” he said, “but I’ll take your advice.”

“Goodnight, baby,” she said.

“Goodnight, Natalie.”

“Just for the record,” she said, wanting to extend the call, “I think I’m falling for you, so be careful with me. Be gentle.”

Then he said it. It just slipped out. “I can say the same to you.”

“Good,” she said, sounding exhilarated by his admission, “and goodnight.” He heard the click. It was the first time he’d ever let his attraction to her leak out into speech. He bit his lip and wondered how wrong it was to have said that.

Lock undressed and got into bed. Natalie was an exceptional woman, he thought, and they were quite a bit alike in some ways, while vastly different in others.

She’d worry about every aspect of her orchids’ health. He’d worry about the kids he encountered through CPS. She had to have the humidity in the solarium perfect for the orchids and she didn’t trust Candice to take care of them. When she would travel, she’d hire a plant expert to come in once a day to check on the flowers. And Lock didn’t trust his colleagues to take good enough care of the kids under his supervision, so he rarely took vacation time. Although Lock knew all about trees, when it came to caring for plants, he resorted to his “brown method” of plant care—when some leaves turned brown and began falling, he would water the plants. And from the way Natalie instructed him on how to care for them, he realized he was alternating between killing them with neglect and killing them by over-watering.

On the other hand, Lock never would have hired Candice to care for his kids, if he’d had any. He didn’t think Natalie had done adequate due diligence in vetting Candice, and he told her so. He suggested giving Candice an unannounced drug test. She laughed and said that demanding Candice submit to a test was way out of bounds. Lock countered, “Not if she’s driving the kids around. And you said you thought her boyfriend was a bad influence on her. Drug testing is definitely appropriate.”