Carpool Confidential (28 page)

“I understand you were bitten by a dog?” I nodded mutely, and he glanced over at Bouvier. “May I see it?” He took my hand and started to unwrap the napkin.

I mentally added the raggedness of my nails to the could-stand-improving list.

“Do you mind if I sit? I can't see from up here.” He handed his jacket to Frederic. I slid over on the banquette to make room. He maneuvered the little lamp on the table closer as he examined my hand. He smelled of shirt starch and expensively milled soap.

“You got here quickly,” I said to the top of his glossy head, since this whole thing was making me nervous and I was trying not to think about the fact that I undoubtedly smelled a good deal less pleasant. I looked up at Frederic. “Is this a regular occurrence?”

Frederic said, “Dr. Spence is one of our regular customers.”

“I live just round the corner. I was on my way into the office when Frederic saw me and came out and asked if I'd take a look.” He let go of my hand. “I expect you'll live, but it might be a little sore for a few days. Some soap and warm water and a little Bacitracin should do the trick.”

“Thank you,” I said. “Um, Dr. Spence.”

He looked at Letitia. “Of course the relative nonseriousness of it's dependent on the dog having had all its shots?”

Letitia nodded. “Of course.”

“Better immunized than the average child,” I assured him.

He smiled at me. “Still, in future, I'd avoid sticking your hand in its mouth.”

Frederic appeared with a bowl of water and a tube of antibiotic ointment.

“I didn't. I did the doggy Heimlich on him. He was choking on an ice cube.”

He bent his head and started cleaning my hand. “And this was how he thanked you for your heroism?” He smoothed a dot of ointment on.

“There won't be a next time.”

“Quite understandable.” He slid off the banquette, stood up, and took his jacket.

My molten chocolate cake arrived, but I figured I'd restrain myself until he left. No need to add me inhaling chocolate to his already charming mental picture.

“Won't you stay for a drink or a bite to eat, Dr. Spence?” Could Letitia's thought process—
fixup!
—have been any clearer?

NO! I tried to telegraph to her. I was more interested in eating my chocolate cake in unself-conscious bliss than having this delicious man sitting next to me.

“Thank you,” he said, “but I need to be off.”

“Thank you,” I said, and then at his look, added, “for the medical assistance.”

“Not for needing to be off?” He almost smiled again.

Ah, British humor. Fine. I could do that, since, as you might recall, I specialize in sarcastic and cutting. “That, too,” I said.

“Pleasure.” He smiled.

“Which?” I asked.

“Both,” he said over his shoulder.

“Well.” Letitia reached across and forked up a bite of my cake, uninvited. “Wasn't that an attractive man!”

“I didn't notice,” I lied as I maneuvered my plate out of her reach. “So where were we?” I did, after all, have to get home in time to pick up the boys.

“I forgot this.” Dr. Spence reappeared.

“If it's your bill” (I was embarrassed to be caught with chocolate between my teeth) “send it to Bouvier.”

He took a Band-Aid out of his pocket and motioned for my hand. “The bill is on the house. I suspect they'd prefer that to the health inspector.”

I sort of wanted to purr when he smoothed the Band-Aid on. “Thanks, again.”

“Pleasure, again. Enjoy your lunch.” And then he was gone.

“Don't say a word, Letitia,” I warned. “Just go on with your story, OK?”

“The nutshell version.” She took a breath. “Rick was born. Olivier had zero interest in being a father. Things got worse and worse between us. He started hitting me. The drugs, the other women, he stopped the pretence of trying to hide any of it from me. One night, when Rick was six months old, we had the worst fight yet. He broke my wrist. I had to do something.”

“Don't tell me you killed him.” I laughed uneasily, trying to lighten the moment. The story, even though it was so far in the past, gave me a sick feeling.

“Don't be ridiculous.” She took a drink of champagne. “I had it done.”

I gripped the edge of the banquette so I wouldn't slide onto the floor. I was back to my
drinking at lunch can't lead to anything good
philosophy. “What?” I whispered, the sick, horrified feeling sicker and more horrified.

“Just kidding!” she said gaily. “The idiot saved me the trouble. Wrapped himself around a lamppost in a drugged stupor. There wasn't enough of him left to bury properly.” She signaled to Leonard. “Espresso, please.

“Olivier's parents were inconsolable,” she continued, “but as far as they were concerned, Rick was now the son and heir. My greatest fear was that they'd pull him into the same world Olivier had grown up in. I decided to keep Rick out of that life as much as possible, make sure he didn't grow up feeling entitled. I knew the right thing was to do the same myself, to pack it up and move to the suburbs and send him to public school. But the ranch house, Suffolk County, I couldn't do it.”

“Rick ended up making plenty of his own money,” I pointed out.

Leonard delivered the espressos. Letitia stirred hers. “He had the touch my father never did. He was always the kid who made two hundred dollars with the lemonade stand. And then instead of blowing it all on baseball cards, he'd put it in an interest-bearing account. So not only didn't my strategy work but making more of his own money than he could ever want or need didn't stop him from hating me or make him a better person.”

Having your children grow up to hate you had to be the worst feeling in the world. I prayed I would never know it.

“So now I feel”—she looked around—“fuck the money. My theory didn't work with Rick. It's not about what you do or don't grow up with; it's about who you are inside. And the sad thing,” she put her cup back down, “is that in the end, he wound up being as bad a father as his father was.”

“And mine.” I nodded. “Through all of this, I've told myself that at least he's a good father. But he's not. Good fathers don't leave their kids and not leave forwarding addresses. I've held onto that because it was what I wanted him to be.”

“The process of seeing someone as they are, not as you want them to be, can't be hurried,” she said.

Emotion (and three-quarters of a bottle of champagne) was getting the better of me. “Look at you, Letitia,” I said. “All that money, and you're not happy either.”

“Maybe not,” she said coolly. “I'll tell you, though, if I'm going to be a cold, unhappy older woman, I'd just as soon do it with a chauffeured car than dressed in Filene's bargains, living in a walk-up on the Lower East Side.”

Which, I had to admit, had a ring of sense.

“Cassie.” She leaned closer. “Take the money.”

I shook my head. “Not now. Not yet, anyway.”

“Why?” She tried to frown. (Couldn't. The Botox-thing.)

Why?
It made no sense that it should require such mental gyrations to provide an answer to one very short word. Ever since the boys had learned to talk it was like my days were filled by trying to provide answers to the most incomprehensible questions—why do I have to take a bath, why is Daddy taller than you, why aren't sheep called pigeons and pigeons called elephants, why is yellow yellow and not blue? And this didn't feel any different.

“Because.” I looked at Letitia and debated between the rest of the espresso or the champagne. I picked up the espresso. “I need to find out what I can do on my own. I don't know if I can make it work, but I have to try.”

“We're talking about the blog?”

“For a start.”

“I keep meaning to tell you—I heard some women at the gym discussing it. They're pretty sure you're a Poly Prep mom named Stacey who screwed up the silent auction sheets at last year's spring fund-raiser.”

I laughed. “So you don't know any nice, gentle, non participatory type men who'd like to accompany your daughter-in-law to an orgy, do you?”

“Do they need to be single?”

“Yes.”

“Under sixty?”

“Yes.”

“Do you care if they're straight?”

“No, but alive and with no history of major mental health issues would be nice.”

She shook her head slowly. “Sorry, but I don't think I do.”

In the elevator on the way up to the apartment I got a call from Janice Streitmeier, the Nantucket realtor. I had a brief moment of nostalgia for the days when people used to not be able to reach you in elevators. “Cassie,” she said, “we have someone who's interested in the house, but when I tried to contact Harry, he said he wasn't working for you anymore.” She sounded puzzled.

I was too. “I, um, forgot. Listen, Janice, that house is like a futuristic nightmare of passcodes and alarms. Let me dig them out and give you a call back?”

I hit speed dial for Harry, our caretaker, to whom I'd faithfully sent a large check every month, with the exception of the last two, for the past ten years. I got voice mail on both home and cell and hung up without leaving a message.

We imploded through the door accompanied by the usual chaos of homework papers, backpacks, tennis racquets, and assorted musical instruments. I could sense the kids were exploding with the need to have a fight with each other, and I wanted them to at least wait until we were closed inside the apartment.

The phone was ringing. Cad, who had had an accident on the kitchen floor, was whimpering. “Eeuw,” the boys screamed in unison. The one item that was conspicuously missing was Harmonye.

“Fuck.”

“Mommy, you
swore!
” Jared's eyes were the size of tires.

Noah could not have been more gleeful. “It was the F word, too.”

“It's okay, Cad,” I said, since she was cowering in the corner. “Don't take your shoes off, guys, we need to take her out first thing. Then I'll clean up.”

“But I don't want to go out.” Jared's lip was quivering. “I'm cold and I'm tired and hungry and it's dark.”

“I know.” I was having a hard time keeping my own lip from quivering as I cleaned the floor. Why couldn't Harmonye have done that one simple thing? “But we have no choice. Let's just do it, OK?”

They must have recognized I wasn't in the mood to be messed with, because they pulled their jackets on and followed me. When we got back, I yanked open all the windows, dispatched Jared to the bath and Noah to his homework—which he insisted on doing at the kitchen table despite the frigid air pouring in and the lingering smell—while I sorted through the mail and played the messages.

They consisted of:

One from the head of the neighborhood association asking me to be on the board of a new group. One from my brother. One from Rick saying he'd call back later. Calls from Charlotte, Jen, and Randy. A hangup and a message from Direct Lottery Services telling me to press three now to collect my prize.

The stupid thing rang a second later. It was Rick with the promised callback. I glanced at the caller ID. It was a 504 number. Where the hell was that?
^*

“Hi, Cassie. Things good?”

I hated it when he said that, because, of course, the implication was that I was supposed to say yes no matter how they were. “No.”

“Oh, sorry to hear that. Kids around?”

“Yes.” I looked at Noah, at the kitchen table, his head bent over his homework. “But you're talking to me first, like it or not.” I headed out and down the hall, peeking in on Jared in the bath, to Noah's room.

“Uh, Cassie, I really don't—I don't have time to—”

“Yes, you do,” I said through clenched teeth. “If you know what's good for you. What do you mean Paulette's going to press harassment charges? What for?”

“She has the recordings of your messages. She played them for me, Cass. You were out of control. She's afraid of you.”

I hadn't been then, but I was starting to get out of control now, that was for sure. “Are you both out of your fucking minds? How on earth is
Hi, Paulette, how are you?
out of control? You're psychotic.”

“It's your tone.” His was endlessly soothing. It reminded me of my father speaking to my mother on Thanksgiving. When Noah was in preschool the kids had had cards to help them express press feelings. One of them had been an anger thermometer on which I vividly recall the highest level being a big, red ENRAGED. I was past there now.

“Did you get rid of Harry? Who's watching the house?”

“It seemed like a needless expense. Nothing ever goes wrong out there. The pool's all closed up, the tennis courts are covered, and the alarm company monitors.”

“OK, fine.” I wasn't going to ask why, if that was the case, we'd paid a caretaker for all these years. I suspected it had something to do with Rick liking the sound of
“our caretaker out on Nantucket…”
“I think we should rent or sell that house.”

He was quiet for a minute. “Let's think about it but table it for now.”

“Rick, I don't know how much longer I can afford to keep going. Let's flip that house.”

“Why not ask your parents for a little help? They both have good incomes.” Yeah, and not the smallest inclination to help anyone other than themselves. Nor should they have to in this case. “I took care of you and the kids for years at the expense of my own creative and psychological well-being.”

“Don't you feel even a little bit guilty about what you've done?”

“No.” He was quiet for a moment. The new, reflective Rick. “I think guilt is an unproductive emotion, don't you?”

“Only because assholes like you who
should
feel guilty never do because they're such assholes they can convince themselves it's an unproductive emotion, while people like me who've done nothing wrong are weighed down by it. If it only worked the other way—the way it's supposed to—it
would
be productive. It's people like you who give guilt a bad name.”

“Cassie,” he sounded weary with this whole conversation, “I don't understand what you're saying.”

The anger was coming, and it had been a long time in the works. Paulette was right to be scared of me. I was scared of me. For the first time in all of this, I was done trying to understand, accommodate, soothe. I'd had it. “What the hell has happened to you?” I hissed, having trouble keeping my voice down low enough. Although considering the volume at which Jared was howling the chorus of “Jeremiah Was a Bullfrog,” over and over, I was probably safe. “I just want you to understand that I'm telling the kids tonight that you've bailed on them and our marriage—”

“Come on, Cass, don't be like that,” he said. “Don't blackmail me.”

“Blackmail you?” I was quivering with fury. “How is telling them the truth blackmailing you?”

“Are you trying to get me to come home by threatening me?”

I laughed. “Rick, nothing could be further from my mind.”

“Why make things worse for them than they need to be?”

“Because they're not idiots, Rick. They know something's up, and it's only fair to tell them what's what. Jared's having problems in school and he's having trouble sleeping and he's sucking his thumb. Noah's moody and unhappy and afraid. Did you think this wouldn't affect them?”

“I don't know,” he sounded subdued.

“Listen, Rick. You can tell them now or I'm telling them when we hang up. Then, just so you know, I'm getting myself a divorce lawyer and I'm coming after you”—there was a call waiting beep, which I ignored—“and when I do—”

More call waiting beeps. I ignored them again.

“Are you
threatening
me, Cassie?”

“Yes, Rick,” I said. “I am. It's so much more rewarding than blackmailing.”

“What do you want from me?”

“At the very least, my rightful share of the assets.”

“Every cent we had, I made,” he said. “I'm entitled to spend some of it my way. Maybe having to earn a living will help you worry about something real instead of is the food organic, is the curriculum rich enough, are they too young for organized sports?”

Tell me I'm not the only person who's ever regretted the impossibility of slapping someone over the phone.

“Just maybe,” he added, “it's time you learned to think outside the box.”

“I'm big on that old inside the box thinking,” I said through gritted teeth.

“I know, Cass.” He sounded sad. “I think that's one of the reasons we no longer clicked. I knew you'd never be able to understand what I'm trying to do—”

“Look, Rick, I have to go get Jared out of the tub before his fingers and toes waterlog permanently. Do you want to talk to Noah while I do that?”

“I'd love to, but I have to run,” he said. “You made me use up all my time.”

I'd just hung up when Noah came out of the kitchen and hugged me. “You and Daddy are getting divorced, aren't you?” He was pale.

I held him close. “Probably.”

He pulled away. “Can we watch TV?”

Which seemed like a non sequitur but I knew meant he needed time, so I said yes. I called Janice back and gave her the codes to the house—I was doing it with or without Rick's permission— and was pulling some chicken breasts out of the refrigerator when the phone rang again.

“Hello?” I tucked it back between my ear and shoulder so I could cook.

“Cassie.”

Rick again. “Listen, I've been thinking. Don't tell the kids anything yet, OK?”

Oops, too late. “Why?”

“I just think we should…wait a few weeks. Let's not rush into anything. This is huge for them. Let's take our time.”

“That's what I've been doing. Taking nothing but time, but I've figured out that while it might be easier for me, it's not really fair to them.”

“The thing is, Cass—” he stopped.

“What is it, Rick?” I tossed the potatoes on the counter.

“—I, well, I miss you and the boys. I might like to come home.”

Coming from a man who'd accused me of being a nutcase a few minutes ago, this wasn't anything I particularly needed to hear. I stood there, at the kitchen counter, thinking about things. Noah's face a few minutes ago. More than anything, I never wanted him to have that expression again. But there was almost no part of me that could still believe Rick could go back to being the man I'd fallen in love with, shared my life with, had babies with. Could he? And if he could, could I live with that? Or was it too late?

“What do you think?” His voice was soft. Seductive.

I hung up on him and started peeling potatoes. One second later, as I was wrapping a wet paper towel around the finger I'd just peeled, the phone rang again.

“Listen,” I said, in low, furious tones, because I didn't want there to be any chance of any portion of this carrying down the hall to the kids. “You are the fucking biggest fucking jerk I have ever fucking had the fucking misfortune to fucking—”

“Pardon me,” said a very British (male) voice. “Have I reached the Martin residence? Is this Cassie Martin?”

I went from boiling hot to freezing cold, right down to the tips of my fingers, and in the process managed to drop a Le Creuset frying pan on my bare foot. I hopped around trying not to shriek with agony. “Um, yes, it is,” I croaked.

“Mrs. Martin, this is James Spence. I hope it's not a bad moment—”

“I'm so sorry. I thought you were someone else.”

“I gathered.”

“Sorry,” I gulped again, once more ignoring call waiting beeps. Fucking Rick.

“Actually, I'm phoning—”

I was so distraught by my conversation with Rick and the one I was about to have with the boys that I was having a hard time concentrating on his words.

“—asked Frederic to get your number. How's the bite?”

“Fine, thanks.” Better than the just peeled finger, actually.

Then he said, “I hope you won't feel this is too personal—” My heart went to hyperspeed mode. “—but I wanted to ask you—”

He sounded really nervous.

“—about your, ah, fingernails.”

Now
that
was not at all what I was expecting.

“I couldn't help but notice when I looked at your hand that your fingernails looked unusually brittle—”

Surely a hot guy calling to tell me I needed a manicure counted as a new lifetime low in relating to the opposite sex? Half of me was thinking I'd definitely use that line, the whole episode in fact, in tonight's blog.

“And as I'm an adolescent medicine specialist, I'm particularly aware that this can occur in cases of eating disorders and—”

I started to laugh.

“—I just wanted to make sure you do eat enough.” He sounded a little irritated by this point.

“I'm not anorexic, honestly, but it's very kind of you to check.” I was still laughing.