Lies You Wanted to Hear (14 page)

Lucy

“I got the names of some mediators,” I said, handing Matt a sheet of paper with a list of five professionals, three men and two women. He glanced at the list but didn’t say anything. “The first one is the one Prissy and her ex used. She said he was excellent, really fair and easy to talk to, but I don’t have a preference. Anyone you’re comfortable with is fine with me.”

It had been four months since he’d come home and caught me with Griffin. I still didn’t know (and probably never would) if it was happenstance or something he had planned. He refused to talk about it, not just the incident in the bedroom but what had gone wrong in our marriage. I let him take the lead in our interactions. For the most part he was cold and reserved, though there were times when he would make a cutting remark or simply look at me with such scorn I wouldn’t have been shocked if he’d spit in my face. But he had begun to mellow lately, smiling and laughing as we got the kids ready to go to his place, telling me about a trip to Istanbul, asking me about work. I could sense he kept hoping for a sign that I wanted him back. I pretended not to notice. I had tried to tell him I was sorry, but sorry for what? For the scene in the bedroom? For breaking his heart? For not being the woman he wanted me to be? All that and more, but not sorry our marriage was over. It was such a relief not to have to
try
anymore. When Matt came by last week, saying he was thinking about contacting a lawyer, I brought up the possibility of working things out through a mediator, and he seemed to agree that it was the sensible way to go.

He folded the list I’d given him and put it in his back pocket. It was Friday afternoon, the start of a long weekend. Matt was taking the kids, and I wouldn’t see them again until I picked them up from day care Tuesday after work. I didn’t know anything about his living arrangements (though I’d gotten some tidbits from Sarah), and I made it a point not to ask. It made me feel guilty sometimes, the way I looked forward to these weekends off, but I told myself they refreshed me and helped me focus on the children when I was with them.

“You kids ready?” Matt said.

“I am, Daddy,” Sarah said, putting on her coat, always eager to please.

“What about you, Nate-ster?”

Nathan laughed with delight as Matt picked him up and tossed him in the air.

“Their bags are by the door,” I said.

“Did you remember to pack their boots?”

“Shoot. No, I’ll get them.” He had mentioned the boots on the phone an hour before because he wanted to take them sledding.

Matt shook his head and gave me a condescending smile. I felt like kicking myself. I made lists, put reminders on the refrigerator, even wrote notes on the back of my hand, but I still forgot things sometimes. Nothing critical—not like the T-shirt of a cartoon-strip woman with her hand on her forehead,
Oh
my
god! I left the baby on the bus!
Just an occasional missed appointment, a lost permission slip, enough to make Matt secure in his unspoken assessment that he was the better parent. Which he was. Hadn’t I admitted as much before everything fell apart?

He was always so sure of himself as a father. It wasn’t hubris, just a kind of knowing. He never seemed to forget anything, never lost his temper, always seemed to know the right thing to say or do. I loved my children beyond measure, but I had a hard time finding my rhythm with them, as if mothering were a dance and I had to keep looking down at my feet, my good intentions no substitute for self-assurance and grace. I could be short and irritable one minute, over-indulgent the next. The books on child-rearing said you had to be consistent and evenhanded, but a mother isn’t a robot. One day the kid might get in your purse and cover his face with lipstick and you’d think it was the funniest thing you’d ever seen; catch him at it the next day when you’re feeling tired and irritable and you’re liable to scream at him like he’d just drowned the cat. Some nights I would lie in bed, thinking about things and wishing I had a “do-over,” as Sarah and her friends would say. At Carla’s suggestion I had begun keeping a journal, not only about the kids and being a mother but everything, all my worries and doubts, just letting my thoughts flow freely, puzzling things out. I wrote nearly every day, which seemed to help.

Matt picked up Nathan’s bag; Sarah insisted on carrying her own. I followed them out the front door onto the porch. The air was frigid, icicles hanging from the gutters. I pulled my sweater tight around my shoulders. Sarah jumped down from the third step, fell on her butt, and got up laughing. As Matt started down the steps with Nathan, I saw Griffin getting out of his car a short way down the street. He wasn’t due at the house for over an hour.

“Hey, Griff,” Sarah called and ran to him.

Griffin looked stricken; I’m sure I did too. Matt turned and glared at me. Sarah took Griffin’s hand and tugged him toward the house. “Come on, Griffin. Come meet my friend, Daddy.”

In another context, it would have been cute as kittens, but Matt wasn’t smiling. A week later, I got a summons from his lawyer.

***

Matt’s attorney’s name was Norman Claxton. Griffin made some inquiries and discovered he worked in a two-man firm, but no one seemed to know much about him. The one name that kept coming up when people talked about the best divorce lawyers in Boston was Arthur Hoyt, who represented Joan Kennedy last year in her divorce from Teddy. People said Hoyt was a bulldog, the kind of lawyer you love to have on your side. I talked to my father, and he said this wasn’t something to leave to chance, hire Hoyt and he would cover the bill. I called Hoyt’s office, explaining that I had needed to talk to him as soon as possible, and the secretary told me to come in the next morning. The office was on the forty-third floor of Sixty State Street, a few blocks from Garbo’s. Hoyt’s secretary came out to the reception area to greet me and ushered me into a conference room overlooking the harbor, one of their staff following close behind with a tray of pastries and a pot of coffee. There was a polished mahogany table with six plush leather chairs, signed lithographs on the walls, a beautiful oriental carpet on the floor. The secretary apologized, saying that Mr. Hoyt had just taken an emergency phone call and would be about twenty minutes late, then left me alone. I poured myself a cup of coffee and gazed across the harbor at the planes flying in and out of the airport.

“Sorry for the delay, Mrs. Drobyshev,” Hoyt said, bounding into the conference room. He shook my hand and took a seat across the table, a yellow legal pad in front of him.

“That’s okay. Please, call me Lucy. Thank you for seeing me on such short notice.”

“Certainly.” He
looked
like a bulldog: barrel chest, a square head with heavy jowls, thick folds of skin around his small brown eyes. He glanced at the legal pad, nothing but my name written on the top line, and put a double line under Lucy. “My secretary tells me you’d like me to represent you in your divorce.”

“Yes. People say you’re the best lawyer in town.”

He frowned. So much for flattery. “How long have you and your husband been separated, Lucy?”

“Four months.”

“Children?”

“Two. A girl four and a half and a boy who’s just turned two.”

“I understand it was your husband who initiated the divorce?”

“Yes, well, legally. On an emotional level, I guess you could say the breakup was mutual.”

“And he has retained Norman Claxton as his counsel?”

“Yes, I believe that’s his name.”

“I’m not familiar with Mr. Claxton, but I never underestimate an adversary. My people will find out everything I need to know about him. Do you expect this to be a difficult divorce?”

“I’m not sure. I hope not.”

He stared at me for a moment, as if he were trying to assess my character—was I a gold-digger? would I be bitchy or weepy?—and I wondered what he thought he saw.

“I don’t deal in hope, Lucy. I deal in the
law
, which, despite its many arcane twists and turns, is about as real as life gets. So let’s dispense with hope and concentrate on the task at hand. You wouldn’t have come to me unless there was a great deal of money at stake or you thought this was going to be highly acrimonious. How would you characterize your situation?”

His bluntness was intimidating. “My husband is very angry. I don’t want…Our breakup was pretty ugly. I was—”

“No, not now.” He waved his hand impatiently. “I have another client waiting. You and I will have plenty of time to talk. I’m going to pass you along to one of my paralegals. I need you to sit down and talk with her. It will probably take several hours. If you can’t do it today, make an appointment to meet with her as soon as possible. She’s going to ask you a lot of questions about yourself, your husband, your marriage, what you believe caused your breakup. Try not to be offended if the questions seem too personal. This is a very personal business. I want you to tell her everything. Anything you can think of that might be relevant. Above all, I need you to be completely honest. Pretend you’re under oath. If you’ve been having sex with the next-door neighbor, male or female, I need to know about it. If you’ve been hopped up on diet pills for the past three years, I need to know that too. This isn’t about good or bad, it’s about the facts. I don’t like surprises. The more I know, the better I can represent you. The paralegal will record everything you say. Don’t worry about privacy; this is all subject to attorney-client privilege. No one but myself, the paralegal, and my secretary will ever see it.” He tapped his pen on the legal pad. He hadn’t taken a single note. “Do you have any questions?”

“Well, I…”

“You’ll think of plenty, I’m sure.” He stood up. “The paralegal will go over our billing rates with you. We ask for a ten-thousand-dollar retainer to get started. I hope that won’t present a problem.”

“I thought you didn’t deal in hope.”

Hoyt smiled for the first time. “I don’t. That’s why I ask for the money up front.” The retainer was even higher than I had guessed it would be. “If you’re concerned about the total cost of the divorce, let me say that it will depend almost entirely on how much disagreement there is between you and your husband. Sometimes these things start out reasonably well, and all of a sudden the couple is fighting over custody of the pet iguana and who gets to take the kids trick-or-treating on Halloween. Are you and your husband still on speaking terms?”

“Minimal at the moment.”

“Good, keep it that way. One of my biggest problems is having some client make an agreement without consulting me first. A couple gets talking, maybe shares a glass of wine—heaven forbid they sleep together. Next thing you know my client gets snookered.”

He opened the door of the conference room for me and walked me out into the hall. “Do you work, Lucy?”

“I’m the lunchtime hostess at Garbo’s.”

“And your husband?”

“He runs a courier service. Mostly international deliveries. He used to be a cop.”

“Hmmm.”

“Is that a good hmmm or a bad one?”

“Let’s say it’s neutral. Be glad he’s not a doctor or we’d really be in trouble.”

“Or a lawyer?”

“You got that right,” he said, laughing. “Have a nice day.”

***

Two weeks later, I gave a deposition in the same conference room overlooking the harbor—Matt’s attorney, Norman Claxton, Hoyt, a court reporter, and myself. Hoyt’s paralegal had spent an hour with me the day before going over the facts a second time, particularly the more damning issues: the affair with Griffin, smoking marijuana, my depression and the medications, the incident in our bedroom. She said it would be rough. The lawyer would be aggressive, and the questions would feel quite invasive; the important thing for me was not to be nervous and simply tell the truth.

The court reporter swore me in. Claxton spent a few minutes establishing some basic facts and dates about my life. About forty-five, he looked like a holdover from the Eisenhower administration: brown three-piece suit and rimless eye glasses, Adam’s apple bobbing above his red plaid bow tie, Brylcreemed hair combed straight back.

“So, Mrs. Drobyshev, it is my understanding that you have had a relationship for a number of years with a man named Griffin. Could you please state his full name?”

“Alan Griffin Chandler the third.”

“And when did you first meet Mr. Chandler?” His words were formal, but his accent was pure Queens.

“In the spring of 1974.”

“How would you describe your relationship with him, Mrs. Drobyshev?”

“Our relationship was okay, the usual ups and downs. We had a lot of fun.”

“Did the two of you live together?”

“No.”

“But he often stayed at your apartment?”

“Several nights a week.”

“In fact, Mrs. Drobyshev, he had a key to come and go as he pleased?”

“He had a key, yes.” Hoyt was sitting next to me. I half-expected him to interrupt Claxton and say there was no need to go this far back, the information was irrelevant to the divorce, but Hoyt kept silent.

“During this time, did you and Mr. Chandler use any illegal drugs?”

“We smoked marijuana occasionally.”

“Where did you obtain the marijuana?”

“Griffin got it. From a friend.”

“Did Mr. Chandler ever sell any marijuana himself?”

“No.” Only on the day we met. Claxton was obviously fishing, but his questions came much too close to my secrets.

“While you and Mr. Chandler were having
a
lot
of
fun
”—his voice dripped with sarcasm—“did the two of you indulge in any other illegal drugs such as cocaine, Quaaludes, LSD?”

“No.”

“Would Mr. Chandler confirm this if he were questioned under oath?”

“Yes.”

Claxton gave me a half-smile. “And would you say that you and Mr. Chandler had a sexually open relationship, Mrs. Drobyshev?”

“Not at all. We were committed partners.”

“But there were mutual infidelities?”

I glared at him. “No.”

“Neither of you had sexual relationships with other people?”