Pawleys Island-lowcountry 5 (20 page)

“Okay.”

We hung up and I looked at my watch. Eight-thirty. Shit. I walked around my house screaming at myself. God, I was such an idiot!
He didn’t try to screw you last night because he didn’t WANT to screw you last night! Why can’t you get that through your thick head?
I was seriously embarrassed and feeling very low.

Nine o’clock. Nine-ten. Then I saw headlights! Wonderful, beautiful headlights, blasting like the sun through my kitchen door, filling my house with glorious light, changing everything, and then I said to myself, Girlfriend? You ain’t got a stitch of cool in you. Jeesch! Calm down.

I could hear his footsteps. Music! Oh, get over it.

He knocked and I checked my face in the mirror—not too bad—and went to answer.

“Hello! Anybody home?”

“Well, look what washed up in the storm!”

Julian stepped inside and proceeded to drip everywhere. He got out of his soaking-wet jacket and looked around for a place to put it.

“You wouldn’t believe what the roads are like! Trees are down, limbs everywhere! I left Charleston at five o’clock!”

“Here. Give me that.” I slipped into the guest bathroom and hung it up in the shower. “Don’t think a thing about it! I’ve just been cooking away and then the phone rang…”

“You’re telling me? I
tried
to call you so many times but I didn’t have service and…am I too late for dinner?”

“Nope! You are right on time!”

“Well, do you have a smooch for this old codger?”

“You know it!”

I kissed him lightly and pulled away. He stopped me and looked at me with the most peculiar expression.

“Abigail? Have you been crying?”

“No! I mean, yes! Oh, Lord, I was watching this old movie on the Lifetime channel, and what can I say? Sappy movies make me cry like a baby. Dumb, right?”

“No, it’s charming. Why don’t you go wash your face and I’ll pour us a glass of this lovely wine—oh, I brought some wine too! And chocolate! And flowers! They’re all on the back porch with my things.”

“Be right back,” I said and smiled at him. God, my heart was pounding like a trip hammer. I was so happy he was there and so happy I had a moment to escape to compose myself. I closed the door and inspected myself in the mirror. Good grief! I didn’t have a drop of makeup left. Very quickly I applied whatever I could grab, spritzed again with cologne, ran my hand through my hair and checked my teeth. Then with measured steps I left my bathroom, clicked on the CD changer and the sounds of Nat King Cole filled the room. The seduction trap was set.

Julian was in the kitchen, peeking in the oven and the pots.

“I turned the oven back on to warm up the chicken. It smells delicious! And you look beautiful, Abigail.”

“Well, thanks Julian,” I said and took the glass he offered me. “Here’s to seeing you again. Oh! The flowers are so pretty!”

“You’re welcome. Here’s to seeing you too.”

We clinked, we sipped and I turned on the heat under the string beans.

If you were expecting us to dive on the floor and make crazy love, you’ve got the wrong two people. No, one of the joys of middle age was the dance, the mating ritual, the innuendo and all the teasing that led to the eventual act itself. Shoot, I knew we were going to sleep together. So did he. Setting up the guest room was a joke, and he didn’t drive through a hurricane for a plate of chicken, did he? I intended to hold out for at least as long as it took to load the dishwasher. I could do the pots in the morning.

After some cheese and crackers and a second glass of wine, dinner was ready. Julian lit the candles and I plated our food.

“This looks wonderful,” he said. “Thank you for having me.”

Having you
is the operative term, I thought and didn’t say. I just said, “Oh, Julian, I can’t believe you drove through this awful storm to get here! We could’ve had dinner next week! But I’m glad you did.”

I don’t have to tell you how the rest of the night went. But I will. Julian ate four pieces of chicken, two pieces of sausage, some salad and string beans. That boy was licking his fingers! The second bottle was opened and I built the chocolates into a little tower on a plate and put them in front of him. The warm glow of the candles, a satisfied appetite, wine and chocolate before us and the promise of romance—damn! How could it get any better? It did.

He said, “I’ve got a wild idea.”

“Let’s hear,” I said.

“Let’s see what’s up with this storm. You got a jacket?”

Was he insane?

“Sure,” I said, “I’ll go get it. I hung yours up in the shower in that bathroom.” I pointed him in the general direction and went to my bedroom closet. His duffle bag was on the floor next to my bed and I thought,
Okay, bubba, you presume a lot, you know
. My intention was to give him a little grief about it, but that’s not exactly what happened.

Julian was on the front porch with the lights turned off. His hair and jacket were blowing like mad and he was getting sprayed from the rain. Men didn’t care about that sort of thing, and to tell you the truth, neither did I. There was nothing sexier than salt spray and moonlight thrown together on a night like that. I stood beside him and he pulled me around in front of him, both of us watching the Atlantic. He put his arms around me and put his lips on the back of my neck, and I mean, honey? That man could have my neck for as long as he wanted. I was already so weak and stupid, my caution had blown by Cape Romain and was headed for Massachusetts! Whew! What would have happened if I’d served red meat?

“Abigail?”

“Yes?”

“Abigail?”

“Yes, Julian?”

“What a great name.”

“Thanks. Julian’s pretty groovy too.”

“We have to talk about this for just a minute or two.”

“Okay. Want to go inside?”

“No, I love it out here. I’ll just get our glasses.”

He was gone, and I thought, now what the hell? What’s bothering him about all this? It was perfect! Perfect! What could be the matter?

He was back, and even in the dim light I could see that he was serious. I took the glass and leaned against the railing.

“So what’s bothering you, Julian?”

“Oooh! Okay. Abigail, it’s like this. I’m not a young man, you know.”

“What are you talking about? You’re in your prime!”

“Well,” he chuckled a little and then said, “not so. But that’s okay. Life’s good and all that. It’s just that in certain areas, things have changed.”

“You mean…like what?” Did he mean Bob Dole Disease? Ah, come on!

“Well, it’s okay, really, because I can just take…”

I put my fingers over his lips.
A pill
.

“Don’t say another word, baby. I’ll meet you in headquarters in half an hour!”

Did I have to say HEADquarters? But it didn’t bother Julian. No, Julian threw his arms around me, his head back, and had the biggest belly laugh I had ever heard come from him.

“Abigail? You know what, sweetheart?”

“What?”

“You just might, just
might
be the perfect woman after all!”

T
HE
following week was one of frustrations. The remnants of Hurricane Charlie were a problem to be dealt with, and every day we watched the Weather Channel to chart the progress of two new hurricanes, Danielle and Earl. Thankfully they proved to be mediocre challengers.

Rebecca kept us up-to-date on the news about her children. Sami was calling her a minimum of four times a day, giving us reruns of
Charlene Ruins Your Life—The Reality Show from Hell
. Apparently Charlene, in an effort to help Nat get the kids organized for school, offered to take them back-to-school shopping at a retail establishment of considerably less cachet than their normal haunts. Sami pitched a fit and called Rebecca.

“She carried on like I don’t know what and I just said to her,
Well, darlin’? Your daddy has to support me, you, Evan and his whore too. I guess money’s a little tight. Maybe you should babysit or you could ask your grandfather for some money?
Well, you know old Tisdale ain’t giving nobody a nickel. Then I said,
So tell me, how’s school? Do you like your new teachers?
”

You couldn’t help but giggle. Rebecca had gone from the cookie-making, pillow-plumping mother of the year to tossing aside the kid gloves from her iron fists and giving her very spoiled children a hard lesson in their new and chosen reality. At first I couldn’t understand why she hadn’t rushed to Charleston and zoomed her children off to the Gap or wherever they normally shopped, but then she did have limited funds and probably didn’t want a face-to-face encounter with Nat or Charlene. Yes, on consideration, an excursion like that had land mines at every turn.

The more I thought about it, I realized what strength it took Rebecca
not
to give in to Sami’s whining demands. If she could just hold out until she regained custody, she could lay down some new ground rules and put her children back on the right track. Meanwhile, she did seem to possess a teensy sadistic streak because she certainly was enjoying the banter with her daughter. But what mother had not been so exasperated with her children that she wanted to make her children face themselves instead of always making everything right in their world? It wasn’t in a child’s best interest, especially a teenage girl, for a mother to constantly give in. It was like giving the dog steak from your dinner plate so he would stop begging. It was clear that indulgence had been the pattern in her relationship with Sami.

The noise from Evan’s quarter was not as vitriolic as Sami’s. Boys were more reasonable. I suspected that Evan was internalizing his bitterness and/or frustrations and Sami was probably telling him that calling their mother was useless. But one thing was certain: both children weren’t happy about Charlene and probably wished they were living with their mother and not Nat. That had taken only three days of Charlene and her twang. Worse than everything else, it certainly appeared that Charlene was residing on Tradd Street. Like they say, there goes the neighborhood.

Julian called for a few minutes every day. We planned to spend the following weekend at Pawleys, and I was looking forward to it. Being with Julian was just
right
. He was an ideal companion. Wild understatement. The man was
fabulous
.

We decided that first night at Pawleys that we wouldn’t talk about Lila or John—at least not about the period in time when we were married to them and discovered. There was no point. I mean, there would always be some feelings of guilt, but only because we got caught. If we hadn’t been caught, it would’ve been the most deliriously euphoric romance of all recorded history. If that sounds wrong, then you have never been caught in a moral or ethical conundrum; your soul is without sin? I doubt it.

Here’s how it goes. You are married for a thousand years to someone no longer well suited to your moods, someone who has lost interest in you and in life in general, someone who no longer wants to learn and discuss the world, and in fact they look at you funny when you want to discuss an op-ed piece on the Middle East.
For what? Who cares?
You want to visit Vietnam or Bhutan just to see a place that seems mysterious and exotic. Their most far-fetched idea of exotic is a pineapple and ham pizza while watching a movie with subtitles. You’re married to someone who figures he might need two more cars in his lifetime, who thinks aerobics are a waste of time, that getting drunk is an entitlement that comes with advancing years, and he hasn’t had on a bathing suit in ten years. You look at this guy and say to yourself that you don’t feel old, you don’t act old, you’re not like him, but you hang in there because you said you would years ago when you were so young that you can barely recognize yourself in the wedding pictures. You realize that this
till death do us part
thing is a lot longer than anticipated. You realize you made a serious mistake—you married the right person for the girl you once were but not for the woman you have become. You’re stuck.

You don’t fret about it too much because that will only make your state of mind worse. You don’t talk about it to anyone because it’s undignified. You don’t get divorced because you get along well enough and you look at the poor thing snoring in his armchair and you feel perfectly horrible to have had any of those thoughts. But what about sex? What’s sex? That perfunctory business that follows and precedes a shower? Oh, my. Oh, well. You decide that your best bet is to forget your own sexuality, stay busy with your work, go to museums and concerts and travel with girlfriends and life will inch toward the grave. Maybe it won’t have been the most satisfying of lives, but you’ll have done a lot of the things you wanted to do.

Don’t count on it.

At the first sniff of that kind of laziness, the universe throws you a fastball, a curve ball and then a spitball. If you’re lucky. Or unlucky. It depends on your point of view.

Love finds you. You float on the wings of romance, you are horrified by the depth of feelings you suddenly have for another person, you are knocked off your feet and ultimately flat on your back, dreaming about having your legs in the air!

That’s what happened to Julian and me. Neither of us were the kind of people who ever set out to just screw around. We never had before and we never did again. But I have to say that in the time we had been apart, Julian had obviously done a better job of keeping me off his mind than I had. But that was how it was with men. When they made up their minds, that was it. They want to quit smoking? They quit. They want to lose ten pounds? It’s gone. They break up with you? They do it and are able to stay away forever, if need be. But, when faced with you again, they lose their composure and resolve just like you do.

Like a lot of men, Julian was the kind of guy who really didn’t want to be single. He was a fully domesticated cat, who liked home cooking and who also played golf and tennis. I think love of simple food and sports contributed to the ease with which he sort of slid back into my life. We decided, what the heck, Lila was gone, John wasn’t coming back, why not give our relationship a slow start and see where it went? Well, maybe it wasn’t exactly slow. I hated to admit this, being the dedicated and sworn, shriveled up, card-carrying old crone that I was swiftly becoming, but having Julian around made me feel awfully good. It just did. And if somebody objects to the fact that I became happier because I had a M.A.N. at the moment, tough nuggies. Excuse me, but an intimate relationship with an intellectual peer of like interests and similar background was a very pleasant way to pass some time. Especially, ahem, the intimate part. And, if it ever stopped raining, I planned to get him out on the golf course and show him where the bear went in the buckwheat. I wasn’t getting married tomorrow, you know.

Friday rolled around before I knew it, and it was mediation day. I knew this would be a disaster, but, if for no other reason than enlightening our clients, it would be worth the effort. Nat needed to be made familiar with what his legal responsibilities were and what going to court would do to his reputation. Rebecca needed to understand exactly where she stood in terms of Nat’s willingness to give her that to which she was entitled under the law and to gauge the size of the fight that was sure to be.

I drove down to Charleston with Rebecca, planning to drive back with Julian, stopping along the way for weekend supplies.

Every time I went to Rebecca’s condo, I scanned the parking lot for an Everett Presson type, crouched in a basic sedan behind a newspaper, watching Rebecca’s door, waiting for a parade of men and, hence, incriminating evidence. Not only were there no men, but I never saw a PI either. I didn’t know if Nat had just made that up, but I suspected that he had. Bullies were often liars and Nat had proven himself to be both. Somebody had probably heard that Rebecca was in Litchfield and told him.

We arrived at Harry Albright’s office a little early, and his miserable mother showed us to the conference room. The walls were painted taupe. The large rectangular table was glass topped, deliberately so, so that opposing clients and their attorneys couldn’t give signals under the table. It was surrounded by eight green leather armchairs. No windows. No artwork. No sideboard with a pitcher of water and glasses on a tray with fake flowers. It could not possibly have been a more boring room.

We waited for the mediator, Harry and Nat to arrive. The mediator was the first to show. Her name was Mary Ann O’Brien.

“Good morning,” I said. “I’m Abigail Thurmond, counsel for Rebecca Simms.”

“Good morning,” she said. “Nice meeting y’all. Are the others here?”

“Not yet,” I said.

“Figures. Is your client familiar with mediation procedure?”

“Basically.”

I looked at Rebecca and I could see that she was nervous.

“Well, there’s no mystery to this. What we’re going to do is: you’ll tell me what you want. Then I will go to, I assume, the other office here and talk to your husband and his attorney and see what they are willing to give. We go back and forth like this until we can reach an agreement. When it works, this process saves the courts a lot of time and money. Besides, it’s always better if you can work things out without the world watching, right?”

Ms. O’Brien smiled. She seemed like a very levelheaded and nice person. She was tall and slender with the most massive head of thick glossy black hair I had ever seen. I imagined she had done this a thousand times, and as soon as we got under way I knew that I was right.

Nat and Albright were in Albright’s office, and Ms. O’Brien was in the conference room with us, going through the documents.

“You’re asking for custody of the children and the house, the house contents and half of all your assets. You’re seeking alimony in the amount of three thousand dollars a month and child support for the children in the amount of five hundred dollars a month for each child. Tuition through college, health care…looks pretty normal to me. How many years have you been married, Mrs. Simms?”

“Seventeen.”

She nodded her head.

“Ms. O’Brien,” I said, “I don’t think we are asking for anything that unusual. However, if we go to court, we have enough damaging evidence on Nat Simms to send him to prison.”

“Such as?”

“Skimming the family business, fraud, adultery, lewd behavior, recreational use of illegal substances.”

“And you can prove all this?”

“You betcha.”

She glanced at Rebecca, who was mortified. Mary Ann O’Brien knew at once that Rebecca, like a lot of women, was the victim of her husband’s midlife reality check. What was absolutely stupefying to Rebecca was everyday news to Ms. O’Brien.

She excused herself with a sigh. “Well, let’s see what they say.”

Time passed. We could hear raised voices through the walls, but we couldn’t make out what they were saying. An hour went by and Ms. O’Brien returned.

“Well?” I said. “How goes the fray?”

“Not good. We’re about as far apart as you could be in terms of a settlement. Your husband insists that you have nothing on him he can’t refute and that he can prove you have been a negligent mother. His attorney is prepared to subpoena their guidance counselors and a few of their teachers. Apparently the mother of one of your daughter’s friends is willing to testify against you. He categorically insists on keeping the house because he believes it’s important to keep the children’s routine the same. That’s for openers.”

“I can hardly wait to hear what else…” I said.

“As far as alimony, he says no. He wants child support from you—three hundred dollars a month, more as a good-faith gesture for the sake of the children’s psyche than real support. He says he will give you a cash settlement of fifty thousand dollars, medical coverage for six months, whatever is in the house that was a gift to you, your personal belongings and that’s it.”

“You must be kidding,” I said.

“He can’t do this to me!” Rebecca started to cry.

“Rebecca! Don’t get upset. This is normal. Let’s work up a counteroffer.”

It went on like this all through the morning. We called out for sandwiches and worked straight through the afternoon until four o’clock. We dug in, sent them a fifth offer and here’s what we got back.

“Okay,” Ms. O’Brien said, in a very tired voice. “It doesn’t appear that we’re making much headway. Their current offer is this: your husband has custody of the children and the house and you pay child support of four hundred dollars a month. He gives you a lump-sum payment of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. That’s it.”

“What?”

Rebecca wasn’t handling this well at all. Neither was I.

“Listen, Ms. O’Brien. Their residence on Tradd Street was appraised at
one point two million dollars
.” I slid the appraisal toward her for the third time that afternoon. “Nat’s share of his family business is valued at
four million dollars
.” I pushed the valuation across the table again. “He’s an
abusive,
pot-smoking, adulterous
felon
who doesn’t know the truth from a hole in the wall. I suggest you take Harry Albright outside and tell him that if we go to court, I’m gonna humiliate him and send his client to the cooler unless Nat Simms gets real.
NOW!
This
entire day
has been an insult to our intelligence.” I was furious, but then I added in a cool voice, “But of course, it’s
your
call.”