The Secret of Joy (3 page)

And Mr. Plotowsky, who’d sat staring at the cherrywood table until that moment, jumped up and yelled, “No fair! No fair! Disqualified!” He’d run screaming into the hallway, yelling that Rebecca had sided with his wife and couldn’t be impartial.

Mr. Goldberg had sent the senior paralegal (the smug Marcie) to “write Rebecca up” and go over protocol, which included no personal comments. Ever. That afternoon, Michael Whitman, the young partner at the firm (the elder Whitman and Goldberg were in their sixties), asked Rebecca to lunch, and she’d assumed it was to fire her.

“Actually,” he’d said at their little table in a crowded Chinese restaurant around the corner from the office, “I asked you to lunch because I think you’re beautiful and smart and kind and I wanted to know if I had a chance.”

A chance. Michael Whitman, six feet two, eyes of blue, a smart, compassionate, if uptight, thirty-two-year-old attorney-mediator in a three-piece suit and an expensive briefcase,
thought she was beautiful and smart and kind, even though he himself had had to spend over an hour calming down Doug Plotowsky. She’d recently had her heart bruised, if not broken, by an effortless liar, and Michael Whitman’s romantic intensity, especially given her mistake with the Plotowskys, had done something magical to her spirit. She’d explained how she thought her years of experience as a paralegal, her psychology degree and interest in counseling might serve her well in the field of divorce mediation, and Michael had been so encouraging. Her entire life she’d been the go-to girl for friends with problems, which was why she’d chosen to study psychology in the first place.

People had been telling her of their tragedies and triumphs since preschool. With pinky promises and crossed hearts and swearing on various boyfriends’ lives not to tell (and Rebecca never did; she was a supreme keeper of secrets), she would hear stories of parents divorcing, of older sisters getting pregnant, of letting a boy unhook a bra. When she’d started working, she’d spent her lunch hours listening to all sorts of family dysfunction, of boyfriends, fiancés, and husbands who wanted this or didn’t want that. But then her mother had died and Rebecca had lost her way and trailed along in her dad’s career as a real-estate attorney—for too long. She’d started at Whitman, Goldberg & Whitman with such high hopes, and as she’d realized very quickly that she hated the job, she’d fallen for one of the partners, which had made coming to work a lot more enticing. For a long while, anyway. Michael had told her often in the beginning that she had a gift for paying supreme attention without judging or validating, which allowed the other
person to unload and reach his own conclusions without even realizing it. He sad it was why divorcing couples responded so positively to her style.

“Sweetheart,” Michael said, “if you really think you’re up to dealing with the Frittauers, go ahead, but if you need to just let all this new information percolate, I understand.”

What he really meant was: Don’t screw things up with the very prominent clients. Like you’ve done several times in the past few months. If she weren’t Michael’s girlfriend, she would have been on probation and fired by now.

New information. Rebecca hated when Michael spoke to her as though she were a client. But the words lit up a lightbulb over her head. “Michael, I just realized I’d better find this Joy Jayhawk fast. Before my dad—” She burst into tears and covered her face with her hands.

Michael leaned his head down on hers. “Becs, listen, honey. One thing at a time. Just focus on your dad right now.”

“But there’s no time left,” she said, wiping her eyes. “If I track her down and let her know, she might want to come. At least meet him before—”

Michael tipped up her chin and shook his head. “Rebecca, I strongly advise against that. Keep in mind that you are operating under an informational deficit. This woman, whoever she is, is
not
your sister. She is a total stranger who will feel entitled to half of your father’s estate.”

Depending on the circumstances, Michael was sometimes more attorney, sometimes more mediator. Right now, behind closed doors in his office, the corner office he’d worked eighty hours a week to get (the elder Whitman did not believe
in nepotism and grudgingly made Michael a partner only when he had to concede the old adage about the chip and the block), he was both of these things, when what Rebecca wanted, needed was more
boyfriend
.

“Straight talk here, Rebecca. Your dad is worth over
a million dollars
. You want to see half disappear into the hands of someone you know nothing about? She could be mentally unbalanced. Or a junkie. Or just a greedy bitch. You wouldn’t be wrong to excise her from your mind. Like your father did.”

Rebecca could not seem to do that, not that she was trying. She already had a picture formed in her mind of the half sister. Despite her own brown hair and her father’s, she saw blond hair. Yet brown eyes, like hers and her father’s. A sweetness in the face. A need for an older sister.

Rebecca, the classic lonely-only, hadn’t stopped asking for a sister. Every birthday, every Christmas, every Hanukkah, until she was old enough to understand about God and biology and luck, she asked. She’d received pets instead. A betta fish, a guinea pig, a white rabbit, the sad-faced beagle named Bingo. All that time, all these years, she
did
have a sister. A sister walking and talking and breathing the air.

“Take the rest of the day off,” he said, hugging her. “Go be with your dad. He needs you more than the Frittauers right now.”

Leave the Frittauers in the hands of Marcie Feldman? No. They were hers. They were the one couple in the past several months who seemed to truly calm down in Rebecca’s presence. At the tail end of the mediation process, the Frittauers had been married for six years and separated two months ago
over Edward Frittauer’s admitted and ongoing affair with an administrative assistant at his firm. An administrative assistant who was now pregnant with his child. Gwendolyn had been willing to overlook the affair until Edward mentioned he now had an extra mouth to feed and that perhaps little Angelina could attend a summer camp for less than ten thousand next year. When Edward Frittauer came to pick up their five-year-old daughter for scheduled “Daddy time,” the fighting and screaming and accusations between Mommy and Daddy in the doorway of their co-op led little Angelina Frittauer to hyperventilate. She was rushed to the hospital, where the ER doctor, a former client of Whitman, Goldberg & Whitman, handed the Frittauers Harold Goldberg’s card.

Rebecca had done much of the preliminary work with the couple, sitting across from them at the large square table in conference room 1, gathering information to see where they stood on the major issues: division of property, child support, and visitation. During the first five minutes of their first meeting, both Frittauers said that nothing mattered more than their daughter and her well-being; they wanted to divorce as calmly and as amicably as possible. That sentiment lasted for another minute, until Michael Whitman walked into the room with his briefcase. Suddenly, Edward wanted to sell the co-op, which Gwendolyn Frittauer wanted to keep. Suddenly, Gwendolyn wanted every-other-week visitation for Edward, and Edward to split the week. Suddenly, they were screaming again.

Until Michael left Rebecca to “redirect the tension.” She’d so appreciated his trust, his faith in her, when everyone else in the office had started expecting very little. In less than ten
minutes, she had the couple quiet and verbally agreeing that Gwendolyn would live in the co-op and Edward would have weekends with their daughter. Something about Rebecca, something in her looks or her manner, seemed to appeal to Gwendolyn Frittauer. Apparently, she reminded Gwendolyn of her favorite cousin, who’d moved to California years ago. And when Gwendolyn was calm, Edward was calm.

Because of the Frittauers, Rebecca had gotten back some of her standing in the office. She wasn’t the “screwup” anymore.

The Frittauers would have been Rebecca’s parents had her mother known about the affair. Norah Strand had been such a proud person. She wouldn’t have stood by her man. She would have kicked him out. Rebecca was sure of it. It was clearly why her father had protected his secret.

The Frittauers were here for their final meeting to draw up the separation agreement. Rebecca would lead them through it before Harold Goldberg came in to finalize everything. Then she would go find that red leather case containing a key to a safety-deposit box she wasn’t sure she wanted to open.

two

Gwendolyn Frittauer reminded Rebecca of a younger version of Glenda Whitman. She was forty, yet had past-bra-strap-length bouncy blond hair. She wore heavy makeup, including iridescent lipstick and bronzer. Her eyes were remarkably close together, giving her the look of a ferret, yet there was a sweetness in her face and a sadness Rebecca had picked up on right away. Gwendolyn sat across the square table from her husband, who alternated between staring out the window and glancing at his watch.

“Afraid you’ll miss an ultrasound appointment?” Gwendolyn snapped at him. “Oh, wait a minute—that’s right. You don’t go to those things.”

Okay
. This was going to be a long session. Rebecca sat down at the head of the table and opened her case file, the one that had accompanied her on the subway to Junior’s last night for her father’s cheesecake. But instead of making a quick review of what was already in her head, she envisioned Pia Jayhawk, vampish-looking, a man stealer, a home wrecker,
lying on the obstetrician’s table, no one waiting with her to see the heartbeat, the tiny growing form of a baby.
Focus, Rebecca
, she reminded herself.
Stop thinking about Dad
.

Mr. Frittauer was examining his nails. “You won’t bait me, Gwendolyn. So don’t waste your bad breath.”

“Would you like some coffee?” Rebecca rushed to say.
Redirect the tension
. “I recall you both liked the French roast.”

Gwendolyn snorted. “Bad breath. Is that the best you can come up with, Edward? Sad.”

“I’m dying for a cup of coffee,” Rebecca said. “Why don’t I have our receptionist bring in a carafe and a tray of pastries, and we’ll get started on the last few items.” She picked up the phone to buzz Jane.

“Fine, whatever,” Edward said to Rebecca, then turned his attention to his wife. “I repeat: You won’t bait me, Gwen. I’ve been attending Buddhist meditation classes.” Edward did look less … buttoned up. He usually wore wire-rimmed glasses and precisely combed hair; today, the glasses were gone, the red hair showed signs of gel, and the Rockports had been replaced by Italian black leather.

Sometimes divorce had that effect.

Gwendolyn laughed. “Hilarious! I’m wondering what the karmic repercussions are for adultery. And, hmm, you fought me for years on having a second child, yet your skanky girlfriend is knocked up. Trust me, the kid will be born with eleven toes. Or worse.”

“Shut the hell up, Gwen,” he practically spat.

Welcome to divorce mediation. Sometimes the couple was so grateful to be splitting up they fell over backward to get
their agreements in order. “No,
you
take the one-hundred-inch plasma TV!” “No,
you
!” Though those couples were rare. There had been only three in the past two years. And sometimes the couple needed help in seeing what was fair for both.

And then there were Gwendolyn and Edward, both of whom had been determined to avoid the kind of divorce that would clearly affect their daughter’s well-being. Their lawyers were not present and would not advocate for their clients during the mediation sessions. They would vet the agreements, of course, but at the table would be the husband, the wife, and the mediation team, who worked for the end result: a divorce agreement both parties could live with.

That was both the positive and negative of working in divorce mediation. In the end, you were dealing with the dissolution of a marriage. That result never changed. Very rarely did Rebecca ever see the flicker of love in a client’s eyes for their soon-to-be-former spouse. When she first started working at Whitman, Goldberg & Whitman, she used to think it possible that discussing what was fair for both parties would reignite some spark, some not-too-distant memory of love, of vows, of happily ever after. But the couple usually sat glum-faced and resigned, the only resolution signatures on an agreement to part.

Because the nature of the work was in itself positive, no miserable divorce battle, no custody fight, no throwing vases at each other’s heads (just the occasional water pitcher), Rebecca had slowly learned to accept that there
was
something called a good divorce. That was how Michael put it, anyway, whenever
she would talk about leaving, about going back to school for graduate work in counseling or clinical psychology.
“Why waste your paralegal certificate by going back to school?”
he’d say.
“We can put that money toward a trip to Aruba.”
And then he’d actually surprise her with tickets to Aruba and she’d have a great, relaxing time away from New York, where everything moved so fast, and away from the office, where everything moved so … meanly, and she’d be rejuvenated for about three weeks. And then Michael would buy her something fancy. Deflection was the name of the game.

She knew one thing for sure. She did not want to be a paralegal in a divorce mediation firm. She did not want to be a paralegal. The only thing she knew she
did
want, even just once, was for the divorcing couple to agree to go back to the start, take everything they’d been through and start over with their experienced heads and hearts.

“Well, then we wouldn’t be a divorce mediation firm.”
Michael had said. As if that helped.

“That whore isn’t getting a cent of what should go to me and Angelina,” Gwendolyn said as calmly as if she’d mentioned it had started to rain.

“Give it a rest,” Edward said, rolling his eyes. “For God’s sake, just shut the hell up! We’ve been through this over and over.”