The elevator deposited them on the main floor and they stepped out onto the marble floor of the foyer. “You really have made my day,” she said with laughter in her voice. She couldn’t wait for her father to next ask about prospects. “But I’m afraid I couldn’t possibly have a drink with you.”
“You’re involved,” he said. It was not a question, and it reeked of disappointment.
“Ray, I’m pretty sure we wouldn’t be right for each other.” She stopped at the glass revolving door.
“I’m mature for my age.”
“Me too,” she said.
“I get done here at about ten. You should be finished working out by then.”
“Good night, Ray,” she said. She took her bag and briefcase from him and went through the revolving doors.
He followed her. “I’m going to change clothes, drive over to the Plum Tree—they have good Chinese and a nice, quiet little bar. Very cozy neighborhood place. Not too loud.”
“I’m going to work out, then I’m going home,” she said, heading for the parking lot. “To tuck in my dog and walk my father.”
“Oh man, you’re making it very tough, Ms. London,” he said from the glass doors. “I don’t know how to compete with a dog and a father. Play fair.”
She threw her head back and laughed again. “You are very flattering. Have a nice evening.”
“You’re breaking my heart!”
She shook her head. Nice joke, she thought. The kid doesn’t know from broken hearts. She unlocked her car, threw all her stuff in ahead of her and got in. She turned on the engine and the lights, then looked one more time toward the office building. He stood there, watching her go. Tall, handsome, young. Young. As she pulled out of the lot, the face in the rearview mirror grinned stupidly back at her. “Oh, for God’s sake!” she snapped at herself. “Don’t even think about it!”
Dennis could hear the commotion of happy family life as he stood at the front door of his sister Gwen’s house. He didn’t hurry to ring the bell, just listened for a moment. Gwen was forty now and had had her children in her thirties—Richie, when she was thirty-one and Jessica, when she was thirty-three. They were at a great age right now—lots of fun and not much work. They didn’t have to be bathed anymore, and they were too young to drive. But this was not a quiet or calm age. He could hear the choppy piano practice in which Jessica was engaged and a steady thumping coming from somewhere inside the house.
“Richie! That basketball is for outside!”
The steady thumping would be his nephew, bouncing the ball against a wall.
“I’m keeping time for Jessica,” he yelled.
A living-room wall.
He rang the bell. The door was opened by the kids, who immediately shrieked in happy surprise and threw themselves on him. He lifted them both, looping an arm around each skinny waist and balancing their wiry bodies against his hips, then carried them through the foyer, past the living room, to find his sister in the kitchen.
“Well, look at this. Your uncle Dennis is psychic. He knew I needed a break from you ungrateful monsters.”
“I eat monstrous children for breakfast,” he said in his growling voice and gave them a powerful shake that sent their limbs flailing.
“Take them away for a while and I’ll make it worth your efforts,” she said.
He growled again and carried them upstairs, knowing he wouldn’t get a single peaceful word of conversation with Gwen until he’d given them some quality time. An hour later, the kids clean and tucked in their beds, Dennis migrated back to Gwen’s kitchen, lured by the aroma of freshly brewed coffee. She brushed a strand of hair out of her tired eyes and slapped a box of Girl Scout cookies onto the kitchen table between two cups.
“Where’s Dick?” Dennis asked.
“In New York, on business,” she said. “The dick,” she whispered, making her brother laugh.
“Had enough mommying for one day?” he asked, sitting down behind one of the cups while she poured.
“You’re the guardian for those two, right? Because I might not live to see the end of this job. God, they should bottle that energy.” She filled the second cup. “Charlene working?”
He sipped. “Mmm, good. Yeah, she has a meeting.” Gwen yawned. “Am I keeping you up?” he asked.
“God, I’m sorry, Denny. I had to work at the school today, plus I took Dick’s turn at Jessica’s soccer practice, and then there was this Brownie meeting about the cookies. You know, THE cookies,” she said, smacking the box till it fell over. “The effing cookies,” she added, again whispering.
“Won’t you be glad when they get a little older and you can swear again?”
“Jesus, you don’t know the half. How’s your life?”
“I’m getting married.”
Her mouth fell open and she was momentarily speechless. “You’re getting what?” she asked when she recovered from the shock.
“Married,” he said again.
He sipped again from his cup while she studied his passive face.
She had wondered if this day would ever come again for her brother. She didn’t want him to be alone. Even though he had her, Dick and the kids, it was not the same as a spouse, a partner. When he’d started dating Charlene, she’d grown excited. Hopeful. But five years had passed in relative sameness, and while they were obviously very close, nothing like marriage—or even living together—ever materialized.
Gwen put her elbow on the table and held up her head with her hand, staring at him while he sipped his coffee. Is this what happened when you were almost fifty and getting married? Matter-of-fact? Is it just another chore? Like deciding to update the will or go see the tax attorney?
She lifted one skeptical eyebrow. “You look ecstatic,” she said doubtfully.
“It seems like the thing to do, don’t you think?” he asked.
“It’s not a colonoscopy, Denny. You’re getting married!”
“I really am happy about it. It’s just that…there’s something I hadn’t accounted for.”
“Lay it on me,” she said, slowly testing her own cup of hot coffee.
“I was completely unprepared for how this would bring back memories of Sarah.” Gwen stopped sipping and gave Dennis her full and, for once, unsarcastic attention. She slowly lowered her cup to the saucer. “Even though I asked Charlene if she wanted to get married two, probably three years ago, it never occurred to me that in saying yes she would unleash so many memories for me.”
“Good ones?” Gwen asked. “Bad ones?”
“All of them, from the time I met Sarah and first held her close, to the time three years later that I held her cancer-ravaged body as we said goodbye.”
“Oh, Denny…”
“I have no idea why this is happening now. Really.”
“Maybe it’s the idea of remarrying,” she offered.
“Sarah died eighteen years ago. And we were only together for three years. It doesn’t feel like remarrying. It feels like that was another life.”
“Well, then, what could it be? Are we close to any anniversaries? Of your engagement to Sarah? Your wedding, her illness, her death?”
“No, thank God.”
She reached across the table and squeezed his hand. “Maybe it’s just time for you to revisit this thing. You know, like post-traumatic stress. Maybe this is how you complete the cycle, bring closure. I mean, is it even possible to marry Charlene without your last marriage crossing your mind?”
“I never thought I’d love like that again,” he said, looking anywhere but at his sister.
A moment of silence passed between them…and stretched out. In a way, Denny and Charlene had been acting like an old married couple since the week they met, but was that a good thing? “And have you?” she asked very quietly, drawing his eyes back to her face.
“Of course!” he insisted. “My God, Charlene is extraordinary. I know you agree.”
“I do,” she said. In truth, Gwen was one of Charlene’s biggest fans,
but that wasn’t really the issue here. The issue was her brother, who was morose on the day he announced his formal engagement. Despite his insistence to the contrary, the bold and passionate way he had loved when he loved Sarah had been buried with her. While Gwen was mostly concerned with her brother right now, it did cross her mind that Charlene might be getting shortchanged.
Gwen had been eighteen when her twenty-eight-year-old brother met and fell helplessly in love with Sarah Brown, a slender beauty with dark hair and vivid eyes. Dennis had described his first true love to his sister as kind, patient, good-natured and possessing a dry humor.
They met while Dennis was teaching high-school chemistry. Sarah was the photography and audiovisual teacher at the school and there was such chemistry between them—an intended pun they overused—that the principal asked them to stop looking at each other during school hours. They got married the second school was out—a sweet little ceremony in the park—and spent the summer in Europe.
What they had together was so obvious, so intense, so devoted and delicious, it became the benchmark for what Gwen wanted for herself. Perfect love.
And then Sarah died, a slow and miserable death from ovarian cancer.
“I don’t know if I ever told you this, Denny, but one of the things that I have always most admired about you was…is…your ability to take the pain and disappointment in life and turn it into something positive and beautiful. Like letting the experience of Sarah’s illness and death turn the chemistry teacher into a physician’s assistant who can help people daily. I love that about you.”
He looked wistful, his eyes cloudy. “She was so amazing,” he said.
“Dennis, look at me,” she said.
He obliged. “You’ve told me that a number of times, Gwen. I appreciate it.”
“Denny, is this some kind of red flag? Maybe you and Charlene shouldn’t be getting married….”
“I was so lonely by the time I met Charlene,” he said. “Dating never did do it for me, you know? I was so grateful to finally find someone who liked the same things. Someone I could talk to. I suggested we get married or at least move in together six months after we met.”
“I didn’t know that,” she said.
“She told me she’d never been happier, more in tune with a person…and she didn’t want to screw it up by changing everything so soon after we’d fallen into such a lovely little routine.”
Routine, Gwen thought. Yes, that would describe it.
“The day I met Charlene was one of the best days of my life. The past five years have been some of my most contented.”
Gwen couldn’t bear the flat expression on his face, the murky look in his eyes. Sarah’s death had been a painful loss for Gwen, too, and for everyone even remotely related to them. They had been a beautiful, joyful young couple, without so much as an argument between them, and were now scarred by the utter tragedy of a life cut short. And almost overnight Dennis became a young widower locked in a powerful grief that lasted years. It was almost too much to bear remembering. She was afraid she might cry just thinking about it.
Now he was getting married…. and he sounded perfectly miserable.
In utter frustration she tore open the box of cookies and stuffed one into her mouth. She went for a second, then a third, chewing slowly and with much difficulty. Her cheeks puffed out and her teeth were smeared with chocolate. It took a long time to make room for two more, which she had to break into chunks to push into her mouth. Dennis watched this display in frowning confusion, but she didn’t see him. She had closed her eyes as she struggled with the clump of chocolate. When she was finally done, she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, looked at her brother and said, “Just don’t bubble over with happiness, okay?”
“That was disgusting,” he observed.
“Thank you.”
When Charlene arrived at the law offices of Bradley & Howe, Sherry Omagi was waiting in the foyer, looking as nervous as a cat. Charlene pasted that smile of confidence on her face. She hadn’t spent as much time as she should have preparing for tonight, for she’d had only one meeting with Sherry, but it should be cutand-dried. Sherry was willing to discuss visitation, as long as she maintained custody, and would not ask for support payments. She was a self-supporting accountant who worked mostly at home and the child was young, circumstances that all heavily favored the mother.
“He’s already here,” Sherry said, wringing her hands. “I saw him go in.”
“Sherry, I want you to calm down and let me do the talking.”
“I’m so afraid,” she said. “Frankie means everything to me.”
Charlene pulled her client along with her to the elevators. She pushed the button for the third floor. “Now, we’ve talked about this, Sherry. Your ex-husband is entitled to some quality time with Frankie, and the same is good for Frankie, but that’s no reason you can’t retain primary custodial care. You should rethink the issue of compensatory support as well.”
“I don’t need support,” she said. “Kim isn’t as attached to Frankie as I am. He only wants him because I want him. He’s even said that having him is stupid.”
“People say things in the heat of the moment.”
“He said he’s sick of Frankie shitting all over the place. Really, Charlene, I worry about Frankie in Kim’s care. I don’t know that he’d be…safe.”
“Well, there are definite messes involved when you have little ones running around. This is the first time you’ve indicated Kim could be abusive. Are you serious about this?”
“I just don’t know. I suppose that’s just my temper talking, but still. Charlene, I just want custody. That’s all.”
“Compromise will get you a lot further, Sherry. Especially since it’s the best thing for the entire family.”
“But it hardly costs anything to keep Frankie. Really.”
“But it will, believe me. Wait till he wants to drive. Wait till college. We have to settle these things now, make it part of the divorce settlement.”
The elevator arrived on the third floor and Charlene got off. When she realized that Sherry wasn’t beside her, she turned around. Her client stood in the elevator, paralyzed. “You’re kidding, right?” Sherry asked.
“About what?”
“About driving. About college.”
Charlene laughed. “I have a twenty-five-year-old daughter—it’s nothing to kid about.”
“Charlene, Frankie is a goose.”
Charlene’s expression was frozen, her mouth hanging open slightly. She did a memory check of all the times Sherry had said things like, “Frankie is such a precious goose,” and “I don’t know what I’d do without my little goose.” She couldn’t remember one time she’d actually been informed that this was not a minor child.
“A goose…with tail feathers?”
“Beautiful tail feathers.”
“The kind of animal down comforters are made of?”
Sherry gasped. “God forbid!”
“Oh my Lord,” Charlene prayed.
That night Jake entered Coppers. The bar, once named Toppers, had been rechristened when the owner realized a large percentage of the clientele was from the police department. Jake stopped first at the bar, procured a beer, said hello to a couple of guys he knew, and finally migrated to a booth near the back. A woman waited there, nursing a cola.
“Hiya, Merrie, honey.” He slid in across from her. “You’re all set. You have an appointment with Charlene next Tuesday—10:00 a.m. Can you do that?”
“I reckon so…. But does she know I ain’t got nomoney?”
“She understands about that. Charlene is good, Merrie. You’re going to need someone good to get ahead of this guy.”
“Jake, I just don’t get it,” she said, shaking her head. “He didn’t want nothing to do with us. Only saw Josie one time, that’s all. Never gave me any money, let the apartment lease run out with me sitting there with no place to go. And now? He wants his daughter so she can have a good li
fe? What does he think she’s been having the last eleven years up till now?”
Meredith was a thin, washed-out blonde, all of twenty-seven years old. She was just a little bitty thing, about five foot two, a hundred and ten pounds maybe, soaking wet. If it hadn’t been for her little tiny breasts, she’d look like a kid. A tired and worn-out kid. She had hardly any fat on her, and her eyes were big and blue and innocent…but she was not. She’d had a hard life. Even before this. She’d been only fifteen when she’d gotten pregnant with the child in the custody dispute. Her ex, Rick, had been thirty, and quite possibly agreed to marriage as a means of escaping any charge of statutory rape.
Meredith was broke, not terribly bright and didn’t live the most wholesome of lifestyles. She also had a daughter at home, aged eight, fathered by another man who was not her husband. Rick, on the other hand, was forty-one, stable and married with a second child. He made a good living, lived in a decent house and went to church on Sunday.
Jake saw a dark shadow on her cheek. “Merrie?” he asked, leaning across the booth and squinting. “Merrie, you got a bruise?”
Self-conscious, she touched the exact place. Then she reached into her purse to retrieve her compact and studied her reflection. She powdered the spot. “It ain’t no big deal. Not really.”
Jake took a long pull at his beer, pursed his lips and looked away, trying to mentally gather restraint. “He’s really starting to piss me off, Merrie.”
“You?” She laughed.
“When did this happen?”
“He came over this morning when I was getting ready for work. He found out where’d I moved to and that you were helping me out, helping me get a better job. He wanted to talk to Josie and I wouldn’t let him past the door. He found out about the whatchamacallit…order of protection.” She laughed hollowly. “It made him mad.”
“Jesus Christ. You call the police?”
She looked into her cola, defeated. “I just took the kids over to the neighbor’s, told her to be sure he didn’t bother them and then came on t’work.” She looked up. “I know I should’ve called the police like you said, but I’m just so tired of him. Of everything. And I didn’t want to be late for work again.”