Good Intentions (17 page)

The woman at the table closest to theirs turned toward Lynn and smiled, fidgeting in her seat, making Lynn aware she had been staring. Lynn looked away from the woman, careful at the same time to keep her eyes away from Marc’s, pretending to peruse the posters of old-time movie stars lining the walls. The restaurant, which looked like a small house from the outside, was surprisingly large inside. In fact, this restaurant was full of surprises, Lynn thought, knowing she would have to look at Marc sooner or later, wondering again how she had gotten herself into this mess when she had spent her whole life avoiding messes, being cautious, always weighing the consequences of every decision before taking action.

“This is so unlike me,” she said finally, forcing her gaze back to his. “I don’t do things like this …”

“You haven’t done anything.”

“I feel so confused. I feel like such an idiot.” She heard her voice rising, and lowered it immediately. “I’ve always been in total control of what I do.”

“Is being in control so important?”

“I think so, yes.”

“Why?”

“Because there’s nothing worse than feeling powerless,” Lynn stated. “You’re a man. You can’t possibly understand. You’re naturally in control. Women have to fight for it all the time. When we go into a relationship with a man, it’s a constant juggling act. We’re always trying to balance how much of ourselves we need to keep with how much we have to give away. Most women give away too much. Then when the relationship ends, they’re left with nothing.”

“So you think that because I’m a man, I’m always in control?” Marc asked, not waiting for an answer. “You think I’m
naturally
in control. Isn’t that what you said?”

Lynn nodded.

“How much control do you think I had when my wife announced she was leaving me? I mean, here I am, forty years old, reasonably well established for a writer, all things considered. I think I have my whole life more or less arranged, all my ducks neatly lined up in the pond. And then she comes along and blows them all out of the water. In a matter of minutes, my life is irreversibly altered. I lose my wife, my house, my sons. Suddenly I get to see my boys all of twice a week, not to mention every other weekend. Do you honestly believe that I wouldn’t choose to do things differently if I had any control whatsoever over my life?” He laughed, but the laugh was bitter, hollow. “I think if I’ve learned anything from all this, it’s how little control any of us really
does
have. What is control anyway? I’ll tell you what it is—it’s a joke. We think we have power, but we don’t. So, Ms. Schuster, you might as well give up some of that
precious control because you don’t really have it anyway.”

The image of her mother in the final stages of Alzheimer’s flashed before Lynn’s eyes. “Tell me about Suzette,” she said softly, eager to displace the image.

“What do you want to know?”

“Everything.”

He smiled and she felt grateful.

“What’s she like?”

“Artistic,” he answered quickly. “Willful. Charming. Needy. Suzette,” he continued, and this time he was the one who was careful not to look in Lynn’s direction, “is a woman of many needs.”

“And Gary is a man who likes to feel needed.”

“Bingo.”

Lynn looked at her empty glass, feeling a definite thirst.

“Gary isn’t the first man Suzette’s been involved with since our marriage,” Marc said after a pause. Lynn felt her mouth drop open in surprise and quickly closed it. “Since her parents died a few years ago—they were killed in a car accident …”

“Oh, my God.”

“Yes, it was pretty terrible. Suzette took it very hard, which, of course, is perfectly understandable. She had a lot of guilt. I was part of that guilt. Suddenly the whole idea of the starving artist didn’t seem as appealing as it had originally. The rebellious daughter loses something of her edge when she has no one to rebel against. Anyway, that’s when the affairs started. Not that there were that many of them. Only a few. I never said anything because, quite frankly, I didn’t know what to say. I wasn’t interested in
ending my marriage. I loved my wife. I was trying to understand what she was going through. I didn’t want to break up my family, to leave my sons, the way I felt my father had deserted me when I was a kid. My boys mean more to me than anything in the world. I’d do anything to keep from hurting them.”

“I’m so sorry, Marc.”

He waved away her concern. “It’s funny how things work out, isn’t it? Here’s a woman whose whole rationale for leaving me is that she wants some stability in her life, that she wants someone who’s settled and who knows where he’s going, someone she can look up to and feel secure with because she knows he’ll take good care of her, like her father always took care of her. And what does she do? In her search for stability, she disrupts the lives of everyone around her. My life, our sons’ lives. Yours. Your children’s. It’s ironic. I know”—he shrugged— “I’m supposed to appreciate irony.”

“Maybe her relationship with Gary will just run its course, the way the others have.”

“Maybe. I don’t think so. Do you?”

“I thought so in the beginning. I was sure Gary would come back.”

“Would you take him back now if he did?”

“Probably,” she answered, thinking this was the truth. “Would you take Suzette back?”

“No,” he answered forcefully. “Too much water under the bridge. How’s that for an original expression?” He tried to laugh. “So, tell me about Gary.”

Again, Lynn found herself searching the poster-lined walls of the restaurant. “What can I say? He’s intelligent, soft-spoken, gentle. I always assumed he was faithful to
me, and I think he had been until he met Suzette. But there are a lot of things about Gary that I obviously don’t know about or understand. I thought he was happy. It wasn’t until he told me he was leaving that I learned otherwise. You can imagine how that made me feel. I mean, aside from the obvious, the abandoned wife and all, I’m a social worker. I’m supposed to be trained to recognize when people are in pain. You’d think that after fourteen years of marriage I might have had some inkling that my husband was unhappy. I always thought,” she continued, aware that she was rambling but too wound up now to stop, “that one of the things he liked about me was my independence, the fact that I had my own career, my own interests, my own life. That I was with him because I
wanted
to be with him, not because I
needed
to be with him. But the night he told me he was leaving, and he was standing there with one foot out the door, and I asked him to tell me why, he said that he had met a woman who needed him, really needed him. I said I needed him too, that our children needed him, and he said it wasn’t the same thing, and that it would be better for all of us if he left. I said I didn’t want him to go, and he said I’d be all right, that I always was. I think he really believed—believes—that he’s doing the right thing. I know it was never his intention to hurt me or the kids.”

“He hurt you anyway.”

Lynn smiled, throwing her head back and staring at the ceiling fan directly overhead. “You sound like Renee.”

“Renee?”

“My lawyer, remember? When I told her about you, she said to be careful, that you might not mean to hurt
me, but what difference would it make if you hurt me anyway?”

“Who else have you discussed me with?”

Lynn shook her head. “No one.”

“Not even your father?”

“Especially not my father. He’s basically a simple man. I don’t think he’s ready for any of this.
I
don’t think I’m ready for any of this.”

“How about my father?”

“What?”

“Think you’re ready for him?”

“I don’t understand.”

“I’m going to visit him this Saturday. He’s in a place called Halcyon Days.” He chuckled. “An ironic name for a nursing home.”

“It’s a lovely place,” Lynn told him reassuringly. “The best.”

“He had a stroke a few years back. It made it hard for him to look after himself. I still feel guilty as hell about having put him there.”

“Don’t feel guilty. What other choice did you have?”

“Are you saying I wasn’t in total control of the situation?” he asked, a sly smile curving across his lips.

The waiter approached the table and cautiously deposited their dinners on the place mats in front of them. “Be careful,” he said, almost as an afterthought, “the plates are hot.”

“Wine?” Marc asked, still smiling, lifting the bottle from its Plexiglas cooler and filling her glass before she could answer. “So what about Saturday? Gary has the kids, doesn’t he?”

“Marc, I …”

“You’d like my father. He’s kind of a crazy old guy. Bought himself a baby-blue Lincoln convertible a couple of weeks ago. Of course, he doesn’t have a driver’s license anymore, so he’s not allowed to drive it, and the damn thing, which cost over thirty-five thousand dollars, just sits there in the parking lot gathering dust. He had a phone put in it too. Bought it outright. None of this renting nonsense for him.”

“The car just sits there?”

“Sometimes he lends it to one of the nurses. That is, when he’s not sending them on expensive holidays to Rome or Greece.”

“Does he have that kind of money?”

“I guess he did.” Marc Cameron cut into the large piece of the blackened snapper on his plate. “Apparently he’s been storing it away for years, like a squirrel. From what I can understand, he’s got bank accounts in virtually every bank in Florida. I just found out about all this a few weeks ago when one of the banks called me about honoring the check he wrote for the car. They said he didn’t have enough money in his current account but that they could take the money from one of his term deposits. I didn’t know what they were talking about. Anyway, I thought I’d better find out. That’s one of the reasons I’m going to see him this weekend. I’d be grateful for the support, if you’d care to come along.”

“I don’t think I should.”

“I could use your professional guidance.”

Lynn raised a large piece of fish to her lips, but was unable to put it in her mouth. “Can I think about it?” Why didn’t she just say no?

“Did you ever think that maybe you think too much?”

Lynn nodded. “Good chance of that.”

“I can be very patient,” he told her, “as well as persistent.”

There was a long pause during which they both sat with forks poised and neither made a move. For an instant, Lynn was tempted to shove the fish into her mouth as Nicholas would no doubt do, and yell triumphantly, “First taste!” Instead she said, “There have to be some ground rules.”

“Name them.”

“No more kisses across the table. No more clinches on the beach. No more rolls through the sand.”

“How about in the back seat of my father’s new baby-blue Lincoln convertible?”

Lynn said nothing. The image of the two of them groping at each other in the back seat of a car pressed itself teasingly against her eyes, lingering, refusing to leave. She chewed the blackened snapper with grim determination, refusing to acknowledge that her mouth was on fire from the heavy layer of pepper.

“Hey, I’m just joking. No back seat, honestly. No sudden lunges across the dinner table. No frolicking by the ocean. Lips sealed,” he said, grimacing, and she laughed, lunging for her glass of water.

“I don’t mean to sound like a prude,” she found herself explaining, abandoning the water for her glass of wine. “It’s not like sex hasn’t been on my mind lately. I mean, it’s been over six months. I’m not interested in celibacy as a way of life. But I just don’t want to rush into something I’ll end up regretting.”

“I won’t rush you.”

“I think it’s important to keep our relationship platonic. At least for now,” she added, then bit down hard
on her tongue. Why had she added that? Why couldn’t she stop when she was ahead?

Marc Cameron lifted his wineglass into the space between them. Lynn quickly raised her glass to his, listening to the delicate click of their touch. “For now,” he said.

H
is hands were cold on the back of her neck. “Your hands are cold,” Renee told him, feeling Philip’s fingers slide gently away from the base of her throat, where he had been doing up the clasp of her wide gold necklace. Renee rarely wore the necklace, a gift from Philip on her last birthday, because she was slightly uncomfortable with its weight, more uncomfortable with theunwanted attention it brought to her overly round cheeks. She thought about the last time she had worn it, the surprise birthday party of a number of weeks ago when her husband had spent much of the night engrossed in conversation with Alicia-call-me-Ali Henderson. Thoughts of Alicia Henderson led to thoughts of the unpleasant surprise that Debbie had arranged for her in the restaurant the previous week. She hadn’t said anything further to Philip about that afternoon, and, of course, he hadn’t mentioned it, each pretending the incident was as innocent as he claimed. There were times she’d been tempted to bring it up, but Philip always seemed to have one foot out the door, or there was Debbie or Kathryn to contend with, and when they finally found themselves alone together in bed at the end of the evening, Philip
would plead exhaustion and roll over and be asleep within minutes. Renee patted the heavy gold links at the base of her throat. A man of grand gestures, she thought. And casual infidelities. “How do I look?” she asked.

“It looks great.”

“Not
it,”
she corrected, wondering if he had been aware of his choice of words. “Me. How do I look?” She dropped her hands to her sides, feeling naked despite the fact she was fully dressed, waiting nervously for his assessment.

“Terrific,” he said, staring at his own image in the mirror across from their bed, smoothing his hair carefully at each side.

“You don’t think it draws too much attention to my double chin?”

“What double chin?” He moved behind her and cupped her full breasts inside his large hands. “Who even notices your double chin when they have these glorious doubles staring them in the face?”

“Thanks a lot.” Renee leaned her body back against his, welcoming the feel of his touch despite his words, not caring that her freshly done hair was being mussed or that her new black silk lounging outfit was being crushed between his careless fingers. It felt like an eternity since he had touched her this way. She suddenly didn’t care that they were already late for dinner with several of her partners; she was unconcerned that neither Debbie nor her sister had returned home from their afternoon outing. She wanted Philip’s hands on her body. She needed to feel close to him; she needed this reassurance.