The Social Climber of Davenport Heights (17 page)

“Oh, yeah,” he agreed. “Can you believe that she’s finally dating. She’s been such a wallflower for so long. I was beginning to think she never would.”

“It’s pretty scary,” I admitted.

“Scary? No, it’s great,” David assured me.

“It’s usually the father who worries that his daughter will fall for the wrong guy,” I pointed out.

“Not me,” he answered. “I’m sure anybody Brynn chooses will be fine.”

I shook my head. “How can you know that?” I asked him. “What if she gets involved with some terrible jerk.”

“That’s not going to happen.”

“David, there are men out there who are absolutely vicious, cruel,” I said.

“Of course there are,” he agreed. “And there are zealots who pray to maharishi mud wrestlers, and weirdos who get healthy by eating pond slime on their granola. But I don’t think we should automatically assume our Brynn would be attracted to them.”

“But she might be,” I told him.

He shook his head. “Brynn’s a smart girl,” he said.

“But she’s emotionally fragile.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “She’s sure been standing up to you pretty well for the last ten years.”

He was right, of course. Brynn’s problems had never been that she wouldn’t stand up for herself, it was that she always locked horns with me when she did so.

“All right,” I said. “She probably wouldn’t let somebody just walk all over her. But even if the man she loves is just irresponsible and selfish, he could make her life a hell on earth.”

David looked at me and actually chuckled.

“Brynn would never fall for somebody like that,” he said with a certainty that I envied.

“People do, David,” I explained. “Every day people make bad choices about who to love. I just don’t want her to do that.”

“It’s worth the risk,” he answered.

“What?”

“It is absolutely worth the risk,” he said. “We want her to be happy. The key to that is finding someone to share your life.”

His words surprised me, but pleased me, as well. And his absolute conviction about them gave me hope.

As we drove home, I thought about us. Daddy and Mommy and Brynn. Our little family unit. I had always assumed that the Mommy and Brynn part of that was somehow the biggest portion. It was certainly the part that had always required the most upkeep and maintenance. I hadn’t really given much consideration to what David’s role had been in our daughter’s life. Maybe because there was no father figure in my own upbringing, I hadn’t thought much about his input, his influence.

I’d always assumed Brynn was like me. That premise had obviously caused a good deal of conflict between my daughter and myself. Maybe Brynn was like her father.

That idea brought my whole thought process to a startling, grinding halt. I glanced over at David beside me. She had his coloring. She had his eyes. Sometimes I saw his smile on her lips. Was it possible that she had his disposition, as well?

I considered that seriously for the first time.

No, she wasn’t like him entirely, or she would have just let me run things and been content to devote herself to golf. But perhaps there was more of her father’s nature in her than I’d considered.

Not being driven to succeed, not being socially ambitious,
not particularly enjoying the privileges of her status in the world, I’d thought those behaviors were some kind of rebellion against me. And perhaps they were, but they could also have been a reflection of her father, who had never gone after any achievement greater than putting an eagle and didn’t give a rat’s ass about powerful people, important parties and sumptuous things.

When we arrived home I turned on the lights on the Christmas tree. The holiday was over, but the sight of those unlit decorations was depressing somehow.

I went into my office and checked my messages. There were several from work, including a personal one from Millie. She asked me to call her immediately. I chose to ignore it and instead called Loretta at the battered women’s safe house to find out how their Christmas had been.

She was too busy to talk. The place was overrun with new clients, they were having to double up in some of the rooms.

“It’s like this every year,” Loretta told me. “It’s as if all the talk about joy and peace just brings out the worst in some men.”

I hung up feeling worse instead of better. I went online to get my e-mail and promised myself that if I got everything taken care of, I’d go see Chester in the afternoon. There wasn’t quite enough incentive to get me digging into work immediately.

From my doorway I could see a sliver of the kitchen. David was on his knees. Beside him was his red plastic toolbox, neat, clean and nearly new from nonuse. To my complete amazement I watched him tightening the loose handle on the flatware drawer.

Incredulous, I got up and went into the kitchen.

“What are you doing?” I asked him.

“I noticed this handle was loose, it just takes a second to fix,” he said.

I laughed and shook my head. “David, that handle has been loose for more than two years. What made you come in here to fix it today?”

I was still smiling when he looked up at me. There was an intensity in his gaze that was sobering. He looked oddly familiar kneeling there at my feet. He had knelt that way the day he’d proposed. It had been so old-fashioned and earnestly romantic. And so long ago.

His expression now was equally as sincere.

“What is it?” I asked.

He carefully placed the screwdriver back into the toolbox and closed the lid. He looked up at me. Nervously, he wiped his hands on his thighs.

“I’m leaving you, Jane,” he said simply.

“What?”

“I’m leaving,” he repeated. “I want a divorce.”

I just stood there staring at him.

“I’m in love,” he explained. “Real love. Maybe for the first time in my life. You and I have had a good marriage, I guess. But it’s over. Now I want to be with her. I have to be with her.”

“Her?”

“Mikki,” he answered. “Mikki Conyers. I figured you knew.”

I nodded.

“I never meant for this to happen, honestly,” David said. “And she didn’t either. But we fell in love, the everlasting, ever-faithful, eternal kind of love.”

His voice was soft, almost soothing as he said the words.

“We want to be married, Jane,” he said. “We want to build a life together.”

Strangely relaxed, I just stood there, listening to him. I
suppose he thought my silence was a signal that more explanation was necessary—that if he just presented everything honestly and openly, I’d say,
Yes, that sounds wonderful, David. Of course you should dump me and go off with her. Be happy. Congratulations!

He continued to talk until he finally ran out of words. The stillness between us grew long. I was almost too stunned by this unexpected development to even speak. It wasn’t like my thoughts were racing. It was more like I couldn’t get my brain to function at all. I had no idea what I was going to say. David waited. The quiet lingered. Then, suddenly, the words came to me.

“Forget it.”

My tone was not sharp, but it was adamant.

His expression immediately changed.

“What?”

“I said, forget it, David,” I clarified. “I’m going to. I’m going to forget this conversation ever took place.”

He rose to his feet. He was surprisingly puzzled at my reaction, but clearly determined to have his way.

“Jane. I want out.”

I shook my head.

“David, that is not going to happen,” I said. “I have always let you have somebody on the side. I’ve never stopped you, never even tried to slow you down. I won’t be repaid for that by being thrown over for a slutty blond hairdresser with a high-school education.”

“There is nothing slutty about Mikki,” he defended. “She’s a wonderful girl. I love her.”

“A wonderful
girl
,” I shot back with emphasis on the last word. “Does she make you feel like a boy, David? News flash! You’re forty, you’ve got a daughter almost her age and your hair’s thinning.”

He had enough vanity to look stricken. He immediately rubbed the crown of his head to verify what I’d said.

“Look, I’m not saying you have to give her up,” I told him. “Keep seeing her, take her on a vacation with you. Enjoy her. Get it out of your system, but don’t throw away our marriage for nothing.”

“Mikki is everything,” he said. “It’s our marriage that is nothing.”

“How can you say that?”

“Because it’s true. It’s been true for years. Maybe it’s always been true.”

The words hurt. They hurt terribly.

“I don’t want to discuss it,” I said, trying to regain control. “The answer is no. That’s it. Simple. No.”

“You won’t be able to stop it.”

“Of course I will,” I answered. “I have been one hundred percent faithful to you. I haven’t so much as eaten dinner with another man who wasn’t a client. You can’t divorce me unless I let you. And I’m not about to let you.”

“You have to.”

“I do not have to and I don’t intend to,” I insisted. “I’m not the one who’s been dropping his pants all over town for the last ten years. And speaking of that, if Mikki is everything and you are so damn in love, ever-faithful and everlasting, then what in the hell was Christmas night?”

He blushed a vivid red. At least he had the decency to be embarrassed about it.

“That was a mistake,” he said.

“I’m sure it was,” I said. “Mistakes are pretty common to you. Is that what you told Mikki? Or did you bother to tell her about making it with me?”

I could see in his expression that he hadn’t.

“Well,” I said, “I guess you could say that it really doesn’t count as being ‘unfaithful’ if the person you’re screwing happens to be your spouse of record at the time.”

“Jane,” he began, and reached out to me.

I slapped at him and yelled.

“Don’t touch me!”

He caught my hand before it found his cheek. He held both my wrists. I struggled in his grasp. I tried to kick him.

He wrapped me in a constricting embrace, holding me tightly against his chest. He wasn’t hurting me, but I could hardly move.

“Let me go! Let me go!”

“Don’t do this, Jane,” he whispered against my hair. “Don’t do this to us. Don’t make it end like this. I love you, Jane. I love you as a friend, as my best friend. Don’t make it end with us tearing each other apart.”

I can’t say if David released me, or if I broke away, but I was suddenly free. I raced to my office. Slammed the door and locked it. I stood with my back braced against the door. He did not pursue me.

I heard him moving about in the house. I tried to sort my thoughts, to ready myself for the next onslaught. David hated confrontation. He always had. That would work in my favor. Divorce was the poster child for confrontation. If I made it hard enough for him, he’d give up the whole idea. And he had to give up the whole idea.

I heard the side door slam. It wasn’t an angry noise, merely imbued in finality.

I ran over to the window. David carried two suitcases, his golf bag slung over his shoulder. He opened the trunk of the Volvo and stowed them inside. As he headed for the driver’s door, he glanced up directly at me as if he knew exactly where I would be. He raised his hand and waved goodbye.

I hurried away from the window. I felt as if my insides had been ripped out. I was hollow, empty. I sat down in my chair, rubbed my temples.

He’d be back, I assured myself. Marriages don’t end in a day. Even if things go sour, couples keep trying. The process goes on for years and years. And I was stronger than David. I could outlast him. I could always have whatever I wanted.

I burst into tears. Once I started crying, I found I couldn’t stop.

T
HE ROAD FROM
“Forget it. No divorce!” to
Ms. Jane Lofton, former wife of
was not nearly as long or rigorous a distance as I would have imagined.

After David left, I had my cry. It was cathartic at the very least. Every few minutes the telephone would ring. I’d eagerly check the caller ID to see if it was David’s cell or the number at the club or any golf course in America. He had to phone me. He had to say he was sorry. He had to say he was coming home. But instead the tiny LED display revealed my office, Edith, Teddy or one of my clients. I couldn’t talk to any of them.

It was barely 8:00 p.m. when I crawled into bed, exhausted from the emotional effort. I turned the phone off and welcomed sleep. But, of course, it didn’t come. I couldn’t stop thinking. And the more I thought, the more frightened I became. I got so scared, I started shaking. Then I was shaking so much, I got cold.

Shaky, shivering, I finally went to the kitchen and poured myself a glass of shiraz. I thought about calling Dr. Feinstein, but then I’d have to talk about it. The last thing I wanted to do was talk about it.

I climbed into a hot bath. With water pouring from the faucet and the whirlpool jets running on high, there was a cocoon of noise around me, surprisingly pleasant.

I sipped my wine and tried to get a grip on myself.

Denial seemed like the way to go. If I just insisted that nothing had happened, that nothing had changed, then I could really wait this out and it would all be fine. The memory of David’s face, however, made denial especially difficult.

I, of course, had thought about divorce before. Maybe more times than I would have liked to admit. Any person in a less than totally satisfactory marriage undoubtedly would. But in all those imaginary instances, I had been the person who decided to get out. I had been the instigator, not the victim.

This divorce was not because I’d grown tired of his infidelities and had decided I was better off without him. David wanted to leave me for another woman. Call it ego, pride or just a sense of competition, but I did not relish that scenario. And it was more than just losing David. I would lose everything I had ever wanted. It would mean losing everything that I’d worked for in my entire life.

I don’t know how late I stayed up, how long I stayed in the bath or how many glasses of wine I downed. But eventually I did get to sleep. I awoke in my bathrobe on the family-room couch. I was easily as tired as when I went to bed.

I squinted at the sun pouring in from the patio French doors. My head was pounding. The cottony taste in my mouth was rank enough for a camel to have died there.

The doorbell was ringing. I realized that it had been ringing for some time.

I jumped up too quickly. The dregs of a glass of wine, which had been sitting on the edge of the couch, spilled down my bathrobe.

I cursed, but didn’t even attempt to clean up the mess. The ringing was insistent. I couldn’t ignore it.

“Coming!” I hollered, hoping to shut up the stupid bell.

It didn’t work. I continued through the house. When I got to the front door I jerked it open angrily. The annoyance of the doorbell was just too much.

“What!”

Millie Brandt was obviously startled, but she recovered quickly.

“Thank God you’re all right!” she said. “I’ve been calling and calling—your home, your cell. I’ve left half a dozen messages. I saw your car here, I knew you had to be inside. I was just minutes away from dialing 911 and getting the police to break down the door.”

I just stood there in front of her, not knowing exactly what to say. There was a part of me that wanted to throw my arms around this woman and say, “Millie, David has left me. What will I do?” Fortunately, that part was held in check by the real Jane Lofton, who knew not to divulge too much information to anyone who might be able to use it against her.

“Oh, sorry,” I said. “I’ve had a terrible migraine and I turned the phones off.”

It was not much of an explanation, but it hung there between us. I took a deep breath and mustered every bit of strength and self-control I’d ever been able to manage.

“I didn’t know you got migraines,” she said.

“Oh, it’s very rare,” I assured her. “I get maybe one a decade or something.”

She glanced down at the wine stain on my robe.

“They say you shouldn’t drink alcohol when you have them,” she said. “It just makes them worse.”

“Really? Well, that’s good to know.”

Millie looked as she always did. Her hair was a little bit
bigger than was stylish and she wore her reading glasses on a chain around her neck. But Millie was small, tidy and conservatively fashionable. Easily ten years my senior, with careful makeup and frequent nips, tucks and peels, she maintained the appearance of a woman trying to hang on to thirty-five.

“I didn’t mean to intrude,” she assured me. “I just wanted to make sure that you were all right.”

Smiling brightly, I opened the door all the way and invited her in. This was mainly to show that my house was not a wreck, no evidence of a lost weekend or a wild toga party.

I caught a vague reflection of myself in the hall mirror. My hair was completely flattened on one side of my head. My day-old mascara had melted, run and re-formed itself into that familiar makeup mask unpleasantly known as raccoon eyes.

I fought the desire to run shrieking from the room and instead put on my very best formal manners, hoping such aplomb would distract any notice from my stained robe, flat-headed, black-eyed appearance.

“Come on into the kitchen and I’ll fix us some coffee,” I said.

“Can you drink coffee with migraines?” she asked.

“Oh sure,” I said. “It actually helps.”

I don’t know what she thought about that, but she didn’t argue with me.

As the coffee dripped, we talked about clients, listings, properties we thought we’d get to contract. It hadn’t been a great year for real estate overall, but the high-end market was always pretty stable.

Having her there in the familiar surroundings of my home, discussing things that we always discussed, made the nightmare of the previous evening much less frightening.

She filled me in on what I’d missed when she’d covered for me during Brynn’s visit. She voiced concern that I had not
really gotten back to full speed since my car accident. My sales looked as if they were going to be unusually low overall.

“I can’t be top seller every year,” I said, giving her my most dazzling smile. “I’m happy to give someone else a chance.”

She didn’t believe it for a minute, of course, but she didn’t say any more about it, either.

“Actually, the reason I first called you was to give you some good news,” she said.

“Oh?”

She looked very pleased, but a little self-conscious. “Frank and I have been voted into the country club at last.”

For an instant I just stared at her mutely. For me this was not a revelation. If I wasn’t going to blackball her, I was pretty sure that nobody else would. I didn’t think I was up to faking surprise, so I didn’t.

“This is not news to me, Millie,” I said. “You should have gotten in two years ago. Everybody likes you.”

“Oh, thanks for your confidence,” she said. “We so appreciate it, Jane. We know that from the very first, you did all you could to make this possible. I can’t tell you how much it means to us.”

“It was nothing,” I assured her. I didn’t feel up to accepting unearned praise.

“It was very much something,” she said. “And we know it. We’ve both worked so hard all our lives, sacrificed, but money doesn’t mean anything if you don’t have friends.”

“Yes, that’s true,” I said, thinking her words were only a cliché. Everybody said that, but people didn’t mean it. Most everybody I knew would toss off every friend they had if it paid cold hard cash. I assumed that tough businesspeople like Frank and Millie were the same way. So what Millie said next was unexpected.

“Frank and I both grew up…we grew up in unfortunate cir
cumstances.” She hesitated. “We met as teenagers at Methodist Home. You’ve heard of it, I’m sure.”

I nodded. I was vaguely aware of the facility for troubled teens who were abandoned or neglected and were hard to place in foster care.

“Frank ended up there when his mother went to prison,” Millie said. “I was taken in after…after I lost my parents in a murder/suicide.”

“My God, Millie!” I said, stunned. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s not the kind of family history that you bring up for discussion over lunch,” she said with a rare flash of wry humor.

“No, of course not,” I said.

“We’ve worked hard to beat the odds,” she said. “We wanted to live a better life than we were raised into and we wanted our children never to know anything about what that world was like.”

“Well, you’ve certainly succeeded,” I said.

“Yes, in a lot of ways,” Millie told me. “The kids go to great schools and have wonderful friends. They fit in. Frank and I…ah, not so well. We moved into this neighborhood ten years ago. No one has ever welcomed us.”

“You’re kidding!”

“We haven’t been snubbed,” she clarified. “Everyone has been perfectly nice. But we’ve been excluded.”

“Oh, Millie, I had no idea.”

“For me it’s not too bad,” she said. “I have the women at the office. And there are the girls in my bridge club. But Frank doesn’t have any men friends, really. He’s active in Rotary and Metro Realtors Alliance, but I think he still feels like he doesn’t belong.”

“It’s harder for men to make friends.”

She agreed.

“Anyway, this acceptance has been a real shot in the arm to him, Jane. I just can’t tell you…” Her voiced faded off. “And I can’t thank you enough.”

“Millie, really, no thanks are required,” I said. “I’m just so happy that you and Frank are now a part of the club. You’re going to be wonderful members. Just the kind of people we need.”

“You’re sweet,” she said. “But then, I guess you know where we’re coming from. I heard that you grew up in Sunnyside.”

I was surprised.

“I didn’t know you knew that,” I said.

Millie shrugged. “People talk,” she said.

I have heard it said, and now I believe it to be true, that the quickest way to forget your own troubles is to listen to somebody else’s.

As soon as Millie left, I plugged in my phone and began making calls. Tookie was first. My life might be out of control, but the rest of the world wasn’t.

“Do you remember years ago we talked about having a mentor program at the club?”

“Sure,” she answered. “We decided we didn’t need it because the new people are always sponsored by someone in the membership.”

“Well,” I said, “I’m not going to officially propose a change, but as a favor to me, could you and Joel take on Frank and Millie Brandt.”

There was only an instant of hesitation.

“Well, sure we can,” she said. “But we wouldn’t want to get in the way of you and David.”

“You won’t, I’m sure of that,” I told her. “David’s so uninvolved with the club, it would really help if Joel introduced Frank around and you got them invited to parties.”

“Sure, Jane,” she said. “I’d be happy to do that.”

“Great!” I said.

“Uh, Jane…”

I heard uncertainty in her tone.

“What?” I asked.

“We’ve heard…I mean, Joel got wind of this rumor…well…some people are saying that David…that David has left you.”

“What?” I feigned incredulity. “Who would start a rumor like that?”

The words were hardly out of my mouth before I regretted them. Tookie was supposed to be one of my best friends. If I couldn’t at least be honest with her, I couldn’t be honest with anyone.

“Listen,” I said, “things are really up in the air right now. Could you do what you can to squelch the rumor. That could give us some time to work things out.”

“Of course,” she said. “I’m sure he’ll come around, Jane. You can ride this one out. You always have. I know she’s really young and perky and he’s built this house with her, but she isn’t one-tenth as smart or interesting as you are.”

Something in her words made the hair stand up on the back of my neck.

“You’ve met her?”

There was a long pause in the conversation.

“They play golf together all the time,” she said. “It’s impossible to be on the course and not run into them eventually.”

“Oh.”

In some ways I felt more betrayed by Tookie than by David. When I hung up the phone, I thought of Buddy Feinstein once more. But I didn’t think I needed a therapist. I needed a friend. And in the days that followed I knew where to find one.

Chester was sitting up in his chair again. He was in his pajamas and bathrobe and those high-tech house shoes, but he was in very good spirits. At least he was until I told him my news.

He patted my hand.

“David has always cheated on me,” I explained. “But I convinced myself that it was all meaningless.”

Chester nodded sympathetically. “That kind of thing always means something,” he said.

“I never imagined that he could love her,” I told him. “I guess I never imagined that David could love.”

“You don’t think he ever loved you?”

I shook my head.

He didn’t believe me. “I think you’re looking at yesterday through today’s glasses,” he said.

“I made him marry me,” I admitted. “I went after him, lured him in and wouldn’t let go.”

Chester chuckled at that. “I’d say that describes about half the marriages in the world. The other half, it’s the fellow who’s guilty of the luring. Either way, somebody got the idea first. But the other person had to go along with it.”

“It was easier to marry me than to stand up for himself,” I said.

Chester found that amusing, as well. “It’s never easier to marry than not,” he said. “Besides, the man you’ve been talking about doesn’t sound like a spineless worm letting you call the shots for twenty years.”

“But he has,” I insisted. “I always did everything I wanted.”

“And he always did everything he wanted.”

“Yes, except for things that involved me,” I said. “Then I had to have my way.”

“Such as?”