Four of a Kind (41 page)

Bess said, “First class, all the way.”

Alicia said, “I have a meeting this afternoon, too. I’ll miss the whole workday.”

“You deserve it,” said Bess. “You’re the star of the agency.”

“I’m only as good as my last catchy slogan,” said Alicia. “My meeting is with a divorce lawyer. Don’t tell your kids. Joe doesn’t know. Tim doesn’t know either.”

That quieted the others. Despite their minibreak, real life hadn’t stopped.

Robin said, “Are you sure divorce is what you want?”

“If I don’t do it, Tim never will,” said Alicia. “No more waiting. One of us has to do something now, while we don’t hate each other too much.”

Bess said, “Next week, I’m supposed to drop off Amy at my mother’s apartment. Simone is taking her to East Hampton, where she will do her best to make Amy hate me even more.”

Carla, not a hugger, reached across the backseat and gave her friend a squeeze. “Have faith,” she said. “Amy will realize all you’ve done for her.”

“But when?” asked Bess.

“Ten years, give or take a month,” said Alicia.

“I’d say twenty,” said Robin.

Carla said, “Are you all still going to talk to me when I’m not a Brownstone mom?”

“You really are a ridiculous person,” said Robin.

“And that really was a stupid question,” agreed Alicia.

Carla laughed, booming. Hurt their achy heads.

“Let’s agree to a fixed day to play each month at my house,” suggested Bess. “All you have to do is be there.”

The women made a vow to each other: to be there.

“Lunch?” asked Finn, stretching at his desk chair, his shirt tightening over his glorious chest. It was Friday afternoon.

For the last six Fridays, they’d taxied downtown to his apartment for “lunch.”

“Can’t,” said Alicia, checking the time, grabbing her purse. “I have an appointment.” Her second. The meeting yesterday, right after the AC road trip, had been a $200-per-hour blur. Alicia was so tired and hungover, she’d forgot to ask half of her questions.

“Doctor?” asked Finn, her fabulous, sweetly concerned boyfriend (just the word “boyfriend” was exquisitely sexy). “You’re not pregnant, are you?”

That would be a laugh and a half, after her years of infertility, to just drop a bun when she hadn’t been watching.

“Lawyer,” she said.

“A divorce lawyer?” he asked, attempting to look calm.

Alicia assured him, “Don’t worry. I’m not asking you to take me on.”

“Maybe I want to take you on,” he said. “And Joe.”

“Oh, please,” said Alicia. “You don’t even know what that means.”

“Right there,” he said, “Great example of the—what word did I use?—the
condescension
I was telling you about.”

He had been complaining lately that Alicia didn’t take him seriously. Although she regretted insulting him, Alicia couldn’t stop herself. The fact was, she was seven years older than Finn. His longest relationship had lasted only six months. At his age, Alicia was already a wife and mother. She’d put in years of emotional agony when she couldn’t get pregnant. Finn had no kids, no mortgage, no responsibilities other than to his job.

“I’m sorry,” she apologized. “I just feel a responsibility to protect you from what’s coming. Divorce isn’t pretty or nice. I hope Tim and I can part amicably. But I’m sure we’ll wind up fighting over the scraps we’ve accumulated. And custody.”

“Are you divorcing him because you love me?” asked Finn.

“I’ve told you a dozen times that Tim and I were in trouble long before we started … doing what we do.”

“But you didn’t put the divorce wheels in motion until after we got together,” he said, grinning, rising from his chair.

She inhaled the heady whiff of pheromones in the office air. Finn rounded his desk, closed and locked their office door, and gathered Alicia in his arms.

“I like your dress,” he said, reaching under it.

“Finn, I pay for the whole hour even if I’m late,” she said, but his fingers were doing delicious things inside her panties.

“I’m not letting you go until you tell me the truth,” he said, kissing her neck.

Alicia groaned, from pleasure and resignation. “What truth?”

“Am I the reason you want a divorce?”

“Okay, fine. Yes, you are the reason,” she said. “I don’t have the nerve to sleep with two men at the same time. Lying and cheating makes me extremely anxious. I’ve wanted to deny it for a long time, but the fact is, I
am
a neurotic mouse. You should have seen me trying to play poker in Atlantic City. It was pathetic! I almost fainted just sitting there. If I don’t get myself out of this god-awful situation of loving you and being married to Tim, I’ll self-destruct.”

“Is it immature of me to feel like the winner here?” asked Finn, nuzzling her shoulder. “The victorious male who gets to claim the prize.”

Alicia snorted and pushed him away. “Some prize!” she said, righting her underwear. “A broke soon-to-be single mother with an upcoming avalanche of legal bills.”

“You’re cute when you’re self-destructing,” said Finn.

“You’re a continuous flow of cute. The Mississippi River of cute,” she said, admiring her lover. “Really, Finn. I adore you. You brought me back to life.” Then she sank into her chair and commenced to sob.
So
not Alicia’s style. She was a quipper, not a crier. Quipping kept her feelings safe and locked up. Crying was for emoters, like Bess.

Finn rubbed her back, lifted her hair from soggy cheeks. “I adore you, too,” he whispered. “Your sense of humor, and talent, and face, and especially your very small, microscopic breasts.”

“Fuck you,” she said, swatting at him. “I’m leaving. You’d better be here when I get back.”

“I will,” said Finn.

Alicia liked the lawyer, a Brownstone mother she’d met on Parents’ Night way back in September. Why she’d thought to ask for the woman’s card nine months ago made no sense at the time. That Alicia had kept the card in her wallet through three cleanouts was pretty telling. She knew this day would come, and yet was still amazed that it had finally arrived. She was going to tell Tim that she wanted out.

“You’re home early,” said Tim, greeting Alicia at their apartment door. She accepted a kiss on the cheek and dropped her purse on one of the boxes they never got around to unpacking. Another clear signal from her (their?) subconscious?

Tim circled around the counter and into the kitchen. “I made a fabulous curry. We’re celebrating,” he said.

“We are?” she said.

“I got a job offer today,” he said.

Thank God
, thought Alicia. “Great news, Tim. I’m so happy for you!” Relief flooded over her. This was how she knew for sure the marriage was over: her immediate thought was gratitude to the cosmos for giving Tim something positive in his life to soften the blow she was about to deliver. If she still loved him and wanted to stay together, his new job would’ve represented a new beginning for them.

“Aren’t you going to ask what the job is?”

“Tell me,” she said.

“It’s a marketing manager job at a start-up men’s apparel company,” he said excitedly. “It’s perfect for me. The money is good. But there is one problem.” He paused, making sure Alicia was paying attention. “It’s in Los Angeles.”

“They don’t have marketing managers in California?” she asked. “Why hire someone in New York for a job out west?”

“The designer saw my résumé online at one of those job finder websites I use. I was number three in his top ten matches, based on experience, qualifications, preferences. We did the interview via Skype. He liked me, and offered me the job if I’m willing to relocate.”

Alicia was impressed. Tim really had been actively job hunting. She thought he’d been slacking off, had given up. His unemployment had taken a huge toll on his ego. Men without jobs felt emasculated, she knew. Alicia should have been more sensitive to that. Boosting his ego was a wifely duty, and she’d failed there.

“What did you tell him?” she asked.

“I said I had to talk to my wife,” said Tim.

She nodded. “Do you want to go?”

He put down the wooden spoon, made eye contact. “Your career has finally taken off and you’ve made great friends here,” he said. “When we moved to Brooklyn, that was the whole idea—that things would fall into place for all three of us. Joe seems to be happy. At the Steeples’ sleepover, he really got in the middle of things.” Tim resumed stirring the curry, looking into the pot. “So Brooklyn has been great for two out of three of us. Not for me, though, Alicia. Far from it. I’ve been miserable here. I’ve lost a year of my life treading water. I want to go to Los Angeles, see if can do better out there.”

Alicia bowed her head.
Here it comes
, she thought.
The guilt
. “I should have done more for you,” she said. “I was so fixated on my own … problems.”

“Don’t apologize,” he said. “Not to seem dismissive, but I don’t want to hear it.”

Whoa, that had an edge to it. “Tim,” said Alicia, suddenly gripped by the urge to confess. “I have to tell you something.”

He held up the spoon, stopping her. “You and Joe should stay here,” Tim said quickly. “I gave it a lot of thought. It’d be cruel to uproot him again. Three schools in three years? That’s just bad parenting. I’ll fly back every month to visit. After a year of living apart, we can get a no-contest divorce.”

Alicia gasped. Had he seen a lawyer, too? And—an icky feeling—was he really going to make it this easy for her? It was wrong. She’d had an affair. She should be held accountable.

“I’ll pay for everything,” she said. “You don’t have to worry about child support or legal bills. It’s all on me.”

Tim laughed. “That’s generous of you to offer, but I won’t hold you to it. Right now, you feel guilty. The beauty of a no-contest divorce is how relatively cheap it is. If we stay civil.”

“Why wouldn’t we stay civil?” she asked, stupidly.

“Well, one possible scenario comes to mind. Say, if I think too much about the last year of my life, realize that I blame you for every horrible thought I’ve had about myself, and then hate you for it,” he said matter-of-factly.

Alicia decided at that moment to willfully put this entire conversation in a box on that very high shelf in her mind. Her habit of compartmentalizing negative emotions hadn’t necessarily served her well. It probably was a chief cause for the communication breakdown with Tim. But at least Alicia knew she was purposefully doing it this time, and fully intended to take a closer look at what went wrong. But not for a while.

Her emotions shut down, the pragmatic mind took over. She’d have to hire a babysitter for afternoons. And a housekeeper. Jobs that Tim used to do. No doubt, his unemployment made her life a lot easier.

Alicia realized suddenly that she’d
liked
Tim being readily available, at her mercy, in a financial sense. His dependence, and her rubbing it in—giving him a household allowance, complaining if he hadn’t vacuumed, and, yes, disappearing nights for her two poker games—was her revenge against him for making her feel unlovable and unwanted. She thought she’d been heroically tolerant of his chronic unemployment. But, as she realized now, she’d enjoyed watching Tim squirm. Only a horrible, cruel person would be so spiteful.

Goddamn the box!
thought Alicia. It wasn’t keeping the ugly feelings locked away. At some point over the last few months—due to the free flow of confessions at her ladies poker game?—the box in Alicia’s mind had turned into a sieve. She would have to address her worst thoughts, whether she wanted to or not.

Curse those women!
she thought.
I’m not ready for emotional maturity!

“I’m an asshole,” said Alicia, welling up.
Oh, God, not again
. She’d have to double up on tissues.

Tim said, “That is true.”

“So are you!” she shouted. “You didn’t touch me for almost three years! I don’t care how emasculated you were about losing your job or feeling like a housewife. Even housewives get horny.”

He exhaled a few times. Was Alicia finally going to get an explanation? The reason that Tim turned off?