I had two friends who had gone through contentious divorces. Randy Fallon was an old friend on the police force, and I remembered how he had complained about his divorce settlement. When I told him what Claxton had advised me to do, Randy said, “Your lawyer must be one in a million, not wanting to soak you for every penny. I paid mine over twelve thousand bucks and still wound up getting screwed.” Randy’s pension from the BPD was being garnisheed by the court for child support. He said the deal I was being offered from Lucy’s attorney sounded like manna from heaven.
Craig Hildebrandt served on the TWT task force with Javi and me. He had been divorced twice. He and his first wife split amicably, no kids. Craig and his second wife had a little girl he adored, but the marriage was a disaster. His wife was an alcoholic who cheated on him with another cop. She got arrested twice for shoplifting. Craig fought for custody, but the judge let her keep the child as long as she provided the court with proof she was attending AA. “Your attorney’s right, Matt,” Craig said. “It’s not worth all the money and heartache. I was so angry for a while I swear I thought about trying to find someone to knock her off. But she found Jesus and things worked out okay in the long run. I’m not a big fan of all the religious stuff, but it helped her get her shit together. She’s actually turned out to be a pretty good mother.”
I called Claxton and told him to draw up the papers. I can’t exaggerate the bitterness I felt when I signed them.
***
In late March, a month after the divorce had been filed, I got a call in my office from Katy Bowen at Katydids, where the children went to day care.
“Maybe it’s my mistake, Matt, but isn’t Lucy supposed to pick up the kids this afternoon?”
“Yeah, hasn’t she come yet?”
“Nope. No sign of her.”
It was quarter to six. When it was Lucy’s night to have the kids, she usually picked them up no later than five. I asked Katy if she had called Garbo’s.
“Yes, they told me she left around four. I called the house too, but got the machine.”
“Okay, I’ll come right away and take the little monkeys off your hands.”
It was Tuesday. I was supposed to have them tomorrow night and Thursday. My two weekday nights with Sarah and Nathan varied according to my work schedule. I made sure I spoke with Lucy in advance and kept Katy up to date. Either Lucy had forgotten it was her night or written it down wrong in her daybook. I hopped in my car and drove to Kaytdids, my tires slipping on the trolley tracks in the rain.
“I have no idea what happened with Lucy,” I said to Katy. “It concerns me that she hasn’t called.”
“Eh, she probably just got confused about the schedule. Happens with parents more than you think.” She laughed. “I’ve had to take my share of orflings home for supper.”
I bundled up the kids and put them in the car.
Sarah said, “How come Mommy forgot to pick us up?”
Because
your
mother
is
a
total
fuck-up. You’ll figure that out for yourself pretty soon.
“She just got confused, honey. We all make mistakes sometimes, even mommies and daddies.” Wasn’t that the way the experts said you should play it? Never belittle the ex to your children. I wondered how long I could keep up the charade.
I took the kids to dinner at an Italian restaurant. Afterward, I drove slowly down Lucy’s street. I thought I’d see if she was home yet and knock on the door. The house was dark except for the lights in the third-floor apartment. I circled the block and decided to take the kids into the house and wait for her to come home. It would piss her off to have me invade her space like that, but I didn’t care. She had messed up again, and I wanted to embarrass her.
I parked out front. I knew it wouldn’t be hard to get in. Chances are Lucy hadn’t changed the locks, and I still had a key for the house on my key ring. It was just like her not to ask for it back. The key fit, and I took the kids inside. I played with Sarah and Nathan till eight-thirty. Then I gave them a snack and read them a story before putting them to bed.
Alone downstairs, I went into the study. Lucy’s desk was a mess. I poked around a little, trying not to disturb anything. In one of the drawers, I found a leather-bound journal, a diary of sorts. I glanced at one entry, which happened to be about Amanda, then put it back. I’m not sure if I resisted the temptation to stop reading out of some qualm of conscience or because I didn’t want to see what Lucy said about me. I wandered into the living room and sat on the couch. I started to read a
Newsweek
article about South Africa but couldn’t concentrate. I went to the kitchen and drank a glass of water. Back in the living room, I saw my car keys partially lodged between the couch cushions. I retrieved the keys and lifted the cushion to see if any coins had also slipped out of my pocket. As I was putting the cushion back in place, I noticed a small dark hole on the underside—an unmistakable cigarette burn that had smoldered deep into the stuffing. I wondered when this had happened. Lucy had bought the couch last summer when we were still together. There were smoke alarms in the house, but even so. I imagined myself barging into my lawyer’s office, holding up the cushion.
What
about
this, Claxton? See this hole! Is this proof enough to get some judge to acknowledge that my children are in danger? Am I supposed to sit around and hope they’re lucky enough to be staying with me when she burns the fucking house down?
“Daddy?” Sarah stood in the doorway with Sundae in the crook of her arm.
I put the cushion back, burnt side down. “What’s the matter? Can’t sleep, sweetie?”
She nodded.
“You want to play a game of Parcheesi?”
She smiled and nodded again and ran to get the board.
“We gonna have a bet?” she said. She was not yet five but already fiercely competitive.
“Okay, let’s see. If
you
win, you get another cookie before you go back to bed. If
I
win…you have to buy me a new car?”
She giggled. “It’s a deal.” And put out her hand to shake.
Sarah won fair and square. She ate the cookie, then I carried her back upstairs and tucked her in bed.
“Will you stay here till I fall asleep?” she said.
“Sure, I won’t move an inch.”
She curled up with Sundae, and I smoothed her hair as she drifted off. I tiptoed out of the room. Outside Nathan’s open door, I stopped and listened for his soft, wet breath. The lights were off in Lucy’s bedroom, but the door was open. I hadn’t set foot in that room since I’d come to collect my clothes and personal belongings. I turned on the light and went in. The bloodstained rug was gone, but little else seemed to have changed. I sat on the bed. The faint smell of Lucy filled me with an unwanted sense of longing. I went over to her dresser and opened the top drawer where she kept her bras and panties. In the back, in its usual place, was her stash of marijuana. The fat buds were still a little green, a sweet odor oozing from the clear plastic baggie. I closed the drawer and gazed across the room. Lucy had put some new photographs on the mantel. Sarah in a princess dress, Nathan on a swing. The photo in the center, in an inlaid wooden frame, had been taken outdoors in the snow—Lucy holding Nathan in her arms and Griffin with Sarah on his hip. They were all smiling brightly, their cheeks rosy from the cold. A handsome, happy family. Lucy could’ve just as easily kept the old photo of the four of us and pasted a cut-out of Griffin’s face over mine. I turned the photograph facedown on the mantel.
I heard the front door open.
“Matt?” Lucy called from downstairs. “Matt, is that you?”
“Be right down.”
She was at the bottom of the stairs with her coat on. Griffin was behind her in a brown leather bomber jacket taking off his driving gloves. They’d brought in several fancy shopping bags and placed them on the floor by the coat tree.
“Would you please tell me what the fuck you’re doing here?” Lucy said.
“You forgot to pick up the kids at day care.” I gave her a sarcastic grin. “I thought I’d do you a favor and bring them home.”
“I didn’t forget anything. I don’t know what kind of shit you’re trying to pull here, Matt, but it’s your night to have them. I could have you arrested for trespassing.”
I was about to say how strange it was that Katy had made the same mistake I did, but I held my tongue. Lucy was about to flip out. I didn’t want to get in a shouting match and wake the kids. I had signed the divorce papers, but I still wasn’t ready to give up the fight. Of course, there were smarter ways to go about it than breaking into her house. What I’d done was needlessly provocative, and it would give her an excuse to shrug off her guilt and embarrassment when she finally figured out she was in the wrong.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I guess I screwed up.”
She thought I was being snide. “I mean it, Matt. Next time I’ll call the police.”
“No. No, you’re right. I’m sorry. It was stupid. My mistake.”
She hesitated, suspicious of my quick capitulation. “Well…okay. But you can’t come in here like this. We’re divorced now. This is
my
house. The lines have to be clear.”
“I know, you’re right. Here.” I took the house key from my key ring and handed it to her. “It won’t happen again.”
“Everything’s cool,” Griffin said, a stupid smile on his face. He put his arm around her shoulder. His woman now. I wanted to grab him by the front of his bomber jacket, pick him up, and hang him on the coat tree. I tried not to let my animosity show on my face.
I turned to Lucy. “You want me to get the kids and take them home with me?”
“Don’t be silly. It’s perfectly fine if they stay here. I’ll take them over to Katydids in the morning.” It was ludicrous to see her playing the dutiful mother.
“Okay, thanks. Excuse me. I think I left my jacket up in Sarah’s room.” I turned and took the steps two at a time. I went into Lucy’s bedroom and righted the photograph on the mantel.
When I came back downstairs, Lucy held out the jacket. “It was in the kitchen,” she said, her eyes narrowed with suspicion, trying to figure out what I was up to.
She followed me onto the front porch and stood there watching until I got in my car and drove off. She’d be a little spooked by what I’d done, but she’d look around the house, see that everything was the same, and forget about the whole thing in a day or two. That was my hope, anyway. What an idiot I was for not taking the kids home with me in the first place and calmly pointing out her mistake to her tomorrow.
I stayed up late playing solitaire, thinking how much better everything would be if Lucy simply vanished. I didn’t wish she was dead, just
gone
. Out of our lives completely. Or the other way around. Maybe I should take the kids and run. Disappear. Start over. New names, new place, no more screwups from her to deal with.
I wasn’t ready to cross that line, but it was time for me to get smart. No more grandstanding. It was foolish to put her on guard like I did tonight. From now on I’d play the part of the model ex-husband. The perfect co-parent. Easygoing, nonjudgmental, eager to compromise. I needed to win back her trust before I could violate it again.
Lucy
After Matt drove off, I came back in the house still holding his key. “Talk about
weird
,” I said to Griffin. “What the hell do you think that was all about?”
“Aah, don’t sweat it. He’s just having trouble letting go.”
We went into the kitchen. “He must have been looking for something. Or checking up on me. I need to get the locks changed. He might have another copy of the key.”
Griffin uncorked a bottle of wine.
I got my daybook from my purse. “Look,” I said, “Tuesday, ‘M’ for Matt. It was
his
night to have the kids.”
“You don’t have to prove anything to me, Luce.”
“I know. I just hate him accusing me like that. He keeps trying to make me out to be a bad mother.”
“Come on, forget about it.” He handed me a glass of wine. “Time to celebrate. Happy birthday.”
“Thank you.”
My birthday actually wasn’t until Thursday, but Griffin was going to be out of town on a business trip, so we were celebrating early. His gift was to take me shopping. He picked me up after work and we went to a half dozen high-end stores where he watched me try on various outfits and lingerie, his eyes filled with delight when I came out of the dressing room looking like a model or a classy hooker. I could feel myself blushing as I showed off a lacy black teddy with a thong bottom.
Bingo
, he said, clapping his hands. I said,
You
just
want
to
buy
this
so
you
can
tear
it
off
me.
And he said,
True, so true.
The teddy cost ninety-eight dollars. Griffin delighted in spending money on me. Much as Matt loved me and occasionally bought me a thoughtful gift—a colorful wool shawl or a wide leather belt with hammered tin buckle—his first priority was to find a bargain. He couldn’t buy anything without considering the price first, not even an ice cream cone or a pair of socks. His frugality wore thin. It almost seemed like a birth defect—congenital cheapness—as if he’d been born with a cut-rate soul.
Griffin and I took our wineglasses upstairs. As we walked into the bedroom, I said, “Matt’s been in here, spying on me.”
“How do you know?”
“I just do. I can
feel
it. It gives me the creeps. Like there’s mold oozing over everything.”
“Don’t worry about it. You were great with him. Clear, straightforward. The poor bastard’s still madly in love with you. He’ll get over it in ten or twenty years.”
We undressed and got in bed, the lamp still lit on the nightstand. I kept scanning the room, trying to see if anything was amiss, resisting the urge to check the closet and dresser drawers. I imagined a scene out of a creepy black-and-white movie, Matt taking a pair of scissors to my underwear. But that wasn’t like him. Tonight was an anomaly he wouldn’t repeat; I could see it in his face. For all his lingering resentment, he was, at heart, a rational, economical man, which is precisely what my lawyer understood when he proposed the divorce settlement. It was a deal Matt couldn’t resist.
I turned out the light and snuggled up next to Griffin. He had been spending nearly every night with me since the divorce was finalized. His emotional support over the past six months was no illusion, and I was beginning to believe that he could love me—and stay. We were a couple now, no different from millions of others who had tried and failed before they got things right.
The next morning Katy asked me if I’d gotten the schedule worked out with Matt.
“Yeah.” I smiled. “His mistake for once.”
“Really? I had it on my calendar that it was your night.”
“You did?”
“Yes,” Katy said. “I called him at the office and he came right over.”
“Well, he wound up admitting it was him.”
Katy shrugged. “I guess he gave me the wrong dates to put in my book.”
I thought about rubbing it in the next time I saw Matt, but it was enough to watch him slink away last night like a petty criminal.
***
Nothing said more about Griffin’s commitment to me than his relationship with the children. He thought they were a hoot, especially Sarah. She was a tomboy and a daredevil, always rolling and tumbling, begging to go faster and swing higher. Nathan was more of a watcher, a little timid and often cranky. I don’t think I fostered it, but he had a tendency to cling to me. Griffin and I bought a pair of bicycles with child seats on the back and took the kids for rides through the Arboretum. One Saturday morning he showed up with a trampoline in two big boxes. He carried the boxes out to the backyard and put it together with Sarah acting as his helper. Rory the cat sat on the fence watching them like she was Queen of the May.
“You guys ready?” Griffin was jumping lightly up and down on the trampoline. “I had one of these when I was a kid.” He sprang up effortlessly, did a back flip and landed on his feet, tried a front flip but couldn’t hold the landing. “Out of practice,” he said, laughing.
“I want to do it,” Sarah said.
I lifted her up. As soon as she got on, she started bouncing as high as she could, utterly fearless, while I stood there holding my breath, afraid she’d go flying off into the bushes. When it was Nathan’s turn, he walked around, unsteady on his feet like a little drunk, lost his balance and got up giggling. Falling down was the best part for him. Sarah and Griffin begged me to take a turn, but I wanted no part of it. Griffin bounded down and put his arm around me as we watched Sarah and Nathan knock each other down over again and again.
My neighbor Nancy Prince, whose backyard was separated by a low wooden fence from mine, stood on her porch and waved. Nancy had an eight-year-old daughter and a teenage son who sometimes did odd jobs for me, raking leaves and shoveling the sidewalk. She and I didn’t talk much, and I had never discussed the breakup with Matt with her, but she must have heard some gossip. I wondered what she was thinking as she looked across the yard and saw Griffin with his arm around my shoulder. I leaned into him, as if to prove to her (or to myself) that there was no mistake in what she was seeing.
***
Over the past year, Amanda had developed a condition that caused the septum in her nose to collapse. She could only breathe through her mouth, and her voice was so raspy it was hard to understand her on the telephone. Worse, perhaps, was her wounded vanity, her nose smooshed in like an old prizefighter’s. She went to several doctors before she found a surgeon at Mass. Eye and Ear who came up with a solution, a procedure that left her with a little dent in her nose but nothing off-putting. In early May she called me and said she was coming to Boston for a checkup. The two of us had been getting closer since my marriage had fallen apart, and I enjoyed having her stay with me. Some nights we’d sit in the kitchen, talking and getting buzzed on white wine; sometimes Griffin joined us. Amanda had confessed to me recently that, much as she cared for Matt, Griffin was obviously more my type—hers too—a man “with the devil in his eye,” just like Thorny. For once I admitted she was right.
The plan was for her to pick up Sarah and Nathan at Katydids after her doctor’s appointment and take them to the Aquarium. She was so good with them that it almost made me jealous. About two-thirty in the afternoon, I got a call at work from a lieutenant in the Braintree Police Department saying they had Amanda in custody.
“One of our officers stopped Mrs. Thornhill for driving erratically on Route Three,” the lieutenant said. “She refused to take a breathalyzer, but her eyes are glassy and her speech is slurred.”
“Oh my god. How are the children?”
“They’re fine. One of the female members of our administrative staff is looking after them. We’re hoping you can pick them up soon, or we’ll have to get social services involved.”
“Yes, of course. Thank you. What about my mother?”
“She wasn’t happy when we brought her to the station, but I’d say she was more confused than belligerent. We’ll release her to your custody, but she’ll have to come back to court at a later date.”
“Thank you so much. I’ll take a cab immediately and drive her car home.” He gave me the address.
I wondered how Amanda ended up in Braintree, which was about fifteen miles south of the Aquarium. She must have gotten on the Southeast Expressway and kept going. I sat in the cab with my mind racing, furious at her and even more furious at myself. She was just doing what she had always done. How many times had she driven drunk with my brother Mark and me in the car when we were kids? She seemed to have gotten her drinking under control lately. Still, I should have said something to her about never drinking when she had Sarah and Nathan in the car. What if this had happened a few months ago? I imagined Claxton looking at me with disdain over his rimless glasses:
Had
you
been
aware
of
your
mother’s drinking problem, Mrs. Drobyshev? Isn’t it true that she had been hospitalized for alcoholism on numerous occasions? Didn’t Mrs. Thornhill once crash her automobile through the plate glass window of a beauty parlor, causing considerable property damage and injuring a female patron?
Yes. Yes. Yes.
And you still let her drive your children around?
I could recite my mother’s excuse before hearing it: Amanda saying her sinuses were still blocked, the pressure so bad when she woke up this morning it felt like her teeth were falling out, so the doctor at Mass. Eye and Ear gave her some capsules—a little something to go along with her prescriptions for high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and depression. At lunch she’d treated herself to a gin and tonic,
just
one
, which was understandable after everything she’d been through—a mistake in hindsight, of course, but the doctor should have warned her not to drink with those pills or she never would have gotten behind the wheel with the kids in the car and driven on these dreadful highways with rude drivers and signs pointing everywhere except the place you wanted to go.
Or maybe she’d say,
I’m sorry, I’m a drunk, what I did was horrible. Time for me to go somewhere and dry out for a while.
Ultimately, what Amanda said to me didn’t matter; the issue was what I would say to Matt when he found out.
If
he found out. The trick was how to get the kids to keep it a secret. Nathan could easily blurt something out, but he’d follow Sarah’s lead. If she didn’t say anything about the incident, chances are he wouldn’t either. But what if Matt caught me trying to keep it from him? This was a man who
never
made mistakes or bent the rules. Last week I’d gotten a lecture for letting Sarah sit in the backseat without a seat belt. Maybe the best way to mitigate the damage would be to tell him myself.
I paid the cabbie and went into the police station. Amanda looked so old when the lieutenant brought her out to me. She was meek and downcast, muttering apologies as I gave her a hug. The officer handed me her keys, and I walked her out to the car. By the time I came back out with the children she was curled up in the front seat, asleep, a shiny trail of drool running down her chin. The kids started giggling as they imitated her snores.
Sarah said, “Are they going to make Nanda go back to jail?”
“Oh no, honey. Nanda’s sick. She just took the wrong pills, that’s all. The policemen will understand.” I was almost ready to believe it myself. “But you know what? Nanda’s going to be embarrassed by all this. She’ll be worried people will say she did something really bad.” I lowered my voice to a whisper. “Maybe we shouldn’t tell anybody.”
“You mean keep it a
secret
,” Sarah said.
“Yes, kind of. Just keep it to ourselves.” I was trying to split hairs with a preschooler.
“Not even tell Daddy?”
“Not Daddy. Not
anybody
. That’s what makes it a secret.”
“Okay,” Sarah said.
I could only hope.
***
Matt was planning to take the children to Disney World the second week in June; he said he heard it was a good time to go, just before most schools let out. It was all the kids could talk about. They’d be gone from Friday to Friday, and I was hoping Griffin and I might be able to take a vacation of our own, but he had arranged some meetings in Dallas that couldn’t be changed.
One afternoon I was talking to one of the mothers I had met at Katydids, and we set up a Friday sleepover for her daughter at my house.
It was interesting to watch the girls interact. Naomi wasn’t bossy, but she had a rich imagination and definitely took the lead, which was a surprise to me given Sarah’s personality. I could hear them chattering in Sarah’s room long after I’d turned out the lights. In the morning Griffin played with them on the trampoline. I sat on the back steps smoking a cigarette with Nathan between my knees. Naomi was frustrated that she couldn’t do a flip like Sarah, but she loved doing belly flops and back flops over and over.
The phone rang in the kitchen. Griffin and Sarah were on the trampoline together, Naomi waiting her turn. I put Nathan down at the bottom of the steps and said to Naomi, “Could you watch him a sec while I get the phone?”
“Yes, ma’am.” She was polite to a fault.
I was about to open the back door when I heard Sarah shriek and Griffin shout her name. I turned around to see her arcing high in the air, her arms and legs pinwheeling as if she were trying to fly. She landed in the grass between the trampoline and the swing set and let out a heart-stopping scream.
Griffin leaped down and cradled her in his arms, his face stricken.
Sarah was crying, “My arm, my arm. Ouch, my arm.”
I rushed to them and took Sarah from Griffin and hugged her to my chest. “Oh, honey, you’re okay, you’re okay. Let me see. Show me where it hurts. I’ll kiss it and make it better.”
She was wailing so hard she could barely catch her breath. “I want
Daddy
,” she said.