take a nap. You were at work. When Paul came home, my car wasn’t in the garage and my lights weren’t on. He must have assumed I wasn’t home, either. A while later, I heard them carrying on out in the pool. That’s what woke me up. He and Charmaine were both in the pool naked, but swimming isn’t all they were doing.”
“Why didn’t you tell me at the time?” Ali demanded. She felt betrayed, as much by her son’s silence as by her husband’s infidelity.
“I thought you knew, Mom,” Chris declared. “I swear to God. I figured you must have decided to make the best of a bad bargain. Lots of women around here do that, you know. They find out what their husbands are up to, but, for one reason or another, they decide to just put up with it instead of throwing the bum out.”
“I had no idea,” Ali murmured.
“I know that now,” Chris said. “And I’m sorry, but hearing him ordering you around like you were some kind of servant…”
“How many people know about this?” Ali asked suddenly.
Chris shrugged. “Lots, I suppose,” he answered. “I mean, if I know, then other people must know, too. They probably haven’t taken out an ad in the Times, or anything like that, but…”
Ali’s phone rang. Paul’s number showed in the display. “It’s him,” she said. “I’m not going to answer.”
And she didn’t. The cell rang five times before it went to message. A few seconds later, the lights started flashing, indicating she had a voice mail waiting.
For ten miles or so, Ali did nothing; said nothing. Finally, she reached for her phone.
“Don’t call him back,” Chris pleaded. “Please don’t.”
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I’m not.”
Instead, she picked up the phone and scrolled through the called numbers until she located the one for Marcella Johnson’s cell phone. Marcella answered on the second ring.
“Hi,” Ali said. “It’s Alison Reynolds, your newest client.”
“Did you change your mind?” Marcella asked.
“Why would you ask that?” Ali returned.
“I just came from Leonard’s office-Leonard Weldon, the senior partner. He called me in right after your husband called here.”
“Paul Grayson called you?” Ali asked.
“Oh, no. He didn’t call me. He called Leonard and hinted very strongly that we should think about returning your retainer. That if we did, he’d make sure some of the network’s very lucrative business got thrown in our direction.”
“That underhanded son of a bitch!” Ali muttered under her breath.
“Yes,” Marcella said. “That more or less covers it.”
“So I suppose I need to go looking for a new attorney.”
“No,” Marcella said. “Not at all. I believe Leonard pretty much told him to stop throwing his weight around and put a sock in it.”
“He did?”
“Leonard told me he was in the same foursome with Paul Grayson at a charity golf tournament a number of years ago, and Paul kept shaving strokes. If there’s one thing Leonard Weldon can’t tolerate, it’s someone who cheats at golf!”
Among other things, Ali thought.
“So if you’re in, we’re in,” Marcella continued. “Weldon wants us to pursue this case to the bitter end.”
“Oh, I’m in all right,” Ali declared.
“So what did you need, then?” Marcella asked.
“Does anyone at your firm handle divorces?” Ali asked.
“I don’t,” Marcella said. “Not personally. But we just brought in a lady named Helga Myerhoff.”
“Wait a minute,” Ali said. “I’ve heard of her. I seem to remember she specializes in high-profile divorce cases. Don’t people call her Rottweiler Myerhoff?”
“That’s right,” Marcella laughed. “Or Helga the Horrible, depending. Most of the time, though, the only people dishing out those names are Helga’s opposing counsel after she takes their clients to the cleaners. Her clients praise her to the high heavens.”
“She works with you, then?” Ali asked.
“That’s right,” Marcella said. “Three months ago, Helga’s long-term partner retired. She and Leonard Weldon went to law school together a hundred years ago. When Helga decided she didn’t want to be a sole practitioner, she came knocking on Leonard’s door. But who’s looking for a divorce attorney?”
“I am,” Ali said in a small voice. “At least I think I am.”
“Do you want me to have Helga call you?”
“Not right now. My son and I are driving to Sedona. At the moment, we’re in the middle of the desert between Palm Springs and nowhere. Have her call me tomorrow.”
“Will do.” Marcella hesitated. “I don’t know you very well, but you sound down. Are you going to be all right with whatever’s going on? If you want me to call her right now…”
“No,” Ali said. “Tomorrow will be fine. As I said, my son’s with me, and he’s been a brick.”
“All right then.”
“So I’ll need to send another retainer?”
“Talk to Helga first,” Marcella advised. “Then you can decide, but if you’re talking to an attorney about this, you should probably also get in touch with your banker. You could find yourself up a creek without a credit card and without a checking account, either.”
“I think I’m okay there,” she said. “I’ve got my own checking account and my own credit card as well.”
“Good,” Marcella said. “Lots of women don’t.”
Ali closed the phone and put it in her pocket. When she looked over at Chris, he was grinning. “You’re going to hire Helga Myerhoff?” he asked.
“Why?” Ali returned. “Do you know her?”
“I’ve heard of her. Remember Sally Majors, the girl I took to the senior prom?”
Ali remembered the photo her son had given her that year. He had stood in front of someone’s massive fireplace decked out in a white tux, pale pink shirt, and cranberry-colored cummerbund and tie. Standing beside him, dwarfed by his size, had been a tiny girl in a full-length cranberry gown that screamed designer label. Ali had always been struck not by the beauty of the gown, but by the unremitting sadness in the girl’s eyes.
“I remember her,” Ali said.
“Her father’s a worm,” Chris said. “He was getting ready to ditch his wife. Same thing. Younger woman. He was hiding assets, doing all kinds of underhanded crap. Sally’s mother hired Helga, and she nailed him. I ran into Sally at Starbucks a few months ago. She told me all about it.”
“Go Helga,” Ali said. But her heart wasn’t in it.
After that, she turned up the music and subsided into silence. As the miles rolled by, she was surprised that she didn’t feel more. Maybe, with all that had happened in the past few days, she was simply beyond feeling anything at all. That turned out to be wrong, however. Because when she finally did start feeling, what hit her first was anger-with a capital A.
“How old is this girl?” she asked finally.
“April?” Chris returned. Ali nodded. “A little older than I am,” he said. “Maybe mid twenties.”
“Oh,” Ali said.
So this was all part and parcel of what had happened to her on Friday night. If you were forty-five and female, you were expendable-professionally and personally. Over the hill. Useless. And nobody, not the people at the station and certainly not Paul, expected her to stand up on her own two feet and fight back. Well, they were wrong-all of them.
Chris pulled off I-10 in Blythe for gas and for something to drink, then they forged on. They stopped for a Burger King on the far west side of Phoenix before they turned north on Arizona 101. Chris downed all of his Whopper and more than half of Ali’s.
It was well after midnight when they turned off I-17 and headed toward Sedona. By then they were close enough that Ali figured it was okay to call her dad. When he answered the phone, it was clear he had been sound asleep.
