never saw her face?
“Crap,” I moaned.
“Exactly,” she said. “These pictures are more anatomical in nature.”
There were no face shots.
“He’s going to win, isn’t he?” I sat back, deflated. For the first time, I realized that as scared as I was, up until that moment I sincerely believed that I was going to come out of this unscathed. My marriage couldn’t be saved, obviously, but I honestly thought I would be able to emerge from this ordeal able to carry on a normal, productive, not-working-as-a-french-fry-technician life. I wasn’t aware I was even capable of that kind of optimism, so I wasn’t willing to let it die just yet. “Wait!” I snatched up one of the pictures. “Look! The bumblebee tattoo. Beebee has a bumblebee tattoo on her inner thigh. Can you subpoena her thigh?”
“Not as part of the divorce action, but to defend you from the lawsuit, yes. We can ask for an inspection of her thighs as proof of identity,” Sam said, examining the photo. “That’s a good catch on the tattoo. Even if she tried to remove it before the suit goes to court, it would still show up.
“But for now, do me a favor,” she said. “From this point on we need you to appear to be the brokenhearted discarded wife, not the angry, possibly crazy, woman scorned. Do not discuss the newsletter with large groups of people. If you see Mike or Beebee in public, do not cause an ugly scene. Do not call, e-mail, write letters to, or otherwise contact Mike or Beebee without contacting me first to see if it’s a good idea. When you do appear in public, try to look sort of, well, beaten and tragic.”
“That shouldn’t be difficult, thank you.”
“In fact, if you’re comfortable with therapy, you might start seeing a counselor,” she suggested. “It will help establish the psychological trauma Mike has inflicted on you. Since you obviously enjoy writing, it would also help if you started a journal to document your hellish, slow recovery from said trauma. How is your current financial situation? How are you getting by day to day?”
I shrugged. “Actually, it’s okay. I don’t have a lot of living expenses. I’m staying with my parents, which I don’t think can last much longer. I’ll probably have to find an apartment soon. But I have a little savings cushion. If the case drags out, I have some investments I can cash in if I need to.”
“I’ll be honest, you’re probably going to need to,” she told me, pinning me with those frank seawater eyes. “It all depends on how contentious negotiations are going to be. And I doubt Mike is going to be forthcoming or cooperative with us. I’ve had some cases that only took sixty days. Then again, I’m still involved in negotiating a canine custody agreement that has dragged a divorce settlement out for almost three years.”
“Canine custody agreement?”
“Both parties want sole custody of Bobo the Pomeranian. Lacey, I can’t say that your literary aspirations are going to help us in court because some judges around here are pretty old school. But I have to tell you, I thought it took a huge pair of Spaldings. A lot of the people who come through that door are just so caught up in being a victim that they can’t see straight. It’s part of the job, but it’s pretty damned annoying. It’s refreshing to meet someone who’s not helpless. You are not what I expected.”
“You’re not what I expected either, Ms. Shackleton.” I rose and shook her hand.
“i you need anything, you call me.”
“By that, do you mean, ‘It’s eleven p.m. and I just need to talk’ or ‘It’s three am. and I need bail money’?” I asked.
Samantha grinned. “Urn, neither of those.”
“Fair enough.” I nodded.
“You’re going to be one of those ‘interesting’ clients, aren’t you?”
I arched a brow at her. “You’re just now figuring that out?”
It was starting to feel crowded at the old home place.
Daddy returned from his reunion a few days after Mama and he was less thrilled to have one of the baby birds back in his empty nest. Other than repeated inquiries as to whether I would need extra boxes when I moved out, he refused to discuss anything with me. If I came into a room, he left it. If I happened to catch him long enough to ask him a question, he answered it in as few syllables as possible. I’m pretty sure the only reason he ate at the same table as me was that Mama refused to serve his meals anywhere else. Daddy was smart enough to know he couldn’t survive on his own cooking.
Daddy was never what you’d call a hands-on father, but he’d never been so distant. When he was disappointed in us, his usual MO was to tell Mama and have her relay the message. Even when Emmett finally, quietly, came out to my parents, Daddy told Mama to tell my brother to be careful. And that was about it.
Daddy seemed to be employing more of a scorched earth policy these days. I think he believed if he made the situation uncomfortable enough, I would give up this whole silly divorce and go back to my own house. He was particularly irritated by the way Mama had managed to insulate me from the phone calls, the insistent visitors, Wynnie’s repeated efforts to talk some sense into me.
“You’ve got to quit coddling the girl,” I heard him grumble through their bedroom door on one of my nightly wanderings around the house. “She needs to face her own music. Personally, I don’t blame Wynnie and Jim for being pissed. Or Mike. Do you know what kind of jokes they’re making about Mike and Beebee down at the golf course? And Lacey? I just don’t understand what was going through her head when she did this. We didn’t raise her to -”
“To what?” Mama demanded. “To stand up for herself?”
“To make a damn fool out of herself,” Daddy countered. “How would you feel if somebody wrote this sort of thing about one of our kids, Deb?”
“Keep your voice down,” Mama hissed. “And our kids wouldn’t be sleazy enough to cheat.”
“Well, if Emmett does cheat, he’d better not tell Lacey about it; God knows what she’d do.”
“Walt, are you upset because you’re embarrassed or because you want her out of the house?”
“Well, she’s never going to leave if you keep stuffing her with pancakes and grilled cheese sandwiches!” he cried.
“Oh, she’s not even eating them,” Mama said. “She doesn’t eat anything. She doesn’t sleep. She just wanders around the house all night, which is why you should keep your voice down!”
I backed away from the door. I didn’t want to hear any more. I was going to have to leave the house, soon. Besides the loser factor, I couldn’t stay at my parents’ house, causing tension and problems for the two of them. There were enough failed marriages in our family.
As I watched my parents’ marriage from a newly enlightened adult perspective, I noticed little things about them I hadn’t before. Little things, like when my dad got my morn a glass of water, he ran the tap for a while, to make sure he was getting her the coldest, least faucet-tasting water possible. Mike used to just stick a glass under the tap.
My parents had that something. Something Mike and I didn’t have. I didn’t know what it was and that was what was driving me insane. I’m not going to say Mike was a total monster. I mean, there was the year that he got me an air purifier for my birthday, but only because I’d mentioned that the infomercial was interesting. I shared some blame in that. We had no connection. No dependence on each other, no real intimacy. We started dating in high school because we ran in the same circles and our parents approved. We got married because that was what you were supposed to do when you’d been dating for a while and were graduating college. It seemed like the next step and we couldn’t think of a better one.
There were things I didn’t expect, a rush of longing when I smelled Tide detergent, a scent that would forever remind me of Mike’s shirts. Not having someone to rub my cold feet against under the covers. Someone to eat my pizza crusts, which I always left behind and Mike called the “pizza bones.” But I think these were signs that I needed a roommate, not Mike. Or maybe a neutered cat.
Yes, Daddy drove Mama nuts with his constant need to be around his stupid adolescent college buddies. But reconnecting, nay, dwelling, on his past kept Daddy happy. And that made Mama happy.
She compromised, she didn’t settle.
I woke up the next morning to find that my car had been towed. Mike had removed my name from the title
