brave as Belinda.
The rain pelted against the windows of Maxine Williams's office on East 79th Street in New York. It was the highest recorded rainfall in New York in November for more than fifty years, and cold, windy, and bleak outside, but cozy in the office where Maxine spent ten or twelve hours a day. The walls were painted a pale buttery yellow, and she had quiet abstract paintings on the walls in muted tones. The room was cheerful and pleasant, and the big overstuffed easy chairs where she sat talking to her patients were comfortable and inviting, and upholstered in a neutral beige. The desk was modern, stark, and functional, and so impeccably organized it looked as though you could perform surgery on it. Everything about Maxine's office was tidy and meticulous, and she herself was perfectly groomed without a hair out of place. Maxine had her entire world in full control. And her equally efficient, reliable secretary, Felicia, had worked for her for almost nine years. Maxine hated mess, disorder of any kind, and change. Everything about her, and her life, was smooth, orderly, and seamless.
The diploma framed on her wall said that she had gone to Harvard Medical School and graduated magna cum laude. She was a psychiatrist, and one of the foremost experts in trauma in both children and adolescents. She had extensive experience with schizophrenic and bipolar adolescents, and one of her subspecialties was suicidal teenagers. She worked with them and their families, often with excellent results. She had written two highly respected books for laymen, about the effect of trauma on young children. She was frequently invited to other cities and countries to consult after natural disasters, or manmade tragedies. She had been part of the consulting team for the children in Columbine after the school shooting, had written several papers on the effects of 9/11, and had advised the New York public schools. At forty-two, she was an expert in her field, and appropriately admired and acknowledged by her peers. She turned down more speaking engagements than she accepted. Between her patients, the consulting she did with local, national, and international agencies, and her own family, her days and calendar were filled.
She was always incredibly diligent about spending time with her own children-Daphne was thirteen, Jack twelve, and Sam had just turned six. As a single mother, she faced the same dilemma as every working mother, trying to balance her family responsibilities and her work. And she got almost no help from her ex, who usually appeared like a rainbow, unannounced and breathtaking, only to disappear again. All the responsibilities relating to her children fell to her, and her alone.
She sat staring out the window, thinking about them, waiting for her next patient to arrive, when the intercom buzzed on her desk. Maxine expected Felicia to tell her that her patient, a fifteen-year-old boy, was coming through the door. Instead she said that Maxine's husband was on the phone. Maxine frowned at the word.
“My
“Sorry, he always says he's your husband…I forget…” He was so likable and charming, and always asked about her boyfriend and her dog. He was one of those people you couldn't help but like.
“Don't worry, he forgets too,” Maxine commented drily, and smiled as she picked up the phone. She wondered where he was now. You never knew with Blake. It had been four months since he'd seen the kids. He had taken them to visit friends in Greece in July, and he always loaned Maxine and the children his boat every summer. The children loved their father, but they also knew that they could count on their mom, and that their dad came and went like the wind. Maxine was well aware that they seemed to have an unlimited capacity for forgiving him his quirks. And so had she, for ten years. But eventually his total self-indulgence and lack of responsibility had worn thin despite his charm. “Hi, Blake,” she said into the phone, and relaxed in her chair. The professional distance and demeanor she kept always vanished when she talked to him. In spite of the divorce, they were good friends, and had stayed very close. “Where are you now?”
“Washington, D.C. I just came up from Miami today. I was in St. Bart's for a couple of weeks.” A vision of their house there came instantly into her head. She hadn't seen it in five years. It was one of the many properties she had willingly relinquished to him in the divorce.
“Are you coming to New York to see the kids?” She didn't want to tell him that he should. He knew it as well as she did, but he always seemed to have something else to do. Most of the time anyway. Much as he loved them, and always had, they got short shrift, and they knew it too. And yet they all loved him, and in her own way, she did too. There seemed to be no one on the planet who didn't love him, or at least like him. Blake had no enemies, only friends.
“I wish I could come to see them,” he said apologetically. “I'm leaving for London tonight. I've got a meeting with an architect there tomorrow. I'm redoing the house.” And then he added, sounding like a mischievous child himself, “I just bought a fantastic place in Marrakech. I'm flying there next week. It's an absolutely gorgeous, crumbling palace.”
“Just what you need,” she said, shaking her head. He was impossible. He bought houses everywhere he went. He remodeled them with famous architects and designers, turned them into showplaces, and then bought something else. Blake loved the project even more than the end result.
He had a house in London, one in St. Bart's, another in Aspen, the top half of a palazzo in Venice, a penthouse in New York, and now apparently a house in Marrakech. Maxine couldn't help wondering what he was going to do with that. But whatever he did, she knew it would be as amazing as everything else he touched. He had incredible taste, and bold ideas about design. All his homes were exquisite, and he owned one of the largest sailboats in the world, although he only used it a few weeks a year, and lent it to friends whenever he could. The rest of the time he was flying around the world, on safari in Africa, or making art forays in Asia. He'd been to Antarctica twice and came back with stunning photographs of icebergs and penguins. His world had long since outgrown hers. She was content with her predictable, well-regulated life in New York, between her office and the comfortable apartment where she lived with their three children, on Park Avenue and East 84th Street. She walked home from her office every night, even on a day like this. The short walk revived her after the hard things she listened to all day, and the troubled kids she treated. Other psychiatrists often referred their potential suicides to her. Dealing with difficult cases was her way of giving to the world, and she loved her work.
“So Max, how's by you? How are the kids?” Blake asked, sounding relaxed.
“They're fine. Jack's playing soccer again this year, he's gotten pretty good,” she said with pride. It was like telling Blake about someone else's children. He was more like their favorite uncle than their father. The trouble was, he had been that way as a husband too.
Irresistible in every way, and never there when there was something hard to do.
First, Blake was building his business, and after his windfall, he was just never around. He was always somewhere else having fun. He had wanted her to give up her practice, and Maxine just couldn't. She had worked too hard to get where she was. She couldn't imagine walking away from it, and didn't want to, no matter how rich her husband suddenly was. She couldn't even conceive of the kind of money he'd made. And eventually, although she loved him, she couldn't do it anymore. They were polar opposites in every way. Her meticulousness was in sharp contrast to the mess he made. Wherever he sat, there was an avalanche of magazines, books, papers, half- eaten food, spilled drinks, peanut shells, banana peels, half-drunk sodas, and bags of fast food he forgot to throw away. He was always dragging the blueprints for his latest house, his pockets were full of notes about phone calls he had to return and never did. And eventually, the notes got lost. People were always calling wondering where he was. He was brilliant in business, but otherwise his life was a mess. He was an adorable, charming, lovable flake. She got tired of being the only grown-up around, particularly once they had kids. As the result of a movie premiere he flew out to attend in L.A., he had missed Sam's birth. And when a babysitter let Sam roll off the changing table eight months later, and he broke a collarbone and an arm, and got a hell of a knock on the head, Blake was nowhere to be found. Without telling anyone, he had flown to Cabo San Lucas to look at a house for sale, built by a famous Mexican architect he admired. He had lost his cell phone on the way, and it took two days to locate him. In the end, Sam was okay, but Maxine had asked Blake for a divorce when he got back to New York.
It had just never worked once Blake made his money. Max needed a man who was more human scale, and who was going to stick around, for some of the time at least. Blake was never there. Maxine had decided she might as well be alone, rather than bitching at him all the time when he called, and spending hours trying to track him down when something went wrong for her or the kids. When she told him she wanted a divorce, he had been stunned. And they had both cried. He tried to talk her out of it, but she had made up her mind. They loved each other, but Maxine insisted that it didn't work for her. Not anymore. They no longer wanted the same things. All he wanted to do was play, and she loved being there for her children, and her work. They were just too different in too many ways. It was fun when they were young, but she grew up, he didn't.
