The War of the Roses

20

‘You should have left the wine alone, Barbara,’ Thurmont lectured. ‘The wine, we all agreed, was his. Not in dispute. What you did only complicates things.’

‘It was only a half case of the Latour. That’s all I touched. I could have really been a rat and pulled the plug. That stuff has to be between fifty-four and fifty-seven degrees. I could have pulled the plug and ruined all hundred and ten bottles. That’s if I was really a rat.’ She was determined to remain calm.

‘Goldstein is threatening to take us to court for violating the separation agreement.’

‘Well, invasion of privacy was a violation and where did that get us?’

‘He was restrained. That helps the case when we get down to the real arena.’

‘I think he’s done it again.’ She was smug now, proud that she had learned to be unflappable. They were not going to grind her down. She was more determined than ever.

Thurmont had looked up at her over his half glasses. / She smiled sarcastically, enjoying the situation. They all think women are dumb, she huffed to herself.

‘I’m positive he’s picked the lock and been inside my room. I’m absolutely positive.’

‘Are you hallucinating now, Barbara? The court doesn’t deal in that kind of information.’

‘I know he’s been there.’

‘That’s not enough.’

She left Thurmont’s office unusually buoyed. He had been discouraging, especially when she had explained that she had ruined the wine because he had destroyed her plants. If he was such a smart lawyer, he would have included the plants in the agreement. She wondered again if it wouldn’t have been a better idea to find a woman lawyer. A woman lawyer would understand. But then again, most judges were men and it would be like playing Russian roulette. She was certain that they all worked hand in glove, conspiring together to keep women in their place.

Whatever the consequences, the fact that he had actually discovered the ruined wine under the most-hoped-for circumstances elated her. So he was having trysts with Ann, she thought gleefully, little country outings. And she had spoiled one by ruining their wine. Even Eve’s intrusion had not diminished her joy.

‘I put her up to it, Mom. I just don’t want to go to camp. I really don’t know who to go to if I have grievances.’ Eve had confessed, revealing how efficient the household communication system operated. Oliver to Ann and Eve to her. Goldstein to Thurmont. A round robin. She didn’t care, reveling in her assertiveness and success. The French Market was demanding more and more pate, and her chicken galantine had made a big hit at any number of big parties. She was making it. She was unstoppable. A winner. And she was certain she would win her case, although Thurmont had warned her not to become too successful until the divorce action came to court.

‘Why didn’t you come to me?’ she had complained to Eve, but in her heart she knew this was a rote response, the expected one.

‘Because you’ve got other things on your mind at the moment. Things are bad enough. I didn’t want to complicate your life.’

She embraced her daughter and kissed her on the cheek.

‘What the hell are mothers for?’

‘I just didn’t want to go to camp – that’s all. Frankly, I’m afraid to leave you two alone in the house.’

Barbara laughed at herself, at her old image as dependent woman, fearful and unassertive.

‘No man pushes your old mom around, baby.’ She did a mock Humphrey Bogart.

‘He’s Daddy.’

‘I know, precious. He’s your daddy. Not mine.’ She laughed again.

‘It’s no tragedy. Just a plain old ugly divorce action. I think I’m right. He thinks he’s right. The judge will decide. So it’ll be a little ugly. So what? Why be afraid?’ She waved her finger in front of Eve’s nose. ‘It’s a new world out there, honey. And don’t you be a dummy when it comes to men. Equal strokes for equal folks. Don’t give up what you want for them. That’s the lesson for your life. You have a living example before you.’ She raised her arms and stood on tiptoe. ‘I feel a hundred feet tall,’ she said. ‘High as a kite. High on life.’

‘I’ve never seen you like this, Mom. So damned content.’

‘So, you see? Nothing to worry about. Go to camp. Enjoy.’

In her heart, she forgave Ann. Forgave everything. Show the bastards no mercy, she told herself, thinking of Oliver and all the rest of those cock heads.

As if to celebrate her newly perceived freedom, she bought herself a vibrator. It had a penis shape and wide ridges like corduroy along its shaft. The idea of it was almost as delicious as its effect on her private parts, which proved a revelation of pleasure as waves of orgasmic crescendos invaded her senses. Sometime in the middle of the day, she would announce to herself, Time for happy hour, and would go up to her room and proceed to use her cock toy, as she called it. It was better than Oliver had ever been.

‘You beautiful little technological miracle,’ she would whisper to it when it had done particularly yeoman service. Who needs them?

The high was accelerated by the deepening of spring. The trees along the circle were in full blossom and the view of the park and the Calvert Street Bridge in their spring wardrobe was magnificent. As for Oliver, he was hardly a bother. More like a rodent who was never seen although the evidence of him could not be missed. Sometimes at night she heard him puttering in his workroom, and if she awakened early, she heard him leave the house. As far as she was concerned, he was no longer part of her life.

But she could not shake the idea that somehow his presence had intruded itself in her room. She had learned recently to trust her instincts, to act according to a deep, unrealized, and unarticulated intelligence. It wasn’t anything she could pin down with surety. She had carefully inspected the room and her closets, looked under the beds, even into her shoes. At night, when she could not sleep, she reviewed in her mind this feeling, even tried to dismiss it. But it lingered, pervasive and intuitive.

During the day, dutifully, in addition to running her business, she went about the chores of preparing the children for camp. Eve was to be a counselor in training, which mollified her somewhat, in that it represented a euphemism for privileged camper. This meant greater freedom.

‘Just be careful, Eve. We don’t need any problems with you. Not now.’

‘I’m cool,’ Eve replied. Mother and daughter understood each other. Josh gave her little trouble. His life revolved around basketball and school. She wondered how she could be so negative toward males and still love her son.

But success bred its own problems and Barbara discovered the meaning of cash flow. She had agreed in the separation agreement not to use any household money for her business. It hadn’t made much sense, but she did get her suppliers, the various food markets and wholesalers, to bill her with separate invoices, as Thurmont had instructed.

She wasn’t the best bookkeeper in the world, but she reassured herself that all she had to do was add up the invoices for the purchases, then add up the bills to her customers, and the difference would be, she hoped, profit. She made simultaneous shocking discoveries. Her customers paid her very slowly and since she was so anxious for the business, she did not press them. But her suppliers demanded payment at shorter intervals. To keep herself afloat, she had borrowed from the household money.

‘Nobody taught me anything about business, Thurmont,’ she protested when he rebuked her.

‘Tell that to the man you buy your meat from.’

‘I did.’

‘And?’

‘He cut me off.’ The memory fueled her indignation. ‘If I hadn’t been a woman, things would have been different. He had no confidence. I showed him my bills to customers. He sneered at me. "That’s your problem, lady," he said. It was the "lady" that galled me and I threw a handful of chopped meat at him.’

‘That was good business.’

‘It gets worse.’ She felt the anger solidify into a hard ball in her stomach. ‘He told me that women shouldn’t be in business. They’re too emotional. Then he nearly struck me with his cleaver.’ She hesitated. ‘I don’t quite mean that. He swung his cleaver hard into the wooden counter. But I knew what he meant. He wished it were me. The bastard.’

‘You went too fast,’ Thurmont told her. ‘Your business isn’t really relevant to the case. In fact, your success hurts the case.’

‘I’m sorry.’ She was sarcastic.

‘What about the other household bills?’ he asked.

‘I’m behind on the gas bill, the electric bill, and the telephone bill. Two months each. They’re getting a little persnickety, but they apparently haven’t talked to Oliver yet.’ She looked at him and frowned. ‘Why don’t you lend me a few thousand? You’ll get it back in spades.’

‘He’s already behind three months with me.’

‘I’ve seen your bills, Thurmont. He sends me notes with Xerox copies attached.’

‘I sell time, Barbara. Every time you come up here for one of your sessions, it costs. Two hundred an hour. It works by a clock. You knew that from the beginning. I keep telling you not to keep running up here every time you’ve got a problem.’

‘You’re supposed to keep me out of trouble.’

‘I’m a divorce lawyer, not a business consultant. I keep telling you to get payment on delivery.’

That doesn’t help me now.’

She went to a bank to borrow money. The loan officer was a woman and that made Barbara immediately hopeful.

‘All I need is five thousand. No big deal.’ She explained her business problems and her current domestic difficulties.

‘What sort of collateral have you?’ the loan officer asked pleasantly. She was an intense woman who chainsmoked.

‘Collateral?’ She had only a vague idea of what the term meant.

‘Like stock, bonds. Your house.’

‘My house? We own it jointly. That’s why we’re having difficulties. You see I’m asking for – ’ She interrupted herself, feeling foolish. She seemed to be deliberately looking for allies. But she could see from the woman’s indifferent expression that she had not been able to transfer her outrage.

‘It’s the litigation that scares us,’ the loan officer explained.

‘I thought they had changed the laws to give women a break.’

‘They have… but you see—’

‘That’s bullshit,’ she said, getting up and walking out. She wondered if the loan officer also felt she was too emotional. Oliver, that bastard, she thought, has crippled me. The idea only made her more determined and she tried two other banks. One loan officer, a man, offered to take her out for a drink.

‘You mean if you fuck me, I’ll get the money,’ she said, raising her voice so that others within earshot might hear her. She returned home shaking, mortified. Then she called up her customers and pleaded for the money. Her heart was in her mouth and her voice ragged and tremulous.

‘We get paid slowly, too,’ the Thai ambassador’s wife told her indignantly. ‘It takes a long time from overseas. You must understand that, dear.’

She swallowed hard and tamped down her anger to avoid a confrontation. It wasn’t at all like what she’d thought it would be. She worked so hard to make her products perfect, artistic creations, something of which she could be proud. She hadn’t expected such indifference when it came to payment.

At night, she had imaginary conversations with Oliver.

‘I told you it was a jungle out there,’ Oliver confirmed in her imagination. ‘Dog eat dog. I tried to protect you from that.’

‘You should have tried to teach me how to protect myself.’

‘That wouldn’t have been manly. You agreed to love, honor, and obey. That meant to oblige me sexually, take my advice, and give me none of your lip.’ His voice seemed to come from a wind tunnel.

‘But it’s wrong to keep someone locked up.’

She had deliberately avoided taking Valium for months. High on life, she had told herself, but the business problems began to crowd in on her. Soon the kids would be off to camp, she reasoned, and she might be able to scrimp and get back on her feet financially without Oliver’s finding out. If only he would get the hell out of the house. His presence galled her. It was unfair. Wrong. She admitted to herself that she would have been perfectly content had he been boiled alive in the sauna. She wouldn’t have given it a second thought.

Then Thurmont called her.

‘He’s found out about the overdue utility bills. He’s fuming. Goldstein was leering through the phone.’

‘Then we’ve simply got to ask Oliver for more. It’s simply not enough. I never had trouble before this.’

‘He cheerfully paid everything, Barbara. Remember, this is a divorce action. And there’s a written agreement. The case doesn’t come up for a few more months. If you get yourself more into the hole, you may be forced to compromise.’

‘Never,’ she said. She paused, then looked into the mouthpiece of the phone. ‘Are you charging me for this call?’

‘Of course.’

‘Then bug off.’

She spent a great deal of time now holed up in her room. It began to get warm, and she opened the windows. Before, she would not have thought twice about turning on the air conditioner. Now she resisted, concerned about the utility bills. Mostly she brooded about her former self, that stupid little doll baby willing to sacrifice herself, everything, for some silly, girlish romantic notion.

‘For you, Oliver,’ she had said, ‘I’ll do anything. Anything.’ He had offered her the same assurance, but it didn’t mean the same thing. She remembered how his every utterance was pregnant with wisdom. She had idolized him, worshiped him, remembering how she would watch his sleeping face in the quickening light of morning, kiss his fluttering eyelids, his puffed sweet lips, and when he held her in his arms, she knew that the world had really stopped just for her, just for that moment. In her mind, she heard bells now, warning bells, Are bells, ominous clanging, banging bells pealing for her lost innocence. They toll for you, Barbara, you dumb little snit, falling for that line. She blamed her parents. She blamed her friends. She blamed the movies, the songs of eternal love, the romantic lies. Sentimental bondage. Love lies.

One night she could not resist and took two Valium, expecting oblivion and relief from her racing thoughts. It didn’t happen. She twisted and turned. She took a hot shower. Then an icy shower. Nothing helped. She felt agitated beyond her ability to control herself. Her heart pounded. She sweated alternately hot and cold. The drug’s reaction confused her.

Terrors magnified in her mind. She felt she was drowning, choking. She could not sit in one place. She went downstairs and sat in the library. The Staffordshire figures seemed to come to life, moving, dancing, mocking her with their cobalt eyes. Like Oliver’s. Her hands shook and she opened the armoire and took a long, burning swallow from the bottle. It made her worse.

She went upstairs and changed into her jeans, then went outside. It was late May and warm and she walked through the quiet Kalorama streets, turned left on Connecticut Avenue, then walked as fast as she could. Sometimes she jogged for a few blocks. She could not stop herself. Once a policeman stopped his squad car and called out to her.

‘It’s too late for jogging, lady.’

‘Bug off. It’s a free country.’

‘It’s your ass,’ she heard him say.

The sweat poured out of her body and she was surprised to see that she had reached Chevy Chase Circle. She sat on a bench in the middle of the circle, watching occasional cars speed around it. The circling images triggered a thought. Then another. And another. Finally, a revelation. She crossed the circle and ran to a public phone and dialed Thurmont’s number, hearing his sleep-fogged, panicked voice.

‘He did something to the Valium,’ she shouted into the phone. ‘I know he did something. That dirty bastard.’

Thurmont seemed confused, but her mind was clearing.

‘He substituted something else for the Valium. It created the opposite effect. I was all strung out. I’m getting better.’

‘Where are you?’

‘Near Chevy Chase Circle.’

‘Don’t do anything stupid, Barbara.’

‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘I will never do anything stupid again.’