Chapter 15 – Amber
Chapter Fifteen
AMBER
F ive days later, back in the “real” world, we finally agree on a statement about our separation. We’ve already filed, so there’s no point in hoping that nobody will notice—eventually, they will. The statement was drafted up by Mason with our input, and it’s short and simple.
“After more than two decades together, Jamestech CEO Elijah James and his wife Amber have agreed to part ways,” it reads. “The decision has been made jointly and amicably and is grounded in mutual love and respect. Amber and Elijah remain close friends and will continue to support each other as they enter the next stage of their lives.”
Then there’s some extra flimflam about respecting our privacy, which we all know in the age of instant social media and online news is unlikely to happen. Mason is going to post it on the company website tomorrow morning, and it won’t take long to spread after that.
It feels odd, knowing those words will be out there. That it will all become real. Journalists will contact me for comment, and acquaintances will be surprised. Our marriage will become part of the rumor mill. People will gossip about us over lunch, wondering what went wrong for the apparently perfect Mr. and Mrs. James. What we don’t provide in fact, they will supply in fiction. And by the end of the week, Elijah will probably be having an affair with his secretary, I will have discovered God and joined a convent, and both of us will have “possibly” been spotted at sex clubs with a dominatrix.
Tongues will wag so hard they might fall off. I know all of this because I’ve been guilty of doing it myself. Never maliciously, I hope, and never in a way intended to spread harm, but I’ve gossiped over cocktails. I’ve reduced other people’s lives to entertainment. I’m sure most people have.
Interest in our separation will fade, though, because that’s the way these things work. As long as we remain quiet and dignified, people will soon get bored of us and the fuss will die down.
I am surprised at how much pain I feel. After the other night, part of me wondered if things would change course. If either of us would have second thoughts. Obviously, we didn’t, and while I might know that’s for the best, this feels awful. I don’t give a damn about the gossip, but this is a step closer to the end of my marriage, to the end of something I once thought was sacred.
I hit reply all to the email chain I’m part of—me, Elijah, Mason, and Drake—and confirm that I’m happy to go ahead. Happy, of course, is not really the right word. I’m terrified. Uncertain and anxious. Although I instigated this turn of events, it still hurts. I keep the tone of my response polite and businesslike, but inside I am unbearably sad.
Our strange and magical interlude in Elijah’s hotel room definitely showed that there is still something between us, and we’ve exchanged a few sexy messages since. That’s certainly been fun and exciting, but clearly neither of us feels it’s enough to sustain a whole marriage.
Drake contacted me separately to ask if I want to delay the statement, assuring me that there’s no rush at all. Bless his heart, he’s trying to give us the opportunity to rethink. But he would have asked Elijah first, and my husband obviously didn’t draw the proceedings to a halt.
Yes, there is still something between us, but that’s only natural after so long together. Maybe it’s simply a leftover, a reminder of what once was. Whatever it is, it’s not enough to reverse all the damage we’ve done to each other.
I don’t quite understand how one version of us is calmly discussing logistics with Drake, and another version of us is using burner phones to carry on our illicit “affair.” Then again, there’s a hell of a lot that I don’t understand about the world.
After I’ve approved the release, I message Martha and ask if she wants to meet up for drinks soon. I don’t really want to, but the news will be out tomorrow, and she’s the closest thing I have to a friend in Elijah’s and my shared world. She’ll have questions, and I owe her after abandoning her to go fuck my husband. Interestingly, now that I think about it, we both studiously avoided talking about our men during our night out.
That’s not unusual—we’re not exactly soul sisters—but Freddie’s name did not pass her lips even once, and I didn’t discuss anything about my own marriage. I know why I stayed quiet, but she was equally close-mouthed.
Freddie is one of the toughest divorce lawyers in the country. He has a reputation for ruthlessly championing his clients and skewering his victims on their behalf, but he is, ironically, also a lousy husband. His constant cheating is well-known to our entire social circle, and I don’t know how Martha tolerates it. I guess we all make compromises in life. At least Elijah didn’t do that to me. He cheated with his work, with his family, but never another woman.
One day, though, he will meet someone else. That is what I want for him—at least it’s what I told him, and myself, that I wanted. But I’m realizing how devastated I will be when it happens.
Shit, my life is a mess. I go with the flow of that thought and get another crappy task done—I call my parents to warn them that the news is breaking tomorrow. When I told them about the split, predictably enough, their only concern was how much I’d be taking away with me financially. The whole conversation was full of dire warnings, stories about women who were left homeless and missing a kidney after brutal divorces. There was pretty much zero concern for my wellbeing, and in my mom’s case, a cynical tone of voice implied she expected this. She even uttered the immortal words, “Well, at least there aren’t any children to make it more difficult.”
I long ago came to terms with the fact that my parents are emotionally incompetent, but sometimes I still find myself hoping for their support, and it’s a painful shock when I realize yet again that not only is it not available, but it never was. Granny Lucille makes up for both of them though.
It’s midafternoon now, and I’m at home alone. I’ve paused all of my social engagements for the foreseeable future and have way too much time on my hands. Elijah has been in Seoul for work, and I’ve been trying to keep busy and tick off some of the things on my list. I thought “learn a new skill” would be a fairly easy item to start with. However, I’ve already taken up crochet, jewelry design, painting, and needlepoint. Quickly, I realized I neither enjoy nor have the talent for any of them.
So instead, I organized the contents of my entire closet and donated an embarrassingly large pile of barely worn designer clothes to charity. I’ve also organized every other closet in the house—except for Elijah’s. It didn’t feel right to go through his things.
I need a job, a purpose of some kind, or I’ll go mad. I need to find something that ignites my passion or at least does some good in the world. Melanie, Nathan’s wife, still works as a veterinary nurse, and Amelia is still Drake’s secretary. That makes me feel even worse. They both have billionaire partners and managed to keep their own identities. It is a bit different for them, though—they were already in their thirties when they met their James boys. I was only nineteen. I grew up with mine, molded my life around him. It’s daunting, this whole unraveling, but as Granny Lucille said, it’s never too late to change.
I sit down with my laptop and look up examples of résumés on employment websites. I am ashamed to say that I have never needed to write one. Elijah proposed to me when I was still in college. I didn’t possess any driving ambition to build a corporate career, but I did have some grand ideas about changing the world. Maybe working for nonprofits or setting up my own charity. But then, marrying Elijah presented me with a new role—being the perfect corporate wife and mom. The next Verona James. And it was a role that I wanted. One I truly relished for a short time. I made it my own, and while I didn’t do any of the changing the world stuff I envisaged, I did make a difference.
There are plenty of people who look down on society wives and their charity work, but I took it seriously. I chose to make a difference the best way I knew while maintaining my most important role as Mrs. Elijah James. Perhaps it was an old-fashioned idea, too old-fashioned for a woman like me. But I adored Elijah and wanted nothing more than to build our world together. I was happy to simply be a wife and a mother, to play my part that way. As it turned out, I wasn’t great at the former, and I was never given the opportunity to try out the latter.
I browse the advice on the website I’m currently on and pull a face. Even the made-up people populating the résumé templates seem a lot more impressive than me. I’m sure I could get some dreadful figurehead job just because of who I am—who I was?—but I don’t want that. I want something real. My life from now on, I have promised myself, will be real.
My own résumé is pretty thin, so I decide to explore the “getting back into the workplace” suggestion by doing some voluntary work. Except in my case, it’s getting in, not getting back in. It makes sense. Volunteering will give me the chance to gain experience and find out what I might want to do in the next stage of my life, as Mason put it. I start to scout out some opportunities but quickly find that filling out a résumé is harder than it seems. How do I succinctly say what it is I have to offer?
I do have a little hands-on work experience from the soup kitchen I volunteer for every Thanksgiving and all the dinners, auctions, and galas I organized. Plus, I’ve literally raised millions of dollars for charity and boosted the funds of hundreds of different causes, from hospitals to theaters to retired circus folk. But nearly all of that has been done at a distance. Sure, I cajoled and convinced and used my position of influence to make all of those events a success, but I rarely got involved in the grassroots work. I rarely contributed in any way other than financial and as a representative of the James family. The vulnerability required to offer myself up like that on a regular basis was outside my wheelhouse and probably still is, but I’m done keeping walls up between me and the rest of the world.
I’m not an idiot—I’m aware that most charities would prefer a nice big check to someone like me turning up on their doorstep. I mean, what use am I, really? I have no tangible or practical skills. I can’t build a wall or tend a garden, fix a broken toilet or drive a bus. I’m a society wife who has good contacts and enjoys organizing. Or at least, that’s what I have been up until now. It’s time to find out what I will be next.
Granny Lucille knew what she was doing when she bought me that notebook and told me to make my lists. It’s helped, even if only by showing me what I don’t want to do. I carry it with me everywhere, and right now I turn to my “learn a new skill” list and grimace at all the things I’ve crossed off—and not because I learned them. Perhaps I should change it to simply “try new things.” I jot down “do something hands-on and make a difference” under the crossed-out needlepoint. Then I add in parentheses, “and stop feeling sorry for yourself.” I feel more determined as soon as I’ve done that. Like I now have to make it happen or I’ll be letting Lucille down.
When I turn back to my computer, I decide to register with a website that matches volunteers to roles in New York and soon realize that my initial self-assessment was completely incorrect. I have a whole plethora of skills that plenty of recruiters are looking for. I just need to figure out how to sell myself in a whole new way. It might take me a little time, but time is one thing I have plenty of.
If nothing else, it’s a distraction from the gnawing sadness that’s eating away at me. This is a time of transition, and it’s natural to feel upset, but I can’t sit around like this forever. There needs to be more to my life than missing Elijah.
I’m still looking online when our cleaner arrives. Vicky stands before me with her feather duster, obviously surprised to find me at home. She really is a great lady. A brunette in her mid-thirties, she always has a smile on her face and a song on her lips despite the challenges that life has thrown at her. “Oh! Mrs. J,” she says. “What are you doing here?”
“I live here, Vicky,” I reply, grinning so she knows I’m joking.
“Oh yeah. I forgot,” she jokes back. “How was your trip?”
“It was really good, thanks for asking. How are things with you and the family?”
She chats away for a few minutes, updating me on the state of affairs in Vicky-land, and I realize that I will miss her. I’m the one who manages coordinating and communicating with the team of people who work for us, and I hope I have been a fair and supportive employer. I very much enjoy the friendly relationships I’ve fostered with everyone. Who knows? As people keep warning me, divorces can turn nasty. I might end up knocking on Vicky or Dionne’s door one night asking for a spot on their couch.
In all seriousness, I really don’t want to stay in this house, and that will eventually mean change for my staff. That gets added to my mental list of things to do—make sure they are treated well. Elijah is a good man who would never knowingly screw a hardworking person over, but it also might not occur to him to think about the housekeeper, the cleaner, or Stuey, the guy who handles general maintenance. I’ll talk to him about it. That and a million other little details need to be ironed out. Huh. Ironing. Another thing I suck at. My life skills are seriously subpar.
“You all right there, Mrs. J?” Vicky asks. “You seem a little… out of whack.”
I have no clue how much she knows. Probably more than I’d imagine. Our staff has access to the intimate details of our lives. The separate bedrooms. The separate meals.
“I’ve been better, truthfully, Vicky, but that’s a story for another day. But I have been thinking about doing some volunteer work. Please sit, will you?”
She nods and takes the chair opposite me. When we do chat, it’s usually while she works. She’s an energetic soul who sees sitting still as a waste of her valuable time. “Don’t you already do enough, Mrs. J? I mean, all those committees you’re on, all those events you organize.”
“I’m thinking of something a bit more… practical. I’d like to meet different people. Get out of my comfort zone. Feel like I’m helping. I want to actually do something, you know?”
She frowns as she turns it over. I probably sound like a lunatic to her. My life must look so perfect, so carefree, with all its wealth and privilege. Even with the separate rooms, she must think I have it made while she zooms around, caring for her kids and working.
“Yeah, must be boring, mixing with those snooty women with the sticks up their butts. You never really seemed like that.”
I have to smile. It’s not the world’s greatest compliment, but I’ll take it.
“What did you have in mind?” she continues. “What are you into?”
“I’m not totally sure, but I’m open to ideas. I used to like ballet and trained in it for years. I enjoy wildlife, as long as it’s not too wild—I love watching the squirrels in the park. I, uh, I suppose I’m pretty interested in people? You know, in their stories?”
“You mean you’re nosy?” she says, giving me a cheeky wink. “In a good way. You listen to me ramble on, Mrs. J, and not all my clients even see me as a human being, so I really appreciate that. What about kids, you like them?”
“Is this the part where I say something like ‘yes, but I couldn’t eat a whole one’?”
She laughs, and I bite my lip as I think it over. I have raised money for children’s charities, but I have avoided spending much time with little ones. To start with, it was simply too hard to be around something I wanted so desperately and couldn’t have. Then, as my contemporaries and college friends started to have their own families, I struggled even more. It’s not something I’m proud of, but seeing them with their big pregnant tummies and then their beautiful babies was too much. I was jealous and resentful. It’s a big part of why I don’t have any genuine friendships these days—there was a natural divide. Their lives became about playdates and preschools and houses in the suburbs. Mine would never be that, and their journey into motherhood took them farther and farther away from me. Our shared experiences shrunk, and I started to find them unbearably smug. They weren’t, I see that now, but it was how I felt.
I nod at Vicky, who is waiting patiently for my response. “Yes. I do like kids.” It’s the truth. I adore them in all their noise and mess and joyous chaos. And maybe I’m ready now. More mature. Able to cope with being around them.
“Well, look, Mrs. J?—”
“Please, call me Amber.”
“Okay, so, Amber… There’s a community center near where we live in Queens that’s always looking for people. Not gonna lie, it’s not your usual type of place.”
“I’m not looking for my usual. Go on,” I say.
“LOJ isn’t the kind of organization that gets a lot of attention, you know? Nobody’s going to be planning fancy dinners to raise money for it any time soon, but it does a lot of good. The neighborhood ain’t the best, but that just means there are more people in need, if you know what I mean.”
I nod, interested. “Did you say LOJ? What does it stand for? And what kind of things do they do?”
“Yeah, it’s the Leslie Odom Jr. Community Center, and they offer a bit of everything. They hold coffee mornings, bingo, art classes, self-defense, coaching for various sports, and they run a community garden. You name it, they do it. A lot of the older folks rely on it for company, and it keeps the kids out of trouble. Some of them, anyway. They do their best. How do you feel about motorcycles?”
It’s an abrupt swerve, but I ride it out. “Never been on one. No plans to. Is that a deal-breaker?”
“Nah, just wanted to mention it because some of the guys who hang out there are bikers. Rough around the edges but good hearts.”
She stops mid-flow and shakes her head. “It… Look, Mrs. J—Amber… Now that I say it all out loud, I’m thinking it’s not the place for you. I don’t think Mr. J would like you being there either.”
I say nothing in response to that one. What Elijah would and wouldn’t like is irrelevant, but those are muddy waters I don’t want to dive into.
Vicky obviously thinks her world would be too tough for me. She probably thinks I’m soft and weak, and that her community would eat me alive. Like most people, though, she doesn’t really understand how tough I actually am. There are many different types of strength, and I’m not even remotely put off.
“But do you think I could be any use?” I ask her. “Not just… donate? I mean, it sounds great, and I will do that as well. Really, though, I’d like to find something more active.”
She raises her eyebrows and looks surprised. “Yeah, they could use you. The kids love dancing, and their teacher just left. Maybe you could you do that.”
“I don’t know. I’m not a teacher. I haven’t danced for years.”
“Well, there’s no harm in giving it a shot. There’s other stuff too. Hey, you could always do the cleaning.” She raises her feather duster in the air, and we both laugh at the idea.
Except, I wouldn’t mind. I might not have Vicky’s skills, but I’m guessing I could swing a mop if I needed to. “Speaking of which,” she says, “I really better be getting on. You want me to call the center, tell ’em you might be in touch?”
“Yes, please. And Vicky? Thank you. I really appreciate it.”
“No worries, Amber. Us girls have to stick together, right?”
I feel oddly uplifted by our conversation. She didn’t dismiss me or write me off as deluded, and her suggestion energized me. I should try this asking-for-help thing more often.
I have no idea if this LOJ Community Center idea will work. I’m not sure I’ve ever even been in Queens. I’ve certainly driven through it, but shamefully, my world has been mostly limited to Manhattan. Perhaps this is all part of my life rehab—expanding my horizons.
I listen to Vicky singing away in the background—“Bad Romance” by Lady Gaga—and glance at my phone. It is still only midafternoon. I’d go for a walk, but the weather is dreadful. November is behaving badly, with lower-than-normal temperatures and lots of violent wind and rain. I wonder how the squirrels are coping and spend a few moments of worrying for them. Should I take them some food, try to set up some kind of shelter? I remind myself that the squirrels have survived for many years without my interference, and they’ll undoubtedly be fine.
I wonder what Elijah’s doing right now. Is he as sad as I am about the breakup statement? Probably not. He doesn’t have the time to sit around being self-indulgent. He might have meetings, even though it’s the weekend. He could be with his family, playing with little Luke while Dalton hosts them all for a day-long brunch. I suspect he hasn’t even given it a second thought.
I hear a beeping noise, and at first I don’t recognize it.
When I remember where I’ve heard that sound before, I dig the burner phone from the pocket where I keep it hidden in my purse. Only one person has the number, and it’s as though I was thinking about him so hard I manifested him.
My heart rate speeds up, and I look at the screen.
I’m free tonight. Are you?