10 - TIME ENOUGH
Six months later
Lacey
I slid into the chair across from her, coat still on, purse in my lap. She looked up from her phone, did the quick scan she had been doing since medical school, and set the phone face-down.
"You look tired," she said.
"I am tired." I ordered black coffee and stared at the menu while the server walked away, even though I had ordered the same thing here every Friday for three years. "He won't sign, Janice."
She went still. "What do you mean, he won't sign?"
"I mean the papers have been sitting with his attorney for eleven weeks.
" I heard my own voice go flat and procedural, the voice I use for bad results.
"He's asking for maintenance. Spousal support.
He says he supported my career for fifteen years, that he gave up his own advancement so I could do my fellowship, and that he's entitled to a portion of my income going forward. "
Janice put her latte down very carefully, as if she really wanted to throw it.
"He emptied your accounts," she said.
"Yes."
"He took every dollar you had, ran your cards to the ceiling, drew down the line of credit on your own house, and left you over two hundred thousand dollars in the hole."
"Yes."
"And now he wants alimony." She said it slowly, like she was reading it off a chart and checking the units. "From you."
"His lawyer's position is that the money was marital property and his to move.
" I turned the mug. "My lawyer says he's probably right about that part.
The rest of it's a negotiating tactic. He's making it expensive to get rid of him.
Every month he doesn't sign is another month I pay someone six hundred dollars an hour to explain to me why I can't do anything about it. "
"Lacey." Her voice had changed. "What has he actually said to you?"
I hadn't wanted to get to this part. She waited me out, as she does.
"He called last week. After the mediation fell apart.
" I looked at the steam. "He said I'd never once made him feel like a man.
He said the money was the least I owed him for fifteen years of— He used the word tolerating.
Fifteen years of tolerating me." My thumb kept moving on the handle of the mug.
"He said no one was ever going to want what's left, and that I should take the deal while a man was still willing to be in a room with me. "
The café went on around us, the hiss of the espresso machine, someone laughing too loud near the door.
Janice's hand had closed around her glass hard enough that her knuckles had gone pale.
"I want you to listen to me," she said. "That man cleaned you out while you were at work saving children, and he is now shaking you down for the privilege of leaving, and he is telling you nobody will want you, because a man who has taken everything still needs to take the last thing.
" She leaned in. "It's a con, Lacey. Start to finish.
He's not confused. He's not unwell. He's not going through something.
He picked your pocket and he's holding the door hostage and he is telling you it's your fault so you'll pay to make it stop. "
"I know."
"Do you?" She let it sit. "Because you keep saying his position and my lawyer says. You're charting him."
I didn't have an answer.
"He shook my hand," I said. "At the last mediation.
When we broke for lunch. He shook my hand like we'd concluded a piece of business.
" I looked up at her. "And I sat there afterward with a folder in my lap thinking I don't think I'll ever be free of him at this rate, and I know that's the point. It's just strange."
Janice reached across and ran her thumb slowly along the inside of my wrist before settling her hand over mine.
"You don't have to do anything until you're ready," she said. "But six months is a long time to be alone."
"I know." The server refilled my coffee and I stared at the steam. "I keep thinking about what you said that day. Before everything. About exploring, having fun, living differently." I shook my head. "I told you I wanted that. And now the thought just sits there and I can't make myself pick it up."
Janice leaned forward, elbows on the table. I knew the posture. Done being gentle.
"It has been six months, Lacey, of being a good ex-wife.
The good doctor. The good girl who holds it together and doesn't make waves and goes home to an empty house every night and calls it healing.
" She leveled her gaze at me. "You don't have to look for love.
You don't have to look for anything serious.
Look for Mr. Right Now. Look for fun. For once in all your thirty-five years of being responsible and careful and good, let yourself have a good time.
" She sat back. "You're gorgeous, you're successful, you're free.
That is not nothing, Lacey. That is everything. "
The words landed one at a time. "I'm not free. He won't let me be free. And I'm not successful, I'm in debt." I turned the mug slowly in my hands. "Most days I'm not sure I'm still in here. Like whoever I used to be packed up and left when Brad did, and I'm walking around in her coat."
"You're not gone," Janice said, her voice dropping, her eyes steady. "You're standing in the dark. That's different. The dark isn't permanent."
A man passed the table on his way to the bar, broad-shouldered, dark jacket, nothing remarkable about him.
I reached for my coffee.
Janice's eyes followed mine to the bar and back, and the slow delighted smile appeared.
"Lacey Anne Bonds," she said. "Did you just check out that man's ass?"
"I was looking at the bar."
"You were looking at what was walking to the bar."
"I was." I stopped. There was no version of this I was winning. "My hormones are apparently no longer accepting my terms and conditions."
Janice pressed both hands flat on the table.
"Six months of celibacy, and a terrible marriage before that.
" She shook her head slowly, with the gravity of a doctor delivering a diagnosis.
"Honey, your hormones aren't out of control.
They staged a coup. There's a difference.
" She picked up her latte. "Also, he had a great ass. I'm just saying."
I laughed despite myself. "Can we please talk about something else?"
"Absolutely not," she said pleasantly.
I laughed again, shorter, and then it faded.
Janice watched me, and I watched her watch me, and after a moment she set her latte down and the teasing went out of her eyes.
"Talk to me," she said.
"I don't even know where I would start," I admitted.
"I went from my father’s house to college to Brad.
I don't know how to flirt. I don't know what people expect now, what the rules are, whether there even are rules.
I don't know if I can let someone touch me without half my brain lighting up with everything I'm supposed to feel bad about.
" I stopped. That was more than I meant to say.
Janice tilted her head. "What are you really scared of? Not the surface things. The real one."
I held the mug tighter. The real one.
"That I won't feel anything," I said finally.
"That someone will look at me and want me and I'll just be numb.
Whatever switch gets flipped in normal people got disconnected in me somewhere along the way.
And I won't know until I'm standing in the middle of it, and then I'll know for certain, and that will be worse than not knowing.
" I looked down at my coffee. "Brad said there was something missing in me.
When he left. He said it like it explained everything. "
Janice was quiet for exactly long enough.
"He said that," she repeated, very evenly, "while he was fucking two of his students on your couch. And then he took your money. And now he wants more of it."
"I know."
"That man," she said, "has the self-awareness of a decorative gourd."
I laughed, a real one, surprised out of me. It felt strange in my chest, like a muscle I had forgotten I had.
"You are not numb," Janice said, leaning in again. "There is nothing missing in you. You are a thirty-five-year-old woman who got told no, and that's unreasonable enough times that you stopped asking. Those are different things." She held my gaze and did not let it go.
"You didn't lose your appetite. You just stopped being fed."