Do This For Me Page 9

  “Of course you can. And you can excel.” I gave up on the drawer and opened a cupboard. “But it won’t be easy. You’ll face a lot of obstacles. People who think you aren’t good enough. You’ll have to find a way to deal with the pressure.”

  “I thought science was fun,” she said. “This doesn’t sound like fun.”

  “It’s not only science. It’s almost every field. Unfair as it is, Della, men still rule the world. If you want to succeed, you’re going to have to work harder than they do.”

  Sarah ended her call. “What an ordeal. But he’ll call me when he gets in.” She yawned and scrolled through her texts.

  “You can do this,” I told Della. “You just have to drown out the distractions. Toughen up. Never let them see you cry.”

  “But,” Della looked troubled, “I cry all the time.”

  “That needs to stop,” I said.

  Sarah looked up from her phone. “What are you two talking about?”

  Della’s eyes were round and wounded. “Auntie Raney says I can’t cry anymore. And she made science sound awful!”

  “Wait,” I said. “That’s not what I—”

  Too late. Sarah had gone full mama grizzly.

  “What the hell’s wrong with you?”

  “I was just saying—”

  “Come here, baby.” Sarah held out her arms, and Della slipped into them. “You can cry whenever you want. And science is great! Remember chemistry camp? You had so much fun!”

  Mercer finished eating, and the kids wandered off to the playroom. I cleared the dishes. I could feel Sarah’s eyes on me. At last, she spoke.

  “Did my daughter really deserve one of your psycho pep talks at four in the morning?”

  “She needs to know what it’s like out there, Sarah.”

  “She’s eight, Raney. I think we have a little time before we have to welcome her into the wonderful world of gender inequality.”

  Eight. Della was eight.

  Maybe I should have dialed it back.

  “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking.” I started wiping down the counter.

  “Can you please stop cleaning? You’re making me crazy.”

  “I can’t sit around doing nothing!”

  She softened. “That’s what most people do at the ass crack of dawn, honey. We ease into the day.”

  That sounded like useful information. But I had too much energy to put it into practice. I pushed aside a collection of bottles and tins to clean underneath. I picked one up, and it gave off a spicy scent.

  I turned to her, scandalized. “You keep marijuana in the kitchen?”

  “Calm down, J. Edgar. It’s chai.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You seriously don’t know what chai is?” Sarah hauled herself out of her chair. “I’ll make some. I’m about to fall into a coma just watching you.”

  She made chai. (It’s a kind of tea. And delicious.) She led me into the sunroom, pushed me into a chair and gave me a mug. She pulled up an ottoman and sat down.

  “Now,” she said. “Tell me everything.”

  I did. And she was empathetic and outraged and loving, exactly as I knew she’d be.

  Until I got to the part about how I’d reacted.

  “Wait,” she said. “That was you?”

  “I lost my temper.”

  “I thought he had a breakdown or something. Holy shit. That was you?”

  “Do you think I overdid it?”

  “Hell no! He’s lucky you stopped short of castration. Although he might have preferred that, careerwise. Wow.” She shook her head in wonder. “You took him down, Raney. I’m proud of you. Terrified, but proud. What did you do to the woman?”

  “Nothing.”

  “I’m surprised she’s not in witness protection.” Sarah stood up, waggling her empty mug. “This is doing nothing for me.”

  Back in the kitchen, she started futzing with the espresso maker. “She’s irrelevant,” I said. “Aaron is the one who broke a promise to me. She didn’t owe me any duty not to sleep with my husband.”

  “That’s a very legalistic way of looking at it.”

  “I am a lawyer, after all.”

  “So am I, but remember when I found out about Tad and his little dog walker? She was a homewrecker. She’d stolen something that belonged to me. I eventually realized I didn’t want what she’d taken, but at first?” Sarah knocked back her espresso. “Hoo boy.”

  She rinsed our tea mugs and set them on the rack. “Anyway, therapy is a great idea. You should do more. You need one of those whatchamacallits, from a car dealership. A twenty-point inspection. When was the last time you had a physical? I’ll give you the name of my internist.”

  Thanks to Norton, I knew the name of Sarah’s internist, and a whole lot more. I wasn’t letting that guy within a mile of my internal organs.

  “Aaron said we have problems. Can you believe that?”

  “Everybody has problems. That’s no excuse.” She began preparing another espresso. “How was the sex?”

  “Fine,” I said. “Good.”

  “Still twice a week?” I nodded. “That’s impressive.”

  “Right? It couldn’t have been the sex.”

  So what was it? Aaron and I were solid. We were sound. We were the ones everyone said would last.

  I simply didn’t understand.

  “When you told me,” Sarah said, “I was blown away. I thought, Aaron? He’s so not that kind of guy. But that’s habit talking. Every guy is that kind of guy—or could be, given the opportunity.”

  “I’m so angry,” I said. “I can’t seem to control it.”

  She sipped her new espresso. “Of course you can’t. You’re like a car that’s been sitting in the garage for a while. The first time you start it up, the engine is going to flood or backfire or whatever.”

  “What’s with the automotive metaphors today?”

  “Remember that safety engineer I went out with last week? He was a real chatterbox in bed.”

  “I thought I was done,” I said.

  “Done?”

  “With that part of my life. Romance, love, companionship—I thought it was all wrapped up. Now I find out that all along, I should have been sitting on the porch of my cabin, shotgun across my lap, ready to defend against all comers.”

  Sarah reached over and rubbed my arm. “You’re never done, honey. Nobody tells you that, but it’s true. You’re never done.”

  NINE

  “You’re a difficult man to get ahold of,” I told Doctor Bogard.

  “You’re a difficult woman to get away from,” he replied.

  Fair enough. I’d gotten the call from Doctor Feuerstein’s receptionist at ten, saying Bogard would take me on. I immediately phoned his office. His receptionist said he could see me in six weeks. I said that wasn’t going to work for me. She said it was the best she could do. I kept talking. I didn’t try to intimidate or hassle her. That never works with receptionists—they’re too powerful. Instead, I coaxed and flattered. I referenced my Brooklyn roots. I might have let a ghost of the old accent creep in.

  Little by little, Tilda softened.

  She said she was sorry but…

  I kept talking.

  She said she wished she could…

  I kept talking.

  She said she’d call me back.

  At one o’clock, I was sitting across from the great man himself.

  I’d never met anyone who looked so much like a lizard. Bogard had a bald, palely freckled head. A wide, lipless mouth. Long fingers with broad tips. He was a slim little lizard man, dressed in a gray suit, sitting neatly in a gray chair.

  “What can I do for you, Ms. Moore?”

  “My husband cheated on me, Doctor Bogard.”

  He nodded
slowly, almost rhythmically. “And how does that make you feel?”

  This struck me as somewhat clichéd, coming from “Manhattan’s best.” I said, “I’m sad, obviously. And angry. Very angry.”

  “You’re here to work through those emotions,” he suggested.

  “No. I’m here to find out why he did it.”

  “You’re asking me?” His nearly invisible eyebrows rose. “I don’t know the guy.”

  We were facing each other in matching gray chairs, atop a tufted gray rug. I realized I was clutching the armrests. I released them.

  “Here’s the thing, Doctor Bogard. I know myself. Talking about my emotions won’t help me. I keep them locked up most of the time.”

  “Locked up?”

  “In an imaginary box. A treasure chest, actually.”

  “That’s interesting,” he said.

  “No it isn’t. My point is, talking, unpacking, delving, working through, processing—whatever mumbo-jumbo psychotherapeutic term you want to use? That’s not how I function. What helps me is information. Clarity. Thus my plan.”

  “Sorry…plan?”

  “For understanding why Aaron betrayed me. For getting rid of him.”

  The doctor pressed his fingertips together, scrutinizing me over the little triangle they made. “Getting rid of him—that’s the goal?”

  “Yes. And to do that, I have to know why he cheated.”

  “So ask him.”

  “I will. But maybe he doesn’t know why he did it. Maybe he was subconsciously motivated. That’s why I’m looking for a broader perspective. You don’t know my husband, Doctor, but you know people.”

  “You want me to tell you why people cheat? You need somebody else for that. A priest, maybe. A talk-show host. A country-western singer. I can’t talk to you about people in general. I can only talk to you about you.”

  This was disappointing. “So you can’t help me?”

  “Maybe, maybe not. Tell me about your marriage.”

  “We got along, Doctor. We talked. We enjoyed each other’s company. We valued each other’s opinions and respected each other’s minds.” I hesitated, thinking. “There are troubled marriages out there, right? The ones that are obviously rocky. Then there are the ones that seem fine on the outside, but are waiting for one problem, one little match that will blow the whole thing sky high. My marriage wasn’t either of those. Sure, we bickered from time to time, we sniped. But we always worked it out. We didn’t…go off and sleep with other people.”

  “Or so you thought,” he said.

  By this point I’d dismissed Bogard, dismissed the whole enterprise. But the challenge in his tone made me pause.

  “You’re coming in here, telling me how you work, what you need,” he observed. “Here’s what I think. You didn’t know your husband, Ms. Moore. Not entirely. What makes you so certain you know yourself?”

  That set me back a little. “Touché.”

  “My advice?” Bogard continued. “Forget about what you think you need to get through this. Forget about people in general. Let’s find out if there are things about you that you aren’t aware of—things that might lead to the clarity you seek. How does that sound?”

  * * *

  —

  We spent the rest of the hour on my childhood, work, the girls. I walked out feeling better than I had since Monday morning. Bogard hadn’t given me any exercises, but maybe he’d have insights. Or lead me to epiphanies. Who doesn’t love a good epiphany?

  I’d just gotten back to the office when Aaron called. “Do you have a minute?” he asked.

  I woke up my computer. “Not really.”

  “How are you?”

  “Superb. Yourself?”

  “Raney, talk to me. Tell me how you’re feeling.”

  “Not your concern anymore, Aaron.”

  “It will always be my concern.”

  “You have a funny way of showing it.”

  We went back and forth like that for a while. It soon became clear that my well-being was not the sole reason he’d called. The Committee for a Sustainable Climate had announced an investigation into his ties to conservative interest groups. Sponsors were pulling out of The Bug Doctor. The network was pressing him for answers.

  “I don’t want to get you involved,” he said, “but if you spoke to a few people, privately, and said, I don’t know, that you were playing a joke on me, and it got out of hand—”

  “You want me to lie for you.”

  “Yes!” he cried. “Yes, Raney. I want you to lie, in order to correct all the lies that got me into this mess!”

  I began deleting e-mails. “Why don’t you ask your girlfriend to help you? I hear she’s pretty good at lying.”

  “This is a nightmare,” he muttered.

  “Admit it, Aaron. You don’t want to get me involved because then people would know the truth about what you did. You wouldn’t be a leader of the scientific resistance anymore. You’d be just another man who couldn’t keep it in his pants.”

  “Believe it or not, Raney, I’m trying to protect you. Some of the things you did…you could get in real trouble.”

  “Yeah? Sounds like I’d better get a lawyer.” I hung up.

  I took a few deep breaths, feeling my fury subside. Then I focused on the issue at hand. Who had been the most enthusiastic of my aiders and abettors on Monday?

  I pressed the intercom. “Get me Cameron.”

  A few minutes later, he strode in, took a seat, smoothed his tie and bent his long torso toward me, the picture of paralegalistic attentiveness.

  “I have a project for you,” I said.

  He whipped out his phone. “Lay it on me, Boss. Your command is my wish.”

  “I want you to learn everything you can about infidelity.”

  He typed, chewing his lower lip. Then he looked up. “Is that it?”

  “Do you need more?”

  “No, but as a research assignment, it’s somewhat…lacking in structure.”

  “I don’t want structure. I want comprehensiveness. Breadth and depth. Don’t be constrained by traditional resources. Consider science. Social science. History. Religion. Literature.” I paused. “Country-western music.”

  Cameron’s brow twitched, but he kept typing.

  “Bring me regular updates. You should come and go from this office as you please.”

  His narrow face grew crafty. “I might have a difficult time executing this task alongside my onerous paralegal workload.”

  “Consider yourself relieved of all other duties.”

  He bounced out of the room, shining with happiness. I was feeling better, too. Aaron’s infidelity was a puzzle, nothing more. Solve it, and I could move on.

  I heard Wally Fanucci yukking it up with Renfield in the outer office. He ambled through my doorway. “Moore!”

  “Fanucci!”

  “I heard about Aaron.” Wally flung his bulk onto the sofa. “Fucking rim job.”

  I didn’t know what that was, but he seemed to be expressing condolences. “Thanks.”

  “Seriously, Raney, I’m sorry. Heard you did a number on him, though. That must have felt good.”

  I turned from my computer and looked him up and down. “Wally. You’re a man.”

  “So they tell me.”

  “Give me some insight. Why did Aaron cheat?”

  He considered the question. “Best guess? He wanted to sleep with someone else.”

  “Thanks, genius.”

  “Hell, I don’t know, Raney! Obviously something was wrong.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  He stretched his arms along the back of the sofa. “Contrary to popular belief, most men don’t have affairs for the hell of it. They’re prompted by some crisis—midlife, existential, what have you. A long-s
tanding problem. A need that goes unfulfilled.”

  Problem. Aaron had said something about problems.

  But he was wrong.

  “Men have affairs all the time,” I pointed out.

  Wally readily assented. “We’re assholes. Still, we’re not without our reasons. They may not be valid reasons, but they do exist. Much as we may talk about it, and dream about it, we’re not going to go out and fuck another woman simply because we want to.”

  Our other suitemate, Jonathan Tate, stuck his sharp, excitable face through the door. “Great news! The Supreme Court agreed to hear our challenge to the Carter-Cyrulnik Act.”

  Wally surveyed him with genial scorn. “Fuck the Supreme Court, fuck Carter-Cyrulnik and fuck you, you fucking nerd. We’re talking about important shit in here, d’you mind?”

  “My marriage,” I explained.

  Jonathan winced. He’d heard the news, too. “I’m so sorry, Raney. Is there anything we can do?”

  “Did you really say you owned all the staples in the building?” Wally asked.

  I sighed. “I was under duress, okay?”

  “The Twitter thing.” Jonathan shook his head admiringly. “That was inspired.”

  “You want to do something for me? Help me figure out why Aaron was unfaithful.”

  Jonathan lounged against the wall. He considered me through his round spectacles. Finally, he said, “I suspect it’s because you’re a massive ball breaker.”

  “What?”

  “Massive, relentless and highly effective,” he added.

  “I am not!”

  “True,” Wally conceded. “You occasionally relent.”

  “You guys don’t know me the way Aaron does. I’m a loving and supportive wife. I listen to his troubles. I worry about him. We have sex all the time.”

  “Oh, God!” Jonathan clutched his head. “I didn’t need to know that.”

  Neither did Wally, apparently. “As the youth say: TMI, Moore. TMI.”

  “Whatever. Bottom line? I’m not a…what you called me. What else?”

  Jonathan removed his glasses. Polishing them on his tie, he mulled over the question.

  “You’ve let yourself go a little bit,” he said.

  Wally whistled. “Brave man right here.”