Sunburn: A Novel(47)
“Let me just ask you as a man—if your wife walked out on you, left you with your kid, what would make you want to divorce her?”
“If I met a new woman, maybe. I don’t know. Your husband probably thinks the divorce is going to cost him, so he’s in no hurry to get started. Remember, he believes you’re dead broke. Maybe if you tell him you want to marry again, then he’ll think he’ll have you over the barrel and he’ll tip his hand, reveal what he wants.”
She smiles. “That advice is worth more than almost anything you’ve done for me.”
“No charge,” he says, waving a hand. Mr. Magnanimous. “We’ve both benefited nicely from our relationship. It was a lucky day for me when Irving Lowenstein referred you.”
Another lie she has forgotten. Irving used to bitch about this guy all the time to Ditmars, which is part of the reason she chose him. Anyone on Irving’s bad side couldn’t be all bad. She had used Irving’s name, let Forshaw assume she was fond of nice old Mr. Lowenstein.
“I probably should have sent him a gift, come to think of it,” Forshaw continues. “When I ran into him last fall, he wouldn’t even let me buy him a Diet Coke.”
“You—ran into Irving? But you didn’t mention me, right?”
“Didn’t have to. All I did was say medical malpractice and he figured out it was you. Besides, it was a referral. He knew he had recommended me to you, right?”
Polly’s nostrils fill with a scorching smell, but it’s a memory, the pleasant smell of damp laundry as she presses Gregg’s shirts and watches television. “I’m Barry Forshaw and I’m for the law—and for YOU.” Irving. Irving Lowenstein. Why had she used his name when she called this stupid ambulance chaser? Because she wanted to sound connected, she wanted to be more than what she was, a dumb housewife, watching soap operas and listening to some guy’s Bawlmer accent bleating from her television set. Barry Forshaw is for the law—and for you. “How did you find me?” Barry Forshaw had asked her. All she had to say was television. But she thought that would mark her as naive, and to be naive was to be cheated, ruined, hurt. She said: “I heard from Irving Lowenstein that you were a fighter. We go way back, Irving and I.”
And now, because Baltimore is so goddamn small, Irving has learned she hired Forshaw. Gregg may not know she has money hidden away, but Irving does.
She manages to smile, shake Forshaw’s hand, walk out to Adam’s truck, but she’s shaking too hard to drive.
She hadn’t been completely stupid on that first visit, she thinks. It had been a test, dropping Irving’s name. She needed someone just a little crooked, someone who would agree to pursue a settlement and keep it a secret. Someone who would then bank her money until she was free of Gregg. Anyone who had done business with Irving had to be a little bent. So she had said “Irving Lowenstein” and, abracadabra, Barry had nodded, said he knew Irving, although mostly as an adversary. She remembers thinking that was good, that they were adversaries. He wasn’t part of their schemes, then.
The schemes—she straightens up behind the wheel of Adam’s truck, takes a deep breath. She’s not shaking anymore. There may be a way to solve the Irving problem. Irving’s not stupid. If Barry thanked him for referring Polly to him, he’ll have figured out she has money. And he’ll come after it. “I have 100 percent of the risk, but only 40 percent of the money,” Ditmars used to lament. “Irving takes 10 percent for doing nothing. But don’t ever try to gyp him out of his 10 percent.”
Last fall, Forshaw says. He ran into Irving last fall. The mystery is why Irving hasn’t made a move on her yet.
Only maybe he has.
She bangs open the glove compartment, decides she has time to run one more errand before heading east.
27
“I think I saw Pauline,” Savannah Hansen tells Gregg when he comes to pick up Jani. Late. He’s thirty minutes late, and there might be beer on his breath.
“You’re always saying that.”
“Not always. Sometimes. Maybe three times during the summer.” She frowns at a grubby chocolate handprint on the skirt of her yellow plaid sundress, which is brand new. The pattern reminded her of that cute outfit that the lead girl in that new movie wore. Savannah is in very good shape for her age, for any age really. She doesn’t exercise, but she watches what she eats, always has, ever since Gregg’s father walked out on them when Gregg was not even a year old. She still had some of the pregnancy fat when Curtis left her. Which was her fault. Savannah has always been very honest with herself. She let herself go, got sloppy and whiny, and Curtis wasn’t having it. Some women in her situation would have been bitter, but Savannah found strength in seeing what she had done wrong. Being bossy was okay; men secretly liked bossy in her experience. But not naggy and self-pitying. And you can be bossy only as long as, at the end of the day, your man knows he’s the king of the castle, the cock of the walk. She raised Gregg to expect nothing less. Go figure that mousy Pauline would be his undoing.
Jani is asleep and Gregg hoists her to his shoulder with a kind of absentminded tenderness. She’s a beautiful girl, but then—Jani favors her father. No conceit there, Gregg is a pretty boy, the one thing that Savannah and Curtis did right, with those dark curls and pale blue eyes. Once Curtis left, Savannah never lacked for male companionship but when the men figured out that Gregg was always going to be number one, they didn’t want to play second fiddle.