The Perfect Marriage(15)
Needless to say, Haley saw her mother’s concern as an insult. Another way for her to convey that her daughter wasn’t good enough.
A little more than a year after their vows, James told her that he was in love with another woman and wanted a divorce.
By then, it had already become clear to her that her marriage to James had been a mistake. Her long hours at work were not always out of necessity but just as frequently to avoid facing that reality. When they were together, she could feel James drifting from her. Sex, which had always been plentiful, had become less so, and on those nights when she wasn’t working late, he often was.
Another woman might have been relieved that James was doing the dirty work of ending it, but Haley wasn’t that woman. She had never before failed at anything, and her marriage was not the place she intended to start.
She begged him to stay. She swore she’d do whatever he wanted to make him happy. She offered to quit her job, to start a family if that’s what he wanted. Anything.
James told her it was not about her. He would never love Haley in the way he loved Jessica. It was not her fault. It was just a fact. He actually used the words soul mate.
She had never believed that soul mates existed. But even worse, she didn’t think James believed it either. The fact he was invoking the term to describe his adulterous lover told Haley that this was a fight she could not win.
At that point, she’d figured that James leaving her for Jessica would be her rock bottom. Then she learned that there was actually no such thing. Given the opportunity, you can always descend further.
“David, to what do I owe the pleasure of a Monday morning phone call?” Haley said.
She imagined the scene playing out in real time. James had called his shark of a lawyer first thing, which for Manhattan lawyers meant 10:00 a.m. After receiving James’s call, Angela or Abigail or Applesauce must have spent the next hour and a half drafting a cease-and-desist letter. That letter had just arrived in David Kaplan’s email, and he’d wasted no time in calling Haley to start his meter running.
“One question: What could possibly have possessed you to show up at James’s house—at his anniversary party, no less?”
“I assumed he wanted me there and my invitation got lost,” she said.
Like all men, David was not immune to her charms. Of course, his professional life was devoted to helping women at their most vulnerable, so he was accustomed to clients flirting, and he’d never suggested he would cross any line with her. Still, men go the extra mile for women they want to sleep with, even when they know it’ll never come to pass.
David sighed. “Haley . . . we’ve been over this before. These types of shenanigans are serious. Not only does it cost you legal fees every time you engage in one of these stunts, which you no longer can afford, but sooner or later, James will take real action.”
“Is this one of those times?”
Another sigh from David, but louder. That meant no.
As Haley suspected, this was all for show. In order to placate Jessica, James could now report that he’d sicced his lawyer on Haley. But James must have also instructed Abigail or Angela or Artichoke to heel as soon as she delivered her threat.
“The impression I got was that if you send James an email promising to stop and apologize for the other night, he’ll drop this thing for now without a court filing.”
“Let me think about it,” Haley said.
She felt sure David knew what that meant—never gonna happen.
Reid had always struck James as something of a man of mystery. Part Jay Gatsby, part John Galt from Atlas Shrugged. Self-confident to the point of cocky, an incorrigible womanizer, and rich without a discernible source of income. That said, there were times in James’s life when the same description could have been fairly applied to him.
Reid’s East Hampton house was at the end of a long pebbled driveway, tucked away from the ten-thousand-square-foot behemoths that surrounded it on all sides. It looked as if it had been designed from a Beatrix Potter illustration, with shake siding and sloping roofs. The interior elaborated on the theme—grandfather clocks, English antiques, and large windows overlooking manicured grounds.
Reid led James into the first-floor study. A Louis XVI desk was in the center of the space, an English secretary standing against the wall.
Reid pulled open the center drawer of the desk, retrieving an old-fashioned skeleton key. “Not the greatest security system, I know,” he joked. He carefully lifted the few items that were on the desk and moved them to the floor. With his shirttail, Reid cleaned the desk of any dust, then made his way to the secretary.
From it, he removed four sheets of paper, careful to hold them from the underside so as not to mar them. Then he laid the pieces on the desk.
James excused himself to wash his hands. When he returned, he looked at the first, then the second, and finally the last two drawings on the desk.
“So, what do you think?”
“I think you’ve got one of two things here.” James lifted his eyes from the artwork. “One possibility is that your friend Tommy Murcer is a forger. Or that he knows some forgers.”
“They’re authentic. I know it.”
James thought so too. The genius of Pollock was both undefinable and unmistakable. How many times had he heard that someone’s kindergartener could create a piece that rivaled some modern masterpiece? He had always been tempted to respond that if they could, they should, because the world needs more beauty, and their five-year-old would be paid handsomely.