Beautiful Day(23)

Doug lifted a piece of pizza, and the cheese stretched out into strings. He gloried in the fact that he was not at home eating lamb chops.

In his back pocket, his phone was buzzing away. Pauline, Pauline, Pauline. She didn’t know how to text, and so she would just call and call, leaving increasingly hysterical messages until he answered. He imagined her stumbling around the house, bouncing off the furniture, drinking chardonnay, calling Rhonda—who, by this time, would be on Nantucket—saying the rosary or a Hail Mary or whatever Catholic ditty was supposed to fix the things that went wrong. Sometimes, when things were really bad with Rhonda or her ex-husband, Arthur, Pauline would tell Doug that she was going upstairs to “take a pill.” Doug didn’t know what pills those were; he had never asked because he didn’t care, but he hoped now, anyway, that she would take a pill, just so she would stop calling.

He could practically see Beth in the seat across from him—wearing one of her sundresses, her hair long and loose, with a little hippie braid woven into the side. She had liked to wear the braid to let the world know that although she was married to a hotshot lawyer and worked as a hospital administrator and was the mother of four children and lived in a center-entrance colonial on the Post Road in a wealthy Connecticut suburb, she still identified with Joni Mitchell and Stevie Nicks, she was a Democrat, she read Ken Kesey, she had a social conscience.

Beth, he asked. How did I end up here?

Beth had left the Notebook for Jenna, but she hadn’t left any instruction manual for him. And oh, how he needed one. When Beth died, he had been lost. The older three kids were all out of the house, and Jenna had stayed with him for a few weeks, but then she had to go back to college. He only had to take care of himself; however, even that had proved challenging. He had buried himself in work, he stayed at the office for ridiculously long hours, sometimes longer than the associates who were trying to make partner. He ordered food in from Bar Americain or the Indian place down the street, he kept a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black in his locked drawer, he didn’t exercise, didn’t see the sun, and he dreaded nothing more than the weekends when he had no choice but to return to his house in Darien and the bedroom he had shared with Beth, and the well-meaning neighbors who drove by, wondering when he was going to call the landscapers.

He had loved her so much. Because of his line of work—day in, day out, divorce, divorce, divorce—he knew that his union   with Beth was a rare and precious thing, and he had treated it as such. He had revered her; she always knew how much he loved her, at least he could say that. But that assurance didn’t fill the hole. It couldn’t mend the ragged edges of his loneliness. Nothing helped but the oblivion that work and whiskey provided.

To this day, he wasn’t sure how Pauline had gotten through to him. Probably, like everything else in life, it was a matter of timing. Pauline had come to see him eighteen months after Beth’s death, when the acute pain was subsiding and his profound loneliness was deepening. He had gained thirty pounds; he was drinking way too much. When Margot paid an unannounced visit to Darien and saw the state of his refrigerator (empty), his recycling bin (filled with empty bottles), and his house (an utter and disgusting mess), she had a fit. She said, “Jesus, Daddy, you have to do something about this!” But Doug didn’t know what that something was. He was proud that he managed to get his shirts and suits back and forth from the dry cleaners.

At first, Pauline Tonelli had been just another fifty-something woman who had been married for decades and was now on the verge of becoming single. Doug had seen hundreds of such women. He had been hit on—subtly and not so subtly—by clients for the entirety of his career. Being propositioned was an occupational hazard. Every woman Doug represented was either sick of her husband or had been summarily ditched by him (often in favor of someone younger), and most, in both cases, were ready for someone new. Many women felt Doug should be that man. After all, he was the one now taking care of things. He was going to get her a good settlement, money, custody, the yacht club membership, the second home in Beaver Creek. He was going to stand up in court on her behalf and fight for her honor.

Doug knew other divorce attorneys who took advantage of their clients in this way. His partner—John Edgar Desvesnes III—Edge, had taken advantage of at least one woman in this way: his second wife, Nathalie, whom he had fooled around with in the office before she had even filed, then dated, then married, then procreated with (one son, Casey, age fifteen), then divorced. There were still other attorneys who, it was rumored, were serial screwers-of-clients. But Doug had never succumbed to the temptation. Why would he? He had Beth.