“Were you? Was that when you were going through your divorce?”
“Prelude to divorce,” he said. He took a sip from his wineglass and hung his head. “We were all so young and thought we were so old. I was just over thirty and had two kids and I remember thinking I was wasting my life by staying in such a toxic relationship. I was very sympathetic to you and Chad but my situation was so much sloppier.”
“It was?” she asked. “Forgive me, I don’t even remember. Just that you were divorced about the same time we were contemplating...”
He took yet another deep breath. “It was a mess. Lots of abuse and neglect, several affairs or flings... Whatever they were, they certainly counted as cheating. Arlene was unstable, her whole family was unstable. I followed suit and mimicked all the instability. We lived in chaos for about five years. My mother left my father at home and moved in to make sure the kids were being taken care of. It was unhinged and crazy. And in the midst of that, you and Chad seemed to pull it together and I found myself leaning on him.” He sat up a little straighter. “I’m sorry, Anna. I made that all about me.”
“What was going on with you and Arlene?” she asked, almost grateful to take the focus off her.
His dark eyes were glassy. “Everything. Our romance was tempestuous and burned hot, our early marriage was a painful roller coaster. We married poorly and divorced even worse. Couples fight about things like possessions and custody, that’s a given, but our divorce was so filled with lies and delusions and obsession for control on both sides it’s a miracle we survived. In anger she even stole my car and torched it. She spent a few days in jail for that, but only a few days and then got community service. It was horrendous and went on for years.”
“I wasn’t even aware...”
“Because you were fighting your own battle. It seemed like no time at all passed when you were put back together and you were in law school, then pregnant. I don’t know how you pulled it off.”
“It was more than the marriage. More than his affair. I didn’t realize it for a few years, but it was so much more personal. You know that I was raised by a single mother,” she said. “It was a good life, but there were times we didn’t have enough. There were times we were broke and times my mother was scared. Sometimes she brought food home from the restaurant where she worked. She might’ve taken it off patrons’ plates. She was a waitress and worked so hard and pushed me to go to school, to plan on a future that wouldn’t be as hard. Every year older I got, in spite of debt and struggle, the closer I believed I was getting to not feeling that any second I’d be hungry and homeless. We were never completely without a roof over our heads, but there were some close calls, like sleeping on a friend’s sofa while waiting for an apartment to be available. But I got through school, I worked and helped my mother, we paid off a lot of debt. Then I met Chad and fell in love.” She swallowed hard. “It was a defendant who said to me, ‘We’re all just one man away from being cleaning ladies or waitresses.’”
Chad came from an entirely different kind of family, a stable, upper-middle-class family. His parents funded his undergrad education; he went to good schools and they lived in an upper-class neighborhood. She thought the rest of her life would be safe and secure; she thought she was building the kind of family she had always longed for. The kind of family he had come from. Then his mother had said, “If you don’t put your marriage to my son back together so he can be with his children, don’t expect any help from me!”
She had worked and supported him while he finished his PhD; he worked part-time while he finished his degree, which set him up for a long and distinguished career as a therapist. At the time it had been all she had ever dreamed of—a spouse who was kind and helped people. A husband with a strong moral compass. There was nothing more she longed for.
“Michael was a baby when I learned of Chad’s affair...”
“How?” Joe asked.
“I suspected because of odd phone calls, because Chad was gone or missing at odd times, and I did the unthinkable thing—I snooped through his personal papers and confronted him. Chad admitted he was seeing a woman. It turned out to be one of the clients of the counseling institute where he was working. It was the first time I felt my future and the future of my children was threatened and I lost it. I was so angry and hurt I wanted to kill him. It was right during that time I was on maternity leave and I planned to go back to work. And suddenly we were talking divorce.”
“But you didn’t even separate,” Joe said.
“We couldn’t afford to,” she said. “We were getting a lot of pressure from my mother and Chad’s parents to get counseling, to try to work it out for the sake of the kids, but that wasn’t what did it. It was the advice of a partner in the law firm where I worked. He was a man in his fifties, a former cop and married for the third time himself. He said, ‘You will never be happy, married or single, as long as you cling to this fantasy that some man will rescue you and make you safe and secure. Make yourself safe and secure. It’s the only way you’ll really feel that way. It’s the only way you can really protect your children. In the end you will see that no matter who you’re married to, you are responsible for your own happiness or security, two things no one can give you.’”
She fought that advice for a while. She wanted to believe the right man would do the trick. If only she could find a man who had that strength of commitment, one who could be trusted, one who wouldn’t stray. One who didn’t have a weak character.
“I began to study for the LSAT right away. I got a lot of help and support from the partners in the firm. I had mentors there, and even though they didn’t know all the details of my personal life, they encouraged me to build my confidence and independence and form a strong career in law. As months turned into years, I did get stronger and more determined. Everything evolved from that point. I kept working as much as possible—the firm had work I could do part-time while I was in school. I helped with depositions, filings, document prep and research. In retrospect, I don’t know how I made it.”
It was during law school combined with her job in the law office that she stumbled upon her specialty and cases that involved domestic violence. After law school during her time in the district attorney’s office, she prosecuted batterers, and later, in private practice, she spent as much time as possible helping the victims of battery domestic. Defending women who had been accused of assault when they relied on self-defense to save their or their children’s lives was her specialty. She had become a well-known advocate for battered women.
“And then there was Bess after you put your marriage back together,” Joe said.
“Not exactly,” she said. “Not that simply. There hadn’t been much affection between us for a few years. But Chad did spend as much time as possible helping with the kids and the house. First of all, his schedule was not as demanding as mine, and second, he seemed to genuinely want to save the marriage. I still ask myself why. I never had the impression it was love. I never had the sense I was chosen. More to the point, I never had the sense he’d forsaken all others.
“Bess was a surprise. I might have been exhausted and needy. I might have decided I didn’t have any fight left in me. Most likely I decided I didn’t care anymore. Bess was a lucky accident. Not only did she focus me, I was stronger and I could accept the life I had as better than most. It was, you know. It was better than most people get. But after Chad stepped outside our marriage, I was no longer in love with him. I liked him. I knew exactly how to get along with him and make the most of what we had. I think I grew to love him again, I’m not entirely sure. It was all about the five of us, holding our family together because there’s strength in numbers.”
“You seemed to be in love,” Joe said.
“I never trusted him again. I also never looked too closely at what he was doing or how he spent his time, afraid of what I might find. I might have found out about his daughter sooner if I had.”
“If I hadn’t been so busy with my own marital problems I might’ve noticed,” he said. “But I didn’t.”
“The great irony is, he did exactly what my biological father did. My mother had a fling with a married man and he stayed with his family. I never knew him. I mean, I knew who he was later on, after I was married. I don’t know how his marriage and family turned out but he didn’t help out like Chad apparently did. Isn’t that weird? The same set of circumstances?”