“There’s nothing to believe in. Part of our life is signing a lot of documents. You’ve seen me do it a million times,” Gordon said. He chuckled. “If I read everything I signed, I’d never have a second to do anything else.”
“Just put them on my desk,” Kelly said. “I’m trying to spend some time with our son.”
Foiled!
Gordon walked upstairs to Kelly’s “office”—it was decorated like Marie Antoinette’s sitting room, all mirrors and gilt and washed-out pastels, completely out of keeping with the rustic Adirondack style Gordon had insisted on for the rest of the house—and did his best to gather his thoughts.
His plan had been this: Have Kelly sign the papers, and then, seemingly as an afterthought, ask Judith Ann to sign as a witness. And then messenger the papers to his lawyers so they could be filed with the court. Simple!
Gordon sat down on a tufted silk chaise longue and fanned through the pages of the document. It was, technically, a postnuptial agreement. It provided a huge trust for Rocco, the interest on which, should his parents’ marriage end, his mother would be entitled to for her lifetime, unless and until she elected to remarry. Gordon didn’t want to give Kelly money—certainly not the amount of money he would have to give her if they were to divorce—but more important, he didn’t want another man married to Kelly and raising his son.
The agreement wouldn’t stand up in court, of course, not if things got that far, but at least it would be something. That’s what his lawyers told him. They wanted to get Kelly’s signature on something, anything, some sort of agreement, no matter how legally suspect, just so they’d have something to fight with if it ever came to that.
And, Gordon thought, it was increasingly looking like it might come to that. Kelly had started sleeping in what she was now referring to as her room, a majestic guest suite that was equidistant from the master suite and Rocco’s bedroom. She claimed Gordon’s snoring and his peeing and his phone pinging kept her up all night. It was true Gordon snored loudly and he peed about eight times every night and his phone pinged if something major was happening in the markets overseas, but all of his other wives had been able to tolerate it! They hadn’t complained! They’d all slept next to him!
Well, they had until the end, really. Until the very end.
*
Lucy had started to worry about how she was going to keep seeing Ben regularly. There were only so many excuses she could make for her new trips into the city. Even with the Arrangement it wasn’t going to be simple—the trip to Brooklyn was a trek, and not a simple one, and she had responsibilities. She had a spectrum-y five-year-old, for God’s sake! Perhaps she’d made a mistake not finding someone closer to home, like the married dentist in Rye she’d stumbled upon online who was looking for discreet, no-strings lunchtime fun.
She was searching for a packet of taco seasoning in the pantry when an idea hit her.
“I think I know what I want to do,” she called out.
“What?” asked Owen. “I can’t hear you.”
“I mean about the thing,” Lucy said. She walked out of the pantry carrying a bunch of spice jars, chili powder and onion flakes and cumin. She’d make her own taco seasoning. “I’ve decided what I want to do about our arrangement.”
“I thought we weren’t supposed to talk about it.”
“Well, this part we can talk about,” said Lucy.
“Okay,” said Owen. “Shoot.”
“I want to start taking French lessons in the city one night a week, like I used to do before we met. So I can feel like myself again. More like myself.”
“And?”
“That’s it,” said Lucy. “Sometimes I might have dinner with a friend or do a little shopping too. But you’ll have to take care of Wyatt and get him fed and to bed and everything. I want to be off duty.”
“I think that sounds good,” said Owen. “You love French.”
“I miss it,” said Lucy. “I miss having something going on in my brain.”
“I think we still have a box of your old French stuff in the attic. Those flash cards you used to make and some other things. I’ll get it down for you.”
“That would be great.”
Lucy walked back into the pantry, looking for nothing, but her heart was beating fast and loud and she needed a second to regroup. She was not going to take French lessons. But the imaginary French lessons would make it possible for her to see Ben once a week, and it would save her from having to come up with a new lie every time. And lies were okay, according to the rules, if they were used to spare the other person’s feelings. Her husband didn’t need to know that French lessons meant Ben.
Owen called to her, “I have two questions.”
“Shoot.”
“Does your class have to be at night,” he asked, “and does it have to be in the city?”
Lucy walked over to the sink with a can of black beans and a bag of yellow rice.
“If I take a class during the day, there’ll be sick days and parent-teacher conference days and fall break, and I won’t be able to count on it. And I want to go to the Alliance Fran?aise like I used to, not some dopey place up here with a bunch of retired old ladies planning a week in Provence. All I’m asking is that you be in charge of Wyatt, on your own, one night a week.”
“Okay,” said Owen. “Sounds fair enough.”
Lucy turned on the faucet and measured out the water for the rice.
“I looked online this afternoon,” she said casually. “New classes start up in a few days.”
Owen and Lucy had bought their house in Beekman before they had Wyatt, back when they both had well-paying jobs, during what would turn out to be a blink-and-you-missed-it substantial dip in the price of real estate in Beekman. They couldn’t afford to buy what they wanted in the city and suspected that might remain true no matter what imaginary unending upward trajectory their careers took, so they did that odd Manhattanite thing of continuing to pay rent on an apartment that would serve as their primary residence while purchasing a house they would make use of only on the weekends and holidays.