The Winners Circle (9 page)

Jerry stopped and unzipped his duster. A scrap of paper from Tisch’s office stuck to his wet boot. He saw the attorney’s raised letterhead. It stoked his will to fight. “Do you have Godiva?”

“
Of course.” She swept her hand over the gold-trimmed display case between them. “We have truffles and fudge on the back shelf.”

“
Good.” He roamed the golden boxes with ribbons and bows. The smell of the place touched off a memory. It harkened a scent on Chelsea’s breath. He used to tuck chocolate kisses in her uniform pocket before she left for work.

“
Purchasing early for the holidays?”

“
It’s for my wife.” He clung to the word ‘wife’ like the final rung of a ladder. The void was widening between Chelsea and him. He needed to close it fast.

“
Is there a particular type that she prefers?”

“
All of it.” He remembered the times that he wanted to buy the best for Chelsea but didn’t have the money to waste. The summer ended before he’d gotten the chance to make up for the past.

“
I love it too.”

“
No, I want all of it.”

“
Every box?”

“
Yes. And put aside a three-pound box. I want to take it with me.” He had a special plan for that one.

“
What do I do with the rest?”

“
Can you ship them? I’ll give you an address.”

“
Are you kidding?” She stared, gauging the seriousness of his request, the utter weight of it.

“
That’s what I said.”

“
I think we can do it.”

“
Can you?”

Her spine whipped straight like an old-fashioned car antenna—commission maximus! “You’re damned right I can ship it.”

Jerry’s plan began to gel as he drove to Princeton. He parked outside a string of pricey condominiums near Palmer Square. He saw Chelsea’s Aunt Laura walk past the white chiffon curtains of her living room window. She was going to be a hard sell, but he had little choice. His parents were both gone. He had no sisters or brothers to make his case. Forget about asking Chelsea’s parents; they didn’t return any of his phone calls. He needed a good witness to break up the court proceedings. The cost didn’t matter. He needed to buy time.

As Jerry rang the bell, Laura Adams opened the door. She was short but managed to look down on him, observing him like a bruised melon in the market. She didn’t like many things. She loathed men, especially her ex-husbands both dead and alive. She reserved her kindest words for wine, opera, and chocolate.

Jerry presented a three-pound box of powdered truffles—the one he’d kept apart from the cocoa tonnage heading toward Chelsea’s new address. “How are you, Aunt Laura?”

“
Not for long, I hear.” Her hair was streaked an unreasonable reddish color. It was an afternoon for bad haircuts.

“
I gather you’ve heard about that. It wasn’t my choice.”

She fingered the doorknob. “A man who wants to stay married. I’ll be damned. What did you do to her?”

He prepared to view a door slamming in his face. He edged his boot tip forward to block. “Can I come in?”

She looked him over again, stopping at his boots. “Take those off.”

Jerry undid the laces and took off his work boots. Laura was a neat freak. If he’d thought better, he’d have changed into nicer clothes, opened one of those boxes that Chelsea piled in the corner of their bedroom, taking Laura by surprise in a silk shirt and slacks—the
GQ
man no one ever suspected, even him.

“
Are your socks clean?” she asked.

“
Yes.”

“
No holes?”

“
Yes.” He abandoned his boots beside the door and entered Laura’s sterile abode.

The carpet was flat white, as were the walls and Swedish bookshelves. Satin pillows accented the plush off-white couches and chairs. A fluffy cat curled beside a smooth marble sculpture of a woman’s torso. Laura bleached the cat’s fur at regular intervals. Jerry and Chelsea used to joke about it. It looked like a walking bag of cotton with paws.

“
How’ve you been?” he asked.

“
Better than you. You look tired.”

“
I don’t sleep great,” he said, but in truth, he slept on and off all day long, just never through the night.

“
Do you miss her?”

Jerry set the chocolates on an oriental table beside the door. “Every minute.”

“
No kidding.” Laura sat in a chair by the sliding glass windows. The sun reflected off the marine white deck, adding to the overall brightness of the room.

For a second, Jerry was snow-blind and groped his way to a seat nearby. “Chelsea’s filed for divorce.”

“
No kidding.”

“
I want to stop it.”

“
What can I do about it?” She tossed back her shoulders.

He watched her glom onto the moment. She wanted him to grovel. He recalled why he didn’t visit her very often. She enjoyed other people’s pain, savoring it like a treasured port wine. “Do you remember us in the beginning?”

“
You and Chelsea?”

“
This isn’t easy for me. I wish you’d stop joking.”

“
Go ahead.”

“
Did you think we belonged together?”

She didn’t answer. Her eyes wandered about the pristine room.

“
Chelsea’s annulling the marriage,” he said. “She’s suing on grounds of bearing no children.”

“
You don’t have children.”

There she goes, he thought, restating the obvious just like Tisch. “It doesn’t matter. She knows I wanted them. You know it too.”

“
So what.”

“
Remember that day a couple of years back. You gave us the crib and baby stuff. You said you were never going to need it. It belonged to your mother. I cooked dinner—ravioli and Bolognese sauce. I told you how much we wanted kids.”

She bent down to retrieve a scrap of lint from the floor, pinching it inside a tissue. She folded the sides of the tissue over the lint as if wrapping a present. “It’s nice to reminisce but ...”

“
You have to help. Tell the courts what you know.”

“
I can’t do that to my niece.”

“
Chelsea’s gone mad. I don’t know how it happened.”

“
You must have done something. Did you beat her?”

“
Never.”

“
Drink too much?”

“
You know I don’t drink.”

“
Ahh, that’s why I don’t trust you.”

He sensed his blood pressure rising. He tried to look away from her, but she was tossing back her shoulders, pondering the ceiling.

“
This is refreshing,” she said.

“
What is?”

“
Now you know how a woman feels.”

Christmas passed like the ticking of a clock. New Years too. Each minute separated from the next. He cooked a turkey with sausage stuffing. He watched TV. He stared at that ridiculous log flaming on the tube for hours. He made soup from the turkey bones. A couple of teams played in the Super Bowl, and the same player fumbled twice and blew the game, but Jerry lost track of the score. He kept waiting for camera angles of the fumbler seated alone at the end of the bench.

The sky outside was slate gray for days, but it never snowed. The wind ripped through the barren hardwoods and rattled the skeletal branches and the antique windowpanes. Somewhere along the line, Jerry managed to take his only suit back and forth to the dry cleaners. It was his wedding suit, but court day was coming, and he was going it alone.

Jerry headed for his day of divorce, hardly able to mouth the words. He latched onto phrases like proceeding and dispensation, as if the event had no beginning or end. He drove the Ford out of the hills, descending toward Trenton. His necktie bunched beneath his chin, and his old loafers pinched the broad base of his toes. As he passed Taddler’s Horse Center, he glimpsed a man working behind the barn. He hit the brakes and turned around.

The reconditioned Ford lumbered up the incline and past the horse corral. In the old days, people heard the pickup coming down the road, but the man shoveling the manure pile didn’t turn his head, until Jerry was almost upon him.

“
Morning,” Jerry called from the pickup window. He’d noted the mud and filth about his tires and stayed in the truck cab. The last thing he needed was Chelsea spotting dirt on his good shoes. Her sights would drop right to it. She’d almost expect it.

The man wore rubber hip boots and gloves past his elbows. He noticed Jerry’s suit and immediately sunk his pitchfork in the ground. “Can I help you?”

“
Just passing by.”

“
Need directions?”

“
I used to shovel this same pile.”

Yeah right, the man’s eyes seemed to say. He propped his hands over the handle and bent one knee, seemingly amused by the attention.

Jerry caught a whiff of the horse dung briefly thawing in winter. It smelled harsh but natural. Not a year earlier, he stood in place of this stranger. He missed the open space and the mix of fresh air and dirt. He longed for the set routine. “Are you selling or taking for yourself?”

“
There’s an organic farmer in Hunterdon County.”

“
Hardaway?”

The man seemed reluctant to reveal his client list. “Something like that.”

“
Better watch out for the snakes.”

“
What snakes?”

“
The rattlesnakes in the pile. If they’re still hibernating, they won’t like to be woken up early.”

The man pulled his tool from the earth. “No snakes in here.”

“
Oh?”

“
They’ve been cleared out, guaranteed.”

“
That’s what I always thought.”

Among the waiting assembly in family court, Chelsea sat toward the front. Jerry spotted her beside Haskell Cogdon. Her blonde hair was clasped with silver combs. She wore a navy blue suit with yellow piping. She looked sharp enough to bring her own caseload before the judge.

She glanced back to the last row. He registered the shock in her eyes. His appearance at the proceedings was optional, and she obviously hadn’t expected him. She rose and walked toward the back of the courtroom.

Jerry flipped through the paperwork from Ralph Tisch. He wasn’t reading it. He saw nothing but letters and numbers on legal-sized paper. They didn’t make sense.

Chelsea came alongside Jerry and sat down. Her silk suit slid across the wooden bench. He shuddered in a private way. They hadn’t been this close in months.

“
Thanks for the chocolate,” she whispered. “I still have a ton.”

“
I wanted it to last.” He’d forgotten about it. He felt stupid all over again.

“
I’ll never finish it.”

He liked the idea of being never completely used up, but he glanced in Haskell’s direction and saw the truth of it.

The short attorney scratched his head, trying not to look back.

“
Are you still with him?” Jerry asked.

“
Don’t do this, Jerry.”

“
He didn’t leave with you that day on the boat.”

She broke eye contact with him. “I’m sorry about that.”

“
I looked for him everywhere that day, but I never found him.”

“
He hid in the engine room of the boat. He bribed the Captain.”

“
I should have known. He does business that way.”

“
He thought you were going to kill him.”

“
It wasn’t a bad guess.” He’d do it right here, if that’s what it took. He waited for an indication, that nervous quiver to her lip. He wanted to touch it, like he’d done many times. He was the first to dare, but now it was beautiful and ordinary. The surgeon had carved out that part of her personality.

Chelsea grabbed his arm, avoiding his glance. A finger pressed the pit of his elbow. Her fingernails were painted French style, peach with white outlines. “You didn’t have to come here.”

“
It’s my divorce too. Excuse me, annulment.”

“
I did it like this so you didn’t have to show.”

“
Do you really want to erase the marriage? Is that what you think of it?”

“
It’s not that simple.”

“
I’d rather have a divorce. There’d be a record of us, not this cleaned up effect, Cogdon-style.”

She released him. “You’re angry with me. It doesn’t suit you. It never did.”

“
I’m better when I have something to fix.”

“
Jerry, don’t screw this up.”

“
I’m past that point. I’m screwed up already. I want to know what you’re doing? That’s the question.”

She looked at him again. He saw his reflection in her eyes. In many ways, he was the same boy from the woods of Chesterfield, yet she had kicked her life into high gear. She was embarrassed for him. He sensed it down to his core.