Beautiful Day

DOUGLAS

He drove to Post Road Pizza, which was a place he used to go with Beth. He asked to sit at the two-person booth in the front window, which was where they always sat. He ordered a draft beer, a pizza with sausage and mushrooms, and a side order of onion rings with ranch dressing for dipping, which was what he and Beth always used to order. Doug took a couple of swills off his beer and walked over to the jukebox. It still took quarters. He dropped seventy-five cents into the jukebox and played “Born to Run,” “The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys,” and “Layla.” These were all Beth’s favorite songs; she had been fond of the rock anthem. If Doug asked Pauline to name one song by Eric Clapton or Bruce Springsteen, she would be stumped.

There had been a time-six, seven years ago, right after Beth died-when Doug had come into this pizza place and ordered this food and played these songs and occupied this booth as a way of wallowing in his misery. Now, he felt, he was doing it as a show of strength. This was who he really was-he liked this restaurant, he loved these songs, he preferred a cold draft beer to even the finest chardonnay. When the waiter brought his food, he thought with enormous satisfaction: Not a fresh vegetable in sight! Pauline would look upon the onion rings with disgust. When he dragged the golden circles through the ranch dressing, she would say, “Fat and more fat.” Secretly, she would be dying to take one-but she wouldn’t, because she was obsessed with calories. The only way she felt in control was when she was depriving herself. And that was the reason, or part of the reason, why she had become so miserable.

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.

Pauline had been on a mission. Doug knew that now because she had confessed to it. She had told him that she had chosen him as her divorce attorney because she knew he was recently widowed and she wanted to date him. The Tonellis and the Carmichaels both belonged to Wee Burn Country Club in Darien, although they weren’t well acquainted. Doug and Arthur had been paired together once for a golf tournament. Pauline and Beth had met a couple of times side by side at the lipstick mirror in the ladies’ room during a dinner dance. Doug didn’t remember Pauline from the club. However, she mentioned their mutual membership at Wee Burn within the first three sentences of their meeting. She threw out names of friends of his-Whitney Gifford, Johnson McKelvey-and then she expressed her condolences for his wife (“such a warm, lovely woman”) and hence established a personal connection and common ground.

She started bringing things to their meetings. First it was a hot latte, then a tin of homemade blueberry muffins, then a bottle of green chile sauce from a trip she’d taken to Santa Fe. She touched him during these meetings-she squeezed his arm or patted him on the shoulder. He could smell her perfume, he admired her legs in heels or her breasts in a sweater. She said things like “I really wanted to go to the movies this weekend, but I didn’t want to go alone.”

And Doug thought, Yeah, me too. Then he cleared his throat and discussed ways to negotiate with Arthur Tonelli.

On the day that Pauline’s divorce was final, Doug did what he had never agreed to do with any client before: he went out for drinks. He had planned to say no, just as he always said no, but something about the circumstances swayed him. It was a Friday in June, the air was sweet with the promise of summer; the victory in the courtroom had been a good one. Arthur’s attorney, Richard Ruby, was one of Doug’s most worthy adversaries, and Doug, for the first time in his career, had beaten Richard Ruby on nearly every point. Pauline had gotten what she wanted; she had divorced well.

She said, “Shall we celebrate?”

And for the first time in nearly two years, Doug thought another person’s company might be nice.

“Sure,” he said.

She suggested the Monkey Bar, which was the kind of spot that Doug’s partners always went to but Doug had never set foot in. He was charmed by Pauline’s confidence. She knew the maître d’, Thebaud, by name, and he whisked them through the after-work drinks crowd to a small round table for two, which was partially concealed by a curved banquette wall. Pauline ordered a bottle of champagne and a plate of gougères. The waiter poured their champagne, and Doug and Pauline toasted their mutual success.

Pauline smiled. Her face was glowing. Doug knew her to be fifty-four, but at that moment, she looked like a girl. She said, “I’m so glad that’s over. I can finally relax.”

Doug let his own deep breath go; he was still experiencing the winded euphoria particular to conquering his opponent. It was not unlike a good game of squash. Doug thrived on the competition. He wanted to win. His job was to liberate people from the stranglehold of an unsatisfactory union. Many times when a divorce was declared final, his client would spontaneously burst into tears. Some clients saw their divorces as an ending, not a beginning; they saw their divorces as a failure, not a solution. It wasn’t Doug’s job to put a value judgment on what was happening, only to legally facilitate it. But he had to admit that he felt much better about his profession when he was faced with a client as buoyant as Pauline.

Drinks at the Monkey Bar had been a success. Doug had headed home on the train feeling nourished by actual human interaction. He had not fallen in love with Pauline, but he had appreciated the hour drinking champagne and eating golden, cheesy gougères, admiring the wall murals by Ed Sorel, regarding the well-heeled crowd, and enjoying the presence of a convivial, attractive woman. He realized, as he and Pauline parted ways outside the restaurant on Fifty-fourth Street, that he would miss her.

And then the universe had worked its magic. A few weeks later, on the Fourth of July, Doug had played golf at Wee Burn, and then he’d stayed to swim some laps at the pool, where he met up with the Drakes, who invited him to join them on the patio for dinner. Doug had nearly declined-he no longer socialized with any of his and Beth’s couple friends because he couldn’t abide being a third wheel-but it was a holiday, and if Doug went home, he was looking at an evening of drinking whiskey and watching a recap of Wimbledon on TV. And so he stayed and ate dinner with the Drakes and met up with more friends whom he hadn’t seen since the funeral. These friends all mentioned how wonderful he looked (he did not look wonderful) and how much they’d missed him (though what they meant, he suspected, was that they missed Beth), and Doug realized how limited his life had become.

It was at the end of the night that he’d bumped into Pauline. He was sitting at the bar finishing a nightcap when she walked through the room with Russell Stern, who was the president of Wee Burn’s board of directors. Russell Stern was divorced himself; he’d endured a rather high-profile split from his wife, Charlene, who sang with the Metropolitan Opera. Doug wondered for a second if Pauline and Russell Stern were dating. He had to admit, the thought irked him.

Pauline caught sight of Doug at the bar and said to Russell, “You go ahead, Russ, I’m going to stay for a minute. Thanks for everything.”

Russell eyed Doug and waved, then said to Pauline, “You sure you’re okay getting home? I can wait, you know.”

“I’m fine,” Pauline said. “Thanks again!”

Russell Stern lingered for a moment, and Doug felt both a surge of macho triumph and a flicker of worry that, as president of the board, Russell might inflict some kind of institutional retribution-a raise in Doug’s dues, perhaps, or revocation of Doug’s front-row parking spot. Then Russell left, and Pauline fluttered over.

She said, “Hey, stranger.”

He had ended up taking her home that night to the house in Silvermine that he had helped her wrest from Arthur Tonelli’s grip. They had kissed on the front porch, then in the foyer like a couple of teenagers. Doug had been amazed by his level of arousal. He hadn’t even allowed himself to think of sex in years. But with Pauline, his body asserted its natural instincts. He had thought they might do it right then and there up against the half-moon mail table, or on the stairs-but Pauline stopped him.

He said, “Are you dating Russell Stern?”

She paused for what seemed like a long time. “No,” she said. “We’re old friends.”

“Really?” Doug said. “Because he seemed a little miffed that you came over to talk to me.”

“Just friends,” Pauline said.

Doug asked Pauline to dinner the following week. He picked a place on the water in South Norwalk, where neither of them had ever been before. This was important, he thought, for both of them. They had a fine time, and during the dinner conversation, it came out that Pauline and Russell had gone to high school together in New Canaan. They had dated their senior year, Russell a football star and Pauline a cheerleader. They had stayed together for two more years while Pauline went to Connecticut College and Russell went to Yale. They had talked of getting married.

“Wow,” Doug said.

“Then I met Arthur at the Coast Guard Academy, and Russell met Charlene, and that was that. Now, we’re just friends.”

As “Layla” ended, Doug went to the counter to pay his bill. In retrospect, he could see that he had been dazzled by Pauline’s ease out in the world alone; he had been comfortable with her, and he had been intrigued by her relationship with Russell Stern. Pauline was nothing at all like Beth, and so Doug was free from feeling like he was replacing her. Pauline was someone else entirely-a friend, a lover, someone to enjoy. Doug had never fallen in love with Pauline, he’d never had the sick, loopy, head-over-heels feeling that he’d had from start to finish with Beth. And that, he saw now, had been preferable. Pauline wasn’t threatening. She wasn’t going to break his heart. She was someone to do things with, someone to talk to, someone to hold at night.

The problems had started when he agreed to move into Arthur Tonelli’s house with her. Why had he ever agreed to that? At the time, the real estate market had been good, and Doug had been anxious to get rid of his house. The kids were grown, Beth was dead, the house was far too big for him alone, it was filled with memories, nearly all of which were excruciatingly painful, and he didn’t want to take care of the house anymore. And so it had been wonderful to have another place to go, a place he wasn’t responsible for. But he had never thought of the Silvermine house as anything but the Tonelli house.

The bigger mystery was why Doug had married Pauline. More than anyone in the world, Doug knew how dangerous marriage could be. Why not just cohabitate without the messy business of binding their union? The answer was that Doug was old-fashioned. He was nearly sixty years old, he had been married to Beth for thirty-five years, he was used to being a married man. He was comfortable with a ring on his finger and a joint checking account, and one way of doing things. He was comfortable in a union. The thought of him and Pauline “living together,” referring to her as “my partner” or worse still “my girlfriend,” and keeping two memberships at the country club and two sets of finances (his money, her money, most of which arrived in the form of Arthur Tonelli’s alimony checks) was absurd to him, bordering on distasteful.

And so he and Pauline had made it official in a very small civil ceremony followed by a lunch at Le Bernardin.

At the time, Doug could never have imagined the way he felt now. Disenchanted, trapped, eager for his freedom. He had thought that he would live out his days with Pauline in comfortable companionship. He had not predicted that his needs and desires would announce they wanted something more, something different.

When Doug got back to the house, it was only eight o’clock, and the sun was still up. He would have preferred to wait until dark when he could be sure Pauline was asleep, but he had nowhere else to go. He didn’t want to drink anything more with the long, middle-of-the-night drive ahead; he didn’t want to go to the club and get sucked into inane conversation about Mickelson’s chances at Oak Hill. He didn’t have a single person he could talk to. In a pinch, he supposed he could call Edge, but Edge lived in the city, and he had endured so much personal drama of his own that Doug would feel terrible heaping on more. Plus, Edge wasn’t particularly fond of Pauline, and so if Doug told Edge he was thinking of leaving Pauline, Edge might give him too much encouragement. Furthermore, Edge had been distant lately, and increasingly vague about his own romantic life. He was dating someone, Doug was sure of that. Edge had the measured calm and patience these days that he only displayed when he was having sex on a regular basis. But Edge didn’t talk about the girl, whoever she was, and the one time Doug had asked about the lucky woman who was keeping Edge on an even keel, Edge had shaken his head and turned away.

Doug had been puzzled by this reaction. He’d said, “Okay, sorry, not up for discussion, then?”

And Edge had said, “Not up for discussion.”

Doug entered the Tonelli house, afraid of what he might find. But everything appeared to be normal. The kitchen was quiet and undisturbed; the lamb chops still lay in the sink. Doug got himself a glass of ice water. His alarm was due to go off at 3 a.m.; he needed to get to sleep.

He crept up the stairs, feeling spooked by the silence. He had half expected Pauline to meet him at the front door with a frying pan in her hand. He had expected to hear her crying.

The door to their bedroom was closed. Doug thought: Go to the guest room. Sleep for a few hours, then hit the road. But that was the coward in him speaking. Plus, his suitcase was in the bedroom.

He cracked open the door enough to see rays of the day’s last sunlight striping the floor. Pauline lay on the bed, still wrapped in her towel. She was awake, staring at the ceiling, and when she heard him, she turned her head.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hey,” he said. He paused, waiting to see if there was going to be a scene, but she was quiet. Doug sat on the bed and took off his shoes and socks, unbuttoned his shirt and slacks, and stuffed them into the dry cleaning bag. He thought briefly of work and the shitshow Cranbrook case, which was going to trial in the morning. Then he thought about Nantucket and the house and the 150 guests, his children and grandchildren, his daughter’s future in-laws, his wife’s cousins. He had a wedding to host, a wedding his dead wife had planned and he had paid for. He couldn’t let the turmoil of his personal life get in the way of this weekend. In the hottest moment, as he was climbing into the car, he had sent Margot a text message that said, Pauline isn’t coming to the wedding. Now he regretted sending that message.

He climbed into bed next to Pauline, the way he had for the past five years. He had done something truly egregious, he realized, in marrying a woman he didn’t love.

“Pauline,” he said.

“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have read the Notebook.”

The Notebook, right. Doug had forgotten about the Notebook.

“It’s okay,” he said.

“You forgive me?”

“I forgive you for reading the Notebook,” he said. “Your curiosity was only natural. But Pauline…”

“And I can go to the wedding with you?” she said. “I mean, obviously, I knew you were speaking in anger when you said you wanted to go alone. I knew you would never, ever go without me.”

But he would. In his mind, when he pictured himself seven hours from now in the car, he was alone, windows down, singing to the radio.

“Pauline,” he said. But he was stuck. He couldn’t get the words out. Every single client he represented had endured a version of this conversation. Doug had heard about hundreds of them in minute detail, he knew which words to say, but he couldn’t make himself say them. Was it the courage he lacked, or the conviction?

Pauline laid her hand over his heart. She said, “You should get some sleep. We have to get up early.”