“Maybe I should go over there,” Faith said, sounding worried.

“Let her cool off first. Write her a letter or something. Mom, she'll figure it out. It's obvious you don't want this divorce.” What wasn't obvious to Zoe yet, and her mother hadn't said, was why her father wanted out. But it was clear to her that her mother didn't want to say. She had a feeling there was more to the story, and as usual, she was right.

“I feel sick over this,” Faith said, relieved that she could talk to her. Zoe was becoming a friend as well as her daughter, and she was sensible and wise beyond her years.

“Ellie always reacts first. And then she makes sense later on. I think Dad was a total shit for saying that stuff, but I'm not surprised.” And neither was Faith anymore. There was no limit to the depths Alex was willing to go to, to destroy her relationship with her daughter.

“I'm going to call him tomorrow,” Faith said, sounding agitated. She still thought she could reason with him, which was naive.

“Get some sleep, Mom. Try to forget about it. At least for tonight. Did you do anything this weekend?” She had meant to call her, but felt guilty that she hadn't. She hadn't had time.

“My friend Brad was here from the West Coast,” Faith said vaguely. All she could think of was Ellie now. The visit with Brad seemed to have faded like a dream.

“Did he come to see you?” Zoe sounded impressed.

“No, he had business here. But it was nice to see him.” Zoe wondered about that, but decided it wasn't the time to tease her mother about him. She had enough on her plate. And whatever his feelings were for her mother, she knew that to Faith, he was nothing more than a friend. But at least he had distracted her for a couple of days. That was something at least.

“Go to sleep, Mom. I'll call you tomorrow. I love you.”

They hung up, and Faith lay in bed awake for the rest of the night. All Faith could think of was what Ellie had said to her. And all she wanted to do now was call Alex. But she had to wait till he got to the office. He hadn't told her where he was staying. And finally at six A.M., she got up and e-mailed Brad. She knew he was home by then, and she couldn't wait a moment longer. She wrote him everything Ellie had said. She cried as she typed it. It looked even worse once she wrote it down in an e-mail.

“… and what do you think she means about the house? It sounds like Alex wants to sell it. Why couldn't he tell me first? Anyway, I'm a wreck. I feel sick that Ellie believed what he said. How will I ever convince her of the truth? I'm not going to tell either of them about the girl. Ever. It's too humiliating for all concerned. And it makes me seem as low as he if I tell the girls about her. And they would never forgive their father. I'm not trying to poison their relationship with him. Why can't he fight fair? He told Ellie I asked for a divorce a year ago. He probably thinks it excuses his behavior if I wanted out. That makes it sound like he's serious about the girl.” She went on and on and on, still trying to be fair to Alex out of some futile sense of decency, and railing at the injustice of it all. Sometimes she wondered if her deep religious beliefs made her too fair. And Alex knew her well, and just where to hit, and how.

“I'm sorry. I'm sounding insane. I'm exhausted, and upset. And it was such a nice weekend. I'm sorry to be a pest about all this. He is being such a shit. Nothing you can do about it, it just helps to talk to you. Thank you for spoiling me, feeding me, being so good to me. I had fun. We always do. I'll let you know what happens here. Have a good day. Love, Fred.”

And at nine o'clock, she called Alex. He had just walked into the office and he sounded irritated when he picked up the phone.

“What's up?”

“A lot,” Faith said sounding stressed. “I gather you talked to Ellie. That was a rotten thing you did.”

“I'm not going to listen to insults from you, Faith,” he said, threatening to hang up. “I have a right to tell my daughter anything I want.” He sounded instantly defensive. He knew how rotten it was.

“It would be nice if you stuck to the truth. You told her this divorce was my idea.”

“Well, it is, isn't it? You tossed our marriage in the trash when you enrolled at NYU.”

“I did nothing of the sort. And you brought a woman into my bed. Did you tell her that?”

“No. Did you?”

“No, I didn't, because I want to be fair to you. Alex, you poisoned her against me.” She was in tears as she spoke.

“That's what you do with Zoe, isn't it?” he accused.

“No, it's not. You totally lied to Ellie, and made her think the whole thing is my fault. You even told her I asked for a divorce last year, and that's a total lie.” He said not a word and there was silence on the line. He had hit way below the belt. “And she thinks I want to sell the house. What's that about?” Her heart raced as she asked.

“We don't have any choice. I want my money out of it. You'll get your half.”

“I don't want my half. I want the house, to live in at least. Where am I going to live?” She was crying openly at what he was doing to her.

“You can get housing at NYU,” he said nastily, and Faith was appalled. He was the most vengeful man she had ever known. She would never have thought him capable of this. It made her wonder who he had always been. Under his icy exterior, there was no heart at all.

“Are you evicting me?” She sounded panicked.

“My lawyer will discuss it with yours.” The way he said it told her he was. He was taking away their home, their marriage, and he had stolen one of their children, with lies. He was destroying her life, just as Ellie had accused her. But Alex really was. And she was worried that the fact that Alex had paid for the house would give her no rights to it at all. She had invested her life and time and heart in their marriage, but the money invested had been his all along.

“Why are you doing all this? How can you hate me so much? Just because I'm going to school? How sick is that?”

“As sick as your walking out on me, to pretend you're a kid.” But it wasn't about that, Faith knew, it was about the girl. She suspected that the girl in the thong was at the crux of this. He was the one trying to recapture his youth, and destroy everything they'd had, and her.

“It's all about that girl,” Faith accused him, and felt justified doing it. “You're trying to obscure that. What you did was totally without respect for me. And now you're trying to make yourself look clean to our daughters, but you're not. And you know it, Alex. What the hell are you doing? Are you marrying her?”

“I have nothing more to say to you,” he said coldly, and without waiting for a reply from her, he hung up. Faith sat staring into space after he did. And then she called her lawyer to ask him to find out about the house, and he promised he would.

It was only then that she noticed that Brad had sent her an e-mail sometime in the last several hours, probably when she was talking to Alex.

“Poor Fred … what a turkey he is. Don't worry about Ellie. She'll get it. Kids always do. My parents pulled the same shit on me. It took me a while, but I got it. They were determined to destroy each other, and both sides tried to use me as a hostage. Ugly stuff. You're not doing that. Ellie will see who is. Wait. Be patient. Be cool. Defend yourself against him. Talk to your lawyer. Don't give up the house. He owes you that much. Hang tough. Have to go to work early, and see what disasters came in over the weekend. I had a great time. You are a miracle in my life. Go have a banana split… just make sure you wipe your chin. Talk to you later. Love, Brad.”

He always made her smile. He always comforted her and now that he was back in her life, he was always there. Faith sat back and read his e-mail again, and felt calmer than she had in hours. And all she could do was thank God for him.





19


FAITH'S CONCERNS ABOUT THE HOUSE PROVED TO BE well founded, or somewhat at least. Although her attorney was slightly reassuring on that score. She heard from him the day after she'd called, as she walked in from school. She was doing well, but having to struggle to concentrate. She was so distracted that the papers she was writing weren't as coherent as she would have liked them to be, and her grades reflected it. But she was hanging in.

She answered the phone as she walked in the door. The attorney didn't have great news.

“You were right. He wants you to move out. He's giving you ninety days.” That meant the end of May.

“Oh my God. Can he do that?” Faith went pale.

“Only if you agree. And I don't think you should.” She was relieved to hear him say that at least. She had visions of everything she owned on the street. “He owes you half of it for community property, and if you want your money out of it, then you should sell the house. If he wants his half, he can force you out in time, and require you to sell. But he's going to have to make some kind of settlement with you, and if you want his share of the house as part of that, that's what we'll do. I think I can get that for you, Faith, if that's what you want. If not, I can't force him to let you stay and tie up his half indefinitely.”

“I want to keep the house,” she said in a strangled voice. All she really wanted was not to move, not to change anything, to hang on to whatever she could of a familiar life that had lasted for twenty-six years. She was fighting change as much as she was losing the house.

“We'll take him to court on it. I haven't had any kind of official notice from them about it yet. Let's wait and see what he does. He has to give you time, in any case. He can't force you out until this is resolved.”

But it didn't take him long. She had a letter from his attorney by the end of the week. It had been addressed to her lawyer, of course, but it said that Alex wanted her to move out, and put the house on the market as soon as possible. They had given her a few days of grace and wanted her out by the first of June. It was the cruelest thing she could think of, throwing her out of her house. The only thing worse had been bringing his girlfriend home to her bed, and lying to their kids.

Brad was reassuring her as often as they spoke, and she had left half a dozen messages for Ellie, but she wouldn't return the calls. It was an enormous relief when finally, in the first week of March, Zoe told her that Eloise was coming home.

“Why didn't she tell me? She hasn't returned any of my calls.”

It came as no surprise to Zoe. The two sisters had had a huge fight on the phone, with Zoe defending their mother, and Eloise defending their dad, each convinced that the other had been handed a raw deal and a pack of lies.

“You don't know what you're talking about!” Zoe had screamed at her in the middle of the night. It had been morning for Eloise. “He fucking walked out on her. I saw her that week. You should have seen the condition she was in!”

“She deserves to be. She's been asking him for a divorce behind our backs for a year. And now she's forcing him to sell the house.”

“It's all lies, don't you get that, you moron? That's who he is. He's kicking Mom out on her ass. He wants her out on the first of June.”

“The hell he does. He has no choice. He says she wants a lot of money from him. And that's disgusting too. Mom is a total bitch, and it's all her fault. You just don't want to see how evil she is.”

“You're blind,” Zoe accused her older sister. “You've been brainwashed by him.” In the end, they had hung up on each other, and Zoe had the unpleasant task of informing her mother that Eloise was planning to stay with Alex during the week she'd be in town. She was staying in the apartment he had sublet, and refused to stay at the house. She was only going to go there to pick up some things.

She arrived in New York on St. Patrick's Day, and had a week off. It was a full two days before she called her mother, who had been sitting in the house, waiting to hear from her, and feeling sick over it. All she could get at Alex's apartment, once Zoe gave her the number, was an answering machine. And Ellie had returned none of her calls. Faith was so desperate to hear from her that she hadn't even gone to school, but at least she was staying home, studying for exams.

She nearly burst into tears when she finally heard Ellie's voice. But the conversation was brief and to the point. Ellie said she was coming over to pick up some clothes, and she said that she hoped her mother wouldn't be there. For a nearly twenty-five-year-old woman, she sounded incredibly childish to Faith, and needlessly cruel. But she was being tutored well.