He paused and then continued, “And she’s coming on to me all the time.”
“She is?”
“It’s confusing.”
“So, Henry, are you sleeping with her?”
“Are you kidding? Of course I am.”
Rainey felt a rush of disgust that twitched the corners of her mouth downward. She looked away, hoping he was too self-absorbed to have noticed.
“But you think there’s someone else, too?” Rainey crossed her arms as he nodded again, and then she leaned back in her chair. “Well, how can I help you?”
“I don’t know. I guess I just wanted to tell somebody. And I wanted to know if it’s a legal problem.”
“Maryland’s only a no-fault state if people can swear they’ve lived apart for a year before a divorce, without cohabitation. That means without sleeping together. So every time you sleep together after separation, you push the date for a divorce back. Does that make sense?”
“Yeah. Well, I don’t want the divorce, anyway, so if it takes longer, that’s fine by me.”
“Well, Henry, I’m not a therapist, and I can’t second-guess your feelings. But from a legal perspective, Maryland allows adultery as grounds for divorce, so if Barbara is having an affair, you could get into court whenever you want on those grounds.” Rainey had repeated similar words so many times in her career, they rolled out automatically.
Henry nodded. One side of his mouth twisted in a wry smile. “I can’t prove anything. It just seems strange to me, her mood.”
Rainey leaned forward, encouragingly. “Henry, divorce is difficult. It hits people different ways. Don’t jump to conclusions.”
While she spoke, she noticed his gaze falling to her cleavage, and she sat straighter in her chair. It had been annoying enough to be the object of sexist remarks in the courtroom, but in her own conference room? She took a deep breath and set her jaw tightly.
There was a knock on the door, and Barbara opened it without waiting for an invitation. Rainey glanced at her watch. Twenty minutes late. And where was Lawrence?
Barbara settled herself in a chair, swiveling toward Rainey. “I’m sorry to be late. Something came up.” Then a red flush made its way from her neck up to her forehead. It made Rainey wonder if breasts could blush. Maybe Henry was right. Maybe Barbara was having an affair.
“It’s all right. Lawrence isn’t here yet,” Rainey said, “and I haven’t heard from him…” The door opened again.
“I apologize,” Lawrence said. He was red-faced and out of breath. “I had some bike problems. I’ll be just a moment more; I need some water.”
As he left the room, Barbara gazed after him as if he were something edible. Rainey watched the expression on Barbara’s face. She sighed. Lawrence had counseled Barbara before she decided to divorce Henry, and then he changed hats, so to speak, and brought the couple into mediation. Rainey had learned it could be a pain to work in mediation with clients Lawrence had seen before as a therapist; their therapeutic transference and silly fantasies about Lawrence didn’t make her job easier. Rainey began shuffling through the file, and Lawrence came back, holding a water glass, his hair damp around his face. As he reached across the table to shake hands with Henry, Rainey glimpsed Barbara’s expression. Her adoring look warped briefly, her upper lip curling in a silent hiss.
“Are we all ready to begin the session?” Rainey asked, taking control.
They began discussing parenting arrangements for Henry and Barbara’s two young children. Barbara hadn’t wanted to share custody, claiming they were too young; Henry, however, was terrified of losing his children. He fretted about whether his relationship with them would be healthy if he saw them infrequently, and he wasn’t reassured by Rainey’s assertion that he would always be their father. Then, to Rainey’s surprise, Barbara suddenly turned to Henry and said, “You know, I’ve been wrong. You’re a good dad, and you deserve to have the children half the time.”
Rainey found herself moved by Barbara’s acknowledgement of her husband. A tear darted to her eye, followed swiftly by a thought darting through her head. Sure, more time with the lover if Henry’s got the kids.
At the end of the session, Barbara and Henry left together, closing the door behind them. Lawrence grinned at Rainey.
“Good job, partner!”
He jumped up and headed for the door. Rainey frowned. Usually they debriefed their sessions, but maybe he needed to fix the bike? She caught a whiff of a sweaty, musky scent as he dashed out of the office, jogging toward the bicycle he always parked at a meter on the curb. The bike still had the little buggy attached that he had used to cart his children around when they were small. Five years later, he said it worked fine for carrying groceries home, even though the kids had outgrown it.
She watched him cycle away, still vaguely charmed by his refusal to drive a car (his environmental statement, he said), his involvement in transporting his children, and his willingness to go food shopping, before she turned back to the conference room. She was less charmed by the sweat that came with the cycling. Nevertheless, he’d done a lot to grow this business, she thought. It wouldn’t have happened without him. As she tucked her notes in the file, gathered coffee cups from the conference room table, and ran a cloth saturated with furniture polish over the table top, familiar images ran through her head. Pre-Lawrence, and pre-mediation, her life had been a series of infuriating events:
Rainey standing outside a courtroom, breathing deeply to lower the register of her voice. She’d realized early on that the good-ol’-boy judges tuned out their wives’ voices and, thus, the voices of women lawyers. If she didn’t speak in a deep voice, she literally wasn’t heard.
Rainey, during a party, pushing open an unlocked bathroom door in the fancy home of a big-firm lawyer to discover one of the judges snorting cocaine. Great, a cokehead was making vital decisions about people’s lives.
Rainey, coming up the courthouse inside stairwell to beg a judicial assistant for hearing time, since the judge she had been scheduled to appear before had canceled the day’s docket. Then, seeing that same judge rushing down the stairs, his robe billowing around him to disclose white tennis shorts. Clearly, he couldn’t wait to get out of the courthouse and onto the courts.
She had first been disappointed and then disgusted that these shallow, sexist, selfish men were making decisions that changed people’s lives forever. She hated being in a courtroom where they held the power. She had complained bitterly to her friends. And it was her friend Lawrence who called her one day, excited, to tell her about a brand new concept for divorcing couples called mediation, where couples worked together to find shared values and common ground. They had rushed out to California for training and set up their business. Their slogan was simple, but they believed it: “Finding Win-Win Solutions!”
Rainey chuckled to herself, remembering their talks to the ministerial association, the local psychologists, and anyone else who would listen. Even professionals were so clueless that they thought Rainey and Lawrence were coming to teach them mediTAtion, not mediAtion. Coincidentally, after observing Rainey’s short fuse (wasn’t he kind to call it that, instead of an “anger management issue”?), Lawrence taught her mediTAtion. Sometimes they would sit together, breathing quietly, until her jaws relaxed and her shoulders eased.
Given the number of daily aggravations she faced, Rainey ended up meditating a lot.
Work continued for the next week, at its usual pace. Sessions, agreements, and then Henry and Barbara were due to come in for another appointment.