“Honestly?” she answered him. “No, it doesn't work for me. Weekends-only is the pits. I hate it. It was fine at first, but it got to me after the first couple of years. I've been upset and complaining about it for the last year, but he doesn't want to hear about it. That's the deal that's on the table. Take it or leave it. He's a tough negotiator, and a very good attorney.”
“Why do you put up with it, if you don't like it?” Jeff was ever more curious about her.
“What else is there?” she asked sadly. “I'm not that young anymore. There aren't a lot of decent guys out there at our age. Most of them are commitment phobic. They've had a bad marriage and don't want another one, or even a full-time commitment. The ones who've never been married are usually dysfunctional, and can't tolerate any relationship at all. The good ones are married by now and having children. Besides, I'm busy. I work too hard. When am I supposed to go out and meet someone? And where? I don't go to bars. I almost never go to parties anymore. I don't drink enough to enjoy them. The guys I work with are all married. And I don't do married men. So that leaves what I've got. I keep thinking that eventually he'll want to spend more time with me. But he doesn't. At least not so far. And maybe never. This works for him, better than it does for me. He's a nice guy, though he's selfish sometimes. And most of the time I enjoy him, when I don't upset myself worrying about how little I see him.” And she didn't want to add to Jeff that the sex was great, even after four years.
“He'll never spend more time with you,” Jeff said clinically. They were becoming friends as they put their emotional cards on the table, and they liked each other. “Why should he? He's got what he wants. A weekend woman who's there for him, and doesn't give him a lot of grief, because you probably don't want to rock the boat too badly. He's got comfort when he wants it, two days a week, and freedom the rest of the time. Hell, for him, it's the perfect arrangement. For a guy who's already been married and has kids, and doesn't want more than he's got with you now, he has it made in the shade with you.” She smiled at the expression, and she didn't disagree with him.
“I just haven't had the guts to walk away till now. My mother says the same thing you do. She calls him a deadbeat. But I know what weekends all alone look like, and to be honest with you, Jeff, I hate them. I always did. I'm just not ready to face that again. Not yet.”
“You'll never find a better one, unless you're willing to go through it.”
“You're right, but it's goddamn hard to do,” she said honestly.
“Tell me about it. That's why Marie-Louise and I keep winding up together. That, and a house we bought together, and a business, and an apartment we share in Paris, that I pay for and she uses. But every time we break up, we both look around and it scares the shit out of us, so we wind up back together. After fourteen years, at least we know what we're getting. She's not psycho, I'm not dysfunctional. We're not ripping each other off, or cheating on each other. At least I hope not,” he said with a rueful grin, since she was six thousand miles away in Paris. “But one of these days I suspect she'll go back to Paris and stay there, and we'll have to pull apart our business, which wouldn't be a great thing for either of us. We make pretty decent money working together. She's a good woman. We're just very different. Maybe that's a good thing. But she always says she doesn't want to grow old here. And I can't see myself moving to Paris. For one thing, I still don't speak decent French. I get by, but it would be hard to work there. And if we're not married, I can't get work papers. Marie-Louise says she'll never get married, and in her case, she means it. And she sure as hell doesn't want children.” Neither did Sarah. She and Marie-Louise had that in common, although everything else about them was different.
“God, things are so complicated these days, aren't they? Everyone has such screwed-up ideas about relationships and how they want to live. Everyone has ‘issues.’ Nothing is easy. People don't just say ‘I do’ and walk off into the sunset together and make it work. We construct these crazy arrangements that sort of work and sort of don't, and maybe could work, but then again they couldn't. I wonder if it was always like that. I just don't think so,” Sarah said, looking thoughtful as she mused about it.
“We're probably all like that because none of us saw happy marriages at home when we were growing up. Our parents' generation stayed together and hated each other. Ours either doesn't get married at all, or gets divorced at the drop of a hat. Nobody tries to work it out. If it's not comfortable, and they get a wedgie and their shorts bunch up, they dump it,” he said, and Sarah laughed at how he described it. But she didn't disagree with him.
“Maybe you're right,” Sarah said, looking pensive. It was an interesting theory.
“What about your parents? Were they happy?” he asked, watching her. He liked her. He could sense that she was a truly decent person, with integrity and good values. But so was Marie-Louise, she just had very sharp edges. And she'd had a tough childhood, which impacted her still, whether she admitted it or not.
“Of course not.” Sarah laughed at the question he'd asked her. “My father was a raging alcoholic, and my mother covered for him. She supported all of us, while he lay around in the bedroom too drunk to move and she made excuses for him. I hated him for doing that. And then he died when I was sixteen. I can't even say I missed him. It was almost as though he'd never been there. In fact, it was easier once he wasn't.” And for much of her early life, she wished he hadn't been. And then felt guilty about it after he died.
“Did she remarry?” he asked with interest. “She must have been young when she was widowed, if you were only sixteen.”
“She was a year older than I am now, come to think of it. She sold real estate, and then became an interior decorator and made pretty decent money. She paid my way through Harvard, and then Stanford law school. But she never remarried. She's had a bunch of very temporary boyfriends. They're always alcoholic or dysfunctional, or she thinks they are. Mostly she hangs out with her girlfriends now, and goes to book clubs.”
“That's sad,” Jeff said sympathetically.
“Yeah, it is, although she claims she's happy. I don't believe her. I wouldn't be. That's why I hang on to my weekend guy. I don't want to wind up twenty years from now doing book clubs like my mom.”
“You will anyway,” Jeff said bluntly. “He's taking up real estate in your life. You really think he'll stick around for twenty years?”
“Probably not,” she said honestly, “but he's here now. That's the problem. I guess one of these days it'll fall apart, but I'm in no hurry to push it. I hate those lonely weekends.”
“I know. I get it. So do I. I don't mean to sound smug about it. I don't have the answers either.”
They left the restaurant after that. And they had come in separate cars, so they hugged each other and she drove home. The phone was ringing off the hook when she got in. She glanced at her watch and was surprised to see that it was eleven. She had turned her cell phone off during dinner.
“Where the fuck were you?” Phil was livid.
“Jesus. Relax. I went out to dinner. It was no big deal. I had sushi.”
“Again? With who?” He nearly came through the phone at her, and she couldn't help wondering if he was jealous, or just being an asshole. Maybe he'd been out himself and had been drinking.
“What difference does it make?” she asked, sounding annoyed. “You're not here during the week anyway. I went out with someone I'm working on a project with. It was strictly business.” That was true.
“What is this? Revenge? Because I need to go to the gym after work and get some exercise? Punishment? Christ, that's childish.”
“I'm not the one screaming,” she pointed out. “You are. What's the big deal here?”