Back In the Game

by Holly Chamberlin

Genres: African American Women's Fiction; Women's Fiction; African American Romance

Synopsis

From bestselling author Holly Chamberlin comes a heartfelt novel of love, marriage, and one woman's search for what comes next. . . Jess Marlowe always sensed her marriage had a limited run. So when a reckless mistake ended it, she was hardly shocked. But since her divorce became final, the surprises have been coming fast and furious. It seems no one in Jess's life is having an easy time adjusting to her newly single status. Most disturbing of all, Jess has no regrets. She knows nobody promised relationships lasted forever. But now she wonders if it's ever right to promise anyone anything. Yet despite Jess's resolve to act with her head from now on, she just may have to accept that the heart has a say of its own. . . Praise for the novels of Holly Chamberlin "Nostalgia over real-life friendships lost and regained pulls readers into the story." – USA Today on Summer Friends "It does the trick as a beach book and provides a touristy taste of Maine's seasonal attractions." -- Publishers Weekly on The Family Beach House

Release date: April 30, 2013

Publisher: Kensington

Print pages: 352

Sample

The day Richard and I got married it rained. Cats and dogs, my father said. The man loved a cliché.

The July sky opened up around three that afternoon and dumped rivers of rain on us until after midnight. When the reception was over, the rain finally stopped.

They say that rain on your wedding day is a good thing, a sign of luck, assurance of a blessed union.

For a little over twenty years our luck held, Richard’s and mine. It held through good times and bad. It held through the birth of our two children, Clara, then two years later, Colin. It held through colds and chicken pox and scraped knees, through Richard’s promotions and my ovarian cancer scare, and through the kids’ graduations from high school. Our luck even held through the deaths of my parents in an awful car crash, and through Richard’s mother’s slow descent in Alzheimer’s and then his father’s fatal heart attack.

It held through the fabulous trip to Europe we took to celebrate our twentieth wedding anniversary.

But, as my father was fond of saying, all good things come to an end. Our union, blessed for so long, fell apart in a spectacular way the night I found evidence of Richard’s affair—the night he admitted to being in love with someone else.

A man named Bob Landry.

My life as I knew it exploded that night. Almost a year later, I’m still finding bloody shards in unlikely places.

Like in the U.S. mail.

I’d spent most of the early spring afternoon walking, wandering really, with no goal in mind other than to eventually wind my way home. I was tired when I got back to the apartment but it was a good tired, the kind you feel in your bones. I hoped I would sleep well that night; since the divorce, sleep had been a hit or miss activity.

I shuffled through the mail I’d retrieved from the box in the lobby. A few bills. A letter from a colleague on the MFA’s Annual Fund committee. A letter from my doctor, confirming what the technician at the hospital had already told me, that my mammogram was clean.

And then . . . I held the chunky envelope in fingers that were suddenly shaky.

Interestingly, some people still hadn’t heard about Richard’s emergence from a lifetime of secrecy and lies. Take, for example, the Smiths, a family who used to own an apartment in the building next door but who’d relocated to Connecticut five years earlier. Clearly they didn’t know that Richard and I were no longer “man and wife” because there it was in my shaking hand, a wedding invitation addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Richard Allard.

Mrs. Richard Allard. The name mocked me; it mocked everything I had thought I had and was and would be until the end, until death parted Richard from me.

After the divorce I’d gone back to using my maiden name, Keats. Maiden name. An accurate term in my case as Richard was the first and only man I’d ever had sex with, and not really, not entirely, until after we were married. Until after the church sanctioned our union and we promised to love and cherish each other and to accept children willingly from God. Not until after we were made to listen to all that other crap Richard’s Catholic church demanded we listen to.

Nell Keats. I am once again who I was a long, long time ago. Except that now, Nell Keats is a forty-two-year-old divorced woman, mother of twenty-year-old Clara and eighteen-year-old Colin, my children who still have their father’s name, who in that way and more still belong to him. I could throw off the burden of Richard’s name, the mark of his possession, but I couldn’t ask my son and daughter to do the same.

Nell Keats. In what relation do I stand to those three Allards?

I tossed the wedding invitation from the Smiths on the hall table. It would have to be answered. I would have to explain yet again what I was so tired of explaining. And then would come the inevitable questions.

How are you feeling?

Like hell.

Are you okay?

No.

Did Richard at least take care of you financially?

Oh, yes.

A wild thought came to me then. Upon learning that Richard and I were no longer married, would the Smiths choose my ex-husband and his lover over me? Would Richard and Bob be invited to the Smiths’ yearly Summer Splash pool party? Would I be left off the guest list?

Stranger things had happened to me since that eye-opening night when I found the scrap of paper in Richard’s pants pocket as I sorted the laundry for clothes to be taken to the dry cleaners. I unfolded the scrap, thinking it might have been a receipt Richard might need to record, and instead found a note in a man’s handwriting—I can always tell a man’s from a woman’s—and what it said exactly modesty forbids me to repeat.

I sat heavily on the edge of the bed. Richard wasn’t home; he’d said he was working late. When Richard walked into the apartment at almost eleven, I was still sitting on the edge of our bed, numb. It never occurred to me, not for one moment, that the note was a piece of trash Richard had picked up from outside the building. Richard was always tidying up. Somehow, I just knew this note was evidence of something far more unpleasant than trash.

Richard came into the bedroom, smiled, opened his mouth to say, “Hi, Nellie.” But nothing came out of his mouth. He saw the look on my face, saw the note I held in my hand, and knew the game was over. Thankfully, he didn’t deny his culpability.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. He looked ill, scared.

I said nothing that night, I couldn’t, but oh, by the next night the words were flying out of my mouth, questions, insults, protestations, cries for mercy.

Mercy. I felt like a victim, powerless, confused. Why me?

Eleven months later and I was still asking, why me?

I stared down at the Smiths’ wedding invitation on the hall table. Let Richard handle it, I thought. Let Richard do the explaining.

I’m through.

Candace. Yes, Candace was a good name for a girl.

But wait, I thought. People will be tempted to call her Candy, and no daughter of mine was going to have a name that was better suited to a porn star.

No daughter of mine.

I wanted, I needed to find just the right names for my children. And I wasn’t even pregnant, not even divorced from Duncan Costello, my husband of eight years, the man who refused to give me my children, little Annabelle or Leon.

“Mrs. Costello?”

I looked up at the lawyer, startled back to the moment.

“I’d prefer if you called me Ms. Keats,” I said. “I’ll be going back to my maiden name.”

That is, until I get remarried. Then I’ll be Mrs. Lumia or Mrs. Makepeace. I really hope I meet a guy with a good last name!

The lawyer nodded. She had a nice face and a nice office. I’d found her in the Yellow Pages. One of my colleagues at the business and computer training school where I work as an administrative assistant teased me for using the phone book and not the Internet to find a divorce lawyer. But in some ways, I’m kind of old-fashioned. I might work for a school that trains people to build and repair computers, but that doesn’t mean I want to build and repair them myself!

“Ms. Keats, then,” she said. “Are you absolutely sure you want to go through with the divorce? Because your husband will be served the papers today.”

I thought about my babies, the babies Duncan said he didn’t want, and said, “Yes, I’m sure.”

I left her office a few minutes later and took the elevator to the lobby. I walked out into the afternoon. It was early April. The winter had been really long and hard, with lots and lots of snow. But now that it was getting warmer, you could feel people’s excitement. I felt my own excitement.

It was really happening. If Duncan came through on his promise not to be horrible, I could be officially divorced in a matter of months. On my own, single, back out there, back in the game and looking for love.

I stumbled. I suddenly felt really dizzy. What was I doing? Was getting a divorce worth it? Was it worth ending an eight-year marriage to a nice guy, someone I had fallen in love with completely, someone I’d been pretty happy with until . . .

I took a deep breath and felt a little better.

A marriage to someone I’d been pretty happy with until I hadn’t been pretty happy with him. Until not long after the sudden death of my parents, until not long after my sister Nell’s husband had announced that he was gay. That’s when it dawned on me that what I wanted most in life was not Duncan but children. At least two children, hopefully a boy first and then a girl.

I took another deep breath and headed for the corner.

It isn’t an unreasonable desire, you know. It’s not like I’m crazy or something. I mean, every woman deserves a child, even if it means leaving her husband to get one.

As I waited for the light to change to green, I ran through our past, Duncan’s and mine, just to be sure I’d gotten things right, though I knew of course that I had.

Duncan and I met at a club. We liked each other right away and went on our first date the next night. Or was it the night after that? Anyway, we had a lot of fun and the next thing you know, we were an exclusive couple.

The subject of having a family didn’t come up for the first six months of our relationship. I mean, we were having fun! And when the subject did come up, when one of Duncan’s friends got his girlfriend pregnant and things got explosive, Duncan and I decided that neither of us really wanted children all that much. But neither of us rejected the idea completely. I mean, we just thought, what’s the rush? We don’t want kids now, so what’s the point of talking about them?

I think Duncan and I had been together for almost a year and a half when we got married. It was a really fun wedding. I still remember how yummy the cake was and what really cool stuff the DJ played. My parents paid for most of it, which was really nice of them considering Duncan wasn’t making tons of money and I certainly wasn’t!

But that was my parents. Always doing nice things for their daughters.

I guess about a year after our wedding the topic of kids came up again, this time when one of my colleagues was struggling through a messy divorce and battling her soon-to-be-ex for full custody of their little girl. Once again, Duncan and I agreed that we were still up in the air about the whole “kid thing.” That’s what we called it. The “kid thing.”

I started to cross the broad street, from one side of Boylston to the other. I don’t like the word “kid” anymore. I like the word “child” better. It seems nicer and more mature, doesn’t it?

Anyway, before you know it we were celebrating our fifth anniversary. And then the subject of children started to come up every month. I’d get my period and say, “Still just you and me, honey.” Duncan would wipe his brow with the back of his hand, say, “Whew!” and we’d laugh. See, we weren’t trying to get pregnant. We were trying to stay not pregnant.

And then it was year six. Duncan and I still hadn’t come to any definite conclusion about the “kid thing.” We’d end every conversation by saying things like, “Let’s think about it some more” and “Let’s wait until after Christmas to decide.”

We were both pretty happy.

And then my parents, Mary and Lucas Keats, married over forty years, were killed instantly when a suddenly out-of-control tractor-trailer smashed into their small Honda. They were on their way to Florida for a week’s vacation at Disney World. They loved Disney World. They went there every year. I have a whole collection of pictures with my parents and Mickey Mouse.

Not long after that terrible crash, I knew. I told Duncan that I wanted children. I told him that I needed to have children. He said, “Let’s think about it some more.” I said, “No more thinking.” And then he said, “I’m sorry, Laura. I can’t.”

Well, it was a little more complicated than that, of course. There were a lot of big fights and I even begged him, but nothing would change his mind. He wouldn’t say yes to starting a family even though it meant losing me.

I came to a dead stop in the middle of the street. My heart hurt. I felt all dizzy again. I wondered if I was having a panic attack.

“Lady! Move it or lose it!”

I don’t know why people have to be rude.

The taxi driver’s shout got my feet moving and I reached the sidewalk safely. I thought about going into Marshall’s to browse the children’s section. I remembered all the cute outfits I’d bought for Nell’s children when they were little. I love being the adoring aunt.

Nell is smart; she always has been. She had Colin and Clara in her early twenties. And now that a bad thing has happened, now that Richard, the love of her life, has left her for a man, the love of his life, Nell still has Colin and Clara. She isn’t alone, not really, the way I would be someday if I didn’t hurry up and have a baby.

I turned left and hurried down the sidewalk to Marshall’s.

My mother used to tell me that I was a pushover.

“Grace,” she’d scold, shaking her head, a look of keen disappointment on her face, “you’re a pushover. You’re just a ball of fluff being tossed around by the wind.”

She was right. I was a spineless creature. I saw that about myself from the start.

My mother, however, didn’t share my consciousness. As much as she hated my tendency to comply, she never saw the same tendency in herself. My mother, Eva Lynch Henley, was the classic pushover, the woman anyone, especially a man, could get around with nothing more than a smile, a caress, a puppy-dog look.

I should note that I never took advantage of her the way other people did, probably because even as a child I was already professionally pleasant.

But my mother, oh, she’d warn me that I would be hurt out there in the big bad world unless I toughened up. “Grace,” she’d say, “where has your self-esteem gotten to?”

I never told her that my self-esteem hadn’t bothered to show up in the first place.

And I never, even when I was in college and hating her, I never pointed out that my behavior was almost an exact copy of hers. I never pointed out that I had been her trainee.

I hated my mother but I was too nice to act on that hate. It seemed rude to remind her that my father, her husband, treated her like a dim-witted cleaning lady rather than like a partner in life. It seemed rude to point out that she allowed his bad behavior, that she seemed to enjoy bending over backward when he brought over friends for dinner at the last minute. It seemed rude to point out that she didn’t yell and scream when he spent their vacation money on a touring bike. It seemed rude to point out that she hadn’t fought back when without consultation he installed his ailing mother in my mother’s sewing room, forcing my mother to make the custom shirts my father preferred in a cramped corner of the garage he had always promised to clean and never did.

All those years I said nothing.

I’m not blaming my mother for making me into anything I wasn’t already by accident of birth. Well, maybe I am blaming her, just a bit, but I keep my anger in this regard to myself. It’s too late, anyway. It would do no good to say, “Thanks a lot, Mom, you set a really fine example” to a grave.

My mother died when I was twenty-one, just barely out of college, and since then I’ve mostly been doing her proud, first by falling in love with and then marrying a moody artist named Simon Trenouth, by putting up with his numerous affairs, by paying all of his bills. Yes, I did divorce charming Simon after too many years of his casual abuse, but true to my mother and to myself, I continued to “be there” for him, letting him sleep on the couch when his girlfriends threw him out, paying his rent when he forgot to, holding his hand when artistic inspiration just wasn’t there.

But the credit card bill was the final straw.

I looked down again at the blue sheet of paper. I felt the urge to scream but I didn’t. It might annoy the neighbors.

There had been other surprises on other credit card bills—clothing from the Armani store (a suit he never wore), caviar from a mail-order company (food he never ate)—but nothing like this, nothing so enormous, nothing from Rothman Brothers, an exclusive jeweler. Simon was in big trouble.

I didn’t even bother to question the purchase with the credit card company. Years of tending to a deeply immature man had given me a sixth sense, an ability to tell when he was at fault, and when I was going to have to pick up the pieces yet again.

I dialed Simon’s cell phone, wondering if he’d run out of minutes, remembering how he could never seem to keep track of such details. Simon answered; his voice sounded hoarse and I noted it wasn’t yet noon, his usual waking hour.

“What did you buy at Rothman Brothers?” I said.

“Gracie?”

“What did you buy?”

Simon sighed the tortured sigh of the long-suffering artist. “Gift,” he said. “For Jane.”

“Who the hell is Jane?”

“Girlfriend. Nice kid. You’d like her, Gracie.”

“Return it,” I said. “Because I’m not paying for your girlfriend’s baubles. And if you ever use my credit card again, I will report you to the police.”

Simon made a gurgling sound of protest and I hung up.

What did I expect, really? I’d trained Simon all the years of our marriage to be helpless and irresponsible. Sure, he’d come to me pretty much that way, but I’d helped mold an amateur slouch into a professional bum.

I could be mad at Simon, but I could be madder at myself.

I took a deep breath, straightened the stack of opened mail, and thought about treating myself to a croissant at the bakery on the corner. I decided against it. Too expensive. Until Simon returned that bauble and my credit card bill was adjusted, I’d have to be very, very careful.

There was two-day-old bread in the kitchen. I ate that.

“Hi,” I said, tossing my bag on an empty chair. “It’s been ages. Why are we all so busy?”

Nell smirked. “Contemporary society tells us we have to be busy. If we’re busy, our lives must be important. Busyness, I am told, helps fill the emotional and spiritual void most of us find ourselves condemned to. Hello, Jess.”

“Aren’t you in a chipper mood,” I commented.

Nell just shrugged.

She’d arrived at the restaurant before any of us; she’s always just a bit early. She says she was punctual even as a little girl, punctual and in charge.

I met Nell a few years back at a charity event she was cohosting. We hit it off when a particularly rude woman at our table was told off by the waiter she’d been abusing. Nell and I spontaneously applauded and met for lunch later that week. Though our lives were playing out very differently—Nell was married and I wasn’t; Nell has kids and I don’t; I teach sociology at Northeastern while Nell has chosen a more traditional manner of career as a full-time mother and volunteer—we had enough of the important things in common to make a friendship grow.

A love of reading, an interest in the arts, a sometimes wry approach to life, and a tendency to applaud when justice is served.

I never really got to know Richard, Nell’s husband, the man she’d been with since college. I saw him rarely and my general impression was of a quiet, intelligent, well-mannered guy, a tiny bit hesitant or secretive, or maybe just private. It was clear to me from the start that Nell adored him; they were best friends, really, and for a brief time I was almost jealous of their union. I remember thinking: that is what marriage should be. Somehow, Nell and Richard got it right.

Grace arrived at the restaurant just after I did and took the seat against the wall; she always does. She likes to people watch; she can hold an intense conversation with someone while at the same time noting minute details of passersby. I imagine this ability to focus on one thing and yet observe another is essential when you’re a teacher of nine- and ten-year-olds.

Grace and I met almost eleven years ago when I was seeing a guy named Carl, a jazz saxophone player. One night Carl introduced me to his friend Simon, and to Simon’s wife, Grace. Simon was a painter, supposedly gifted—not that I would really know; I appreciate art but don’t really know what I’m looking at—and sexy in that charming, bohemian kind of way. While Simon was charismatic, prone to dramatic gestures and a roaring laugh, his wife was more guarded in her behavior, self-contained. For a while I wondered if Grace was intimidated by her show-stopping husband, but when I learned she taught art at a prestigious, private middle school, I figured the discipline her job required informed every aspect of her life.

The long story short is that Grace and I became close and the guys didn’t last. Carl and I broke up—he was far too carefree for me—and Grace, finally tired of Simon’s infidelity and other costly antics, divorced him.

Around the time Grace filed for divorce, Nell invited me to a cocktail party at her beautifully appointed apartment on Marlborough Street. Temporarily single, I brought Grace along. That night we both met Nell’s younger sister, Laura, and her husband, Duncan. Duncan seemed a nice enough guy and made a nice enough impression on me. Laura and Duncan seemed well suited, as did Nell and Richard.

Well. It wasn’t the first time I was wrong and it won’t be the last.

Laura finally arrived at Café Alice. Her tendency to be late or to slip in just under the gate is only one of the ways in which she’s different from her older sister.

Nell is tall and slim, aristocratic in her bearing, though certainly not in her attitude. She has a delicate beauty, with fine features, sapphire blue eyes, and sleek blond hair. Laura also has blond hair but it’s thicker and darker than Nell’s. She’s medium height and slightly plump in a way that might be a problem later but which suits her perfectly now. Laura’s eyes are wide and blue green and somehow innocent.

Grace is small and slim. Her hair is dark, almost black, and she wears it in a bob reminiscent of Louise Brooks. Her eyes are brown and doelike; her style, urban sleek.

As for me, at five foot nine inches I tower over Grace. I’ve never been shy about my height; I like being tall, though it can be difficult finding pants that fit properly. The rest of me is unspectacular. Brown hair to my shoulders, brown eyes. End of story. Well, I have heard that I have a good smile.

“Well,” Nell said when we had ordered a round of drinks, “I don’t know about you gals, but I’ve had quite a week.”

“What happened?” Grace asked.

Nell told us about the wedding invitation from the Smiths.

“That’s awkward,” I said. “So, did you ask Richard to respond?”

“I didn’t ask him; I told him to respond. And to explain to Mr. and Mrs. Smith that he now prefers the company of men. Rather, that he has always preferred the company of men but was too scared to admit it. So, what’s new with you, Jess?”

I related the sad tale of my conversation with Matt.

“So, it’s official,” I said. “We’re divorced and I’m single and Matt is miserable.”

Nell, not terribly demonstrative, patted my hand. “I still th. . .