The Husbands Read online

  “I get it.” Isla raises a palm like: preach. “Never off the clock really. If you don’t mind, please sign the guestbook on the way out. Full transparency, we’re fielding inquiries on this property, but let’s just say I have a vested interest in making sure that this house goes to a nice family.” She winks. “So don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any other questions.”

  Nora hastily scrawls her name on an empty line, noting that they are the seventh visitors of the day. “One thing.” She sets down the pen. “Do you know what happened to that house a couple blocks back?”

  “Terrible house fire. Something with the electrical maybe. But don’t worry. We took extra precautions and had this house preinspected with special attention to the wiring. Everything came back perfectly clean.”

  “That’s good to hear.” Hayden touches Nora’s waist. “Thanks again.”

  “Hope you have a great, productive day” is the last thing Nora catches before stepping back out into the day’s Crock-Pot heat.

  * * *

  Having retrieved four-year-old Liv from the in-laws, Nora spends her afternoon on the phone with Gary, a senior partner at Greenberg Schwall. The reason for Gary’s frantic email turns out to be his computer, which isn’t connecting to the color printer. Naturally, he thought to call Nora, given that his secretary doesn’t work on Sundays. Nora uses the directory available to all attorneys at the firm, including Gary, to call the IT hotline, then waits for a team member to call her back. During this time, she makes two separate snacks for Liv, one nutritious, one not, dumps unfolded laundry onto the kitchen table, and digs out a sticker book from a crammed craft drawer that she still needs to make time to clean out. When IT calls back, she conferences in Gary because she knows he’ll be annoyed if he feels she pawned him off on support staff.

  “Mommy, watch this. I can do a trick!” Liv tugs on her dress. Nora tries to watch as her daughter attempts, rather unsuccessfully, to stand like a flamingo. According to Nora’s rough calculations, 80 percent of her parenting life is spent “watching this” while the other 20 is spent chasing Liv through the house with a brush and a hair tie begging her daughter to “please, sit still.” At least it’s cardio.

  “Nora, are you there?” Gary’s gruff on the other end.

  “I’m right here, Gary. Make sure you don’t have CAPS LOCK on, okay?” It’s a testament to how taken care of Gary is that he doesn’t consider her comment utterly condescending. “Is the light on the left side of your keyboard green?”

  Gary grunts. He makes no effort to mask his frustration, which is aimed not at the computer or himself for not knowing how to use it, but at Nora and at Bruce from IT. Nora, however, is accustomed to weathering the partner’s tantrums and takes it no more personally than she does her toddler’s.

  Meanwhile, the other half of her brain wanders, wondering where Hayden has gone. She untwists the lid of an applesauce pouch and hands it to Liv. She checks her in-box. It has begun to fill up, as it does every Sunday evening, clients and other lawyers hoping to get their requests to the front of the line come Monday. She checks the clock. Maybe an early bedtime for Liv and she can get a head start on the week’s work. She’s up for partner this year. She does good work. She writes persuasive legal arguments. People like her. But Nora isn’t what’s known as a “rainmaker.” Instead, she’s earned her keep by servicing the clients of the established senior partners who already have lengthy client lists. Like Gary.

  Not that she hadn’t planned on cultivating her own client list. Once. It’s just that she reached the point in her career at which she could responsibly begin to take on her own clients at the same time she became a mother, and this convergence had so often precluded her attendance at happy hours, lawyer luncheons, and in-person continuing legal education courses that she’d all but given up. She focused on her strengths. She’s content to be the brains behind the spectacle. She’s reasonably sure that she has a deep-seated phobia of public speaking anyway, so it’s probably for the best. She does the research, writes impressive briefs, pieces together compelling arguments, and leaves it to others to stand up in court and sell her words. Everyone knows how vital her work is. Or at least that’s what she tells herself.

  The call ends. Her in-box has grown again. She feels the mounting stress like an itch beneath her fingernails.

  “Hayden!” she shouts, barely clinging to a note of self-control. “Hay-den!” She leans deep into the two syllables. She can’t help it. Her husband appears from the garage, tilting his head to remove his AirPods. “Where were you?” She sounds like a detective trying to intimidate a suspect into providing his alibi. She hates herself a little for it.

  “Sorry.” He pours himself a glass of water, and a stream of it drips onto the front of the refrigerator where it will leave marks on the stainless steel and a puddle on the floor. “I was just working out. I had my headphones in. Did you need me?” He takes in her face. “What’s wrong?”

  “What’s wrong? I’m trying to do my job with a toddler hanging on me while you’re off in la-la land.” This to say nothing of the fact that she is also three months pregnant.

  It hasn’t escaped her notice that she managed to arrive at partnership eligibility, a year typically marked as being one of the hardest in a young lawyer’s life, knocked up.

  “Come on.” He gives a rueful shake of his head. “Don’t be like that. I didn’t know. You should have come to get me. I would have been happy to help.”

  “I didn’t know where you were.” She takes a stack of opened mail and pushes it into a drawer so that she won’t see it.

  “I was just in the garage.”

  “Well, don’t be,” she says, turning away.

  “Geez. Someone’s in a mood.”

  She grabs a broom from the pantry and begins sweeping up the crumbs from Liv’s snack. She doesn’t know whether she is doing this to make a point or because the crumbs are actually bothering her. It’s so hard to tell sometimes. “I’m not in a mood. I just need to work.”

  “Don’t you think it’s kind of ridiculous that they expect you to work weekends?” He watches her sweep. She isn’t illustrating a point to anyone.

  “They don’t.” She relinquishes the broom. “I just have to, Hayden. You go to work and you get to, you know, work. Honestly, I can’t remember the last time that happened for me. I’m always dropping off Liv at school or taking off to bring her to a doctor’s appointment or skipping out to buy a birthday present for one of her friends, and don’t get me started on what happens when she’s sick. An entire eight hours of doing my actual, paying job? That would be, like, amazing. The reason I have to work on weekends is because I have to make those hours up sometime.”

  Nora realizes that she could choose to gripe about Gary here and instead chooses to gripe about Hayden. There’s something wrong with her. She’s going to ruin her marriage if she keeps it up.

  “Okay.” He takes a deep breath. “Tell me what you want from me.”

  “I just need time.” Nora sounds like a broken record. Time, time, time, she’s always stressed about time. She once heard that you can choose to worry about time or you can choose to worry about money, but the good news is, you get to pick.

  “We’ll figure it out,” says Hayden. “We’ll hire more help. It’ll be okay.” Nora nods, but even as he says “we” she hears “you.” And isn’t this always his magical fix for everything? Hire more help! As if “hiring help” is as simple as ordering pizza.

  He holds his arms out and she allows herself to be nuzzled into his broad chest, which smells of fabric softener and deodorant.

  Her rib cage convulses. Her throat goes soupy. The volume of what lies ahead just this week threatens to drown her before she’s even started swimming. And really she does not want to wreck her marriage.

  He stretches her out to arm’s length. “I will help out more.” He lowers his chin so that his pale blue eyes are staring directly into hers. “I’ll pack lunches. I’ll … clean up Liv’s room. I’ll do drop-offs every day.”

  Gratitude rises like freshly baked bread inside of her and she is thinking, Yes, yes, please, let’s do that.

  And yet, somewhere in the back of her mind, she listens for the needling sense of déjà vu, the memory that perhaps she’s heard this all before. Fool me once, that’s to be expected. Fool me twice, that’s love.

  “Deal?” He grins crookedly, stretching out his calloused hand for her to take.

  She is a believer. She has to be. For this man is the same one who forgave her for the worst thing she’s ever done.

  www.lexingtonpost.com

  Necessity Is the Mother of Innovation

  BY LEONARD CASEY

  “As moms enter the workforce in record numbers, women have employed creative problem-solving to make the most of their time.”

  _____________

  Read Comments

  _____________

  BexyFord

  If by “creative” the author means working (why yes I am counting child-rearing + my paying job) seventeen-hour days then—as he puts it—problem solved! SO glad that’s settled.

  StronglikeMom20

  LMAO, pretty sure this author thinks he wrote a feel-good piece when all this makes me want to do is sob into my leftover spaghetti. Secretly change into exercise clothes behind office doors to sneak in a quick “mat workout” in order to save the time it’d take to go to the gym? Buy wearable breast pumps to express milk while on-the-go? Bring a laptop to work through hair appointments? Excuse me while I take that mat and go nap under my desk, thanks.

  Jonathan SC

  Interesting that there weren’t any men interviewed. Women like to act as though they are the only ones who struggle with work-life balance. Like it’s their cross to
bear. When, in fact, most of the men I know are shouldering 50 percent of all household responsibilities. I guess maybe it’s just not new for them or it’s not as trendy to talk about. But articles like these devalue the role of men at home. I would expect a more objective eye from the editorial staff here.

  Neesi

  Anyone else read this and think: Hold up, maybe dudes should be making 80 cents on every one of our dollars instead?

  2

  Nora groaned when she saw the calendar reminder for the Women’s Leadership Initiative pop up just after striking SEND on her fifth email of the morning. She thought about calling in sick, but she did that two months ago and can’t pull that stunt again.

  The brainchild of the firm’s executive committee, the Initiative is a series of monthly meetings that started a year ago. Attendance is mandatory for female associates and maybe, if anyone were paying attention, that might be a tipoff that the women at Greenberg Schwall aren’t actually so keen on being initiated. Like a menstrual cycle, it has become a pain that Nora must endure with clockwork regularity.

  At noon, eight women sit around a conference room table reading the emails that stack up in their Outlook accounts while they’re stuck in this second-rate conference room in what feels like time-out: Stay in there and think about how to break that glass ceiling!

  Beside her, a first-year associate opens the box lunch that’s been provided by the firm from one of the local sandwich shops and inventories the usual soggy sandwich, off-brand chips, hard cookie, and paper-wrapped pickle with a disappointment Nora knows all too well. Another minute of excruciating silence and Barbara Tims at last knocks on the conference table to get everyone’s attention.

  “Shall we get started?” Barbara is a senior member of the executive committee. Her face is loose-jowled and colorless, framed by a female-politician haircut and clip-on earrings. Five years ago, Barbara’s toast at the firm’s thirty-fifth anniversary party included a “fun” anecdote about that time she took only a weekend off following her C-section. Through the grapevine, Nora’s heard that Barbara tracks the amount of time the female associates take off for their honeymoons. Nora took seven days, two of them falling over a weekend, and this apparently was on the very cusp of acceptability.

  “Today,” Barbara announces, “we’re talking about learning to embrace direct language.” Barbara wraps her fingers into fists. “As women, we’re programmed from a young age to couch our opinions, needs, and even facts in qualifiers.” She reads with forced feeling from a handout in front of her. “We say we ‘think’ when really we ‘know.’ We use ‘probably’ when we mean ‘definitely.’ Even worse, we sit back and say nothing at all.”

  As a matter of fact, Nora would very much prefer to sit back and say nothing at all here. It doesn’t seem fair, all the office men at their desks, billing hours and crossing things off their to-do lists.

  Barbara asks them to go around the table and say two things they’re good at without downplaying. Tia, the only other senior associate, says she is good at putting clients at ease and is formidable at negotiations during mediation. She says it just like that. Formidable. Maybe Tia doesn’t have a problem with confidence after all.

  When it’s Nora’s turn, she tells the group that she’s a fast, efficient worker and that she’s good at drafting colorful court motions that manage to be persuasive and not completely boring. This even gets a smile out of Barbara and gives Nora a small flush of pride, not that she’d admit to it.

  Barbara crosses her ankle over her knee, splayed like a man, her slacks opening wide and exposing the bottom of her shin. “Let me pose this to the group. If a woman doesn’t ask for a raise and a company doesn’t volunteer one, whose fault is that?”

  The first-year beside Nora finishes chewing and raises her hand. “The woman’s,” she answers, no qualifiers. “The company isn’t required to be altruistic and it isn’t a mind reader. A company is a business. Women have to take more responsibility.”

  Nora glances at the girl’s ring finger: vacant. Sorry, but what does this first-year know about responsibility? Apparently nothing, seeing as how she wants more of it.

  Nora’s phone rings. She slides it into her lap to check the caller ID, an unknown local number, which she declines.

  “Exactly.” Barbara punctuates with pinched fingers in the same way one might throw a dart or puncture the air from a balloon. “We are the best stewards of our own careers. Us.”

  Nora’s phone vibrates with a text message:

  Actually, Nora had been thinking about the house. Before she’d fallen asleep, she’d started a pro-con list on a scrap of paper in her nightstand. Pros: Space, one story, backyard, new, price per square foot. Cons: commute, complicity in urban sprawl, lack of charm. She’s going to have to be methodical about it if she’s going to motivate Hayden, who she can already tell has set himself up as a speed bump: Not so fast, missy.

  Barbara finishes the seminar with an exercise that requires the women at the table to guess whether a man or a woman said certain lines of dialogue during a negotiation. The women at the table get all the answers right.

  As she’s packing up her lunch and trudging over to the too-small trash can, Nora’s phone buzzes again. The same text chain as before.

  * * *

  Nora waits until she’s ensconced in her office with its messy desk, undecorated walls, and towers of file crates before phoning back the telephone number.

  “Nora, hi! So glad I caught you,” Isla greets her.

  “I’m afraid we’re not ready to make an offer on the house.” Nora heads her off. “We’re still thinking. We haven’t been looking long and my husband—”

  “Oh gosh, this isn’t about the house, no. Sorry.” Isla sounds genuinely apologetic. “No, it’s about a legal matter.” She enunciates the word legal like it deserves special care. “A wrongful death case. You did say you do personal injury work, didn’t you? I hope I don’t have you mixed up.”

  For a moment, Nora feels a touch competitive. Mixed her up with whom, she’d like to know. Another buyer?

  “No, no.” Nora gives a little shake of her head, replacing her preconceived notions with the realization that she might have managed to network without trying to network at all. She should tell the Women’s Leadership Initiative. “I mean, yes. I do.”

  “I thought so.” There’s a satisfied smack to her confirmation. “Listen, I thought I might connect you with a couple of my neighbors who have been searching for an attorney with your credentials. Would you mind?”

  “Neighbors, you said?”

  “Yes, but don’t worry about that. If nothing comes of it, honestly, I know these ladies and they’re always happy to add strong women to their network.”

  Nora is familiar with this phrase. I’m looking to connect with other women, I place a premium on networking with other women like you, strong women, strong women, strong women, and occasionally, when people are feeling cheeky, nasty women. Not that Nora is a skeptic, not really, but the phrasing has begun to signal something else: This woman wants something from me.

  Nora checks her calendar, checkered with conference calls, draft deadlines, and reminders to herself that only she can decipher. But she can’t think of a polite way to turn down the request. Never burn professional bridges. Hadn’t that been one of Barbara’s takeaways from an earlier Initiative meeting? “Okay,” she says. “I’d be happy to meet with them.” She’s not making any promises.

  Except by the time the call ends, she has promised one thing: to return to Dynasty Ranch tomorrow afternoon, four o’clock.

  * * *

  “In two-hundred-and-fifty feet, turn left on Bluebonnet Parkway.”

  “In two-hundred-and-fifty feet, turn left on Bluebonnet Parkway.”

  “In two-hundred-and-fifty—”

  Nora shoves her finger into the red END button on her phone, and finally the overly polite British voice falls silent.

  The lights on the dash of Nora’s SUV have gone berserk. It feels like they’re yelling at her: Your tire is flat!

  So that’s happened.

  Up until this point, the GPS Lady had projected two more minutes before her arrival at Dynasty Ranch. She’d been very smug about it, too.