Ted took off his glasses. His contacts had been bothering him lately. All three lawyers checked to see if the husband was going to break down, too. It was almost customary to have tears shed in the conference room of a firm specializing in matrimonial law. But the husband wasn’t crying; instead, he pinched the bridge of his nose and blinked his eyes rapidly.
“Very dry in this room,” Ted said. A gust of cold air came from the wall vents above Ella’s lawyer’s head.
Ella noticed that Ted was rubbing his face, especially his eyes. Was he crying, too? It had been so long since she’d seen him cry that she felt sorry for him. His father had just died, and Ella imagined that all this must be hard on him, too, though physically he looked no worse for the wear. Like her, he had lost weight. The thinness made their faces gaunt and older. Ted was still a striking man. Today, he looked like a successful art dealer in his titanium eyeglasses, blue jeans, crisp white shirt, and black blazer.
Ted blinked his right eye repeatedly. He swerved his head back and forth and looked at everyone in the room. He picked up the papers in front of him, and with his left eye closed, he tried to read the words but couldn’t. His name was written above the word RESPONDENT on the top sheet of the pile—he knew that because he could read it with his left eye, but with his right, he couldn’t make out his own name. It had to be his name, but it looked like dark, wavy smudges floating on white space. “What in the world?” he said out loud.
“What’s the matter? Are you okay?” Ella got up from her seat and walked around to look at his eye, just as if she were examining the scrape of a boy at St. Christopher’s. Ted was blinking furiously now, looking up and down at the walls, everyone’s faces, then again at the papers. He put a sheet of paper up close to his eye.
“I can’t see. In my right eye,” he said. “Ella, I can’t see.”
Ella stood over him and peered into his right eye. “Is it an eyelash? I don’t see anything.”
Ronald observed his client hovering over her husband’s face. Did she still have feelings for this guy? What a mess, he thought. Love was such a fucking toxic waste dump. Women always wanted these divorces because they were hurt and angry, and these men never responded correctly. You shouldn’t bluff, he thought. Never bluff in love. If you have to, it’s not love. It was like that favorite quote of his grandfather’s: “There are only two questions that can’t be answered: First, ‘How much do you love me?’ and second, ‘Who’s really in control?’” Basically, Ronald believed that a marriage was fundamentally based on these two sphinxlike riddles, but in the end, both parties could get eaten alive giving the wrong answers.
Ella took a tissue and cleaned his glasses, blew away the lint. “Put these on again,” she said gravely.
Ted put them on.
“Is it any better?”
“No. I can’t make out my own name,” he said, apoplectic.
Ella crossed her arms, not knowing if she should return to her spot. Did Ted have some ulterior motive? Lately, she felt almost invulnerable toward surprises or wrong-mindedness. People were not always very good, and she had been naive for a long time. Unu had just told her that Casey had cheated on him with a colleague of hers at Kearn Davis. How could she? After what Jay had done to her? After knowing what it had done to her own marriage? And to Unu, who was such a sweet person? Ella returned to her seat.
“Are you all right?” Chet Stenor spoke up finally. He hadn’t wanted to interrupt Ella’s efforts. It would have appeared rude.
Ella looked up to see what Ted would say. He didn’t say anything but appeared lost. She wanted to help him. “Do you have any drops? Can I get you anything?”
Ted could hear the kindness in Ella’s voice, and he felt lousy. He shook his head no, unable to speak. From his left eye, he could see her face perfectly well with his glasses on. He could see the whiteness of her skin in contrast with the navy fabric of her simple dress. It was a knit wool dress that she had bought when they first married. From Saks. It had been expensive, but he had insisted on it, because it made her look so confident and elegant. Had she worn it to upset him? No. Ella wasn’t like that. But it did remind him of their happier times. She also wore a pearl necklace that he didn’t recognize. Where did she get that? She would never have bought it for herself. Did she have a boyfriend already? The possibility of it rankled him. From his right eye, at best he could manage the outline of a pretty Asian girl—the soft features of an oval face, the dark pink of her lipstick.