Jennifer Greene - Man From Tennessee

And as for grounds? Was she supposed to be able to stand up and say that Kern didn’t love her?

“Patricia?”

She swallowed the unforgivable urge to cry. “Isn’t there a no-fault divorce law in Michigan? Where both people simply agree-”

“Yes, of course. If that’s the situation.”

“How long does it take?”

“Well, that depends, Patricia. If there are no children-”

She felt a ridiculous urge to cry. “There are no children.”

“And if everyone agrees readily on a property settlement-”

She shook her head. “There won’t be any problem. There’s no property involved. I don’t want alimony or anything else from my…husband.”

Cal’s pencil touched tip to desk, then eraser. Back and forth. Flip-flop. His eyes regarded her patiently, his lawyer’s mind spinning out the potential state of his client as it affected his fee. Finally he drawled, “We all tend to react rather quickly when our feelings are involved, Patricia. I see a lot of it. It’s the name of the game in divorce. My father was Ralph Lowery’s attorney, did you know that?”

“Yes.” Julia had told her once, and indirectly it was how she had met Cal before. He was a Grosse Pointe neighbor of sorts.

“I may not still have call to know the personal circumstances of your husband these days, Patricia, but anyone on our side of town is familiar with the Lowery estate. As a wife you’re entitled to your fair share, if only to ease some of the trauma of the divorce itself. And there’s your future to think of. It’s my job to-”

“No.”

“You don’t have to be involved, honey. This kind of thing is done directly between lawyer’s offices. You can trust me to take care of your interests, Patricia-”

She stood up rapidly, a hunted-doe look in her eyes as sudden nausea wrenched in her stomach. “I don’t want that. I don’t want any of that. All I want is to sign a piece of paper, Cal. Can’t you just-”

“Patricia, have you really talked this over with your husband?”

“There will be no argument from Kern. But he might try… I don’t want his money. There’s no reason for this to be any more complicated, I just…”

The tears gushed then, mortifyingly free in front of this man who was undoubtedly used to overemotional women in his office. With practiced patience he had his handkerchief just as ready as the wine. But this wasn’t just any divorce, she wanted to cry out. Don’t you understand how much I love my husband? Don’t you understand that if I thought he really wanted me…

“Now, now, Patricia. Don’t be embarrassed. We’ll have all this settled before you know it; it’ll hardly take any time at all. We’ll celebrate with a dinner out when it’s all over, when it’s all behind you. We’ll wait to discuss the fee another time. I’ll get everything in the mill; don’t you worry about a thing…”

It was seven before she could make it back to her apartment, loaded down with two bags of groceries, feeling as if she hadn’t slept in a year. With the food put away, she slipped into the shower, cleansing off the city grit of a warm afternoon. Clad in a loose silk kimono, thigh-length, she wandered barefoot back to the kitchen, opening the refrigerator now full, seeing nothing she really wanted, though a bowl of raspberries seemed-possible. Her stomach was in knots. Her nerves were frayed. The tears kept feeling like they were just behind her eyes, still trying to burst out, and she was more than disgusted with herself that they already had in Cal’s office.

The worst of it was that she knew she was waiting for the telephone to ring. Kern would have long since realized she was gone. If there was any chance he still wanted her back, he would have called. Every time she turned around she was imagining him there, just arrived, imagining what he would look like as he walked around her apartment for the first time.

“Very pretty, Tish, but there isn’t a stick of furniture a man my size could get comfortable in.” With the dish of raspberries in her hand, she surveyed with a different eye her pink-and-gold living room, coming up with the same dissatisfied feeling.

“But you’ve really done well for yourself. You really made it completely on your own, didn’t you, bright eyes?” And her heart swelled, knowing she had done well, that she was a woman now and not a child, capable of handling her own life. It was no longer as an appendage of Kern that she saw herself.

She set down the ridiculous dish of raspberries, curled up on the couch and put her head in her hands. “I like the robe, Tish. Silk like your skin…” The memory of their loving by the waterfall twisted inside; she could feel her breasts swell in desire even now, the look in his eyes, the panther grace of the naked man… stop it, she told herself. And stared at the telephone, knowing he was not going to call. She had left him once and he had never come after her. He had said as much. She knew it, in her heart. There had been no words of love, only passion.

She napped erratically on the couch, and when she woke again at ten-thirty her body was protesting her sporadic eating habits, insisting she find something to sustain it. She fixed a sandwich finally, switched on the news and settled back on the couch.

The announcer was the newer breed of newscaster, flamboyant in dress, with a personal air. He was enthusiastic about a satellite flight, depressed about one of Congress’s latest bills, lurid about a national kidnapping scandal. Trisha only half listened, munching the sandwich as she threaded through the pile of mail that had been at her door.

“…only a spark. But the weather’s been so dry and hot in the Smokies that that was all it took…”

She dropped the letter in her hand and bounded up to raise the volume on the TV set.

“…park service people have their hands full trying to control the rapidly vacating populace in the Smokies, though the fire hasn’t spread that far. Fire officials claim there’ll be no problem, that the blaze won’t get as far east as the national park and for vacationers not to panic. It’s still the biggest blaze they’ve had in over forty years, longtime residents tell us, and in the meantime, Jimmy Barker and his six-year-old son, Robert, are dead…”

“Now in Tiger town…”

Frantically Trisha switched to another station, whose newscaster was just as interested in baseball scores, and switched to a third who was still waxing poetic on the satellite success before he enthused over the city’s team.

The Smokies were only worth a sixty-second spot where local interest might have been spurred in the vacation season. Trisha stood, feeling a frustration like rage building inside when no amount of dial-twisting was going to tell her any more. The two dead, but how many were hurt? And west of the Smokies was Kern’s. If he wasn’t hurt, no one would be able to keep him out of it. And his land, his mountain that he loved so, everything he had worked for…and Julia.

With her head throbbing, she reached for the telephone, but neither the news stations nor the newspapers had any other information to impart. There was a fire. Two people had died. The blaze wasn’t over yet but it was now considered “in control,” and there was no list of injuries. Perhaps on the internet…

She tried that, didn’t pick up anything new, so she shut that done and grabbed the phone again to dial long distance. The operator was pleasant, but informed her that many lines were down in that area and those in operation were for emergency use only. Did she have an emergency?

“No-I-thank you.” She hung up, hugging her arms to her breasts. No, she didn’t have an emergency. In fact, the afternoon had been wretchedly spent severing all ties with the man. They didn’t have a marriage. She no longer even had the right to ask.