Page 59 of The Best Part of Breaking Up

“I’m here to escort Miss James to the front desk,” he says. He’s got the perfect executive assistant voice, all smooth and accommodating, like attending to my needs is his utmost priority.

Emma peers at me, interested. Until this moment, I don’t think she expected that she was going to be able to leave the room.

“Be sure to ask for snacks,” I tell her conspiratorially. “Ms. Bernadette has all the best snacks.”

Emma gives me a sideways look that glimmers. It’s not a grin, but it might be the closest I can get, given the circumstances. From a kid in her place – and I know far more than I’d like to admit about that place – it feels like a gold star.

“Anything else, Ms. Krupp?” Quentin says from the doorway.

I glance up, realizing he’s studying me. I attempt to swallow whatever emotion has welled up in me in the few minutes I’ve been in here. If it were anyone else standing there, I wouldn’t worry, but sometimes I get the feeling Quentin can see all my walls – maybe see past them – and it unnerves me.

“No,” I say. “Thank you.”

He nods once before ushering Emma into the hall and shutting the door behind them.

“So,” I say, turning back to my stack of papers and attempting to get my bearings. “You’re here to file for divorce?”

“Yes,” she replies, still looking a little ruffled. “As I mentioned earlier, my husband left us –”

The words climb my throat, escaping before I can stop them.

“Left you,” I amend.

For a moment, neither of us seems to believe I’ve said it. The screwed tight look of Ashley Kate’s smile twists a little further.

“Excuse me?” she blinks.

“Your husband is still going to be a father after all this,” I explain. “But he won’t still be a husband. So I’d like for us to be clear: he’s leaving your marriage, not your daughter. Unless he is in fact planning to terminate his parental rights?”

I check the papers in front of me as if scanning them for this detail. When I glance back up expectantly, she’s still smiling, but she looks like her eyeballs are about to burst out of her head.

“What the hell is this?” she laughs, her voice high-pitched and grating. “I’m not the one who did anything wrong here. This is his fault. He’s the one who couldn’t keep his dick in his pants, and –”

“And right now you’re putting it on your kid,” I interject. “If we’re going to work together, that’s one of the things we’ll need to agree on. It’s a hard line for me. The kids stay out of it, as much as possible.”

She bursts out laughing, and the sound scrapes across my already raw nerves. She’s not that much older than me, but suddenly I feel decades older this woman, as if maybe I’m talking to a high school student instead of a tried-and-true adult.

“You’re supposed to be the best, so I shouldn’t have to explain this to you,” she says, letting a mocking edge creep into her tone. “But I’m paying you to be my divorce attorney. I don’t need your opinions about how I raise my kid.”

I close the file and steeple my fingers under my chin. I’ve got a waiting list of more new clients than I could possibly take on. I know if I send her on her way that there will be more than enough people willing to take her place. But I also know that if she’s looking for the kind of attorney who will help her use her kid as a bargaining chip, she’ll find one. I wet my lips, gathering my patience. Not for her, but for Emma.

“Ms. James, I am good at what I do. You may be the one paying the attorney’s fees, but I have an obligation as an officer of the court to act in the best interest of your daughter, and it’s in your best interest to support that. This isn’t just about ending your marriage; it’s also about making sure that your daughter still wants to have a relationship with you when this is all over. I don’t mean right now, when she’s seven and relies on you for everything, but later, when she’s grown and out of the house and doesn’t have any obligation to speak to you, if she doesn’t want to, ever again. And trust me, if you continue down this path you’re on – blaming her, acting like you’re sister wives who’ve been mutually wronged – she won’t want to. That’s not an opinion about your parenting. It’s a fact.”

She’s staring at me like she wishes she had laser beams for eyes and could slice me in half. Instead, a frustrated tear rolls down one cheek. She swipes it away with an annoyed laugh. I’m holding my breath, ready to release it at any second, because I know I’ve got her. She’s going to cave. She’s going to agree. They always agree.

“God, I knew better than this,” she says, gathering her purse and pushing back the chair so hard it smacks the glass wall behind her. The entire panel rattles. I know the moment she stands up, everyone outside is able to see her. See the angry tears on her face. See the way she’s pointing at me. “What the hell did I expect? Some woman who’s never been married, who doesn’t even have kids, whose face is on a goddamn billboard.”

She’s cutting me down to size using society’s rubric of womanhood: do I have a husband, have I reproduced, am I modest enough about my accomplishments? On all counts, that’s clearly a no. It’s easy by that metric to determine I’m not an adequate woman. I’m a self-centered witch. A well-dressed devil.

“Ms. James,” I say evenly. My heart is thudding wildly in my throat, but I’m sure I can get this back on track. I always do. Any second now, she’s going to sit back down. “Let’s talk about what you really want out of this –”

She swings the door open with a wild fling of her arm.

“What I really want?” she screeches. “Fuck you! I want nothing more to do with you! Do I have some sort of sign on me that makes people think I’ll stick around when they treat me like trash? Well I won’t. And I’m not. Take a look at yourself, honey – you’re the high dollar trash!”

The conference room door is one of those that can’t be slammed. Its slow-close mechanism gives me plenty of time to watch Ms. Ashley Kate James stalk towards the lobby in that short skirt and snatch her kid off one of the chairs beside Bernadette’s desk.

I see Bernadette wearing her headset, with her eyes wide and her mouth slightly ajar.

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