Job or death in Philadelphia
Шрифт:
I shouted because I couldn't be silent anymore about every injustice and abuse that had happened to me ever since my first husband sent me an e-mail saying that he wanted a divorce because he felt closer to his parents than to his wife.
Nobody came out to claim the Jaguar, so I kept kicking it until I smashed the grille.
"Hey," an eerily familiar voice said. "I can see that you like my gift!"
I turned around, wet sweatshirt and Mudd's jeans clinging to my bones; my mouth opened, and my eyes popped out. Alexander Davidoff stood behind me in his long gray London Fog raincoat. His brown-gloved hand was holding an umbrella.
"Huh?" I said and swallowed a handful of raindrops.
"I'm glad you like my Christmas present," Alexander repeated after a brief inspection of the car. "I'm glad you customized it right away. It looked kind of too new. Not your style."
CHAPTER 3
At thirty-five, I retired as a cab driver and acquired the most exquisite taste in clothes, furniture, architecture, design, landscaping and jewelry, all by virtue of my marriage to his highness, prince, landowner, and international lawyer, Alexander Davidoff. My new husband owned a family castle in Mooresville, NJ. Built a hundred years ago by his relatives as a hunting shed, the castle was an exact copy of a French mansion from the Champagne province. When I first saw this castle, two things became clear to me. First, I'd retired as a cab driver, and second, I have a lot of time on my hands to read mystery novels.
We moved in and spread out evenly through its fifty rooms. Under `we' I mean Alexander, his daughter Evana, me, my daughter Iris, Alexander's butler Mark, the girls' tutor Larissa, Alexander's German shepherd Elvis, and my black cat Pepper.
Pepper was the first one to step inside our new house, according to the superstition rules of Alexander's old country. I agreed that the three-story gray stone mansion needed some good guardian spirits. We took the cat to the door in his basket and let him inside. He stepped on the shiny hardwood floor with his legs straight and inflexible like a little parading Pakistani soldier. The cat crossed the spacious entrance hall and then turned towards the kitchen. The shepherd, Elvis, surprised he wasn't the first one this time, trotted behind Pepper, sniffing the air.
"Hey," Alexander said, smiling. "They know their place in a house."
Our animals disappeared into the kitchen. Surprised, we rushed there too. I stopped at the door. The countertops and a round dining table were loaded with tons of pizzas, chicken pies, salads, cakes, grilled meat, and fruits. Amid this abundance stood a British-looking man, holding a baking sheet filled with hot rolls.
"Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen," he said. "Where have you been the whole morning? I was about to eat it all myself!"
That's how I met Mark, my husband's butler.
Tired of eating and moving, we took a trip around the house. There was a huge kitchen with a sunroom, dining room, living room, library, sauna, and a fitness room on the first floor. On the second floor were a master bedroom, my office, my husband's office, and the girls' bedrooms. Four spare bedrooms comprised the third floor. To clean all those square feet, we hired a cleaning aide, a middle-aged single mom named Claudia, against Joe's advice about how dangerous it was to have other people in the house. According to him, there was a scam running through the cleaning community. They work for you two months, and then they sue you for bodily injuries and mental abuse. They see that you have money, and why not try to nibble on your bank account a bit? My husband usually listened to Joe like the old guy was his godmother, but this time Alexander ignored his advice. The first time in my life I wasn't doing housework and working for money. The first week I felt like a queen; the next week I caught myself watching soap operas at midday and having a second lunch. When, in the third week, Mark woke me up for dinner after my lunch nap, I took it as a real wake-up call and decided to start my own charity.
It was a late spring Friday. In anticipation of a nice long family dinner and a romantic evening with my husband. I made a mountain of sandwiches and went to drop some food at Joe's office. I wheeled into the parking lot with Joe's Ford and somebody's Honda parked there. I didn't want to interfere, just to come in, place a package with lunch on a kitchenette table and leave.
"Rachel? Come here this instant."
Joe, who spent part of his life in the Navy, had a booming husky voice that could reach you and stop you in your tracks from a block away. I entered his office and greeted him and his client, a short bulky woman with brown hair.
"Listen, you nincom… Rachel, this is Deborah. Mrs. Cooper, this is Rachel, my assistant and my right hand. Can you please repeat your story to her? I found it very important that she would hear it from you."
Deborah looked at me. Her slightly bulging eyes welled with tears.
"I had just started a new job and my co-worker accused me of stealing money and jewelry from her. She was leaving for a new location, and I was taking over her position. I waited for this position for four months," she interrupted herself, sobbing. I brought her a cup of coffee, and she told us her story.
Debbie Cooper was from a family of college professors and scientists. In her parents' house, people discussed numbers and laws of physics as if it was breaking news and weather updates. She had known the multiplication table since she was five, thanks to her uncle Bruce, who made it a routine when coming for dinner to play a numbers game with her he called Number of the Day. "You can't go wrong with math," he liked to say. Being a genius mathematician himself, he worked for years on Wall Street as a market analyst, and after retirement at thirty-five, he took a tenured position at Princeton. His sister-in-law Elizabeth, Debbie's mother, herself was a professor of physics at the community college. Debbie's father used to be a financial analyst for Vanguard Group, but died a year ago of pneumonia complications.
Debbie's love of numbers made it very easy for her to get an honorary scholarship at NYU. She graduated with a Bachelor of Finances and became the youngest woman to work as an accountant for Goldman Sachs. That is where she had met her husband, Pitt Cooper, working for the IT department. Ten years older, he was a big, forceful man who always knew what to do, and to her, a calm, scholarly girl, he looked like a safe haven. They had their share of city dating, which means fast, quick and in a hurry, before their roommate or parents showed up. They got married after sixteen months of dating, got a Tribeca apartment and had two children one after another. Debbie worked part-time, trying to concentrate on her sons, especially the oldest son, Matthew, who developed ADD at the age of four.
She had wanted to move to the suburbs, she said, and after seven years, God heard her prayers: Pitt became the Head of the IT department at Gordon's Electronics in Philadelphia. They bought a spacious house in Cherry Hill and moved. Relaxed and happy in her new life, Debbie gets pregnant again, this time with a girl. Pitt, forty at the time, was completely crazy over this `little angel,' as he called her.
Away from the New York intensity, Matthew seemed to outgrow his emotional problems. Life was perfect until Debbie realized Pitt had a drinking problem. She suspected him of having affairs: he was coming home late or not at all. The final straw was his moving in with his lover. Debbie filed for divorce.