How was anybody supposed to calculate that one? What was her home worth? Everything, if a happy family lived in it. Otherwise, nothing.
She knew this, too: whatever figure an appraiser came up with for the farm, there was no way Cam could buy her out. Cam earned almost nothing. Their savings—though he’d be entitled to half—amounted to a little over a thousand dollars.
With her syndicated strip gone, she was just getting by on her freelance jobs, and Toby’s school and speech therapy had wiped out the money she’d saved from her days as a bestselling author of children’s books. There was no way Eleanor could afford a house of her own without the money from the buyout. Still, the thought of selling the farm—even if she never got to live there again—was like imagining a death.
The agreement they came to gave Cam nine years to figure out how he might buy out Eleanor’s share of their farm. Meanwhile, he’d assume the mortgage and Eleanor would rent a place somewhere else. “I’m not endorsing this,” her attorney told her. “Frankly, I think it’s a lousy deal for you. Nine years. Your ex-husband’s a smart guy. Maybe he’ll come up with something. Either that or his parents will kick the bucket and he’ll inherit some cash. Or maybe they’ll bail him out.”
The document they drew up left it that when Alison turned eighteen Eleanor and Cam would have the farm appraised. At that point Cam would be obligated to pay Eleanor half of that figure, to take over full ownership of the property. Failing this, it would be put on the market.
“Not that it’s my business, but you need to promise me,” her attorney said. “The day your older daughter turns eighteen you’re demanding full payment on the buyout. If your ex-husband can’t do it, you put up the For Sale sign.”
Eleanor signed the document. So did Cam.
“I don’t understand why you and Dad have to do this,” Ursula said. Speaking of the divorce.
Ursula was always the negotiator, the peacemaker. As for Al, she seemed to have shut them all out. When she got home from school now, she headed to her room and barely emerged, except when called for meals. This left Ursula to be the children’s spokesperson.
“Can’t you two just sign up for some counseling?” she said. “You could go on a romantic vacation together, just the two of you. Al and me could take care of everything. Phyllis could drive us places. And Coco can come over on weekends when she’s home from college and play soccer.”
They all loved Coco. She’d make things right. That’s how the children had seen her before. And still did.
54.
Why Would You Blow Up Our Life?
Eleanor had assumed the next thing to happen, after they delivered the news of their divorce, would be an announcement to the children, from Cam, that he and Coco were a couple now. As much as she wanted to spare their children pain, maybe Eleanor looked forward to that moment. The girls would hate Coco then. They’d be angry with their father. As angry at him as Eleanor was.
But the announcement never came.
Maybe Cam was right that telling the children about his relationship with Coco at this point would be too hard for them. But the result of his not telling them made for a different kind of trouble that fell on Eleanor’s shoulders.
Because Eleanor was the one moving out, they saw her as the one responsible. Their mother was leaving their father. That’s how it looked, and Cam said nothing to disabuse them of this idea. And Eleanor, though she wished she could explain, believed that by doing so, she would become that person she vowed never to be: the bitter parent who poisons her children against their other parent. She and Cam had promised each other they’d never speak ill of each other. Adhering to the promise meant, for Eleanor, holding her tongue about Cam having fallen in love with their babysitter.
Now there was this: having told Eleanor he was in love with Coco, suddenly she was nowhere to be seen—off in Vermont, attending her school for holistic studies, evidently. From a conversation Eleanor had with her mother, Betsy, when the two of them ran into each other at the food co-op, it was clear to Eleanor that Coco’s parents knew nothing of her relationship with Cam, either. She was eighteen now, but Eleanor doubted that Betsy and Evan would be happy ifthey knew their daughter was involved with a man almost twenty years older, a father of three.
Al was the first to express her anger toward Eleanor. Eleanor had been making one of those speeches parents getting divorced deliver to their children, that she and Cam still cared about each other and that nothing was the children’s fault, and nobody was going to love them any less. She went so far as to suggest things might be better for the three of them without the tension of their parents’ fighting.
Eleanor hated the sound of her own voice, saying these things. But not as much as Ursula did.
“I don’t want to hear it,” Ursula said, covering her ears, when Eleanor had launched into her most recent attempt at reassuring them.
“You’ll see,” Eleanor said. “We’re going to make this work. The most important thing will always be you three.”
“If we’re so fucking important,” Al said, “why would you blow up our life?”
(She said “fucking.” She used that word. She must have known that under the circumstances, Eleanor was not about to give her a hard time for using bad language. This was the children’s moment to give her a hard time. As hard a time as they chose.)
“I want you to tell me your feelings,” Eleanor said, another time. The four of them had been driving somewhere—Al’s basketball practice, probably—and for fifteen minutes, nobody had spoken a word.
“You’re leaving our family,” Ursula said—all the usual softness and love absent from her tone. “How do youthinkwe feel?”
“You need to tell them the truth,” Darla urged Eleanor. “Don’t you see you’re protecting this guy? The jerk cheated on you with the fucking babysitter, and still you’re letting him look good to your kids. Like you’re the bad mother and he’s the poor innocent victim you abandoned.”
“I don’t want to turn our children against their father,” Eleanor said.
“So they turn against you instead.”
“That won’t happen. That couldn’t ever happen.”
