A Serialized Novel
Beautiful Scarring | chapter 1 [part 2]
Livie
𝑰𝒇 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒂𝒓𝒆 𝒋𝒖𝒔𝒕 𝒇𝒊𝒏𝒅𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒔 𝒏𝒐𝒗𝒆𝒍, 𝑰 𝒊𝒏𝒗𝒊𝒕𝒆 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒕𝒐 𝒔𝒕𝒂𝒓𝒕 𝒉𝒆𝒓𝒆: 𝑫𝒊𝒔𝒄𝒍𝒂𝒊𝒎𝒆𝒓 & 𝑻𝒂𝒃𝒍𝒆 𝒐𝒇 𝑪𝒐𝒏𝒕𝒆𝒏𝒕�. Link to Part 1�
Henry Tacksman was on the phone, standing with his back to the door. His jacket was off, slung over the chair, and there was a thin line of dampness down the middle of his white shirt.
Henry’s voice began to rise, but just as Livie was about to give him a minute to be alone he swung around to face her. He continued to bark but his face softened and he motioned with his free hand toward the chairs by his desk. Livie sat before him as he argued. She ran her tongue across her teeth to remove any trace of lipstick.
“Oh, come on, you know that’s not even a factor in this case! I don’t have time to go through another … No! That’s okay. Listen, I’ve got a client. Call me later. And I want you to have a different answer later, or else don’t call. Right. Bye.”
Henry hung up and scrawled some notes on a legal pad, still standing. Without looking up he said, “Some first impression! I’m not a bad guy. Really.” He smiled but was still writing.
Livie smiled in return though he couldn’t see it. “I’m sorry Mr. Tacksman, your receptionist told me I could …” she trailed off as he held up a finger to silence her.
“Jussasec,” he said as he scribbled a bit more.
Well over 6 feet tall, maybe early forties with a youthful sense of energy and a slightly hunched figure that was casual but commanding. He looked like he could spring at a moment’s notice and move on to the next thing without skipping a beat.
“You’re,” he checked his desk calendar, “Mrs. LoPresti? Olivia LoPresti?”
“They call me Livie, Livie’s fine.”
“Livie. That’s nice. My wife tries to call me Hank sometimes but I hate it. Not every name gets a good nickname, right?” He finally sat in his chair and began to twirl the pen he’d been writing with between his fingers.
Livie pressed her lips together awkwardly. She wasn’t used to small talk. She looked at him expectantly.
“So, what brings you here today, Livie?”
“I found you in the yellow pages? It said free consultation. I need to know about getting a divorce. What I’d need to do to …”
“Get a divorce. Good. Okay. So what’s your situation, Livie?”
“I thought … well … I want to understand … I have questions …” She shrugged, lost for words.
“Catch a breath … it’s not a marathon. I’m not on the clock,” he paused, “…yet,” and winked. “Need a tissue? No? Water? I got it in bottles. Terrible thing, one’a these bottles stays in a landfill for what is it? Seven hundred years? I can’t wash a cup, though. I’m a mess. Go on. What’s on your mind?”
“Um,” Livie shrugged. “I don’t know how to start?”
“Sure, no one does, that’s why you’re sitting there and I’m sitting on the side with a nice view. Grounds are adultery, violence, mental cruelty, sexual abandonment. You tell me.”
“I don’t think I understand what all those things mean.”
Livie noticed a tiny twitch at the corners of Henry’s mouth. She couldn’t have been the first woman to sit across from him in a knock-off Versace. Still, something made her think he cared.
“I’ll help you sort that out. Divorces can be easy, or they can get bitter; I’m not telling you anything you don’t know. Right? You know it already … right? Coming out to meet with me, it’s a big step. Something’s gone bad, and it’s bothering you, hurting you. You want to strike out; sometimes that’s not a good idea. You don’t wanna give in quick either, some women do that. Get it over with, I don’t want anything. He can keep the house, just get me out. That’s stupid. together we won’t do something stupid. Sounds good?”
“Sure,” Livie said.
“Let’s start with his name.”
“Nick. His full name is Domenico.”
“Nick. That’s a good nickname. You two, you lucked out with the nicknames. Ahh, nicknames … see what I did there?”
Livie flashed a pained smile.
“All right, all right, you’re not paying me for jokes. What does he do?” Henry was like a photographer, using chit-chat to put Livie at ease till he could capture the story. He knew how to make an unnatural process natural.
“He owns a café. Coffee, espresso, cappuccino, you know. And pastry. His father was a baker.”
“In Brooklyn? The café?”
“No, Manhattan. Around the Chelsea area. We’ve had it over twenty years. Our dads owned it together at one point.”
“I mighta been there. I like coffee … nothing wrong with coffee. Guy up the street makes a helluva cup. Could probably save a few bucks and make it myself, but I gotta tell you I can’t make coffee to save my life, so I pay the buck and at least I know it’s gonna be good. Screw that instant crap …. tastes like water. What’s it called?”
“Sanka?”
Henry chuckled. “No, the café. What’s the café called?”
“It used to be “LoPresti’s Coffee House” way back. Now it’s “Chrysanthemums”. He keeps them in the window. It’s more poetic, but it’s tough to spell.”
Henry looked out at the Brooklyn view. “Not poetic, it’s just a damn flower. Evocative, I bet. Do you think it stirs something up in him? Something he wants to remember? Is it your favorite?”
Livie shrugged. “Mine? No, peonies. Those are my favorite.” She smiled at him, remembering how, as a girl, she used to pronounce them pee-OH-nees.
Henry had been jotting down her answers on a yellow legal pad. Now he took out a form and ran down the list, filling in boxes as he went.
“So, how long have you been married?”
“Twenty-one years next month.”
“You musta been kids,” he said without looking up.
“Yeah, teenagers. I was eighteen. He was nineteen. We didn’t know what we were doing. Is that grounds for divorce? Married too young? Screwed it all up in the process?”
Henry only smiled and went to the next line on the form. “Children? You and your husband have kids?”
“One … our daughter Angelina. She’ll be fifteen in May.”
“Fifteen … tough age. I had one that age. Always testing boundaries. She’s good now though. In her twenties, straightened right up. She’s a nurse now.” Henry tilted a picture of a young woman towards Livie and Livie nodded, smiling obediently. The girl had the same eyes as her dad.
“Currently lives with you?”
“She lives with us, of course.”
“Sorry, I did it again. Your husband. He lives in the house with you?”
“Yes. Well … yes. I guess so. He stays at the café part of the week.”
“But is the house you share his primary residence? Does he get mail there?”
“Yes.”
“So that’s not abandonment. If he moved off the premises, that would be abandonment. Marital relations?”
“Um … you mean …”
“Anything different? Less than usual? Sleeping in another room? Making himself unavailable?”
“Nothing’s changed, no.”
“Okay then, so no sexual abandonment. Is he violent with you at all?”
“Oh, no! Never. He wouldn’t. That’s not … No.”
“Other women then.” It was all that was left.
Livie nodded in a gesture so small her earrings didn’t even sway. Wasn’t such a friendly conversation anymore. Would have made a great photograph, though.
“My husband has been with other women for … I don’t know … two years? Maybe longer? Probably longer. Maybe from when we got married, even.”
“You sure? You got something on him?”
“A letter. I found it in his pocket. It was typed up and just signed “D”. She sounded very desperate. It might have been a waitress who worked for him, she had a “d” name — Dina, maybe. Daphne, Denise? Something like that. He must have told her he couldn’t leave me because the letter went on and on about how she couldn’t stand him sleeping with me still. She kept using my name, too. Livie doesn’t deserve you, leave Livie. It made me sick to see my name. Does that even make sense?”
Livie looked at Henry’s gold wedding band. Could a divorce lawyer be happily married? With everything he sees? She looked down at her own wedding band, hoping Henry wouldn’t notice she had moved it to her thumb. It looked a little eccentric there. She tucked her hand under her coat.
“Of course, it made you sick. A letter like that would make any wife sick. What did you do after you found the letter?” Henry asked.
“I took a nap,” Livie said.
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