Free Woman on Top by Deborah Schwartz Page A

wasn’t the center of the universe. I feel like my life began when I met Jake.”
    “The message to a kid is that they’re not important. Ok, tell me why Jake married you?” Sarah asked.
    “Why Jake married me? He loved me.”
    “Why did Jake love you?” Sarah persisted.
    I paused.
    “Hey, come on. I never thought about why he loved me. I never had a reason to. I just fell into Jake and stayed there.”
    “You just don’t get how much you bring to a relationship. So Len can take advantage of you and be as selfish as he wants.” Sarah frowned at me as she spoke.
    I sat there feeling pretty damn angry with Len and myself. The only pure emotion I still knew was the unbound love for my children. My husband was dead. And who had come up with this ridiculous scheme of life anyway? Where love consumes you? Where that person dies?
    The pensive look on Sarah’s face made it clear she was in her element and not done with me yet.
    “When we were in high school all of our friends had so much money, huge apartments on Fifth Avenue, the Upper East Side, terraces, doormen, vacations at every school break in the Caribbean and Mexico. Jeff Brody had a Porsche in high school. And we were worried about our apartments being burglarized,” Sarah said as the waiter placed our food on the table. One could only imagine what he thought if he had heard any of our conversation.
    “That might be part of your attraction to Len. You’ve never been shallow, the New York gold digger. So what’s going on here? We were so envious. Remember when the Carlsons went to Mexico for spring vacation in seventh grade? We set up towels and beach umbrellas on your living room carpet and put on our bathing suits.”
    “Well, with Len I could easily live in a luxury doorman building on the Upper East Side. Everything I ever wanted, or so I thought, when I was fourteen,” I responded.
    Sarah sat busy eating her lunch while I didn’t feel hungry anymore.
    “One of Len’s friends told me, while warning me that I had to keep this to myself, Len is insecure and worried that I’ll run off with another guy. That’s why he’s glad I don’t live in New York. He prefers having me cloistered in the suburbs. I find that hard to believe,” I said.
    “Believe it. Just because he’s rich and powerful in his day job, doesn’t mean he isn’t making up for how inadequate he feels.”
    A calm came over me as some of the chaos of Len disappeared.
    “Look,” Sarah implored, “It’s time to move on from the past, Jake’s death. Spend the time now to focus on what kind of man you need and want to love. And then take pleasure in all the things he would love about you.”
    These words could only come from Sarah’s heart and I took them to mine. I might have resented them from someone else but I trusted her completely.
    But the task was daunting. Jake’s love had come so easily. But why? How to find a love like that? Might as well ask me to figure out the cure to cancer.

CHAPTER 9
    July
    L et’s go to Europe for two weeks. Your kids will be away then,” Len asked.
    “I haven’t been to Europe in years. I’d love to.”
    “Where would you like to go?” he asked.
    “Italy! I’ve never been.”
    “Then we’ll go to Italy. I was there with Judy but that’s where we’ll go. I’m that kind of guy.”
    He made the plans. He was constantly making the plans and I just had to show up. And he said he loved how spontaneous I could be, ready to accompany him at a moment’s notice. He was often invited to the parties of wealthy businessmen and benefit dinners attended by socialites and movie stars. Just that week we had been to a benefit for Lincoln Center where I tried to act like having Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger at the next table was how I always spent my time in Montwood.
    “Sometimes when I’m sitting in a board room, I laugh that this little guy from Jersey City is telling these multimillionaires what to do with their money,” Len had told me.
    We