Every Kind of Wanting

by Gina Frangello

  “Snap!” cries Chad. He isn’t even drinking. There is no logical explanation.

  “Prostitutes!” Elaine cries at the same instant. She bursts into tears again, her hand going to Emily’s abdomen as if on instinct. “Darling! The baby! Gretchen’s eggs could have AIDS!”

  “I’m pretty sure they do a thorough testing for sexually transmitted diseases at the fertility center,” Miguel mutters into his scotch.

  “Can we be sure?” Elaine persists. “Emily, you must go in and make sure.” Then, as if this is actually an afterthought, Elaine fingers the sharp bottoms of her blond bob and adds, “You should be tested, too, Gretchen, dear.”

  “I’ll call tomorrow,” Gretchen says, shooting daggers in Emily’s direction lest she protest or contradict.

  Steaks, doled out like playing cards to everyone at the table, even Gray. Gretchen is pretty sure she remembers Emily and Nick being vegetarians, but Emily beams down at her slab of meat as though she could mainline the iron into her veins. Pregnancy does strange things to the appetite, Gretchen knows: with Gray, she craved tuna so intensely that she once ate a party-sized vat of tuna salad from Whole Foods, and afterward her OB-GYN scolded her about her mercury intake until Gretchen slunk home in tears. Still, Gretchen has a strong feeling Emily chows down carnivorously whenever Nick’s back is turned—a belief that makes her strangely happy.

  In Gray’s hands, Gretchen’s cell phone has been pinging wildly with the sound of incoming texts. She’s been ignoring it, fearing it’s someone from the Day School calling to expel Gray, which would be at once an immense relief and a significant dilemma: Where the hell would he go when it is nearly winter break; would he fail kindergarten and have to repeat it? But staring at her son, Gretchen realizes this would probably be a great thing for Gray. Everyone says boys who are on the younger side should start kindergarten as late as possible, and Gray won’t even be six until July—some of the kids in his class have been six since September. Maybe this whole debacle is just some factor of ten months. Maybe if Gray were in kindergarten again next year, he would miraculously have no problems socially. Maybe amongst the apish brutes in public school, he would seem advanced and be the teacher’s pet. She gently extracts her phone from his intent grip.

  There are eleven texts from Troy. Nine say, Where r u? The next two say, Where the fuck r u?

  The last one has added: I am going to call the police and have you arrested for kidnapping.

  Gretchen stares at her iPhone screen.

  “You know, darling,” her mother says to Gretchen across the table, “Your handbag is supposed to be worn in the spring. It’s not season appropriate.”

  Gretchen feels her eyes blinking rapidly.

  “Well,” Emily interjects, as though she is someone who understands about seasonal handbags, “It hasn’t snowed yet this year.”

  “But you see, there’s both the floral pattern and the fact that it’s made of nylon,” Elaine continues, Vanna White gesturing towards the fabric of Gretchen’s Kate Spade. Emily may be bearing her grandchild but this is a serious matter. “It doesn’t go with winter outerwear at all. You could bring it on a cruise in the winter, but even then I would say it’s more day than evening.”

  “It was daytime when I got to your house and got abducted for dinner so that Naomi wouldn’t know we were a bunch of racists,” Gretchen says.

  “Racists?” Gretchen’s father’s neck double-takes dramatically. “Why would Naomi think a thing like that? She’s practically family!”

  This sends Miguel chortling into his martini.

  Gretchen says, “Then why isn’t she here at dinner?”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Gret,” Chad says. “Let it go. This is Mom and Dad you’re talking to. The freaking Black Panthers wouldn’t have any luck here. You don’t see me having a conniption fit that they donated to McCain, do you? We’d have been rounded up to the gas chambers right next to Naomi if that old fart had died and Sarah Palin became our president, but hey, that’s fine if my parents don’t care about my human rights—we wouldn’t want to ruin a good steak.”

  “Gas chambers?” Elaine squeals. “Charles, what is he talking about?”

  The expression on Emily’s slightly bloated face makes it clear she has been duly punished for intruding on Gretchen’s divorce party.

  Gretchen texts back, As you have probably heard around town by now, we are getting a divorce. Be packed and gone by the time Gray and I return this weekend. I will pay for your hotel room. Hasta la vista, baby.

  Chad, Miguel, and Emily have remained in the city, so it is only Gretchen, an exhausted Gray, and the inebriated Merrys by the time they arrive back in Winnetka. After Charles parks (no one should have let him drive, yet Gretchen didn’t even suggest relieving him of the keys), Gretchen goes to her car in the driveway to get her luggage, but before she even lifts the door, she sees through the back window of her Lexus SUV that the trunk is empty, and she dutifully follows her parents into the house. Once in the great room, however, she sees her bags are not there, either. Maybe Naomi took them up to the guest room already? But no, as Gretchen trots around the house—nonchalant at first and then with increasing urgency—she realizes they are simply nowhere to be found. Did she leave them at her house: packed bags sitting at the front door when Troy arrived home? Is this why he was threatening to have her arrested for kidnapping? She’d been so sure that everyone at the Day School would have already informed him of her divorce proclamation, but what if . . . well, what if no one had? What if no one wanted to get involved, and now she has just texted Troy some insane shit and left packed bags sitting in their foyer? Although she’s not certain why this would be a disaster exactly (she has wanted this divorce for two years), she finds herself embarrassed, her stomach churning like a blender. Leaving Gray in front of the TV, she goes back to the driveway and flings open her trunk as though she may find the hulking bags actually sitting there after all, unnoticeable through the window.

  Then she sees it. A Post-it note with the words Hasta la vista my ass, bitch.

  The carpeting in the trunk is askew. Gretchen hurls it back, undigested steak rising up in her throat. There, under her spare tire where her laptop and file folders should be: nothing.

  Nothing.

  This cannot be happening. Gretchen stands in the driveway, heart hammering in her temples. How the hell did he even find her car—well, no duh, he always says how codependent she is on her parents, where else would she be? Troy has, of course, a spare key to her Lexus. She imagines him, circling like a big cat of prey. He has, Gretchen would put money on it, never changed a tire in his life. Yet still she can envision the maniacal light going on behind Troy’s piercing blue eyes as it suddenly occurred to him to lift the carpet in the trunk and plumb the bowels of the vehicle. But . . . who would think of something like that? What kind of person . . . Gretchen stands with her hands to her mouth, for the first time realizing what she is dealing with here, horrified, waiting to wake up, waiting for the credits to this horror film of her life to roll.

  She retches in the driveway, but nothing comes up.

  Hasta la vista my ass, bitch.

  Gretchen has spent two years worrying about appearances. She has worried about showing up stag at work parties like a husband-stealing predator, or worse, being an object of pity—the mannish middle-aged woman with her unusual, borderline-autistic son—while Troy would be out partying it up with Fine Young Things. But no, she was wrong: that is not what Troy will be doing. And all at once it occurs to her: if Troy weren’t living precisely the life he wanted and intended on living, then he—an unnervingly handsome former athlete—would have divorced her, an heiress with her large feet and wrong-seasoned handbags. No, Troy has had a plan. The plan, it abruptly occurs to Gretchen, implied so much gratitude on her part for his mere presence that she would never actually expect anything of him: a steady job, civil conversation, sex, reasonable co-parenting, a lack of blue lights. She has been imagining that Troy was ju
st tired of her, might be glad to let her go . . . but Troy was tired of her from the onset and that had done nothing to stop his calculated plan. Divorcing her would entail losing half the money, losing social connections, cachet. How has it never dawned on her that Troy . . . wanted these things? At the prospect of their being taken away, taken away by Gretchen, she is pretty sure Russian hookers and nights out clubbing are the last thing on Troy’s mind.

  Her husband is gearing up for war.

  Charles and Elaine Merry do not have separate bedrooms, although in most other ways their relationship seems to hold the distance Charles was referring to at dinner. Gretchen stands on the outside of their bedroom door, contemplating a knock. She knows that at some point in her childhood, she must have knocked on her parents’ bedroom door seeking comfort, but if this is true she has no recollection. For a time they had a string of nannies who lived with them. One was an actual au pair, from France, but she was much younger than the rest and didn’t last long. Gretchen remembers Chad harassing the nannies with his constant chatter and neediness—that he stalked them through the house babbling and seeking attention. He had long, elaborate bedtime rituals. Gretchen does not remember particularly desiring the affection of her nannies—in her memory, she always retained a strange awareness that the nannies were only being paid to love her, and that in their real lives, who knew? She remembers being curious as to whether they had boyfriends. One had children who lived with her mother in Mexico, and the children were approximately Gretchen’s and Chad’s ages. It seems unlikely that Charles and Elaine Merry ever had knocks on their nuptial door in the middle of the night. When Gray was born, everyone advised Gretchen to hire a night nurse, and so she had—it was the way things were done. Now it occurs to her that perhaps if she had tended to her own child in the dead of night, Gray would be more interactive with her now. She knows, in some pit of her stomach, that this is not true exactly: that the disconnect between Gray and the world is something genetic, chemical—the words “on the spectrum” loom—but for a moment it feels agonizing and delicious to imagine that the blame is simply her own, and that had she stood up to her parents and what seemed to be “the world” and kept her own nipple in her child’s mouth instead of some stranger feeding him a sterilized bottle full of pumped milk, everything could be different.

  Different how? Different like pumping her egg into a stranger’s body and giving that away, too?

  On the other end of the door, at her tentative knock, her mother calls a bright, “Come in!”

  Gretchen feels her feet wading through the plush, cream-colored carpet. Her mother is in bed, in crisp white pajamas with bright peonies popping vibrantly all over them. Her father is in the bathroom, brushing his teeth with the door open.

  She explains the situation calmly. Her mother is an extremely excitable person—is, let’s face it, a crazy person, although the source of this “insanity” feels nebulous: there is no diagnosis, and Gretchen does not recall her mother being batshit when she was a child, merely preoccupied and flighty, like so many of the women in their circle. She conveys the facts, slowly and with some redundancy. Troy has been increasingly difficult at home. He berates her and calls her names, even in front of Gray. He spends her money in dishonest ways, attempting to hide grand purchases from her. While searching for proof of his financial duplicity, she found this matter of the Soviets. Troy has been abusing Carrot, and as she understands it, animal cruelty is a sign of sociopathy. Then, the soccer balls that broke the camel’s back. “I didn’t know what else to do,” she says, and the plaintiveness in her voice makes her cringe. “I didn’t mean to make trouble.” And she explains about the pillaged trunk, as though explaining an assault on her body, even though Troy always accused her, just like he did about her body, that she didn’t take good enough care of the car. “It’s all gone,” she concludes. “Every single thing I’ve piled up to use against him, he has it now. And that means he knows all my intentions, and he’s the one with the upper hand.”

  Her father stands in the hallway between walk-in his-and-hers closets, a towel in his hands. “It’s simple,” he says. “Go home.”

  “Now wait a minute, Charles,” her mother says. “I don’t understand. How can Troy have the upper hand? He hasn’t held a steady job in years. An attorney can track down credit card statements pretty easily. I don’t see how this changes anything. Gretchen, honey, it seems to me you just stay the course and proceed with the divorce. This thievery thing is just . . . a minor inconvenience.”

  “I don’t know . . .” Gretchen falters. “He says I’m depressed. He says I . . .” Her eyes flood and she looks in the other direction until she can swallow it down. “He says I drink too much. He says I’m a cold mother, and that I’m hysterical, and my medicine cabinet looks like Valley of the Dolls, and you can tell just by looking at me that I’m not creating a thriving environment for Gray.”

  Her parents stare at her. Neither one says a word.

  “I am drinking too much,” she blurts. “He’s right. I’m to blame.” She’s sobbing now, unable to stop.

  “Oh, honey!” her mother cries. “Who doesn’t drink too much? That’s nonsense. We all need a little help. Everyone’s to blame!”

  “It’s not nonsense, Elaine,” her father barks back. “More than half of the fathers who pursue custody get it. That clown wants a buy-off. Write him a check for a cool mil and see how fast he’s out of our hair. Well, I’ll be damned if I’m going to give in. He wants the kid so much, let him have him. What’s he going to do with a kid? Call his bluff, I say.”

  Gretchen steps backward. “You want me to . . . give him Gray to prove a point?”

  “Oh, bullshit,” her father says. “He’ll have him back on your doorstep with packed bags inside of a month.”

  “Raising a child is very hard,” agrees her mother, who never raised a child in her life.

  “This is probably always what he was after,” her father says, swiping a fist in the air. “I said it from the beginning—he saw dollar signs and went after them. Oh, he had that act down while he needed it, but I’m surprised he stuck around this long—Gray is, what, three, four? I thought he’d take a hike and sue for alimony the minute the kid was born.”

  “He’s five and a half,” Gretchen says pointlessly.

  Another round of silence.

  “I think,” Gretchen says, “I need to sleep on all this.”

  “Good idea,” her father says, striding toward the bed.

  “I’ve asked Naomi to come back early to make pancakes for Gray!” her mother booms cheerily. “We can find the cookie cutters and make Mickey Mouse ears.”

  “Great,” Gretchen says. “Um. Thanks.”

  She stands in the hallway taking gasping breaths of air, trying to survey her situation:

  1) Her father believes Troy never really loved her and was after the family’s money from the start.

  2) This would be more infuriating and less humiliating if Gretchen did not believe the same exact thing.

  3) Neither of her parents seems even mildly concerned about her alcohol and pill intake.

  4) She has imminent plans to pop a Xanax and pour a drink.

  5) In her father’s mind, Gray makes a very fine bargaining tool . . .

  6) . . . but is definitely not worth the “cool mil” that would make Troy go away.

  7) Gretchen going home and admitting defeat would make things infinitely easier on everyone.

  She thinks of Carrot, home alone with Troy tonight, and realizes:

  8) There is clearly something wrong with her, leaving a helpless animal in the house to suffer Troy’s wrath.

  Would it have killed her to bring the fucking dog?

  Back in her room, Xanax swallowed dry and no alcohol yet, she calls Chad’s cell.

  “Listen,” she begins when he answers the phone, “I’m not sure what to do next. I can’t stand it here . . . Mom and Dad will make me into Lizzie Borden before Christmas. I don’t even know if I s
hould bring Gray back to that school, Chad—it’s the fucking Stepford Children over there . . . could we just come and stay with you and Miguel until something shifts?”

  “Oh, honey, sure, of course,” Chad coos. “Don’t worry about a thing. I mean, the baby isn’t born until July, you could stay for months before then if you need to.”

  “No, no, don’t worry, I’d never stay that long,” she says. “Just a couple of weeks at most, I mean, until—” And all at once she freezes. “But wait. You mean . . . if the baby was born . . . I mean . . . would we not be able to stay then?”

  “What do you mean?” Chad asks. “You just said you’d never stay that long.”

  “But what if, like, instead of staying now, I wanted—I needed to stay then. Like in July or August. Would that still be all right?”

  “Well sure,” Chad says slowly. “You’d be welcome to stay with us for a couple of weeks like you’re talking about any time, Gret, you know that.”

  She feels that creeping sense of paranoia, like she’s acting crazy—the way she tends to feel when talking to Troy—but now she can’t let it go.

  “But not longer,” she says.

  “Longer?” Chad asks. “How much longer? Why would it be longer?”

  “What I’m just trying to ascertain,” she says flatly, and all the tentativeness is gone from her voice, “is whether by giving you one of my eggs, I’ve just made myself and my son less welcome in your house instead of more.”

  “Gretchen!” Chad sounds genuinely alarmed; he sounds like their mother. “Of course not!”

  “So,” she persists, “just to be clear, if the baby were already born, and say Troy were to start draining all my money on a horrific divorce, and Mom and Dad were being . . . Mom and Dad, and were an unfit environment for anyone to live in unless they’re hoping to gear up the incentive to eat a gun . . . in circumstances like that, Chad, if my son and I needed a place to stay, you and Miguel would welcome us, to come and live with you and the baby.”