by Laura Dave
Which is when the door opens again. It’s Nate.
“Can I tell you something I’ve never told you before?” he says. And he looks at her, really looks at her, until she holds his gaze for a second, sees him. “I like you more than anyone,” he says.
She smiles at him. “I like you more than anyone,” she says.
But then—just when she needs him to stay most, and can ask for it least—he is gone again.
Gwyn
She started to get to this earlier: the billion-dollar industries. The ones that survive based on the faulty idea that women like her have, the idea that if you keep yourself beautiful, that if you keep yourself looking a certain way, you are safe. In your life, in your marriage, in yourself. How many times has she heard a friend talking about someone leaving his wife and saying, well, she really let herself go? The implication being that it is less his fault than hers, that he can’t be expected to stay for someone who is less than perfect.
Only, what if you stay perfect? And he leaves you anyway? Who are you going to blame it on, then? Especially when this other person, the one he is leaving for, isn’t beautiful? When she isn’t anything like the person you’re supposed to try hard—try with everything you have—to keep being?
This is the worst position of all, Gwyn thinks. She has stayed beautiful, and it hasn’t saved her from anything. In fact, it may have left her more vulnerable, because it allowed her to get complacent. Thomas still stared at her as she walked into a room, touched the small of her back, still told her she had the most perfect hips and shoulders and breasts he’d ever seen. She let those things mean something. She let them stand in place of the things he rarely said enough, like: I want you, and I always have.
She straightens her dress out, leaves the bathroom, and heads down the stairs toward the kitchen. If she can spend some time in the kitchen without being harassed, without seeing anyone, it will be no small miracle. She wants to start baking the cake. She wants to be left alone.
But she turns on the kitchen light and it reveals both of her children, sitting in the dark, just where she guessed she’d find them: Nate sitting on a stool by the counter, Georgia leaning against the countertop itself. The ingredients for the cake are pushed to the side. Shortening and cocoa and sugar. Beets and fresh buttermilk, too many eggs. Gwyn closes her eyes, opens them, hoping to see something else. They could be ten or fifteen as easily as the grown people that are sitting in front of her now: Nate bending into his shoulders, Georgia leaning backward on her tiny elbows. Anyone who says people change should ask a mother. She can tell you that her children—in the ways that seem to count most—are exactly as they’ve always been.
“You’re going to have to move,” she says, tapping Georgia on her cheek.
Georgia stays where she is. “We’ve been talking about it, Mom,” she says, “and if this divorce party is some twisted attempt to make us feel better, then we feel fine, okay? We’ll feel a lot better without it.”
Gwyn reaches around Georgia for the eggs, the butter. She reaches around her daughter, and starts to get organized. “It’s too late to cancel. Everyone has been invited.”
“Everyone has been invited? You sound British,” Georgia says.
She looks at her daughter disapprovingly.
“Do they even know what they’ve been invited to?” she asks. “Do they even know what tonight is really about?”
How can Gwyn answer that? She nods, because yes is the closest thing to the correct answer. Her friends do know they’ve been invited to a divorce party, and they do know the gist of the rest of it: that she and Thomas are splitting. They don’t know there is another woman, though. They probably wouldn’t believe it if Gwyn told them, wouldn’t want to believe it, which is really beside the point. Because she can’t tell them anyway. She can’t bear to hear them say what they’ll inevitably say—Thomas is goingto come running back to you. She can’t hear them say it, then have to find out how wrong they are about that too.
“So just that we are clear,” Georgia says, folding her arms across her chest, “parading our family’s demise in front of everyone we know is the healthiest way to go. What kind of parenting is that? Do you know what my therapist is going to say?”
She squeezes Georgia’s elbow. “You can tell your therapist that your father and I decided together, with our therapist, that celebrating our family in front of everyone we know, one last time, is the healthiest way to go.”
“You guys have a therapist?”
“No. But will you tell your therapist that we do? It makes us sound better.”
“Mom, this isn’t funny.”
“Well, it’s a little funny.”
She looks at her daughter, who looks very upset—though, Gwyn guesses, not exactly for the reasons she is saying. Yes, it must be hard for her to think of her parents separating. Gwyn imagines that it is particularly hard for her right now when she doesn’t want to think about anyone separating. When she has to deal with the fact that her family is constantly worried her relationship may be next.
“You know what? Please don’t be so transparent, Mother. I see that look in your eyes. This has nothing to do with me and Denis, or me being worried about Denis and me, or whatever else you think that I’m putting on you and Dad. We’re fine. We’re great.”
Gwyn puts up her hands in surrender. “I’m just trying to explain that tonight is a nice thing. There’s a reason divorce parties are getting popular around here. We’ve gone to three this year alone. There’s another later this month, Syril and Maureen Livingston, you know the screenwriter couple from up the block?” She directs this question to Nate. “They wrote that terrible love-on-a-plane heist film a few years back. Anyway, they had a beautiful one, and said that it made it a lot easier for their twins to come to terms with their decision, to feel good about it.”
“Aren’t their twins six years old?” Georgia says.
“And?” Gwyn says.
Georgia pushes away from the countertop. “I’m going to lie down,” she says. “Before I say something I’ll regret.” She pats her brother on the shoulder. “You try.”
“I’m on it,” Nate says, but he looks distracted.
“Wait,” Gwyn says.
Georgia starts to leave, but Gwyn hands her the pile of divorce literature, which has made its way into the kitchen. She puts Loving Divorce on the top—the best book she has found about all of this.
She has dog-eared the chapter about divorce parties, why they are a good idea, how they help a family heal. How, if done right, they help a family appreciate that there are many forms of love, many forms of staying together, even if apart.
“Excellent,” Georgia says. “Are we done here?”
Gwyn nods. “If you want to be,” she says. And she watches her daughter go—her daughter, who, from the back, doesn’t look at all pregnant, doesn’t look at all different from how she’s always been.
“So,” she says, turning back to Nate. “Do you hate me too?”
Nate looks at her. “No.”
She puts on her apron, reaches under the kitchen sink for her biggest mixing bowl, its matching oversize spoon. “Well, that’s something,” she says.
“Though I just can’t help but think you shouldn’t have let me bring Maggie here for the first time during all of this, Mom. This is a lot for someone to walk into.”
She puts the spoon down. “You knew we were having this party. You even knew how big it was going to be.”
“I wasn’t thinking what that meant.”
“And whose fault is that?”
Nate is quiet. “Maybe mine.”
Gwyn moves the ingredients around the bowl, takes out the ripped, yellowed recipe—marked RED VELV on top in marker— as if she needs the recipe, as if she doesn’t know it by heart. She looks up at her son. “I didn’t want that,” she says.
“Which part?”
“The part that makes you uncomfortable. I don’t want that. You know I don’t.”
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nbsp; He runs his hand through his hair, the way he does when he is trying to make sense of things—seven-year-old Nate, thirty-three-year-old Nate—and then, with a small smile, he gets off the stool and goes to the sink and starts washing his hands. He dries them on his own jeans, turning back toward the countertop, untying the shortening bag. He dumps three cups into the bowl, chef eyes it as close enough, and starts looking for the coconut extract to create the puddle in the middle of it.
“What are you doing?” she says.
“What do you think?”
He is helping her. That’s what she thinks. He is helping her now, and he is always going to help her—seven-year-old Nate, thirty-three-year-old Nate—if she gives him the choice. It warms her, and makes her feel something else too. Something like pride. Who wants to hear about that, though? He doesn’t. He doesn’t want to hear her say any of that right now.
So, instead, she rubs his back, and hands over the black bottle of extract from the spice rack. Its small cap, loose.
“Thank you, baby,” she says, as he takes it.
“Don’t mention it.”
She leans toward him, as he adds the lemon zest, her secret ingredient, the way she showed him a long time ago, the way he has remembered to do.
“And you guys are going to be fine,” she says.
“Me and Georgia?”
“You and Maggie. People don’t break up because someone’s family is a little . . . messy. If that were the case, no one would ever get married.” She touches his jaw. “But I am sorry. Have I said that yet? I’m sorry if I caught her off-guard. I’m sorry if I caused any strife.”
He shakes his head, cracks open an egg. “The truth is that I managed to freak her out all by myself about sixty minutes before we came here. I waited until this morning to tell her some things that I should have told her about before now.”
“Like what?”
Nate doesn’t answer at first, reaching forward and plugging in the mixer, holding it over the bowl, slowly running it through the mixture.
“I didn’t tell her much about how I grew up,” he says. “Or, I should say, I didn’t tell her everything. I didn’t really tell her about the finances, for starters.”
Gwyn unplugs it. “One more time?”
“It never seemed like the right time to tell her.” He looks at Gwyn, meets her eyes. “It feels so separate from my life. From our life.”
“Nate, your life is that you are opening a restaurant together.
And she had a right to know. . . . Not that you were going to take any money for it from us, after last time. You made that much clear. But you should have explained that part to her. My God, she must feel so confused.”
“I can see that now.”
He starts to mix again, but she puts her hands over his, tries to make him listen to her. “You have nothing to be ashamed of.”
“I know that.”
“I don’t think you do.”
He looks at her. He is silent, as if considering it for a minute, whether to say what she can already see on his face. The worst part.
“The thing is that she doesn’t know about the last time.” Gwyn can feel her jaw drop in disbelief, can feel her disbelief running through her—and something like anger. Because he looks in this moment—she sees it in him—like his father. She usually sees pieces of his grandfather, Champ, in him. But now, it is Thomas she sees. Those sweet but put-upon eyes, that reluctant frown. And now it scares her.
“You haven’t told her, Nate?”
“I wanted to.” He clears his throat. “But she was already so freaked out that I didn’t tell her about the money situation, and then we saw Murph on the bus. I think learning another secret of this magnitude now would be a lot for anyone to take.”
“And what? This morning is the first time the two of you have ever had a conversation?”
“Apparently.”
He pulls the food coloring out of its box, puts several drops into the bowl, stirring it into the mixture. And refusing to do it, refusing to look at her, which tells her more than she wants to know.
She shakes her head. How can she explain it so he will hear her? He needs to tell Maggie now. Because if she finds out about Ryan another way, it will make the rest of it, anything else he hasn’t told her, seem bigger, and also pale in comparison.
“I’m going to tell her, Mom. I will. I’ll tell her as soon as we get back to Brooklyn, as soon as this weekend is behind us . . . I’ll tell her the rest of the story.”
It’s not a story, she wants to tell her son. It’s your life.
“You need to promise me. Not that I’m the person you need to be promising, but I’m going to have to do—”
“I will, I am planning to, as soon as she can hear it,” he says, wiping his hands on a dishtowel, as if that solves it. “But while we are being all honest here, then let me ask you something.”
She turns on the oven, letting it heat. “Shoot,” she says.
“Are you sure this is what you want?”
She feels herself go stiff. “The party or the divorce?”
“Either, both. I know I’m probably supposed to have my own reaction to it, but the reaction I’m honestly having now is that it’s okay with me. If it’s really what you want.”
She meets his eyes, holds them, making herself believe it so she can say it. “Yes, this is really what I want.”
“Then why are you still making his favorite cake?”
She looks down at the now-messy countertop, the dirtied dishes and bowls and spoons in the kitchen sink. She wipes her fingers on her apron, the fronts of them, then the back.
“I don’t know,” she says.
He nods. “Because truthfully, Mom, Maggie thinks there is something else going on. And normally I would argue, but I don’t know . . .” He pauses. “You just don’t seem like yourself.”
Then, as if the conversation is over—and she guesses it is, for now—he turns away from her to get the ingredients for the frosting. And she begins to pour the cake into its container. Where it will bake. Where it will complete itself.
“Now that is the nicest thing anyone has said to me all day,” she says.
Maggie
It’s not that she is convinced she would have fallen asleep, but she was close to it, closer than she’s been in a few days: lying on top of Nate’s bed, her eyes closing, her mind in that silent place right before sleep. She wishes she had gotten there from a place of relaxation, but this is more from the opposite. It is more from not wanting to acknowledge what she is feeling in her stomach, what she worries is going on around her.
Then Georgia knocks on the door. The first time, jarring Maggie. The second time, giving her no choice but to respond.
“Maggie! Can I come in?” Georgia says, as she opens the door, answers her own question with a yes. “Were you sleeping?”
“Not exactly,” she says.
Georgia enters: a book under her arm, holding a bottle of absinthe, a thin shot glass. She gets on the bed, lying down. Then she hands Maggie the absinthe and the glass.
“I brought you a snack,” she says.
Maggie looks at her, then down at the bottle, unscrewing the cap. The pungent smell that comes out is a mix of apples and cherries and licorice and wood. Maggie remembers trying to buy a bottle of this for Nate out in San Francisco the day he gave notice at the restaurant and they decided for certain to open their own place in New York. He had told her that he loved absinthe, but she went to every liquor store she could think of and could only find imitations, the real version illegal and unavailable anywhere in the continental United States.
“It’s the real absinthe?” she asks Georgia now.
Georgia nods. “Denis smuggled it in from Canada.”
“Is absinthe legal in Canada?”
“Oh, how should I know?”
She opens the book, which Maggie recognizes from Gwyn’s pile downstairs—Graceful Divorce is written on the cover, above a purposely blurry photograp
h of two hands, separating from each other. Georgia flips through pages until she stops on one, her fingers skimming a passage. “Listen to this,” she says, and begins to read:
The purpose of the parting ritual is to replace animosity with harmony. It is a message that closing the door on marriagedoes not mean closing the door on the love you feel for each other. It is a message that wherever your lives may take the two of you from this point forward, you will remain connectedin your hearts. . . .
“Gross,” Maggie says. “What is that?”
“Apparently, what we have to look forward to tonight.” She pauses. “Set to orchestra music.”
Maggie pours some of the thick drink into a shot glass, downs it, pours herself a little more, downs it again.
“There we go!” Georgia says, and starts to applaud.
Maggie’s throat starts burning, her eyes tearing up. “That is strong.”
“Stop trying to make me jealous.”
Maggie looks down at her empty shot glass. When she was searching for this for Nate, a store clerk told her it was banned because it could make you crazy. How long does that take? It is starting to feel like she is going quietly crazy anyway, but it would be nice to have the alcohol to blame it on. She hasn’t eaten yet today, nothing except the popcorn. She is hungry, specifically hungry, wants ginger pancakes. She tries hard to crave something else, knowing that it means she is in trouble. As a little girl, whenever she was about to get sick, or she would sense disaster striking, her craving for them would rise up, like a bright red hazard sign. She thinks it has something to do with one of her clearest memories of her mother—the two of them sitting on Maggie’s bed, early one Saturday morning, eating ginger pancakes and drinking unsweetened iced tea. Listening to the radio. She can still call it up whenever she eats the pancakes. Not just the memory. But the feeling, as if it is happening right now.
