by Laura Dave
“Wow,” Maggie says. “I can only imagine what would have happened if I made that a full shot.”
Maggie smiles, for what feels like the first time all day. This is going to be okay, she thinks, all of it. She’ll go home and sleep off some of the absinthe. She’ll get ready for the party tonight. And this time tomorrow, they will be on their way back to Red Hook.
Then Georgia starts to speak again.
“I just had a feeling as soon as I saw you get off the bus. I had a positive feeling, which is a relief. And I was worried about it. I had all these conversations set up to have in case it got awkward. Like, Nate told me you loved music. We could talk about that. Because the first time Nate was married, it didn’t work like that. All the prepped conversations in the world wouldn’t have helped. I tried to be nice, I wanted that, but she made it so hard. She made it really hard.”
For a second, Maggie is certain she misheard her. Until she is certain she hasn’t.
“Ryan never even tried with me. She wasn’t the type. She’s the other type. You know, the girl you hate because you kind of want to be her? Cold, but occasionally sweet in the way that keeps men running back because they are thinking she’ll be sweet again. One day. If they figure out the special way she needs them to do everything just right.”
Maggie’s head is spinning. It may spin right off of her body. She holds on to the side of the rock, literally holds it, trying to concentrate on her breathing, not turning toward Georgia.
“Ryan?” she says, finally.
“Right, Ryan.”
“Ryan?”
“Weird name for a girl, isn’t it? And she lives up to it, believe me,” Georgia says, and shakes her head, in imagined shared contempt, and then—as though she is seeing for the first time that Maggie has no idea what she is talking about—she shakes her head slower, until she is barely moving it at all. “Wait, why exactly are you looking at me like that?”
Maggie doesn’t answer.
“He didn’t tell you he was married . . . I can’t believe this. He didn’t tell you about Ryan?”
“You really need to stop saying her name,” Maggie says.
“How could he not have told you?” She holds her head in her hands. “This is bad. This is very bad. He’s going to kill me. . . .”
Maggie isn’t listening anymore. She is already standing up, starting to move back to the car. But she slips on the rock, slips and scratches the side of her ankle, and barely catches it. The bottle of absinthe. But she does catch it, and keeps going.
“Hold on!” Georgia is jumping off the rocks, following her. “Where are you going?”
He was married. Nate was married. To a woman Maggie has never even heard of. Never even knew until this very moment. There is no rationalizing this away. There is no excusing why he hasn’t told her this.
“I don’t know.” She is walking in the opposite direction from the car. She is just walking.
“You need to slow down, Maggie. You need to slow down so that I can explain a little better.”
She can’t slow down. There are tears welling in her eyes. She can feel them. And her ankle is stinging. Now that she is standing there is no ignoring this either. The absinthe is making her head foggy, and clearer, and foggy in a whole new way. She isn’t sure if she knows less than she would know otherwise, or more. It makes her think it is probably less. It makes her think she is about to make a less than great decision.
“Was Nate married?” Maggie asks.
“Yes.”
“So what is there to explain?”
And this time she does start walking to the car, the keys already out, already ready to go.
“Please, wait.” They are by the car again, Maggie pulling helplessly on the locked doors. Then she starts to unlock the driver’s side, barely fitting the key in the lock. When she feels Georgia sneak up behind her, a quick motion, and grab the keys away.
“Maggie, you’re drunk.”
“I’m not drunk.”
“You’re not sober.”
Maggie gives her a look, and Georgia holds out the keys. Then, just as she is about to grab for them, Georgia pulls them back.
“What are you going to do? You have to tell me. Are you just going to drive out of town? I can’t let you do that. You can’t just drive away and leave my brother. And me. Forget my brother. You can’t just leave a pregnant girl by the lighthouse.”
“You have a point.”
“I think so.”
Maggie looks back and forth between Georgia and the car. “Well then, if you want to come with me, you’ll have to take me to her.”
“Who her?”
Maggie doesn’t say anything, just holds Georgia’s eyes.
“Ryan?” Georgia looks at her like she is crazy, and maybe she is. Maybe post-absinthe, and post-too-much-information, she really is. But that is where she is going.
“What makes you sure she is near here?” she says.
She wasn’t sure. But it would make sense, right? Another reason Nate dreaded coming home. The real reason. And seeing Georgia’s fearful look now, she knows it. Ryan is close enough that they can get to her.
“Fine,” Georgia says, pushing Maggie out of the way, getting in the driver’s seat herself. “For the record, though, I think this is going to end badly. Very badly.”
Maggie goes around to the passenger side before Georgia— or Maggie’s own better sense—can get it together, can change her mind.
“Well,” she says, “I guess we’re about to find out.”
Gwyn
It’s not that she is entirely unfamiliar with the Internet, but she never had occasion to learn about it in too much detail, to use it too regularly. So when she found out for certain about Thomas and Eve, it was Gwyn’s sister Jillian who did a Google search on Eve and sent Gwyn the results. (Who wants those kinds of results?) It isn’t a good thing to have too much information. No one probably thinks of that today, but Gwyn still thinks you are better off with less information. Especially because once you start to look for it, it is because you hope you won’t find it.
And then you do.
The Google search of Eve Stone revealed things that served only to make her more human, more real: Eve Stone. Full name: Natalie Eve Stone. Graduated from Pacific Valley High School in 1997. (No record of college.) Moved to Santa Barbara, California, where she lived on a street called Foothill Road, worked for a catering company, a dog-walking service, a restaurant called Firestone’s. She had another address, after that, in Oxnard— under Natalie Eve Stone—maybe there was a man she lived with there, a man who supported her, because there was no record of employment. No record of employment anywhere, again, until she landed on the east end of Long Island and opened Eve’s Kitchen.
It seems like she’s gone by Eve for a while now, maybe more than awhile now. Gwyn doesn’t know what made her decide to change it. The Internet didn’t tell her anything about that.
Or this: she was Thomas’s student. Eve was Thomas’s continuing education student—third on the wait list, the last one he let into the class. If Stephanie Golding hadn’t dropped out after the first class, Gwyn wouldn’t have this problem. She’d have other problems, certainly, but not this one. And the thing is, if it wasn’t actually happening to her, this problem could be out of a bad movie of the week. Where a man is supposed to be one thing. Like: bad. So they have the bad man screwing around with his student, just so the viewing audience can be clear. Hate this guy. He’s the jerk. Like it is ever that simple, for the people who actually have the job of hating him.
These things came back to her: The night after she went to the meditation center and she found her husband not present, she decided she needed to figure out the truth. She went back through it in her mind, when it all began, that first conversation with Thomas in the bathroom, which took place right after Thomas’s class on a Monday night. So the next Monday night she went to the college herself and saw Thomas and Eve outside of the library.
Fro
m the back, they didn’t look so ridiculous. From the back, she could see how he fooled himself that they belonged.
He was helping her load boxes into her van, his hand hovering right above her ass, reaching for her. Like he was the one with something to prove, like he was the one who was going to have to earn her. Like if he wasn’t the one reaching, Eve could just as easily move away from him.
He wanted to be the one reacting. Gwyn knew this, and it helped her figure out the rest of it—what her husband sees in Eve: Thomas is impressed by women who seem fearless, like they can do anything separate from him, like only if he is equally fearless, and lucky, and on task, is he going to be permitted to stay. If he was questioned about what he saw in her, Thomas would probably say that Eve is very sweet and unpretentious, easy to talk to. But he would be wrong to think his desire for her stemmed from any of that. Even though he admires those qualities, it is only in a distant way. They don’t penetrate for him.
A long time ago, he had to work for Gwyn. He worked to convince her that he could be who she needed him to be: that he could stand by her and be a good parent with her and build a home life with her. Now, he wants the opposite. To earn Eve— Eve with her whimsical spirit, her desire to remain unburdened, her desire to remain plucky, daring—Thomas gets to convince her that he can be as free as she is. He gets to convince himself.
“We have a problem,” Eve says now, still sitting on the steps.
Gwyn pretends not to hear her—or, rather, doesn’t acknowledge that she has heard her—choosing instead to take the heavy tray off Eve’s lap and move past her into the Buckleys’ kitchen, wind blowing behind her, letting Eve be the one who follows. This time.
“Now,” Gwyn says, once they are both inside, “it’s looking like we may be running into a little rain, but we’ll just deal with that if it happens. We already have someone who will be providing all of the alcohol, loads of champagne and caviar. A complete vodka bar. I’ll have him outfit a proper waitstaff for you, so your only responsibility will be to prepare the food and have one or two staff members with you to help in the kitchen.” She pauses. “You know all of this. We went over it, didn’t we? Why are you looking at me like that?”
Eve looks down, away. She seems young, beneath her skin, young and scared, standing before Gwyn. It makes Gwyn feel bad for her, for a second, maternal almost. This is a young woman who is in over her head. Who has daddy issues or insecurity issues, and finds a man who promises her things. So what if that man is married? So what if he is currently breaking his most important promise to someone else?
“Ms. Lancaster . . .”
“Gwyn. Please. Considering everything.”
“What’s everything?”
She puts the tray on the counter. “You know,” she says. “How closely we are going to be working together today.”
“Well, that’s what I want to talk to you about.”
Gwyn turns away from the counter, and tries to look casual, pushing her hair behind her ears. “Okay.”
“I am really sorry, but it turns out that I won’t be able to cater the party tonight. I know this is unprofessional, so last minute, but something came up. A personal issue.”
“What kind?”
“I’d rather not say.”
“Except you’re going to have to. You’re going to have to do a little better than that, Eve. I have a hundred and seventy people showing up here in a few hours.”
“I thought you said two hundred.”
Gwyn crosses her arms over her chest. “I like to overorder.”
Eve ignores her, motioning toward the tray. “I’ve already done most of the preparation, so the food belongs to you. And my friend Lola Cunningham, over at Bobby Van’s, says she will be glad to work with what I have and take over the catering duties.”
Eve hangs her head, and Gwyn can see her searching for the words—but she isn’t sure which ones.
“Eve, if you are worried that this is out of your league, if that is what this is about, please don’t be. I am well aware of your limitations, or your inexperience with a party this size, but you have come to me highly recommended.”
“By who?”
“My husband.”
Eve is silent, clearly confused, wondering what Gwyn knows, which makes Gwyn wonder how Eve figured out who she was. “Why did you tell me that the party was here, at the Buckleys’?” George asks.
“What are you talking about? I told you we were prepping over here.”
“No, when we spoke on the phone, what you told me was that this was where the party was.”
“You must be remembering incorrectly.”
“I’m not.”
Gwyn meets Eve’s angry eyes. “Well, what’s the difference anyway, Eve? Here or there. Here is easier in terms of space to organize. And what does this have to do with why you are canceling?”
“I guess it doesn’t.”
Gwyn puts the tray on the table, turns to face her. “Right, it doesn’t. So let’s get started on the menu order. Obviously, you’ll be rotating among the different appetizers, but I was hoping we could start crabcake heavy. I think those will go off well. Everyone out here is already dreading the end of seafood season—”
“Gwyn, let me be clear.” She clears her throat. “I feel uncomfortable catering this party tonight.”
Gwyn clears her throat, back, almost in mimicry, and moves closer to her. “So, let me be clear, you feel comfortable sleeping with my husband and helping him walk out on a thirty-five-year marriage, but you can’t cater my party?”
Eve is silent, and Gwyn can see it—Eve’s worst fears getting confirmed. This isn’t just a bizarre coincidence, the universe delivering a karmic blow: Gwyn knows. Or, at least, Gwyn knows enough of everything that this isn’t going to end well.
Eve drills her with a look. “So you do know?” she says, and she looks defiant, suddenly, and annoyed even, like she is the one who has been tricked. Like she is the one who has been wronged. And maybe, in this moment, that is the truth.
“Of course I know, Eve,” Gwyn says. “Why do you think you’re here?”
Eve looks beside herself, and Gwyn can see her looking at the door longingly as if wondering whether she can make a run for it. Gwyn steps in front of it to block the way. That way, at least.
“This is crazy,” she says. “You’re crazy.”
“It’s possible, and probably good news for you if it’s true.”
“Why?”
“Because that will make it easier one day when you feel bad about all of this, when you are a little more sure of yourself, when you would never dream of getting involved in someone’s marriage. It will make you feel better about what you’ve done. Or that’s giving you too much credit. What you’ve helped do.”
“Whatever issues you have, you should take them up with Thomas. He’s the one you should be talking to.”
“Believe me, I will. But you still need to stay for a minute and hear me out. I still need that from you. Can you do that for me?”
Eve doesn’t answer her, but she does move away from the door, goes and sits at the table and so Gwyn goes back to the counter, and starts to unwrap the tray of mushroom caps. There must be tons of other trays in the van to get to, but they will get there.
Once Eve is handled. “Thank you, Eve,” Gwyn says.
“You’re welcome.”
Gwyn finishes taking the layer of film off the container. “My goodness, these smell great!” She leans in closer. “Did you use dill? That’s such an interesting choice.”
“Yes, a marinade of dill and pineapple.”
“Pineapple too?” She shakes her head. “I wouldn’t have guessed.”
“It’s my mother’s recipe.”
“Sara Stone. Old Coast Road. Big Sur, California.”
Eve gives her a look, but Gwyn just ignores it and looks back at her—into her eyes, which are bright blue, and sad. This close up, there is no denying it.
“Eve, this is not about blame,
okay? Or at least this is not about blaming you. It is my husband who has betrayed me. He is the one who decided to break up our marriage. I’m clear on that. You didn’t promise to stand by me thirty-five years ago. And you aren’t the one who should be held responsible for what he has caused here. Or . . . not mostly.”
“Then I don’t understand.”
“There are many reasons that I need you to cover this party tonight. Believe it or not, it’s not only for my benefit.”
“So it’s for my benefit?”
“Partially.”
“How do you figure that?”
“You don’t strike me as a saver. And when my husband leaves you, which he will, you are going to be distraught. You are going to want to get far away from here, and him, and anything that has to do with this time in your life. Maybe you’ll want to go back to Big Sur. Who knows? The money you are making tonight will make it possible for you to leave.”
Eve shakes her head. “This is too weird.”
“Many things are, yes.”
Eve folds her arms across her chest—thinking about it, really thinking about it. “In all fairness, I have to say that I think Thomas is going to choose to continue honoring our love.”
“Of course you think that. Why wouldn’t you? My husband thinks that. He is so certain about it, in fact, that he is willing to lie to his entire family in order to guarantee it.”
Eve doesn’t look confused by this, which suggests to Gwyn that he has told her what he is doing: blaming it on something that isn’t blameworthy. A conversion, a spiritual change. And later, once the wounds have healed, once enough time has passed, and it is more allowed, he will have Eve meet his children, even Gwyn herself. When Eve can be aboveboard, not someone worthy of scorn. This is my new girlfriend, he will say. This is Eve Stone.
“But here’s the flip side,” Gwyn says. “When you love someone, when you have spent several decades loving him, you begin to see his insides even before he can see them. You know what he is going to do before he does.”
