The Divorce Party

by Laura Dave

  “You believe that? Can you try for a second to understand that maybe my decision to leave this all behind has nothing to do with you?” His voice is tightening, as if he is failing to keep a lid on it, his own growing anger, which instead of making Maggie step back fuels hers. “It was a decision I made long before I ever met you, Maggie.”

  “What decision is that? To just pretend that everything is okay, even when it’s not? You couldn’t hear your mother tell you what was really going on with the party tonight. You couldn’t hear me ask you to be real with me about your childhood here. You think if you don’t talk about it, you can just pretend everything is all right? Everything is not all right. Not with us, not with your parents, not with anything today. And if you let yourself go anywhere real with it, you have to acknowledge it.”

  “Which part?”

  “That I had a right to know. I had a right to know that the person I was marrying had been married before. I had a right to know why it didn’t work out between you. For goodness’ sake, doesn’t that make sense? I had a right to know more about you than a stranger might.”

  “You do.”

  Do I? She doesn’t know if that’s true. She doesn’t know what she believes. How do you ever know anyone, at the end of the day? Does it matter if they leave out who they used to be? Does it matter if they are never going to become who you thought they were?

  She starts to walk away, back toward the car. She can’t think about it now, she can’t think until she has some distance. Until she has some time when she isn’t looking at him, and letting what she feels for him obscure what she needs to be remembering right now.

  “I don’t think she ever loved me.”

  She turns back around, because she hears the anger drop out of him, hears something much worse beneath it. “Excuse me?”

  “We met and it all happened so fast. We met two months before I graduated from high school, and were married six weeks after. I had never known anyone like her. That sure of herself, that fearless about everything. She always knew exactly what she wanted. She knew exactly how she felt about everything that came her way.” He paused. “It is a dangerous reason to love someone.”

  “What is?”

  “Because you want to be them.”

  She is quiet, looking at him. She can see in his eyes how hard it was for him to say that—to her, to himself. She knows the last thing he wants to do now is to keep going.

  “And I’m sure she would say she did love me. But I can’t stop thinking that she was in it because I could help her. She needed help getting the restaurant together, getting this life together that she wanted. And when she didn’t need that help anymore, she didn’t need me anymore. And I’m not just talking about financial support or whatever. I’m talking about the fact that she wanted an audience, and I couldn’t have been a better one. I’m talking about how long it took me to believe, after her, that anyone would actually just want me.”

  “So what, then?” Her heart is racing, everything good he has said dropping out beneath what she fears she just figured out, what she worries she now knows. “Is that why you picked me?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m the opposite.” She motions in the direction of The House. “Ryan, your previous life, the restaurant. It looks absolutely different, it feels absolutely different. You just said it yourself, and I saw it myself. She couldn’t be more different from me . . . the way she looks, the way she is. And so now I don’t know if you actually chose me, or just chose the opposite of what didn’t work before.”

  “I am choosing you.”

  But she is no longer listening. She is not even sure, at this moment, that she knows how. Apparently, though, she does know how to cry. Because she is crying. She is crying harder than she can remember crying. She can’t stop it now. And, what’s worse, she can’t stop from saying the next thing, even though she is scared it will change everything once they both hear it.

  “And the worst part is that commitment has always been so hard for me. You know that. You know that I’ve run from everyone my entire life. But when I met you, I thought, hey, maybe it isn’t me, after all. I just had to meet the right person. And then I’d know how to stay still, and be a good partner, and be a good friend, and be happy.” She pauses, makes herself swallow. “Only now, I think that our relationship is the clearest example I can give myself that I still can’t handle commitment, that somewhere inside I still don’t want real partnership.”

  “Why?”

  “Because there was no real risk with you,” she says. “You were going to run first.”

  “I’m right here.”

  “That’s the thing, Nate. Why do I have to explain this to you? If you haven’t been honest with me, you’ve never been here,” she says.

  She starts to leave him standing there, but the sound of his voice stops her. “So now you have it, Maggie. Your way out.”

  “You think I was looking for one?” she says.

  “You think you’re not going to take it?” he says.

  Then he is silent, and in the silence she has no choice but to feel it, beneath the pain, beneath her sadness—a loosening in her chest, the quick release—a little something like relief. She can go now.

  She looks back in the direction of the restaurant. She follows the skyline north and east toward Montauk Point, toward the bluffs and the cliffs that, through the fog, she can barely see. She follows the skyline until she can see it. The outline of the house. Her wallet is there, her belongings, the things that can get her away from this, and here.

  And she starts to walk that way.

  part three

  the divorce party

  Gwyn

  If the ending makes you think of the beginning then maybe that explains why Gwyn is standing under the stream of shower water, thinking of her wedding day. September 23, 1972: no photo album to remind her, no announcement in the New York Times. They had forgone a big wedding, forgone any of the requisite hoopla. This was partially because Gwyn didn’t care about that stuff, and partially because she thought it would bring them bad luck. To make too big of a deal out of what she felt so blessed to find.

  They had only a few people at the wedding: her parents, Thomas’s parents, their sisters. All of them standing on the cliff outside. Looking out over the water. She spent the morning getting ready, and then walked herself downstairs into the garden. She was wearing a yellow cotton dress that she had bought in town for $65. Thomas was in a pair of linen pants, a loose white button-down, bare feet. Her father married them, only saying God one time at the end. This was their concession to him. His concession to them: the whole thing took fifteen minutes. Then they went for a long walk by the beach, stopping on the way back at a fish shack along Old Montauk Highway to have cheeseburgers. A wedding meal of cheeseburgers and spicy fried potatoes and Coca-Cola and chocolate chip cookies.

  She steps out of the shower, beginning to dry off. And she rolls open the stained-glass window, puts her hand outside. The air is misty. It is going to rain. It is going to rain, and—based on the weird colors in the sky—probably worse than the radio guy predicted. She can still make the game-time decision to have the party inside, but she doesn’t want to do that. Even if the alternative is the barn falling down. Even if it falls down all around them. Something is stopping her from moving the party inside, something she can’t put her finger on. It doesn’t matter anyway. She doesn’t need a reason. If anyone feels the mist, gets uncomfortable, they can go home. Tonight is for her, and her alone. And she will act as if that is true. She will keep telling herself this until she believes it.

  When she starts to walk back into the bedroom, she hears someone there, and thinks that it is going to be Thomas. It started a long time ago—this ritual that they have of lying down on top of the bed together, fully dressed, before going to any party, even one they are hosting. It was one of Gwyn’s first signs, this past year, that she was losing Thomas, that she was really losing him for g
ood. He would still come with her to dinner parties and weddings and other obligatory functions, but he wouldn’t come into the bedroom to be with her first—wouldn’t have the low-voiced pillow conversation that used to be her favorite part of any evening out. If she has to guess, he stopped liking the idea they’d always had of reminding each other that this is what they were coming home to at the end of any given night. Each other. And putting that first.

  So when she hears noise in the bedroom, hears someone moving around in there, her heartbeat speeds up, involuntarily.

  But it isn’t Thomas. It’s Georgia. It’s Georgia half-balancing against the bedpost, while she unsuccessfully aims to reach around herself and zip up the back of her dress: a flowery halter-top, which is beyond stuck, her back pushing out of it.

  Georgia doesn’t turn around but, as she continues to try zipping, she must sense Gwyn’s presence, because she starts talking.

  “It fit last week, and now it’s too small,” she says. “Seven lousy days. Things shouldn’t be able to change so fast.”

  Gwyn walks toward her daughter. “We’ll make it fit,” she says.

  “How, Mom? How are we going to do that?”

  Gwyn takes a seat on the edge of the bed, tightening her towel around herself, around her breasts, Georgia moving in front of her so she can take a clear look at the zipper—the fabric stuck inside of it.

  “I just don’t understand what’s going on,” Georgia says.

  “People have to get better about lying around here. Or at least telling those of us in on the truth what it is that we’re not supposed to spill.”

  “What did your father tell you?” she says, and feels her face getting red, thinking that Georgia had come across Thomas and her on the porch.

  “My father?” Georgia turns around, faces her. “I’m talking about your son. Your son and his fiancée. I’m talking about a very bad chain of events I was just a part of. He didn’t tell her about Ryan. Did you know that?”

  “Yes, he told me.”

  “Well, someone should have told me!”

  Gwyn puts her hand on the small of Georgia’s back, starts to fiddle with the zipper, moving it slowly at first, loosening the fabric, trying hard not to think about what her daughter may say next.

  “We just went to The House.”

  “As in Ryan’s restaurant?”

  “As in Ryan’s restaurant, yes. Maggie was going to go with or without me and so I figured better with me. And when we got there and she went inside, I called Nate. It was the best I could do.” She pauses. “They are back now. I just heard them get back, so I ran in here. I ran in here, midzip, and now the whole situation is stuck.”

  Gwyn tries to imagine what the two girls said to each other, what Nate and Maggie are saying to each other now, how either part of the equation can end well. Gwyn looks up at her daughter. “He should have told her. He should have told her long before now. You really can’t blame yourself. It’s good that it came out. It’s not your fault.”

  “No. It’s yours.”

  “Mine?”

  “A lot of badness is coming from today. A lot is coming out of this divorce party.”

  “This divorce party? How is that responsible?”

  “It’s putting something in the air.” She starts to cry, deeply and terribly, sitting down, exhausted, on her mother’s lap. “I can’t reach Denis.”

  “That’s obvious.” Gwyn wraps her arms around her.

  Georgia shakes her head, wiping at her eyes. “Things have been a little hard on us since he’s been away, but being here is really screwing me up. It’s making me wonder whether I am right that we are actually happy, or whether he is going to call any minute and say that he’s staying in Nebraska to be with some asymetrically haired, secretly miserable, post-hipster music snob, who moved to Omaha because the lower east side is closing down all the good music venues to make room for blue condominiums,” she says. “And that sucks, yes, but so does she.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Georgia hangs her head. “I’m not sure.”

  Gwyn rubs her daughter’s back, and then pushes her back to standing, taking a moment to focus on the zipper. “Georgia,” she says. “Listen to me for a second. You’re getting ahead of yourself. If you can’t reach him, maybe that means he is on a plane. Did you consider that?”

  “Of course, but like you want that to be the case. Like you don’t think I’d be better off without him.”

  “I never said that.”

  “You didn’t have to.”

  Gwyn thinks about this, and doesn’t want it to be true. If it is, she has failed in the number one way she was hoping to succeed: she wanted to parent differently from her parents. She wanted to only want for her children what they want for themselves, even if she doesn’t agree with it, even if she wouldn’t hope for that. She thinks she has been good at it most of the time, but maybe not. Not if she hasn’t succeeded in convincing them that she is behind them, no matter what.

  “The thing is that you think we’re like you and Dad,” Georgia says. “But we’re not.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Georgia pauses. “You think I love him more.”

  She can’t see Georgia’s face, but if she could, she knows she would see those eyes blazing. Sad. And hurt. Maybe she should be offended, but all she can think is: How do you avoid getting here? How do you pull your daughter back from such a sad place? If this sadness is something she has passed on, she wants to take it back, take all of it back and bear the burden herself. Make different choices, be braver, do just about anything so her daughter thinks she is worthy of getting everything that she needs as opposed to trying to figure out how to be better at giving it away.

  Gwyn pulls her wet hair back off her neck, waits a minute to speak again, waits in the hope that putting a small wedge of time in will help Georgia hear her, will help Gwyn hear herself. But she has no idea what to say. What does she know right now that is hopeful? That wouldn’t scare someone, if she started to say it out loud?

  “Did you know that you were conceived at a Pete Seeger concert?”

  Georgia looks disgusted. “Um, no. And, more importantly, that sentence should never be repeated.”

  “How did I never tell you that?”

  “I never asked.”

  “Well, it’s true. The night started off so great. We went to see him play in upstate New York. I can’t remember the name of the place, but it was somewhere near Beacon, New York, and it was this great night. Starry, beautiful. Except your father and I started to fight, about something. Something silly, and I went running back to the car crying. I think I was still so scared then that fights could end us that when he got back to the car, I kind of attacked him.”

  “Oh my gosh.” Georgia covers her ears with her hands. “What did I do to deserve hearing this? And what is your point?”

  She pulls her daughter’s arms back down, going back to work again on the zipper’s most stuck part. “My point,” she says, “is that my parents never told me anything. Everything was always cloaked, hidden. And I always promised myself that I’d be different when it was my own family. I’d tell you guys everything. Even small things, like about the concert. Because it might tell you something about you. Like maybe that’s the reason you like music so much.”

  “I seriously doubt it.”

  “Still. I guess I haven’t done a good job of that. Of being open?” She turns Georgia to the side, the zipper releasing slightly. “If I had, you and Nate would be better at it, at being open yourselves . . . I think when you are back here, you go back to thinking things are supposed to look a certain way. If they look a certain way, you are safe. If they don’t, you’re in trouble.”

  “Isn’t that what you think?”

  Gwyn looks up at her daughter, makes her meet her eyes. “What I think is that there is no good way or bad way. And the sooner we let go of expectations about how things are supposed to go, the happier we get to b
e.”

  Georgia smiles at her, puts her hand on her head. “Wow.”

  “What?”

  “That sounds awfully Buddhist of you, Mom.”

  “Please . . .” Gwyn shakes her head, looking away.

  “No, seriously,” Georgia says, smiling bigger now. “Dad would be impressed. You are getting wiser about this stuff than he is. Maybe we have a double conversion on our hands here. Wouldn’t that be something? There would be no reason for you guys to get divorced, after all.”

  “All right, enough,” she says. “Help me here.”

  And Georgia sucks all the way in—as much as her pregnant belly will allow—holding her shoulders tight against her back, her ribs as in as they can go. And Gwyn is able to do it, finally. She pulls once, and then once more, and gets the zipper all the way up.

  “There we go.”

  Georgia pulls her dress down tighter over her legs, going to look at herself in the mirror, now that the dress is up and ready.

  “Not bad?” Gwyn says.

  “Not bad.”

  Which is when Thomas walks in.

  He is in his suit, his tie undone, but already in his suit. He looks back and forth between Gwyn and Georgia. “Oh, I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t want to interrupt. I was looking for you.”

  He is talking to Gwyn, and she knows it, knows it by how he is being soft when he says it. He has come to take this time with her, lying down together, as if that is something they still know how to do. Except Georgia is still looking in the mirror. And neither of them wants to ask her to leave.

  Thomas meets Gwyn’s eyes, and points, behind himself, toward the door. “You know, I’ll just see you down there,” he says.

  Gwyn nods from the edge of the bed, and smiles at him. “I’ll see you down there,” she says.

  Then right before he leaves, he smiles at her, smiles at her in her towel. “You look beautiful,” he mouths.

  “Thank you,” she mouths back.

  Then she watches her husband go.

  Maggie