The Divorce Party
Page 15
She only brought a small bag out here, which she hasn’t even unpacked yet, and so she takes it with her. Her outfit for tonight is folded on top: an ivory tank top and a knee-length green skirt, her freshwater pearl earrings in their small metal container. Nate bought them for her in Berkeley last year. The earrings. She offhandedly told him that she saw them at a store—earrings that were pretty, but too expensive—and he went back to the store in the hope of surprising her with them. Only she described them badly, or he heard the wrong things, and he came back with these earrings instead: these dangly earrings, with black opals running among the pearls. But she loves the earrings, loves them even more than the earrings she noticed herself, and not only because every time she puts them on she gets to think of his going into that store for her, trying to be good to her in a way she had trouble being for herself. But for this reason, if no other, Maggie takes the earrings out of her bag, out of their case, and leaves them on his dresser behind his orange Steelers mug, where he won’t find them.
Then she takes the backstairs down. Nate is still in the shower. Why should she be sneaking out of here like a criminal? Why should she be the one sneaking? Nate is the one who created this situation. Yet it doesn’t make her feel better because, on the other side of the blame, she is still leaving him. So what good does the blame do her? It just reminds her that it feels like she doesn’t have a choice in anymore.
And she can barely stand to picture him getting out of the shower, towel wrapped around his waist, expecting to find her on the bed, where he left her. Waiting to talk. Waiting to try and get somewhere. In her place will be a note, saying she can’t do this. Not tonight, at least. Maybe she’ll feel better able to deal with everything back in Brooklyn. Back home in Red Hook. Maybe.
Now, she just needs to go. She feels that clearly. But on the bottom of the staircase, she stops in front of the small window and looks outside. She can see it from here: the barn lit up and glowing, like an oversized nightlight. White balloons and water lilies everywhere. Bundled sticks in six-foot vases. Lemon center-pieces. The only color, the only break.
People are already starting to arrive. They look like movie star versions of themselves: the women in cocktail dresses, the men in perfect tan jackets. Like there is really something to celebrate. Everyone holding single-malt Scotch or champagne flutes.
Maggie steps outside, closing the door quietly behind her. It is raining, slow and heavy drops. The sky dark with the promise of more to come. Part of her is resolved to walk down into town anyway, but she doesn’t know these roads particularly well. Can she remember how they got here? She thinks so. Right, left, right, right. Reverse it. She thinks she can figure it out. And, still, the last thing Maggie wants is to get lost, and end up back here, end up anywhere near back here. She wants to be on the green and white bus heading back to New York, heading back to Red Hook and her neighborhood bar, Sunny’s. When everyone asks where Nate is tonight, she will say he is out at his parents’. She will drink a glass of Maker’s Mark for him. She will get to pretend that this is okay.
As she heads down the driveway, she catches it out of the corner of her eye. The house next door, Victorian like Hunt Hall. But slightly smaller. The Buckleys’. The beam of the light outside the screened kitchen door shining down on someone smoking a cigarette, someone Maggie recognizes.
Eve, the caterer.
She is standing beneath the awning. The smoke rises up to meet the light above it, making her look foggy, backlit, in her low-riding braids, her red chef jacket and high-top sneakers.
As Maggie moves toward her, she can see what a mess Eve is: her jacket splotched and sweaty, her hair curling out of its tight bun. She is leaning back against the screen, and doesn’t notice Maggie until she is right in front of her, her eyes opening in surprise.
“It’s you,” Eve says, and offers a large smile.
“It’s me.”
Maggie holds out her hand, which she has found can be awkward even under the best of circumstances between women, but now even more so, because Eve has to put the cigarette in her mouth, hold it there, in order to shake back.
“Sorry,” Maggie says.
“No, no, don’t be.” Eve shrugs. Then she shrugs again for good measure. “It’s good to see you.”
“I’m sorry to interrupt the one break you’ve got.”
“I’m taking far more than one,” Eve says.
“What?”
“Nothing.” Eve shakes her head, and pulls out the cigarettes from her pocket, opening the pack for Maggie. “Would you like?”
“Yes, but I’m not going to.”
Eve nods, closing the pack back up, looking back between it and Maggie. “Well, will you take them from me anyway?” she says, holding it out. “I’ll just smoke the rest of them otherwise. It’s turning into one of those nights, and they are never good for anyone.”
“The nights or the cigarettes?”
“Both,” Eve says.
Maggie smiles and puts the cigarettes in her back pocket, looking behind Eve into the kitchen. There are several servers in there, organizing food onto trays, milling around. “You’re gearing up?”
“You could say that,” she says, taking a peek behind her.
Then Eve looks at Maggie, and Maggie can see her take in her fraying jean skirt and white tank top, trying to make sense of it. “Shouldn’t you be getting ready?”
“Yes,” Maggie says.
She can’t go into anything more than that. She figures that Eve will hear the rest, or she won’t. Either way, that is all she’s got to give for now. And Eve seems to understand what she isn’t saying, nodding in response, slowly at first, then quicker. And she doesn’t ask her for any more than that. Not yet.
Eve gestures back in the direction of the kitchen. “Do you want to come in?”
“No, I should go,” she says. “I was actually just hoping for a flashlight?”
“A flashlight? You’re walking into town or something?”
Maggie nods. “That’s the plan.”
“It’s not a good one. It’s really going to start coming down, and these hills are dangerous in the rain. You don’t know what it’s like when it storms around here. You can end up flooded in somewhere.”
“What do you suggest?”
“Tyler can take you. Remember Tyler from the van this morning? He just went on a run to Watermill for me, but he’ll be back in a few minutes, and I can have him drop you anywhere you need to go.”
“I just want to get to a bus.”
“Not a problem. You can hide out here until then.”
“Who says I’m hiding?” Maggie says, maybe too defensively.
Eve just smiles. “Come and help me inside for a little bit. I’m in the dining room, setting up some trays of prosciutto-wrapped asparagus. You can help me assemble.”
“I’m not very good at assembling.”
“It’s just ham and asparagus,” she says. “I’m really not worried about it.” She pulls open the screen door, giving Maggie room to walk through it.
“Okay then,” Maggie says.
She switches her bag to her other arm as they walk into the kitchen: a twelve-foot-tall ceiling, pipes running across the top, a beautiful stainless steel oven set—as high quality as any restaurant in the country. Plants everywhere.
Nate’s high school.
Awesome.
Two of Eve’s waiters are tending to something on the stove, another by the console putting the finishing touches on a tray of crabcakes—and Eve doesn’t say anything as they pass them, through a swinging door, and into the dining room, which reveals itself to be a strange combination of red Zen-inspired furniture and Scottish dolls behind a heavy glass case.
Eve motions to the case with her head, as she takes a seat at the long dining table, getting ready for the work at hand. “Rumor has it that the dolls are worth over two million dollars,” she says.
“Each?” Maggie asks.
“Man, I hope not.”
Maggie takes a seat catty-corner to Eve, a silver tray of the meat and vegetables between them. In a purposely exaggerated way, Eve gingerly picks up a stalk of asparagus, a small piece of the ham, and wraps them together before placing them on the serving tray.
“You think you’ve got that?” she says.
“You may have to show me again.”
Eve laughs, and they get to it, working silently at first, Maggie checking the clock in the corner every thirty seconds, like she can hurry it along: Tyler getting here. Her leaving. Her making the bus home. But soon, she gets into it—the easy preparation repetition, helping her get mindless.
“You talk a good game over there,” Eve says, after a while, pointing down at Maggie’s handiwork. “But you’re pretty good at that. It’s nice, the way you are setting them up—”
“I wouldn’t get carried away,” she says.
“No, really. It all looks good. You’ve got a knack for it. Are you planning to help Nate with food prep during the soft opening?”
“Not unless he makes me,” she says. But she bites her bottom lip thinking about it. How she had made a habit of that back in San Francisco, helping him prepare the food for the night: Nate turning on the record player to old Van Morrison, the two of them sitting silently, working together.
Then something occurs to her. “How did you know that? That we’re opening a restaurant?”
Eve hesitates, reaches for more vegetables. “Oh, Gwyn must have told me.” Then, as if thinking better of it, she shakes her head. “You know what? That’s not true. Nate’s dad told me.”
“Oh, so you met Thomas?”
Eve nods. “Yes,” she says. “I met Thomas.”
Maggie looks back down at her pile of asparagus, thinking about Thomas: how looking at him earlier today felt like looking at her future. This morning, she thought she understood what was happening in her own future. She was in love. How can everything change in the space of a few hours? Maybe that’s the only way everything changes. Just when you finally believe that anything is stable, and will stay the same.
“It’s hard, isn’t it?” Eve says.
“What?”
“Ending up in a situation you never thought you’d be in. Or maybe the very one that you thought you’d end up in, but were trying to avoid.”
Maggie meets Eve’s eyes. She wonders what Eve thinks she knows. Is there something people can discern about their relationship, just by watching her and Nate?
Eve shrugs. “Just a guess,” she says.
“Based on what?”
“All the shame tends to look the same.”
Maggie looks at her, really looks at her, and then starts to speak. “I found out today that Nate’s family has quite a bit of money he never told me about. And that’s the best news I got.”
“What was the worst?”
“He’s been married before. He’s been married before to a woman he never even bothered to mention to me. And the woman is this incredibly sexy, tough woman with perfect arms who I went to see in person, because, you know, I didn’t feel bad enough already.”
Eve shakes her head. “Wow. Not a good day.”
“Not a great one, no.”
Eve puts a piece of prosciutto down and looks at Maggie. “How did you find all this out?”
She thinks back to early this morning, how it all started, stumbling on the statements that listed Nate’s name as Champ. Stumbling on what was the beginning of a very different story from the one she thought she knew about the person who mattered to her most—the person she thought she knew the most about.
“I could see that Nate was trying to tell me himself, but he couldn’t seem to get there. He couldn’t seem to . . . trust me.”
Eve is quiet in response. She is so quiet that Maggie can’t help but wonder what she is thinking about. Maybe something else entirely. Maybe her mind has drifted to her responsibilities— the party—to everything going as planned.
Then she starts to speak. “I know they must seem so huge right now,” she says. “The lies he has told you. All the things he has chosen to omit. But I’m thinking it’s not that simple.”
"What do you mean?”
Eve shrugs. “Well, there are two ways to look at this. The first is that Nate has lied to you about everything that is of any importance to who he is and how he has grown up, and what has mattered to him. His family, his money, his marriage. His first marriage, I mean. To this other woman.” She clears her throat. “But, the second option you have is to interpret it differently—”
“I’m not sure I’m following.”
“As really just one lie. That it is really just one lie you’re dealing with here. And Nate may have done it loudly, but it’s a lie we often tell ourselves, and the people closest to us.”
“Which is what?”
“I get to start over.”
Maggie stares at Eve, as she wonders if Eve understands more or less than she does.
“What?” Eve says. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“I’m just wondering if you think that makes it okay? Withholding so much?”
“I think it just means that I understand. We all want that, don’t we? A chance to be new, to not be the people we wish we hadn’t been. The problem is that the faster you run from something, the harder it hits you when it catches up to you again.”
“Well, today definitely hit me hard,” Maggie says.
Eve nods. “It probably hit Nate a lot harder.”
Her pulse starts to race—to race with something like sadness, like impossible compassion. Not just for her, but for Nate. With how hard and desperately, all of a sudden, she understands he has been running. Maggie remembers when she left Asheville at seventeen, thinking she could be someone new. And maybe at different points, with new scenery and new people, she has felt new. Except, really, she is still herself. Same worries about staying present, committing, being still. Same desire to make things clean when they’re not. Same need to understand things as black and white, or avoid them altogether.
“Look, I’m not trying to make you more upset here. I understand what it feels like to have things going on that you don’t want to say out loud.”
“Like what?”
“Like I’m in love with someone who I shouldn’t be in love with. Like I’ve been complicit in letting him break up his family so we can give being together a real shot. Like I’ve encouraged him to do this.”
Maggie looks at Eve, trying not to judge. During college, she was seeing her TA, who lived with his girlfriend. Maggie didn’t know about the girlfriend when they started, but when she found out she didn’t leave him immediately either. She told herself, at the time, that it was his responsibility to stop it, to deal with his obligations. She knows now that it isn’t that simple. She believes now that it shouldn’t be.
“He’s leaving his wife for you?”
“He seems to be.” She moves the completed tray out of the way. “And then what am I going to do with him?”
Maggie laughs, running her hands through her hair. Then, giving Eve a small smile, she looks away.
“I think maybe there is another question you can ask yourself,” Eve says.
“And what’s that?” she says. “Do I want to try?”
She shakes her head. “Am I sure I don’t?”
Maggie is silent.
“I’m just saying that’s the one that will kill you one day if you’re not sure and you get it wrong.”
Maggie isn’t sure of anything—which is the main reason she smiles at Eve, and excuses herself. “I’m pretty
sure I want to go and wash up,” she says. “Probably should have done that before helping with the food. Is the bathroom that way?”
“Live and learn,” Eve says, raising her palms.
Then she points behind herself, and Maggie heads that way, toward the back of the house, toward the master suite, toward the bathroom. But as she opens the door, she remembers what is going to be waiting for her. The special padded bathroom, the special tub. Only the bathroom that greets her is old, and not particularly noteworthy.
And there is no padding on the bathroom tub. None that she can see. The tub is white and oval shaped and too small to hold two people at all comfortably. Maggie gets in and lies all the way back, putting her arm over her eyes, her legs hanging over the edge. She tries to take a few deep breaths in, center herself, figure out what she is going to do next.
She needs to decide whether to find out the answer to the question running through her head right now, in this moment in her life: What happens if she stays?
Which is when Tyler walks in.
She doesn’t say anything, just takes her arm off her eyes, blinks. He looks back at her for a moment, and she imagines she is some sight: curled into the tub, in her skirt, her flip-flopped feet hanging out over the side.
“Hey there,” he says.
“Hey.”
“So am I taking you somewhere,” he says pointing in the direction of the driveway, “or are you taking a bath?”
Gwyn
This is perhaps what a wedding is supposed to be like: the barn is gorgeous and full of people, music playing, everyone eating and laughing and swaying. Everything’s candlelit and lantern-lit and dreamlike. You can hear the rain in the background, feel it tumbling along the roof but you almost don’t notice it, except for the light wind it is kicking up and inside—making everyone stand a little closer together.
It all makes Gwyn feel like it is appropriate that she has chosen to wear white. A handmade corseted top, a loose silk skirt. Her hair pulled back with a lily. When she wore yellow on her wedding day, her sister asked her if she was sad that she wasn’t taking her one chance to be the one in all white. I’ll have another chance, Gwyn said. She meant at a party or an event. She didn’t imagine the event would be for the end of her marriage.