The Status of All Things: A Novel

by Liz Fenton

  “Do you want to talk about things?” I ask, hoping her comment was an opening that she’s ready.

  “Nope,” she says, and her lips form a tight line, one I’ve seen when she tells one of her children that their time on the iPad is over. It’s not negotiable.

  “You sure?” I push anyway.

  “I’ve already said too much. I shouldn’t have laid all of that on you. I’ll figure it out, I promise.”

  “But . . .”

  “Kate, please. I’m not ready. But when I am, I will tell you, okay?”

  “All right.” I acquiesce, still concerned and wanting another chance to convince her not to stray. To stop her from doing something that can’t be undone. I exhale deeply and grab the magazine from her, reading the headline: “New Direction for Nikki Day?” Under it is a picture of Nikki in the passenger seat of a car being driven by one of the members of a boy band currently topping the charts—their latest single ironically titled “I Got Your Girl, Yo.” “Is this true?”

  “Hell if I know.” Jules rolls her eyes. “Liam says it’s not.”

  I raise my eyebrows at her. “What?” she says in response. “Of course I asked him about it! And he swore it was bullshit.”

  “But she is in the car with this guy and her head is resting on his shoulder!”

  “I know, I know, but he says it’s Photoshopped or something. Then he reminded me about her party this weekend.”

  “He’s still going? After this article basically tells the whole world she’s probably cheating—” I say, and then catch myself, but it’s too late, the words are already out there. “You know what I mean, Jules. It—it’s different than your situation,” I stammer.

  “You really believe that?” Jules says.

  “Yes, of course. I’m just not a fan of Nikki. I don’t think she’s right for him. That’s all I meant, I promise. And he can go to that party, but there’s no way in hell I’m going to attend. I don’t care what she told him, these pictures don’t lie.”

  “Okay, but if you’re secretly judging me for how I’m feeling, now is the time to tell me. It’s better to get it out on the table.” She slaps her hand on the wood tabletop for emphasis. “Because I would think you of all people would understand . . .”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I ask, feeling my chest tighten.

  “Because of what Max did to you with Courtney.”

  “He didn’t actually do anything.”

  “He fell in love with someone else!” She bristles and my eyes fill with tears.

  “In another life, not this one,” I start to argue before Jules interjects.

  “True. I’m sorry if that came out a little harsh.”

  “A little?” I say, my voice catching in my throat.

  “Okay, a lot. Maybe I just got overly defensive because of my own stuff. But what I’m trying to say is, you forgave Max. You understood that there was more to the story.” When I don’t respond, her face softens. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be such a bitch.”

  “I know,” I say. “It’s okay.”

  “I was just trying to make the point that you should give others the same consideration you’ve given Max.”

  “Like Nikki Day? I’m sorry, Jules. I love you, but comparing her to Max is a stretch. Why would I give a shit about her?”

  “Because Liam does,” she says simply.

  I pause for a moment. “You’re right,” I reluctantly agree, her reminder about accepting Liam’s choices bringing back the talk he and I had at the club.

  “Great,” she says, clapping her hands together. “So that means you’ll go to this party no matter what your feelings about Nikki are? Because even though Liam acts like he doesn’t need us, he still does. We should be there for him. In good times,” she says as she points to the article about Nikki, “and bad.”

  “I’ll go,” I say, and swallow the lump in my throat, trying to ignore how quickly things seemed to be spinning out of control—like a merry-go-round that I can’t escape without flying untethered through the air and falling to the ground.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Going through old photo albums—OMG, who gave me that god-awful bowl cut when I was a toddler? #momIknowitwasyou #dontdenyit

  As a little girl, I remember feeling like time always went slowly when I wanted it to speed up, like the first day back to school after winter break when I was still dreaming of the presents I’d opened on Christmas morning. And time seemed to fly by at lightning speed when I wanted it to decelerate, like summer vacation when I spent my days with my bare feet kicked up over the handlebars of my bike, the wind ripping through my long hair. But now, over twenty-five years later, as I stare at the date on the calendar, I wonder why the opposite is happening. My wedding is fast approaching, yet I find myself wanting the hands of the clock to move just a little slower. There is a pressing feeling in my gut, one that tells me to take my life one day at a time, to not be in such a rush, that Max will be my husband soon enough.

  I pull out my cell phone and listen as it rings, wondering if my dad will answer or if I’ll get his voicemail, where Leslie hums in the background as he chants his greeting, trying to sound like he’s rapping, but the result sounding more like he’s preaching. It’s so ridiculous that I can’t help but laugh every time I hear it. They’d moved to Northern California last year so I didn’t see them as often as I liked, but it was always good to hear his—and her—voice. And I realized my dad was the one person who needed to answer a question that had been sitting heavy on my chest.

  “Daughter!” my dad says cheerily.

  “Father!” I answer, smiling at the memory of trading this greeting for years.

  “So you’re almost a married woman—how are you spending your final days before you become an old ball and chain?” My dad releases a hefty laugh and I imagine him sitting in his leather recliner, his feet perched on the matching ottoman, CSPAN on mute on the TV.

  “Dad?” I start, ignoring his question, my voice suddenly sounding like it did when I was a little girl. “Can we talk about Mom?”

  He exhales deeply, and for several moments there is only silence between us. Finally, he answers. “I know she’s upset about Leslie wanting to be in the family picture at the wedding—”

  “I don’t want to talk about that. That’s not what I mean.”

  “Oh? Then what is it?” My dad’s voice lightens.

  I think back to what my mom had said to me—that my dad had been her everything, and I wonder, if that was the case, why hadn’t that been enough for them to make it? “What happened between you and Mom? Why didn’t you stay?”

  “Whoa, I’m going to need something stronger than this coffee I’m drinking to have this conversation.” My dad laughs again, but this time it’s stilted. “Hey, Les, can you bring me a beer?”

  “If you don’t want to talk about it, I understand—” I start to let him off the hook, deciding as I curl my knees under me, the photo albums from my childhood strewn across my dining room table, the little girl with the strawberry-blond pigtails staring up at me, that maybe I don’t need to dredge up the past after all. Maybe figuring out where my parents went wrong won’t unlock the answers inside like I hoped they would. As I listen to my dad and stepmom’s muffled voices, I wonder if it’s better to preserve the memories I have, not taint them. My dad had left, that was true. But he hadn’t left me.

  “Sorry about that. I’m in my office now. Don’t want Leslie to overhear this.”

  “Dad, on second thought, we don’t have to talk about this. It’s probably none of my business—” I flip through one of the albums, fixating on a school picture of me in the first grade, my front tooth missing, the freckles on my nose pronounced from the summer sun.

  “Actually I think we should discuss it. I know your mom has always had ideas in her head about why I left.” I hear h
im take a drink of his beer. “I know she’s always felt I left her for Leslie—that I was having an affair with her.”

  The word affair hangs between us, like a chime dangling in the air, silent until a gust of wind blows it and causes it to release a musical sound. I chew my lower lip, removing a photo of my mom and dad from behind the plastic in the album, one taken on their wedding day, the picture sticking slightly to the backing as I pull it out. My mom’s dress is ivory, with an antique lace overlay, her hair swept up in a bun with loose curls falling around her face. She has her arms wrapped around my dad’s neck, kicking her leg up behind her. My dad’s tie is loose and he is leaning his head toward her, his eyes closed.

  “Kate? You still there?” my dad asks, his usually sturdy voice sounding weak.

  “Yes,” I answer as I turn the picture over in my hand. My mom had written: The end of a perfect day but the beginning of a perfect life.

  I think of Jules. I thought she’d been in a perfect marriage too. And I was engaged to be married to a guy I had always thought was perfect for me. How do we know the difference between what’s real and what we tell ourselves is real? Did perfection even exist? Or maybe it was just a very dangerous notion, one that we can only see in others’ lives, but never in our own.

  “Kate . . . I didn’t have an affair.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “Sweetheart, there is no one answer to that question,” my dad says, and I hear ice cubes hitting a glass. I imagine him now mixing a drink in the bar in his office. “We just grew apart.”

  “Then why doesn’t Mom see it that way? Why is she still so . . .” I pause, choosing my next word carefully. “. . . stuck?” I finally say.

  “I’m probably to blame for that.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I didn’t give her a whole lot of warning, Kate. I said we grew apart, but maybe what I should’ve said is I changed.” He takes a breath. “By the time I came to her and talked to her about how I was feeling, it was already too late—something inside of me had shifted. I wasn’t the twenty-four-year-old man she married anymore and I needed to figure out who I was, and I didn’t feel like I could do that with her. That’s the thing people don’t realize about the forever part of marriage—you’re going to change, and if the other person doesn’t adapt, things can go sideways pretty quickly.”

  “So then why did you get married again right away?” I ask, knowing that’s the sticking point, the thing my mom can’t accept. That my dad pulled away in that U-Haul intending to go find himself, but instead he found the woman of his dreams.

  “I know your mom has always thought I had an affair because of the timing, but like I told her back then, I didn’t know Leslie before I moved out. I met her after. Believe me, another relationship was the last thing I was looking for—but it just happened. Life is short, and when you meet someone who makes you as happy as Leslie makes me, well, let’s just say everything else seems to fade away,” he says.

  Was my love for Max so strong that the rest of the world stopped when we were together? Yes, I had come back in time for him. But maybe it wasn’t because nothing else mattered to me but my love for him—maybe I just couldn’t bear being left alone.

  “If you could do it all over again, would you still have married Mom?” I ask.

  “Of course—because we had you. But, Kate, even if I had the opportunity, I wouldn’t want to rewrite the history of my life.”

  “Not even if you were given the chance to go back in time and change anything? You wouldn’t?”

  “Nope. Sometimes your mistakes turn out to be your biggest blessings—so you can’t live your life second-guessing every choice you make.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because then you’re really not living it at all.”

  I consider my dad’s words as I place the wedding photo back in the album.

  “Kate? What is this all about? I know it was hard on you when I left. But I really thought it was the right thing to do. I didn’t want you to grow up in an unhappy household. I hope you know that.” I can hear the panic in my dad’s voice. That maybe I don’t. That maybe I’ve been bottling up a secret anger toward him for leaving my mom.

  “Yes, I’m okay, Dad,” I say, and can picture his jaw softening as he hears my words. “I mean, of course I was sad—no kid wants her parents to get divorced. But you were always there for me,” I say, thinking about how my dad never missed a soccer game or a spelling bee, never tried to shove Leslie on me, instead letting me come to accept her on my own terms, which I did eventually. “Plus, you know I love Leslie,” I say, feeling a pinch of betrayal of my mom for saying it out loud.

  • • •

  The conversation with my dad sits with me long after we’ve hung up. As I’m getting ready for Nikki Day’s party, I’m still replaying my dad’s words—that he wouldn’t rewrite his history, even if given the chance. Was he just saying that to spare my feelings, because if he hadn’t married my mom, I wouldn’t have been born? Would Jules have to give the same response about her marriage to Ben because of her children? Or was my dad right—does life work out just as it should, even if it doesn’t feel like it at the time? And if that was the case, why couldn’t my mom accept that? Even though she had already been on three dates with Bill, she was still bringing my dad’s name up in every conversation, the thought of seeing him and Leslie at the wedding consuming her. I had hoped that dating another man would ignite a spark in her, one that would let her leave the past behind once and for all—but for whatever reason, she still seemed to be clinging to it.

  “What should I wear to this thing?” Max says, startling me as he enters our walk-in closet.

  “Shit, sorry, didn’t mean to scare you!” He grabs for a pale blue button-down. “You okay?”

  “I was just thinking about a conversation I had with my dad today. I was asking about why he left my mom.”

  “That’s a heavy topic for a Saturday.” He searches my eyes. “Why were you asking? Is your mom giving you shit about Leslie again?”

  “Yes, always.” I release a hollow laugh, pulling a blue wrap dress down from the hanger and holding it up against my body. “Can I ask you something?” I meet Max’s eyes in the full-length mirror on the wall and he nods.

  “Yes, definitely wear that. It brings out the blue in your eyes.” He smiles.

  “Thank you. But that’s not my question.” I pause, looking around, thinking how much my life has changed since I was in this closet when this all began—when I was giddy over a pair of sandals that had magically appeared.

  “Oh?” He runs his hand through his hair, sticking up slightly in the back from the baseball cap he’d been wearing earlier.

  “Do you think life works out just as it should? That you can’t mess with destiny?”

  Max’s lips curl upward and I think I see his chest contract slightly, as if he’s just released the breath he was holding. Had he been worried I was going to ask him something else? “Have you been reading The Power of Now or something?” He laughs.

  “No!” I swat him with my dress. “I’m being serious, Max. What’s your opinion?”

  “Well, if I must weigh in on this . . . I would say that we control our lives, not the other way around. I don’t believe there’s some predestined plan for me.”

  “Good answer,” I say, kissing him deeply.

  “Oh, yes. Definitely wear that,” he says, running a finger down my arm as I grip the dress. “And if you do, I can’t be held responsible for what I might do to you later.”

  “Oh, really?”

  “Yep,” he says, kissing me again.

  “Why wait until later?” I start to pull his T-shirt over his head.

  “Don’t have to ask me twice,” he says, pulling me down to the closet floor. I let myself get lost in his kisses, in his touch, detaching myself from the conflicting t
houghts about fate and destiny that are wrestling inside of me, and decide the only moment that matters is the one I’m living in right now.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Once, Magda had given me some valuable advice. It was right before my first client pitch, a proposal I had been working on for weeks, barely sleeping or eating, my hair falling out at the slightest touch from the stress. As we sat in the reception area of the cosmetic company we were courting, the fire-engine-red walls making my temples pound, Magda had uncharacteristically put a hand on my trembling knee and smiled. “Kate, you’ve put together a fantastic presentation. I wouldn’t let you pitch this if I didn’t think you were ready.”

  I had nearly jumped at her touch. “But what if I’m not . . .” I’d paused before finishing my thought, not sure how vulnerable I wanted to appear.

  “Not what?” Magda squinted her eyes.

  “Ready?” I’d finally said.

  “I’m going to tell you a little secret,” she said as she leaned in. “No one’s ever really ready for anything. You just fake it till it feels right—and eventually it will.”

  I had nodded silently, trying to reconcile this kinder, gentler Magda with the one who had fired questions at me like bullets the entire way there.

  “Okay? So pull it together. I don’t want to have to fire you,” she said, and laughed quietly to herself, leaving me to wonder whether or not she was joking. I never did find out—I had held my shaking hands steady as I’d impressed the executives, signing them as my first client. I have given countless pitches since, but I have never forgotten that moment—or the tip that had gone along with it. Advice that would come in handy tonight.

  As we all sit silently in the valet line that wraps around the block for Nikki’s party, Max’s Jeep Cherokee trapped between Escalades and SUV limos, I wish I could read everyone’s mind. Max stares straight ahead with a blank expression. Ben and Jules sit in the backseat, their hands brushing lightly, almost as if by accident.