On Grace

by Susie Orman Schnall

  “Guilty,” Tommy says, shrugging his shoulders.

  “That little slut!” I say and clink glasses again with Tommy.

  “This is getting good,” Abigail says.

  “Then Kiki showed up at school, and she and Tommy were suddenly soul mates, making out all over school every day, and that lasted for a few years until they went to college and Kiki decided she didn’t want anything holding her back.”

  Kiki and Tommy clink glasses.

  “And Sara had that boring boyfriend Todd,” Arden says.

  “Todd!” a few of us say.

  “He was boring,” Sara says and laughs, clinking glasses with Abigail who is sitting right next to her and is a good enough stand-in for boring Todd.

  “What about you Arden?” Abigail asks.

  “Let’s just say I had a series of suitors throughout my adolescence, but didn’t find true love till I got to Berkeley. None of the boneheads at this table ever did it for me,” Arden says.

  “To boneheads!” the guys all shout and toast each other.

  “Well, then, that just leaves you, Jake,” Abigail says as we all turn to look at Jake.

  “I wasted my high school years with a girl named Stephanie Campbell. She was nice, but I secretly lusted after our girl Gracie over here,” Jake says turning to me. I feel my face turn red instantly.

  “Really?” Kiki asks, with a sly tone to her voice. “I never knew that! I knew everything! How did I not know that?”

  My guard is down so I continue, “To be fair, I had a massive crush on our boy Jake over here for years. But it was heartbreakingly unrequited, and I never knew the feeling was mutual. Didn’t find out, actually, till our twentieth reunion last year.”

  “Well, just think how different high school could have been for the two of you,” Tommy chimes in.

  “Just think,” Jake says, looking at me and raising his glass to mine.

  “To Jake and Grace!” Arden shouts.

  “To Jake and Grace!” everyone at the table shouts, clinking glasses all around.

  By this point I am laughing and blushing, and feeling just fine. Jake and I clink glasses, look into each other’s eyes, and finish off our drinks in a silent chugging pact. He kisses me on the cheek, and I feel like I’m going to vomit butterflies all over the table.

  “Well, it’s all good and fun, but now you’re married, so I have to be a gentleman,” Jake says as he raises his arms over his head, lowering the right one across Scotty’s shoulders and the left one across mine. “Sorry, I just need to stretch my arms for a minute. It’s a little tight in this booth.”

  “No problem. So why haven’t you ever found the perfect girl to marry?” I ask.

  “Not for lack of trying,” Jake says laughing.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I feel like I’ve dated every single woman in L.A., including the Valley.” He raises one eyebrow and smiles. “I just haven’t found the one yet. Who knows, maybe I never will.”

  “Well, maybe you’re better off,” I say.

  “There you go again, referring to marriage negatively. What is going on?”

  With the alcohol lowering my inhibitions, I open up and tell him the whole story about Darren. He is silent through the entire thing, supplying nods and “hmms” when appropriate. When I finish, he just stares at me. I realize I don’t regret telling him; I’m actually interested to hear what he has to say. But just then, the dinner arrives, and Scotty starts talking to Jake about a surfing trip they have planned for next week. I dig into the most delicious black cod and tiger prawns I’ve ever had and catch up with Kiki and Arden while trying to ignore Jake’s body pressing against my own.

  chapter eighteen

  There comes a point during dinner when I feel like I’ve stepped out of my body and am watching the scene from afar. I see happy, laughing, smiling people. An abundance of plates gleaming with delectable food. Gestures and expressions of love and friendship. It is the type of scene that I would normally walk by and be envious of. But here I am, right in the middle of it, one of the happy, laughing, smiling people, eating that delicious food, receiving those warm gestures of love and friendship. I am soaking it in. I am present for it. I am simply being.

  Dinner passes with more rounds of drinks and more conversations about ski trips we all took, parties we all remember, the children we all were. Jake doesn’t mention the bombshell I dropped. At one point, he turns to me and for a second grasps my hands in his own and starts to tell me something, but stops. I sense that he is sad for me, but there are too many people around us and too much noise to know for sure.

  Toward the end of dinner, I excuse myself to the bathroom. I feel like I’m floating through the restaurant. I’ve got a perfect buzz—the type where I’m still entirely aware of what I’m doing, but I have no fears, no shame, no inhibitions. The type of buzz that allows me to look in the mirror in the bathroom and see a really pretty, young, happy woman smiling back.

  As I exit the bathroom, Jake is there waiting for me leaning against the wall.

  “Grace, I need to talk to you,” he says.

  “Okay,” I say, my smile fading.

  He takes a deep breath and looks around to make sure we’re alone. “I’ve been thinking a lot about what you told me, and I think a man who disrespected you by cheating on you might not be the right man for you.”

  “It’s all just very confusing. It’s not entirely black and white,” I say quietly.

  “I realize that. I just want you to know I’m here for you if you need a friend. I care about you,” he says and a tiny laugh escapes.

  “What’s so funny?” I ask.

  “It’s just that it’s been a long time since I’ve cared for a woman. And somehow, I find myself really caring for you. I really should never have let you go in high school, Gracie. I think we could have been something together. I just needed a little extra time to grow up,” Jake says, reaching for my hands.

  We stand there in the corridor near the bathrooms, holding hands, staring into each other’s eyes, completely deaf to the noise coming from the restaurant. I’m not thinking. I’m just being. I’ve surrendered. The commotion in my stomach swallows any words I would even think to say.

  “I would be crazy to lose you twice,” he says, staring into my eyes. In one motion, he releases his right hand from mine and lifts it up to touch my cheek as he brings his left hand up to cradle the back of my head. And as he leans in and starts to bring his lips toward mine, my stomach clenches, and I close my eyes accepting what is about to happen.

  His lips feel so soft as they press against mine. I feel my body surrender and my mind go blank as his lips slowly part and mine respond intuitively. It’s slow at first. Hesitant. Then he kisses me a little more deeply, more passionately. My body, my mouth, respond, searching for, finding, a connection. He leans more closely into me, and I feel us fit together tightly. I hear a tiny moan escape from Jake—or was that from me?—and suddenly I’m back on earth. Outside the bathroom. Kissing Jake.

  “I can’t do this,” I hear a voice quite similar to mine say slowly. I look at Jake and rush back to the table, taking the seat next to Arden on the end.

  My heart is pounding, and I try to process what just happened. I think about the time Cameron’s husband Jack told me he’d once been in a position to cheat at a medical conference, but that he was just sober enough to stay away. I realize that’s what happened to me tonight, kind of. I was just sober enough. But I did kiss him. But it was only for a few seconds. Does that even count? Am I just like Darren? True, I was just sober enough to stop. But I did let something happen.

  When Jake returns a few minutes later, my side of the table stands up to let him back into the booth. He whispers, “Sorry” into my ear as he passes me and slides back to his seat. I stay next to Arden. I don’t want to go back to my seat and have to have any discussion with Jake about what just happened. Not now. Not here.

  “I would like to make a toast,” I say, clinkin
g Arden’s coffee spoon against her water glass. Dinner is winding down, and there are some things I want to say before another five or ten years go by. I’m a little shaken up by what just happened between Jake and me, but I continue. “I am so happy I was able to join you all here tonight to celebrate Scotty and Abigail. Scotty, we’ve been through so much together, through so many years. But I’ve never seen you so happy, and I know that’s because you’ve found true love with Abigail. I’m thrilled for the two of you that you get to embark on this new life, this new love, together. Marriage is not always easy, and we often do things that hurt the one we love the most. But it’s a point of always keeping, always trying to keep, the one you love in your mind when you do anything,” I look at Jake, “that allows you to honor your spouse and keep your marriage true. I know the two of you will have a very successful, very loving, very true marriage. I also want to thank you all for being such wonderful friends to me over the years. I’m gonna cry,” I say.

  “Hold it together, Gracie!” Kiki says, laughing.

  “It’s okay, Grace,” Jake says, handing me a napkin across the table.

  “We all are who we are today for a lot of different reasons. The type of family we grew up in, the type of parents we had, all sorts of things. But so much of who we all are is because of our friends. There’s something precious about old friends. I just want you all to know how much I cherish each of you and our individual and shared histories. I know I’m getting a little sentimental, but living so far away also makes me distant from these feelings, so when I’m home, they come up. Anyway, I’m not even making sense anymore. I just want you all to know I love you.”

  Arden turns to me and gives me a hug, while the rest of the table erupts in shouts of “Awww” and “Gracie!” I sneak a look at Jake, but he’s already back in conversation with Scotty. I’m not angry at him for what he did. Not even a little. I’m flattered that he wanted to kiss me. Ecstatic even. Like in Darren’s email when he wrote, “It felt good to have an attractive woman flirt with me and to have her want me.” I get it. No matter how old you get, no matter how comfortable in your relationship, it still feels good to know you’re attractive to another person. Especially one you’re attracted to in return. The central point rests on what you do next.

  “Welcome Home Mommy!!!” the signs taped to the mudroom door read. Henry’s newly perfected bubble letters combined with James’s green (he’s in a green phase) scribbles welcome me to a dark and quiet, but not empty, home. I feel like I’ve been gone for weeks, and the house feels different. As if while I was gone, another family moved in with their belongings, their scent, their rhythms. There are lacrosse sticks and new cleats strewn across the mudroom floor, and new jerseys stuffed into their cubbies, evidence of Darren’s trip to the sporting goods store with the boys. My boys’ belongings, new to me, precious and familiar now to them. I quietly set my bags down and decide not to turn the lights on in the kitchen. The Darren-clean, as we call it, which takes great effort from him and receives vocalized appreciation with silent derision from me, can be dealt with in the morning.

  I walk up the back staircase to peek into the boys’ rooms. This ritual, my nightly rounds, is usually just an end-cap to the day, like brushing my teeth and removing the decorative pillows from my bed, one more thing I just do before I go to sleep. It always brings me great happiness to see my boys sleeping peacefully. And it’s not just about their inability to ask me for one more baseball pitch, one more book, one more glass of water. It’s seeing them safe, and knowing that it was me who was the one mostly responsible for returning them unharmed to their beds for yet another night. That I was the one who successfully managed to mother them appropriately for yet another day in this seemingly endless journey of parenting. But doing the nightly rounds, well, nightly, steals a bit of sweetness from the routine and makes it, well, routine. Having been away from the boys for two nights, I am excited tonight to do my rounds.

  I open Henry’s door and turn the light on while pushing the dimmer switch all the way down. He’s sleeping with Matt Christopher’s Lacrosse Face-Off open on his chest. Apparently, while I was away exploring the world of infidelity in L.A., my family was taking up lacrosse. I close the book, put it on his nightstand, kiss him on his forehead, and leave, switching off the light as I go. There is a light coming through the door to James’s room, and I find him asleep gripping his new lacrosse stick, his favorite stuffed animal discarded to the foot of his bed. I have an urge, which I indulge, to take off my shoes and curl up next to James in his bed. I stroke his hair and inhale his innocent boy smell. I realize I’m easing my way back into connecting with my family with a kiss for Henry, a cuddle with James. Hopefully, by the time I reach my bedroom, where my husband will be in bed waiting for me, (his text when I landed letting me know the door was unlocked and he was still awake), I will feel comfortable enough back in my duty as mother to resume the role of wife.

  Dinner last night ended anti-climactically. My aborted kiss with Jake, the big dramatic climax of the weekend, gave way to a boring-by-comparison end of Act Two. Jake gave me a few searching glances across the dinner table that I interpreted to mean either that he was sorry that he went in for the kill or that he was sorry that the vulnerable cub’s overprotective mother lion appeared at the most inopportune moment. I returned those glances with my own, trying to convey with a squint of the eyes and a hint of a smile that what he did was okay, that I’m okay. That if I weren’t so tethered to my station in New York, despite the fact that I’m mostly happy I am thus tethered, then I would have further explored that outside-the-bathroom-door kiss. I would have even followed it up with a request to leave the restaurant that instant so I could spend the next few blissful hours doing things with him that would hopefully leave us both breathless and in love. But, being a man, Jake was probably baffled by my telepathic communiqué and most likely just thought I had something in my eyes.

  We all hugged and chatted around the valet parking station outside, saying our goodbyes, laughing, making optimistic plans for a sequel, while I tried to nonchalantly inch closer to Jake so I could have a quick word.

  “No need to be sorry,” I said, replying at last to the quick apology he had delivered when he returned to the table after I left him by the bathroom. “It’s okay. I’m okay,” I said, deciding it was best to leave out the part where, had things been different in my life, I would have taken that kiss along with whatever was behind doors one, two, and three.

  “I know I shouldn’t have done that,” he said quietly. “I just don’t want to have any regrets in my life.”

  “I think I’m going to go back to Darren,” I said, for the first time even believing it myself.

  “I think that’s great,” Jake said smiling, staring into my eyes.

  “I hope you’re right.” I said, and I was able to hold his gaze without feeling myself blush, realizing that the anticipation of the zip line careening through the forest is much more exciting than the actual ride itself. I disembark at the end of the line and realize I’m stronger for having experienced it and ready to get on with the rest of my life.

  “It was really nice seeing you, Gracie.”

  “It was really nice seeing you, Jake,” I said and gave him a kiss on the cheek and a long hug.

  Then Scotty grabbed me and started in with the Scotty hugs and sentiments, and before I knew it, Arden and I were back in Kiki’s car, Madonna’s “Over And Over” giving way to “Love Don’t Live Here Anymore.”

  My mom and sister woke me up at ten o’clock on Sunday morning, piling on my bed with large cappuccinos my sister brought from The Coffee Bean and a tray stacked high with warm Barefoot Contessa strawberry scones that she must have woken up early that morning to make. They asked me about the night, and I told them all about dinner, Arden’s presentation to Abigail of the who-loved-whom of our set, and what Scotty was planning for his wedding. I left out all mentions of Jake, especially the part where I almost cheated on my husband, still tryi
ng to convince myself—at times, unsuccessfully—that I didn’t really cheat. That I didn’t even come close. We talked and ate and before I knew it, I was in the shower, packing up, and then driving down the 405 with my mom to LAX to catch my flight back to JFK.

  I had a glass of wine on the flight, curled up in a blanket, and listened to the soundtrack from Once over and over again. The melodies were haunting but my mind was, for the first time in a while, crystal clear. I led myself back through Darren’s and my relationship, from when we first met to the early days of falling in love, through our carefree days without kids as we built our careers in the city, through those exciting and utterly exhausting days of having babies, to our easing into suburban life. I didn’t go as far as the night he told me he cheated. I lingered in the feelings and atmosphere of life before The Bandit. Like loitering in the bridal room right before the wedding, knowing that outside that door waited something a bit scary and as soon as you entered that place, your life would never be the same. And though the experience of my wedding and the thought of Darren unceremoniously banging The Bandit are, clearly, two entirely different animals, they both changed things forever.

  In my mind, I wanted to just be Grace and Darren again. The Darren without the cheater asterisk by his name. Pure Grace and Darren. The couple who could still trust each other, whose business trips weren’t second-guessed. I luxuriated in the memories of the looks he used to give me, the conversations we used to have, the sex that would go on all weekend long. I spent a lot of time on that flight perilously near the edge of Darren’s indiscretion but not going there. I needed to remind myself why it was worth it to go back to him. So that if I ended up going through with my decision to actually go back to him, I would be excited to jump back into, or maybe, more appropriately, fall back into that place of my marriage before I knew about The Bandit.

  And I decided that I didn’t even come close to doing what he did. Yes, I flirted with Jake. Yes, I entertained thoughts in my mind of being with Jake. And, yes, I, kissed him. But I stopped it right away. Well, almost right away. I couldn’t get rid of a sinking feeling in my stomach that I had done something wrong. But, I stopped it. And that means everything. I chalked up the small feelings of doubt to my overanalytical brain.