My Ex-Life: A Novel

by Stephen McCauley

  Mrs. Grayson rarely showed her face before ten, and Julie left out bread for her, since she seemed to subsist largely on white toast with the crusts cut off and other pale food.

  “Isn’t it a lovely morning?” she said to Julie today. She was sitting at the end of the dining room table, daintily buttering toast, cardigan carefully draped.

  “A little warm,” Julie said, “but after last winter, I suppose we shouldn’t complain.”

  Last winter had been mild, but complaining about New England winters was the only truly safe topic of conversation with guests. Accurate or not, it offended no one. Accuracy was beside the point lately anyway. Among a certain segment of the population, acknowledging the existence of scientific data was considered unpatriotic, akin to acknowledging the existence of gun violence unless perpetrated by Muslims or racism that didn’t involve a white person losing a job to a person of color.

  It was the Fourth of July, and Julie was certain that Mrs. Grayson’s son and daughter-in-law would be having a cookout or party of some kind. Surely they intended to invite her. Her son and his wife lived on the opposite side of town—the “gold coast”—in an enormous house built out onto the rocks. Julie, along with everyone else in town, knew the house; it was that large and imposing, built in an epic style Julie thought of as Late Hedge Fund. There had to be eight bedrooms, which meant a dozen bathrooms, which begged the question: Why was she staying here? Her son’s house surely had extra bedrooms and probably whole wings.

  “Is your son doing anything special for the holiday?” Julie asked.

  “They’re having some people over. I wasn’t going to go, but they gave the au pair the day off, and they said I could take care of the baby. He’s the dearest little thing. They let me see him for almost ten minutes yesterday.”

  The wording suggested she was usually led into a room where the baby was sleeping before being hauled out sixty seconds later.

  “Are you and your brother doing anything?” Although Julie had introduced him as “friend” and referred to him as such, Mrs. Grayson sometimes called David her “brother,” other times her “companion,” other times her “guest.” She’d considered clarifying once and for all with “my ex-husband” but she suspected that would only confuse the issue.

  “You must be proud of your son,” Julie said, fishing for more outrageous information. “He’s done so well.”

  “I sure am proud of him,” Mrs. Grayson said. She clutched her throat. “I just hope he’s a little bit proud of me.”

  This was so heartfelt, Julie felt unsettled. She sat at the table and put her hand on Mrs. Grayson’s. “Of course he is. Why wouldn’t he be?”

  “It’s different with boys,” Mrs. Grayson said. “Once they get married, everything changes. You’re lucky you have a girl. She’ll always be your devoted daughter.”

  Daughter-in-law issues. That explained her exile to this house on the other side of town. An hour later, when Mrs. Grayson was out on the front porch reading a large-print edition of Reader’s Digest, a black SUV pulled up to the curb. Mrs. Grayson waved and gathered her things. A stern woman sat in the front seat texting while Mrs. Grayson climbed in and then pulled away without any apparent conversation. It was unclear if this was the daughter-in-law or the driver, but either way, David’s long-suffering southern belle was getting no respect.

  Julie’s mother had wanted a proud, devoted daughter, too, but one devoted to her reputation and legacy as a scholar, not to her as a good parent. “Anyone can be a good parent,” she’d once told Julie. “It’s hardly a talent.”

  In the last couple of decades of her life, her mother had been in contact mostly through letters, ones she’d insisted Julie hang on to. “I’m not suggesting they’ll be worth much,” she’d said, “but if a biographer contacts you, it would be ideal to have them all in one place.”

  Her mother, who’d been an apparently well-known scholar at Yale and an authority on fifteenth-century poetry, had always assumed someone would write about her, although given her claims that she was hated in her field, it wasn’t clear why she assumed that. Her letters were full of criticism of Julie, often phrased in ways that justified her own choices and child-rearing decisions and crafted with a formality that seemed intended for publication. They were in a big plastic container in the basement, safe from the destructive forces of water and air, just as her mother would have wanted. Every once in a while, when Julie was feeling masochistic or was, inexplicably, missing her mother, she’d look at them. It had only recently occurred to her—with horror—that Mandy, with her love of digging things out of the basement, might have seen them, too.

  “I feel terrible your learning disability wasn’t diagnosed earlier,” her mother had written. “We took you to many specialists, but of course in those days, there was considerably less literature on the matter. If there had been, you might have been able to pursue the academic career your father and I had always planned for you instead of the roundelay of sad marriages and pointless drifting that your life has been. And just to reassure you, darling, we were always proud of the way we accepted the reality of who you are, even though it was so far from what we’d hoped.”

  Mixed in with these assaults were comments that she had to know would be of no interest to Julie: “Your father and I attended a lecture by Nadine Sanderson. It was riddled with factual errors about Renaissance poetry and simple historical details. The fact that the audience seemed to appreciate her talk is more a comment on the current state of academia than on her skills. When she came up to me afterwards to praise my work and practically kiss my hand, I was embarrassed. I know she wanted me—someone she has idolized and emulated for decades—to heap praise on her. I told her I had rarely seen a speaker use the microphone more effectively, letting her interpret the comment as she wished. In attendance were…”

  Her mother’s popularity with students at Yale had always been a source of confusion for Julie. Was she kinder to them than to her own daughter? Did she actually love them more, meaning perhaps that they were more lovable? Back when they were married, David had explained that undergraduates often mistake condescension and sarcasm for pedagogy, a comforting thought that hadn’t comforted her.

  As Julie was clearing off food from the “breakfast buffet,” she realized she had it all wrong—she didn’t see Mrs. Grayson as an idealized mother figure, but as a possible future version of herself, alone, melancholy, and trying to put the best face on the slight, grudging interest of her child. Mandy’s devotion wasn’t a given, and why should it be? What had she given Mandy to be proud of?

  She went to David’s room. He was sitting at his desk with his computer open.

  “Do you realize,” he said, “that since we raised the rates, inquiries about the rooms have increased almost 50 percent? Hiring that lunatic was a brilliant decision, my dear. We should have her back for a cocktail. If we raise our prices again, we’ll have to build an addition.”

  She wanted to play along with him, but she was afraid she’d lose her resolve if she didn’t bring it up right now. “I want you to help me with something,” she said.

  “You sound serious.”

  The way he said it made it clear he thought she wasn’t. “I am, David. I hate to ask another favor, but I can’t do this on my own.”

  That got his attention. He opened the desk drawer and took out a sheet of paper with “The Seven Steps to Julie Fiske’s Happy Henry-Free Future” printed across the top. He handed it to her. “My guess is we’ve arrived at Step Number Four.”

  This was labeled simply “Pot Problem.”

  “You’re always right. I stopped completely six months ago, but as you know, I still smoke a few times a week. I keep telling myself that since it’s not addictive, it can’t matter that I’m hooked.”

  “That sounds logical.”

  “It sounds even more so when you’re stoned. The worst thing is, Mandy knows. She won’t come out and say it, so I talk myself into believing it doesn’t matter, bu
t it does. On some level, she’s probably ashamed of me.”

  “I’m not giving you drug tests,” he said. “If that’s the help you were thinking about.”

  “I have to get rid of it,” she said. “All of it.”

  “How much is there?”

  While it was undeniable that pot had deteriorated her memory, there was one exception: she remembered every cupboard and closet and hidden ashtray and outdoor fake rock and—relics from a past civilization—plastic film canisters in which she’d stashed joints or buds or a few loose crumbs. It took them almost half an hour to gather it all in a glass bowl. A weird Easter egg hunt that David seemed to find entertaining. “Did you have pot stashed all over the apartment when we lived together?” he asked.

  “Of course not. I came to it late in life. If I had been smoking then, I wouldn’t have hidden it from you.” As if there weren’t things each of them had kept hidden from the other?

  “I hate to admit it,” David said, “but looking at this all piled up in the bowl makes me want to roll a joint. Should we give it to Amira? Or better yet, sell it to her?”

  Julie considered this for a moment. It was tempting, but Amira would chide her for being a prude and they’d end up high within ten minutes.

  “I think we should go out and toss it into the ocean,” she said.

  “A grand gesture. I approve.”

  She went to get Opal while David emptied all the pot into a brown paper sandwich bag. By eleven, they were walking along the Atlantic Pathway. It was usually windy there, but today the air was still and the water sparkled as it often did in the morning. It was going to be another hot day. They left the path and scrambled along the rocks that jutted into the water until they were as far out as they could get, with the ocean sloshing and sucking at the seaweed that clung to the boulders below. David took the bag out of the pocket of his corduroys and handed it to her. She shrugged and, trying to make it look less consequential and difficult than it felt, dumped the contents into the water. They watched as a swell came in and pulled it under.

  “That’s that,” he said.

  “I doubt it, but it’s a start.”

  They lay back on the rocks in the sun, and within minutes, she felt herself growing sleepy. David reached over and took her hand and squeezed it. Sun-drugged, she dozed off for a few minutes, and when she woke up, he was still holding her hand.

  “Good nap?” he said.

  “Brief.” She felt as if she was swimming up to the surface of consciousness, but the heat was making it slow, heavy work. From their perch, they could see the rocky beach near the center of town where they were constructing a tower of wooden pallets for the Fourth of July bonfire.

  “I’m going to do my best to make sure it all works out,” he said. “The house, Mandy. I’m going to try.”

  This supposedly optimistic sentence made it clear he was having doubts. They were a month and a few days from the closing, and everything was still up in the air. Why had she been so resistant to a Plan B? She still hadn’t heard back from Pamela, and while she wanted to think that the silence meant she was gathering up a variety of enthusiastic bids for the jewelry, she was beginning to wonder. And still, the water was so calm, and David’s hand was reassuring.

  “You’re losing weight,” she said.

  “I know. It’s because you’re making me take all these walks. The fact that there are no Thai restaurants in town doesn’t hurt either. Sometimes city living is too convenient.”

  “I think you should come back every Fourth so we can do this.”

  “You might be remarried sooner than you think.”

  “There’s not too much that gives me more pleasure than knowing I will never remarry.” This was the truth. It was like having money in the bank, not that she knew a whole lot about that. With her eyes closed and her face turned up to the sun, she said, “I slept with one of the guests.”

  “Thank god Sandra didn’t know that. Anyone I’ve met?”

  “A saxophonist. He’s coming back in a couple of weeks. Not to stay at the house.”

  He squeezed her hand again. “I can’t wait to hear all about it. Does he have a friend for me?”

  “He probably has a wife.”

  “Ah, well. Not exactly what I had in mind.”

  Because it was so warm and because they weren’t looking at each other, and because she’d just mentioned Raymond and had therefore made selfish motives seem less likely, she asked, “Is it ever what you have in mind? Women, I mean.”

  “No, dear. Not since you. Men are just a better fit for me. I suspect it’s like finding the proper key to sing in; it just feels right. Which is odd since on the whole, I like women better as people and attribute most of what’s wrong with the world to the stupidity and reckless behavior of men.”

  Although it meant inching closer to their past, she said, “Did you ever see Antrim again?”

  He propped himself up on his elbow, looking at her, and pulled aside a strand of her hair that had blown onto her lips “I didn’t. We lost touch after the field trip to Washington. I’ve never tried looking him up, mostly for fear I’d find out he died.”

  “I liked him so much,” Julie said. It was a peculiar thing to say, considering the role he’d played in their lives. But she’d been a little in love with Antrim. Once she got some distance, she decided he and David had been perfect for each other. But timing is everything, and in that, they were both unlucky.

  “I liked him, too,” David said. “So much. But not enough to justify hurting you.” He leaned down and kissed her lightly on her mouth. “Mandy told me she thinks you have a secret boyfriend.”

  “Apparently, she knows about everything.”

  And yet, she had the nagging fear that the one thing she didn’t know about was how to take care of herself.

  23

  The door to Beachy Keen opened, letting in a gust of steam heat, and two identical women entered. There was a 90 percent chance that Nice and cool would be the first words Mandy heard.

  “Isn’t it nice and cool in here,” one woman said to Mandy. “You’re lucky you get to work in the air-conditioning all day.”

  Instead of being on vacation like you? Mandy felt like asking. She smiled and told them she was lucky. Predictably, the women headed for the “sand art.” The one who’d spoken held a bottle up to the other and said, “Isn’t this lovely!”

  Her friend mopped at her face and said, “You’d better put that down if you know what’s good for you. You go home with that thing and George will divorce you. Either that or you’ll drop it and there goes twenty bucks.”

  “You have no imagination,” the woman said, although she did put it down.

  The real shock was that there was a George in the picture somewhere. The two women were so similar in appearance and outfits, Mandy had assumed they were a couple. Maybe they were twin sisters.

  What astonished Mandy most about working on Perry Neck was that so many of the people who came in made the exact same comments, usually in the exact same tone of voice. Maybe that shouldn’t have been so surprising considering that they all wore the same pastel clothes and had the same middle-aged-mom hairdos. The do that screamed, I’m done. If there was one benefit to working at Beachy Keen it was that she’d begun to appreciate that no matter how annoying and scattered her mother was, no matter how sadly sincere, she was at least original. If she walked into a store like this, her first comment would have been, “Let’s leave.”

  As for men, they were few and far between in the shop. When they did come in, they wandered around with glum expressions and, if asked by a wife or girlfriend their opinion of something, grunted and then were told they were “no fun.”

  Mandy heard Elaine rustling papers in the back office, a reminder that she’d better swing into action. Now that they were in the second week of July and summer was in full swing, there were more customers. But Elaine still complained that she wasn’t being aggressive enough as a salesperson.

  �
��Those are one of our biggest sellers,” Mandy said. This was the line she’d been instructed to use when someone showed interest in anything and then put it down. More often than not, it worked. Hearing that a lot of other people wanted to spend twenty dollars on a worthless bottle of sand made it all the more desirable when, clearly, it should have made it less so.

  “Did you hear that, Beth? It’s one of their biggest sellers.”

  Beth gave the bottles more serious consideration. “George will still kill you if you bring it home.”

  “Oh, you’re no fun.” She turned to Mandy, grinning that unique tourist grin that implied everyone was supposed to be happy they were on vacation. “I should have left her at home. She’s no fun, is she?”

  Mandy mostly wanted to get back to her notebook. She was starting to rewrite her college essay since David had praised her pages about Clara Dunston in a way that made it clear he hated it. She’d decided to switch from the nemesis question to the one about two different types of people. She’d start off saying she thought she and Clara were Cat and Dog but ended up realizing they were runts from the same litter.

  “I’m not sure,” Mandy said. “I don’t know her.”

  The women appeared offended by what Mandy considered a simple statement of fact, huffed, and walked out.

  Elaine came out of her office and went to the shop window. She followed the women with her eyes as they went into the next air-conditioned nightmare. Without turning to look at Mandy, she said, “If you’d tried harder, Mandy, you could have made a sale. They just went into Sunbrella, and I guarantee they’ll come out with a bag.”

  “I told her it was one of the bestsellers,” Mandy said.

  “Yes, but you didn’t sound excited when you said it. You didn’t sound enthused. Could we add a little energy and enthusiasm here?”