My Ex-Life: A Novel

by Stephen McCauley

  “If it’s any consolation, I’m not sure that’s what those are.”

  David went out with Julie to welcome them, realizing a moment too late that it wasn’t his business to appear on the porch of a house that was still half Henry’s with a woman who was still, technically, his wife.

  “Those flowers are incredible,” Julie called out. “Please don’t tell me you grew all of them.”

  “They’re mostly perennials,” Carol said. “And half of them were already there when I moved into the house. All I have to do is weed. I brought something to put them in, but if you don’t like it, I promise I won’t be insulted.” She produced an innocuous clear blue vase from the car. “I thought the color went well with the harvest bells and agapanthus.”

  “Oh, yes,” Julie said.

  Carol had a high, girlish voice. She took superb care of herself—her skin appeared to be polished—but she had the hard face of someone who could stand to eat a cupcake once or twice a year. The bones were too prominent, and the muscles around her jaw flexed visibly when she spoke. As was to be expected, she was pretty. But it was the flat prettiness of a sorority sister who wears pastels, subscribes to Self magazine, and actually reads the articles. She punctuated her comments with a dry, nervous laugh that reminded David of the panting of a dog eager to be petted.

  Julie made the requisite introduction, and, as instructed, David complimented the flowers in detail, looking down at the bouquet as one looks at an infant in a stroller, desperately searching for things to praise.

  “Doesn’t David remind you of my brother?” she asked Henry.

  “Your brother’s thirty-five,” Henry said.

  “No, but I mean his manner.”

  From this, David gathered that Carol had a gay brother, a suspicion confirmed later when the brother came up in conversation again and his profession (set designer), real estate (adorable studio in the West Village), and love life (dating Eric) were revealed.

  If Carol was making an exhausting effort to please, Henry was aiming for a stern demeanor that gave away nothing. David had noted this deportment in strong-willed men overcompensating for the fact that their lives are controlled by their wives or girlfriends. He had a dark suntan, an attractive affectation, but one that these days looked somehow vintage, like a dial telephone or an electric carving knife.

  Henry sidled up next to David as Carol and Julie were walking into the house, still cooing about the bouquet. “I see,” he said, “you’ve made some improvements.”

  “There were a few loose brackets that needed to be tightened,” David said. “Nothing very complicated.” And then, first step on the guilt trip he was planning to use to purchase more time, he added, “You know how important this house is to Julie.”

  Henry didn’t respond to the comment, nor did he say anything when David mentioned that he’d also cleaned out the gutters. He foresaw awkwardness about who would open the door for whom, so he told Henry he needed to get something out of the back of Julie’s car and would be in in a few minutes.

  When he entered the living room, everyone was perched on the edges of sofas and chairs, engaged on multiple fronts in a shoving match with the new toss pillows. Julie was explaining that David had cleared out a lot of the excess furniture.

  “I’ll bet that was hard for you, Julie,” Carol said. She spoke in a sympathetic tone, but the implied criticism was clear. David wondered if Julie had noticed it. “It must be interesting meeting all the people who stay here,” she went on. She was fiddling with her pink T-shirt, which had become tangled in the fight with the pillows. “Are there, what, dozens a month?”

  “We only have a few rooms,” David said.

  “Have you?” Henry said.

  “And of course, I’m taking up one of them.”

  “Mandy told me you had someone die here the other day,” Henry said. “She seemed upset by it. It must have been traumatic for her.”

  “She was exaggerating,” Julie said. “Someone had a stroke.”

  “Aw, a mini-stroke?” Carol asked. She said it the way you’d say “mini-marshmallow,” as if there was something inherently cute in it.

  “Minor,” David said. “Julie told me you manage a doctor’s office. What kind of practice?”

  “Family medicine,” she said. “We see a lot of teenagers and their parents. A great deal of what we do is a form of family therapy. I suppose it is for you, too, David.”

  “Sometimes,” he said. “If each parent wants their child to go to the school they went to, it gets tricky. It usually has less to do with what’s best for the child than with the parent’s desire to relive their youth.”

  “I suppose there are many ways to do that,” Henry said. “Attempt to relive your youth, that is. Speaking of which, where’s Mandy?”

  “Upstairs getting Opal settled,” Julie said. “At least as settled as possible.”

  David had been told that Opal could tolerate Henry at Carol’s house but she’d turned “confrontational” with him here in recent months.

  “You know a lot of people have had success giving their troubled dogs antidepressants,” Carol said. “We hear tons about dogs at the office.”

  “If anyone’s taking antidepressants in this house,” Julie said, “it’s not going to be Opal.”

  David excused himself and went to check on dinner. He’d made a baked pasta casserole with penne and chicken that was based on a dish he’d been served at someone’s house years earlier. He’d chosen it almost solely for carbohydrates, which he’d been depriving himself of for weeks now and was craving with salacious urgency. There was such an undercurrent of tension in the living room, he took the casserole out of the oven and reached a fork into it. He gobbled down a tube of pasta as if it were medicine. It tasted similar to everything he cooked, mostly because he was hostile to the idea of using recipes—which he saw as similar to tracing a picture instead of drawing it—and always used the same basic spice combination: two kinds of salt.

  As he was about to return to the living room, he heard Mandy’s footsteps on the back staircase. She strolled into the kitchen, sat at the table, and began playing with an empty wineglass. She had the slightly confused look he’d noticed in her eyes lately, and he wondered if he’d been too harsh with her about her essay.

  “Opal’s all set?” he asked.

  “I propped the door open so she’d get a breeze. She went right to sleep.” She laid her cheek down on the table as if she was too exhausted to hold up her head. “What would you say if I told you I’d like a glass of wine?”

  “I’d have to ask for an ID.”

  “I’m seventeen, have only had alcohol twice, and hated it both times.”

  “In that case, I’d ask why you’d like it now.”

  “Because I’m about to have dinner with my divorcing parents and my father’s new girlfriend and my mother’s new whatever and we’re all going to talk about my future.”

  “You make a strong case,” he said. He poured half a glass of wine and handed it to her. “It’s on the cheap side, so don’t judge all wine by the taste of this. If it makes you feel any better, I’m planning to take control of the college conversation. You’re free to disagree, but that could also be done afterward, in private.”

  Mandy sipped the wine slowly, as if she was trying to get used to the bitterness. In the past week or so, David had seen that there was something different about her, more mature than when he’d arrived, even though it had been only six weeks earlier. Though he’d tried, he’d been unable to put his finger on precisely what it was, just as it was often impossible to locate the source of a bad odor. But now, as she set down the wineglass and brushed her hair behind her ears, something clicked into place. This was a gesture he’d seen her make many times before, but tonight there was an element of sensuality in it and in the way she tilted her head and looked up knowingly. Too knowingly for someone who had, on some level, seemed entirely innocent a few weeks earlier.

  “Mandy,” he said. �
�I went to Beachy Keen the other day.”

  She looked up, wary and clearly unsure how to respond.

  “Why did you go there?”

  “The point is, why didn’t you tell us you got fired?”

  She eyed the wine in her glass. “I don’t know. I guess I was ashamed that I’d screwed up even the world’s worst job.”

  She got off her chair and went to hug David, once again childlike. “You aren’t going to bring that up tonight, are you?”

  “Where do you go when you claim to be working?”

  She was silent for a moment, and then carefully she said, “There’s a guy who has a little computer company. He works at the high school sometimes. I’m one of the people who answers the phone and some other stuff for him at his office. In Hammond.”

  This information should have been reassuring, even welcome, and yet it was not. There was something inherently unwholesome in David’s mind about people who work in a vague way with computers. They were like men who ran vacuum cleaner stores—yes, they knew what they were doing and they provided a service, but there was often something off, even if it was hard to pinpoint what.

  As if she understood his doubts, she said, “I’m learning more than I was at Beachy Keen.”

  “That’s a low bar,” David said.

  She hugged David again, not with affection exactly, but with a need for comfort.

  Henry walked through the swinging door carrying his glass. He took in the scene and went to the counter, where the wine bottle was. “So,” he said as he poured. “This is where you’ve been hiding out, Mandy. Do I get a hug, too?”

  “I’ll leave you two,” David said.

  In the living room, Carol was explaining to Julie the particulars of her Fitbit. It calculated steps and calories and heartbeats and other statistical information that was essentially meaningless to anyone, even Carol. Americans were increasingly addicted to information, especially when it could be used in support of opinions that were inaccurately described as facts. David supposed that the numbers spit out by the device on Carol’s wrist supported her obsessive need for exercise, a neurosis masked as a virtue. Julie was listening with rapt fascination, not, David knew, because she was interested in the details but because she was astonished that Carol was.

  “Carol is a serious athlete,” she announced.

  “Only when I find the time,” Carol apologized.

  Henry came back into the living room with his arm around Mandy, and David was relieved to see they’d made up.

  “And she always finds the time,” Henry said. There was a dismissive note in his voice, despite the fact that he obviously enjoyed the benefits of her unyielding regimen. Those firm, shapely legs.

  “Come here and sit with me, you two,” Carol said. Her voice had developed the friendly warmth that explains the popularity of wine at awkward social functions.

  Mandy did as requested and sat on the sofa between Henry and Carol. David could imagine Carol as a strict-but-loving stepmom who’d treat Mandy like a younger sister with whom she was vying for Daddy’s attention. There were worse arrangements.

  Now that Carol was slightly lubricated, she seemed to have assumed the job of keeping the conversation rolling. “I guess there must be all kinds of exes,” she said, wagging a finger between David and Julie. “I haven’t talked with mine in years, and I can’t imagine even having dinner with him, let alone an extended visit.”

  “Did things end badly?” Julie asked. “I guess they always do, in one way or another.”

  “Not exactly badly,” she said. “I moved to Tucson to be with him, and we discovered we didn’t have anything in common. So that ended it.”

  This complaint, which often referred to divergent careers and hobbies, had always baffled David. The only thing relationships needed in common was love—of some kind—and true love was rarely the result of a shared fondness for quilting.

  Henry pointedly announced that he was beginning renovations on the restaurant at the end of September, after the height of the summer season. The contractors had been lined up and the time blocked. “As soon as we close on the house,” he said, “I’ll send in the deposits. That’s in ten days, I believe.”

  “I’d have thought you’d wait until November,” David said. “There must be a lot of tourism here right through October. Foliage season and all.”

  “Some,” he said, “but it drops off sharply after Labor Day. You’d see for yourself if you were going to be around.”

  “He might be,” Mandy said.

  Henry nodded, as if, on some level, he’d known this was coming. “I wouldn’t think there was much for you here,” he said.

  David commented that a lot of his work could be done online, even though he doubted Henry had been referring to career opportunities.

  The subject of Mandy’s plans did not come up until they were seated at the dinner table and David was serving his casserole. He’d left it in the oven perhaps fifteen minutes too long, and it had the texture of oatmeal and not much more flavor. To try to salvage it, he’d resorted to the standard culinary Band-Aid—he added cheese, lots of cheese, and stuck it under the broiler. This created a crust and aroma that fooled everyone except Carol, who, with the bloodhound instincts of all people with mild eating disorders, saw through the ruse immediately. Her Fitbit was probably sending her electric shocks. When Henry indulged in a second helping, she shot him a smile that reeked of disapproval. She talked in a cheerful way about a doctor she’d worked for who’d moved to San Francisco and the astonishing real estate prices there, all while carefully extracting vegetables from the pasta with the skill of a brain surgeon and then creasing and folding them with her knife and fork as if she were practicing a culinary form of origami.

  After he’d cleared the plates, David brought out four identical binders into which he’d slipped copies of Mandy’s dossier, including a list of a dozen schools he saw as possibilities worth pursuing. He’d started off the list with the most impressive schools, even if they weren’t the most likely. In this case, Wellesley, Smith, Johns Hopkins, Barnard, and Williams. He’d noted that parents were inevitably flattered by the inclusion of schools of this caliber, even if they knew they were long shots for their kids and weren’t happy to pay for them if they did get in. It was a facile, mandatory compliment he paid to the family DNA.

  “Why so many women’s colleges?” Henry asked.

  David had an opinion that Mandy would do better surrounded by smart, serious women who were not, at least on the surface, vying for the attention of men in the same school. Or perhaps his feelings about her best interests had been formed that first day when he saw her talking with the guy in the van and discussed library steps with Amira. Her grades made any of these schools a reach, but her test scores were strong enough that it was possible to make a case for her, especially if she could pull off an eye-catching essay.

  “We’ve chosen these schools because they have outstanding programs in psychology,” he said.

  “I’m not sure that’s a very practical thing to focus on,” Henry said. “What about business?”

  “It’s not like that always works out either,” Julie said. The meaning of this was unmistakable.

  Although Henry and Carol were seated on one side of the table, there was a palpable intimacy between Julie and Henry born of having lived together for decades and therefore knowing precisely where to stick the daggers. As the coded discussion went on, it seemed as if they were the real couple and Carol and David the mere backup singers, almost an item themselves.

  Finally, Mandy spoke up. “I ought to get an opinion here, don’t you think? We all know I’m not getting into any of these first schools, so there’s no point in discussing. And I’m sorry, Dad, but if you think I’m a good candidate for studying business, you haven’t been looking closely. David’s right—I’m more suited to psychology. If I never brought it up before, it’s because I needed his help figuring it out, or at least admitting it to myself. I can see it as a
real direction, which I’ve never had before. And I’d probably be better off at a state school anyway.”

  There was nothing hesitant in her delivery, nothing unsure. Maybe it was the few sips of wine she’d had in the kitchen. Whatever it was, David was proud of her: she’d made a stand for herself; and Henry, no doubt both pleased and disappointed at her newfound conviction, merely shrugged and said, “I’m glad you have a direction, Mandy.”

  * * *

  Later, when David was standing at the kitchen sink scraping food off the plates into a scrap bucket, Henry came in and placed a bowl of salad remains on the counter. He looked around the room as if he was seeing it for the first time. “Something’s different in here,” he said. “The lighting?”

  “Good call,” David said. “I had some of the old fluorescent ceiling lights replaced. It warms things up. A simple fix.”

  Henry nodded. “Thanks for the meal. Comfort food. I don’t get much of that at home.”

  David saw this confession as an attempt at male bonding. “Carol have you on a short leash?” he asked.

  “She and some others. I had a scare last winter, so it’s all for the best. As is an indulgence like this every once in a while.”

  “What kind of scare?”

  Henry gestured toward his chest. “Heart. Nothing major, but then again, in that area, there’s nothing minor, either. I don’t think the stress of the restaurant and the divorce helped much. It will be good for all of us to have it over.”

  David was sorry to hear about the scare. It put the food and the fitness into a new category—a matter of necessity rather than vanity. Even Carol’s nervousness and Henry’s urgency about selling the house looked different in this context, although he was going to have to raise the issue anyway.

  “Julie doesn’t know anything about this,” Henry added, “so I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t mention it.”

  “Of course. And I did want to ask something of you, too, Henry.”

  He couldn’t falter or be sheepish about it. He had to ask as if it was not a big deal, as if it was a completely reasonable request. He mentioned his plans for turning the barn into a unit for himself and thereby helping Julie purchase the property. “There is one problem,” he said. “We’re going to need a little more time.”