by Jill Kargman
We had never been the gold-digging types, and so we weren’t bitter—we had each other. We had met through the two brothers, who were now fading away into the past chapters of our lives, but we remained side by side, closer than ever. I just hoped that after our warm summer sanctuary, I could get through the chilling ice-water plunge of September’s reentry.
14
“Marriage is a three-ring circus: engagement ring, wedding ring, and suffering.”
The first day of school, heart pounding, I walked beside a skipping Miles, eager to see his friends, as I cringed, wishing I had a Harry Potter-style invisibility cloak. But I couldn’t hide; I had to face up to everyone and diffuse any gossip with my big smile and confident composure. In other words, give Meryl Streep a run for her Oscars.
“Hi, Holly,” said the perfectly bobbed Mary Grassweather, looking me over. “You look . . . great. How was your summer?”
A loaded silence hung in the air as four nearby moms turned to hear my response. Miles had scampered off to gab with his friends, and I looked at them with a small shrug.
“Well, you know, Tim and I split up, so it was kind of crazy, but I’m hanging in there.”
“We heard,” said Emilia d’Angelo, with a faux-sadness in her eyes like that kitty-cat poster they sell in Hallmark. “I’m so sorry to hear it. But these things are usually for the best!” Mary, Emilia, and Posey all looked down briefly at their different candy-hued Tory Burch Reva flats in a nanosecond of silence as an imaginary death knell rang over the grave of my marriage.
I had a scarlet “D” on my forehead and could tell I somehow felt different to them now; maybe because I represented the fact that if it could happen to us, it could happen to anyone. There were reactions of shock at the demise of my marriage, patronizing looks of pity on the school steps, and whispers from perfect mommies who saw me as I approached. Women whom I myself had resembled only a year ago when kindergarten had started. I was the first divorcée of the first grade. Well, second, but Kathy Gilles had split from her husband when their son was only two. I, however, was the first singleton of the couples who had arrived intact. Posey was my only organic pal, and in my low pony and occasional sweats I always felt like an outcast from the other women who were so groomed and glittering. And the Cadillac Escalades and GMC Denalis at drop-off always reminded me of this.
Whenever Miles had a playdate and they rode home with his pal’s chef-baked chocolate chip cookies and movies for the fifteen-minute trip, he always lamented that we didn’t have the same amenities. But I didn’t want some dude in my kitchen on call, and not to be cheesy but I liked the idea of Miles day-dreaming out the car window, watching the world go by instead of Spider-Man’s webbing. I remembered one time, Hubert, Sherry Von’s sweet and loyal butler, came to scoop us up. Kiki accompanied Miles and me to Locust Valley in Sherry Von’s car, which was equipped with countless DVDs for Miles, all of which were age-inappropriate, skewing too young. But Miles was a captive audience and even though he was six, he preferred Dora the Explorer to green highway signage any day, so he zoned out to the quest to get the little ducky back to his momma, whose nest was perched at the top of a volcano. After the Map sang his round of “I’m the Map! I’m the Map! I’m the Map! I’m the Map! I’m the Map! I’m the Map! I’m the Map! I’m the Map!”
Kiki blurted out, “OKAY, YOU’RE THE FUCKING MAP!” She asked how I could ever put up with that cacophony, and from that moment I knew we would not succumb to the in-car entertainment system that the hordes at drop-off and pickup were screening. Even Hubert, who never complained (and had been through way worse with Sherry Von’s poison tongue lashing him when the coffee was too hot or not hot enough), exhaled in relief when I turned off the relentless chirp of our amiga cantante.
But because Miles’s friends would always run in elite circles and possibly infect him with their yearning for stuff, I knew I had to ground him as best I could and keep his values centered, like the school’s teachings did. I adored Miles’s school and the unmatchable education it offered my son. But while I loved the soul of the place, I was loath to see all the moms whose husbands somehow worked with Tim—half the class was hedge fund wives. There were other professions, sure, but many—most—were hedgie molls. As I surveyed the school’s steps from a distance, I saw everyone preened to perfection, blond locks glinting off the sun from a summer of beachside rays—and amped up shades at Fekkai.
But as I saw the blond heads whispering and casting not-so-subtle glances in my direction, I knew that not just good news, but also bad, travels fast: Within yards of the front door where the boys lined up outside school, I knew damn well that word had broken on Tim’s extracurriculars to every last mom on those crowded steps, not just the Hamptons crew among whom gossip is texted at the Mercedes wheel between Hay Ground camp and town. My bomb’s fallout had even reached those summering on their private islands off the coast of Maine and Canada. But while such salacious revelations would have spurred me to reach out to the poor humiliated wife, I weirdly had the sense that I was somehow diseased when two of the moms looked me over. I tried to change the subject.
“Wow, Emilia, that’s a cool camera,” I observed, noticing a very sleek futuristic digicam with MoMA on it.
“Thanks!” She beamed. “For a five-million-dollar donation, you too can have one!” she said, in all seriousness. She then looked down, probably realizing (correctly) that post-divorce I was in no position to be a high-roller philanthropist any longer.
“Oh, they’re letting us into school,” she was happy to notice, puncturing the pregnant pause. “Let’s go, Prescott!”
And with that, they ran off to get in line with their sons. Emilia had looked away almost immediately and swept the whole thing under the proverbial rug, as if she needed to change subjects. Were all these perfect women somehow threatened by my split?
It got worse a week later when I heard Trish say to Mary, “Is there anything I can bring tomorrow night? We’re so looking forward to dinner, we had such a nice time last year. . . .” Ah, yes. It was Trip and Mary Grassweather’s black-tie dinner party in honor of the seasonal equinox on the twenty-first at their penthouse on Fifth. These hedge fund people will find any excuse for a party. Tim and I had met them a few times at birthday parties during the nursery school years, and when a mutual friend told us our kids would be in the same school for kindergarten, they invited us to a beautiful evening at their home at this time last year. I guess I was off the list now. I guess I’d be off every party list now. . . . I was the pariah of St. Sebastian’s.
15
“Marriage is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.”
Kiki and I were standing in my walk-in closet. Miles was leaving for a sleepover birthday party at Corbett Grassweather’s house, and I would be . . . alone. Free to go out on the town with Kiki. Sort of. I gripped my cell phone in case Miles needed me and wanted to be airlifted from the slumber party, which I was weirdly secretly hoping he would.
Corbett’s party wasn’t just a Spider-Man theme. No, no, no, no—that would be too easy! Too pedestrian! You see, Mary and her husband called the owner of Marvel and arranged for Stan Lee himself to come and do drawings for the boys! And: You guessed it, Tobey Maguire would be “stopping by” for the cake, since now many hedge funds were investing in movies and the Grassweathers had befriended the webbed one by funding a pet project of his. Nice. Here, without exaggeration, are party themes of some hedgie children Tim’s friends had thrown for their beloved offspring:
It sounds like I’m exaggerating, but I’m not. I wanted to shield him from the excess as much as I could, but I wasn’t going to have him be the only one to miss the parties. All I could do was try and stay grounded in our new family of two. Keep him centered, read to him about other places outside this bubble. So far, so good: He was a truly loving, good kid with a huge heart and strong values. But as he kissed me at the Grassweathers’ and skipped off with his Spider-Man sleeping bag and navy duffel, it occurred
to me that he couldn’t wait to have me bail. So there I was. Walking home alone to face getting ready to go out like the old times.
HEDGE FUND KIDS’ BIRTHDAY PARTIES
I stood staring at my closet wondering what to put on to face the world as a singleton again. I gulped wearily at the prospect of gussying up, until Kiki burst into my apartment, fiercely dressed in a chocolate brown leather mini, a chic cowl-neck sweater, high boots, and bloodred nails.
“Okay! Let’s get this party started! We need wine and music.”
It had been so long since I’d done this: the revving up pre-night out. Choice after fashion choice that Kiki handed me was about as over the top as a spa day for six-year-olds.
“Keeks. I’m in my mid-thirties. This is too wild,” I protested as she handed me a red satin D&G clinger she’d brought. “You don’t wear this hem length at my age.”
“Bullshit. All those Sex and the City girls were older than you and they wore Hermès scarves on their boobs, for Christ’s sake!”
“That was a show. And I ain’t Sarah Jessica.”
We blared songs from my newly downloaded file on iTunes, which Kiki had introduced me to, blowing the cobwebs off my stereo and buying bands I’d never heard of but liked. I’d never felt so old: The rockers who crooned the tunes we shimmied to were a decade younger. And would probably laugh if they saw this mommy ramping up for a Saturday night.
I was oscillating from fear to excitement to cold strength. I knew it was “character building” to be dumped—I never had been ditched before—and I strangely almost found solace in the fact that this was a rite of passage for me; suddenly I was in on the Top 40 chart lyrics about heartbreak. Now I knew what all those dumb happy people didn’t—there’s a whole subworld of the miserable out there. And guess what? It’s so much hipper! Kiki blared the Smiths as I brooded in front of the mirror applying eye shadow. The darkness was making me grow, and hey, everyone probably has one big earth-shattering heartbreak, right? Now mine’s out of the way.
And now, along with my thinner frame (the Grief Diet is so amazing), I had something I hadn’t had during the sad times in my marriage: hope. Loneliness when there’s a human next to you is way worse than alone-loneliness for some reason. When you’re single, there’s always the accompanying reverie that you’ll find Him, that special Dream Guy who will be forever your companion, laugh factory, lover, and, most of all, friend. But Tim and I hadn’t even been close friends for a while. Before we had met, I used to see married couples and truly felt like they were little skipping in slo-mo through green pastures holding hands, like they had crossed over into happy-land and knew something all of us single ignoram uses didn’t. But years into marriage, I realized that there is no gold-laced border into the land of rainbows and hazy sunsets. It was . . . the same. Or maybe worse. Because then the dream of finding that perfect love was over. And here I was on the outside again, back across that border in the realm of the unattached, where anything was possible. It was terrifying but electrifying.
To get to the way West Village, Kiki and I piled into a taxi, which stank so horrendously that you could toss your tacos. I was praying for the little yellow oxygen masks to spring out of an overhead compartment, but instead I just zoned out on the descending numbered street signs.
When we got to the party in one of the Raymond Meier buildings where one of the Olsen twins formerly resided, there was that crush of bodies that instantly transported me back in time. It wasn’t that Tim and I hadn’t been to parties; we just went to sedate, catered affairs with mostly married people. Or married people’s hanger-on single friends who wanted to be married. This was not that at all; it was a full-on raucous rager, music blaring, lights low, hot-blooded hook-ups hours away. But it wasn’t the fleece-and-headbands preppy twenties set, either; it was entirely new to me. There were some younger people, but there were plenty of thirtysomethings as well, just not older drones like uptown. These were edgier, cooler-seeming people who didn’t seem to give a shit about aging. In fact, they dressed so young, they seemed younger, whereas the women at Miles’s school may have been the same age but instead of vintage band T-shirts and fishnets and mod minidresses, they wore pleated kilts and cashmere twins sets and (gasp!) capes and looked way, way older than their years. I always had been somewhere in the middle—never matronly, but not edgy, either. But seeing people look so cool and stylish inspired me to take more risks and take clothing dares the way I did in college when Jeannie and I would flaunt our assets more than I had as a Mrs.
There was an energy bounding through the loft that I couldn’t relate to, but wanted to. Reading my nervousness, Kiki squeezed my hand. She spied her friend Eliza across the crowded space and waved, dragging me behind her through the mass of dancing bodies.
There was a round of introductions yelled over remixes of Nine Inch Nails, and of the faces who mouthed their names over the din, one guy did catch my eye. He said his name was Matt Sevin, which seemed to ring a bell. Lucky seven: I liked the sound of it. There seemed to be a cool twinkle to him. We all sat near each other and tried to chat, but the music was so loud that it was a strain to gab freely. I gleaned he was a music journalist for Spin (hot!) and that he lived in DUMBO in Brooklyn, but not much else. I chatted with a few people plopped nearby, but I kept making eye contact with Matt. Finally, when everyone was heading out to some late-night party across town, my mommy clock kicked in, even though Miles hadn’t called my cell. I wasn’t exactly used to the words “after-party” and slowly felt myself turning into a pumpkin. My eyelids got heavy, and I even let a yawn escape as partygoers piled into the industrial elevator. As everyone hopped into cabs, I could sense Matt staying near our smaller posse, but what was the point of sticking around when I didn’t have the energy to turn on the charm? I decided to bid everyone adieu and bolt. As it turned out, my non-strategy proved a good strategy.
“It was fun shouting over the music with you,” said Matt flirtatiously.
“Yeah, you, too. Very worth the laryngitis I’ll have tomorrow,” I said, and smiled.
“Holly, do you want to grab dinner sometime?”
“Sure, I’d love that.”
“Somewhere quiet, I promise.”
And with that, I had set up my first post-divorce date.
16
Q. What food causes the most suffering?
A. Wedding cake.
Kiki had informed me that while the words “late night” weren’t in my vocabulary (unless they involved Conan O’Brien), they were certainly in hers. Having never been woken by the sound of a newborn’s lungy cry, she was used to partying hard and had, in fact, gone home with the bartender from the loft party.
“Kiki, how do you do it?” I asked over lunch a week later at Sarabeth’s. “Don’t you feel creepy about slithering in and out of some random guy’s bed?”
“Guys don’t. Why should I?” she said, sipping her club soda with a shrug.
“I need time alone. To rebuild,” I thought aloud. “And even when I am ready, it’s not like I’m going to meet someone serious in some party like that.”
“Who said anything about serious?” Kiki mocked. “That is the last thing we need.”
“Speak for yourself.”
“Okay, I need. I am so not ever remarrying. Ever.”
“What?” I asked with surprise. “You don’t want to get married again?”
“No. I want to be free. I want to be like a guy. Why the fuck shouldn’t I be? Because Doris Days like Sherry Von think we should be there with oven mitts and plastered smiles? I am so not being someone’s Mrs. again.”
Suddenly I saw Emilia d’Angelo getting up from her booth in the back, followed by Posey, Trish, and Mary Grassweather.
“I just hit an age where I said to myself, I’m just not doing my own hair anymore! Who has the time?” bellowed Emilia, retrieving her sable from the maitre d’.
“That’s like me with sweaters,” said Mary. “I just got to this point where it’s, like, if it�
�s not cashmere, it’s not going on my body. You know, life’s short, why itch?”
They turned and saw us and immediately started whispering before approaching.
“Hi, Holly,” Posey said, coming over to kiss me hello. Trish and Mary did the same.
“Hi, Holly,” said Emilia, faux-pity infusing her voice. “How are you doing? You poor thing . . . I’ve been thinking of you during what must be an extremely difficult and unbearable time,” she said, making a sad face like one a child would draw, with an exaggerated downward arch of the mouth, as Mary and Posey looked on.
“She’s fine, actually,” Kiki said. I was kind of embarrassed because it was obvious from her tone that she wanted to send the gang packing.
“How are you guys? I feel like I haven’t even seen you guys in forever.” Translation: They had stopped inviting me everywhere. Not that I cared. But Posey’s distance seemed to get under my skin a bit more than the other twos’. “How was your summer?” I asked with a smile.
“Uh-oh,” chimed in Posey. “Don’t get her started on her rental.”
“It was the pits,” said Emilia. “We get out there, after signing the contract—half a mil for three months in Montauk—unpack the four kids with all their stuff, all the staff, only to discover the central air is kaput. Broke. Unfixable.” She threw her hands up, shaking her head at the horror.
“Can you imagine?” added Mary, hand to throat, with an intonation that put the catastrophe on par with the Hindenburg.
