After I Do

by Taylor Jenkins Reid

  part two

  NOVEMBER RAIN

  I just need you to hear what I’m about to say and not try to talk me out of it. Don’t judge me. Or say I’m making a mistake, even if you think I am. Making a mistake, I mean. Because I probably am. But I just need you to listen and then tell me everything is going to be OK. That’s what I need, basically. I need you to tell me everything is going to be OK, even if it probably isn’t.”

  “OK.” Rachel agrees immediately. She doesn’t really have a choice, does she? I mean, I’ve shown up on her doorstep unannounced at nine A.M. on a Saturday, screaming, “Don’t judge me!” So she just has to go with it. “Do you want to come in? Or—” she starts to ask me, but I don’t wait for her to finish.

  “Ryan and I are splitting up.”

  “Oh, my God,” she says, stunned. She stares at me for a moment and then unfreezes, opening the door wide for me to step in. I do. She’s still in her pajamas, which seems reasonable. She probably just woke up. Chances are, she was having a perfectly nice dream when I rang her doorbell.

  Once I walk past her and she shuts the door behind me, she can see I’ve packed a bag. It’s all coming together for her.

  She takes the bag from my shoulder and puts it down on the couch. “What did you—I mean, how did this—how did the two of you—are you OK? That’s what’s important. How are you feeling?”

  I shrug. Most of the time when I shrug, it’s because I’m indifferent. And yet now, even though my shrug means a million things at once, none of them is indifference.

  “Do you want to talk about why you’re splitting up?” Rachel says calmly. “Or should I just make you some . . . I don’t know. What do people eat when they are divorcing?”

  “We’re not divorcing,” I say, moving past her and taking a seat on her couch.

  “Oh,” she says, taking a seat beside me. “You said you were splitting up, so I just assumed . . .” She curls her feet in, sitting cross-legged and facing me. Her pajama pants are white with blue and salmon-colored stripes. Her tank top is the same salmon as the stripes on the bottom. She must have bought them as a set. My sister is exactly the person who wears the set together. I am exactly the person who cannot find a single matching pair.

  “We’re breaking up,” I say. “Like, we are not going to be seeing each other for a while, but then, you know, we’re going to give it another shot.”

  “So you’re separating, then? It’s a trial separation?”

  “No.”

  “So . . . Lauren, what am I missing here?”

  “You aren’t supposed to judge.”

  “I’m not judging,” she says, taking my hand. “I’m trying to understand.”

  “We’re going on a break. We can’t live in the same place anymore. We can’t stand each other.” The look on her face confirms that she’s known this for a while, but I don’t acknowledge it.

  “But you’re not getting a divorce because . . . ?” she asks me. Her voice is gentle. I think that’s maybe the thing I need most right now. I’m functioning pretty similarly to a dog, in that, really, the words themselves don’t matter. I’m just listening for high-pitched tones, sounds that are smooth and soothing. “I mean, if you guys have been having problems for a while, if it’s bad enough that you don’t want to live together, then what is stopping you from just breaking up altogether?”

  I take a moment and think about how to answer. I mean, the word divorce never came up.

  Obviously, it was in my head. I thought about saying it. But I never wrote it down on that sheet of options. And while I can’t imagine that Ryan didn’t think of it, didn’t consider it, didn’t almost say it, something stopped him, too.

  I think that’s important. Neither of us suggested it. Neither of us said that this thing we have together, this thing that we have broken and is no longer working, neither of us said that we should throw it away.

  “I don’t know why,” I say when I finally answer her. “Because I made a promise, I guess. Or, I don’t know, I’m hoping there’s a third option for us besides living unhappily or giving up entirely.”

  Rachel considers this. “So how long is this break?” She says “break” as if it’s a new word that I made up. “So how long is this flarffensnarler?” That’s how she says it.

  I breathe in. I breathe out. “One year.” My resolve starts to melt away. My composure starts to crack. The true pain of what I’m doing starts to slowly seep in, not unlike the way the sun shines brightly enough to break up a cloudy day.

  Rachel can see I’m starting to cry before the tears actually form in my eyes, and it further softens her into exactly the Rachel I need. She does not need to know the details. She wants only to hold me and tell me everything will be OK, even if it won’t be. So that’s what she does; she holds me, and she runs her hands through my hair. And she says what I’ve been waiting all morning to hear.

  “It really will be OK,” she says, her voice almost cooing to me. “I know you told me to say it. But it’s actually true. This will all be OK.”

  “How do you know?” I shouldn’t ask her things like this. I told her to say something. She said it. I can’t press her on it. I can’t try to get her to say things I haven’t scripted for her. But she seems so confident right now, so sure that I will be OK, that I want to know more about this version of me she sees. How is the Lauren in her head going to be OK? And how can I be more like that Lauren?

  “I know it will be OK because everything is OK in the end. And if it’s not OK, it’s not the end.”

  I pull back and look at her. “Isn’t that from one of your mugs?”

  Rachel shrugs. “Just because it’s on a mug doesn’t mean it’s not true.”

  “No,” I say, lying down, my head in her lap. “I guess you’re right.”

  “You know what else I know?” she says.

  “What?”

  “I know you have a really great year ahead of you.”

  “I find that hard to believe. I’m turning thirty, and I’m on the verge of divorce.”

  “I thought you weren’t getting divorced?” Rachel says.

  I roll my eyes at her. “It’s hyperbole, Rachel. A rhetorical device.” I am at my most condescending when I’m at my least secure. I guess the problem is that I don’t know how much of a hyperbole it is. I’ll insist to everyone, my sister included, that it’s not going to happen. But what if it does? I mean, what if it does?

  “No, I’m serious,” she says. “This part is hard. But I know you, and you don’t do things that you shouldn’t do. You don’t take this stuff lightly. Neither does Ryan. He’s a good man. And you’re a good woman. If the two of you decided this was a good idea, that’s because it’s a good idea. And good ideas are never a bad idea.”

  It’s quiet for a minute before we both start laughing.

  “OK, that last part didn’t make a whole lot of sense, but you know what I meant.”

  I look up at her, and she looks down at me. I always know what she means. We’ve always had a way of understanding each other. Maybe more to the point, we’ve always had a way of believing in each other. I need to be believed in right now.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” Rachel says to me. “Not under these circumstances, obviously. But I’m glad you’re here.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah, it’s nice to see you, just you.”

  “With no Ryan?”

  “Yeah,” she says. “I love Ryan, but I love you more. It will be nice to have a year of just you.”

  She’s better with words than she thinks she is, because for the first time, I can see something to look forward to this year. It will be nice to have a year of just me.

  • • •

  “So, delicate question, I guess,” Rachel says to me. We are at her kitchen table. She has made Cinnamon Toast Crunch–­encrusted French toast with fres
h whipped cream. I want to take a picture, it looks so gorgeous and decadent. She puts the plate in front of me as she speaks, and I immediately stop listening to whatever she is saying. I know this will taste even better than it looks. Which is saying a lot. But this is Rachel’s forte. She makes Oreo pancakes. She makes red velvet crepes with cream cheese filling. She cannot make a casserole or an egg dish to save her life, but anything that requires a bag of sugar and heavy cream, and she’s your woman.

  “This looks incredible,” I say to her, grabbing my fork. I press the end of it against the corner of the bread and grind it against the plate until I’ve set my piece free. It tastes exactly like I imagined. It takes like everything is fine. “Oh, my God,” I say.

  “I know, right?” Rachel has absolutely no qualms about admitting that what she has made tastes great. She does it in a way that implies she had nothing to do with it. You can tell her that her pumpkin spice cake is the most delicious thing you’ve ever tasted, and she will say something like, “Oh, tell me about it. It’s sinful,” and you get the impression that she is complimenting the recipe instead of herself.

  “Anyway,” I say, after I have finished chewing, “what is your delicate question?”

  “Well,” she says, licking the whipped cream off her fork. “Who gets . . .” She pauses and then sort of gives up. She doesn’t know how to say it.

  “Thumper,” I say, so that she doesn’t have to. “Who gets Thumper?”

  “Right, who gets Thumper?”

  I take a deep breath. “I get him for the first two months just so everything doesn’t change at once for him.” I feel stupid when I say this. Ryan and I act as if Thumper is a child, and it comes out in the smallest and most embarrassing ways. But Rachel doesn’t bat an eyelash.

  “And then Ryan gets him?”

  “Yeah, for two months after that. That brings us to January, and we will renegotiate.”

  “Got it.”

  “It sounds stupid, right?” I say. The truth is, I was eager to agree to the idea when Ryan came up with it. It meant that no matter what, we would see each other in two months, and that gave me a sense of security. It felt like training wheels on a bike.

  “No,” Rachel says, not even looking at me. She continues to eat her breakfast. “Not at all. Everyone has their own way of doing things.”

  “Well, what, then?” I ask.

  Rachel looks . . . I don’t know. There is something going on with her face. She seems to be holding something back. “What do you mean?” she asks.

  “What are you thinking that you’re not saying?”

  “I thought I was supposed to be supportive!” Rachel says, half laughing and completely defensive. “I can’t tell you every little thought in my head and tell you everything you want to hear at the same time.”

  I laugh. “Yeah, OK,” I say.

  We are quiet for a minute. I have scarfed down all of my food. There is nothing left to do but stare at my white plate. I try to move the crumbs around with my fork.

  “But what is it, though?” I say. I want to know. I’m not sure why. Maybe I need the truth more than I need to hear what I want to hear. Maybe there is almost never a time when you don’t need the truth. Or maybe it’s just that you need the truth the most at the times you think you don’t want to hear it. “Just tell me. I can handle it.”

  Rachel sighs. “I just . . .” she starts. She looks up at me. “I feel bad for Ryan.”

  I’m not sure what I thought she was going to say, but it wasn’t that. I expected something about how I’m taking the Thumper thing too seriously. I expected something about how maybe Ryan and I should give it another try. I expected that maybe she was going to say the one thing that I fear is actually true: that I’m being a whiny-ass baby and that every marriage is hard, and I should just shut up and go home and quit this bullshit, because not being happy is not a real problem.

  But she doesn’t say that. She actually tears up and says, “I just . . . he lost his wife, his house, and his dog on the same day.”

  I don’t say anything to her. I just kind of look at her. I let it sink in.

  She’s right. I used to love that man so much. I used to be the person who made sure he had everything he wanted. When did I become the person who took it all away?

  I start to cry. I put my head down on the table, and Rachel rushes to my side.

  “I’m sorry,” she says. “I’m sorry! See? I’m not good at this. I suck at it. I’m the shittiest person at this. You are a good person, and you’re doing the right thing.”

  “Thumper is just for two months,” I say. “The whole thing is only for a year.”

  “I know!” Rachel says, holding me, squeezing my shoulders. “Ryan is fine. I know he’s fine. He’s one of those guys, you know, who’s always fine.”

  “You think he’s fine?” I ask her, lifting my head off the table. It is somehow awful to think that he is fine. It is almost as awful as thinking about him being miserable. I cannot stand the thought that he is OK or not OK.

  “No,” Rachel says. I can sense her desperation to get out of this conversation. She can’t say the right thing, and she knows it, and maybe she’s a little annoyed at the situation I’ve put her in. “Ryan is fine, as in ‘He will be fine.’ Not like ‘He’s totally fine.’”

  “Right,” I say, composing myself. “We will both be fine.”

  “Right,” she says, grasping for the calm tone in my voice. “Fine.”

  So that’s what I aim for. I aim for fine.

  I am fine.

  Ryan is fine.

  We will be fine.

  One day, this will all be fine.

  There is a big difference between something that is fine and something that will be fine, but I decide to pretend, for now, that they are the same.

  “You know you have to tell Mom soon, right?” Rachel says to me.

  “I know,” I say.

  “And Charlie,” she says. “But who knows with Charlie? That could go either way.”

  I nod, already lost to my imagination. I think about telling them. I think about how Charlie will crack some joke. I think about whether my mom will be disappointed in me. If she’ll feel the same way I do, that I’ve failed. After a minute, I recognize that this line of thinking is going nowhere fast. “You know what?” I say.

  “What?”

  “They’ll be fine.”

  Rachel smiles at me. “Yes, they will. They will be fine.”

  I go home on Sunday night at seven o’clock, the time that Ryan and I agreed on. I knew he would be gone. That was the whole point. But as I open the door to my empty house, the fact that he is gone really hits me. I am alone.

  My house looks as if I was robbed. Ryan didn’t take anything that we hadn’t discussed ahead of time, and yet it feels as if he has taken everything we owned. Sure, the major furniture is there, but where are the DVDs? Where is the bookshelf ? Where is the map of Los Angeles that we had mounted and framed? It is all gone.

  Thumper runs toward me, his floppy tan ears bouncing on his head, and I fall down when his paws hit me right on my hips, knocking me off balance. I hit the hardwood with a thud, but I barely feel it. All I can feel is this dog loving me, licking my face, jumping all over me. He nudges my ears with his nose. He looks so happy to see me. I am home. It doesn’t look the way it used to. But it is my home.

  I walk to the back of the house and feed Thumper. He stands there, looking up at me for a moment, and then chows down.

  I turn on the light in the dining room, and I see a note that Ryan has left. I wasn’t anticipating that he would leave anything. But seeing the note there, I want to run to it and tear it open. What is there left to say? I want to know what there is left to say. My hands rip apart the envelope before my brain has even told them to.

  His handwriting is so childish. Men’s handwriting is r
arely identifiable by any sense of masculinity. It’s only identifiable by the lack of sophistication. They must decide in sixth grade to start worrying about other things.

  Dear Lauren,

  Make no mistake: I do love you. Just because I don’t feel the love in my heart doesn’t mean I don’t know it’s there. I know it’s there. I’m leaving because I’m going to find it. I promise you that.

  Please do not call or text me. I need to be alone. So do you. I am serious about this time away. Even if it’s hard, we have to do it. It’s the only way we can get to a better place. If you call me, I will not answer. I don’t want to back down from this. I will not go back to what we had.

  In that spirit, I wanted to wish you a Happy Birthday now, even though I’m a few weeks in advance. I know thirty is going to be a hard year, but it will be a good year, and since I won’t be talking to you on the day, I wanted to let you know I’ll be thinking of you.

  Be good to my boy, Thumper. I’ll call you in two months to discuss the handoff. Maybe we can meet at a rest stop like a pair of divorced parents—even though we are neither.

  Love,

  Ryan

  P.S. I fed the beast dinner before I left.

  I look down at Thumper, who is now standing at my feet, looking up at me.

  “You little trickster,” I say to him. “You already ate.”

  I read the letter again and again. I break apart the words. They hurt me and fill me with hope. They make me cry, and they make me angry. Eventually, I fold the letter back up and throw it in the trash. I stare at it in there on the top of the pile. It feels wrong to throw it away. As if I should keep it. As if it should be kept in a scrapbook of our relationship.

  I go into the bedroom and look for the shoebox I keep on the very top shelf. I can’t reach it on my own. I go into the hallway closet and get the step stool. I go back into the bedroom closet and strain my fingers to reach the edge of the box. It falls down onto the closet floor, busting open. Papers fan across the carpet. Ticket stubs. Old Post-it notes. Faded photos. And then I see what I’m looking for.