After I Do

by Taylor Jenkins Reid

  She looks up. “Sorry,” she says, turning the key. Then she looks at me. “You really think I’d be good at it, though? The bakery thing?”

  I nod my head. “Better than good. Seriously.”

  She doesn’t respond, but I can see she takes it to heart. “Merry Christmas, by the way!” she says as we hit the freeway. “I can’t believe I forgot to say that this morning.”

  “Merry Christmas!” I say back to her. “I think it’s gonna be a good one.”

  “Me, too,” she says. Her gaze is straight ahead at the road, but her mind isn’t on this freeway.

  My phone buzzes, and I look down at it. I think, for a split second, that it might be Ryan. Maybe on Christmas, we can bend the rules.

  But it’s not Ryan. Of course it’s not.

  It’s David.

  Merry Christmas, new friend.

  I text back: Merry Christmas to you, too!

  It’s not from Ryan, but I’m smiling nonetheless.

  Merry Christmas!” my mother calls to us before she even opens the door. You can hear the thrill in her voice. This is always the happiest day of her year. Her children are home. She gets to give us presents. We’re all on our best behavior. In general, she gets to treat us as if we are still kids.

  She opens the door wide, and Rachel and I both say “Merry Christmas!” in unison. When we get inside, Grandma Lois is sitting on the couch. She goes to get up, and I tell her she doesn’t have to.

  “Nonsense,” she says. “I’m not an invalid.”

  She takes a look at the desserts on the table. “Oh, Rachel, they are so gorgeous. Look at the detail on those cookies. I’m sorry to say I can’t have any. I read recently that they have done studies correlating white sugar to cancer.”

  “No, Mom,” my mom says. “Rachel made it all sugar-free.” She turns to Rachel for confirmation. “Right?”

  “Yep,” Rachel says, suddenly proud of herself. “Even the sugar cookies!”

  “So I guess they’re just cookies, then?” my mom jokes, and she is not much of a joker, so you can see her eyes start to crinkle as she holds back a smile, waiting for other people to laugh.

  “Good one, Mom!” I say, and high-five her. “I tried that one earlier today.”

  Everyone starts to talk about the things you talk about at Christmas. What is cooking, when it will be done, how good everything smells. Grandma usually takes over Mom’s kitchen every Christmas, making everything from scratch, but this year, my mother lets us know, she pitched in.

  “I made the sweet potatoes and the green beans,” she says proudly. Something about her childlike pride reminds me of the can of snow.

  “Oh!” I say, “Look, Mom! Rachel and I brought spray snow.” I pull out the cans. “Awesome, right?”

  She grabs them from my hands and shakes them immediately. “Oh, this is great! Do you guys want to spray, or should I?”

  “Let them do it, Leslie,” my grandmother says to my mother. The way she says it, the way it’s a suggestion that should be heeded, the way it’s laced with love and derision, makes me realize that my grandmother is sort of a bossy mom. I always think of my grandmother as my grandmother. I never think about the fact that she is my mother’s mother. My mom isn’t at the top of the totem pole, which is what it often feels like. Rather, she’s just one piece of a long line of women. Women who first see themselves as daughters and then grow to be mothers and eventually grandmothers and one day great-grandmothers and ancestors. I’m still in phase one.

  My grandmother sneaks a piece of sugar cookie and eats it, but it’s not a very stealthy move, because we all see her.

  “Oh, my!” she says. “These are fantastic. You’re sure you didn’t use any sugar?”

  Rachel shakes her head. “Nope, none.”

  “Leslie, try this,” she says to my mother.

  My mother takes a bite. “Wow, Rachel.”

  “Wait, are they that good?” I say. I was with her all morning; you’d think I’d have tried one. I take a bite. “Jesus, Rachel,” I say, and my grandmother slaps the back of her hand against my arm.

  “Lauren! Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain on Christmas!”

  “Sorry, Grandma.”

  “Where is Uncle Fletcher?” Rachel asks, and my mom starts shaking her head and waving her hands behind Grandma’s back. The classic “Don’t ask” signal, signaled classically too late.

  “Oh.” Grandma sighs. “He decided not to come after all. I think, maybe, you know, he needs some time to himself.”

  “Oh, that makes sense,” I say, trying to ease the conversation along. This seems to have made my grandmother a little sad.

  “No,” she says, nodding. “I think I’m realizing that your uncle is a little . . .” She lowers her voice to a whisper. “Weird.”

  She says it as if being “weird” is a thing people don’t speak about. Uncle Fletcher has never been in a relationship. He lives at home with his mother. He makes his living selling things on eBay and taking temp jobs. I’m pretty sure that if they release a computer game good enough, he will die playing it in his underwear.

  “You just figured this out now, Grandma?” Rachel asks. I’m surprised she’s feeling bold enough to say that—none of us talks about Uncle Fletcher’s eccentricities—but it seems to make my grandmother laugh.

  “Sweetheart, I once believed your grandfather when he told me you don’t get pregnant the first time you do it. That’s how we got Uncle Fletcher in the first place. So I’ve never been the sharpest tool in the shed.”

  If we don’t talk about Uncle Fletcher’s weirdness, we definitely don’t talk about my grandparents having sex. So after the comment sits in the air a bit, waiting for us all to realize it has actually been said, it cracks us open. My mother, Rachel, and I are laughing so hard we can’t breathe. My grandmother follows suit.

  “Grandma!” I say.

  Grandma shrugs. “Well, it’s true! What do you want from me?” We all catch our breath, and Grandma keeps the conversation going. “So where is Ryan today? Surely he’s not working on Christmas.”

  I just assumed that my mother would have done my dirty work for me and told my grandmother about what was happening. In fact, I assumed she told her months ago. I was sort of surprised that Grandma never called me to bring it up. And when I called her on Thanksgiving, I was pleasantly surprised when she didn’t mention anything. But it’s plain to see that she has no idea. Oh, the naiveté of wishful thinking.

  I look to Rachel, but she starts paying more attention to the cookies than necessary, averting everyone’s gaze, especially mine. My instinct is to make something up, to avoid this conversation and put it off for another day, but my mother is giving me a look that makes it clear she’s expecting a braver version of her oldest daughter. So I try to be that daughter.

  “We . . .” I start. “We split up. Temporarily. We are separated. I guess that’s the term.”

  Grandma looks at me and cocks her head slightly, as if she can’t quite believe what she’s hearing. She looks at my mother, her face saying, What do you have to say about this? And my mother gestures back to me, her arms saying, If you have a problem, you tell her yourself. My grandmother looks back to me and takes a breath. “OK, what does that mean?”

  “It means that we reached a point where we were no longer happy, and we decided that we wanted more out of . . . marriage than that. So we split up. And I’m really hoping that after we spend this time apart, we will find a way to . . . make it work.”

  “And you think being apart will do that?”

  “Yes,” I say. “I do. I think we sort of pushed each other to the brink, and we both need some air.”

  “Did he cheat on you? Is that what’s happened?”

  “No,” I say. “Absolutely not. He wouldn’t do that.”

  “Did he hit you?”

 
“Grandma! No!”

  She throws her hands up in the air and back down on the counter. “Well, I don’t get it.”

  I nod. “I thought you might not, which is why I haven’t broached it with you.” Rachel is so clearly avoiding being a part of this conversation, she might as well be whistling off to the side.

  “So you just decided you weren’t ‘happy’?” She uses air quotes when she says “happy,” as if it’s mine alone, a word I made up, a word that doesn’t belong in this conversation.

  “You don’t think being happy is important?”

  “In a long-term marriage?”

  “Yes.”

  “Not only is it not the most important thing, but I would argue that it’s not even all that possible.”

  “To be happy at all?”

  “To be happy the whole time.”

  It’s so confusing, isn’t it? I mean, why fill our minds with everlasting love and then berate us for believing in it?

  “But don’t you think that it’s something to strive for? To try to be happy the whole time? To try to not just grin and bear your marriage but to thrive in it?”

  “Is that what you think you’re doing?”

  “I believe this to be the best way to learn how to love my husband the way I want to. Yes.”

  “And is it working?”

  Is it working? Is it working? I have absolutely no idea if it’s working. That’s the whole problem. “Yes,” I tell her. I say it with purpose and with confidence. I say it as if there is no other answer. Maybe I say yes because I want her approval, because I want her to back off, because I want to put her in her place. But I think I say yes because I believe, on some level, that thoughts become words, and words become actions. Because if I start saying it’s working, maybe in a few days or a few months, I’ll look back and think, Absolutely. This is absolutely working. Maybe that conviction has to start right here, with a little white lie. “Yes, I do believe it’s working.”

  “How?”

  “How?”

  “Yes, how?”

  Now my mother and Rachel are not pretending to do anything else. They are listening intently, their ears and eyes aimed toward me.

  “Well, I have missed him far more than I ever realized I would. When he left, I thought I wasn’t in love with him anymore, but I didn’t realize just how much I did still love him. I do still love him. The minute he left, I felt the hole in my life that he filled. I couldn’t have done that without missing him, without losing him.”

  “One might argue that you can get that kind of perspective from a long weekend away. You got anything else?”

  I want to prove to her that I know what I’m doing. “I mean, I don’t know if it’s anything to talk about here,” I say.

  “Oh, please, Lauren. Let’s hear it.”

  I’m exasperated. “Fine. Fine. I can see now, now that he is gone, and I have real worries that he might be with someone else, I mean, I think he is with someone else. I know he is. And I’m jealous. At first, I got seethingly jealous. I realized that I had stopped seeing him as someone who, you know, was attractive, I guess. I was taking him for granted in that way. And now that I know that he is dating, it’s very clear to me what I had when I had it.”

  “So what you’re saying is that you forgot your husband was desirable, and now that you can see another woman desiring him, you remember?”

  “Sure,” I say. “You can say that.”

  “Do you have cocktail parties?”

  “Grandma, what are you talking about?” Rachel says, finally interjecting. I know my grandmother loves me. I know she wants what’s best for me. I know she has very specific ideas of what that is. So while I do feel defensive, I don’t entirely feel attacked.

  “I’m asking her a serious question. Lauren, do you have cocktail parties?”

  “No.”

  “Well, if you did, and you invited some young women, and you left your husband’s arm for a minute, you’d notice that he’d end up talking to a number of very pretty young ladies, who would be glad to take him off your hands. And you’d go home to have the best sex of your life.” She puts up her hand to wave us off before we ever start. “Excuse me for being vulgar. We’re all ladies here.”

  “That’s what worked for you, Grandma,” I say, pushing the image of my late grandfather flirting with young women and then having sex with my grandmother out of my mind. “Don’t you respect that something else might work for me?”

  My grandmother considers me. My mom looks at me, impressed. Rachel is staring at us, desperate to see what happens next. My grandmother grabs my hand. “Make no mistake, I respect you. But this is stupid. Marriage is about commitment. It’s about loyalty. It’s not about happiness. Happiness is secondary. And ultimately, marriage is about children.” She gives me a knowing look. “If you had a baby, no matter how unhappy you were together, you’d have stayed together. Children bind you. They connect you. That’s what marriage is about.”

  Everyone just sort of looks at her. Not saying anything. She can see that no one is going to agree with her. So she eats a cookie and wipes the crumbs off her fingers.

  “But you know, you kids these days. You do what you do. I can’t live your life for you. All I can do is love you.”

  That’s as much of a victory as anyone gets from Lois Spencer. I’ll take it.

  “You’re sure you still love me?” I ask, teasing. I have always, always, always already known the answer to that one.

  She smiles at me and kisses my cheek. “Yes, I most certainly do. And I admire your spirit. Always have.”

  I blush. I love my grandmother so much. She’s so cranky and such a know-it-all, but she loves me, and that love may be fierce and opinionated. But it is love.

  “One thing,” she says. “And this goes for all of you, actually.”

  “You’ve got our attention, Mom,” my mother says.

  “I’m old. And maybe I’m a traditionalist. But that doesn’t mean I don’t know what I’m talking about.”

  “We know, Grandma,” Rachel says.

  “What I’m saying is, I can try to respect the way you do things, but don’t forget that the old way works, too.”

  “What do you mean?” I ask her.

  “I mean, if you had hosted a cocktail party, and you had left him to his own devices, and you had flirted with other men and he’d seen it, or he had flirted with other women and you’d seen it, if you had spent a few weekends apart from each other sometimes, given each other some space now and again, maybe you wouldn’t need a whole year apart now. That’s all I’m saying.”

  The doorbell rings, and it ends the conversation. In mere moments, Charlie will be walking through the door with the mysterious Natalie. But long after my grandmother and I are done talking, her words stay in my mind. She might very well be right.

  • • •

  Natalie is gorgeous. She’s not gorgeous in a hot, sultry way. Or even a skinny, supermodel sort of way. She’s gorgeous in that way where she just looks healthy and happy, with a beautiful smile, in a pretty dress. She looks like she works out, eats well, and knows what clothes look good on her. Her laugh is bright and loud. She listens to you; she really looks at you when you’re speaking. And she’s thoughtful and well mannered, judging from the poinsettia she gives my mother. I know she had sex with my little brother in the bathroom of an airplane, but it’s hard to reconcile that with the person I see in front of me. The person in front of me brought Rocky Road fudge to Christmas.

  “I made it this morning,” she says.

  “Is it sugar-free, sweetheart?” my grandmother says, and Natalie is understandably confused.

  “Oh, no, I’m sorry,” she says. “I . . . didn’t know that that was . . .”

  “It’s fine,” my mom says. “My mother is being absurd.”

  “It’s not absurd
to want to ward off any further cancer,” my grandmother says. “But thank you so much, dear, for bringing it. We can give it to the dog.”

  Everyone stares at one another; even Charlie is at a loss for words. My mom doesn’t even have a dog.

  “I was joking!” Grandma says. “You all are so thick it’s farcical. Natalie, thank you for bringing the fudge. Sorry that this family can’t take a joke.”

  When Grandma turns her head, Charlie mouths “Sorry” to Natalie. It’s sweet. I think he may be trying to impress her. I’ve never seen Charlie try to impress anyone.

  “It’s so nice to meet you all,” Natalie says.

  “Come,” my mom says. “Let’s put the presents down by the tree. Can I get you two anything? Charlie, I know you probably want a beer. Natalie, I have some mulled wine?”

  “Oh.” Natalie shakes her head casually. “Water is fine.”

  Eventually, we all sit down by the tree.

  “So Natalie, tell us about yourself,” Rachel says.

  And Natalie, kind, sweet, naive Natalie, tries to answer, but Charlie steps in.

  “That’s such an annoying question, Rachel. What does that mean?”

  “Sorry,” Rachel says, shrugging defensively, as if she’s been falsely accused of a heinous crime. “I’ll try to be more specific next time.”

  The doorbell rings again, and my mother stands up to get it. She comes back in with Bill by her side.

  “Merry Christmas!” Bill announces to the room. He has gifts in his hands, and he puts them down at the tree. Everyone gets up and hugs. Mom gets him a beer.

  The small talk begins. People start asking one another questions. None of them is interesting. I learn that Natalie works in television casting. She’s from Idaho. In her spare time, she likes to pickle things. When she asks me if I’m married, Charlie interrupts.

  “Awkward topic,” he says, immediately sipping his beer. The entire family hears, and each one of them laughs. Every one of the sons of bitches laughs. And then I laugh, too. Because it’s funny, isn’t it? And when things are funny, it means they are no longer only sad.