by Emily Giffin
“Have you lost weight? You feel tiny,” I asked, backing up to look at her. Other than brisk walks and swims at the Y, Julie never worked out, and she was built like a delicate bird. Sort of the opposite of her personality. “Tinier than usual, I should say.”
“I don’t think so,” she said, pulling at the waistband of her khaki shorts and glancing down to check the space between the fabric and her stomach. “I don’t have a scale, so I’m not really sure.”
“You don’t have a scale?” I said, thinking I weighed myself at least twice a day, mostly out of mindless habit but also due to general vigilance. My being thin was so important to Kirk—and so it had become that way to me, too.
“Nope. Not since I caught the girls weighing themselves,” she said as we each took a rocking chair. “I didn’t think much about it until Reece declared herself the winner because she was a pound lighter than Paige.” She shook her head as she snapped her fingers, making a crisp sound. “I nipped that in the bud.”
“God, you’re so good about that stuff,” I said, wondering if it was ever tough for Paige, who had inherited more of Adam’s stocky build; Reece looked just like her mother. I was ashamed of having the thought and saw it as another sign that I’d been focusing on the wrong things. I felt sure it wasn’t something Julie had ever worried about. Her lack of shallowness, coupled with feelings of self-acceptance, transferred to everyone close to her, most of all her daughters. “It’s a good thing I had a boy. I’d have screwed up a girl even worse….”
“No, you wouldn’t have,” she said but conspicuously did not deny that I’d screwed up Finch. I told myself this wasn’t the time to get defensive. I needed to have a thick skin. After all, if I’d wanted someone to help me take the easy way out, I would have called Melanie.
“Anyway,” I said.
“Yes. Anyway…would you like some lunch? I made some chicken salad.”
“No, thanks,” I said. “I’m not really hungry right now.”
“Something to drink? Coffee? Sweet tea? A glass of rosé?”
Although I actually could have used some caffeine, I didn’t want to interrupt the moment. I wanted us to stay exactly where we were, for as long as possible. “No, thanks,” I said. “Where are Adam and the girls?”
“They’re running errands….I gave them a very long list.”
I smiled and thanked her, knowing she’d done this for my sake, probably changing her own plans for the day, too.
“Of course. No problem,” she said. “So tell me, what’s going on? I assume this is about Finch?”
“Yes and no,” I said, then caught her up on everything. Our visit to Tom and Lyla. Finch’s apology. The tickets to see Luke Bryan. Finch’s lies. Kirk’s lies. All of them.
“Bastard,” Julie said under her breath. “I knew it.”
As she started to get all worked up, I raised my hand and stopped her. “Yeah. But honestly, that’s the least of it,” I said. “It’s more…the kind of husband and father he is. The person he’s become. It’s everything….I think the affair is just a symptom of it all….And I just can’t do it anymore.”
“Meaning?” she said softly.
“Meaning…I think I want a divorce,” I said.
Julie didn’t miss a beat. It was almost as if she’d been waiting for this. “Okay,” she said. “Let’s back up. Did you find something? Texts or receipts?”
“No. Just the pocket dial—and what Tom told me he overheard,” I said. “I know it’s circumstantial, but it’s just a feeling I have. A very strong gut feeling.”
“And there’s a lot to that,” she said. “But I still think you need a PI. I know a guy in Nashville. He’s incredible.”
I shook my head. “I don’t need proof. I know what he’s doing.”
“Yes, but we still should have it. Tennessee’s a fault-based state.”
“Which means?”
“Which means adultery is a factor in alimony. It’s also leverage. Kirk cares so much about how things look to people.”
“No, he doesn’t,” I said, shaking my head.
“Well, he cares about how things look to some people. That’s why he does his philanthropy bullshit.”
“Maybe,” I said. “But those people give him a pass no matter what…because of his money. They love him for his money.”
“I know,” she said. “It’s disgusting.”
We rocked in silence for several seconds, both of us looking out over her front lawn, which consisted of a small square patch of grass, a beautiful magnolia, and a row of white hydrangea bushes planted along the front of the porch. The landscape was so simple it reminded me of a child’s drawing, right down to the yellow butterfly fluttering on a flower near us. I could tell Julie was watching it, too, both of us tracing its flight, in and out of the dappled sunlight.
“So you’ll be my lawyer?” I said.
Julie sighed. “I don’t know, Nina—”
“What do you mean you don’t know? You’re my best friend and you’re a Tennessee divorce lawyer.” I let out a dry laugh.
“I know. And I’m happy to take your case,” she said, as I noted her telling use of the word happy in this context. “And I certainly can handle it. But you may want to consider some bigger hitters.”
“Bigger hitters?” I said. “C’mon, Jules. Nobody hits harder than you.”
“True,” she said, smiling back at me. “But you know what I mean. There are lawyers who specialize in high-net-worth and celebrity clients….”
I shook my head and said, “No. I want you.”
“Okay, then. You have me. Always.”
I nodded and said, “So what’s next?”
“We get the PI…and you gather all the information you can. Any financial information, bank statements, investments, a list of all your assets….We’ll eventually subpoena records. But get everything you can for now. Once we get our ducks in a row, we will file a complaint. That’s followed by a mandatory sixty-day cooling-off period. From there, we do discovery….”
My stomach lurched. “So you think this will go to trial?”
“Maybe. Probably.”
“But don’t a lot of people settle? Or do mediation?”
“Yes,” she said. “But honestly, I don’t see mediation working with Kirk. Do you? He doesn’t know the word compromise.”
“Yeah…He’s going to be so shocked.”
“Oh, will the poor thing feel betrayed?” she said, her voice dripping with disdain.
“You really hate him, don’t you?”
She stared at me for a beat, as if trying to restrain herself—for the sake not of her new client but of her old friend. Yet she couldn’t help herself.
“Yeah,” she said. “I hate him, Nina.”
“Since when?” I asked, thinking back to when Kirk had sold his company, feeling sure she would cite that as a turning point.
“Um. Since the night I met him. When he cheated in putt-putt.”
Looking up at the sky, at least as much of it as I could see from the porch, I rewound to the first time I’d brought Kirk to my hometown from Vandy. I actually had a photograph from that night, which was unusual, because it was pre–camera phones. In it, Kirk, Julie, Adam, and I were all standing in the run-down parking lot of the Putt-Putt Fun Center on Bluff City Highway. The three of us from Bristol were wearing sneakers and T-shirts, but Kirk had on a polo shirt, khakis, and driving moccasins—which at the time I just thought of as loafers with funny rubber things on the bottom.
“What did he do, exactly?” I said, picturing him nudging the ball with his foot—or taking an extra turn. The joking, impatient ways a lot of people cheated in minigolf.
“He was keeping the scorecard, of course,” she said. “And Adam kept busting him shaving off his own strokes. Blatant cheating.”
“
Wow…What else?” I said.
“What do you mean ‘what else’? Other than the cheating?” She raised her eyebrows. “Isn’t that sort of like saying ‘other than his shitty character’?”
“I meant what else do you remember,” I said, feeling the tiniest bit defensive. Not of Kirk per se. But of the whole notion that his actions that night automatically translated to irredeemable character flaws. “Other than the minutiae around minigolf?”
“Minigolf,” she said with stone seriousness, “is a metaphor for life.”
I smiled and said, “Oh, really?”
“Yes. I mean, think about it….Do you take it seriously? Too seriously? Do you enjoy it? Do you keep careful score? Do you get upset when you lose? Do you cheat? And if you do cheat, how do you react when you’re busted? Are you sheepish? Sorry? Do you do it again?”
I held up my palms and said, “Okay, okay…All I’m saying is—I think cheating on your wife is a little worse than cheating at putt-putt….And I don’t think Kirk was that bad back then,” I said. “After all, I fell in love with him, right?”
“Did you?” she asked, looking more than a little skeptical.
“Uh…yeah. I married him, Julie,” I said, hearing how lame my comeback sounded given everything that was happening in our lives.
She heard it, too, raising her eyebrows as I continued.
“I don’t regret our whole marriage. That would be akin to regretting Finch….I just regret…the past few years. Since Kirk sold his business. I think that’s when he changed,” I said, stopping short of mentioning money directly.
Julie nodded and said, “Yeah. Well, he definitely got worse after that. More arrogant, more entitled…What’s the saying? Money makes you more of what you already are?”
“Yeah.” I nodded. “Something like that.”
Julie looked thoughtful for a beat, as if trying to figure something out, then said, “You know, in the past decade, I don’t think I’ve ever been around Kirk for longer than thirty minutes in which he didn’t excuse himself to go ‘make a call.’ ” She imitated his deep voice, then muttered, “Self-important prick.”
I winced at her words, knowing she was right, thinking of how he couldn’t bear to be separated from his phone. In fact, the only time I’d seen him without it for any length of time was at the Masters every year, where cellphones were absolutely forbidden—no matter how wealthy or powerful you were. It was one of the few rules he actually respected—perhaps unsurprisingly, given the elitist context.
“Like, nobody’s that important. Herman Frankel doesn’t do that, and he’s a freaking brain surgeon,” Julie continued, referring to the valedictorian of our class, with whom Julie was still friends. “He never mentions his work unless other people bring it up. And he won’t even make plans to go out if he’s on call because he doesn’t want to have to insult people by stepping away from the table.”
She was on a roll now. Part of me was embarrassed for my husband—and myself for putting up with his behavior for so long—but I also felt oddly comforted by her rant. It was almost like therapy or validation.
“He’s such an insufferable snob,” she continued. “I mean, Nina, forget what he can afford. Because I get that—if you can pay for nice hotels and first class, fine, get your nice hotels and first class. I’d do it, too, if I could….I don’t begrudge Kirk all the perks that come with wealth and success. But he thinks of himself as a higher class of person. Like he, along with his rich, white, male friends, is truly better than the rest of us.”
“I know,” I murmured, thinking of all the offhanded disparaging remarks he’d made about average, hardworking Americans, the kinds of people you might see at a professional sporting event or an amusement park or the zoo. The public, he called them, and that was the nicer of the terms. I’d also heard him use riffraff, dregs, proles, and plebs. He usually pretended to be joking, but the sentiment was real. That was how he felt. If something was accessible or populated by “those people,” he wanted no part of it.
Even Disney World, I thought, reminding Julie how much I had wanted to take Finch when he was little, and how Kirk had refused to go until he learned about the VIP tour guides that movie stars used. How you could access everything from the backs of the rides. Circumvent all lines. Avoid the commoners. Yet he still managed to squeeze in remarks about all the “fat people with their turkey legs who were riding in scooters because they were too lazy to walk.” And the worst part was that he would sometimes make such comments within earshot of Finch. I shushed him, of course, or came right out and told him that wasn’t nice, but I still worried that some of those ideas would rub off on our son.
Julie listened, her lips pursed, then chimed in with more. “And he only pays attention to people who have a lot of money. Otherwise he sees right through you, doesn’t give you the time of day. Do you know he has never, once, asked me about my work? And I’m an attorney. So forget Adam’s job. It’s as if fighting fires is…is…I don’t know.” She threw up her hands, at a rare loss for words.
“Is equivalent to being in jail?” I said.
“Exactly,” she said. “Although that might depend on what kind of jail. In his eyes, a white-collar criminal in a cushy federal prison probably has more status than a firefighter.”
I nodded, thinking of how Kirk still defended Bob Heller, a neighbor of ours who had been sent to prison for running an elaborate Ponzi scheme. And it wasn’t because Kirk believed in mercy, redemption, or forgiveness—that would have been admirable—but because he insisted his friend was a “good guy” who got a “raw deal” and “hadn’t ripped anyone off that much.”
“So Adam hates Kirk, too?” I said, wondering how much they’d discussed us.
Julie shrugged. “I wouldn’t say hate. Adam doesn’t care enough to hate him. And honestly, I wouldn’t either except for the fact that he’s married to my best friend. I hate him for you. And for Finch.”
And there it was. The point of no return. My realization that if I didn’t divorce Kirk for me, I had to do it for my son. Staying in the marriage any longer was giving tacit approval to everything Kirk had done. Finch needed to know that there were repercussions to his father’s entitled mindset and selfish behavior. I had to make him see that there was another way to be.
Tears stung my eyes, and I tried to blink them back, telling myself I had to be strong. But I couldn’t. I expected Julie to glance away, as most people do when you start to cry, no matter how close they are to you.
But Julie didn’t look away. Instead she fiercely held my gaze and my hand, telling me it was time—high fucking time—and that Kirk wouldn’t be ignoring her anymore.
I thought kissing Finch was a distinct possibility when he invited me over, especially after he made it a point to say that his parents wouldn’t be home. But I didn’t think we’d do anything more than that.
Backing up, I should say that I’m not a virgin, but I’m also not a slut. I’ve only had sex with one guy. His name was—still is—Caleb King. We vaguely knew each other from middle school, where he’d been a grade ahead of me. But then he went on to Stratford, the public high school near us, and I went to Windsor the following year. So he never really crossed my mind again until last spring, when we ran into each other at the Gulch, shopping at Urban Outfitters. I didn’t notice him at first (I get really focused when I’m shopping), but then he tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Hey, didn’t you go to Dalewood?”
I put down the T-shirt I’d been considering and said, “Yeah. Hi. It’s Caleb, right?”
“Yeah. That’s right,” he said, smiling at me. “And you’re…Layla?”
I smiled back at him. “Close. Lyla.”
He asked me where I went to school, and after we covered those basics and a few others, he told me I had beautiful eyes. A few minutes of flirting later, he asked if I wanted to hang sometime. I was more flattered
than psyched by the idea, but I still said yes, then gave him my number before he left the store.
It was all good until Grace, who had been standing impatiently nearby, started dissing Caleb, saying he was annoying and came on too strong. Maybe he had been a little aggressive, but I somehow got the feeling that she had a bigger problem with the fact that Caleb was (still is) black. It surprised me because I’d never thought of Grace as being at all racist, and she certainly had never said anything negative about our friend Hattie (who is white) dating Logan (who is black). I’d once even heard her say something about how cute their babies would be. So I gave her the benefit of the doubt. Until she threw out the word ghetto, that is.
“Ghetto?” I said. “Caleb lives in my neighborhood.”
“I don’t mean where he lives,” she said, ignoring the actual definition of the word. “I mean…his whole look.”
“What about his look?” I said, then reminded her that we were all shopping in the same clothing store.
“He was wearing a gold chain.”
“I think some guys can pull off a chain,” I said, even though I didn’t love jewelry on guys, either.
“Maybe. If you’re, like, Brad Pitt or Robert Pattinson.”
“You mean white?” I asked, which was as close as I came to calling her out.
I waited for her to get defensive, but either my question was too subtle for her or she just didn’t mind the implication, because she sloughed the comment off with a shrug. “Okay. Maybe the chain’s okay, but nobody can pull off those saggy jeans,” she said, making her way to the cash register with about seven items, none of which were on sale.
“His jeans weren’t sagging,” I said, empty-handed and superannoyed. “They were just…loose-fitting.”
“What’s the diff?”
“The diff…is…his jeans weren’t falling down,” I said, thinking that I distinctly remembered watching Caleb walk away from us. “I know for a fact his boxers weren’t showing. At all.”
Grace shrugged. “Still. I just think you could do better. Way better,” she said, then went on this whole tirade about how I needed to aim high in life, and wasn’t that why I was at Windsor in the first place?
