The Divorce Party (11 page)

She hoists her bag higher on her shoulder, follows Nate up the stairs, toward his childhood bedroom, and tries not to focus on how today is starting to feel like that. A day of hidden truths: incredible finances, childhood friends, creepy two-hundred-person parties.

Instead, she focuses on the several black-and-white photographs lining the staircase. There are gorgeous photos of the family, and enormous landscape photographs, mostly of Montauk—though, not surprising, she is mostly drawn to the ones with Nate in them. But then her eyes catch on the one at the very top of the stairs, a large eight-by-ten: Gwyn and Thomas in the front seat of an old pickup truck, the highway behind them, Thomas’s arm straight out in a way that suggests to Maggie that he is the one shooting the photo. Gwyn, meanwhile, is kissing his neck. And he is laughing. He is really laughing.

Maggie stops in front of it, runs her finger along the black frame. It is a nice picture, but when she looks up to ask Nate about it, he is not there. He has gone on ahead, without her, which is her first real indication that he may actually be affected by what he’s heard in the living room.

He’s left his bedroom door open for her. It is a corner room, small, with wood planks lining the walls and a square window near the ceiling that is the only source of light. It looks like a boat cabin, in its way, covered with too much blue: blue comforter and carpet. Blue bike in the corner. She goes right to it—the bike—runs her hands along the seat.

“This was your room?” she says.

He nods. “This was my room.”

Nate is sitting on the edge of the bed, and she goes to sit down next to him. His T-shirt is hiked above his waist, and she can see the hair there leading downward from his belly button. She moves toward him, reaches out to touch him there.

Her eyes focus on the bulletin board above his desk: newspaper clippings and ribbons, lots of empty tacks where things used to be, things that are long gone now. She wants to tell him she likes his room, but he tenses, even at her touch, and she can feel that he is annoyed—or maybe embarrassed, or maybe both. It isn’t exactly about her, and yet she doesn’t say anything, takes her hand away.

“We don’t have to talk about it, Nate,” she says.

“You obviously want to.”

She takes a deep breath in. “I just want to make sure you’re doing okay,” she says.

Nate is quiet. “I’m fine,” he says.

“I can tell.”

“Mag, I can understand that you are freaked out. I get that. If this were your parents’ house, and I walked into all of this, I think I’d freak out a little too.”

When it was her dad’s house they were visiting, Maggie had been so worried that her father would drink too much, say something inappropriate. The worst thing he did was speak with
a little
too much detail about his most recent girlfriend, Melinda. And yet it had been tame in comparison to Maggie’s fears, hadn’t it? Maybe because Maggie had told Nate everything about her father a long time before they went to Asheville. He knew her whole story—everything that could potentially cause friction— and so, when it all went well enough, it created a sense of relief.

“If this were my parents’ house, you’d deal,” she says.

“So you’re dealing?” he said.

She shrugs. “You’re a better person than me.”

She is trying to make a joke—to bring him back to her—and it works for a second. He smiles. Then his smile disappears. “Please don’t feel weird. This is all fine. This is what they want. I accept that. Sometimes things just don’t work out. Sometimes, it’s easier to separate . . .”

She looks at him, worrying that he’s missing it—the bigger picture—and wondering if he is missing it for his parents’ sake, or if he would also be capable of missing it for them. “Something just feels off about it,” she says. “The divorce party. I think something else is going on.”

“What are you talking about?” he says.

“I’m not sure yet,” she says. “I’m not sure I can explain it. I just have a bad feeling.”

“A bad feeling?”

“Yes. I have a feeling that it is not as simple as them both wanting this.”

He looks down at her hand, turning it over. There is no engagement ring there. She hadn’t wanted one. Now she almost wishes she had one. She wishes she had something to look down at, as proof that they promised to be in this together. Because, right now, she is feeling outside of it, of them.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

“For what?”

“For putting us here.”

Maggie shakes her head, trying to take this out of the realm of the two of them.
This is Nate’s family’s weirdness, not his.
Nate has always worked hard, so hard to be good to her, to be there for her. It is unfair to even worry in her own mind, now, about whether that will be the case. Because of his parents? Because of anything he says about why they’ve chosen to end things?

“I’m the one that should be sorry,” she says. “It’s your family.

You know them better than I do, and I shouldn’t be rushing to judgment.” She makes herself meet his eyes. “I just feel a little overwhelmed by everything . . .”

But suddenly she doesn’t want to say even to herself what the everything is. The part of him that she is seeing now too. It has taken Georgia to point out that Nate gets absent, doesn’t want to deal. How could Maggie not have picked up on that before now? Has she not noticed? Or has she been too scared to acknowledge that she has and what it may mean?

“You know,” he says, “let’s just lie down for a while . . . take our clothes off for a while.” He smiles at her. “If we get some sleep, this will all feel less weird. Plus when we wake up, we’ll be that much closer to out of here. Sound like a good plan?”

She nods. “Sounds good.”

But just as they are lying back, there is a knock on the door. “Nate!” It’s Georgia. She’s knocking more while she’s talking.

“Can you come downstairs with me for a minute? I need to talk to you. And don’t pretend you can’t hear me. I’ll bust this door down and make you hear me.”

“I need a minute, Georgia.”

“No.” She knocks again. “
Now.
”

Maggie touches his knee, shrugs. “Go. It’s fine. I’ll sleep for a little while. It will be good. You can talk to your family without worrying about me.”

He turns back toward Maggie, putting his forehead against hers—holding it there, closing his eyes.

“I’ll be back.”

“I’ll be here.”

He nods, pulling back, and kissing her on top of her head, which she imagines is supposed to bring her calm, but has the opposite effect. Because it feels nothing like him.

Maggie listens to the door click shut, and looks back over at the bulletin board, at the red ribbons in the middle, and the newspaper clippings again, and the empty tacks. There are no photos up there anymore. But she thinks of the last one on the staircase: the one of Gwyn and Thomas in the pickup truck. They look in love in that picture. They look very much in love. How do you get from there to here? Does it start with one lie, one small omission? One conversation that you need to have, and can’t seem to?

Which is when the door opens again. It’s Nate.

“Can I tell you something I’ve never told you before?” he says. And he looks at her, really looks at her, until she holds his gaze for a second, sees him. “I like you more than anyone,” he says.

She smiles at him. “I like you more than anyone,” she says.

But then—just when she needs him to stay most, and can ask for it least—he is gone again.

Gwyn

She started to get to this earlier: the billion-dollar industries. The ones that survive based on the faulty idea that women like her have, the idea that if you keep yourself beautiful, that if you keep yourself looking a certain way, you are safe. In your life, in your marriage, in yourself. How many times has she heard a friend talking about someone leaving his wife and saying,
well, she really let herself go
? The implication being that it is less his fault than hers, that he can’t be expected to stay for someone who is less than perfect.

Only, what if you stay perfect? And he leaves you anyway? Who are you going to blame it on, then? Especially when this other person, the one he is leaving for, isn’t beautiful? When she isn’t anything like the person you’re supposed to try hard—try with everything you have—to keep being?

This is the worst position of all, Gwyn thinks. She has stayed beautiful, and it hasn’t saved her from anything. In fact, it may have left her more vulnerable, because it allowed her to get complacent. Thomas still stared at her as she walked into a room, touched the small of her back, still told her she had the most perfect hips and shoulders and breasts he’d ever seen. She let those things mean something. She let them stand in place of the things he rarely said enough, like:
I want you, and I always have.

She straightens her dress out, leaves the bathroom, and heads down the stairs toward the kitchen. If she can spend some time in the kitchen without being harassed, without seeing anyone, it will be no small miracle. She wants to start baking the cake. She wants to be left alone.

But she turns on the kitchen light and it reveals both of her children, sitting in the dark, just where she guessed she’d find them: Nate sitting on a stool by the counter, Georgia leaning against the countertop itself. The ingredients for the cake are pushed to the side. Shortening and cocoa and sugar. Beets and fresh buttermilk, too many eggs. Gwyn closes her eyes, opens them, hoping to see something else. They could be ten or fifteen as easily as the grown people that are sitting in front of her now: Nate bending into his shoulders, Georgia leaning backward on her tiny elbows. Anyone who says people
change
should ask a mother. She can tell you that her children—in the ways that seem to count most—are exactly as they’ve always been.

“You’re going to have to move,” she says, tapping Georgia on her cheek.

Georgia stays where she is. “We’ve been talking about it, Mom,” she says, “and if this divorce party is some twisted attempt to make us feel better, then we feel fine, okay? We’ll feel a lot better without it.”

Gwyn reaches around Georgia for the eggs, the butter. She reaches around her daughter, and starts to get organized. “It’s too late to cancel. Everyone has been invited.”

“
Everyone has been invited?
You sound British,” Georgia says.

She looks at her daughter disapprovingly.

“Do they even know what they’ve been invited to?” she asks. “Do they even know what tonight is really about?”

How can Gwyn answer that? She nods, because
yes
is the closest thing to the correct answer. Her friends do know they’ve been invited to a divorce party, and they do know the gist of the rest of it: that she and Thomas are splitting. They don’t know there is another woman, though. They probably wouldn’t believe it if Gwyn told them, wouldn’t want to believe it, which is really beside the point. Because she can’t tell them anyway. She can’t bear to hear them say what they’ll inevitably say—
Thomas is goingto come running back to you.
She can’t hear them say it, then have to find out how wrong they are about that too.

“So just that we are clear,” Georgia says, folding her arms across her chest, “parading our family’s demise in front of everyone we know is the healthiest way to go. What kind of parenting is that? Do you know what my therapist is going to say?”

She squeezes Georgia’s elbow. “You can tell your therapist that your father and I decided together, with
our therapist,
that celebrating our family in front of everyone we know, one last time, is the healthiest way to go.”

“You guys have a therapist?”

“No. But will you tell your therapist that we do? It makes us sound better.”

“Mom, this isn’t funny.”

“Well, it’s a little funny.”

She looks at her daughter, who looks very upset—though, Gwyn guesses, not exactly for the reasons she is saying. Yes, it must be hard for her to think of her parents separating. Gwyn imagines that it is particularly hard for her right now when she doesn’t want to think about anyone separating. When she has to deal with the fact that her family is constantly worried her relationship may be next.

“You know what? Please don’t be so transparent, Mother. I see that look in your eyes. This has nothing to do with me and Denis, or me being worried about Denis and me, or whatever else you think that I’m putting on you and Dad. We’re fine.
We’re great.
”

Gwyn puts up her hands in surrender. “I’m just trying to explain that tonight is a
nice
thing. There’s a reason divorce parties are getting popular around here. We’ve gone to three this year alone. There’s another later this month, Syril and Maureen Livingston, you know the screenwriter couple from up the block?” She directs this question to Nate. “They wrote that terrible love-on-a-plane heist film a few years back. Anyway, they had a beautiful one, and said that it made it a lot easier for their twins to come to terms with their decision, to feel good about it.”

“Aren’t their twins six years old?” Georgia says.

“And?” Gwyn says.

Georgia pushes away from the countertop. “I’m going to lie down,” she says. “Before I say something I’ll regret.” She pats her brother on the shoulder. “You try.”

“I’m on it,” Nate says, but he looks distracted.

“Wait,” Gwyn says.

Georgia starts to leave, but Gwyn hands her the pile of divorce literature, which has made its way into the kitchen. She puts
Loving Divorce
on the top—the best book she has found about all of this.

She has dog-eared the chapter about divorce parties, why they are a good idea, how they help a family heal. How, if done right, they help a family appreciate that there are
many forms of love, many forms of staying together, even if apart.

“Excellent,” Georgia says. “Are we done here?”

Gwyn nods. “If you want to be,” she says. And she watches her daughter go—her daughter, who, from the back, doesn’t look at all pregnant, doesn’t look at all different from how she’s always been.