The Big Love (23 page)

“Oh my god,” said Amanda.

“Who is Spence Samuelson?” asked Mark.

“He was the ex before the ex,” Amanda explained. “The guy before the ex-husband. He was before your time.”

“Wait.” Mark turned to Holly. “He’s the shitty guy in your book?”

“Exactly,” said Amanda.

Holly said, a tad formally, “The character of Palmer was fictional, but sort of loosely, in the broadest possible way, based
on Spence.”

Amanda rolled her eyes at this. She knew the truth, which was that Holly had changed exactly two details about Spence when
turning him into Palmer, his name and the color of his eyes.

“Did you call her?” said Mark.

“Not yet.”

“Are you crazy? Do it now,” said Amanda. “Put her on speakerphone.”

“The woman said something catastrophic happened,” said Mark. “I don’t think we should put her on our speakerphone.”

“You know, after I got this email, I had an epiphany,” said Holly. “
This
is why I wrote a novel. For this exact experience. To have girlfriends of men I used to date track me down and ask me for
advice. It’ll be like being a therapist without having to get a degree.”

“Lord,” said Mark.

“What?” said Holly.

“That poor, sad schmuck,” said Mark. “He has no idea what he’s in for.”

Holly Frick had had the worst kind of divorce: the kind where you’re still in love with the person who is divorcing you. Not
“fond of,” not “still attached to,” not “building a life together” — hopelessly in love with. And it was a year ago exactly
that Alex had left her, a fact that had somehow slipped her notice up until earlier that evening, when she went to hail a
cab and saw the dried-out Christmas trees heaped in sad piles along the sidewalk. Alex had left her on January third. Kind
of like a benevolent CEO who holds off on the pink slips until after the holidays.

Alex had left Holly abruptly, more or less out of the blue, not for another woman, not even for another man, but for, it would
seem,
women.
As many as he could get his hands on. The rumors came back to her throughout the spring and summer, trickling in from various
gossipy sources, stories about his fling with the frosty Thai hostess at Tao; a graduate student who worked in the basement
of Shakespeare & Company; the “model” who sold lingerie at Barneys. Holly’s therapist claimed she’d metabolized the breakup
of her marriage like a trauma victim, that it happened so suddenly and so unexpectedly it was like she’d been in a car accident,
or the subject of a violent crime, which Holly figured was as good an explanation as any as to why she’d spent the past year
of her life feeling like she was underwater.

She knew that what she was going through was nothing special, just garden-variety heartbreak, the sort of thing that poets
and novelists had been writing about for hundreds of years, but she also knew, from those same books, that there were people
who never recover from it, ones who go on through life beset by a dim and painful longing. It wasn’t until that day, when
she saw the Christmas trees littering the street and was shocked to realize a full year had gone by, that she started to fear
she might be one of them.

Amanda and Mark had a baby, a thirteen-month-old named Jacob, who was asleep in his room for most of the evening but made
a brief cameo appearance around the time of the last moo shu pancake. Jacob was huge. At his six-month birthday party he was
the size of a small two-year-old, but seeing as he had only about a thirty percent chance of transferring his pacifier from
his fist to his mouth on any given try, he seemed vaguely retarded. He wasn’t, though — he was just too big. Holly and Amanda
had, years earlier, come up with a name for just this sort of baby — blond blob (because, and you’ll see that this is true,
these enormous blobby babies are invariably blond) — but that was before Amanda had gone and given birth to one.

After Jacob went back down, Holly and Amanda settled in on the couch with a fresh bottle of wine while Mark dozed in his chair.

“Talk,” said Amanda.

“What? I’m good.”

“Good!”

“Not that good,” said Holly. “But better.”

“That’s still good.”

“It’s weird,” said Holly. “A couple of weeks ago, I woke up on a Saturday morning, and I hadn’t made plans with anybody, so
the whole day was sitting there, stretched out in front of me, this big blank, which usually makes me feel all panicky and
anxious and bad about myself —”

“You should have called,” Amanda interrupted. “You could have come over.”

“Yeah, I know. Thanks. Anyhow, I got dressed and I made my way downtown, and I did some Christmas shopping, and then at around
four I went to see a movie I’d been wanting to see at the Film Forum, and then I came home and made a nice dinner for myself
with real cooking involved and I ate off the good plates and, you know, in the end, I had this really great day. And the whole
time I was aware of the fact that I was by myself, but I wasn’t bothered by it the way I would have been in the past,” said
Holly. She reached for the bottle of wine and refilled both of their glasses. “I
got
married. I tried that. It didn’t work out for me. And maybe I’m just one of those people who are meant to be alone.”

“You’re going to meet someone, Holly.”

“I don’t know if I even want to. Honestly. I’m fine alone. I feel like this is the first time in my life I’ve been able to
say that and have it be completely true,” said Holly. “I’m. Fine. Alone.”

“Of course you’re fine.”

“And it feels good, you know, to finally be in a good place with all of this.”

“And you’re not really alone.”

“I’m pretty alone.” Holly took a big swallow of wine and closed her eyes. “I miss Alex.”

“No you don’t,” said Amanda.

“I do. I miss him,” said Holly. Her voice got small. “I think I’m still in love with him.”

“You’re not in love with Alex.”

“Okay, so what is it then, when you walk by a restaurant you used to go to together, you get tears in your eyes and your chest
feels like there’s a huge hole in it and you have to go straight home and crawl into bed and get under the covers? What can
that possibly mean, other than I still love him?”

“That’s grief. That’s healthy.”

“I don’t know,” said Holly. “It feels like love.”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Amanda. “You guys weren’t happy together.”

“I think maybe we were.”

“You were miserable, Holly.”

“So? I’m miserable now. And I’m not sure it’s all that much better to be miserable alone than to be miserable with another
person,” said Holly. She thrust her forefinger in the air as the thought came to her: “Misery loves company.”

“You’re drunk.”

“I do like to drink.”

“You can sleep over if you want.”

“No. That’ll just make me feel more pathetic,” said Holly. She flopped back against the cushions and stared up at the ceiling,
which was flickering in the candlelight. “God, I’ve fucked up my life. My novel was a spectacular failure, I’m back writing
for TV — for the world’s crappiest TV show if anyone’s keeping score — I’m thirty-five years old, utterly alone, and the outer
walls of my eggs are taking on the consistency of tissue paper as we speak. Meanwhile, Alex leaves me and his life is going
great. I think he’s dating someone pretty seriously.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Nothing, really,” said Holly. “I’m just pretty sure he is.”

Amanda put down her wineglass and looked hard at Hollss“Are you still checking his email?”

“No.”

“
Holly.
”

“I’m not. I promise,” said Holly. “He changed his code.”

Mark opened one eye and piped in from his recliner. “You were checking your ex-husband’s email?”

“I’m not proud of it.”

Amanda got off the couch and headed towards the kitchen with a few dirty glasses. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I think
you should really seriously consider getting a new therapist.”

“Hey, you can’t blame this on her,” Holly called after her. “I don’t tell her things like this. Trust me. She’d be appalled.”

A few minutes later, Holly rolled off the couch and joined Amanda in the kitchen. After briefly rallying, just long enough
to suggest that Holly (a) consider Internet dating, because a forty-three-year-old at his office met a guy from Teaneck that
way, and she was pretty fat, or (b) maybe take a salsa dancing class, Mark had fallen back into a slipper-socked slumber.
Amanda was at the sink with the rubber gloves on. Holly picked up a sponge and went to work on the countertops.

“Your husband thinks all my problems would be solved if I signed up for a salsa dancing class.”

“That’s not the worst idea,” said Amanda. “You like to dance.”

“My friend Betsy took a salsa dancing class, and when she went out to the hallway during the break, one of the guys from the
class was just standing there, leaning against the wall, perfectly normal, with his hand down his pants.”

“Was he, like, doing things to himself ?”

“Does it matter?” said Holly. “Really, with that story, does it matter why his hand was in his pants?”

“I see your point,” Amanda said, and then she turned off the faucet. “I have to talk to you about something.”

“What?”

“Well, it’s kind of complicated.”

“Did I do something wrong?” said Holly.

“No, no. Of course not. It’s not about you.”

“Well, then, what is it?”

“It’s — now this is going to seem like a bigger thing than I meant it to be, and it’s really nothing.”

“Okay . . . ?”

“About a month ago, I met a guy at this benefit thing I went to.”

“Uh-huh.”

“His name is Jack, and he knows my old boss Theresa. We talked about Theresa a lot at first — the woman is out of her mind
— and we just got into this dynamic with each other. Then we had lunch, and, you know, a few emails back and forth. Nothing
big.”

“I’m missing the part that’s complicated.”

“Yeah, well, that’s just it,” said Amanda. “It’s getting complicated.”

“Spell it out for me,” said Holly. “Are you sleeping with him?”

“God, no. No. Nothing like that.”

“Good. Then what is it?”

“I don’t know what it is. I’m a little confused,” said Amanda. “Feelings are getting involved.”

“Does Mark know about it?”

“No,” said Amanda. “I mean, he knows there’s a guy out there named Jack, I’ve mentioned his name a few times, but he doesn’t
know.”

Holly put the sponge down. “So what you’re telling me is, you’re dating somebody.”

“Of course not,” said Amanda. “We’ve had a couple of innocent lunches.”

“You shouldn’t talk to me about this,” said Holly. “I’m no good with infidelity. I always overidentify with the cuckolded
party.”

“This isn’t infidelity, Holly.”

“Then why are we whispering in the kitchen?”

Amanda opened the cabinet and took out three coffee mugs.

“What are you telling me this for?”

“I want you to meet him.”

“What?” said Holly. “Why?”

“I don’t know,” said Amanda. “You’ll like him. You’ll like each other.”

“I don’t think I want to meet him,” said Holly. “I’ll feel complicit. I feel guilty even having this conversation.”

“Why should you feel guilty?”

“I don’t know,” said Holly. “Somebody should feel guilty, and I tend to feel all the feelings in the room.”

“Just meet us for lunch next week, will you, please?”

“We’ll see.”

“Is that a yes?”

“It’s a ‘we’ll see.’ ”