The Divorce Party (20 page)

“I’m not sure I’m following.”

“As really just one lie. That it is really just one lie you’re dealing with here. And Nate may have done it loudly, but it’s a lie we often tell ourselves, and the people closest to us.”

“Which is what?”

“I get to start over.”

Maggie stares at Eve, as she wonders if Eve understands more or less than she does.

“What?” Eve says. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“I’m just wondering if you think that makes it okay? Withholding so much?”

“I think it just means that I understand. We all want that, don’t we? A chance to be new, to not be the people we wish we hadn’t been. The problem is that the faster you run from something, the harder it hits you when it catches up to you again.”

“Well, today definitely hit me hard,” Maggie says.

Eve nods. “It probably hit Nate a lot harder.”

Her pulse starts to race—to race with something like sadness, like impossible compassion. Not just for her, but for Nate. With how hard and desperately, all of a sudden, she understands he has been running. Maggie remembers when she left Asheville at seventeen, thinking she could be someone new. And maybe at different points, with new scenery and new people, she has felt new. Except, really, she is still herself. Same worries about staying present, committing, being still. Same desire to make things clean when they’re not. Same need to understand things as black and white, or avoid them altogether.

“Look, I’m not trying to make you more upset here. I understand what it feels like to have things going on that you don’t want to say out loud.”

“Like what?”

“Like I’m in love with someone who I shouldn’t be in love with. Like I’ve been complicit in letting him break up his family so we can give being together a real shot. Like I’ve encouraged him to do this.”

Maggie looks at Eve, trying not to judge. During college, she was seeing her TA, who lived with his girlfriend. Maggie didn’t know about the girlfriend when they started, but when she found out she didn’t leave him immediately either. She told herself, at the time, that it was his responsibility to stop it, to deal with his obligations. She knows now that it isn’t that simple. She believes now that it shouldn’t be.

“He’s leaving his wife for you?”

“He seems to be.” She moves the completed tray out of the way. “And then what am I going to do with him?”

Maggie laughs, running her hands through her hair. Then, giving Eve a small smile, she looks away.

“I think maybe there is another question you can ask yourself,” Eve says.

“And what’s that?” she says. “Do I want to try?”

She shakes her head. “Am I sure I don’t?”

Maggie is silent.

“I’m just saying that’s the one that will kill you one day if you’re not sure and you get it wrong.”

Maggie isn’t sure of anything—which is the main reason she smiles at Eve, and excuses herself. “I’m pretty sure I want to go and wash up,” she says. “Probably should have done that before helping with the food. Is the bathroom that way?”

“Live and learn,” Eve says, raising her palms.

Then she points behind herself, and Maggie heads that way, toward the back of the house, toward the master suite, toward the bathroom. But as she opens the door, she remembers what is going to be waiting for her. The special padded bathroom, the special tub. Only the bathroom that greets her is old, and not particularly noteworthy.

And there is no padding on the bathroom tub. None that she can see. The tub is white and oval shaped and too small to hold two people at all comfortably. Maggie gets in and lies all the way back, putting her arm over her eyes, her legs hanging over the edge. She tries to take a few deep breaths in, center herself, figure out what she is going to do next.

She needs to decide whether to find out the answer to the question running through her head right now, in this moment in her life:
What happens if she stays?

Which is when Tyler walks in.

She doesn’t say anything, just takes her arm off her eyes, blinks. He looks back at her for a moment, and she imagines she is some sight: curled into the tub, in her skirt, her flip-flopped feet hanging out over the side.

“Hey there,” he says.

“Hey.”

“So am I taking you somewhere,” he says pointing in the direction of the driveway, “or are you taking a bath?”

Gwyn

This is perhaps what a wedding is supposed to be like: the barn is gorgeous and full of people, music playing, everyone eating and laughing and swaying. Everything’s candlelit and lantern-lit and dreamlike. You can hear the rain in the background, feel it tumbling along the roof but you almost don’t notice it, except for the light wind it is kicking up and inside—making everyone stand a little closer together.

It all makes Gwyn feel like it is appropriate that she has chosen to wear white. A handmade corseted top, a loose silk skirt. Her hair pulled back with a lily. When she wore yellow on her wedding day, her sister asked her if she was sad that she wasn’t taking her one chance to be the one in all white.
I’ll have another chance,
Gwyn said. She meant at a party or an event. She didn’t imagine the event would be for the end of her marriage.

No one notices her at first. She is standing just inside the barn’s entrance, the rain falling down behind her, taking it all in. The party is beautiful from this angle. Everyone is drinking champagne and talking in small circles. Even in this weather, everyone has come. If she could zoom in, wire her guests with hidden microphones, she still believes they wouldn’t be talking about her. Everybody gets divorced now, don’t they? Half of everybody, at least. The important part, for them, is that they have a nice party to go to on a less-than-nice night.

She looks straight across the barn and sees Nate and Georgia standing by the bar: Georgia sipping Nate’s beer. She decides to let them be. If the divorce party leaves them hating her a little but feeling more bonded with each other, then fine, she’ll take it. If they come out of this closer—more sure that they will always have each other, that this is their primary family relationship—Gwyn will feel better. She isn’t dying yet, but it is one more thing she wants in line before she does. That her children will always feel loved.

Then she notices Thomas, center-barn, wearing the suit she picked out for him, laughing with the Jordans, Daniel and Shannan, who live off of Dune Road, on the bay. They got divorced themselves, maybe ten years ago now, and Shannan moved to New York City and took up with a male ballet dancer. Now Daniel and Shannan are together again, permanently again.
I’m simply too tired to not be with Daniel,
Shannan told Gwyn when she moved back out here.
And I don’t think that is the opposite of love.

Thomas waves at her. She waves back and points up to the steel rods, then the weather outside—the lightning coming in quicker, brighter bursts; the barn starting to seem too much like a bull’s-eye. But Thomas just shrugs, as if to say:
let’s not worry about it.

Fine. He doesn’t want to worry, they won’t worry. Let him have his way this last time. This barn will come crumbling down or it won’t. Only, he won’t get to tell her again that she always worries too much. She wants his last memory of her tonight to be that she didn’t care, didn’t overanalyze, didn’t take on the role of worrier for both of them. For once, she would relax into acceptance of whatever would come. That she, for once, was willing to breathe in and let even the most rational fear go.

A waiter comes by and offers her a braised lamb chop. She takes it, because what else is she going to do? She has a small bite, and looks around at the other waiters carrying trays of spicy cashews and barbecued chicken bites, ahi tuna crackers and soybeans, Thai toast and curry tofu—all disappearing into people’s palms as soon as they appear.

She notices Minister Richards with his wife and decides to go over to say hello, when she feels a pat on her back, and turns to see Maxwell Scalfia, a five-foot-tall doctor who works with Thomas, married to Nicole, another doctor, who is a good ten inches taller than he is. She used to see him almost daily, all those years when it was Thomas and her habit to have lunch together. Mondays and Wednesdays, most Fridays too.

“How are you holding up?” Maxwell asks, stepping on his toes to kiss her cheek.

“Fine, Maxwell, we’re doing fine. Thank you for coming tonight. We’re glad to have you.”

“We’re glad to be here.”

She smiles, wondering how long she has to stand here— before she can move on. He will be Thomas’s friend now. And as far as Gwyn is concerned, Thomas can more than have him.

Maxwell is still smiling at her, though, making eye contact, and tipping his glass of champagne her way—leaving Gwyn no graceful exit.

“I was just telling Thomas before that a friend of mine once said to me that marriage isn’t a success if it lasts, it’s a success based on how it lasts,” he offers. “Ten or twenty or
thirty-five
good years together is sometimes a stronger statement to make than fifty okay ones together. I believe that.”

She nods as though they were in agreement, though of course she knows that he doesn’t believe what he is saying—that he has generated this anecdote solely for whenever a friend is in this situation. Gwyn knows him well enough to know that whatever his marriage is really like—and how can anyone outside of it know?—he will never leave it. He believes that staying is the only success. Why shouldn’t he? We only believe something else when we have no other choice.

A waiter comes by with a tray of champagne flutes, Gwyn grabbing one as he passes.

“And, of course,” Max says, “this is not the best time, but just so you know, Nicole and I would like to buy it. We’d be open to making a generous offer if you’d consider our interest before putting it on the market. As generous as is necessary.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The house.”

“This house? My house?”

She turns around to look at it across the dooryard, lit up and glowing, against the rain.

“Yes,” he says, “your house. Huntington Hall.”

They’ve agreed to table the discussion about the house, she and Thomas, until after tonight. Somehow, figuring out what is to become of the house—letting it go in some way—would make everything final, if it isn’t already. It would make it all done.

“It’s complicated . . .” Gwyn says.

He interrupts her. “No, I’m sure. I’m just saying that when you two are ready, we are more than ready. My daughter Meredith just had twin boys. And we’d like to get them all out here in the summers. It will be easier if they have their own place because her husband is such an SOB who doesn’t even try to hide anymore that he hates us.” He smiles. “The price we pay.”

Gwyn feels her face reddening. She has considered that Thomas would leave, that he would go to Eve, wherever that is. And that she would leave too, not wanting to stay here without him. But she hasn’t actually considered the house not being . . . theirs. Only having Hunt Hall be empty? Isn’t that wrong too? And while she could leave it to her children, she knows—as soon as the thought runs through her head—that she doesn’t want to do that. Thomas won’t want that either. At one point, this house might have seemed like a place for new beginnings. Now it feels more like a place for letting go of old ones.

“We can probably work something out,” she says.

“Really?” He laughs nervously. “Just like that?”

She turns and looks at her house again. Thirty-five years. Thirty-five Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve dinners and Christmas mornings here. Thirty-five Fourth of July parties and 36 children’s birthday parties, 78 overly long visits from her family. One hundred times that she decided January was too terrible here and 250 times that she knew there was nothing more perfect than Montauk at the very end of March. Five hundred times that she went up to the lighthouse for picnics, 709 times that she brought home fresh flowers from the farm stand in East Hampton, 840 times that they walked down the bluffs to the beach. Eleven hundred times they read the Sunday paper by the fireplace, 1,300 times that she watched the sunset from the porch, 1,900 times that they spent an evening on the swing by the edge of the cliff.

One time, now, that they are standing before everyone they know, everyone they love, and having a party that is supposed to end with them telling each other good-bye.

She looks in the direction of Thomas, who isn’t looking back at her.

“I don’t know,” she says to Maxwell. “Maybe.”

Maggie

She doesn’t go upstairs and change. She doesn’t fix herself, really. She pulls her hair back in a loose ponytail and walks into the party in her faded jean skirt and pink tank top—her purple bra a little too obvious beneath it. She left her backpack at the Buckleys’, with Eve, who was trying to get ready for the wine toast, the cutting of the cake. Still. If she wants to be putting on her best face for this, she certainly isn’t. She just wants to get to Nate while she can still remember that part of her does want that, before it feels too late.

The rain is coming down now, unapologetically, the wind whipping into low currents, fighting the outside of the barn, pushing on it. Maggie is wet by the time she enters—water droplets on her arms, her neck—and there is dirt and blades of grass on her feet, where her flip-flops left her exposed.

From the doorway, the barn looks incredible: a shiny, warm refuge from the storm, lit up and bright, the party full of that energy that the best parties have, that intangible quality that means a night has the chance to be memorable, magical. Looking around, it’s easy to forget what these people came for. It’s easy to wonder if they’ve all decided to forget too.

Maggie sees Nate in the corner of the barn, Nate in a tan suit, orange Converse sneakers on his feet. He looks great. He looks like himself. And she forgets about the rest of it, for a second. She feels so relieved to see him—that she has chosen to see him—that it takes her a second to realize he is standing next to Murph, in her deep skin-colored dress, looking, from here, like one long leg.