The First Husband (15 page)

But I couldn’t. In that moment, a bigger part of me had no desire to be generous at all. Nick’s mother had loved me, had treated me like a second daughter, even
before
Nick and I had been together. Where was I starting from this time around? Apparently hoping my mother-in-law could figure out how to
stand
me.

Still, instead of going to a place where I asked Griffin to parse his mother for me further—or asking for that, and then making unfair comparisons (at least out loud) to the mothers of my past, the ones who seemed predisposed to love me from the get-go—I did the best I could do. I looked at the designs on the ceiling, the calming designs, taking them back in.

“Am I crazy,” I said, “or is there some sort of blueprint to it? Like an ordering system?” By way of explanation, I pointed up above me, swirling my finger along the outlines of the designs. “The artwork on the ceiling.”

Griffin froze. Only for a second. But in that second, I could see what he knew and feared was coming. More of the truth. More of how interconnected it all still was. Something like his past, something like our present.

“They’re recipes, actually.”

“Recipes?” I said.

He nodded. “Recipes from the first meal I cooked professionally. When I working for a catering service near Boston.”

“What are they recipes of?”

“Pork confit and peppers, a braised lamb stew. Lemon cake.”

“Lemon cake sounds good right now.”

I looked at the ceiling in a different light, making out the words as ingredients, the numbers as quantities, the designs between them literally like a mixing pot moving them all together. Gorgeous, and incredible.

Then I saw it, the other thing I missed—how had I missed it?—the lilt of the
l’
s reminding me of something. Reminding me of the lilt of other
l’
s I’d just recently seen. Reminding me, all at once, of where.

“Gia drew it?”

“Yes,” he said. “Gia drew it.”

“Did your mother help out?” I was joking. Or I was trying to joke when I said that. But then Griffin didn’t answer.

I turned over and went to sleep.

T
here was an e-mail waiting for me in the morning forwarded to me from Jesse, which had been forwarded to Jesse from Cheryl, reminding all of us that I was supposed to go on the twins’ field trip to Hartford that day. Claire had sent it to Cheryl, and had asked Cheryl to send along to her sister—me, apparently—followed by a smiley face.
My sister?
Cheryl wrote in her e-mail to Jesse, followed by a series of expletives far less friendly than a smiley face.

It was the last thing I wanted to do. To be at the elementary school no later than 9:15 A.M., ready to help monitor the field trip bus. No, strike that: the last thing I wanted to do was get up and begin to focus on the photographs still strewn all over the bedroom floor. No, strike that: the last thing I wanted to do was get up and deal with my husband—to go and help him at the restaurant, like I had promised—and then have to answer to the photographs on the floor. No, strike that: the last thing I wanted to do was run into my mother-in-law on the way to helping Griffin at the restaurant on the way to dealing with the photographs.

And so I let Jesse give us all a ride to school on his way to MIT to try and work on his dissertation (and avoid his mother).

But when we pulled up to the school—the minibus already in front, the twins jumping out—Gia was standing there, getting ready to board, wearing a pair of bug-shaped sunglasses. Sunglasses that would have undoubtedly looked great with her orange scarf.

“Oh man,” Jesse said, just as Gia looked up and saw both of us through the car’s windshield.

“What do we do?” I said.

“Wave?” Jesse said.

I, meanwhile, was stuck on the slightly less immediate problem.

“She’s going? It’s the Children’s Museum,” I said. “A children’s
science
museum. Aren’t there art classes she needs to teach or something?”

“Apparently not right now.”

I sighed, loudly, wrapping my terrible coat more tightly around me as I opened the passenger-side car door. “Well, come on, I guess,” I said.

“Come on where?”

She was still looking right at us. She was still looking right through the windshield in her bug-shaped shades.

“To say hello.”

“No way.” He shook his head. “Too awkward.”

“Too awkward?”

“Yep.”

I glared at him. “Jesse, you’re seriously going to send me out there all alone?” I said.

“I’m not sending you anywhere,” he said, turning the ignition back on. “If you want to make a run for it, I’m game to take you. I’ll take you anywhere you want to go. Well, anywhere between here and MIT.”

“Gee, how generous,” I said.

“Don’t mention it,” he said. “I’m that kind of guy.”

It wasn’t easy, but Gia and I managed to avoid each other the entire way to Hartford—me sitting all the way up front in the minibus, Gia sitting in the back, leading the kids around her in some sort of magical-singing-puzzle contest.

We managed to avoid each other at the actual museum, all morning—it was all I could do to keep my eyes on the twins and my other assigned peanuts as they raced from one accidentwaiting-to-happen exhibit to the next. We even managed to avoid talking to each other as we handed out paper-bag peanut-butter lunches together in the museum lunchroom—Gia somehow managing to do it with a flourish, each kid’s bag decorated with a lacy flower.

But then, right before we were set to leave the museum, to get back on the bus and make our way home to Williamsburg, we happened to take several little girls to the bathroom in the same three-minute interval. And so, at the very end of the field trip—so close to free from each other—we found ourselves face-to-face. Or, rather, side to side. In front of the sink bank, looking into the same slightly discolored mirror.

“Hey . . .” she said.

“Hey,” I said. “Long day.”

She nodded.

I started washing my hands quickly, trying to hurry my girls along. Then something came over me, and I decided to take a different tactic. To be something like brave.

“Look,” I said, “Gia.”

She met my eyes in the mirror.

“I just wanted to say how sorry I am. I’m not sure if it matters, or makes anything better, but I wanted you to know. That I didn’t know about you. Or your and Griffin’s . . . history. Not really, at least.”

“Why would that make it any better? Griffin knew.”

It wasn’t a bad point.

I shrugged. “Then I’m sorry anyway,” I said. “For the rest of it. For springing it on you the way I did.”

She looked at me for a last second, in the mirror’s reflection, before giving me a sad smile.

“That’s nice of you to say,” she said. “But you don’t need to apologize, really. I shouldn’t have walked away from you like that. It was a little melodramatic, which is not like me. I was just shocked, as you can imagine.”

“Of course. Or, I should say, I can imagine now.” I paused. “I didn’t mean to be the one to tell you that Griffin was married.”

“It’s not surprising that you were,” she said. “Griffin has a hard time with blame.”

Then she gave me a knowing look. And, all of a sudden, I felt like I was on the opposite team than Griffin. On a team with Gia. And I didn’t want to be there. I didn’t want her to think I wanted to be there.

“I don’t think Griffin meant to be unfair,” I said. “To anyone. It doesn’t feel like he had bad intentions.”

“I’m sure that’s true. He doesn’t have a bad bone in his body. Though I’m starting to think that was part of the problem. For us, I mean.”

I looked at her, in the mirror, confused.

“It was a good thing he did, leaving town for a while. Going out to California, giving me some breathing room. I have a new boyfriend now. And I’m doing well.
We’re
doing well. I’m moving on with my life. I’m moving on in a way I probably should have done a long time ago. In a way I probably wouldn’t have been able to do if he had stayed.”

“Oh, good.” I breathed in. “That is really good to hear.”

“I’m not finished.”

“Okay.”

“I shouldn’t have called Emily. That was wrong of me. But you should know something else. About Griffin. He is a good man, a very good one. But he only knows how to love broken people. He can’t show up for people who are whole. That’s why I lost him. I didn’t need fixing anymore. Which meant we weren’t just spinning our wheels, trying to keep moving in place. You know what I mean? We were actually going to have to be in it together.” She turned off the faucet. “You understand what I’m saying? ”

“No,” I said, and shook my head because I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to understand, even if I did.

There was a world in which what Gia told me could be construed as the ex-girlfriend trying to poison the well. But in the world I lived in, all I knew was that she didn’t seem like she was trying to be mean. Or she was trying to be a little mean, maybe, by giving me a warning that one of these days Griffin would give up on me. But she also seemed like she was trying to be honest—didn’t her story, in a way, match up to Griffin’s? Just from the other side? Which actually felt much worse.

“I don’t know what was going on with you when you two met, but my guess is you were at a low point, no?”

She eyeballed my coat. She eyeballed my ridiculous heartcovered coat when she asked this. And from the pitying pursing of her lips, she apparently decided she had enough information to answer her own question.

“I’m not sure it’s that simple,” I said.

She smiled and reached for a paper towel, started to dry her hands.

“It never is,” she said. “Except when it is. That’s the hard part. Knowing exactly when something is as simple as can be. I’m terrible at that myself.”

I nodded and started to dry off my own hands. “Right . . .”

“Also, when you have a chance, I’d like my scarf back.”

Then she threw her paper towel in the trash, and exited. Leaving me to look in the mirror. All by myself.

E
mily Putney was waiting there, in the parking lot, when we got back to the school. Standing outside even though it had started snowing again, standing in her perfect parka and fur-filled boots, waiting to walk the twins home and spend the afternoon with them.

From my seat in the back row, from my seat by the emergency exit, I watched as Gia jumped off the bus, and rushed over to give Emily a hug hello—her chin cupping Emily’s shoulder.

As Gia pulled back, they started talking to each other, hurriedly and happily, their faces still so close together I thought they might kiss.

I tried to make out what they were saying to each other, but I couldn’t. And truthfully, it didn’t matter. Whatever it was, I knew it didn’t began—or end—with either of them singing my praises.

“Fantastic,”
I said, looking at them out the window, then looking up at the emergency exit and seriously considering pulling its firm red handle, willing it to carry me out of there.

And then, as proud as I am to admit this, while they were still busy talking, I slid off the bus—and I do mean slid: utilizing two three-foot-five-inch-tall girls as coverage, utilizing their matching Little Mermaid lunch boxes to cover my face, a Dora the Explorer backpack to block my side.

I knew I should have said hello. I should have tried to engage Emily, but I didn’t have it in me. Not right then. I was too overwhelmed. And too scared about what she might or might not say, too scared it would be something else that would make Griffin feel even more like a stranger.

Instead, I took the long way home—the back roads of the back roads—not feeling the cold wind, not feeling too much of anything. Which felt like a marker of many things. A good sign, sadly, wasn’t one of them.

And so I was a little out of it, and more than a little surprised to get back to the house and find someone sitting there. On the front steps. In a long, ridiculously white ski jacket—and a matching white hat, big pom-pom on top.

I walked closer to the steps, preparing to find another Putney waiting to surprise me—a Putney eager to offer another version of how I was an enormous invasion into a life that long proceeded me.

But I didn’t find another Putney there in the silly, all-white ensemble, puffing out from all angles.

I found Jordan there. My Jordan. Looking more than a little like a life-size snowball.

I stood in front of her.

“I’m going incognito,” she said. “I’m afraid to be spotted by anyone I don’t want to be spotted by.”

This, she said, instead of hello. Instead of “How are you?” This, as though it actually made any sort of sense.

“Is it really you?” I asked.

“It’s really me, and it’s really fucking freezing out here,” she said. “I’ve never been this cold in my life. On top of which, I’m thinking that you and I have had a slight misunderstanding.”

“What’s that?”

“I said, Go
on a date
with him. Not
marry
him.”

“Oh, is that what happened? I’ve been wondering.”

She was quiet for a minute, as we looked at each other. “I also thought you said you were in Williamstown,” she said. “Didn’t you? I’ve been driving through Massachusetts all day.”

“Everyone hears Williamstown,” I said.

Jordan looked around herself, taking in the cold, which felt colder in the unrelenting quiet.

“I can understand why,” she said.

It didn’t matter that I knew I was about to get badly yelled at for disappearing on her, for flat-out ignoring her phone calls, sending shoddy e-mails in response to hers, for acting as if that was something we’d ever historically done to each other.

None of that mattered. I sat down on the step beside her, resting my head against hers. She didn’t say anything, and I knew she was going to let me. She was going to let me rest there until I was ready to tell her where I’d been.