When It Happens to You

by Molly Ringwald

  Greta got up and put the plate in the sink. The forks clattered as they slid from the porcelain onto the stainless-steel basin. She ran the water for a moment, and he watched her shoulders grow still, in that quiet, certain way of hers. Then she switched off the water and came back to the table. She took both of their glasses and carried them to the bedroom. He followed her.

  Greta lay wakeful next to Phillip, who slept beside her. She hadn’t intended to go to bed with him, but now that she had, she tried to stop herself from feeling the dull ache of regret. Not to say that she hadn’t enjoyed it. The firmness of his broad back, the soft blond patches of hair across his chest and circling his navel, everything about him was both familiar and new. She had urged him on faster, consoling herself with the pretext that if it happened quickly enough, she could put it out of her mind, deny that it had ever occurred. But Phillip restrained her movement, delaying the mutual rush of restive desire. “I don’t know if this will ever happen again,” he had said. And so they had lingered, abating the urge onward to the inexorable and exquisite little death.

  Now she lay on her back thinking of her betrayal. Granted, Phillip was still her husband, and the commitment that she and Peter had made to each other was tenuous at best, but still Greta found it troubling how easy it had been to relinquish the standards that she held up for herself.

  What had this changed for her? There was the small comfort of knowing that Phillip was still attracted to her—a fact that she had doubted, even though everyone from the marriage therapists to her friend April (whose own marriage had ended in a bonfire of infidelity years before) to Phillip himself had avowed. Still, the doubt had always persisted, the result of what she considered her linear mathematical thinking. Mathematics had always come easy to her because it embodied absolute justice—everything was reconcilable as long as you did the same to either side of the equals sign. Every question had a simple, direct, discoverable answer. Each puzzle could be pieced together, every mystery solved. Now only the questions remained. The answers simply didn’t exist, not in any way that would ever satisfy her.

  Still, there were some questions that for practical purposes had to be answered. Six frozen embryos. Six potential children. The boy that she had hoped for, another possible green-eyed, towheaded baby girl like Charlotte. Six lives to nurture, the wild or docile schoolchildren they would become, the surly teenagers, arrogant young college students, and weary adults with families of their own to raise. Greta knew that it was next to impossible that all of the embryos would be viable—there was no assurance that even one of them would survive after being implanted into her uterus—but as long as they existed, preserved by medical science, those six embryos were suspended in the balance of her and Phillip’s vague and volatile union.

  For as long as she could remember, Greta had been in favor of a woman’s right to choose what happens to her own body, and there was no question for her that had three embryos implanted in her uterus, she and Phillip would have made the choice to reduce to one. So why did it seem intolerable now to let even one go? Phillip had said that he would agree to release them into the world for other families to adopt, and while this seemed the most practical and generous solution, Greta knew that if she consented, it would eventually drive her mad. She supposed that the arcane biological imperative that supposedly exists for men to spread their DNA far and wide could arguably exist for women and their need to nurture. How else to explain why it was unbearable to Greta that a child, one that shared the same genetic makeup of their own Charlotte, could be out in the world dependent upon the capricious kindness of people entirely unknown. She knew that until the day she died, she would never stop looking for the face of her child in the eyes of strangers.

  Phillip stirred next to her. He reached out, waking briefly, but as soon as his hand found the warmth of her body, he settled back into sleep. Greta shifted onto her side and studied his face in the shadowy light. They had found each other when they were still teenagers, and he had always appeared the same to her. Now as she examined Phillip in his sleep, she could see the years in stark relief on his face. She took her finger and ran it across the deep lines etched in his forehead. He opened his eyes and squinted up at her.

  “Hey,” he said. “Are you okay?” He yawned, covering his mouth with his elbow.

  “Those boxes in the office aren’t Peter’s,” she said.

  He opened his eyes wider. “Oh, okay. I wasn’t going to say anything. . . .”

  “They’re his sister’s. Lindsay. I offered to help figure out her finances. I might work with her, depending on whether I can sort it out.”

  “That sounds like it could be . . .” He paused. “But what about—are you going to stay with him?”

  Greta sighed and fell back onto the bed. “I don’t know. I . . .”

  Phillip grabbed a pillow. He propped himself up with it, waiting for her.

  “No. I don’t think so,” she said finally. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Okay,” Phillip said. They were both quiet for a moment. “Would it be all right if I told you how happy that makes me?”

  Greta sat up and turned on the light. He raised his hand to shield his eyes from the glare.

  “I don’t want to hear about how happy that makes you!” she cried. “I don’t want you to be happy.”

  “Ever?”

  “Not in this lifetime.”

  She began to cry, hating the rage in her, the way it would not leave her, like a sliver embedded deep beneath the flesh, jagged and inflammatory, impossible to extract. Phillip pulled her close to him. She pressed her face against his chest, squeezing her eyes shut. “I’m sorry, Greta. God, if I could change it, you know I would. You know I would.”

  A dog barked, followed seconds later by a siren. They both lifted their heads to see how close it was. As the sound receded into the distance, they turned their attention painfully back to each other.

  “Don’t you?” Phillip tilted her face up toward his. She shrugged imperceptibly and buried her face back into his chest.

  “I love you so much,” he said, kissing the top of her head.

  “But I’m the same person,” she murmured. “There’s nothing about me that’s different. I’m not any different.” She reached over and switched off the light. “Except a year older.” She lay on the pillow and stared up at the faint light edging through the blinds.

  “I’m different,” Phillip said in a whisper.

  “I would feel weak going back to you.” It was the first time that she had said it out loud, the possibility that she might give their marriage another chance. Even in therapy, despite Phillip’s entreaties, Greta had never once even hinted at considering a reunion. It had been bad enough to endure the judgment, all those years ago, when she had chosen a man over her own education and career. These are rights that we won for you, older women had insinuated. Her mother could barely contain her disappointment. As her former classmates attended graduate school and established careers, then married and started families (where the parenting duties were unabashedly relegated to foreigners), they seemed to Greta to be almost embarrassed by her decision to become a homemaker.

  At the time she had felt her choice to stand behind her husband’s career achievements while she built a home and family was noble, even as it was judged by others as foolishly old-fashioned. Now she just felt foolish, and the thought of going back to this man after all the pain she had endured suddenly seemed ludicrous.

  “You’re not weak,” Phillip said. “I was the one who was weak. Anyone can see that.”

  Greta swallowed, not answering. Phillip lay still next to her, for once not trying to pull her into him.

  “I don’t expect you to try again,” he said, “Obviously, I hope—well, you know what I hope. But I’d understand if it was something that you couldn’t do.”

  “Could you do it?” Greta asked. “If things were reversed, if I had been the one who . . .” She trailed off.

  “I don
’t know,” Phillip said. “I’d like to think, eventually, I would—”

  “It would bring you to your knees,” Greta said. “To your knees.”

  Phillip exhaled. “What can I do? Or say? Or not do or not say to make you believe in me, Greta? I’m not where I was. I’ll never be in that place again.”

  Greta ran her hand along the side of his face. Phillip put his hand on top of hers. “Why do you love me?” she said. The question surprised her as much as it seemed to surprise him.

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s a simple question.”

  “Well, I mean . . .” In the darkness she could just make out his bewildered profile. She observed the muscles around his eyes tighten as he gauged her reaction. She wasn’t certain what she was looking for, but then she saw it: a softening of his expression as he relinquished anticipation, persuasion, his harried and relentless solicitations. A tired, almost serene look came over him. “If you had asked me that a year ago, I would have fallen all over myself trying to answer you. But no matter how much I went on about your beauty or your intellect or your kindness or the times we had together, our shared lives as parents, the truth is . . . that’s just part of it. That’s just the outside. The inside is the thing that I don’t know.” He smiled, exhaling deeply. “And it’s why I can’t stop loving you. There’s something about you, and about me, that comes together in a way that doesn’t come together when I’m with anyone else. And I hate to think that I spoiled it. That for the rest of our lives, we won’t have access to that anymore.” Shaking his head, Phillip pressed the back of his neck into the crumpling pillow. “I pray that someday we can make each other happy. I don’t know if I can make you happy anymore, Greta, but if there’s even the slightest chance of it, I’ll wait for as long as it takes.”

  She wasn’t sure when or how it happened, but eventually she fell into a thick and dreamless sleep. She was awakened in the morning by the familiar sound of Thinmuffin mewling and scratching at the door. As Phillip got out of bed to let the cat in, Greta answered the phone on the bedside table. It was her mother calling from the airport in Seattle, informing her that Charlotte was safely on her way back to them.

  They left the house in plenty of time to allow for traffic or any other unforeseen mishap on the way, but getting the certificates to pick up their daughter at the gate, and hustling their way through security, took much longer than expected. They appealed to strangers in order to get through the line faster. “Six-year-old daughter, traveling alone . . .” They recited their way up the line of weary travelers waiting impatient and shoeless for their turn to put their bags through the X-ray machine. Most were pleasantly, some resentfully, obliging.

  Upon being released from security, they ran across the entire terminal to Gate 17 to find that the gate had been changed to 2, which was all the way over by security. They circled back and arrived at the assigned gate, distraught and short of breath, only to be told that the flight would be delayed another ten minutes. Drained, they collapsed into the chairs overlooking the tarmac.

  Greta leaned back and closed her eyes. “Charlotte isn’t leaving home again until she’s eighteen,” she said.

  Phillip left in search of coffee, while Greta remained near the gate, scanning the sky for Charlotte’s plane. Her phone vibrated in her bag. Greta took it out and saw a text from Peter.

  I’M SORRY.

  She turned off the phone and put it back in her bag. Then she thought better of it and turned it back on.

  Over the course of the year she had often wondered if it would feel worse to betray rather than be betrayed. She remembered April, who had deliberately sought out a married man the weekend that her husband had moved in with his mistress. Greta and Phillip had been happy then, and the thought of her friend choosing a married man had been a great source of contention between the two of them. It went against every moral fiber in Greta. Unsuccessfully, she had tried to contain her judgment until April—her best friend dating back to preschool—confronted her one night, drunk and belligerent. She accused Greta of being a “sanctimonious, self-righteous reactionary.”

  “You can’t understand. You still have a husband,” April had said.

  “But he isn’t yours,” Greta had argued. “It’s like you’re taking something that doesn’t belong to you. He isn’t your husband. It’s stealing.”

  “I know he isn’t my husband,” April had cried. “But he is somebody’s husband and he wanted me.”

  Now Greta cringed as she considered the intractability of her younger self, her inability to sympathize with anyone else’s fragility. Regarding her own betrayal, she felt a discomfort that she supposed to be the weight of her guilt, but that was all. It was nothing like what it had felt like to be the one deceived. There had been times that Phillip had ventured to persuade Greta of the terrible weight of his suffering. He had told her that he would switch places with her if he could. Perhaps it was true. It was a matter of love, she supposed. The quality of betrayal is commensurate only to the measure of love for the one you betray.

  Phillip arrived just as the plane was pulling into the gate. He handed her a large coffee. “Sorry, their cappuccino machine was broken.” He sat down, bracing the cup between his knees, and tore open a sugar packet to pour into his coffee.

  Greta took one of the unopened packets of sugar and put it in her purse. Then she slung her bag back onto her shoulder and stood up.

  “I want another year to decide,” she said. He looked at her. “I’m not ready to let go of them yet.”

  Phillip stood up beside her. He reached out to embrace her, and suddenly stopped, uncertain. It was Greta, then, who went to him.

  From behind, Greta heard the clarion call of Charlotte. They broke apart and turned to see Charlotte holding the hand of an older female flight attendant. Charlotte dropped the woman’s hand and burst into a sprint toward them. As she approached her parents, Charlotte froze, as if suddenly unsure whose arms she should run into.

  “Come here, you!” Phillip cried out, scooping her up. Charlotte squealed with delight and reached an arm out to Greta while she wrapped the other one around her father’s head.

  “Mama.”

  “She is a lovely young lady,” the flight attendant said as Greta signed the airline’s release form. “Mine is twenty-seven now,” she continued. “I don’t know where the time goes.”

  Greta pulled off the Pacific Coast Highway and onto Ocean Avenue on their way back to the house.

  “I painted rocks with Oma!” Charlotte said.

  “Is that why your suitcase was so heavy?” Phillip asked. “Because, you know, I was going to ask you if you had rocks in there!”

  Charlotte giggled. “Milo helped me find them in the bay. He was painting with me, too, until his ugly girlfriend came.”

  “Don’t call her ugly,” Greta said. “That isn’t nice.”

  “But she is!” Charlotte insisted. “And all they do is kiss, kiss, kiss all the time. It’s nauseating.”

  Phillip looked at Charlotte and then to Greta. “Where’s she getting these words?”

  “What?!” Charlotte leaned back and put her feet up on the seat. “Oma says that.”

  “Mom.” Greta shook her head. She slowed down as a jogger jaywalked in front of her.

  “Put your feet down, honey.” Phillip reached back and tapped on Charlotte’s ankles. She dropped her feet, pouting, and then something caught her eye outside the window.

  “Oooh! The pier! Can we go? Please, please?”

  She leaned forward, sticking her head between the two front seats, arranging her face in the most persuasive expression she could manage. Greta called it her “sick puppy” face. “Puh-lease?”

  Greta looked to Phillip.

  “Your call,” he said.

  The park was mostly empty, having just opened. After they’d purchased the all-day wristband for her, Charlotte ran ahead to choose her first ride. She hesitated between Inkie’s Pirate Ship and the Moon Jumper
and then chose the latter after finding out that she didn’t meet Inkie’s height requirement.

  “Are you sure you don’t want us to go with you?” Phillip asked as Charlotte extended her skinny arm to show the orange wristband to the man at the ride’s entrance.

  “I’m sure,” Charlotte said. “I’m not afraid.”

  She sat in the center of the empty car with a solemn expression as the man strapped her in and tugged on the belt for safety. He took his time walking back to the controls. Charlotte gave a little wave to her parents and looked up above her head in expectation.

  Greta and Phillip stood on the ground together. The man pulled the lever, and all at once they watched their daughter take to the sky.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I would like to thank the following people:

  Carrie Kania for not batting an eye when I told her that my second book would be a collection of short stories and for leaving me in very capable hands.

  My publisher Calvert Morgan and the whole It! team for their continued dedication and support.

  Especially Denise Oswald for her patience and astute editorial eye.

  The following people whose love and wisdom have helped immeasurably to support and guide me through the writing process:

  Matthew Freeman, Greg Henderson, Brandi Sanger, Meredith Arthur, Julian Fleisher, Julia Caston, James Sanders, Ingrid Bernstein, Molly Ryan, Will Ryman, Alex Auder, Cindy Sherman, Fergus Greer, Todd Thomas, Thomas Weems, Naomi Burns, Venia Skliamis, Hill Salomon, Barbara Foley, Wendy Waddell, Jason Weinberg, Greg Clark, and Victoria Leacock Hoffman.

  In particular my friend Darcy Cosper, whose generous assistance and grammatical know-how were invaluable.

  Eileen Funke and the Writers Junction.

  Ms. Joan Didion for uttering the truest of words: “You must pick the places you don’t walk away from.” You are the finest inspiration any writer could have.

  My fierce and tireless advocate Kimberly Burns. You are worth a thousand and one Burberry trenches.