The Undoing

by Jean Hanff Korelitz

  “Attitude,” she repeated, very skeptical. “Really.”

  “Simple as that,” he said, looking pleased with himself.

  “But … attitude toward what?”

  “Oh, I could tell you, but then I couldn’t be responsible for what happened next. Shall we leave it for a few weeks?”

  Yes, she told him, nodding soberly. A few weeks.

  Then they got up and left the café together, Leo waving back at the woman behind the counter, and Grace, who at the very least had been able to spend the past hour not thinking about what was going to happen next, went back to her car and got inside and drove north.

  Her brief conversation with Vita had taken place a few days earlier, on the phone at the lake house, which Grace had plugged back in for the occasion. Vita’s office number had taken all of thirty seconds at a keyboard in the David M. Hunt Library to procure, but the courage to use it had been far harder to come by. The talk had been … well, a little formal under the circumstances, but when the invitation came—to meet in Vita’s office in Pittsfield, of all places, she had said yes right away.

  It was not what she had wanted, exactly.

  Well, she did not know what she wanted.

  Grace leaned forward, reflexively searching for black ice on Route 7, especially when it curved. The road was familiar by now. She had assigned Great Barrington the newly vacant role of “metropolis” in her life and had gotten into the habit of coming here for anything Canaan or Lakeville couldn’t handle, which was most things. (Her attachment to the Berkshire Co-Op alone was now so potentially dangerous that it made her former penchant for Eli’s on the Upper East Side seem benign—and very economical—in comparison.) She had also managed to lose time in a couple of the better restaurants, the butcher shop, and a shop that sold only antique china, including a complete set of the Haviland now officially promised to her.

  It was a pretty town; she had always thought that. It had one of those utterly American Main Streets, but the town itself bent like a hairpin through a couple of areas that—if they were not actual “downtowns”—at least felt like places you might want to park your car and walk around. There were plenty of her own memories here: the long-gone general store where her mother liked the service and the shoes, the Bookloft on Stockbridge Road, where she had spent dusty afternoons ferreting out early psychology tomes, and a massive antiques store where she and Jonathan had bought the landscape of men haying that now hung in their dining room on 81st Street.

  Or was it still their painting? In their dining room? Like everything else in that site-specific museum of the installation previously known as her marriage, she wasn’t sure she ever wanted to see it again.

  It was steely gray overhead by the time she cleared Lenox and headed northwest to the address Vita had given her. The road left the affluent Berkshire world of Tanglewood and Edith Wharton behind and succumbed to scattered farms and the industrial edges of Pittsfield (home—who could forget?—of a Superfund cleanup site) and the extreme northern boundary of Grace’s own childhood territories, if only because she had been taken to the Colonial Theatre here once or twice as a child, and at least once a summer, on stormy days, to the Berkshire Museum. Quite possibly Vita had come with her on one of those expeditions while staying with Grace at the lake house, and how strange it was to think that a place she herself had once introduced her friend to was now the place Vita worked and had made a life. Pittsfield was one of those old towns you drove through to get to somewhere else, or because that’s where the train or the bus actually let you off. It was a place in headlong decline: full of formerly grand homes, now in slightly scary neighborhoods, and formerly sylvan parks you might want to think twice about entering at night.

  The Porter Center was located in some former Stanley Electric Manufacturing Company buildings, distinctively redbrick, forming a kind of campus, but the sign at the entry (and the guard who emerged as she slowed to read it) directed Grace to a converted residential house in classic white and green, with its own, smaller, ADMINISTRATION sign. She parked her car and took another moment to steady herself. Vita, according to the tagline on her e-mail, was the executive director of this place, which seemed to exist not only here on its own postindustrial campus, but in a kind of root system of programs all over the county, as far north as Williamstown and as far south as Great Barrington. According to the website Grace had pored over in the library, it did everything: drug treatment intervention, programs for teen mothers, individual therapy, anxiety and depression groups, and court-mandated courses for substance abusers and sex offenders. One-stop shopping for mental health, she thought, taking in the long brick buildings from her own front seat. Years earlier, at the time of her wedding, when she and Vita had both been about to enter graduate school (Vita for social work, Grace in psychology, but with the common goal of becoming therapists specializing in individual therapy), this was not the outcome she had envisioned for her friend.

  And I was so gifted at envisioning outcomes, too, she thought grimly.

  She zipped her parka and picked up her bag. After a moment, she locked the car door.

  Inside, in the reconstructed front parlor, it was warm—very warm. A woman her own age with scalp shining through her severely thinning hair invited Grace to sit on the prim sofa, decorated with white lace circles, and Grace did, taking in the reading material on offer (Psychology Today, Highlights) and the picture book of historical Pittsfield. She picked this up and turned the pages: tinted postcards of the Stanley Electric plants, avenues of elegant Victorian homes, some of which she had probably passed on the drive, families at leisure on the grass, and baseball—lots of baseball. Pittsfield had always been a big baseball town, apparently. She would have to remember to say so to Henry.

  “Gracie,” said Vita’s voice. It was unmistakably Vita’s voice—a little clipped, as if she always had a half breath less than she required to complete her thought—and she turned, already smiling to herself if not to anyone else.

  “Hello,” said Grace. She stood and the two women looked at each other.

  Vita had always been taller, as Grace had always been thinner, and both things were still true, but Vita had changed dramatically in almost every other way. The brown hair that had once been imprisoned in a pageboy (Vita’s mother’s idea of a universally flattering hairstyle) was now long—very long—and almost entirely gray, and worn loose, or more accurately not “worn” at all. It flowed and coiled at will, over Vita’s chest and down her back, and was so extraordinarily unexpected that it took Grace another moment to gather in the rest. She had on jeans and work boots, a long-sleeved black shirt—very casual—and, of all things, an Hermès scarf knotted around her neck. Grace found herself staring at that.

  “Oh,” Vita said. “I know. In your honor. Do you recognize it?”

  She nodded, still speechless. “We went to buy it together, didn’t we?”

  “We did.” She smiled. “My mother’s fiftieth birthday. You made me pick this one over the naval battle. Of course you were right.” She turned to the woman at the reception desk, who was following this conversation with keen attention. “Laura? This is my friend Grace. We grew up together.”

  “Hello,” said Grace.

  “Hi,” said Laura.

  “We picked this scarf out for my mother’s birthday,” Vita said. “My mother loved it. I never went wrong following Grace’s advice.”

  Perhaps not sartorially, thought Grace.

  “Would you like to come on back?” Vita said. She turned and walked ahead. Grace followed to the back of the house and up a flight of narrow stairs into what must have been a bedroom.

  “I have to warn you,” she said as she held back the door for Grace to enter, “because I want you to be ready. I’m going to hug you. Okay?”

  Grace burst out laughing, which was better than the alternative.

  “Well, all right, then,” Grace finally managed to say. And then they hugged. And when they did, she very nearly lost it again. I
t was a long hug, with nothing tentative about it, except for only the first little bit of it, and only on her own part.

  The office wasn’t large. It had a window overlooking one of the long brick buildings and its parking lot, but there was a tree in what would once have been the house’s backyard that obscured part of it. She could imagine a child living here, with movie star photos tacked to the wall and curtains with rickrack. On one of the shelves behind Vita’s chair, among the textbooks and journals and stacks of legal pads, were framed photographs of children.

  “Want tea?” said Vita. She went out to fetch it and came back a few minutes later with mugs.

  “Still with the Constant Comment, I see,” said Grace.

  “It is indeed a constant in my life. I had a serious dalliance with green tea, but I came back. You know, there was a rumor a few years ago that they were phasing it out. I was all over the Internet, chasing it down. I even wrote to Bigelow and they swore up and down it wasn’t true, but just to be safe I bought around a hundred boxes.”

  “You can’t trust those corporate tea folks,” Grace said, inhaling. In a whiff, the smell of their apartment in Cambridge had overwhelmed her.

  “No indeed. What kind of company makes money off a product called Sleepytime? There’s obviously something underhanded going on. Remember that time your mother’s favorite perfume got discontinued? And your dad tried to hire someone to re-create it? I never got over that. Today you’d just go on eBay and stock up, but back then—what was it, sometime in the eighties? When it was off the shelf you had to take matters into your own hands. It was very touching, wasn’t it?”

  Grace nodded. Touching like a piece of jewelry every time you had an affair with another woman. Which was also touching, on its own idiosyncratic terms. She had not thought about the perfume in a very long time. For months that year, there had been rows of little amber testers from the expert’s laboratory: “Marjorie I,” “Marjorie II,” “Marjorie III,” etc. After her mother’s death, before pouring them down the drain, she had smelled each of them, and they were universally terrible. But yes, very touching.

  “I heard about your father,” Grace said. “I’m so sorry. I should have gotten in touch.”

  “No, no. You get a pass. We both get a pass. But thank you. I really miss him. Actually, I miss him a lot more than I thought I would. We sort of became very close at the end. I know …” She smiled. “Nobody was more surprised than I was. Well, my mom was more surprised. She kept saying, ‘What do you talk about in that room?’”

  “What room?” Grace said.

  “He was pretty much bedridden for the last six months. He had hospice care at home. We’d just hang out and talk. You know they moved up here? Well, to Amherst. My mother’s still in Amherst. She’s doing great.”

  “Oh, please give her my love.”

  “She’s having such an interesting life. She joined a drumming circle. She’s become a Zen Buddhist.”

  Grace laughed. “Gotta love Amherst.”

  “They sold their apartment for an insane fortune. At the top of the market, too. And that was my mom. She just said, ‘Jerry, look at these prices. We’re selling right now.’ For that ordinary little apartment!”

  “On Fifth Avenue,” Grace reminded her.

  “Well, yes. But nothing special. And off Fifth.”

  “But with a view of the park!”

  “Okay.” She nodded. “You know, I haven’t talked Manhattan real estate in ages. It’s not much of a topic up here. I kind of miss it.”

  Grace kind of did, too. Lately she had been testing, with a very long stick, the notion of selling her home and, as a consequence, never living in it again. But whenever she did, it hurt too much to go on. “How long have you been here?” she asked Vita.

  “In Pittsfield? Since 2000, but I was in Northampton before that. I ran an eating disorder clinic at Cooley Dickinson Hospital. Then there was an opening here at Porter to run the entire program, which was a huge challenge. You can imagine how much less community support there is for mental health services here than in Northampton. The Pioneer Valley’s like a fairyland for mental health. But I love it here. I had to convince the rest of my family, but it’s worked out well.”

  The word hit Grace squarely. It had seemed incomprehensible (but of course utterly obvious) that Vita had a family she knew nothing of. Grace also had a family of her own! Well, once, she had.

  “I want to hear all about your family,” said Grace, bravely, like a grown-up.

  “Oh, you’ll meet them. Of course! One of the reasons I wanted to see you was to make sure we got you over for dinner while you’re here.”

  “I think ‘while I’m here’ is going to be quite awhile, actually.”

  “Good. Your father wasn’t sure. I know there’s been a lot of uncertainty,” Vita said plainly, but with an encouraging—vaguely therapeutic, Grace couldn’t help thinking—nod. They had arrived at the crux of the matter: A life crisis of fairly stupendous proportions had dragged one partner in a ruined friendship into the close presence of the other partner, and the other partner (who had presumably not suffered a life crisis of fairly stupendous proportions) was standing by to pass some commentary of “I told you so” or “This is what happens when you forgo the wisdom of my counsel” or similar content. Which Vita was being either too polite or too secure to say aloud. But she must be thinking it. Wouldn’t Grace have been thinking it?

  Considering this now, she thought: Possibly not.

  She took a breath. “Yes. A lot of uncertainty. I have a lot to sort out. I have a son. He’s here with me. He’s wonderful.”

  “So I understand.” Vita smiled. “His grandfather certainly thinks so.”

  “He’s going to the local middle school. Do you know the seventh-grade math class at the Housatonic Valley Regional School is actually ahead of Rearden’s seventh-grade math class? I never realized what a snob I was.”

  Vita laughed. “I’ve been happily surprised, myself. One of my kids, we had to find a private school, but not because we felt she was being held back. She had some other issues, and we just needed something small. A few more eyes on her, you know? But I’m sure Rearden has set your son—”

  “Henry,” said Grace.

  “Henry. Has set Henry up to do very well, wherever he goes. I thought, when I got to Tufts, this is how I know I’ve been well educated, because I was just able to jump in and start learning. You get the tools at a place like Rearden. What’s it like being a parent there?” she asked with real curiosity.

  Grace, in spite of herself, started grinning. “The most bizarre thing ever. Do you remember Sylvia Steinmetz?”

  Vita nodded.

  “She’s the only one from our time who has a kid in my son’s grade. It’s been like having one other sane person in the room. Everyone else—oh, my God, they have so much money. And you’ve never seen such entitled people. You just can’t imagine.”

  “Oh, I can.” Vita sighed. “I still get the New York Times. Well, I’m not sorry to miss that. But I have to confess, I did get a pang when I realized my kids weren’t going to Rearden. It was so wonderful, all that utopian stuff when we were kids. About the children of the workers. Remember?”

  Grace, smiling, sang:

  Here may each eager worker find

  A workshop for a thoughtful mind!

  She did remember.

  And then she remembered how Jonathan had taken that, too, away. He had killed another Rearden parent. Henry was never going to go back to Rearden, it was brutally obvious, and Grace was never going to go back either. It had been one of the smaller losses by comparison, but it was mighty on its own.

  She asked about Vita’s kids, who were Mona, a junior in a private school in Great Barrington, who lived to swim, and Evan, who was fourteen and obsessed with robotics, and Louise, who was so cuddly from birth that her family nickname was “the Barnacle” and who was just now, at six, starting to show some interest in the outside world, especially if it was
in the form of a horse. Vita was married to an attorney who specialized in environmental litigation. Of which, even after the Superfund cleanup, there was still plenty in Pittsfield.

  “You’re going to meet them,” said Vita. “You’re going to be sick of all of us.”

  “Aren’t you mad at me?” Grace heard herself say out of the silence. It was an uncomfortable silence, true, but no more uncomfortable than any number of the silences that had come before. “I mean, sorry to state the obvious. I was mad. Are we no longer mad?”

  Vita sighed. She was sitting on the other side of her desk, an oversize and unlovely piece of furniture, weighted down with stacks of folders in various hues. “I can’t really answer that,” she said finally. “I don’t feel mad anymore. Or, if I am, I’m mad at myself. Actually I’m really mad at myself. I think I gave up way too easily. I let him run me out of town. I let you down, I think.”

  “You …,” Grace said, mystified. “What?”

  “I let your husband, who upset me and worried me in a very profound way, from the moment I met him, separate me from my very close, very beloved friend, and I didn’t put up nearly enough of a fight, or—as far as I can remember—ever let you know exactly how grave my concerns about him were. And for that I have not been able to forgive myself. And I would like to apologize for that, to you. Okay?”

  Grace stared at her.

  “I don’t expect you to just snap your fingers and forgive me, don’t worry. It’s been kind of a big issue for me. Thank God I live in western Mass, where the hills are alive with therapists! I can’t tell you how often I’ve been encouraged to contact you and articulate some of this. Obviously I didn’t do it. Well, they say we make the worst patients.”