by Ellie Eaton
“Bars on all the upper windows,” I say.
Still nothing.
Gerry glances at her lap, turning her inner arm discreetly so she can see the face of her gold wristwatch. About to make her excuses.
“The shoe tree,” I say before she can speak, “that’s still there too. In the middle of all these new builds. It was a big hit at the reunion. Everyone wanted their photo taken in front of it.”
Gerry nods, still smiling.
“I can imagine,” she says, and then, even though I haven’t asked her the question, she says, “I was busy that day. Working or, no, my daughter had a concert. Something or other, I forget. You know how it is. My eldest plays the saxophone, she’s in two orchestras, so it’s nonstop rehearsals, or a competition or a master class, absolutely endless.”
Just like that Gerry shifts the conversation back to safe ground—her children, unfinished Christmas shopping, a recent visit from her in-laws. She asks if we’ll be in Los Angeles for the holidays and I tell her no, that we’re going to spend it in England with my mother.
“Oh, fuck,” she says suddenly. “Presents. I forgot to get the girls anything from Sydney. I’d better pick up something before my flight.”
This is the most rattled I’ve seen her so far.
She scribbles in the air in the direction of the waitress.
“It’s been nice to see you again, Joe.”
She stands up quickly, tucks her silk shirt neatly in place, and hooks her bag over her shoulder. She can’t get away fast enough.
I feel the moment slithering away from me.
“Wait,” I say, rocking the table as I stand, grabbing her arm. “Gerry, I have something to say first. Please.”
Gerry stands with her hand in her pocket, her elbow jutting out, legs bent slightly backwards as they always used to. She looks down at my hand and flinches—perhaps I’m imagining it—and I let go of her sleeve. The frown evaporates. She dons the same serene, indecipherable expression as before and nods.
“I’m sorry, of course. Go on.”
Gerry sits and puts her bag down, resting it by her neatly crossed ankles, as if she has all the time in the world, regarding me, I think, as she might one of her young patients. My eyes gravitate towards her scar, the crack in her hairline like a piece of broken china.
“I want to say I’m sorry.”
Gerry’s nose wrinkles, at a loss to know how to respond.
“Okay,” she says.
“For the way we used to treat you. The things we did. Dares night.”
The taunting, the snobbery, the social ostracization.
Gerry leans forward as she listens, her arms on the table, and twists her wedding band thoughtfully, as if she’s cracking a safe. We sit in silence.
“Well, for a start,” she begins, “I wasn’t exactly the easiest person to get along with. There was a lot going on that year that I didn’t talk to anyone about. I wasn’t”—she reaches for the right words—“I wasn’t very happy in my own skin.”
Who is? I want to ask her. Even now. Is she?
“It’s very sweet of you to apologize.”
Sweet? I wince.
“But to be honest, I haven’t thought about any of that stuff in years. I didn’t particularly enjoy school, of course, but it’s not something I dwell on. I wasn’t in with the cool crowd, not like you, and let’s face it, most girls can be pretty horrible to each other, can’t they? But I don’t think I was particularly singled out. I wouldn’t say that. No more than anyone else. And I can’t even remember much about dares night. Sorry to have wasted your time, but it’s really not a big deal in my life. I moved on.”
Her voice is light and breezy, as if she finds the whole thing humorous, a smile at the end of each sentence. I stare at her, baffled. Can this really be how she remembers her schooldays? Harmless joshing?
“God, you should see what my daughters have to contend with,” Gerry continues. “The vile things teenagers post about one another these days, the comments online, it’s enough to make your toes curl.” She shakes her head and a strand of hair slips out from behind her ear, covering her scar. She tucks it back in place again. “You’ve got that to look forward to, I suppose.”
A muffled announcement comes over the airport intercom. Gerry strains to listen. She squints at the departures board. Checks her watch. We only have a few moments left. I slide the blue box from my side of the table to Gerry’s.
“What’s this?” she asks.
“It’s yours.”
“I don’t understand.”
She opens the case and stares at the forget-me-not pin, restored as best the shop in the jewelry district could manage—the missing gems replaced, the two broken halves somehow welded together—the cost of the repairs probably far exceeding the value of the ornament itself. Gerry peers closer.
“This was mine?”
She seems bemused.
“Yes.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“Gosh.”
Finally she takes it out, twisting the pin between her fingers. It’s as if she’s seeing it for the first time. It’s clear she doesn’t remember. Then she places it back in the box.
“Strange,” she says. “But thank you.”
A large group outside the restaurant is waiting to be seated. The waitress stares meaningfully in our direction. We get up. Gerry walks ahead of me to the exit, eager to have this meeting over with. When I stuff my notes and laptop into my bag, I see that she has forgotten to pick up the jewelry box from the table. I carry it over.
“Silly me,” she says, patting her pockets as if she doesn’t have anywhere to put it. This, too, is an inconvenience.
We say our good-bye in the middle of the terminal, amongst the wheelie bags and sprawled bodies and heads hunched over phones. No hug or handshake. No request to stay in touch or a false promise to meet again the next time I’m back in England. Gerry raises a palm and smiles, that’s it. She has nothing more to say to me. She’ll board her plane, order a Bloody Mary, flip open her laptop without a second thought. I doubt she will even bother to tell her wife and kids about our meeting, a detail forgotten as soon as she walks through the door, lost in the welcome home hugs and shouts of excitement. Skipper and I have no place in her narrative. Not even as a footnote. We have been written out, painted over like the message in my leavers book, banished from the pages. In making light of my apology, she’s refusing to play the victim, to seem in the least bit tragic. And why not? Who are we, after all, if not the author of our own story?
A happy ending then. It could be worse, I know, but instead of catharsis, I feel the opposite. Despondent, strangely hollow. What would I prefer—eternal damnation? For Gerry to scream in my face, chain me to a rock, flay me alive, pummel me with accusations?
Instead I stand there in the middle of the concourse feeling small and inconsequential, like something you might brush off your coat, still holding the forget-me-not pin.
“Gerry,” I call after her.
She ignores me at first.
But then, halfway to her gate, I see her hesitate.
She loops back around, swimming awkwardly the wrong way through the crowd, and comes to a standstill in front of me, a hand on her hip.
“Actually, I do have one question. I’m curious. No hospital visits or calls. No get-well cards, not a single one from any of you. Twenty years. Why now?”
There is no point in lying.
“I thought you were dead,” I say.
Gerry’s mouth widens.
She lets out a screech.
People crane their necks to look.
“Dead?”
Her lips pinch into a beak, shoulders thrust back, one knee bent.
“You wish,” she hisses.
She claws the jewelry box from my hand.
Turns on her heel.
My last view of Gerry, or any other Divine. Marching across the polished floor towards a bin, dodging frantic travelers.
No second look, no equivocation. A snap of the wrist. She tosses the blue box, barely stopping to see it land, and vanishes into the crowd.
Acknowledgments
Thank you to my brilliant, unflappable agent, Julia Kenny, for her passion, humour, and cautious optimism; Veronique Baxter in the UK; and everyone at Dunow, Carlson & Lerner.
Thank you also to Liz Stein, my extraordinary editor, for her razor-sharp notes and the care she’s taken with this book; Vedika Khanna, Mumtaz Mustafa, Eliza Rosenberry, and the rest of the incredible team at William Morrow, for helping to usher it into the world; and Beth Hoeckel for her stunning artwork. In the UK, thanks to Kate Howard and everyone at Hodder & Stoughton.
I owe a great deal to poet Kate Llewellyn, for setting me on this path in the first place and teaching me about rope; Sir Andrew Motion and my cohorts from Royal Holloway, in particular Sarah Perry, whose long-distance friendship, bolstering emails, and early championing of the book have kept me sane.
Thanks to the Kerouac Project and the Writers in Prison Network whose residencies gave me space and time to write.
For reading and rereading versions of this and earlier books, thank you to Patrick Hussey, Ivo Watts-Russell, Jeff Capshew, Tempany Deckert, Emma Finn, and Alexandra Calamari. Thanks to Karin Casparian for, amongst other things, patiently answering all my questions about Austrian German idioms. Special thanks to Holly O’Neill, for her immeasurable editorial skills and wit, and not least for inadvertently helping sow the seed that would grow into The Divines.
Lastly, thank you to my family. To my parents, Jennie and Julian, for their unwavering support, and to my sister, Kythe, 90s fact-checker, survivor of the green velvet minidress, kindest of all people.
And above all, for everything, always, thank you to Tom and Iris. Here we go.
About the Author
Born and raised in England, ELLIE EATON lives in Los Angeles with her family. Former writer-in-residence at a men’s prison in the United Kingdom, she holds an M.A. in creative writing from Royal Holloway, University of London. The Divines is her first novel.
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Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
the divines. Copyright © 2021 by Eleanor Eaton. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
first edition
Cover design by Mumtaz Mustafa
Cover art © Beth Hoeckel
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.
Digital Edition JANUARY 2021 ISBN: 978-0-06-301221-9
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-301219-6
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