by Laura Dave
No one asked her opinion on Maggie either. Maggie, who Gwyn has only talked to on the phone, but who has a laugh that Gwyn likes, a laugh that Gwyn trusts, especially because she has learned, over time, that the way someone laughs often mirrors who they are. How they are. Maggie’s laugh is empathetic, giving. She’ll take either of those qualities for Nate. She’ll gladly take both.
“Mom.”
“Georgia.”
“Did Dad’s plane land yet? I need to talk to him. Denis cut his hand on a corkscrew and he doesn’t want to get on a plane to come here if there is something really wrong with it. If he needs to go to a hospital in Omaha or something. It’s his left hand. He needs it to work properly. He is the bass player.”
“What if he was the drummer? Would it not matter then?”
“Mom, please be serious. I need Daddy to tell Denis what to do.”
Daddy. Georgia still looks to him to tell her what to do, still finds it easy to be his child. Will it be the same with Denis and Georgia’s kid—the love with the father easier, longer? Why does it always seem to go that way? The love going to the one who is around a little less, and therefore seems to deserve it a little more?
“I’ll have him call you.”
“Thank you,” she says. And then, as if something occurred to her, her voice gets louder. “Oh, and will you also tell him that that woman from the meditation center called the house again? I couldn’t understand exactly what she was saying, but she wants Dad to call her. She said his cell phone isn’t working. She said that he would know what she was calling about.”
Gwyn feels her heart seize. Another call for Thomas. From the meditation center. How on earth did they get here? Gwyn is the daughter of a southern minister—a southern minister who heads a congregation near Savannah, Georgia, of twenty-five hundred people. And for the first several years of their marriage she could barely get Thomas to go home with her for Easter, for Christmas. He would agree, grudgingly, only after saying that it made him feel like a hypocrite. To pretend to believe. He is a doctor, a man of science. This is where he is placing his bets. It doesn’t have to be one or the other, she used to tell him.
Yes, he would say. It does.
But then, nine months ago, he came home from teaching his weekly seminar on health care reform at Southampton College and told Gwyn that he was thinking more about spirituality. Eastern spirituality. He told her that he would be staying at the college late on Mondays to take a class in Buddhist Thought, that he would be driving down to Oyster Bay to attend meditation classes on Thursday mornings. That he would be driving all the way into Manhattan for weekend-long retreats at the Chakrasambara Buddhist Center. Where he couldn’t be reached for three days at a time.
I just want to see, he said.
Until he wanted to do more than just see, which was when the real problems started.
I think my life is going in a different direction, he said, almost casually, over dinner one night—over sautéed bluefish; a small lentil salad—as if he had changed his mind about wanting these things for dinner, as if it were of no real consequence either way.
It feels unclear to me right now where it fits into that, he said. You know . . .
No, Thomas, she said. I don’t know.
Our marriage.
Gwyn looks at herself in the rearview mirror, the phone still against her ear. She is symmetrical. This is the nicest thing she can think about herself right now. The rest of it—the long, blond hair, matching long legs; her cool blue eyes and still fairly lovely skin; her beauty—it has deceived her. In its own way, it has made her feel secure. For fifty-eight years, her beauty has made her feel safe. In her marriage, in her family, in her own skin. But she hasn’t been. Her husband is acting like someone she doesn’t know. Her son never wants to come home. Her daughter never wants to leave.
She is the opposite of safe. And this is the secret she wants to tell, if anyone wants to hear, this is what she wants to warn people of: Beauty won’t protect you. Not in the end. What will is the one thing you can’t plan for. The one thing you can’t save for or search for or even find. It has to find you and decide to stay. Time. More of it. More of it to try and make things right. As of today, Gwyn is just about out.
“Mom,” Georgia says. “Are you listening to me? Who is Eve?”
“What?”
“Eve? You asked me when I got on the phone if I was Eve. Who is she?”
Gwyn looks toward the landing strip in the distance, as if she were about to get caught. For what, and by whom, she can’t say. But a plane has landed in the time since Georgia called, a small jet plane hitting the tarmac, coming to a complete stop. This too she has missed.
“Eve is the caterer,” she tells Georgia. “She is catering tonight’s party for us. She hasn’t called the house, has she?”
“No, what do you need from her if she does?”
“Everything,” Gwyn says.
Georgia laughs. This is funny? Apparently this is funny. Apparently, Gwyn has made a joke.
“Sweetheart, I’ll call when Dad gets here, okay? I’ll ask him about Denis’s hand and I’ll have him call you. But I’ve got to jump off now.”
"Why?”
How can she answer? She doesn’t want to. She doesn’t want to go into any of it with Georgia, not now, not without telling her the whole story. But what is the whole story? Part of it, at least, starts to tell itself: because there is a knock on the window, a loud knock, which Georgia surely hears through the phone. And Gwyn looks out to see a young guy, standing there—post-college, clean shaven, a little too tan. Her guy. The messenger. And he is carrying a briefcase, a metal briefcase, the temperature inside regulated, controlled.
Gwyn’s briefcase.
She rolls down her Volvo’s window to greet him, manually rolls it down. The Volvo is more than fifteen years old, and requires the turning of an actual lever. Gwyn doesn’t mind, likes it actually, as it gives her a second to compose herself. Because when the window is down, the messenger gives her a big smile, a smile she is used to getting from men she is just meeting, a smile of approval. These days, such smiles unnerve her. They remind her she may have to start paying attention to them again.
“Mrs. Huntington?” he asks.
“Yes?”
“I’m Porter Blevins from the winery,” he says. “My apologies that the flight was delayed.”
“No reason to apologize. You weren’t flying the plane, were you?”
Porter seems to appreciate this, coming from her. “If I were, I would have been more effectual.”
Effectual? The word surprises her coming out of his mouth, continues to surprise her as he hands over his card, proof that he is who he says he is. He opens the briefcase and takes out the bottle of wine she ordered. The bottle of wine that he flew across the ocean to hand-deliver for Gwyn and Thomas’s party this evening. A bottle of 1945 Château Mouton-Rothschild.
“I’m glad to open it for you,” he says, “so you can make sure that it is to your liking.”
“I’m sure it’s fine.”
“I’ve been instructed to open it,” he says, and looks worried.
“Well,” she says, more firmly, “I’m changing the instructions.”
He nods, and Gwyn wonders how many people check a $26,000 bottle of wine to make sure it has aged appropriately. Especially one flown in on a private plane from across the Atlantic.
“Mr. Marshall sends his loving regards,” he says.
Look at that, she thinks. What treatment! For $26,000 plus the cost of the messenger’s flight, you don’t just get a bottle of wine, but regards, loving regards, from someone you don’t know.
“Please send him my best as well,” she says.
Through the cell phone, she hears her daughter, screaming: “Mom! Did I just hear that you flew in wine? You’ve got to be kidding me. That’s what you are at the airport picking up?”
“That’s what I’m picking up,” she says, and rolls up the window. “It’s for the
toast tonight.”
“Have you lost your mind?”
Gwyn thinks about this, as she tucks the briefcase under the seat. “Yes. I think I may have.”
“What about Dad, Mom?”
“I have to get home, and bake the cake.”
“But who is picking up Dad?”
Who is picking up Dad? This isn’t what Gwyn wants to talk about. If anything, she wants to talk about the cake. The real story behind the red velvet cake. The first baker to make it—a southern woman, from a town less than fifty miles from where Gwyn grew up—wanted to make a cake that meant something, that symbolized the contrast between good and evil: the good represented by the lily white frosting, the evil represented by the red colored cake. The baker had thought that even if it didn’t taste so different from other chocolate cakes, people would decide it tasted different. Because it had it all in there. Good and evil. Holy and unholy. Right and wrong. And she was right, wasn’t she? People are drawn to the cake even if they have no idea why. They have no idea that they are counting on it. You know, to save them.
Does her daughter want to hear about that? No, she doesn’t think so. She doesn’t think she is ready.
“Mom,” Georgia says again. “Who is getting Dad?”
“Your father is effectual,” she says.
“What does that have to do with anything?”
Gwyn turns on the ignition. “He can take a cab.”
Maggie
They’ve been standing on the corner of Forty-first and Third, in front of the Au Bon Pain, waiting for the Hampton Jitney to pick them up. They’ve been standing here for twenty minutes, and Maggie keeps staring at her fingernails, occasionally biting on one, as if that is actually an all-consuming activity, as if this leaves her no energy for anything else. She has no energy for anything else. She doesn’t want to look at Nate and she doesn’t want to look at the guy in the suit standing on the other side of her either. The guy is on his cell phone and typing on his BlackBerry at the same time. He also keeps looking at Maggie’s ass. Your regular multitasker.
When he catches Maggie’s eyes, he winks at her and mouths, “Do you belong to him?” About Nate. Nate is looking down, and doesn’t notice. But this makes her reach for him, hold his arm.
It is the first time she’s reached for him since they’ve been back at the apartment, since his big announcement, which is probably why Nate turns to her, a little hopeful, adjusting his backpack higher on his shoulder. “Do you think it’s going to rain?”
"What?”
He points up at the sky, which is blue and cloudless. “It looks like it’s going to, doesn’t it?”
“That’s what you want to talk about, Nate?”
“No, it’s not what I want to talk about. But I thought it might be a start.”
Maggie isn’t sure what to say. Her head is hurting, throbbing actually, a combination of being absolutely exhausted and being unable to wrap her mind around what Nate has told her—half a billion dollars; what does that even mean? What does that look like? And why did he say half a billion as opposed to, say, five hundred million? Does he think it makes it sound smaller, to cut it in half?
She has no idea. But what she actually feels mad about— what she can wrap her head around—is that, if she had known, she would have packed differently. Not that she has some fancy clothing hiding in the bottom of their closet, in the bottom of their unpacked boxes. But maybe she would have found something. Her grandma’s ruby ring or her one black cashmere sweater. Yes, it’s September, and, yes, it’s probably too early for cashmere. But if she had had more time to think, she would have grabbed it, put it in her bag, or just draped it around her shoulders. Something. Maybe, at the very least, she would have become the kind of person who knows whether it is too early for cashmere.
“So . . .” Nate runs his fingers through his hair, messing it up. “I’m trying to give you space, but if you’re not careful, we’re going to get all the way to Montauk, and we still won’t be past this. That will be worse.”
“Says who, Champ?”
He moves in closer, putting his arms around her, bending so he is looking her in the eyes. “I like it when you get passive aggressive, and pissed off,” he says. “You look like your first-grade picture.”
“Great,” she says. “I’m glad this is fun for you.” But she is starting to smile as she says it.
“The money thing isn’t really a big deal,” he says. “You probably wouldn’t have even known unless I told you. Or, you’d know they have some money, but not how much. I guess once I admitted it, I just kept going.”
“So you admit it?”
“What?”
“That there was something to admit?”
He shakes his head, takes an exaggerated breath as if he is trying to find the words. “People with a lot of . . . They are the opposite of people with some. They do the opposite of showing it. My mom doesn’t even have an engagement ring, just her wedding band. They drive fifteen-year-old cars.”
“And they have divorce parties.”
“The divorce party didn’t bother you when you didn’t know about the money.”
“Because I thought it was something I just didn’t know about yet. But now it’s starting to feel like something I don’t want to know about. Like debutante balls or . . . I don’t know . . . boarding schools in Switzerland for advanced six-year-olds.”
He ignores her, which is wise right then. “The reason that I told you about my family’s financial situation is that I didn’t want you to walk into their house and feel sideswiped.”
“Right, but finding out an hour before I meet them couldn’t possibly have the same effect.”
“The bus ride is actually closer to three hours.”
“Very funny.”
“No. It’s not. By the second hour, it’s not funny at all. Nauseating, a little. But not exactly funny.”
She looks at him and feels something in her soften. She starts to smile, smiles because he is. She smiles because he, as usual, is looking at her until she does. He is looking at her like she is the only thing he really cares to see.
“Nate, I’m not trying to make a big deal. But wouldn’t you be a little freaked out too? If the situation was reversed? I mean, you say people with money. But it’s not people. It’s your people, your family. It just feels like a big thing to not have known about you all this time, especially with all the conversations we’ve been having about finances because of the restaurant.”
She doesn’t know how to explain it exactly, even to herself, except that she thought Nate had told her everything about himself. She thought they both had told each other everything. It isn’t as much about the money, but that that has turned out to be wrong. He knows everything about her. Every terrible, boring thing that it wasn’t her instinct to share. That he—in his way— encouraged her to share. Now she wonders what else she doesn’t know about him.
“But that’s the thing. It isn’t about me. It’s my grandfather’s money, or his grandfather’s money. I haven’t touched any of it since I left home. I made that decision a long time ago. I even paid for school myself. You know that.”
She does know that. He mentioned it when they figured out that they both went to the University of Virginia—same small-town campus—Nate two years ahead of Maggie; two years ahead of her after his two years off—though they never met there. She thinks of her own loans, $1,100 that she needed to pay to a woman named Sallie Mae by the fifth of each month on a traveling food critic’s salary, the $1,100 she still needs to pay to Sallie Mae each month.
“Well, that was just stupid of you,” she says.
He puts his head to her head as if to say, thank you. Thank you for making a joke, for laughing. For letting us be us. She reaches for his ear, tugs at it, thinks of him at UVA, and how remarkable it is that they could have met almost a decade before they did. She has a few distinct memories now of seeing him there—on the other side of the student union one rainy Sunday morning, usi
ng the Sunday paper to try to dry off his arms; at a basketball game sitting in the last row of the visiting team’s side with friends, wearing a bright-red UVA sweatshirt. They are so vivid, the memories, but how can she really know if they are real or imaginary? How can she know which way is better?
He leans down, talks into her hair. “Can I tell you something I’ve never told you before?” He pauses. “I like you more than anyone.”
She looks up at him. This is what Nate always says to her— what they always say to each other—instead of I love you, instead of I’ll never leave. I like you the most, like a promise: I want you, and I always will.
“I like you more than anyone, too,” Maggie says.
Then—before she has to take another look at their BlackBerry friend, before she has to think about any of the rest of it—a bus is pulling up with large green paneling on the side, HAMPTON JITNEY written in white letters. They get in line, head onto the bus, behind an older couple who is bickering with the driver about a surfboard: under the bus, over, under.
The first several rows are already filled with passengers from previous stops. As they pass row three, Maggie catches the eye of a model-looking woman—exotic more than pretty, and strikingly thin—who looks at Nate, really looks at him, does a double take as they walk by. Nate doesn’t seem to notice, but Maggie does. She is still not used to this, how women look at Nate. At first, she kind of liked it. But now she doesn’t care if anyone else thinks Nate is attractive, especially because their looks feel so predatory. As if how he looks is all they see. As if any of his more human qualities, or the fact that he isn’t looking back, can be made untrue, invisible.
In the first free aisle, Maggie squeezes into the window seat, Nate shoving their belongings in the rack above their heads before taking the aisle seat, handing her a brown bag.