by Laura Dave
She wonders if this is why her father never focused too much on the things she did well, the ways she succeeded. Because it might make her feel entitled to be treated a certain way, make her feel like she should be angry if someone wasn’t honoring her.
Let go. This is the job.
Gwyn circles back around the airport, back past the LOW FLYING PLANES sign, to find Thomas by the curb in a white crew-neck sweater and khaki pants, his bags by his feet, his eyes fixed on the digital clock by the airport entrance.
He looks angry. He is angry with her, she imagines, because she wasn’t here when he arrived, a little angry that she hasn’t been picking up her cell phone, telling him what it is that he is supposed to do. But his face seems to relax as she gets closer, as he realizes she hasn’t abandoned him. He breaks into a smile, waves. He is like her father this way, unflappable. Or mostly unflappable. Like her father. Like Buddha.
She can’t help but smile back. She loves his face. Even now. People say you get over that with time. If you stay married long enough, you get over someone’s face. You stop noticing. But Gwyn never has. Even if they are apart for only a few days, when she sees him again, she is surprised by how his face affects her, makes her think, Hey, I get this person. Hey, this face is mine. There are wrinkles now, too, of course, but in Gwyn’s opinion they just help carve out the parts of him that looked a little too boyish before. Now he looks confident. Like more good days than bad have brought him here. To his current moment on this earth. It is enough, in its complacency, to make someone cringe—to make Gwyn, in her current moment on this earth, come close.
“There you are,” he says. And he puts his bags in the backseat. He doesn’t seem to notice the briefcase. He reaches over and touches the tip of her nose with his index finger as he gets into the passenger side. It is the strange and sweet way he often used to greet her. He hasn’t done it in a while, which makes Gwyn think it means something. And maybe it does. But probably not what Gwyn wants it to.
“I was about to give up on you,” he says.
“That makes two of us,” she says.
She pulls the car out of the airport, heading away from the potentially crowded main road, opting to wind them around toward the side roads that will lead them back to Montauk, that will lead them the long way home. She stays focused on looking out the windshield, on her hands on the steering wheel, on avoiding Thomas’s gaze.
Out of the corner of her eye, she watches as he unbuckles his sandals, putting his left foot up on the dashboard. His bad foot, as he says. The foot missing the third toe, since a surfing accident where it got chopped straight off. Fifteen years ago now. Truth be told, it’s one of Gwyn’s favorite parts of her husband—that bad foot. When things were better between them, she would stare at it, at the small opening, liking that she was the only one in his adult life to be there on both sides of it. The before and after.
“So,” he says. “What’s been going on around here?”
She shakes her head. “Not too much, really. I’m having trouble getting in touch with the caterer about tonight, which is making me a little tense. And your daughter—”
He smiles. “My daughter today?”
“Your daughter, yes,” she says. When Georgia graduated from UCLA’s photography program, when she made the masthead at Rolling Stone (Asst. Photo Ed.: Georgia G. Huntington), she was Gwyn’s daughter. Even when she started dyeing her hair pink earlier this year (wasn’t she supposed to be interested in that ten years ago?), but today she belongs to Thomas.
“She’s a little prickly because Denis ran into some trouble with a corkscrew. She wants you to call her to talk about it. Or call him in Omaha.”
Thomas rolls down the window, and she can see him thinking. “So Denis isn’t here yet?” he says. “But I thought he was flying in last night. I thought he promised her that.”
This is news to Gwyn, but she has no reason to doubt it. Georgia tends to discuss things with her father that she doesn’t tell Gwyn. She may feel judged by Gwyn, or maybe she just knows that even if Thomas is judging her, she won’t have to hear about it. That’s probably closer to it. Thomas is too nonconfrontational. He never says critical words, especially to their kids. So when she and Thomas had a bad feeling about the decisions Nate was making for himself after high school, or when Georgia dropped out of college for a while, it was up to Gwyn to do something about it. To talk to their children, or not. To be the bad guy, or not. Should she be mad at Thomas about this? She knew it going into their marriage, so it feels beside the point to hold it against him now. She has plenty of other things to hold against him.
“What can I do from here anyway?” Thomas asks.
“Tell him to get on the plane.”
He nods, agreeing. And he starts to say something else, but stops himself. They are both avoiding the temptation to address the topic of tonight in too much detail. But she can see—visibly see in his eyes—Thomas remind himself what he does think he should bring up: information about his trip, and, more specifically, what he did during his trip that pertains to Buddhism. As if Gwyn has forgotten that Thomas’s newfound spirituality is the reason they are here in the first place, as if she needs proof that it still matters to him.
The part of her that is still her husband’s friend wants to remind him that he shouldn’t try this hard, that trying this hard is a dead giveaway that you are up to something. But he is already talking, and no one, least of all Gwyn, has the energy to stop him.
“So I had a little time off Thursday, and headed to this incredible temple out in Orange County. It is the second oldest Buddhist temple in the United States.”
“No kidding?”
He nods, not sensing her sarcasm—not sensing that she couldn’t care less about all of it, everything he is going to say next.
“One of the best parts is that every spiritual director there comes from the same bloodline.” He is quiet for a minute, as if thinking about it. “Isn’t that amazing? I really was inspired, just being there. It was, far and away, the most beautiful temple I’ve ever seen.”
She nods her head, too, hoping that is enough affirmation so he shuts up.
“I’m thinking about going back out there,” he continues.
Apparently not.
“They are sponsoring a silent meditation retreat in November out in the Santa Ynez Valley. Two weeks.”
She decides she has done her part, and doesn’t say anything else, focuses on the road. The morning is slipping away, the day carving out ahead of them: sunshine and warm air, blue skies as far as the eyes can see. This is why she was excited to move out here, originally. Days like this. Drives like this. Instead of spending Saturday afternoons the terrible ways that people in a city can spend Saturdays—shopping, eating too much brunch, seeing friends they half wish they weren’t seeing—she and Thomas would be out here together. Taking long car rides, the radio playing some forgotten song, watching the world around them. Gwyn would make sandwiches for lunch. And they would stop in a quiet restaurant for a fried fish dinner or a decent steak, good cheap wine.
She had this pair of cut-off jean shorts she liked to wear for these rides. They were white and tiny, crawling only to the top of her thighs, cutting her in just the right way so that her thighs looked brown and round and endless. Thomas used to hold her there, at the short’s edges, most of the day, his hands between her bare thighs.
The last time she put those shorts on must be eight years ago now, those Saturday afternoon rides a thing of the past. Thomas had been traveling to a lot of conferences that fall, and Georgia had just left for her freshman year of college, and Gwyn started spending her newfound free time with Moses Wilder, a dentist in town. (A divorced dentist! Could there be anything less sexy? Maybe only one named Moses.)
Moses Wilder.
It was all innocent enough at first. Moses had two big sheep-dogs, and she would go with him when he’d walk them in the morning. She would go for walks with him, and those dogs, and let him pay
attention to her. It got less innocent, she guesses, when she began going on the evening walks as well, and let them end with a glass of bourbon on Moses’s porch, and a different kind of attention. But one evening, she wore the shorts to meet him. And after he handed her the bourbon and sat down beside her, he reached for her, the same way Thomas used to, and it could have been Thomas’s hand on her thighs, it could have been Thomas, and that was too much.
She never saw Moses again. She did what she had to do. She threw herself back into her house, her home, back into Thomas in the ways she still could. She threw out the shorts. She only let herself cry for Moses once. This doesn’t make her anyone’s hero. This is just what you do. When you put a marriage first. When you remember what you promised. When you want to remember and make it count.
“Have you seen my cell phone, by the way?” Thomas turns toward her, putting his hand on the back of her seat. “I was sure I packed it, but I got to California and couldn’t find it anywhere.”
Gwyn squeezes the steering wheel. “No, I haven’t seen it.”
“Are you sure? I don’t think I brought it with me.”
“Are you expecting me to change my mind if you ask enough times?” she asks, harsher than she means to. She tries to think of a way to dial back, make it less aggressive. But this is how she feels toward Thomas—aggressive. This is what she is learning, how things shift inside when you hide the truth. They shift irreconcilably. She takes a deep breath in, forces herself to stay calm. “Maybe it will just show up.”
“How do you figure?”
She shrugs. “Lose something else, throw your keys out the window, and look for them instead. And, right then, when you really start looking for your keys, like under the bed, or in the backyard. Bam.”
“Bam?”
“There the cell phone will be.”
He smiles at her, really smiles at her, because he likes it when he thinks she is being weird, quirky. He finds it endearing, and she knows it reminds him of who he thinks she used to be, who he thinks she isn’t exactly anymore. But before she can enjoy it, the small return of affection, her cell phone starts to ring, PRIVATE coming up on the caller ID.
She motions for him to give her a minute, and picks it up. “This is Gwyn.”
“Ms. Lancaster?”
Lancaster. Her maiden name. So she knows immediately who it is. Eve. Eve, the Caterer. Finally. She has her on the phone. This is what she needed to make sure everything is on track for tonight.
Gwyn covers the receiver, sneaks a look at her husband. He is looking out the window, paying no attention to the conversation whatsoever.
“I just got your messages from this morning,” Eve says. “I’m sorry about that. I was surfing, and we had no cell phone coverage to speak of, but . . .”
But. Gwyn stops listening, wants to hear the rest of what her husband is saying instead. “You know,” she says. “I’m going to have to call you back, okay?”
She flips the phone shut, turns back to her husband.
“Sorry, what were you saying?”
“I don’t know,” he says. “I was just thinking . . . it must be something about the way we were talking . . . but I was thinking about those Saturday rides we used to take, those long rides. Something about this road, maybe. Something about the way you’re taking us home is making me think of it.”
She is silent. Me too, she could have said. Because she was thinking it too. She got there even before he did. But she doesn’t want to give him this. She doesn’t want to say anything.
“Do you remember the first time I taught you to drive a stick shift? We went out to McCully’s old vineyard. What ever happened to McCully? Do you think he’s still around? My God, you were so scared. Why were you so scared? You were such a natural at it. Well, once you could figure out the difference between first and third.”
And he laughs. She tries not to. She bites the inside of her lip and tries not to laugh too. This is the painful part. Love doesn’t leave you. Not all at once. It creeps back in, making you think it can be another way, that it can still be another way, and you have to remind yourself of the reasons that it probably won’t be.
“Thomas,” she says. “That was forever ago.”
“So you don’t remember?”
Third and fifth. The ones that she had trouble with were third and fifth. He had tried to talk to her about making an H—but she couldn’t seem to do it. And they had to pull over because they were laughing so loud. They couldn’t seem to communicate, but that was funny then.
“Gwyn?”
She hates him now. She actually may hate him. “I don’t want to,” she says.
Maggie
They are the very last stop.
It comes at almost three hours exactly. It comes after too many towns, too many abrupt stops and starts, too many tennis courts and Olympic-size swimming pools and horse farms named things like Happy Meadows or Spring Blossoms. It isn’t crowded, this late in September. But still, Maggie has been looking intently out the window and is able to gauge it in quick bursts, the weirdness of the Hamptons, beyond these obvious excesses: the daughter-and-mom duo in their matching yellow Juicy sweatsuits, a caravan of antique convertibles driven by teenage boys, an ice cream parlor for dogs.
But then, after the East Hampton stop, something seems to change—the universe course-correcting itself. Suddenly the roads and towns become more like beach towns that Maggie remembers from growing up: fewer fancy SUVs, more swaying trees and empty spaces.
Clapboard houses that look lived in.
By the time they pull into Montauk’s town center, into the bus station, Maggie is looking forward to checking out Nate’s hometown, wants to breathe in the sea air, breathe in the beach. But the windows won’t open. It isn’t an option. So she closes her eyes and waits.
Nate leans in and kisses her cheek, then kisses her right below the jaw. “We’re here,” he says.
“That’s something,” she says.
He smiles. “That is something.”
She takes his hand, squeezes. She is trying. She is really trying to let the day start again, right here, when she needs it the most.
And by the time they step off the bus, Murph is already out of sight. Maggie decides to take this as the first good sign. The second one is that, as soon as Maggie is on solid ground and gets a look around, she feels intrigued by the town around her.
Montauk isn’t what she expected—it feels less like she’s walked into a beach town and more like she’s walked into a ghost town: an empty police station and a closed-down restaurant, a sign for the Memory Motel out ahead of them, and in the distance, just a peek of ocean.
“You ready for this?” Nate says, as she looks around. “Because, if not, this thing turns itself around in about twenty minutes. We’ll head back to New York City. Be home in time to watch the sun go down.”
“Be home in time to watch Weeds?” she says.
“Even be home in time to buy a television to watch it on,” he says. “Just tell me when you’re ready to get out of here.”
She steps on his tiptoes, and whispers softly into his ear. “I’m ready to get out of here.”
And he reaches for her, because he thinks she is flirting a little. And part of her is—the part of her that is trying to overpower the other part, the part that wants to scream: I am ready now! Because it is all starting to feel manageable again between us, to feel something like normal, and just when that happens today,I seem to get struck down worse. I hear about you having sex in mansion/high schools with padded bathtubs.
But she takes a deep breath, and follows him across the street to the small parking lot next to John’s Pancake House, where they are supposed to meet his sister. There is a small taffy stand outside the restaurant, a group of teenagers in matching green Windbreakers with S.H.S. WEATHER CLUB written on the back, standing around sipping sodas and eating taffy. Maybe they are on a class trip. Maggie doesn’t know, but she feels a longing to be among them, to have access
to the day ahead of them: sticky candy, and conversations about water currents, and a bus ride back to wherever they’re coming from.
Only before she can think too much about it, one of the girls, who Maggie assumes is with them, steps out from behind the hood of a dirty gray Volvo wagon, revealing the pregnant bulge in her belly.
Her stomach is a dead giveaway, even if she weren’t identical to the most recent photo on their refrigerator: same pink streaks running through her blond hair, wearing an X-large NOFX tank top and faded jeans, wearing Nate’s eyes.
Georgia. In the photograph, she was cradling her stomach. Now, she is cradling a three-pound plastic sand bucket of saltwater taffy in both of her hands. And when she looks up, she is sucking on one of the pinkish-green strands, like it is a cigarette, like it is the last cigarette on earth.
“Nathaniel,” she says. “You’re here.”
“I’m here,” he says.
Which is when she turns to Maggie.
“And you’re here!”
Maggie waves hip-side—small, shy—and Nate drops his bag, letting go of her hand and moving toward his sister.
He bends down to give her a hug, an overly gentle hug, as though he’ll break her. Maggie laughs, knowing this is what he is worried about, and because it is so nice to watch him with Georgia. Even with her huge stomach, even holding on to that huge taffy tub, she looks so small next to Nate. She looks like she belongs to him.
When Georgia pulls away, she holds out her hand for Maggie, who takes it.
“I’m glad to meet you,” Maggie says.
“I’m glad to meet you too,” she says. “You don’t smoke by chance, do you?”
“No, she doesn’t, Georgia,” Nate says.
“Was I talking to you? I was asking Maggie.”
“And I am telling you that Maggie doesn’t.”
Georgia turns back to Maggie. “No one is asking anyone to give me one. But someone’s going to have to smoke a cigarette for me. Sometime soon. And I thought maybe you looked up to the task?”