The Divorce Party

by Laura Dave

  Maggie reaches out, covers the scratch on the Volvo. “And we’ll take care of the damage,” she says. “If it even needs to be taken care of. Nate’s parents won’t have to know.”

  Maybe it isn’t her place to say this, but she decides she’ll pay for the scratch if she has to—anything so Eve stops looking like she is about to have a nervous breakdown right in front of them.

  “You sure about that?” Eve says.

  “Positive,” Nate says. “It could have been a lot worse. You have no idea what’s waiting for us inside.”

  Eve laughs at this, a little too loud, like she knows something they don’t. Or something they are about to find out. “Well,” Eve says. “I guess I’ll be seeing you both a little later today.”

  “Sounds good.”

  Maggie gets back into the car as Nate drives them to the side of the driveway, out of the way.

  Eve gives them a wave and heads back to her truck too. But instead of moving forward toward the house, she puts the truck in reverse and drives straight out of Ditch Plains. As fast as the vine van will carry her.

  Nate looks at the now empty driveway, as though he can’t believe it. “She’s not coming in? What about the mushroom caps?”

  “I guess they are going to have to wait.”

  He shrugs. “Maybe she’s just not ready.”

  Maggie turns back toward the house-slash-national-park in front of her—its pillars like signposts to a world she doesn’t exactly want to visit. The large wraparound porch like a promise of something, but maybe nothing she is quite ready to know about yet.

  “I know the feeling,” she says, as they walk inside.

  Gwyn

  This is what she remembers.

  That first time she came to Montauk with Thomas, to see where he lived, it was winter and freezing out. And she came down here to the edge of the property—to this deep cliff, overlooking the beach below, and stood there, by herself, watching as the sun slowly went down. She was barely twenty-two years old, she was shivering, but standing there on the cliff she saw her life spread out before her. Or maybe that’s too easy. Maybe what’s closer to the truth is that for the first time she saw something promising in her life, something she didn’t want to look away from. Even now, all these years later, she remembers how she felt looking out at that water. She remembers that this was when this place first became hers.

  Now, she sits down on the swing—the small, wooden swing—that Thomas’s parents gave them as a wedding present. That Champ actually made for them. It is a beautiful swing, and she comes out here daily to sit on it. To read or knit, just have her morning coffee, and look at the paper. Or, like today, to get herself ready for something she doesn’t want to do.

  That first weekend, though, there was no swing, and she stood there getting ready for all she did want to do.

  Thomas had been so nervous to show her where he grew up. He had already started to work at the free clinic out here, so he wasn’t only showing her his past; he was showing her their future. If she decided to join him in it. They would live here, on the end of the world, which at the time—in theory—felt romantic. But seeing it firsthand in the middle of a cold, cold winter felt like something more complex, closer to something he had explained: You’ll either love the quiet or you won’t be able to take it. And that will make all the difference. It will make all the difference in whether you can imagine this becoming your life, too.

  It was then she started to understand that it wouldn’t just be her and Thomas out here, but this third component—the house itself—that would dictate things for them. This house, in its isolation, which would demand that their marriage be both stronger and looser than if they lived somewhere else. Somewhere urban or suburban—somewhere less close to the edge of the earth, that required less partnership to make things work. That, quite simply, required less.

  Thomas doesn’t know this part. She went into town that first afternoon to get some fresh juice, and called her sister from a pay phone on the side of Old Montauk Highway, wondering why it was that it took her until now to understand that she was being asked to step into someone else’s already-chosen life. Or step out.

  “What do you want from me?” Jillian asked her.

  “I want you to tell me that you like him,” she said. “I want you to tell me it will turn out okay.”

  “I like him, Gwyn,” she said. “And it is probably not going to turn out okay.”

  “How can you know that?”

  “Because you only ever ask me questions when you need to hear an answer you can’t tell yourself.”

  Then Jillian stopped giving any opinion. She reminded her instead of something her father did when they moved into that colonial house in Macon—Gwyn barely four years old—the house her parents would stay in until they died. He told the girls that when they grew up and found the place they wanted to make their home, they should find a safe spot there and make three wishes. They could count on three coming true, but only three, so they should wish carefully.

  It probably stuck with Jillian, and should have stuck with Gwyn, because their father never said things like this. Superstitious things. But he believed you got to make three wishes for being brave enough to even imagine a place could become your home.

  So that first night—once Gwyn decided she would make Montauk hers—she stood on the edge of this very cliff and did it. She made her wishes. She sealed her fate.

  She’s never told anyone what she wished for, not even Jillian. And she’s never told anyone that she saved the third. She’s saved it for the day she needed to wish to overcome something bigger than she could imagine, or plan for: that one of her kids would get better, that the car accident wasn’t insurmountable, that death wouldn’t get to Thomas before her.

  But she’s using it now—by the edge of the cliff, her cliff, looking down over it while it still is.

  This moment, this wish.

  Thomas was completely wrapped up in the first two: her wish that they would marry. Her wish that they would have healthy, happy kids. Such average wishes, so unspecific. He may as well get this one as well.

  She gets up off the swing, stands tall. She breathes in the sky, the blue of it, the air collapsing, growing thinner, around her. She doesn’t feel it yet—or can’t name it—the storm that is brewing, but she feels something.

  She wishes he will be sorry.

  Then she unclasps her hand to find Thomas’s cell phone in there. It is small and black. Its red light is flashing brightly. There are messages waiting for him. Phone numbers he may think he needs, but will not have for now.

  It is eighty feet to the ocean. She pulls back, takes aim and lets the cell phone fly.

  Maggie

  There is a statue of Buddha in the living room.

  Gold-plated and several feet high, sitting tall against the wall, between the two windows. Smiling.

  Maggie is squatting down before him, looking him right in the eye. Looking him right in his smile, his wide cheeks. She wants to reach out and touch him, the Buddha, right where they meet: that smile, those cheeks.

  Thomas comes up behind her and hands her a glass of iced tea. “It’s over a hundred years old,” he says. “I just had it shipped here.”

  “The Buddha,” she says. “Or the tea?”

  Thomas laughs, which is good, because as soon as the words are out of her mouth she knows they could have been taken badly. Seems to confirm Maggie’s guess that he is like Nate in that important way: open, nonjudgmental. She still only reluctantly heads back to the couch and sits down across from him. She doesn’t want to look at him, not straight on. He looks so much like Nate in person—same nose and hair and eyes. Watching him, Maggie feels a little like she is peering into her own future: this will be Nate in thirty years. This will be what Nate looks like when their son comes home with his fiancée for the first time.

  Maggie looks around the rest of the room instead: it is Asian inspired, with warm yellow walls and eight-foot windows, th
e large beautiful mahogany bookshelves taking up one wall, a painting of a Chinese character taking up the other. Its steady line on the bottom makes it look like a ship. If she thinks about it, this room—what is in it—is probably worth more than her father’s entire house. She tries to think about something else.

  The Buddha seems to still be laughing at her. She covers the side of her eyes, bites her lip, and tries to listen as Nate’s dad starts to tell them about the medical conference, about the temple he visited in Orange County while he was out there.

  They are all sitting down now: Nate and her on the couch, Thomas in the big armchair across from them, and Georgia lying on the floor, on her back, beneath him. Gwyn hasn’t materialized yet.

  “I’m thinking of going back out there for a while and taking some classes,” he says. “After things are settled.”

  “You mean after the divorce is settled?” Georgia says. “You can say it, Dad. We’re celebrating it tonight, aren’t we?”

  “We’re celebrating everything that came before it, George,” Thomas says.

  “How is that different?” she says.

  “Because,” he says. “It’s our way of reminding you that no one is to blame.”

  Is that an answer? Maggie looks over at Nate, who is nodding his head, like he understands what his dad is saying, and maybe he does—maybe he understands something she doesn’t, like how that is an answer to the question Georgia asked. It sounds more, to Maggie, just like an answer Thomas wants to give—regardless of what is being asked of him. So he gets to believe it.

  But then, before she can think of why that is striking her, Maggie hears footsteps padding down the hallway, and Gwyn comes flying into the room. Gwyn with her long blond hair, a pale sheath dress running down to her bare feet. She looks like a commercial for herself, and Maggie is forced to see that she will not be her when their son comes home with his fiancée: a beautiful woman—her beauty still sharp, graceful and elegant, a close semblance to who she has always been. There are women like this, and Maggie guesses that if you pay attention, you know early on whether you get to be one of them. Probably—if you aren’t paying attention—you don’t.

  Gwyn makes a beeline for Nate and her, bending to give him a large hug, bending before he can even stand.

  “It’s looking like we’re probably going to get a little wet during this party of ours,” Gwyn says. “I think a storm is moving in off the horizon. Maybe we should move the whole thing inside . . . what do you think? I don’t want to move the thing inside, but that barn is falling apart. . . .”

  This before hello.

  This before anything else.

  “Hey there, Champ,” she says, as she pulls away. And for a second Maggie’s eyes open wide, because she thinks Gwyn is calling him by his real name, his birth name, but then she realizes Gwyn is just saying it like a nickname. Like calling him a winner. Like how Maggie sometimes calls him “Sport.”

  She holds her hand against his cheek. “It’s good to see your face,” she says. And then, still on her knees, Gwyn turns to Maggie. “And you must be Celine?”

  Everyone is silent.

  “I’m kidding!” Gwyn squeezes her knee, and then leans forward to hug her, to really hug her. “It is lovely to meet you, Maggie,” she says, right into her ear, so only Maggie hears her.

  “You too,” Maggie says, and smiles.

  Maggie makes decisions about people too quickly—she knows this—but she likes Gwyn, right away, partially because she sees what she might have missed if Gwyn hadn’t bent to greet her: a sweetness in her eyes. A real sweetness. For a second, it makes her think of all that Nate had growing up. These two loving parents, this home. Even if his parents are splitting up now, it doesn’t explain why in the last year and a half he has always seemed less than eager to come back here.

  She tries to shake off her questioning as Gwyn gets up and goes to sit down on the floor beside Georgia, taking Thomas’s glass from him and taking a sip, one swift motion, as she plops down on the floor, her dress wrapping her legs—scooting in as close as she can get to her daughter.

  “So what did I miss?” Gwyn says. “Did you have an easy trip out here?”

  “Fairly easy,” Nate says. “Until we got to the driveway.”

  “What happened in the driveway?”

  “Nothing,” Nate says, and shakes his head, as if remembering they weren’t going to bring it up. “My sister just got out of the car, while I was still driving, to answer a phone call.”

  “You’re telling on me?” Georgia says. “What are you, nine?”

  Nate smiles, proud of himself. “I just turned ten,” he says.

  But then Thomas interrupts them. “You weren’t using my phone, by chance, were you, Georgia? For the phone call? I can’t find it.”

  “Why would I be using your phone?”

  “You wouldn’t,” Gwyn says, putting her hand on Georgia’s shoulder, rubbing it. Then she turns to look up at Nate’s dad. “Let it go, Thomas. It’s gone.”

  And Maggie is startled by it—startled by it on the heels of thinking that they are so lovely, even in the midst of all of this— what she hears in Gwyn’s voice: anger. Latent, maybe, but there nevertheless.

  But she looks over at Nate, who seems not to have noticed, and so Maggie decides she has imagined it.

  “Hey, the caterer was here, by the way,” Georgia says, pointing toward the front of the house, toward the driveway. “And she told Nate and Maggie that there are two hundred people coming tonight. That’s a mistake, right?”

  “You guys met the caterer?” Gwyn asks, taking her hand off Georgia’s shoulder. “Thomas, did you meet the caterer too?”

  “Mom, that’s kind of beside the point, wouldn’t you say? Why are there two hundred people coming to the house? There are supposed to be, like . . . seven,” Georgia says.

  “We never said seven,” Gwyn says.

  “You said, small parting ceremony.”

  “And that equals the number seven?” Gwyn says. “Since when?”

  Georgia gives her a look. “Why didn’t you give us any warning about this? Because you thought Nate wouldn’t come?”

  “We did tell Nate,” Thomas says.

  They did? Maggie looks at Nate. You knew?

  But Nate doesn’t meet her eyes. He is looking down at his own hands, as if this were a stranger’s too-loud conversation in a dentist’s office, as if he just wants it to be over. He looks up at his sister. “We’ve been so crazed with the move and the restaurant,” he says. “I guess I wasn’t taking it in.”

  “That’s shocking. I’ve never known you to avoid addressing things that you don’t want to deal with,” Georgia says.

  Maggie almost asks aloud, what does that mean? But Georgia is turning back to her mom. “Why didn’t you tell me the scale of tonight?”

  “We didn’t want to overwhelm you while you were pregnant,” Thomas says.

  “I’m still pregnant.”

  “Well, we didn’t want to overwhelm you while you were less pregnant,” Gwyn says. “But there’s no need to be upset anyway. Tonight is going to be really lovely. Just a little more involved than you thought.”

  “Define ‘involved,’ ” Georgia says, an edge to her voice.

  “Too much food, a large band, and my very delicious red velvet cake. It’s kind of like an anniversary party. A big anniversary party. But instead of just celebrating our anniversary . . . we are also celebrating that it is the last one.”

  “Fantastic,” Georgia says.

  “Look, what your mom is trying to say is that no one is the villain here,” Thomas says. “We still plan on being close. Celebrating your wedding, Georgia’s birth. We just want to do those important things in an honest way.”

  “Who are you talking to, Dad?” Georgia says. “Us or yourself? You just said that five minutes ago.”

  Gwyn stands up and starts to leave the room. “Well, then let’s avoid any of us getting too repetitious and take a breather, okay?
Just give ourselves a chance to get used to this. It’s not like we are surprising you that we are getting divorced. The rest is just . . . details. In a little bit, it won’t feel so severe. In a few hours, even. We’ll have some drinks, some good food. Celebrate our family.”

  Georgia says, “At the divorce party?”

  “Yes, at the divorce party.”

  “I was kidding.”

  But Gwyn gives her daughter’s shoulder a slight squeeze, as if that settles it, and starts to walk out of the room. Only Thomas tries to stop her. “Maybe you should sit until everything is covered,” he says.

  “Everything, Thomas?”

  This is when Maggie notices it, reminiscent of the anger she detected before: Gwyn gives Thomas a look, so quick and brutal that anyone could miss it. And everyone seems to, except for Maggie, who feels like she now knows that something is going on. Something beyond whatever it is Thomas and Gwyn are trying to pretend isn’t. But what? Everyone knows they are separating. Amicably separating, but separating nevertheless. What could be worse than that? Perhaps something a little less amicable.

  Gwyn is standing in the doorway now, smiling too eagerly. “Tonight is what it is,” Gwyn says. “And this time tomorrow, it will be done. If you don’t want to come, don’t come.”

  “I don’t want to come,” Georgia says.

  “You’re coming,” Gwyn says.

  And with that, she is gone. Maggie watches her go, the same way she came, in a swirl of white fabric and hair and wind. She looks over at Nate, who is looking back at her.

  Are you okay? he asks with his eyes.

  If you are, she answers.

  “Guys, I get that this isn’t exactly easy,” Thomas says. “But it is all going to shake out to be for the best, I promise you. In a year, we’ll both be better off being apart. We’ll have moved on. We’ll be able to be true friends, which is something we haven’t been able to be in a long time.”

  “Because of the Buddhism thing?” Georgia says.

  “Because of a lot of things,” Thomas says.

  Maggie looks up at her future father-in-law. There is something different in Thomas’s tone—something that sounds like the truth.