by Laura Dave
“Can I ask you something personal?” Georgia says.
Maggie turns her body so she is completely facing Georgia. “Of course.”
Georgia looks at Maggie, then back up at the ceiling. “I’m having a little girl,” she says. “I found out yesterday.”
“Oh my God, Georgia!” Maggie touches her arm. “That’s amazing.”
Georgia nods. “You’re the only one who knows.” She pauses, rubbing her belly. “You’re the only one that knows, including Denis.”
Which is when Maggie remembers how this started. “And what’s the question?”
“Do I have to tell him?”
“Why wouldn’t you tell him?”
“Denis really wanted a boy. I didn’t care, as long as the baby is healthy, but Denis did, and I found out because I wanted to surprise him, if it were a boy. Now that it’s not, I am worried.”
“Worried about what?”
“That he won’t be happy. That he’ll be disappointed and unable to hide it.”
Maggie looks over at Georgia, trying to think of how to calm her nerves, trying to calm her. “I’m sure he is going to be thrilled. When that baby comes into the world, it will be the only baby he wants.”
“How do you know?”
“I think that’s just the way it works.”
She smiles, uncertain. “In the movies?” she says.
“And television,” Maggie says.
Georgia’s smile gets bigger, starts to light up her face, just as Maggie hears a loud vibrating noise, and Georgia pulls her cell phone out of her jeans pocket. She holds out the phone so Maggie can see DENIS on the caller ID. Then she flips her feet over the side of the bed and sits up, so she can answer.
“Hey, baby,” she says. “Where are you? Please tell me that you are at the airport, getting on the plane.”
From the expression on Georgia’s face, which goes immediately back from happy to far less so, it is clear that, wherever Denis is, it is not at the airport getting on the plane.
Georgia gets up and Maggie thinks she is going to leave the room, but she goes into the closet, closing the door behind her. Maggie looks down at the shot glass in her hand, trying not to listen to Georgia’s voice, which is getting increasingly loud.
And suddenly, the closet door is open and Georgia is standing there, no cell phone in her hand.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” she says.
Maggie nods. “Okay.”
She looks pissed and for a second she thinks Georgia is going to take the absinthe bottle and down the whole thing. But she doesn’t. She just gets real close to Maggie.
“Let’s get out of here,” she says.
“Where to?”
“You’ll love it.”
The last thing Maggie wants to do is go anywhere, even somewhere she’ll love. She wants to let the alcohol work its magic. She wants it to make her tired. She wants to sleep. But it makes Georgia look alive, the thought of getting out of here, and Maggie can’t handle stopping that. So she takes a deep breath. “Can I bring the absinthe?”
“I think we can make room.”
She ignores the spinning in her head as she starts to stand. “Then let’s go,” she says.
Gwyn
She is washing the dishes when Thomas comes into the kitchen in his wet suit, his surfboard in his hand. This isn’t an anomaly. It is his pattern: most afternoons, when he gets home from work, he goes for a run along the ocean’s edge, and, depending on the tide, he goes surfing. Sometimes, after, he also goes for a bike ride, even in the rain, even in the snow: anything to get outside for a while, get active. It was years into their marriage before Gwyn accepted that it was impossible to talk with him about important things—about anything, really—before he had that time alone, outside, to decompress. He was in a much better mood afterward, his face more open, accepting. In the space between work and the time he spent outside, she could have the best news in the world for him, and he wasn’t able to engage her, or hear it.
Thomas opens the oven, takes a look at the cake, the thick butter smell wafting through the air. “Is that red velvet cake?”
Gwyn flicks water at him. “Close it. It’s bad luck.”
“How do you figure?”
“You know how it’s bad luck to see the bride in the wedding gown before the wedding?”
“It’s bad luck to see the red velvet cake before the divorce party?”
“Exactly.”
He smiles, doing what she says, closing the oven tight. “I’ll take your word for it.”
She turns the water on stronger as he leans the surfboard against the wall, opening the refrigerator door, searching for a bottle of green tea to bring. She knows that is what he wants and says, “Second shelf.”
He bends to grab it. “I think the kids are okay with our plans for tonight,” he says. “We knew they wouldn’t be happy about the size, but it seems okay with them.”
“Really? You think so?”
Maybe she expects him to be mad at her, mad that she was fairly passive-aggressive during the conversation with their children—that she didn’t rise to the occasion the way she had said she would, been as smooth about it as she could have been. He doesn’t seem mad at all, though, which is almost worse. It feels like just another reminder that he barely sees her anymore.
He closes the fridge door, shakes the tea bottle in his left hand. “Georgia was upset,” he says. “But she’ll calm down.”
“We can hope.”
“Gwyn,” he says. “I think it’s hard for them to see us together. It will get better after a while.”
She looks up from her dishes. “How’s that, Thomas?”
“They’ll realize that we aren’t supposed to stay that way.”
She nods—trying to ignore the tightening in her chest—as he moves toward the other side of the sink, reaches toward the windowsill to turn on the small radio they keep there. “I just want to get the weather before I head out,” he says, tuning in to 1010, just as the weatherman is finishing up his report:
. . . Expect thunderstorms in early evening, growing in intensity throughout the night. Certainly not a repeat of the hurricane that greeted us back in 1938, on this very day, but certainly not the time to go walking along the beach.
“That’s not great for tonight,” Thomas says. He pulls off the bottle cap, takes a sip. “But I think we’ll be okay. The barn can handle it, right? I don’t think we should worry.”
That’s fine with her. With everything else she is trying to handle for this evening, the weather is the last thing she is going to concern herself with.
“Do you know how many times my father told me what happened to him during the hurricane?”
Do you know how many times you’ve told me? she wants to say. She could repeat the whole thing by heart, even what happened to them afterward: Champ fondly remembering how the town of Montauk got rebuilt in the aftermath, how he and Anna got involved in resurrecting this area from what it had faced.
“It was because of the hurricane that they decided to stay out here full time,” Thomas says. “Most people didn’t do that back then, didn’t consider that as an option. It’s weird to think about it, how they would have had a totally different life otherwise.”
She smiles, but she doesn’t feel like talking about Champ and Anna. It makes her miss them, makes her wish they were here. If they were, she can’t help but think that Thomas wouldn’t be doing what he is doing. She knows this, at least: he would be doing it differently.
Gwyn motions out the window to where Nate is standing near the edge of the cliff, by the swing, throwing rocks out at the ocean.
“Why don’t you ask him to go with you?” she says, motioning toward their son. “Maggie’s upstairs in his room sleeping. And it will be good for you to talk to him while you have some time alone. It will be good for you to get him to talk.”
“About what?” Thomas looks confused. “About you and me?”
Gwyn gives h
im a look. “About him and Maggie. About why he is choosing not to tell her some very important things.”
“Like what?”
“Like she doesn’t know about his first restaurant.”
“What are you talking about? How can she not know about that? That’s insane.”
Is it? she wants to say. What about all the things you think I don’t know about? Is that insane too?
“What did he say exactly?”
Gwyn takes a breath in, not in the mood to translate, not in the mood to go through it again—the little that Nate told her, the rest that she couldn’t seem to pry from him over one cake-baking session. “Just ask him, Thomas,” she says, her anger rising. “Ask him what he is doing.”
“Okay,” he says, and he picks his surfboard up. “Except Maggie’s not upstairs. She just went out with Georgia a little while ago. I heard the car pull out. They didn’t come in here and tell you?”
“No, I didn’t even hear them leave.” She puts the sponge down. “That’s odd. Well, I’ll let her know. I’ll let her know, and I’ll keep her busy.”
He taps her on the nose, makes a quick circle there. “You doing okay?” he says.
She feels herself cringe at his touch, at how it feels when he moves away. “Sure,” she says. “I’m doing great.”
“Gwyn—”
“Get going. Come on. Before it starts to rain.”
He points at the radio. “It sounds like we have hours before any of that hits us.”
“The one thing we do not have before any of that hits us, Thomas, is hours,” she says and he gives her a look, but he picks up his surfboard and leaves.
Gwyn takes her time. She finishes with the dishes, puts them back in the cupboard, and calmly heads outside herself, but in the opposite way from Nate and Thomas. She heads down her driveway toward their nearest neighbor’s place. It is quiet out here, silent almost, but soon enough, they will be coming to set it up: the barn being transformed in one swoop, candelas covering the now pushed-to-the-side tables. A buffet of food circling the center. The rafters coated with white balloons and glass balls.
Still, she has a little longer to get this last piece together. And she’s come this far, but she’s not nervous now. She’s not. She is just letting herself know what she knows, like a mantra she’s been repeating since all of Thomas’s lies started: More than one thing is never true. People love to say the opposite, love to talk about inner conflict, nuances, levels of complication. But if this last year has taught her anything, it has taught her that people are clearer on what they want than they admit to themselves. They want something, or they don’t. They decide to keep working at a relationship or they give up. They love someone or they love someone else. And if they love someone else, it is often the idea that they love most, especially when they haven’t learned enough to figure out that this new person probably won’t save them either.
Thomas hasn’t learned that yet, which is why he can lie and call the girl religion. And why Gwyn is left to call her new religion the girl. Following the girl. Learning from her. Learning about who her husband has decided he wants to be. Learning about what is coming next for her family.
And here it is. What is coming next.
Here she is.
Sitting on the back steps at the Buckleys’.
Her husband’s mistress. In a large jacket and frayed jeans, two low-flying braids against the side of her head. Her eyes darting back and forth, looking nervous—holding a large silver tray of oversize mushroom caps.
“Eve,” Gwyn says, and moves toward her. “Welcome.”
Maggie
This is what Maggie knew about the lighthouse out on Montauk Point, before she actually went to the lighthouse out on Montauk Point: that it was the oldest lighthouse in America, around for over two hundred years, and still used to help navigate ships in and out on the tip of Long Island, this important port on the edge of the world. What she didn’t know, until today, is that many couples get married here, that it’s booked years in advance, so that on any given weekend, a bride and a groom can say their vows in front of fifty friends, the ocean in the background, the lighthouse up on the hill to the right, like a beacon shining, eternal. Something for the minister to point to as emblematic of the union, of what the couple has to come.
When she and Georgia pulled up, a wedding was in progress, and so they swung around to a private “lot” that Georgia knew about—more like an unused dirt road—and Maggie followed Georgia through the forest until they reached the rocks, a small beach area just beyond—marked GOVERNMENT PROPERTY: NO TRESPASSING—where they could watch the ceremony, undetected.
“Are you sure we should be here?” Maggie asks.
“Shhh!” Georgia says, pointing to the couple forty yards away. “I’m concentrating.”
From where Maggie sits with Georgia on these rocks, she can see everything, and hear nothing, and make up whatever story she wants. From here the couple getting married can be anyone.
This couple does seem to be older, in their sixties or seventies—if Maggie is guessing correctly—and this is probably why they are including readings and scripture and more readings. They probably want to include the people from their previous lives—all of their kids, all of their kids’ kids—and make them feel a part of this. There also seem to be a lot of musicians, taking turns playing music, singing songs, throughout the ceremony. Probably one of them is a musician, or both, and this is how they met. Or, at least, this is what Maggie decides.
“I used to always think I’d get married here,” Georgia says. “I was dating this hedge-fund dude when I was just out of college who liked me because I was just out of college, and I reserved this place for a June wedding. I almost forgot to cancel in time. I almost forgot I hated him, and so should probably get my deposit back.”
Maggie turns toward her, and tries to focus on what she is saying. Did all of that make sense? She looks down at the absinthe bottle, and the too-big dent she has made in it. And maybe it is because she is sitting down that she can’t feel it exactly, exactly how too-big the dent actually is. Somewhere inside, though, she knows it is happening. She knows it and isn’t doing anything to stop it.
“When I was growing up, my mom and I would come up here sometimes on Saturdays and watch the weddings. I was always so amazed when the couple actually went through with the thing. That no one got up and walked away, changed his mind at the last minute. I think I was always waiting for that. Isn’t that terrible? A whole life ruined for my amusement.”
“Sounds pretty human,” Maggie says.
“Maybe.”
She looks at Georgia more carefully. “Do you and Denis not talk about getting married?”
That is certainly the absinthe talking. This sounds like something she would be too afraid to ask normally, if she were thinking clearly about it.
Georgia shakes her head, slowly. “No, Denis wants to wait until after the baby comes.”
“To get married?”
“To talk about it.”
Georgia reaches over and takes the bottle of absinthe from Maggie. She takes a long smell of it, and then hands the bottle back.
“Have you ever heard that Oscar Wilde saying? ‘All women become their mothers.’ I think it was Oscar Wilde. You know the quote, right? ‘All women become their mothers. That is their tragedy . . .’ ”
Maggie feels it, a familiar pang rising up in her chest. At even the sound of the word mother, at a reminder of what she never really had. Should it be like this twenty-plus years since her exit? Does the should even matter? It is this way, and there is no denying it. Maggie’s mother left and never came back and Maggie never did anything to find her. Or to let her go. And maybe this has made some sort of difference she is afraid to look at.
“I’ve been thinking about that recently,” Georgia says. “I love my mom, but I’ve been worrying a little that it’s true.” She looks at Maggie. “You think it is?”
Maggie shakes her head. If we are
bound to become our mothers, Maggie knows, then she is bound to leave the people who love her most. She will decide it is too tough or too uncomfortable or too involved, and go. Hasn’t this been what she has always done? It has been. She has always been the one to leave, to find reasons not to stay—her chosen career and all its built-in reasons—even when the men she’s been with have given her many chances not to look for them.
“God I hope not,” she says.
“Me too, but I think it was always hard for him to connect. We kind of all accepted that about him. That was just who he was. He needed a certain amount of time alone, time to feel like he wasn’t being locked in by us. And my mom was always protecting him, you know? She was always giving him that.”
It takes Maggie a minute to realize that Georgia is talking about Thomas. That she is talking about how her mother and her father used to be together, how that used to look to her.
“The part that bothers me is that my mother would do it without even thinking about it. She has never been good at taking her own space, getting her own needs met, but she has no problem saying ‘your dad needs xyz.’ Like it was her job to make us understand him. Not his.” She pauses. “I just don’t want to be the one.”
“Which one?”
“The one who is always trying harder.”
Maggie looks over at Georgia, who is coming out blurry. She is blurry from Maggie’s bad attempt to focus too hard or her absinthe-filled mind or both. She takes a deep breath in, blinking hard, and looks up at the sky, the blue giving way to something darker.
“Are you afraid that you are?” Maggie says.
“No,” she says. “I’m just afraid that my family thinks I am.”
Maggie looks at her, confused. “What’s the difference what they think?”
“I’m afraid they’ll convince me.”
Maggie holds up the bottle, pours Georgia a quarter of a shot into the shot glass—not even really a quarter, more like a teaspoon. And she holds it up, like an answer. Then she hands it over.
Georgia downs it. “Man, I knew you would make me feel better,” she says, and wipes her mouth. “You have that look about you, that old-soul look. That my-heart-is-too-big-for-my-own-good quality that I like in people.”