The Divorce Party

by Laura Dave

  No one notices her at first. She is standing just inside the barn’s entrance, the rain falling down behind her, taking it all in. The party is beautiful from this angle. Everyone is drinking champagne and talking in small circles. Even in this weather, everyone has come. If she could zoom in, wire her guests with hidden microphones, she still believes they wouldn’t be talking about her. Everybody gets divorced now, don’t they? Half of everybody, at least. The important part, for them, is that they have a nice party to go to on a less-than-nice night.

  She looks straight across the barn and sees Nate and Georgia standing by the bar: Georgia sipping Nate’s beer. She decides to let them be. If the divorce party leaves them hating her a little but feeling more bonded with each other, then fine, she’ll take it. If they come out of this closer—more sure that they will always have each other, that this is their primary family relationship—Gwyn will feel better. She isn’t dying yet, but it is one more thing she wants in line before she does. That her children will always feel loved.

  Then she notices Thomas, center-barn, wearing the suit she picked out for him, laughing with the Jordans, Daniel and Shannan, who live off of Dune Road, on the bay. They got divorced themselves, maybe ten years ago now, and Shannan moved to New York City and took up with a male ballet dancer. Now Daniel and Shannan are together again, permanently again. I’m simply too tired to not be with Daniel, Shannan told Gwyn when she moved back out here. And I don’t think that is the opposite of love.

  Thomas waves at her. She waves back and points up to the steel rods, then the weather outside—the lightning coming in quicker, brighter bursts; the barn starting to seem too much like a bull’s-eye. But Thomas just shrugs, as if to say: let’s not worry about it.

  Fine. He doesn’t want to worry, they won’t worry. Let him have his way this last time. This barn will come crumbling down or it won’t. Only, he won’t get to tell her again that she always worries too much. She wants his last memory of her tonight to be that she didn’t care, didn’t overanalyze, didn’t take on the role of worrier for both of them. For once, she would relax into acceptance of whatever would come. That she, for once, was willing to breathe in and let even the most rational fear go.

  A waiter comes by and offers her a braised lamb chop. She takes it, because what else is she going to do? She has a small bite, and looks around at the other waiters carrying trays of spicy cashews and barbecued chicken bites, ahi tuna crackers and soybeans, Thai toast and curry tofu—all disappearing into people’s palms as soon as they appear.

  She notices Minister Richards with his wife and decides to go over to say hello, when she feels a pat on her back, and turns to see Maxwell Scalfia, a five-foot-tall doctor who works with Thomas, married to Nicole, another doctor, who is a good ten inches taller than he is. She used to see him almost daily, all those years when it was Thomas and her habit to have lunch together. Mondays and Wednesdays, most Fridays too.

  “How are you holding up?” Maxwell asks, stepping on his toes to kiss her cheek.

  “Fine, Maxwell, we’re doing fine. Thank you for coming tonight. We’re glad to have you.”

  “We’re glad to be here.”

  She smiles, wondering how long she has to stand here— before she can move on. He will be Thomas’s friend now. And as far as Gwyn is concerned, Thomas can more than have him.

  Maxwell is still smiling at her, though, making eye contact, and tipping his glass of champagne her way—leaving Gwyn no graceful exit.

  “I was just telling Thomas before that a friend of mine once said to me that marriage isn’t a success if it lasts, it’s a success based on how it lasts,” he offers. “Ten or twenty or thirty-five good years together is sometimes a stronger statement to make than fifty okay ones together. I believe that.”

  She nods as though they were in agreement, though of course she knows that he doesn’t believe what he is saying—that he has generated this anecdote solely for whenever a friend is in this situation. Gwyn knows him well enough to know that whatever his marriage is really like—and how can anyone outside of it know?—he will never leave it. He believes that staying is the only success. Why shouldn’t he? We only believe something else when we have no other choice.

  A waiter comes by with a tray of champagne flutes, Gwyn grabbing one as he passes.

  “And, of course,” Max says, “this is not the best time, but just so you know, Nicole and I would like to buy it. We’d be open to making a generous offer if you’d consider our interest before putting it on the market. As generous as is necessary.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The house.”

  “This house? My house?”

  She turns around to look at it across the dooryard, lit up and glowing, against the rain.

  “Yes,” he says, “your house. Huntington Hall.”

  They’ve agreed to table the discussion about the house, she and Thomas, until after tonight. Somehow, figuring out what is to become of the house—letting it go in some way—would make everything final, if it isn’t already. It would make it all done.

  “It’s complicated . . .” Gwyn says.

  He interrupts her. “No, I’m sure. I’m just saying that when you two are ready, we are more than ready. My daughter Meredith just had twin boys. And we’d like to get them all out here in the summers. It will be easier if they have their own place because her husband is such an SOB who doesn’t even try to hide anymore that he hates us.” He smiles. “The price we pay.”

  Gwyn feels her face reddening. She has considered that Thomas would leave, that he would go to Eve, wherever that is. And that she would leave too, not wanting to stay here without him. But she hasn’t actually considered the house not being . . . theirs. Only having Hunt Hall be empty? Isn’t that wrong too? And while she could leave it to her children, she knows—as soon as the thought runs through her head—that she doesn’t want to do that. Thomas won’t want that either. At one point, this house might have seemed like a place for new beginnings. Now it feels more like a place for letting go of old ones.

  “We can probably work something out,” she says.

  “Really?” He laughs nervously. “Just like that?”

  She turns and looks at her house again. Thirty-five years. Thirty-five Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve dinners and Christmas mornings here. Thirty-five Fourth of July parties and 36 children’s birthday parties, 78 overly long visits from her family. One hundred times that she decided January was too terrible here and 250 times that she knew there was nothing more perfect than Montauk at the very end of March. Five hundred times that she went up to the lighthouse for picnics, 709 times that she brought home fresh flowers from the farm stand in East Hampton, 840 times that they walked down the bluffs to the beach. Eleven hundred times they read the Sunday paper by the fireplace, 1,300 times that she watched the sunset from the porch, 1,900 times that they spent an evening on the swing by the edge of the cliff.

  One time, now, that they are standing before everyone they know, everyone they love, and having a party that is supposed to end with them telling each other good-bye.

  She looks in the direction of Thomas, who isn’t looking back at her.

  “I don’t know,” she says to Maxwell. “Maybe.”

  Maggie

  She doesn’t go upstairs and change. She doesn’t fix herself, really. She pulls her hair back in a loose ponytail and walks into the party in her faded jean skirt and pink tank top—her purple bra a little too obvious beneath it. She left her backpack at the Buckleys’, with Eve, who was trying to get ready for the wine toast, the cutting of the cake. Still. If she wants to be putting on her best face for this, she certainly isn’t. She just wants to get to Nate while she can still remember that part of her does want that, before it feels too late.

  The rain is coming down now, unapologetically, the wind whipping into low currents, fighting the outside of the barn, pushing on it. Maggie is wet by the time she enters—water droplets on her arms, her neck�
��and there is dirt and blades of grass on her feet, where her flip-flops left her exposed.

  From the doorway, the barn looks incredible: a shiny, warm refuge from the storm, lit up and bright, the party full of that energy that the best parties have, that intangible quality that means a night has the chance to be memorable, magical. Looking around, it’s easy to forget what these people came for. It’s easy to wonder if they’ve all decided to forget too.

  Maggie sees Nate in the corner of the barn, Nate in a tan suit, orange Converse sneakers on his feet. He looks great. He looks like himself. And she forgets about the rest of it, for a second. She feels so relieved to see him—that she has chosen to see him—that it takes her a second to realize he is standing next to Murph, in her deep skin-colored dress, looking, from here, like one long leg.

  She cracks her knuckles and starts to head toward him, toward both of them. Only someone stops her. Thomas stops her. He is talking to a young couple whom he looks less than happy to be talking to. They could be Maggie’s age, maybe a little older.

  “Maggie,” he says, shifting his hand from her arm to the small of her back. “I was just looking for you. This is Belinda and Carl Fisher, who just moved into a house down the road. This is Nate’s fiancée, Maggie Mackenzie.”

  Belinda looks her up and down—her face almost not breaking rank, almost not showing what she is certainly thinking about what Maggie is wearing. “It’s nice to meet you. We’ve heard so much about you.”

  Like what? she wants to ask, but instead she tries to cover herself, crossing her arms in front of her chest. “You too,” she says.

  She feels Thomas’s hand on her shoulder. “If you’ll excuse us, Belinda, I just need a minute with my daughter-in-law,” Thomas says, and steers her to the side of the barn, away from the terrible Fishers and everyone else.

  “You need a minute away?” Maggie whispers to him.

  He shoves his hands deep into his suit pockets, looking exactly like Nate—awkward in this setting, awkward in a way that he won’t be able to shed until he is out of his suit, out of tonight’s game.

  “Is it that obvious? Sorry about that. I’m not a big one for cocktail parties,” he says. “Never have been. But Gwyn is great at them.”

  Maggie smiles. He isn’t saying this rudely, but with something like admiration. Admiration that Gwyn is able to stay comfortable in her own skin, or able to fake it better at least.

  “Have you been in the house?” he asks, and hands her some cocktail napkins, and she begins drying herself, begins to pull herself together a little bit.

  “I’ve been next door with the caterer, actually, helping a little,” she says. “And hiding a little.”

  “How was that?”

  “The helping or the hiding?”

  He laughs. “Either.”

  “Both were okay, I guess.”

  And he tries to smile. Only there is something behind the smile that can’t be hidden, something that Maggie recognizes almost as soon as she sees it. A loneliness. A complicated one, one that he feels he isn’t entitled to.

  “I’m supposed to make a speech in a couple of minutes about things ending peacefully, lovingly.”

  “Do you think that’s possible? Things ending peacefully?”

  “Well . . .” he says. “I’m starting to think the nicer you try to make things at the end, the worse you actually make them.”

  “Yeah, I’m not sure I would open with that.”

  He starts to laugh, and Maggie feels herself warm to him. She likes Thomas. She has this feeling that something is going on, something that she doesn’t want to know about, but she likes him anyway. Because she can see it: the parts of him—and not just the outside parts—but also the sweetness that he passed on to Nate. There aren’t many men who have a real sweetness in them, and there are other things that go with it, but right now, it makes her feel grateful.

  “From the little I heard, you and Nate had a tough day around here,” he says. “I’m sorry about that.”

  “Why are you sorry?”

  “Because I’m the reason that you are here.”

  She smiles at him. “Please don’t feel badly about that. It’s not your fault that things have gotten a little out of hand.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure of that,” he says.

  She locks eyes with him and starts to hear something else, something that she has been suspecting—pieces coming together—just as Gwyn walks up to them, looking absolutely stunning in all-white.

  “There you are,” Gwyn says, looking at Thomas and then noticing her, but with no judgment about what she is wearing—just a quick, sincere happiness to see her. And, in that moment, with all the rest of it, she can feel it. How lovely this woman really is.

  “How are you doing, Miss Maggie? I feel like with all the chaos I haven’t gotten to spend any time with you.”

  “Good.” Maggie says. “I’m fine.”

  “Definitely?”

  She nods. “Definitely.”

  “Good. Then can I steal Thomas, for just a minute? I’ll bring him back, sooner than you want. I just need to steal my husband so we can get this toast over with,” she says.

  “He is all yours.”

  Thomas takes Gwyn’s hand and smiles back at Maggie, as if to say, we’ll talk more later, okay? And she smiles back at both of them as they head to a small table by the front door of the barn—the rain behind them, the house behind them—a single bottle of wine on it, two glasses.

  Then she feels someone’s hand on the small of her back, Nate’s hand, and she turns to look up at him. Murphy, thankfully, is not with him.

  “You stayed,” he says.

  “I stayed,” she says.

  And he nods, as if to say, thank you, as if to say, I don’t know what that means but I’m glad you’re here.

  She nods back. Me too.

  “Where is Georgia?” she asks.

  “I’m right here.” Maggie turns as Georgia walks up next to her—looking sweet but a little uncomfortable in her halter dress—a half-eaten prosciutto-wrapped asparagus spear in one of her hands. She drapes her free arm over Maggie’s shoulder, taking another bite. “These things are totally delicious,” she says.

  “That is the nicest thing you could have said to me,” she says, and pulls Georgia’s forearm tighter around her shoulder.

  “Really?” Georgia looks at the spear, slightly confused, reaching across Maggie to hand Nate the uneaten bite. “Well, the nicest thing you could say to me is nothing.”

  Maggie bites on her lower lip, obliging, and turns toward Nate, who is popping the rest into his mouth. “No Denis?” she mouths to him.

  He shakes his head, swallowing. “No Denis.”

  And before she can ask about the rest of it—or not ask about the rest of it—someone is clinking a spoon against a glass, other people chiming in, until mostly everyone is facing toward the small table where Gwyn and Thomas are standing. Maggie looks around at all of them, all of these people who have comprised her future in-laws’ life together, all of them with a story to tell about who Gwyn and Thomas have been, who they think they are now. At first it makes her think that this is like a wedding—when else do you have everyone who matters to you both in one room?—but then she takes in the nervous smiles and dazed looks, looks not exactly of approval or compassion but of doubt and anxiety. Doubt that they can escape this same end, anxiety that they won’t.

  Maggie turns her attention back to Thomas and Gwyn as Thomas starts to open the tall bottle of wine, with a dime-store corkscrew. He is being careful with it, too careful with it—the corkscrew, the bottle—everything starting to move in a rhythmic slow motion as he finally pours Gwyn a glass of the wine and pours himself one too.

  As everyone moves closer, Gwyn takes the glass from him, swapping him for a folded piece of paper, which he opens, putting his free palm on her hip. It is like a dance the way they move together, seamless—and totally natural, even now. And so, even in this strange instance,
where, apparently, they are about to toast to the end of their union, Maggie is struck all over again by how they look together. They look right.

  And then Thomas starts to speak.

  “Thank you all for being here tonight, with us, and with our family.” He looks at Nate, Georgia and Maggie, and then over at Gwyn, who is looking right back at him. “When Gwyn first suggested doing this, I thought it sounded a little . . . off the wall. Especially for us. Except the closer we’ve gotten to tonight, the more I’ve come to understand that tonight is a good thing. It’s a way for us to explain that this relationship has mattered. That nothing has mattered more. Even if it is ending now.”

  Gwyn takes out another copy of the poem, putting her own wineglass down. “This poem we’re going to read is called ‘The Empress of Nowhere,’ ” she says, more to Thomas than to anyone else.

  “It doesn’t rhyme, so bear with us,” he says.

  Everyone laughs. This is funny, apparently. Everyone finds this funny. But as they begin to actually read the poem, trading off each stanza, the laughter stops. The laughter stops even though it is a bizarre and very funny poem about a fisherman eating black licorice on a dock in Florida. About how he doesn’t like it at first, finds it too bitter, but learns to like it. He learns to like it—not just tell himself he likes it, but truly like it—just in time to realize that there is no more to be eaten.

  Maybe the laughter stops because no one understands. You’d have to stretch the poem to make it relevant. You’d have to stretch the poem beyond recognition, as far as Maggie can tell, to have it make any sense in terms of Thomas and Gwyn—and they’re offering no explanation about what it means to them, what it might have meant. And she can’t help but wonder if she missed something while she was over at the Buckleys’, something that would explain why Thomas and Gwyn are choosing to read this.

  Only when she looks back and forth between Georgia’s and Nate’s blank faces, she realizes that they don’t have a clue either. No one does, apparently. No one but Thomas and Gwyn, that is, who are red faced and happy, looking right at each other and smiling, really smiling, which all of a sudden seems like the saddest part. It makes Maggie sad to see it so plainly before her. You have something between you after a while, this soft little bug of a thing, its own life form, even if you decide you don’t want it anymore, even when you decide you want other things instead.