The Divorce Party

by Laura Dave

He shrugs. “Why were we playing spin-the-bottle in fourth grade?”

  She starts to laugh, and feels something come loose in herself, or loose enough that she does it, the first thing: she moves some of the books out of the way, so he can sit across from her.

  She moves some bad paperback novels, a small hardback, and an aquatic dictionary, the largest book, out of the way. He sits down, cautiously, leaning backward on his hands, looking at her, really looking at her.

  “Thank you,” he says.

  She nods. “You’re welcome . . .”

  “What are you thinking?” he says.

  She looks at him. “Nothing.”

  “No, not nothing. Tell me.”

  “Well, right now I’m thinking that you rarely ask me what I’m thinking.” She pauses. “And I’m feeling grateful for that. It’s a terrible question. There is nowhere good to go from there.”

  He smiles, and turns briefly toward the window, looking outside, at the night—the outline of the ocean in the distance. “He asked me something today which I keep thinking about. He asked me a question when we were walking back from surfing earlier.”

  “Your dad?”

  He nods his head, turning back to her, a look passing over his face. “It was strange because he didn’t sound like himself exactly. He asked if when I look at you I feel rational. He said I shouldn’t,” he says. “I shouldn’t feel rational about you.”

  “Rational? What does that mean, even?” she says. “Like I should still be a fantasy?”

  “I don’t know. That’s my point.” He pauses. “It sounded like he was talking to himself more than to me.”

  She is quiet. Part of her wants to ask what Nate says now when he is talking to himself, to ask herself the same thing. Somehow that feels like too big a question. Somehow that feels like everything. Besides, who are we to tell ourselves anything about our lives? Who are we to be brave enough to figure out a new way to live them?

  “I’m thinking that with enough practice, you can talk yourself into or out of anything,” Maggie says.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that you should be careful what you say,” she says. “I think we should both be careful what we say next.”

  He leans forward, putting his hand over her chest, clutching her there, his fingers digging in. She is aware of his fingers, and that feels upsetting. His touch unsettles her right now, almost as much as it soothes her. But she has to think that it isn’t always going to be like this. As he moves closer to her, she knows she doesn’t want it to be like this, and he doesn’t want that. She knows that he is going to try to do whatever he can do to fix it. And for the first time, so will she.

  It might seem that they haven’t moved far from where they started—Maggie started her day with Nate, and she is ending it with him. She is staying in the same place. But she is staying in a new way, a deeper one, which she is starting to understand might be the most important move she ever makes.

  He starts to speak, his voice catching. He clears it, and takes a second try. “Maggie, I’m not going to disappoint you again,” he says.

  She looks at him, right into his eyes. They are endless. And she can see that he believes it. She can see that he believes the impossible, which can be a recipe for disappointment, but is also the first step—the absolutely necessary step—to working toward anything that is possible. And stable. And true.

  “You will disappoint me.”

  “No. Not like this.”

  “How can you know that?”

  He shakes his head, and keeps talking. “Look, Maggie, it doesn’t matter in the end.”

  “What doesn’t?”

  “Even if this feels fairly awful for a while, I’m going to tell you everything. And I’m not going away unless you ask me to.” He pauses. “I’m not sure I’m going even then.”

  “Are restraining order jokes ever funny?” she says.

  “No, not usually.”

  “Okay,” she says. “So I won’t make one.”

  Then she rests her forehead against his, can feel him there, his heart beating there, right where he is touching her. It often feels like that, wherever they are touching, that she is reaching something inside of him. Especially now, when she needs it the most, that feels something like its own kind of promise.

  “Nate,” she says, “I keep thinking about that swing outside. I keep thinking a swing like that would be great in front of our restaurant.”

  “It would be. It would be perfect.” He is talking slow. “How about we ask my parents if we can use theirs?”

  Maggie looks at him. “You think they’ll say yes?” she says.

  “I think we’ve got a good chance, yes,” he says. Then he moves closer, putting his mouth against her ear. And he waits. He waits for just a second, before he says it, real low. “Can I tell you something I’ve never told you before?”

  Maggie closes her eyes, a tear falling out, which she brushes away so he doesn’t see it, and so she won’t miss it, any of it, all of it, the good part, the hard and real part, that may be coming next.

  epilogue

  Montauk, New York, 1972

  Champ

  He is working on the swing.

  Anna is sitting on the ground close to the edge of the cliff, pretending to look back in the direction of the house, but she is watching Champ out of the corner of her eye. He knows that she thinks he is too old to be lying on his back working on this swing.

  He is too old. They live in New York City now, for more than a year now, where things are easier on them. They miss the house, though, miss being out here, in a way they don’t like to talk about even to each other.

  They are back only for a few days for Thomas’s wedding. To the woman Gwyn. The woman that Anna thinks is too pretty.

  “He doesn’t have to look hard enough to find it,” she says. “Her beauty.”

  “So?”

  “It’s harder to appreciate what you don’t have to look hard to find.”

  They have had this conversation before. Champ focuses on polishing the underside of the swing. It is almost done. It is their wedding present to Thomas and Gwyn. It is their offering.

  He rubs his hand along the wood. “They’ll be fine, Anna,” he says.

  “You don’t know that.”

  “No. I guess you can never know that. But I do like her.”

  “What could be more beside the point?” She turns and looks at him straight on. She is better at this now, saying exactly what she thinks.

  And he doesn’t say what he thinks because he is better at knowing what she isn’t ready to hear: that he has no idea whether it will last for his son and his wife, the way it lasted for him and Anna. It could go either way. It always can go either way, can’t it? You can stay together for the wrong reasons as much as for the right ones and who is to say you’ll be more or less happy either way? Because of a storm, because her arms were outstretched . . . Champ only knows that the important part is to decide to stay. Again and again. And, on the days you can’t, to resist deciding anything else.

  “Read the lyrics to me.”

  “Again?”

  “Again.”

  The lyrics are engraved on a blue plate beneath the seat. The lyrics to their song—Anna’s and his. It hadn’t been their wedding song. What had been? A Cole Porter tune, if he’s remembering right. “Begin the Beguine.” It had been so many people’s wedding song that year. But this song became the one they played the most in recent years. It is the song that Champ would put on the record player on the cold winter nights out here, toward the end, when they needed a reminder that they wanted to spend the cold winter nights out here.

  Hopefully, it would help hold Thomas and Gwyn during their beginning.

  He’s screwed the plate to the innermost plank of wood, somewhere you have to look close, somewhere you have to be lucky just to find it. And he doesn’t skip any of it this time when he reads the words to her:

  And I will stroll the merry wa
y

  And jump the hedges first

  And I will drink the clear

  Clean waterfall to quench my thirst

  And I shall watch the ferry-boats

  And they’ll get high

  On a bluer ocean

  Against tomorrow’s sky

  And you shall take me strongly

  In your arms again

  And I will not remember

  That I ever felt the pain.

  And I will raise my hand up

  Into the nighttime sky

  And count the star

  That’s shining in your eye

  And I’ll be satisfied

  Not to read in between the lines

  And I will walk and talk

  In gardens all wet with rain

  And I will never, ever, ever, ever

  Grow so old again.

  “It’s perfect,” Anna says. “It makes me want to go listen to it.”

  “So we’ll go listen. As soon as I finish.”

  “But we’re not going to tell them it’s here?”

  “No,” he says. “They’ll find it one day. Or someone will find it.”

  She smiles. “Like a second gift.”

  “Like a blessing.”

  She goes and lies beside him, her husband. “Who are you to bless anyone, old man?”

  He laughs, and wonders, for a second, what a stranger would think if he came upon them. Two people lying here, between their home and the rest of everything. Would he know that they spent their whole lives here? Would he know that that has made all the difference? Would that even be the truth?

  He looks at his wife, watches as she closes her eyes and takes in the late-day sun.

  “Can everything end right here?” she says. “When we get to be this happy?”

  He moves closer to her. “It just did.”

  Author’s Note

  In early spring 2005, I drove with a friend to Montauk, New York. While heading over the Napeague stretch, my friend mentioned a hurricane had hit this area in the 1930s, which separated Montauk from the rest of Long Island.

  I began wondering: whose house could have survived such a powerful storm? What would be happening in that family today?

  For their help as I aimed to answer these questions and understand everything about the Hurricane of 1938, I am grateful to Robin Strong and the entire staff at the Montauk Library. Several texts and documentary films were useful in my research as well. In particular: Sudden Sea by R. A. Scotti; The Great Hurricane: 1938 by Cherie Burns; Scott Morris’s From the Ashes: The Life and Times of Tick Hall; Abianne Prince’s Voices in Time: An Oral History of Montauk 1926-1943; A Healing Divorceby Phil and Barbara Penningroth; and When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chodron.

  I took liberties in changing facts and playing with pieces of history in order to make my story work the way that I wanted it to work. These were intentional choices.

  A final note: for their support as I worked to complete this book, I am indebted to my wonderful editor and agents—Molly B. Barton, Gail Hochman, and Sylvie Rabineau. My gratitude, also, goes to my family and friends for generously reading many drafts; and to Joe the Art of Coffee and The City Bakery for giving me warm and welcoming places to write them.

  And a big thank-you to the many people who shared their personal stories with me while I was working on this book. We all live such quietly brave lives, and I feel blessed that I was invited into yours.

  —LD, January 2008