The Status of All Things: A Novel

by Liz Fenton

  “So, Max asked me to tell you something,” Jules says delicately, her lips turning down slightly as she notices the engagement ring still on my finger. I twist the diamond so it’s on the inside of my hand and turn away. I’d ceremoniously removed it in Maui, but kept it close—in a pocket or my purse—until this morning, when something had pushed me to put it back on before I’d left the house. I wasn’t sure if it was the fear of my naked ring finger being exposed to the world, or if it was denial or maybe a little bit of both. Hadn’t I noticed the barista at Starbucks eyeing it as if she knew it wasn’t supposed to be there?

  “What does he want me to know?” I finally ask.

  “I told him I’d pass it along, but if you’re not ready to hear it—”

  “You don’t have to listen to anything that guy has to say.” Liam clenches his jaw. “Fuck him.”

  I put my hand over Liam’s mouth to silence him, his anger with Max threatening to unleash the tears that are clamoring at the backs of my eyes. There was a side to Liam he didn’t show everyone, a part that took time to find, like a shell you finally unearth after digging through the sand. On the exterior, he was a guy’s guy, slapping high fives when Hanley Ramirez hit a grand slam or when Liam went for a layup on the basketball court like he was still twenty-one years old. But underneath, he could be sensitive, like the time he’d grabbed my hand and sat silently beside me as I wailed like a toddler after my favorite TV show was canceled, something he could have told me wasn’t important, but he didn’t because he understood it mattered to me. And I was the only person who knew he’d cried while reading The Notebook, a secret he’d made me promise never to reveal, information I’d been proud to protect because it represented my favorite part of him.

  Our friendship just worked. I understood him and he got me. We never pushed each other to fix our neuroses. He knew I needed to scrutinize ten nearly identical photos before uploading one to Instagram, always willing to weigh in on which picture made my arms look the least fleshy. And in return, I understood he wasn’t interested in showing his “secret sensitive side” to the women he dated. The Liam he gave them was the thirty-four-year-old hilarious computer programmer by day who went on acting auditions at night, even landing a couple of national commercials, not the man whose parents had divorced when he was ten and whose dad hadn’t been in the picture much since, the man who fiercely protected his own heart as much as he looked out for Jules and me.

  As I regard him now, a scowl settling into his chiseled face and loyalty blazing in his hazel eyes, I know he’d do anything to take my pain away.

  “It’s okay. I want to hear what he told Jules.” I recognize that familiar feeling that’s been rising and falling within me every day since he canceled our wedding—hope.

  Jules inches her body closer to me. “He wants to talk . . .” She pauses, squeezing my palm, and suddenly I’m picturing my mom’s warm hand over mine as she choked back her sobs, telling me that she and my dad were getting a divorce. Was the pain I was feeling only a fraction of what she had experienced? There had always been a part of me that had resented her bitterness. But now I could see why it might be easy to wallow in it.

  “Kate?” Jules notices I’ve drifted away.

  “Sorry,” I say, snapping my attention back to her.

  “I was saying that he wants to talk as soon as you are ready. And he wanted me to tell you again that he’s sorry.”

  “Did he sound sincere?” I ask.

  Jules presses her lips together in a tight line.

  “Jules?” I ask again, sinking back into the sofa’s plush cushions, remembering when I’d bought it after the feng shui consultant deemed my old futon full of bad energy, feeling excited as the movers unloaded the sofa in the center of my living room, imagining all of the possibilities this new piece of furniture represented. But why had I focused so much of my attention on the good fortune some inanimate object would bring my relationship?

  “What a prick,” Liam says, his tone a sharp contrast to Jules’ motherly inflection. “I can’t believe he’d try to get to you through Jules—put her in the middle like this.”

  Ignoring Liam, Jules finally nods her head. “He did sound like he meant it. But who cares what I think. You should talk to him and decide what you think. I know you’re hurting right now, but the sooner you do face him, the faster you can start picking up the pieces.”

  “Ugh. I hate it when you’re right.” I release an exaggerated sigh. “And even though he’s got his tough-guy thing going on right now, Liam does have a point,” I say as he peers at me over the top of his flask, nodding his head in agreement. “It’s not fair of either of us to make you the middleman any longer.”

  “Don’t worry about me—I can handle him,” Jules says. “I took care of two kids with swine flu last winter while Ben was at his annual stockholders’ meeting. This is nothing!”

  I cringe at the visual of Jules getting puked on and running cold baths. “Believe me, I am very aware that you can tackle any situation with the proficiency of a drill sergeant, but you’re right. I can’t avoid him any longer, especially because he lives here—at least he used to.” I choke back the bile in my throat as I think about the cold sheets on his side of the bed. “And there are things to divide up—although I don’t even know where we’ll begin. I mean, what’s the etiquette for dealing with those?” I sweep my hand toward the wedding gifts that are piled beneath a quilt in the corner. Jules had thrown the blanket over them after I’d kicked one of the boxes the night before, the sound of whatever was inside breaking, me praying it was the stupid bread maker Max had insisted we register for. When we’d taken the trip to Crate & Barrel, he’d silently shuffled beside me, nodding absentmindedly as I scanned various items. But then, like an elderly person who nods off after a meal and abruptly wakes up, he’d stopped in the middle of the aisle and pointed, offering a strong opinion about the need for us to be able to make homemade bread. “Like, when are we ever going to use that? I can’t even remember the last time I had a piece of toast!” I’d screamed at Jules late last night, right before she took the wine from my hand and guided me over to the couch to go to sleep.

  But what I couldn’t bring myself to say to my best friends now, even though I knew they’d understand, was I couldn’t care less about who got custody of the Vitamix blender or the surround sound system. I needed more answers from Max. I needed to know why. Why he waited so long to leave. Why I wasn’t enough for him.

  “I need to go upstairs and call him.” I hold my hand up to halt their protests.

  Jules stands and starts to speak, but I cut her off, already knowing what she’s about to say. “I’ll be fine—I promise,” I lie as I look at the circular metal staircase that leads to the master bedroom. I can do this. One foot in front of the other.

  “Okay, we’ll be right here,” she says, giving my arm a squeeze and glancing at Liam as if she thinks he can talk some sense into me.

  “Kate.” Liam stands and envelops me in a hug, his chest warm against my cheek. “He has no idea what he’s giving up,” he whispers fiercely in my ear.

  “Thanks,” I say, leaning in closer, the quickened pace of his heartbeat reinforcing his words.

  I start to pull back, but he tightens his grip. “We love you exactly the way you are—just remember that. If he doesn’t, then he doesn’t deserve you.”

  I smile up at him. “I don’t know what I’d do without you guys.”

  When I walk into our bedroom and see the neatly made bed, a memory comes flooding back. The morning after Max first slept over at the apartment in Venice Beach I lived in before I bought the condo, I’d walked out of the bathroom and found him pulling the sheet taut, then carefully tucking it under each corner, then smoothing the top. After watching him for several minutes, I said, “Hey there, Hospital Corners, you for real? Don’t tell me you know how to separate the whites too?”

 
; On the morning we left for Hawaii, did he know it was the last time he’d be making our bed?

  I sit on the edge of the bed and pull up Max’s name on my phone. He answers on the first ring, as if he has been waiting for my call. “Kate.”

  “Hi,” I say, my voice catching in my throat.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Just tell me why you threw away everything we had,” I launch in, the edge in my voice harsher than I want it to be. “I deserve to know.”

  The four beats between my question and his response feel like hours. The only sound is our neighbor’s dog, a Jack Russell terrier named Benji, barking urgently in the background. Always a big fan of Max’s, I imagine he’s yelling, Be careful! This is a loaded question!

  I suck in my breath, my eyes moving back and forth over several framed pictures of us on the dresser that are angled in two perfectly straight lines, finally landing on the one in the center, our engagement photo that was taken on the beach in Malibu last summer. Finally, the words tumble from his mouth—he’s so sorry, he didn’t mean to hurt me, he hopes I can forgive him. He tells me he hadn’t been happy for some time, but didn’t know how to tell me—describing the last few months as a roller coaster that he didn’t feel he could stop. He says something about how he’s doing us both a favor, even if I can’t see that right now. Then he tells me I deserve better. “And there’s something else you need to know. Something I want you to hear from me,” he says.

  “There’s more? Lucky me,” I say sarcastically.

  “Yes . . .” He trails off.

  “Enlighten me,” I say, hating that I sound bitter. Hating that it’s him who’s making me sound this way.

  His shallow breaths sound amplified through the phone. “God. I don’t know how to tell you this. But I feel like telling you is the right thing to do. I’d want to know if it were me.”

  But it’s not you. I would never do this to you.

  “What is it?” What could he reveal that could hurt any more than I don’t want to marry you?

  “I think I’m in love with someone else.”

  Okay. I was wrong. That hurts worse.

  I grip the phone tightly, my body temperature rising so quickly that I have to unzip my sweatshirt.

  “Hello? Are you still there?”

  “Yes,” I finally whisper as a lone tear escapes my eye, travels down my cheek, and drips off my chin before he finally starts to talk again.

  I try to rub the tension out of the back of my neck with my knuckles. Max used to do that—I’d sit on the floor beneath him and he’d dissolve the kinks with such ease that I’d joke that if his lawyer thing didn’t work out, he’d definitely have another career to fall back on.

  “But no happy endings!” he’d laugh. “I’m saving those for you.”

  “Of course,” I’d chuckle, foolishly believing he would never so much as let his eye linger on another woman. Turns out I couldn’t have been more wrong.

  “I want you to know I never cheated on you, not even a kiss,” I hear him say, his words sounding muffled like the sound you hear when you put a seashell to your ear. “We never expected this to happen. That—”

  “Who?” I interrupt, but am only met with silence. “Who is it?” I demand again, running through a mental index of the women it could be. That glossy intern at his office? His ex­-girlfriend from high school who’d friended him on Facebook last year? Some random girl he’d met when I wasn’t around?

  “Courtney,” Max says, so quietly I think I’ve misheard him.

  “Courtney?” I repeat, the shock of hearing her name smacking me across the face like a hailstorm.

  That Courtney? My friend? My coworker? The one I’d busted my ass with for five years—pulling so many all-nighters at the office she finally brought in her favorite fluffy pink slippers and chenille blanket and I hauled in my Keurig coffeemaker and iPod, us laughing that at least we had the comforts of home, and each other. I feel a burn in my chest as I recall the exact moment when our partnership at work transformed into a real friendship. It was one of those long nights—the janitor was cleaning the marble floor and we were lying on the couches in the entryway as we tried to think up a slogan for the athletic socks account we’d just acquired. As I listened to the whirring of the buffer, I burst out, “You know what? This really fucking socks! We should be home in bed with our husbands. If we had husbands!” And Courtney deadpanned, “Husbands? Who needs men when we’re married to our jobs!” and I’d started crying, the really ugly snotty kind. And she’d hopped off her couch and onto mine and thrown her arms around my neck and said, “You and I will have hot human hubbies one day, but tonight we only have each other . . .” She trailed off for a moment and reached down toward her foot, and suddenly I felt a soft fabric against my cheeks. “And our socks,” she said, using hers to wipe my tears away.

  I heave as all the air is sucked from my lungs like a Shop-Vac inhaling everything in its path as the memory of how Courtney and Max ended up in each other’s lives floods through me. How, when a smile had danced across my lips the morning after I met Max, Courtney was the first person I thought of telling after Jules and Liam. But as I’d reached for my cell phone, a part of me had worried she’d be resentful because being single workaholics had been our thing. I’d had boyfriends before and so had she, but we’d always known they were just seat fillers until the real thing came along.

  And I could tell that’s what Max was—the real thing. When he’d walked me to my car at the end of the night we met, I’d tripped over my four-inch heels and fallen, grabbing my fender, my legs doing near splits so I didn’t hit the asphalt, but I couldn’t stop my dress from flying up and exposing the granny panties I’d worn to the wedding because I hadn’t done laundry. I’d looked up at Max in horror and he’d started laughing, tears running down his cheeks. “I didn’t see anything. I swear,” he had declared as he held up his hands so vehemently that we both knew that he had seen everything. And suddenly it was as if I could see the movie of our lives playing out: the third date when we let our hands linger over each other’s bodies in a way that said we were ready for more, the meeting of the parents, the first time he whispered that he loved me gently in my ear. I could see a future.

  When I’d finally told Courtney—making myself wait until I could tell her in person at work on Monday—her eyes had registered it before I even opened my mouth. Her face immediately softened and she’d hugged me tightly and said, “So when do I get to meet this man who has made you look like you’re glowing from the inside out?” and I’d scolded myself for doubting her, for projecting onto her the way I probably would’ve reacted had the roles been reversed.

  Ironically, it had been Max I practically had to drag to meet Courtney the first time because there had been a big basketball game on he’d wanted to watch. But within the first few minutes, he and Courtney had hit it off. An innocuous comment from me about being an only child had spawned a conversation between them about their both being adopted, and I could barely get a word in for the rest of the night. I brought them together and now they’re leaving me for each other.

  So this was why I hadn’t heard from her since the night of the rehearsal dinner. I had thought she was just trying to give me space, but had felt slightly hurt that she hadn’t so much as sent me a text. Even my grandmother, who had instructions taped to the back of her archaic flip phone on how to use it, had figured out how to do that.

  “Yes,” Max finally answers, breaking me away from my racing thoughts, his words soft, but the tears in his throat making his voice squeak from his mouth.

  Oh, I’m sorry this is so hard on you, Max.

  “Fuck you,” I spit as I hang up the phone and throw myself on the army-regulation-made bed, pulling the covers apart like a child throwing a tantrum as regret, shame, and aching sadness wash over me at once.

  I stare at the ceiling for several minu
tes before hauling myself off the bed and pulling my laptop open. With a mind of their own, my fingers seem to find their way to Facebook, where I spend the next ten minutes obsessively deleting every photo I’d posted of Max and Courtney, my heart simultaneously racing with anger and breaking in pain every time I click on another picture that reminds me of the times we all spent together. I stop short when I come across a shot of the three of us, taken last month at the happy hour at STK, Max sandwiched between Courtney and me, his lopsided smile giving nothing away as he draped an arm over each of our shoulders. I click the trash icon, wishing there was a way to delete this part of my life too. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could get rid of hurtful feelings and memories the same way we so easily send a bad picture sailing into our computer’s trash can?

  I pull up my status box and type, imagining Max and Courtney’s reaction when my update appears in their feeds—hoping my strong statement will show them they can’t break me down.

  Thanks for all your kind words—they have meant so much to me. But please don’t worry! I’m going to be fine!

  I pause before clicking on the post button, the insincerity of my words sitting heavy in my chest. I couldn’t recall a time I’d ever written something negative on Facebook, instead focusing on the positive things I wanted people to know—a new account I’d landed at work, a fabulous restaurant where I’d scored a reservation, the roses Max had sent me on our anniversary. Even on days when I felt like absolute shit, I’d found something humorous to say or share, deciding no one would want to hear about my bad morning. Or maybe I just hadn’t wanted anyone to know I was having one? I had always thought myself above the Debbie Downers who posted about the (gasp!) problems in their lives—the ones who weren’t afraid to highlight unpopular opinions or rant about their kids, the people who didn’t fear judgment the same way I did.