Goodbye To All That

by Judith Arnold

  “I’d host it, but I think it’s better if everybody isn’t at my house.”

  “Why do they have to be at my house? What do we need a gathering for? And so last-minute. We’re all busy, we all live hectic lives—”

  “I know, but this is important. And it’s better we get together to discuss it. It’s not something I want to talk about over the phone.”

  Jill suddenly felt wobbly. She gripped the kitchen counter and swallowed. “What is it, Mom? Is Dad sick?”

  “No.”

  “Are you?”

  “Everyone is healthy,” her mother said, sounding vaguely annoyed, although Jill failed to see anything annoying about good health. “Just call your brother and sister and invite them to your house. One o’clock? Two? Whatever is easier for you.”

  What’s easier for me is not doing this, Jill thought glumly. “Why can’t Doug host this gathering?” she asked. No point suggesting that Melissa might handle the hostessing duties. Melissa lived in Manhattan and the rest of the family lived in the suburbs west of Boston. Besides, Melissa was ditzy and disorganized and couldn’t be counted on to do anything useful.

  “You know Doug,” her mother said.

  Yes, Jill knew her brother. He was like her father: brilliant, a doctor, with an ego the size of Antarctica before global warming had reduced its glaciers. Doug’s wife loved to entertain, though. “I’m sure Brooke—”

  “Don’t start with Brooke,” Jill’s mother said. “She’d turn it into an affair, with catering and a music ensemble and a bartender mixing drinks on the three-season porch.”

  A bartender sounded good to Jill.

  “She’s so . . . elaborate,” her mother continued. “She’s wonderful, I love her like a daughter, but . . .” A long, deep sigh. “You know Brooke.”

  Jill knew Brooke well enough to know Brooke might indeed hire a bartender, which made her the ideal person to host this gathering. “Mom, you’re asking us to turn our schedules upside-down. Abbie and Noah have soccer games Saturday morning, and I’m supposed to put together a family reunion in the afternoon?”

  “They shouldn’t have games on a Saturday morning. It’s not fair to the Jewish kids.”

  As far as Jill knew, none of the Jewish players in the town’s soccer league—including Abbie and Noah—were the least bit bothered about missing Saturday morning services to play soccer. “I don’t see why you can’t tell me what this is about,” she said. “You’re asking us to rearrange our lives. Doug plays golf with Dad on Saturday afternoons. Brooke probably spends the entire day getting a facial or something. Melissa has to schlep all the way up from New York. What’s the big mystery?”

  “It’s not a mystery.” Ruth’s tone was tart. “It’s just not something I want to discuss over the phone.”

  “So we have to have a party?”

  “Not a party. A get-together.” Her mother sighed again. “If you don’t think it’s important when your parents are going through something . . .”

  “What are you going through?” Jill asked with forced patience. “We’ve already established that no one’s sick.”

  “I’ll tell you on Saturday. You said you didn’t have any time to talk, so I’ll say good-bye. I’ll see you this weekend. Give me a call, let me know what time.”

  Right. As the hostess, as the person who had to telephone her siblings and organize this stupid party—correction: get-together—and run out to stock up on gourmet coffee because Doug wouldn’t drink the stuff that came in a can, and organic herbal tea for Melissa, assuming she was still on that kick, and the sticky honey rugelach her father loved, and she’d have to vacuum because her mother would notice if she hadn’t, and Gordon would crab about how her mother was too demanding and she really ought to develop enough backbone to say no to the woman every now and then, Jill would get to decide what time this affair would take place.

  Through the window she heard the low-pitched rumble of Abbie’s school bus chugging past the house. The bus dropped Abbie off at the corner, and it took her anywhere from five to fifteen minutes to walk the half-block home, depending on how much she and Caitlin Orensky had to discuss in person before they parted ways, entered their own homes and started texting each other.

  In any case, Jill didn’t have time to prolong this conversation, let alone decide whether lemon, as in “lemon shantung scarf,” was actually a lyrical color—whether any color could be lyrical, although she did like the alliteration. She wasn’t going to get the catalog copy done by three, damn it. She might not get it done by five. Geoffrey would fire her, and all because her mother was being not just demanding but ridiculously cryptic.

  “Just tell me what’s going on,” she said, deciding she could be demanding, too. “Tell me, or I won’t host this thing.”

  “I really don’t want to talk about it on the phone.”

  “Why? Do you think the NSA has my line bugged?”

  “What’s the NSA? One of those spy things?” A pregnant pause. “All right, Jill. I’ll tell you. But please don’t tell Doug and Melissa. Let Dad and me tell them in person.”

  Jill hadn’t realized this was a question requiring a response until her mother’s silence stretched several long seconds. “Okay,” Jill agreed. “I won’t tell.”

  “Your father and I are getting a divorce.”

  Jill almost gasped. Almost laughed. The very idea was so shocking it was hilarious.

  She wasn’t naïve. She was aware of the statistics—half of all marriages and blah-blah-blah. She counted among her acquaintances a fair share of divorced people. Two of her closest friends from college were divorced. Connie and Bill McNabb from down the street got a divorce last year and sold their house at a loss. Everyone in the neighborhood had seemed more upset by the puny price they’d accepted for their four-bedroom contemporary than by the news that the McNabbs were splitting up. Their divorce might not have threatened the other married couples on the street, but it did threaten their property values.

  Divorces didn’t happen in Jill’s family, though. The marriage of her grandparents on her mother’s side had survived World War II, most of which Grandpa Schwartz had spent in a cold, damp trench somewhere in Belgium while Grandma Schwartz collected tin cans and grew vegetables in a ten-by-twenty-foot plot behind their three-decker in Roxbury. Then Grandpa Schwartz had come home and their marriage had survived a move to Brookline, Grandma Schwartz’s frequent spasms of hysteria, and Grandpa Schwartz’s fondness for schnapps. It had survived financial ups and downs and passionate fights and their son Isaac eloping with a shiksa. Grandpa Schwartz was gone now, his butt no doubt planted firmly on a bar stool somewhere in heaven, and Grandma Schwartz was missing about half her mind, but the remaining half seemed to be coping well enough, supported by the competent staff at the assisted-living facility she’d moved to last year. The Schwartz grandparents had stayed together until Grandpa Schwartz shuffled off his mortal coil.

  The same with Jill’s paternal grandparents. The Bendels had been a perfect match, both of them slight and pale and meek. Grandpa Bendel had been bald, Grandma Bendel had had breasts, but other than that they’d been more or less interchangeable.

  So neither of Jill’s parents had come from broken homes. And until a minute ago, Jill hadn’t come from a broken home, either.

  “How can you get a divorce?” she wailed. For some reason, her mother’s announcement seemed like a personal affront. What Jill had really wanted to shout was, How dare you? Which didn’t make sense. It was her mother’s divorce, not hers. Her mother’s and her father’s. “You’ve been married for forty years.”

  “Forty-two, but who’s counting? We can talk more on Saturday. I know you’re busy. You’re working on one of those catalog jobs? I shouldn’t keep you.”

  Don’t do this, Jill thought, unsure of what this was. Don’t guilt-trip me about my work. Don’t dump a bombshell on me and hang up.

  Don’t get a divorce.

  “What happened?” she asked. “Did Dad . . .
do something?” She couldn’t imagine her father doing anything divorce-worthy. Sixty-four years old and the man had never even gotten a speeding ticket. The idea of his having an affair, or visiting porn websites, or . . . what? Switching his voter registration to the Republican party? Jill’s mother would probably kick him out of the house for that.

  “It’s not any one thing, Jill. It’s nothing I can explain when you haven’t got any time to talk.”

  “Try.”

  “You haven’t got time,” her mother reminded her. “We’ll talk later. Call and let me know when we should come on Saturday.”

  Before Jill could argue with her, before she could insist she did have time even though she didn’t, before she could plead with her mother, and cry and stamp her feet and declare that if her parents did this stupid thing she’d hold her breath until she turned blue and passed out, her mother had hung up the phone.

  Jill didn’t have much choice but to hang up, too.

  She crossed back to her desk, weak and dizzy. What could have precipitated such a drastic move by her parents? What could her father have done to drive her mother away?

  What if it was Jill’s mother who had done the doing? What if Ruth had fallen in love with someone else? A neighbor. Someone from her synagogue. A younger man. A younger woman. What if she’d suddenly discovered she was a lesbian?

  What if she’d decided to join the Republican party?

  Jill couldn’t imagine that. Lesbian, maybe. Republican, never.

  Words swam before her on the computer monitor: romantic, rainbow, midnight. Forty-two years, she thought. It wasn’t being the child of a broken home that upset her; it was the idea that something she’d depended on, something that had lasted longer than her own life, something she’d had such tenacious faith in, could suddenly stop existing.

  If she could misread her parents’ marriage so totally, how could she trust her judgment on any other issue? If Ruth and Richard Bendel could get a divorce after all these years, why shouldn’t Jill also assume that gravity didn’t exist, and chocolate-chip cookies lowered your cholesterol, and Abbie didn’t need a bat mitzvah, and the shantung silk scarves being peddled by Black Pearl actually felt more like sandpaper than a waterfall against one’s skin?

  The back door swung open and Abbie swept in, her eyes bright, her hair windblown and her backpack dangling heavily from one shoulder. “I hate pre-algebra,” she announced with operatic grandeur. “Three worksheets are due tomorrow. Three. And Mr. Parshna knows it takes, like, a half hour to get through a worksheet. He said so, he said he expects us to spend, like, a half hour on a worksheet, and then he gives us three and says they’re due tomorrow. Like I don’t have anything better to do.”

  Jill should say something. Something sympathetic about the work sheets, something supportive of Abbie’s math teacher, something about not dumping her backpack on the kitchen table if she was planning to eat a snack, because the during the trip home from school the backpack had probably been sitting on the floor of the bus, where it would have picked up enough germs to poison the population of a small nation.

  But her lips refused to move. If she spoke, she might say something about her parents’ divorce. And she couldn’t tell Abbie about that. Abbie adored her grandparents. She would be devastated to think they no longer adored each other.

  Of course they adored each other. Forty-two years of love didn’t just evaporate overnight. The whole thing was absurd.

  On Saturday, the Bendel family would converge at Jill’s house and she would work this thing out. She was the fixer, the solver, the person who held her loved ones together. The Bendel everyone depended on.

  She’d make this right.

  “Are you okay, Mom?” Abbie asked.

  “Sure,” Jill managed. She turned from her daughter, her beautiful daughter, whose blondish-brown hair looked a lot more like a silken waterfall spilling down her back than Black Pearl’s silk scarf ever would. “I’m just a little distracted, that’s all. I’ve got to write this copy before Noah gets home.” The middle-school bus dropped Abbie off a half-hour before the primary-school bus dropped Noah off. In thirty minutes, maybe Jill could spew out some text for the catalog.

  “Once he gets home,” Abbie said, sounding far too wise for her years, “life as we know it comes to an end. Can I bring an apple to my room? I’ve got to get started on these stupid math sheets.”

  Jill usually banned food from the kids’ bedrooms, especially food that could drip juice onto the carpet. But she needed to be alone right now as much as Abbie needed to do her math sheets. “Go ahead,” she said. “Just be careful.”

  “Oh, darn. I was planning to be careless,” Abbie said sarcastically as she swung open the refrigerator door. “Yay, you bought Granny Smiths. I love Granny Smiths.” She waved a round green apple in her mother’s direction. “I don’t know why Daddy and Noah like those Cortlands so much. These are much better.” She took a bite, grinned and tore a square of paper towel from the roll next to the sink. “Any apple they name after a grandma has to be the best,” she said before scooping her backpack off the table and prancing out of the kitchen.

  Abbie idolized her grandmother. What would she think if she knew her grandmother was planning to divorce her grandfather? What would she do? Abandon Granny Smith apples for Cortlands?

  Jill wanted to cry. She wanted to be a Bad Mom and curse. She wanted to be a Bad Daughter and call her mother back and accuse her parents of being idiots.

  Instead, she guzzled some Diet Coke and typed, “Our new shantung scarf will wrap around you like a fresh breeze.” The hell with alliteration. And waterfalls.

  Chapter Three

  Doug steered his car up the winding driveway to the house. The car was a Mercedes, the house a sprawling twelve-room multi-story featuring abundant quantities of fieldstone and glass and surrounded by landscaping that had cost something on the far side of twelve Lasik procedures. Behind the house, a free-form pool was imbedded in the slate patio, its contours curved to accommodate a hot tub.

  Thirty-eight years old and Doug had everything he could possibly want: a showcase house, a luxury car, a thriving eye surgery practice, a beautiful wife and a set of six-year-old twin daughters. His hair showed no signs of thinning, his waist no signs of thickening. Brooke had booked them for a week next February in an ocean suite at the Four Seasons Resort in Nevis. Just the grown-ups; his parents had volunteered to take care of Madison and Mackenzie for the week.

  Five months from now, he’d be schtupping his beautiful wife silly in a tropical paradise. He and Brooke would lounge on the beach all day sipping exotic neon-hued drinks, they’d have sex all night, and they’d return home a week later tanned and relaxed, toting cute little shell necklaces and T-shirts that said “Nevis Land” for the girls. He worked hard for such indulgences. He’d earned them.

  He punched the button on the remote control to open his garage door and steered the Mercedes into the bay between Brooke’s Audi wagon and the Land Rover he’d bought for the two days every winter when the snow plows didn’t get the job done and the roads were a mess. As an ophthalmologist specializing in corrective laser surgery, he rarely dealt with emergency calls—in fact, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d been summoned on one—but you never knew. If someone suddenly suffered a life-threatening stye in the middle of a blizzard, he’d be there.

  Inside the garage, he pressed the remote button again and listened to the motorized door hum shut behind him. He leaned back against the Mercedes’s contoured leather upholstery, his hands resting on the steering wheel, his tie loosened around his neck. Four consultations today, two post-ops, two surgeries. Busy, always busy, but he couldn’t complain. If there weren’t so many people who despised eyeglasses and contact lenses, he wouldn’t have been able to afford this house, or this car, or the trip to Nevis. Or his beautiful wife, probably.

  After a deep, cleansing sigh, he straightened and swung out of the car. The garage wrapped him in its cool, musty atmo
sphere. He pulled his white medical coat and briefcase from the back seat, then climbed the three steps to the inner door that led into the house.

  Brooke stood by the cook-top in the kitchen’s center island, a glass of white wine in one hand and a stirring spoon in the other. How a woman could look so enticing while stirring marinara sauce was beyond him. He wasn’t in the mood for spaghetti, but the girls loved it. Brooke did, too, even though she ate at most a dozen strands because she was always watching her carb consumption. Spaghetti was easy to make, she said. Boil water, dump in the pasta, heat up a jar of sauce and voila.

  Still, he wished the kitchen—a monumental room teeming with the latest gourmet equipment, from a Viking range and a Sub-Zero fridge to engineered stone countertops—didn’t reek of pureed tomatoes and garlic. He wanted to smell Brooke. He wanted to bury his nose in her glossy blond hair and inhale her perfume. He couldn’t recall the name of the scent she wore, but it was obscenely expensive.

  And worth every penny, he thought as he studied her from the mudroom doorway.

  She glanced up from the stove and smiled. “Hi, honey. I hope you don’t mind.” She gestured toward the saucepan with her long-handled cooking spoon, and then at the large pot sitting on an adjacent burner. “The girls had a play date after school, and by the time we got home . . .”

  “No problem,” he assured her, silently ordering himself not to be a prima donna about dinner. The girls had had a play date. Brooke couldn’t be expected to throw together a gourmet feast. Cooking wasn’t her forte, even when the girls didn’t have a play date.

  He started toward her, thinking again about burying his nose in the soft, silky blond locks of her hair and gathering her to himself. But before he got close enough even to take her hand, she told him, “And you have to call your sister. As soon as you get home, she said.”

  So much for kissing Brooke. So much for pulling her slim, dozen-strands-of-spaghetti body against him. So much for a calm, private minute with his wife before the girls—or, in this case, his sister—barged in. “Damn. What did Melissa do now?”