My Ex-Life: A Novel

by Stephen McCauley

  Thoughts of her new beneficence lulled her, and she drifted off.

  When she woke up, the temperature had dropped and Clarke was turning into the driveway of a monstrous house somewhere on the early end of the Grey Gardens trajectory. It was late afternoon and a pretty sunset was lighting up the side of the house and the impressive privet hedge surrounding the property. If she was listing this dump in San Francisco, she’d put it on the market for mid-seven figures and set off a nuclear bidding war. Here? Lunch money.

  “Pull over behind those cars, Clarke. I want to attempt an entrance. Once we make sure they’re home, you can go for a fried clam plate for a couple of hours until I’m ready to leave. Mama’s treat.”

  The moment to start wearing flats was approaching (according to her doctor, it had arrived five years earlier), but she was still going to work her advantage. The lawn was a bumpy, pitted mess, but she was not going to be seen wobbling and stumbling across it. Who needed good balance and arthritis-free feet as long as you had determination?

  * * *

  David was sitting at the dining room table, working on his computer, when he heard the car pull into the drive. Probably someone who’d made a wrong turn. In the aftermath of the tears and meetings that came with the Mandy crisis, they’d decided to suspend renting rooms for a few weeks, at least until she got settled back in school. Amira’s husband was not buying the house, so Julie had a little more time to get out. He’d stay, as promised, until everything was settled, and then make his own plans.

  He listened for the car to back out, but after a few minutes, he went to the stairs and called up to Julie, “Someone pulled into the drive. Are you expecting anyone?”

  “No, unless it’s someone coming to look at the house. In which case, I’m going for a walk.”

  “I’ll go out and check.”

  * * *

  The hardest part for Julie had been trying to remember that Mandy was, fundamentally, the same person she’d been before Julie learned the whole horrifying story. She didn’t want to make the mistake of looking at her as if she was a stranger and alienating her further, but that was easier said than done. That had been an afternoon she had no desire to relive. In the two weeks since, Mandy had spent most of her time in her room playing the ukulele with a commitment that was impressive even if her musical skills were … well, developing. Every once in a while, she heard Mandy singing and fumbling her way through something like “Blue Moon” or “Blue Skies” and her heart broke all over again. She just wanted everything to be the way it had been two months earlier, when helping her navigate her way through college applications had been her big challenge. And on top of everything, David had started to help her pack up the house. One box at a time.

  When David didn’t report back about the car in the drive, she decided to go and investigate with him. One way or another, she was going to have to face prospective buyers eventually.

  * * *

  As Renata was halfway to the house, a trim, attractive man stepped out onto the deck. Probably one of the guests or whatever they were called in this kind of establishment. When she got a little closer, she realized it was David. He was shielding his eyes against the sun. He had a tan, and he’d lost at least twenty pounds. That was a horrible disappointment. It robbed her of an advantage. On the other hand, it probably indicated he was happy, and if she was really going to be a nicer person, she had to start approving of things like that. A woman stepped out and stood beside him. Good-looking in the New England, I’ve-never-worn-makeup mode. No doubt the ex-wife. David put his arm around her waist as they discussed something. Oddly, they did look like a couple, although a couple of what wasn’t entirely clear.

  “Well, you could at least say hello,” she called out.

  David scrutinized her and said, “Renata? What the fuck are you doing here?”

  “I’ve come to check in for a week. And I hope that’s how you greet all of your guests.”

  48

  By the first of October, the daytime temperatures had become completely erratic, in the high forties one day and soaring into the high eighties the next. Environmental mood swings. The nights were mostly cool and clear, and with the leaves starting to thin, Mandy could hear the ocean from her bedroom if she slept with the windows open and if the wind was blowing onshore. It was the sound of her childhood, the waves washing against the rocks in the harbor below as she tried to go to sleep, that and the house creaking as it embraced her. She would miss those sounds. She would miss Beauport, the morning sun on the water, and the mathematically predicable rhythm of the tides. She had started to miss everything and everyone else she thought she hated: Beachy Keen, Elaine Guild, Lindsay. She even missed Craig sometimes, but only in the way she missed the lazy dopiness of having the flu once she was over it.

  Her father was arriving any minute, and she still hadn’t finished packing. It wasn’t that she had trouble deciding what to bring, it was more that she couldn’t decide what to leave behind. She’d started out packing the six pairs of overalls she owned, but little by little, over the course of a few hours, had pruned down to two. Now as she sat on the edge of her bed looking into the duffel bag where everything was neatly rolled—as David had suggested—she wondered if it might not be a good idea to take them out, too. She and Sheila (aka Dr. Pierson) had spent most of their time together talking about letting go. She’d seen Sheila twice a week for the past five weeks, and even though she hadn’t trusted her at first and had never grown to like her, she knew she’d miss her, too. Her quiet little office with the ugly framed posters and the ticking clock and the slight menace in Sheila’s smile when she told Mandy that forgiving herself was the first step toward putting everything in perspective.

  “What about my mother forgiving me?” Mandy had asked her. “How do I know when that’s happened?”

  Sheila, with her maddening tendency to answer questions with a question, said, “You tell me. How will you know?”

  She hadn’t had to give it much thought. “I guess when she looks at me and I can tell that what I did isn’t the first thing she thinks about.”

  She was still waiting on that, and time was running out.

  The house was officially her mother’s. That was a relief. David’s, too, apparently, since they’d used some of his money to buy it. Some big check had been delivered by his weird friend from San Francisco who—one thing in her favor—had kept calling her “Amanda,” even after she explained that that wasn’t her name. Supposedly they were going to start to convert the barn for David before winter, but she’d believe that when she saw it.

  She zipped up the duffel bag and slung it over her shoulder. It was so heavy, it threw her off balance and she fell back on the bed. It was embarrassing to think about arriving at school with, literally, so much baggage. She unzipped the bag, took out both remaining pairs of overalls, and tossed them into the far reaches of her closet. It was amazing how much lighter it felt.

  David had used his connections to persuade a school in western Massachusetts to take her now, three weeks after the official start of classes. It wasn’t as if she was looking forward to it, but it was a lot better than going to Beauport High or moving in with her father and Carol. She was supposedly too traumatized to go back to her old school, where rumors were circulating. If you could believe the hype on this new school’s website, it emphasized life experience and got students out into the community to do actual good in the real world. They had lined up an internship for her at a food bank. At first, it sounded like a sentence you’d get from a judge after vandalizing the school cafeteria, but the more she read about it, the more interesting it sounded, and in her own private way, she had been a vandal of some kind. She’d talked to her roommate already. Three times. The roommate’s name was “D” and wanted to be called “they” instead of “she.” Mandy had a feeling she was not going to be the only person at the school with a complicated story.

  “Mandy,” David called. “You’d better hurry, your father jus
t arrived.”

  “Be right there.”

  She dropped her bag one more time and went into her mother’s bedroom. She lay down on the bed for a minute and buried her face in her pillow, breathing in the familiar smell of her mother’s shampoo and whatever else it was that gave people distinctive scents aside from perfumes and cosmetics. It might be nice to steal the pillowcase and take it with her, but that would be too weird and doglike. She’d leave it for Opal. She took the college essay she’d finally completed and printed out and slipped it under her pillow. She imagined her mother reading it that night when she got into bed. She thought probably she should say all this to her face, but her mother was so hurt and disappointed, it was hard to say anything to her. And sometimes it was good to commit things to paper.

  What Is Square One and Can You Really Go Back to It?

  When I was ten years old, my mother and father and I went to the Catskills. We rented a cottage along a rocky stream and went hiking in the mountains most days. Late in the afternoon, we’d go swimming. To get to the lake from our cottage, we had to drive up a steep, twisting, seasonal road that hugged the side of a mountain. It had no railings and sheer drops on one side into the ravine below. My father couldn’t believe the State of New York allowed this road to be open when it was so dangerous. I liked the roller-coaster thrill of the drive and never believed there was any real danger.

  One afternoon when we were swimming, dark clouds rolled in, and we packed everything up and started to head back to the cottage. By the time we were on the steep, twisting road, the sky was black and there was lightning ripping up the sky and so much rain, my father decided it was better to not even try using the windshield wipers. The three of us sat silent as we slowly wound down the mountain. When branches blowing off the trees started to hit the roof of the car, my mother asked my father if it wouldn’t be a better idea to head back and wait at the top until the storm passed. But we couldn’t. We were halfway down, there was nowhere to turn around, and going up was no safer than going down. We just had to drive through to the end.

  I spent most of my summer in a dark place, wanting to undo my mistakes, looking behind me to find a place to turn around and go back where everything was brighter and none of my bad decisions had been made. Where I hadn’t disappointed the people I care about the most. But I couldn’t, I had to drive through to the end. I’m not there yet, but I can see now that if there is a Square One, it’s on the road ahead, and the only thing that will prevent me from getting there is looking back. And when I get there, Mom, I promise you’ll be the first person I call.

  Her parents and David were sitting in the living room, talking like normal human beings, and when she walked in, they all stood at once. Except that her mother still had that look on her face—not cold, not angry, but as if it hurt her muscles to produce her tight, forced smile. It made Mandy’s stomach ache to be seen the way she knew her mother was seeing her. Not as the girl she wanted to hold and praise—even when she didn’t deserve it—or tuck in at night—even though she was too old for that—but as the girl in the basement, talking with predators. But there was nothing she could do to change it now. She had to keep putting one foot in front of the other and hope that somewhere along the road, her mother would meet her, and see that she was, despite everything, still her daughter.

  “I told them we’d be there by two,” her father said, “so we’d better get going.”

  They all went out to the lawn, and Opal, who seemed to know what was going on, hopped around the pine tree in crazy circles, barking and growling. Mandy hugged David goodbye and thanked him. “For showing up,” she said, but she didn’t know if she meant in Beauport or at Craig’s.

  “But you’re the one who invited me,” he said. “So let’s call it even. Look what I ended up with.” He gestured toward the barn and the yard and then Julie, who was standing beside him.

  She looked at her mother, not sure if it was okay to put her arms around her.

  “I feel like I’m forgetting something,” her mother said sadly, “but I can’t remember what. Text me when you get there, okay?” She hugged her tightly, but Mandy had the feeling it took some effort.

  “I will,” she said.

  Once she and her father had loaded everything into the back of his car, she had a fantasy that the engine would be dead, and the whole move would be put off for another day or another week, but the engine ran smoothly, and by the time she had her seat belt buckled, her father was releasing the emergency brake.

  As her father backed up the car, she had a view of her mother and David on the lawn with Opal, waving goodbye with the pine tree and the house behind them and the hedge turning yellow. Her father turned the car around, and she looked in the rearview mirror for a second, hoping to see some sign on her mother’s face that it was all right. But there was no one on the lawn now, and the screen door into the house was swinging closed.

  Even her father sensed that something was wrong. “You’ll be back for Thanksgiving break before you know it,” he said.

  She nodded, unable to reassure him that everything was all right.

  They turned out of the drive and started down the road to town. But then, just past the front of the house, her father braked the car. Mandy looked up hopefully. And yes, there was her mother hurrying down the sidewalk, waving at them with a bag tucked under her arm. As she came up to the car, Mandy lowered her window. Her mother’s hair, loose and graying, was blowing in her face.

  “I knew there was something,” her mother said. “I meant to give you this inside.” She was smiling, a real smile this time, and she handed Mandy the plastic bag with a little piece of red ribbon holding it closed. “Go ahead and look,” she said.

  It was a blue sweater of Mandy’s that she’d worn almost daily all of last year and had abandoned in the bottom of a drawer when the weather had turned warm.

  “This used to be your favorite,” her mother said. “I thought you might like to have it with you, even if you don’t wear it.”

  And then she leaned in the window and kissed her and walked back toward the house.

  Her father was watching her closely; she felt his eyes on her. He put his hand on her knee. “You tell me when you’re ready to go,” he said.

  It was a warm, clear afternoon, and down in the harbor, a lone sailboat was heading out past the jetty. Mandy took the sweater out of the bag and folded it. She put it on her lap and gently fingered a moth hole in the wool. Even if she didn’t wear it, it might become her favorite again.

  “Okay, Dad,” she said. “I’m ready.”

  * * *

  David watched Julie walk up the sidewalk toward the house, her hair blowing in the warm breeze.

  In that other, earlier life they’d had together, their ex-life, they’d imagined a future ahead of them full of limitless possibilities. Oh, he’d known even then that everything has its limits, but it appeared there was an immense, glittering expanse of time rolling out before them with a bright end point so far in the distance it was unknowable, but easy to picture being as splendid as Oz.

  That stretch of time hadn’t been nearly as long or as carefully ordered as they’d thought it would be. Really, it had been a jumble of years that had passed more quickly and chaotically than either of them could have predicted. And, for the most part, they’d traveled through it separately. Most surprising of all, it turned out there was no predetermined destination in the hazy distance they’d been headed toward, Emerald City or otherwise.

  Julie came up to the porch and stood beside him, and they looked out at the water and the sailboat heading toward the horizon. After a few minutes, he took her hand, and they went into the house.

  There’s just the place, David thought, where you’re happiest and most at ease and unpack your bags once and for all. The pretty, imperfect, unimagined place you decide to call home.

  Acknowledgments

  Many thanks to the Ragdale Foundation, the Corporation of Yaddo, the Virginia Center for the C
reative Arts, and Katherine Sherbooke’s Hemingway House. Also to public libraries in Cambridge, Northampton, and Provincetown, Massachusetts; Woodstock and Saugerties, New York; and Montpelier and Burlington, Vermont. Also to Genevieve and Henry Lee and to Paul and Gary Hickox. Also to Peter and Rose.

  Also to Larry Rosenberg and Joanne Greenfield.

  Also to Christopher Castellani and Michael Borum. Also to Elizabeth Benedict. Also to Brice Cauvin and Franck Crombet. Also to Anita and Amy. Also to Lisa Pannella.

  Many, many thanks to Amy Einhorn for making this a much better novel and to Conor Mintzer for making it a more grammatically coherent one.

  Many thanks and much love to Sebastian and Chuck and Patti and Matt and Rob and Danielle and Jack.

  Recommend My Ex-Life for your next book club!

  Reading Group Guide available at

  www.readinggroupgold.com

  Also by Stephen McCauley

  The Object of My Affection

  The Easy Way Out

  The Man of the House