“If there’s something you think I should know, tell me,” I said.
“Tell her.” Helene sounded tired. “Just get it out.”
“Not to just get it out,” Scott said. “Because it matters. Paige, you’re not saying the past doesn’t matter, right?”
“It’s a tricky balance—to not hide the past but also not get stuck in its axel, so you keep rotating around the same cycle. I can listen, sure, but know I’ll be trying to keep you both on track to move forward.”
They both looked satisfied with that and then, in polite, worried fragments, they told me what they hoped to get over but weren’t sure they could.
They’d been married for ten months when Helene said she wanted out. “A full-on breakdown freak-out,” she’d called it. It had nothing to do with Scott, she swore, and everything to do with her father having left her mother when Helene was nine years old. Married at twenty-eight, Helene saw it unfold like a movie reel: she had put all her eggs in one basket, that basket would break and she would relive her mother’s mistakes.
She left Scott suddenly and moved to Seattle to be with Paul, a high school boyfriend she’d reconnected with on Facebook. She and Paul were together for one month. That’s how long it took for Helene to realize that she’d made the biggest mistake of her life and move back to Manhattan to immediately start trying to win back Scott.
It had taken time and setbacks and many conversations, but Scott had eventually forgiven Helene, or so he thought. Two months before that day in my office, they’d moved back in together. One week after that, he got out of bed to get a glass of water and saw Helene on the computer in the living room, catching up on Facebook. She had long before unfriended Paul, but the next morning, Scott broke out in hives.
“No more Facebook,” Scott said, and Helene agreed. “No Facebook.”
But then a few weeks later, she came home at ten p.m. after going out for work drinks, and Scott flipped out. It kept happening: Scott falling to pieces, Helene bending to meet him, until they called me.
Instead of looking vindicated after sharing the story, Scott looked sick. “I don’t know that I can ever get over it.”
“We’ll figure it out.” Helene said this with confidence. “I’ll do whatever you need.”
Scott stood up, flipped his sunglasses over his eyes. “Unless you just can’t.” After he left, the door shut softly behind him—a sigh, not a slam.
Helene stood up slowly, two spots of red streaking her cheekbones. “E-mail me some times for next Friday, okay?” she said without looking at me. She didn’t wait for a response before leaving. I wondered if she was going to look for Scott and try to persuade him to keep at this work of saving their marriage, or just let him be.
chapter eighteen
THE SOMETHING FUNNY my mom had promised for the party was, in fact, pretty funny, which was not standard for my mother’s predictions. She had selected a photo of my dad from twenty years ago in which he was waving at someone, right palm up, and made it into one of those life-sized cardboard photos. It was positioned right at the entryway with a sign around its neck that read FLAT FRANKIE.
Dave started laughing. When I didn’t join in, he poked me in the shoulder. “Come on. That’s hilarious.”
“It is.” I didn’t have high hopes for the evening. All he’d wanted to talk about in the cab ride over was Sloane: What time would she get there? How would she act? How should he talk to her?
“She’s not a bear, Dave. You don’t have to clap or wear bright clothing or something. Just say hello.”
“Like she’s a normal person?”
“She is a normal person.”
“Are you kidding me? Angry, fucked-up and here-under-suspicious-circumstances Sloane?”
“Start with hello.”
He held up one hand, smiled fake-brightly and said, “Hello,” awkwardly with a frozen smile on his face.
I didn’t laugh. “Has Brian been better?”
“Brian?”
“Your liaison?”
“Better at what?”
“You were talking about what a crappy liaison he was. Has he upped his game?”
In his pause, I anticipated another Brian story—how he’d blabbed about alcoholism and gambling at the Native American Lawyers dinner, or made a speech about moneygrubbing and Palestinian rights at the Hillel Club. Instead, Dave jerked his head to the side like he had water in his ear. “He’s been fine. He’s adequately performed his job.”
“Meaning you’ve been fine not talking to anyone else at the office.”
“Paige?” He squeezed my shoulder. “It’s a-a-l-l working out.”
I knew I’d overplayed it; instead of feeling like the wronged party, I was the hysterical nonsensical one.
I high-fived Flat Frankie and forced myself to laugh. I was choking on the ha-ha’s when one of the waiters my mom had hired for the evening arrived to usher us to the patio. He was wearing an outfit remarkably similar to mine: white pants and a green jacket with a mandarin collar.
Walking behind him, Dave stopped to whisper in my ear. “Do you get an inside line on the color scheme?” I faked another smile and pulled my own jacket closer.
“Paigey Turner the Page Turner!” Darren Rabinowitz knew I hated my married name, knew I didn’t use it, but its appeal was just too great for him to pass by. He was fond of phrases like “Where’s the party at?” and “Happy Turkey Day!” and would utter them in his fifty-nine-year-old booming voice. Once, two summers ago, he’d called Cherie his “boo.”
“Hi, Darren. How are you?”
“Good, excellent. You? Looking lovely as always.”
“Fine, fine.” We pressed our cheeks together. It was funny, the things I knew about him—the testicular cancer scare, the money he’d “borrowed” from my parents during the real estate bust seven years ago that now no one expected him to repay. I didn’t even want to know the things he’d been told about me. Cherie, I assumed, did with my stories what my mom had done with Binnie’s, dutifully reporting in on everything from my late puberty (sixteen—cause for some concern at my house) to when I got dumped the morning of the senior prom.
He had probably learned these things over a salad and roast chicken at their dinner table, half listening, occasionally offering judgments. Yet he and I never discussed any of it and never would. It was always this—phony reassurances that all was fine, fine, as the other one thought, Yeah, right.
Cherie kissed me, murmuring something in my ear about what a weird, weird week it was. I nodded before wishing my dad a happy birthday and then saying hello to Michael Oster, Binnie’s husband. He absented himself from the cluster with his in-laws and planted himself next to Dave as if staking a claim, no doubt relieved Dave was there to buffer the steady, slightly nagging chatter of Cherie, Michael’s mother-in-law. Binnie floated up, kissed Dave’s cheek and managed to slightly lift up the corners of her mouth in my direction.
“Dave, we were just talking about summer homes. The Rubens bought one in Amagansett, on that block where that old tree fell last June.” Binnie and Michael had the forced repartee of actors playing a married couple in a commercial for floor cleaner—all talk of broken washing machines and benign gossip and changes in the teaching roster at little Barclay’s preschool.
“Oh?” Dave looked interested, and I couldn’t tell if he was pretending.
“So, what’s up?” Michael said. “Why haven’t you been out east for even one weekend?”
“Work,” he said. “Lots and lots of work.”
“What are you guys drinking?” I stepped in to change the subject for him.
Binnie held up her glass. “Pomegranate and coconut something.”
“Oh, because of the—” I gestured at the burgeoning bump in Binnie’s midsection, which would be her third. Hopefully, this one
would be as blond and precocious as the first two, or heaven help us all.
“No.” Michael held up his drink. “Apple juice infused with ginger. It’s a dry party.”
“You know”—Binnie gestured with her glass vaguely in the direction of one of the chaise lounges—“thanks to—”
Sloane sat alone on one of the chairs, wearing the same T-shirt and cutoff shorts she’d worn all week. Her knees were hugged up to her chest, and although she had a cigarette in hand—a tiny little orange light that burned in the darkness and I assumed was the reason for her exile—she looked like a ten-year-old who’d been stashed at a kids’ table.
I walked over. “Hi.” I sat down on the chaise next to her, surprised when her features relaxed into relief for half a second when I did. “You having fun?”
“Well . . .” She fluttered her eyes beneath her lids for a moment. “No.”
“Hi.” Dave was right behind me, hand extended to Sloane. “I’ve wanted to meet you forever. I’m Dave.”
“The husband.” She switched her cigarette to her left hand and shook with her right, unfolding from the little ball she’d been sitting in. “Hello.”
“The husband.” He plopped down next to me, depressing my cushion with his weight. “So how does it feel to be back? Is it weird?”
“A little, maybe.”
“Must be. Seeing everyone after twenty years, watching people age in flashes like Rip Van Winkle. You’ve got a great family, though.”
“Dave.” I pushed against him with my shoulder so he’d shut up.
Sloane sucked on her cigarette, which was back in her right hand. “I hear you’re part of the family business?”
“What?” Dave seemed taken aback.
“You’re a lawyer.”
“Guilty. I’m at a firm in Midtown.”
“Neat. How’s married life?”
“Married life?” He watched her for a second, and I thought he was trying to figure out if she was challenging him.
“She’s about to embark on it,” I reminded him.
“Oh, congratulations.” He put his arm around my shoulders and kissed my cheek. “It’s the best. I’m the luckiest.”
“Aw,” Sloane said in her monotone. “Sweet.”
“Hello!” My mom rushed over, leaned down to kiss Dave’s and my cheeks and stood over the three of us, hands clasped. “Look at this: the kids—all together.” She beckoned to someone with the crook of a finger on her right hand.
“I’m getting to know my new sister.” Dave’s head bent up toward my mom. “Right, Sloane?”
“Right.”
“Excellent.”
“Hi there.” My mom spoke loud enough to address a stranger ten feet away who was wearing a dark suit with four cameras around his neck. “Can you get a picture of these three?” I did a quick estimation of the party’s hired help–to-guest ratio: four to one. “Not just one, actually, but as many as you can.” She leaned closer to him, put her hand up to cover the side of her mouth and said, conspiratorially, “I don’t really care about anyone else’s picture, actually.”
He nodded and winked, and she pulled my arm, whispering, “Get up!” and smiled gently at Sloane. “Over there, by the view. Paige, oh my god, you’re dressed like the caterers.”
“I’m not.” I glanced down. “This is emerald. They’re wearing . . .”
“Emerald. They’re wearing emerald.” Dave put his hand on my mom’s arm. “That life-sized picture of Frankie is so funny. What did he say when he saw it?”
“Oh, he couldn’t believe how much hair he used to have. Get together, you three.”
Dave put an arm around me and one around Sloane and hugged us toward him so closely that I could smell the minty spice of his deodorant. I smiled into the flashes, having no hope for the resulting images: Dave’s smile the only genuine one and Sloane’s outfit awkwardly casual compared to ours.
“Oh,” my mom responded to someone’s signal across the patio. “Dinner’s ready!” She hurried away, and the three of us moved over to the outdoor table, the photographer dutifully recording our steps.
“I feel like I’m walking the red carpet,” said Sloane under her breath to no one in particular.
“Casual, I promise,” my mom had sworn during the planning stage, and yet there were seating cards, designed, I was certain, to offer both protection and proof of Sloane.
My mom had placed us at my dad’s end of the table, which was always the quiet side. The kids were next: a spectrum from Reinhardts to Rabinowitzes, with Dave and Michael the bridges. Beyond them were my mom and Cherie and booming Darren, the constant, spirited yammerers.
Normally, I would have fought against being shelved with the duds and would’ve pushed into Dave’s conversation or leaned over to chat with Cherie, who could converse for hours about anything from the cleanest way to remove a splinter to the difference between seltzer and sparkling water.
I stayed silent, however. So did Sloane, even though my mom kept trying to draw her into the conversation. Sloane’s and my eyes met once, and I interpreted her glance as an admission and acknowledgment that we were each having a less-than-fantastic time.
The toasts started, as they always did, right after the singing and the cake. Darren went first—with a golf story that was as generic as it was loud—something about my dad going par three and the green or the sand. Cherie, who did not technically give her own toast, kept butting in to Darren’s: “Why aren’t you talking about the time we went to Mexico?” and Darren would boom, “Okay. We went to Mexico.” And Cherie would say, “Not like that. Tell the funny parts,” and Darren would say, “You tell it, then,” and she would.
Michael and Binnie together recounted the Orlando Motor Inn incident. (That vacation had happened before Binnie even met Michael, but by now he’d heard enough about it that he’d probably forgotten he wasn’t there.) The story was that we’d all gone swimming in that fluorescent blue pool and when we got out, dripping wet, there had been no towels. My usually mild-mannered father apparently found this unforgivable and expressed his displeasure in such a volcanic way that we were all still discussing it.
Dave rose with raised glass, bouncing a little on the balls of his feet. I was surprised by how self-conscious he was as he told my dad he was “the best dad I know.” Dave was usually a smooth public speaker, and it wasn’t like he was covering unexplored territory: Dave’s own dad had spent the majority of Dave’s childhood sitting in a Barcalounger, flipping the remote and grunting for corn nuts. Dave talked to him about twice a year.
I wondered if Sloane was thinking the same thing I was—that Dave probably appreciated our father more than we did. Involuntarily, I smiled at her—my lips twisted in a guilty grin. Wonder of wonders, she smiled back.
Dave sat down, which meant I was up. I watched Sloane pick at the loose fabric of her place mat. She couldn’t have known that toasts are de rigueur at Reinhardt parties, and if she had, it’s not like she had stories to share.
I willed Sloane to look at me. She didn’t, so I leaned over her mat and put my flattened palm down on it, raising my other hand like an orchestra conductor: Rise! She furrowed her brow, but I did it again until she pushed back her chair and slouched to a stand.
I’d written a poem for the occasion, albeit an awful one—the worst stanza of which rhymed “hardworking lawyer” with “moral as Tom Sawyer.” It had occurred to me, as I watched my dad puff out sixty-three candles, that Huck Finn, not Tom, was the moral one. Wasn’t that the whole point of the thing? Now Huck Finn—that would have introduced a wealth of rhyming options.
I raised a juice glass and waited for Sloane to do the same. I had no clue what to say, so I said something about how he worked hard enough so the rest of us didn’t have to. I said how generous he was, although really, I don’t know if he was intrin
sically. (I’d always suspected that if my mother had met an early and unfortunate death, my dad would have done a full-on “Father of Cinderella,” and we’d have been pulled into the embrace of a wicked stepmother. I left that part out of the toast.)
Then Sloane mumbled something about how nice it was to be celebrating with everyone together in one spot. It wasn’t much, but when she spoke, it was like that pivotal moment in The Elephant Man—I am not an animal; I am a human being! Everyone gasped and sprouted tears, and Sloane waited until after the kissing and the aws died down to give me the most potent grateful glance I’ve ever received.
She cares, I thought. She actually cares under there.
My mom, the anchor of the toasts, pushed out her chair. “Frankie,” she said, “I’ve done my share of stupid things.” Everybody laughed. “Hey—you all don’t have to agree so readily. But the first smart thing I did was marrying you. The second smart thing I did was stay married to you.”
“Surely, you’ve done more than two smart things?” Darren boomed this.
She pretended to think, holding up one finger as if counting, scratching her head, hamming up her head shake. “Not really. I think two. Not that I’ll admit that ever again.”
She waited for the laughter to die down before continuing, looking at the Rabinowitz end of the table. “Here’s the thing about Frankie. Last week I asked him what he wanted for his birthday, and he told me to pick out a nice piece of jewelry for myself.” Her voice wavered, and instead of continuing, she blinked, hard, her face caught in that ugly spastic moment heralding tears. I held my breath, uncertain what would happen next.
“That’s probably because he likes to play dress-up when you’re out of the house.” That was Cherie.
“Maybe.” She raised her glass, and I could see her returning from the precipice of wherever her toast had been leading her.
“Didn’t he ask for fishnets last year?” Darren said loudly.
“And coral red lipstick,” said Cherie.
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