Once her hair was wrapped in a plush black towel, she paraded back over to the tall woman with the Long Island accent who had been cutting Zoe’s hair since high school. Sherette was a talkative, opinionated, and potentially attractive lady who wore too much makeup and snapped her gum while she worked. Zoe was always nervous that one of her enormous pink bubbles was going to end up stuck in her hair, but not nervous enough to change stylists. Sherette was a genius with scissors, although she checked herself out in the mirror just as often as she looked at her client. She was the one who had encouraged Zoe to cut off her long dark hair before college, and after the initial alarm at seeing her shorn locks carpeting the salon floor, Zoe had loved her new look. She’d been wed to Sherette ever since.
“So, what’s new with you?” Sherette chomped as she wrapped a smock around Zoe.
“Well, let’s see… ” Zoe stared at herself in the mirror. “The guy I’ve been seeing for forever got married on Saturday.”
“Ouch. What’s the story with that?” Sherette combed Zoe’s wet hair. “I assume we’re doing the regular here.”
“Yeah, although I should ask for a totally new look. This one hasn’t done me any favors.” Zoe sighed. “But no, just do your thing.”
“So, what happened? How’d this girl steal your guy?”
“The million-dollar question.” Zoe snickered. “Actually, I guess he wasn’t really my guy. I was borrowing him.” She bit her lip and stated more to the mirror than to Sherette, “They’ve been engaged for almost a year now.” Surely enough time to get the message and move on.
“Leasing with an option to own.”
“Although my option was never stipulated in writing. It was all up here.” She tapped her damp head. And it still is. Even now, there was part of her that refused to let go of Gavin. She loved him. Never more so than when he had stayed by her side during her abortion, nervously fidgeting in the waiting room and ferrying her home afterwards. It was a new side of him: caring and concerned with nary a sexual innuendo in sight. The surprising and sad thing about it all was that they had now developed a strange sort of friendship; the piece that had been so lacking in their earlier relationship was now their only tie. Although they didn’t see each other often, when they did it was with a quieter and deeper commitment than before. The sexual zing was gone, or at least the certainty that it would be acted upon, but the beginnings of a comfortable bond was there.
“Now that the lease is up, the good news is you can move on to a newer model,” Sherette said.
“In theory.”
“Don’t tell me you’re still hung up on him?”
“I’m still not sure I’ve figured it all out yet.”
“Get a grip girl. They said ‘I do’ didn’t they?”
“That they did. I was a witness.”
Sherette’s eyebrows shot up. “You were at the wedding?”
“With bells on.” Zoe had considered just not showing up, but she knew that whether she was there or not, she would feel the same way. Better to see it for herself. Besides, her absence would say something to Gavin that she would rather not repeat.
“You’re a sucker for punishment.”
She wondered again if she had made the wrong decision. Even with a year of mental prep—reciting her “It’s not a big deal” mantra, staying busy at work, and partying into the night when the other tricks didn’t deaden her pain—she hadn’t quite grasped how deeply it would cut to see Tess and Gavin celebrating their togetherness (she still couldn’t bear to think of them as in love). She shuddered as she remembered Gavin dressed to the nines, attentive to Tess, holding her close on the dance floor, whispering intimately with her; she realized that she had rarely seen them together, and that it was obviously only in her own mind that Gavin was dismissive of Tess. “I’m kind of friends with the bride.”
Sherette stopped snipping. “You’re kidding, right?”
“No.” Zoe studied her hands on the black vinyl smock. It sounded awful to her too.
“The plot thickens.” Sherette moved around to Zoe’s back and blew a huge pink bubble.
Almost to herself, Zoe said, “I just don’t see what he finds attractive about her.”
Sherette chuckled. “But she’s your friend, right?”
Zoe exhaled slowly. “Let’s just say we run in the same group.” Sherette didn’t comment and so Zoe continued, “She’s a nice girl, and maybe under different circumstances… but there’s always been Gavin.” She shook her head. “She’s so demure with him. I mean, I know guys like to have control, but to call all the shots all the time? How can men find that attractive?” Zoe thought of her mother and stepfather, who lived an older version of the Tess-Gavin dynamic, and shook her head. “I just don’t get it.”
“Honey, if we knew what men found attractive, we’d all look alike.”
Zoe laughed.
“She never knew?” Sherette said.
“No. I mean, I really don’t think so.”
“How about your other friends? That must have caused some switching of teams, some divided loyalties.”
“They never knew.”
“You kept this all to yourself?”
“Don’t you feel honored?” Zoe sighed. “My best friend knew how I felt.” She thought about Allie squeezing her hand as Mr. and Mrs. Gavin Keller were ushered to the dance floor for the first time. The wordless squeeze had given her a powerful shot of support, and perhaps, had also held her in place so that she didn’t leap onto the floor and rip them apart. “But no, I didn’t tell them we were together because it was none of their business.”
“And because you knew they wouldn’t understand. You were afraid they’d side with the quiet mouse.”
Zoe caught eyes with Sherette in the mirror. She had wanted to tell Allie, and even Megan, but she could never bring herself to do it. Although they would’ve tried to understand, she knew they would have eventually sided with Tess, who on paper was Gavin’s rightful partner. But Zoe liked her reason better, it hurt less. “She wasn’t always the fiancée. We were actually together first,” she said with a lift of her chin. “It was one of those things, I just couldn’t help it.”
“That’s bullshit.”
Zoe winced.
Sherette backtracked from her sharp tone. “I mean, I’m just being straight with you here, right? I’ve known you a long time. Take it from me, I’ve been where you are. Asshole told me he loved me and that he’d leave his wife.” Chomp, chomp. “Took me a long time, and a lot of mascara to figure that game out.” She peered at herself in the mirror before her eyes focused back on Zoe, the scissors motionless in her hand. “Don’t fool yourself. You can always help it. You’re a smart girl.”
Zoe stared into the mirror.
Sherette went back to snipping and cracking her gum. “So there’s my two cents.” Sherette smiled warmly. “Can you believe this weather?”
————
It wasn’t snowing in the Caribbean. The blood-orange sun was on fire, melting through the horizon towards the turquoise of the sea, and the whole sky was glowing pink and purple with its effort. The tinny beat of reggae music provided a seductive soundtrack. Gavin stood quietly, absorbing the display, thinking it should be captured on a postcard with “Wish you were here!” scripted across the top. He took a sip of his rum punch and squeezed Tess’s hand. “Whoever invented the honeymoon was a genius.”
“You mean you’re tired of the votive versus tall candle debate?” Tess said.
Gavin smiled. “It was the seating chart that put me over the edge.”
“Can you believe after that whole debate that my crazy uncle Jim never even showed up?”
“I think my grandfather’s speech filled in for anything crazy uncle Jim might have pulled off. Although your mom seemed to like it.”
“She was just happy that the food was garnished approp
riately.”
Gavin laughed. “I think there are more pictures of the food than of us.”
“Sorry we’re late,” Robert called out as he sauntered over with his new bride, Traci (with an “i” she had informed them upon introduction; Gavin could almost see the heart as the dot).
“I thought the word ‘late’ was outlawed here. Weren’t we supposed to leave our watches in our suitcases?” Gavin said.
“I can’t do it,” Robert confessed, peeking at his wrist.
“At least I got him to switch off the alarm,” Traci said, and the other three laughed with a communal noise more about making connections than about humor.
The two couples had met the day before, bumping into each other first on the tennis court, and then later on the beach. Tess and Traci had instantly bonded over the fact that they had gotten married on the same day (overlooking the fact that most of the honeymooners at the resort had undoubtedly done the same), and they’d agreed to meet for dinner on the terrace.
“Cocktails first or straight to the table?” Gavin said.
“Despite the watch, I’m in no hurry.” Robert smiled at his new bride as if to say, “See?”
Gavin waved the white-jacketed waiter over.
They sat down in wooden armchairs facing the hypnotic blue of the water and were momentarily silent, a combination of breathing in their surroundings and not knowing where to start the conversation with relative strangers. Traci, a tall, thin woman with a supernatural blond bob, broke the quiet. “So, tell. How’d he pop the question?”
A smile exploded on Tess’s face. “Gavin was acting weird for about a month.” She patted his leg. “I figured he was stressed about work, but I didn’t really know what was going on, I mean, I was starting to wonder…” She paused, shook her head as if to shake those thoughts out of her head again. “Now I know that the ring was burning a hole in his pocket all that time. So anyway, one night he came home with red roses and champagne and got down on one knee.” Said he loved me, hadn’t been thinking clearly (she still wasn’t sure what that meant), said he didn’t want to waste any more time. “And pulled out this ring.” She looked at Gavin and smiled. “I cried.” She sat back with a contented exhale. “How about you?”
Traci clapped her hands together. “We met at my friend’s wedding six months ago; Robert was friends with the groom. One look and that, as they say, is all she wrote.” She flashed a toothy smile at her husband.
“So after one day, you knew?” Tess said.
Gavin picked up his drink and drained it.
Traci nodded like her head was on a spring.
“It all happened so quickly that some people came right out and asked if we were pregnant,” Robert said.
Gavin shifted in his chair. He scanned the patio for the waiter.
It was pathetic that his life had only become clear to him when it was threatened, but there it was. In the five quaking seconds that he believed he was the father of Zoe’s baby, Tess had fallen into place with trembling certainty. He loved her; he did not want to lose her, he couldn’t lose her. And he had been so careless with her, with the one person in his life who didn’t expect him to be anything other than who he was. The guilt he had never allowed himself to feel had suddenly swamped him. Even more so because he knew that if Zoe told him he was the father, he would’ve offered to marry her, and that would have ended up slaying all three of them. All because of him. But he didn’t love Zoe. And despite her unintentional and breathless “I love you,” he didn’t think she really did. The words were still out there though, hovering over them, unconfirmed and unaddressed.
“Get out of here.” Traci punched her husband’s arm with a closed fist. “Who asked?”
“Some of the guys.”
“You didn’t tell me.”
“I figured you’d flip,” he said, and then he chuckled at Tess and Gavin, “and I guess I was right.”
“Obviously skeptics about love at first sight,” Gavin said. He held up his glass. “Anyone need a refill?”
————
Several rum punches later, Tess staggered into the ladies room with Traci right on her heels, giggling and grabbing onto Tess’s arm for support.
“Those punches are strong,” Traci said. “And Gavin’s cute.”
“Are those two things linked?”
“Possibly!” Traci howled with laughter and stepped into a stall. “How long did you say you’ve been together?”
“About six years.”
“Whoa.”
Let’s get off of this subject. It was tarnishing her inner “just married” glow. For all six years she had wished that cupid’s arrow had pricked Gavin with the insta-commitment that seemed to pierce everyone else; instead, it had been years of near misses, with one finally just grazing his chest. Sometimes she felt as if she had won the prize she coveted just because she survived the longest. Not that she wasn’t ecstatic that he’d finally come around; but to know that her husband had “come around” to the idea of spending the rest of his life with her was not something she cared to brag about.
“Robert’s cute too. You guys seem good together.” Tess rummaged through her purse.
“You think?” Traci shouted from behind the stall door. “Guess what? He snores! I’m having a really hard time sleeping.”
“Didn’t you notice that before?” Tess asked in a more moderated tone of voice.
“Apparently not. I must have been in some kind of engagement fog or something.”
Or maybe you just haven’t known each other long enough. Tess swiped on her berry lip gloss, silently thanking Traci for validating her and Gavin’s long courtship. “They say that love is blind, right? Maybe it’s deaf too.”
Chapter 9
Journal Entry #9
February 21, 2001
Ghosts wear a white sheet over their nothingness so that they are visible, so that someone knows they’re there. We wore clothes. In our last few years of marriage, Dana and I were invisible to each other in all but outward body. We moved around the house not so much unobserved, but overlooked; breezing past, gliding through each other. Our big dreams, our trivial desires, our daily temperature were all at best obscure shadows to each other.
It was not an earth-shattering fissure that pushed our marriage to the very edge of a deep crevice, it was slow and simple erosion; it was presumption. The base presumption of love, of our knowledge of each other, of the foundation of each other was initially an asset of ours, but we took that basement for granted for too long. As we built our life together, the normal fault lines that open up within any relationship were patched over with a sense of invulnerability, not new cement. And so ironically, our sedate presumption of strength left us fundamentally weak, and as the earth continued to shift underneath us, we were ever so gradually split apart.
Within this growing divide, our vulnerabilities slowly became a liability. The human flaws that we had once tentatively shared with each other, held out in front of us on a silver tray like a trembling, intimate offering, were locked away. Our failings were not something we were going to expose when so many other, obvious things went unsaid as well.
I can understand now how so many empty-nesters get divorced. In the living room of their lives, one theme—most likely the children—has bound them, dominated all conversation, all passionate emotion, all tangible exchange. Meanwhile in their kitchens, offices, yards, cars, the individuals are still dreaming, still achieving, still accumulating new friends and new interests, but for any number of reasons these personal pursuits aren’t shared over the living room coffee table. The partners open their fingers and let go, just for a moment, of each other’s hand as they inch away into these separate corners of their lives. The inch becomes an arm’s length, then more, just out of reach; maybe they even look over their shoulder and watch their spouse disappear behind a different door. The living
room becomes an empty formality; at first lacking life zest, and then after the children have shifted out of eyesight and daily mindsight, devoid of conversation as well.
And one day, the husband and wife park themselves together in their spotless living room and discover that they’re sitting across from a stranger.
Right now Dana and I are trying to rebuild our foundation, to create a shared room we live in. We’re dating again, a one-step forward, one-step back getting to know each other, and in so many ways, it’s more hesitant than our initial head-first dive into each other. We know every crease and crinkle of the other’s smile better than we know our own, and yet we now tiptoe into conversation, not knowing when we’re going to tread on a scar, all too aware that we don’t always know what prompts that smile anymore. But we both want to find out.
And if our feelings are a little less cloudy, the logistics of this interim relationship are still quite gray. The whole will he/won’t he spend the night is actually rather comical—in hindsight—although quite prickly in the moment. This is our house, our bed, but it feels like my call, which is strange. If I say no, the assumption zipped into the tiny word is that there’s something we need to discuss, some boulder in our way. If I say yes, what am I really saying yes to? The night or our marriage? Perhaps both.
Sarah knows all this by the way, so it’s legit. Dana joins me now at my weekly sessions, and the conundrum of the end of the date is something we talk about in therapy together, sometimes even get a good laugh out of. It feels good to laugh again with Dana, like every shared chuckle cancels out one bitter thought, one forgotten goodnight kiss.
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