The Intermission

by Elyssa Friedland

  Twenty minutes later, he and the guys were standing around a crowded bar, doing a shot of Tito’s. And then he was dancing to remixes of songs he vaguely recognized with a girl named Ashley, who seemed to appear from nowhere as though his friends had magicked a Cass antidote out of thin air.

  “Do you want to sit down?” he asked her over the blaring music.

  “Sure,” she yelled back, and he walked with this mystery woman toward a velvet banquette in the back, behind a rope for which his buddies had shelled out enough to cross.

  “Can I get you another drink?” That was what he was supposed to ask, wasn’t it?

  “Vodka martini, extra olives,” she said, smiling like that was the nicest thing anyone had ever said to her. She was hot. Skinny, but with boobs, and dark hair that fell in waves past her elbows. He could smell her perfume, musky and sweet.

  He got the highlights: University of Texas (go Longhorns!), marketing degree, loving New York City, dance-cardio addict, sick share house planned for the summer in the Hamptons. Her good breeding was obvious, and he knew his mother would love her—this Ashley von Warwick of Fort Worth to be precise. A “von” would please both his parents to no end. And though this random girl he met dancing at Aura with her tits hanging out said things like “ridic” (and also “sick” and “totes”), she held the stem of her martini glass just so, knew to let him go first through the revolving door to get it started when they finally left the club, and was a graduate of the finest all-girls preparatory school in Texas. But Ashley’s good breeding was like an anti-boner—when he found himself kissing her on the street, he couldn’t stop picturing his mother going gaga for her, flinging this pretty, young thing with the fancy last name around the Cheshire Club to make her friends green with envy. When she asked him if he wanted to come over to her place, he politely declined, only asking for her number as a courtesy.

  Later that night he tried to explain this to Jeff at the all-night diner around the corner. Jeff nodded in agreement, stabbing his waffle with the fork like he was spearing meat, saying, “I hear ya, man.” But it didn’t seem that he did. None of the women Jonathan met before Cass—the Jessicas and the Jennas, and now Ashley—were the type he could imagine sharing inside jokes with or dog-earring 1,000 Places to See Before You Die together. Well, maybe Brett, but she was nothing more than a ghost from his past at this point. He could barely remember what they used to talk about for hours straight.

  After the big reveal to his Winstar crew, the Wentworths were up next to hear the news. He thought Cass might already have told them—or surely one of them noticed that they never ran into her in the elevator or hallway anymore—but the look of surprise on their faces made it clear they had no clue. Jemima hugged him and stroked his cheek like a little boy, saying she had to admit Cass had been acting strange recently. “She didn’t even want to try the new blow-dry bar with me,” Jemima shared. “And it’s right at the corner of our block.” This was meant, Jonathan concluded, to assure him that the separation was due to Cass being mentally ill. Imagine! She wouldn’t blow-dry her hair despite the convenience! Bonkers, isn’t she? Jemima only meant to comfort him and put Cass’s departure in the context of other erratic behavior, but she wasn’t very convincing. Henry took him out for a beer, but two dudes out with a plan to have a heart-to-heart for the first time devolved into a conversation that centered mostly around business.

  Random friends came next, Stefania the dog walker, then Luna. Their cleaning lady, whose skill set and reliability made Amelia Bedelia look impressive, for once responded immediately to the text Jonathan had sent out. He wrote: Luna, Cass is going to be living in California for a while. We would still like you to come so please reach out to me for scheduling. The three dots of Luna’s response popped up immediately, disappeared, then reappeared and vanished at least five more times. At a loss for words, she finally managed: I hope everything is okay. I’ll be there to clean Monday. And she actually showed up. Somehow the idea of Jonathan living alone, ditched by his wife for some self-indulgent soul-searching, induced Luna to meet her commitments.

  There were not one, not two, but three platters of food offered to him as a form of condolence, officially turning his separation from Cass into a wake. Luna left a tin of brownies next to a messily scribbled note that said, You needed Windex. I bought it at CVS. Don’t worry about paying me back. Because of who they were from, he suspected there were some “nontraditional” ingredients mixed in the batter. Three brownies later, he didn’t feel remotely high, just nauseous. Jemima delivered a vegetable lasagna. When she handed over the casserole dish with a big smile, Jonathan noticed her forehead didn’t so much as move, let alone crease. Cass was right about the injections. He worried this dinner delivery would become a daily occurrence, so he very pointedly but politely explained to Jemima that he ate in the office almost every night anyway. “Uh-huh,” she said with her nonmoving eyebrows, and it seemed she had in that instant concluded the source of Cass’s departure. Lastly, his secretary, Gloria, the backbone of his professional existence, came to work with an actual carry-on-sized rolling suitcase filled with arroz con pollo and pork enchiladas.

  “They freeze great,” she assured him. Without asking him first, she rolled her meals-on-wheels into the office kitchen, stacked the aluminum-foil pans and printed out a sign on computer paper that said, “Jonathan Coyne. Do Not Eat.” Because his wife leaving him wasn’t embarrassing enough.

  So the friends, the colleagues, the team (Luna, Gloria, Roger the building super, Derrick the corner barista and others) were all told in succession. Jonathan even shared Cass’s departure with his mentee Leon when they were playing chess in Bryant Park on a windy Sunday morning. Leon fixed his eyes on the board and muttered a “Sorry, man, that’s rough,” and then let Jonathan checkmate him easily as a consolation. Things were bad when a kid who had been to juvie twice described your life as rough.

  After so many tellings, he’d learned to shorten the story in a way that would eliminate the possibility of follow-up questions. “Cass and I are doing a trial separation. We’re going to see how we fare living apart. It’s all for the best. Thank you for your support.” That last part was key. The recipient of the news hadn’t in fact offered any support yet, but by saying so, it showed that the matter was closed, and no particular words of kindness, insight or armchair psychology were welcome.

  The one person of significance whom he hadn’t yet notified was his mother, whose reaction would depend on a combination of time of day, inebriation and luck. If he caught her in the morning en route to bridge, all hell could break loose. She would need to rush him off the phone because she didn’t want to be late for her foursome, but then she wouldn’t be able to concentrate on her game, sweating the fact she’d have to tell her friends eventually. Then he’d get a phone call in the late afternoon berating him for the insensitivity of his timing. If he reached his mother after five, she’d have the lubrication of one or two martinis. This could soften her and she’d attempt to coddle him (in her cold, Waspy way) or the booze would loosen her tongue and she’d unleash a murderous string of I told you sos. She’d hinted not too subtly that Cass was a gold digger who saw the Coyne firstborn as a cash cow. Jonathan wondered if it ever occurred to his mother that by painting him as the golden goose conquest of some conniving bitch, she was implying that a woman like Cass would never be interested in him if he didn’t have money. As if his personality were stale and his career prospects dismal. As though he were ugly.

  He couldn’t withhold the news from his family much longer. His little brother Michael was getting married in a few weeks, over Memorial Day weekend. His bride, Jordyn, was the sort of woman for whom seating arrangements and place card design were as critical as arms negotiations. She would need to know sooner rather than later that he’d be coming to the wedding stag. Jonathan remembered Cass agonizing over the tiny slips of white paper with each of their guests’ names scrawled on them, th
ough her objective seemed mainly to be hiding her family members in small pockets around the room. He reached for the phone on his desk at work, glancing at the computer clock first: 5:09 p.m. Half a martini in.

  He grimaced when his father picked up.

  “Jonathan, long time no speak. You avoiding us because you have to spend the whole weekend on the Vineyard soon enough?”

  “Just been busy at work, Dad. Is Mom there?”

  “Hang on.” A moment later, he heard “Betsy!” and he could picture his father’s deep baritone traveling from his second-floor, wood-paneled study down to Betsy’s floral sitting room off the kitchen.

  Despite the strain in their relationship, there was still never a question for Jonathan that he would tell his mother before his father. Then she would tell his father in a game of drunken telephone, her gin-soaked lips passing on the message to his scotch-breathed father. But unlike in the children’s version of the game, Betsy’s changes would be deliberate.

  It wasn’t just that his mother had a stronger constitution than his father. Even though she wasn’t warm and fuzzy in the least, and he had zero memories of her slicking Bacitracin on his scrapes or reading him Corduroy (a heavily accented Jamaican lady did that), she was still his mother. And mothers were meant to be the first in line for news, of both a good and bad nature. When he thought of him and Cass as parents, he pictured his wife as the one who would have the first crack at fielding the tough questions and wiping the tears. He wasn’t as obtuse as his own father, but he didn’t have Cass’s emotional landscape. It was all those damn plays she saw. She was “in touch with her feelings,” for lack of a better phrase. But there was such a thing as being too in touch. That kind of thing could lead to overthinking and indulging every twinge. That’s what got them into this predicament.

  His mother came on the line.

  “Jordyn is really a piece of work. I thought it was odd that Cass didn’t care about the wedding details, and that trailer-trash mother of hers certainly couldn’t be trusted to make any decisions.”

  Jonathan cringed at hearing the phrase “trailer trash.” All manner of people went around using it casually, but it stung his wife sharply. She’d lived a good part of her adolescence teetering on the edge of actually moving into a trailer park.

  “Anyway, I think this might actually be worse,” Betsy continued. “What do they call it? A bridezilla, I think. That’s what Jordyn is. But Michael is smitten and it’ll all be over in a few weeks.”

  That was his mother. She was partial to skipping pleasantries, finding the ping-pong nature of “Hi, how are you? I’m good; how are you?” to be a complete waste of time. Despite Jordyn’s fine breeding, Betsy didn’t seem to like her on a personal level much more than Cass, because he knew his grandmother’s emerald ring was still idling in the family vault. Maybe his youngest brother, Wallace, would finally claim it. If he could find a society girl pretty enough, thin enough and with enough composure not to fret over silly things like Jordyn did.

  “When are you and Cass arriving, by the way? The house is going to be very crowded. I never thought I’d say this, but if you wanted to take a room at the Winnetu, that might actually be of some help.”

  How Cass would have celebrated upon hearing that news. If she was in the room, he would have scrawled on a piece of paper, “We’re free. Can stay in hotel!” She would have jumped up and down, stifling screeches, prompting Betsy to ask, “What is all that commotion?” He’d answer something about Puddles knocking a bowl over. It was all so easy to picture, and yet it was no longer his reality.

  “You there, Jonathan?” He heard his mother take a sip of something. “I saw your boss on CNBC this morning. There’s something about him I don’t like. Do they pay him to be on the show? He’s on practically every other day.”

  “I’m here, Mom. Jerry is one of their regulars on the show, yes. It’s good for business. You might not ‘like’ Jerry, but he’s a pretty amazing boss and we have two billion dollars under management. Anyway, I have to tell you something. About the wedding. I’m hoping you can pass on the news to Dad. And Jordyn.” More telephone.

  “You don’t sound right, Jonathan. What’s going on?”

  “Cass is not going to be able to make it to the wedding.” He let that marinate for a minute before elaborating.

  “She’s pregnant, isn’t she? I thought Cass might pull something like this. I had four children, threw up until my third trimester with each of you, and never missed an obligation. Fine, yes, maybe I skipped a few bridge lessons or some volunteering commitment, but nothing like a family wedding. Is she home now? I’m calling her. Jordyn will have a heart attack when she hears, and who do you think is going to have to fix this? I don’t see her father rearranging the tables.” Jordyn’s mother had lost a battle with kidney disease a year ago. When she passed, Betsy had actually said (with Jordyn’s father bent over the casket in the next room), “Well, at least I’ll be able to control the wedding details.” And now it took a minute for Jonathan to process that his mother thought he was announcing the pending birth of her first grandchild. Her reaction? “I thought Cass might pull something like this”—“congratulations” clearly not a part of her vernacular. Between Donna and Betsy, any kid of his and Cass’s could forget about a cozy, cuddly nana.

  Despite being taken aback by his mother’s harshness, he couldn’t blame her for being wildly off the mark. From the outside—hell, even from the inside—it seemed like he and Cass were on the brink of having a child. Cass swore that all their friends would look a second too long at her belly or pay special attention to see if she was drinking. Sometimes she’d order club soda all night just to mess with them. Meanwhile, in her mind, she was packing her bags. Even in her completely unexpected departure, she was being true to her nature. Cass was like sunshine on a freezing day—her presence could give you a false sense of security.

  “Cass isn’t pregnant, Mom. We are separated.”

  Silence on the other end. And then . . .

  “Separated? Where in the world is this coming from? Everything seemed fine at Christmas.” They had spent the weekend in Boston with his parents and siblings, attending the pageant show (as the only married couple there without children, they felt rather foolish) and partaking in a big feast with all of Jonathan’s siblings. The weekend was fine, he supposed. Though Cass had disappeared for hours on Saturday without explanation and they had an explosive fight about a comment his father made at dinner about the “blue collars” ruining a resort he and Betsy used to favor in Bermuda after the hotel started offering a fourth night free and rewards points.

  “He was looking at me when he said it, Jonathan,” Cass had sniped. “You are such a jerk for not seeing that.” He had seen it, though he pretended to her that he hadn’t. And he had spoken to his father privately about Cass’s sensitivities. His father feigned cluelessness, or maybe it wasn’t an act. Some people were truly tone-deaf and Christopher Coyne was likely one of them. At the time of the incident, Jonathan felt just as exasperated with his wife as she did with his dad. Did she really have the right to be outraged when she had fled from her upbringing? This was the woman who preferred to reduce her childhood to a buried footnote. Trips home to Michigan, which were only every other Thanksgiving, usually involved her making snarky comments about the footwear choices of the women that were incomprehensible to him. She’d insist they bolt after two nights for fear she’d start saying “pop” again instead of “soda.” A woman full of contradictions could be incredibly sexy, but more often than not, it was cause for a migraine.

  “Things were fine then, that’s true,” he said. “But now they aren’t. A marriage doesn’t necessarily fall apart over screaming matches and cataclysmic differences, Mom. Sometimes, it’s the little things that are the undoing.” And for the first time, like someone had waved a crystal ball in his face, he saw where Cass was coming from and felt a momentous breakthrough
taking shape. “I’d rather be certain that we are totally sure about our marriage before we bring kids into it. It’s not exactly a great environment for a child to be raised by parents who don’t like each other.” He didn’t intend that part to come out as an accusation, but once it landed, it couldn’t be taken any other way.

  “I’m not calling Jordyn. You can tell her yourself,” Betsy said, serving a quick revenge for his nasty comment.

  “Good-bye, Mom. I’ll see you soon. Please try and be supportive of our decision.”

  Because he’d be damned if he told his mother it was Cass’s idea. From now on, the decision was mutual.

  * * *

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  WHEN JONATHAN WAS in the sixth grade, he came downstairs one night to get a late-night snack. His parents thought he was fast asleep, but in reality he’d stayed up watching a baseball game on the West Coast and found himself needing a celebratory scoop of ice cream after the Red Sox win.

  “This can’t happen again,” Betsy hissed to his father as Jonathan had entered the room unseen. “I will not be made a fool of any longer.” He saw his parents at the kitchen table, though not in their normal seats at opposite heads. His father was in pajamas, rubbing his chin. His mother, in a bathrobe and curlers, had a box of tissues and a bottle of wine within reach. Jonathan tucked himself out of sight in the butler’s pantry, but within earshot.

  “Betsy,” Christopher said. “Let’s not pretend this is something other than what it is. I was seeking comfort elsewhere. We have three children together, but not much of a real marriage. It’s been that way for quite some time. You know it just as well as I do. Don’t pretend this was some big betrayal.”