“Yeah? What’s that?”
“They say they wanted to feel alive again.”
Mitch nudged the Oreos her way. “More alive than cookies in your pj’s on a Wednesday night in the suburbs, you mean?”
She kicked his knee gently with one bare foot. “I keep thinking about the movie Love Actually.”
“There’s a part of my brain that’s always thinking about Love Actually,” Mitch said. “It’s delightful.”
“Remember when we watched it last Christmas? That Emma Thompson scene? The Joni Mitchell song? Everyone’s so depressed because the bad guy from Harry Potter has the affair, right? But think how different the end of that movie would be if Emma Thompson would’ve cut him some slack. Let him live a little. Maybe it would’ve saved them.”
He took two Oreos and handed her one. “His name was Alan Rickman,” he said. “And he was a screen legend.”
Outside, a car engine started: a low, expensive-sounding hum. James’s BMW. When he pulled away, the headlights lit up the kitchen like an explosion.
“The other day,” she said, “when I asked you if we’re happy.”
“Yeah?”
“I didn’t mean that I think we aren’t.”
“I know,” he said.
She sealed the bag and pushed them away. Enough.
Mitch took a piece of her hair and tucked it behind her ear. “But you think we need to be saved anyway, huh?” he asked.
The truth: She didn’t know. Maybe. But she was sure that there was a point when Megan, Sarah, and even Amber hadn’t known either. In their divorces—maybe in every divorce in the history of divorces—there was a moment when things could’ve gone either way.
“Maybe this will save us before we need saving,” she said.
7
On weeknights, the Butler bedtime routine was ironclad, run with humorless, German-like precision.
Bath. Teeth. Story. Cuddle. Closet check for E.T. Then, between 8:30 and 8:50 P.M., the lights went out.
Like any parenting routine, though, it went straight to shit on weekends, particularly when one of them was flying solo. Which was why at 8:45 P.M. on Friday, while Jessica was out with the Wives, Mitch was only halfway through bath time.
Emily splashed about in a mountain range of bubbles and drew animals on the tile with a green bath pencil. Jude’s bath was done, so he was sprawled out on the bathroom floor in pajamas, coloring in an E.T. coloring book. Mitch supervised the operation while sitting on a wooden step stool, drinking a beer from a plastic Orioles stadium cup.
He took a picture of the tile, catching just a glimpse of the back of Emily’s head, and posted it to Instagram.
Bath time at the Butler House. #Friyay?
“That’s some decent coloring, dude,” Mitch told Jude.
“Thanks.”
“See? Not scary at all. E.T.’s totes adorbs.”
The idea was pretty simple: A kid couldn’t be scared of something he colored in a coloring book, right?
But Jude shook his head. “He’s not adorbs, Dad.”
Emily looked up from her bubbles, her face serious. “Am I gonna turn all white when I die, too, Daddy, like E.T. did?”
“Honey, you’re not gonna d—” Mitch pumped the brakes. “E.T. didn’t die, guys, remember? We talked about this. He was just sick. Then he got better. Fade to black. Roll credits.”
All three of them knew this was total bullshit. E.T. died. He died frightened and tormented, hooked up to fake movie medical equipment, and thanks to Mitch, his kids got to see it firsthand on an enormous screen.
“When are you gonna die, Daddy?” Emily asked.
“Not for a long, long time. Like, an annoyingly long time. My goal is to be a burden on you for many, many years. Someday, Mommy and I will live with whichever one of you has the coolest house.”
Amazingly, Emily accepted this without further comment.
“Is Mom gonna be home soon?” asked Jude.
“Not till after you’re asleep,” he said. “She’s having a Sex and the City night with her friends.”
“What’s sex and the city?”
“Nothing. Keep coloring.”
When his phone buzzed on the sink, Mitch assumed it was Jessica texting—to remind him of something or to say good night to the kids. But it wasn’t. It was his friend Alan of Alan and Amber; of divorce number three.
I’m knocking on your front door. You in there?
Mitch was surprised by how excited this suddenly made him. He hadn’t seen any of the Husbands in a month, and he texted back immediately.
Upstairs. Giving kids bath. Come in.
Alan hit him back with a thumbs-up emoji, but a moment later he texted:
Locked. Should I ram the door with my car?
Go around. Back is unlocked, I think. If not, you can go fuck yourself.
He laughed at his own vulgarity—at the sheer childish joy of talking shit to a friend.
“Who are you texting?” asked Jude.
“Uncle Alan’s here.”
Just as quickly as that surge of excitement appeared, it was replaced by melancholy. The Core Four had always referred to themselves as the uncles and aunts of one another’s kids. Could they still do that? Are there rules to pretend-families like theirs?
A single, loud beep came from the security alarm, and then Alan shouted up the stairs. “I’m getting a beer, you filthy animals! And there’s nothing any of you can do to stop me!”
“Bring me one, too!” said Mitch.
“Me, too!” shouted Emily, and her laughter reverberated off the bathroom walls like a Mariah Carey song.
Mitch recognized his friend’s lanky gait as he came up the stairs. “Where are you guys?” Alan said.
“In here!” said Emily and Jude.
“In the bathroom,” said Mitch.
“Oh great. If someone’s doing a numero dos in here, you’re all in big trouble!”
The kids laughed. Tall, youthful, prone to bathroom humor, Alan was their favorite pretend-uncle. He handed Mitch a beer and sat on the edge of the tub. “How’s it going, Butlers?”
Mitch punched him in the thigh.
He wore a nice shirt tucked into dark jeans. The top button was open, Mitch noticed, and he smelled like cologne.
Alan touched Jude’s wet hair. “Whattya say, Jude the dude?”
“Hey.”
“Is that E.T.?”
“Yeah. Dad’s trying to make me think he’s not scary.”
“Well, your dad’s delusional. E.T.’s horrifying. Did you let them watch that, man?”
This was great. Even the guy with no kids thought he was a terrible father.
“There’s my little lady,” said Alan. “How’re you, beautiful?”
Emily blushed. “Gooooood.”
“I like the bubbles.”
“Me too,” said Emily.
“We used four capfuls of bubble juice, even though the directions only said two,” said Jude.
Mitch took a drink. “That’s how we do it on Fridays,” he said. “Next we’re gonna sniff some of the glue from Emily’s art set.”
Alan took a drink—at least a third of his bottle.
“You missed one of your buttons,” said Mitch.
Alan smiled. “It’s intentional. I’m trying something. You like?”
“I don’t know. I’m still processing. You look like a suburban coke dealer.”
“It’s the new me. I’m reinventing myself as a breezy single guy who’s so chill that sometimes he forgets to button all his buttons.”
“Okay. It’s growing on me.”
As they watched Jude color, Mitch assessed his friend. He looked different. It was tough to pinpoint how, exactly. It was like when you finally take your ca
r to the car wash after an ugly winter. It doesn’t just look clean—it looks somehow new again. That was how Alan looked: new. Or newish, at least.
“Are you divorced now, Uncle Alan?” Emily asked.
“Em,” Mitch said.
Alan rolled with it. “That I am, sweetie. Your Uncle Alan’s a free bird. Officially. Hide your daughters.”
“How was it?” asked Mitch. “Signing the papers. Tense? Weird?”
“Not as bad as you’d think. We hugged. I wanted to do a divorce selfie. That’s a thing now on Instagram, divorce selfies. Amber wasn’t down, though. Surprise, surprise. She thought it was ‘inappropriate.’ ”
Mitch opened his new beer and poured it into his cup while Alan used shampoo to mold Emily’s hair into a full-on Mohawk. “I gotta get some kids,” he said. “They’re hilarious.”
“You talk to Doug and Terry lately?” Mitch asked. “How’re they?”
The Husbands texted often throughout the week—sometimes daily. There’d be long chains about the most inconsequential things imaginable. Weeks would sometimes pass without any of them sharing any real, legitimate personal information.
“Oh, you know. Same stuff. Terry’s music collection is straight-up bananas now. He’s practically got a DJ booth in his apartment. And Doug’s doing CrossFit with twenty-five-year-olds every day after work. He’s due for a devastating injury any day now. It’s a foregone conclusion.”
“Uncle Doug is kinda jacked,” said Jude.
“Eh,” said Alan. “I could take him.”
“Yeah, right,” said Jude, turning the page of his coloring book to a picture of E.T. holding out one glowing finger.
“So, what’s up?” Mitch asked. “You just popping in? Gracing us with the presence of your exposed chest?”
“I was in the hood. Thought I’d roll by. You’re the only one of us who still buys good beer.” He was smiling, though, being coy, and Mitch gave him a look, which was all it took. “Okay, fine. Ya got me. Uncle Alan’s got a date tonight, kids!”
“A date?”
“With Aunt Amber?” asked Emily.
Alan booped her nose. “Girl, you’re killing me. No, with someone else. Someone new. It’s complicated.”
“Like, a date date?” said Mitch.
“Well, I guess that’s what you call it. We’re meeting at Valley Inn in half an hour. I’m gonna show up a little late, though, just to keep her guessing.” He winked. Alan was the only person Mitch knew who could wink in casual conversation without looking like a sex criminal.
“Wow. You’ve been divorced for like—”
“Forty-eight hours. I know. But, seriously, check it out.” He pulled his iPhone out of his back pocket and tapped the screen a few times, revealing the image of a girl.
Mitch took the phone. She was blond. Freckles across the bridge of her nose. Smiling and young. Midtwenties, maybe.
“How’d you meet her? Were you cruising high school parking lots?”
“Shut up,” Alan said. “She’s not that young. She’s like twenty-six or something. And we haven’t met yet. Not technically.”
“What?”
“I know I said I wasn’t gonna do the app thing,” said Alan. “I was gonna be a purist. But I was at work the other day, and I was like, why not? This is what people do now. This is how people meet people. So I signed up. I’m not kidding, dude….Fifteen minutes later, girls were hitting me up. Pinging me right and left.”
“Pinging you? Is that what they call it?”
“I don’t know. I’m sure there’s a word for it. I felt like Justin Timberlake.”
“Justin Timberlake’s married, Uncle Alan,” said Jude.
Mitch gave his son a high five. “Truth bomb!”
“Good point, Judey,” Alan said. “I’m talking pre-Biel here. Vintage Timberlake. Boy-band style.”
“But don’t these girls know how old and decrepit you are?” Mitch said.
“You’d think, right? But apparently not. In app world this is desirable.” He showed Mitch his profile picture. He stood outside Camden Yards, smiling, in an Orioles T-shirt.
“Let me see,” said Emily. She touched his digital face and smiled, and Mitch imagined the dating future the poor girl would inherit: apps and swipes and robots. Mitch and Jessica met at a bar while drunk, in real life, like God intended.
“Well, you should pace yourself,” said Mitch.
Alan snorted. “It’s a date, not a half marathon.”
“I know,” said Mitch. “But you’ve been an indoor cat a long time now. It’s a jungle out there.”
Emily licked a drop of water from her nose, and Jude dug into his ziplock bag of crayons. Mitch noticed Alan touching his bare ring finger, feeling for something that wasn’t there, a soldier reaching for a limb that’s long gone.
“It’s actually overwhelming,” Alan said. “You have any idea how many women there are out there? Like, available women?”
“I don’t,” he said.
“This is the golden age of being single. They’re gonna write books about it someday.” He tapped his phone. “I mean, if these things had existed back in the day, when we were young and in the game? My God, none of us would’ve ever gotten ma—”
He cut himself off, and Mitch felt an emptiness open. Apparently it was the night of mixed emotions. Happiness at the idea of seeing his friend. Sadness at the loss of the lives they’d all once lived. Now emptiness at the implication that he was somehow missing out on something. His face must’ve shown all this, because Alan segued. “Anyway, I’m babbling. What’s up with you guys? How’re you and Jess—our lone survivors?”
As Mitch worked through some of the possible responses to this, he was aware that Emily and Jude were watching him, waiting. Half the job of parenting is not saying ominous shit in front of your kids, so he cleared his throat and said, “Well, we miss all you guys.”
Which was true. Mitch missed the hell out of those assholes, all of them, the Husbands and the Wives, their kids, their dumb yards and messy houses and crappy beer selections.
“We miss you, too, buddy,” said Alan.
There was no joke to be had here. No teasing or sarcasm. Just two old friends in a little bathroom in the suburbs, acknowledging to each other that sometimes things just suck. Fortunately, though, Emily was there to save them.
“Look, Uncle Alan,” she said. “I drew a picture of you.”
In green bath pencil, next to an elephant on the bathtub tile, stood a smiling stickman with a giant head, huge ears, and a broken triangle nose. It was a perfectly terrible drawing.
Alan aimed his iPhone at the tile. “Sweetie,” he said, “I’ve never looked better.”
8
Nine miles away, Bond Street Social was an absolute shit show.
Jessica had known it would be, especially on a Friday night, but when she’d brought this up to the Wives earlier via text chain, they’d made her feel old and lame.
It won’t be THAT bad, grandma.
Maybe you can DVR Murder She Wrote?
Isn’t a shit show kinda the point???
The message was clear. They were three single women, dammit, and they’d go wherever the hell they pleased. She was the interloper now, the extra wheel, the other.
Which made it that much more satisfying when Jessica arrived and saw them huddled together at the back of the bar and clearly miserable. It was loud, hot, and packed, which were all things they’d once loved about this place—about all of the places of their youth. She stopped and took them in before they noticed her: her three attractive, dressed-up, overeducated friends.
She loved them. God did she love them. But she couldn’t help but hate them a little, too, for allowing their lives to fall so thoroughly apart.
“Hey, ladies,” she said.
“About time!”
said Sarah. She tapped her watch, but she was smiling. The Wives were used to Jessica arriving last.
She hugged her friends one by one, and then Amber said, “Okay, so this place kinda sucks.”
“Did it always suck like this?” asked Megan.
“I remember it sucking less,” said Sarah. “It’s like spring break in here.”
A shot materialized. Megan held it out to Jessica with a smile that said This wasn’t my idea.
“Time for you to catch up,” said Amber. “We’re celebrating!” There was some slurring in her vowels. Amber was a chronic slurrer when she drank.
Jessica took the little shot glass. “How many have you had?”
Amber counted with her fingers. “Not that many. I was the first one here, so I got a head start.”
The drink was green and murky, like a prop from a movie about teenagers doing dumb things. “What is this, anyway?”
“Remember back in college?” asked Sarah.
“Vaguely,” she said.
“Back then, when someone handed you a shot, you just took it, right? No questions asked.”
“I also cut my own bangs in college,” said Jessica. “Is there a roofie in here?”
“I’m almost positive there’s not,” said Megan.
“Driiiiink!” shouted Amber. She was teetering in her high heels. She was the tallest of the Wives by a long shot.
As miserable as they looked, they also looked amazing. Lanky Amber in her leggy dress. Sarah in a sleeveless blouse that showed off her amazing arms and sexy collarbones. Megan was lovely, too, in a dress she never would’ve gone for when she was married to Terry. Tight and short, but classy, too—one of those miracle dresses that accentuates what you want accentuated and leaves everything else alone.
“So, question for the group,” said Amber.
Megan, Sarah, and Jessica leaned in to hear over the noise.
“Do you think I could sleep with Mr. Suit Guy over there?”
There was a handsome, well-dressed man nearby with his arm around a woman who was clearly his wife.
Last Couple Standing Page 4