The Divorce Party

They’ve been standing on the corner of Forty-first and Third, in front of the Au Bon Pain, waiting for the Hampton Jitney to pick them up. They’ve been standing here for twenty minutes, and Maggie keeps staring at her fingernails, occasionally biting on one, as if that is actually an all-consuming activity, as if this leaves her no energy for anything else. She has no energy for anything else. She doesn’t want to look at Nate and she doesn’t want to look at the guy in the suit standing on the other side of her either. The guy is on his cell phone and typing on his BlackBerry at the same time. He also keeps looking at Maggie’s ass. Your regular multitasker.

When he catches Maggie’s eyes, he winks at her and mouths, “Do you belong to him?” About Nate. Nate is looking down, and doesn’t notice. But this makes her reach for him, hold his arm.

It is the first time she’s reached for him since they’ve been back at the apartment, since his big announcement, which is probably why Nate turns to her, a little hopeful, adjusting his backpack higher on his shoulder. “Do you think it’s going to rain?”

"What?”

He points up at the sky, which is blue and cloudless. “It looks like it’s going to, doesn’t it?”

“That’s what you want to talk about, Nate?”

“No, it’s not what I want to talk about. But I thought it might be a start.”

Maggie isn’t sure what to say. Her head is hurting, throbbing actually, a combination of being absolutely exhausted and being unable to wrap her mind around what Nate has told her—half a billion dollars; what does that even mean? What does that look like? And why did he say half a billion as opposed to, say, five hundred million? Does he think it makes it sound smaller, to cut it in half?

She has no idea. But what she actually feels mad about— what she can wrap her head around—is that, if she had known, she would have packed differently. Not that she has some fancy clothing hiding in the bottom of their closet, in the bottom of their unpacked boxes. But maybe she would have found something. Her grandma’s ruby ring or her one black cashmere sweater. Yes, it’s September, and, yes, it’s probably too early for cashmere. But if she had had more time to think, she would have grabbed it, put it in her bag, or just draped it around her shoulders. Something. Maybe, at the very least, she would have become the kind of person who knows whether it is too early for cashmere.

“So . . .” Nate runs his fingers through his hair, messing it up. “I’m trying to give you space, but if you’re not careful, we’re going to get all the way to Montauk, and we still won’t be past this. That will be worse.”

“Says who, Champ?”

He moves in closer, putting his arms around her, bending so he is looking her in the eyes. “I like it when you get passive aggressive, and pissed off,” he says. “You look like your first-grade picture.”

“Great,” she says. “I’m glad this is fun for you.” But she is starting to smile as she says it.

“The money thing isn’t really a big deal,” he says. “You probably wouldn’t have even known unless I told you. Or, you’d know they have some money, but not how much. I guess once I admitted it, I just kept going.”

“So you admit it?”

“What?”

“That there was something to admit?”

He shakes his head, takes an exaggerated breath as if he is trying to find the words. “People with a lot of . . . They are the opposite of people with some. They do the opposite of showing it. My mom doesn’t even have an engagement ring, just her wedding band. They drive fifteen-year-old cars.”

“And they have divorce parties.”

“The divorce party didn’t bother you when you didn’t know about the money.”

“Because I thought it was something I just didn’t know about yet. But now it’s starting to feel like something I don’t want to know about. Like debutante balls or . . . I don’t know . . . boarding schools in Switzerland for advanced six-year-olds.”

He ignores her, which is wise right then. “The reason that I told you about my family’s financial situation is that I didn’t want you to walk into their house and feel sideswiped.”

“Right, but finding out an hour before I meet them couldn’t possibly have the same effect.”

“The bus ride is actually closer to three hours.”

“Very funny.”

“No. It’s not. By the second hour, it’s not funny at all. Nauseating, a little. But not exactly funny.”

She looks at him and feels something in her soften. She starts to smile, smiles because he is. She smiles because he, as usual, is looking at her until she does. He is looking at her like she is the only thing he really cares to see.

“Nate, I’m not trying to make a big deal. But wouldn’t you be a little freaked out too? If the situation was reversed? I mean, you say people with money. But it’s not people. It’s your people, your family. It just feels like a big thing to not have known about you all this time, especially with all the conversations we’ve been having about finances because of the restaurant.”

She doesn’t know how to explain it exactly, even to herself, except that she thought Nate had told her everything about himself. She thought they both had told each other everything. It isn’t as much about the money, but that that has turned out to be wrong. He knows everything about her. Every terrible, boring thing that it wasn’t her instinct to share. That he—in his way— encouraged her to share. Now she wonders what else she doesn’t know about him.

“But that’s the thing. It isn’t about me. It’s my grandfather’s money, or his grandfather’s money. I haven’t touched any of it since I left home. I made that decision a long time ago. I even paid for school myself. You know that.”