The Divorce Party

“You’re lying to me now?”

“No, I’m not.”

But she knows he is. She knows it, in her gut. And yet she is too tired to guess why. It’s still the morning. They still have the entire day ahead of them. She’d rather just believe him.

“You know what?” she says. “Let’s just not talk about it right now. Let’s listen to some music for a while, okay? I can get some sleep, maybe.”

He smiles, relieved, which has the opposite effect on Maggie. “Okay.”

He pulls out the iPod. They have a splitter, so they can listen to the same song. And when she guesses which song he is going to pick, that feels like something too. “Moving Pictures, Silent Films,” by Great Lake Swimmers. He played it for her, for the first time, a month after they started dating, when they took a weekend road trip to Wyoming. They were driving the back roads into Cody—through all of that gorgeous orange rock, more like outer space than anything she’d ever encountered on this earth—and Nate put on this song. I think you’ll like this, he said. And she fell in love with it. And with him.

“Pause it for just a sec,” she says now. And she squeezes his shoulder, walks over him to the bathroom, to splash some water on her face, hoping to feel better, shake off the malaise settling over her.

But there, as if waiting for her—and not just waiting for the bathroom also—is Murph.

“We meet again.”

Maggie tries to smile. “We do.”

“Have you used one of these jitney bathrooms before? If not, I should warn you. It’s complicated.”

“Is it?”

Murph nods. “You need to angle yourself in there just right, or the door slams on your cold, bare ass just as your hand gets stuck in the toilet. Whatever you do, angle left.”

“Good tip,” Maggie says.

“You will see just how good, especially if you don’t follow it. Trust me on that . . .”

Maggie laughs. Maybe Murph isn’t the enemy here. Or, really, who cares? Murph, or no Murph. Isn’t it beside the point? Maggie is just tired, too tired to be rational. But here is her attempt: she is just going to calm down, to stop thinking about Nate’s confession this morning, to stop worrying about the details of his past he left out, to stop letting their immediate future—this divorce party weirdness—stand for more than it is worth.

“Nate is a great guy. You know that, right? Probably better than me. You don’t need me to tell you. But everyone’s always thought that. He was always the most popular guy in school.”

“The most popular out of eleven?”

“Exactly.” She pushes her hair out of her face, smiles at Maggie. “Anyway, I’m just really excited for you. It’s a nightmare to try to find a good guy. Most guys today, they think if they show up, that’s enough. They think if they put a hand on the small of your back, they deserve some sort of award. You know what I mean?”

Maggie smiles. “Kind of,” she says.

“We used to always have sex in my parents’ bathroom. Nate and I. They have this enormous bathtub with this crazy padding. God, we had no idea what we were doing. Like the first fifty times, we just had no idea.”

Maggie falls silent.

She almost falls.

?

?But whatever. Practice makes perfect, right? You can thank me later that he is such a good kisser.”

This is when the bathroom door opens, an old guy steps out, zipping his fly, and Murph steps inside, left side first.

Then Murph winks at Maggie, closes the door, and is gone.

Gwyn

It comes from being a minister’s daughter, she thinks. She’s not good at anger. Not built to hold a grudge. From the time she was old enough to remember, she was taught again and again that anger—or giving in to it, at least—was wrong. Whenever anyone was cruel to her, she was told to forgive. As if it were that easy. In her house, it was supposed to be.

There was that time when Gwyn was eight, and Mia Robin-sky from her second-grade class announced that cool girls had curly hair, and the best way to get it was to use peanut butter. She handed Gwyn a jar of peanut butter. And Gwyn used the entire thing, covering her clean blond locks from top to bottom with curlerlike knots of the chunky, sticky mess. Until it hardened. Like Mia directed.