The Divorce Party

Maggie looks at Nate. Where have you been?

“So unpack,” Thomas says. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Maggie looks at him, and fights the urge to say it. If I’m startingto understand anything, it is that that may not be true. Then, as she stands up, she looks back at the Buddha one last time— wondering what he would say if he could talk. Maybe, Welcome to the family.

More likely, Get ready.

Gwyn

In Buddhism, there is a word that means loving-kindness. Maitri. It means always acting from a place where you try to be kind toward yourself, toward others. To meet whatever hand you are dealt, with an open curiosity, and not make it mean everything, not make anything mean more than it should.

Maitri—forgiveness.

What is the expression in Buddhism for ‘betrayal’?

How about for fucking liar?

Gwyn stares at herself in the bathroom mirror, her heart pounding out of her chest, beating through her ears. She takes another drag of her joint, breathing deep, trying to calm herself, trying to get centered.

It’s done. The hardest part is done. Protecting them, protecting her children. And she thinks she has, thinks they bought the gentler version of the story. She thinks they bought the whole thing. Why wouldn’t they? Why wouldn’t they assume that what was going on is what she told them is going on?

She assumed it. For a long time. Here, in this very bathroom, she bought it, herself: Gwyn standing by the sink, Thomas sitting on the edge of the bathtub, as he first told her how serious he was getting about Buddhism. His hands clasped around the pamphlet, like a paper witness. He was meeting her eyes in the mirror—they were meeting each other’s eyes there. Even then, she knew that was a first step toward not meeting them in real life.

“I’m losing him,” she told Jillian over the phone later that week. Her sister lived in Oregon with an underemployed journalist who grew pot in their backyard. And even on beautiful Sundays, the journalist slept until 2 P.M. and wanted to spend the rest of the day in bed. And to think! To think there was a time when Gwyn had felt bad for her.

“You are not losing him,” Jillian said. “It’s a phase.”

“A phase? I don’t think so. Deciding to go on safari in Africa is a phase. Or joining a book club! This is a religion. One that he says may take him away to retreats for weeks at a time. Months at a time.”

“You have had tough stretches before,” Jillian said.

And this was true. They had. Who hadn’t? When the kids were little and Thomas hadn’t known his place, exactly; when Thomas had taken that yearlong fellowship in Nevada and Gwyn had felt neglected. But still. This time felt different, right from the beginning. For the first time, it felt like they weren’t in it together. For the first time, it felt like Thomas was determined to make her feel like they weren’t in it together.

Gwyn takes another drag of the joint, feeling the world start to grow foggy, dulled out, in a good way. She never smoked before now, not in high school, only once in college. But when this whole Buddhism thing started, her sister Jillian sent her a small stash of marijuana in the mail, hidden in small sewing thimbles, buried under a plate of brownies. In case this phase doesn’t end by his birthday, she wrote in the note. In case, by his birthday, you need to be celebrating something else.

This had been Jillian’s promise. That it would end by his birthday. His sixty-third. Based on Jillian’s theory that Thomas was behaving the way a man sometimes does at sixty-three. (Peoplesay it happens at sixty-five, but it is sixty-three, she said. That is the birthday when they think they still have time to change everything.) He was panicking, searching, panicking more. And because Gwyn wanted to believe that was what was happening, she suggested that they go into therapy, couples counseling. So she could try to understand. But Thomas was against this. Therapy. Understanding.

This isn’t a simple infidelity. That was what he said. That was his answer to her request. This is who I am now. It is what I want my life to mean.

He wasn’t interested in helping Gwyn understand. It was a total lifestyle change and she could accept it or—if she thought he was turning into someone she didn’t recognize—she could choose something else for herself. But either way, this was the direction he was choosing.

No place to meet in the middle. An open and shut case. Either she was in or out.

With such a halfhearted invitation, he certainly didn’t count on her choosing in. He didn’t count on Gywn’s reaching deep into herself, the part that wasn’t sure how she felt about any religion, especially one that she knew so little about, and deciding that what she believed in was her husband. The one she married thirty-five years ago, in the very house they still shared. He didn’t count on her summoning up how she had felt then, and driving to Oyster Bay, to the Buddhist Center to join her husband for Thursday meditation class: Gwyn walking through the peaceful hallways in a red dress, black scarf wrapped around her neck. As if it were something she knew how to do. Pray, learn, change. As if it were something she could figure out how to do.

A woman in a long, dark robe introduced herself as one of the center’s master teachers, please call me Donna, and asked Gwyn how she could help her. “I am looking for tonight’s meditation class,” she said. “I am meeting my husband, Thomas Huntington.”

“The meditation class is in the third room on the right, but did you say your husband was Thomas? I’m sorry, but there is no one in the class by that name.”

“Are you certain? How many people are there? Maybe you missed him.”

“Five.”

Gwyn shook her head, blinking in confusion. “But he is in the middle of your sixteen-week meditation class.”

“Is it possible that he registered under a different name?”

Maybe. Maybe he thought they would know his financial situation if he used his real name. Maybe that would be looked down upon. So Gwyn walked the rest of the way down the hall anyway, to look inside the room herself. They were on the floor—the five. Three men and two women. Three brunettes, one blonde, one gray. All in brown robes, all silently kneeling over brown benches.