The Divorce Party

“You think I was looking for one?” she says.

“You think you’re not going to take it?” he says.

Then he is silent, and in the silence she has no choice but to feel it, beneath the pain, beneath her sadness—a loosening in her chest, the quick release—a little something like relief. She can go now.

She looks back in the direction of the restaurant. She follows the skyline north and east toward Montauk Point, toward the bluffs and the cliffs that, through the fog, she can barely see. She follows the skyline until she can see it. The outline of the house. Her wallet is there, her belongings, the things that can get her away from this, and here.

And she starts to walk that way.

part three

the divorce party

Gwyn

If the ending makes you think of the beginning then maybe that explains why Gwyn is standing under the stream of shower water, thinking of her wedding day. September 23, 1972: no photo album to remind her, no announcement in the New York Times. They had forgone a big wedding, forgone any of the requisite hoopla. This was partially because Gwyn didn’t care about that stuff, and partially because she thought it would bring them bad luck. To make too big of a deal out of what she felt so blessed to find.

They had only a few people at the wedding: her parents, Thomas’s parents, their sisters. All of them standing on the cliff outside. Looking out over the water. She spent the morning getting ready, and then walked herself downstairs into the garden. She was wearing a yellow cotton dress that she had bought in town for $65. Thomas was in a pair of linen pants, a loose white button-down, bare feet. Her father married them, only saying God one time at the end. This was their concession to him. His concession to them: the whole thing took fifteen minutes. Then they went for a long walk by the beach, stopping on the way back at a fish shack along Old Montauk Highway to have cheeseburgers. A wedding meal of cheeseburgers and spicy fried potatoes and Coca-Cola and chocolate chip cookies.

She steps out of the shower, beginning to dry off. And she rolls open the stained-glass window, puts her hand outside. The air is misty. It is going to rain. It is going to rain, and—based on the weird colors in the sky—probably worse than the radio guy predicted. She can still make the game-time decision to have the party inside, but she doesn’t want to do that. Even if the alternative is the barn falling down. Even if it falls down all around them. Something is stopping her from moving the party inside, something she can’t put her finger on. It doesn’t matter anyway. She doesn’t need a reason. If anyone feels the mist, gets uncomfortable, they can go home. Tonight is for her, and her alone. And she will act as if that is true. She will keep telling herself this until she believes it.

When she starts to walk back into the bedroom, she hears someone there, and thinks that it is going to be Thomas. It started a long time ago—this ritual that they have of lying down on top of the bed together, fully dressed, before going to any party, even one they are hosting. It was one of Gwyn’s first signs, this past year, that she was losing Thomas, that she was really losing him for g

ood. He would still come with her to dinner parties and weddings and other obligatory functions, but he wouldn’t come into the bedroom to be with her first—wouldn’t have the low-voiced pillow conversation that used to be her favorite part of any evening out. If she has to guess, he stopped liking the idea they’d always had of reminding each other that this is what they were coming home to at the end of any given night. Each other. And putting that first.

So when she hears noise in the bedroom, hears someone moving around in there, her heartbeat speeds up, involuntarily.

But it isn’t Thomas. It’s Georgia. It’s Georgia half-balancing against the bedpost, while she unsuccessfully aims to reach around herself and zip up the back of her dress: a flowery halter-top, which is beyond stuck, her back pushing out of it.

Georgia doesn’t turn around but, as she continues to try zipping, she must sense Gwyn’s presence, because she starts talking.

“It fit last week, and now it’s too small,” she says. “Seven lousy days. Things shouldn’t be able to change so fast.”

Gwyn walks toward her daughter. “We’ll make it fit,” she says.

“How, Mom? How are we going to do that?”

Gwyn takes a seat on the edge of the bed, tightening her towel around herself, around her breasts, Georgia moving in front of her so she can take a clear look at the zipper—the fabric stuck inside of it.

“I just don’t understand what’s going on,” Georgia says.

“People have to get better about lying around here. Or at least telling those of us in on the truth what it is that we’re not supposed to spill.”

“What did your father tell you?” she says, and feels her face getting red, thinking that Georgia had come across Thomas and her on the porch.

“My father?” Georgia turns around, faces her. “I’m talking about your son. Your son and his fiancée. I’m talking about a very bad chain of events I was just a part of. He didn’t tell her about Ryan. Did you know that?”

“Yes, he told me.”

“Well, someone should have told me!”

Gwyn puts her hand on the small of Georgia’s back, starts to fiddle with the zipper, moving it slowly at first, loosening the fabric, trying hard not to think about what her daughter may say next.

“We just went to The House.”

“As in Ryan’s restaurant?”

“As in Ryan’s restaurant, yes. Maggie was going to go with or without me and so I figured better with me. And when we got there and she went inside, I called Nate. It was the best I could do.” She pauses. “They are back now. I just heard them get back, so I ran in here. I ran in here, midzip, and now the whole situation is stuck.”