The Divorce Party

Gwyn tries to imagine what the two girls said to each other, what Nate and Maggie are saying to each other now, how either part of the equation can end well. Gwyn looks up at her daughter. “He should have told her. He should have told her long before now. You really can’t blame yourself. It’s good that it came out. It’s not your fault.”

“No. It’s yours.”

“Mine?”

“A lot of badness is coming from today. A lot is coming out of this divorce party.”

“This divorce party? How is that responsible?”

“It’s putting something in the air.” She starts to cry, deeply and terribly, sitting down, exhausted, on her mother’s lap. “I can’t reach Denis.”

“That’s obvious.” Gwyn wraps her arms around her.

Georgia shakes her head, wiping at her eyes. “Things have been a little hard on us since he’s been away, but being here is really screwing me up. It’s making me wonder whether I am right that we are actually happy, or whether he is going to call any minute and say that he’s staying in Nebraska to be with some asymetrically haired, secretly miserable, post-hipster music snob, who moved to Omaha because the lower east side is closing down all the good music venues to make room for blue condominiums,” she says. “And that sucks, yes, but so does she.”

“What are you talking about?”

Georgia hangs her head. “I’m not sure.”

Gwyn rubs her daughter’s back, and then pushes her back to standing, taking a moment to focus on the zipper. “Georgia,” she says. “Listen to me for a second. You’re getting ahead of yourself. If you can’t reach him, maybe that means he is on a plane. Did you consider that?”

“Of course, but like you want that to be the case. Like you don’t think I’d be better off without him.”

“I never said that.”

“You didn’t have to.”

Gwyn thinks about this, and doesn’t want it to be true. If it is, she has failed in the number one way she was hoping to succeed: she wanted to parent differently from her parents. She wanted to only want for her children what they want for themselves, even if she doesn’t agree with it, even if she wouldn’t hope for that. She thinks she has been good at it most of the time, but maybe not. Not if she hasn’t succeeded in convincing them that she is behind them, no matter what.

“The thing is that you think we’re like you and Dad,” Georgia says. “But we’re not.”

“What are you talking about?”

Georgia pauses. “You think I love him more.”

She can’t see Georgia’s face, but if she could, she knows she would see those eyes blazing. Sad. And hurt. Maybe she should be offended, but all she can think is: How do you avoid getting here? How do you pull your daughter back from such a sad place? If this sadness is something she has passed on, she wants to take it back, take all of it back and bear the burden herself. Make different choices, be braver, do just about anything so her daughter thinks she is worthy of getting everything that she needs as opposed to trying to figure out how to be better at giving it away.

Gwyn pulls her wet hair back off her neck, waits a minute to speak again, waits in the hope that putting a small wedge of time in will help Georgia hear her, will help Gwyn hear herself. But she has no idea what to say. What does she know right now that is hopeful? That wouldn’t scare someone, if she started to say it out loud?

“Did you know that you were conceived at a Pete Seeger concert?”

Georgia looks disgusted. “Um, no. And, more importantly, that sentence should never be repeated.”

“How did I never tell you that?”

“I never asked.”

“Well, it’s true. The night started off so great. We went to see him play in upstate New York. I can’t remember the name of the place, but it was somewhere near Beacon, New York, and it was this great night. Starry, beautiful. Except your father and I started to fight, about something. Something silly, and I went running back to the car crying. I think I was still so scared then that fights could end us that when he got back to the car, I kind of attacked him.”

“Oh my gosh.” Georgia covers her ears with her hands. “What did I do to deserve hearing this? And what is your point?”

She pulls her daughter’s arms back down, going back to work again on the zipper’s most stuck part. “My point,” she says, “is that my parents never told me anything. Everything was always cloaked, hidden. And I always promised myself that I’d be different when it was my own family. I’d tell you guys everything. Even small things, like about the concert. Because it might tell you something about you. Like maybe that’s the reason you like music so much.”

“I seriously doubt it.”

“Still. I guess I haven’t done a good job of that. Of being open?” She turns Georgia to the side, the zipper releasing slightly. “If I had, you and Nate would be better at it, at being open yourselves . . . I think when you are back here, you go back to thinking things are supposed to look a certain way. If they look a certain way, you are safe. If they don’t, you’re in trouble.”

“Isn’t that what you think?”