Should Have Known Better

“Great choice,” Sarah Ferguson said. “I love her hair.”

I pinned the card to the pink sweatshirt I’d found in my mother’s closet.

“Now, go on into the room and have a seat,” she said, pointing to a set of sliding wooden doors. “We’ll get started in just a few minutes.”

At first there were just four women, including myself, in the meeting room. It was a huge space where it was clear they’d gutted out a wall dividing once-formal dining and living rooms. Fifteen or so chairs were arranged in a circle and a table with juice and cheap cookies was set up in the corner.

We were just sprinkled around the room. It was obvious we were the new people, quiet and focusing mostly on the buzz of the ceiling fan.

“It’s getting hot out there,” one woman said. “Much too hot for May in Atlanta.”

We all nodded, but went back to watching the fan.

Soon the room got noisy. Women with badges reading Elin Nordegren, Sandra Bullock, and LisaRaye laughed aloud at the punch bowl like old friends and one said, “Wait until we get started! I am so telling on you, Ms. Kathy Ambush!”

Madonna, who was seated next to me, asked who that was and I said I didn’t know, but later the “ringleader,” whose name tag said she was Carol McCain, would explain that Kathy Ambush was Clarence Thomas’s first wife.

“OK, you furious women, settle down,” Carol McCain said, walking into the room in a black yoga outfit similar to the one Kerry had been wearing at lunch. I saw a sign out front that said there was a weekly yoga session in the backyard. “We need to get started and I hear we have some new women today, so there’s no time for your angry chitter-chatter.”

The women growled at her playfully and started taking their seats.

“For those of you who are new, I’m your ringleader, which simply means I’m the group leader for this week. I’m one of three psychologists who run this Hell Hath No Fury House and we’re a nonprofit counseling support group for women who are considering or going through divorce. We provide these free group sessions three nights a week to about seventy-five women in the metropolitan area and we also do private meetings daily upon request—those will cost you.” She stopped and everyone laughed. “We like to think of HHNFH as a gathering place for stunned souls. For women who thought their marriages would last forever but were shocked and scorned and made furious by the reality that they didn’t.” People were clapping and nodding along. “Our goal is to help our furious sisters admit to their pain, accept it, and get on with the work of healing their lives. Our approach is different than most. We don’t want you to pretend what’s happening isn’t affecting you. We say, get angry. Break something. Tell people how you feel. We believe that accepting those actions is the only way you can move on. In meetings, we commonly have three rules: no names, no lies, no fake recovery. If you don’t want to tell the truth, be quiet. If you haven’t moved on, admit it.”

Sarah Ferguson handed out an agenda. There was a review of old topics from the week before. One woman who’d slashed her husband’s tires had to go to court and she gave her update. Another woman finally agreed to let her ex-husband see their children after two years and she shared what it was like seeing him again.

“No, Ivana, you shouldn’t have scratched his eyes out. I’m glad you didn’t,” said Vivica Fox, who was white with red hair.

“But I want to so badly. Is there something wrong with that?” Ivana Trump looked at the ringleader.

“No, I can’t say there’s anything wrong with thinking about it. My question concerns why you think you want to do it and what it would’ve solved had you done it,” she said.

“It’s been two years since the divorce, but I still feel it like it was yesterday,” Ivana Trump admitted. “He took me for a ride. A real ride. Stole my money. Froze my bank account. I couldn’t feed my children and then he told the judge I wasn’t a fit mother. Thank God she could see through that. The day the divorce was final, he was laughing. And said he was happy to get rid of me and my baggage. I wanted to hurt him. I wanted to wipe that smile off his face and make him hurt like I was hurting.”

I found myself leaning in and nodding with the other women. Ivana’s story wasn’t mine, but it sounded like mine. She sounded like me.

“The only thing I could do to get over that was to keep the kids from seeing him. I know it was wrong. He was a shitty husband, but he was good to my girls. But I just, I wanted him to hurt.”

“But you moved on,” someone said.

“Took me two years of being with you guys and a lot of wine, but I did, and I felt like the bigger person this weekend when we went to meet him. I was OK. But when I saw him, I still wanted him to know where I was at and how I was feeling. I didn’t really want to hurt him. I know it wouldn’t solve anything, but it was a good image. He just has such beady little eyes.”

“Mine, too,” said Juanita Jordan.

“Mine, too!” someone else called.

“Well, what about the new furies?” the ringleader asked. She had all of us new women in the room introduce ourselves by saying why we were furious and how we knew we were.

“My husband, Reginald, he wants a divorce,” I said, expecting to go on, but I didn’t know what else to say. I didn’t know what I wanted to say to these strangers.

“And how do you feel about that?” the ringleader asked.

“Angry. I feel very angry. The situation, it’s . . .” I paused and looked around the room, stopping at the woman who’d said her ex-husband stole her money. “I thought I knew him better than this. But I guess I didn’t.”

We kept going around the room and then a few older members answered a question the ringleader had posed the week before: what are the good things you remember about yourself before you got married?

The women opened the writing pads they had on their laps and began to read aloud, taking turns.

“I had great hair,” Madonna said.