The Divorce Party (10 page)

“Define ‘involved,’ ” Georgia says, an edge to her voice.

“Too much food, a large band, and my very delicious red velvet cake. It’s kind of like an anniversary party. A big anniversary party. But instead of just celebrating our anniversary . . . we are also celebrating that it is the last one.”

“Fantastic,” Georgia says.

“Look, what your mom is trying to say is that no one is the villain here,” Thomas says. “We still plan on being close. Celebrating your wedding, Georgia’s birth. We just want to do those important things in an honest way.”

“Who are you talking to, Dad?” Georgia says. “Us or yourself? You just said that five minutes ago.”

Gwyn stands up and starts to leave the room. “Well, then let’s avoid any of us getting too repetitious and take a breather, okay? Just give ourselves a chance to get used to this. It’s not like we are surprising you that we are getting divorced. The rest is just . . . details. In a little bit, it won’t feel so severe. In a few hours, even. We’ll have some drinks, some good food. Celebrate our family.”

Georgia says, “At the divorce party?”

“Yes, at the divorce party.”

“I was kidding.”

But Gwyn gives her daughter’s shoulder a slight squeeze, as if that settles it, and starts to walk out of the room. Only Thomas tries to stop her. “Maybe you should sit until everything is covered,” he says.

“Everything, Thomas?”

This is when Maggie notices it, reminiscent of the anger she detected before: Gwyn gives Thomas a look, so quick and brutal that anyone could miss it. And everyone seems to, except for Maggie, who feels like she now knows that something is going on. Something beyond whatever it is Thomas and Gwyn are trying to pretend isn’t. But what? Everyone knows they are separating. Amicably separating, but separating nevertheless. What could be worse than that? Perhaps something a little less amicable.

Gwyn is standing in the doorway now, smiling too eagerly. “Tonight is what it is,” Gwyn says. “And this time tomorrow, it will be done. If you don’t want to come, don’t come.”

“I don’t want to come,” Georgia says.

“You’re coming,” Gwyn says.

And with that, she is gone. Maggie watches her go, the same way she came, in a swirl of white fabric and hair and wind. She looks over at Nate, who is looking back at her.

Are you okay?
he asks with his eyes.

If you are,
she answers.

“Guys, I get that this isn’t exactly easy,” Thomas says. “But it is all going to shake out to be for the best, I promise you. In a year, we’ll both be better off being apart. We’ll have moved on. We’ll be able to be true friends, which is something we haven’t been able to be in a long time.”

“Because of the Buddhism thing?” Georgia says.

“Because of a lot of things,” Thomas says.

Maggie looks up at her future father-in-law. There is something different in Thomas’s tone—something that sounds like the truth.

“I’m going to be away a lot on retreats and at conferences,” Thomas says. “It’s better. It’s better that your mother isn’t always sitting around waiting here for when I come home, for when I am leaving again.”

“So don’t leave again,” Georgia says.

He wraps his arms around his daughter. “Your mom and I are both okay with what is happening. This is what we want for ourselves. Isn’t that the most important part?”

“No.” But she sighs as she says it—and offers a half smile— as if she has given up the fight. For now. Thomas looks at her gratefully—for this allowance—and turns toward Nate.

“You okay, guy?” Thomas asks him.

“No, he’s not okay,” Georgia says. “He just doesn’t know himself well enough to know he’s not okay.”

Nate smiles at his sister. “I’m fine, Dad. I just think Maggie and I should unpack,” he says.

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.

Thomas was nowhere. She went back out into her car, and stared at herself in her rearview mirror for an hour, maybe longer. As if her own face would show Thomas’s secret, or show her where to go next. It didn’t. She had no idea where to look. Not that night. But she knew the beginning of the truth. She knew what was really happening with her husband.

It was another woman.

With blue eyes and noble hips, a tattoo of the Chinese character for peace on the nape of her neck, the one for joy on one of those hips. Her thirtieth birthday still years away.

It is still the other woman. And because she has refused to tell Thomas that she knows this, Gwyn has been left in the tricky position of putting together the rest of it—painfully putting together what she has wanted to know least—why Thomas has lied to her, why he has lied so elaborately.

Because the truth was so simple. An affair with a younger woman? How absurd! How cliché! But how familiar, too. If Thomas confessed there was someone else—as opposed to making up the Buddhism story—Gwyn would have been furious, but so furious that she would have wanted out of the marriage? Hard to say. Many friends have dealt with infidelity and survived. She might have chosen to do what they chose to do: to stay and to fight. For their marriages. For their husbands. For the only life they knew.

But religious conversion? Newfound belief?

Thomas was banking on this making him seem like a stranger to Gwyn. And who wants to fight to stay with a stranger? Who wants to stay?

This is why he lied, Gwyn knows. She knows now. She knows all of it: Thomas didn’t want her to fight. He didn’t want her to blame him, or feel hurt. He didn’t want to be the bad guy. He just wanted to leave.

This isn’t a simple infidelity,
he had said. How right he had been. And how wrong.

Gwyn takes a final drag and puts out the joint with her thumb and index finger. A quick tap of the base. And puts the rest back in the walnut box, slides it under the sink. Then she wets her fingers, runs them along the bridge of her nose. Steadies herself.

He still doesn’t know that she knows the truth. Because he underestimated Gwyn in the worst way. He underestimated the great lengths she would go to to try to understand him. To try to meet him wherever he needed to go.

He underestimated how much she loved him.

So now, on the eve of their thirty-fifth anniversary, he isn’t the only one with something he is trying to hide. And Gwyn won’t be the only one asking the question: Can you ever know anyone?

Maitri.

Forgiveness.

No.

Not tonight.

part two

unexpected guests

Maggie

They are having a divorce party.

They are having a divorce party.
Maggie knew this coming in. She knew most of this coming in. And yet, to hear them talk about the actual event, to have the event be this close to them, makes it feel more immediate. And certainly more bizarre. Everything here feels bizarre. Beneath these hardwood floors, soft curtains. Beneath these enormous windows looking out over the ocean and the clouds and the rest of everything.

And still. A small, arguably reasonable voice enters into her head, asks a question she is not sure she wants to answer—
Who are you to judge
?
Why would you even want to?

Maggie was nine years old when her mother left them. There was nothing like a party—nothing like an announcement, even. Maybe Maggie would have been better off with some kind of ceremony. But her mother simply walked out the door on an otherwise typical Tuesday night, and no one even told Maggie it happened. For the first couple of weeks, her father pretended Jen Lyons Mackenzie (age twenty-nine, landscape architect, Aries) had gone on a trip—an extended vacation back out to Eugene to visit her parents. Maybe Eli was hoping it would turn out to be true, or true enough. That, at the panic-inducing age of twenty-nine, Jen had been rash in her decision to depart, would come to her senses and come back to them. But what kind of judgment was Eli using, hiding the reality? Her father was trying to save Maggie, by choosing which pieces of the truth she got to see. Which was the surest way to never save anyone.