Then
Sunday, June 13
Brooklyn, New York
Was George ever into tequila?” Willa asked, perusing the menu at our Mexican spot. “Jack always has us going to these ridiculous tastings where worms made full McMansions in the bottoms of the bottles and everything, and shoots me side-eye when I order a regular margarita, but I mean, make it strong, make it salty, and you can’t really go wrong, right?”
“I’m with you,” I said. “But no, George wasn’t a tequila man. He liked wine and champagne, but I can never taste the difference past a certain price point. Half the time, I don’t think he can, either.”
“Same!” Willa said. “They want us to think they have these super refined palates, but they’re really just getting sloshed in a way that makes them feel okay about it. What’s George’s sign?” she asked.
“Libra,” I said.
“No way,” Willa said. “Jack’s, too. What’s his birthday?”
“October twenty-third,” I said, without thinking about it too much.
“That’s it, then,” Willa said. “Jack’s is October twenty-second. Libras are all well-bred and polite. If someone tells them about a fine liquor or wine, they can’t help themselves. You’re Sagittarius, right?”
“No,” I said. “February eighteenth. Aquarius.”
“Oh,” Willa said, eyes lighting up. “I must have just assumed. I always vibe with Sagittarians,” she said, then raised an eyebrow mischievously. “You might be my first Aquarius bestie.”
My heart leapt, in spite of myself, at Willa’s choice of words, but if she saw the pleasure in my eyes, she pretended not to notice, at least. The waiter came over, and Willa beamed up at her instead. “We’ll start with two mezcal margaritas, extra salt, please. And an order of guac. Spicy.”
I took a sip of water and looked around the back patio of this tiny little restaurant. Park Slope was like a different world at night, especially now, as summer approached. When the strollers and the scooters and the kids, kids, kids, finally went indoors, to their cribs and their toddler beds, to their bunks and their burrowed nests with their parents who co-slept. At night, we shed, or at least attempted to shed, the skin we wore all day. To peel back a layer and attempt to become a closer version of the people we were before. Date nights. Drinks with friends. Discussions about politics and poetry, contemporary art and Kendrick Lamar. It was a magical world, this place, when our tiny little wards were tucked away. When we could finally be ourselves again.
The waiter returned with our drinks, salt like ice crystals on the rim, and Willa said thank you and lifted hers straightaway. “To being free of the little monsters,” she said, like she had the last couple of times.
“To being free,” I echoed, taking a sip, then licking the salt off my lips.
Willa set her drink down, traced her well-manicured fingers against the crystal’s condensation. “And not to be weird or anything, but I wanted to tell you I’m sorry about the other day. You know, in the park, prodding you about George. Jack Senior is always on me about being so pushy. You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to. About your marriage, about your past, about anything. I just . . . I get this way, sometimes, with people I care about, people I love . . . like I want to tear down every single boundary between us. God, you should have seen me when I met Jack. But I know not everyone is that way. And I know maybe it’s not even the healthiest, demanding that people unburden themselves to me. So I wanted to say there’s no pressure to tell me anything. I hope you know that.”
Already my cheeks were reddening, my face hot, and it wasn’t from the drink in my hand or the humid almost-summer air, the hint of what Brooklyn would be in just a month or so more. It was from what she said. People I love. Couple that with the word “bestie” and I felt practically on cloud nine.
“You don’t have to apologize,” I said.
Willa reached a hand across the table, then linked her fingers through mine. “I just want you to know I’ve come to care about you so much, and that’s the only reason I was pressing.”
“I know,” I said. “You mean a lot to me, too.” My hand stayed in hers, and I could feel the warmth of her fingers in mine, the electricity pulsing between us. Two opposing charges, coming together. Positive and negative. Magnetic. An enthralled wanting that I felt deeply when I was with her and when I was away, too. A romance of sorts, even if it wasn’t sexual. A feeling of some sort of communion, understanding, one that swelled and ballooned within me, as if it could fill me up, then pop me right open.
I knew then I was going to tell her everything. Someone had to hear it, after all.
I pulled my hand away, wanting to break the spell, take a little bit of control back before I let her in completely. “I always thought he was a good man,” I said hesitantly, as if dipping a toe in the water. I looked around, as if one of the family’s many employees could be watching me even now. “George, I mean.”
Willa nodded me along. “But he isn’t?”
I pursed my lips. “It’s strange, like if you look at him, if you take stock of every part of him, you would say he is. His work helps women all over the world. He votes for the right people, supports the right causes. He certainly thinks he’s good . . .”
Willa took another sip of her drink, all patience, and I liked that she didn’t push.
“I don’t think he ever really loved me. I think he just wanted to control me.”
Willa raised an eyebrow. “One of those types, huh?”
“Yes,” I said. “I mean, he was always super confident and self-assured, and I think that’s a lot of what drew me to him, but at some point, I guess shortly after we got married, the confidence turned into . . . something else. He dictated everything. What we watched on TV, what music we listened to, what decorators we hired, where we went out to eat, what vacations we took.” I shrugged. “It took me a long time to see it, because he was giving me all this amazing stuff I’d never have otherwise. I mean, was I really going to complain about a fully planned vacation to the Seychelles or a brand-new dress, even if it wasn’t exactly my taste, or a rule that we couldn’t watch reality TV—reality TV is stupid anyway.”
“Hey now,” Willa said playfully, taking a quick sip of water. “Let’s not say things we might later regret.”
“Right,” I said. “I forgot that The Bachelor is the closest thing to religion you have.”
“Will you accept this rose?” Willa asked as she made the sign of the cross.
“You know what I mean, though. George was the sophisticated one, I was the one from the small town with student loans. I didn’t always mind that he was teaching me how to be a bit . . . classier. But then I had Alex—”
“Let me guess. Now he had someone else to control, too.”
“Exactly,” I said. “It was like he was molding me into this super submissive person, and he was trying to mold Alex into—well—into him.”
Willa licked the salt off her lips. “Big yikes.”
“Yes,” I said. “And part of me thought it was all in my head, that I was being too sensitive. Some people were a bit headstrong—did it really matter if we were all happy together? I needed to find a way to go against George, to test it out. I needed to prove to myself that if there was something that I really wanted to change, that if I really spoke up, he would support me.”
“So did you?” Willa asked.
“I thought we’d probably go head-to-head over something with Alex, but then . . . a different opportunity to challenge my husband came up. Remember how I mentioned Cassandra, my sister-in-law?”
“The one who you had a falling-out with?” Willa prompted.
“Yes,” I said. “And no. See, I only actually fell out with her because of George.”
Anger, so familiar, surged within me once again.
“Because of what George did to her.”