It had been a pattern throughout her life, that whenever someone told her she couldn’t do something, she couldn’t want something, that only made her want it more. When other people said no, she only heard try harder.
Her father told her she wasn’t smart enough to go to college, and she proved him wrong by getting a full scholarship. She flew away and never spoke to him again, for the entire rest of his life.
When George told her that he would kill her if she left him and took Will, in her head she thought, Just go ahead and try. George was a finance guy, a numbers man; he liked rules and order. And he didn’t like confrontation. Though he would often complain to her about his job, about the entitled jerks in his office he was forced to kiss up to, he would never once dare do or say anything about it at work. And if he thought she was going to stay with him, that she was going to listen to him because he’d threatened her with a useless, empty threat? He was out of his fucking mind.
What she thought instead was, she would leave him now for sure. And she would take Will too. And no matter what he said, George would never really have it in him to stop her.
Max didn’t get the job he interviewed for in Chicago, but then he did get one in Seattle. He told Mare he would save up, buy a house and there would be space for all of them. All she had to do was figure out the best way to leave George. All she had to do was run away to Seattle. And he would be there, waiting for her.
So Mare steadily planned their escape. Every week she bought a little less at the grocery store and put a few dollars aside. She wouldn’t tell George a thing, and then one morning, when she had enough cash saved, just after he left for work, she would take a taxi to the airport. She would buy their plane tickets in cash and get on a flight. By the evening, when George would come home from work, she and Will would already be across the country. What would George do then? He would call Marge. Or he would call Bess. And so she didn’t tell either one of them what she eventually planned to do either.
Her plan had holes, sure. For one thing, this wasn’t a way to divorce him. And she could run away as far as she wanted, but even in Seattle, George would still technically be her husband. For another, what would she do if he agreed to divorce her but sued her for custody of Will? She’d recently rewatched Kramer vs. Kramer on television one evening when George was working late. And Meryl Streep’s character had been haunting her ever since. It was one thing, she now realized, to love a man and to live without him. But it was another kind of love that she felt for her son. How could she possibly be apart from him?
And then, there was Bess. Every time she thought of Bess, every Sunday she talked to Bess, she had to swallow back a lump in her throat. Bess had never told her what Max had, that they had broken up. And when Bess told her instead that her mother was ill, and she was moving back to California to take care of her, Mare guiltily sighed with relief. Because California was far from Seattle, from Max. And if Bess were in California, then she couldn’t be there with him. Even if she wanted to.
One crisp fall day in October, her doorbell rang in the middle of the afternoon. Will was almost too old to nap, but sometimes he did anyway, and today was one of those days. Mare put a pot roast in the oven for dinner and then had made herself a cup of coffee. She sat with her notebook at the kitchen table, jotting down half a story, or a dream, while he slept.
As soon as she heard the chime of the bell, she jumped and ran to the door, hoping it hadn’t woken Will. But then she heard him talking to himself from his room, and she opened the door and sighed.
Max stood there, kicking at a few stray orange leaves with his boots. He looked up as the door opened and smiled.
“What are you doing here?” She grabbed him and dragged him in from the porch, lest one of the neighbors should see. She slammed the door shut behind him and he leaned against it, pulling her to his chest in a hug. Her heart pounded from being this close to him again, from being thrown by his sudden appearance too.
“I missed you too much,” he whispered in her hair. “I just wanted to see you.”
The unexpectedness of it, of him in her house, like this, caught her off guard, and she pulled out of his hug and stared at him. “I don’t understand,” she said. “What are you doing?”
“I wanted to surprise you. I bought a house,” he said. “It’s outside of Seattle, but not too far. And there’s plenty of room. There’s even a tree house out back for Will.” Max worked in estate law, and he continued on to explain how he’d heard about this house in foreclosure at the office, that it needed some repairs, but he’d bought it for a song, free and clear with a little money his grandmother had willed to him when she died.
“I still don’t understand,” she repeated. “If you bought a house in Seattle, why are you here now?”
He laughed, and grabbed her in another hug, and this time she eased into the warmth of his body, the feel of him against her. Her limbs evaporated and she couldn’t let him go, even if she wanted to. “To convince you to come back with me,” he whispered into her hair.
The thud of Will’s little feet running in snapped her back into the real world, and on instinct, she jumped away from Max’s grasp. She had kept Will in the crib, though he was much too big and he climbed in and out as he pleased. Now he stood in the front hallway, before them, naked except for a pair of Superman briefs, sucking his thumb.
Max dropped down on the floor on his knees to meet Will eye to eye. “Hey, Will,” he said gently. “Do you remember me? I’m your mom’s friend, Max.”
Will eyed him suspiciously, glanced at Mare, who nodded a little in confirmation, but then continued sucking on his thumb.
“I brought you a present,” Max said. He unbuttoned his overcoat to reveal a small brown teddy bear he’d had hidden in the pocket underneath. He held it out in front of him, and Will stared at it but didn’t move.
“Go ahead.” Mare nudged her son’s shoulder gently. “Take the stuffie and go get back into your crib and rest some more.”
Will reluctantly took the bear, held it to his bare chest, but he didn’t budge from his spot on the floor in front of them.
“You can go sit in my bed and turn on the television.” If there was one thing she had learned as a mother, it was that bribery got you everywhere. And the television in her bedroom was always the best form of bribery.
He listened then, clutched the bear in one hand, kept his thumb in his mouth and padded off down the hallway toward her bedroom. As soon as he was out of sight, Max grabbed her again in another hug.
She leaned into him for a moment, pushing away the rush of thoughts, of fear. The feeling that suddenly she was careening inside her own tunnel of lies in a car with no brakes. This was not her plan. She hadn’t saved enough money yet to fly to Seattle. She hadn’t figured out how to plug the holes so she could keep Will with her, always.
“Max, you have to go,” she said. Though she clutched him tighter as she spoke, took a deep breath and inhaled the piney, reassuring scent of him. “George comes home soon, and you can’t be here. Like this.”
“Why not?” Max said.
She had almost forgotten. That they were all friends first. A college foursome. That Max had been here to visit before. With Bess. At the thought of Bess she swallowed hard and took a step back.
But Max reached for her and pulled her to him again. “Let me talk to George,” he said. “Let’s talk to him together. I know everything is complicated, but I don’t want to live without you anymore. And I don’t want to lie to him. Why don’t we just tell George the truth?”
And what exactly was the truth? The very concept of it escaped her now.
Her truth was—if she was really going to admit it all—she had loved Max from the afternoon she first met him in the library. She should’ve told Bess the morning he showed up to their dorm with her wallet. And the truth was, also, she wasn’t totally sure now whether she was stealing something from Bess or not. Max had said he and Bess were better suited as friends. But what was Bess’s truth? And in that moment she understood that before she went anywhere with Max, what she needed to do was the hard thing she’d been dreading all along: talk to Bess.
But before she could say any of that, she heard the sound of the garage door opening. George was home.