I wrote to my ex-husband via his lawyer, requesting the following: an infrared thermometer, two silicone baking sheets, a silicone spatula, a dozen dipping forks and spoons, parchment paper, nesting glass bowls, candy molds, sea salt, superfine sugar, pistachios, dried cherries, and a bain-marie, preferably Meltinchoc brand. I knew I’d get most of the things on that list—not because Holden was generous, but because in the same letter, purely for leverage, I asked for a two-bedroom apartment.
The lawyer crossed the edibles, the parchment, the Meltinchoc, and the apartment off my list just to show who was boss and as an unspoken reminder of the get-nothing prenup I’d signed.
Jeremy was proving to be a good audience for both my progress on the confection front and for all anecdotes that vilified my ex. I noticed the funny look I got the first time I pronounced my ex’s fancy moniker. He asked me to repeat it, then said if it had been a regular-guy name—a Joe or a Dave or even a Geoffrey with a G—he’d be less judgmental. But Holden? So pretentious and lit-ambitious. What was the story there?
I told him it was a family name, that the first son in every generation got it, like it or not, a century before Catcher in the Rye.
Further empathic questions: Were these in-laws nice to you? Did they take sides in the divorce? Did they know what he was up to, marrying you to kick-start his trust fund?
I said his father was out of the picture, the apple having fallen not far from the adulterous tree. His mother was a sharp cookie, nice enough when I was the shadow daughter-in-law but ultimately possessing a heart of plutonium. Her name was Bibi, short for nothing. She’d had Holden late; the most personal thing she’d ever confided was that he was conceived on her fortieth birthday after a surprise party, after they’d given up hope. At our first meeting, family heirloom on my ring finger, she stated that she was relieved that her bachelor son was settling down with a woman who wasn’t . . . well, you know.
I said, “No, tell me.”
“A woman my generation would have called easy.”
I should’ve dropped it there, but instead I asked, “Did you meet many of these women?”
“Some.”
“And what gave you the impression they were easy?”
“You can tell. Sometimes it’s the makeup or the clothes or the way they carry themselves.”
I saw her practically never during my short marriage. Family dinners consisted of Holden having Manhattans and not much else at his mother’s apartment, solo. After the first few of these exclusionary suppers, I smelled a conspiracy. Was he unhappy and confiding in her? Or had I become as unfortunate a choice as the skanky also-rans? Evidence to the contrary and always reassuring: He’d come home with a beautifully wrapped cashmere cardigan or an evening purse I’d never use, or an Hermès scarf with a note that said, “For no reason! Kisses, Bibi.”
A few weeks into our separation, she called me. Had I received the German nutcracker she’d sent home with Holdy last Monday? She’d found it in a box with ornaments . . . on and on to news of her two dogs and their monogrammed Tyrolean winter coats.
“I assume he kept it for himself,” I told her.
That provoked only silence until she asked, “Could you put Holdy on?”
“I can’t.”
“He’s out?”
“I have no idea.”
Was it my job to fill in the blanks? Because she wasn’t my mother, my confidante, my problem, I decided not to elaborate. “When was the last time you talked to him?” I asked.
“Monday. I left a few messages, but I haven’t heard back.”
“Try a text.”
“I don’t do that.”
“I’ll text him and tell him to call you.”
She said coyly, “And tell him he’s a terrible son! But maybe if he calls, he gets another chance.”
Was she clueless? Or perhaps she’d been in on the plot and was only feigning congeniality.
I texted him, CALL YOUR MOTHER & TELL HER ABOUT US!
I gave it thirty-six hours, then called her back, newly motivated to squeal if the coward hadn’t come clean about the separation. I suggested lunch.
“What a good idea! You’ll be my guest. I insist. Pick a place. You know what I like.”
I picked a favorite restaurant of hers that was a doozy, figuring I might as well make it a very expensive, five-star sayonara.
I had to admit she was handsome in an august way, with the white pageboy and bangs of someone who’d once been a natural blonde. She was wearing the pearls, three strands that she’d told me would be mine some day and then, please God, a granddaughter’s. I’d planned to tell the story of our dissolution over coffee, but I was having trouble making small talk in the face of my suspicion that she was Holden’s willing accomplice. I began with “I know this might be the last time you want to see me . . .”
Did that evoke anything? No. She crossed her knife and fork over her untouched lobster salad.
I started off delicately, or so I thought, with “Things could never be the same after he ruptured several commandments—”
Who was this usually dainty Episco-Republican opposite me, now practically spitting? “Don’t talk to me like I’m some . . . some . . . Southern Baptist! Commandments! Ha! You don’t think I know that you threw him out!”
I leaned across my own salad, and hissed, “For good reason! Did he tell you that he stayed out all night with a woman he’d met in a hotel bar? I even know her name: Amanda. Because he confessed.”
No answer, just an unnerving stare.
“And that confession led to a bigger one: that he’d been having sex with other women from the time we met: when we were dating, when we were engaged, then after the wedding. I think the only time he was on hiatus was our wedding night.”
“And . . . ?”
And? My face must’ve registered my incredulity, because her next question had a tinge of humanity. “Is there any chance . . . ?”
“Any chance of what?”
“Any chance he exaggerated his extramarital love life?”
Was that a smile of sisterhood she’d just flashed? “It’s not as if Holden is a specimen,” she explained.
“Bibi! He told me he was a sex addict. And he’d go to rehab—like drug addicts and alcoholics—in some place like Minnesota.”
She had started shaking her head with the first syllable I uttered. “Wouldn’t I know that? Wouldn’t he have come to me first to say, ‘Mother, I have a problem’?”
“‘Mother, I’m a sex addict’? I don’t think so.”
Was Bibi looking thoughtful? Was she summoning a mother-son conversation from their past? I asked what she was thinking.
“You didn’t know Holdy’s father. No, how could you? He was ancient history by the time Holdy met you. What am I saying? He was gone in many ways by the time I brought Holden home from the hospital as a newborn.”
I knew she’d been divorced but wasn’t positive which of her ex-husbands had been Holden Phillips III. I asked if by “gone” she meant that he’d passed away that early in their marriage.
“Unfortunately not.”
I said yes, now I remembered. Then, just for meanness’ sake: “Back in the day when broken homes were rare enough that Holden felt like the only kid in the class without two parents on visiting night.”
“I don’t like to talk about it.” Her voice was now tight. “Of course, when supposed friends in your church are sleeping with your husband, you have to take a stand, don’t you? You don’t just show up and smile at the two b-words who were having relations with your husband. It’s so humiliating.”
Whoa. I’d brought out the best or worst in Bibi. I asked how she found out about the women.
“I connected the dots. It wasn’t that hard.” What followed gave me another glimpse into the very un–New Hampshire, Upper East Side world of privilege and drama: “I hired a private detective. The rest was easy. They know what to look for. He wasn’t caught in flagrante delicto but in what you might call the comings and goings, the before and after.”
“Did he confess once he was busted?”
She actually smiled. “Do you know how I handled it? I told our minister, ‘You fix it. You get all of them in here and tell them the jig is up!’”
“Did he?”
“That mouse! No, he begged me not to put him in the middle. I said, ‘When I can’t come to church because my husband’s mistresses, plural, are in the next pew, who else is going to help me?’ And at the time, Dear Abby always told women to talk to their ministers or spiritual advisors. Have I mentioned they were married women whose husbands went to our church, too? On Fifth Avenue! Of course, I later found out that the pastor was no angel, either.”
I didn’t have to ask if there were only two paramours because Bibi volunteered, after summoning our waiter for another whiskey sour, “My divorce lawyer called it Don Juanism—his need to bed countless women.”
“If you’re saying this is an inherited vice, it doesn’t make me any more sympathetic.”
“Why did Holden marry?” she asked. “Why didn’t he continue sowing his wild oats?”
“Are you telling me that you didn’t know about the provision in his grandmother’s trust that he’d get the windfall only when he married?”
“Oh, that,” she said. “That was on his father’s side.”
“He used me! He thought I was a country bumpkin who wouldn’t notice he was a philanderer, who’d be grateful to marry someone with, as my mother would’ve said, means.”
“Check, please,” Bibi called.
We’d hardly touched our matching lobster salads. I asked to have mine wrapped up, then forgot to take it.
Jeremy said that this lunch must’ve been more painful than I was making it sound and that it couldn’t have been that long ago. A year? Eighteen months? Had there been any follow-up?
“Nope. That was it. I haven’t seen her since. Or her precious son, either. Did I mention that the scarves were hideous? I don’t even think they were new.”
“‘Holdy,’ seriously? Holden’s bad enough.”
We were watching Jeopardy! on his bed, fully clothed, laptop open, contemplating what to order for dinner. “Were you named after anyone?” I asked him.
“If you can believe that my mother admitted this—Jeremy was one of the brothers in Here Come the Brides.”
“Maybe she sensed, in utero, that you had a future in television.”
“Ah, yes. As Timmy.” After a pause, he added, “Which perhaps you recall is the name of my character.”
Was Jeremy hurt that I hadn’t caught up with Riverdale? Why hadn’t I upgraded my package to include his channel? Maybe because he played a junior in high school and I was having sex with him several nights a week. I said, “I’ve been economizing on my cable bill, but I’m calling them tomorrow.”
“Not necessary.”
“I think it is.” We turned back to the laptop, to Seamless and our delivery history. When we agreed to hit reorder from our favorite Cuban restaurant, Jeremy said, “This is the third time we’re getting these exact things. I wonder if it means we’re going steady.”
Of course, he was using that ironically. I knew from season one that it was a retro phrase often heard in a booth at Pop’s Chock’lit Shoppe.
The smell of coffee in an NYU mug woke me. “I guessed milk and sugar for someone with a professional sweet tooth,” he said.
I lifted the covers to evaluate my state of undress. Complete. I told Jeremy I’d wait till he left before getting out from under. The coffee was excellent, thank you.
“I’ve got to run. Feel free to use the shower.”
“No need. I’ll slip across the hall.” I reached for his retreating hand. “Another plus.”
“Along with . . . ?”
What answers did the modern woman give? I mentioned his coffeemaker, his view of the Hudson, his martinis, and his talented hands.
“Why, thank you. Come back soon.”
“You can leave. I’ll make the bed and wash my mug.”
“I left a key for you on the table by the front door.”
A key? I’m sure possession of that didn’t have any meaning beyond my being a trustworthy neighbor should an emergency arise.