PENNY ADDED A plop of whiskey to Ruthie’s coffee. Ruthie had sat in the same chair at the kitchen table when she told them Mike was leaving her. Penny had leaned toward her in the very same way, her fists on the table. Ruthie had the same expectation, that Penny would excoriate her enemy and then map out a plan for a new life.
“That Mindy,” Penny said. “She’s a venomous…ah, mealworm. And Catha. Didn’t I tell you? A smug, self-aggrandizing cardboard lady.”
“Cardboard lady?”
“Look, I think we can turn this around,” Elena said. “I’ve been making calls. People are outraged. They know you made the Belfry what it is. You are a part of this community. We can get up a petition. You have a huge amount of support.”
“Please don’t,” Ruthie said. “It won’t do any good. And frankly, if we cause a fuss it could impact my severance. Mindy has a hotshot attorney from Manhattan. The nondisclosure is like I worked for deep ops.”
“We can’t let them get away with it!” Penny cried.
“Worse things happen every day, and you know it,” Ruthie said.
“That’s my point,” Penny declared, waving her mug. “What’s wrong with people? Is lying and betrayal not only okay now, but you actually get rewarded for it?”
“Yes!” Ruthie and Elena said together.
“I need to tell you something else,” Ruthie said. “That. Mike,” she got out. “Is sleeping. With Adeline Clay. Since Memorial Day weekend!”
“Wow,” Penny said. “I mean, oh. Bastard.”
She saw by their faces that they hadn’t known, and she felt better. Elena and Penny dragged their chairs closer to surround her, and Elena held one hand and Penny held another, and she told them how she found out, and that she’d thrown a glass and chopped down a tree (muffled guffaw from Penny), and how she was a mouse with a collapsing skeleton, and that her life was shit.
Penny squeezed her hand. “You know this was inevitable.”
“It was either you or him,” Elena said. “Somebody was going to get a lover.”
“You two seemed to be able to do it, but nobody can really do it,” Penny said.
“You can’t sleep with your ex on a regular basis without paying the piper,” Elena said.
“Sleep with my ex?” Ruthie looked from Elena to Penny.
Penny’s head bobbed backward in a gesture she knew well. “You and Mike aren’t still sleeping together?”
“We just assumed…” Elena said.
“Or else how did it work?” Penny asked.
“We’re friends,” Ruthie said. “I mean, we were.”
“But…neither one of you was ever with anyone else since the divorce,” Penny said. “You saw each other all the time.”
“And it’s been three years,” Elena said.
Penny and Elena exchanged glances.
Elena patted her knee. “Now, let’s just sit here and look at this. Mike is having a summer affair. A ridiculous summer affair with a ridiculous summer woman, so obviously it will end by Labor Day.”
“Am I really this pathetic that I need to hear that?”
“You’re not pathetic, sweetie,” Penny said. “No matter how you look right now. Look, can I say this? Mike set this up. I love him, I do—though I’m really, really mad at him right now—but he’s the one who insisted that you could be friends. He pursued that, doll. He was so guilty about breaking up his family and so terrified at losing Jem that he made the rules. He came up with the Wednesday-night dinner and the cookouts and the sitting together at school events.”
“And he was the one who put off the divorce. He wanted to be an intact family without the commitment,” Elena said.
Ruthie wiped her eyes with her sleeve. Elena handed her a napkin. “She wants to buy my house. I guess he needs a dowry. Ha. The thing is, we always had this agreement that if one person really, really wants to sell, we’d sell.”
“Can you buy Mike out?” Elena asked.
“I don’t have that kind of money.”
“Nobody does,” Penny said. “Well, I mean, not nobody. Just not us.”
“Well, we’ll be unemployed together,” Ruthie said.
Penny shot a glance at Elena that clearly signaled that they did not feel comfortable being happy in front of her.
“You got a job!” Ruthie cried.
Penny nodded. “Woodhull Vineyard is opening a restaurant. A soft opening in the fall.”
“Fantastic!”
“It hasn’t been announced yet, it’s still under wraps. It’s a gorgeous space overlooking the vineyard.”
“You’re the chef?”
“I’m planning the menu.”
“That’s wonderful.”
“With Roberta Verona. Do you know her? She’s an amazing chef. Her name will be prominent, of course, I get that, but I’ll get to run the kitchen.”
Ruthie leaned back. “Are you kidding me?”
“No, isn’t it great?”
“Roberta is Adeline’s best friend.”
“Really?”
“You didn’t know?”
“No! Mike told me about the job, but—”
“I told you that Jem was offered a job in her kitchen.”
“You never told me!”
“I thought I did. I mean, it just happened about a week ago.”
Penny looked stricken. “I didn’t know.”
“Don’t you see? That woman is taking over everything. She knows you two are our best friends! She’s going after you, too!”
“She’s not taking over,” Elena said. “Penny got the job on her own. She didn’t use Adeline.”
“But Adeline knew! She set the whole thing up. Don’t you see that?”
“We don’t know that,” Penny said. “Mike just said he heard about the new place, and I know David, the owner, so I just called him. And anyway, what difference does it make?”
“It makes every difference!” Ruthie felt the whiskey eat through her stomach lining, and she put down the empty cup. “You’re in the friend loop now! Won’t it be great next summer? Mike and Adeline will have a favorite table—of course it will be the best one—and you’ll be sending out amuse-bouche and free glasses of champagne and chef’s little tasting appetizer things! Except all vegany because she doesn’t eat dairy!”
“Now you’ve gone too far. I don’t cook for vegans!”
“This isn’t a betrayal, sweetie,” Elena said. “It’s a job. And we need it.”
Ruthie had always admired Elena’s beautiful serene gaze. It had always soothed her. Now it infuriated her. She stood up, the chair clattering. “Why doesn’t anybody listen to me anymore? Do I have a voice? Can you actually see me? Am I a ghost?”
“Let’s cut to the chase. Do you want me to turn this job down?” Penny asked. Her voice was quiet.
“I didn’t say that.”
“You are saying it.” Penny slammed her fist on the table and sent the cups rattling. “So just say it!”
Elena put her hand over her mug. She looked from Penny’s white face to Ruthie, standing now and trembling, hanging on to the kitchen chair.
Penny pushed back her chair. “Say you want me to give up a fantastic opportunity so that you won’t have to feel uncomfortable if your ex-husband and his girlfriend happen to stroll into my restaurant on a random Tuesday evening and I cook them food. Because that is what you are saying and I am hearing you say it.”
“Why would I say it? It would mean that you’d have to actually listen to me instead of talking about yourself all the time.”
“And you’d have to be not such a fucking victim!”
Ruthie strode to the door. Elena took two steps after her but stopped.
“When did you become such an asshole?” Penny shouted.
“Today!” Ruthie yelled. “Okay? Tell everyone. Ruthie is now an asshole! All she had to do was tell the truth!”
“Ruthie!” Elena spoke with the sternness of a schoolmarm. “You can’t blame Penny.”
“I am going to blame everyone in the world,” Ruthie said, opening the door.