“Thanksgiving,” I said to Jessica on the way into the office Monday morning. “Three weeks. I can do that.”
“You can totally do that. In your sleep. They’re calling my flight. I’ll text you when I land.” She hung up.
“Rory.” Ginger caught me before I put my bag down. “Taylor wants you.”
As I approached Taylor’s door I overheard, “God, why does my stepmother have to be such a fucking round hairbrush in my asshole?” I paused.
“It’s her life’s purpose,” Kimmy wheezed.
Had I Googled Taylor before taking the job, I would have known she was Asher’s daughter from one of the four wives who had led him to the “bikini designer” I’d met in Kathryn’s bathroom, who was—and I’m giving Taylor this—two years older than her. Was JeuneBug just Taylor’s elaborate ploy to get back at Daddy for Fly?
“My dad doesn’t even talk to her. They have dinner, like, once a month and between retching up her food in the bathroom, she tells him she heard at some party we’re understaffed?! So now I—the one who runs an actual business, not just some fucking moleskin full of lame sketches of bathing suits—I have to waste time combing spread sheets like some fucking accountant. It’s totally unfair.”
“It is.”
“Fucking. Hate. Her.”
Shit, had Asher’s wife figured out who I was? Had she shared that with Asher between her retches? And if she found out, would it reflect badly on Kathryn—or me? Girding myself, I stepped inside and found Taylor filling her PUSSY mug. I was starting to suspect she just liked pouring liquid from one container to another, like Maya in the bath.
“Good. You’re here.” She pressed her freshly glossed lips together and strutted to a side table that’d been liberated of its hot pink Buddha head. She gestured for me to take one of the three chairs that had been shoved around it.
Kimmy pulled out the chair abutting mine, where she was forced to swivel her knees to the wall. Was this Taylor’s idea of a sit-down?
Tinkling sounds came from the hall, like a hundred knives clinking against a hundred glasses, insisting a groom kiss his bride. Taylor plopped in the chair beside us and eyed the doorway expectantly.
Silence.
Annoyed, Taylor breathed out, mouth closed, a Darth Vader sound, then called brightly, “Gavin?”
A young guy appeared in an expensively distressed leather coat, tucking his chin-length blond hair behind his ear. I knew him . . . from? From? From? Oh, no. “Cool if I come in?” I watched as the guy who wanted to be inside me on Halloween rolled in a luggage cart dangling crystal light fixtures.
“Um, yes?” Taylor said with the half-smile of a head cheerleader enduring the class nerd. “It’s your meeting.”
“Hey, Gav,” Kimmy called.
“Hey, Kim.”
Crap.
He shrugged his coat off and then took in the room. “Barbi-tastic. You made nice, Tay.”
“Which you’d know if you ever came by, asshole.” What was he to her? Roommate? Little brother? Little brother of an old roommate? “This is my boyfriend, Gavin Roth. Rory’s the head of our Be vertical.”
I stood as he came to shake my hand, our skin meeting at the tips of his fingerless gloves. “Great to meet you,” he said, his eyes widening in recognition.
“Tell her,” Taylor prompted impatiently, her tone like a tapping foot.
“Right. So . . .” He spun to his work, so thrown he looked like he’d never seen it before. “Um, yeah, so everything’s hand-blown in Bushwick. And I, uh, found this artisanal sand in—”
“Not the boring creative bullshit. The stats,” Taylor spat. He looked as endearingly confused as I would have been. “The stats. The stats!” It would never have occurred to me to talk to a guy like this. I couldn’t have even imagined there was a bark-at-him-like-he’s-a-fucking-idiot option on the Get Him to Love Me menu.
Taylor pushed back her chair, practically tipping the tiny table into Kimmy’s lap. “Fine, I’ll do it. Apple Paltrow Martin has one. Ivanka Trump hung one in her nursery and ABC Carpet is asking for samples. Gavin is the up-and-coming children’s chandelier designer.”
“Congratulations,” I said, as it seemed in order. “Are there many of you?”
“He has interest in Dubai,” Kimmy said flatly.
“We have to feature him,” Taylor said. “It’s done.”
Okay, Asher’s daughter, whose best friend is her CFO, let’s feature your boyfriend. For someone so obsessed with reinvention, her management style was skewing pretty Borgia.
Gavin cleared his throat. “Yeah, um, I was inspired by Roald Dahl, you know? Quentin Blake?” The three of them watched me look at the spiky pieces. “All the shadow in his work. I wanted to explore the juxtaposition.”
“Gavin’s going to make a shit-ton,” Taylor assessed.
He blushed. “Well—”
“If he doesn’t smoke it first.”
“Mm-hm,” Kimmy agreed, but whether to Gavin’s sales potential or drug consumption was unclear.
“I got inspired in Peru.” Gavin explained—possibly both.
“Okay.” Taylor climbed out of our Business Women Tableau. “I want these all over the next Be spread. We’ll take our next call in Kimmy’s office. Make a good impression, Gavin.” Taylor waved Kimmy to the door before turning back. “My place tonight,” she informed him.
I would have paid cash money to see Taylor’s response when a guy pushed her head down to his crotch during a hookup. Cash. Money. On a scale of confidence, with zero being, “I’m a waste of space,” Taylor was permanently set at ten. It was weirdly reassuring that I got the same version of her that her boyfriend, dry cleaner, and Chinese delivery guy got too.
“You’re gonna be cool, right?” Gavin asked furtively once we were alone.
“I’m going to work something up and send it over to you.” I had no intention of having that conversation.
“Just so you know, we’ve only been together a few months, like, maybe, six, tops so when you and I—” He stopped short as Taylor lapped in to pick up her phone, eye him, and leave.
“Let’s not,” I said, exactly as I had to Wynn when I’d found him typing boobs into Google. I took out my phone to get some photos of the lights. “These are great.”
“You think so?”
“Yes. They’re really amazing, actually.”
He tilted his head, my compliment reigniting the cockiness that had pulled me to him on Halloween. “Look, I just hope you didn’t get the wrong impression.” Was this child trying to let me down? “I wouldn’t want you to think—”
“Oh my God, I didn’t think anything because I’m married.” I flittered my fingers Beyoncé-style. Now he looked confused. “We’re just going through a thing. You were an oat. Something I would pour milk on. If I had taken you up on your offer, which, for future reference, could give a less married girl the wrong impression—this would be a different conversation.”
He went to kiss me.
I jerked back, barely catching myself on the rack, which teetered precariously.
“Fuck.” He steadied the lights. “You’re just so—”
“Are you breaking them?” Taylor appeared.
“Just testing weight for the shoot.” I made a show of lifting one. “Perfect. I’ll start making calls and we’ll go hell for leather in the opposite direction,” I said to Gavin. “Don’t want to repeat a single thing that’s been done. Fresh start.” I did an about-face and left.
I’d like to say that having a hot guy make a pass at me while the gatekeeper to his “shit ton” was in the next room played no role in my restored confidence. I’d like to say a lot of things. But when I picked up the phone on Thanksgiving to tell Blake the car was packed for our annual trek to my parents and we’d be over shortly to collect him, it helped.
He looked cringingly uncertain when we pulled up outside Jack’s, but then I tossed him his parka and offered the wheel and in no time we were listening to Wynn explain The Hobbit. It felt surprisingly good to clear the bridge and see the winter sky stretch out around us. Blake hummed along to the radio. Maya danced her stuffed rabbit to the beat. The McDonald’s pit stop led to a game of guessing how many diapers we’d changed in its bathroom over the years. As we rounded the hill into Oneonta, the cluster of Victorians looked picturesque in the gently drifting snow. Yes, I thought, let’s be charming.
The kids tumbled from the car as soon as we arrived, giddily abandoning their nests of cracker crumbs and headphone wires to race up the walk. “Great driving.” I dared to squeeze Blake’s hand as he withdrew the key from the ignition. “You made great time.”
“It’s good to get out of the city,” he said, looking down at where we’d touched.
“Um,” I tentatively broached, “so I haven’t said anything to my family about . . .”
He nodded.
It wasn’t that I hadn’t been tempted. When my mom called to ask how I was doing, obviously sensing not well, shame kept me from answering truthfully. From admitting my husband’s defeat, but more so, mine. Perhaps it had been delusional—like hoping they wouldn’t notice that the vase in the dining room was missing because it was lying in shards under my bed, all attempts to reglue it by my then nine-year-old hands having failed miserably. But, I thought, as I unbuckled myself, thank God, because here we were, intact.
“Mom?” Wynn was back, rapping on my window. I opened the door. “Aunt Jen needs a gravy boat.”
“What?”
“Hey, Rory! Hey, Blake!” My very pregnant sister-in-law came down the walk in my mother’s Kiss the Accountant apron. “We’re doing two gravies, and I’m parked in.” She waved at where her minivan sat between the garage and my uncle’s Honda. “Would you mind? My back door’s open. Just grab it out of the china hutch.”
“No prob.” I hugged her and then turned to Blake. “You want to come?” A quickie in their game room?
“I’ll go in and say hello, if that’s cool.” He got out to stretch.
“Of course! Grab yourself a beer. Back in a jiff.”
Arriving at my brother’s house at the end of the cul-de-sac, the one with the maple leaf wreath, I let myself in the back door. If, in ninth grade, you’d told me I was going to grow up to envy a woman her mudroom, I would never have believed you. But Jen’s was something out of Better Homes and Gardens, complete with cubbies for each family member, a labeled sports equipment rack, and a framed chalkboard to jot such reminders as, “Start on stocking stuffers.”
I once heard an organization guru advise working moms to stock a separate school backpack for every day of the week, prefilled on Sunday nights with each day’s requirements to ensure that Little Johnny would never arrive at practice without his cleats. That would be ten backpacks for us Turners. For the cost of the square footage required to store them, we could hire a butler.
Stepping out of my boots I walked around the kitchen island that could have held my kitchen. In the basement, there was a room used only by my brother to watch football and another, used only by Jen, to scrapbook, and still another, where their kids had a stage to put on dress-up shows. There were no sounds of traffic to obscure the whir of the heat coming up through the vent or the wind rustling the branches of the fir tree outside. Was this what Blake and I needed—silence? Space? A place for him to retreat that was on-site? Did we have too much baggage—or were we just crammed unnaturally on top of each other without room to breathe?
My phone rang, startling me.
“Hey!” I answered, walking into the dining room and grabbing the gravy boat.
“Ror!” I was greeted with Blake’s sitcom dad voice.
“What’s wrong?”
“She found it!” he called to whomever was in the room with him. “Just making sure you didn’t get lost, there.”
“You okay?” I asked anxiously.
“In a minute, then! You too, bye!”
I hurried back, blasting the radio to calm my unease. Scrolling through the same stations I’d listened to while dreaming of being anywhere but there, I found the same songs playing as when I’d left town in the nineties. It was such a time warp that I half expected to find Chip Brown waiting to break up with me on the front lawn.
Making my way through an assembly line of McGovern hugs and hellos, I finally arrived in the kitchen, where my father was already carving the turkey and Blake was bookended by my mother’s sisters, who were probably already on their second glasses of chablis. His eyes flashed to mine.
“There she is! Welcome, Victoria.” Mom took the gravy boat before pulling me into her arms. “I’m so happy you’re here! Can you tell the kids to wash up?”
“So, your movie. When will we see it in theaters?” my aunt asked Blake, her palm resting on her cheek. Shit.
“I’ll tell all my friends to go see you,” my other aunt added.
“Well . . .” He gripped his beer. “There’s editing and we never know release dates for sure, but yes, thank you.”
“Rory, you’ll tell us when Blake’s new movie comes out, won’t you? You two are so modest. I mean, you’re friends with the director and everything! It’s like we don’t even have a star in the family.”
“Ah, ha-ha,” I trilled, actually trilled, as I went to the den where the kids were watching a game of Monopoly their older cousins had started hours ago. “Let’s wash up, guys. Grandma’s getting food on the table.”
The blessing bought us a few minutes of relief, but then my brother, Fred, who’d been glued to football for the initial inquisition, turned to Blake across the table. “So, big guy, what are you working on these days?” To their credit, Blake usually regaled us with behind-the-scenes vignettes about failed technical effects or directors acting like children. He liked to hold court, and I loved to sit back with my wine, the drive behind us and a lazy evening ahead, and watch Blake be Blake.
But now he could only gaze down at his plate. “Uh, well, I, uh,” he stammered. “As I was telling these guys, I just finished an indie. It’s, um, a great part, but, uh, hard to know what’ll happen from here.”
“When are you going to be on TV again?” Gus, my nephew, asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Pass me the creamed spinach,” I jumped in. “Did our pies make it out of the trunk?”
“What about directing your own thing?” my dad’s sister asked. “Like Costner did with Dances with Wolves?”
I could feel him choosing his words as everything I’d eaten hardened to a brick. “Yes, yes, I should do that.”
“Because I checked the kids’ 529s,” Dad said, reaching for the potatoes. “You haven’t put anything in to match our contributions. You gotta seed it early or the account’s not gonna grow fast enough to cover even a year of college. For Wynn, it may already be too late.”
“Dad,” I suggested, “maybe we should get someone in the city to do our taxes?”
“That’s ridiculous. Why would you waste the money? I know you don’t have it to waste.”
“Honey,” my mother reached across the table with her voice, and my dad filled his mouth with Thanksgiving.
From that point on, Blake went stonily silent, until, as the pies that had gotten crushed under Blake’s duffel were being picked over, he unexpectedly volunteered us for cleanup. “Rory and I’ve got it.”
“Are you sure?” my mother asked. “All by yourselves?”
“Really, babe?” I asked. Didn’t he just want to go lie down? I wanted him to go lie down.
“Yep!”
There were so many dishes it was like we were doing penance. When I took a break to put the kids to bed, we were still only halfway done.
“I needed silence,” Blake whispered when I asked why he had rebuffed everyone’s offers of help. “It was the only way to get a break.”
“So go up to bed,” I whispered back.
“I can’t lie in the dark right now. I’ll go crazy.”
I turned the water back on while he dried. “Do you want to talk about it?” I tried, as most of the guests had left or were snoozing in front of Independence Day in the den.
“No, I don’t. Please, Rory,” he begged, looking utterly exhausted. I wanted to touch him.
My phone buzzed by his elbow and he glanced down, his expression shifting. “Who’s Gavin Roth?”
“I’m styling his light fixtures for our next shoot.” I put another casserole in the drying rack.
“I want to give you the right impression,” he read.
I grabbed the phone from him. “He’s my boss’s boyfriend. It’s about the shoot.”
“In the middle of the night on a holiday?”
“You get calls at all hours from work. I’m sure if I just picked up your phone you’ve gotten a billion texts since we got here—” I did and then went cold. “You’re on Tinder?”
He shrugged, his gaze dropping to his shoes.
“Oh my God, Blake, are you dating?”
“I’m not dating.”
“Sorry, ‘hooking up’? Do they even still call it that?” My uncle coughed in the next room. I stepped close, straining to keep my voice down. “I thought you just needed space. I believed that. How could you do this to me?”
“To you? To you?” he hissed. “Do you have any idea what you did to me? You gave up, Rory!”
“When?” I asked. “When did I give up? I’ve been fighting for us for months, but you had to retreat or whatever the fuck Weinstein called it—”
“You talked to my mother?”
“Of course I talked to your mother! You’ve been unavailable!”
He stepped closer so I was almost under his chin. “Look, you left me first. I got kicked in the balls harder than I ever have and you couldn’t get me to give up what I’ve devoted my whole life to fast enough.”
“Because we’re out of money, you asshole!”
He grabbed my arm and for a split second I thought he was going to lift me onto the counter and fuck me. For a split second, I wanted him to. And then he splattered a fistful of mashed potatoes in my face.
I was stunned. And then I was furious. Blindly furious. I grabbed at whatever I could—turkey fat, breadcrumbs box, serving spoons—and hurled them at him. I lost time. It might have lasted hours or seconds. All I know is that my father screamed my name and we were covered in food, panting. My parents were standing in the doorway, horrified.
“What’s going on?” My mother recovered her voice.
Blake slipped in the mess, holding on to the oven to steady himself as he caught his breath. “We’re getting divorced.”