CHAPTER 6

Leo isn’t up for the sunrise. I should be glad to have the swing all to myself, but I’m not. This alarms me on the deepest level. I’m getting used to him and how he follows me around. I like how he listens to me when I talk. I like how he looks at me.

Ben used to sit at the kitchen island and talk about real estate and what’s wrong with people while I made dinner. “You know what’s wrong with Mickey?” Or “You know what’s wrong with that guy at the bank?” These were rhetorical questions, and the only real variety to them was which person had wronged him that day. He liked to keep the TV on at all times, background noise while he moved the papers outlining his newest scheme around on the kitchen table. Ben took up a lot of space.

The night he told me he was leaving, he slept on the couch with the TV blaring. I lay in bed trying to process what was happening. The whole thing was so confusing. I remembered Penny’s face the first time I told her I was seriously dating him. “Oh. My. God,” she’d said. “Don’t blow it.” Ben was kind of a catch. He went to prep school and moved through life like a knife through soft butter. Ben was the kind of guy Penny would know.

Penny and I grew up in Chesterville, Connecticut, a medium-size town that had previously been two small towns—one affluent, one working class. When things were rezoned in the 1950s to create a single town with a single public high school, the result was a town divided like you’d see in a John Hughes movie. If you lived up the hill, your parents were likely professionals. If you lived down the hill, your parents worked a trade. If you were me, your dad was in the business of cleaning all the professionals’ pools.

The divide in our town was something I almost never thought about. I took the bus to school with the kids in my neighborhood, and we played in one another’s yards after school. We spent our vacations at the public pool, which my dad also cleaned. In high school, my friends and I made fun of the hilltoppers’ pretentious clothes and sweet-sixteen convertibles that were invariably crashed and replaced within a month. I felt comfortable in my little house, in my faded jeans, where I knew exactly what to expect.

But not Penny. She wanted to be up that hill. Starting in middle school, she emulated the hilltop girls and the way they put themselves together. When they bought new skinny jeans, Penny spent the weekend on my mom’s sewing machine tapering the legs of her Levi’s. When they cut bangs, Penny followed suit. This never would have gotten her anywhere, but in the tenth grade Penny tried out for the spring musical and landed a leading role along with a handful of the hilltop girls. After prolonged exposure to Penny’s giant heart and passion for fun, they became her real friends. The transition was seamless, making me think that Penny had always been a hilltopper just biding her time in our twelve-hundred-square-foot ranch.

Throughout college and when she moved to Manhattan afterward, these were the circles in which she ran. I was surprised to learn that these circles are everywhere and they overlap in the oddest ways. Rich people, it seems, all know one another tangentially. So I guess I wasn’t surprised when I called her from Amherst to tell her about Ben, and she knew exactly who he was.

While I never bought into the glamour of the hilltopper, when I met Ben I sort of became taken by the ease of it all. His quiet expectation that the world would arrange itself around his whims. His confidence that he would never be called out or punished for any wrongdoing. He was that kind of slightly mean guy that made you feel superior if he liked you. Since the day he picked me, I’d done everything I could not to blow it. And yet here we were.

When we graduated, I had a job in publishing in Manhattan, and Ben had his first big idea and a check for ten thousand dollars from his grandmother. It would be six months before he learned this was the last check he’d be receiving. We found a walk-up apartment in the East Village that we could almost afford, and I think we were happy. I’d come home from work and find him at the kitchen table, excited about a potential new investor. I’d cook as he shared the real-time details of their conversation. I figured he was too excited about his day to ask about mine.

By the time we married at twenty-six, the glow had worn off. Ben was still railing against the injustice of having no passive income, an injustice that fueled his rage against the simplemindedness of the investors who weren’t interested in his schemes. The part of me that knows who I am and knew I shouldn’t marry Ben had become hard to hear over the din of wedding plans. Newton must have been thinking of twentysomethings in long-term relationships with hard-to-secure wedding venues when he decided that objects in motion tend to stay in motion.

When I was two kids and one broken house into the marriage, I had to face the fact that Ben didn’t really like much about me at all. He didn’t like my worldview, my hair, my house. He was blind to my best qualities, and eventually I was too. I think our whole marriage was about me trying to make him glad he picked me. I humored him about his poorly thought-out projects. I made the money but did it quietly so he could feel like his work was what mattered, like I was waiting tables while he finished medical school. I even started using his words to describe my work, “another dumb romance.” I cooked the food and tried to be upbeat for the kids. I remembered his mother’s birthday and sent her gifts. It wasn’t enough.

In my mind, I was holding Ben up; in his, I was holding him back. He had a way of making me feel like every time another project fell apart, it was my fault. And there was no reason there, no logical connection, but the not-so-quiet implication was that it was me who was keeping him down. One night when I discovered we had thirty-seven dollars to our name, I suggested we eat at home rather than meeting friends out. “You have scarcity in your heart, Nora. You’ll always be broke,” he’d told me, disgusted. I have a husband who doesn’t work and tears through money like he’s printing it, I’d thought. Yes. I’ll always be broke.

That night, alone in my bed with Ben on the couch, I fell asleep clinging to the oddest thoughts. Among them was that starting tomorrow I’d have full control of the TV. Starting tonight, I’d be going to bed without Ben next to me, pestering me for bad sex. I imagined tomorrow’s sunrise and how that would be the last sunrise I’d ever watch with him in the house. The remaining sunrises would all be mine. I felt a profound relief that the struggle was over, like if you stopped treading water and then found yourself effortlessly floating to the surface. Go, Ben. Go find your big life.

Of course, it wasn’t just me. Ben was walking out on his kids too. And that was going to hurt them for a long time. But in my new buoyance, I couldn’t help but think that I’d never again register the doubt on their faces as he promised them something we couldn’t afford. I’d never again have to explain “what Daddy really meant when he said that mean thing.” This was going to take some time for them to adjust to, but in my heart, I knew they were better off with him gone.

The next morning, I woke up thinking about Arthur’s vocabulary test. He’d bombed the last one and was nervous to try again. I pictured him tackling all those tough words just after his father told him he was leaving. I ran downstairs and woke Ben. “Can we just wait until after school to tell the kids?”

“I’m leaving, Nora. You’re just going to have to accept it. I’m sorry.” He rubbed his eyes and turned back into the couch, and I thought, Man, the disconnect is real.

“I know, and I’ll come to terms with it,” I played along. “But let’s just let the kids have their school day, and we can tell them in the afternoon.”

“Sounds good,” he said, sitting up and meeting my gaze. “I’m going to shower.”

Over breakfast, Ben acted like everything was normal. I took the kids to school and went out to the tea house while he packed his things. I was anxious over the details of what was to come, but also a little nervous that he’d come out and tell me he’d changed his mind. I caught myself smiling out the tea house windows, wondering if maybe the future had actually just opened up. I never would have had the courage to let go of the rope in this tug-of-war, but Ben had done it for me.

When the kids were back from school, we sat them down and Ben told them he was leaving for a while. Arthur started to cry instantly, having the wisdom to know where this was headed. “Where are you going?” he asked.

“Asia,” Ben said. As if that explained everything.

“I’ll come with you,” said Arthur. “I can help you there, and we’ll learn Chinese.” He spoke through tears and this is when my heart broke a little. I was better off without Ben, and my kids were too, but seeing the desperation behind Arthur’s eyes killed me.

“Sorry, buddy, but I’ll be back.”

“When?” asked Bernadette.

“Soon.” He gave them each a hug. “You guys be good for your mom, okay?”

They didn’t reply, just looked at him in what I assume was disbelief. He grabbed his keys and his phone and his stupid puffer vest and left. We three stayed in the same room for the rest of the day, none of us wanting anyone out of our sight. For weeks afterward, I tried to get them to talk about it. Bernadette seemed more annoyed than hurt, like whatever her dad had to do that was dragging him away was probably nonsense. I was careful not to agree. Arthur was sad and asked a lot of questions I didn’t have answers to. Doesn’t he miss us? Does he wonder how we are? We talked about it every day for a while, until we’d sort of exhausted our own explanations. None of us thought he was coming back.

The house was bigger without his stuff and his anger. I cleared out furniture and luxuriated in the open spaces. I felt like the house could finally breathe. I started running before I wrote, and I swear my writing got better. I hoped my kids could feel how much stronger I was without Ben dragging me down. Without Ben, I had the energy to be mother and father and provider and playmate. People usually talk about their new normal as some sort of difficult adjustment, but mine left me lighter. I was released from worrying about what Ben would spend. I no longer needed to deflect his criticisms of the kids or myself. I was free.

But Leo in my house is fun. I like the space he takes up. It’s light and exciting, and I am slipping into a daydream that this is my new reality. I have a handsome playmate who listens to me when I speak. He asks follow-up questions because he wants to hear more. I cannot shake the feeling that Leo likes talking to me. Like, he likes the actual me. He’s not in it for the free meal or anything I can do to improve his situation. Leo Vance is just fine without me, yet he still follows me around with rapt attention.

He’s leaving in two days, and I need to screw my head on straight. It’s Tuesday. Bernadette has dance after school. I have to get the recycling out. Tomorrow is the first day of rehearsals and I’m in charge of shushing the children while they wait their turns. I’m also, as it turns out, in charge of the whole play, so I’d better get a committee together. Costumes? Sets? Snacks?

“Crap. I almost missed it.” Leo barrels through the door with a blanket in his arms. He sits down next to me and covers us both up. The sun’s halfway up and he hasn’t missed the best of it. This is the part where the pink starts to move up the trees.

“Want me to get you some coffee?” I ask, because I’d never do this without coffee.

“No. Stay till it’s over.”

So I do and we sit there and stare in silence until the sky is bright. “What were you thinking about?” he asks. “You were all furrowed when I came out.”

“Nothing.” Talking about Ben is going to make me feel like a loser, so I’m quiet. Leo turns his head to me and gives me a look like he’s not buying it. I say, “How nice it is that Ben’s gone.”

“Where is he now?”

“Who knows. He said Asia.”

“So, you don’t hear from him? He doesn’t see the kids?”

“Nope. Well, he calls sometimes and makes plans but doesn’t show.”

“Wow. Where do the checks come from?”

And I laugh at this, a real whole-bodied laugh that ends in my coughing up a little of my coffee. Leo offers his blanket to wipe my mouth. I use my sleeve. “Sorry,” I say, gathering myself. “That was a totally legitimate question. This part wasn’t in the script. He doesn’t send checks. Our deal was pretty cut and dried—I get the house, the mortgage, the credit card debt, and the pleasure of supporting the kids and myself. And he gets to walk away. I didn’t argue because I didn’t want to have to sell the house. And I actually might have ended up paying him alimony for the rest of his life. And then I’d probably have to kill him. So. This was for the best.”

“I’m starting to see why Ruth was so nonplussed when Trevor left. So just like in the movie, he’s sort of too good to work?”

“ ‘Hamiltons don’t work for other people.’ That’s sort of their thing. His great-grandfather actually worked hard and made a fortune in cattle. Ben grew up with that wealth but didn’t really internalize the ‘work hard’ part of the story. It’s like he missed the part where his great-grandfather shoveled cow shit for years before he made it. So he dabbles. He tries lots of stuff that doesn’t work out, mainly because other people are incompetent.” I hold his gaze to show him that I really am okay with it. Which I am. Not the part that he’s made no effort to see or contact the kids in nearly a year, that part lives in my chest in the form of an easily triggered rage. But the part where Ben is who he is and it’s not my problem anymore, that’s fine with me.

Leo studies the tree line again and then looks back at me. “What happened to the see-through nightgown?”

“I learned my lesson,” I say with a sisterly nudge.