“A hot dog with a slice of processed cheese melted over it, but it was melted way off-center.”
“Yeah, that would get to you, wouldn’t it?”
“No,” Blair said reflexively.
It had, though. It hadn’t been the tube of processed meat, not really, or the square of processed cheese, but something about the placement of the cheese. The lack of care shown by whoever had slapped that cheese on that tube of processed meat. It had ruined the overall composition.
Blair had merely textedGrossand Esme had repliedi knew this would annoy uand then followed it with a single heart emoji that had made Blair’s actual heart swell.
She put down the quilt. The corner wasn’t right, but she would fix it later. Her hand twitched.Later.
“I’ll send Esme some more money so she doesn’t have to eat there,”Reggie said. “I asked her last weekend if she needed more cash, but she never replied.”
Blair couldn’t help but inwardly gloat. She loved that her daughter texted her pretty much every day. She loved that her daughter knew what arrangement of ultraprocessed foods would trigger her.
And even though it probably didn’t reflect well on her, she loved that Esme didn’t have that kind of relationship with her dad. Neither did Calvin. Cal wasn’t texting Blair every day from Georgetown, but he did call when he had to register for a new term and needed an audience for his monologue about whether Political Philosophy in Historical Context was too arcane if his aim was a legislative internship.
But just because Blair was the audience for registration monologues from her serious older child and gross-out pictures from her carefree younger child—birth order was, apparently, real—didn’t mean they didn’t love their dad.
He loved them, too. Blair was pretty sure Reggie was here because he was worried about Esme because, like Blair, he was having trouble adjusting to the idea of their girl on her own a thousand miles away. He wanted the solidarity only Blair could provide.
“Don’t send Esme any money. She can ask if she needs more. Shelikesthe gross cafeteria food.”
The second time Reggie stopped by, Blair began to understand that this was going to be a thing. She couldn’t really complain. They’d fallen out of love years ago. Had remained friendly co-CEOs of the family as they’d done the staying-together-for-the-kids thing, waiting until Esme left for college to file the papers. So, she reasoned, if they could skip the acrimony and move straight to conscious uncoupling—was that still a thing?—all the better.
And therewasa sort of solidarity between them. Reggie was the only one who understood what Blair meant when she said, “I’mworried that Cal isn’t having any fun.” And Blair was the only one who understood when Reggie responded by saying, “I’m worried Esme is having too much fun.”
Sometimes she thought she missed Reggie, but when he started showing up unannounced, she realized that what she missed was the understanding that flowed between them. The shorthand.
It was hard to have that stuff when you lived alone.
But, she reminded herself, there was relief in her solitude. Relief in knowing there would be no little comments about what she was wearing to whatever gala Reggie had signed them up for. That she didn’t have to try to talk him out of another car purchase. That she didn’t have to listen to him recount a meeting that had gone spectacularly well for him despite his lack of preparation.
But two things could be true at the same time. There was relief in solitude, yes, but also, she hated eating alone.
When Reggie buzzed at her gate one week in late September, Blair was, surprisingly, not in the mood for solidarity. TMZ had caught her on the way out of the office the day before and had run the resultant picture next to a piece about Reggie’s “beach date with a bleach blonde.” “Sources” reported that Reggie was bouncing back from the divorce more quickly than Blair was.
Of course he was. He had a newly acquired postdivorce gym body and a ten-bedroom house, and he was making movies in which men shot at other men for three hours. Blair had lines in her forehead since she’d stopped getting Botox and a three-bedroom house, and she made movies about the complexities of human relationships.
And she’d started having to fold all the quilts she used multiple times after she was done with them.
She was beginning to understand that Reggie wasn’t going to be the cure for her loneliness. He hadn’t been when they were living in the same house—Reggie never noticed the cyclones, even thoughthe previous run of them had coincided with COVID lockdowns. When Blair had disappeared for hours at a time to batten down the hatches, he’d thought she was working.
The buzzer rang through the house a second time. Morticia, who was stretched out on the spot on the sofa she seemed to have claimed, gave a terse meow. She hated the buzzer. Blair didn’t blame her.
Blair had been bummed when she had to install a security system. Back when she and Reggie had first lived here, there had been no need for security, nor had there been for all the years she’d rented it out. But as she’d reoccupied it, she’d understood that she had to face facts.
Facing facts sucked.
A third buzz. Another annoyed meow.
“Sorry, Morticia.” She pressed the button to talk. “Hi, Reggie.”
“Finally. I can see your car, so I knew you were home.”
“I’m on my way out,” she lied, “so I can’t invite you in.”
“OK, no prob. I was in the area,” Reggie said breezily, his forehead huge as he leaned toward the camera.
