Page 89 of The Husband I Left

“Well,” she says. “Hello, Genevieve.”

Chapter 32

Genny

Nancy Sinclair stands in the doorway, looking like she’s just stepped out of a magazine spread, and I’m sitting on Oliver’s couch with my hair a mess and my sweater askew, feeling like I’ve been caught doing something I shouldn’t. Which is ridiculous. I’m a grown woman. Oliver is a grown man. His mother has no business walking in on us; though, to be fair, she didn’t walk in. She knocked.

“Mom,” Oliver says. “This really isn’t a good time.”

“I can see that,” Nancy replies. She looks at him a moment longer and then says, “May I come in? I promise I won’t be more than a few minutes.”

Oliver doesn’t answer right away. Instead, he turns and looks at me. There’s a question on his face, and I understand what he’s asking. This is his mother, but it’s my history. Two years of never being quite right. Of always trying my best and still wearing the wrong shoes or saying the wrong thing, or eating the wrong thing. Two years of quiet corrections delivered in that pleasant, unhurried voice. Genevieve, dear, we don’t.

He’ll close the door if I want him to. I can see it in his eyes. He’ll close the door on his own mother and never mention it again. And it’s that that makes it possible for me to nod my head.

Oliver turns back to the doorway. “You can stay for a few minutes.”

Nancy nods and steps inside, and Oliver shuts the door behind her. I watch her take in the apartment. I wait for the flicker of distaste, the way she presses her lips together and tilts her head. I learned to read that like a weather report during my marriage.

It doesn’t come, however. She just looks around and nods, and turns back to Oliver.

“You can’t avoid your family forever, Oliver,” she says.

“I wasn’t—” Oliver stops. Rubs the back of his neck and thinks about his next words. “I didn’t know if he wanted to hear from me.”

Nancy goes still, her eyes fixed on Oliver’s face.

“Dad built his whole life around the company,” Oliver continues. “And he built me around it too. Every school, every internship, every dinner conversation from the time I was six years old. I was the heir. That was the job. That was the reason—” He makes a small, helpless gesture. “That was what I was for. And I walked into his office and quit. So I didn’t know if there was anything left that he’d want. I didn’t know if he had any use for a son who isn’t going to be his heir.”

Nancy closes her eyes. She takes a deep breath, the kind I’ve seen her take just before she has to make social niceties with someone she despised. When she opens her eyes again, they’re bright with unshed tears.

“I am sorry,” she says. “That you felt that way. That we are—“ her voice catches, just barely, “—that we are the kind of family that made you feel that way.”

I almost don’t believe what I’m hearing. In the years I was married to Oliver, I never once heard Nancy apologize for anything. She expressed regret sometimes. She acknowledged inconveniences. She never, ever said I am sorry and made it sound like she meant it.

It suddenly occurs to me that I’m intruding on a conversation they might rather be alone for. I shift my weight slightly and clear my throat, and both their heads turn toward me. “Should I go?” I ask. “I can give you two some time to—”

“No,” Nancy says it before Oliver can even open his mouth. “No, please. Please stay.” She looks at me, and her grip tightens on the handbag. “I’m glad you’re here, Genevieve. Even though— “ A small, rueful breath. “Even though this is hard for me.”

Nancy draws herself up. She takes a breath even deeper than the last one, and her fingers tighten even more on the bag. “I owe you an apology,” she says to me.

I actually glance behind myself, as if there might be another Genevieve standing there that she’s talking to. There isn’t. There’s just a bookshelf and a lamp and me, sitting here like a dummy with my mouth hanging open. Oliver looks equally poleaxed. He’s gone completely motionless beside the door, watching his mother as if she’s a stranger.

“I was terribly unkind to you,” Nancy says. “When you were married to my son. I shouldn’t have—” she stops. Her jaw works for a moment. “Well. I did many things I shouldn’t have done.”

I think about the way I’d do everything she asked of me, and she’d still find something in my appearance to criticize. The way she’d introduce me at parties as Oliver’s wife; or Genevieve, never Genny. I think about standing in a fitting room while she and a saleswoman discussed my figure in the third person, and how I smiled through it because I was trying so hard to be worth all this trouble.

“I have no excuse,” Nancy continues. “I have come to realize that I am a snob. I was embarrassed that my son married a woman from a working class background. I was obsessed with this family’s image. With my own image. I have been for most of my life. Longer than either of you has been alive.” Her mouth curves then into a small self-deprecating smile. “You helped with that, actually.”

“I did?“ The words come out before I can stop them.

“You did.” The smile deepens by a degree. “Your actions. And then my son’s actions. Between the two of you, my image among my peers was thoroughly shattered. The gala. The graduation party. The divorce. And then Oliver quitting so suddenly and dropping off the face of the earth.” She shakes her head. “I was the subject of every luncheon in Boston for months. I couldn’t walk into a restaurant without conversations stopping.” She lifts her chin slightly. “I was embarrassed. Deeply. And then one morning I woke up, and I realized the world hadn’t ended. Life had simply gone on. All those people whose opinions I had organized my entire existence around, nothing they said had actually touched anything that mattered. It turns out image isn’t everything.” She pauses, and her gaze drifts somewhere past both of us, somewhere I can’t follow. “It’s certainly not worth living an unhappy life for.”

That last part comes out quieter than the rest, almost to herself. I suddenly realize that I have spent two years thinking of Nancy Sinclair as a warden and never once wondered who built the prison she worked in.

Nancy turns to Oliver then, and her whole face changes, softens. “I’m proud of you,” she tells him. “I’m proud of you, and I’m glad you chose happiness for yourself over what was expected of you. One of us ought to have.” She says the last bit lightly, like a joke, but nobody laughs.

Oliver’s throat moves. “Mom—”