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Thomas was completely wrapped up in the first two: her wish that they would marry. Her wish that they would have healthy, happy kids. Such average wishes, so unspecific. He may as well get this one as well.
She gets up off the swing, stands tall. She breathes in the sky, the blue of it, the air collapsing, growing thinner, around her. She doesn’t feel it yet—or can’t name it—the storm that is brewing, but she feels something.
She wishes he will be sorry.
Then she unclasps her hand to find Thomas’s cell phone in there. It is small and black. Its red light is flashing brightly. There are messages waiting for him. Phone numbers he may think he needs, but will not have for now.
It is eighty feet to the ocean. She pulls back, takes aim and lets the cell phone fly.
Maggie
There is a statue of Buddha in the living room.
Gold-plated and several feet high, sitting tall against the wall, between the two windows. Smiling.
Maggie is squatting down before him, looking him right in the eye. Looking him right in his smile, his wide cheeks. She wants to reach out and touch him, the Buddha, right where they meet: that smile, those cheeks.
Thomas comes up behind her and hands her a glass of iced tea. “It’s over a hundred years old,” he says. “I just had it shipped here.”
“The Buddha,” she says. “Or the tea?”
Thomas laughs, which is good, because as soon as the words are out of her mouth she knows they could have been taken badly. Seems to confirm Maggie’s guess that he is like Nate in that important way: open, nonjudgmental. She still only reluctantly heads back to the couch and sits down across from him. She doesn’t want to look at him, not straight on. He looks so much like Nate in person—same nose and hair and eyes. Watching him, Maggie feels a little like she is peering into her own future: this will be Nate in thirty years. This will be what Nate looks like when their son comes home with his fiancée for the first time.
Maggie looks around the rest of the room instead: it is Asian inspired, with warm yellow walls and eight-foot windows, th
e large beautiful mahogany bookshelves taking up one wall, a painting of a Chinese character taking up the other. Its steady line on the bottom makes it look like a ship. If she thinks about it, this room—what is in it—is probably worth more than her father’s entire house. She tries to think about something else.
The Buddha seems to still be laughing at her. She covers the side of her eyes, bites her lip, and tries to listen as Nate’s dad starts to tell them about the medical conference, about the temple he visited in Orange County while he was out there.
They are all sitting down now: Nate and her on the couch, Thomas in the big armchair across from them, and Georgia lying on the floor, on her back, beneath him. Gwyn hasn’t materialized yet.
“I’m thinking of going back out there for a while and taking some classes,” he says. “After things are settled.”
“You mean after the divorce is settled?” Georgia says. “You can say it, Dad. We’re celebrating it tonight, aren’t we?”
“We’re celebrating everything that came before it, George,” Thomas says.
“How is that different?” she says.
“Because,” he says. “It’s our way of reminding you that no one is to blame.”
Is that an answer? Maggie looks over at Nate, who is nodding his head, like he understands what his dad is saying, and maybe he does—maybe he understands something she doesn’t, like how that is an answer to the question Georgia asked. It sounds more, to Maggie, just like an answer Thomas wants to give—regardless of what is being asked of him. So he gets to believe it.
But then, before she can think of why that is striking her, Maggie hears footsteps padding down the hallway, and Gwyn comes flying into the room. Gwyn with her long blond hair, a pale sheath dress running down to her bare feet. She looks like a commercial for herself, and Maggie is forced to see that she will not be her when their son comes home with his fiancée: a beautiful woman—her beauty still sharp, graceful and elegant, a close semblance to who she has always been. There are women like this, and Maggie guesses that if you pay attention, you know early on whether you get to be one of them. Probably—if you aren’t paying attention—you don’t.
Gwyn makes a beeline for Nate and her, bending to give him a large hug, bending before he can even stand.
“It’s looking like we’re probably going to get a little wet during this party of ours,” Gwyn says. “I think a storm is moving in off the horizon. Maybe we should move the whole thing inside . . . what do you think? I don’t want to move the thing inside, but that barn is falling apart. . . .”
This before hello.
This before anything else.
“Hey there, Champ,” she says, as she pulls away. And for a second Maggie’s eyes open wide, because she thinks Gwyn is calling him by his real name, his birth name, but then she realizes Gwyn is just saying it like a nickname. Like calling him a winner. Like how Maggie sometimes calls him “Sport.”
She holds her hand against his cheek. “It’s good to see your face,” she says. And then, still on her knees, Gwyn turns to Maggie. “And you must be Celine?”
Everyone is silent.
