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Gwyn looks up at her daughter, makes her meet her eyes. “What I think is that there is no good way or bad way. And the sooner we let go of expectations about how things are supposed to go, the happier we get to b
e.”
Georgia smiles at her, puts her hand on her head. “Wow.”
“What?”
“That sounds awfully Buddhist of you, Mom.”
“Please . . .” Gwyn shakes her head, looking away.
“No, seriously,” Georgia says, smiling bigger now. “Dad would be impressed. You are getting wiser about this stuff than he is. Maybe we have a double conversion on our hands here. Wouldn’t that be something? There would be no reason for you guys to get divorced, after all.”
“All right, enough,” she says. “Help me here.”
And Georgia sucks all the way in—as much as her pregnant belly will allow—holding her shoulders tight against her back, her ribs as in as they can go. And Gwyn is able to do it, finally. She pulls once, and then once more, and gets the zipper all the way up.
“There we go.”
Georgia pulls her dress down tighter over her legs, going to look at herself in the mirror, now that the dress is up and ready.
“Not bad?” Gwyn says.
“Not bad.”
Which is when Thomas walks in.
He is in his suit, his tie undone, but already in his suit. He looks back and forth between Gwyn and Georgia. “Oh, I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t want to interrupt. I was looking for you.”
He is talking to Gwyn, and she knows it, knows it by how he is being soft when he says it. He has come to take this time with her, lying down together, as if that is something they still know how to do. Except Georgia is still looking in the mirror. And neither of them wants to ask her to leave.
Thomas meets Gwyn’s eyes, and points, behind himself, toward the door. “You know, I’ll just see you down there,” he says.
Gwyn nods from the edge of the bed, and smiles at him. “I’ll see you down there,” she says.
Then right before he leaves, he smiles at her, smiles at her in her towel. “You look beautiful,” he mouths.
“Thank you,” she mouths back.
Then she watches her husband go.
Maggie
She only brought a small bag out here, which she hasn’t even unpacked yet, and so she takes it with her. Her outfit for tonight is folded on top: an ivory tank top and a knee-length green skirt, her freshwater pearl earrings in their small metal container. Nate bought them for her in Berkeley last year. The earrings. She offhandedly told him that she saw them at a store—earrings that were pretty, but too expensive—and he went back to the store in the hope of surprising her with them. Only she described them badly, or he heard the wrong things, and he came back with these earrings instead: these dangly earrings, with black opals running among the pearls. But she loves the earrings, loves them even more than the earrings she noticed herself, and not only because every time she puts them on she gets to think of his going into that store for her, trying to be good to her in a way she had trouble being for herself. But for this reason, if no other, Maggie takes the earrings out of her bag, out of their case, and leaves them on his dresser behind his orange Steelers mug, where he won’t find them.
Then she takes the backstairs down. Nate is still in the shower. Why should she be sneaking out of here like a criminal? Why should she be the one sneaking? Nate is the one who created this situation. Yet it doesn’t make her feel better because, on the other side of the blame, she is still leaving him. So what good does the blame do her? It just reminds her that it feels like she doesn’t have a choice in anymore.
And she can barely stand to picture him getting out of the shower, towel wrapped around his waist, expecting to find her on the bed, where he left her. Waiting to talk. Waiting to try and get somewhere. In her place will be a note, saying she can’t do this. Not tonight, at least. Maybe she’ll feel better able to deal with everything back in Brooklyn. Back home in Red Hook. Maybe.
Now, she just needs to go. She feels that clearly. But on the bottom of the staircase, she stops in front of the small window and looks outside. She can see it from here: the barn lit up and glowing, like an oversized nightlight. White balloons and water lilies everywhere. Bundled sticks in six-foot vases. Lemon center-pieces. The only color, the only break.
People are already starting to arrive. They look like movie star versions of themselves: the women in cocktail dresses, the men in perfect tan jackets. Like there is really something to celebrate. Everyone holding single-malt Scotch or champagne flutes.
Maggie steps outside, closing the door quietly behind her. It is raining, slow and heavy drops. The sky dark with the promise of more to come. Part of her is resolved to walk down into town anyway, but she doesn’t know these roads particularly well. Can she remember how they got here? She thinks so. Right, left, right, right. Reverse it. She thinks she can figure it out. And, still, the last thing Maggie wants is to get lost, and end up back here, end up anywhere near back here. She wants to be on the green and white bus heading back to New York, heading back to Red Hook and her neighborhood bar, Sunny’s. When everyone asks where Nate is tonight, she will say he is out at his parents’. She will drink a glass of Maker’s Mark for him. She will get to pretend that this is okay.
As she heads down the driveway, she catches it out of the corner of her eye. The house next door, Victorian like Hunt Hall. But slightly smaller. The Buckleys’. The beam of the light outside the screened kitchen door shining down on someone smoking a cigarette, someone Maggie recognizes.
Eve, the caterer.
