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“Let’s go, then,” he says.
And he starts to pull her out of the crowd, away from here. But before they can get out, Gwyn starts to speak again, and Maggie turns back. Maggie turns back, which may be the first mistake because she can hear it, something breaking in Gwyn’s voice. She hears something, impossible, starting to break.
“This is the way we spent our first night together, in a way.
And in celebration of that, and everything that has come since, we hope you will raise your glasses and join us in a toast as we cut the cake.”
But there is no cake yet. Which is when Eve starts to wheel it in.
And Gwyn says: “Please join us for this one last thing.”
Gwyn
This one last thing. Her words are drowned out by the thunder. Gwyn almost can’t hear herself, her voice sounding bizarrely far away, displaced, like she has just gotten off a plane, her ears popping, creating a remove she didn’t expect but feels relieved to have. It helps her keep going. To the part that is coming next.
In a minute, the cake will be front and center. The red velvet cake. There is only enough cake to serve to ten people, or—maybe the way these women eat frosted carbohydrates— all two hundred guests. There is only one person this cake is really for, though. It is the cake he loves best, and the last time she will ever make it for him. This holy man. Holy and unholy. Right and wrong. Good and evil. Is anything that clear-cut? That able to be separated? If it was, it would be easier. It would be easier to avoid being fooled and confused by the people who hurt us. We could recognize the injuries before they came. We could recognize the places where we will never be safe.
The rain sounds like it is going to break through the barn without any problem at all. Hard, deep raindrops. Breaking only for the claps of thunder. Breaking only for the lightning. Shocks running through her each time.
There are things Gwyn knows. She is holding a poem in her hand. She is looking out at her children, and Maggie—at all of Thomas’s and her friends. The ones she likes, the ones she doesn’t particularly. They will try to be there for her, on the other side of this, all of them. She knows this. But she also thought she knew something else. She thought there wouldn’t be another side of this. She thought she could count on Thomas. She never thought they would actually reach this moment.
But Gwyn turns and sees her wheeling the cake in, in a red chef jacket, matching, almost as though she has planned it, the inside of the beautiful cake. Gwyn is looking at the cake so intensely—the red creeping out beneath the white—that it takes her a minute to meet Eve’s eyes, and she almost misses it—almost misses it taking place, the moment that Thomas notices Eve. But Gwyn remembers. She remembers just as Thomas and Eve lock eyes on each other: Eve picking up the cake, holding it in her hands.
They are still there, in that place new couples are in at the beginning, in that space where they are so happy to see each other. Surprised and in awe. It is you. I can’t believe it. I can’t believe you weren’t just a dream. So it takes Thomas a moment to catch the rest of it—what it means that Eve is there. What that means that Gwyn has found out.
Her husband turns toward her, his eyes open wide, and Gwyn braces herself against it—her natural inclination to support him, to offer herself to him. She looks hard right back at him so that he knows—without a doubt—that she knows everything. She knows the lies he has told, about where he has been these last nine months, about where he is hoping to go now. Without her.
“Gwyn . . .” Thomas whispers. “Just, please. Let me explain.”
Let me explain? This is the best he can say in this moment? This is the best he can offer? What three words could be worse? She can’t think of any. She can’t think of any that are less appealing, more useless, than these, promising an excuse for the inexcusable.
Let me explain. Like: let it go. This is the job. To forgive. To understand. To be generous. Someone else can do that, thank you.
Eve is standing there with the cake. Gwyn looks at her, and then down at her cart, takes the heavy knife from it.
She holds it out to her husband. “Cut the cake, Thomas,” she says.
He shakes his head, refusing to take it. She holds it closer to him, her heart beating in her hands.
“Do it,” she says.
“I’m not going to do it, Gwyn,” he says.
She is aware that they are talking about something other than what they are talking about, but she isn’t sure that he knows exactly what.
“Yes,” she says. “You are.”
Everyone is quiet. She can see them, watching, wondering what is happening. She isn’t sure either. She isn’t sure what she is actually asking him to do. She just knows that he isn’t doing it. He’s not doing anything else either. He’s not doing what she needs. His hands are by his sides, and he is completely still— the way he has been, forcing her to move around him to get anywhere.
Then she sees it. He glances at Eve. Because it is her that he is most concerned with. It is her that he wants to make sure is okay. First and foremost. Someone is always first. Eve, with her eyes cast down at the ground, is first for him.
And it drops out of Gwyn.
Her last bit of hope.
The hope she didn’t fully know she was still holding on to: that confronted in front of their friends, in front of everyone, Thomas would see what he was doing to them, to himself. And that he would turn away from this old fool he is becoming: someone who throws a life away because he is scared. He is scared he is getting too close to the end of his.
Is it as simple as that? All of a sudden it doesn’t feel much more complicated. All of a sudden, it doesn’t matter anymore.
