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“I have been studying Buddhism, though,” he says. “For whatever it’s worth to know that. I’ve gone on Saturday mornings for silent meditation, and I did go to a retreat upstate. It wasn’t as long as I said, but I did go to one. I do feel . . . interested in the teachings.”
She has wondered how Thomas is going to get out of the Buddhism thing after the divorce. How was he planning on getting out of that? Post-divorce, telling them he changed his mind? Post-divorce, telling their kids that he now believes in something else? Maybe in the end it won’t matter anyway. Maybe it is far easier to forgive your father for being fickle about his beliefs than for being fickle about your mother.
“Thomas, I went to the meditation center in Oyster Bay. I know you haven’t been there. I know you have never been there.”
“I’ve been going to a different one.”
“A different meditation center?”
He nods.
It takes Gwyn a minute. It takes Gwyn a minute to get to where he is trying to take her. “To the one Eve goes to?”
“To the one Eve goes to, yes,” he says.
She looks at her husband, just looks at him. No judgment. “What have you learned, Thomas?” she says. “Tell me one true thing.”
He thinks about it, and then he takes his eyes off the road, for a moment, and looks at her.
“We don’t know anything,” he says. “About what is coming next.”
Maggie
Nate is getting ready to take Denis to the hospital. He has changed into jeans and a paint-stained THE HOLD STEADY T-shirt, and is still wearing his orange Converse, which she stares down at when he asks her to come with him, when she tries to figure out why she says no. She decides it is better for her to stay behind for now. She decides—even if the reasons aren’t entirely clear to her yet—that she is better off staying in this broken house without him, and if not right away, then soon, surveying the different rooms on the first floor for the worst damage, and using the empty wine boxes to store away what may get lost or damaged.
They are standing on the porch, by the front door, Denis already in the car, ready to get going. Nate looks nervous, shifty, and shifting, from foot to foot. She knows he wants to ask her if she’ll be here when he gets back, and feels bad that she isn’t making that part easier.
He smiles at her, but she can’t make that easier yet either. She can’t kick the feeling that something very important has
been forgotten.
“Where did you go before? Did you walk all the way into town and change your mind?”
“I didn’t even get that far. I ended up next door at the Buckleys’ talking to Eve.”
“Eve as in the caterer?”
“Eve as in the caterer.”
She pauses, focuses on the word STEADY on his T-shirt before considering whether she is going to say it, before deciding that it really isn’t a good idea, and then saying it anyway.
“I think she is having an affair with your dad.”
“What?”
He looks like she punched him. That’s what he looks like, instinctively stepping back from her. He gives her a stern look, and all of a sudden it feels like he isn’t sure he can see her. All day she hasn’t been able to see him, and now it is mutual. Maggie isn’t sure that this is better, but it surprisingly doesn’t feel a whole lot worse.
She puts her hand on his chest, on the STEADY.
“What are you talking about?” he says.
“I’m sorry but there were just things she was saying. And then the way your father has been acting. And maybe I’m particularly sensitive to it today, but I still know what I know. I still think I know what I know. Eve said too many things, knew too many things, for me not to start adding it all up.”
He shakes his head. “I think you’re wrong.”
“I don’t.”
“It just doesn’t make sense. You’re talking about someone my mother hired to have here tonight. Someone my mother interacted with. This is who you’re saying my father is involved with?”
