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“Well look at that.” Harlow pops into the front room with a huge grin on her face. “Looks like somebody got herself a date with the man of the hour, and no cookies were burned in the process.”
Athena watches Elijah stride across Seadog Lane before turning to look at her sister. Her smile fades and the panic sets in. “What do I do now?” she asks, looking terrified.
Without an ounce of concern, Harlow bites into a cookie as she smirks at Athena. “Now you go home and put on something cute, and then get ready to be kissed by the hot son of a rockstar, you ding dong.”
Marigold
Marigold wakes up on Christmas Eve with a dream in her head, and it’s not a happy one. In it, she’s waiting for Cobb to come off stage after a concert, but he never does. Every other band member, set technician, lighting director, and band affiliated person comes and goes, but Marigold sits in an empty dressing room backstage, waiting for her husband as the auditorium empties out and goes silent. It’s chilling.
But when she opens her eyes it’s still early—too early to get up and start grinding coffee beans and turning on the kettle while her son and ex-husband are still sleeping nearby. The sky is still a dusky blue, but the clouds are pink as the sun rises and throws its winter light all around the Gulf of Mexico. Marigold rolls onto her side and looks out her open window as the curtains move gently in the morning breeze. The dream won’t leave her.
As she thinks about the meaning behind the dream, her mind turns over a real memory like she’s examining a coin in her palm. It’s a time she prefers not to think about too much, but her confrontation with Cobb on Seadog Lane outside of The Frog’s Grog had brought it all rushing back. Frankly, having him in her house has broughteverythingrushing back, and she’s doing her best to filter her thoughts and feelings so that she doesn’t act on every single one of them, and also so they don’t color her writing any more than they need to. But life influencing art is real, and to that end, she’d written an entire chapter the day before about the very memory that’s playing out in her mind now, as the sun rises over the water.
It was midway through their marriage when Marigold started to wonder what—or who—might be taking some of Cobb’s attention away from his life with her and Elijah. This was about 1999, early in the days of everyone using email, but certainly before smartphones and everyone constantly tip-tip-tapping away on phone screens to send texts pinging into the ether. This was back when Cobb’s manager handled all of his email and he and Marigold shared an address for any personal correspondence (GoldieCobb99 on either yahoo or AOL or some other long-unused email provider). Anyhow, she’d sat down at the big, slow to boot up computer that sat in the rec room of their English cottage, listening to Elijah playing with Transformers in the next room as he imagined some other world full of trucks and robots and good guys versus bad guys.
Without any sort of intentions, Marigold had opened an email from her childhood best friend and read up on the latest details from home, then she’d sent a quick note to her sister, letting her know that they were considering coming to Vermont for Thanksgiving. It was only after she’d sent the message that the thought occurred to her to check whether an email she’d sent to the head of a charity board had gone through, as she hadn’t ever gotten a response.
Marigold opened the “sent” file and combed through them, recognizing all the email addresses in it except for one. Frowning, she’d hovered over the email and then double-clicked, curious as to what this message was and who had sent it.
It was from Cobb to a woman named Susan Smyth-Rounder, and the message was short and to the point:I can’t do this anymore. It’s too painful. I want to be a good husband to Marigold, but this is killing me. Can we quit for now? Or pause this? I can see you again at some point, just not now.
She’d read the message over and over, becoming more frantic with each re-reading. Susan Smyth-Rounder’s name looped through her brain on repeat, and within an instant, she had an image of the woman: younger, pretty in an uncomplicated way, someone without children or baggage or anything that would weigh Cobb down.He wanted to leave her. He was already in the process of leaving her.
With a sob, Marigold had logged out of the email before she did anything crazy like email the woman herself, and she’d spent the rest of the day cleaning—scrubbing the uneven tile floors on her hands and knees, beating the rugs that she dragged out of every room of the house—and poor Elijah watched with wide eyes as his mother became a whirling dervish of activity in order not to lose her mind.
At the time, Cobb had been on tour. A short one, but gone on the road nonetheless. Talking about Susan Smyth-Rounder had not been something she wanted to do on the phone, so she’d held the name under her tongue like a hard candy that she wanted to savor, letting images of Cobb and this unknown woman dance through her mind each night when she closed her eyes to sleep. It was a torturous two weeks, and by some mysterious reserve of willpower, Marigold had really and truly held her tongue.
Until Cobb returned.
That night, she cooked a huge roast dinner. She had the table set like it was a national holiday, and she, Cobb, and Elijah drank their sparkling water in wine glasses. Everything was perfect, and Marigold had spent two weeks polishing the stone of her anger to a high shine. She was ready.
“Gorgeous dinner, Goldie,” Cobb said with a gleaming smile lit by candlelight. Elijah looked back and forth between the two of them with wonder; he was a boy who clearly adored both parents, and in turn, they adored him. Cobb reached over and mussed his son’s hair. “What’s the occasion, love?”
Marigold sat down slowly, looking across the table at her husband magnanimously. “The occasion is your return, darling.” She lifted her wine glass, sipping the sparkling water like it was the finest champagne. “And the fact that you have something important to tell me.”
Cobb looked confused. Confused and surprised. He stared at her over the flicker of the candles. “I do?”
“Mmm,” Marigold said, setting her glass on the freshly ironed and starched tablecloth. She’d pulled out all the stops for this dinner. “You were going to tell me all about what your friend Susan Smyth-Rounder is up to. I assume she was with you on tour?” Marigold picked up her knife and fork and cut into a baby potato like she was dissecting a small animal. Her slicing was meticulous, her eyes glinting as she glanced up at Cobb.
“Excuse me?” Cobb’s confusion and surprise had morphed into annoyance. “What are you talking about, and how in the hell do you know Susan Smyth-Rounder?”
Marigold turned to Elijah. “Sweetheart,” she said to him in a calm voice. “I know we’re just starting dinner, but if you go play in the other room for just a few minutes, I’ll let you eat all the dessert you want tonight, and you can stay up an extra hour to play in your room before bed.”
Elijah seemed to be weighing this offer, but not wanting to look a gift horse in the mouth (and not being a kid who cared too much about roast or potatoes, but one whodefinitelycared about extra dessert) he shoved his chair back and bolted into the front room, falling right into his game of Transformers or Legos.
“What kind of game are you playing?” Cobb hissed, leaning forward over the table and lowering his voice. “Have you gone mad? Flinging my personal business in my face over dinner? And in front of ourchild? What is this, Marigold?”
Marigold stood, tossing her napkin onto the table. She needed leverage—physical if not emotional—and she stood over him, staring down at Cobb with all the hurt a wife feels when she realizes that there’s another woman in her husband’s life.
“I was sending my sister an email and I happened to see the one that you sent to Susan,” Marigold said, folding her arms across her chest. “‘I can’t do this anymore, can we quit for now?’” she quoted, spitting the words at him like rapid-fire bullets. “What is going on, Cobb? Tell me now.”
To Marigold’s complete and utter shock, Cobb dropped his head into his hands and sobbed. Sobbed like a man who’d just had his whole life taken away from him, which, if she didn’t get the answers she wanted, was exactly what she was about to do to him.
“Cobb, answer me,” she insisted, though some of the fire had gone out of her tone and her stance. Her hands fell to her sides. “Cobb?” Marigold said, feeling a little frightened at the way her husband was crying. “Tell me.”
It took him at least a full minute before Cobb could even lift his head, and when he did, the candle flames caught like specks of glitter in his tears.
“Goldie,” he said, reaching out a hand to her and looking up at his wife, who was still standing. “Come here.”
