Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Seventeen
“Duly noted.” I tighten my grip on the arm of Miriam’s couch.
Oliver sighs and tips his head back, staring straight up at the textured ceiling. “Why aren’t you taking this seriously? You wanted to come back to therapy and now here we are and you’re saying things like ‘duly noted’?”
“We’re getting a divorce, Oliver. It’s a little fucking late for therapy!”
“You agreed!”
“To the divorce or the therapy? Because I’m not sure I agreed to any of it. And now you want to dictate what we talk about.”
Miriam interjects. “What would you like to talk about, Diana?”
“You want to talk about our sex lives? Okay.” I turn away from him, toward Miriam. “Maybe we should talk about why my husband knew I was faking orgasms but still made love to me the exact same way each time.”
“Did it even matter?” Oliver asks.
“Apparently not.”
“All I wanted to do was please you. To make you happy. And sex was this constant reminder that I couldn’t.”
“So say something! You could have talked to me. I was right there.”
“So was I.”
“Maybe you should have watched a YouTube tutorial.” A low blow. Oliver shrinks into the couch. Walk it back. “Or maybe you should have asked the person you were having sex with.”
Oliver doesn’t fire back. He gets quiet. And then, “I couldn’t.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. I already felt like such a failure. Like a bland piece of nothing.”
I dig my fingernails into my palms.
“Diana? You look like you want to say something?”
“I want to scream, actually.”
“Okay.”
“But I can’t. Because if I scream, Oliver will feel worse and then we’ll both feel worse. This is how it goes. This is why I couldn’t ever say anything, because I’ll be stuck in the loop of always making Oliver feel worse.”
“Oliver? What do you hear when Diana says this?”
He doesn’t look at Miriam. He keeps his eyes on me. “You know what I think about all the time? The first time we had sex. In my old bedroom. And I asked you if you came. And you said yes. And a part of me didn’t believe you. But it felt like a silly thing to call you out on. And for my own ego, I needed to believe it. But it set a precedent.”
I think about that night, too, about how safe I felt with Oliver as soon as I met him. He was so steady when everything else around me was shaky. I was heartbroken and broke and alone in a new city. And the sex between us was tender and it was good but never great and I didn’t come. I lied and then I lied again. And then the very things that made me safe, I began to resent him for. My needs changed and so did his—we both knew it and we still couldn’t have a fucking conversation about it.
“All I wanted was for you to want me. To really want me. I wanted you to want to rip my clothes off.”
“I should have been honest with you,” I say.
“What would that have sounded like? You being honest with Oliver?”
I owe him this. I owe him the truth. “We had the same sex for so long. And for some reason it felt wrong to even suggest a different way. I felt dirty. Like I would shock you. Or disappoint you.”
“What did you want to do?”
“It’s not just a position I wanted to try—it was a feeling, a way we approached it. Sex with you felt old-fashioned. Like you were older than you are. Or younger. One of them.”
“I’m not a total prude, Diana. Not like you think.”
“But when…when you listened to that fantasy…”
“What fantasy?” I’m in dangerous territory now and I know it.
“The recording I played for you once, in our bed, when Miriam asked us to share a secret. I played you that recording of a woman talking about sex…”
“But that wasn’t you talking. It wasn’t your fantasy—”
“It could have been! And the look on your face…”
“I felt like you set me up on that one. I didn’t know what you wanted me to say.”
“Maybe not that it was ‘creepy’?”
“I never said it was creepy.”
“You didn’t have to, Oliver. I felt it.”
“But that wasn’t you!”
I turn to Miriam. Bingo. Oliver was fine judging other women. Judging their desires. Their fantasies. It was fine because it wasn’t me. But that only made me want to retreat into my shell even further. What were my fantasies allowed to be? And why did I feel I needed permission? It’s as if a version of my desire was cemented long ago and any deviation from it is some kind of betrayal we stumble over or walk the long way to avoid.
—
I hurry to meet L’Wren at school, straight from therapy. We sit through a long planning meeting in a crowded auditorium of impassioned parents trying to decide what the fall fundraiser should be after a disastrous last-minute cancellation from the golf club that had promised to host a tournament.
It’s the ninth volunteer job I’ve signed up for since school started. At least when the other moms gossip about me and Oliver it will have to include, You mean Diana who organized the Gardenpalooza? What a shame her marriage didn’t make it!
After lots of hemming and hawing and many bad ideas—the dreaded silent auction; a magic show by the former principal who must be in his nineties; the ever-reliable stinker Housewives of Rockgate —one of the dads proposes writing a letter to Cher to see if she will consider performing for the school. L’Wren loses patience and takes charge.
“Let’s do a dance, just for the parents. We’ll call it ‘Party with a Purpose’ and it’ll be an eighties-style homecoming, so everyone can wear their hair real big and their dresses very short. K?”
After a unanimous vote in her favor, L’Wren walks me to my car. “Jesus. Why can’t the parent body just admit they need an excuse to get wasted on a weeknight? Bye, Penny. Sorry they didn’t go for your Bluey theme. That would have been a blast.” She loops an arm through mine and asks about Jasper. “So y’all will get to see each other before Iceland?”
“He’s flying in this weekend and cooking me dinner. Just the two of us.”
“At the hotel?”
“No. He booked an Airbnb this time. Just for the weekend.”
“That feels like a step in the right direction. Soon it’ll be a month-to-month rental, then a lease, then…”
“Okay. I get it.”
“Too bad he won’t be here for homecoming! We could take Jasper and Arthur and really blow up the gossip mill…”
When we get to my car, she stops. “I just gotta say again, I’m so glad we are going through this together. I’d be so lost if it was just me and all the other sad, divorced moms. That’s not fair. But you know what I mean.” In a throaty whisper she adds, “ Penny. ”
“Have you told Kevin you’re dating?”
“Mmm. Maybe his assistant will do it?”
“L’Wren!”
“What? I would pay her to do it. I mean, she knows him better than anyone. Do you know I sometimes used to wish they were having an affair? I really did. Some days, in the back of my mind I thought, Wouldn’t it be great if he was fucking someone else and I could make a clean break? ” She sighs, her eyes flitting around the emptying school parking lot. “But no. So now we spend all our time dividing up assets and avoid talking about anything personal. There’s a house for sale on the corner that Kevin’s put an offer on. We’re thinking it’ll be nice for him to be nearby. Very conscious uncoupling.”
“Wow. You guys are really moving fast.”
“It’s all part of our mediation meetings. Y’all are in mediation, right?”
When I don’t say anything, she narrows her eyes. “You’ve filed papers at least? Diana! What is taking you so long?”
I try changing the subject. “I think that’s great for Halston, you being neighbors.”
“I actually prefer Arthur’s apartment. It’s so cozy. And easy to clean. It’s just us.”
“And how many cats?”
“Seven.”
“Oh my god, I was kidding.”
“Relax. Only three are permanent. The rest are fosters.”
“L’Wren. I don’t know if I should steer you away or thank god you found a male version of yourself.”
“Two of them are incontinent. You know how big someone’s heart needs to be to manually express a cat’s bladder in the middle of the night?”
“Pretty big.” I open my car door but L’Wren lingers. She bites at her fingernail, then adjusts her purse with nervous energy. “Ever since we got home from Paris, I keep thinking how lucky we are, you and me. We have more story, you know? I felt a little like…this was it. This would be my life. Happy but not happy.” Her eyes glisten with tears. “I had no idea there was this much more. And the thing is, I want Kevin to find this too. I want him to have an incredible connection with someone and know that the real thing feels so different.”