CHAPTER EIGHTEEN #3
“I think you do understand, though, honey. At least the shit with me and Scott, you seemed to understand the situation pretty well last night.”
“But I really didn’t think you’d take it this far,” she said. “I mean, I suspected that was where it was going when you didn’t reach out last night. I thought you’d call me crying and apologizing. I thought maybe I should have gone after you when you bolted.”
“Why didn’t you?”
She shrugged. “I just didn’t feel like dealing with you. I never know what to do with you when you’re in one of your states.”
“Yeah. I get it. And hasn’t that gotten tiresome for you over the last eleven years?
“Of course it has —”
“Isn’t it a relief to imagine not having to deal with it anymore?”
“Yes, but I always thought you’d mellow out with age. You’re just very insecure sometimes, and I thought age and success would eventually fix it.”
“But maybe I need something you can’t give me.”
“Like what?” Lillian snorted. “Dick?”
“Yeah, for one,” he said, and she snorted again. “But, you know. There are other things.”
“Ugh,” she said, and petulantly kicked a piece of driftwood out of her path. “I thought the other things were for other people.”
“Maybe I am other people.”
“God, don’t say that. That’s so disappointing. This is all so disappointing.”
“I know.”
They were quiet again for a moment. They rounded a curve onto a new stretch of beach, where the sand was even more dark and wet and hard-packed, and littered with driftwood and shells near the water.
Carver started keeping an eye on the ground in case he saw any cool shells he could bring back to Conway, who collected them.
“I don’t like to disappoint you,” he said. “I’m being honest when I say that.”
“I know,” Lillian said, in a surprisingly mournful tone. “That’s how I know all this is real.”
“I’m sorry I fucked our shot with Credit Suisse.”
“Yeah, I didn’t like that at all, but I think you ultimately made the right call, so I’m willing to let it slide.”
As an olive branch, he admitted, “I really have no idea what I want to do next, so I’m not ruling out staying with Blackbrick. But I might take a short leave of absence, like a month or something, so I can try to figure shit out. Would that be okay with you?”
“I can’t stop you.”
“Okay.”
“Getting divorced is a hassle, you know,” Lillian said. “I mean, our prenup is very good, but it doesn’t cover everything.”
“I want you to take the duplex and the sailboat, and I want the yacht.”
“Sure, we can do that.”
“I don’t really care about any of the real estate, honestly, you can just buy me out of my equity.”
Lillian nodded. “But you know, if we do this, I’m going to try to take you for all you’re worth.”
Carver laughed. “You know that won’t work.”
“Yeah, but I’ll try anyway, with an excellent lawyer. I’m going to make you fight it out with me.” She grinned. She loved fighting it out. “You owe me that.”
He echoed her: “I can’t stop you.”
Lillian stopped and turned to him. The sun had come out from behind a cloud, and she was lit brilliantly by it, her eyes almost gold.
He saw a flash of crow’s feet near the right one, skin and muscle acting in defiance of Botox, and he felt a surge of affection for her.
She put her hand out to him, and he looked at it, then shook it.
“It was a good run,” she said.
“It was,” Carver agreed. “Hey, you want to race me?”
“Do what?”
“Race me, just up the beach here. Look how flat it is, it’s perfect to run on.”
Lillian turned to survey the landscape, then nodded. “It is.”
“You game?”
“I’m game,” she said with a twinkle in her eye. Then she abruptly dropped his hand and sprinted away from him, leaving forefoot strike marks in the sand.
“Hey!” Carver shouted, bolting after her. “Hey, cheater!”
Lillian let out a loud, throaty laugh and didn’t stop.
Carver agreed to get dinner with Lillian that night so they could continue hashing out the finer details of their separation, and in the meantime, she returned with him to his parents’ house so she could drop him off and then take the Maybach across the state line into Connecticut to do some shopping on Greenwich Avenue.
She came inside with him, and they found the rest of his family in the den, finishing up the movie Free Solo.
Lillian greeted everyone by loudly announcing that they were getting a divorce, to the horrified confusion of the adults and the confused horror of the children.
“It’s fine,” she said, flapping her hand. “It’s the best thing to do. I’m about to head back out, does anyone want anything from Hermes?” She waited, then looked around. “No?” She then said goodbye to everyone by going around and kissing them on the cheek before departing with a, “Ta!”
Once the front door had slammed shut behind her, the sound echoing down the hall, everyone stared at Carver like he’d been criminally negligent in some way. He scratched his stubbly cheek, realizing he hadn’t had the chance to shave yet. “Sorry about that.”
Nora’s face was a tight rictus of disbelief, like a clown had just run up to her and thrown a pie in her face.
“I’m missing something here, right?” Maggie said to Chip in an undertone, and he shushed her in an ‘I’ll-fill-you-in-later’ way.
“It’s alright,” Doug said stiffly, from his armchair which bookended the leather sectional. He gestured with remote in hand: “Come sit down.”
“What if I want a present from Hermes,” Aaron said to no one in particular.
Carver went and sat down on the couch between Chip and Conway, making each of them scoot over to accommodate him. He nudged the latter, then opened his palm to show her a pearly, creamy slipper snail shell.
“Pretty,” Conway murmured. “For me?”
“Yeah.”
She took it, smiling. “Thank you.”
“Can I turn the movie back on?” Doug said, looking around. “We were at a pretty critical juncture.”
“Go for it,” Carver said, settling in.
Chip left with his family a little while later, citing the school day tomorrow and their arduous 25-minute drive back to Fairview, though Carver suspected he would have been itching to hit the road even if it were a Friday.
It was obvious that he and Nora still weren’t on good terms, though he could tell there hadn’t been any new blowups in the interim, and the two of them did exchange a quick hug after Chip finished packing up the minivan in the driveway.
Doug hugged him next, while Nora went to the backseat to say goodbye to the kids and surreptitiously make sure they were buckled in correctly. (Carver noticed Maggie notice this and minutely roll her eyes.) “Drive safe, kid.”
“Always do,” Chip said, patting Doug on the back.
Once Doug had stepped away, Carver went in for a hug too, even though he and his brother didn’t usually do this. Chip surprised him by yanking him in close, squeezing him and whispering in his ear, “I love you, you gay little Jew.”
Carver laughed. “Love you, prick,” he whispered back.
Chip patted him hard on the back. They separated, and Carver went to say goodbye to the kids, who were already mentally checked out and playing iPad games.
Behind him, he heard Conway and Chip saying goodbye, and Chip asking if she was still planning to have dinner at their place next week, which she assured him she was.
Carver was interested to note the little pang of loneliness he felt in response to this. Maybe he should make it out to Westchester more often. Maybe he could start trying to. It all felt possible right now.
Once Chip hit the road, Nora announced that she had a book club meeting about to start down the street, and Doug professed a need to go to Wegmans for “ham and a few other things.” Carver and Conway assured them this was fine, they were free to go about their lives, and once their parents had cleared out they went to sit on the back patio’s porch swing together so they could smoke a joint, eat pita chips and talk.
“You’re lucky I brought two of these,” Conway said, passing it to him after taking the inaugural drag.
Carver took it and smoked as they swung gently back and forth, enjoying some light locomotion under the warm afternoon sun. “It was Chip’s idea to rob you.”
“But you went along with it.”
“I did, but there were exigent circumstances.”
“I guess. How are you doing with all that?”
“Um.” Carver handed the joint back. “I’m not totally sure yet. It’s complicated.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m not gonna lie, I wish he wasn’t dead.”
“Right,” Conway said in a soft voice, looking over at him. “What about your, um, divorce?” She blew out smoke. “Or whatever’s going on?”
“You know, we don’t have to talk about me, actually.”
She laughed some more and passed the joint, then ate some pita chips.
“I’d love to talk about you,” Carver said. “You promised me earlier that you’d tell me how you’re doing after Chip left.”
“Yeah, I did say that,” Conway said, sounding annoyed with herself. She squinted into the sunlight. “I’m okay. I’m kind of losing hope of ever finding somebody I’d actually want to marry, and my job feels so stupid a lot of the time, and I feel like I have no money.”
“Do you still make art?”
“Yeah,” Conway sighed. Carver had always liked her art. She mainly drew and painted portraits in a characteristically offbeat style — she used stark, loose lines and stylistically elongated her subjects, like Modigliani or Ralph Steadman. “I do. But it’s not like I can sell it or anything.”
“Why not?”
She laughed. “Do you have any idea how hard it is to do that?”
“No,” he admitted. “But I’d buy a few pieces.”
“Ugh, God, I’d just give them to you, I don’t want pity money from my brother.”
“It’s not pity, dude, I like your stuff. I still have that drawing you did of me before I went to college.”
“Well, thank you. That is nice to hear. I just feel like, in every way I can measure myself against Mom and Dad at this age, I suffer by comparison. Which does get to me, sometimes.”
Carver blew out smoke. “You know about the affair and you’re still saying that?”