Twenty-Six
Finn had arranged things so if they wanted they could divorce in the morning and marry the same afternoon.
But Nina refused to share the date of their respective divorces with their wedding anniversary.
On Thursday morning, she put on her traveling dress.
Black, simple, demure. The perfect costume for an unraveling.
She removed her wedding rings and slipped them into her cosmetic bag.
Maybe the girls would want them someday.
Probably not, but maybe. She didn’t even wear makeup.
This ritual was a necessity, not a joy. She’d been told everything that was going to happen but was still nervous in the courtroom when Mr. López started speaking in his rat-a-tat mixture of English, Spanish, and French (imagine having all that vocabulary at your fingertips!).
She was sure someone was going to stop the proceedings and catch them out.
But the judge reviewed the documents impassively and asked a few questions of Mr. López and then everyone was shaking her hand and saying congratulations.
Mr. López led them to another office, where they submitted the papers and were handed an official divorce decree.
Within minutes they were standing outside on the sidewalk. She was single, a free woman.
In the car on the way back to the hotel, Finn asked how she wanted to spend the afternoon.
Looking out the car window, she pointed at the market they were passing in town.
“I’d like to go there. See what they’re selling.
Taste some food that isn’t made for Americans in a hotel for Americans.
” Finn groaned. “I wasn’t expecting a busman’s holiday.
The last thing in the world I want to do is inspect produce. ”
“It’s crowded and hot in the market,” Mr. López said, immediately siding with Finn, who paid his bills.
“Then I want to see the water,” Nina said, disengaging her hand from Finn’s.
The beach was wide and the sand an otherworldly white, like someone had poured bags of sugar up and down the coast. The water was a color blue she’d only seen in magazines and movies.
They had two chaise lounges with thatched umbrellas to protect from the sun.
The tropical drinks tasted better, the food more delicious touched by the salt air.
She felt herself getting drunk—day drunk for the third day in a row, was this her new persona?
—and feeling deliciously tired. They went for a long swim, and when she was falling asleep on the hotel towel carefully laid out on top of the cushioned chaise, she licked her forearm. It was salty.
When she woke, the sun was lower in the sky and a breeze had kicked up.
She could hear Finn faintly snoring next to her.
She picked up her watch from the sand beneath the chair, where she’d woozily placed it before falling asleep.
Two forty-five p.m. Clara would be heading to Drama Club and Bridie probably walking home with a friend.
She wanted to call them, but Finn had convinced her they needed to wait until the wedding was over to open that Pandora’s box.
And what could she possibly say to them over the phone that would do anything other than make them feel worse?
Going home was the start of a process, Finn kept reminding her.
A bumpy process that would lead everyone to a greater happiness. She had to believe him.
She sat up and considered another swim. For the first time since leaving Rochester, she felt herself relax a little.
The deepening blue and green of the water as the sun shifted in the sky made her wish she could paint or watercolor.
She pulled on flip-flops and grabbed her straw hat and took off down the beach.
Her empty ring finger felt strange, and she kept rubbing the place where she used to feel solid gold.
She stood at the shoreline and let the gentle waves break and crest and foam around her toes.
She had not been nice to Finn since they’d arrived, whatever nice even meant—but she didn’t care.
Stepping into his car two days ago had brought her to a place beyond sense and rules, a place that required its own vocabulary.
She needed a new language, one she couldn’t conceive of yet or one, ideally, they would build together, syllable by syllable.
The old words were useless: betrayal, destruction, selfishness.
They’d acted in service of something bigger.
A greater love. A way to move through the world honoring what she now knew was the purpose of love: that you would not feel alone all of the time, just some of the time.
In a perfect world, everyone would see—Finn and Nina were bringing their world more love.
And yet, strolling back toward the beach hut, she wondered what would happen if she left.
If she went back to the hotel and packed her bag and got on a plane and returned to Rochester a single woman.
Still scandalous but in a simpler way. Like Bess.
Bess would let her stay in her house until she found a place for her and the girls, not the temporary, furnished house Finn had rented for them in an adjacent neighborhood, close enough for all the kids to walk to but not too close to their former spouses.
He said they’d start looking for a bigger place to buy soon.
But what if she—left? What if she didn’t marry anyone else? Ever?
She could picture the little house she and the girls would make together.
She’d let them paint their rooms any color and pick their own bed linens and furniture.
She could imagine the three of them around a small table in the kitchen, laughing and eating more casually than they ever did when Sam was home.
The scene filled her with joy, but then reality rushed in.
She didn’t have her own money. A Christmas Club account with $375 in it waiting for her to do her holiday shopping.
A small savings account where she deposited her meager pay from the newspaper had a balance of almost $500.
Not enough to start a new life, never mind maintain one.
Sam would never finance this fantasy of hers.
She and Finn had already set off this little bomb.
How could she change course now? What agency did she have without him backing her?
She realized, glumly, she was thinking of herself as one of Finn’s acquisitions.
She reminded herself she was here because she was in love.
She was here to build a new life with a specific person, not just shed the old one.
But what if last night’s dinner was a harbinger of dinners to come?
What if, in ten years’ time, she found herself with a wandering eye again?
As she returned to their spot on the beach, she motioned to the waiter to bring two more drinks and a check.
Next to her, Finn let out a loud boozy snore and startled himself awake.
“God,” he said, rolling over to face her, “that was loud. I don’t usually snore.
” His face was creased on one side and his lovely hair all akimbo.
He hadn’t properly applied sunscreen to his beakish nose, and the ridge of it was bright red.
The waiter appeared with their drinks and Finn sat up and said, “Ah, you are a goddess.” He took a greedy gulp and put the glass down and reached out for her hand.
She took a sip, sat up, and said, “Come with me.”
“Where?”
“I want to show you something. Bring your drink.”
The sand was hotter than they expected, so they ended up dashing over to the slight strip of grass that led to the changing stalls and restrooms. “Where are we going?” he asked.
“You’ll see.”
She led him into one of the stalls. It was small and hot and smelled faintly of mildew, but she’d changed in there earlier and the latch worked.
She closed the door and struggled to get the slightly rusty latch to close.
Finn, beginning to get the picture, gently moved her hand away and engaged the latch with one pound of his fist. He turned to her.
She slipped the straps of her swimsuit off her shoulders, one at a time, as he watched.
She paused before she pulled the blue serge fabric down below her breasts.
He was transfixed. She kept tugging and kicked the suit to the side with one foot.
She could hear him breathing harder, more deeply, and she nodded at him.
He pulled off his damp swim trunks and lunged for her.
“Stop,” she said. He stared, confused. She put her hands on his shoulders.
“I have a question.”
“Now?” He sounded desperate. He would have done anything she asked.
“What if I want to go home?”
“What?”
“If I want to go back home now, before we get married. What would you say?”
“Nina.” He tried to pull her closer, but she resisted.
“I need to know.”
“What do you need to know?”
“If I want to go home tomorrow morning, what would you say?”
“You’re not my prisoner.”
“But what would you say? What would you do?”
She could see him straining for an answer, not comprehending the questions. “I would say, don’t go. I would say, I love you. I would say, if you need to go, go. But I wouldn’t give up on you.” He cupped both of her breasts in his hands and whispered, “You are so beautiful—”
“Shhh,” she said. She gave him a light shove and he sat on the cushioned bench behind him, looking up at her.
“Do you want to go?” he asked, confused.
“Maybe. Maybe I do.” She knelt on the bench, legs on either side of him, until she was straddling him, but he wasn’t inside her.
She kept herself there for a bit, teasing, until he started to groan.
With one hand on his chest, she took her other hand and lightly wrapped her fingers around his cock and held it firmly.
He moved his head back and forth, wild-eyed.
“Look at me,” she said, as she put him inside her and started to move slowly up and down and up and down. “Look at me.”
She had never looked another man in the eyes during sex.
Not even Finn. And what they were doing in the slightly mildewy, damp cabana took on the same otherworldly quality of the past few days.
It was sex and it was something else. He had his hands around her waist, but she was controlling the pace of the friction, how their bodies moved, and he was following her.
It was slow until it was furious. They moved with each other in a kind of fever, an exorcism and a baptism, stopping and starting until—and she would never fully embody this word again—until they were utterly spent.
Collapsed onto each other but not moving.
Sweaty and giddy and tearful. They were reconstituted in what she would always think of as their real union.
The moment when she chose him despite and because of it all: The pain. The sacrifice. The beauty.
The wedding the following morning took exactly twelve minutes.
I do, I do. Man and wife. Kiss the bride.
Judith offered to come and take photos, and they said yes.
The only photo they would ever display in their home was the one Judith took that day.
Nina in her white linen shift, Finn wearing his divorce suit, both hand in hand, grinning at each other like a couple of fools.
Behind the viewfinder, Judith had laughed.
“Now there are two people in love,” she said as the shutter clicked.
As they packed for home the next morning, Nina took the pretty pink soap shaped like a scalloped shell from the hotel bathroom and tucked it into a corner of her suitcase.
When they got home, she would place the soap into a box with the rest of the photos from the trip, a few seashells from the beach, a matchbook from the hotel, and for many years to come she would take the box out when she needed a reminder and bring the soap to her face and breathe deeply.