27. Maren
MAREN
Ido not, as it turns out, get on the puddle-jumper.
I sit on the bench at the regional dock with my suitcase between my knees and I watch the small white plane I have, on my phone, paid for taxi to the runway, and I do not, when they call my row, stand up.
I do not stand up because somewhere between the shuttle and the dock and the small unbothered face of the gull on the cliff house I have realized — clearly, without drama — that there is a thing in the laundry hamper of the bathroom of the wing in the villa that I am not going to be able, in any future life, to live without, and that thing is the soft cotton t-shirt I wore down to the kitchen on Tuesday morning of last week.
It is, on its own, an absurd reason.
I cancel the flight at six o’ four. I rebook for noon out of the city airport, which is the second-tier flight, which is the one that goes through the regional hub, which is the one I should have booked in the first place if I had been, in fact, leaving like a person, and I take a taxi back up the coast road.
The driver — a different driver, a woman in her fifties with a crucifix on her dash — does not, in the forty minutes of the drive, ask me a single question, which is, currently, the kindest thing anyone has done for me all week.
She drops me at the lower gate at seven thirty.
I walk up the drive with my suitcase. The gravel is the gravel.
The cypresses are the cypresses. The string of bulbs along the upper path is, this morning, off.
I do not, when I come around the bend, see Cassian's car in the front drive.
I do not, when I come up the steps, see Sebastian at the door.
The door, when I push it, is, however, open, the way the doors in this house have, for two weeks, been open for me, which is a thing I will, in some hour of next month, note as funny.
My family is in the foyer.
All four of them. My mother in the small floral robe she travels with, my father in last night's shirt, Sienna in the pajamas she has, in fact, been wearing every morning all week as if to make a point about something she has not yet identified, and Owen in slacks and a pressed shirt, because Owen is, even at seven thirty on the morning of a domestic catastrophe, dressed.
My mother sees me first.
"Maren."
"Mom."
"What — Maren — sweetheart, you have a suitcase — Graham, she has a — Maren, where have you been — "
"Mom. Let me — let me just?—"
"Sebastian came to my door at five thirty.
He told me you were unwell. He told me — Maren — he told me you were unwell, and at six forty he came back and he told me that you had, in fact, left the property, and I have been — Maren, I have been standing in the foyer in this — in this robe — for forty minutes, and Cassian is in his office and he has, he has, twice, refused — Maren, sweetheart, what is happening. "
"Mom."
"Tell me you had a fight."
"Mom."
"Tell me you had a fight. Sweetheart. Couples have fights. The first year is hardest. I have, Maren, in thirty-two years of marriage, walked out of this house — Graham, do not laugh — I have walked out of this house nine times in thirty-two years, and your father — your father — "
"Mom."
"Your father always knows where I have gone, that is — that is the trick, Maren, you walk out and he knows where you went and he comes for you, that's — that's all it is, that is — "
"Mom."
"Sweetheart."
"Mom. Stop."
She stops.
She stops because something in my voice does the small, quiet thing it has, in twenty-six years, never done, and her hand, which had been gripping the lapel of her robe, lowers. My father, at the bottom of the stairs, sets his coffee cup on the small console table.
"Mom."
"Sweetheart."
"Sit down."
"Maren—"
"Mom. Sit. Please."
She sits on the velvet bench by the door—the one with the needlepoint cushion she’s praised twice since Sunday.
My father lowers himself beside her. Owen stays standing.
Sienna stays standing. And Sienna, I notice, is giving me the pinched, narrowed look of a woman who has burned through every theory she had in the past fourteen hours and is now starting over.
I set the suitcase down.
I cross to the bench. I crouch in front of my mother, the way Cassian crouched in front of me on Saturday night, and I take her hand. Her hand is small and cold and her rings, on her fingers, are loose because she has, in two weeks, lost a pound.
"Mom. The engagement was not real."
The foyer is, after that sentence, very quiet.
"Maren."
"It was a lie. I told it at the chef's table because — because you all were — because I was — because I had had a hard week and a harder dinner and Cassian walked through the lobby and his name came out of my mouth and I went up to his office on Monday to confess it and instead of firing me he — he asked me to keep telling it.
For a week. For — for a deal, Mom. For a deal.
He needed a fiancée for an investor visit.
I needed a way out of the chef's table. We agreed.
We agreed in writing, Mom. There were terms."
My mother's hand, in mine, does not move.
"Maren."
2. More interior, more vulnerable
“Sunday night, I had no idea it would last beyond a week. Tuesday morning, I still didn’t—Mom, I didn’t. And I’m not rewriting any of it. I let parts of it become real. I think he did too.
But the thing that mattered to him wasn’t me. It was a contract being signed at eleven on Monday. That’s happening no matter where I am. He made his choice.
So I’m leaving. I’m going to Carmel. I already asked Davies for the transfer. Mom… I’m going.”
I have, at this point, for the first time today, begun to cry.
I am embarrassed about it. I do not, in front of my mother, cry.
I have not cried in front of my mother since I was twelve.
I have cried in front of Livian. I have cried in the staff bathroom.
I have cried, I will admit, in the kitchen of a wing of a villa I am, currently, never going to set foot in again.
I have not cried in front of my mother. The thing on her face, when it lands, is not a thing I have a script for.
"You—"
This is Sienna.
Sienna is, currently, the color of something that has been left out in the sun.
"You — you lied."
"Sienna."
"Mar — Maren — you — you stood at the chef's table and you told us you were engaged and then you let us — you let us come up to a villa and you let Mom — Mom, did you hear what — "
"Sienna," Owen says.
"Owen, no, no, you do not get to — you do not get to Owen-Sienna me on this one — Mar, you let us — you let us call a florist."
"I know."
"You let me tell Pia?—"
"I know, Sienna."
"This is — Mom — this is — Maren, this is cruel, this is — "
"Sienna."
This is Owen. Owen, who has, until now, stood at the foot of the stairs with his coffee. Owen, who is, currently, the only person in this foyer whose face has not changed.
"Sienna. I knew."
"You — what."
"I have known since Friday. I have known all of it since Friday. I have not, since Friday, told either you or Mom because I knew that Maren had — Sienna, Maren had to be the one to do this, and she has, in fact, just done it. So sit down."
"Owen, what?—"
"Sit down, Sienna."
Sienna sits down.
She sits down on the bottom stair, hard, in her flannel pajamas with the little stars on them, and she puts her face in her hands, and I would, if I had any money in my account left to spend on emotional labor today, do something about it. I do not. I have — currently — none.
My mother hasn’t said a word in two minutes. She’s looking at me without an opinion, and the absence of it is so strange I barely recognize her.
"How could you do this to me?"
There it is.
I had, on the cab ride, written this part on the back of a receipt with the pen the cab driver let me borrow.
I had written it in three short sentences.
I had written it because I knew, the way you know which step on a staircase creaks, that this would be the question.
I had written it so I would not, in this moment, lose my nerve.
I lose my nerve a little anyway.
I keep going.
“Mom. I love you. I always have. And for as long as I can remember, I’ve been told—gently, consistently, by you and Sienna and Owen when he was twelve and your sister every Thanksgiving—that whatever I was doing wasn’t quite the right thing.
Not the right success. Not the right job.
Not the right relationship. I was never the version of myself you wanted.
And I lied at that chef’s table because, for once, I wanted you to look at me the way you look at Owen.
I’m sorry it got this far. I’m sorry about the florist. But I’m not sorry for the lie.
I’ll apologize for the florist. The lie happened because I had run out of any other way to be visible in this family.
And I’m not going to regret doing it. I’m only going to regret that it took me twenty-six years to get there. ”
"Maren—"
"I love you, Mom. I'm — I'm leaving."
I stand.
I lift the suitcase. I look at Sienna, who does not look up.
I look at Owen, who has the small set face he had at the dinner table two days ago when he told her to eat her salad.
I look at my father, who has, in the entire last twenty minutes, said exactly nothing.
He stands. He crosses to me. He takes the suitcase out of my hand.
He carries it down the front steps to the drive.
The taxi I had asked the driver to wait at the gate has come up. He sets the suitcase in the trunk.
"Ren."
"Dad."
"Eat. On the plane."
"I will."
"All right."
He kisses the top of my head.
I get in the cab.
The cab pulls away.
I do not, in the rear window, look back at the villa.