Four
Four
Saturday
The next day, the sun blazes, its rays like invisible flames that shoot down from the sky. After Bunny returns from morning Mass, the whole family piles into her and Frank’s car. It’s a midrange sedan—nothing glamorous, enough to get the job done. Frank’s eyes are on the way out, and so Bunny—wearing a coral-colored cotton top—slides into the driver’s seat (which is not to say her eyes are much better). The two of them work in tandem—a real grade A comedy act—to fold up the windshield’s reflective shade. Behind them, Ellie, Maggie, and Jonah are crammed into the back seat, as tight as canned sardines, their knees practically in their throats.
“Everyone comfortable?” Bunny asks before she backs the car out of its spot and carefully turns onto their town’s main drag. Above her, a palm tree–shaped air freshener hangs from the rearview mirror—the one Frank keeps peering in to cast a questioning glance at Jonah, as if his son-in-law of more than two decades has transformed into a serial killer overnight.
No, Ellie thinks as Maggie—who dons a pair of ripped denim shorts and a tie-dyed tank top printed with the logo of a jam band—works hard to keep her thigh from touching her mother’s skin, exposed from her predictable chino shorts. Not even a little bit. Jonah sits on the far end of the back seat, still close and yet so far. They haven’t exchanged more than a quick hello all morning. No one here is comfortable at all.
“We’re great, Bunny,” Jonah answers for the family. He wears his black sunglasses, a crisp navy-blue T-shirt, and tan shorts—vacation gear, even though this isn’t a vacation. Sweat drips in petite beads from his hairline. He’s trying to keep things amicable, to reduce the awkwardness and burden of their broken threesome being trapped here—smack-dab in the middle of the country’s tourism capital and in the center of Bunny and Frank’s retired life—for another full day.
The car moves forward. Through the window, the world is block after block of recently constructed condo developments and precisely manicured artificial lakes.
While Bunny drives, Ellie wonders if she and Jonah have made a mistake by telling everyone when they did. Maybe they should have waited until the end of the trip. But there’s no one to blame. Making the announcement on the first night was Ellie’s idea (Jonah couldn’t decide on the right time). It would be like ripping off a Band-Aid, or so she’d thought. She’d figured everyone would sense something amiss between her and Jonah anyway—that they’d feel that their chemistry was off or that something between them had changed. But no one had.
Her gaze still out the window, Ellie thinks back to one of their last fights. It was only weeks ago, she and Jonah still sorting out what they’d say when they arrived here, how they’d explain this mess to the family. They’d been talking about the divorce for what had felt like ages by then. But that night, as they sat at their kitchen table, a half-empty bottle of red wine sitting between them, Jonah finally uttered the thing that so far neither of them had said.
“You know, you’re the one who wanted this, Ellie!” he’d shouted, their black metal pendant light hanging above them in a way that suddenly made her feel like they were both under investigation for some unspoken crime. “ You’re the one who first brought all this up! This whole disaster—it was your choice, not mine!”
“That’s not fair!” Ellie had shouted back, the swing of her hand nearly knocking over her wineglass. “Don’t pin this all on me just because neither of us knows what we’re supposed to say to everyone.” She dropped her face into her hands, feeling like she’d aged about a hundred years in just a few weeks. They’d talked through their relationship so many times—their mutual unhappiness, their frustrations with all the disagreements and ridiculous tit for tats. But right then, Ellie thought back on that first night with the laundry basket. “We both wanted this,” she added. Sure, she was the one brave enough to have suggested a divorce first. But he’d agreed, right from the get-go. He’d agreed. Hadn’t he? “We’ve both been unhappy.”
“Huh,” Jonah said, the word not really meaning much of anything. It was just a sound, a filler.
“What?” Ellie asked, pushing away her glass. Who could drink right then? Who could even want that? “What do you want to say?”
Jonah stood, pressed his hands against the island’s countertop, the muscles in his arms inadvertently flexing. “It’s nothing, Ellie,” he said, his tone evening out with each new breath. “We’re both grieving right now.” He tossed up his hands as if to say Who even knows and then dragged his fingertips across his scalp. They turned away from each other, neither of them sure where to look. Their focus simultaneously fell upon the stainless steel refrigerator, where one of Maggie’s childhood marker drawings—a smiling illustrated sun wearing sunglasses—still hung, the paper yellowed with age. As delicately as if he were handling a newborn baby, Jonah pulled away the tape and held the paper in his hands. He looked at the drawing, then gently folded it and slid it into his pants pocket. “It feels like we’re grieving so many things,” he said.
Back in sunny Florida, Bunny pulls the car into a parking lot that looks out onto one of the artificial bodies of water. “We’re here!” She shifts the gear into park, gathers her things.
The memory vanishes from Ellie’s mind for the time being. “We’re here already?” she asks, confused. They’ve been in the car for all of two minutes. She turns around, looks through the rear windshield, noting that her parents’ condo development is still in plain sight. “We could have walked,” she points out, not that she would have wanted to with her back and the heat.
Of course, no one is in the spirit for this lunch, the one Bunny had planned for them the instant Ellie told her they were all flying down for a few spontaneous days (or at least as spontaneous as the airlines would let you be anymore). But then again, what else are they all supposed to do? Sit around the condo and cry? No one is dead—it feels like it, but no one is. They’re all here and healthy and, frankly, hungry. None of them thought a meal out was a good idea, though they all seemed to agree this is at least a better idea than sitting around the living room picking from yesterday’s lunch meat tray and staring at each other.
Bunny opens the door, trying to seem unfazed. Nearby, an elderly couple briskly walks on a smooth pathway. “Come on, everyone,” she says, like it’s just another day in paradise, as if this casual Saturday meal is not a sort of Last Supper—a gastronomical tombstone here to mark the end of something. “You’ll all love this place.”
The restaurant is terrible. It’s an old Olive Garden that has inexplicably been renovated into a different Italian restaurant that still looks exactly like an Olive Garden inside. Apparently, according to Bunny, the place is known for their delicious, fresh-baked breadsticks and bottomless salads. Again, not an Olive Garden.
“I’ve prepared a list,” Bunny announces as the family’s entrées arrive. Giant platters of chicken parmesan, dripping with melted cheese. Enormous bowls of pasta, ladled with steaming red sauce. It’s all stuff one is dying to eat when it’s nearly ninety degrees outside. Bunny digs through her handbag, pulls out her reading glasses and a notepad. “Is everyone ready?”
“Ready for what, Mom?” Ellie asks, picking at a bit of macaroni. She’s hungry, and yet, in the past twenty-four hours, her appetite has pulled a Houdini and all but disappeared. “Why did you make a list?” Across the table, Jonah is piling the mozzarella-drenched chicken onto his plate (even though it will absolutely bother his stomach later) and nodding at his mother-in-law to show her how much he’s enjoying the dish, the one he ordered upon her insistence. Beside him, Maggie nibbles her lettuce, as if anyone in the nonchain (but still basically a chain) establishment is concerned about her political stance. “A list for what?”
Bunny looks across the table. Her favorite creamy coral blush, another retirement favorite, is smoothed over her creased cheeks, a highlight to her perennial tan. She slides her readers down to the tip of her nose and looks at her granddaughter. “Why is she only eating vegetables again?” she asks the group, like Maggie is not sitting right here at the table with them. “Have you talked to her doctor? Maybe she has an—”
“She’s doing it for the climate,” Jonah says, but in a friendly, agreeable way. Maggie offers him a half smile, some camaraderie existing between them that’s no longer present between her and Ellie. “Isn’t that right, kiddo?”
Maggie looks at the food options on the table—many of which are her old favorites—and then back at her salad bowl. “The glaciers are melting,” she tells her chopped romaine.
“The glaciers?” Bunny scrunches up her entire face. “What do glaciers have to do with chicken parm?”
Despite Bunny and whatever she’s up to with her notepad, and Jonah and their impending divorce, Ellie’s focus remains on Maggie. She’s not the same as she was the day they packed the family car with plastic milk crates and twin XL bedsheets and then dropped her off at Middlebury’s picturesque campus. The school had been Maggie’s top choice. Unlike Ellie, who’d stayed close for college and then ricocheted right back like a boomerang after graduation, Maggie longed to go away for real . She wanted to find herself, she’d told Ellie so many—too many—times. To do things Ellie herself had never done. To explore and to see what existed outside the bubble that was her hometown community (too young to realize that schools like Middlebury are their own type of bubble). She loved to ski and be outside, and so Vermont felt perfect. Jonah agreed.
The weekend they visited Middlebury for an open house, Ellie and Maggie had a terrible fight.
“I love it!” Maggie had proclaimed on Sunday before they made the seven-hour drive back home. She was already wearing the Vermont sweatshirt Jonah had picked up for her in the campus store. “This is exactly what I want! This is exactly where I want to be!”
They were seated at a local restaurant, picking their way through an appetizer-size order of poutine. Ellie was happy for Maggie. But deep down, her maternal intuition kept insisting that her daughter’s choice was not the right one for her.
“What?” Maggie looked at her mother and sipped her iced tea. “You don’t like it?”
Jonah sighed, already knowing an argument was coming.
“I didn’t say that,” Ellie pointed out. “It’s undeniably beautiful. The town is obviously very charming.”
“Then what?” Maggie posed, her voice as sharp as a knife.
Ellie took a small sip of wine. “It’s just—I just don’t see you here at all.”
Maggie’s face appeared as hot as the fireplace that warmed the cozy room. “Why? Because it’s not, like, a mile from our house?”
Ellie looked to Jonah, raised her brows. “A little help here, maybe?”
Jonah drank from his amber beer. “Look, this is between the two of you. Maggie, you need to speak more respectfully to your mother. And Ellie, if Maggie says she likes it here, then maybe it’s not for either of us to question her choice to apply.”
Maggie’s yellowish eyes narrowed. “Why can’t you just be happy for me?”
“I am happy,” Ellie insisted and pushed away her plate. Obviously, she was done eating. “I just don’t see why you need—”
“Because that’s what kids like me do,” Maggie interrupted and aggressively flicked her hand, splattering cheese on her new crewneck. “I don’t want to stay close to home forever and never actually do anything.” She said the next part so fast that Ellie wasn’t sure her daughter even knew she was saying it. “I don’t want to do nothing with my life and just end up like—like—”
Maggie quickly cut herself off. But it was too late. Ellie had already heard the unspoken word in her head.
You.
I don’t want to end up like you.
Here in Florida, Ellie traces her hand across the restaurant’s tabletop.
“Anyway,” Bunny says, tugging Ellie’s focus away from her daughter. “Enough about the environment.” She readjusts her glasses. “Let’s talk through my list.”
“Get ready for this one,” Frank murmurs through a mouthful of baked macaroni. He’s wearing another tourist T-shirt, today’s selection printed with an illustration of a Floridian license plate.
“Oh, phooey.” Bunny shoos him off. She clears her throat, a signal that she means business, and lifts her spiral notepad. “I’m taking back Christmas.”
Ellie and Jonah—for the first time all day—exchange a look, both their eyebrows raised.
“Um, what does that mean exactly?” Ellie asks.
“Look, I know your father and I have celebrated down here for years now,” Bunny continues. “That cold—it’s too much for us at our age.” She sets the notepad on the table. “That’s why we’re going to host it here—at our condo—this year.” She turns to Jonah and suddenly chokes up. “Regardless of this ridiculous divorce stunt you two are pulling,” she says before dramatically dropping the volume of her voice—“which will never last, by the way,” she mumbles—“the five of us are still spending the holiday together.” She gives one firm nod, as if her word is gospel. “It’s one of the holiest days of the year for us!” She flips a page. “Speaking of which, let’s talk about Easter. It’s never too early to start to plan and to—”
“Bunny, I really appreciate this,” Jonah acknowledges, his tone sincere. When he does, Ellie notices a glint of wetness in his eyes. “But Ellie and I should probably talk through some of the finer points of the holidays.” His chest heaves with a substantial breath. “See what makes each of us comfortable.”
“So, what?” Maggie flings—actually flings!—her fork across the table. A rogue slice of cherry tomato lands on the white tablecloth. “We just, like, never get to spend the holidays together—all five of us—again?”
Across the dining room, another family is staring.
“Mags,” Jonah explains. “It won’t be that bad.” He pinches the bridge of his nose—a good one, angular, distinguished, but not so much that it’s all you see—and blinks the emerging tears away. “You’ll get to choose, you know. Spend one holiday with Mom, one holiday with me, so that—”
“You,” Maggie spits and glares at her mother. “I choose you, Dad.”
“Come on, kiddo,” Jonah says. He’s always been so soft on her. Dads often get to be this way with daughters; it’s the mothers who have to be so hard.
“It’s fine, Jo,” Ellie tells him, even though it’s not. She’s had enough, reached her limit. She pushes her chair out from the table right as their waiter appears behind her.
“Can I interest anyone in dessert?” he asks, already prepared to pass out the slender, laminated menus.
“No!” Ellie, Jonah, and Maggie shout, one of the few things they currently agree on.
“I’ll—I’ll take a look.” Frank reluctantly accepts a menu. “Do you still have that tiramisu?”
Ellie pushes her way through the dining room.
“Good Lord, where are you going, Ellie?” Bunny asks. “Come sit. I haven’t even gone through my full list! That’s only the first point. We haven’t even discussed the matter of birthdays yet!”
“Not now, Mom,” she says over her shoulder and navigates back toward the exit. “I—I need some air.”
Ellie sits on a bench just beyond the parking lot and stares out at the artificial lake. It’s pretty—Ellie can’t deny this—even though it’s not actually real. In the center of it, a series of three fountains artfully shoots sprays of water up toward the blue sky, like a mini Bellagio.
“Hey.”
Ellie turns and finds Jonah behind her. He appears so familiar and yet so foreign, like some object from her childhood she’s only now remembering ever existed. Jonah looks at his wife. She is, in this moment, still his wife. Nothing legal has been finalized or even officially started yet, both of them confident that telling the family was the appropriate first step. His expression, the distinct curves of it, suggests he wants to say something but doesn’t have the right words.
“Want a breadstick?” he asks, like this is the whole reason he’s come out here, and hands her a greasy golden carbohydrate tube.
Ellie pushes away her oval sunglasses, takes it, and begins to tear away little pieces, which she tosses into the grass where a family of ducks sits. They all quack in jubilation, pecking at the garlic-flecked bites with their orange beaks.
“What are we doing, Jo?” she asks, her gaze still cast on the water. She sets the breadstick beside her on the bench. “Are we really going through with this?” She looks up at Jonah, who’s still standing, unsure what to do. “Are we really getting divorced?” For the first time since this word has become a part of their marital vernacular, Ellie wishes she hadn’t been the first one to say it.
Jonah sighs heavily, finally takes a seat next to her. He pushes his sunglasses away from his face and onto his head. “I don’t know, Ellie. I’m not sure what we’re doing anymore.” He picks apart the breadstick, throws another handful of pieces to their new feathered friends. “This is what we both said we wanted, right?” He turns, locks eyes with her. “To start over. To hit the reset button. To try to become better versions of ourselves and take a shot at a different life.”
These are all things they’ve said before, lines they’ve crafted together, along with some they’ve adopted from the many self-help books about divorce they’ve both read in recent months, the ones they’ve told themselves make so much sense. But right now, the two of them side by side on this bench, the words don’t hit right.
They did all the things they were supposed to do in the weeks that followed that night in their bedroom. They talked. They went to therapy (only a few times). They briefly separated, but not for long, the uncertainty of it (What were they?) riper with inconveniences than anything. In short, they tried. This much, Ellie can say with certainty, is true. They tried. Hadn’t they?
“I’m worried about Maggie,” Ellie admits. “I don’t think she should take this trip overseas. I think she needs to come home after finals while we figure this all out.”
“Home?” Jonah tilts his face, and in a rush, Ellie can sense it—the tenderness she felt toward him and their situation only one second earlier dissipating. His tone suggests that an argument is coming on, not because something Ellie has said is wrong, but because they’re both just so broken and mad at themselves and each other for letting this happen. “And where would home be for her right now, Ellie? In our house, which will soon be half-empty? In the bachelor pad I still haven’t found for myself yet?”
“I don’t want to do this,” Ellie admits and, frustrated, tosses the rest of the breadstick at the birds. They go berserk, their wings wildly flapping. “I don’t want to fight with you anymore.”
There are so many emotions that come with a marriage ending. More and more, Ellie is coming to realize that a divorce is very much a specific brand of grief. In the span of a day—sometimes in the span of a single minute—she experiences a whole spectrum of feelings. Denial. Anger. Shock. Panic. Bargaining. Pain. Guilt. Sadness. And then, worst of all, acceptance that this decision they’re making is in fact right.
“Mom!” Ellie turns and finds Maggie rushing toward them, a furious look painted across her youthful face. Behind her, Bunny and Frank exit the restaurant carrying multiple to-go containers. “You can’t feed a breadstick to wild animals!” Maggie shouts. “That’s so bad for them! For their whole ecosystem!”
“What?” Ellie looks around, a feeling of uncertainty settling on her, as if she suddenly cannot remember where she is or how she got there. Her heart palpitates in her chest. “What are you talking about?”
“The breadstick, Mom!” Maggie snaps. “I saw you throw it!” She tosses up her hands to show her annoyance, huffs as loudly as a hurricane, and then joins her grandparents at the car.
Ellie watches them all settle inside the vehicle and thinks back to that night in their bedroom, the one when her whole understanding of the world shifted with as much force as the planet’s tectonic plates. Theirs is not a story of fate like she once believed. That day when they first met was only an accident, the result of a detour that Jonah, who’d been rerouted through Ellie’s town, had been forced to follow on his way to someplace else.
Life, Ellie now recognizes, is not a study in destiny but an experiment in choice, less a quirky romance novel about serendipity and more akin to those Choose Your Own Adventure books she loved to read as a kid. You make one decision and flip ahead twenty pages. You make a different one and watch your marriage end.
Back at the waterfront, the breadstick is gone. The ducks all waddle into the lake.
“Are we making a mistake, Jo?” Ellie asks when they’re alone at the bench once again. “Are we making a terrible choice by doing this?”
Jonah’s chest rises and falls as he inhales and exhales a round of deep breaths. He opens his mouth to say something. But before he does, Bunny begins to beep the car horn. They both turn. She’s waving from her spot in the driver’s seat, like they all have some very important event to attend.
Ellie doesn’t know what Jonah will say. Worse, she doesn’t know what she even wants him to say anymore. That, yes, they’re making a mistake. Or that, no, this is precisely the right choice. Which option is better? Which is more terrible?
The ducks swim away, leaving a gentle ripple in their wake.
“I mean, we already told the family,” Jonah says.