Chapter 32. Molly
It’s two days before Thanksgiving and I’m scouring my perennially unkempt house. It always takes everything I have to prepare my home for Seth, a man who folds his socks into stackable rectangles and has a toothbrush just for grout. After five months of going back and forth between each other’s houses I am mostly inured to his shrieking at the appearance of stray crumbs and his habit of bleaching my sink. But this is the first time we’ve spent a holiday together, and I want it to be perfect.
I take a break to check my email. I’m waiting to hear back from my dad and his director on the latest draft of Busted. I sent it weeks ago and haven’t gotten any notes. The director, Scott, usually responds right away. The radio silence is making me uneasy.
But there’s nothing—just some emails about other, smaller projects I’ve been working on—so I commence the dreaded task of steam-mopping my floors.
My phone rings—Dezzie—and I pounce on it, eager to wail to a sympathetic ear about my fear of being judged dirty by society’s most hygienic man.
But she’s sobbing.
“Oh my God,” I say. “Babes. What is it?”
She doesn’t say anything. She makes a noise like she’s suffocating.
The first thing I think about is Seth. They’re both in Chicago. Maybe something’s happened to him, and she’s been tasked with telling me. Every day, now that we’re so close, visions flash before my eyes of losing him. A plane crash. A car wreck. An undiagnosed heart defect. So many things that could strike at any moment to take this unexpected joy away from me.
“Dezzie!” I say. “What’s wrong? You’re scaring me.”
“It’s Rob,” she chokes out.
I feel a sharp, shameful relief that whatever horrible thing this call is about, it’s not Seth. And then an overwhelming wave of guilt that this is my reaction to my best friend’s hysteria. I’m seeing more horrific visions. I think of Covid. I think of cancer. I put my fingers on the table and press them down to make myself talk instead of spiraling.
“What’s wrong? Is he okay?”
“He’s leaving me.”
“Wait, what? Leaving you?” I’m sure I heard it wrong.
I have frequently entertained the thought that Dezzie might benefit from taking some time apart from Rob, who has continued to devolve from a goofy model husband into an erratic, booze-soaked stranger. It never once occurred to me that he might leave her.
“He got some woman pregnant, and he’s filing for divorce,” she says raggedly.
I stare at my phone like it’s radioactive.
“What the fuck? Rob cheated on you?”
“Yes! With some woman from his grad program. He said it was just a fling, but now that there’s going to be a baby, he needs to try to make it work. With her.”
All I can think is: no. No, no, no. This cannot be happening to someone I love.
Not to Dezzie, of all people.
She’s about to start her second round of IVF. She and Rob refinanced their house to pay for it. I suspect her desire for a child is the reason she’s stayed with him this long.
That, and she loves him.
However difficult their marriage has become, there are years and years of love between them.
I want to fly to Chicago and stab him in the neck.
“I’m going to die,” she gasps out.
No, Rob is. Because I am going to murder him.
But I bite that thought back because it isn’t what she needs to hear right now.
“Oh, honey, no you’re not,” I say. “It’s going to be okay. You have me and Alyssa and your parents and all your friends and we love you so, so much and we will be there with you every step of the way, no matter what happens.”
Even as I say it, I know it might not be enough. It took my mother years to glue herself back together after my dad left her. Two decades to trust another man.
When someone you’ve been with for so long turns on you—changes into something unrecognizable—it makes you question your own reality. What did you miss? What did you do? And if it can happen once, what will keep it from happening again?
“I don’t know what to do,” Dezzie says hoarsely. “He’s just gone, Molly. He literally took a duffel bag and left. Just like that.”
I flash back to my dad’s BMW pulling out of the driveway. Of standing in the front yard sobbing, begging him not to leave. Thinking that what was happening could not possibly be real. Praying he would see my desperation and realize his mistake and turn the car around.
He didn’t.
They don’t do that.
They just fucking break your heart and go.
My hands are shaking.
“Dez?” I say, trying to keep my voice calm for my friend. “Listen. I know exactly what to do. First, do you have any herbal tea? Chamomile?”
“Tea?” she wails. “What the hell, Molly?”
“Process-oriented tasks are calming!” I tell her, marshaling my years and years of therapy. “You’re going to make yourself a cup of tea and we’re going to talk this out, okay? Can you do that?”
“Yeah,” she says, after a long pause. “I guess.”
“Good. I’ll wait. Put me on speaker.”
“Fine. Hold on.”
I hear her fiddling around in her kitchen. Hear water running, then the electric kettle roaring. Hear her crying.
“Okay, I made the stupid tea.”
“Good girl. Now I want you to inhale the steam off the top of the cup while I count to five. All right? Deep inhales, deep exhales, all the way from your belly.”
“I should have called Alyssa.”
“I promise, this will help. Deep breaths. Do it with me.” I model breathing as I count. “One. Two. Three. Four. Five.”
I hear her following my breath. I count it out again. We repeat this over and over, until her crying slows.
“Okay,” she says shakily. “I feel calmer. Thank you.”
“Good. Now, before you do anything else, you need to call Seth. I’m going to text you his work number.”
While I’ve been counting, I’ve also been having visions of my mother losing her house. My rich dad hiding his money. This isn’t the same situation, but I know that Dezzie and Rob have debt. And if Rob can cheat on her and leave her, he can also hire a scumbag lawyer who can ruin her financially.
Maybe this is the reason I’ve fallen in love with a divorce attorney. I still don’t trust them as a species, but I trust Seth. I know he is honorable and good at what he does. I know he will protect my friend.
Dezzie whimpers. The sound is pure pain. “Oh God, Molls,” she says, “this is a fucking nightmare. It’s Thanksfuckinggiving, how am I supposed to—”
“Stop. Seth will know exactly what to do, okay? Will you call him?”
“Yeah,” she says weakly.
“And, while you’re doing that, I’m going to book a flight to Chicago.”
“No, don’t. My parents are already planning to come. They’ll be here tonight.”
“Then you’ll have all of us.”
“No, no, you have your trip with Seth.”
We’d planned to drive to Joshua Tree for the long weekend. Seth wants to cash in on my pining-era impulsive invitation to take him there. He says that was the first moment he realized I might really feel something for him.
“Are you sure?” I ask Dezzie. “Seth will understand. We can stay at his place and all spend the weekend together.”
“I’m sure,” Dezzie says.
“Okay, love. Call Seth and call me back.”
As soon as she hangs up I put my head on my kitchen table. I’m still shaking.
Dezzie and Rob. My God.
Happy endings, man.
Just when you think they might exist…
It’s terrifying, because things with Seth are getting really, really serious. I’ve watched myself fall for him, knowing my feelings are getting out of hand, and let it happen anyway. Enjoyed it happening. Sometimes I find myself randomly smiling and staring off into space, daydreaming about a life with him. One where we move to the same city, get married, maybe even have a baby.
I’ve begun to let myself wonder if we’re safe.
But no one’s ever safe. Because if this can happen to Dezzie and Rob, it can happen to anyone.
I send Seth a text.
Molly:Hey babe—dezzie is going to call you at work. Make sure to pick up. It’s important
I wait two minutes. He doesn’t reply.
He always replies.
Intellectually, I know he must be in a meeting or already on the phone with Dezzie, but it rattles me. I attempt to return to cleaning, but I can’t focus. Trying to prepare your home for a romantic visit from your boyfriend seems really fucking tasteless in the midst of your best friend’s life unraveling.
And I keep getting lost in my own memories of the day my dad left.
He’d taken me out for breakfast, to Denny’s, which was our special place. He ordered chicken fingers for breakfast—a childish habit of his I’d always found hilarious. My pancakes came and he took a sip of coffee and told me, casually, that he’d be moving out that day. “Your mother and I are getting a divorce.”
At first, I thought he was kidding. My dad liked to be funny, and my mom was often the butt of his jokes. In retrospect that’s a telling detail, but at the time I was a daddy’s girl and thought it was charming when he mocked my mother to amuse me. Our shared sarcastic sensibility was our special bond. My mother’s sincerity and warmth and easily hurt feelings weren’t on our level.
But that morning, there was no punch line—unless you consider him telling me he was moving into a beach condo with Coral Lupenski, the twenty-two-year-old daughter of my dentist, funny.
I began to suspect I’d been on the wrong side of history.
It was confirmed when we got home and Mom was locked in her bedroom, sobbing like she might die, and his only response to this was to roll his eyes and tell me she was “being hysterical” and that he’d left money for pizza in case she stayed “a basket case all day.” Which is when the true panic set in.
When I realized he was leaving me too.
I started yelling. I said this was pathetic, that you can’t just leave your wife for some bimbo because you’d gotten famous.
He said—because he is a bad writer who traffics in stale clichés—“All good things must come to an end, toots.” Then he grabbed his keys and walked out the front door.
I couldn’t not follow him.
I begged him to take me with him and, when he didn’t even respond, collapsed bare-legged in my cutoffs on the sharp crushed shells of our driveway as he drove away.
And the worst part was that in the aftermath, during the deepest, scariest part of my mother’s depression, when she stopped making meals and barely showered and refused to see anyone except my grandparents, I kept wanting him to fix it.
I wanted my father.
He and I had been so close. I would get waves of despair so intense I’d almost pass out from them, and I wanted to call him and tell him I felt like I was dying, that I needed him to rub my back and tell me it was going to be okay—but he was the reason for the despair in the first place. He was the reason it would never be okay again. At least not for a very long time.
And I know that this—this ache for someone who has irrevocably destroyed their ability to comfort you—is how Dezzie is feeling. The person whose love she most craves isn’t there for her because he’s the one who is causing her the pain.
I want to take her in my arms and hold her. I want to give her everything that Rob gave up.
My phone rings, and it’s her.
“Dez?” I ask. “Did you get a hold of Seth?”
“Yes.” She sniffles. “He can’t help me.”
“What?”
Seth is one of Chicago’s premier divorce attorneys. Of course he can help her.
“Babe, back up,” I say. “What do you mean?”
“He said he can’t represent me because Rob already came to him this morning and tried to hire him. He says he’s ‘conflicted out,’ even though he didn’t accept the case.”
“Wait. Rob told him about this and Seth didn’t fucking tell you?”
“I don’t think he can? Legally? I don’t know. He gave me the numbers of a couple other attorneys he said are good.”
“Jesus.” I am flooded with a sudden, all-consuming feeling of betrayal. “I’m going to call him right now and talk to him. I’ll get him to do it. There must be a way.”
I hang up before she can say anything, and speed-dial Seth.
He picks up immediately.
“Hey,” he says in a somber tone.
“Please tell me it isn’t true that you refused to help Dezzie.”
“Whoa,” he drawls out. “Refused to—I told her—wait. What’s going on? Are you upset with me?”
“Yes,” I hiss. “I am extremely upset with you.”
I drum my gel nails aggressively on the table, glad they are long and spiky for the satisfying clack they make.
“I didn’t refuse to help her,” he says. “I can’t really say anything beyond that—conversations regarding legal matters are confidential—”
“Oh, please,” I interrupt. “You can’t invoke attorney-client privilege if you won’t take her as a client. And I can’t believe you didn’t tell her right away when fucking Rob showed up at your fucking office.”
He sighs.
“Molls, I’ve been devastated all morning, but my hands are tied. It would be completely unethical for me to share that information. And I would love to represent Dezzie, but Rob got to me first. We’ve been working together on the nonprofit, so he thought I’d take the case. But obviously I would never represent him against Dez, so I said no. Unfortunately, the fact that he consulted me means I can’t represent her either.”
He’s being so patient and reasonable that I want to throw the phone at the wall.
“Why can’t you make an exception?” I shout. “You’ve known Dezzie for decades. She’s my best friend.”
He sighs. It sounds awfully long-suffering. Like I am the problem here.
“Like I said, it’s unethical. I feel terrible, but there’s nothing I can do to change that.”
I have no words.
Oh, wait. I do: “You’re fucking over my friend.”
“No, I’m not,” he says, in his firmest lawyer voice. “She’s my friend, too. And I’ve given her the names of the best people in Chicago. She’s going to be in very good hands, whoever she chooses.”
I don’t say anything. This does not deserve a response.
“Molls, I have a client waiting. I’ll call you in an hour, okay?”
“Yeah. Fine. Whatever.”
I hang up the phone before he can say goodbye and call Dezzie back.
“Hi,” I say. “I’m really sorry but I can’t get him to change his mind. He says it’s a matter of ethics and he’s being completely intransigent.”
“It’s fine,” she says. “I understand.”
She might, but I don’t. He’s a senior partner at his firm. He can’t bend the rules one time? If not for her, then for me?
“Molly,” Dezzie says. “Really, it’s fine. He was nice and super apologetic.”
I force myself to take a deep breath.
This is not about me and Seth.
This is not about my dad.
I’m just having an emotional reaction on behalf of my friend that I will no doubt have to apologize for later.
“How are you feeling?” I ask Dezzie. “Have you called the other lawyers?”
“Not yet.”
“You should do it right away, before people leave the office for Thanksgiving. Get to them before Rob does.”
“I know. I will in a minute. I just feel completely discombobulated.”
“Have you talked to Alyssa?”
“No. I feel like she’s going to say I told you so.”
“God, Dez, no. Alyssa would never do that. Besides, she didn’t predict this.”
But Seth did.
In our bet.
The thought gives me chills.
“I know Alyssa thought I should leave him,” Dezzie says. “She basically implied it when we took the kids to Six Flags last month. And she was right.”
“Well, she’ll certainly wish she’d been wrong.”
Dez puffs out a breath. “Honestly, I’m just glad I found out before I got pregnant.”
“Yeah. Bullet dodged.”
“Huge bullet.” She pauses. “You are so smart, you know that?”
I’m taken aback. “What do you mean?”
“You’ve never given a real fuck about men. Never arranged your life around romance bullshit. I used to think you were pathologically cynical, but now I think you’re a genius. Rejecting all these toxic institutions.”
It’s not great to be called pathologically cynical by someone who has known you since elementary school, but I try not to get tripped up.
“What toxic institutions?” I ask, though I suspect I know.
“Marriage. Love. ’Til death do us part bullshit.”
She sounds so brittle.
She sounds like me.
I hate to hear it.
Seth has opened me to the possibility of these things. I’m not sure I fully believe in them. But for him, I want to.
“Dezzie, love is not a toxic institution,” I say. “I certainly don’t reject it. And as for marriage—some people seem to enjoy it. Who knows.”
But she’s not listening.
“You don’t set yourself up to let other people upend your life,” she’s saying. “You protect yourself. And I used to think it was a little cowardly, to be brutally honest. But now I’m really fucking jealous.”
“Um, I’m not sure whether to be offended or flattered right now,” I admit.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I shouldn’t rant at you. I know things are going well with Seth, and I’m really happy about that. I’m not trying to, like, poison your optimism. I just know you always keep one eye open, and I feel idiotic that I didn’t do that too, especially after the last year with Rob. Like, I should not be blindsided, but I feel like I’ve been hit with a truck when I wasn’t even walking near a road.”
“I really think you should let me fly out. Or meet you somewhere.”
“Dude. No. You and Seth are doing your first Thanksgiving. I’m not going to fuck that up.”
“He can stay his ass at home. I’m so pissed at him.”
“Don’t be mad on my account. I get it. He was really sweet on the phone.”
I sigh. I know I’m going to have to let go of this anger, but at the moment it feels good and right.
It’s probably not fair to Seth.
But it’s real.
“What can I do to make you feel better?” I ask Dezzie, trying to remind myself that this is not about me.
“Nothing,” she mutters. “Unless you want to kill Rob.”
“I do want to,” I say. “I’ve been fantasizing about it all morning.”
“Me too. I was thinking I might use a pastry blender.”
“Gory. I love it.”
“I’m going to call Alyssa now,” she says. “Face the music.”
“Okay. Call me whenever you want. I love you.”
“Love you too, Molls.”
I spend the next few hours rage-cleaning. Using a previously untouched vacuum cleaner attachment to suck God only knows what from the interior cracks of my couch. Magic-erasing fingerprints from light switches. Dusting the bulbs in my lamps. It calms me down. By the time I’m done my fury has dissipated, at least a bit.
I strip my bed and put on the brand-new sheets I bought for Seth’s visit, and even pre-washed and dried for optimal softness. I sage every room and burn palo santo—giving the house the official smell of LA. I go out and buy fresh flowers to arrange on my table and then secure provisions to take with us to the desert. I splurge on good cheese and charcuterie and briny olives and rosemary-fennel crackers from my favorite fromagerie. Cornish game hens to roast in lieu of turkey. Two kinds of potatoes and fresh thyme and cracked pepper and cream for my mom’s famous gratin. A cranberry-orange pie speckled with shiny flecks of demerara sugar. Eggs and bacon and carrot cake muffins for breakfast. Whiskey and Seth’s favorite pinot and ingredients for a special Thanksgiving cocktail with cranberries and sloe gin. Candles. A big cooler and two bags of ice to transport my haul when we make the two-hour drive tomorrow.
I shop myself into something numb enough to feel like forgiveness.
Seth calls me back just as I’m pulling into my driveway.
“Hey,” he says. “Sorry, I got sucked into client calls all afternoon. I just arrived at the airport. Are you okay?”
He sounds almost frightened.
I feel terrible.
“I’m fine. And I’m sorry for being tough on you earlier. I was just disappointed.”
“It’s okay,” he says. “You’re an amazing friend.”
I would not credit my behavior to being amazing. More like traumatized. But I don’t argue. “Thanks.”
“Are you still picking me up from LAX or should I grab an Uber?” he asks.
“Of course I’m picking you up. I can’t wait.”
I hear him smile. “Me neither. See you tonight. I love you.”
“I love you too,” I say.
And I do.
I’m still shaken up, but I do.