Chapter 21 #2
A ball of dread sat in her stomach as she took the number 4 uptown.
The subway car grew more crowded. At each stop along the way, she thought about stepping out and crossing the platform to take the next downtown train, even though she had been the one who said that she wanted to meet.
At the Fifty-Ninth Street stop, Emily pretended that the dread in her stomach was a ball of yarn.
She hooked it with knitting needles and made it into something else. A sweater. This calmed her.
She arrived at her stop. She knitted a hat, mittens.
She exited the station onto the gusty street.
She walked by the Frick Museum, which she often visited when Stella was a baby and napped in her carrier, her hair the peachy color of Turner’s skies.
Emily passed by Central Park, where horses pulled carriages with tourists.
She knitted leg warmers for Stella and a scarf for Connor.
Then she walked into the café and saw Jack, seated, waiting for her.
Everything she had knitted came undone. Jack’s face filled with happiness to see her.
She had expected to find him angry. His happiness was worse, because it fed her guilt and the guilt eroded her confidence in what she had come to say.
When she avoided his attempted embrace, he didn’t accuse her of coldness.
He winced but regained his smile. He pulled a chair out for her to sit with him.
Emily began with what she had rehearsed: “Things have been bad between us for a while.”
“It’s my fault. I’m ready to change.”
“You’ve said that before.”
“This time is different. I have a therapist. He’s helping me see destructive patterns in my behavior.
He says my childhood was built on a model of feast and famine: everything that money could buy, never enough love and approval.
So when I lash out at you, I act the way I wish I could’ve as a child. ”
“What about when you lash out at Connor?”
“If you mean the pool, you overreacted. Or”—he added hastily—“consider the possibility, okay? You acted like I tried to drown him.”
“I know you didn’t, but it was punishing. You frightened him.”
“Kids get frightened. Parents don’t always know what will set them off. I thought we were horsing around but I guess he didn’t, and as soon as I realized, I stopped. I never hurt him and I never would.”
“The way you treated me—”
“That day? Em, I was so mad. I know you were, too, but I was insulted. It’s insulting how you never trust me.
You always assume the worst. My therapist says I need to take ownership of my behavior and I’m trying.
I understand that you assume the worst because of how I’ve acted in the past, but I’m not going to be like that anymore.
They say that marriage is falling in love over and over again with the same person.
Can’t that be us? We have to break our old patterns, but I can’t do that without you. We can’t get better if you don’t try.”
“I don’t want to try. I tried for years.”
Jack looked down at the table, took a breath, but didn’t speak. When he lifted his face, his cheeks were wet. “Tell me what I can do.”
“Nothing.”
“Don’t talk like you’re reading a script. I’m your husband. We have a life together. A family.”
“I know you work hard during the week, so you can have the children on the weekends. You will put enough money in my account for us to live on.”
“I’m supposed to pay for you to leave me?
You’re kicking me to the curb and I haven’t done anything wrong.
Look at our friends. Look at Arthur Hamilton.
He’s a drunk and he cheats. I would never do that to you.
You could take ownership, too, of your behavior.
Think about how you always make me into a villain.
You want to talk about punishing behavior? You’re ruthless.”
Emily thought of how she had sent Gen to the bus station.
Was she ruthless…cruel? A minnow of doubt darted through her, quick in its skinny vigor.
The question distracted; she found herself following where it might go.
She forgot, for a moment, all that she knew about Jack in pursuit of what she didn’t know about herself. Was she cruel?
“You cut your parents out of your life,” Jack continued. “I know they weren’t perfect but they raised you. Your first move is to blame other people. Meanwhile, I’m always trying my best. Imagine what this is like for me.”
Emily imagined his loneliness. She imagined herself as he saw her, and because what he saw was true for him, it was easy, when she imagined Jack’s perspective, to accept it as true for her, too.
This was an old habit: inhabiting his point of view.
Seeing herself as bad, wanting to be good.
Now, though, she wished she were ruthless.
She wished she were a cunning liar. Those qualities would make her powerful.
“I came here with an open mind,” he said. “You came to give me orders. Why should I obey?”
She had practiced the words so that they would readily fall out of her mouth if he confused her. “If you don’t, I’ll file for divorce.”
Quietly, he said, “I’ll do anything you want if you give me a chance. Remember how magical we were in the beginning. We could be that way again. Wait to make a decision, please.”
What would waiting gain her, if she were truly ruthless?
She said, “You’ll put money in my account?”
“Em, if you need a separation so that our marriage can heal, of course. I’ve always supported you, you know that.”
She could economize with what he gave her.
She would build savings. She would need it to hire a lawyer.
Divorce was expensive. And for now, she would make a calm life for Connor and Stella, the three of them safe inside the snowy story she had told them, the heavy-footed bear at bay.
Jack wanted time, but time was good for her, too. Cunning? She could be cunning. “Okay.”
She had an hour before school pickup, so she walked swiftly into the red-orange park, through Sheep Meadow and north to the Hernshead, a promontory of rock jutting out into the pond.
During good weather, weddings happened regularly at a nearby pavilion, and while Emily had thought it would be too late in the season to encounter one, she was wrong.
The microphoned tones of the officiant drove her faster down the wooded path to the boulders.
Two young men, one of them wearing a Fordham sweatshirt, sat cross-legged opposite each other on the rocks, eating potato chips out of a large bag.
Geese dunked their heads in the water, then slid them out.
Their beaks dripped. Turtles swam at the water’s surface.
Connor liked to come to the Hernshead and catch turtles, which impressed other kids, who watched as he waded in and caught the turtles from behind.
He showed the kids how to do it, and later referred to them as his friends even though they were strangers.
Once, a turtle turned its head and bit his arm, and he yelped but didn’t drop the turtle.
He released it into the water gently, tears leaking down his face.
He told Emily that it wasn’t the turtle’s fault. It was the turtle’s nature.
Emily sat on the rocks. She didn’t know where the turtles would go in winter. She didn’t think they migrated. Some amphibians hibernated, she knew. Like frogs. Would the turtles crawl into the mud? Connor would know. He watched nature documentaries obsessively.
Her breath had gotten less jagged. She had been hot when she had arrived but now the rock chilled her butt and she shoved her hands into her jacket pockets.
She returned to her conversation with Jack.
Ruthless doesn’t actually mean cruel; it means to have no remorse, no ruth, to rue nothing, but she regretted so much.
She regretted meeting with him. She should have sent a text.
She should have written a letter. But she didn’t write letters anymore, neither to send nor keep, and what she wrote in her mind she never committed to paper, the way you don’t build again on the shore where a hurricane took your house.
She regretted—but no, there was no point in thinking about Gen. The past was done, over; it isn’t a novel you can revise until you get it right.
She regretted her lost friendships. She had blamed Jack for keeping her from her closest friends, but she had made the choice to let them go.
She called Rory. Emily didn’t expect her to pick up, but it took only a couple of rings. “Emily, are you okay?”
“Yes.”
“In that case, can I guess why you called?”
“Sure.”
“You want to model.”
“I’m too old.”
“Not true. I’ll represent you. Or is it one of the kids?”
“This isn’t about modeling.”
“You’re in L.A., and you want to treat me to one of those craft cocktails that come shrouded in vapor under a bell jar, so that the cocktail is drunk and inhaled at the same time. You want me to forgive you for ignoring me for years.”
“I do want that, but that’s not why I’m calling.”
“Water under the bridge.” Emily had called Rory first, among her group of college friends, because Rory never held a grudge. “Okay, okay.” Rory was probably bouncing on the balls of her feet. She guessed again. “You heard about Elizabeth.”
“What about her?”
“She’s getting married! To Yasar, the one with the many skills and serial hobbies.
He decided that what he wanted to learn most was how to find her.
He traveled all over. It took him more than a year.
It was like Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?
except with Elizabeth. He found her in Bora Bora and proposed. ”
“Isn’t that stalking?”
“But for love . Okay, from the outside it could look bad, but the fine line between stalking and romance is knowing your audience and Yasar did. My final guess, to be honest, was my first but I was trying to be discreet. Being discreet was my New Year’s resolution.
It’s going so-so. Did you leave Jack again? ”
“Yes.”
“Great news. That guy sucks. Thank God for divorce lawyers.”
“We’re not actually divorced.”
“I know, the courts take forever.”
“I haven’t filed. He asked for time.”
“Say no!”
“If I file, it means going to war.”
“So go!”
It would be horrible. Suri Hamilton once said, laughing, “Arthur told me that if I ever tried to leave him, he would destroy me.” Jack never had to say that; Emily knew.
She was afraid of divorce—its brutality, the bitter fight.
She was afraid of fighting. She was afraid of losing.
She remembered Jocelyn’s warning that Jack wouldn’t simply let her keep the children.
She had agreed to give Jack time, and she would use that time to save for a legal battle, but her earlier confidence dwindled.
No matter what she saved, he would always be able to outspend her.
“Who’s your lawyer?” Rory said. When Emily was silent, Rory said, “ Emily . Tell me you have a lawyer.”
“Can you please not explain how I’m doing this all wrong?”
“He is going to ensnare you. Again .”
“Discretion. Your resolution. New Year’s.”
“You better distract me, then. Tell me something else about your life. Something good. Juicy.”
“Well…I ran into Gen.”
“Gen, your ex? Gennifer Hall, Olympic champion and dykon and occasional model?”
“We decided to try being friends.”
“Noooo. Emily, do not.”
“Why can’t we be friends?”
“Gen Hall is a fuckboy! She just dumped one of my actresses. I had to show up on set with Xanax and play mother, and that is not my forte. My client cried for days. Gen is a menace, and if she’s in New York, it’s because she’s already slept with everyone in L.A. Stay away.”
“What about New Year’s?”
“Fuck New Year’s!”
“She’s not interested in me like that.”
Rory huffed.
Emily said, “I don’t think she’s the type to look back. She moves on pretty quickly.” That was how celebrity magazines described Gen’s relationships. “Maybe she gets bored.”
“She wrecked you once. Don’t let it happen again. Promise me that you will not date Gen Hall.”
“Okay,” said Emily, though she was already looking forward to seeing Gen again. “I promise.”