After
Gretchen
In the car home, Gretchen called Hilary. “Could you do something for me?”
“Anything,” Hilary answered without hesitation. Gretchen heard the din of the city in the background, followed by an odd whistling, as if Hilary were blowing into the phone.
“Are you smoking?” Gretchen asked. That was new. Or maybe not. With Hilary, one never really knew.
“I plead the Fifth,” she said. “What do you need?”
“Can you track down someone named Noah using Frankie’s Instagram? I need to talk to him.”
“Noah. No last name?”
“No, but I think they were close friends, and they went to college together. Does that help?”
“Maybe. That’s not the most common name. But then again, she does have a lot of followers.” There was admiration in Hilary’s tone—and Hilary didn’t admire anyone.
“How many is a lot?” Gretchen felt petty for caring. And yet she did. Gretchen cared about this online world her husband was a part of, a world in which she had no currency.
“Close to a hundred K.”
A hundred thousand people cared about Frankie. They wanted to look at her photos. Stare at her face. She was attractive, of course, but this was a whole different level of attention. What if Thalia was right? What if Richard had been stalking Frankie? And what if that had led to…
Hilary jumped in to fill the silence. “Don’t worry, don’t worry. They’re probably all bots.” But it was obvious she didn’t really think that. “What is Richard saying?”
“Saying?” Gretchen asked as the car pulled up in front of her building.
“Oh, I thought you would have at least talked on the phone by now…I was just wondering if he had any theories about who might be responsible.”
Ever since they’d seen Frankie’s paintings, Hilary hadn’t uttered a word about a possible affair. It was an act of charity, Gretchen suspected. It made her feel like a terminal case.
“I don’t know what theories Richard might have,” Gretchen said to Hilary, picking up the pace as she headed into the lobby. Perhaps she could outrun the idea of ever speaking to her husband again. “I haven’t actually talked to him yet.”
“Oh, Mrs. Falk,” the doorman called out as she strode quickly toward the elevator.
This had become her M.O. Move quickly, but don’t be frantic.
She had no reason to think that her neighbors knew what was happening.
But the co-op board was notoriously gossipy, pumping the doormen constantly for intel.
Police at someone’s door would certainly qualify. “Your mail.”
“Hold on, Hilary,” she said, forcing a casual smile as she came back to collect the huge stack of envelopes. How many days had it been? Richard always got the mail. “Thank you, Joel. Hilary, I’m getting on the elevator. I might lose you.”
“You should go see him, Gretch,” Hilary continued, as the elevator doors slid shut. “Get it over with. Ask him about her. Look him in the eye when he answers and see if you believe him.”
“And what if I don’t believe him?” Gretchen asked. God, it was so hard to admit.
“Then you’ll deal with it. And I’ll be here to hold your hand,” Hilary said. “But you can’t pretend this away, Gretchen. You just can’t. I mean this with love—you have to start facing things.”
* * *
Gretchen had to tell someone about Richard, but she was as surprised as anyone that the person she picked was her own mother.
Later, she would ask herself whether she’d done that on purpose to wake herself up, like splashing cold water on your face.
Because she could have guessed what her mother would say even before she uttered a word.
For nearly a whole year after Gretchen found the receipt from the Crosby Street Hotel, she kept her mouth shut and tried to pretend that it had never happened.
That she’d never seen that stupid scrap of paper.
And she was also careful to keep her gaze averted from anything else potentially incriminating, lest she stumble on something even worse.
She didn’t reach into Richard’s pockets, didn’t look at his texts, didn’t ask him details about his schedule.
But then someone started calling the house and hanging up.
It could have been anyone. Telemarketers or someone pranking the children.
But Gretchen worried it was the woman Richard had been seeing, or screwing, or whatever he called what they’d done at the hotel.
Fucking—that’s what it was. Gretchen hated that word.
It was just so…crass. Like describing two animals.
But maybe dirty talk was what really turned Richard on because he had never fully shed his terrible upbringing.
Regardless, with the hang-ups, Gretchen began to truly seethe, her anger growing and growing until it spiraled out of control.
Soon it had leached into every part of her life.
She existed in a constant state of barely suppressed rage.
Became someone she didn’t even recognize.
But it wasn’t until she screamed at poor five-year-old Becks when he spilled a glass of juice by accident—a completely innocent accident—that she realized she couldn’t live this way anymore.
Which left what?
She considered leaving Richard. Her distrust was a cancer, so maybe the only reasonable solution was to cut it out.
To cut him out. She even met with a divorce attorney.
Confidentially, of course. A friend of a friend from Choate, in Westchester, of all places.
Gretchen couldn’t risk word getting out in the city—their circle of friends devoured bad news like flesh-eating bacteria.
The Westchester lawyer had assured Gretchen that she was in an excellent position financially.
Her multimillion-dollar inheritance belonged to her—in a trust from her grandfather—because she received it long before she and Richard ever married.
There was also a very good chance that she would be entitled to half of all the marital assets, including everything Richard had ever earned.
But Gretchen wasn’t worried about money.
She was worried about what getting a divorce would do to the children.
About what it would do to her. It was one thing to be “just” a homemaker when you had an actual home to make.
But the handful of divorced women she knew all had careers or had always wished they’d had careers.
The divorce had been their chance at a second life.
Gretchen didn’t want a new life. She wanted to keep on taking care of Richard and the children. She wanted the choices she’d made not to be bad ones because Richard couldn’t keep his hands off other women—was that so very much to ask?
And yet, she still couldn’t bring herself to ask him about the receipt or Chicago or about other women in general. What if he admitted it? What if Richard said that he loved someone else?
And so she ended up in Greenwich, talking to her mother.
Gretchen and her mother hadn’t ever been big on heart-to-hearts. Her mother had an icy streak. No, she was an icy streak. But who else could Gretchen trust with the ugly truth about her marriage? At least she knew for sure that her mother wouldn’t tell anyone.
Her mother had listened on the back porch, stirring her iced tea, expressionless, as Gretchen shared her concerns, just enough to get across how bad the situation was, but perhaps not the full shameful reality. After all, her mother had a bottomless appetite for the unseemly.
When Gretchen was finished, her mother made a small snorting noise and kept staring out into the distance. And then she was just…silent.
“I’m sorry, dear, what’s the question?” she asked finally.
Now it was Gretchen’s turn to snort. “The question is whether or not I should leave Richard.”
“A divorce?” Now there was an actual burst of laughter.
“Yes, a divorce, Mother. He cheated on me. I’m convinced. At least once, maybe more than that. And he’s—I mean, I can ask him to stop, but…”
“Do you think he will?” her mother asked.
“Stop?”
“Yes, if you say: ‘Husband of mine, I politely request that you stop whoring around.’ Do you think he will say: ‘Oh, wife of mine, I had no idea it bothered you! Of course, I will cease immediately sticking my manhood places it does not belong!’ ” And then she really laughed. Loud and shrill.
Gretchen shuddered. Her mother’s use of the word manhood, like something out of a bad romance novel, was especially horrifying. Just that one sentence was as close as they’d ever come to a sex talk. “This isn’t a joke, Mother.”
“Oh, I’m being deadly serious, dear,” she said. “Divorce Richard, expose your children and this family to the shame of your failure—only to what? Marry another man who will do the exact same thing to you?”
“You don’t know that.”
“Yes, I do,” she hissed. “Because they all do it. Every. Last. One. Of. Them. Did you honestly think you were so special, so beautiful, so smart that it wouldn’t happen to you?”
And then Gretchen almost asked: Are you saying that Dad cheated? But the truth had been looming there her whole life, just out of view. Hidden, but only because Gretchen had averted her eyes. Just like she was doing now.
“I’m surprised,” Gretchen had pressed.
“About what?” her mother asked, adjusting her oversize sunglasses on her pale, bony but somehow still very striking face.
“That you, of all people, would tell me to stay. You didn’t want me marrying Richard in the first place.”
Her mother took off her sunglasses and turned to look at Gretchen.
A grimace played at her lips. “But you went ahead and married him anyway, didn’t you?
The beautiful boy who would be loyal to you because he was poor.
Because you held the power. But you turned your poor boy into a rich and handsome man.
So, it’s your rickety bed. You need to grow up, my dear, and start lying in it. ”
* * *