4. Bree
Bree
Each time I tried to take a bite of my potato kugel, my phone would go off again. Another call from Gavin. Brrr brrr. Every thirty seconds, annoying the hell out of me.
I had stopped reading the messages pretty quick after Mom hugged me at the door.
“It’s Gavin, isn’t it?” Mom had asked right after I had stepped in and sounded unsure of the reason why I had showed up at ten at my parents’ doorstep.
I nodded quietly. ”My darling girl.” Mom had said, as she and Dad had both lurched forward to bury me in a hug.
“Hurry up and tell me.” Mom had asked. “Gavin,” I tried to speak but the words wouldn’t come out. “Gavin, and..”
“Wren.” supplied my mother. “Am I right?” She didn’t wait for an answer.
She just shoved me in, and Dad made me sit down in my old spot on the couch, and handed me the soft gray throw blanket I’d had since I was twelve.
“Are you hungry?” Dad had asked, and that’s when I had realized that I really was.
He had disappeared into the kitchen to fix me something to eat which had turned out to be an entire feast. Potato kugel.
Garlic bread. Chicken schnitzel. Green beans.
The texts kept coming with the weirdest autocorrects I’d ever seen in my life, which told me Gavin was typing these with shaking hands, probably walking fast, probably not looking at his screen.
Bree, Pick up the phone.
I’m losing my shirt Bree. Answer the phone.
Please Bree.
Where are you? I’m not able to live from here. I’m sending James hone to check on you. Please, please Bree. Talk tot me.
Going into the film sturdy and them the meeting now. Please call me.
WHERE ARE YOU, brEE? James went home and you were not there. What the hell?
Are you on your wait New Heaven?
Bree, your mom is not answering the phone either. Call met.
Please Bree. Don’t do this to met.
And that’s where I stopped reading. Right after don’t do this to met. Because if he still thought I was the one doing something TO HIM in all of this, I did not need to spend one more second reading his autocorrected texts.
And then there were the calls. He’d called me nonstop for the first half hour of the drive.
Even while I was driving, part of my brain was still tracking his schedule out of habit.
Wasn’t he supposed to be in the offensive and defensive positional meeting soon?
That one had apparently become Wren’s favorite to film.
Every positional meeting is different, Bree, she’d told me once, in this weirdly official tone, back when I’d made the mistake of asking why every single meeting needed to be caught on camera.
After about fifteen minutes, the calls had stopped.
Then they’d started right back up again an hour later.
I just kept driving, feeling sorry for myself, mad at Gavin, and then, somehow, also feeling guilty, because I knew how important this upcoming week was for him.
I was sure he was stressed out of his mind after everything that had happened.
But I was also sure Wren would be right there, more than happy to make him feel better.
I reached for another kugel.
Mom and Dad were sitting right across the table from me, just watching me eat.
“You want to take the calls?” Mom asked.
I shook my head. My mouth was too full of kugel to actually answer. The starchy, buttery deliciousness of that potato was doing something to my brain, honestly, giving me almost an out-of-body experience. Or maybe that was just the four hours of sleep talking.
“Okay,” Mom said, settling down a glass of water for me. “If I may borrow a little wisdom from Ree, you have three options.”
Ree Wright was Mom’s all-time-favorite romance writer. This woman practically worshipped Ree Wright.
“Option one. You float a rumor that Wren’s production company is under investigation for fraud.”
“That’s slander,” Dad said, not even looking up from the tong-ful of green beans he was serving on my plate.
“It’s from Ree’s latest bestseller, Mel,” Mom said. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“Or,” Mom went on, “you make an ‘anonymous’ social media account and post everything she’s been doing to sabotage your marriage. That’s exactly how Maybel gets her revenge in The Wronged Wife.”
I rolled my eyes so hard I felt it in the back of my skull.
“Just hear me out,” she said, holding up a finger. “Third option. And this is the best one. I can help you befriend her hairdresser. And over time, very gently, very naturally, the hairdresser convinces her to get a bob.”
I actually stopped chewing for a second and thought about that one.
Mom looked thrilled, watching me consider it, like she’d just won something.
“That one’s from The Husband’s Worst Nightmare,” she said, triumphant. “Ree is the best.”
“How do you even know a bob wouldn’t suit her?” I asked.
Mom laughed, waving her hand like the answer was obvious. “I’ve seen her face cut, Bree. She’d look horrendous in that.”
Dad finally looked up. “The hair one’s good,” he said. “That one, I’d actually help with, honey.”
Mom beamed at him. “Thank you, Melvin. I knew I could count on you.”
I sat there, half laughing, half crying, wiping my face with the back of my hand, and I was actually tempted to take revenge on her.
Especially the hair idea, it was brilliant in its simplicity and in its satisfying promise of having Wren stare into a salon mirror at the life-destroying hair cut she was destined to live with for at least a few months.
But I was apparently a sensible adult. And it turned out that was basically the whole job description of being a sensible adult.
You get handed three perfectly good revenge plans on a silver platter, and instead you just sit there, eating kugel, feeling very sorry for yourself, and doing absolutely nothing about any of it.
I smiled at my Mom. I knew exactly what they were doing.
They were trying to make me laugh, trying to distract me so my brain didn’t have room to think about anything else.
They’d both slipped into their roles without even discussing it.
Mom, my personal comedian, and Dad, my personal chef.
I took a huge bite of the schnitzel. Nothing fixes a broken heart like kugel, schnitzel, and Mom doing her cheesy romance-novel bit at the dinner table.
I picked up a piece of garlic bread, took a bite, and just like that, tears started streaming down my face.
“It’s all... over,” I said, with a mouth full of bread.
And then I didn’t say anything else. I just sat there, crying and eating at the same time. Mom and Dad shot each other a look across the table.
“There’s a Stouffer’s apple pie in the freezer,” Dad said. “And vanilla ice cream. You want it?”
Even with tears running down my face, I wiped one off and nodded, because he knew, and I knew, that I was never, ever going to say no to that dessert. Not even heartbroken. Not even on my deathbed.
While Dad went to go get it, Mom got up from her side of the table and came and sat right next to me.
She watched me finish the rest of my plate.
She didn’t say a single word. She just sat there, close enough that our shoulders were touching.
I put my head down on her shoulder, and neither of us said anything for a minute.
Then Mom leaned in and whispered, “Wren’s a bitch.”
I actually laughed. Out loud. Because my mom did not curse.
Ever. She used words like wretched, and obnoxious, and home-breaker, all these very proper, old-fashioned ways of describing a bad woman that she’d clearly picked up from decades of reading romance novels.
This was the first time I had heard the word bitch come out of her mouth.
And somehow, it was the most comforting thing anyone had said to me all day.
The smell of apple pie started filling up our little kitchen, warm and sweet with cinnamon and sugar, and Dad was clattering around behind us getting plates, and Mom’s shoulder was still pressed against mine.
It was such a simple thing. But somehow, sitting there, I felt like maybe I actually could do this.
Maybe I could exist as a person who wasn’t just Gavin’s wife.
“Gavin should have believed you about Janet,” Mom said.
A while back, Mom and Dad had come to visit us, and we’d all planned a nice dinner out at this fancy restaurant downtown.
Wren called Gavin last minute saying it was the anniversary of her wedding to her ex-husband, and that she was just going to sit home alone and cry herself to sleep that night.
Gavin asked me if she could come along, and, idiot that I apparently am, I said yes, no hesitation, wide open heart and everything.
Wren had just moved to town at that point.
I knew she had some kind of history with Gavin, sure, but she’d always come across as sweet, and genuinely hurting, after her marriage to a cheating husband fell apart. So of course I said yes.
Right around the time Gavin was settling the check, a woman walked up to our table.
“Lauren?” she said. “Oh my gosh, is that you?”
My mom’s whole face lit up like a Christmas tree. “Janet!” She was already halfway out of her chair for a hug. “I don’t believe this. Everyone, this is Janet, one of my very oldest, dearest friends.”
Janet went around the table, saying hello to each of us. “So nice to meet you all.” Then her eyes landed on Wren, and something in her face changed, just slightly.
“Hi, Wren,” Janet said.
“Janet! Oh my gosh, hi,” Wren said, a beat too fast, already turning to the rest of the table before anyone could ask a single question. “Janet and I used to be neighbors. Years ago now. Small world, right?”
“Mm,” Janet said. “Small world.”
She gave this tight, thin smile, the kind that doesn’t move a single other muscle in the face, and didn’t say anything else.
“Well, it was so wonderful running into you,” Mom said, still glowing. “We have to catch up soon, I mean it.”