Results May Vary (18 page)

I had already decided that my own approach was going to be no more complicated than total honesty, delivered on an as-needed basis. I had made Neil aware of four things: that I'd kicked Adam out after discovering his affair (as always, the important distinction was that it was me who'd done the kicking, not Adam who'd done the leaving); that the affair had been with a man; that I had decided the marriage was irrevocably over, but I was waiting out the separation period before I could file divorce papers; and that I found Neil himself very attractive. I didn't have to tell him I wasn't looking for anything serious, because any idiot could read the big red flashing sign over my head that blared
BAGGAGE
. That damn sign had enough wattage to power an entire city block. So to point out such an obvious thing to him bordered on insulting. And besides, the guy had lost his own wife only a year and a half ago; there was no way he was going to be up for a real relationship, either.

But still. The things I wondered. What had prompted him to ask me out? Was it just proximity? Had somebody told him it was time to get back to the pond, and he'd decided I'd be as good a guppy as anyone? Was he seeing other people? Somehow, I found the idea unpleasant. I wanted his kisses and his sleepy jazz mix and his mischievous texts to be all for me. And I didn't know what that meant.

I am the man you used to say you loved. I used to sleep in your arms—do you remember?

—Dylan Thomas to Caitlin Thomas, March 16, 1950

There were several different people I could have told that I was dating someone, and for several different reasons. Adam, first of all; and I'm sure the reasons are obvious. Second of all: Ruby. To reassure her that I was moving on, and making strides. Our mother, to help convince her that I was serious about the divorce. Jonathan, simply because he would be happy for me. Oh, and of course, Farren—to convince her nosy, anarchy-loving little soul that I was
not
just waiting for the right moment with Jonathan.

The reasons I didn't tell any of those people are probably less obvious than the reasons I would have chosen for telling. Instead, as November slipped toward December, I clutched my secret to myself, like a mug of warm cocoa. And every day, I missed Adam a little less.

“Have you called a lawyer yet?” said Ruby, as we chopped walnuts in my kitchen for our Thanksgiving stuffing. Due to the space constraints of both my parents' and my sister's apartments, Adam and I had hosted my family's holiday meals ever since our move to Massachusetts, and I saw no reason to alter the tradition simply because Adam was no longer involved.

“No,” I said. “But I wrote up what I want for the financial settlement, so I'm ready to go once the filing date gets close enough.”

My mother, drifting into the kitchen in time to catch my last words, shook her head and clucked. “I can't believe you are seriously going through with this,” she said. “Honey, have you even thought through what your life is going to be like when it's final?”

“My life is going to be pretty much what it's been for the last few months, Mom.”

“No,” she said, swinging the bread loaf for the stuffing onto the counter with a
thwack
. “I don't think it will. You've spent the last few months in limbo, thinking about a divorce. Actually
being
divorced will be different, I can promise you that. The finances, for one thing. You should have started looking for a lawyer weeks ago, if you're serious about this, because you'll need a good one to stand up to whoever his parents hire. They certainly aren't going to let you walk off with half the money they've given their son.”

I watched her silver charm bracelet swing in rhythm with her hands as she cubed the bread. “I don't want half of Adam's money, anyway.”

She shook a strand of gray-blond hair off her cheek and glanced up. “That's foolish, Caroline. You should be asking for half, even if you know you won't get it.”

My skin rippled with revulsion. I'd always hated the opportunistic way she viewed the Hammonds' wealth. “No. I shouldn't. I want my fair share of what I paid into our assets and that's all. I didn't marry him for his money and I'm sure as hell not going to try to cash in on the way out. Now can we please talk about something else? Ruby,” I said, turning to my sister, “how is the job hunt going?”

“Well, as long as you're getting ready to find someplace else to live,” muttered my mom. “Because this will certainly be our last holiday in this lovely house.” My mother is unique among the people I know in her ability to skirt conversational markers so pointed she should have impaled herself on them. And I deeply wanted her to stop talking about this, because in spite of my bravado, I
was
a little worried about the money. I'd be able to support myself without Adam, but my mom wasn't wrong that I'd lose the house if the Hammonds wouldn't let me do a gradual buyout.

“Mom, seriously, please give it a rest,” I snapped.

“The job hunt is in a holding pattern,” said Ruby loudly, thumbs testily punching a text into her phone, “because, as you may recall, I have been doing quite well with my own clients and with some advertising on the blog. Or perhaps you don't recall that, seeing as you ask me the same question and I give you the same answer every time.”

“I know, Rube, and that's fantastic. Really. I just think for the long term—”

“Honey, we both know this blog thing is not a serious job,” said my mother. “Besides, how will you meet someone if you're holed up in your apartment all day?”

Ruby swung her head up and speared first me and then our mother with a look of utter disgust. “Oh my god. Seriously, why do I even try?” And then she whirled on the balls of her feet and stomped up the stairs to the guest room, her blond knob of hair wobbling indignantly with every step. The silence following her departure was shattered by the distant but emphatic bang of her door.

Sighing, I scooped her share of walnuts onto my own cutting board and resumed my slow, steady chopping. Despite the strides we'd made during her extended visit, it was evident that Ruby and I still did not always bring out the best in each other. At least not when our mother was involved.

The one saving grace of Ruby's fits of temper has always been that they blow over fast, and the one on Thanksgiving was no exception to this rule. By the time the turkey smell really started to get good, she reappeared and proceeded to set a beautiful holiday table, using tiny white pumpkins, pale celadon gourds, and LED candles flickering in mercury glass holders that she had imported from Manhattan for the occasion. But her progress at the arrangement was considerably slowed by the fact that she was texting as if the future of the free world depended on it. Ruby has always been a phone whore, but this high a volume of traffic could only mean one thing.

“So, you gonna tell me about the guy or what?” I asked, when she ambled into the kitchen for plates.

“What guy?” she said, in a facsimile of innocence so poor that I actually laughed out loud.

“Sell that to someone who's buying,” I said. “The guy. The one you've been texting since the minute you walked in here.”

“Oh, that's Rashmi,” she lied.

“Is it? Well, I'm thrilled to hear you and Rashmi have decided to take your friendship to the next level. And kudos on pulling off the straight act all these years, you totally had me convinced you liked di—”

“Dudes,” gasped Ruby, just as our father strolled into the kitchen from the hallway behind me. “Dudes. Yeah. But, um, that's really just Rashmi. She's at her boyfriend's and his sisters are driving her nuts.”

I sidled closer to her and pulled out the silverware drawer to hand her what she needed. “Come on, seriously. What's his name? Carlton? Mortimer? Eldridge?”

“Shut up, Caroline,” she said, but she was smiling.

“Rube, seriously, why won't you tell me? I promise not to tease you.”

“Even though your literal exact previous comment was teasing me? No. Even if there were a guy—which I am not admitting there is—sometimes it's nice to hold it to yourself a little, you know?”

She had her hands cupped together and pressed against her chest. And while it stung that she didn't want to tell me, I understood exactly what she meant. After all, I still hadn't told her about Neil—or Jonathan.

In spite of the fact that I was with my own family in my own house, it felt odder to be without Adam than I had wanted it to be. I missed him challenging my father to a duel with the electric turkey knife, and charming my mother in the kitchen with tales of the antics of the actors he'd worked with on his recent show. (Adam had a predator's eye for the vagaries of attention-addict personalities, and pilloried them mercilessly without the faintest acknowledgment that he owned such a personality himself.) I missed the way he somehow always managed, at some point in the day, to tell me he was thankful for
me.

Given that I'd been thinking about him all day, I wasn't surprised that he called me while I lay in bed, waiting for my food coma to reach its final stages and put me to sleep.

“Happy Thanksgiving, sweetheart,” he said, his voice as normal and warm as if we were merely separated by some regrettably scheduled business trip. “I missed you today.”

“Happy Thanksgiving,” I said. I didn't want to tell him I'd missed him, too, but even so, I was sure he already knew.

“My parents asked about you. They send their love.”

“What reason did you give them?” I asked. “For us not being together.”

“I told them the truth. That I had an affair.”

“I appreciate that. Thank you for not pretending it was about something else.”

“I didn't want to lie. I'm owning up to this.”

“You didn't tell them the whole story, though, did you?”

“What does it even matter?” he said. “Honestly, Caroline. Think about it for ten seconds and tell me what essential good would have been accomplished by me telling my parents I slept with a guy.”

“I think it would have been good practice for you to be honest about something uncomfortable.”

“That's such a
you
way to look at this. Abstract principles that have nothing to do with how people really interact. Spoken like someone with parents who think you walk on water no matter what you do. But in
my
life, why should I share that detail? It's never going to happen again. It was a one-time thing.”

“It
wasn't
a one-time thing; you were sleeping with Patrick for months.”

“That isn't the point,” he said loudly. “God, I am so tired of running around this track with you. It was a fluke. An aberration. I was curious and intrigued, and I acted like a stupid horny teenager. You're attaching way too much importance to the fact that it was a guy. Look, sweetheart…I have apologized again and again and again and again. I've told you everything there is to know. There is nothing more I can do to make this better. It's been almost four months now. When are you going to let me come home?”

I stared across the room at my Jackson Pollock wall, then craned my head to look at the others, which I had painted in my favorite dark olive green. My color. My house. My future.

“I'm not, Adam,” I said, in a clear, steady voice. “I am never letting you come home again.”

By the end of breakfast on Saturday, I had: 1) listened to another lecture from my mother about the foolishness of my divorce and aborted two others—admittedly, by shouting, “Mom, I do
not
want to talk about this anymore!,” thus causing her to walk away in a huff; 2) witnessed my father avoiding my “Give me a hand here” stare on two separate occasions; and 3) teased an unusually recalcitrant Ruby about the identity of her mystery friend until she stowed her phone in her bag out of pure desperation to shut me up. I loved these people, but I badly needed to get them out of my space.

“You guys should probably hit the road soon if you want to get home before dark,” I said, playing hard to my father's loathing of any remotely suboptimal driving condition. Jonathan likes to say I inherited my poor driving skills from my father, but that's only because he's never been in a car with my mother behind the wheel. Look, New Yorkers have too many other acquired skills to also be known as strong drivers, okay?

When I closed the door behind my family, I poured myself a mug of cider, collapsed gratefully on my couch, and reached for my phone to text Neil.

Do you want to come over for dinner tonight?
My parents left early and I'm somehow willing to cook again.

Sounds awesome,
Neil said.
Just spent three days with my in-laws, and—yes. Happy to pay my sitter's surge pricing.

My heart leapt inside me like a fluffy bunny when I saw him on my doorstep, all New England wholesome in his parka and wool scarf. The kiss I pulled him into was deep and welcoming, and Neil's breath was coming fast when he finally lifted his head.

“Wow. Hello. I missed you, too.”

In a burst of self-consciousness, I put my hand to my mouth, but he nipped at my fingers.

“Hey. I was pretty happy about that kiss. Anyway, what are you feeding me? I brought both kinds of wine.”

“Oooh, what did you get?”

“Um,” he said, lips twitching. “A red and a white?”

I laughed and kissed him again. Neil was of the tribe that bought wine according to a shifting algorithm factoring price point against the prettiness of the label—and he cheerfully admitted this fact. It was one of many things I enjoyed about him. But perhaps my favorite thing of all was his ability to equally talk for a while, or listen for a while, or pass the conversation back and forth, as a shared thing.

This evening, accompanied by a Duke Ellington mix Neil had brought along with the wine, we were mostly passing: my wacky family, his (allegedly) wackier in-laws.

“It's like the balance has been shifting somehow, ever since Eva died,” he said. “She used to be so good at walking the line between what we wanted and what they wanted, and letting them think they were getting what they wanted while we were busy doing something else. But without her there, I have no buffer.”

“No buffer from what?”

“Everything,” he sighed. “They want us to move to be closer to them in Mississippi, never mind that
my
parents are up here, never mind that Eva never wanted to raise our kids in the South. And it's bad enough I won't take the girls to the Baptist church; the fact that I won't take them to church at all?” He mimed his skull exploding. “They're relentless.”

“You know they have to be genuinely scared, though. They truly think the kids are in danger of hell if they're not exposed to the church.”

He shook his head. “Then that's their problem, not mine. The girls can go to church with them when we visit, if they want to. There is no way I am taking them myself.” He paused, smiling slightly. “Eva knew what she was getting into when she married me. And she was ready to take on the culture wars. It definitely would have been easier—”