Jack got to the door more quickly than Nate and blocked Nate's exit. "Mr. Grace. I really am sorry. Are you sure that I can't get you a taxi?"
"No. I'm fine," Nate responded, not able to look into Jack's sad eyes.
"Okay, but at least take this." Jack moved from the threshold and grabbed a black umbrella from the coat rack. It was one of those items that managed to be unassuming but also clearly expensive—the kind of thing that a wealthy, but not obnoxiously rich, person would buy. He thrust it into Nate's reluctant hand.
"I can't take this; it looks like it costs more than the house I don't own." This attempt at humor fell flat. "That was meant to be funny. I was trying to be the guy who puts on a brave face and makes a joke even in the face of financial and emotional ruin."
Jack looked like he was trying to smile, but he was clearly worried. Nate was struck with gratitude at Jack's professionalism, even though the information he had offered felt like a punch to the gut. The whole thing was genuinely painful. Nate usually believed that the truth set you free, but this truth felt like a death sentence. "It was funny. I thought it was funny."
"It wasn't funny. It was just sad. But you know what?" Nate asked.
"What?"
"One day, maybe a day not that far from now, it might be. Maybe I will look back at all of this… all of this shit… and be able to see it as something other than devastation. Maybe one day this will feel like some kind of joke." Nate's words sounded flimsy and unconvincing.
"I don't know you very well, and even I can tell that you don't really believe the things that you are saying. But for what it's worth—and I'm pretty sure that you don't care about what I have to say at the moment—I think you're right. I think that with a little time you'll be able to see this differently. I don't think it will ever be funny, and I don't think you should put pressure on yourself to be...Let me see if I can remember how you put it. 'The guy who puts on a brave face and makes a joke even in the face of financial and emotional ruin'. I think you
will
look back and be happy that you survived, and that that survival meant something." Jack's voice took on a kind of fatherly tone that Nate found comforting rather than condescending.
"Thank you." Nate's eyes welled up with tears and Jack swiftly handed him a tissue.
Nate walked past the receptionist in a hurry and stepped out into the crisp, cool air. He put the umbrella up and stood still for a beat, listening to the
tip-tap-tip-tap
of the rain on the expensive waterproof material and watching as streams cascaded to the ground. There was freshness in the air and as well as sadness; the world looked gray and cold and metallic, but it also looked as if it was being renewed. The rain was ruining things so that it could all become clean. It was destroying the little ecosystems of the now so that they could grow again stronger and more resilient in the future. It offered the promise of a new life, a slate not quite immaculate but cleaner than before. Nate put his hand out and felt a trickle of cool water run along his skin. Then he crossed the road, unlocked his car with a beep, and settled into the seat.
Back to the Past
Nate threw the newspaper down on the table and sipped some more Merlot. He rubbed his strained eyes. "Did you have any idea how expensive rent was in this damn city? When did the world go crazy? I thought that everybody was supposed to be broke!" He slipped off his nice-to-look-at-but-uncomfortable shoes and spread his toes out, trying to cure some of the soreness in his feet. He and Cecily had been apartment hunting all day, and his feet had taken a severe pounding. Luckily, he was on the right side of tipsy; the harsh lines of the world had begun to grow fuzzy without being too lopsided.
"I can't even believe the price they were asking for the last one. There was barely room for us to stand in there, let alone for you and Bailey to live your lives." Cecily sounded genuinely shocked.
"You know, I think the Golden Girls had the right idea. We should round up our friends and move to Miami; we can eat chocolate cheesecake, sleep with geriatric men, and wear an endless variety of stylish-yet-comfortable kaftans." Nate smiled at the image.
"You know what I would like to do? I'd like to go on one of those
Eat Pray Love
-style trips, but with more eating and drinking and less praying. I always thought it was a shame I wasn't born into a culture that valued the finer things in life more. I've always been suited for the high life. I can just see it now: zipping around Italy on pastel-colored Vespas, getting day-drunk on good wine, and flirting with impossibly handsome young men. Shall I book the tickets now, or later?" Cecily did a pitch-perfect impression of one of the vapid moms at school—the ones who judged parents who turned up in sweatpants or who baked non-organic pies for bake sales. Nate loved when Cecily did this; it suited the way she looked and clashed violently with her true personality. It was a delicious mix.
"Uhhh... Where do the kids fit into all of this? Are we pulling them around with us, or are they staying with childcare—do we have the kind of money to afford a month's worth of nanny bills? If so, why don't I just rent all of the apartments in town? That way I can be somewhere new every day!" Nate found himself smiling, and it felt really good.
Cecily moved her head from side to side as if she was weighing her options, which made Nate's smile widen. "You're right. We do have kids. Why won't you let me have my fantasy for just one second?"
"I don't know. I think I'm too much of a control freak to do any of those things. Why is it that no one ever gets spiritual fulfillment somewhere like Starbucks? There are no books like 'How an espresso gave me inner peace' or 'Grande chai latte: how a huge multinational conglomerate gave me everything'." Nate and Cecily giggled, and it was not lost on Nate that this was the first time they'd been able to fall into their old, comfortable rhythm since Joshua had left. They had spent nights talking, wondering what had happened and what was coming in the future. Cecily had spent her time making Nate feel better, supplying him with promises that she had no way of backing up. Nate had spent his time mourning, calling Joshua, and putting on a brave face when Bailey was around and falling apart when he wasn't.
"You know, this might be the drink talking, but I just had a great idea. Why don't you just live here? You don't have to pay rent until after you've settled some of the debts, and Tommy and Bailey get along so well." Cecily shifted forward in her seat nervously. Nate could see from her expression that she wasn't sure if she was excited or horrified by the idea of Nate moving in.
Nate waited a second to tease her, knowing that she would be anxious to hear his response. He knew that it was a genuine offer, but he also knew Cicely well enough to know that she needed her space and that she would be on tenterhooks as long as the silence lingered between them. "Cici… That's a really lovely thing for you to offer. But there has barely been enough room for all of us this week and none of my stuff is here yet. I don't think it's very practical. Plus you're a bit of a nightmare to live with."
Cecily threw one of her expensive throw cushions at Nate, who caught it just before it hit his glass of red wine. "I am not. If anyone's a nightmare to live with, it's you. I could still hear the tapping of your computer keys at four this morning. It better have been some pretty steamy stuff to have kept you up all night."
"I wish. No, my editor wants me to change the premise of the book a little bit. So I've got to put in double the hours." Nate felt himself cringe at the thought of the work that lay ahead of him.
"What does he want you to write about?" Cecily asked, her voice brimming with excitement. Nate usually didn't let anybody know what he was working on—and he knew how much it annoyed his friends and family.
"I was going to write about all the things I had learnt in a ten-year relationship. A sort of collage of essays about the ups and downs of sharing your life with someone for such a long time. But mostly it was going to be about how to keep it on track throughout, how to get to a decade without killing each other." An uneasy silence descended on the room, cloaking Nate and Cecily like a shadow. Nate shifted around in his seat, and his voice cracked a little when he began again. "But in light of recent circumstances, it's clear that I don't know very much about any of that. So now I'm going to write about sadness and loneliness and knowing that you should start again but not wanting to."
"Sounds like a laugh," Cecily said nonchalantly.
They both erupted in laughter, breaking the tension that had built. They laughed a lot; deep, shallow-breathed, stomach-aching laughs. They laughed for all of the little and big heartbreaks they'd received over the years, for the pain of the last week, for all of the things that they had never imagined would happen to them.
"Cecily?" Nate asked, his voice still a little shaky from laughing. "What am I going to do?" He felt the tears of laughter turn it tears of relief and sadness and helplessness. He looked over and saw that Cecily had joined him, her face contorted into a look of gloom. "What is wrong with us? We're already the Golden Girls," Nate said.
"I don't know. It's just such a sad question, and also kind of a funny one. Whatever it is... I don't know the answer, unless the answer is drinking more red wine."
"That is always the answer." Nate held his empty glass out to be filled, his face still shining with tears. "I meant, what would you do if you were me? If you didn't have that much money and a son and no home and some debts."
"Umm, kill myself."
They laughed again.
"What did you do when you got divorced?" Nate asked cautiously. This was a topic that they had never broached before, and he had always got the impression that it was dangerous territory. Cecily prided herself on being strong; being this glamorous, beautiful, talented woman who could juggle work and single parenthood with authentic grace. She always seemed to be spinning plates and they never seemed to fall.
There was a second of silence and Cecily sat still, her eyes darting around like she was working out a difficult equation, weighing up the pros and cons of delving into her relationship history. "What can I say? I was young—I was only twenty-six when I left him, and we'd been together four or five years."
"I don't think twenty-six is that young, you know, in the grand scheme of things," Nate said, hesitant to interrupt Cecily in a rare confessional moment but unable to stop himself.
"Are you kidding me? You don't know anything at twenty-six!" Cecily laughed. There was an awkward silence, the shadow of a chill in the air. Cecily's eyes widened as she realized what she had said. "Shit. I didn't mean that, I meant to say that
I
didn't know anything at twenty-six… You just—it's just that I always forget you're younger. You should take it as a compliment; you're so much better at being a person than I was at your age." Cici's words came out like gunfire.
"Forget that; tell me about your pain so I can get over mine. It's nice to know that you got divorced and survived. Well, more than survived—
flourished
. Plus I feel like I'm looking into some kind of hidden file—you never talk about your past." Nate shifted forward in his seat like a child waiting for his teacher to finish a book.
"Where do I start? Okay, I was working as a runner at CNT News. I had been there a while, running around, making coffee, and doing some secretary work. Then one day I shot a segment. I remember I was interviewing the man who had made the world biggest blackberry pie. No, wait a minute… He thought that he had made the world biggest blackberry pie—but it was actually the second biggest. Looking back, it was pretty sad." Cecily broke into a wide, white smile, and her eyes seemed to sparkle at the ridiculousness of it all. Nate watched her every move, riveted, trying to wring as much as he could from this unprecedented honesty.
Nate gestured to indicate that she was going too slowly, and she swatted at his hands.
"Okay, okay. So after that, I started doing more and more stupid little segments, and the anchor of the show—the person who hosted the breakfast show and then the evening news—sent me a message saying that he wanted to meet me about some ideas he had. Anyway, we met in a really nice restaurant; it was much more expensive than I would have ever been able to afford. He was just like something out of a novel. He was so
worldly
. You know when somebody is so smart that it's intimidating, but also just really sexy? He made me feel respected and important, which
was not
something I was used to as a blonde reporter. And I fell in love with him there and then. I knew he was a horn-dog and all the girls in makeup warned me—but I just couldn't help myself. He was the most handsome man and powerful and suave and rich, and I was blinded by it all."
Nate inched even closer to the edge of his seat, enthralled. "So why did you leave, what happened?" He knew he was inappropriately excited, that he felt like he was hearing about a soap opera rather than someone's real pain, but he couldn't help himself. It felt like a tiny little peephole into another world that he could escape into. He knew that it was voyeuristic to tumble into someone else's life just so that he could forget about his own, but he also knew that Cecily wouldn't be opening up like this if she didn't know that she was doing for him. Nate knew that Cecily was throwing out a lifeline by providing him with a positive narrative for his story of heartache.
"Well, he slept with everybody at the station. For a while, I felt like I could deal with that, because I had a huge house and I didn't have to work if I didn't want to. And, you know, I had money to help causes that I believed in, which was really nice. The truth is, I just liked being seen as his wife. I would go to a party and people would whisper 'that's Thomas's wife', and I felt like I mattered. That I was somehow more valuable because I was the one he chose; out of all the people he had been with, he wanted me the most."
Nate noticed something strange in Cecily's voice. It was like she was telling the story for the first time and was resolving herself with her past as she spoke. He was fascinated by people's voices, with the way people revealed so much more than they knew. Hearing Cecily heal herself in front of him was powerful. Powerful because it was something wonderful for his friend, but also because it offered a glimmer of hope for the future—the suggestion of some kind of happiness.