Can I Get An Amen? Read online

  I ran a dry hand towel over my face and then marched downstairs to join my parents. I expected to find them in their typical posts, my father sitting back in his chair with his feet resting on an ottoman and my mother reclining on the couch, with her reading glasses on and a magazine splayed open and lying on her chest. But tonight they sat next to each other, their heads inclined in intense discussion. Over the relentlessly raised voices of their news show, I couldn’t make out a single word of their conversation, but as soon as they saw me, they both adopted bright, easy smiles. Instantly, the concern and anxiety vanished from their faces so convincingly that I smiled, too. Turns out we were all good at pretending.

  CHAPTER THREE

  It was eight thirty a.m. and I was having a cup of coffee when the phone rang. My mother answered. “Oh, hey, Jill honey,” she said with a smile. “She’s right here.” Jill and I had been friends for so long that she still knew my parents’ home phone number by heart. There was something nostalgic about my mother handing me the phone to speak with Jill.

  “Jillie, hi,” I said, warmed by the very existence of my old friend.

  “Elle, I know it’s under terrible circumstances, but I am so glad you are back home.”

  “Thanks, Jill.” Jill and I didn’t need to go through the rote so-sorry exchange, as she was the one friend I had kept in touch with over these past few weeks.

  “Listen, I’m going to pick you up in an hour. We’re going to the mall. Kat’s meeting us.”

  Jill was married to a successful businessman, Greg Wadinowski, whose family owned a chain of convenience stores. She had long ago given up the charade of her thirty-five-thousand-dollars-a-year PR gig, despite the fact that they hadn’t yet started a family, and was now content to lunch and shop and worship the gods of retail. But Jill was so forthcoming and ironically without pretension that you couldn’t hate her for it. Kat was a hairdresser with an irregular schedule who often had chunks of midweek time available for Jill’s adventures, and the two had become very close over the years.

  Jill picked me up in her late-model Range Rover and handed me a whole-milk latte from one of the few remaining locally owned coffee shops in our area. “I still can’t believe you waste the fat grams on these milk shakes,” she said, adjusting her large designer sunglasses. Her own skinny cappuccino, which was certain to contain at least a quarter inch of Splenda sediment, sat in the console cup holder.

  I smiled. The Great Milk Debate had long been an issue between Jill and me. “I don’t like skim,” I said simply.

  “Nobody likes skim,” she said with disgust. “But to not drink it… that’s like, that’s like…” Jill was never very gifted with simile. While she spun her wheels, I took a gratifying first sip. Giving up, she shook her head and threw the car into reverse. “You don’t deserve to be thin.”

  Jill and I had met when she was a pudgy seventh grader whose type A mother had her doing Weight Watchers at twelve years old. We both came of age during the days of the T-Factor diet, and Jill was still paralyzingly frightened of fat, the charter member of an increasingly large club whose ranks now included carbs, sodium, and alcohol.

  On the ride to the mall, Jill caught me up on the gossip from our prep school, Horton Academy, a tony institution where Jill and I had bonded over our feelings of inadequacy. “You heard about Duncan Vose, right? And his movie that got all those awards at Sundance?” I had. “I never saw it,” she continued, then added grudgingly, “But I heard it’s actually pretty good.” She went down the list of usual suspects—the boys we had crushes on, the outcasts who were now doing interesting and meaningful work, and the popular girls into whose ranks we were intermittently accepted. “And of course Parker Collins is still an evil bitch.”

  “You still see her?”

  “Unfortunately. She’s always decked out in some cotton-candy Lilly Pulitzer number. And she’s in the Junior League. Who joins the Junior League these days?”

  Parker Collins was our mutual high school nemesis, and our loathing of her always seemed to be rekindled when we were in each other’s company. In twelfth grade, after circulating a very unflattering photo of Jill in her underwear with “Jillie Jelly” scrawled across the top in her bubbly, loopy writing, she started a rumor that I had given Mr. Ridley, our doofy twentysomething history teacher, a blow job, even going so far as to plant a pair of my underwear in his classroom. Parker’s rumor mill was so welloiled that both Mr. Ridley and I were called into the headmaster’s office for separate but I’m sure equally humiliating rounds of questioning.

  . . .

  We walked in silence up to the mall, Jill staring into the mirrorlike exterior windows and checking her reflection in the glass, always sucking in her stomach just a bit and holding her shoulders back. Jill was not fat, but she was also never going to be rail thin, no matter how many hours she logged at the gym. She just wasn’t built that way. But she was beautiful, with a mass of blond curls, a heart-shaped face, and a smattering of freckles over her delicate nose.

  Kat was at the makeup counter at Neiman Marcus when we arrived. When she saw me, she flashed her signature half smile and sauntered over to give me a hug. “So, when do we get to boil some bunnies?” she asked, rubbing her hands together. Then she threw an arm around my neck and leaned back to look at me. “You look good, Elle. I thought that maybe you’d have drowned your sorrows in spinach dip, but it looks like misery is agreeing with you.”

  Gee, thanks, Kat.

  “Seriously. When Ali from the salon got divorced, she gained twenty-eight pounds in three weeks. Apparently it was all Subway.”

  “Subway?” asked Jill, horrified.

  “Yeah. She was the anti-Jared.”

  “Kat,” began Jill, switching gears, “your hair looks amazing. Who did it?”

  “Jim,” she said, giving her new do a little stroke. “If you’re going chin length or shorter, you really need a gay.”

  Kat was constantly rotating through hairstyles, and at present her already naturally dark hair was dyed a shiny jet-black and cut into an Anna Wintour bob. I could see Jill trying to determine whether she could flatiron her blond corkscrew curls into submission to achieve the same look. But Kat preempted her. “Don’t you dare cut your hair, Jill,” she commanded. “It’s beautiful. It’s Botticelli hair.”

  Even though Kat was younger, Jill and I gave her total jurisdiction over matters of taste. She was always so effortlessly stylish, the type of woman you’d want to mimic, imitate.

  “All right,” Kat said, getting down to business. “I have a date on Friday. I need to find something to wear.” Kat was always dating but never had a boyfriend, which she claimed was exactly how she liked it. Linking her arm through mine, my little sister led me into what was her prescribed course of treatment for what ailed me: shoes, salads, and sarcasm.

  And that was how I spent the next couple of weeks, cosseted in the calming, sedative womb of marble-swathed department stores. It wasn’t a bad little sojourn. Everything was so beautiful, so easy. If you wanted something, you just laid down your credit card and smiling salespeople would hand you a thick bag with a braided rope handle. “Have a great day,” they’d say with a smile.

  My mother eyed every new shopping bag with disapproval. “Ellen, you can’t buy happiness,” began her cliché lecture. “Only the Lord can bring you that.” Oh, really? I wanted to ask. You’re not happy living in your six thousand square feet of hardwood floors and imported stone? But that sort of confrontation was more Kat’s milieu.

  With Jill and Kat as my constant companions, it was as if I was able to hit rewind on my life, to a time before Gary. Before Boston and our house and three soul-destroying years of trying to have a child. I could pretend that none of it had ever happened, and I found that living in the past was a fantastic way to avoid the present.

  I knew that reality would need to be dealt with at some point. And I waited with dread for my cue to come. So I’m not sure why I felt so utterly blindsided when it happened, w
hen reality rudely and abruptly shook me awake.

  We were sitting at a café in the mall having lunch. Kat was grilling me on how I was able to live so relatively contentedly with our parents. “Honestly, Elle. I don’t know how you can deal with it, with all their James Dobson, Tea Party bullshit.” I was about to tell her that Luke and I just didn’t pick fights the way she did, but the instant I heard my phone ring, I was frozen. It was Gary’s ring.

  “What is it?” asked Jill.

  I reached into my bag and stared at the screen. “It’s Gary.” My heart was racing.

  Jill and Kat exchanged glances. “Pick it up!” urged Kat.

  I stood and hit the ANSWER button. “Hi,” I said cautiously as I made my way out of the restaurant.

  “Hi, Elle. It’s me.”

  “I know.” You don’t have the right to identify yourself as “me” anymore, I thought.

  He cleared his throat. “Listen, I have some good news. Or at least I think it’s good news.”

  And I totally fell for it. I thought he had reconsidered, that he wanted to work things out. The past eight weeks had been a nightmare, but our relationship was going to be even stronger now! I could go home and pack up my things and drive back to my little house and my husband’s open arms. We could just forget about all of this. My father had been right: everything was going to be okay!

  “Oh?” I asked eagerly, sweetly. Practically hyperventilating with anticipation, I paced outside the café, waiting for whatever form his apology would take.

  “Yeah, so I’ve been doing some thinking. We don’t need to find a buyer for the house.” Oh, here it was! “If you’ll agree to it, I’d actually like to purchase your half from you.” And for a moment, my heart stopped beating. I turned to the wall next to me and leaned my forehead against the cool stone surface.

  “Elle?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “Elle, are you there?”

  I couldn’t formulate words; I was lost and spinning. I was too stunned to cry, too stunned to speak. And then I heard her voice. It was a seconds-long sound bite before the unmistakable rustle of a hand covering the mouthpiece of a phone. I couldn’t even make out what she said, but I knew exactly what had happened. Just a little misunderstanding. She hadn’t known Gary was making the call and came into the room to ask him where he wanted to go for dinner or if he’d seen her sunglasses. As soon as she saw he was on the phone she clamped her hand over her mouth and Gary’s hand darted to the receiver.

  “Who was that?” I asked, suddenly fortified with fury.

  “What? That was nobody,” said Gary quickly. “It was just a friend.”

  I felt venom creep into my voice. “You know, we’re still married, Gary. Did you forget that little detail? The divorce isn’t final yet.”

  “Ellen, please don’t be like this.”

  I hated the reasonable, calm tone he was using. “Be like what, Gary? Be like any other woman who just found out her husband is cheating on her?”

  “It’s pretty clear that our circumstances are a little different from that,” he said, bristling at his morals being called into question.

  My mind was working quickly now and I suddenly understood how divorces became hateful and bitter and cruel. “Well, I guess some funds that weren’t available for in vitro have suddenly been freed up for a real estate opportunity.”

  “Ellen, stop. It’s not like I have an offshore account. I’ll take out another mortgage. This really isn’t at all uncommon in situations like ours.”

  “You want the house, Gary? You can have the fucking house.”

  I hung up the phone, but I didn’t cry.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I went out that very night. I put on my sexiest underwear and lowest-cut top and went out to meet men. “What bar should I go to?” I asked Kat, determined and furious, leaning into the mirror as I smeared charcoal gray shadow onto my eyelid.

  “Elle, why don’t you just give it a little bit. Maybe it’s not a good idea tonight.”

  We sat in my bathroom at my parents’ house, Kat’s very presence there an indication of how concerned she was. Although she lived only twenty minutes away, she tended to make only obligatory visits on holidays and birthdays. “Kat, I need to go get a drink.”

  “Fine,” she said. “I’ll come with you.”

  Kat drove us to a bar near the train station where commuters into New York often stopped for a drink before heading back to their waiting wives and sleeping children. I ordered a Manhattan and immediately tried to adopt the persona of a fun, carefree girl out for a night on the town. I was all hair flips and smiles. Kat regarded me warily as I tried to engage her in meaningless small talk, as I batted my eyes at attractive older men with loosened ties, silently pleading that they return my attention. We both knew that I was holding on by a very thin thread. Soon, a decent-looking guy offered to buy Kat and me a drink. Kat turned it down—she was still nursing her glass of white wine—but I happily accepted and proceeded to flirt desperately and shamelessly. He eventually moved on and I ordered myself another drink. Then another.

  “Elle, I think we better get going.”

  “Come on, Kat. Please. Just stay.” My words were starting to slur and I was rapidly approaching the kind of sad, sloppy drunk that’s no longer fun. That’s too revealing to be fun. I was a wounded, pathetic divorcée who wanted, who needed, to believe that she was still beautiful, that she still had a chance, that she was still—despite all evidence to the contrary—a woman.

  . . .

  I started going out a lot, with Kat or Jill when they could be convinced to come, and often by myself. I never really wanted anything more than a bit of male attention. But sometimes a hand would run up my thigh or a fingertip would brush against my lips, and I would find myself pressed against a cold brick wall, the cool fall air mixing with alcohol-heavy breath as a stranger and I kissed in that frenzied, wild way of two people who have no illusions of love or a relationship. It was cheap and fast, but I never let myself sleep with any of them. When the suggestion was eventually made that we move on—to a car, a hotel, my place—I’d back away, wipe my mouth, and say that I had to get going. Maybe it was that I still considered myself a married woman, but I think it was more likely some dim, fledgling sense of self-preservation; on some level I knew that once I slept with a man, I wouldn’t be able to pretend anymore. He’d leave me weeping and shaking in a hotel room as he hurried down the hall, wondering how he had managed to pick up such a basket case. Psychiatrists would say that I wanted to be the one to leave, and I’m sure they’d be right. Once, I let a man go down on me in the bathroom of a bar. I leaned right up against the door, closed my eyes, and tangled my hands into his thick, dark hair. But that was the furthest it ever went.

  If they asked for my number, I’d give it to them. Sometimes they’d call. I had no trouble attracting men, but a few minutes into a conversation they’d sense that I wasn’t good for more than an evening of entertainment. I wasn’t, as the cliché goes, the type of girl they’d take home to Mother. I’d let the intervals between flirtatious smiles get a little too long or cast my eyes about the bar distractedly, looking for something that wasn’t there.

  The lectures from Kat and Jill eventually stopped, though my mother stubbornly continued to attempt her version of talking some sense into me.

  “You aren’t dealing with your pain, Ellen. I know a wonderful Christian counselor that you should just talk to.”

  “Good-bye, Mom,” I would say as I slung my purse over my arm and headed defiantly out the door.

  “God loves you too much to let you continue down this path!” she’d call after me as I stomped toward my car, feeling a heady rush from the rebellion, feeling like Kat always must have felt.

  Though my mother was an expert at melding dime-store psychology with religious dogma, in time even she bit her lip. Instead, she scurried around the house having hushed conversations with the women from her prayer group, conversations that I myopicall
y thought were limited to me. I sensed that my father was avoiding me. Everyone treated me like I was one step away from the deep end, and like any false move could send me plunging into true blackness. In time, I preferred to go out alone.

  . . .

  Luke led a busy life in New York, so his information regarding my behavior came by way of regular updates from my mom and Kat, both of whom tended toward hyperbole. Luke was initially skeptical that things were actually as bad as they claimed. He said as much over dinner one night at a trendy noodle bar in the city. We sat across from each other on wooden benches in the austere but bustling dining room.

  “So,” he began, with an expression that was meant to put me at ease. “I hear you’ve been auditioning for Girls Gone Wild.”

  I fished around in a steaming-hot bowl of brothy noodles with a pair of chopsticks. “Did Kat tell you that?”

  “Well, I took a little poetic license, but yeah, she and Mom both said that you’ve been going out, like, a lot. Like a-Lindsay-Lohan lot.”

  Shaking my head, I gave an exasperated little chuckle. Oh, those two! “I mean, I’ve definitely been going out, but I was married for four years and with Gary for two years before that. I’d say that I’m just cutting loose a little.”

  “That’s kind of what I told them, but even Kat thinks it’s gotten…”