The press announced our engagement like it was a tragedy, shocked that I’d managed—as they put it—tolandhim, like I’d tricked him into loving me. They didn’t know that he’d had to ask me to marry him once, twice, three times before I said yes. It wasn’t that I didn’t love him—I did, so much it scared me sometimes—but I wanted to make my own name before I became someone’s wife. So I didn’t say yes until our second album went gold. But when we announced our engagement, the press made it sound like I was just another groupie.
His female fans gathered outside our wedding venue crying. When I pulled up in my white dress, I saw someone holding a sign begging him not to go through with it.
After he left years later, I knew that all those people who said we were doomed were patting themselves on the back for having been right.
“We never battled over custody, never divided up our assets,” I continue. “Not likesome people, who spend years arguing over who gets what.”
Evelyn shifts in her seat, so I know I hit a nerve.
“I’m proud of my marriage.”
Evelyn scratches her scalp, causing a strand of hair from her perfect bun to come loose. As she presses it back into place, I can see that she’s shaking slightly.
I add, “Whatever else I’ve done wrong, at least I know I didn’t fail atthat.”
The lie tastes sour in my mouth, but I’m careful not to let it show. No one knows the truth of how things ended, I made sure of that.
In the silence that follows, I concentrate on the sound of Andrew chopping vegetables. It sounds like a drumbeat. I bet he’s doing that on purpose.
“Lunch,” Andrew announces finally, breaking the silence.
I stand immediately, patting my belly like I’m starving. “I guess we’re done for the day.”
This afternoon, a personal trainer will (try to) get me to exercise, and then a massage therapist will loosen up all the muscles I was supposed to be strengthening. I feel the soft flesh of my belly beneath my hands. My kid was an emergency C-section. I hadn’t been scared, figured it was a routine procedure, happens every day. I was awake when things started to go wrong. I heard the panic in the doctors’ voices when they saw bleeding where there shouldn’t be. My kid and I stayed at the hospital for weeks. When they finally sent me home, I could barely walk.
In between bites of my salad, I hear a soft but firmthump. I turn and see that a tiny bird has flown into the wall of windows behind the couch.
Sascha, the housekeeper, is already outside, shivering in her gray scrubs. She pulls on rubber gloves and picks up the tiny ball of feather and bone. She doesn’t check to make sure the bird is dead before dropping it into a plastic bag and tying it closed. I imagine that bird’s heart still beating, imagine it flapping its wings, trying to escape.
It’s the first time I’ve actually seen Sascha clean anything. This place is like a fancy hotel where the maids wait for you to leave the building before they clean up, so you walk into a spotless room without a reminder that someone had to get down on their hands and knees to undo the mess you made.
30Florence
“What does she want from me?” I ask, crunching on SweeTarts, so hard I think my teeth may crack. It’s after midnight and I’m starving. Andrew’s healthy salad and one mini Snickers, followed by yet another bland and unsatisfying dinner, wasn’t near enough to fill me up.
Does anything satisfy you?the chorus of musicians asks.
My husband used to cook for me.Realfood: pasta, roast chicken, pancakes. He didn’t mind when I ate off his plate. I think I haven’t been full since he left.
“She’s a therapist.” Andrew shrugs. He picks out the flavors I don’t like—the greens and the yellows—and eats them himself. “She wants you to tell her about your life.”
No,I think,she doesn’t.She wants me to reveal a hidden, dark secret that will explain everything: My uncle molested me in the closet when I was ten, or my father died in front of me when I was six. Without some childhood trauma, Evelyn’s probing questions imply there’s no excuse for my behavior, my failures, my mothering—no excuse forme.
“I already told her, there’s nothing about me she can’t find out online. Or if she wants a deeper dive, someUs Weeklyreporter published an unauthorized biography in the early aughts. It’s out of print, but I’m sure she could find it on Amazon or something.”
I read it, actually. The guy interviewed girls who’d claimed they’d been in grade school with me, a boy who said I gave him a hand job in the ninth grade behind the gym, some old man who claimed I bought drugs from him when I was thirteen. I didn’t recognize any of the stories, but Callie said there was no point denying it.
I crunch an orange candy, so sour my tongue tingles, just the way I like. “Usually other people’s stories fill the silences.”
We’re sitting at the kitchen counter, our barstools angled so we’re facing each other. Andrew’s legs are so long and the stools are so close together that his right thigh is perched loosely between mine. He’s acting like it’s casual, but I know he sat that way on purpose.
“What do you mean?” Andrew asks, reminding me that he wasn’t hired for his expertise so much as for his muscle. I have more experience at rehab than he does.
“You know, group therapy. Other places, you go around in a circle and people talk about their abusive parents, the teachers who went too far, the people who broke their hearts.”
“What did you talk about when it was your turn?”
I couldn’t tell them about my decent enough childhood (absent father, overbearing mother, nothing really all that wrong), the success I found young (though not as young as I wanted), the boy I fell in love with and married, the baby we made together. Unlike everyone else—the addicts with their tough childhoods, their genetic predisposition to addiction, the traumas they built up over the years—I have only myself to blame for what I lost.
