When you get divorced, you have to choose one of a few well-established personas. Well, maybe some people don’tchooseper se. Maybe they justare. There’s the bitter divorcée who blames her ex-husband for every single thing that’s wrong on the entire planet. The one who wallows in her self-pity forever, refusing to reclaim her life. There’s the divorcée who immediately jumps into another serious relationship like nothing ever happened. And there’s the one who goes through a wild phase, dating every inappropriate man (or woman) she can get her hands on. I had to choose which kind I was going to be before the kind I didn’t want to be chose me. So I settled on the free-spirited divorcée and practiced saying in my mirror, “It was a beautiful period of my life and now it’s over.”
That was my external persona. Outwardly, I was fine. Fine, fine, fine. I was grateful for our years together, for Wagner, for what Greg and I had shared, and now I was happy we could both move forward. Inside, I was anything but happy. I was sad to have lost someone I had shared so much of my life with. I was scared that I would never find anyone else and would be alone forever. I was embarrassed that I had to walk around, the woman scorned, with every Southerner and her mother doing the thing I hated the very most: pitying me. And, most of all, I was furious. Furious at Greg for not being able to keep it in his pants. Furious at Brooke for being such an opportunistic hussy. Furious at myself for being the kind of woman who calls another woman an opportunistic hussy and, worst of all, for falling for a man who I knew deep down, even from the beginning, could never give me the kind of partnership I wanted in this life.
And now, speaking of lifelong relationships, I was wishing that I hadn’t checked my e-mail one last time before my friends arrived. But I had. And the note at the top of my inbox was a charming one from my sister. Trey must have been busy, because he was pretty adamant about immediately transferring any e-mail from Quinn into its own secret folder in hopes that I would never see it. It wasn’t his worst idea, but the inevitable moment of reckoning had arrived. The subject line: My Previous E-mails.
I hadn’t read her previous e-mails because I knew what they said and, well, I didn’t want to hear it. But now I couldn’t help myself. I fell on the sword.
Dear Gray,
I know you don’t want to hear what I have to say, but I promise you it comes from a place of love. God doesn’t like divorce, and I am only thinking of you when I urge you to reconcile with Greg, to save your marriage. Think of Wagner. Think of your family. And, most of all, think of your immortal soul.
Love,
Quinn
I know everyone handles grief in a different way, and I guessed this was how Quinn was handling our mother’s death. But to go from being the ultimate party girl—and the ultimate devoted sister—to being solely focused on Elijah Taylor and his church was so extreme.
People almost always know when they are about to cry. There are warning signs: the tears welling up, a lump in the throat. Reading Quinn’s e-mail didn’t give me any of that. In fact, I only noticed the tears after they’d already started. Which made me realize that, despite my cool exterior, I fell into the divorcée category of total and complete mess.
I heard Diana’s voice saying, “Gray,” and she was beside me before I could pretend I wasn’t crying. The natural reaction to another person’s tears is to ask them what’s wrong. Diana didn’t ask. She sat down in the chair on the other side of my desk, looking right at me, and said, “Honey, I know it feels like your life is falling apart. Hell, your lifeisfalling apart. But my life falls apart all the time, and what I’verealized is that when your life falls apart, the universe is just teaching you how to trust.”
This time I felt an ironic laugh coming. “Oh yeah,” I said sarcastically. “My divorce is doing wonders for my ability totrust.” (Bitter divorcée had arrived for another visit.)
She rolled her eyes at me. “Not other people, honey.You. When the shit hits the fan, you’re the woman left standing; you’re the one left holding the bag. And you learn how strong you are. You figure out real quick that nobody’s going to fix your life but you. Nobody else is in charge of your happiness.”
That sounded plain lonely to me, and I braced myself for more tears.
Diana looked at me sideways. Again, no hug, no sympathy. But she was kind enough not to compare our situations. She easily could’ve pulled theYou think you have problems?card, but that would’ve gotten us nowhere.
“Are you going to sit in your room and cry? Or are you going to get your ass up and take on the world?”
I’ll be honest. I wanted to sit in my room and cry. But then Diana got up to leave and said, “The only person who gets to pick how you feel is you.”
Was that true? Was I choosing this? And if I was, could I stop?
When I heard Diana’s footsteps again, I thought she had decided she was going to have to come extract me from my chair of pity. But then she appeared with a plate. It contained a Ritz cracker with a blob of something that I thought I remembered from my childhood as being Easy Cheese, pigs in ablanket, saltines with what appeared to be melted marshmallows on top, and those jalapeño poppers from the freezer that Wagner and his friends liked that I only let them eat when I needed cool mom points.
When I looked up, her face mirrored my confusion. “For your girls’ night,” she said. “Thought a taste test could get you out of here a little quicker.”
I couldn’t help it. I started laughing. I mean, uncontrollably, tears running down my cheeks in the best possible way, laughing at the idea of prissy, perfect party-planner-to-the-rich Mary Ellen walking into my house and, instead of being greeted by prosciutto-wrapped asparagus, grabbing a whing-ding, which is what my mom called saltines with cheese and a marshmallow on top.
Girls’ nights at Mary Ellen’s were always the most extravagant and over-the-top—and the most shared on social media. Every seemingly random get-together was a self-promotion opportunity. 9:08 a.m: “Arranging the flowers for #girlsnight with @grayhoward!” 10:42 a.m.: “Cupcakes for #girlsnight arrived from @spouterinnbakery. Aren’t they gorgeous?” 12:01 p.m.: “Putting the final touches on the bar for #girlsnight. Don’t you love paper straws? #partyon.” 12:14 p.m.: Block further notifications from @maryellenentertains.
I had two choices. I could run to Friendly Market and throw together a fancy cheese plate and try to salvage my friends’ opinions of my party skills. Or I could stick with Diana’s version of appetizers and not hurt her feelings. And her apps were kind of campy. There was a theme.
“Are you having some sort of fit?” Diana asked.
I think that was when I realized how much I’d made the past several months about everyone else. Walking into the club that first day had felt like getting a bad report card—and having it read over the PA system for the entire school to hear. I was Gray Howard. I was successful. I was self-made. My ultimate idea of success as a child had been being able to go to the Dollar Tree and pick out something I didn’t expressly need. But I had made it big. I was happy. I was proud. And I was acutely aware that there were more than a few people out there who couldn’t wait to revel in what was, to date, my largest failure.
When you are in a marriage—or a divorce—sometimes it’s impossible to see outside of it. When you’re in your house sitting across the kitchen table from the man who used to be your world trying to reconcile how he became a stranger in such short order, all you can think about is your intensely private anger and your very personal pain. You forget that you are going to be subject to the merciless scrutiny of the outside world, that the comments and questions and snide remarks being hurled at you from all directions can be almost as bad as your husband’s unfaithfulness. I knew I shouldn’t let other people’s opinions affect me. I shouldn’t care.
But I was a human being. So of course I did.
But I was tired of caring about other people’s opinions. I popped one of Diana’s pigs in a blanket in my mouth. It was delicious. And I figured, why not? My friends should love me even if I served them Cheez Whiz crackers.
Diana was still looking at me expectantly. Then a light bulb went on. “Oh,” she said. “When you said to make what I would make for girls’ night, that’s not exactly what you were expecting.”
I smiled at her. “No, no.” I paused. “Well, I mean, sure, it’s not exactly what I was thinking, but that’s okay. I’m laughing because when I was pregnant with Wagner I couldn’t eat anything—I mean, notanything—without getting sick. So my mom melted cheese on saltine crackers and put marshmallows on them and browned them in the oven. It sounded gross, but then they were all I could eat. These made me think of her.”
