I think you might find in these pages some parts of myself that I am ashamed of, some parts that, if I’m honest, I’d rather you never knew. For those parts, I am sorry, my love. I truly am. But please know that nothing in these pages changes the absolute certainty in my heart that you were my only one.
I am writing you a letter, and I will leave it with your mom, who, as you know, I loved almost as if she were my own.
She will give it to you when the time is right. She will know. Mothers always do.
AmeliaDREAM JOB
AS I OPENED THE DOORto Palm Beach Conceptions only an hour after the most emotional scene of my life, I realized I should have been sitting at one of my friends’ houses, sobbing into a pint of Häagen-Dazs and a glass of rosé. But, damn it, I had been working on getting this interview for more than three months. Crying wouldn’t help. Writing, I knew, would.
I waved to two of the women in the waiting room, who called, “Hi, Amelia.” I’m sure they were wondering why I was here, if Thad and I were trying to have a baby. Even the gossipiest socialites in town couldn’t already know about my new, Thadless life, could they?
The thought gave me heartburn. What ifeveryoneknew? What if I was the only person in all of Palm Beach who had been out of the loop on the truth about Thad? I couldn’t stayhere now. I couldn’t bear to stick around knowing that I was the scandal of the week.
Maybe I could go back home to North Carolina. I had a decent amount of contacts now. I could freelance. But I wasn’t sure if I could make enough money freelancing to live. And try as they might, my parents weren’t in a position to help me. Plus, there wouldn’t be any alimony. I’d been the one paying our bills, while Thad “focused on his novel”—which I now knew was code for focusing on Chase.
I couldn’t very well throw Thad out of his own grandmother’s apartment. Even if I could, I’m pretty sure no one wants to sleep in the chintz-filled bedroom where her husband has been having sex with someone else.
All at once, this terrified, vulnerable feeling came over me. But at least I still had my job.
I didn’t have a single friend who still had the same job as when they graduated from college, so I guess that made me a little bit different. But getting hired atClematismagazine had been my dream. Growing up, the daughter of two very refined Southerners,Clematishad been as much a part of my life as church on Sunday and my grandmother’s pearls around my neck.Clematiswas aspirational, a symbol of the person that I might become one day, someone well traveled and well-read. Someone who could speak authoritatively on art and new museum exhibits and the importance of music in society. Someone like my mother.
I had taken early on to investigative pieces. Getting to the bottom of a secret, discovering a sordid underbelly, was myreal forte. But I also loved to tell people’s stories. Real stories about life and love, hardship and heartache. About the way that people get back up when they fall down. In fact, my very first piece atClematishad been about a disgraced young heiress whose father had been caught up in the Enron scandal. In a matter of days, she lost everything, the cushy, beautiful life she’d always known pulled out from under her. Years later, only in her midtwenties, she had begged and borrowed from every friend she had left to launch a makeup line that had sold for millions to Sephora, landing her back on top once again. Storytelling showed me that it’s not our failures that matter; it’s what we do after that counts.
There was no doubt about it: I was in the midst of the biggest, baddest failure of my life. I guess, in retrospect, there had been signs, a few rumors. Being from North Carolina, I should have known that where there’s smoke, there’s fire. But Thad laughed the rumors away.
I knew when I walked out of the apartment that this wouldn’t be a normal divorce. If Thad had left me for another woman, people would rally around me, curse him for how he had betrayed me. But now that he was leaving me for a man?
Well, of course my girlfriends would hate him. They didn’t have a choice. But strangers, and acquaintances, andsociety? They would all cut him slack. He was finally living his truth. There would be pity for me, of course. And maybe even whispers that our marriage had been for appearances.
I exchanged pleasantries with the women I knew, forcing a smile, getting close enough to smell their Jo Maloneperfume and see the diamonds sparkling in their ears, hoping that they couldn’t see how I was dying inside.
As I sat down in one of the chic leather chairs, I couldn’t help but realize how different this was from the waiting rooms of my youth with their standard-issue medical office chairs with the upholstery that itched the backs of my legs. This waiting room smelled of soothing essential oils, not antiseptic.
As I picked up the latest issue ofClematis—as though I couldn’t have practically recited its contents—all I could think about was that I should have stayed in Raleigh. If I had continued on at the little newspaper outside of town I interned at for two summers in college, if I had taken the job they offered me, my entire life could have been different.
I’d loved working for that little newspaper; I had loved getting to do absolutely everything, from writing to editing, proofreading to graphic design. I had even learned to take a decent photo or two. Those summers made me the journalist I am today. I wasn’t a one-trick pony. I knew every element of putting out a publication.
But when I saw the salary package they could offer, I realized that even I, a single girl in a small town, couldn’t live on it. And, to be honest, I felt a little bit ashamed. I had been number one in my journalism school class, the editor of my college magazine. By all accounts, I was destined for journalistic greatness. I couldn’t work at a small-town newspaper for the rest of my life.
Even still, I actually didn’t expect to get the job atClematis. It was a smaller, core group of journalists. And if it didn’t work out, I was stuck in Palm Beach—which, admittedly, isn’t a bad place to be stuck—with no New York City publication on my résumé. If I’m honest with myself, I was scared. When I was in college, I said I stayed in Raleigh so that I could be close to the beach, drive home on the weekends to soak up the summer rays. And I guess that was true, in some ways. But when you got right down to it, I was terrified of being in a big city, scared to leave home, intimidated by the great, wide world beyond the South.
Plus,Clematiswas my dream job. And even though it was less money and a less prestigious position in the eyes of the world than a New York magazine, I believed with all my heart that if I took it, it would pay off. At a midsized publication likeClematis, I could have the opportunity to write both investigative stories and profile pieces.
I had been so nervous moving to Palm Beach, renting the smallest apartment on the least noteworthy street with a girl from Craigslist who I had never met. (My parents would have killed me if they’d known.) I didn’t have any friends. In some ways, it was a much bigger risk than going to New York with a handful of college friends. But there were vestiges of my Southern upbringing everywhere. The trappings of city life, but the manners and protocols of a small town.
And then I met Thad. He was handsome and kind and made me feel like I was at home in this new world.
I had gotten my dreams early. So I guess I was getting my comeuppance early, too. I was only thirty-five, and I was going to be joking about my starter husband.
I knew I was in real danger of crying when a very pleasant nurse with Texas-sized hair opened the door to the waiting room and said, “Mrs. Williams, Dr. Wright will see you now.”
Mrs. Williams. I wasn’t going to be Mrs. Williams anymore. I was going to go back, as quickly as possible, to being Miss Saxton.
On autopilot, I followed the nurse as she opened the door to Dr. Wright’s office, which was so sparse it was clear he didn’t do a lot of actual work in here. I put my game face back on like my daddy taught me on long days at the softball field. “Are you the one who has to call the patients?” I asked.
“We all take turns,” she said. I could tell she wasn’t sure if she was supposed to talk to me. I supposed a reporter in a doctor’s office usually didn’t mean much good. But I wasn’t there to get her in trouble. I was there to sniff out a trail; I was writing about what happens to frozen embryos once they are no longer needed.
I wanted to talk to parents of these fertilized eggs. Did they destroy them? Adopt them out? Donate them to science? Did they have more children because they couldn’t stand the idea of doing any of the above?
