She can see the frustration crossing Henk’s face. She’s done it again, hasn’t she? She’s found herself in a terrible situation, and instead of reacting appropriately, she reacts with snippy remarks. Why can’t she be honest with him, just for once? Show him her vulnerability, let go of the armor made up of humor and wit and acerbic comments? But, even as Mebel claws deep into the recesses of her heart, her ego embraces her tightly, refusing to let go. And so she stands there, unbending, as Henk takes a suitcase out of the walk-in closet. She can tell from the way he’s moving that the suitcase is full of things. When did he pack that? He’s never packed a single suitcase for as long as they’ve been married. Their helpers have always done that forthem. She wonders for a horrifying moment if he did, in fact, ask their helpers to pack for him. Had Narti and Kus done that, knowing what they were packing for?
“Did Narti—” she starts to say.
“No,” Henk sighs. “Of course not. I packed by myself.”
Mebel releases her breath. She ignores the little glow of petty pleasure that comes at the realization that because Henk has packed his own suitcase, chances are he’s forgotten a ton of things. His nighttime retainer, for one, without which he’ll spend the entire night grinding his teeth. He doesn’t even have pointy canines anymore; they’ve been ground flat like the rest of his teeth. Mebel has always hated Henk’s teeth grinding. It sounds like someone rattling dice in a cup.Hah, let’s see how Wendy likes that.But the thought of him sleeping next to Wendy is a punch to Mebel’s heart. She thinks of Wendy, beautiful in her youth, her cheeks plump with natural collagen, and it makes her want to rip out her hair. She bets Wendy has none of her health issues—the stiff knees, the aching back, the dry eyes. Speaking of dry eyes…Mebel fishes a small bottle of eye drops from her pocket. These days, her eyes have become so dry that she has to make sure she always has eye drops on her all the time.
Halfway out of the bedroom, Henk says, “I’ve called Samuel. You shouldn’t be on your own, especially now.”
Horror sinks in with ruthless speed, and Mebel’s entire body goes cold, as though someone’s poured a jug of ice water into her veins. “You told Sammy?” she gasps, scandalized. The thought of her sweet baby boy learning about his father’s indiscretion is, in fact, worse than the transgression itself. “How could you? He would be—”
“He’s a thirty-four-year-old man with a wife and kids,” Henk says flatly. “I don’t think we need to be protecting him from the realities of life anymore.”
“He’s my baby!” Mebel says, and even she has to admit that, when put like that, she sounds like one of those overbearing moms who are obsessed with their useless sons. Except Sammy is far from useless, of course. And Mebel is anything but overbearing. You really can’t be overbearing in full-body Chanel, it gets too warm.
Henk doesn’t even bother with a response before striding out of the room, wheeling his enormous suitcase behind him. She hurries after him, dozens of questions crowding her mind. Dimly, she thinks:I can’t beg him to stay. That would be beyond pathetic. I’ll tell him good riddance.But when she opens her mouth, what comes out is: “Please stay, dear. Please.” Damn it, so much for not begging.
“I wish you all the best, Mebel,” Henk says, and starts going down their elegant curved staircase.
For a fleeting moment, Mebel hopes the wheel of his suitcase will snag on their rug and make him trip, but of course it doesn’t. It’s a Rimowa, after all. And so she stands breathing hard at the top of the stairs, watching her husband of forty years walk out of their north Jakarta mansion and into the unforgiving tropical heat. It’s only when the front door clicks shut that it all sinks in. Mebel slides to the floor—gently, as her Chanel tweed skirt is somewhat snug, and if she split the seams, that would just be the icing on this cake of shit, wouldn’t it? She senses tears filling her eyes, but before they can stream down her face, the snot arrives. She has never perfected the art of crying prettily. Her body has always produced snot far moreefficiently than it does tears. Maybe that’s why Henk left her. Maybe Wendy is one of those women who are able to cry prettily.
Girl, Mebel thinks, with another sob.Wendy is barely a woman, she is a girl. Oh god, she’s younger than Sammy. Ugh.
Just as that revolting thought settles into her consciousness, the front door opens once more. Mebel’s head whips up. Has Henk finally realized what a grand mistake he’s made? Maybe this was all a big joke, one of those things that young people are always playing on one another and posting to the Instagram. She dabs at her wet cheeks, hoping she doesn’t look too much of a mess.
“Mami?”
Mebel’s shoulders sag. Not Henk coming back to beg for forgiveness, after all. Still, she reaches deep within her soul and finds a kernel of persistence to cling to. She mustn’t let her sweet Sammy see her like this. She pulls herself up using the banisters for support, then straightens her skirt and tweed jacket.
“Mami?” Samuel calls out. “Are you there?”
“Ama,” the high-pitched voice of Mebel’s granddaughter Luciana shouts. “I wanna play makeup!”
“Shush, Luci,” Samuel’s wife, Hannah, says. “We’re here to check on your ama, not play with her.”
Mebel hurriedly dries her eyes and takes in a shuddery breath. She brushes down her outfit and primps her puffy hair. There, now she no longer looks like a woman whose husband of forty years has just left her. But when she comes down the stairs and sees her sweet Samuel, her Sammy baby, and his lovely family, the tears come rushing back, and she finds to her horror that she is crumpling like a piece of tissue. And when she opens hermouth to say,Oh, Sammy, there’s no need for you to come here, what comes out instead is an elongated “Waaaah!”
Samuel wraps an arm around Mebel’s shoulders. Luciana clings to her mother and stares at Mebel with wide eyes.
“What’s wrong with Ama?” Luciana asks in a whisper loud enough to be heard all the way across the house.
“Shush,” Hannah says again. She turns around to signal at their nannies—there are two of them, one for each of the twin toddlers, Freydis and Aelgifu. Apparently they’re Viking names. Mebel has had to double-check to make sure that they’ve spelled Aelgifu correctly.
The nannies nod and take the toddlers, along with Luciana, away into the kitchen, leaving Mebel with her son and her daughter-in-law.
“Don’t worry, Mami,” Samuel is saying.
“Don’t worry?” Mebel cries. “How can I not worry? Your father is leaving me for”—she lowers her voice into a scandalized whisper—“for someone younger than you!”
Samuel fidgets, and the crack in Mebel’s heart deepens. “Oh, Mami. You’ll be okay. He’ll come to his senses. This is just a midlife crisis.”
“He is almost seventy years old!” Mebel snaps. “He’s much too old to be having one of those things. He had one of them already, when he was forty-five!”
“What happened then?” Hannah says.
“He had the old house knocked down and rebuilt into this.” Even now, Mebel can’t stop herself from gesturing at her palatial home with flourish. It really is a work of art, Italian marble everywhere, the walls gilded with gold, decorated with statuesthey’d flown in from Greece. “I thought, ‘Well, as far as midlife crises go, this is a productive one.’ But now”—she dissolves into another bout of tears—“I’m going to die here alone, in this big house.”
“It’s okay, Mami. You won’t be alone,” Samuel says. “Hannah and I will stay here with you. And the kids will be here as well. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
