“It’s nice that you and Leonora get along so well.”
He put down his wineglass and crossed his arms in a deliberate motion.
“Don’t start,” he said, and Merritt felt stupid and small, like ajealous tween girl whose boyfriend had been spotted talking to someone else between classes.
“I’m just saying—”
“We had a life together,” he interrupted. “Havea life, but it’s all very mature and friendly.”
“I could tell.”
“Don’t be jealous.” It had been a command. He was still in his sport coat and button-down, while she had changed into sweatpants and a T-shirt. Stupid mistake. She was unarmed.
“Did you have totouchher so much?”
“I’ve done quite a bit more thantouchher, sweetheart.”
Merritt turned back to the sink then, showing her disgust at both the faux pet name and the unnecessary, unhelpful allusion. Two plates later, though, she turned back around. He was waiting, smirking, and she hated him then.
“You barely spoke to me all night,” she said, pointing with a soapy silver ladle.
“Our friends were here.”
“Your friends.”
“Sweetheart, please,” he said again, leaving the kitchen to gather more leftovers from the dining room, “you’re embarrassing yourself.”
Merritt finished the dishes in silence, refusing to turn around again. She knew that Graydon probably felt victorious, that she had been appropriately shamed, but the truth was that her working hands were fueled by rage. It was there in Graydon’s kitchen that she had first seen, with glaring clarity, what this all was. What she was to him. She had read scenes like this in books, and she knew this should be her Nora Helmer moment. Instead, she was doing the dishes, because this was not a three-act play, and Graydon wasn’t Torvald, and this wasn’t even her house.
The next morning Graydon had halfway apologized for being distracted by the guests—she knew, didn’t she, how much hecared about things like this going well?—and Merritt accepted that apology. She did not wait for him to mention Leonora because she knew, instinctively, that he would never apologize for whatever happened with her.
Now, looking back, Merritt wished she had left the dirty dishes and the house and never returned, but she did return. They, too, had built a little life together, and there was always the chance she was being unreasonable. Graydon was the kind of man who seemed to have some secret knowledge about the way things really were, and so she had stayed, and she’d spent Christmas with him, too, and then the day before Valentine’s Day, which a man like him hardly deigned to acknowledge anyway, she was in the department mail room and decided to do the kind thing of checking Graydon’s box for him. On top was a red envelope addressed in an unfamiliar script, but a hunch told her to check the outgoing box for interdepartmental mail and there was a similar envelope, addressed in his cramped, hypermasculine handwriting toLeonora Benbrook, Religious Studies. Valentine’s cards, after all these years.
Back then, she did not think Graydon and Leonora were sleeping together, and she still didn’t think so. But Merritt did realize in that moment that whatever this man felt for his ex-wife was not what he felt for her, was not something he could ever feel for someone like her. She went home to her studio apartment, which she loved, and took stock: of her day and the days before it, of the recent writing she was doing and despising, of the tepid feedback she’d begun to receive in workshops and from professors, and she thought, of course, of that Thanksgiving dinner and Leonora’s wine-drenched laugh. She let herself feel small again for a moment, aware of her passive role in this smallness, and then she drove to Graydon’s house and ended things.
He put up an enervated fight for the first half hour, but the encounter ended with the same cold dismissiveness he’d shownher in November. Merritt remained calm, a fact she was proud of even today, as she told the man about himself:
“You fool a lot of people, and you fooled me for a while, but what’s so depressing is how boringly predictable you ended up being. This whole thing—going after a grad student and treating her like shit, dismissing her the moment she stops propping up your fragile ego. It’s just like every sleazy professor in every bad, gossipy story, andGod, it makes me feel stupid for having ever thought you were interesting or kind or good. You’re not. You’re condescending and cruel, and you’ve diminished me—as a person and a student and a writer—and yes, fine, I am partly to blame for that. But now I’m through.”
That stopped him short because, knowing him as she did, she was certain he planned to say something about how she herself was responsible for any feelings of weakness or insignificance, but she’d beaten him to it. She was also proud of having given him a small, cold smile in this moment of bewilderment, and the way she’d walked away from him then. She did get the last word.
At least until the book came out.
“So anyway,” her mother was saying while signing the check, “what do you think about going to a B&B on Wednesday and staying for a day or two? There’s one here in town, but I found a quaint little place on the coast that does a whole big Thanksgiving meal. That way we won’t have to cook, and we won’t feel so pathetic about it being just the two of us.”
Merritt watched her mom, who watched the ceiling. Merritt waited until Kathleen looked her way, then rolled her eyes, drawing a laugh from her mother.
“You know I could never feel pathetic about that, Mom.”
Chapter Twenty
Evie was clearly succeeding at the job she had assigned herself. There was no other way to explain why Whit was currently walking with her toward the farmers’ market with Annie skipping giddily between them. Whit had no problem with farmers’ markets, but they were exactly the sort of thing he never seemed to have energy for these days.
Today, though, he was glad he had listened to his sister. The morning was pleasantly cool, and Annie was over the moon to be out and about. Whit caught Evie’s eye over his daughter’s head and gave her an appreciative nod. She beamed back.
“You’re going tolovethe farmers’ market, Evie,” Annie bubbled, talking at the frantic pace eight-year-olds are accustomed to. “It’ssocute in the fall.”
“I believe it,” Evie said. “Is it all pumpkins and scarecrows, or has Christmas already started taking over?”
