“At first I was mad. It was almost worse than if you were having an affair. I mean, that’s how much you didn’t want to have me around? It was awful, Darby.”
Hold on a minute, the conversation is moving entirely in the wrong direction, she’s swimming upside down. How is she the bad guy here? What’s going on?
He grins sheepishly, asking her to understand something he’s never even bothered to explain to her. “But it was a wake-up call. I get it now. It’s frustrating for you to have to babysit me at parties and whatnot and, well, believe it or not, I don’t love it myself.” He chuckles. “Rahul says it’s a real thing. There are symptoms. Excessive sweating, trembling, nausea, difficulty speaking, a rapid heart rate. An actual diagnosable syndrome and I have it. I know it’s not like I’m a social anxiety disorder survivor or anything.” Though it sounds to her like that’s exactly what he thinks, like she should make him some colorful supportive wristband. “So I knew I had to treat it like a disease, to do something drastic. Dive into the deep end, so to speak.”
“Well, you did it,” she manages weakly. Her husband. A comedy troupe member. It’s so important that she look happy for him, that she perform this happiness convincingly. She has no time to consider how she actually feels.
“I’m not totally cured yet, but Rahul says maybe by Christmas we could try having a dinner party or something? The point is I’m getting there. It’s a start. See, at first, I just did an online class, like with Rahul. That’s where I met Sarah. She was in my class at Upright Citizens Brigade. Level One Improv. Kind of neat that they offer it. It’s a very safe space.” U-C-B, Darby thinks. He met Sarah at UCB and then, and then … “And then I was finally ready to try it in person. I go to this theater near my office. I’ll show you sometime, now that you know.”
“Hideout?” she asks, feebly.
“You know it?” He grins like this is all the best news ever.
He stretches out his arms. A hug. The man is expecting a hug. From her. The pallor has retreated from his face, now rosy with pride. He’s thrilled. It’s all out in the open. As though this couldn’t have worked out better if he planned it. He’s a changed man. Or at least a changing one.
Darby allows whatever sense of forward momentum that carried her this far in the conversation to send her gently floating into his arms, as if that were where she intended to land all along.
“Thank you, Darby,” he says into the top of her hair.
“You’re … welcome?”
She’s relieved, isn’t she? Or mostly relieved.
At least until it’s the middle of the night and she can’t sleep, but her spinning head has slowed enough to consider how two things can be true at once. Griff can be doing improv. Griff could have also been at the school. One has virtually no power to negate the other and yet she let the conversation end right then and there. Griff truly could not have planned it any better, which of course he didn’t. He improvised.
THIRTY
This morning, when Mary Beth woke up, she felt like her old self again. Squeaky clean, not even a glimmer of headache on the horizon. It was marvelous. She had a desire to make Mickey Mouse pancakes. Vintage Mary Beth, she thought fondly. She is a woman who can make crabs out of a croissant and cucumbers and form SpongeBob SquarePants from spaghetti. She goes the extra mile. That’s who she is as a mother, as a person.
“Good morning,” she sang to her little family like she was Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music.
The faces of her daughters glowed with youthful radiance. They were beautiful, a stunning feat of nature like a national park. “Breakfast with a view.” She smiled, looking at them, really looking for what felt like the first time in weeks.
Only a year ago, Noelle had slept with an alligator blanket named Alli and was deathly afraid of the snow monster in Frozen and greeted everyone she saw with “Hello, guys,” like a vaudeville actress. Now she’s four and a whole new person who sleeps with a bear and gets embarrassed when she passes gas and still the beauty remains the same.
She thinks about those national parks, those stretches of untouched land, and believes her daughters truly are a lot like those splendid views; they must be protected.
An hour or two later, still in her chipper, can-do Mary Beth mood, she knocks on the office door of Pastor Ben. “Now still a good time?” she asks in the creaky hallway.
The hotter the temperature climbs, the less capable it seems the window air units are of fending off the creeping humidity. A hint of mildew mixes with the smell of a microwaved breakfast sandwich. On the bathroom door hangs a typed sign that reads Sensitive Plumbing, and Mary Beth thinks maybe for her next project she’ll tackle getting these offices renovated properly.
Today, she arrives as her most presentable self. The Bible is full of redemption stories—see the Prodigal Son, and Jonah, and, of course, Job. Hers involves a ladylike dress and some judiciously applied argan oil. Though perhaps presenting a self who has not almost assaulted a police officer in front of a pastor is all the improvement she really needs.
She just has this sense that everything is going to be okay.
“Hey, hey.” Pastor Ben looks up from where he was writing in a journal. There’s no product in his hair today and a wavy lock falls over his forehead, which he swipes back as his eyes meet hers. He sets down his pen and ushers her inside with a big, hospitable gesture. To her surprise, instead of staying where he is, he comes around to occupy the guest chair beside her. “Do you mind?” he asks, hovering over the cushioned chair. “Easier to focus without my computer screen beckoning.”
“By all means.”
He nestles his back into the support. “Thanks for coming,” he says. “I wanted to go ahead and check in again about those fundraising efforts for the youth center.” When he hikes his ankle over his knee, she notices a small tribal sun tattooed on the inside bone. “The coffers, you know, seem to be sort of, you know.” He flattens his hand. “On a plateau.”
“I think it’s paused, mostly,” she says. She did imagine this was coming and yet still doesn’t like the feeling of not being in a position to wow. “We did ask for contributions at the counseling session you led with the children, which was fantastic, by the way, but wanted to let the families regroup given the circumstances.”
“Paused isn’t stopped, though, right?” He toys with his chin.
“Of course not. I check the office regularly for any new slips. And, you know, a few of the parents thought it would be nice to earmark a portion of the money for Erin’s funeral expenses. We could give it to the family as a gift.” She doesn’t mention that “some of the parents” were just her, actually. “I need to deal with that paperwork, but—”
“How much do they want to earmark?”
“Oh. I don’t know exactly. A couple thousand dollars might be appropriate. I can get you hard numbers.” She grabs a pen and planner from her purse and makes a note.
He sits forward, elbows on knees, his shirt pulling tight across his broad shoulders. She remembers when Doug’s shirts used to do that. Now they just sort of bunch up around the love handles. Not that she’s complaining. Just noticing. A woman’s allowed to notice, isn’t she? Especially given—given that their 30-Day Challenge has hit the skids. There, she said it.