Because, it’s awful to admit, even to myself, but I knew James was having an affair.
I may not be exactly tactful. And there’s probably no good way to hear your husband is cheating. But honestly, there had to have been a better way than the one he chose. James sat me down in our sun-filled living room on our white banquette, the one I had gotten from Mom when Vivi was eight and I had finally felt like I could redo the house because she wasn’t going to spill chocolate milk—the love of which I am certain she inherited from Sloane—on everything anymore. He took my hand and said, “Baby, I know this isn’t the best timing.” He looked down at my stomach. I knew what was coming, really, but I tried to avoid it. In those seconds, I pretended that he was going to say he thought we should move or he was going on a big trip the week before my due date or something, anything that would be bad timing except for this.
“I’m so sorry,” he said. “And I don’t really know how to tell you this. But I’m not in love with you anymore.”
I’m not in love with you anymore. I’m not in love with you anymore. It ran through my mind all day, every day, like the refrain of a horrible pop song you wished the radio would quit playing. Twelve years of marriage, thirteen years of being together, an eleven-year-old daughter, another baby on the way. How could he not love me anymore?
Of course, it was only a couple of hours before Jenna Franklin, my “friend,” called and said, “Oh, Caroline, I don’t know how you’re coping. I don’t know how you can stand to stay here when he’s gallivanting all over town with her.”
My heart sank. I couldn’t act like I didn’t know what was going on. Especially not to her. Which was when I said, “Got to run! I’m late to pick Vivi up from swim practice.”
It was perfect, because it rubbed in the fact that we were members of Central Park Swim Club, which would not let Jenna in.
So I called my real friend, Sarah Peters.
“Is it true?” she asked breathlessly. “Please tell me it isn’t true.”
“I have no idea,” I said. “I am somehow totally in the dark. James has told me he’s leaving me. But who is he leaving me for?”
“Oh, Caroline. Please don’t make me say.”
That was when I knew it had to be one of our friends. Probably that whore Alex Martin. Everyone knew she had only married that old man husband of hers because she was going to have to go back to waiting tables if she didn’t find someone soon after her previous husband had caught her cheating with her high school boyfriend. But I always saw the way she eyed James. I actually kind of liked it. Because I believed that he loved me so much he would never leave me.
I was a lot. I knew it. I had a sassy attitude and a bad temper, but I loved him. Loved him. And he always said that was what he loved most about me. I challenged him. I put him in his place. I made him work. And the way he looked at me, like I was the only woman in the world . . . Well, let’s just say I never imagined that he would do this to me. It made me want to crawl into a hole and die.
But when Sarah said “Edie Fitzgerald,” I about fell out.
I mean, James was good-looking, sure. He still worked out every day and had that gray around his temples, which I thought was sexy once a man hit forty or so. Honestly, I only assumed that since he was eleven years older than I was, there was no way he could trade me in for a newer version.
Evidently, I was wrong. Edie Fitzgerald was the hottest up-and-coming model in the city. She was on every billboard in town and a magazine darling. They ate up the fact that she was, ironically, from Georgia.
“And Caroline . . .” Sarah added, keeping her voice conspicuously calm, “I found out from my producer friend, you know that one over at HBO?” She cleared her throat. “Well—apparently James is going to appear with Edie on Ladies Who Lunch.”
When I broke the news to Vivi that night, thinking it was better she hear it from me than those gossipy, middle school socialites-in-training she called friends, the poor thing was totally inconsolable. I’d never been much of a shrinking violet, as Grammy would say, but I had a baby to birth in a couple of months and this daughter to tend to, and for God’s sake, Ladies Who Lunch? The man really had no tact. Unbelievable. Truly. I blamed his mother. I know I said I liked her. But she was the one that made him so weak.
Suddenly this warm, golden feeling washed over me, like I’d been cold in the air-conditioning all day and stepped outside to warm sun blanketing my body. It hadn’t even occurred to me: We could leave. We really could. At least for a little while. I could get out of town, take Vivi. But where to go?
I can’t explain why Peachtree Bluff popped into my head. But suddenly, all the things I had hated about it—its tiny size, the quiet streets, my mom not having a TV—seemed incredibly appealing. No TV. Nowhere to watch the damn Ladies Who Lunch. It was perfect, actually. I was sure I could talk that sweet headmistress Mrs. Stewart into giving Vivi a spot in her cute private school.
I sat down beside Vivi and rubbed her back. She was lying listlessly on the bed like the brokenhearted ex-girlfriend in some teen movie.
People can say what they want to about me, but I am a terrific mother. I’ve never doubted that. I momentarily wondered if escaping would be teaching Vivi to run away from her problems. But instead, I realized that running away for a couple of months would help to keep her young just a little bit longer.
“I know this is horrible, sweetheart. And we can talk about it all you want to. There’s nothing you can’t ask. OK?”
She sat up and nodded. “I hate Dad.”
I hate Dad, too. No. I didn’t hate James. Not really. Not even in that moment. James had broken my heart. Shattered my world. Shattered my child’s world. There was a difference.
“I’ve been thinking,” I said, as though this was an idea I’d been mulling over for months, not the past ninety seconds. “You know how we always say we’re going to spend the summer at Gransley’s? Go out on the boat, learn to fish, take surfing lessons?”
She nodded sulkily. I couldn’t blame the kid.
“Well, what if we do that now? We could spend the spring there instead.”
She jumped up and threw her arms around my neck. “Mom! No, you’re kidding me!”
I shook my head. “I am not kidding you. Not at all. Every good New York girl knows when to take a break from the fast pace.”
She squealed. “You are the best mom in the whole world.”
I relayed the entire scene to Sloane and Emerson on the phone that day and was met with total silence on the other end, suddenly punctuated by a loud sob. I rolled my eyes. Oh, Emerson. “Look,” I said, “I love you both, and we’ll have plenty of time for family therapy, but right now, I need to keep it together and just get home. OK?”
Nothing.
“Guys, I mean it. I can’t fall apart, for Vivi’s sake.”
“OK.” Emerson sniffed.