“And who is that, exactly?”
He turned back, the question genuine. For a moment, it felt like there was an opening. Like this might be the start of a conversation, not the end. But before I pushed through that small hole, he shook his head.
“It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if somewhere deep inside you’d like to believe you’re still the woman I fell in love with. That’s not who you are now.”
“I just—I got a little lost.”
He laughed. “Is that what happened?”
“You hate me that much?”
“No. I don’t hate you.” He met my eyes, almost kindly. “I just don’t know you.”
Then he kept walking.
11
I walked all the way home. I walked down Central Park West and circled through Columbus Circle, winding down the Hudson River Greenway, all the way to Tribeca. It took me several hours. It wasn’t the first time I’d walked the city. But it might have been the first time I walked all that way focusing on the taxi lights twinkling in the circle past the Time Warner Center; the glittering lights of Chelsea Piers; the way Jersey actually looked pretty from across the river. I noticed all of it. It was as if one of those places held the answer to how to turn the last few days around—to get my career back—to find myself walking closer to Danny, as opposed to moving further away.
I walked into the apartment to hear the home phone ringing. No one in the world had the home line except for Danny. I felt a surge of relief run through me. I knew he wasn’t calling to say he forgave me, but maybe he was sorry he had been so hard on me. Which felt like an important start.
I picked up. “Danny?”
“No, it’s Sheila.”
Sheila. Our attorney. Danny’s words ran through my head. And the word I didn’t want to hear her say. Divorce.
I looked at the clock. “Sheila, can I call you tomorrow? It’s a little late.”
“It’s late because I’ve been trying the cell number I have for you all day but the voice mail is full. And no, it can’t wait until tomorrow. It’s urgent.”
“If by urgent you mean that you’re calling to say that Danny is filing for divorce, that’s the kind of urgent that definitely can wait until tomorrow.”
“He has not.”
I breathed a sigh of relief.
“Because in New York State the law mandates a year of legal separation before filing. He has filed for that.”
“Great,” I said.
“But that’s not why I’m calling either,” Sheila said. “Are you aware your publisher has demanded that you repay the advance for your cookbook?”
Sheila was our personal attorney, not my business attorney. “How do you know that?”
“The money was deposited into a joint account that you share with Danny, and so we were sent a letter from the publisher that if he touched that money, he would be equally liable.”
I laughed. “That’s just bluster, Sheila. They’d have to sue to get the money, and Louis is never going to do that. That’ll take years and lawyers and he isn’t going to want to bother with all that. He is angry right now, but that’s not who he is. I’m telling you, he’ll calm down.”
“Either way, I advised Danny to give the money back.”
“Thank you for the loyalty.”
She interrupted me, unimpressed. “. . . And he did.”
“He did what?”
“We transferred the funds this afternoon.”
I felt like I was going to pass out. That was all of our money. As in: Nothing left to pay the mortgage. Or the six-figure bill sitting on my credit card. “What’d you say?”
“I know that impacts your liquid wealth.”
“That was our liquid wealth.”
“Not for long,” she said. “There has been an offer on the apartment. And the buyer, who is being quite generous, wants to take possession immediately.”
I looked around the apartment—the last bit of solace I had. “That’s not possible.”
“It’s going to have to be,” she said. “Danny wants to divide all joint assets as quickly as possible. And the apartment is the largest one.”
“He can’t just sell our apartment, Sheila.”
“Actually, he can, it’s his name on the mortgage. As I seem to remember, it was something about protecting A Little Sunshine.”
She paused, perhaps hearing it in my silence—absolute terror.
“It’s a really good offer,” she said gently.
“We live on the best street in Tribeca,” I said. “Of course it’s a really good offer.”
She blew past this. “I’ve been speaking with the buyer’s lawyer all day, and in order for the inspections and everything to proceed in a timely manner, the apartment will need to be vacated by the weekend.”
“No, Sheila—this is all happening too fast.”
“According to the internet, actually, it’s been going on for the better part of the decade.”
“I’m hanging up on you now,” I muttered, trying to muster a last shred of . . . something.
“Look, it’s not the end of the world. In sixty days, you’ll have your half of the closing and you can get yourself a new apartment in New York.”
“And in the meantime?”
“Danny says you are welcome to take any of the furnishings with you. But you will have to vacate by the weekend.”
“I literally have nowhere to go.”
“Everyone has somewhere to go,” she said. Then she hung up.
July
12
There were three calculations that went into how I chose which college to attend. The first was who was willing to pay: University of Oregon, UCLA, and Brown University at the top of the heap. The second consideration was how difficult it would be to get there from where I grew up. Brown was a ferry ride and a relatively short car ride, so it was out from the start. UCLA was a car ride and a long plane ride. But if you made the right Hollywood friends, the ones who summered in the Hamptons and had a propeller plane that let them bypass the Expressway, you could potentially go directly from a cushy flight in Los Angeles to the propeller plane in New York City, and be in my hometown in a fun and reasonably quick way.
But to get to the University of Oregon, you had the car ride, a plane ride, and another lengthy car ride. Fourteen hours, door to door. It was easier to get to Europe. There was safety for me in that. There was safety in thinking there were indefinite obstacles separating me from Montauk. So maybe it’s not surprising that it took the destruction of my entire life—losing my husband, my career, my home—for me to return.
And to return at the worst time.