In Twenty Years: A Novel (17 page)

17

OWEN

When Lindy is done with her performance art—which actually takes a while, because once Annie disappears upstairs, Lindy becomes particularly manic, and then that dude she’s with starts beat-boxing, then videotaping so they can upload it to some site that Mason and Penelope probably use but that Owen has never heard of . . . but when all of this subsides, Owen rises wearily to his feet. He stays there for a few seconds, just standing, immobile, because he realizes he has nowhere to go.

“You OK, guy?” Leon says.

“I should go check on Catherine.” He doesn’t move.

“Maybe Catherine should come check on
you
,” Lindy says.

“Stop stirring the pot, Lindy.” Leon elbows her and checks the upload on his phone.

“Yeah,” Owen says. “Yeah, maybe she should come check on
me.
For all she knows, I hurt myself down here.” Lindy cocks her head. “From the broken glass. It’s not like she didn’t hear that.”

“I meant for how she treated you on the walk. With that emasculating bullshit,” Lindy says.

Owen considers this. It was pretty emasculating bullshit.

“I just thought it would be fun! The butter churning. Jesus, who is she to treat it like the goddamn Olympics?”

“She’s Catherine,” Lindy says. “Of course she treated it like the goddamn Olympics.”

Owen digs into a jagged cuticle on his index finger.

“Linds,” Leon says. “Stop.”

“No, she’s right, dude. You should see it in my house: I didn’t unload the dishwasher, I didn’t
load
the dishwasher, I order pizza too much, I—”

Lindy interrupts. “See? I’m not stirring the pot. The pot is already boiling.” She shakes her head. “But you two, man. If you can’t make it . . .”

Owen doesn’t hear her. Instead, he only hears his rage filling him up to his ears. So what if he orders pizza three times a week? So what if he promised, like, homemade lasagna when they agreed he should stay at home. Homemade lasagna sounded thrilling, like a goddamn vacation, when he first resigned from the law office. But then there was the kids’ homework and their schedules, and he’s practically a goddamn taxi service now! Homemaking proved much less enchanting than he realized: monotonous, dull, lonely. There weren’t a lot of stay-at-home dads, not a lot of opportunities to make friends. So he does what he wants now to make himself happy. Does Catherine ever stop to ask what it is that makes him happy?

He marches up the steps two by two, a little winded by the time he reaches the third floor, near the ladder to the trapdoor to the roof. He loiters outside their bedroom, and he can hear Catherine’s voice—clipped, officious—through the door. He scales the ladder upward.

No,
he thinks as he heaves the trapdoor open, his already sore shoulders shaking under the weight.
She never stops to ask me.

She didn’t used to be this way. She used to love the entirety of him. He used to love the entirety of her too. Now, if he’s being honest, who knows? You wake up every day and you’re still married, and so you assume that because you’re both still there, that it’s still love. Is it? Owen doesn’t consider himself an expert.

The afternoon sun hammers down on the roof, and Owen adjusts his baseball cap lower to shield his eyes. He’s hungover, man,
really
hungover, though he did his best acting job this afternoon because he didn’t want to hear it from Catherine. So he pretended he was
just fine
, basically pretended he was astonished that they thought he was so completely obliterated last night that he wouldn’t be
just fine
today. Pretended he wasn’t a little concerned that he might literally die out there, churning butter. Owen wonders if there’s anything sadder than keeling over dead in a mock–colonial times butter-churning contest.

Then he thinks of Bea and realizes, in fact, there is.

He eases his way onto a sun chair that abuts the roof wall.

Oh, he’s feeling it. But he isn’t going to give Catherine the pleasure of knowing.

The metal picture frame around his old letter is already hot to the touch, so he slides it under the shadow of the lounge chair. He closes his eyes, curious whether he can remember what he wrote, what he wished for himself, but that night was a blur. He’s pretty sure he and Colin and a few buddies from Sigma Chi had started drinking at the bars downtown well before the sun started to dip below the horizon. He remembers being intent on making the evening “legendary”—he and Colin and the boys kept shouting, “Legendary!”
and chest-bumping—which to him, back then, meant a shit ton of Amstel and . . . he remembers that they peeled their clothes off at about 3:00 a.m. and streaked Locust Walk. In hindsight, it wasn’t as daring as it seemed: most of the campus had emptied by then—the freshmen back to their parents, the sophomores off to camp-counselor jobs, the juniors to New York City for some important internship they were sure would shape the rest of their lives.

A jaded security guard pulled up in a golf cart, shined a flashlight, and said, “All right, boys, it’s not that I’m not impressed, but let’s wrap it up now.”

Legendary.

Like that was supposed to be the best night of their lives. Before everything changed.

That much was true, though. After college, everything did change, but it was supposed to—life got going after college! Owen knew that. Catherine knew it. In fact, they couldn’t wait for it to change. To move in and play house together—real house, not this dormlike townhouse. To be grown up. To be
responsible.
To make trips to Ikea and stock up on pot holders and lamps and wineglasses for red wine and different wineglasses for white. Like they ever used wineglasses just for reds.

Well, now Catherine does. Now she has five different types of forks, and ten different types of wineglasses, and plates for this occasion and plates for that occasion.

Maybe Owen should have seen it coming, how much she’d grow up. It wasn’t like back then she hadn’t told him that she wanted to take over the domestic-goddess world. She had! He’s not selfish enough to pretend that. Maybe he just wasn’t smart enough to see how much being grown-ups would change them.

A million different kinds of plates, none of them paper—which is all he asks for every once in a while.

When was the last time Catherine asked him what he wanted? He doesn’t know. When was the last time Catherine asked him for advice? He doesn’t know that either. Who does she listen to now? Who does she trust when she can’t trust herself?

Owen has no idea.

He tugs his baseball cap even lower and thinks he might like to go streaking later.

Though he can’t, of course.

Because now he has to be
prudent
, now he has to be
mature
, now he’s a husband and a father, and the owner of a Volvo SUV and a pretty decent-size mortgage.

Grown-ups don’t do that sort of thing.

He tells himself this, but mostly, he hears Catherine’s voice saying it.

Owen groans aloud. His head is pounding, his stomach churning from that earlier burrito and the leftover vestiges of alcohol from last night.

His tongue is sandy, sticky against the roof of his mouth, and his eyes droop with heavy hangover fatigue.

He’ll read the letter later. It can’t tell him anything he doesn’t already know.

18

CATHERINE

The house is quiet by the time Catherine wraps up with her publicity and marketing teams. No one was happy to teleconference in on the Fourth, but tough toodles, Catherine told them. She apologized immediately afterward, then hated that she felt compelled to apologize.

Male CEOs don’t apologize when they call their staff with a crisis!

But it was indeed her fault, and her fault alone that their long weekend was now not their own, so whether or not Rupert Murdoch would apologize, Catherine felt compelled to do so.

She apologized four more times over the hour in which they drafted a statement for the press. Odette, her publicist, said that most of the online chatter is laser focused on the tiny detail that the queen of domesticity is not, in fact, all that domestic in her own home. She texted Catherine during the call to confidentially say, because she didn’t want to declare this in front of the team, that this could torpedo Target, not to mention HGTV.

“So what we need to do,” her publicist suggested to the team, half of whom were only vaguely listening because they were probably savoring grilled hot dogs or watching their toddlers splash in the kiddie pool, “is deflect.”

“Deflect?” Catherine asked. “To what?”

“To you and Owen.”

“To me and Owen?”

“Yes. We need to make this about you and Owen, not about your skills, or lack thereof, at home.”

In the silence that followed, Catherine was pretty sure she could hear one of her employees trying to inconspicuously crunch on corn on the cob, or maybe that salted-caramel popcorn recipe her new test chef concocted in April.

Finally, she said, “So what you mean is, I have to choose—Owen or me.”

“I wouldn’t say it like that,” Odette tutted. “I would say that relationship problems make you relatable. You were having a bad day. You took it out on your husband. Your audience understands that; your audience
wants
that.”

“And the other option?” Catherine’s voice echoed in the emptiness of the closet.

“The other option makes you look like a fraud. Which, frankly, is the only thing your audience won’t tolerate.”

Catherine hoped her team didn’t hear her inhale, didn’t hear her voice quavering. Her hands shook as she gave the OK, and she literally tucked them underneath her to control the trembling. She hadn’t crossed this line yet, at least not publicly, but what choice did she have? It was Owen or her.

I’m deeply embarrassed that my foul mood was caught on tape. We are mourning the loss of a friend (which is why we are regretfully not with our children on this wonderful day in celebration of our nation’s birthday), and after a heated (and fun!) butter-churning contest which reminded me of how grateful I am for the dairy section at Target, my emotions got the better of me. I took out these emotions on my husband, Owen, who has been nothing but a bedrock of support for me at The Crafty Lady. So much so that he is considering joining our in-house legal team. He has accepted my apology, and I hope that you can too.

“And this will stop the message boards? The things they’re posting?” Catherine asked.

“They’ll feel like they heard this from a friend. They’ll want you to be humble, then they’ll want to support you.”

Rupert Murdoch never worried about being humble.

Rupert Murdoch never cared about making friends,
Catherine thought while her publicist rattled on. Though she could use a few friends, actually. Not just her agent. Not just her assistant.

“OK, send it out,” Catherine said finally. “Let’s put this behind us,” she added, already wondering what Owen would think, which is more consideration than she’s given his opinion in a long time.

She flips on the closet light and stares up at the ceiling, the etching no more visible now than it was last night. Twenty years ago she’d never have imagined she’d sacrifice her relationship for her career. Twenty years ago, her relationship was what everyone envied about her. Twenty years ago, it was what she envied about herself. And yet, here, now, she just served her marriage up for public sacrifice, or at least public scrutiny, which is just about the same thing these days.

She sighs and drops her head into her hands, squeezing her temples like this will help assuage her guilt.

She owes him an apology for her behavior today. And now for so much more, though she’s not ready to acknowledge that yet. Maybe he won’t even hear about it, maybe it won’t filter down to his little corner of the Internet, which is filled with . . . she doesn’t know, ESPN and Barstool and Politico?

She should apologize. She should get up right now and go downstairs and find him and kiss him and say,
I’m sorry. Sometimes I’m a bitch and I don’t mean to be. And sometimes you’re a jerk, and I use that against you for longer than is fair. I shouldn’t. I shouldn’t have. I’m sorry.

She tells herself three times to do this. It shouldn’t be so hard. It really
isn’t
that hard. No one ever regrets apologizing to their spouse, do they? Catherine remembers their last fight from a few months ago, well, their last spoken fight. It feels like they’re fighting all the time now, just not out loud.

Catherine was sitting on the island in their kitchen, eating peanut butter ice cream out of the carton as a makeshift late-night dinner after an epic board meeting when he startled her; she’d thought he was asleep. He was wearing his boxers and an undershirt, and she knew immediately that he wanted something. He never roused himself anymore when she tiptoed in so late. She thought maybe he wanted sex, and she cringed a little because she was so bone-weary, but she vowed to smile and sound enthusiastic at the notion.

But then he scratched the back of his head and said, “Maybe I could come aboard the company as counsel.”

(So it wasn’t totally made up: the mention of possible employment in her statement to the press. Though it wasn’t totally honest either.)

“Come aboard my company?” Her spoon lingered over the ice cream pint. She genuinely wasn’t sure what he meant.

“Well, yeah. Why not?”

She dropped the spoon into the container.

“Because, well . . . why would you?”

“I’m restless here. I want to do something.”

“You are doing something. You’re taking care of the kids.”

He shrugged like this wasn’t enough.

Owen said he was bored at home. (But evidently not bored enough to make the interview rounds, tap-dance for kids who were younger but now more senior than he was.) He’d been unemployed for five years; he couldn’t expect to just coast back into the corporate world, he said. Also, he admitted, he didn’t exactly
want
to dive back into the corporate world. He wanted, he said, to juggle both: a few days at the office, a few with the kids, some time to maybe train for a half marathon or take more spinning classes. (Catherine had no idea that he’d even taken one spinning class, and he said, “Yes, all of the other parents go to SoulCycle, so I go to SoulCycle too now!”)

Catherine said, “Well, who wouldn’t want to work a few days and then have a few days off with the kids and then a few days more to go to SoulCycle?”

And Owen looked at her like his suggestion wasn’t ludicrous. So he said, “I don’t know?”

And she replied, “Everyone would like that, O!”

“Jeez, it was just an idea,” he said. “You have all these lawyers working for you. I thought I could help.”

Exasperated, she explained to him, “This is not a side project where you get to come in for a day when you don’t have lacrosse pickup!”

Owen, more exasperated, said, “Jesus Christ! I never said it was!”

Cutting him off, she yelled, “It seems to me that’s what you’re saying!”

And he shouted back, “If you listened to me, you’d know that’s not what I’m saying at all!”

Then they each swapped a bunch of words that Catherine really can’t remember now but knows weren’t particularly nice. Owen eventually retreated to the den and blared the television, watching who-knows-what, and she retreated to her laptop and work e-mails and the rest of the peanut butter ice cream, followed by a nearly full glass of Scotch.

Eventually, she heard the den door open and felt his presence standing there, in the kitchen archway, watching her, wondering who was going to forge a truce first. When she refused to make eye contact, she heard him exhale. Long and slow and frustrated.

“Look, I’m sorry, OK? It was a stupid idea.”

“Fine. Let’s move on.” And she sipped deeply.

She didn’t apologize then either.

She tilts her head back against the closet door and sighs again. It wasn’t that ludicrous a request—that he wanted a life outside of their home. It’s not like she doesn’t think he’s smart, doesn’t know he’s competent. She used to ask his advice all the time, look forward to hearing his insights, was open to his ideas and counsel. So maybe it was the casualness of his assumption that lit her fuse: that she’d built the empire and he could now ride her coattails. But that wasn’t fair either. Owen had done plenty at home, at least for a while when he first left his job, to keep their family sane. Maybe it was that she needed him to have his own purpose outside of hers. They’d always been one entity, all the way back to freshman year, and while she had the opportunity to break out of their oneness at work, Owen hadn’t. She’d been the one—and she knows this—who started seeking independence, relying on her own staff rather than him, relying ultimately on her own gut (and occasionally that shameful notebook of other people’s ideas) rather than anyone else’s. And now The Crafty Lady was
hers.
Just hers. She didn’t know how to share it anymore. Maybe she didn’t
want
to share it either. Independence, she’s discovered, feels just as good as codependence once did. She’s as surprised as anyone to realize this.

Also, there’s that small voice that murmurs to her these days, about how much Owen has disappointed her by failing to live up to his domestic promises. How much would she disappoint him if he unearthed her own messes, her own fraudulent shortcomings?

Still, though. That doesn’t forgive her behavior today. Her own childish behavior at the butter churning. The unkindness of her words afterward. The rest of it—the stuff with her publicist—well, that’s self-preservation, a necessary evil to save the Target partnership. She’ll tell him this eventually, and surely he’ll understand.

Get up. Go find him. Meet his eyes and make amends. It’s not too late to do that.

She knows the Catherine from college would be ashamed of her immobility. The Catherine who shared this room with the then-love-of-her-life; who brought him Corn Nuts for all-nighters; who planned her senior-year schedule around his senior-year schedule; who would iron his shirts (not that he cared, but it was sweet all the same); who sewed him cute little parakeet boxers; who once dressed as Daisy Duke for Halloween because Daisy was Owen’s childhood crush. Then she thinks of Bea and how she’d be ashamed too.

She plants her palms on the floor and pushes herself up.

Enough. It’s Owen, for God sake! Go fix it.

Annie is the only one downstairs, which already deflates Catherine’s determination. She dawdles against the railing, spying the open box from their front stoop on the dining table, and Annie sitting next to it, her knees curled up to her chest, scrolling through her phone.

“Where is everyone?”

“Oh!” Annie starts, her eyes round as orbs. “Sorry, sorry. I forgot I wasn’t here alone. They went to Smoke’s for Fourth of July happy hour.”

It’s not even four o’clock, and after last night, Owen is already back at it.

The rest of Catherine’s apology deflates out of her entirely.

“What’s that?” She points to the box.

“A box of horrors.”

“What?”

“No,” Annie laughs. “Just kidding.” Catherine doesn’t think that Annie looks like she’s kidding. “No, it’s that time capsule Bea made for us, remember? With our letters? I guess that’s what she wanted us here for, together, I mean. What she wanted to give us.”

“Huh.” Catherine pads down the steps and cranes her neck over the top of the box. “Weird. What does yours say?”

“Oh.” More nervous giggling. “I haven’t read mine yet. I just . . .” Annie runs out of words. She sets her phone on the table, screen down.

“I hear you—why get stuck in the past?”

“Yes, something like that,” Annie agrees.

“Looking back can be complicated.”

“I just prefer to look forward,” Annie chirps. “Isn’t that something you’d say on your site? Be present. Enjoy the sunrise!”

“That does sound like something I’d say on my site.”

Annie’s phone buzzes, and she flips it upward, glances at it quickly, then flips it back.

“Just waiting to hear from Baxter,” she says. “I’ve been trying to reach him all day.”

“Everything OK?”

Annie waves a hand. “Oh, I’m sure. Just . . . you know. Well, I don’t go away very often. I mean . . . pretty much . . . practically never.”

“You think he may have burned down the house accidentally?”

“Oh, Baxter? Never!”

Catherine wonders what that would be like, the total assuredness that comes from having a reliable partner. Not that Owen would burn down the house. But following through with his promises, keeping up his end of the bargain . . . ? They used to have this, of course. But once it fades, it feels like it was never there to begin with, like rain through your fingers, a mirage you wonder if you didn’t imagine completely. She fiddles with her gold wedding band.