Revenge Wears Prada (44 page)

“
My
best interest?” Andy realized she was shrieking, but she was unable to lower her voice or make it sound any less hysterical. The rage she felt frightened her; more than the shock or the sadness, the tidal wave of anger threatened to overtake her. “You didn’t think for a single second about
my
best interest, or you never would have done this—any of it. You were thinking of yourself and your father’s company and your family’s name. Nothing more, nothing less.”

Max looked down at his feet and then met her gaze. “
Our
family’s company,” he said quietly. “And
our
family’s name. I did this for all of us. I did it for Clementine, too.”

If Andy hadn’t been holding her daughter, she may have actually struck Max. As it was, she clutched her daughter close to her and said, “You’re so sick to even think that.”

Emily sighed, as though all of this were just too exhausting. “Andy, you’re overreacting. Nothing’s going to change for the next year, maybe even longer. You’re still the editor, I’m still the publisher, and I’m sure our entire staff will be happy to come with us. We’ll still call all the shots. And we’ll probably never even see Miranda. We’ll only be one of a dozen magazines in her stable.”

Andy turned to Emily—in her rage for Max, she’d almost forgotten Emily was there. “You were there, Emily. You saw how she acted. What do you think it’s really going to be like? That she’ll come to our offices for yoga over her lunch hour, or late-afternoon pedis? We’ll drink mimosas and giggle about boys?”

Emily surely understood the sarcasm, but she smiled anyway. “It’s going to be even better than that. I promise.”

“I don’t care what you’re promising, because I’m out. I was going to tell you tomorrow at our lunch, but apparently you couldn’t wait.”

“Andy—” Max started, but Andy cut him off.

“Don’t you say another word,” Andy said in a low, angry voice, her eyes narrowing to slits. “This is
my
magazine,
my
career, and you prance in here under some bullshit supposedly selfless reason of saving me from myself . . . duping me so you can try to repair the company your family drove into the ground. Well, guess what? It’s not going to be on my watch. You can go to hell.”

Emily coughed. For the first time in the whole conversation, she looked worried.

Andy turned to Emily. “You can tell them I’m out or I will. Apparently I can’t undo this deal, but I can sure as hell hand in my resignation, effective immediately.”

Emily met Andy’s gaze and the energy in the room seemed to change. Their anger was palpable, but Emily seemed on the verge of saying something truly hideous. Andy watched as Emily opened her mouth to speak and then closed it. Forgetting the stroller and her phone and everything but the baby bundled in her arms, Andy turned and stalked out the front door.

Out of breath from running nearly the entire way home and on the verge of a total nervous breakdown, Andy barely made it through Clementine’s nighttime routine: she performed a perfunctory kitchen-sink bath, dressed her daughter in an overnight diaper and footie pajamas, and gave her a bottle, all without crying. It wasn’t until Clem was safely in her crib with the lights out and the baby monitor on that Andy let herself lose it. Although she’d only been home an hour, it already felt like a decade, and she wondered how she’d face the long night ahead. Not willing to let Max see her cry, she locked the bathroom door and stood under the shower for twenty minutes, maybe half an hour, the tears mingling with the hot water as her body shook with sobs.

Max still wasn’t home when Andy finally stepped out of the shower and dressed herself in head-to-toe flannel. A quick glance in the mirror confirmed that her face was a horror of crimson streaks, swollen cheeks, and bloodshot eyes. Her nose ran uncontrollably. The word she hadn’t allowed herself to consciously
think a single time in the year they’d been married kept forcing itself to the forefront of her mind: divorce. This time, there was no way around it. She would refuse to walk one more step.

Remembering that she’d left her cell phone at Emily’s, Andy picked up the landline and dialed Jill at home.

“Andy? Can I call you back tomorrow? We’re midbaths here. Jared just pooped in the tub, Jake has a fever, Jonah thinks it’s hysterically funny to see if he can splash poop water from the bath into the toilet, and Kyle is out tonight at a work dinner.”

Andy forced herself to sound normal. “Of course, why don’t I call you—”

“Great, thanks. Love you!” The line went dead.

She dialed her mother next, but when it rang and rang, Andy remembered that her mother had her book club on Tuesday nights and wouldn’t be home until much, much later, tipsy from all the wine, laughing over the fact that another three-hour meeting had elapsed without a single minute of actual book discussion.

Next up was Lily. She hadn’t wanted to obligate her friend to what would surely be a long and tearful conversation when Lily undoubtedly had her hands full with Bear and Skye, but Andy had no choice. When Lily picked up on the first ring and said, “Hey there!” in her usual upbeat way, Andy once again began to cry.

“Andy? Are you okay? Sweetheart? Talk to me!”

“I should never have walked down that aisle!” Andy wailed, vaguely aware she wasn’t making any sense but unable to stop herself. Stanley jumped onto the bed and began licking away her tears.

“What aisle? Andy, what’s happening?”

Andy told her everything.

Lily was dumbstruck. Finally she said, “I’m so sorry, Andy. It’s such a betrayal.”

“He sided against me,” she said, still unable to believe it. “He used a legal
technicality
and sold my own company out from under me. Who does that? Seriously, what kind of person?” Her
cheeks were wet with tears but her throat felt like cotton. She poured herself some water, drank it all down, and refilled her glass with white wine.

“Oh, Andy. I don’t know what to say.”

“I haven’t even allowed myself to think about the fact that Emily—supposedly one of my closest friends—conspired against me with my own husband. I can’t even process
that
yet.”

From her spot in bed, she heard the front door open. Andy felt her stomach heave. She didn’t know how she was going to make it through the next fifteen minutes.

“He’s home,” she whispered to Lily.

“I’m here, sweetheart. All night, anytime. Okay? You pick up that phone and call me whenever you need to.”

Andy thanked Lily and hung up just as Max appeared in the doorway. The mere sight of him, looking contrite, holding a bunch of orange tulips in one hand and a Pinkberry shopping bag in the other, caused the tears to start again. Only this time they were accompanied by the sickening realization that he was no longer her husband. She pulled Stanley even closer to her leg and buried her fingers in his fur.

“I swear on Clementine’s life that I never wanted to hurt you,” he said plainly, not moving from the doorway. “On her life, Andy. I swear to you. If you hear nothing else I ever say, please hear that.”

She believed him. Without a doubt in her mind, regardless of how hard it was to trust anything he said, she knew he would never swear on their daughter’s life and lie about it. Andy nodded. “I appreciate that,” she said, wiping away tears. “But it doesn’t change anything.”

Max placed the flowers on the dresser and took a seat at the foot of the bed. His coat and shoes were still on, as though he knew he wouldn’t be staying. He pulled a large Pinkberry from the bag, peanut butter and chocolate swirl topped with Oreos, and handed it to her, but Andy just stared straight at him.

“It’s your favorite.”

“Forgive me for not being very hungry right now.”

He reached into his coat pocket and handed Andy her cell phone. “I brought the stroller home, too.”

“Great.”

“Andy, I can’t begin to tell you how—”

“Then don’t. Save us both even more misery.” She coughed, her throat raw and painful. “I need you to leave right now,” Andy said, not realizing how much she meant the words until she’d said them.

“Andy, talk to me. We have to work through this. We have Clem to think about. Tell me what—”

Andy’s head whipped up and she felt a jolt of rage as her eyes locked with Max’s. “Clem is exactly who I’m thinking about right now. Over my dead body will she grow up watching as her backstabbing father betrays her doormat mother. Not my daughter. So believe me when I tell you that it’s in
Clementine’s
interest for you to get out of here.”

Max looked at her with tears in his eyes. Andy was surprised she felt nothing. In all the years they’d been together, she’d seen Max cry once, maybe twice, and yet his tears today elicited zero emotion from her. He opened his mouth to say something and stopped.

“I’ll go,” he whispered. “I’ll come back tomorrow and we can talk then.”

Andy watched as he quietly shut the bedroom door behind him. A few moments later, she heard the front door close as well.
He didn’t take any clothes,
Andy thought.
Not so much as a toothbrush or extra contact lenses. Where will he go? Who will he stay with?
Her mind circled through these concerns automatically; she worried the way she would have over her mother or her friend or anyone in her life she loved and cared about. But as soon as she remembered what he did, she forced herself to stop.

Easier said than done. Although Andy managed to fall asleep
around midnight, she woke at one wondering where Max was sleeping, at two figuring out how she would tell her parents and Jill, at three trying to envision what Barbara would say, at four thinking about Emily’s betrayal, at five asking herself how she would manage as a single mother, and at six for good, her tears dried up but her head pounding from lack of sleep and her mind racing with worst-case scenarios. Her entire skull ached, from the nape of her neck to the bones around her eye sockets, and her jaw was nearly locked closed with the pressure of grinding her teeth all night. She knew without looking in the mirror that her face and eyes would be splotchy and red, puffed enough to make her look sick or clinically depressed, neither of which was far from reality. Only scooping Clem from her crib and nuzzling her peach-fuzz hair calmed her; the sight of her daughter drinking ravenously from her bottle, the feel of the fleece-encased baby curled up in her arms, and the smell of her silky skin had to be the only things on earth that could have made Andy smile right then. She kissed her daughter, inhaled her delicious neck smell, and kissed her again.

When Andy’s phone rang at six thirty, she was perfectly content to ignore it, but she almost jumped out of her skin when the doorbell rang. Her first thought was Max, but she dismissed it immediately: no matter how intense the crisis they were experiencing, it was still his home and his daughter, and he would never, ever ring the doorbell. No one else she knew would even be awake at that hour, never mind showing up at her apartment, and if they were, the doorman would have called. Her heart beat a little faster. Was something wrong? Should she be nervous?

She placed Clementine on her play mat and peered through the peephole. Emily, clad head to toe in designer running wear—sneakers, tights, hot-pink fleece, reflective vest, and coordinating headband—was stretching her hamstrings. As Andy watched her, Emily checked her phone, rolled her eyes, and ordered Andy to open the door.

“I know you’re there. Max is crashing at my place. I need to talk to you.”

Andy desperately wanted to ignore Emily, or scream at her to go away, or tell her to drop dead, but she knew none of it would matter. Not having the energy or the will to outlast her, Andy opened the door.

“What do you want?”

Emily leaned forward and kissed Andy’s cheek, the way she always did, and breezed past her into the apartment, the way she would on a normal day when she hadn’t just effectively ended their friendship.

“Please tell me you have some coffee on,” Emily said as she beelined for the kitchen. “My god, it’s brutal getting up this early. How do you do this every day? Do you believe I already ran four miles? Hi, Clemmie! Hi, sweetheart, you look so cute in your PJs!”

At the sound of her name Clem stopped eyeing her mobile for a moment, but she didn’t turn around and offer Emily one of her usual heartbreaking grins. Andy sent her daughter a silent thank-you.

“Hmm, no coffee. Do you want one too?” Emily didn’t wait for the answer; she grabbed a clean mug from the dishwasher, discarded the old coffee pod, selected and installed a new one, closed the lid, and hit “start,” all the while delivering an endless stream of chatter about an advertiser who called her at ten the previous night with a silly question.

“Are you really here to tell me about the De Beers people? At six thirty in the morning?”

Emily feigned surprise. “Is it really
that
early? How uncivilized.” She removed the second mug from the machine, added milk to both of them, and pushed one toward Andy. After taking a long drink, she sat down at Andy’s dining room table and motioned for Andy to sit with her. Irritated with herself for taking orders from Emily, Andy nevertheless sat across the table and waited.

“I just want you to know that I feel really badly about how all this went down.”

Once again Emily paused and searched Andy’s face. Andy did nothing but stare straight ahead; she was worried she’d murder Emily if she allowed herself to utter so much as a single word.

Emily didn’t seem to notice and barreled on. “As far as this whole contract debacle . . . I admit I probably didn’t handle that in the best way possible—I can certainly see that from your perspective—but I just knew in my heart of hearts that once you’d really weighed this incredible opportunity, you’d come to the same conclusion: that we couldn’t possibly pass this up. I
knew
it, and I didn’t want us to potentially miss out because it took us a little too long to figure it out. Of course, when we found out the Olive issue was in jeopardy, I knew I needed to act immediately.”