Chapter 25: The Visit
Between Us Girls, by Natalie Drenovac
If you’re new here, read: Chapter 1
Friday, December 13
Giselle is hovering in the hallway as I cross the threshold. She looks at the bag. She looks at my face. She steps back. There is nowhere else in my life I can arrive at like this. No explanation, no preamble. We’ve only known each other a few years but our friendship drills down to the foundations. Right now, Giselle’s couch, with its warm blanket of lamplight, its cashmere throws, and the stacks of books and wellness apparatus that emit various beams of light that surround it, feel like the safest place I know.
She goes to the kitchen and comes back with two negronis and sits across from me and hands me one and waits. I don’t have to manage how it lands or preempt how she’ll take it or decide how much to say. I just tell her everything. Giselle doesn’t move while I talk. She holds her glass and listens. When I stop she puts it down.
“Show me,” she says.
I take out my phone. I photographed the papers before I left.
I watch her jaw tighten as she reads it and she looks up at me perplexed.
“Eighty twenty,” she says.
“Yes.”
“She asked you to sign this?”
“Yes.”
She hands me back the phone. She picks up her negroni and takes a long sip and sets it down again and looks at me.
“I don’t understand.” she says. “No.” She stops. Shakes her head. “This isn’t her. She’s always said marriage is a partnership, fifty fifty, that women need financial security.” She looks genuinely bewildered. “I don’t understand what I’m looking at.”
“Neither do I.”
“You’re staying here,” she says. It isn’t a question.
Saturday, December 14
When I wake up, I pause for a moment. I don’t know what time it is but I know Miranda’s messages will already be backed up on my phone when I roll over. I already know they will pendulum between anger, contrition and declarations of love. I can barely bring myself to read them. I grab my phone off the charger, fluff up the pillows and scrunch Giselle’s bone cotton sateen sheets up around my shoulders to fortify myself.
Miranda: I hope you’ve had some time to cool off. I want you to know the ownership structure was always in the documentation. I think there has been a miscommunication about what we agreed and I want the chance to explain it properly. Please let me know you’re safe.
I’ve tried calling. I’m worried about you. You can’t just disappear every time we have a disagreement. It’s becoming a pattern and it’s not okay.
Alex, the apartment is meant to settle in a few days. We had an agreement, you can’t just disappear, not communicate and leave me in limbo. You may be upset but so am I. I’m under so much stress, my chest is tight and I can’t breathe deeply. At the very least, I deserve a response.
Fine. I’ll be here. Let me know you’re safe.
I lie there with the phone on my chest. Miranda asking if I’m safe is the one question that always gets to me. I’ve never been able to ignore it, regardless of what’s happening between us. I get up and go to Giselle’s kitchen and text her while Giselle makes coffee.
Me: I’m at Giselle’s. I’m fine.
Four minutes.
Miranda: I see. So you’re probably telling other people about our private financial decisions before you’ve even spoken to me about them. That’s really hurtful, Alex. I’ve done everything for us and this is how you respond. Your avoidance is starting to become really detrimental to our marriage.
Then, six minutes later:
Miranda: I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. I’m scared. I don’t know what’s happening and I’m scared. Please call me.
I put the phone down on the counter.
Giselle puts a coffee in front of me. She makes eggs. I eat maybe a third of the plate and she clears my plate without comment. She once survived a breakup entirely on gin, two months of it, until I told her I was staging an intervention. I’m so glad she left Gavin. He was profoundly dull. We can laugh about it now but at the time it felt like the end of her world.
In the afternoon, despite the cold weather, we go for a walk. The trees are bare. Leaving everything or nothing to the imagination. Usually while we walk we talk about a whole lot of nothing until we end up in fits of laughter but today nothing flows. Everything feels like it’s behind a grey filter. I can’t see clearly no matter how much I try. I’m aware of Giselle beside me and I’m grateful for her. But the cloud still sits there, low and grey, the whole way around.
At some point I say: “She put a number on me. What I’m worth.”
Giselle is quiet for a moment. “I know.”
“Not even a big number.” A weak attempt at a joke I thought it might lighten the mood but I can’t even make myself laugh. We stop walking. “I think the worst part is, I’m realising she’s totally full of shit. Our entire relationship, she has spoken at length about how disgusted she is by men who try to take advantage of their wives. Of the burden of unpaid domestic labour. About women’s empowerment. She said all of this to my face. To other people’s faces. Everything is fifty fifty. We’re partners. That’s what she has always said.”
“I don’t understand it,” Giselle says. “I genuinely don’t. Because she does love you.” She looks at me. “Something must have happened.”
“Something must have happened that changed her entire set of values?”
“No, that’s not what I mean. I mean she’s clearly not thinking straight.”
“Or she’s been lying this whole time.”
Giselle doesn’t answer. She links her arm through mine and we keep walking.
“You don’t have to answer right away but maybe it would help if we all spoke about this together. I could help mediate so things don’t slip through the cracks. Let’s not catastrophise until we give her a chance to explain. Maybe there are some misunderstandings here that could be cleared up. ”
We walk home and sit on the couch. Giselle pretends to read while making furtive glances at me over the top of her novel. I pretend to not notice. Miranda’s name lights up my phone twice more before evening and I watch it each time and don’t move but my heart flinches.
Sunday, December 15
Vivien, Giselle’s mother arrives at four.
She’s in her early seventies, impeccably dressed, and has the quality of making you feel that what you’re saying is the most interesting thing she’s heard all week, despite also having the quality of living a supremely fabulous life. She walks in, kisses Giselle, crosses straight to me and takes my face in her hands.
“Oh, darling,” she says. “I came as soon as Giselle said you were staying with her.. It’s moments like this we all need mothering”
She pulls me in and holds on. She’s worn the same perfume since I’ve known her and right now that is supremely comforting. As soon as she says it, I feel my tear line go blurry and I realise how right she is. I just want someone to take care of it. I want someone to take care of me.
She sits and looks me right in the eye.
“Tell me everything” she says and squeezes my hand warmly.
When I get to the 80/20, Giselle interjects.
“I thought maybe we could have Miranda over in a few days, when Alex is feeling up to it, and give her a chance to explain. It doesn’t make sense.”
Vivien shakes her head and holds out her hand. I give her my phone. She reads it. Reads it again. Gives it back.
“Right,” she says. “No, I don’t think that’s a good idea. I’m afraid this is more serious than that.”
She’s quiet for a moment.
“You know what bothers me most?” She picks up her wine. “Miranda has always talked about the two of you as partners. I’ve heard her say it. At your table, at ours, to anyone who’d listen. She was almost evangelical about it.” She looks at me. “She’s told me that the thing she loved most about your marriage was that you’d built it from nothing together.” She pauses.
“Quick chats in the morning over coffee? Yes. Or maybe something you said after a bottle of wine? Sure. That’s where misunderstandings happen. Paperwork doesn’t leave much room for mistaken impressions.”
The room is very quiet.
“The papers can be redrawn. Say the word and I’ll speak to David’s parents and get this cleared up. But Alex, that’s not really the issue here.” She puts her hand over mine for a moment.
It’s not something you ever get used to really, the maze behind how these families work. Speak to David’s parents? It’s not clear how that would change the paperwork or any agreement between me and my wife but Vivien seems certain a word or two would do it and I have no choice but to believe her.
“But there’s something else, Vivien.” I fumble. “Something I haven’t told you about.”
She hovers over the cheese board with the knife in her hand, looking at me.
“I… I have been with other people. We’ve been sleeping with someone else and –”
“Oh, darling, we can talk about that if you like but it’s got nothing to do with division of assets.”
She waves me off vaguely with the cheese knife and then slices it smoothly into a triple cream brie.
“Now. Tell me what you’re working on. I read something online but I want to hear it from you.”
So we talk about my new film instead. I look down at some point and I’ve eaten without noticing.
At the door, Vivien holds me again and squeezes tight.
“You know what you know,” she says quietly. “So don’t let anyone talk you out of it.”
Giselle and I sit with the last of the bottle.
“I love her,” I say.
“She loves you,” Giselle says. “Miranda does too, you know.”
“Sure.” I say.
Sure.
Monday, December 16
We’re in the middle of a shoot so I can’t just ‘take a few days to myself’. I need to get to set and swap the chaos of my life with the chaos of a mid-act drama and unpredictable lighting conditions. When I left our apartment, I grabbed approximately nothing useful. I have the semblance of a single fuck to give but I also have no underwear so I swing by Lululemon on the way in, buy three pairs and a clean top. I change in the bathroom like a very sad version of Clark Kent, who goes in as a woman with her life semi-together and comes out as a woman who has her life semi-together and clean underwear.
Our day and schedule is packed. It’s perfect, there’s no space to think, just the work, just the next thing, and I lose myself in it for hours until Carmen appears at my elbow with two coffees and hands me one and looks at my face.
“What happened,” she says.
“Shit weekend,” I say.
She doesn’t push. She just stands there with me for a minute drinking her coffee and then she squeezes my arm once. “I’m here. Whatever you need.”
When we break, I can’t eat lunch. My stomach feels too tight. I go back to Giselle’s.
Miranda: I’ve been thinking about what I said. How we built this together. I said what I did because I felt cornered and I’m not proud of it. Your career is yours and you should be proud of it. Everyone knows that. I just need you to know I know it too.
Then later:
Miranda: I keep making two coffees.
Miranda: You haven’t replied to any of my messages. Do you understand how that feels? I’ve been sitting here not knowing if you’re okay, not knowing anything, and you can’t even let me know you’ve read this. That’s not fair, Alex. That’s really not fair.
Then that evening:
Miranda: I miss the way you take up half my side of the bed and then deny it. I miss you correcting my pronunciation of things. I miss fighting about what to watch. I miss you. Please just tell me we’re going to be okay.
I put the phone down on the counter.
Tuesday, December 17
The buzzer goes at seven.
Giselle looks at the intercom and closes her eyes for 5 seconds. Then she buzzes up.
She turns to me. “Don’t be mad. I completely forgot I made plans.”
The door opens. Emily comes in already talking, coat still on, a bottle under one arm. “I’m so sorry I’m late, the subway was.” She stops.
She sees me. I feel guilty before I feel anything else. Then I feel glad to see her, which makes the guilt worse.
“Hi,” I say.
“Hi.” She looks at Giselle.
“Alex is staying with me,” Giselle says. “Come in.”
Emily puts the bottle on the table and sits on the other end of the couch and looks at me. And I think, absurdly, that Miranda would lose her mind. Then I think ‘good’.
“What happened,” she says. Not a question.
I tell her almost everything. When I get to the part where Miranda told me everything I have is because of her, Emily’s mouth falls open.
“She said that to you?”
“Yes.”
“She’s always told me the opposite. That you were the most naturally talented person she’d ever met. That you made her sharper just by being in the room.” She shakes her head.
“I know.”
Giselle, from the armchair, is very busy examining her negroni. Then she picks up her phone. “Thai or Indian, I’m starving.”
We eat dal makhani and laugh and ignore reality for a few hours. Emily does an impression of David holding court about cryptocurrency at a dinner party recently, the way he leans forward when he thinks he’s about to blow someone’s mind. We open a second bottle before we get stuck into Giselle’s wedding. I follow the conversation with half my attention and the other half is on Emily. The way she tucks her feet under her on the couch. The way she looks at me sometimes mid-sentence like she’s checking I’m still there. Somewhere around the third glass I think about crossing the couch and kissing her, about what her mouth would feel like right now, and the thought is so vivid and so specific that I have to look away.
Giselle is right there, keeping me tethered to reality.
At midnight Emily puts her coat on. At the door she pulls me into her, our bodies pressed together, and when she pulls back she kisses the corner of my mouth. Warm. Deliberate. Her lips resting at the edge. I don’t move and I don’t turn my head but I feel it all the way down to my toes.
She steps back.
“You know where I am,” she says.
“You said not to come back.”
She shrugs and heads out the door. I lean against it for a second after it closes.
From the living room Giselle says, without looking up from her phone: “Another negroni? Or maybe a no-groni. I need to start depuffifying before the wedding.”
“Is that a word?” I say.
“I’m 50% certain, it might be a word.” She says, pouring campari into a shot glass.
Miranda has been calling every day. Voice notes. Messages that start carefully and get warmer and then switch to frost again. I listen to some of them. I read all of them.
On Wednesday morning I call her.
“Alex.” There is real relief in her voice.
“I’m fine.”
“I know. I just.” She stops. Starts again, quieter. “I’ve been thinking about nothing else. What I said. What you must have felt reading those papers. I’m not going to defend it. I just want to fix it.”
“Miranda, we always said fifty fifty. You’ve always said it. You said it to people. Not just me.”
“I know.”
“So what happened?”
“I was scared,” she says. “Of what might happen between us. All of it was wrong.” Her voice is very quiet. “I know that. But you know how scared I am of having a financial situation like my mother…that fear just took the wheel.”
She pauses.
“What have you said though…to Giselle?” she says then, and the quality of her voice changes. “This is between us. It should really stay between us.”
“Vivien came over. She was saying that…”
Miranda interrupts. “Well, I want to redo the papers. Fifty fifty. I’ve been trying to reach you for days to tell you this. So whatever you said to them, it was all a little premature, baby. We’ll need to clear that up but, for now, I just need to know everything is going to be okay.”
I don’t say anything.
“Alex. Please.”
“I’ll think about it,” I say.
“That’s enough,” she says. “That’s all I need.”
That evening Miranda texts me a photo. The two of us at Giselle’s birthday dinner in the spring. Miranda’s arm is around me and both of us mid laugh, looking at something off camera. I remember that night. I remember feeling like the luckiest person in the room.
It didn’t feel like a lie. It didn’t feel like a lie at all.
Wednesday, December 18
I tell Giselle over coffee that I think it’s time to go home.
She puts her mug down.
“I think she gets it,” She says. “She’s had the papers redrawn, fifty fifty, and I think she knows she fucked up.”
I look at my coffee. “Yeah, I think she’s genuinely sorry.”
I don’t ask Giselle when she spoke with Miranda.
She gets up and comes around the table and puts her arms around me from behind, her chin on my shoulder the way she’s always done. “I just want you two to be happy, Al. She loves you. You’ll get through this.”
I pack my bag. It doesn’t take long. I didn’t arrive with much. I stand in the doorway of the spare room for a moment and look at it for a moment. The moulded ceiling. The lamp from the Paris market. The now empty drawers and floors. Rooms that have recently been emptied always make me feel emotional. It’s like your energy still lingers through the air, like static. It reminds me that nothing stays still.
Giselle is in the hallway when I come out, leaning against the wall with her arms crossed and her eyes a little bright.
“Call me when you’re home,” she says.
“I will.”
“And Alex.” She looks at me. “Your worth doesn’t have a percentage figure attached.”
Giselle calls me a car.
Miranda opens the door before I’ve finished with my key.
She looks at me. She doesn’t say anything. She just steps forward and puts her arms around me and holds on.
I let myself be held.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I’m so sorry.”
The apartment smells like simmering lemon slices and fresh herbs. Miranda has cooked and we sit at the kitchen table together. Talk. Eat. She asks about Giselle, about Vivien, she even tries making jokes. I know she’s doing her best to lighten the mood. Something pulls at my chest. The intoxicating desire to believe everything is going to be okay. If we could just stretch out this one moment forever.
After dinner she puts the amended papers on the table.
“I don’t want to rush you,” she says. “But with Christmas coming, everything needs to be finalised before the break. The lawyers need them back as soon as possible.”
I read through them. She doesn’t rush me.
I sign.
She takes the pages and puts them aside and takes my face in her hands and kisses me.
My chest feels hollow.
“Thank you. I love you.” she says.
The apartment around us. The painting. The lamp. All of it ours, equally now, on paper.
“We’ll be okay,” I say.
Later she falls asleep with her hands on me. I lie in the dark and feel light. Like I might drift away.
It feels like the tide of love. Carrying me away.
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Disclaimer: This story is a work of fiction. The characters, events, companies, places, names, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance, whether direct or indirect, to actual persons (living or dead), places, events, or businesses is entirely coincidental and unintended. Where reference is made to real locations or historical events, such references are included solely for the purpose of creating a sense of authenticity. They should not be interpreted as depicting real people, their actions, or their conduct. The author expressly disclaims any and all responsibility for any such interpretations or assumptions.
I just caught up to everything I missed and the only thing I want to say is : NO !! I’m so mad rn whYYY did she go back to her omggggggggg
Can’t wait for the next one this is so brilliant