The gown is champagne-colored and costs $4,000, Grant picked it because he picks what I wear to donor events, and also because left to myself I’d show up in the emerald dress I bought with my own money but my husband cannot have that, not at the Greenwich Arts Foundation spring benefit, and certainly not in front of 300 people who measure the Cavender marriage by the cut of my neckline and the size of the check.
Grant’s hand is on my lower back as we walk in, he does this at events, the hand, the gentle steering, the performance of a husband who is present and attentive, and the performance is so polished that I almost forget he hasn’t put his hand on my back at home in months.
Because at home, his hands are always on his phone or his laptop or whatever else occupies the hours between 9:00 and midnight when he’s in his office with the door closed.
Tonight though, his hand is on my spine, his smile is wide and he shakes hands with men whose names I’ve stopped learning then he introduces me as “my wife, Margaux”, his voice is warm when he says it and the warmth is for them, and certainly not for me.
“Grant!
Margaux!” Tate’s voice carries across the room before I see him.
He’s in a navy suit, drink already in hand, grinning the way he always does, open, a little bit generous and slightly too loud for the room.
He pulls Grant into the handshake-hug and kisses my cheek then squeezes my elbow.
Tate has never once made me feel like a decoration at these events, which puts him ahead of every other man in the building, including my husband.
And then there’s Camille.
She’s in red, a deep, dark red that moves when she walks, her hair is down and her Cartier bracelet catches the light when she reaches for a glass of champagne.
She doesn’t look like she’s trying because she isn’t, she walks toward us and Grant straightens his posture, adjusts his cufflinks and his eyes pass over her and keep moving and the not-looking is so deliberate that it registers as its own form of attention, honestly.
I’ve been watching people lie for a while now, so I know what a performed indifference looks like because I perform one every Tuesday and Thursday at school pickup when Jonah is at the classroom door and I’m in my car pretending he doesn’t rearrange my entire nervous system.
Grant’s version of not-looking at Camille Marchetti in a red dress is the same species of lie, I don’t know what it means yet, but I just know what it looks like.
“Margaux, you— you look stunning.” Camille hugs me and her perfume is the same warm, layered scent from the grocery store, her arms are strong and genuine then I hug her back and I think: I like you and my husband might be lying about you and I can’t tell whether the lie is mine to investigate or not because I’ve been lying about Jonah for a while now and the moral high ground left the building long before I did.
“You look incredible,” I tell her, and I genuinely mean it.
“This old thing?” She smooths the dress at her hip.
“Tate picked it.” “Grant picked mine too.” “Isn’t that— isn’t that depressing?” “Profoundly so.” We laugh, both of us, real laughter, and Grant and Tate are already deep in conversation about someone’s fund then Camille links her arm through mine, we walk to the bar together and for 10 minutes I have a friend and she’s warm, funny and doesn’t know anything about me, and the not-knowing feels like oxygen.
The headmaster takes the stage after dinner.
Dr.
Aldridge, tall and silver-haired, a man who was born to stand behind a podium at a fundraiser and say things that make wealthy people feel good about writing checks.
He thanks the donors, thanks the board, thanks the foundation, and then he says, “And of course, none of this would be possible without our wonderful faculty at Whitfield Academy, whose dedication to our students is the heartbeat of everything we do.” My chest tightens, Jonah is not in this room, he was not invited to this room because teachers don’t get invited to donor galas, they get thanked from a stage by a man in a $3,000 suit who has never set foot in Room 204, and the faculty gets a round of applause from people who couldn’t name a single teacher at the school their children attend.
I clap because everyone is clapping, my hands feel numb, and I think about Jonah in his apartment right now, alone, probably grading papers on his bed, and the distance between this ballroom and that studio is the distance between the world I married into and the world I’ve been sneaking into twice a week.
Tate finds me at the bar during the dancing, Grant is across the room talking to the foundation chairman, Camille is in a cluster of women near the auction table then Tate slides up next to me and orders a whiskey but his face is different, less bright than usual.
The storyteller has gone quiet.
“Can I— can I ask you something?” “Sure.” “Is Grant okay?
He’s been…
off, even at work, he seems distracted, missing calls he wouldn’t normally miss.” I look at Tate, and his hazel eyes are sincere but worried, and I realize he’s asking me as a friend, not as a business partner, and the question hits me harder for it.
“He’s fine,” I say.
“Just busy, you know how he gets during Q1.” “Yeah.” Tate drinks.
“Yeah, probably.
He just…
he cancelled on me twice last week and Grant doesn’t cancel, certainly not on me.” “I’ll— I’ll talk to him.” “Don’t tell him I said anything.” “I won’t, I promise.” Tate squeezes my arm and goes back to find Camille, then I stand at the bar with my champagne, and I think: I don’t know if Grant is okay, I don’t know when he stopped being okay, I haven’t looked at my husband closely enough to know whether he’s stressed or distracted or falling apart or in love with someone else, because looking at him would require me to be present in my own marriage and I vacated that building a long time ago and left the lights on so nobody would notice.
I excuse myself to go to the bathroom, the hallway is long, carpeted and very quiet.
The door swings shut behind me, and I’m checking my lipstick in the mirror when the door opens again, and 2 women walk in, both in black, both carrying clutches, both deep in a conversation they don’t bother pausing when they see me because I’m standing at the far sink and they don’t know who I am or probably don’t care.
“Did you— did you see Grant Cavender with the Marchetti wife?” The taller one, reapplying liner.
“Twenty minutes in the garden, at least.” “They’re friends.” The shorter one, adjusting her necklace.
“Their husbands do business together.” “Friends don’t stand that close.” The tall one clicks her compact shut.
“I’m just saying.” “You’re always just saying.” “Because I’m always right.” They laugh and check their reflections then leave, and the door swings shut behind them, and I’m alone in the bathroom with my hands on the marble counter, my face in the mirror and the champagne turning acid in my stomach.
Twenty minutes in the garden.
Grant and Camille.
Friends don’t stand that close.
I stare at my own reflection, at the $4,000 gown, the platinum ring and the dark blonde hair pinned up the way Grant likes it pinned up, and the woman in the mirror stares back, she looks like a wife, she looks like a liar and she also looks like a woman who just heard something she can’t unhear and doesn’t know what to do with it because doing anything about it would require a moral authority she lost in a studio apartment in Port Chester weeks ago.
I wash my hands because I need to do something with them, and I go back to the party.