If I Forget You(52)

For a moment, he considers following the two of them. But a small gesture stops him. Alex reaches his arm out suddenly and stretches it around the woman’s back, bringing her close to him for a moment, and she turns her head up to his and smiles, and they are both so endlessly young and pretty, it breaks his heart to see it, and they are laughing again now, moving into each other, and Henry thinks they deserve to be as alone as they believe they are, the city colliding all around them.





Margot, 2012

The following day, Margot pays a visit to her parents’ Central Park West penthouse. She calls her mother to tell her she is coming, that she has news, but she doesn’t say anything else. Her mother pries, but Margot says, “I will be there in an hour. I need to talk to you and Dad.”

Her mother meets her at the door and they move out to the patio, where her father sits in a cast-iron chair painted white at a table with a diet soft drink on it, still saluting the brand he managed for thirty years. Her father pivots his head away from the view and toward her, the park far below them, the buildings of the Upper East Side rising up beyond it, and for a moment Margot’s eyes go to a tall, thin building, and she remembers that they call this building “Donald Trump’s penis,” since it was the first high rise he built in New York.

A minor stroke two years ago has left her father’s face slightly off center and has affected his gait when he walks, but otherwise, he looks well for his eighties, a full head of hair, and those clear, sharp wolf eyes.

“Margot,” he practically barks at her. “Sit down.”

Margot slides a chair out from the table, hearing the soft scrape of it across the tiled balcony, and her mother sits down across from her.

“Hi, Daddy,” she says.

“View never gets old, does it?” her father says.

“No,” Margot replies with a thin smile.

“What can I help you with?” her father says.

“Nothing, actually.”

“Oh, your mother said you needed to talk.”

“I do, but I don’t need any help.”

Her father reaches out with his big hand and grabs the can of soda, takes a long pull of it. The habit he picked up decades ago—six to ten cans of it a day—and he is still continuing. All that caffeine, Margot thinks.

“What is it, then?”

“I have asked Chad for a divorce,” Margot says.

Her mother gasps slightly and says, “Oh, sweetie, why?”

Her father sits up straighter in his chair and looks at her. “Fullers don’t get divorced,” he says.

“Well, this one does,” says Margot.

“He’s having an affair, isn’t he?” her dad says. “That bastard.”

“No,” Margot says. “I am. Not that it matters. That’s not why. I am not in love with him. And I never was.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Margot,” her mother says. “You aren’t a teenager anymore.”

“I know. I am not asking your permission. I wanted you to know.”

“Say you’re sorry and get on with it,” her father says.

“No, I won’t do that. I am doing this for myself.”

“You’re going to need a good lawyer. Chad will take you to the cleaner’s. Karen, get the phone and get me Doug Brenniman.”

“No,” Margot says firmly. “I don’t need your help.”

“Yes, you goddamn do,” her father says.

“No, I don’t. And now I am leaving. I have a busy day.”

Margot stands and her father looks up at her and says, “Sit back down.”

“No,” she says. “I have to go.”

“Wait,” her father says.

“Good-bye, Daddy,” Margot says. “Bye, Mom.”

And with that she is back through the expansive apartment to the elevator, moving down to the street and to the new day.

*

It is all very civil. They get lawyers by the end of the week. The lawyers talk and they don’t. Chad moves into the guest room, and in the mornings he is gone before she wakes. The following week, they will go to Maine and speak with Emma. And then they will talk to Alex in the city. The money is primarily Margot’s, the expansive trust fund she brought into the marriage. She quickly agrees that Chad is entitled to a generous annuity. She doesn’t want the f*cking money. She doesn’t care about the f*cking money. This is his major concern, but now he won’t have to worry about any of it. He can get his apartment in TriBeCa. Once that is settled, there is little else to talk about. The kids are old enough. There are no custody questions.

Margot sleeps late and then she forces herself to make coffee. She is not hungry ever, it seems, and often doesn’t eat until dinner. She can feel herself losing weight and knows she looks like shit. But she is not depressed—no, something else is happening to her. It is something not so easy to grasp.

There is a heavily wooded park near their house, and in the mornings she goes there after her coffee and just walks. She walks up and over the small hills and through the leafy pathways, and she likes the way the sunlight is obscured and dappled at her feet and she likes the sounds of the birds, and now and again she sees joggers or young women pushing strollers as she herself once did, but mostly it is just her and her thoughts, and this is how it should be now.