You Think It, I'll Say It(10)
“Okay,” Lucas said.
“And there’s chips,” Julie said. “And an apple.”
Lucas looked at her with benign curiosity, and Julie thought that this might be her lowest moment yet—worse than all her lustful daydreams about a man other than her husband, worse than her recent months of preoccupation, worse even than unsuccessfully throwing herself at Graham.
“Darth Vader is stronger than Sidious and Obi-Wan put together,” Lucas’s friend Drew said. “And he survived in the river of lava.”
A whistle blew, and the children lined up; Mrs. Ackerburg and the two other second-grade teachers took turns reading names aloud so the kids knew where to stand.
Gayle appeared next to Julie and murmured, “There’s something I want to ask you.”
Julie tried to sound neutral as she said, “Sure.” She had no idea whether Gayle had ever suspected anything; it was possible she hadn’t and also possible that Gayle had suspected before Julie herself did. But Julie doubted that Graham had told her about their lunch.
“This spring is Mrs. Ackerburg’s twenty-fifth anniversary at the school,” Gayle said. “Paula and Jen and I were thinking all the families in the class should go in on a gift certificate, but do you think she’d rather have one to a restaurant or a spa?”
“Oh,” Julie said. “Well, you could split the difference, right? And do both? I’m happy to contribute.”
“If it were me, I’d prefer the spa. I think Sanctuary is really nice.”
It was like cortisol—or something—had been released into Julie’s bloodstream in preparation for a showdown, and though the cortisol had proved unnecessary, she was compelled to deploy it. She said, “Gayle, how are you doing? In terms of, you know, Graham?” Even now, there was a certain illicit thrill in saying his name aloud, as if he were a regular person.
Gayle rolled her eyes. “Have you heard that he’s moved in with Beth? He was staying at a residential hotel for a while, but now he’s at her place. Frankly, I’m not sure what she sees in him. What does a gorgeous thirty-year-old woman want with a man having a midlife crisis?”
Julie’s heartbeat had picked up. “Who’s Beth?”
“Beth Brenner,” Gayle said. “In mergers and acquisitions.”
Julie had a dim idea of who this was—an employee of the firm where both Graham and Keith worked, an up-and-comer who was, if Julie was thinking of the right person, her own physical opposite. Her mental image of Beth Brenner was of a tall, slender blonde wearing a short-skirted business suit and high heels.
“I’m sorry,” Julie said, which of course was true.
Gayle shook her head. “He claims it started after we separated, but come on. You know what, though? She can have him.”
Because the children and adults were entering the museum in a horde, it wasn’t the moment for Julie to burst into tears again, though there was time to discreetly check her phone and confirm that Beth Brenner was who she was picturing. Half the second graders were led to the Butterfly Center proper—basically a tropical greenhouse—and the other half, including Lucas’s group, started in a classroom, where they were each given a sheet of orange paper that read, across the top, THE WORLD HAS MANY BUTTERFLIES. Below that were the words Did you know…and an assortment of facts: Butterflies have four wings, fold them when resting, and live during their pupal stage in a chrysalis.
A docent led a discussion among the children while Julie and the other adults stood against a side wall. She can have him. Would Julie ever in casual conversation say that about her husband and another woman? It felt unlikely. She had wondered, in retrospect, if she had been hoping to leave Keith for Graham, hoping she and Graham would marry. She thought but wasn’t certain that she’d only been trying to have an affair. Though how embarrassing, in light of the news about Beth Brenner, that Julie had imagined Graham might desire her forty-four-year-old self, even boob-lifted and hair-straightened. Sometimes, in the last few weeks, she had thought maybe he’d been denying his attraction to her as an act of chivalry, in order not to destroy her marriage, too. But Beth Brenner offered rather convincing evidence that he’d said he was never romantically interested in her because he was never romantically interested in her.
The children made butterflies out of paper, glitter, and pipe cleaners, and Lucas tried to give her his to hold as they left the classroom. Julie shook her head. “You can hang on to it like everyone else,” she said.
In front of the doors to the “rain forest,” Julie, Gayle, and the ten children in their group were told by another docent that they should not touch the butterflies, even if one landed on them. Before exiting, they’d need to make sure no butterflies were clinging to their clothes. Already, Julie could feel the humid air.
Julie had been to the Butterfly Center several times. Inside its tropical clime, a walkway snaked around massive nectar plants and fruit trees, below a three-story roof of windowpanes. At first, the children shouted out on glimpsing a butterfly—someone identified a zebra butterfly, then a green swallowtail—but they were so plentiful that the children soon settled down.
And yet, Julie thought, the world did not have many butterflies. Or at least for her, it hadn’t. A long time ago, after Julie and Keith had been dating for a month, they’d gone for drinks one night with a bunch of his business school classmates, and the next morning, while the two of them were still in bed at Keith’s apartment, Julie had begun describing her impressions of his friends—that guy James had been a blowhard, and Ross had made a weird comment about affirmative action, and clearly Nick’s girlfriend was anorexic or bulimic or both; in fact, Julie wondered if she’d puked in the bathroom at the bar, because she’d been gone twenty minutes and returned to the table wobbly and minty-smelling.