Beatrice had yet to see a young woman walking around Brooklyn who wasn’t perfect. Even the awkward, less-symmetrical ones—miracles, all of them, and they had no idea. Every time she passed one, she’d think, You’re gorgeous, dumbass. One day she walked behind a twenty-something wearing dumpy shorts and a T-shirt that did nothing for her. She was pigeon-toed and slumped over, but her hair was shiny, and when a guy carrying groceries walked past them both, he stared hard at the young woman, like her existence made him mad. It was awful, Beatrice thought, what girls had to put up with. She wanted to do something for this one, brighten her day.
So when the girl ducked into a bodega, Beatrice walked right in behind her. She caught up to her in the back, by the sodas.
The young woman turned and looked at her with saucer eyes, a slight overbite pressed against her lower lip. Beatrice had planned to tell this stranger that she was pretty, but suddenly that felt creepy and intrusive. Leave her alone, she thought. Maybe she doesn’t want to hear it; maybe it’s no business of yours.
“You got this!” Beatrice said instead. What?
“What?” the girl said.
“Oh, sorry, I thought you were someone else.”
Beatrice fled, face burning, and speed-walked the four blocks to her apartment.
When she got home, her ex-husband, Martin, was calling on the landline. Beatrice had a cell phone—she wasn’t that ancient—but she hated talking on it, because she was pretty ancient.
Beatrice told him the story about accosting a stranger. “I’ve grown nutty.”
“Uh-oh,” Martin said. “Here we go.” Since Beatrice had entered her sixties, he liked to joke that she was on the precipice of dementia.
“How’s Bert?” Bert and Martin had been together for ten years, ever since they’d met at a knife-skills class. Martin had moved out well before he’d found Bert, so Beatrice couldn’t resent their love. She did resent that, once he was on his own, Martin had started working on things like “knife skills.” When they were together, she couldn’t get him to open a can of beans.
She still loved Martin. Of course she did.
“Bert,” Martin said, then sighed deeply. “What can I say? He’s wonderful.”
“That’s nice.”
“Don’t be like that.”
He meant jealous. Maybe she was jealous. After all, she wished someone would be wonderful for her, and with every passing year she felt increasingly ridiculous for wanting that. There seemed to be no way to stop the descent into becoming some kind of caricature: Her hair would get coarser and grayer; her skirts would get longer and have deep pockets that she would fill with caramels. She would wear socks with her orthopedic sandals. Her feet were widening and flattening, and her toes had begun to overlap; the internet said it was “toe crowding.” No one had told her this would happen, that your toes would just start rearranging themselves and there wasn’t a damn thing you could do except wedge plastic separators between them and grit your teeth.
“Seriously, I do worry about you, Beatrice,” Martin said.
“Oh, Martin,” Beatrice replied. “Shut the fuck up.”
They both laughed for too long.
Beatrice’s daughter came to visit her. Susanne was living in Massachusetts with her German boyfriend, Heinrich, and some other woman. There were more people in their relationship too, men and women who floated in and out like guests at a boarding house. Susanne had told Beatrice she was polyamorous now—and pansexual, “if you need to put a label on it.” Which seemed to imply that labels were for people like Beatrice.
Susanne’s visit was meant as a treat for Beatrice, although she didn’t say so outright.
“I missed you, that’s all,” Susanne said, lying across the couch. Beatrice had wanted her to come home so much, and now her presence was almost too much to bear, the Susanne-ness of her. Susanne’s phone lit up, and she stared down at it.
“Something wrong?” Beatrice asked.
Susanne looked up. “Oh, that would be great,” she said absently, and dipped her head back down.
Beatrice had made up Susanne’s old twin bed, washed the sheets and comforter, plumped the pillows. It was embarrassing how much she’d enjoyed doing it. It was embarrassing that Susanne’s arrival was such a highlight of her week, her month. Beatrice wanted to say out loud how weird it was that Susanne had only recently been a baby. It was the craziest thing! There had been the moment Susanne was pulled out of her, that cascade of relief, and bloop, a baby coated in white goo had been placed on her chest. A few weeks later Susanne’s face had erupted into a smile at 5 am, when Beatrice was tired and frustrated. Susanne had smiled, and Beatrice had fallen in love.
“You still have this?” Susanne said now, picking up a scented candle from the coffee table. Lily of the valley, Beatrice’s favorite. Susanne put it to her nose and inhaled. “Wow, what a flashback,” she said.
“I don’t still have it. I burn them and buy new ones,” Beatrice said. “It’s not the same candle.”
“Don’t be a grumpy mama,” Susanne said, nudging her.
“I’m not,” Beatrice said, scowling. Susanne laughed and hugged her.
That night Susanne and Beatrice had an argument. Beatrice asked Susanne what she was doing for money, and this got Susanne riled up.
“It’s like we live in a society where you have to do something or you’re not worth anything,” Susanne said. She poured herself another tall glass of wine, almost all the way to the top. Beatrice thought of all the alcoholics she knew.
“I’m just worried about you, Suze. A person needs a source of income. How else will you support yourself?”
“I didn’t say I don’t have a source of income, Mom. It’s just rude to ask about it.”
“So you have a job?” What was Susanne doing that she wouldn’t talk about? Sex work? Drug dealing?
“I work! I work all the time, if you must know.”
Beatrice pinched the bridge of her nose. “Don’t act like this isn’t a regular question that people ask each other.”
Susanne continued to argue that it’s not a question people ask each other in Europe.
Beatrice had never met Heinrich, but she already hated him. She was certain he was trying to get away with something, that this polyamory setup was just an excuse to have sex with anyone he wanted. Plus, his beard was aggressively unkempt. It went all the way up to his eyes, which were bright and dark at the same time, like pennies.
Would anyone ever want to have sex with Beatrice again? She would much rather have been with a man right now, wondering when his clothes were coming off, than perched on a chair with her twenty-five-year-old daughter yelling at her for asking a perfectly reasonable question. On the other hand, maybe Susanne was right. Who cared what anyone did for work anymore? Beatrice was a proofreader for a law firm, had been for thirty years. Why should that matter to anyone?
Beatrice felt a wave of pure exhaustion wash over her. Her eyes watered as she held back a yawn.
“Oh, Mama,” Susanne said. She put down her glass of wine and gave Beatrice’s knee several firm pats. “I’m just doing dumb graphic design for a dumb marketing company.”
Beatrice could have asked Susanne why it was so much work to pull that information out of her. Instead she said, “Thank you,” and got up to kiss her on the top of her head. Susanne’s hair smelled like an early-spring morning when everything is thawing.
The day Susanne was heading home, she announced it was time for Beatrice to start dating. They were sitting at the kitchen table.
“You don’t even have a cat anymore,” Susanne said, putting down her coffee. “It’s sad.”
“That’s funny, I was thinking about getting a new one.” Pedro had died two years ago, and Beatrice was only now able to look at Petfinder without getting emotional.
“Surprise! You can do both,” Susanne said. She shooed Beatrice to the couch for a tutorial on the latest app, which she opened to reveal her own profile.
“You’re dating other people?” Beatrice asked, a flash of hope bursting in her chest.
“We’re always looking for a new member of the polycule. So you swipe right on the people you’re into, and if they do the same for you, it’s a match, and then you can interact with each other. I’ll show you,” Susanne said, swiping right on a young man with glasses and sandy brown hair. A bubble immediately popped up telling her, It’s a match! “I bet before I even get the chance to say hi, he’ll send me a dick pic.”
“No one sends dick pics to my baby,” Beatrice said, although she knew that wasn’t true. Susanne’s phone was probably teeming with dicks.
Beatrice didn’t sign up for the app until after her daughter had left. She had no recent pictures of herself, so she put on some lipstick and a little mascara, and she took a selfie, positioning the phone higher than her head, but not so high that it was obvious she was trying to reduce the number of chins she may or may not have. It looked OK to her. She sent it to Martin.
“Hot stuff!” he wrote back.
It was OK, then.
Filling out her profile came naturally. Likes: Cats and Cat Stevens. Dislikes: People who dislike cats and Cat Stevens. Also Cats, the musical. She put in her real age. Her face in the selfie looked hopeful; maybe her dorky cat joke would attract the right men.
Beatrice looked through the profiles of men who were willing to date a woman her age. They were all so old! And they were all looking for younger women, of course—ideally younger than she was. She was at the upper limit of what they would tolerate. Don’t focus on age, she told herself. You’re as bad as they are. But it wasn’t only their ages. It was the photos of them sitting at a blackjack table in Las Vegas, capped teeth gleaming, or holding a tennis racket like they’d just learned what one was. It was their goals (“to find the foxy lady of my dreams”) and their quips about retirement (“done with work but not with getting down”). They all looked hungry.
You’re a snob, she chided herself. She thought of Martin’s slim body, how he still looked like a little boy in the morning with his hair all mussed, how his glasses were always filthy.
She called him. When she told him about her morning on the app, she made it sound hilarious, another one of her misadventures. He laughed uproariously. “All these old men with pinkie rings playing poker! Are they mob bosses?”
“Surely mob bosses wouldn’t need an app,” she said. “Or they’d have a special app to find their goomars.”
“I think you need to come over tomorrow. Let’s get drunk and find you someone great together.”
What a bad idea.
“Sounds perfect,” she said.
Bert made beef stew, and they had a nice bottle of pinot noir, and then another one, because Martin always bought multiples of what he liked. At Costco! “I’m not a snob,” he said. “Unlike some people.” He meant Beatrice, of course. He would never issue a dig like that about Bert. After her third glass of wine, Beatrice got up to look at Bert and Martin’s wedding photo, the one with the understated silver frame and the two of them making out like teenagers, Martin’s leg wrapped around Bert’s thigh. It was supposed to be a joke, but they ended up liking it. She stared at it and thought, This was the man I thought I was spending my life with. Mistakes were made. By me, Beatrice.
While Martin cleaned up, Bert sat at the table, peering at Beatrice’s phone. Sometimes she glanced at Bert and thought he was Martin: same salt-and-pepper hair, same glasses. They could wear each other’s slim-cut jeans. When she’d first met Bert, she’d asked Martin, “Are you actually gay or just a narcissist?”
“What is with these old men this app wants to set you up with?” Bert said.
Beatrice tore herself away from the wedding photograph and sat down next to him. “I know, right?” she said. “I’m not that old. Not yet.”
“Hardly!” Bert exclaimed. “You’re a vibrant sixty-year-old who deserves someone hot to fuck.” She had always liked Bert; she couldn’t help it.
“Agreed,” she said. “So let’s find someone for me to, you know. Do that with.”
Bert snorted. “Swipe left, swipe left. HARD left,” he said, sweeping his thumb across her phone’s screen.
“You’re not even reading their profiles!”
“I don’t have to read their profiles to know you’re way out of their league,” he said.
“Give me a moment to at least agree with you.”
“Sweetie, are you being shallow?” Martin called from the kitchen.
“Just the opposite, I’m—oh,” Beatrice said, realizing he was talking to Bert, who kissed her blushing cheek. “Force of habit,” she said. “Muscle memory.”
“You can still be his sweetie too, you know.”
Beatrice itched to take her phone back. “No more swiping without my consent.”
“I promise,” he said. They looked at the next man, whose profile picture was of him shaking hands with Ted Cruz. Bert swiped left as Beatrice lunged forward to do the same.
“OK, no more after that one,” she said.
Bert suddenly sat up straight, his eyes fixed on something across the room.
“Are you all right?” Beatrice asked. She assumed if anyone her age behaved strangely, they were having a stroke. Any note of alarm in their voice: stroke. Confusion: stroke. She was always on the lookout. Strokes weren’t going to catch Beatrice off guard.
“I have an idea. Martin!” he cried out.
Martin came running. “What’s happening?” he said. Beatrice was sure that he, too, was thinking about strokes.
“I have an idea for Beatrice,” he said. “A great idea. Chris.”
“Chris,” said Martin, thinking. Then: “Chris!” His face brightened. “Chris could be good. Chris could work out.”
“Chris is a friend of ours,” Bert told Beatrice. “Last I heard, he’s single.”
“And attractive,” Martin said, winking slowly. Martin always winked like he’d just learned how.
“‘Chris’?” Beatrice said, making a face. “You know I like Jewish men.”
Beatrice wasn’t Jewish; she wasn’t anything. Her only exposure to religion had been in second grade, when her Brownie troop spent Saturdays braiding lanyards in the local Knights of Columbus hall under a lenticular image of the pope: When you moved from one side of the picture to the other, he made the sign of the cross. Every weekend Beatrice moved back and forth until her troop leader ordered her to quit it. “Why?” asked Beatrice, but she never got a good answer. Now she knew: because children and their inability to grow tired of things was irritating; because it reminded adults they had lost their own fascination with life.
“We can invite him over for our anniversary party!” Bert said. “You can meet him there. No pressure. But you’ll love him.”
“You are going to fall in love with this guy,” said Martin. “Bert, you’re so smart.” He kissed Bert’s head.
“But no pressure,” Bert told Beatrice.
She hadn’t planned on telling Susanne about Chris, but when Susanne called on Sunday, Beatrice told her anyway. Susanne called every Sunday, as though Beatrice were sitting by the phone waiting for her to call. Sometimes she was sitting by the phone waiting for Susanne to call, but only because Susanne had trained her to expect it. Susanne never had much to say and acted as though she were being forced to call every week, even though Beatrice had never asked her to. It was infuriating. Beatrice would ask, How’s your life? And Susanne would say, Same as ever. Not much going on. You know. But Beatrice didn’t know; that was the whole point!
“How’s the boyfriend?” Beatrice asked.
“‘Boyfriend.’” Susanne snorted.
“Or whatever you call him. Partner? Lov-air?” She tried to sound playful.
“Mom.” Susanne let the silence hang in the air for a few seconds. “Heinrich’s fine. He’s out shopping with Janie.”
Janie was probably part of their relationship in some new and baffling way. “How many people live there now, anyway? Is it a cult yet?”
“Mom.”
“Sorry, sorry.”
To take the pressure off Susanne, Beatrice told her about Chris. Their calls shouldn’t only consist of Beatrice grilling her daughter every week. Susanne should have the opportunity to judge her too.
“I think that’s great,” Susanne said. “You should get a pedicure.”
“Why?”
“Also, have you ever been waxed?”
“We’re done here, Suze.”
“Expectations are different now, is all I’m saying.”
“Nope, not talking to you about my bikini area.”
“OK, but I don’t think you notice what your feet look like anymore. Sorry to be so blunt, but they could use a little touching up. They’re kind of gross.”
Beatrice looked down at her bare feet. They looked normal to her: like feet, albeit with wonky toes. Susanne’s feet looked like works of art, her nails like jewels. Beatrice couldn’t compare with that.
“Fine,” she said. “I don’t think he’s going to be looking at my feet, though.”
“You never know,” Susanne said. “Feet are important to a certain type of man.”
Beatrice rocketed back to when Susanne was first born, when she and Martin couldn’t get enough of her: her neck folds, the crease of her wrist, the wrinkles in her impossibly small fingers, her toes that would curl around their pinkies. And now here was her baby girl, impatiently explaining about men and their fetishes. Time has a way of punching you right in the fucking face.
You’re here!” Bert said, beaming at her. He was wearing a button-down shirt and silver tie and looked immaculate. Beatrice was wearing a turquoise silk shell that said, I own expensive things, but a dumpy gray cardigan over it that said, But I’m not crazy about my arms, and jeans that said, These have a forgiving waistband.
She immediately removed her cardigan—her arms were fine!—and gave Bert a hug. “I’m here!” she said. “Against all odds,” she added.
Bert cocked his head at her, smiling. “What?”
“Never mind,” she said. “I brought wine!” She thrust the bottle at him.
“Good girl!” he said, and then stage-whispered, “Chris isn’t here yet, but he just texted for directions, so he’s off the subway.”
“Wow, he might have been right behind me,” Beatrice said. Watching me walk, she thought. Was my walk any good?
“Don’t be alarmed,” said Bert, “but—”
Martin ran over. “Beatrice, my love!” He hugged her hard, his pelvis jammed up against hers in a way that announced, We once made a baby. “It means a lot that you’re here! Come, come!”
“What should I not be alarmed about?” she asked Bert.
“Oh, it’s nothing, just—” The doorbell rang, and he went to answer it.
Perched around their table were ten new friends of Bert and Martin’s—new, that is, since their marriage. Beatrice and Martin had had only a few close friends, and they’d all hung around Beatrice after the divorce, which at the time she’d chosen to see as a preference but in retrospect felt more like pity. Bert and Martin’s circle was chic: painters and fashion stylists who, though only a few years younger than Martin and Bert, seemed a generation away from Beatrice. One woman had an asymmetrical haircut—black with a silver streak down the front—and pulled it off perfectly.
“Everyone, you know Beatrice, my old flame,” Martin announced. It was nice of him not to call me the ex-wife, she thought. She gave a little wave, and the ones who noticed her waved kindly back.
Bert came up behind Beatrice with a couple in tow. “And you all know Chris,” he said.
Standing next to him was a tall man with sparse ginger-blond hair and a weak chin. Chris smiled, showing a row of crooked teeth. Beatrice loved crooked teeth, and her heart leapt.
“And this is Esme, Chris’s friend.” Behind him was a lithe number with curly black hair, wearing a dress with a neckline that announced her cleavage. She waved amiably at the other guests.
Beatrice caught Bert’s eye, and he mouthed, Kitchen.
Out of earshot of the guests Bert explained: Esme was visiting from out of town, and Chris had asked if he could bring her along. “We couldn’t say no.”
“I assume they’re fucking?” Beatrice said, hoping Bert would swat at her and say, Of course not, she’s his cousin!
But he nodded. “I’m afraid that’s my assumption as well. I still want you to meet him though. You never know.”
Oh, but I do, she thought.
Bert poured Beatrice a glass of wine and shooed her into the living room. Martin took her arm and led her straight to Chris and Esme, who were standing by the windows that overlooked the Hudson. “Thanks?” she whispered to Martin, who gave her a little squeeze that showed he didn’t know what she meant.
“Talk!” he ordered the three, then retreated.
“So,” Beatrice said, turning maybe a little aggressively toward Chris, “what do you do?” She dimly remembered, too late, Susanne’s insistence that she shouldn’t ask that question.
“Ah, well, I write about cryptocurrency,” Chris said.
“That’s so interesting,” Beatrice lied. “I don’t know anything about it.” Which was the truth.
“No one does. That’s what the companies are banking on,” he said. Esme erupted into a giggle that seemed to emanate straight from her bosom. “Esme loves a pun,” he said.
“What do you do?” Esme said to Beatrice.
“I’m a legal proofreader.”
“Bert told me you’re a writer,” Chris said, frowning.
“I’m a writer in the sense that I wrote one book twelve years ago. But in the sense that I haven’t written anything since, I’m a legal proofreader.”
“Tell us everything about your book, Beatrice,” Esme said.
“It’s called Sweating in Sweaters. It’s a look at menopause through the clothes I’ve destroyed. It’s supposed to be funny,” she added.
“I love it. I’m starting that journey, and I can’t wait for it to be over,” Esme said. “The freedom! I can’t imagine it.”
Chris looked around the room. “Mmm,” he said.
“Oh, but the journey is never over,” Beatrice said. “The long slide into decrepitude keeps going until you die, and even after that, your nails and your hair grow in your coffin. Or is it that they appear longer because your body shrivels?” She wondered something similar about herself all the time: Was she growing or shrinking? Living or dying? Brave or afraid?
Esme giggled again, unflappable. Chris had turned pale.
“Men go through menopause too, you know,” Beatrice said to him.
He looked around, as if maybe someone was trying to get his attention. “I don’t think that’s so,” he said.
“Oh, they don’t call it menopause, but the hormonal changes can be a real bitch.”
I’m flirting, she realized. This was how she flirted: She annoyed someone until they noticed she was kind of cute.
“As we get older,” she continued, “women turn into men, and men turn into women.”
“What?” Chris twitched.
“I mean, estrogen and testosterone levels decline until men and women are essentially the same. Have you ever been to a nursing home? Gender-wise, it’s a real guessing game.”
“You’re hilarious!” Esme declared.
Chris cocked his head, considering this statement. “You do have an unusual sense of humor.”
“I need more wine,” Beatrice said. “Anyone else?”
Chris shook his head, looking deeply relieved that she was leaving.
In the kitchen she found Bert using a citrus squeezer to juice limes into a pitcher. He grasped her forearm and whispered, “How’s it going?”
“I told him he’s going to turn into a woman,” said Beatrice.
“Ooh, you’re flirting!”
Bert knew her well.
“I should probably go. I’ve completely alienated him. Anyway, I can’t compete with youth and boobs.”
Beatrice’s mother had been uncomfortable with breasts. She was flat-chested, and when Beatrice started to develop, her mother couldn’t stop talking about it. “There are surgeries for that,” she would say, pointing to Beatrice’s chest—when Beatrice was barely a B cup! Her mother would have had a stroke looking at the cleavage Esme was sporting, if she hadn’t already died of a stroke years ago.
“No, don’t leave,” Bert told her. “That’s my professional order as your matchmaker. You’re glowing in that turquoise blouse. You sell yourself short; you always have.”
“I’m being a jerk. And I can’t help it. Give me five more minutes, and I’ll say something about his chin.” She retracted her own chin deep into her neck folds.
Bert cackled and shoved her lightly. “You’re the worst.”
“Martin is calling for you,” Esme said from behind Beatrice, who quickly righted her chin and turned around. Sure enough, they could hear Martin calling out, “My love!” from the living room.
“He knows where I am,” Bert said, rolling his eyes, but he wiped his hands on a towel and headed out.
Esme directed her smile at Beatrice. The two of them were alone in the tiny kitchen.
Esme’s perfume reminded Beatrice of a grandma. Not her grandma, who’d smelled like sweet vermouth and Virginia Slims. But definitely someone’s grandma.
“That top,” Esme said. “The color brings out your eyes.” She reached out and fingered the fabric.
“So, are you fucking Chris?” Beatrice blurted.
Esme raised her eyebrows and laughed. “No way,” she said. “Between you and me? He wishes. But he’s not my type. I keep telling him I want to be friends.”
“So why are you here with him?”
Esme shrugged. “I’m visiting for the weekend, and he asked me to come along.”
“Maybe you like the attention,” Beatrice said, and then softened it with “I mean, who wouldn’t?”
“Maybe. Or maybe I wanted to see who else I might meet,” Esme said, looking directly into Beatrice’s eyes.
“Oh!” Beatrice said. “I’m straight?” Question mark?
Esme laughed again, even harder this time. “Oh my God, you’re killing me!”
Would Beatrice ever learn to read signals correctly? She swept her hand up and down her body, waggling her eyebrows, and said, “Come on, I know you want a piece of this.”
Esme ignored this. “Honestly, Chris needs someone like you,” she said. “Not to presume anything. I mean, for all I know, you’re married.”
Now Beatrice was the one who laughed.
Her pocket buzzed, and she pulled out her phone, expecting it to be a junk call. No one called her on her cell.
It was Susanne. It wasn’t Sunday. Who had died?
“Everything OK?” Esme asked, seeing Beatrice’s face.
Beatrice walked away from her—so rude!—and answered the call. “What’s wrong?” she asked as she made her way across the living room, looking for a quiet corner.
“I can tell you’re busy,” Susanne said. Her voice sounded funny.
Beatrice entered Bert and Martin’s bedroom and shut the door. “Are you sick? Did something happen?”
“Heinrich dumped me,” Susanne said. “So I guess you’re pretty happy about that.”
The party was a distant murmur through the bedroom door. “Oh, Susanne. Oh, no.”
“Don’t even pretend you’re not fucking thrilled,” Susanne said. “I can’t believe this.” She howled in fury.
“Oh, sweetie,” Beatrice said. God, she longed to hold her baby. Bloop.
“I think I’m broken,” Susanne whimpered.
“Oh, that feeling.” Someone knocked on the door. “Go away!” Beatrice called out.
The door opened anyway. “This is my room,” Martin said.
Beatrice gestured to the phone and mouthed, Susanne, just as their daughter said, “Dad?” and wailed. Beatrice put her on speakerphone.
“What did that fuckwit do this time?” Martin growled.
Beatrice gasped. Martin never cursed.
“He said he never loved me. He loves Janie and not me. How can he not love me?”
Beatrice looked helplessly at Martin, who exhaled and said, “That’s so painful, my love. You’ll get through this, of course you will. But—and I’m so sorry—you have to go through this. And that is just terrible.”
Beatrice found herself hurtling through time again—not to Susanne’s babyhood, but to the night she’d realized Martin was leaving her, when she had told him, “I’m the loneliest I’ve ever been,” and he had said, kindly enough, “I can’t help you with that, Beatrice.” It wasn’t so much his dismissal that made her realize their marriage was over; he had been saying those kinds of things for a year (which should have been its own red flag). Whenever she tried to explain how alone she felt, he would suggest that she volunteer or join the local choir, “make new friends.” No, it was the use of her name. She was always “sweetie” or “honey” or “baby” to him. He only used her name when he was furious. It had become a joke: When he’d use The Name, she would say, “Oh boy, I’m really in trouble,” and he would laugh, because he loved her, he did. But at that moment, the way he said, “Beatrice,” with such a flat, even pleasant affect, it was like he barely knew her, like they were merely acquaintances, not a couple who had vowed to be together forever. She’d never thought her name could hurt so much, and when she said, “Am I in trouble?” he looked up at her, not understanding, and that compounded the pain.
She was the one who’d finally said—not that night, but eventually—“Maybe we need some time apart.” She had said it, but he had agreed pretty quickly. Could she ever forgive him for that?
You have to go through this. Beatrice could have used this Martin back then.
Martin looked at Beatrice as she wiped her eyes, and he took her hand, misunderstanding her emotions as usual. Even so, she felt a surge of—what was it? If someone had entered the room and seen Beatrice and Martin sitting there on the immaculately made bed, holding hands and murmuring while their daughter wept and raged, and they had asked Beatrice what she was feeling at that moment, she would have had to admit that she was . . . well, not enjoying herself. Not precisely. But feeling that she could stay there forever, with just the two of them. That she was in the exact place she was always meant to be.
