“From the gentleman.” The waitress sweeps a hand toward the other side of the room, then looks surprised when she doesn’t see whomever she was looking for. “Oops. All I can say is you have two rounds on the house.”
Everyone preens just a little—Chaz and Wesley included—but none of us see anyone who’s smiling or trying to take credit. No one approaches our table.
“Ah, well.” Angela holds hers aloft. “It’s been a while since someone I didn’t know bought me shots. I say we make the most of it.”
“Arriba!” We lift our shot glasses. Then the bravest of us lick salt from our hand, down the shot, slam the empty glass down, and suck on the lime. The rest of the table follows suit. There’s a brief, possibly stunned silence.
“Holy shit!” Chaz gives his head a hard shake. “I am clearly out of practice.”
Some at the table look lost in thought. Some just look lost.
The second round of shots arrives on the heels of the first. We contemplate one another. “Nobody drove here, did they?” Chaz asks.
Everyone shakes their head. But carefully. The next round goes down more slowly, with breaks for water and chips.
The surrounding noise recedes, as if someone packed a layer of cotton balls between our table and the rest of the room. My thoughts slow. It takes me a moment to realize that a conversation is taking place. And that it’s Sara who’s speaking.
“In a way, you’re lucky Josh didn’t wait until you’d been married for a decade before he let you down,” she says to Erin. “Marriage is not what it’s cracked up to be. And neither are men.” She motions vaguely toward Chaz and Wesley. “Sorry. Present company expected. Um, excepted.”
We gape at Sara, who is generally the quietest and least argumentative among us.
“Are you . . .” Phoebe looks at Sara in distress. “Is everything okay?”
“No. It’s not. Everything is abominable, abhorrent, atrocious, awful. And that’s just the a’s.” She looks at her mother-in-law. “Do you wanna tell ’em, Dot, or shall I?”
Everyone but Sara blinks at the “Dot.” Including Dorothy.
“Okay. I’ll go ahead and hannel it then,” Sara continues. “I am divorcing Mitchell. Because he is a liar and a cheat. And . . .”
“I think that’s enough, don’t you, Sara?” Dorothy interrupts.
“Oh, definitely. It’s way more than enough. But there’s a whole lot more! And I have a confession to make.” She turns to Judith. “I’m sorry your husband died. I really am. But I’m jealous, too. Because you stayed married for so long, and you got to raise two children. I bet you didn’t find out your husband had secret children with another woman. And I bet he didn’t steal his mother’s house right out from under her, either. Who does that kind of shit?”
At first, I think I’ve misheard. I can tell everyone’s thinking that. Because Sara is the last person you’d expect to share such private information.
“How could you?” Dorothy gasps, her face so wretched there’s no real room for doubt.
“Oh, Sara. I’m so sorry,” Judith says. “But if you want to know the truth . . .” She doesn’t pause long enough for anyone to tell her that we don’t want to hear anything else that’s painful. “Just because a marriage lasts a long time doesn’t mean it’s a good one. I was seriously considering divorcing Nate when he died. I mean literally. While he was dying. Or possibly already dead.”
I’m not the only one whose mouth gapes open at this. Shock suffuses every face at the table, including Judith’s. I want to applaud her for being brave enough to share something this big, even as I feel us being swept into the unchartered territory of one another’s lives.
Angela expels a big rush of air, and suddenly I’m afraid that the one person—other than my parents and sister—that I’ve always assumed is happy is going to confess that she isn’t. I hold up my hand, ready to beg her not to speak, when she says, “No marriage is perfect all the time. I’ve never considered divorce—not for more than a minute or two, anyway. But no matter how much you love someone, occasionally murder looks extremely attractive.”
Wesley and Phoebe nod somberly, their faces, their Braves jerseys, and the angle of their Braves caps set at identical angles. “He . . . she . . . sometimes is lucky to be alive,” the twins say, each pointing at the other.
Judith’s face turns white. Meena reaches out and squeezes Judith’s hand.
“Wishing someone dead—even for a split second—doesn’t make it so. And I know this from personal experience,” Meena adds. “If it did, there’d be a lot more women in jail for murder. Or appearing on Snapped!”
“Wow.” Chaz straightens and looks around the table. “Women sure do have unexpected depths.”
“You don’t know the half of it,” Carlotta adds sagely. “Women are like icebergs. We only let you see the very tip of us.”
We’re all drinking water now, but once tongues are loosened, it’s hard to tighten them back up.
“I was married right out of college,” Annell admits in a stunning spray of words. “It barely lasted a year.”
We contemplate one another almost warily. But there is no censure, no rush to judgment. For the first time, I ask myself why I’ve been so guarded—sharing the facts of my loss but not the pain—when this support has always been there for the taking? I realize that my reticence, my constant need to show strength, has been more wall than protective shell.
And suddenly I’m spilling my truths, too. “A lot of you know that I lost my fiancé fourteen years ago. What you may not know is that I’m only just now starting to date again. Mostly because my sister didn’t give me a choice. And frankly, nothing that’s been said here tonight makes me want to go on another date ever again.” I look around the table. “You people are scaring the you-know-what out of me. And probably Erin, too.”
“Oh, don’t be a baby,” Angela scolds. “It’s time you get back out into the world and give men a chance.” A smile blooms on her face. “But you know what this reminds me of? Did you all ever see that movie Almost Famous, where the rock band thinks their plane is going down and they start telling one another what they really think and confessing all the horrible things they’ve done. Including sleeping with one another’s wives?”
“Oh yeah!” Wesley laughs. “And then the plane levels out and . . .”
“. . . they’re all just left looking at each other,” Phoebe finishes as we do exactly that.