Pennie told her that she’d only had one or two texts from Tim since he’d started school. He was busy with his new college life, and seemed to have moved on, even after losing the baby, which had brought them closer, briefly. Pennie wasn’t ready to move on yet. She wasn’t dating, and she didn’t want to, but her mother hoped she would soon, when she felt ready. She wanted her to enjoy her senior year, especially after everything that had happened to her.
Eileen made a major effort to make it a fun Halloween for them. She carved pumpkins with the twins, as she always did. She had their costumes ready and drove the twins around trick or treating. Pennie went to a party with friends. It had only been two weeks since Paul had moved out, but Eileen felt as though she was coming alive again. She was managing fine without him, better than she had ever thought she would. It made her wonder if they should have split up sooner. Most of the time, she was amazed to find she didn’t miss him. He had wounded her so badly by cheating on her that it had killed something deep within her. She was beginning to think that she no longer loved him, which was a relief.
* * *
—
In the first week of November, Gwen and Gabrielle went to Paris for Federico’s show at the Petit Palais. It went beautifully, the critics loved it, Gabrielle was very proud of him, and the three of them enjoyed a week in Paris, staying at the Ritz. Gwen had invited Olivia to join them, but she said she was too busy getting her online art gallery running smoothly and meeting new artists.
Things settled down with Paul again, after the disastrous meeting with his children. They were coming to the city to see him every other weekend, but sometimes they had too many plans of their own and couldn’t make it. They weren’t interfering in his life with Olivia, and Paul and Olivia were settling into a comfortable routine that worked for both of them. They were both busy, but he slept at her place every night, and she liked that. She was too busy to think about his divorce, and assumed he was taking care of it. They had no plans for her to see his children again. Nor for him to meet her mother.
Paul talked to Eileen about the children’s Thanksgiving plans. She wanted them with her for the holidays, and they wanted to be at home in Connecticut. Paul wasn’t set up to provide a real Thanksgiving meal for them, and didn’t want to take them to a hotel or restaurant, so he agreed to let Eileen have them. He had no plans of his own. Olivia had already told him that she spent Thanksgiving at her mother’s every year, her grandmother and Federico came, and a few old friends of her mother’s, but she didn’t feel comfortable asking Paul to join them. It seemed like too big a statement, and too soon to her. She wanted him to meet her mother, but not yet. And Gwen didn’t approve of the fact that he was married, even if he was separated.
Olivia said she would only be gone for a few hours on Thanksgiving, and planned to meet up with him afterwards. It was the first time he wouldn’t be celebrating Thanksgiving in years, and wouldn’t see his children. They didn’t want to come into the city during the weekend. They all had too much going on and fun plans of their own.
Olivia felt mildly guilty when she left for lunch at her mother’s, but Paul was a good sport about it, went back to his own apartment, and caught up on some work.
Traditionally, Eileen’s mother came to Thanksgiving in Connecticut every year. Eileen wasn’t close to her. Her mother, Margaret, had always been an angry, unhappy woman, and she had never liked Paul. She made no bones about it. Her own marriage had been disappointing. She was widowed at sixty when Eileen’s father died of cancer. But even after he was gone, Margaret led a small life and was a dour woman. Eileen was used to it, and called her dutifully every few weeks, but her mother was a joyless person, probably chronically depressed all her life, with no interest in Eileen or her grandchildren. The children had never been close to her either, and they only saw her once a year on Thanksgiving. Eileen’s father had been browbeaten by her until he died at sixty. Eileen had been thrilled to leave home and move to New York to escape both of them.
Eileen’s mother lived in Massachusetts, and was only sixty-five years old, but acted as though she were ninety. She had no hobbies or interests, and watched soap operas on TV all the time. She had worked in the finance office of the same company until she retired, and had hated it for all the years she worked there. The children dreaded her visit every year. She complained about everything, and it was the one thing Paul knew he wouldn’t miss over the holiday. He called her the “mother-in-law from hell,” and Eileen didn’t disagree with him. Eileen was an only child and her mother had been constantly critical of her growing up, and her father was too meek to defend her. Eileen had grown up in a suburb of Boston.
Eileen waited to tell Margaret about their separation until about a week before she came so she could make whatever negative comments she had to make over the phone, and not make them at dinner and ruin the holiday, which she often did anyway. The children paid no attention to her.
“What brought that on?” She seemed surprised when Eileen told her that Paul had moved out.
“I guess we’d been drifting apart for a long time, and I didn’t notice it.”
“Are you getting divorced?”
“We haven’t decided yet.” She wanted to give her mother as little information as possible, just the basics.
“You should try to get him back.” Eileen was startled by her comment.
“You’ve never liked him, Mom. Why would you say that?” She was more curious than interested in what she had to say. Her mother had never given her good advice. She and Eileen’s father had been a poor match, and stayed together anyway, unhappy for most of their marriage. Eileen knew from her mother that he’d had several affairs while she was growing up, but they’d never divorced.
“You’re not going to find someone else at your age,” she said, sounding as sour and negative as she always did.
“I’m thirty-nine, not a hundred, Mom.” Eileen was annoyed by her comment, since her age was becoming a sensitive subject, with her fortieth birthday looming.
“It’s all over at forty, your looks, your future, men. Does Paul have someone else?” She rang a death knell over Eileen’s future, as she had always done, even in her twenties.
“Possibly.” Eileen didn’t want to give her the details. She always had something depressing to say.
“You can bet she’s younger than you are, if he does. He’s not going to want another forty-year-old. Maybe that’s why he left.” She hated the idea that her mother might be even partially right. And she was of course, since the woman he was involved with was considerably younger. Pennie had said she was twenty-seven. A lot younger. And Olivia looked like a teenager, according to her boys.
“I think he had other reasons.”