Chapter Text
As soon as she pulls into a vacant parking spot in front of the Ashfield Community Rec Center, Beth cuts off the car’s ignition and sighs something heavy.
Despite having had all week to come to terms with the fact that she’s going to be doing this, the truth of the matter is that between wrangling four children and doing her best to manage the kids’ understandably complicated feelings about her and Dean’s impending divorce, she hasn’t actually had that much time to mentally prepare herself for tonight.
Not when she’d also had to cook, and keep the house in its usual order; not when she’d also had to attend the bimonthly PTA meeting and juggle her new work schedule at the Paper Porcupine, what with its additional hours and the new responsibilities that accompany her recent promotion to the shop’s assistant manager position.
(A position she hadn’t technically applied for or even known existed, but just last week Dorothy had dropped in on Beth and Margot, the shop’s acting manager, unboxing the latest ink shipment together.
While Dorothy may be older in age, she has a sharpness to her, a keenness, that Beth doesn’t think will ever fade. The woman had wasted no time in greeting the both of them with her usual cheer, but she’d paused nearly imperceptibly upon clocking Beth’s slightly red-rimmed eyes, bleary from the exhaustion of the previous night spent comforting a crying Emma well into the gray light of morning.
Dorothy’s eyes had lingered over Beth’s hands as she opened every box, Beth’s movements methodical but a little shaky, off-kilter and jagged with the remnants of the quiet anger that always embedded itself into the lines of her body for hours following an early morning custody meeting with Dean’s lawyers. Lawyers, plural.
Dorothy had offered her the position on the spot.)
And Beth knows she’s spread herself far too thin these days, knows that she’s been fraying at the edges and knows too that she’s probably due to snap at any moment (at least, if the looks Annie and Ruby have been throwing each other when they think Beth isn’t paying attention are anything to go by) – but really, what else can she do differently?
The answer is nothing because Beth doesn’t have options, she thinks bitterly, and she sighs again because she never thought she’d end up here.
But she’s been naïve.
After she and Dean had gotten married, Beth had allowed herself the luxury of relaxation. She knows, now, that doing so was a mistake, but back then Beth had really thought that her days of flipping over stained couch cushions in the hope of scrounging up some spare change were well behind her.
She didn’t realize she would one day be back in a position where she’d have to do what she did so long ago with Annie and pull her kids out of their after-school activities, one by one, in a bid to dial back her household expenses. Didn’t think, either, that she’d have to replace the brand names on her cleaning supplies with their dollar-store equivalents that don’t work nearly half as well as she’s used to.
Maybe it’s her fault for letting her guard down, but Beth couldn’t have anticipated that she would once again feel the all-consuming urge she’d felt for so many months following Emma’s birth, Jane’s too, the familiar desire to crawl into the comfort her empty bed provides and never get out of it again. These days, Beth’s mattress sings to her the siren’s song that her mother probably also used to hear when she was still alive – one that makes Beth want to spend as much time as she possibly can occupying that precarious position between sleeping and waking. It’s a space where everything’s softer, quieter, duller, blurred at the edges.
(She fights it every morning when she gets up and looks at herself in the mirror, fights it because she is not her mother, will never be her mother. Fights it because that’s what she sees whenever she manages to dream, the image burned onto the backs of her eyelids and if she blinks quickly enough, Emma and Jane’s little faces as they wait for her at the kitchen counter in the mornings morph into Annie’s so many decades ago and she can’t.
She won’t. She’ll make sure of it.)
Beth’s fingers slip on the steering wheel and she comes to with a jolt, realizing that she’s been clenching her jaw and that her heartbeat has picked up a little, her body a traitor as it exposes the inner turmoil she then spends a full two minutes trying to swallow down before she can start to get nauseous. Somewhere, somehow, Beth finally musters up the courage to get out of the car, gather up her bag, lock up again behind her.
Walk toward the building in front of her, face what’s waiting beyond its double doors.
* * *
Because the thing is, when Annie had suggested that Beth begin attending the single parent support group that meets on Friday nights at the same place Jane used to play intramural soccer and Danny used to take karate, Beth had outright laughed at her.
“I don’t need to go to a support group, Annie,” Beth had said without looking at her sister, choosing instead to top up her half-full glass of the Chardonnay that Beth hates. Dean had brought her two bottles as a “peace offering” in the first few weeks of their separation, and they’d remained unopened and gathering dust until tonight.
However, while Beth may hate Chardonnay, Annie doesn’t care either way. Nowadays, practicality gets prioritized before everything else: neither of them gets paid until next week, and Beth’s over being reminded of Dean every time she opens her liquor cabinet. His presence, or lack thereof, is ghost enough in her home.
They still had forty-five minutes left before the newest Housewives, but Beth couldn’t deny that she was already looking forward to whatever drama this week’s episode would bring, tired of the drama that had come to characterize her own life these days. Excited at the prospect of watching someone else’s problems, trivial and inconsequential, play out for a change.
“I’m not saying you need to do anything, Beth,” Annie’s response had been quick and fallen just short of the mark of reassuring. “I’m not, like, trying to tell you what to do or anything. It’s just— I don’t remember if I told you or Ruby but I went for a while, after Greg and I got divorced, and it was, I don’t know. Helpful? Like, I found it helpful. To talk to some people who were maybe going through the same or a similar thing.”
At that, Beth had raised an eyebrow and side-eyed Annie, who misinterpreted Beth’s silence, her doubt, as indicating some sort of offense on Beth’s part.
“Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that you and Ruby didn’t help, because you totally did! But I guess it’s kinda different, when you talk about it with people you don’t really know and who don’t really know you. And besides …” Annie had trailed off at that, her usually rambunctious and confident self suddenly replaced with something else, something hesitant and out of place on her sister’s youthful features.
Beth didn’t like it at all, both because this wasn’t the Annie she was used to and because this shift in Annie’s demeanor typically meant she was gearing up to say something that might make Beth uncomfortable. A truth she might not want to hear.
She had to know anyway.
“Besides what?” Beth brought herself to ask it, the weight of her sister’s unspoken words thickening the air between the two of them. Ruby hadn’t arrived yet, couldn’t crack a joke or two or three to relieve the sudden tension, and Beth found herself wishing desperately for her best friend’s presence in that moment.
“It’s nothing, Beth, I—”
“Annie.”
Annie had huffed a sigh, avoiding eye contact until she didn’t. She cut her eyes over to Beth from where she was sitting on the living room couch and Beth was standing in the kitchen until their gazes locked and held, until Annie continued.
“Ugh, fine. Um. I say this because I love you and because I hate seeing you like this, but you’re, like, honestly way overdue for some kind of extra support. You’ve already been doing the single parent thing for a long time, haven’t you?”
Annie had said it as gently and carefully as she could, Beth knew. Even if Beth hadn’t been looking at Annie, she wouldn’t have needed to look to know – a lifetime spent alongside her and Beth didn’t need any reassurance that Annie’s words carried no malice. The tone of her sister’s voice was also eerily identical to the one Beth had used in a similar conversation a few years ago. It had taken place in this same house, Annie sitting on that same couch, but with the roles reversed because that time, it had been Beth trying to comfort Annie after the ink had dried on Annie and Greg’s divorce papers.
Now, Beth took in the set of Annie’s still shoulders, Annie’s trademark fidgeting halted in lieu of awaiting Beth’s own response, but she didn’t have to wait for too long, because oh.
Oh.
Beth had laughed again. But this time, the edges of Beth’s laugh had been tinged with something that bordered on hysterical, because—
Because.
She couldn’t really argue with that, could she?
* * *
And so she’s at the Rec Center.
Beth pushes open the front doors, takes a moment to collect herself again now that she’s inside the building lobby. Determined not to lose her nerve, Beth makes quick work of scanning the directory off to her right for the room number.
It doesn’t take long; there’s not too much going on for it being a Friday night, and Beth knows exactly where the room she’s looking for is because it’s next to the ballet studios. Emma has been begging Beth to start ballet classes for over three months now, and Beth hasn’t had the heart to tell her that it doesn’t look like something that will be happening anytime soon. Bitterly, she resolves to have Dean be the one to finally break the news to their dismayed daughter, seeing as it’s his fault they’re in this position to begin with.
The scent of chlorine from the nearby pool area trails Beth as she climbs the stairs to the second floor and mixes with the smell of ammonia that indicates the recent presence of a cleaning crew. Beth wrinkles her nose slightly because all of a sudden everything seems like it’s a little bit too bright, a little bit too much.
The overstimulation pricks at her already-fraught nerves, and Beth uses the jolt of nervous energy it gives her to push past her discomfort. She quickly reaches the top of the landing, laser focused as she finds the correct room number. Beth slips inside as quietly as possible and takes a seat in one of the empty folding chairs that form a big circle in the middle of the large rec space.
Dimly, Beth notes that save for the arrangement of chairs, a rickety wooden table that looks like it’s seen better days marks the only other furniture present. It’s been pushed up against one of the far walls and covered with one of the 99 cent paper table covers Beth’s sworn by for years any time she’s had to set up a picnic outside for the kids. The table boasts two little brew stations – for tea and coffee, probably; next to those is a stack of disposable cups piled high, flanked on the other side by an assortment of creamers and stirring sticks.
She’s arrived too late to grab anything to drink, because almost as soon as Beth’s grabbed a seat someone else is standing up, a younger woman with a soft face and kind eyes. She introduces herself as the group leader, and launches into what’s clearly a prepared speech.
Beth tries to take in what she’s saying, she really does, but at first, she can’t. Her anxiety is an invisible hand that wraps itself around her throat and presses in. As Beth settles into her seat, though, she finds that the cool sting of its metal frame makes listening to what’s going on around her increasingly easier.
The feeling, the sensation of cold, helps Beth come back into her body as much as it helps in bringing the woman’s words into focus – like a radio dial tuning into a staticky station, unintelligible noise shaping itself into something clear, their group leader’s voice pierces through the ether of the room.
“—only share if you want to, and only what you’re comfortable with.”
Belatedly, Beth realizes that she definitely hadn’t been paying as much attention as she should have been. Now that the woman’s done talking, they’ve moved into going around the circle one by one and introducing themselves.
Luckily for Beth, it’s straightforward: everyone who speaks starts with their name. (Only first names, not last, thank God.) Most people choose to follow that with an explanation of why they decided to come at all, or how long they’ve been attending. Some describe what happened to them this week specifically that’s pushed them closer to the same proverbial edge Beth thinks they’re all trying to avoid falling over.
Not everyone shares, but about three people go before Beth suddenly realizes that her own turn is rapidly approaching.
(A man who lost his wife to an autoimmune disease the year prior, and now he’s struggling to care for their adopted daughter on his own. A divorced couple in attendance together, seemingly on good terms and coming to the same meeting in the hope that it will help them become more unified coparents. A heavily pregnant girl who’s fresh out of high school, and Beth can’t help but think of Annie as the girl tells them the baby’s father split the second the pregnancy test came back positive – Beth thinks of Annie back when she was pregnant with Ben, thinks of Annie going to these meetings, thinks of Annie who’s sitting at home right now with Beth’s kids so that Beth could do this for herself.
It’s all Beth can do to hold back the tears that threaten to spring up unexpectedly.
She makes a mental note to give Annie a tight hug as soon as she gets home from this thing.)
Now there are two more people left to go until Beth’s the one in the hot seat. Jesus Christ, and to think that Beth expected this to drag interminably. It’s the opposite: time is passing way too quickly, the sword that’s been hanging over her head since she got out of the car swinging a little lower with every sentence that comes out of someone’s mouth.
Beth inhales shakily, forcing air into her lungs and doing her level best to avoid thinking of her mother, of you get what you get and you don’t get upset. Thinks instead of what she’s going to say once her turn comes, what pieces of her soul she’ll decide to reveal to a room full of strangers. There’s a strange sort of intimacy to this, and something about it makes Beth’s skin crawl just a little bit.
When the middle aged woman sitting on Beth’s immediate left finishes her introduction (Wendy, two high school-aged daughters, recently split from her wife of thirteen years) and shifts minutely in Beth’s general direction, Beth takes that as her unofficial cue to raise her head, jerk her chin up, and let her gaze dart over every person in their circle before speaking.
“Hi. My name is Beth, and tonight is my first meeting,” Beth pauses for a moment. “My little sister suggested I come here, and I rarely listen to my sister. Between me and her, I’m usually the one who knows what she’s doing.”
At that, a man sitting a few seats down from Beth chuckles, a low raspy thing that sends a shiver down Beth’s spine. For all that Beth feels she’s maybe, probably, definitely stepping farther out of her comfort zone than she’s necessarily ready for, she’s momentarily taken aback by the pleased feeling that drips through her chest molasses-thick at seeing she’s elicited that kind of reaction from someone else.
Beth doesn’t know that she’s ever made a man laugh like that.
She can’t really make out the details of the mystery man’s profile from here – the room is dimly lit, only a few of the overhead fluorescents switched on in a testament to the Rec Center’s after-hours atmosphere, still leaving half the room in relative darkness – but for a few moments Beth wonders what the owner of a voice like that could look like. She’s got a feeling she’ll like what she sees.
(Which— what?)
Beth feels like she’s maybe paused for a half-second too long, and she steels herself to continue speaking, refocusing her attention on the task at hand.
“I’m currently in the middle of a contentious divorce. The division of assets, not that we have that many, has been… messy. There are financial issues, and it’s complicated things more than I could have thought or was expecting. My ex also didn’t want to leave and has been digging his heels in ever since I told him I wanted to separate, and eventually divorce.”
As soon as the words tumble out of her mouth, Beth is transported back to every time Dean has continued to call her his wife over the last year and a half, as recently as last Sunday evening’s drop-off. Beth has stayed more or less steadfast about correcting him, insisting that even though they aren’t officially divorced yet, they are and will remain exes. Dean hasn’t even been living in the house for close to a year.
But every time he sees her, he looks at Beth like he owns her, like she’ll always choose him to come back to. It rankles Beth more than the word wife ever can.
Now that Beth’s started talking, she can’t seem to stop.
“I’m exhausted. I don’t know where the last few years have gone. My kids are my entire life and they’re all having a hard time, but in different ways, and I’m trying to help them but I feel like I’m failing them anyway because I’m barely at home anymore. I can’t divide my attention between them the way I could when I wasn’t working, because now I work every spare shift I can pick up. I do it so I can make sure they won’t go hungry because their dad couldn’t give them the same consideration and I—,” Beth stops herself, stutters out a breath, finishes, “—I’m just… suspended in time, waiting for it to get easier. And I stay up all night sometimes because I can’t stop thinking that maybe it won’t.”
She could say more, finds she wants to, but cuts herself off before she can overwhelm herself. If Beth’s going to be doing this, she’s going to be doing it slowly – there’s no use in spilling everything all at once. There’s too much of it, anyway, and she doesn’t want to cut into others’ time. Instead, she contents herself with peeking up through her lashes to survey the reactions of everyone gathered around her.
There are some nods, a couple of sympathetic glances. Beth is surprised to find they’re devoid of pity, so she decides she doesn’t mind them as much as she thought she might. The group leader (and shit, Beth already forgot her name, barely even clocked it, but she thinks it might be Catherine or Katie or maybe even Rebecca) is smiling encouragingly, a secretive little half-smile that Beth also takes as a testament to the woman’s own relief that people are actually, willingly volunteering their personal information. Beth may never have been to one of these before tonight, but she’d much rather be in a room where her group mates are talking than be in a room where everyone’s too shy to speak up.
A movement at the corner of her eye draws her attention, and Beth takes note of a beautiful woman with shoulder-length brown hair and striking blue eyes who seems to be shifting forward onto the edge of her seat, opening her mouth like she wants to say something before snapping it closed again.
“Thank you for sharing that with us, Beth. Let’s move onto your neighbor—”
“Are there custody issues?”
For all that the same woman Beth had just noticed a moment ago has interrupted Catherine/Katie/Becca, the woman doesn’t appear to care at having spoken out of turn, her words coming out in an accent that Beth can’t immediately place. Beth makes direct eye contact with her, and something in the way this woman is looking at her relaxes Beth. She’s asking in part for herself, Beth realizes.
“Yes.” Beth rolls her eyes, exasperation sparking through her at the reminder of Dean’s most recent antics. “That’s one of the ways he’s been trying to manipulate me into getting back together, delaying the divorce. His mother comes from money, so she’s hired him a whole team of lawyers.”
Beth openly scoffs at this because she can’t not, not when she wakes up every morning to no less than five voicemails from different members of Dean’s legal team. She’d never had much of a reason to do this prior to the start of their divorce proceedings, but Beth’s taken to silencing her phone at night now, making religious use of its Do Not Disturb feature.
“There are custody issues between me and my ex, too, that fucking asshole.” The woman offers it up simply; her face seems almost blank, or maybe even calm – like it’s just a fact of life that her ex is the way he is just as much as it’s another fact of life that the sky is blue, or that blue and yellow mixed together make green, or whatever else, but Beth’s also practiced enough at reading between the lines to know that behind her words is a rage that simmers.
Beth recognizes it because it looks like her own, reflected back at her in the world’s strangest idea of a mirror.
Because yeah, while they may not look anything alike, and while Beth knows next to nothing about this woman’s situation, doesn’t even know her name, Beth finds that she likes her. It’s instant; something in her calls to something in Beth, and the last time Beth had felt a tugging feeling in her gut like the one she’s feeling now, she’d ended up getting Ruby.
(Later, after the meeting is declared over, the woman will seek Beth out in the scant few minutes of decidedly awkward mingling that follow its conclusion.
The group leader will have left, but people will remain milling about with their Styrofoam coffee cups, refilling them one last time as they engage in idle chatter, and as Beth stands and hitches the strap of her bag over her shoulder, she won’t be surprised to see the woman walking up to her.
She’ll introduce herself as Dalia, will ask Beth to grab a coffee sometime that Beth will readily agree to. She’ll flip her hair over her shoulder as if she doesn’t have a care in the world and wordlessly hand Beth a gold-embossed business card, a sharp grin tugging at the edges of her lips like she’s in on a joke Beth hasn’t yet heard the punchline to.
Beth will flip to the side of the card that’s written in English to see that Dalia has a JD and is a practicing divorce attorney; she’ll meet her new friend’s eyes and laugh with her both long and loud, the joy that abounds in their shared laughter ringing true in a way that makes something in Beth’s chest loosen and splinter free.
That’s later, though. Now, the meeting will continue almost as if Dalia hadn’t spoken at all, moving to Beth’s right so that person can share too, going down the circle and easing the tightness in Beth’s muscles with every new person that speaks.)
Beth isn’t proud to admit it, but after a few more people share, the stories begin to blur together. There’s just too much pain, too many similarities between Beth and the fifteen-some people sharing the space with her.
When they finally reach the man who’d reacted to her previous comment about Annie, though, Beth straightens up automatically.
She’s intrigued by him and interested in what he has to say, wants to know about him but doesn’t exactly know why. His profile is still in half-shadow so she can’t get any better of a look at him (and again, why does she care?), but Beth thinks she’s more disappointed than she has any right to be when he shakes his head at the girl leading the group (and God, Beth really should know her name if she’s going to be coming here a second time) – the motion signalling his refusal to share.
Which, okay. They can do that. It’s fair of them to do that, and they’d been told as much. Beth had even thought for a few minutes about choosing the same option for herself, so it wouldn’t be fair of her to fault the man for doing so.
Still. She’d wanted to know what had brought him here too, what put him in her orbit on what was, for all intents and purposes and for most other people (people who aren’t her and people who aren’t him) just another ordinary Friday night in the Detroit suburbs.
She’d wanted to know if their pain overlaps.
If she could find beneath his silence a restlessness that pulses.
* * *
And these questions stick with Beth, but not for long.
They stick with her all the way through to the end of the meeting. They stick with her, too, as Beth picks her way through the parking lot, as she drives off and puts some distance between herself and the depressing room in which she’s managed to be more emotionally open about her divorce with complete strangers than she’s been with Annie and Ruby in months.
But that’s as far as it goes, because the longer Beth drives the more her thoughts turn to her children. The closer she gets to them, the more Beth’s mind races with everything she has to do this weekend, lingers over how much she’s dreading having to see Dean when he comes by to pick up the kids tomorrow morning for his weekend with them. He should have picked them up from school earlier today, but he’d texted her some flimsy excuse around lunchtime about having gotten tied up at the dealership and could Beth please keep the kids until Saturday morning, where he’d swing by the house after breakfast to do the hand-off.
Beth wonders if Dean will try to talk to her. Sometimes, she can scrape herself together enough to act vaguely civil toward him; she knows from now that she will not have it in her to be kind tomorrow, that it will not be one of those days. She wonders how many references he’ll drop to it being so much better for kids to grow up in a home with two parents than with one, Bethie, it’s good for their stability, which seems to be his new mantra as of late.
Beth thinks about which one of Dean’s lawyers must have spoon-fed that one to him. Maybe he’d Googled it (“how to fix my marriage after serially cheating on my wife and bankrupting my family”, or maybe even “how to manipulate my custody agreement to my advantage so I can see my ex as much as possible and wear her down until she agrees to take me back” – Beth doubts the legitimacy of Dean’s excuse about the dealership being busy; it’s hanging on by a thread as it is).
So really, what’s a two-second interaction measured up against all of that? How can Beth possibly have room in her mind for anything else?
How can she have room for anything at all?
It’s a relief to walk through her front door and see that Annie’s already put the kids to bed, better still that Beth gets the house to herself within five minutes of hugging Annie goodnight. She has to send her sister off with an explicitly made promise that she’ll call tomorrow and give Annie a full update of how it went, but it’s a relatively small price to pay for the chance to be alone for a little while.
Beth uses that time to kiss every one of her kids goodnight, closes the door to Emma and Jane’s room last and with some unnamable feeling twisting in her gut (guilt? Shame? Beth doesn’t know how to tell them apart, anymore). She tries to pick up one of her unfinished knitting projects, tries to lull herself into sleepiness with the repetitive motions made by her fingers, her hands, but her vision blurs as she stares down at the skein in her lap and Beth remembers that she hasn’t actually knitted properly, the way she likes to, in ages.
In that same moment Beth decides that she needs to change and lie down, because sitting upright should feel simple but is taking far too much of her effort with each minute that passes. Beth doesn’t know if she feels any better having gone to that meeting, tonight; what she can’t deny is how thoroughly it’s worn her out.
As she enters her bedroom (her bedroom, not hers and Dean’s – hers, hers alone because that’s what she’s been fighting for, hers because it’s not theirs any longer or ever again, if she has anything to say about that either), the weight of the day slams into Beth with a force that makes her hyperaware of how heavy her bones feel in her body. Beth’s weighed down, Beth’s sinking; in her haste to get under the covers, she trades her day clothes for pajamas but forgoes washing her face and brushing her teeth. She can’t find it in herself to care.
She turns off the lights the minute she’s done changing. As Beth’s room is plunged into darkness and her eyes gradually adjust, she stares out at the French doors that separate her bedroom from the patio. Beth looks at the way the moonlight illuminates the backyard beyond, framed by the filmy, gauzy curtains she made in the first year of her marriage.
(She’d wanted to add a personal touch to the bedroom décor, so she found a pattern online and followed it and felt a burst of pride for both herself and her work when she’d finished, because she’d never tried making curtains before. She wasn’t sure she’d succeed, but she had.
Dean never noticed her working on them. One day, years later, he snagged himself on their fabric somehow while running through the double doors as he and Kenny chased after each other in some game they’d made up together, and only then did Dean notice they existed in the first place.)
Exhausted, Beth’s eyelids eventually flutter shut, and the absence of sight pulls her under and takes her to that in-between place, grants her a brief reprieve to end with a repetition: today, but tomorrow morning, and the morning after that, every day the same as the last and stretching – no; marching resolutely, marching foolishly – forward into an uncertain future.