Phoebe feels powerless to help. She imagines this is what mothers often feel. Powerlessness is part of the package. So she does what she can: She brings her to the room Juice shares with Gary. But at the door, Juice just cries.
“I don’t want to be in my dad’s room,” Juice says, and it sounds like she is about to hyperventilate. Like she almost did that day at the wharf. “I just want my mom.”
Phoebe feels Juice’s cry deep in her heart—she feels it as her own.
“Let’s go to my room,” Phoebe suggests.
Inside, Phoebe gets her a glass of water. She takes off Juice’s gold shoes. She puts a blanket over her. She sits at the edge of the bed and thinks, I would have been a good fucking mother, and then strokes Juice’s hair.
“I’m sorry your mom isn’t here anymore,” Phoebe says. “But that doesn’t mean you’re alone.”
Juice cries, curls herself into a ball, pulling the blanket up to her chin. Phoebe hopes Lila will grow into the role of mother. She hopes Lila will at least be stepsisterly. That the two of them will bond while watching shitty movies and eating cookies late at night.
“You’ll be okay,” Phoebe says. “I know you don’t believe that now. But you will.”
“How do you know, though?”
“Because I didn’t have a mother, either,” she says. “And I’m okay.”
“You’re okay?”
“I am okay,” Phoebe says, and it feels true. I am okay. I am alive. I am here.
When Juice falls asleep, Phoebe looks at her phone. Three missed phone calls from her husband. He has lost control, she thinks. She starts to listen to the first message but is interrupted by a knock on the door.
“I couldn’t just sit there watching the fireworks,” Gary says. “Is Juice okay?”
“She’s okay now,” Phoebe assures him.
“I mean, clearly, she’s not okay,” Gary says.
“This is hard for her.”
He sits down on the love seat. “I kept thinking that at some point it would be easier for her. Maybe as the engagement went on, this would all feel right. I thought my getting married again would be good for us.”
The fireworks are loud outside, but Juice doesn’t budge.
“She must be really drunk,” Gary says.
They watch the green and red and blue explosions in the sky.
“Jim was right,” Phoebe says. “There’s no missing the fireworks.”
“Jim is often right.” He sighs. “Life is never what you think it’s going to be, is it?”
“No,” she says. “It’s been a very surprising week.”
He looks at her. “I certainly didn’t expect you.”
“I didn’t expect any of you. Any of this.”
“Phoebe,” Gary says, like he is about to start up their conversation from earlier. “I think I’m making a terrible mistake.”
But then there’s another knock on the door. She can hear her husband’s voice asking very loudly, “Phoebe, are you in there?”
“Matt,” Phoebe says when she opens the door.
“Phoebe,” Matt says.
Her husband is here. Because if she’s being totally honest with herself, he is still her husband. When she sees him she thinks, Oh, my husband is here. He looks as he always did. He stands in the hallway like he has stood in every hallway she’s ever seen him in.
“Hi,” Gary says. “I’m Gary.”
Matt must be so confused to see her here with this stranger behind her, this girl in her bed.
“I’m Phoebe’s husband,” Matt says.
She waits for Matt to correct himself, but he doesn’t. She can’t tell if Matt is the one who seems weird next to Gary or if Gary seems weird next to Matt.
“Nice to meet you,” Gary says. He looks at Phoebe, as though trying to send a message with his eyes, but Phoebe can’t pick up on it. Her husband’s presence has short-circuited something. “Well, I should bring my daughter to her room.”
They watch silently as Gary picks up Juice from the bed and carries her out the door.
When they are alone, Matt says, “Who were those people?”
But Phoebe doesn’t answer. She refuses to explain the wedding people to him. They are hers, not his.
“You’re my husband?” she asks.
