They all look at her. Phoebe laughs a little. Cubism facts on demand.
“Well, it was an artistic and intellectual movement in the early twentieth century,” Phoebe says. “They believed if you aren’t seeing something from all sides, you aren’t seeing it fully. Should I seriously go on?”
“God no,” Suz says, but the bride nods.
BACK AT THE hotel, the bridesmaids meet in the blue parlor for the in-house tarot reader.
“I’m Thyme,” says a woman sitting behind a glowing candle. Then she turns to the bride. “Would the bride like to go first?”
Lila nods, and Nat and Suz clap.
“Come with me,” Thyme says.
Outside the parlor, the bridesmaids take a breath in the hallway. Then like in the spa, they all go on their separate journeys. Suz calls her husband. Nat goes to her room for a power nap. Marla looks at Phoebe and says, “Drink?”
As soon as they sit down, Marla wastes no time.
“Do you hate me because I had an affair like your ex-husband?” Marla looks at Phoebe as if she’s waiting to be condemned.
Phoebe doesn’t nod or shake her head. “I don’t hate you. You’re not my ex-husband. And honestly, I don’t even hate him.”
“That’s a relief.”
“To be honest, the only reason I’d hate you is that you aren’t very kind to Lila.”
Marla nods. “It’s true.”
“If you bothered getting to know her, you’d realize she’s actually an interesting person,” Phoebe says. “And a good friend.”
“That’s very hard to picture.”
“You make her nervous,” Phoebe says. “She’s different around you.”
“Look, I know she’s your friend or whatever,” Marla says. “But I don’t have to like her just because she’s marrying my brother. She’s so spoiled. And ridiculous.”
“Well, you’re mean,” Phoebe says. “And having an affair.”
“See, you do hate me for it,” Marla says. “And I don’t blame you. I hate me for it. Some days, I just can’t believe I did that to Robert.”
“So why did you?”
“I felt like I would die if I didn’t.”
Twenty years of attending events together, twenty years of her husband looking at her in her dress and saying, “Not so shabby.”
“So the judge had something that your husband didn’t?” Phoebe asks.
But Marla doesn’t see it that way. She can see now that it wasn’t really about either of them.
“It was more about what I didn’t have,” Marla says. “According to our therapist, at least. The affair is the easy way out—the fantasy of believing someone else can give you what you don’t know how to give yourself.”
Phoebe imagines this is likely true about her husband.
“I think my husband fantasized about losing control,” Phoebe says. Her husband, so tightly wound, like his belt. A man who would only eat Oreos in private. “He couldn’t loosen up fully around me, and I don’t know why.”
“But that doesn’t mean it’s your fault,” Marla says. “It’s his fault. For not being able to do that. For not asking for whatever it was he needed from you.”
“I am starting to see that, I guess,” Phoebe says.
“I’m learning how to ask Robert for compliments. And he says he can’t, so the therapist suggested we start sexting. Like some kind of gateway drug into real compliments. And now I’m on the path to forgiving Robert and Robert is on the path to forgiving me,” Marla says. “That’s how the therapist describes it. And when we get to the end of the path, I guess we’re allowed to start having real sex again.”
She’s worried about how long this path will be.
“We’ve only been sexting since Tuesday and I’ve already run out of ways to describe my vagina,” Marla says. “It’s also very difficult sexting with one hand.”
“Is it working?” Phoebe asks.
“Inconclusive,” Marla says. “Mostly we just say filthy things to each other in between other very practical things, like, Suck my balls, dirty girl, and then, Did the guy come to check out the dishwasher leak?”
They laugh. “That’s marriage,” Phoebe says.
Phoebe thinks back to the failed sext she sent her husband, how scared she had been, how afraid. Phoebe feels such tenderness for that person who pressed Send.
“Do you regret it?” Phoebe asks.
“I regret hurting Robert,” Marla says. “I regret lying. I regret that I’m going to have to resign. But even before the affair, the trust was already gone. We were fooling ourselves to think it wasn’t. We had hurt each other in a million ways over the years, but then pretended like we hadn’t. The affair just brought all of that to the surface. And now look at us! We’re sexting! Look! My husband is telling me that he wants to pound my pussy as we speak!”
She holds up the phone.
