Beautiful Day(10)

Maybe Edge was just busy. He had been preparing for court all week; he was taking over something called the “shitshow Cranbrook case” for Margot’s father. Margot had asked what that meant, but he hadn’t told her; he couldn’t tell her about any of his cases—not only because it was privileged information, but because Edge didn’t want Margot to accidentally slip up in front of her father.

The result of this was that Margot knew next to nothing about Edge’s work life or how he spent his days. She almost preferred the way things had been with Drum Sr. Drum Sr. had done nothing for work, but at least that nothing had been reported to Margot in excruciating detail. Going for run in park. Back from run. ATM, $80. Warren Miller film—off the hook! Thinking about enchiladas for dinner—ok with u? Store. Sale on canned tomatoes, buying 3. Picking up Ellie now. Walking. What is name of Peyton’s mom? And what is wrong with her face? Margot used to sit in her office at Miller-Sawtooth, which was the most prestigious executive search firm in the world, and receive these texts and think, Don’t you understand that I am too busy for this piddly-shit?

Now, with Edge, Margot would kill for some piddly-shit. She would kill to know what he had for breakfast. But he told her nothing. If he was feeling expressive, he would text, In court. Or, With Audrey, who was his six-year-old daughter.

Margot checked her phone: nothing. It was quarter to six. Maybe Edge was in a meeting with a new client; those could take a while. Maybe he was so busy preparing for court—with his favorite paralegal, Rosalie—that he simply hadn’t had time to check his phone. But Edge checked his phone compulsively. The red light blinked, and he salivated as though the next text or e-mail was going to offer him a million free dollars or a house on the beach in Tahiti. With clients, he prided himself on responding within sixty seconds. But Margot he let languish for days.

Most of Margot and Edge’s relationship had taken place via text, which had started out seeming modern and sexy. They would go back and forth for hours—and unlike in actual conversation, Margot could take her time to compose witty responses. She could text things she was too shy to express in person.

But the texting now was frustrating beyond all comprehension. It made Margot want to tear her hair out. It made her—late one night when she and Edge had been going back and forth and then she texted I miss u and heard nothing back—throw her phone across the room, where it, thankfully, landed in her laundry basket. She both hated the texting and was addicted to it. She despised her phone—the seventy-two times a day she checked to see if Edge had texted were torturous—and then if she did have a text from him, she went to absurd lengths to answer it, no matter what she was doing. She had answered texts from him under the table in big client meetings. She had stood up and left Ellie’s kindergarten play (Stone Soup) to text Edge from the school corridor. She had texted while driving, she had texted him drunkenly from the bathroom while she was out with her girlfriends, she had texted him from the treadmill at the gym. The texting with Edge was keeping her from being present in her real life. It was awful, she had to stop, she had to control it somehow, to keep it from destroying her.

Because now, on Thursday, July 18, instead of focusing on her sister’s bachelorette party, which she, Margot, had organized and which was due to begin shortly, Margot was thinking: I texted him nineteen hours ago and he hasn’t responded. Why not? Where is he and what is he doing? He isn’t thinking about me.

Margot remembered when she had stood in this very house waiting for the mail to arrive because she was expecting a letter from her high school boyfriend, Grady Maclean. That had been stressful in the same sort of way, except then all of Margot’s anxiety had been focused on one moment of the day, and once she got a letter—Grady Maclean had been pretty devoted for a fifteen-year-old boy—she didn’t have to sweat it out until the following week.

At that moment, a text came into her phone, and Margot thought, There he is, finally! But when she checked, she saw it was a text from her father. Okay, that was absolutely the worst: she had waited and waited for a text, and then a text came in, but from the wrong person.

The text read: Pauline isn’t coming to the wedding.

Margot stared at her phone. She thought, WTF? Her mind was whizzing now. This was family drama, exactly the type that was supposed to happen at weddings. Pauline wasn’t coming!

Why did this news make Margot feel so buoyant? Was it because deep down she didn’t like Pauline, or was it because Margot was grateful for something to think about other than Drum Sr. getting married to Lily the Pilates instructor or Edge’s nonresponse to Drum Sr. marrying Lily the Pilates instructor, or… Griffin Wheatley, who was still irritating a part of Margot’s mind. (He had looked great with the scruff on his face—like Tom Ford or James Denton. Margot had always seen him within an hour of his last shave.)