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planned and thought and worked for and seen happen, all the clothes that hang in our closets and the furniture we’ve always had…everything that we remember…who would all that belong to if we…didn’t stay together?

    56 / Anne Rivers Siddons
    There’s just not going to be any divorce. Let him wear bike shorts and screw her in a midtown condo; it doesn’t touch who he is or who we are together. He knows that as well as I do.”
    “Oh, honey,” she said softly.
    “Why, does Caleb think Tee’s…going to be with her now?”
    “Moll…Tee told him that he was. He told him that back in March or April. He just didn’t get around to telling you.”
    “Because he knows it’s not going to happen,” I said, and got up. “I do think Caleb might have told you, though. It would have saved all of us a lot of pain.”
    “No it wouldn’t, love. It just would have gotten it over sooner. But you’re right, he should have told me. That’s one reason I’m so goddamn mad at him. Okay, enough about it.
    You’re not ready to deal with it yet, and that’s okay. It’s probably too early. But I still wish you’d come stay with me next week. Teddy’s old enough to be on his own; you don’t want to hang on to him. Who knows, you might even have fun with me. You know what we could do? We could do four or five days at a spa, Canyon Ranch, maybe, get a complete overhaul, do some serious shopping…”
    “And get our hair bleached, and maybe even a little liposuction, a little nip and tuck? God, Livvy, I never thought I’d hear it from you. The classic woman-scorned, feel-good routine. Such a cliché.”
    “Maybe that’s because it works,” Livvy said matter-of-factly.
    “Well, then, we’ll watch old movies and eat pizza for six days, or get drunk, or whatever you want to do. Will you come?”
    “Not right now. But I love you for thinking of it, UP ISLAND / 57
    and I may take you up on it later. Right now there’s stuff that has to be settled, and it can’t get done until I talk to Tee.”
    “Call him, then.”
    “It’s his call to make. He’ll have to do it sooner or later.
    He can’t just pretend nothing’s happened; he owes Teddy more than that, and Caroline. But it’s his call.”
    “It’s your call, of course, but I’m out of here for now,” she said, getting up and hugging me. For a moment I stood loosely in her arms, feeling the strength and warmth of them, luxuriating in the simple human touch that meant love, and then I drew back and slapped her on the fanny and she turned to go. Then she looked back.
    “How’s your butt, by the way?” she said.
    “Why…fine. Smooth as a baby’s. Not a tingle for days,” I said, realizing only then that it was true.
    “Butt knows best,” she said solemnly, and was out the door and gone.

CHAPTER THREE
    T EE DID NOT, AFTER ALL, come and talk to Teddy and me.
    He faxed us.
    That one thing infuriated my father more than any of the sorry flotsam and jetsam cast up by the separation. Most of the proceedings he watched with a sort of grim, detached sorrow, but when he heard about the fax he exploded.
    “What kind of sorry jackass faxes his family that he doesn’t want to live with them anymore?” he shouted, throwing the Atlanta Constitution down on the floor of the screened-in porch.
    “He may be a jackass, but he’s our jackass,” I said, hoping to divert him with humor. It usually worked, but not this time.
    “No, he’s not,” my father said in a low, cold voice. “That’s just what he’s saying, only he’s not man enough to say it to your faces. Well, by God, he’ll say it to mine, or I’ll know the reason why.”
    And he got up and strode toward the hall where the downstairs telephone sat. Cellular phones were not a part of my father’s ethos.
    “No, wait,” I called. “In all fairness, Teddy told 58

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    him to fax. He wouldn’t talk to Tee on the phone and he wouldn’t see him.”
    “So what! Tee should have insisted; he