The Break-Up Clause by Niamh Hargan

Chapter Forty-Five

The next day brings a long lie-in and, after breakfast, the second coat of paint on the upstairs hallway.

The edging is a bit messy in places, and a few spatters of green have made their way onto the white skirting board here and there. It’s not the best job that could have ever been done. That’s for certain. But it’s the job they did.

Down in the living room, all sorts of miscellany has ended up strewn about, most of it Fia’s, and she can sense Benjamin’s eyes on her as she begins to gather up her belongings. It reminds her of that morning in Dublin when he walked into her bombsite of a bedroom. Though he hasn’t asked the question aloud, she feels the need to answer it anyway.

‘Being organized in work and being on time or whatever … it’s not like that comes naturally to me,’ she says, a bit embarrassed in a way she can’t precisely specify. ‘As in … not at all. I don’t get any personal joy out of a Post-it note. All that stuff … it’s literally just about not getting struck off, for me. Even back at Camp Birchwood … I was sure that unless I made, like, pretty major efforts at self-improvement, I’d be fired within a week.’

Benjamin just nods, and Fia thinks that maybe he understands it, now – maybe she understands it, fully, for the first time herself. So much of her frustration with him, back then, was seeing herself in him: the self she tried to hide.

In all honesty, she could probably have afforded to work a lot less hard at hiding it back then. They were camp counsellors.

And conversely, as seems to have become clear to Benjamin over recent weeks, he will probably need to step up his efforts from here on out. They’re lawyers.

Later, they make their way into town, veering towards the little marina. With a late lunch of bagels and iced coffee spread out between them, they sit on the wooden dock, letting their feet and shins dip into the water.

Leaning back on her forearms, her palms flat on the ground behind her, Fia lets out a little sigh. She’s exhausted, but not in the way she usually is, after a long day at the office. This is a satisfying sort of tiredness, one born of physical activity, her limbs feeling almost pleasantly achy. In response to it, for once, she lets herself be idle, lets herself just take in the picture-perfect scene around her. A mere matter of days ago, she hadn’t known this town existed. It doesn’t have the excitement and opportunity of Manhattan, nor the comfort and familiarity of Dublin. After today, she knows that the odds are she’ll probably never come back to Greenport again in her life. She knows that, for a whole host of reasons (not least the risk it poses to her future career and maybe his, too), this thing with Benjamin needs to end. Probably sharpish. Not for the first time, she reminds herself that she absolutely cannot let him get in there first – or rather, get out of this first. All that said, she’s felt undeniably more peaceful this weekend than she has in a long time.

‘So, I guess we’ll pack up, hit the road about five?’ Benjamin suggests.

Fia nods. ‘I kind of wish we could stay,’ she says, a minute later.

‘I know. Me too. But we love New York City, right?’ Benjamin adds dryly.

‘Yep,’ she says, and she recites it like an incantation. ‘We love New York City, we love New York City.’

The funny thing is that actually, now that she’s settled back in the US, that sort of feels true again. That mini existential crisis she had in Dublin seems to be receding ever-more in her mind. But then, she thinks to herself, any doubts that sprung up were never really about the day-to-day of her existence in Manhattan, were they? They’re not really about the present. They are about sustainability – the future.

‘Sometimes I think people at home – in Dublin, I mean – feel a bit sorry for me being here,’ she finds herself telling Benjamin. ‘And then, sometimes, I think they feel a bit jealous of me.’

It feels like an admission, like a big thing – a slightly raw thing – to talk about.

But Benjamin just takes another bite of his bagel, wholly unperturbed. ‘So? Don’t you feel a little sorry for them? Don’t you use that feeling to validate your own choices, to counteract the part of you that’s a little jealous of them? That’s pretty much just life, I think.’

Fia takes that in for a moment.

‘Ughhh.’ She lies right back on the wooden dock, careful not to hit her head, reaching out blindly to swipe at him as she does. ‘Stop making so much sense, would you?’

He just laughs, letting her lie there for a minute or two, in comfortable silence.

Then, Fia’s phone rings in her bag, and she hauls herself back upwards, reaching for it. Unknown number.

‘Fia! It’s Susan Followill,’ comes the voice on the other end of the line, and Fia jolts to attention. A low-level panic, inexplicable but instinctive, suddenly threatens to rise in her.

‘Susan, hi!’ she replies, and beside her, Benjamin’s all ears now, too.

‘I intended to call you on Friday with a quick update, but you know how it is. Did I get you at an okay time? Don’t worry, I’m hoping I’ll catch Ben this afternoon, too.’

‘Oh! Um, he’s actually here,’ Fia says, and it only occurs to her afterwards that she didn’t need to do that. She wouldn’t even have needed to lie. Saying nothing would have been a perfectly legitimate option. In any case, it’s too late now. On the other end of the line, there’s silence.

‘He’s there right now?’ Susan asks. ‘With you? On a Sunday?’

‘… Yeah,’ Fia admits, feeling immediately like a toddler who’s been caught with her hand in the cookie jar. We’ve been playing house, she adds, in her own mind. All at once, it occurs to her that maybe this weekend, while very enjoyable, has also been entirely ridiculous.

Susan, meanwhile, seems to be some mixture of bewildered and weary. ‘I’m just … I’m not even gonna ask,’ she says. ‘I guess you may as well put me on speaker, then.’

Fia duly does so, setting her phone on the dock between herself and Benjamin.

‘All right, so, as you know, I’ve submitted your settlement agreement to the court,’ Susan continues, her voice coming out a bit crackly.

‘What was that?’ Benjamin asks. ‘Sorry, the reception here kind of sucks. We’re on Long Island.’

Another pause.

‘You’re on Long Island,’ Susan repeats, deadpan. By now, it is as though she is being asked to accept that her divorcing clients are, right this second, wrapped up in bed together. Had she called just a few hours earlier, they might have been.

‘You guys are still getting divorced, right?’ she asks then. ‘You don’t want me to withdraw the petition? You sounded pretty definitive the last time we spoke, Benjamin, if I remember correctly.’

A hint of what looks like embarrassment crosses Benjamin’s features, as though he’s recollecting that conversation, too. As though, that day – before they left for Dublin very much at odds with one another – he might have been very definitive indeed.

‘Uh, yeah,’ he mumbles.

Susan takes this as a sort of generalized green light to proceed with the conversation she originally had in mind.

‘All right, well, I called the court clerk on Friday. I just wanted to flag with her that this really is a remarkably clean-cut case, see if she couldn’t maybe shuffle it up the judge’s list a little for sign-off, you know?’

‘Oh? And what did she say?’ Fia asks.

‘She hasn’t made me any promises, but Sheila Katz and I have known each other twenty years. I’m gonna guess we’re talking maybe two to four more weeks, tops, and then this is all done. You’ll each get a copy of your final decree in the mail, so just keep an eye out. I gotta tell you, this’ll be my fastest divorce ever. No mess, no fuss, huh?’

Susan chuckles lightly, and just about leaves space for Fia and Benjamin to do the same, before she’s rushing to move the conversation along. This is a woman mopping up her work overspill on the weekend. Fia gets it.

‘Anyhow, I just wanted to give you the good news! I know speed was of the essence for you guys. Like I said, I intended to call on Friday, but things were just hectic and tomorrow will be hectic-er!’

Again, there seems nothing to do but make the appropriate sounds as Susan wraps up the conversation, says her goodbyes. And, once she’s gone, Fia and Benjamin say nothing. They just look at one another.

It’s a matter of waiting on a signature, then. Substantively, their divorce is done – unless, of course, they were to take any steps to actively undo it.

Benjamin swings his legs a bit, the water sloshing around them noisily. Whatever he’s thinking right now, Fia doesn’t know, but for her, that whole conversation felt like being pulled back to reality. Another sudden, stark reminder of the situation that awaits them when they get back to Manhattan. Greenport is nice, but it is not real life.

She takes a slurp from her iced coffee, swirling her feet a little to match Benjamin’s, as though she’s tracing patterns in the water.

‘Pretty weird, isn’t it?’ she says. ‘I mean, just … given the way things have panned out with us.’

‘Pretty weird,’ he agrees. For a moment, there’s quiet between them once more, before he speaks again. This time, he’s faltering, stilted, as though some new prospect has just struck him for the first time. ‘Wait. Are you saying that you don’t want to get—’

‘What?!’ Fia rushes to jump in. ‘No, of course I do! Do you w—’

‘Yes!’ he yelps in turn and, somehow, despite how extremely emphatic they both are being, Fia’s not totally clear on what they’re actually saying to one another any longer. It seems like perhaps Benjamin isn’t either.

She frowns, forces herself to take a minute.

‘It would be insane for us to stay married,’ she says then, for the sake of absolute clarity.

‘Right,’ he agrees readily. ‘Insane.’

And, just for good measure, she agrees with him, too. ‘Right.’

‘Right.’

A beat of awkward silence follows, then another, and Fia’s not sure where to go from here. He opens his mouth to speak just at the very moment she does, which makes them both clam up. Are they colliding with each other – or missing each other? The practical effect is the same.

‘I’d still like you see you, though,’ he offers eventually, his voice about as tentative as she’s ever heard it. ‘That’s … if you want to.’

‘You’ll see me all the time,’ Fia replies, wilfully misunderstanding him. She just needs a second, to process the fluttering sort of feeling in her chest. ‘Practically everywhere you turn, about fourteen hours a day for the next three weeks, there I’ll be.’

‘You know what I mean.’

She does know what he means. There are so many reasons why it’s a terrible idea. And yet.

‘Yeah,’ she finds herself saying. ‘I’d like that, too.’

A little longer, she thinks to herself. If he’s not ready to call time quite yet, then maybe she can hold off, too. They will just need to be extra, extra careful at work. And, of course, Fia knows she’ll need to stay alert in other ways, too. But, provided she watches for the signs, provided she’s prepared to cut and run before he does … why not, in the meantime, allow herself to enjoy this?

For just a little bit longer.